Systematization

[sdi]

You know, I'm really starting to think that the systematization of a worldview or philosophical system is a deeply flawed goal.

Let's suppose Plotinus is right and the Intellect is unitary. Then no possible systematization can exist: everything happens all at once, together, in a harmonious chorus. Here in the mirror-world of matter, of course, all-at-once is not possible: the harmony is broken, disparate, disjoint. Formulating a system out of it doesn't squish it all back together: rather, it only applies an order to it. One-thing-after-another is not the same as all-at-once, no matter how much you squint and turn your head.

Consequently, trying to formulate a system out of a mystical vision is to miss the point. Plotinus himself says that rationalism can only take you so far: the final leap is, and must be, beyond reason; this is because reason is the power of the soul, but we already live in the world of soul—to move beyond, to the world of Intellect, requires the transcendence of reason and the use of intuition. To put it another way, Euclid could formalize mathematics because mathematics exists within the soul; but philosophy—at least, philosophy in the sense Plotinus considers it—transcends soul and exists within the Intellect. To formalize philosophy is to try to use a system to prove itself, which both Plotinus and Gödel demonstrate to be impossible.

I haven't hazarded Proclus yet—I still intend to, and reserve the right to reconsider my evaluation when I do—but I am wary of treating his work as a touchstone or as a goal to be attained, like every modern commentator on Neoplatonism, from Thomas Taylor on, seems to. The Elements of Theology may yet be a useful didactic device, but the goal mustn't be anything so crass as a system: it is only, at best, a finger pointing at the moon. Focus on the moon, not the finger!

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

I agree, with a caveat: the systems are, in my opinion, best viewed as tools in the unfolding. Thus a systematic theology, rather than being viewed as something to which one's spiritual life must conform, is only useful insofar as it leads one further along one's own peculiar path.

(FWIW, I err more on the side of a Iamblichus than Proclus...)

[sdi]

Yes, I agree—the didactic purpose makes sense to me. I am not necessarily criticizing Proclus, here—I haven't read him yet, and have no sense of his intent; no, I'm criticizing all the modern commentators who insist that Neoplatonism's goal was to systematize theology, and it's failure to due so was the reason for it's decline.

For example, consider how Thomas Davidson presupposes that systemization of a worldview is necessary or desirable:

"The greater part, it might almost be said the whole, of the Neo-Platonic philosophers failed in the attempt to reduce their pholosophic views to a system. The most successful of them was Plotinus; but even he, according to the admission of his most enthusiastic admirers, has rather left materials from which a coherent system might, by careful study and comparison, be deduced, than worked out a system himself."

Or Christian Wildberg, who presupposes that systemization is necessary to compete in the marketplace of ideas:

"At a time when the considered wisdom of Greece and Rome came under increasing pressure to re-articulate its commitments in the face of waves of novel movements that lay claim to revelatory truth, the Neoplatonists too strove to refine their teachings and to delineate the metaphysical architecture of the world as they saw it. No longer would it suffice to hold forth on philosophical issues, as Plato, Cicero, and to some extent Plotinus had done, in a serious yet exploratory and protreptic spirit. In order to be heard in an increasingly competitive marketplace of ideas teeming with holy men of every kind and temperament, views had to be laid out clearly and in systematic fashion. In some of its later manifestations, like Stoicism and Epicureanism before it, Neoplatonism drifted towards scholasticism and reveled in dogmatic system building."

Folly, I say! Mystical visions are mysterious, and that is as it should be—and I appreciate that Plotinus was intellectually honest enough to demonstrate it!

[boccaderlupo]

Ah, was unfamiliar with all these...interesting!

[sdi]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, too:

"The most beautiful and orderly development of the philosophy which endeavors to explain all things by an analysis of consciousness, and builds up a world in the mind out of materials furnished by the mind itself, is to be found in the Plantonic Theory of Proclus."