?The Metaphysics of Polytheism in Proclus,? MS Word ... - Henadology

The Metaphysics of Polytheism in Proclus
Edward P. Butler "But apparently the One neither is nor is one,
if this argument is to be trusted."
(Plato, Parmenides 141 E) Introduction This dissertation seeks to restore the doctrine of the henads to its
proper place at the center of our understanding of Proclus' metaphysics. To
do this, it is necessary to correct two key mistakes made by modern
commentators on the henadology.
The first is the tendency to overlook unique logical and structural
characteristics of the henadic manifold setting it apart from any ontic
manifold, that is, any multiplicity of beings. Once we see that a logic
really distinct from that which applies to beings applies to supra-
essential entities, the henads will no longer seem, as they might
otherwise, a mere structural complement within the system. We shall see, in
short, the work the henads do. The whole concept of the supra-essential or
"existential," that which lies beyond being, will therefore acquire for us
true content, whereas otherwise it might seem mere hyperbole or
obscurantism. To arrive at a contentful interpretation of Proclus' key
philosophical concepts is a requirement of hermeneutic charity, and we must
not allow an appearance of exoticism such as Proclus may present to us in
one respect or another to excuse us from the burden of taking him seriously
as a philosopher, just as we must not assume that because his dominant
medium is commentary, that we shall not find in him originality of thought.
The second problem which has hindered the contemporary understanding
of the henadology has been the inability of commentators to integrate the
religious and philosophical dimensions of the doctrine. The henads are also
the Gods; and this has caused inexplicable problems for commentators who
would not, to put it bluntly, find it so difficult to grasp the interplay
and interdependence of philosophy and theology in a Christian, Jewish or
Muslim philosopher. In such a case, one would recognize the positive
contribution that the attempt to rationally articulate a religious position
could make to a philosopher's thought; one would not see the philosopher in
question as merely engaged in an exercise of special pleading. Such an
attitude toward the relationship between religion and philosophy is
perfectly defensible on its own grounds, but it must be applied with
fairness across the board. An implicit assumption in the background for
many commentators with respect to the henadology seems to be the following:
if the identity of the henads and the Gods is to be taken seriously, then
the philosophical significance of the henads must be minimal, while if
their philosophical significance is to be affirmed, then their identity
with the Gods must be a mere concession to vulgar opinion, even if the
vulgar opinion is Proclus' own. Upon either alternative, the integration of
the philosophical and theological dimensions of the henadology is
practically ruled out from the start.
What is the source of this presupposition? One could attribute it
simply to the difficulty that modern commentators have often found taking
the classical paganism of the West seriously. The images of Homer's
Olympians seem incompatible with either sincere piety or profound
theological reflection. Indeed, it is a habit of long standing to see the
birth of philosophy itself in the West as a function of the progressive
estrangement from paganism. This view, of course, features in a particular
metanarrative of the spiritual history of the West. To trace the history of
this metanarrative and criticize the notions upon which it rests is not the
task of this dissertation. Nor does this metanarrative suffice by itself to
explain the complex of assumptions which have prevented the proper grasp of
the henadology. Instead, we may find upon examination that the roots of the
incapacity to integrate the philosophical and theological dimensions of the
henadology lie in the first problem I outlined, namely the incomplete
understanding of the special logic of supra-essential existence in Proclus.
For it is not merely a question of a reflexive cultural bias privileging
monotheism, but beyond this, of a logic of unity and multiplicity for which
intelligibility can only come at the cost of reducing multiplicity to unity
and the diverse to the same.
The thesis of this dissertation is that Proclus interprets the
primacy of unity in the Neoplatonic tradition as the primacy of
individuality, and the first principle of Neoplatonism, the One Itself, as
the principle of individuation. Furthermore, the One Itself, despite its
hypostatization for discursive purposes, is actually not different from
each member of the ultimate class of individuals: the One is each henad.
Proclus can thus be seen, from different points of view, as a monist or a
pluralist, for while there is for him a single principle from which all of
reality depends, and in that respect he is unquestionably a monist, that
principle is also really many. It is not, however, as many henads that the
One is the first principle, for the first principle cannot be many.
Instead, the One is the first principle as each henad individually. That
is, it is in the uniqueness of each henad that the first principle is
manifest, not in that henad's membership in any group or class. Failing to
grasp the true nature of the relationship between the henads and the One,
commentators have naturally seen a tension between Proclus' polytheism and
his Neoplatonism. For they have assumed that the unity of the One Itself
must trump the multiplicity of the henads, making of polytheism a mere
appearance veiling an underlying unity. But in this they have failed to
take seriously the negations laid upon the One in the first hypothesis of
the Parmenides, for Proclus the most canonical of Platonic texts. For the
One neither is, nor is one. Naturally this does not mean that it simply
fails to exist or that it is ontically many. When I say that the One is not
ontically many, what I mean is that the ultimate source of Being is not
many principles, but just one, the principle of individuation. But that
source is no one thing. Proclus is not therefore a pluralist in the sense
of, say, Empedocles, for whom there is a discrete set of distinct
principles, themselves beings, which constitute all the rest. Instead, we
might say that for the purposes of ontology, he is a monist, while
existentially, that is, with reference to the supra-essential realm, he is
a pluralist.
This distinction between ontological and existential registers of
philosophical reflection parallels the distinction between philosophical
and theological discourse; and this is why the two misunderstandings
preventing a proper grasp of the henadology, namely the distinct logic of
unity and multiplicity applicable to supra-essentials and the relationship
between the philosophical and theological dimensions of the henadology,
depend upon each other. For if the distinction between philosophical and
theological discourse were fully collapsed in Proclus, then he would be
either a pluralist à la Empedocles, betraying his Neoplatonism, or his
polytheism would be a mere appearance, inasmuch as the many Gods would in
every respect simply derive from a One which, whether producing them or
comprising them, either way totalizes them. But this would, in a word,
reduce Proclus' philosophy to nonsense. His protestations to the contrary,
the relationship between the One and the henads would be in every way
assimilable to that between any other principle and its
products/participants, and while we might still find worthwhile material in
his ontology, his account of the supra-essential domain would be at best
uninteresting and at worst a philosophical embarassment. What we find
instead is a doctrine of remarkable subtlety, for the distinction between
philosophical and theological discourse for Proclus is that between a
discourse of classes and a discourse of proper names. The philosopher,
except for purposes of illustration, has nothing to do with particular
deities, but only with classes of Gods. Henads, while they are all supra-
essential by nature, fall into classes based upon their activities with
respect to Being. In this way we can speak of classes of deities mirrored
by the hierarchy of ontic hypostases, all the way up to the class of Gods
simpliciter, which is the class corresponding to the One Itself. However,
each henad is also an individual God with a proper name and an identity
primordially distinct from the rest. To deal with particular, named Gods is
the province of the theologian and, of course, the individual worshiper.
The proper domain of philosophy, that is, the domain of form, is bounded
above and below by a domain of individuals, below by those individuals
falling short of formal unity or identity, namely individuals like us,
those who fall under infima species, above by those individuals
transcending formal unity, and who are thus uncircumscribed by the laws
governing the unity and multiplicity of ontic sets, namely the henads.
In the ontic realm, all multiplicity is subordinate to unity; and in
this sense, that is, ontically, the same can be said for the henads. Gods
are formally subordinate to the quality of Godhood; this is no more and no
less than analytic. For this reason, it would make no sense to speak, as an
Empedoclean pluralist would, of an ontic multiplicity of first principles,
for then they would be no longer first. Such a discourse merely fails to
take stock of its own tacit presuppositions. The multiplicity of the henads
takes place in a different register which grounds the realm of forms and
upon which therefore the latter can make no claims. But this is not to
withdraw support from the realm of Form; rather, t