The Elements of Theology, Introduction

The Elements of Theology is one of the great works of Proclus, the last great pagan philosopher of antiquity. Like most of Proclus's works, it's dense, difficult, and very hard to read unless one has a grounding (as did Proclus himself) in the work of Plato and Aristotle both, as well as the later philosophers in the tradition, such as Plotinus and Porphyry. Unlike Proclus's other works, however, the Elements is divided into brief, manageable chunks. The work consists of 211 propositions, which, taken together, are intended to constitute the whole of Platonic philosophy. As Thomas Taylor tells us in the introduction to his 1792 English translation of the work,

They begin from super-essential Unity, and proceed gradually through all the beautiful and wonderful progressions of divine causes, ending in the self-motive energies of the soul. They possess all the accuracy of Euclid, all the subtlety and sublimity necessary to a knowledge of the most profound theology, and may be considered as bearing the same relation to the Pythagoric and Platonic wisdom, as Euclid's Elements to the most abstruse geometry.

As Taylor's introduction suggests, Proclus's way of reasoning can seem backward to the modern mind, as it is always his method to begin with the highest and most abstract concepts and only from there descend, one degree at a time, to the world of our experience. Starting today and concluding, let us hope, 211 days or more from now, I'm going to work through Proclus's propositions one at a time, beginning, as Taylor says, in the super-essential Unity, and proceeding to the self-motive energies of the soul.

Proclus wrote in Greek, which is a language that I can read only with great difficulty. Rather than trying to bang my head through the original text, I'm going to make use of multiple English translations. Thomas Taylor's 1792 translation is online here; Thomas Johnson's 1909 translation is here; and a more recent translation by the Noetic Society is here.

Elements of Theology, Proposition 1

 

Every multitude participates in some respect of The One.

For if it in no way or degree participates of The One, neither will the whole be one, nor each of the many things from which multitude arises, but each mul­titude will originate from certain or particular things, and this will continue ad infinitum. And of these in­finites each will be again infinite multitude. For, if multitude partakes in no respect of any one, neither as a whole nor through any of its parts, it will be in every re­spect indeterminate. Each of the many, whichever you may assume, will be one or not one; and if not one will be either many or nothing. But if each of the many is nothing, that likewise which arises from these will be nothing. If each is many, each will consist of infinites without limit. But this is impossible. For there is no being constituted of infinites without limit, since there is nothing greater than the infinite itself; and that which consists of all is greater than each particular thing. Neither is any thing composed of nothing. Every mul­titude therefore partakes in some respect of The One.


Commentary: 

As Thomas Taylor promised us, we begin in absolute Unity. The first proposition concerns the One and its relationship to the Many. This very topic is the subject of Plato's Parmenides, which is both his most difficult dialogue, and the dialogue that was read last in the Platonic schools of antiquity, as it is concerned with the most exalted subjects. (It's also the dialogue that modern thinkers have the most trouble with, with some seeing it as an attack by Plato on his own ideas, which it is not, and others throwing up their hands in frustration or declaring it one big joke!) 

In the Platonic understanding of the universe, the One is the first principle of existence, that by virtue of which anything else exists at all. Although it might seem backward to begin with such a lofty topic and one so far removed from our daily affairs, Proclus is actually doing us a favor here and giving away the answer to a difficult problem. The relationship of the one to the many is one of the great puzzles of philosophy. If the One exists, how can anything exist outside of it? If the many exist, how can there be any kind of unity?

Proclus gives us the answer here, and at time same time introduces us to the Platonic way of thinking about these things. "Every multitude participates in a certain respect of the One." That is: If you have any multitude, or group of things, you must have some form of unity as well. Otherwise, each component part of the multitude will itself be consist of nothing but an infinite number of component parts, with nothing to unite them. Indeed, you won't even be able to call them "parts," because parts are parts of a whole, and without the One, there is no whole-- no one thing. There are only fragments of fragments of fragments, unto infinity. Instead, each individual part of any multitude of things participates in the One-- it has some measure of unity, oneness, wholeness. But not the One itself, or the One in its entirety-- because then it would be unable to be a separate thing, different from others. 

Speculation:

The One is the name for the first principle in the Platonic tradition-- the One, and also, the Good. But there are other philosophical traditions which also know the First, but by a different name. The Christian tradition-- in its Catholic and Orthodox forms, at least-- borrows many of these ideas, but applies them to God. The Chinese tradition uses the word "Tao" in the same way as the Christians use "God" and the Platonists use "One." One of the ideas which I have drawn from John Michael Greer is that in the Druid tradition, the Welsh word "Awen," which refers to poetic inspiration, can also be a name for the First Principle of thing. 

What happens when we exchange some of these other names for the word "One"? 


Let's try it and see. 

"All creatures participates in a certain degree of God."

Suppose this to be the case, and suppose that, by "God," we mean precisely what the Church means when it prays "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth." 

If this is the case, then several other things immediately follow: 

1. God is always present to all of his creatures, because their very existence is sustained by their participation in Him.

2. If that's the case, then nothing in the universe is wholly deprived of God. Not even devils, and not even Hell. 

3. If it is also the case that-- as the tradition suggests-- by deliberate activity one may increase one's participation in God, this suggests both that universal salvation is probably true, since God is present to everything. Moreover, since God himself cannot be divided, God in His entirety is present to everything, even the Damned, even the devils, and that, therefore, anyone or anything in the cosmos my ultimately be united to Him. This also gives us a more useful way to understand the old formula, "Christ became man that men might become gods." 

"All beings participate in a certain degree of the Awen." 

Awen is a kind of poetic inspiration. Its presence to all things makes all things a kind of song or poem. This is a very fine way to look at a human life: Each of us is capable of becoming a true divine song. Our trouble, often, is that we are out of tune, in the wrong key, inharmonious. Our work, then, is to restore harmony within ourselves, and also our harmony to the larger creation of which are are a part. 

"All ways participate in a certain degree of the Way."

The Taoist way of looking at things is processual. If the first principle is a path or Way, everything can be seen as a kind of activity or journey. This allows for a more dynamic and relational way of approaching the cosmos. One of the great virtues of the Taoist tradition is its approach to politics, which is very hands-off, relaxed, and libertarian. It makes a strong contract to the control-freakery that one often sees in even the best Western thinkers, even in Plato himself. I'm going to do a post at some point called "Platonic Ends, Taoist Means" making the case that the Taoist method provides a very useful way of approaching Platonic ideas about both society and, more importantly, the soul. 

In the meantime, it's worth noting that the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching reads a lot like Proclus's first proposition translated into Taoist