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!
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Date: 2023-03-02 03:21 pm (UTC)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!