Neoplatonism Ancient Philosophies Th is series provides fresh and engaging new introductions to the major schools of philosophy of antiquity. Designed for students of philosophy and classics, the books off er clear and rigorous presenta- tion of core ideas and lay the foundation for a thorough understand- ing of their subjects. Primary texts are handled in translation and the readers are provided with useful glossaries, chronologies and guides to the primary source material. Published Cynics Presocratics William Desmond James Warren Neoplatonism Stoicism Pauliina Remes John Sellars Forthcoming Ancient Commentators on Plato Epicureanism and Aristotle Tim O’Keefe Miira Tuominen Classical Islamic Philosophy Ancient Scepticism Deborah Black Harald Th orsrud Plato Aristotle Andrew Mason Vasilis Politis Socrates Confucianism Mark McPherran Paul Goldin Neoplatonism Pauliina Remes acumen © Pauliina Remes, 2008 Th is book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. First published in 2008 by Acumen Acumen Publishing Limited Stocksfi eld Hall Stocksfi eld NE43 7TN www.acumenpublishing.co.uk isbn: 978-1-84465-124-5 (hardcover) isbn: 978-1-84465-125-2 (paperback) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Designed and typeset in Minion by Kate Williams, Swansea. Printed and bound by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn. Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements xii 1. Introduction 1 2. Th e fi rst principles and the metaphysical hierarchy 35 3. Nature and the sensible universe 77 4. Human being and the self 101 5. Epistemology and philosophical psychology 137 6. Ethics and politics 177 7. Th e Neoplatonic legacy 199 Glossary of terms 209 Guide to further reading 214 References 227 Index of passages 235 Index 240 Preface In school in the 1970s I learned that the world does not consist only of human beings, trees, cars, colours or even the materials these are composed of; rather, everything is made of tiny, invisible atoms that function according to their own laws. What we perceive and identify in our everyday life emerges from these basic elements that we cannot perceive in ways only the experts know and understand. By the 1970s, atoms were no longer considered indivisible (atomoi), and their more subtle internal structure had been described. Since then, even smaller entities have become the subjects of mainstream physics; these subatomic particles are even further removed from the direct empirical gaze of the perceiver, and from the direct sight of the physicists. Scientists introduce such theoretical entities as quarks and strings to explain the elementary constituents of matter and radiation. For their part, these explicate the true elemental structures of the universe. Importantly for our purposes, the establishment of these new entities has not meant a replacement of, say, an atomic level of explanation, but the opening of a new level of reality and its study. Reality seems to be constituted of a hierarchy of levels, only one of which we are directly aware of. In late antiquity the philosophical movement called Neoplatonism fl ourished in cultural centres of the Mediterranean such as Alexandria, Rome and Athens. Th is school of thought, which prospered from vii neoplatonism the third century well into the sixth century ce and beyond, shares certain important features with contemporary physics. Like physics, it concentrates on revealing the order of the universe, working on the assumption that although this order is not directly perceivable, a correct combination of gathering information through perception and theorizing about it will reveal its basic nature to human reason. Again like physics, Neoplatonism postulates levels of being on which diff erent entities and diff erent characteristics appear, all of them explanatory of this very same world we see and live in. Some of these levels and entities are more speculative than others. As in physics, these levels are hierarchically ordered, each level functioning as an explanatory level proper for certain phenomena, having a complex relation to the levels and entities above and below. In both theories, the subtleties of the cross-level relations are as, or even more, prob- lematic than the study of the levels themselves and the entities they consist of. In sum, what is shared by Neoplatonists and some modern physicists is a speculative eff ort and readiness to postulate theoretical entities that form a layered reality inaccessible to perception. For the comparison to illuminate rather than distort, however, we should also note the paramount diff erences. Unlike most con- temporary physics, Neoplatonism treats matter as inert and without any properties of its own, claiming that what is basic and most truly existing is pure order, not qualities of matter nor even the realization of order in matter. Th e Neoplatonic explanations of phenomena do not seek constitutive, simple elements of which things are composed, but share the general Platonic tendency of appealing to intelligible principles. Th is has been called Platonic “top-downism” as opposed to the “bottom-upism” of many theories currently in fashion (Gerson 2005b: 259–60). Undoubtedly, too, the levels and the entities pos- tulated are completely diff erent in the two theories. It is also likely that Neoplatonists went much further than most modern physics in their methodology, in which the justifi cation for the theory is not sought in how well the empirical studies and their results fi t the theory, but in matters internal to the theory: its completeness, consistency and rational plausibility. Although the starting-points for the study are the experiences and perceptions of the enquirer, viii preface ultimately the theoretical considerations outweigh comparisons with experience. It is important in this context to recall that at the time of Neoplatonism, systematic empirical science had not yet been devel- oped. In their speculative spirit and readiness to postulate theoretical entities, however, many modern physicists are Platonist in spirit, some of them manifestly so. Th us we might claim that present-day physics and Neoplatonic metaphysics both start from perceptible reality and share the ten- dency to postulate further layers of reality foreign to the common man, but that they are poles apart in choosing their direction. Where physics proceeds “downwards” by penetrating the subtleties of mate- rial or physical structures of the universe, Neoplatonists separated themselves from what they considered matter’s limitations, and sought a purely intelligible order. For intuitions nestled in contem- porary science, this move may seem fatal, but to grasp and appreci- ate some of the basic Neoplatonic insights it is enough to allow the possiblity of a multilayered reality penetrable to reason. Before looking at the details of this philosophical position, however, a thought experiment might help to make the reader more sympathetic to the Neoplatonic preference of order and formation over matter. Try to think of matter: not mud, soil, clay or pebbles, but just matter. Th e inclination to organize it in your mind in some way or other – as brown, earth-like, coarse or whatever – is fair enough, otherwise it seems diffi cult to think or imagine it at all. For the Neoplatonists, this is a conclusive sign: pure matter cannot func- tion as a starting-point for any enquiry because it resists intellectual attempts to grasp it. What is grasped in trying to think of matter is actually some intelligible organization or another, imposed on it by intelligence. Th is, rather than matter in and of itself, must therefore serve as the nucleus for the theory. Th e somewhat bizarre but fascinating and highly infl uential philo- sophical school of thought called Neoplatonism, although pagan, had an emphatic interest in spiritual matters. As the centuries reveal, Neoplatonism existed side by side and, to an extent, in dialogue with the growing Christian religion. Despite the religious and spir- itual context, Neoplatonism was focally a continuation of ancient ix