[Discussion] On the Gods and the World, Ch. II

[sdi]

My gratitude to those who participated in last week's discussion of Sallustius' On the Gods and the World—I am learning much, and we've hardly begun! So let's pick the puzzle-box back up, shall we?

II. That God is unchanging, unbegotten, eternal, incorporeal, and not in space.

Let the disciple be thus. Let the teachings be of the following sort. The essences of the Gods never came into existence (for that which always is never comes into existence; and that exists for ever which possesses primary force and by nature suffers nothing): neither do they consist of bodies; for even in bodies the powers are incorporeal. Neither are they contained by space; for that is a property of bodies. Neither are they separate from the First Cause nor from one another,* just as thoughts are not separate from mind nor acts of knowledge from the soul.

* Thomas Taylor notes, "The reader must not suppose from this, that the gods are nothing more than so many attributes of the first cause; for if this were the case, the first god would be multitude, but the one must always be prior to the many. But the gods, though they are profoundly united with their ineffable cause, are at the same time self-perfect essences; for the first cause is prior to self-perfection. Hence as the first cause is superessential, all the gods, from their union through the summits or blossoms of their natures with this incomprehensible god, will be likewise superessential; in the same manner as trees from being rooted in the earth are all of them earthly in an eminent degree. And as in this instance the earth itself is essentially distinct from the trees which it contains, so the highest god is transcendently distinct from the multitude of gods which he ineffably comprehends."

Comments

[temporaryreality]

Ok, another set of questions: how are we to approach and understand Taylor's use of the terms "self-perfect essences" and "superessential" in the footnote. Perhaps the first is somewhat readily apparent at face value, but I'm not sure about the second - and I figure it's good to check, because perhaps I shouldn't take the terms at face value.

[boccaderlupo]

I suspect the first phrase denotes the fact that each god, being perfect, requires nothing from without to make he or she any better (indeed, they can't get any better, since they are perfect).

His use of the term "essence," though, raises some issues, largely because of the second point: the gods are "superessential," that is, above/prior/before Being itself. Indeed, the confluence of the gods, if I recall right, is what generates Being, from whence arises the Forms (I think?) and ultimately the material world that we inhabit.

But if they are prior to essence, then how can they have essence, even if it's perfect? I would assume he just is using "essence" as shorthand for intrinsic qualities, and not in the sense of "being," but...you know what happens when one "assumes."

An aside, one model for perhaps visualizing some of this, after a fashion (henads are, for all intents and purposes, the gods). I'm not sure where Being arises in this schema, but it would be below the level of the henads/gods.


Axé

[temporaryreality]

"largely because of the second point: the gods are "superessential," that is, above/prior/before Being itself. Indeed, the confluence of the gods, if I recall right, is what generates Being"

Huh, interesting. I'm still balancing the several cosmogenic tales I'm most familiar with in light of this. No, I don't expect them to agree, but I'm still holding them up next to each other (these are the big bang theory (it does posit a First Cause of sorts) , the Cosmic Doctrine's version of things, and the Dao de Jing's Dao as the originator of Heaven and Earth). I don't have much to say about how they stack up or compare to what Taylor's noting...

Thanks for the graphic - it's a nice visual as well as fulfilling its educative purpose. It's reminiscent of umbrellas or lotus leaves, or even inversed turtles, all the way up! :D

[boccaderlupo]

Apart from the "big bang," I am unfamiliar with those cosmogonies, but will be interested to hear what you find.

One other general conclusion about Neoplatonism: the waters get pretty deep pretty quick with this material, and different writers seem to introduce divergent ideas. For some, intensive, deep contemplation of the various hypostases leads to valuable insights; for others (like myself), a more superficial understanding of the major concepts will suffice, especially when it comes to its relevance/explanatory power with regard to your praxis. This is why I like Sallustius: he's effective at outlining the major ideas without (IMO) compromising them, and offers the option of wading out deeper, should one wish to do so.

[sdi]

Sorry, I'm a few days behind on this, it's been a difficult week.

"Superessential" in this context simply seems to mean "above existence."

Sallustius specifically treats "existence" as a property of the gods. (In fact, he makes a stronger statement, that the gods exist eternally, and thus have no beginning and no end.) This would seem to imply that the gods are "essential" rather than "superessential."

If I'm reading Taylor right, he's saying that the One is superessential, but that the gods are "superessential" in the same way that trees are "earthy"—they're not literally like the earth, but if you're looking at a tree, it's definitely got something to do with the earth (rather than, say, some asteroid or something). I would take this to mean that the gods aren't truly above existence, but they can reasonably be said to be above existence since they're above all the other things that exist and give rise to them, which I think is what boccaderlupo was saying.

(As far as the One goes, I'm not sure what it can possibly mean to "be superessential", which strikes me as self-contradictory. I wonder if the One is merely some kind of (literally) glorified reductio ad absurdum used to prove logical statements about what the gods must be. I guess we'll see as we proceed?)

[sdi]

As for "self-perfect essences", I think the way Neoplatonism thinks of gods is that they're causal fixed-points: they're those things that act but are never acted upon. Therefore the various gods are all the things that can act in such a way that they are self-stable (e.g. they don't blow up or burn out, since then they wouldn't be eternal). Thus they're "perfect" or "complete" since they each have all they need to sustain themselves indefinitely.

(I assume there's one of these for each way in which it is possible to act in a self-stable manner. Personally I would have guessed there's an infinity of ways for that to occur? I suppose the Greeks figured that there were exactly twelve, or maybe I'm reading into their myths wrong. We're not at the chapters on myth, yet, anyway!)

Speaking of "perfect", Neoplatonism talks a lot about "the good," and last week I wondered what the deal was with that, since they clearly mean something other than "beneficial?" Maybe "perfect" is a better translation than "good" in this context (since it has both connotations of being "beneficial" but also "complete", and it feels like that last is being relied on to make all these little proofs that Sallustius is making).

[boccaderlupo]

Now I think we may be getting somewhere. Good observations all around.

I suspect "perfect" in conjunction with "unchanging" suggests that the gods are so good that they can never be better, since, as it's been noted by others elsewhere, for them to be improved on would imply that they were not perfect in the first place. This begins to convey, albeit only imperfectly, the absolute nature of the gods, a characteristic imparted them by The One.

As for the number of gods, I believe elsewhere (maybe it was Proclus?) it is noted that there is a finite number of gods, although the exact number is unknown to us mortals. It would seem that the Greeks settled on a "main 12," although there seem to plainly be more that that, given their mythologies.

And if we are talking about a more modern Neoplatonic approach, a la Butler's polycentric approach, its conceivable that we can extend this way of thinking, of the panoply of gods from across various cultures: Olympians, Titans, Æsir, Vanir, Orixas, et al., each of which seems to be have discrete "personas," although there are sometimes overlap in the tokens that are ascribed to them by each different culture.

Axé

[sdi]

Yeah, I think you're right: the Olympians are more of a "primary vibrations", while all of the other (subsidiary?) gods are various "harmonics" or "chords" formed of the above (hence all the mythic incest and so on).

Regarding the various pantheons: Apuleius seems to make the point (or maybe I am reading this into him) that the true gods are constant (or, perhaps, that different pantheons "tune in" to different subsets of them), but the beings worshipped and interacted with aren't actually the true gods at all, but various groups of intermediary beings (dæmons in his terminology) that act on behalf or in conjunction with the true gods. As you say, not only do individual deities but also entire pantheons seem to have personalities: the Greek deities seem to be pretty serene, Roman deities formal, Egyptian deities sympathetic, Norse deities boisterous, and so on. He points out that the true gods wouldn't have personalities, since they're constant and not moved by interactions with us, so these pantheons must be lower than them.

[boccaderlupo]

These observations may jibe with Proclus's (later) distinctions between the intelligible, Intelligible-intellective, and intellective gods: I regard this to mean that certain aspects of the gods are more apprehensible to mortals (how they are portrayed in myths and other revelations, for example) whereas other aspects are remote and hidden. But all of these are God, in the sense of "God" as a class.

It's worth keeping in mind, too, that there's a diversity of viewpoints on all these matters. Despite the general agreement of Platonists, each has their own angle* on things, so looking for a seamless agreement is, I suspect, not gonna happen. (A multiplicity emerging from a unity, as it were, on a different scale.)

[sdi]

If there is anything I am certain of, it is that this is all well above our pay grade! Still, it is fun to try. (I'm sure the gods appreciate it. Do we not appreciate dogs who can almost talk?)