in this paper i will examine Proclus’ Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato in order to shed light on his doctrine of the partial soul’s nous. Proclus’ epistemology is in many ways the heart of his system. The human soul is a microcosm, and because each of its faculties corresponds to one or other order of the macrocosm, the soul’s knowledge of reality is primarily through self-knowledge. We have, however, a paradoxical situation in Proclus on this point. On the (...) one hand, he continually relates the doctrines he finds in the texts that he interprets to various psychic or noetic activities, and one sometimes gets the impression that he is more interested in how we grasp a feature of the cosmos than in that feature itself. On the other hand, his epistemological remarks are almost always in passing, and in the context of a discussion of some other point. This paradox is a source of frustration, to this interpreter at least, and leads one to wish dearly that Proclus’ commentaries on Theaetetus and Sophist had survived, where presumably he explained his theory in a more orderly manner. (shrink)

This is an examination of Proclus' philosophical practice, outlined in his commentary on Plato's Cratylus, of tracing philosophical explanations back to divine 'names' which come from Intellect. A comparison is made with Derrida's philosophy, which exhibits strikingly similar features.

Philosophy has as its task not only the discovery of the determinations into which all things fall, but also the explanation of how these determinations arise. In Proclus we may distinguish three related sorts of determinations. First, there are the determinations which emerge within any given taxis in tire hierarchy of all things and which may be thought of as its content, such as tire intelligible genera in Intellect (Nous), or the various animal species in the material world. Second are (...) the determinations which give a particular taxis its overall character, such as the simplicity of the henads, or the temporality of souls. Finally, there are the determinations which emerge through discursive titinking itself, the logoi through which we grasp the determinations of all things. What follows is an account of the character and origin of these related sorts of determination in Proclus’ system. (shrink)

I propose a new interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides. I avoid the assumption of Developmentalism, that Plato is criticising his own ‘middle’ theory of forms. Instead, I read the dialogue as Plato’s serious presentation of the Eleatic position. He shows that Eleatics’s counterintuitive thesis follows from the fundamental assumption of qualitative monism. The animating idea of the dialogue is indicated by Zeno. Whereas Parmenides’ critics said many laughable things followed from his thesis of the One, Zeno’s book showed that what follows (...) from the many is more laughable. The dialogue is a step-by-step elimination of the many, so that its readers have no choice but to accept the sole One. Against other interpreters, I argue that the first step in the argument isn’t a survey of the levels of Forms, but a demonstration that Socrates cannot explain how the many material things could possess contradictory characters. I argue that the five problems of participation are not a criticism of Forms, but of participation itself, and are solved by eliminating participants. I argue that the eight hypotheses are meant to show that a One without any characteristics is less laughable than a One with a totality of contradictory characteristics, and that only an intelligible world with a single One would yield this more plausible result. The first part of the dialogue, consequently, eliminates the material world and the second part eliminates all Forms but the One. Parmenides, consequently, is not a reductio of Eleaticism, but a presentation of Eleaticism from the inside, as a serious philosophical position. However, having made the best case he can for Eleaticism in Parmenides, Plato will diagnose its mistaken assumption, in Sophist, as the idea that things are ‘one in formula’ and propose the mixing of Forms as its remedy. (shrink)

This chapter is an examination of certain parts of the philosophy of Proclus. Its aim is to clarify in what manner Proclus is a systematic thinker. The notion of philosophical system which comes to mind from a contemporary standpoint is not the notion which Proclus had, and any interpretation of Proclus from a later standpoint is bound to fail. Proclus’ notion of philosophical system, moreover, is important for the interpretation of all medieval philosophy, because the Greek Neoplatonic tradition of which (...) he is a part contributed to the self-understanding of Medieval Jewish, Islamic, and Christian thinkers. His notion of philosophical system helps to clarify such medieval principles as the distinction between kataphatic and apophatic theology, the difference between human and divine knowing, and the analogy of Being. If we investigate Medieval philosophy with a conception of philosophical system drawn from a later period, these aspects of Medieval thought will remain closed to us. (shrink)

Au début du Prologue 1 (chapitre V dans le découpage de Barocius)1, Proclus reprend le fameux passage de la ligne dans la République de Platon2. À la suite de Platon, Proclus déclare que la moitié supérieure de la ligne est divisée en νοητά et en διανοητά, lesquels sont appréhendés, respectivement, par la νόησις et la διάνοια. Dans son commentaire sur ce passage, Proclus fait deux remarques concernant la relation entre ces deux types de connaissance. En premier lieu, «la pensée discursive (...) (διάνοια) étudie les images (εικόνας) des intelligibles, images qui sont descendues des είδη premières, simples et sans parties vers la multiplicité et la division »3. Cela est en accord avec l'idée exprimée plus haut dans le chapitre I, à savoir que les objets des mathématiques « et les objets de la διάνοια en général »4 tiennent une place médiane entre les objets intelligibles et les objets sensibles. Ce sont des objets qui « imitent de manière morcelée et multiforme les modèles indivisibles et uniformes de ce qui existe »5. Ainsi, les objets de la διάνοια sont des images des νοητά; ils sont divisés, alors que les νοητά sont simples. En conséquence, la νόησις se situe en haut de la ligne divisée, alors que la διάνοια vient ensuite. (shrink)

Near the end of his examination of whether perception can be knowledge, Socrates gives a long digression about the ‘man of the law courts’ and the ‘philosopher’. Interpreters have mostly judged that this digression plays no role in the dialogue’s main argument. I will argue that, on the contrary, it supplies an important step in the refutation of Protagoras’ thesis of the relativism of opinions.