Unfair to Proclus?Author(s): Gerard WatsonSource: Phronesis, Vol. 27, No. 1 (1982), pp. 101-106Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182142 .

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Unfair to Proclus?

GERARD WATSON

It has been said that whereas Plotinus had a genuine scientific interest in such questions as how sense perception worked, as matters of some interest in themselves, for Proclus these questions have no intrinsic interest at all, and are subordinated to 'soteriological' ends. A isthesis and phantasia are for man distractions from his proper end, and should therefore be looked down on. This contempt leads to a lack on interest in such faculties or processes, and helps to explain the differing or inconsistent usage of terms for the 'lower' faculties of knowledge, aisthesis, doxa, and phantasia.I

These remarks were made at the discussion of a paper by Beierwaltes. In his paper in the same Entretiens, on 'Plutarch's De Anima and Proclus', Blumenthal had discussed some of these apparent inconsistencies in Proclus. He considers the suggestion of Trouillard that in the Timaeus commentary doxa has the role later played byphantasia in the commentary on Euclid. He is inclined to explain this alleged state of affairs by the hypothesis that if Plutarch's position about the function of doxa and its status at the centre of the soul was his later view, then Proclus started from a position like Plutarch's and moved away from it. This is the first thing we must consider.

While it would be foolish to ignore the possibility of a development of thought in Proclus, we should be slow to use it, here as elsewhere, in an attempt to explain difficulties or inconsistencies. Blumenthal thinks that neither the status nor the role of the two powers of phantasia and doxa is clearly or consistently described, and that the feeling reflected by the discussion of Mme. A. Charles' paper that the status of phantasia was unresolved perhaps adequately represents the truth.2 Mme. Charles' paper, however, was a brief and far from exhaustive discussion of the subject so perhaps we should not be so pessimistic. The first point that Blumenthal makes is that in the Timaeus commentary Proclus has much more to say about doxa and much less aboutphantasia than in the other works. We can let this pass. He then says, in a footnote, that it is evident that this is not merely a consequence of the subject matter of the Timaeus (op.cit., p. 137). This, I think, cannot be conceded without discussion. The word phantasia does not occur in Plato's Timaeus, and Proclus' commentary breaks off before the word phantasis occurs in 72B, and, more important, before the passage just preceding this (70E ff.). There Plato describes how the gods placed the lower part of the soul in the liver, making it smooth and solid and bright so that the thoughts proceeding from the mind should be received there as in a mirror which receives impressions and makes images appear - a passage which was central for every Neoplatonist concept of phantasia Doxa, on the other hand, can be described as one of the two or three most important concepts in the Timaeus, and we may therefore expect that a great deal more attention should be paid to it than to phantasia. The eternal being is grasped VOTIOE [ETr& Xyov, the world of becoming 86iET- aT' arus (27D-28A). (Plato does not here explain that the latter form of knowledge is called in other dialogues phantasia). Consequently, doxa refers to what has become for Plato in the later dialogues an important form of knowledge, even if inferior when compared to noesis meta logou. It would be surprising then if doxa were not mentioned more than phantasia in the Timaeus commentary.

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Blumenthal's next point is that in the Timaeus commentary the immediate neighbour of aisthesis on the higher side is doxa: a number of passages mentioning several faculties or activities do not include phantasia between doxa and aisthesis, and in addition some of these texts expressly locate doxa next to the sensitive faculty. That this does not prove anything, however, about the unimportance of phantasia can be seen from a glance at Aristotle. Aristotle lists together three times in the De A nima activities and faculties in the soul concerned in knowing: 404b25ff. KpLVETXL Se 'Tpay,LuTCL T&a Liv vx, Vra 6' rrLoTrT , reTa bE

boy,q Ta 8'aloCiaEL; 41 la26ff. ?s E; 8E TO YLV6OXELV TTS 4VxjiS iOTi XiL TO aLC&vFOEaa TE xCtL

T7 bOt6tELV, ?TL &i TO EXl8V?Lvv xviL OVXEOaoL xati 8Xws aiL 6pEiELS; 413b29ff. ai*TLx4 y&p

EtVrxL xvio borTLxi4) ETEpov, E'LIEp XvXi TO iO64iVEOO4XL TOV boO&ELv. . . Nowhere is phantasia or its activity mentioned. Yet Aristotle insists at great length against Plato in De A nima III 3 that phantasia is neither aisthesis nor doxa, but that it is the indispensable bond between the two which cannot be passed over. The fact that he can, nevertheless, omit it in a list concerned with knowing makes it less surprising that Proclus does the same. Phantasia is, of course, very closely linked to aisthesis in the thought of Aristotle, as is clear from the case of some animals particularly: because the phantasiai persist and are like the aistheseis, animals do many things in accordance with them (ibid. 429a4-6). Phantasia is thought to be a movement of some sort which does not occur apart from aisthesis and must be like the aisthesis which causes it (ibid. 428bl l-14). Rhet. 1370a28 says that phantasia is aisthe'sis tis asthenes, something like aisthesis, and like it a movement but weaker.3 Similarly, Proclus can say (In Tim. III 69, 18ff.) that aisthesis and phantasia are 'one' (trn>ps yap Trs qpVTCtGTLXnS OVUiLs 'WS RL&S Ov1.)GTs 4aXLO&Es x(a; X PaVTLC0tXS "XLOS

U'rroaT&Trs), or that they have the same nature (In Tim. III 286, 24-5), but that does not mean that he does not distinguish them, as we shall see, nor that he is inconsistent.

Blumenthal's next indication of Proclus' uncertainty or inconsistency is the fact that one passage in the Timaeus commentary, II 247,9-16, implies that doxa belongs to the lower soul rather than the upper where it is clearly placed elsewhere, i.e. the lower part of the soul where the aistheseis and desires are located, the part in which phantasia, and not doxa, is normally the highest part in Neoplatonic psychology in general and Proclus' other works in particular. Against this, however, it must be said that Proclus is clearly referring to a Platonic as distinct from an Aristotelian schema which he uses, as we shall see, elsewhere. Proclus is referring to the overall distinction made in Timaeus 27D-28A about the soul's two ways of apprehending two different worlds. Even the lower form of knowledge would not be possible according to Proclus' psychology and Neoplatonic psychology in general unless the stimulus received through the senses were passed on to the mind which through the forms and principles it contains enables us to pronounce judgements on sensibilia. In the comparison of the two kinds of knowledge doxa belongs to the lower human knowing soul. But it is to be found in a human soul only, a logike psuche, and finds its place there after nous and dianoia as 1 223,16f says. This compared to an animal soul is higher, but there is no reason to accuse Proclus of inconsistency.

Doxa is used by Proclus both after the manner of Aristotle. That does not mean, however, that he was confused or unconsciously inconsistent in his use of this term nor of the term phantasia, as I shall try to show later. Nor does the fact that in the Timaeus commentary doxa is clearly connected with aisthesis have as a consequence 'that there is relatively little scope for phantasia' (op.cit., p. 138). We have seen that Aristotle in De Anima does not mention phantasia in contexts where it might be expected, yet argues strongly that it has an intermediate function between aisthesis and doxa which Plato had misunderstood. The argument from silence should, then, not be used against Proclus any

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more than against Aristotle. On the other hand there are, as Blumenthal concedes, 'a number of passages in the Timaeus commentary which apparently include phantasia as a full and independent faculty'. He instances I 255, 9-13 and I 343,3ff. as two undoubted examples, inclines to take I 352,16-18 and I 194,14-195,8 (as well as I 395,22ff). as representing Porphyry's views rather than Proclus' own, yet must again concede that 'there is nevertheless a residue of passages which have phantasia as a faculty and which appear to give Proclus' own views' (p. 141), drawing attention particularly to III 286. That page shows clearly the closeness yet distinctness of aisthesis and phantasia, and it also, as Blumenthal says, has doxa andphantasiajuxtaposed at the centre of the soul. Yet he takes this primarily as evidence of the change of view which was to be found in Proclus' later works.

The notion that such a change of view took place rests, as I hope to have shown, on Blumenthal's mistaken understanding of aisthesis, phantasia and doxa in the Timaeus commentary. Let us turn now to an explanation which was proferred for Proclus' alleged inconsistency, i.e., that Proclus' interest in lower forms of cognition, aisthesis, phantasia and doxa, was caused by 'soteriological' concerns, and that questions about their working had no intrinsic interest for him and that in this he differs from Aristotle, Plotinus, and the Aristotelian commentators before and after him whose exegesis was inspired by a genuine philosophical interest (see Beierwaltes and Blumenthal, op cit., p. 190). This is the more important charge, and one that is unfair to Proclus. It is true that Proclus often talks as if phantasia were not only unimportant but harmful. We should see this in context, however. Aristotle himself bears some of the blame for negative attitudes to phantasia: even in the chapter where he is arguing for an independent and important function for phantasia between aisthesis and doxa, he says that in contrast to aisthesis, 'mostphantasiai are misleading' (De An. III 3, 428a12). It is in Neoplatonism, however, that the negative attitude is strongest. The danger inherent in phantasia is emphasized time and again in Plotinus. Part of the reason is the insistence on the necessity of flight from the body, omne corpus fugiendum, and the connection of phantasia with bodily desires. Another part of the reason is to be seen in the reaction to a common opponent of Stoics and Neoplatonists, the Sceptical school.The Sceptics had objected to the Stoics (and others) that the fact that the soul knows the 'impressions' or images of external objects is no guarantee that it knows the originals.4 Plotinus' reply was to have truth depend on the mind's knowledge of the Forms which it contains and of which external objects are merely a reminder (Enn. V.5.1-2). The more, therefore, the mind or soul can confine itself to the highest realm, the truer its knowledge: the more it depends on further faculties, the less knowledge it possesses. This attitude receives its most dramatic ex- pression in Porphyry, in a passage which was to have a profound influence in later Neoplatonism. There (Sent. pp. 47,9-48,7 L) Porphyry is largely paraphrasing Plotinus Enn. VI.5.12.7-23 on grasping the nature of reality. Porphyry maintains, on Lloyd's explanation, that 'if you add to it something in the category of place or of relation this might seem to entail a diminution of it in proportion as it could have lacked that property: but you would not have diminished reality, the reversion would be in yourself away from reality, because you had hidden the meaning of it behind a screen of imagery',5 (X6x1XVuIue Xo0av Trv v?o6posoiboav rrs V'-Trov&os TosvTacxaov). In this sense phantasia acts as a veil between the soul and reality, a form of earthly clothing which should be cast off.

When one sees Proclus in the light of this tradition one is not surprised that he uses the rhetoric about deceptive phantasia. But that is only one part of the stor' and it should not blind us to Proclus' critical awareness of the theory of phantasia and his interest in it. This

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is to be seen in the Timaeus commentary in a reference to the passage in the De Anima where Aristotle tries to show that on Plato's view a single phantasia will be simultaneously true and false. Proclus has been talking about the role of logos, reason, and how it operates with various faculties. In this context he says: 'When the matter under examination is a certain position or figure, e.g. the position of the earth which has the pole towards the head and the relation it has with the sky, logos also stirs up phantasia to give a representation in space and figure of the object in question as it really is' (In Tim. I 255, 16ff.). He has said a few pages above (I 250, 24ff.) that aisthesis as irrational cannot do other than present the sun as a foot wide, even though logos says the sun is bigger than the earth. Here is a case where phantasia can help to correct the deficiencies of aisthesis (see In Tim. I 343, 7ff.). The correction is effected because logos can make use of phantasia with its power of imagining the distance from the earth to the sun and imagining the real shape of the sun.6

Proclus seems to administer an implicit rebuke to Aristotle by setting out the positive argument that Anrstotle should have used instead of indulging in eristics: Proclus dis- tinguishes between aisthesis and phantasia, and shows what their different contributions are to human knowing. Yet he certainly appreciates what phantasia can contribute, in Arsitotle's understanding, to human knowledge. In the commentary on the Parmenides he touches on the nature of the phantasma which according to Aristotle is the result of phantasia working on the material provided by aisthesis. He says that a phantasma is something common derived from individual sensibilia, but that it is not to be understood as something which is taken to be the case, doxaston. It must not be postulated to be an independently existing reality about which a judgement of truth or falsity could be made. Its only existence is to be available as a kategorPma which could be predicated of a number of things, oi^v 8'&XXo eyeraL e'Lvot fi xxaqy6pii,uat, xtYi actv TO ro EtivtL TO

xaTqfyopeLOaL Ti)V 'rrOXXCV, (In Parm. IV 893,7-894,4. Cf. 1093,32ff.). Proclus obviously means that the phantasma is not the noema, thought, 'white' which could be used in a judgement involving white. The thought 'white' could not exist without the phantasma 'white', on Aristotle's theory, but it is only when the process of thought takes places that the kategorema which was potentially present in the phantasma can be used in a judge- ment (see Aristotle De Anima III 8,432a4-14). This is genuine and not easy Aristoteli- anism which has caused difficulty for commentators to this day. Proclus' exposition is all the more impressive, considering that it occurs in a context where the Platonic theory of Forms is set against the Peripatetic theory of universals, not to the latter's advantage.

Perhaps more striking as an indication of his attitude to the lower forms of cognition are some passages from his commentary on the Republic. There, in a discussion of the tripartite soul of the Republic, he points out that the faculty of perception, to aisthetikon, is separate from any of the three mentioned by Plato, reason, spirit, and appetite, and that it is basic to them all (In Remp. I 232,15ff.). He goes on to remark that to phantastikon, the faculty of phantasia, is so close that it could almost be confused with to aisthetikon, but that in addition it preserves in memory what comes through the senses. He supports his position with reference to the Theaetetus (19 IC) and the Philebus (39B). The writer in the latter dialogue represents the common sense, he says, and the painter tophantastikon, the faculty of phantasia. It is as if to remind us that Plato, too, was interested in the processes of ordinary human knowing.

In that same commentary some points of the greatest interest in indicating Proclus' attitude to the lower forms of knowing occur in his discussion of the relation of the myth to philosophy. He says (In Remp. II 107,14ff.) that when souls enter bodies they take on the phantastikos nous (the nous that is associated with phantasia) and cannot live without

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it in this place of becoming. It was for that reason, he adds, that some of the ancients said that phantasia was the same as nous, and even those who distinguish them would not accept that there was thinking without phantasia (Tovs Si XcOi SLapLVaVraS &q&v'rTaawrov

VOqGLV T8qiCCV &'roXEi'ELv). It is only reasonable, then, that the form of instruction that is given throughi myths should be fitting for human souls, which are disposed to the plastic (yevo%LvaLs "opFTLxa7s). Myths contain much of the intellectual light of truth, but it is put forward in plastic fashion, the myth concealing (protectively) the truth, just as the phantasia in us overshadows the individual nous. The mythical is suitable for those who live according to phantasia, who are constituted by the passive nous, thepathetikos, just as intellectual knowledge is for those who spend their time in pure thought. There is, on the one hand, the mind, nous, which we are, and on the other, the nous which we put on: it is through this latter that we enjoy the myths which are akin to it. Both minds get pleasure in their different ways, through internal contemplation or through the myth. Our life in phantasia and the myths will be proper if they correspond to the internal truths.

One final general point should be made. It is largely through Proclus that we have expositions of what earlier Neoplatonists considered to be the role of phantasia, preserved for us otherwise only in short and sometimes fragmentary form. It is not necessarily a commendation to say that Proclus writes at length on a topic, but occasionally we benefit from it. This is the case in his commentary on Euclid, for instance, where he explains the role of phantasia in geometry. It is not that Proclus is being original (which of the later Neoplatonists is?): what is important is the thoroughness and clarity of his exposition of the inherited material.7

Proclus is not an Aristotle nor a Plotinus. But to say that he is inconsistent in his use of the concept phantasia, as Beierwaltes does (op.cit., p. 157) might seem to imply that he was incapable of or not interested in understanding what Aristotle is saying. I do not think that the charge of inconsistency has been established. Beierwaltes sees the inconsistency in taking phantasia in some contexts as an element of the passive understanding, i.e. that which simply receives impressions, while in other contexts it is primarily the substrate or form of a spontaneous act (op.cit., p. 157). Beierwaltes seems not to advert to the fact that exactly the same 'inconsistency' is to be found in Aristotle. He uses phantasia sometimes to mean the movement which is caused through aisthPsis and which is similar to the perception (De An. III 3,428blO-17), and can be conceived of in some contexts as a picture formed in the soul, and on the other hand Aristotle also uses it as a power or activity in the soul, as when he says (427b17-20) that through our phantasia we can visualize various things, just as people, to suit themselves, arrange the order of images in mnemonic systems (see also 43 1b2ff. on the use of phantasia in visualizing courses of action). In fact, I think we should not speak of 'inconsistency' in either Proclus or Aristotle: both are using the word for differing aspects of the same thing, somewhat as we use 'imagination'.

Nor is Beierwaltes' unfavourable comparison of him to the Aristotelian commentators justified. We can pass over Stephanus to whom the third book of the De Anima 'Philo- ponus' commentary is now attributed. Stephanus says at some length (494, 26-495, 4) that the second reason Aristotle gives for distinguishingphantasia from aisthesis is taken from the behaviour of new-born babies. What he has to say is charming, but it has nothing to do with the text of Aristotle as we have it. (A case of creative phantasia, perhaps). If we turn to Philoponus himself, however, or Simplicius, both serious scholars if not good friends, we find that they occasionally write things for which they would be reproached by students of Plato or Aristotle today. That Simplicius understood his Aristotle is clear. Occasionally, however, a danger of direct distortion of Aristotle's teaching does arise

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through his devotion to Plato. He realised, for instance, that Aristotle was criticising Plato in the De A nima when he said that phantasia is not doxa combined with aisthesis. Later on in the commentary, however, when Simplicius is discussing chapter nine of Book Three, he tries to reconcile Plato and Aristotle even on this. He says (290, 25ff). that to phantas- tikon has much in common with to aisthetikon on the one hand and the logike dunamis, power of reasoning, on the other. With the first, because it is sbmatoeides, associated with body, and works with impressions which have parts and are like aisth&ta, perceived things, and with the second, because it is in some way independent of aisthesis since it can operate when the sense-objects are no longer present. The exercise of the faculty of phantasia depends very much on us, as Aristotle himself had said, and we can set it in action when we wish. In this way it has much in common with the reasoning faculty. It has then a middle position between doxa, opinion, and aisthesis.

Simplicius is obviously very clear on the place and function of phantasia in Aristotle. And yet he adds immediately that that is why Plato talked of phantasia as a combination of aisthesis and doxa, since, because of its position in the middle, it shared with both. This syncretism would have horrified Aristotle, but we must put it down to Platonic piety and not to misunderstanding.8 Similarly, in Philoponus' Aristotle we find, as Verbeke has remarked,9 psychological dualism, the pre-existence and fall of the soul, anamnesis and the doctrine of the immortality of the rational soul. Blumenthal's article on 'Neoplatonic Elements in the De Anima Commentaries' (Phronesis, 1976) appeared two years after the Entretiens of 1974, and provides a useful balance to Beierwaltes' remarks on the Aris- totelian commentators. If we look at Proclus in the same way I think we shall see that while he shares some of their faults, he also shares many of their virtues. He was also a philosopher and does not deserve to be dismissed as an enthusiastic but rather muddled Seelsorger.

St. Patrick's College, Maynooth

NOTES

I See De Iamblique ta Proclus. Entretiens XXI (Geneva, 1975), p. 190. 2 See her paper in Le Neoplatonisme (Paris, 1971). 3 I have argued elsewhere against Schofield's view that Aristotle later abandoned this position. See Schofield in Aristotle on Mind and the Senses (Cambridge, 1978), p. 120. 4The point is well made by Wallis, Neoplatonism (London, 1972), p. 26. See Sextus Empiricus PH ii 72-5; AM vii 191-8, 357-8. 5 In Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 1967), p. 289. 6 1 follow Festugi&e's interpretation in his note to the translation ad loc. I do not wish to suggest that Proclus' approach is original here: it may go back to Theophrastus. Priscian's Metaphrasis contains views of Theophrastus on phantasia: see Supplementum Aris- lotelicum 1 2 ed.I.Bywater (Berlin, 1886), p. 25, lines 15ff. 7See the Introduction p.xxviii to Morrow's translation of Proclus' commentary on Euclid on his use of his predecessors, and Trouillard, Proclos tE1ments de Theologie (Paris, 1965), p. 32. 8 Plotinus, Enn. I11.6.4.19-20, calls the phantasia which is in the soul doxa, yet he too knew his Aristotle. 9 G. Verbeke, Jean Philopon, Comm.sur le De A nima d'Aristote (Louvain, 1966), p. LXX.

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