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sdiSince Proclus' Elements is named after Euclid's Elements—a book entirely composed of geometric proofs—I think people may get the wrong idea that it's meant to prove anything. It's not. The word "elements" is meant in the sense of "elementary:" Proclus' work might better be called "Introductory Metaphysics." It's a book meant to teach, to give you a tour of the big principles of metaphysics from beginning to end, so that once one has mastered it, they are conversant in it and can start discussing it sensibly.
We human beings are embodied souls, and according to Plotinus, "reason" is the power of the embodied soul—we need to think things out, since we are detached enough from the essential Reality that we can't make use of higher powers. Proclus, here, is going to be working with the tools of logic to show that the pre-eminent metaphysical principle is Unity itself. But it must be made clear that this is only meant to be by way of explanation: it's an analogy, and the Unity that we can think about is just a construct within our souls—it's not the actual Unity that rules all things. That may only be experienced, not thought about, which is what Laozi was talking about when he said, "the Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao."
On the One and the Many: In the same way you are a "one" (a body) made up of "many" (systems, organs, cells, molecules, atoms, etc.), so is everything, up to and including the cosmos. In between the cosmic One and all the various "manies" are a middle rank called "Henads" which share the characteristics of both, since they are technically "many" but are indivisible (and so "one" in a sense).
I. Every many participates in one.
Every thing must be one or many. If every many was only made up of manies, then each of those (lesser) manies would be made up of (still lesser) manies, and so on and so on forever, which is absurd. So, the process must terminate eventually and every many must, directly or indirectly, be composed of ones.
II. Every thing that participates in one is both one and not-one.
One is already one, and can't participate in itself: this is just identity rather than participation. But for a many, note that we are still calling it "a thing:" it has some measure of unity by which we refer to the pieces that make it up as one, like how an "army" is somehow a unity of "soldiers." So, that many is one but with something added, and this is in fact what we mean by "participation."
III. Every thing that is united is so by participating in one.
One is already one, and can't become what it already is. But when a many is united, that many hasn't gone anywhere and still exists, but one has nevertheless somehow been added to it, and so we say that that united many now participates in one.
IV. Every thing that is united is different from one itself.
If something is united, it participates in one [III], and is therefore both one and not-one [II]. Suppose the participated one to itself be united: then we can just repeat this process again and again forever, which is absurd. So, the participated one must not be united (e.g. must be simplex). [This establishes one's uniqueness: so, in order to be explicit, we will henceforth refer to it as "the One."]
V. Every many is posterior to the One.
We have previously established that every many participates in the One [I, II]. Suppose that the One also participates in many such that the two are co-dependent. It cannot be the case that the One and many naturally come together, since that is not the nature of contraries. But neither can there be a third principle prior to them forcing them together: such a third principle must be zero, the One, or many; it cannot be zero, since nothing cannot bring something together; and it cannot be the One or many, since we have already supposed these to be posterior to the third principle. So, our supposition must be false and the One and many cannot be co-dependent. Therefore, since many participates in the One but not vice versa, the One must be strictly prior to many.
VI. Every many consists either of Henads or of united groups.
Every many must consist of ones [I]. These ones can't all be united groups, since if there is the One [IV], there must be some first united group: if there weren't, every group could be divided and subdivided forever, which is absurd. [We will call the (many but indivisible) members of this first united group "Henads."]
It's impressive that Proclus managed in two pages what took Plotinus dozens, but that sure didn't make it any easier! In particular, I had a devil of a time with V, and while I think the idea is intuitive, I'm not sure I understood the logic correctly. Dodds points us to Proclus' Theology of Plato II 1 for a fleshed-out version of the argument, but I honestly found it just as confounding.
I begrudgingly use the terms "the One" and "Henads" in deference to tradition, but frankly they frustrate me. I couldn't change "the One" without making the whole section confusing (it's very convenient to go from "a one" to "the One"), and translating "Henad" to English (as "Unit" or "Atom") would, if anything, be worse than importing a loan word (we'd end up with sentences containing "one," "the One," "Unit," "unity," "united"—sheesh!). If I had my druthers, I would probably call them "the Absolute" and "Primaries."
There seems to be some disagreement about the nature of Henads: are they ones (not "united things", but unities plain and simple) that participate in the One but aren't the One itself, or are they manies that are indivisible? Dodds seems to assume the former, Taylor and Johnson seem to assume the latter. Plotinus certainly asserts that the One is the only unitary thing in existence (even the first Henad, the Intellect, is many) so I've assumed this reading of the text, but it's entirely possible Proclus and Plotinus disagree, and I suppose we'll see as we proceed.
Finally, Johnson quotes Oscar Kuhns in The Sense of the Infinite:
There exist no more beautiful lines in English poetry than the following, taken from [Shelley's] Adonais [§52], lines in which the whole system of Plotinus [and Proclus] is summed up in exquisite words:
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity.
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Date: 2023-06-02 09:30 pm (UTC)Axé
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Date: 2023-06-07 08:23 pm (UTC)From reading commentaries, I'm already familiar at least one discrepancy between Plotinus and Proclus: Plotinus considers the soul immaculate and unable to descend into corporeality (requiring an intermediary, which he calls "the lower soul" and which Porphyry calls "the pneumatic vehicle" and which I've glossed as "the spirit," for this purpose), while Proclus instead apparently considers the soul able to lose it's original home in the Intellectual and needing to regain it. This isn't an abstract notion! For Plotinus, this is exactly why we are essentially divine and means we can incarnate as more or less anything (even an animal, even a plant, even a stone), while Proclus and most other late Neoplatonists reject this and say that humans have "human souls" and cannot incarnate as anything else except through an intermediary as a divine prerogative (e.g. as punishment or something). I'm of two minds on the topic, myself: I'm inclined to trust Plotinus, but my angel urges a middle ground between the two. But because of this, I imagine they may disagree on other things, too.
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Date: 2023-06-08 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-08 09:07 pm (UTC)