Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism brings everything (including Aristotle) in to understand Plato. They synthesize all ancient thought.
The neoplatonists would not call themselves ‘neoplatonists,’ because in their eyes they are simply continuing the platonic tradition.
The Platonic academy ceased to exist (as a building) in (the first century CE) and was refounded in the 4th century CE.
Plotinus was the one to refound it, and attracted many pupils. A lot of the people in it would be from Palestine, Turkey, etc. Places where monotheism would later take up the achievements of neoplatonism.
We start with what they would consider orthodox Platonism: between the destruction and neoplatonism, we find the ‘middle Platonists,’ who weren’t a school, but a bunch of authors that worked independently. Most of their work was based on reading the Timaeus - Plato’s cosmology. But this was only a side-project of Plato, only to show that nature is dominated by mathematics.
The neoplatonists would instead care about
- the 6th book of the republic: that of the transcendent good, the good beyond being.
- Parmenides - the dialogue in which Plato first criticizes his own theory of ideas, then, the second part, discussing Parmenides’ hypothesis of ‘the One is,’ i.e. the one either is or is not, and if it is, it must be One.
Parmenides says to Socrates at the end: ‘Socrates, you’re still young, let me give you some training about how the principles of reality actually operate.’ If ‘the One is,’ as a hypothesis, what follows?
- If the one is one
- if the one is
- … what are the effects for the one
- … what are the effects for the others
- if the one is not
- … what are the effects for the one
- … what are the effects for the others
This is just a logical exercise, really. Some would dismiss it as thus, or as a game Plato decided to play with his readers. But nobody really knows what is going on in this text.
Prof. says this could be an attempt to show that if you take the concepts you use for reality seriously, then they also entail their counterparts. You end up with pairs of opposites that imply each other. If something is similar to something else, you imply difference. If you say motion, you imply rest (by distinction).
What identifies them as neoplatonists, is that they read this as a way of elaborating different ways of existence of one-ness in the universe. You can see this as ‘different layers of reality.‘
They ontologize the reading of this second part of Parmenides.
T.3.22 — we see here the conclusion of ‘if the one is one.’ If you say this, you already imply two things → oneness and being. If you take any objects, and you wish to describe it, and you were to want to describe it as one, you would have to strip away all accidents, all attributes ascribed to the ‘oneness.’
If you have a being it is always determined in one of those ways: it has come to be, it will come to be, etc. Anything that exists as a being can be described in temporal ways. Thus, the one in no way partakes of being, as being is saying too much. Thus, oneness must be detached from being. In prof’s interpretation, that’s because it would mean there would be no opposite otherwise.
If you apply this to being, and say being is always plural, multiple in its existence, then oneness does not apply → if something is not, would anything belong to this thing that is not, or be of it? → the opposite then, would be non-being (being vs. non-being) → of course there is nothing to be said of things that are not → (if) oneness is not being; then no name applies to oneness (no name applies to it, non-being cannot be described) →
[Negative theology??? ? Hello Adorno]
By talking about ‘oneness’ you deprive it of its unity. Thus, oneness exists, but you can’t speak of it. What they refer to now is a kind of super-existence of a principle that is one and good; This is what’s called negative theology, or henology.
The pagan Greeks saw Christianity as a religion of the slaves.
[I am neon platonist]
‘we attribute a being to him, but not a being we know.‘
The One Good
It’s a principle that is a combination of those two passages from Plato. It’s an ineffable principle: if you say any more of it, you already go beyond what you can say about it.
The notion of Good and One are not derived from it as exegesis, but rather through connection to experience of daily life. For the Greeks, the object of longing is always good; if we apply this nickname to the principle, the name Good, you refer merely to its desirability.
The first unmoved mover, who is God, is the one who attracts us, and everything in nature to it, by being the first performance of the most perfect activity. It is the object of longing, hence it must be termed Good.
It’s not just thinking, as that is also bipolar → the thing that is thought and the thing that is thinking.
One of the proofs of the existence of God, from Thomas Aquinas, is ex effecticus: i.e. you argue from the effects, arguing that the cause must exist.
If you see people longing for anything whatsoever, you show that there must be a first principle that causes all kinds of longing by being good in itself.
They argue that it gets its true existence out of being a unity. The first principle, more importantly than being good, is what provides things their unity, hence making existence possible.
Before you can be, there must be a unity that installs being in what you are.
So the neoplatonists advocate for the priority of unity over being.
There are also other Platonic starting points:
- immortality of the soul
- immateriality of causes
- bipartition intelligible / sensible world
- soul as intermediate level
Whatever can be said of ontology, is always preceded by henology. For the neoplatonists, the Greek pantheon remains in place. So they have to reconcile that with the idea of ‘oneness’ somehow.
The Platonists kinda see the One as containing everything, and then expanding itself (decompressing) into the intellect.
The intellect is the first other that posits itself over and against the one. This is what transmits the whole movement of emanation to the lower stages. ‘The good gave him what he did not have himself.’ The One doesn’t read that file either, but it is just oneness that you need at that stage. Once you feel the need to read it, you see that you are lowering, descending in this multiplication.
Emanation: threefold existence; the neoplatonists actually take over Aristotle’s view of the threefold soul. Their metaphysical build-up is the Aristotelian distinction between the rational, vegetative and sensitive soul.
Plotinus disses the Gnostics, and refuses their dualism, because he sees everything as a result of a single principle. Matter is the lowest because it is pure, undetermined, potentiality.
Everything in the world is designed to be good, but there is evil because it has no force of its own. There is no dynamics to evil, it derives its forces from taking the force of the good until it is totally exhausted. Think of cancer.
There is a unity in every individual single thing. The multiplicity you find are different unities → you are already denying its unity.
The one posits itself in every thing. Unification is not a discovery of something outside, but a turning inwards.