Friday 18 April 2014

Beyond Being: Thomas Taylor on the Ineffable Principle





An extract from the writings of the English Platonist Thomas Taylor, who was a contemporary of Coleridge. I have modernised the paragraphing of this text, for clarity, since the subject matter is difficult enough by itself. Otherwise the orthography of the original is unchanged. This text forms one of the appendices to The Sacred History of Being (2015). 

Taylor's translations were originally issued in very short print runs. However they were occasionally reprinted during the nineteenth century, according to no particular plan, and all survive. All Taylor's works were republished in a uniform edition at the beginning of the 21st century by the Prometheus Trust. 

Thomas Taylor, from his additional notes to the Select Works of Plotinus, note to p122 ,“On Eternity and Time”, sect. IV and V. – Sect. V contains: “Because, however, such a nature as this, thus all-beautiful and perpetual, subsists about the one, proceeding from and with it, and in no respect departing from it, but always abides about and in the one, and lives according to it, hence I think it is beautifully and with a profundity of decision, said by Plato, that “eternity abides in one,” that he might not only lead it to the one which is in itself, but that he might also in a similar manner lead the life of being about the one. This, therefore, is that which we investigate, and that which thus abides is eternity.”

Taylor comments in footnote 2 that “Plato, however, does not by the one in this place, mean the ineffable principle of things, but the one of being, or the summit of the intelligible order, as is shown by Proclus....” 

'Hence there is something even beyond the one. – The most sublime of the arcane dogmas of the Platonic Theology is this, that the ineffable principle of things is something even beyond the one, as is demonstrated by Proclus in his second book “On the Theology of Plato,” and particularly by Damascius in his MS. Treatise [Gk. peri archon], “On Principles.” See my translation of the former of these works, and of an extract from the latter in the Additional Notes at the end of the third Volume of my Plato, and in my “Dissertation on the Philosophy of Aristotle.” From this extract, the following observations are selected.'

 “The one is not the one as that which is smallest, but is the one in all things. For by its own simplicity it accedes to all things, and makes all things to be one. Hence all things proceed from it, because it is itself all things prior to all. And as that which has an united subsistence is prior to things which are separated from each other, so the one is many prior to the many. All things, therefore, are from the one, and with reference to the one, as we are accustomed to say. 

If then according to a more usual manner of speaking, we call things which consist in multitude and separation all things, we must admit that the united, and in a still greater degree the one, are the principles of these. But if we consider these two as all things, and asume them in conjunction with all other things, according to habitude and co-ordination with them, we must then investigate another principle prior to all things, which it is no longer proper to consider in any way as all things, nor to co-arrange with its progeny. For if some one should say that the one, though it is all things which have in any respect a subsistence, yet is one prior to all things, and is more one than all things; since it is one by itself, but all things as the cause of all, and according to a co-ordination with all things; - if this should be said, the one will thus be doubled, and we ourselves shall become doubled, and multiplied about its simplicity. For, by being the one it is all things after the most simple manner. At the same time also, though this should be said, it is necessary that the principle of all things should be exempt from all things, and consequently that it should be exempt from the most simple allness, and from a simplicity absorbing all things, such as is that of the one

Our soul, therefore, prophesies that the principle which is beyond all things that can in any respect be conceived, is unco-ordinated with all things. Neither, therefore, must it be called principle nor cause, nor that which is first nor prior to all things, nor beyond all things. By no means, therefore, must we celebrate it as all things, nor, in short, is it to be celebrated, or recalled into memory. We may also add, that the one is the summit of the many, as the cause of the things proceeding from it: and that we form a conception of the one according to a purified suspicion extended to that which is most simple and most comprehensive. But that which is most venerable must necessarily be incomprehensible by all conceptions and suspicions; since also in other things, that which always soars beyond our conceptions is more honourable than that which is more obvious; so that what flies from all our suspicions will be most honourable. But if this be the case, it is nothing.

 Let however nothing be twofold, one better than the one, the other posterior to sensibles. If also we strive in vain in asserting these things, striving in vain is likewise twofold; the one falling into the ineffable, the other into that which in no respect whatever has any subsistence. For the latter also is ineffable, as Plato says, yet according to the worse, but the former according to the better. If, too, we search for a certain advantage arising from it, this is the most necessary advantage of all others, that all things proceed as from an adytum, from the ineffable, and in an ineffable manner. For neither do they proceed as the one produces the many, nor as the united things separated, but as the ineffable similarly produces all things ineffably

But if in asserting these things concerning it, that it is ineffable, that it is no one of all things, that it is incomprehensible, we subvert what we say, it is proper to know that these are the names and words of our parturitions, daring anxiously to explore it, and which, standing in the vestibules of the adytum, announce indeed nothing pertaining to the ineffable, but signify the manner in which we are affected about it, our doubts and disappointments; nor yet this clearly, but through indications to such as are able to understand these investigations. We also see that our parturitions suffer these things about the one, and that in a similar manner they are solicitous and subverted. For the one, says Plato, if it is, is not the one. But if it is not, no assertion can be adapted to it: so that neither can there be a negation of it, nor can any name be given to it; for neither is a name simple. Nor is there any opinion nor science of it. For neither are these simple; nor is intellect itself simple. So that the one is in every respect unknown and ineffable.

“What then Shall we investigate something else beyond the ineffable? Or perhaps, indeed, Plato leads us ineffably through the one as a medium, to the ineffable beyond the one which is now the subject of discussion; and this by an ablation of the one, in the same manner as he leads us to the one by an ablation of other things. But if having ascended as far as to the one he is silent, this also is becoming in Plato to be perfectly silent, after the manner of the ancients, concerning things in every respect unspeakable; for the discourse was indeed most dangerous in consequence of falling on idiotical ears. Hence that which is beyond the one is to be honoured in the most perfect silence, and prior to this, by the most perfect ignorance, which despises all knowledge” [As that which is below all knowledge is an ignorance worse than knowledge, so the silence in which our ascent to the ineffable terminates, is succeeded by an ignorance superior to all knowledge. Let it, however, be carefully remembered, that such an ignorance is only to be obtained after the most scientific and intellectual energies].

And in another part of the same admirable work, he further observes: “Ascending therefore to the one, shall we meet with it as that which is known? Or wishing to meet with it as such shall we arrive at the unknown? May we not say that each of these is true? For we meet with it afar off as that which is far known; and when we are united to it from afar, passing beyond that in our nature which is far known; and when we are united to it from afar, passing beyond that in our nature which is gnostic of the one, then are we brought to be one, that is to be unknown instead of being gnostic. This contact, therefore, as of one with one, is above knowledge, but the other is as of that which is gnostic with that which is known. As, however, the crooked is known by the straight, so we form a conjecture of the unknown by the known. And this indeed is a mode of knowledge. 

The one, therefore, is so far known, that it does not admit of an approximating knowledge, but appears afar off as known, and imparts a gnostic indication of itself. Unlike other things, however, the nearer we approach to it, it is not the more, but on the contrary less known; knowledge being dissolved by the one into ignorance, since as we have before observed where there is knowledge there is also separation. But separation approaching to the one is inclosed in union; so that knowledge also is refunded into ignorance.

This, too, the analogy of Plato requires. For first, we endeavour to see the sun, and we do indeed see it afar off; but by how much the nearer we approach to it, by so much the less do we see it: and at length, we neither see other things nor it, the eye becoming spontaneously dazzled by its light. Is therefore the one in its proper nature unknown, though there is something else unknown beside the one? The one indeed wills to be by itself, but with no other; but the unknown, beyond the one, is perfectly ineffable, which we acknowledge we neither know, nor are ignorant of, but which has about itself super-ignorance. Hence by proximity to this the one itself is darkened: for being very near to the immense principle, if it be lawful so to speak, it remains as it were in the adytum of that truly mystic silence. 

On this account, Plato in speaking of it finds all his assertions subverted: for it is near to the subversion of every thing, which takes place about the first. It differs from it however in this, that it is one simply, and that according to the one it is also at the same time all things. But the first is above the one and all things, being more simple than either of these.”


Monday 10 March 2014

Consensus about the past

The Sacred History of Being blog is about both the history of philosophy, and the wider history of ideas.

The history of philosophy is now rather well defined by scholars, and by consensus, it has its proper beginning in Greece in the middle of the first millennium BCE. We are talking here about the recorded discussions of Socrates, the dialogues of Plato, and the systematic works of Aristotle.

Before that thinkers had more or less vague notions about the nature of reality and the world.  So the presocratic thinkers were not thinking with the same kind of clarity and acuity shown by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

The presocratics are granted the description 'philosophers' because they are treated as part of the intellectual tradition in Greece which led up to the great achievements of the 5th century BCE and beyond. But their work is by comparison vague, imprecise, and sometimes apparently without logical basis.

The presocratics sometimes borrowed ideas from other cultures elsewhere in the mediterranean and the near-east. These foreign ideas are not regarded as in any way philosophical, partly because they emerge from the theologies and religions of peoples who incorporated unintelligible and irrational notions into their various (and colourful) understandings of the world.

Looked at from this point of view, the work of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle represents the clarification of what thinking itself is. It also represents the beginning of the clarification of the limits of human understanding - defining both what we may know and speak of, and what we cannot know.

Before this process began, in which thought itself was clarified and turned into a vital tool for a proper understanding of the world, the human mind was adrift in a sea of phantoms and irrational beliefs. Consequently there is little that we can now know about the intellectual life of earlier cultures except in anthropological, social and pathological terms.

That at least is the consensus view. Like many consensus views, it has a lot to recommend it, and much of it is unobjectionable. But it has been subject to challenge both in general and in its detail, particularly from the early years of the twentieth century onwards. This is because, whatever the merits of the consensus, it has resulted in  the distortion of the shape of the cultures of the ancient world, and particularly in the shape of the ancient mind, as we conjecture it. There are many questions about the ancient world which we cannot answer, simply because we have subjected antiquity to distortion for the purpose of a scholarly and teachable consensus.

The Sacred History of Being blog is a forum for some radical reformulations of questions about antiquity, and is particularly concerned with ancient ideas about the divine, especially when expressed in terms of religious liturgy and in art.

The blog also serves as an outrider to the book: The Sacred History of Being (forthcoming 2015), which looks at ideas of the divine both in Greece and in earlier cultures, and restores the proper shape of some of the cultural dynamics in the ancient world.

***

I've created a page of RSS feeds on Archaeology and Ancient History, which I will add to when I find interesting stuff.