Political philosophy has always been denied full recognition, focusing on analyzing the metaphysical aspects of Neoplatonism. Neoplatonic concepts such as “permanence” (μονή), “emanation” (πρόοδος), “return” (ὲπιστροφή), etc. were treated in historical-philosophical works separately from the sphere of the Political [1]. Thus, the Political was interpreted only as a stage of ascent toward the Good, embedded in the rigid hierarchical model of Neoplatonic philosophical thought, but not as an independent pole of the philosophical model.
This view of the Neoplatonic philosophical heritage seems insufficient to us. We would like to take the example of Proclus' works to show that in Neoplatonism the Political is interpreted as an important and independent phenomenon embedded in a general philosophical, metaphysical, ontological, epistemological, and cosmological context.
While in classical Platonism and in Plato himself political philosophy is explicitly expressed (dialogues “State”, “Politics”, “Laws”, etc.), in Neoplatonism and especially in Proclus we can judge the philosophy only indirectly and mainly in commentaries on Plato's dialogues. This is also due to the political-religious context of the society in which the later Neoplatonists, including Proclus himself, operated.
At present, the political ideas of the Neo-Platonists have not been sufficiently studied, and, moreover, the very fact of the existence of Neo-Platonic political philosophy (at least in the late Greek Neo-Platonists) has not been proven and is not the subject of scientific and historical-philosophical research. However, Neoplatonic systems of political philosophy were widely developed in the Islamic context (from al-Farabi to Shiite political gnosis [2]), and Christian Neoplatonism in the versions of Western authors (in particular, Blessed Augustine [3]) largely influenced the political culture of medieval Europe.
At present, the topic is underdeveloped. In Russian there are practically no research works devoted specifically to Proclus' political philosophy. Among foreign sources, the only specialized studies are “Platonopolis” by Dominic O'Meara, the English specialist in Neoplatonic philosophy [4], “Founding Platonopolis: Platonic Polytheism in Eusebius, Porphyry and Jamvlich [5], separate chapters in “Proclus. Neoplatonic Philosophy and Science” [6] and comments by A.-J. Festujer to French translations of Proclus' major works, especially the five-volume “Commentaries on Timaeus” [7] and the three-volume “Commentaries on the State” [8].
Proclus Diado (412-485 CE) was one of the most important thinkers of late antiquity, a philosopher whose works express all the main Platonic ideas developed over many centuries. His writings combine religious Platonism with metaphysical Platonism; to some extent he is a synthesis of all previous Platonism-both classical (Plato, Academia), “middle” (described in J. Dillon [9]), and Neoplatonism (Plotinus, Porphyry, Jambleach). Proclus was probably the third scholar of the Athenian school of Neoplatonism (after Plutarch of Athens and Syrianus, Proclus' teacher), which existed until 529 (until its closure by Justinian, who issued edicts against pagans, Jews, Arians and numerous sects, and denounced the teaching of the Christian Platonist Origen).
Proclus' philosophical hermeneutics is an absolutely unique event in the history of the philosophy of late antiquity. Proclus' works represent the culmination of the exegetical tradition of Neoplatonism. His commentaries start from Plato's original works but take into account the development of his ideas, including the criticisms of Aristotle and the Stoic philosophers, in the most detailed way. Added to this was the tradition of Middle Platonism, in which special emphasis was placed on religious theistic issues [10] (Numenius, Philo of Alexandria). Plotinus introduced the thematization of the Apophatic into exegesis. Porphyry drew attention to the doctrine of political virtues and virtues that appeal to the mind. James [11] introduced a differentiation in the Plotinian hierarchy of the basic ontological and eidetic series represented by gods, angels, demons, heroes, etc. If in Plotinus we see the main triad of the Elements - the Unity, Mind and Soul, in James the multi-stage eidetic series separating people from the World Soul and the speculative realms of Mind. James also belongs to the practice of commenting on Plato's dialogues in esoteric terms.
For an accurate reconstruction of Proclus' political philosophy, it is necessary to pay attention to the political and religious context in which he operated.
Politically, Proclus' era is very eventful: the philosopher witnesses the destruction of the western frontiers of the Roman Empire, great migrations of peoples, the invasion of the Huns, the fall of Rome, first at the hands of the Visigoths (410), then at the hands of the Vandals (455), and the end of the Western Empire (476). One of Proclus' chosen visitors to the school, Anthemius, a patrician of Byzantium, took an active part in political activities.
Proclus (according to the traditional rules of interpretation of Plato's dialogues) begins his commentary on the State and Timaeus with an introduction in which he defines the topic (σκοπός) or intention (πρόθεσις) of the dialogue; describes its composition (οἷκονομία), genre or style (είδος, χαρακτήρος), and the circumstances under which the dialogue took place: the topography, the time, the participants in the dialogue.
In determining the topic of the dialogue, Proclus points out the existence in the philosophical tradition of analysis of Plato's “State” of different points of view [12]:
We thus encounter some difficulty in defining the object of the dialogue: does the dialogue aim to describe the manifestation of justice in the political sphere or in the mental sphere?
Proclus believes that these two definitions of the subject of dialogue are incomplete and argues that both goals of dialogue writing share a common paradigm. “For what justice is in the psyche, justice is the same in a well-governed state” he says [13]. In defining the main topic of the dialogue Proclus notes that “the intention [of the dialogue] is to [consider] the political regime, then [consider] justice. It cannot be said that the main purpose of the dialogue is exclusively to try to define justice or exclusively to describe the best political regime [14]. Having admitted that the political and justice are interconnected, we will note that in the dialogue there is also a detailed consideration of the manifestation of justice in the sphere of the mental. Justice and the state are not independent phenomena. Justice is manifested at both the political and the psychic (or cosmic) level.
Once this fact is established, the next question arises: which is more primary-the soul (ψυχή) or the state (πολιτεία)? Is there a hierarchical relationship between the two entities?
The answer to this question is found in the dialogue “The State” [15] when Plato introduces the hypothesis of homology (ὁμολογία) of soul and state, the sphere of the mental and the political. This forces us to think carefully about what is meant by homology in Plato and the Neoplatonists who continued his tradition. In the later New Age philosophy, the (real) paradigm is mostly a thing or object, and ontology and epistemology are hierarchically constructed: for objectivists (empiricists, realists, positivists, materialists) knowledge will be understood as a reflection of external reality, for subjectivists (idealists) reality will be interpreted as a projection of consciousness. This dualism will be the basis for all kinds of relations in the field of ontology and epistemology. But to apply such a method (objectivist or subjectivist) to Neoplatonism would be anachronistic: here neither the state nor the soul nor their concepts are primary. In Plato and the Neoplatonists the primary ontology is endowed with ideas, paradigms, while the mind and soul and the sphere of the political and cosmic represent reflections or copies, icons, results of eikasia (εικασία). Consequently, in the face of the exemplar, any kind of copy: whether political, mental, or cosmic, possesses an equal nature, an equal degree of distance from the exemplar. They are not seen through comparison with the other, but through comparison with their eidetic prototype.
The answer to the question about the primacy of the Political over the psychic or vice versa then becomes clear: it is not the Political that copies the psychic or vice versa, but they are homologous to each other in their secondness to a common image/eidos.
The recognition of such homology is the basis of Proclus' hermeneutic method. For him, state, world, mind, nature, theology and theurgy represent eidetic chains of manifestations of ideas. Therefore, what is true of justice in the realm of the Political (e.g., hierarchical organization, the placement of philosopher-guardians at the head of the state, etc.) concerns at the same time the organization of theology-the hierarchy of gods, daimons, souls, etc. The existence of a model (paradigm, idea) ensures that all orders of copies have a unified structure. It is this that makes it possible to safely deduce Proclus' political philosophy from his vast legacy, in which actual politics is given little space. Proclus implies the Political in the same way as Plato, but unlike the latter he makes the Political the main theme much less frequently. Nevertheless, any interpretation of Plato's concepts by Proclus almost always implicitly contains analogies in the area of the Political.
General homology, however, does not negate the fact that there is some hierarchy among the copies themselves. The question of the hierarchy of copies among themselves has been approached differently by different commentators on Plato. For some, closer to the paradigm, the model is the phenomenon of the soul, for others the phenomenon of the state level, and for still others the cosmic level. The construction of this hierarchy is the space for freedom in interpreting and hierarchizing the virtues. Thus, for example, in Marin[16] Proclus' own life is presented as an ascent up a hierarchical ladder of virtues: from the natural, moral, and social to the divine (theurgical) and even higher, unnamed, through the purifying and speculative. The political virtues are usually considered intermediate.
From the fragment we quoted above, in which Proclus discusses the topic of the dialogue on the state, we can see his desire to emphasize that the hierarchy of interpretations is always secondary to the basic ontological and epistemological structure of Platonism as a contemplative method. Thus, the construction of a system of hierarchies in the course of interpretations and commentaries turns out to be secondary to the construction of a general metaphysical topology reflecting the relationship between exemplar and copies. And even if Proclus himself, in the course of the development of his commentary, pays situatively more attention to mental, contemplative, theurgical, and theological interpretations, this, by no means, means that political interpretation is excluded or of secondary importance. Perhaps in other politico-religious circumstances, which we discussed in the first part of our paper, describing the political situation of Proclus' time in the context of Christian society, Proclus could have focused more on political hermeneutics without violating the general structure and fidelity to Platonic methodology. But, in this situation, he was forced to talk about politics in less detail.
Proclus' interpretation of the “State” dialogue, where Plato's theme is the optimal organization of the state (polis), represents a semantic polyphony, a polyphony that implicitly contains whole chains of new homologies. Each element of the dialogue interpreted by Proclus, from the perspective of psychology or cosmology, corresponds to a political equivalent, sometimes explicitly, sometimes only implicitly. Thus, the commentaries on Plato's dialogue, thematizing precisely “polytheia”, do not represent for Proclus a change from the usual register of consideration of ontological and theological dimensions in most of his other commentaries. By virtue of his homology, Proclus can always act according to circumstances and freely complete his hermeneutical scheme, deploying it in any direction.
Notes:
[1] Karl Schmitt's term to emphasize that it is not a technical organization of the process of government and power, but a metaphysical phenomenon with its own internal metaphysical structure, an autonomous ontology and “theology”, from which C. Schmitt's formula “political theology” originated. See Schmitt C. “Der Begriff des Politischen”. Text of 1932 with a paper and three corollaries. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1963; Schmitt C. Political theology. Canon Press-C, 2000.
[2] Corbin Henri. “History of Islamic philosophy” Progress-Tradition, 2010.
[3] Mayorov G.G. “The formation of medieval philosophy (Latin patristics)”. Mysl, 1979; “Augustine. On the city of God”, Harvest, M.: Astra, 2000.
[4] O'Meara D. J. “Platonopolis. Platonic political philosophy in late antiquity”, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003.
[5] Schott J. M. “Founding Platonopolis: The Platonic Politeía in Eusebius, Porphyry, and Iamblichus” Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2003.
[6] Siorvanes Lucas. “Proclus. Neoplatonic philosophy and science”, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1996.
[7] Proclus. Commentaries on Time. Tome 1, Livre I ; tr. André-Jean Festugière. Paris : J. Vrin-CNRS, 1966; Idem. Commentaries on time. Tome 2, Livre II ; tr. André-Jean Festugière. Paris : J. Vrin-CNRS, 1967; Idem. Commentaries on time. Tome 3, Livre III ; tr. André-Jean Festugière. Paris : J. Vrin-CNRS, 1967; Idem. Commentaries on time. Tome 4, Livre IV ; tr. André-Jean Festugière. Paris : J. Vrin-CNRS, 1968; Idem. Commentaries on time. Tome 5, Livre V ; tr. André-Jean Festugière. Paris : J. Vrin-CNRS, 1969.
[8] Proclus. Commentaries on the Republic. Tome 1, Livres 1-3 ; tr. André-Jean Festugière. Paris : J. Vrin-CNRS, 1970. Idem. Commentaries on the Republic. Volume 2, Livres 4-9 ; tr. André-Jean Festugière. Paris : J. Vrin-CNRS, 1970; Idem. Commentaries on the Republic. Tome 3, Livre 10 ; tr. André-Jean Festugière. Paris : J. Vrin-CNRS, 1970.
[9] Dillon J. The Middle Platonists of 80 B.C. - 220 A.D.. St. Petersburg. Aletheia, 2002.
[10] In the ethical teaching of the Middle Platonists the central idea proclaimed is the goal of being assimilated into the divine.
[11] Jamvlich also systematizes the method of commentary on Plato's dialogues, introducing the division into different types of interpretation: ethical, logical, cosmological, physical, and theological. It is his method of commentary that will form the basis of Proclus'. He distinguished the twelve Platonic dialogues into two cycles (the so-called “Cane of James”): the first cycle included dialogues on ethical, logical and physical problems, the second - the more complex Platonic dialogues, which were studied in the Neoplatonic schools in the last stages of education (“Timaeus”, “Parmenides” - dialogues related to theological and cosmological problems). Iamvlich's influence on the Athenian school of Neoplatonism is extremely great.
[12] Proclus. Commentary on the Republic. Trad. par A.J. Festugière. Op. cit. pagg. 23-27.
[13] Proclus. Commentary on the Republic. Trad. par A.J. Festugière. Op. cit. pag. 27.
[14] Proclus. Commentary on the Republic. Trad. par A.J. Festugière. Op. cit. pag. 26.
[15] Plato “The State” Works in four volumes. Volume 3. Part 1. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg University Press; Oleg Abyshko Publishing, 2007.
[16] Marin “Proclus, or on happiness”, “Diogenes of Laertes. On the life, doctrines and sayings of the famous philosophers” Thought, 1986. С. 441-454.
Translation by Lorenzo Maria Pacini
Art by Alexey Belyaev-Gintovt, contemporary Russian artist.
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Compilation of texts and thoughts by Daria Dugina narrated in English, about The Traditionalism, The Philosophy and The Russian World and quotes from her book and poems, so that her soul will be remembered for all eternity.
