Proclus

Greek philosopher

• Born: c. 410
• Birthplace: Constantinople, Byzantine Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey)
• Died: 485
• Place of death: Athens, Greece

Proclus is known for his detailed systematization of the various theological and philosophical doctrines that he inherited from his predecessors and for his immense commentaries on the works of Plato, which consumed most of his activity.

Early Life

Proclus (PROH-kluhs) was born of patrician Lycian parents from the city of Xanthus. They wanted him to be educated in their city; thus, he was sent to Xanthus at a very early age. Later, he went to Alexandria to study rhetoric and Roman law in order to follow his father’s profession, law. He soon became interested in philosophy and abandoned the study of law, choosing instead to attend lectures on mathematics and the philosophy of Aristotle. About the age of twenty, he went to Athens and studied under the Athenian Plutarch and his successor, Syrianus, at the Academy, the Athenian school that traced its ancestry to Plato’s Academy. There, he continued his study of Aristotle and was introduced to Plato’s philosophy and to mystical theology, to which he became a devotee. Proclus was such an intense, diligent student, with extraordinary powers of comprehension and memory, that by the age of twenty he had read the whole of Aristotle’s De anima (348-336 b.c.e.; On the Soul, 1812) and Plato’s Phaedros (399-390 b.c.e.; Phaedrus, 1792), and by twenty-eight he had written several treatises as well as his commentary on Plato’s Timaeos (360-347 b.c.e.; Timeaus, 1793).

Although a devoted disciple of Platonic thought, which he considered his main influence and inspiration, Proclus was a great enthusiast of all sorts of religious practices, beliefs, and superstitions and a champion of pagan worship against Christian Imperial policy. He practiced all the Orphic and Chaldean rites of purification religiously, was a celibate, pursued a strict vegetarian diet, observed the fasts and vigils for the sacred days (more than was customary), devoutly revered the sun and moon, faithfully observed all the Egyptian holy days, and spent part of each night in prayer and in performing sacrifices. He believed that he was in complete possession of the theurgic knowledge, that he was divinely inspired, and that he was a reincarnation of the neo-Pythagorean Nichomachus. Through the practice of theurgy, a type of ritual magic, it is claimed that he caused rainfall in a time of drought, prevented an earthquake, and was able to persuade the god Asclepius to cure the daughter of his friend Archiadas. Proclus had a vast and comprehensive knowledge of philosophy, mythology, religious practices, and cults, and he attempted to harmonize all these elements into a comprehensive system.

Marinus, his biographer, who was also his pupil and successor, describes Proclus as having lived the perfect life of a philosopher, a model of all the virtues, both social and intellectual, the life of a divine man. His only shortcomings were a quick temper and a fiercely competitive nature. On the death of Syrianus, Proclus succeeded him as the head of the Academy. Because of his position as the head of the Academy and his devotion to Platonic thought, he has often been called “diadoches,” or successor of Plato.

Life’s Work

Proclus believed that his philosophy was a further and necessary development of Plato’s thought. In reality, his views are a systematization of those found in other Neoplatonists’ interpretations of Plotinian thought, and most can be traced to the teachings of Iamblichus, a follower of Plotinus. Of the many works that Proclus wrote, the most important and the one that best displays his schematization of Neoplatonic thought is Stoikheiōsis theologikē (The Elements of Theology, 1933). This work is basically a doctrine of categories. It consists of a series of 211 propositions with deductive proofs. Each succeeding proposition follows on the basis of the preceding one, following the Euclidean procedure in geometry.

At the head of Proclus’s system is the One, the ultimate First Principle existing beyond being and knowledge, ineffable and incomprehensible. Proclus often identifies God with the First Principle or One. From the One emanates or radiates innumerable lesser independent realities, reflecting the multiplicity of the world order, which strive to return to union with it. Unlike Plotinus, who held that the process of emanation was continuous and equal in degree, Proclus believed that all things emanate by triads and return to the One by triads. Every emanation is less than that from which it evolves but has a similarity or partial identity to its cause. In its emergence from its cause, the derived is also different. However, because of its relation to and dependence on its cause, it attempts to imitate its cause on a lower plane and return to and unite itself with it. It is only through the intermediate existences in triadic aspects that an existence can return to the highest reality, the One.

Although not original with him, Proclus was the first to emphasize and apply throughout his system the principle of universal sympathy, the view that everything is in everything else, each according to its proper nature. According to this, every reality in the universe is mirrored in everything else, but appropriately, in accordance with its nature. Eternal things exist in temporal existences temporally, and temporal things exist in eternal things eternally. This principle unifies and interweaves every part of the universe with every other part, from the One to the last stage of being or matter. In his attempt to unify the totality of the universe, Proclus also effected a total synthesis of religion with philosophy. His system is a chain of many carefully constructed links that include the traditional pagan gods, heroes, and other supernatural beings of late pagan syncretistic mythology and cult, as well as the divine principles of Greek philosophy.

Similar to his Neoplatonic predecessors, Proclus believed that the ultimate goal of the individual soul was to lose its identity and return to union with the One, or God. Although he accepted the Neoplatonic view that philosophy was important in the attainment of this goal, he added that theurgy provided an even better avenue. Philosophy is intellectual activity, is discursive, and, as such, is divided. Thus, it is impossible to achieve union with the undivided One through philosophy alone. Philosophy serves only as a preparation. Union with God is best achieved through the method of theurgy, or, as Proclus calls it, the sacred art, a collection of magical practices based on the principle of universal sympathy, a common sympathy existing between all earthly and divine things. According to this, there can exist in herbs, stones, and other material substances a magical or divine property. On a higher level, divinity could also be found in the names of gods, certain symbols, and even numbers. A skilled theurgist, by placing together the materials that possess divine properties and effacing others, could set forth a chain reaction of sympathies proceeding upward through a whole series of things to a divine being. The result would be a divine illumination, by means of which an individual could come into external communion with a god. Thus, theurgy was considered by Proclus superior to philosophy, for, unlike philosophy, theurgy can lead an individual to the gods themselves.

Proclus posited two types of theurgy, a lower and a higher. The lower uses the unities found in specific material things to stimulate the soul toward self-knowledge, an understanding of its unity and divinity. Union with God, Himself, however, is attained only through a higher theurgy, the power of faith. Faith, according to Proclus, is when the individual goes beyond words, ritual actions, and conceptual thought and arrives at a state of simplicity, or self-unity. That leads to an unexplainable and incomprehensible belief in and love of God. When that occurs, the soul finds itself in a mystical silence before the incomprehensible and ineffable Supreme Being, and to the degree that a soul can, it becomes God.

In its later years, Neoplatonism came to be more a religion than a philosophy in order to compete with Christianity, which was becoming increasingly popular. Neoplatonism’s followers were concerned with matters similar to those of their Christian counterparts: constructing a theology and interpreting and reconciling sacred texts. They also adopted some of the tenets fundamental to Christianity and other religions. Because faith is indispensable for salvation in any religion, it became for the later Neoplatonists a basic requirement for salvation or union with God. Proclus understood the problem of combating Christianity and attempted to construct a system that would bring into harmony elements of religion and Greek thought.

Significance

Proclus is considered the last of the major pagan Greek philosophers. His works represent the culminating point of Neoplatonic philosophers and the final form of Neoplatonism’s doctrines. It is in the Proclian form that Neoplatonic doctrines had considerable influence on Byzantine, Arabic, and early medieval Latin Christian thought. Proclus exerted the greatest influence, indirectly, on Latin Christendom through the writings of Dionysius, or Pseudo-Dionysius, as he is now called. It is not known who Dionysius was or when he lived. All that is known is that sometime in the late fifth or early sixth century a Christian follower of Proclus adopted his philosophy in toto, disguised it as apostolic teaching, and claimed it to be that of Dionysius the Areopagite, Saint Paul’s first Athenian convert and disciple. Despite the fact that they were fraudulent, the works of Dionysius were highly regarded in the West, and beginning in the early sixth century to the eighth, elaborate commentaries were written defending both their orthodoxy and their genuineness. They soon acquired authority second only to those of Saint Augustine. Through the Dionysian corpus, Proclus’s Neoplatonism influenced the thought of Western theologians for many centuries.

In the Byzantine world, the Dionysian theology had influence on the eighth century Eastern theologian Saint John of Damascus, but in general the works of Proclus were not as widely accepted as in the West, although they were well-known and often refuted. The main reason for their nonacceptance was that the Christian East considered Proclus’s views on the eternity of the world heretical. It was not until the eleventh century, with the revival of Platonism, that Proclus’s philosophy became widely known, studied, quoted, and commented on in the East. The Muslim world was also influenced by Proclus. His works were translated into Arabic and influenced the thought of Arabic thinkers, especially those mystically inclined, such as al-Ghazzali and the Sufis, and Ibn Gabirol and the Cabalists.

Proclus’s influence on both the East and the West continued down to the eighteenth century and was especially prominent during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when he was considered the great pagan master. His works were translated into many languages, and his influence can be found in the philosophies of John Scotus Erigena (c. 810-c. 877), Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Meister Johannes Eckhart (c. 1260-1327), Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), René Descartes (1596-1650), Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), and others. Traces of Proclus’s philosophy can also be found in many modern works, literary and philosophical.

Bibliography

Lowry, J. M. P. The Logical Principles of Proclus’s “Elements of Theology” as Systematic Ground of the Cosmos. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980. A study of the development of a logical structure of the cosmos as set forth in the logical systematic construction of the 211 propositions in Proclus’s The Elements of Theology. It contains a good introductory chapter that includes a synopsis of Greek philosophy, Proclus’s place in the history of philosophy, his relation to Iamblichus and Plotinus, and his influence on medieval and Renaissance thought.

Proclus. The Elements of Theology. Translated by E. R. Dodds. Rev. ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1977. Greek text and English translation, with an excellent introduction and commentary on The Elements of Theology. The introduction includes a general description of the work, its place in the philosophical works of Proclus, a summary of Proclus’s place among his Neoplatonic predecessors, and his influence during the Middle Ages.

Rosán, Laurence Jay. The Philosophy of Proclus: The Final Phase of Ancient Thought. New York: Cosmos, 1949. A compendium of Proclus’s writings, with a detailed discussion and annotated bibliography.

Wallis, R. T. Neoplatonism. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995. The study is intended as an updated account of Neoplatonism. It is a summary of Neoplatonic thought from Plotinus to the end of the Athenian Academy, but it also includes two brief chapters on the aims and sources of Neoplatonism and a lengthier chapter on the influence of Neoplatonism through the years. Includes bibliography.

Whittaker, Thomas. The Neo-Platonists. New York: Olms-Verlag, 1987. A study in the history of Hellenism, with emphasis on Neoplatonic philosophy, from Plotinus to Proclus, and its influence. Chapter 9 contains a study of Proclus’s life and a descriptive account of many of the propositions found in The Elements of Theology. At the end of the book, there is a supplementary section of summaries on Proclus’s extant commentaries.