Anaxagoras, Origen, and Neoplatonism: The Legacy of Anaxagoras to Classical and Late Antiquity 3110419467, 9783110419467

Citation preview

Panayiotis Tzamalikos Anaxagoras, Origen, and Neoplatonism I

Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte

Founded by Karl Holl † and Hans Lietzmann † Edited by Christian Albrecht and Christoph Markschies

Volume 128/I

Panayiotis Tzamalikos

Anaxagoras, Origen, and Neoplatonism

The Legacy of Anaxagoras to Classical and Late Antiquity Volume I

ISBN 978-3-11-041946-7 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-042010-4 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-042019-7 ISSN 1861-5996 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

ἡτοίμασας ἐνώπιόν μου τράπεζαν ἐξ ἐναντίας τῶν θλιβόντων με. Psalm 22:55 πλεονάκις ἐπολέμησάν με ἐκ νεότητός μου, καὶ γὰρ οὐκ ἠδυνήθησάν μοι. Psalm 128:1 καὶ περιέζωσάς με δύναμιν εἰς πόλεμον. Psalm 17:40 ἔστρεψας τὸν κοπετόν μου εἰς χορὸν ἐμοί, διέρρηξας τὸν σάκκον μου καὶ περιέζωσάς με εὐφροσύνην. Psalm 29:12

Ὁ πιστός ὄψεται τοὺς λόγους τοῦ κόσ­μου τούτου, οὕστινας χρήματα τρο­ πι­κῶς τοῦ νοῦ προσηγόρευσεν. Origen, Expositio in Proverbia, PG.17: 196.26‒31 & 197.35‒37.

χρυσίον δὲ καθαρὸν πολλαχοῦ τηρήσας συμβολικῶς λέγεσθαι τὸν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ πρὸς ὕλην νοῦν. Origen, Commentarii in Romanos (P.Cair. 88748 & cod. Vaticanus graecus 762), p. 158.

Everything is generated from some­ thing which is existent, but it is exis­ tent potentially, whereas it is nonexis­ tent actually (ἐξ ὄντος γίγνεται πάντα, δυνάμει μέντοι ὄντος, ἐκ μὴ ὄντος δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ). And this is the one of Anaxagoras. For [my own phrasing] ‘all things were together potentially but not actually’ (ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα δυνάμει, ἐνεργείᾳ δ᾿ οὐ) is better than [Anaxagoras’] ‘all things were together’ (ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν). Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b19‒23.

ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ αὐτὰ διακρίνας διεκόσμησεν. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, In Aristotelis Quattuor Libros De Caelo Commentaria, p. 590.

Ἀναξαγόρας … ἀρχήν γε τὸν νοῦν τίθεται μάλιστα πάντων· μόνον γοῦν φησιν αὐτὸν τῶν ὄντων ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ τε καὶ καθαρόν. Aristotle, De Anima, 405a15‒17.

Πολλοὶ γὰρ καὶ οἱ ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ νόθοι. (For also in philosophy there are many phoney ones). Origen, Contra Celsum, IV.27.

However, if one were to follow his [Anaxagoras’] doctrine, and rephrase what he means to say, then he might appear propounding a novel doc­ trine (ὅμως εἴ τις ἀκολουθήσειε συν­ διαρθρῶν ἃ βούλεται λέγειν, ἴσως ἂν φανείη καινοπρεπεστέρως λέγων). Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989b4‒6.

Aristotle wrote this ‘rephrasing the proposition along with Anaxagoras accordingly, so as to help him express himself properly’: προσβοηθῶν δὲ τῇ λέξει αὐτοῦ καὶ διαρθρῶν αὐτῆς τὸ βούλημα, … ὡς αὐτὸς αὐτῷ βοηθῶν εἴρηκεν αὐτὸν βούλεσθαι λέγειν. Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis Metaphysica Commentaria, p. 68 & Asclepius of Tralles, In Aristotelis Metaphysicorum Libros Commentaria, pp. 61‒2.

To be sure, selfishness can magnify one’s own doing and glorify it greatly, while belittling and disparaging those of others. It is because of this [selfish­ ness] that paltry people oftentimes rep­ resent themselves as more eminent than others who are in fact far more superior. ἱκανὴ γὰρ ἡ φιλαυτία τὰ μὲν ἴδια με­γα­ λοποιῆσαι καὶ ἀποκιδᾶναι, τὰ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων κατασμικρῦναι καὶ διαφαυλίσαι· πολλὰ γοῦν διὰ ταύτην οἱ κακί­ους σφᾶς αὐτοὺς προκρίνουσι τῶν κατὰ πολὺ βελτιόνων. Hierocles the Stoic (second century AD), Fragmenta Ethica, p. 59, apud Stobaeus, Anthologium, 4.27.20.

Listen to the discussion between any two philosophers, one of whom upholds determinism, and the other liberty: it is always the determinist who seems to be in the right. He may be a beginner, and his adversary a seasoned philosopher. He can plead his cause negligently, while the other sweats blood for his. It will always be said of him that he is simple, clear, and right. He is easily and naturally so, having only to collect thought ready to hand and phrases ready-made: science, lan­ guage, common sense, the whole of intelligence is at his disposal. Criticism of an intuitive philoso­ phy is so easy and so certain to be well received that it always tempts the beginner. Regret may come later – unless, of course, there is a native lack of comprehension and, out of spite, personal resentment toward every­ thing that is not reducible to the letter, towards all that is properly spirit. That can happen because philoso­ phy, too, has its own Scribes and Phari­ sees. Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind, An Introduction to Metaphysics.

Preface This book is part of my struggle to learn who Origen really was. In order for this stage of my research to be realized, it took full exposition of the philosophy of Anaxagoras and its impact on Classical and Late Antiquity, right through the dawn of the Renaissance. It has been quite a long time since I noticed that Ori­ gen’s theology had a bearing on Anaxagoras’ philosophy, which was mostly ob­scured by apparent affinities with Stoicism. Subsequently, the more I studied Origen, the more Anaxagoras’ influence appeared to be there, too. Origen has been always studied as a theologian and too much credit has been given to Eusebius’ implausible hagiography of him. This book explores who Origen really was by pondering into his philosophical background, which deter­ mines his theological exposition implicitly, yet decisively. In order for this back­ ground to come to light, it took a systematic exposition of Anaxagoras’ philoso­ phy and its legacy to Classical and Late Antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Origen, Neoplatonism), which also involves critical assessment of Aristotle’s perverted representation of Anaxagoras that unfortunately has determined almost all of the later accounts of this philosophy. Origen, formerly a Greek philosopher of note, whom Proclus styled anti-Pla­ tonist, is placed in the history of philosophy for the first time. He was indeed an anti-Platonist only because he was an Anaxagorean philosopher with far-reach­ ing influence, not only on Stoics (particularly Zeno) but also on Neoplatonists, such as Porphyry, and certainly on such Christians as Gregory of Nyssa, who made the most of Origen’s Anaxagorean evolutionary theory of generation. More­ over, his doctrine of the soul turns out more orthodox than that of some Christian stars of the Byzantine imperial orthodoxy. As for Origen being the precursor of Nicaea, let Appendix II speak for itself. It turned out that Anaxagoras had much the same fate as Origen: both of them were famous during their lifetimes; both of them had outstanding men of their day as pupils; both of them were utterly misunderstood and distorted by uninformed or spiteful critics; both of them came to be incriminated as danger­ ous blasphemers; both of them were condemned by censorial judicial assemblies backed by the State; both of them were persecuted and forced to decamp; both of them died in cities in which they settled in the third place, following decampment from their native land to conspicuous cities of letters, which were unable to toler­ ate their genius: Anaxagoras moved from Clazomenae to Athens, and then he fled to Lampsacus, where he taught and was buried with full honours. Origen moved from Alexandria to Caesarea, and then to Tyre, where his body was honourably interred in the cathedral basilica of Tyre. Moreover, both Anaxagoras and Origen

X 

 Preface

were acclaimed as great pioneers who inspired brilliant intellectuals during the peripeteia of human thought in the quest for truth. Since this is a study about Origen being considered as both a theologian and a philosopher, the project involved some inherent difficulties, which bear on the long established tradition of theologians and philosophers largely being indiffer­ ent to each other’s research, as if Greek philosophy and Christian theology were two fields impervious to each other. Moreover, in his Christian writings, Origen was loath to reveal his enormous pagan background, except for his polemic trea­ tise against Celsus, in which he felt he should exhibit his equal, indeed superior, knowledge of pagan sources in order to discredit what he saw as impertinent attempt of derogation. Consequently, he sought not so much to refute as to over­ whelm. This is why he quoted from numerous pagan sources in order to show Celsus’ inconsistencies and his gullibility, so as to disgrace his adversary while bolstering up his own image both as a scholar and as a learned faithful. Not only did he refute Celsus’ invective, but also cared to show that he was superior to his adversary on that score. Once Origen’s references are scrutinized, one can see the great Anaxagorean ideas that nourished him. However, on no account was he prepared to reveal his creative flare, which is why, while writing his commentary on the gospel of John, he caveated that ‘it is possible only for a few to understand those philosophers’ (i.e. Origen himself) ‘who have expounded meticulously the doctrine about the state prior to creation and the theory of generation of things’. He had no doubt that his ideas (let alone the pagan provenance of some of them) would embar­ rass those who could make up a fallacious composition of the statements being involved, only because they were not equipped to realize their origin and impli­ cations. Accordingly, he concluded, it would be precarious to write about this theory explicitly, even though he was confident that this was the most sound and consistent one. One of the aims of this book is to cast light on his philosophi­ cal background, which is indispensable for his philosophy concerning both cos­ mogony and function of the universe to be properly grasped beyond the current self-defeating allegations that surround it. I thank Editorial Director Dr. Albrecht Döhnert for his kindness and noble collaboration. My thanks go also to Project Editor Mr. Stefan Selbmann and to Production Editor Mr. Florian Ruppenstein, both of whom made the process of production a smooth and gratifying experience, and to Miss Katrin Mittmann for her assistance. Most of all, I am grateful to the editors of this distinguished series for having included this book therein, especially Professor Christoph Markschies for his considerate reading of the manuscript. P. T.

Contents Volume I Abbreviations  XVII Introduction  1 Quest for the real Origen  1 Methodology  7 A damned intellectual  14 Anaxagoras, ‘the first’  17 The H. Diels – W. Kranz collection and Aristotle  25 Considering a triple context  42 Simplicius as a witness  55 Aristotle: a doxographic source for Aetius, Plutarch, and Stobaeus  58 Homage to an irreverent iconoclast  63 ‘Systems’ in Aristotle?  69 Scope  78 Bibliography  80 Opting for old wine, not new bottles  95

Part I

The Philosophy of Anaxagoras

Chapter 1 The Principles  105 Anaxagoras’ principles  105 Anaxagoras’ principles being styled elements  114 ᾿Aρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion  128 Conclusion  158 Chapter 2 A religious outcast criticized  163 Plato  163 Aristotle  173 Assessing the criticism  179 Chapter 3 Aristotle as a critic  196 Chapter 4 A twofold creation  263 Chapter 5 The will of Mind  311

XII 

 Contents

Chapter 6 Potentiality  323 Chapter 7 Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle  421 Conclusion of Part I: Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras  488

Part II

The Legacy of Anaxagoras to Classical and Late Antiquity

Chapter 8 Plato and Aristotle  527 Plato  527 Aristotle  537 Liabilities to the criticized ancestor  537 Anaxagorean Principles/Logoi, Platonic Ideas, and Aristotelian Forms  542 Is the Immovable First Mover also a poietic cause?  554 Who is to blame for obscurity?  570 The notion of essence  579 Aristotle’s commentators  590 The mind that comes from outside  594 The idea of potentiality  598 Chapter 9 The Stoics  607 Generation and existence  607 God permeating the entire universe (διὰ πάντων ἰών)  620 Philo using Anaxagoras: clandestine influence  629 Universal interrelation (συμπάθεια)  638 Different modes of existence  639 Voice is a blow on the air  641 Arabic sources  643 Anaxagorean principles and Stoic logoi  649 The Stoic logoi styled spermatic  660 Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus  690 Zeno going to theatre  700 Chapter 10 The Neoplatonists  702 Plotinus  702 Porphyry  750 The Theory of Logoi  750

Contents 

The First Body  781 Iamblichus  790 Proclus  793 Damascius  810 Volume II

Part III Origen Chapter 11 Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras  827 Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy  827 De Principiis  855 The Body of the Logos  867 A ‘good’ creature  867 Origen and Neoplatonists  918 The Mind is detached from all creation  930 The theory of seminal logoi  933 The living Body of the Logos  955 Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?  964 Against the hagiography of an ex-pagan  964 From Anaxagoras to the Bible  965 Origen and Numenius  974 First and Second Mind in Classical and Late Antiquity  978 Origen’s ‘second God’  998 Origen writing after 265 AD  1032 An authentic Origenist exponent  1040 An Anaxagorean Second God?  1041 The notion of incorporeal: Presocratics and Stoics  1067 Euripides  1078 Conclusion  1092 Chapter 12 Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity  1096 Anaxagorean influence, Aristotelian self-contradiction  1096 Aristotle’s commentators  1111 Doxographers  1120 Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo  1124 Philo  1124 Origen  1126 Natural and symbolic language in Origen  1146 Neoplatonism  1159

 XIII

XIV 

 Contents

Thomas Aquinas  1166 Divine Creation  1168

Part IV Theory of the Soul Chapter 13 Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity  1178 Exordium  1178 From Anaxagoras to Classical Age  1181 Definitions of the soul  1203 A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body  1222 The Stoic concept of the soul  1245 Spermatic logoi  1254 Criticism against the Stoics  1259 The Stoic soul after death  1273 Origen on the soul  1279 Incorporeality and individuality  1279 Testimonies about Origen on transmigration  1288 Against transmigration  1293 Body / Soul / Spirit: logoi co-existing differently  1298 The ‘inner man’: Paul, Origen, and Heidegger  1307 The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity  1313 Origen and the Anaxagorean theory  1313 Acting Anaxagorean principles: the labourers  1343 Rational essence and rational nature  1348 Human being: an image of the universal Mind  1368 Origen’s doctrine of the soul resolved  1374 Soul standing ‘midway’  1382 Three classes of being  1389 The ‘logos of this world’  1401 Soul shedding its wings  1410 Origen and pagan theories of the soul  1417 Conclusion of Part IV  1442 Conclusion  1463 Appendix I The wondrous Greek travels to the East  1516 A brave old world  1517 Plato  1524 Pythagoras  1531

Contents 

 XV

Democritus  1536 Aristotle  1544 Proclus  1546 Pherecydes and Anaxagoras  1549 Appendix II Origen and the homoousion. A critical edition of two unpublished texts  1559 Origen, Commentary on Genesis, Codex Holy Sepulchre, 3  1561 Origen, Commentary on Matthew, Codex Sabaiticus, 232  1565 Bibliography  1605 Primary sources  1605 Modern works  1661 Index of Names  1666 Index of Terms  1753 Index of Greek Terms  1763 Index of Modern Names  1774

Abbreviations Origen Cels homGen commGen selGen adnotGen selEx selNum selDeut homJob selPs excPs frPs expProv homJer frLam selEz schMatt commMatt frMatt homLuc commJohn frJohn commCor commEph Princ

Contra Celsum Homiliae in Genesim Fragmenta ex Commentariis in Genesim Selecta in Genesim Adnotationes in Genesim Selecta in Exodum Selecta in Numeros Selecta in Deuteronomium Homiliae in Job Selecta in Psalmos Excerpta in Psalmos Fragmenta in Psalmos Expositio in Proverbia Homiliae In Jeremiam Fragmenta in Lamentationes Selecta in Ezechielem Scholia in Matthaeum Commentarium in Evangelium Matthaei Commentariorum series in Matthaeum Homiliae in Lucam Commentarii in Evangelium Joannis Fragmenta in Evangelium Joannis Fragmenta ex commentariis in Epistulam i ad Corinthios Fragmenta ex Commentariis in Epistulam ad Ephesios De Principiis

Other authors adnotArist commAnalPost commAnalPr – ‒ commAnim ‒ commCael commCateg ‒

Gennadius Scholarius, Adnotationes in Aristotelis Opera Diversa John Philoponus, In Aristotelis Analytica Posteriora Commentaria John Philoponus, In Aristotelis Analytica Priora Commentaria Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis Analyticorum Priorum Librum i Commentarium Ammonius of Alexandria, In Aristotelis Analyticorum Priorum Librum i Commentarium John Philoponus, In Aristotelis Libros De Anima Commentaria Simplicius, In Aristotelis Libros De Anima Commentaria Simplicius, In Aristotelis Quattuor Libros De Caelo Commentaria Dexippus, In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium Elias of Alexandria, In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium,

XVIII

Abbreviations

‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ ‒ commCrat commDeInterpr commDeSensu commEpict commEucl commGenAnim commGenCorr commMetaph ‒ ‒ commMeteor ‒ commPhys ‒ ‒ ‒ commRep commTim ‒ commTop De Natura et Arte De Providentia De Providentia et Fato De Spiritu Sancto i De Spiritu Sancto ii epitSummae Opuscula i Opuscula ii paraphrAnim ‒

John Philoponus, In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium Porphyry, In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium Porphyry, In Aristotelis Categorias Expositio per Interrogationem et Re sponsionem Simplicius, In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium Ammonius of Alexandria, In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarius Proclus, In Platonis Cratylum Commentaria Ammonius of Alexandria, In Aristotelis Librum De Interpretatione Com mentarius Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Librum De Sensu Commentarium Simplicius, Commentarius in Epicteti Enchiridion Proclus, In Primum Euclidis Elementorum Librum Commentarii John Philoponus, In Libros De Generatione Animalium Commentaria John Philoponus, In Aristotelis Libros De Generatione et Corruptione Commentaria Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis Metaphysica Commentaria Syrianus, In Aristotelis Metaphysica Commentaria Asclepius of Tralles, In Aristotelis Metaphysicorum Libros Commentaria Alexander of Aphrodisias In Aristotelis Meteorologicorum Libros Com mentaria John Philoponus, In Aristotelis Meteorologicorum Librum Primum Com mentarium John Philoponus, In Aristotelis Physicorum Libros Commentaria Simplicius, In Aristotelis Physicorum Libros Commentaria Michael Psellus, In Aristotelis Physicorum Libros Commentarium Gennadius Scholarius, Divisio Summaria Quinque Primorum Librorum Aristotelis Physicae Proclus, In Platonis Rem Publicam Commentarii Porphyry, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria (fragmenta) Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis Topicorum Libros Octo Commen taria Bessarion, De Natura et Arte: Liber adversus Georgium Trapezuntium Cretensem Proclus, De Decem Dubitationibus Circa Providentiam Proclus, De Providentia et Fato et Eo Quod in Nobis ad Theodorum Me chanicum Gennadius Scholarius, Tractatus de Processu Spiritus Sancti i Gennadius Scholarius, Tractatus de Processu Spiritus Sancti ii Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Primae Partis Summae Theologicae Tho mae Aquinae Michael Psellus, Opuscula Logica, Physica, Allegorica, Alia Michael Psellus, Opuscula Psychologica, Theologica, Daemonologica Themistius, In Aristotelis Libros De Anima Paraphrasis Sophonias, In Aristotelis Libros De Anima Paraphrasis

Other authors

XIX

paraphrPhys Princ Vitae

Themistius, In Aristotelis Physica Paraphrasis Damascius, De Principiis Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum

ACO FGrH GCS TU PG PL ACO SVF COT PHE RCR NDGF Scholia

Schwartz, E., Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur J. P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca (volume / page / line) J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina (volume / page / line) Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (volume, page, verse) P. Tzamalikos, Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of Time P. Tzamalikos, Origen: Philosophy of History and Eschatology P. Tzamalikos, The Real Cassian Revisited P. Tzamalikos, A Newly Discovered Greek Father P. Tzamalikos, An Ancient Commentary on the Book of Revelation

Psalms are numbered after LXX.

Introduction Quest for the real Origen The main reason for me to write this book has been my ongoing quest for determining who Origen really was. Although an author of a vast number of works, in which he struggled always to make himself clear, he came to be regarded as a mysterious figure surrounded by hot controversy. Why this man was so provocative and irritating an intellectual to so many persons already during his lifetime is a question that has not attracted as much attention as it ought to. Why so many of his contemporaries cared to misinterpret, even adulterate, his writings (to which he remonstrated himself) has not yet received a convincing answer. One might think that he was but an intellectual of the Late Antiquity, a philosopher among many others. Why then was it that he attracted both passionate hatred and enthusiastic loyalty of such intensity, both during his lifetime and much later, until modern times? This is a unique phenomenon of an author officially considered as a damned heretic, on whose work the most eminent stars of Christian theology drew, from Athanasius and the Cappadocians right through Thomas Aquinas and Gennadius Scholarius, and cardinal doctrines of what is called ‘orthodoxy’ can be definitely shown to be the fruit of his own pen. The most damaging curtain in order to determine who this tragic figure of Christianity was has always been the hagiography composed by a self-declared follower of Origen, namely, Eusebius. He was a weird amalgam of learned scholar who had no inhibitions about concocting or distorting history, so as to present his readers with both edification and subjugation to the will of the State. Unlike modern times that are so different in so many respects, that State claimed not simply obedience to the will, or whim, of the emperor: it demanded all of human soul, which is why the shape and content of religious faith and theology played such a crucial role. A main claim which Eusebius vehemently attacked was Porphyry’s comment made in passing, which informed that Origen was born a pagan, he was raised as a Greek, and, before he was converted to Christianity, he was a philosopher of note. However, the implausibilities, impossibilities, and logical inconsistencies in Eusebius’ ‘biography’ are so many, that his text could be considered as ‘historical evidence’ only once religious allegiances prevail over unbiased scholarship. I consider the value and implications of this text in a biography of Origen, which hopefully will appear before not long. For the time being, my argument in this book is that the spiritual profile of Origen as a philosopher, not only as a theologian, is inherent in his writings and should be brought to the fore.

2

Introduction

Proclus wrote that Origen and Plotinus ‘shared the same education’ (meaning, under Ammonius Saccas). Although I postpone until appearance of that biography a more comprehensive demonstration of this Origen and the Christian one being the selfsame person, in this book, the fact of ‘common education’ will recur abundantly while considering the thought of Plotinus and then of Porphyry, on the one hand, and of Origen, on the other. More stunning still, the points at which Plotinus and Origen appear as sharing some common principles are mostly those which demonstrate two intellectuals who parted ways as of a certain moment onwards. Since 1986, I have been arguing that Origen was an anti-Platonist in many respects, and that the claim of Platonism in Origen appears so baffling, that argument would be needed to establish not its incoherence, but its coherence, since it thrives on half-truths confronting his own statements and cardinal ideas.¹ Ever since, new evidence keeps coming to light, and one of my conclusions in the present book is that Origen was an anti-Platonist because he was an Anaxagorean philosopher, both as a Greek philosopher and then as a Christian theologian. At the outset of the second volume of his Platonic Theology, Proclus summarized the chapters he was going to treat; he described the fourth of them as a refutation, described as ‘reply to those who maintain that, according to Plato, there is not any first principle above the Mind’.² When he came to writing that chapter, he made a general reference to ‘all the other exegetes of Plato’ who sustained that the Mind is the supreme principle, and then he mentioned one name only: “and, above all others, Origen, who shared the same education with Plotinus.” His conclusion was that Plato could have never included Origen among his pupils.³ This work is a study of Origen as both a theologian and a philosopher, indeed it places him in the history of philosophy for the first time. After more than three decades of research and publishing on this author, and nearly equal time of teaching philosophy, I have been convinced that Origen was an intellectual, who was formerly a pagan, indeed an Anaxagorean philosopher (who interpreted Plato on Anaxagorean premisses, for which Proclus repudiated him), and joined Christianity at the age of nearly fifty. Nevertheless, even as a Christian, Origen maintained his Anaxagorean allegiances, which he managed to harmonize with his new faith. Porphyry and Proclus mention him in admiration while mourning his conversion to the ‘audacious barbaric venture’, meaning  PHE, p. 17.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, p. 1: ᾿Aπάντησις πρὸς τοὺς λέγοντας μὴ εἶναι τὴν πρώτην ἀρχὴν ὑπὲρ νοῦν κατὰ Πλάτωνα.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 31.

Quest for the real Origen

3

Christianity. The irony is that, to Neoplatonists such as Proclus, Origen was an anti-Platonist, and to Christians he has been always a Platonist, for which the imperial orthodoxy of Justinian anathematized him. The simple truth is that he was an Anaxagorean ex-pagan who paved the way to the doctrine of Nicaea, currently held to be the orthodox one, and the current Trinitarian orthodoxy is simply the product of his thought. A small yet telling token of this appears in a text of his that I have recently discovered, part of which is now published as Appendix II, only to give some idea who Origen really was. However, religious allegiances have made it it hard to accept that an expagan, who joined Christianity when he was already a mature man, is the one who formulated the core of the faith. Now, philosophers can read for the first time that Origen was (indeed in the first place) also a philosopher, and his Anaxagorean background is being cast light upon. I am arguing that it was in Anaxagoras that he found the notion of divine will ascribed to the supreme Nous. Although this tenet has been assumed to be the most radical difference between Christianity and Hellenism, the fact is that it did exist in Anaxagoras, and whether the notion is indeed Biblical is still being debated. Likewise, in Anaxagoras Origen found the idea of matter having been (actually, being incessantly) created from what appears to be ‘out of nothing’, yet this is not really ex nihilo: quite simply, visible matter is being produced from what will be described as Anaxagorean principles. That the Neoplatonist Hierocles of Alexandria advanced the idea suggests that this was a doctrine sustained by Ammonius Saccas, and his pupil Origen belonged to the ‘holy generation’ (τῆς ἱερᾶς γενεᾶς)⁴ that studied under that master. Origen applied the designation λόγοι to Anaxagoras’ χρήματα, which became σπέρματα upon their ‘distinction’ by the Nous, which are indeed the object of creation. On this, he was a predecessor of Poprhyry, who reflected in like terms concerning ‘the way to creation’, as Proclus put it. Nevertheless, Origen saw the λόγοι as having been made ex nihilo and then placed on the Body of the Logos. His entire inspiration and tenor was Anaxagorean, and this was the source of his cardinal notion of the Trinitarian God / Mind producing out of will, which became the paragon of the Christian theory of creation. In respect of this, the notion of ‘second God’ appearing in his thought has always been assumed an influence by Numenius. However, it is shown that this idea originates with Aristotle, although he did not actually expound it in detail: quite simply, he could not understand why was it that Anaxagoras posited a Nous acting ‘as of a certain beginning’, whereas to Aristotle the world was with-

 Photius, Bibliotheca, Codex 214, p. 173.

4

Introduction

out beginning. Aristotle decided that, before the Nous came to create, it was actually ‘nothing’, in like a manner ‘formless matter’ was ‘actually nothing’. It was Theophrastus who took the idea and built on it, by introducing the notions of ‘Potential Mind’ (δυνάμει νοῦς) and Actual Mind (ἐνεργείᾳ νοῦς), but Themistius (our source about this) saw that Theophrastus’ account was too perplexed for anything to be made out of that. In any event, everything Origen knew about Aristotle (of whom he had all but high regard) he had learned from Alexander of Aphrodisias, who also strove to decipher what Aristotle was talking about concerning this issue. Therefore, what Origen believed about the ‘second God’ goes back to Aristotle taking his cue from Anaxagoras. Numenius was too unimportant and belated an arrival to be dignified as a source for Origen on this issue. Modern pompous reference to a presumed ‘tradition of Numenius’ is simply the result of unawareness of the real origin of the notion of ‘second God’, which can be traced in Theophrastus, who in turn thought he had tracked traces of the notion in Aristotle, if inconclusively. This is discussed in chapter 11, where it turns out that the Neoplatonic notion of the Supreme Principle causing generation of things ‘by being what it is’ (i. e. as a cosmic principle, not out of untrammelled will, or volition whatsoever) could have been an Aristotelian corollary. Origen was always cautious so as not to reveal the philosophical implications (sometimes, origins) of his theological propositions. In this book, I have taken the step which he himself did not wish to take: I point out the philosophical premisses of his thought, as well as their allusions and roots, although always he cared to buttress up all of his theology by means of scriptural passages. Besides, Origen’s work is not a statue to be statically examined: it is a trajectory, indeed a process, and an evolution of ideas that reached their maturity over time. Unless his thought is studied while taking into account a painful process of transforming pagan notions and theories to Christian propositions duly adapted, there is no way for his thought to be properly understood and pertinent accounts to be fair to him. In this book, the convenient folly about ‘two Origens’ (which recently has resulted in ‘two Ammonii’!) is not dignified with being made part of my considerations. Mere reading of Plotinus’ ideas vis-à-vis those of Origen’s made throughout in this book will allow the reader to see for himself all about this modern fanciful obsession – which is not in fact modern, although no one seems to be aware of this. For in fact this is pretty old, although not an ancient one (references to ‘two Origens’ by Epiphanius of Salamis and Sophronius of Jerusalem have an entirely different import). This modern chimera about ‘two Origens’ appeared in a footnote of a book published in 1659 by Henri de Valois, only to be rebutted brilliantly in the late 1820s – and then to be forgotten for the ensuing

Quest for the real Origen

5

one century. Both books are mostly terra incognita to the majority of scholars, who are reproducing anemophilously claims about ‘two Origens’ and ‘two Ammonii’ made in the mid‒1950s, mostly assumed to be innovative ones, although the weird theory of ‘two Origens’ made an appearance en passant in 1723 with Johann Albert Fabricius (in his Bibliotheca Graeca, 1705‒1728), and then with Eduard Zeller (in the third volume of his history of Greek philosophy, 1844‒ 52), which though were simply surreptitious echoes of the thesis of Henri de Valois, who was a lawyer, not a theologian, and based his two arguments on poorly informed considerations. Following a long period of silence, the pseudo-question which created a mirage revived in the mid‒1950s with H. Dörrie who said nothing new about Origen, and it has now become a fashionable trend for several scholars to speak of ‘two’ contemporaneous ‘Origens’, a Christian and a Neoplatonist, only because is appears difficult for them to realize that Late antique intellectuals felt at liberty not only to modify their opinions, but also to change their lives, whereas personal relationships and human rapport between pagans and Christians were scarcely determined by religious allegiances. However, the notion of ‘one Origen’ causes dismay to some scholars who find it intolerant that an ex-pagan anticipated the doctrine of Nicaea, although Athanasius felt happy and convenient at informing posterity that the ‘industrious and highly learned’ Origen had posited that the Son is co-eternal with the Father and he was born ‘from the essence of the Father’, which inspired that synodical resolution. One of the standard arguments for this is that Origen the Platonist is said (by Longinus through Porphyry) to have written very little; to reconcile this information with the renowned fecundity of the Christian Origen, it is argued that this ‘very little’, and however little, was Platonic. It seems unacceptable that there has to be substantial difference between the ‘Platonic’ (although rebuked by Proclus as ‘anti-Platonic’) and Christian phases of Origen’s life. Consequently, if concession is made for ‘one Origen’, this is made in order to ‘discover’ a lot of residual Platonism in Origen’s Christian works, whereas it appears as utter paradox that Origen did not die at the age of 69 (as Eusebius fancifully reported in order to conceal events that Epiphanius did not care to suppress), but he reached the age of 80 and probably more (which has been deemed humanely impossible by some ones, although Didymus died when he was more than 85, and Gorgias was spiritually active until the age of 105). This expedient practice goes on defiantly, and it has resulted in such by-products as, following ‘two Origens’, of necessity discovering ‘two Ammonii’, of whom one was the teacher of Origen, the other of Plotinus. All of this is simply about a newfangled practice that has enchanted several scholars, who have also ‘discovered’ two ‘Lucians of Samosata’, although my edition volume of the Scholia in Apocalypsin made it plain that the text of the ‘other’ Lucian (namely, the rhetorician and satirist) makes a strong

6

Introduction

mark upon an important Christian text, not to mention an impeccable Trinitarian formula (along with Euripidean verses!) written under his name, which is now quoted in chapter 11. Similar enraptured practices have discovered ‘two Gennadii Scholarii’, only because no room was allowed for a Byzantine scholar to change his mind on the issue of union of eastern and western churches. Likewise, in older times, Leo Allatius (the Greek scholar, theologian and keeper of the Vatican library, c. 1586‒1669) introduced a trichotomy of his own making, and made Michael Psellus three persons out of one. Perhaps, in the future we should expect also claims about ‘two Plotini’ since, in chapter 13, I discuss a monograph by Plotinus, entitled On Reasonable Departure [from life] (= On justified suicide), attested by Olympiodorus of Alexandria and his pupil Elias. The third and most important testimony to this book of Plotinus, which comes from by Michael Psellus, is largely unknown, since, to many scholars, classical Hellenic studies have to ‘stop at 800 AD’. However, Psellus not only cited this, but also quoted a Chaldean oracle, adding that Plotinus quoted this in that monograph of his, which confirms Plotinus’ Chaldean predilection (argued and explained by Psellus at other points in reference not only to Plotinus, but also to other Greek philosophers -see Appendix I). Psellus explains the meaning of the Chaldean oracle shortly after that point as total ban on suicide, quoting also Plato’s Phaedo, 62c5‒6, ‘which Plato had learned from’ the Chaldeans. On this issue, there is dissent concerning (1) Plotinus who was faithful to Socrates in the Phaedo arguing that suicide is never permitted (presumably such references imply Phaedo, 61e‒ 62c, but I should add the Laws, 873c); (2) Plotinus who accepts the Stoic thesis of freedom to commit suicide, although he does not grant that it is right to use this freedom under any circumstances; and (3) Plotinus who believes that sometimes suicide is permitted. Fortunately, we have not heard about another Plotinus – for the time being, at least. I hope that the relationship between the ontologies of Plotinus and Origen, which is partially explored in the present book, will make clear the complex phenomenon of theories being profoundly different and yet demonstrably ones that largely emanated from the classroom of the same teacher, namely, of Ammonius Saccas. This is about the compelling case of a common lesson that they had been taught by their common teacher, which was bifurcated by those two brilliant scholars, who remained intimate friends for a lifetime, despite their having parted intellectual ways. It is hardly mere coincidence that Origen knew of Plotinus’ Supreme Principle posited as standing not only ‘beyond essence’, as Plato had it in the Republic, but also ‘beyond the Intellect’. Origen quoted and considered this an odd thirty years before Porphyry published his master’s work, he was the only one to do so, and so he remained for a long time, until Proclus and Damascius made a casual reference to this. Why Origen was aware of Plotinus’

Methodology

7

cardinal proposition and he quoted this, is explained in chapter 11. Exploration of this bifurcation by two classmates, who paved two sheer different philosophical ways while having followed the lessons by the same master, is not exhausted in the present study, since pertinent considerations had to be confined to my main topic. However, since all of this marks an astounding development which is pregnant with serious consequences for the history of philosophy and theology, I will return to this theme in the forthcoming biography of Origen, in order to explain a pseudo-question that has unwittingly tantalized modern scholarship.

Methodology My methodology deviates from the current one, since, as it happened in antiquity, I consider philosophy, theology, and science as a whole, which is what ancient philosophers actually did. My thesis is that these modern designations and divisions make no sense when the ancient lore is studied. Accordingly, this book puts to rest the artificial and anachronistic classification between philosophy and theology when ancient sources are studied. Over the years, I have been convinced that considering ‘theology’ as distinct from ‘philosophy’ (which was a distinction unknown to ancient authors) is too an artificial one, and it is the product of the last two centuries. In Late Antiquity, both Greek and Christian scholars lived under the same heaven, they conversed with each other, and they shared common classrooms: Empress Eudocia, the wife of Theodosius II (a Christian, that is) studied under Orion of Alexandria in the same classroom as Proclus. Besides, as philosophers, they oftentimes reasoned on the same principles. Concerning Origen and Plotinus, it would be futile to search for influence upon each other: for although they departed from some common assumptions that they had heard from Ammonius Saccas, subsequently they parted ways while developing their thought to different directions. On other issues, their difference was irreconcilable: concerning creation of the perceptible universe, on the one hand, Origen maintained the Theory of Logoi, which was purely Anaxagorean. On the other, in theory, Plotinus posited the Soul as an intermediary between the Intellect and sensible things. However, the Soul in Plotinus, although standing between the intelligible and sensible worlds, has not a world of its own: it belongs to both worlds, normally it is thought of as linking them, and sometimes Plotinus felt that it was hardly necessary to make use of the soul as a link at all.⁵

 Cf. Plotinus, Enneades V.8.7.

8

Introduction

Nevertheless, there was neither appropriation nor polemic nor rancour, and it is by some of their common points of departure that we can arrive at a better understanding of their views and make out their differences. One thing is for sure: the two classmates remained in amicable terms for a lifetime. In this context, there is a stunning instance, which is worth mentioning, taking into account Plato’s famous asseveration that ‘the Good itself is not essence, but still transcends essence in dignity and surpassing power’ (ἐπέκεινα οὐσίας πρεσβείᾳ τε καὶ δυνάμει).⁶ Plotinus went a step beyond, reinforcing the transcendence of the One, which he made ‘beyond essence, and beyond activity and beyond mind and thought’ (ἐπέκεινα οὐσίας, ἐπέκεινα καὶ ἐνεργείας καὶ ἐπέκεινα νοῦ καὶ νοήσεως).⁷ Of this, Plotinus emphasized the notion of being ‘beyond mind’ (ἐπέκεινα νοῦ):⁸ the One is ontologically superior to the Mind/Intellect. Of all authors after Plotinus, either pagan or Christian ones, it was only Origen that mentioned this expression, which he clearly made in reference to Plotinus himself, indeed it is a quotation from him. By saying that the God of the universe is Mind, or that the God of everything is beyond mind and essence, and is simple and invisible and incorporeal, we would maintain that God is not comprehended by any being other than him who is made in the image of that Mind. ⁹

This has things to tell us about the dates of both men, particularly of Origen, as well as about their relations and publication of the Enneades, which I discuss in chapter 11, and, more extensively, in the forthcoming biography mentioned above. Different philosophers had different predilections, of course: Damascius wrote that, whereas ‘Porphyry, Plotinus, and other philosophers, had a tendency for philosophy, others, such as Iamblichus, Syrianus, and Proclus, opted for the sacerdotal activity’, which means that the latter were of a character which was hieratic rather than philosophical.¹⁰ In spite of this remark made by a philosopher who knew the stars of Late Antiquity better, today, scholars conveniently style Iamblichus, Syrianus, and Proclus ‘philosophers’, whereas they believe

 Plato, Respublica, 509b. Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. V.3.13; V.4.2.  Plotinus, op. cit. I.7.1; cf. V.1.8; V.4.2; VI.8.16. Damascius, Princ, p. 48.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.8.9 & V.1.8 & V.3.11; cf. V.3.12; V.4.2; V.8.1; V.9.2.  Origen, Cels, VII.38: Νοῦν τοίνυν ἢ ἐπέκεινα νοῦ καὶ οὐσίας λέγοντες εἶναι ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀόρατον καὶ ἀσώματον τὸν τῶν ὅλων θεόν, οὐκ ἂν ἄλλῳ τινὶ ἢ τῷ κατὰ τὴν ἐκείνου τοῦ νοῦ εἰκόνα γε νομένῳ φήσομεν καταλαμβάνεσθαι τὸν θεόν.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 172: Ὅτι οἱ μὲν τὴν φιλοσοφίαν προτιμῶσιν, ὡς Πορφύριος καὶ Πλωτῖνος καὶ ἄλλοι πολλοὶ φιλόσοφοι· οἱ δὲ τὴν ἱερατικήν, ὡς Ἰάμβλιχος καὶ Συρ ιανὸς καὶ Πρόκλος καὶ οἱ ἱερατικοὶ πάντες. See discussion of this in chapter 11, p. 1042.

Methodology

9

that Origen was a downright ‘theologian’, although he had been a celebrity of the pagan world as a Greek philosopher. Although normally styled a ‘physicist’, Anaxagoras was also not less than a theologian, even though the Athenian estabishment convicted him on charges of blasphemy, in the same way they did so of Socrates and of Aristotle. However, Anaxagoras’ piousness was reflected in the plays of his devout pupil Euripides, and little wonder that Euripides was always a suspect of atheism, too. Against this, three names were normally cited together referring to those who introduced a sublime idea of God in the Hellenic world: Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Plato.¹¹ In the same way, Justinian’s imperial orthodoxy of the sixth century branded Origen a heretic laying at his door all sorts of heresy, and anathematized him for excessive tendency to philosophy, namely, for extreme Hellenization of Christianity. The problem that has been a detriment to comprehension of Origen is as ancient as is it modern: while he had been a Greek philosopher of note, once he joined Christianity he addressed an audience that did not know, and did not want to know, philosophy: they deemed it alien knowledge, indeed an inferior one, which could be used only selectively by picking up terminology with little awareness of its implications. Even in some theological studies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on Origen, Hellenism is styled ‘contamination’, or ‘danger’, and the like,¹² and it is treated as a daemon to be exorcized, even though cardinal notions of orthodoxy have been articulated in Hellenic philosophical (that is, non-scriptural) terminology. Therefore, in his own times, Origen took his audience by storm to an extent that it was impossible for them to assimilate, and too little has changed ever since, although recent generations of students of theology have realized how important knowledge of philosophy is, and there are

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis Metaphysica Commentaria, p. 61: ἐπεὶ οἵ γε πρὸ τού των οὐ τὴν ὑλικὴν μόνον ἔθεντο αἰτίαν· οὔτε γὰρ ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὔτε οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι οὔτε Πλά των. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 8.8.5 6 (copied by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Vir tutibus et Vitiis, p. 114): καὶ γὰρ Πυθαγόρας καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Πλάτων οἵ τε μετ᾿ ἐκεῖνον ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς φιλόσοφοι καὶ μικροῦ δεῖν ἅπαντες οὕτω φαίνονται περὶ τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ φύσεως πεφρονηκότες. Op. cit. 14.16.11: πρώτους ὁ λόγος συνίστησι τοὺς ἀμφὶ τὸν Πυθαγόραν τε καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν Πλάτωνά τε καὶ Σωκράτην νοῦν καὶ θεὸν ἐπιστῆσαι τῷ κόσμῳ. Theodoret, Graeca rum Affectionum Curatio, 2.26: Οὐκοῦν καὶ Πυθαγόρας καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Πλάτων αἰνίγματά τινα περὶ τοῦ ὄντος παρ᾿ Αἰγυπτίων καὶ Ἑβραίων ξυνέλεξαν. Op. cit. 2.51: Καὶ γὰρ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Πυθαγόρας καὶ Πλάτων ὕστερον ἐκεῖθεν εἵλκυσαν σμικρὰ ἄττα τῆς ἀληθείας ἐναύσματα· καὶ ὁ Σωκράτης, ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ καὶ ᾿Aρχελάῳ ξυγγεγονώς, παρ᾿ ἐκείνων μεμάθηκεν, ἃ περὶ τοῦ ὄντος ἐδίδαξε.  See references in COT, pp. 237 8.

10

Introduction

currently some remarkable European scholars who are gradually reversing the tide of traditional trends and assumptions in respect of Origen studies. My suggestion then is that the Christian Origen did not reflect within an intellectual vacuum, and that Anaxagoras’ thought played an implicit yet decisive role in his formulations. Nevertheless, all of them were adjustments to the new faith, which means that, if Anaxagoras’ thought was invention, Origen’s one was innovation, as far as his audience was, and still is, concerned. Consequently, I am aware that this book would be faced with some difficulties stemming from the current ‘compartmentalization’ of scholarship: On the one hand, some brilliant exceptions apart, too many theologians are loath to read philosophy, unless there is something specific related to theological concerns (such as keen interest in Plato’s Timaeus, because of its cosmogony, but largely indifference to the rest of Plato’s ideas). On the other hand, philosophers would read for the first time that Origen was a philosopher who deserves a place of his own in the history of philosophy. The funny misunderstanding is that when modern students of philosophy read Iamblichus, Syrianus, and Proclus, they are complacently satisfied that they study philosophy – even though Damascius assured that not only were those men theologians, but also they ‘opted for sacerdotal rather than philosophical activity’. Consequently, in this book, there is no distinction between ‘philosophy’ and ‘theology’, and some fundamental points of my methodology are the following: 1. The study of the Presocratic philosophers (including Anaxagoras, above all) is based not on the ‘Diels-Kranz fragments’, but directly on ancient sources, which are far more numerous than those considered and excerpted in this respectable but outdated collection. What is more, all testimonies about Anaxagoras (from Plato down to the end of the Byzantine era, in 1453 and after) have been taken into account, and none of them has been left out of consideration. Against the universal practice that has been pursued for reasons of convenience and on the assumption that there is no alternative, I believe that a philosophical education built on pursuit of ‘fragments’ of any kind can never lead to any ‘wholes’. 2. The philosophy of Anaxagoras is expounded in full, and so is his impact on Classical and Late Antiquity, against all current scholarship, which is fatally dependent on extant doxography. It has been generally assumed that, ultimately, Theophrastus has determined all doxography. However, I adduce some new evidence showing that the real source was Aristotle himself, who wrote a book (now lost) on the doctrines of his predecessors.¹³ Consequently, I argue that the source

 See infra, pp. 58 63.

Methodology

11

of Aetius (whose existence and work is attested by Theodoret alone, and nothing of his life can be ascertained definitely) was Aristotle himself, namely, his doxogaphic book entitled Περὶ τῶν ἀρεσκόντων τοῖς φιλοσόφοις. ¹⁴ 3. Once all doxography is by and large based on Aristotle (or, on Theophrastus, i.e. Aristotle’s successor, if one would prefer so), therefore, in effect it is based on his own agenda, aims, and aspirations, I have studied testimonies not only of Aristotelian commentators (who, nevertheless, at points, considerably deviate from Aristotle’s representation of Anaxagoras – which is all too often a biased one), but also of others, such as Porphyry. 4. To this purpose, I have taken into account doxography from non-Greek sources, such as Bardaisan reporting information he had received from an Indian delegation about a holy statue in India which represented the gist of Anaxagoras’ and Origen’s theory, or Arabic doxographers, such as testimony by Al-Shahrastani. 5. The philosophy of Anaxagoras is expounded on premisses which are entirely different from those appearing in the current bibliography (lean, anyway, in respect of monographs) about his thought: his principles were immaterial, not corporeal, and Simplicius who saw this a good nine and a half centuries after Aristotle (and rebutted Aristotle on this) was right, but his arguments have been left aside and out of study, and so they continue to be. This is the reason why present-day scholarship on Anaxagoras has been of no use to me, even though I consider current views and allegations stemming from misrendering of this philosophy, yet not scholars by name, with only a few exceptions. 6. Origen the pagan (mentioned by such authors as Porphyry, Proclus, and implicitly by Michael Psellus) is the same person as Origen the Christian. Some, though not all, scholars who have religious allegiances are loath accept to this. However, the evidence which is now available is overwhelming, and, in any event, there are several scholars who accept this identification. He was an ex-pagan Anaxagorean philosopher, but it is extremely hard for those who give precedence to what they take to be theological loyalty to allow that a man of such a background was the convert Greek philosopher who paved the way to Nicaea, that is, to current Christian orthodoxy. Accordingly, Origen is placed in the history of philosophy for the first time (which I am satisfied he deserves fully), and I am going to show who he really was in a forthcoming biography of his. I should only note that discussion of the locution ‘second God’ in Origen is designed not simply in order to put some distance between Origen and Numenius, but to show that Anaxagoras was the creative flare for Origen to build

 Franciscus Philelphus, Epistulae, Epistle 62. See infra, pp. 59 62; 76.

12

Introduction

on this idea; also, that the idea of a ‘second God’ being ontologically not inferior was far too old in the Eastern lore, and that Damascius clearly suggested that the Plotinian ontological classification between the One and the Intellect was untenable after all. Besides, it becomes evident that an account of the relation between the Plotinian Intellect and its Logos is called for, since, concerning the universe, Plotinus proposed that ‘everything has proceded and separated into parts from one Nous and its Logos’,¹⁵ indeed he wrote so taking his cue from Anaxagoras.¹⁶ Numenius spoke of ‘first’ and ‘second’ God, but he came far too late to be a source for Origen, indeed he never was. For the discussion was caused by Aristotle considering the Anaxagorean Mind, to be followed by Theophrastus who spoke of Potential and Actual Mind, and then by Alexander of Aphrodisias, the man from whom Origen learned almost everything about Aristotle, the man from whom he received the expression οὐκ ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν about the Son in relation to the Father, which became the catchphrase of Nicaea, the man from whom he took up the term συμπαρεκτεινόμενον and applied it to his own theory of time, since this was a term introduced by Alexander¹⁷ discussing Aristotle’s proposition concerning the divine life of ‘the First Mind’.¹⁸ In other words, Aristotle made it clear that this was a discussion of necessity stemming from Anaxagoras’ philosophy, which I discuss in chapter 11. In the sixth century, Damascius suggested that the ontological classification between the first and second hypostases by Plotinus was untenable. Origen simply knew this already in the third century, and this was a main reason for him to part ways with Plotinus, and a reason for Proclus to rebuke Origen as an anti-Platonist. When he set out to refute ‘those who maintain that there is no principle higher than the Mind’,¹⁹ Proclus wrote an extensive section, but the sole intellectual among those he meant to refute that he cited by name was Origen. Ironically though, the gravamen in the open file that guardians of orthodoxy kept against

 Plotinus, Enneades, III.2.2: ἐξ ἑνὸς νοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ λόγου ἀνέστη τόδε τὸ πᾶν καὶ διέστη. … ἐκεῖ νοῦς καὶ λόγος.  Plotinus, loc. cit.: Ὥσπερ δὲ ἐν λόγῳ τῷ ἐν σπέρματι ὁμοῦ πάντων καὶ ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ ὄντων.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 699: αἰὼν γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ἑκάστῳ συμπαρεκτεινο μένη ζωή.  Cf. Origen, commEph, 9: ὁ μὲν οὖν τις ἁπλούστερον αἰῶνα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου ἡγήσεται τὸν συμπαρεκτεινόμενον χρόνον τῇ τούτου τοῦ κόσμου ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς μέχρι τέλους κατασκευῇ. expProv, PG.17.189.8 9: τὸ γὰρ συμπαρεκτεινόμενον τῇ συστάσει τῆς ζωῆς αὐτοῦ, αἰῶνα ὠνόμασεν. Then, Gregory of Nazianzus followed suit: In Theophania (orat. 38), PG.36.320.14 18 & In Sanctum Pa scha (orat. 45), PG.36.628.30 34: Αἰὼν γὰρ οὔτε χρόνος, οὔτε χρόνου τι μέρος· οὐδὲ γὰρ μετρη τόν· ἀλλ᾿ ὅπερ ἡμῖν ὁ χρόνος, ἡλίου φορᾷ μετρούμενος, τοῦτο τοῖς ἀϊδίοις, αἰών, τὸ συμπαρεκ τεινόμενον τοῖς οὖσιν, οἷον τι χρονικὸν κίνημα καὶ διάστημα. I have discussed this in COT, p. 265.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, p. 1.

Methodology

13

Origen was that his Trinitarian theology was simply modelled after Plotinus’ ontological pattern. 7. The fourth part of this book is a study of the Theory of Soul from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity, again, with emphasis on the impact of Anaxagoras on his posterity, especially Origen. The doctrine that made a scandalous mark during that period was expounded by Galen, who argued that the soul is posterior to the body. I discuss the serious implications and origins of this tenet, too. 8. In relation to Anaxagoras (and then to Origen, and to others, right down to Thomas Aquinas), I hope I have come up with a conclusive solution to one of the most tantalizing contradictions of Aristotle: since he posits one Immovable First Mover, why was it that he introduced also a plurality of immovable movers? Werner Jaeger wrote that ‘the keenest thinkers of posterity have racked their brains to understand how an Aristotle would have involved himself in such contradictions’. I believe that this question is now settled, but this has been possible only because Anaxagoras’ philosophy has been expounded on a new basis, which though was well argued by Simplicius. In general, the almost universal modern attitude is that Simplicius essayed to represent Anaxagoras through his Neoplatonist lenses, hence his analysis is dismissed out of hand. No room is made for some suspicion that the charge of misrepresentation should be laid at the door of Aristotle rather than of Simplicius. Now, were it for the relevant passage of Aristotle not to have survived and for us to know of his contradiction only from Simplicius’ comments on that, the same modern attitude by the same token would have been all too quick to argue that Simplicius strove to misrepresent also Aristotle as a ‘Neoplatonist’. However, fortunately Aristotle’s text is extant, and no room for such allegations is allowed, even though Simplicius (unlike Alexander of Aphrodisias) welcomed this part of Aristotle’s theory. If Platonism and foreshadowing of Neoplatonism are there, this is so because Aristotle’s text moves along this or that way, not because Simplicius distorted or thought wishfully of it. This should be instructive to those who dispute Simplicius’ honesty as regards his analysis of Anaxagoras’ philosophy, since, in the present case, Simplicius could not have been more faithful to Aristotle’s text and import. Beyond this, long before Simplicius, Heron of Alexandria (perhaps first century AD), who evidently had read all of Anaxagoras’ work, assured that this philosopher reflected after Pythagoras, namely, in terms of ‘incorporeal principles’,²⁰ and I have just mentioned that the spiritual lineage from Pythago Heron of Alexandria (perhaps first century AD), Definitiones, 136.1: ὁ Πυθαγόρας ἄνωθεν τὰς ἀρχὰς αὐτῆς ἐπισκοπούμενος καὶ ἀΰλως καὶ νοερῶς τὰ θεωρήματα διερευνώμενος καὶ μετὰ τοῦ τον ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ ὁ Πλάτων καὶ Οἰνοπίδης ὁ Χῖος καὶ Θεόδωρος ὁ Κυρηναῖος καὶ Ἱπποκράτης πρὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος.

14

Introduction

ras to Anaxagoras, and then to Plato, was well known to both Greek philosophers such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Christian authors, such as Eusebius and Theodoret. I should add, nevertheless, that this book does not aim at being the authoritative last word on each and every aspect of the quest for discovering the real Anaxagoras. But, by treading a way which is as critical of (and, for that matter, independent from) Aristotle’s accounts, it aspires to becoming a permanent part of the unresting process of documented and argued scientific discussion.

A damned intellectual As a ‘golden age’ as the fifth century BC was, there were instances, so frequent in history, when the word could not prevail over the sword. Anaxagoras came to be a ‘damned’ intellectual who escaped death only at the very last moment thanks to the manoeuvring action by his friend Pericles. His fate was the same as that of ingenious and groundbreaking scientists throughout history. The Athenians could not tolerate a blasphemer living among themselves. As Pericles grew old, his opponents attacked him by persecuting his friends: they accused Pheidias of embezzlelment of the gold which was given to him for construction of statues, to which they proved Pericles to have been an accomplice that appropriated fifty talents;²¹ and ‘Diopeithes introduced a bill that those who did not recognize the gods, or who taught theories of the heavens, be prosecuted, thus drawing suspicion against Pericles through Anaxagoras.’²² Diopethes²³ was no doubt a man of the cloth in Athens, his person epitomized the staunch preservation by the old religious tradition, and naturally he was a member of the conser-

 Suda, letter epsilon, entry 3511. Cf. Aristodemus (historian, first century BC), Fragmenta, fr. 1, lines 270 5. Anonymous, Scholia in Aristophanem, Scholia in Pacem, verse 606a. Anonymus (third century AD), Ars Rhetorica, 216. The story goes that Pericles caused a war of Athens against Megara in order to escape prosecution. Plutarch insisted that all of this was but slander. Plutarch, Pericles, 31.  Plutarch, Pericles, 32.2 3: ψήφισμα Διοπείθης ἔγραψεν εἰσαγγέλλεσθαι τοὺς τὰ θεῖα μὴ νομί ζοντας ἢ λόγους περὶ τῶν μεταρσίων διδάσκοντας, ἀπερειδόμενος εἰς Περικλέα δι᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρου τὴν ὑπόνοιαν.  Probably the father of comic Menander. Cf. Pausanias of Lydia, Graeciae Descriptio, 1.2.2. Li banius, Orationes, 25.66. Suda (letter mu entry 589) has it that he was the father of another Menander. So suggests the anonymous De Comoedia, lines 57 62. But the anonymous scholiast of Demosthenes appears certain of it. Scholia in Demosthenem (scholia vetera), 8.3 (comm. on Demosthenes, De Chersoneso): Οὗτος ὁ Διοπείθης πατὴρ ἦν Μενάνδρου τοῦ κωμικοῦ· ὁ δὲ Μέ νανδρος φίλος ἦν Δημοσθένους δι᾿ ὃν ὑπὲρ Διοπείθους βουλεύεται.

A damned intellectual

15

vative party and a friend of general Nikias. He is mentioned in the Old Comedy and by others, especially as a competent exegete of oracles (χρησμολόγος).²⁴ The law aiming at Anaxagoras and at all relevant ideas of Enlightenment, was introduced shortly before the Peloponnesian War erupted. He introduced also a law decreeing that any citizen of Athens who spent the night in Piraeus should be put to death. But he himself inadvertently once stayed in Pireaus, for which he was prosecuted by his opponents.²⁵ Anaxagoras was regarded as a phasphemer who had dared say that the sun is not god, but simply a fiery stone. What would this god’s response to this abomination possibly be? The man was a magician who could cause the wrath of that god and ruining of Athens. Therefore, he should be extinguished for the sake of the city. Tokens that he was not a natural human being were there already: he had appeared at the Olympic Games wearing a fleece, and when he was asked why was he doing that, his reply was that he did so because it was going to rain.²⁶ Why did he do this, and how was it that he knew? Of course, because he was a sorcerer. After all, he had paid visits to the East, he had socialized and conversed with the Babylonian Chaldeans, the Persian Magi, and the Egyptian priests, he had learned a lot of things from them – the case could not be otherwise: he was one of them. Therefore, it was all too natural to demand, ‘Away with him, away with him, crucify him’.²⁷ References to his ideas by his other great admirer, namely, Euripides, made on stage, will also contribute to our analyses at some points. The fact is that, apart from all Simplicius preserved, we have not Anaxagoras’ text, he remained always a ‘blasphemer’, and Euripides nearly so. However, his impact on the Classical and Late Antiquity was profound. This bears on Greeks and Christians alike, and outstanding among them is Origen, another ‘damned’ intellectual, who was a pupil of the Clazomenian, both as a pagan and as a Christian philosopher. In view of Plato’s theory of Ideas failure and Aristotle’s ‘obscurity’ (pointed out by eminent commentators of his work), a new approach was attempted to the  Cf. Aristophanes, Equites, lines 1085 6. Anonymous, Scholia in Aristophanem, Scholia in Aves (scholia vetera), comm. on verses 988 & 988b. Xenophon, Hellenica, 3.3.3. Plutarch, Lysander, 22.5; Agesilaus, 3.3.  Aelian (Greek speaking Roman sophist, c. 175 c. 235), Fragmenta, fr. 22. Suda, letter gamma, entry 392; letter delta, entry 1188.  Photius, Bibliotheca, Codex 241, p. 331b: Καὶ τίς οὐκ οἶδε τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν Ὀλυμπιάσι μέν, ὁπότε ἥκιστα ὕοι, παρελθόντα ὑπὸ κωδίῳ εἰς τὸ στάδιον ἐπὶ προρρήσει ὄμβρου; Ὑφ᾿ ᾧ ἔψαυσε τοῦ θεοῖς τε καὶ δαιμόνιος εἶναι. Suda, letter alpha, entries 1981 & 3420; letter kappa, entry 2216. Cf. Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, 1.2.  Cf. John, 19:15.

16

Introduction

problem of how is the supreme principle related to sensible objects in the universe. This was the Theory of Logoi, which stemmed from Anaxagoras’ philosophy and was introduced anew by Origen and Porphyry, probably following the teaching of Ammonius Saccas. Anaxagoras’ impact on Stoicism was profound: had he not said what he said, hardly could the Stoic physics have appeared at all. Besides, we see Neoplatonists, from Plotinus to Proclus and after, using Anaxagorean ideas, which do not fit neatly into the premisses of their ‘Platonic’ (as they claimed it to be) philosophy. And we can see both Porphyry and Origen hurdling the impasses of Plato’s doctrine of creation by creating the Theory of Logoi, which Proclus (speaking of Porphyry) praised as an insightful exposition of the way to creation, ²⁸ which was the weak point of Plato’s theory of Ideas castigated by Aristotle, whose alternative was subsequently criticized, too. Although Anaxagoras’ impact on Classical and Late Antiquity is discussed extensively, this monograph does not aim at making everyone Anaxagoras’ pupil. For all too often did ancient intellectuals not realize his influence, since many of them had not read Anaxagoras’ work first-hand. Therefore, ‘drawing on Anaxagoras’ means that some intellectuals practiced no direct and conscious borrowing from him, even though his fundamental lines of thought became prevalent in Greek philosophy, and they were often developed without knowledge of him being the source. The present work takes a mostly positive view to the exposition of Simplicius rebutting Aristotle’s representation of Anaxagoras. He realized that the intellectual universe of the Presocratics was quite different from the philosophical milieu in which later Greek thinkers worked, therefore, they should be assessed accordingly, that is, by taking into account their intellectual atmosphere, as Plotinus aptly remarked.²⁹ Contradiction is not too rare a characteristic of Classical and Late antique philosophy. It is well known that, at certain points, Aristotle speaks as an orthodox Platonist, as if he had never excoriated his own teacher. Less known is a flagrant contradiction of his, concerning a glaring introduction of the ‘immovable movers’ that move each and every heavenly sphere, as if he forgot altogether that he had introduced an Immovable Mover to do this. Werner Jaeger never managed to afford a convincing explanation of this flaw. I hope that the analysis of this issue in chapter 12 makes it clear that everything can be explained as a commanding influence by Anaxagoras, not only on Aristotle, but also on Origen

 Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 395.  Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.9.

Anaxagoras, ‘the first’

17

and on the Late Antiquity in general, until Thomas Aquinas, and then on Gennadius Scholarius at the dawn of the Renaissance.

Anaxagoras, ‘the first’ Had Heraclitus or Thales lived in modern times, no one would care to style them philosophers: for their concerns were exactly the ones of those who take pleasure at seeing themselves as scientists, according to the modern distinction between philosophy and science, which is anachronistically imposed on the ancient thought. Strictly speaking, this distinction has not been always endorsed: when Isaac Newton wrote his monumental work which became the landmark of natural knowledge until the beginning of the twentieth century, he entitled this Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which means that Newton proudly felt that he was doing philosophy. Therefore, even according to modern taxonomy, the Presocratics were in fact physicists, which is indeed a designation accorded them today, if as only a supplementary one, although to their immediate successors they were simply and purely ‘physicists’. Anyhow, no ancient or modern explorer of ideas could have ever doubted that Anaxagoras was also a philosopher. For unlike some others that are lumped together as ‘those who preceded Socrates’, he cared to provide answers not only about what or how things are, but also why the things of the world are what they are, how they function, and eventually what was the ultimate cause for all this to begin in the first place. This is a fact that was immediately recognized by all of those intellectuals of old who explored the evolution of ideas, and styled Anaxagoras the first on various grounds. Anaxagoras is reported as ‘the first who expounded his theories in a book’ (πρῶτος δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ βιβλίον ἐξέδωκε συγγραφῆς).³⁰ To Themistius,

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.11. Likewise, Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 1.16.78.3 5: ᾿Aλκ μαίων γοῦν Περίθου Κροτωνιάτης πρῶτος φυσικὸν λόγον συνέταξεν. οἳ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόραν Ἡγησι βούλου Κλαζομένιον πρῶτον διὰ γραφῆς ἐκδοῦναι βιβλίον ἱστοροῦσιν. Diogenes Laertius reports that Anaxagoras wrote one book. Op. cit. 1.16: καὶ οἱ μὲν αὐτῶν κατέλιπον ὑπομνήματα, οἱ δ᾿ ὅλως οὐ συνέγραψαν, ὥσπερ κατά τινας Σωκράτης, Στίλπων, Φίλιππος, Μενέδημος, Πύρρων, Θεόδωρος, Καρνεάδης, Βρύσων· κατά τινας Πυθαγόρας, ᾿Aρίστων ὁ Χῖος, πλὴν ἐπιστολῶν ὀλί γων· οἱ δὲ ἀνὰ ἓν σύγγραμμα· Μέλισσος, Παρμενίδης, ᾿Aναξαγόρας· πολλὰ δὲ Ζήνων, πλείω Ξεν οφάνης, πλείω Δημόκριτος, πλείω ᾿Aριστοτέλης, πλείω Ἐπίκουρος, πλείω Χρύσιππος. However, beyond his Physics (Φυσικά) mentioned by Simplicius, we know that Anaxagoras wrote at least one more book entitled Ἱμὰς (Girdle), which contained arguments that perplexed its readers. Anonymous, apud Codex Monaciensis, 490, folio 483v: τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν δέ φασίν τινες λόγον περὶ ἀπόρων ζητημάτων γράψαντα τοῦτον Ἱμάντα καλέσαι διὰ τὸ ταῖς δυσπορίαις ἐνδεσμεῖν,

18

Introduction

‘Anaximander who first dared to commit a treatise about nature to writing’, since, up to his time, ‘to expound a written account about nature was considered a shame among Greeks’. As a matter of fact, ‘neither Thales, nor any other of his contemporaries did compose any treatise expounding his finds’ (Θαλῆς μὲν δὴ τοσαῦτα εἰσενεγκάμενος οὐ κατέθετο ὅμως εἰς συγγραφὴν τὰ εὑρήματα, οὔτε αὐτὸς ὁ Θαλῆς οὔτε ἄλλος τις τῶν εἰς ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον). Thales inspired Anaximander, but, fortunately, he did not follow his practice, since he dared to expound his theory of nature in writing, against the Greek practice prior to him.³¹ Nevertheless, the novelty introduced by Anaxagoras was far more admirable, since ‘he was the first who introduced the Mind and God into his exposition of the origin of the universe, and he did not make everything dependent on the nature of material bodies’.³² We should bear this in mind vis-à-vis the criticism against Anaxagoras by both Plato and Aristotle, as canvassed later.³³ ὡς ᾤετο, τοὺς ἀναγινώσκοντας. Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Julianum, PG.35.597.8: καὶ τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόρου Ἱμάντα. Pseudo Nonnus cites the work of Anaxagoras, and purports to quote from this, but the text of the ‘story’ he promises to quote is not there. Scholia Mythologica, 4.36: Τριακοστὴ ἕκτη ἐστὶν ἱστορία ἡ κατὰ τὸν Ἱμάντα τοῦ ᾿Aναξαγόρου. ἔστι δὲ αὕτη. This work would have been a case study of that which later the Sceptics called ‘opposite arguments being equal in force’ (λόγοι ἰσοσθενεῖς). Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 1.8; 2.103; 2.130; Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 59; 207; Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (= Adversus Physicos 2,) 161; 10.168; Adversus Rhetores, 99. In fact, this possibility had been pointed by Homer (Ilias, XX.248 50: “Glib is the tongue of mortals, and words there be therein many and manifold, and of speech the range is wide on this side and on that”). See this being discussed in Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 9.73; Dio Chrysostom, Orationes, 12.64; Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 1.3.22.3; Eustathius of Thessaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, pp. 401 2; Anonymous, [Plutarch] De Homero 2, lines 2168 73. Clement of Alexandria correctly pointed out that this ‘sus pension of judgement’ pertains not only to the Sceptics, but even to Dogmaticians, owing to ei ther defective knowledge, or obscurity of things or ‘opposite arguments being equal in force’. Stromateis, 8.5.16.3. In fact, long before the Sceptics, Aristotle had pointed out that, ‘concerning the question of the void either existing or not’, opposite arguments might be adduced, which could be equal in force. Physica, 213a12 16. John Philoponus pointed out that, by this, Aristotle indicated ἐφ᾿ ἑκάτερα λόγοι ἰσοσθενεῖς. commPhys, p. 611.  Themistius, Ὑπὲρ τοῦ λέγειν ἢ πῶς τῷ φιλοσόφῳ λεκτέον, p. 317c: ἐκείνου γεγονὼς ζηλωτὴς ᾿Aναξίμανδρος ὁ Πραξιάδου οὐ πάντῃ ὁμοίως ἐζήλωσεν, ἀλλὰ τοῦτ᾿ εὐθὺς παρήλλαξέ τε καὶ ἐξ ετράπετο, ὅτι ἐθάρρησε πρῶτος ὧν ἴσμεν Ἑλλήνων λόγον ἐξενεγκεῖν περὶ φύσεως ξυγγεγραμμέ νον. πρὶν δ᾿ εἰς ὄνειδος καθειστήκει τὸ λόγους συγγράφειν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἐνομίζετο τοῖς πρόσθεν Ἕλ λησι. The interesting information at this point is that, prior to Presocratics, it was deemed a shame to commit any teaching to writing, but the Presocratics themselves thought of it different ly.  Themistius, op. cit. p. 317c d: καὶ ἐῶ τὸν Κλαζομένιον ᾿Aναξαγόραν καὶ ἐφ᾿ ὅσον οὗτος ἐνεωτ έρισε, νοῦν καὶ θεὸν πρῶτος ἐπαγόμενος τῇ κοσμοποιίᾳ, καὶ οὐ πάντ᾿ ἀνάψας τῆς φύσεως τῶν σωμάτων.  See infra, pp. 163 262.

Anaxagoras, ‘the first’

19

Anaxagoras was generally reputed as the philosopher who cared to come up with an answer to the question of the creative cause of things. Diogenes Laertius opens his biography of Anaxagoras with reporting that ‘he was a pupil of Anaximenes, and the first who set the Mind above matter. For at the beginning of his treatise, which is composed in attractive and sublime manner, Anaxagoras says, ‘All things were together; then the Mind came and set them in order’, which earned him the nickname Nous’.³⁴ Simplicius, who turns out to be the best and most trustworthy witness to Anaxagoras, reports some views of Theophrastus, who praised him as ‘the first who reformed the views about the first principles, by introducing the Cause [of creation of the world]’, since he was the intellectual who posited the Nous as the cause of both motion and being (τῆς δὲ κινήσεως καὶ τῆς γενέσεως αἴτιον ἐπέστησε τὸν νοῦν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας).³⁵ Olympiodorus of Alexandria, writing during the same period as Simplicius, also credited Anaxagoras with having been ‘the first who introduced the Mind as the supreme Ruler of all beings, who though was not himself one of the beings’ of this world.³⁶ Eusebius was not sparing of praise for Anaxagoras, whom he described as ‘the first of all Greeks who introduced the Mind as the Cause of the universe’,³⁷ and he was the first who composed a treatise on the first principles (οὗτος δὴ  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.6: ᾿Aναξαγόρας Ἡγησιβούλου ἢ Εὐβούλου, Κλαζομένιος. οὗτος ἤκουσεν ᾿Aναξιμένους, καὶ πρῶτος τῇ ὕλῃ νοῦν ἐπέστησεν, ἀρξάμενος οὕτω τοῦ συγγράμματος, ὅ ἐστιν ἡδέως καὶ μεγαλοφρόνως ἡρμηνευμένον πάντα χρήματα ἦν ὁμοῦ· εἶτα νοῦς ἐλθὼν αὐτὰ διεκόσμησε.  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 27 (reporting the dis torted view of Aristotle expressed by Theophrastus): ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν γὰρ Ἡγησιβούλου Κλαζο μένιος κοινωνήσας τῆς ᾿Aναξιμένους φιλοσοφίας πρῶτος μετέστησε τὰς περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν δόξας καὶ τὴν ἐλλείπουσαν αἰτίαν ἀνεπλήρωσε τὰς μὲν σωματικὰς ἀπείρους ποιήσας· πάντα γὰρ τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ οἷον ὕδωρ ἢ πῦρ ἢ χρυσὸν ἀγένητα μὲν εἶναι καὶ ἄφθαρτα, φαίνεσθαι δὲ γινόμενα καὶ ἀπολλύμενα συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει μόνον, πάντων μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν ἐνόντων, ἑκάστου δὲ κατὰ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν ἐν αὐτῷ χαρακτηριζομένου. χρυσὸς γὰρ φαίνεται ἐκεῖνο, ἐν ᾧ πολὺ χρυσίον ἐστὶ καίτοι πάντων ἐνόντων. λέγει γοῦν ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὅτι ἐν παντὶ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστι καὶ ὅτῳ πλεῖστα ἔνι, ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν. καὶ ταῦτα φησὶν ὁ Θεόφραστος παραπλη σίως τῷ ᾿Aναξιμάνδρῳ λέγειν τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν· ἐκεῖνος γάρ φησιν ἐν τῇ διακρίσει τοῦ ἀπείρου τὰ συγγενῆ φέρεσθαι πρὸς ἄλληλα, καὶ ὅτι μὲν ἐν τῷ παντὶ χρυσὸς ἦν, γίνεσθαι χρυσόν, ὅτι δὲ γῆ, γῆν· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἕκαστον, ὡς οὐ γινομένων ἀλλ᾿ ἐνυπαρχόντων πρότερον. τῆς δὲ κινήσεως καὶ τῆς γενέσεως αἴτιον ἐπέστησε τὸν νοῦν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ὑφ᾿ οὗ διακρινόμενα τούς τε κόσμους καὶ τὴν τῶν ἄλλων φύσιν ἐγέννησαν.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem Commentarii, 139: πρῶτος γὰρ οὗτος [sc. ᾿Aναξαγόρας] τὸν νοῦν εἰσήγαγε τοῖς πράγμασιν, ἐξῃρημένως ἄρχοντα τῶν μετ᾿ αὐτόν, μὴ ἐγκα τατεταγμένον αὐτοῖς ὄντα.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 1.8.19: πρῶτος Ἑλλήνων ᾿Aναξαγόρας νοῦν ἐπιστῆσαι τῇ τοῦ παντὸς αἰτίᾳ μνημονεύεται.

20

Introduction

πρῶτος διήρθρωσε τὸν περὶ ἀρχῶν λόγον). Some thinkers before him had expressed views of the essence of all things (περὶ τῆς πάντων οὐσίας ἀπεφήναντο), but Anaxagoras was the first who came up with a theory about the Moving Cause of the world’ (περὶ τοῦ κινοῦντος αὐτὴν αἰτίου), namely, the Mind.³⁸ Eusebius says that he quotes extensively from Plutarch’s Placita Philosophorum (Περὶ τῶν ἀρεσκόντων τοῖς φιλοσόφοις φυσικῶν δογμάτων), although the modern editor of this work deemed it spurious, and Eusebius’ references are not included in the surviving part of it.³⁹ According to Eusebius, Plutarch (or, whoever the author was) introduces Anaxagoras as the first philosopher who sustained an upright notion about God (τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν εἰσάγει, πρῶτον φάσκων αὐτὸν ὀρθῶς φρονῆσαι περὶ θεοῦ).⁴⁰ Therefore, in Greek philosophy, to hold a correct idea about God (in other words: monotheism) appears with Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Socrates, and Plato (ὧν πρώτους ὁ λόγος συνίστησι τοὺς ἀμφὶ τὸν Πυθαγόραν τε καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν Πλάτωνά τε καὶ Σωκράτη νοῦν καὶ θεὸν ἐπιστῆσαι τῷ κόσμῳ).⁴¹ In any event, Anaxagoras introduced into the Greek world a certain knowledge that was already known to the Hebrews; nevertheless, he was the first among the Greeks that introduced a real theology, no matter what his sources would have been (ἡ τοῦ τῶν ὅλων θεοῦ γνῶσις, ἣν πρῶτος Ἑλλήνων ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ οἱ ἀμφ᾿ αὐτὸν ἐξήνεγκαν).⁴² It should be noticed that the witnesses to Anaxagoras’ book are at one in reporting that this was a tract On the First Principles (περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν).⁴³ According to Eusebius, he was the first who offered an organized tract.⁴⁴ Alexander of Aph-

 Op. cit. 10.14.12; likewise, 14.14.8 9: μόνος δ᾿ οὖν πρῶτος Ἑλλήνων ᾿Aναξαγόρας μνημονεύεται ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἀρχῶν λόγοις Νοῦν τὸν πάντων αἴτιον ἀποφήνασθαι. φασὶ γοῦν ὡς ἄρα οὗτος μά λιστα παρὰ τοὺς πρὸ αὐτοῦ ἐθαύμασε φυσιολογίαν· μηλόβοτόν γε τοι τὴν ἑαυτοῦ χώραν δι᾿ αὐτὴν εἴασε τόν τε περὶ ἀρχῶν λόγον πρῶτος Ἑλλήνων διήρθρωσεν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον περὶ τῆς πάν των οὐσίας ἀπεφήνατο, ὡς οἱ πρὸ αὐτοῦ, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τοῦ κινοῦντος αὐτὴν αἰτίου. Ἦν γὰρ ἐν ἀρχῇ, φησίν, ὁμοῦ τὰ πράγματα πεφυρμένα, Νοῦς δὲ εἰσελθὼν αὐτὰ ἐκ τῆς ἀταξίας εἰς τάξιν ἤγαγε.  Only a part of this work by Plutarch has survived. See J. Mau, Placita Philosophorum, in Plu tarchi Moralia, vol. 5.2.1, Leipzig, 1971, pp. 50 153.  Eusebius, op. cit. 14.14.  Eusebius, op. cit. 14.16.11.  Eusebius, op. cit. 14.16.12.  When Origen was converted to Christianity, he was already a mature man and a philosopher of note, according to Porphyry, quoted by Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, 6.19.7. It will be shown that he was an Anaxagorean philosopher, for which Proclus rebucked him as an ‘anti Platonist’ (Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31). It is all but coincidence that Origen as incipient Christian enti tled one of his very first Christian works On the First Principles, which was a title used by several Greeks but by no Christian author.  Eusebius uses the verb διήρθρωσε (Past Tense of the verb διαρθρόω), which means an artic ulate composition of a work forming an organic whole. Praeparatio Evangelica, 10.14.12: ᾿Aναξα

Anaxagoras, ‘the first’

21

rodisias reports Aristotle’s reviews of those who considered the ‘first principles’ before Aristotle himself (τίνες τὰ περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν εἶπον τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ),⁴⁵ designates the work of Anaxagoras ‘On the First Principles’.⁴⁶ This is how the philosophers that were most familiar with Anaxagoras’ work made reference to this, from Theophrastus up until the sixth century.⁴⁷ However, some authors reported that it was Hermotimus that had first mentioned the Mind being the first cause before Anaxagoras did so. This was a claim by Aristotle, reproduced by his commentators (some of whom did not report it without reservation), but it may well be indicative of Aristotle feeling that he had been anticipated by Anaxagoras and never actually matched the genius of his ancestor.⁴⁸ However, Hermotimus was a semi-mythical figure, and Pythago-

γόρας Ἡγησιβούλου Κλαζομένιος. οὗτος δὴ πρῶτος διήρθρωσε τὸν περὶ ἀρχῶν λόγον. Cf. op. cit. 14.14.7: μόνος δ᾿ οὖν πρῶτος Ἑλλήνων ᾿Aναξαγόρας μνημονεύεται ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἀρχῶν λόγοις Νοῦν τὸν πάντων αἴτιον ἀποφήνασθαι. φασὶ γοῦν ὡς ἄρα οὗτος μάλιστα παρὰ τοὺς πρὸ αὐτοῦ ἐθαύμασε φυσιολογίαν· μηλόβοτόν γε τοι τὴν ἑαυτοῦ χώραν δι᾿ αὐτὴν εἴασε τόν τε περὶ ἀρχῶν λόγον πρῶτος Ἑλλήνων διήρθρωσεν. The same verb, διήρθρωσεν, used in the same con text, is the one that Aristotle chose in order to deny that Anaxagoras composed an articulate work, and it was necessary for Aristotle himself to come to the fray and express it properly. Ar istotle, Metaphysica, 989a31 32: κατὰ λόγον, ὃν ἐκεῖνος αὐτὸς μὲν οὐ διήρθρωσεν. Aristotle’s de vious enterprise in respect of Anaxagoras will be discussed in detail in the pages that follow.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 69.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, loc. cit. (ref. to Metaphysica, 989b16): Συγκεφαλαιοῦται τὴν ᾿Aναξ αγόρου δόξαν περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν. Op. cit. p. 136 (ref. to Aristotle, who reviewed the theories of pre vious philosophers on the first principles): ἐπὶ τούτοις ἀπορίας τινὰς ἀπορήσειν ἐπαγγέλλεται συντεινούσας εἰς τὸν περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν λόγον, … αἱ γὰρ περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν ἀπορίαι τε καὶ λύσεις ἀρχαὶ τῆς τῶν μετὰ ταῦτα ἀπορουμένων λύσεως γίνονται. … εἰπὼν γὰρ ὅσα δὴ περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν τούτων ἀπορήσειεν ἄν τις ἐπανέλθωμεν πάλιν, περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν καὶ τῶν αἰτίων καὶ ἐν τῷ μετὰ τοῦτο ἐλάττονι ἃ ζητεῖ τε καὶ ἀπορεῖ. Op. cit. p. 237: κινήσας καθόλου τὸν περὶ τῶν αἰ τίων λόγον καὶ τὰς δόξας τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ τὰς περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν ἐκθέμενός τε καὶ ἱστορήσας καὶ ἀντειπὼν πρὸς αὐτάς.  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 27: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν γὰρ Ἡγησιβούλου Κλαζομένιος κοινωνήσας τῆς ᾿Aναξιμένους φιλοσοφίας πρῶτος μετέστησε τὰς περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν δόξας. Simplicius, op. cit. p. 461: τοιοῦτος δὲ ὁ νοῦς, ὃν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐνόησεν ἐργαζόμενον, ἐν οἷς λέγει ἄρξασθαι τὸν νοῦν διακρίνειν. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἔννοια, καθ᾿ ἣν εἰς ταύτην ἦλθε περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν τὴν ὑπόθεσιν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, οὕτως φανερὰ γέγονεν. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 62: [Aristotle] συγκεφαλαιοῦται τὴν ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξαν περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984b: φανερῶς μὲν οὖν ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἴσμεν ἁψάμενον τούτων τῶν λόγων, αἰτίαν δ᾿ ἔχει πρότερον Ἑρμότιμος ὁ Κλαζομένιος εἰπεῖν. Protrepticus, fr. 110, apud Iam blichus, Protrepticus, p. 48: Ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός, εἴθ᾿ Ἑρμότιμος εἴτ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἶπε τοῦτο. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 32: καὶ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ζῴοις τοῖς ἔχουσι νοῦν οὗτος ἀρχὴ καὶ αἰτία τῶν γινομένων καλῶς ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν. δοκεῖ μὲν οὖν, φησί, φανερῶς πρῶτος ἐπὶ τὴν τοιαύτ ην αἰτίαν ἐλθεῖν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πρὸ αὐτοῦ Ἑρμότιμος ὁ πολίτης αὐτοῦ δόξαι ἂν τῆς τοιαύτης αἰτίας μνημονεῦσαι. Op. cit. p. 33: ἔθεντο γὰρ τὸν ἔρωτα ἀρχήν, ὡς δέον ἐν τοῖς οὖσιν

22

Introduction

ras claimed that he was his own pre-incarnation.⁴⁹ Aristotle was very good indeed – but Anaxagoras was better, as it will be argued later in connection with their respective understanding of the kinds of motion, the concept of potentiality, and other cardinal ideas. Mean rivalry and enviousness by those who are inferior is not a characteristic of the present times only: Aristotle misrepresented and criticized Anaxagoras since he had not understood his notion of primordial state, in which ‘all things were one’ before the Mind distinguished them, and ‘all things were – and still they are being – all in all’. This appeared to Aristotle as a sort of universal potentiality in total absence of any actuality, except for the Mind itself. Such an idea was intolerable to the Stagirite, but this was exactly what Anaxagoras maintained and what Origen largely took up from him. It is certainly no coincidence that Anaxagoras and Empedocles were the two philosophers whom all Antiquity extolled for their idea to deal not only with the material elements, but also with the creative cause that gave rise to the universe: to Anaxagoras it was the Νοῦς, to Empedocles it was the twofold cause φιλότης and νεῖκος. Aristotle wondered whether it was actually Anaxagoras who set forth

ὑπάρχειν τινὰ αἰτίαν κινητικήν τε καὶ ποιητικήν. τίς δὲ πρότερος τῆς τοιαύτης αἰτίας ἥψατο, πό τερον ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ὡς δοκεῖ, ἢ Ἑρμότιμος πρὸ αὐτοῦ, καὶ πρὸ τούτου οἱ περὶ Ἡσίοδον, ὕστερον, φησίν, ἔξεστι ζητεῖν. Loc. cit.: τούτους μὲν οὖν φησιν, Ἐμπεδοκλέα τε καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν, ἔτι δὲ Ἑρμότιμον καὶ τῶν ποιητῶν Ἡσίοδόν τε καὶ Παρμενίδην, πρὸς τῇ ὑλικῇ αἰτίᾳ ποιητικῆς μνημο νεῦσαι αἰτίας. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 1361 2 (reporting Alexander of Aphrodisias): ἐν δὲ τῷ μείζονι Ἄλφα τῆς Μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ πραγματείας ἐπαινῶν τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν καὶ πρὸ αὐτοῦ τὸν Ἑρ μότιμον, ὡς μὴ μόνον ὑλικὰς αἰτίας τοῦ παντὸς ἀποδεδωκότας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν νοῦν ὡς ποιητικὸν καὶ τελικὸν αἴτιον θεασαμένους γράφει ταῦτα. Loc. cit.: εἰπὼν οὖν ὅτι ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ πρότερος Ἑρμότιμος ἥψαντο τούτων τῶν λόγων, ἐπάγει. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 29: φανερῶς μὲν οὖν ἐκ τῶν φυσικῶν ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἴσμεν ἁψάμενον τούτων τῶν λόγων καὶ ἐπιστήσαντα νοῦν τῷ παντί. λέγουσι δέ τινες αἴτιον εἶναι τούτου τοῦ δόγματος πρότερον Ἑρμότιμον τὸν Κλαζομένιον. δοκεῖ οὖν καὶ Ἑρμότιμος ὁ πολίτης αὐτοῦ τῆς τοιαύτης αἰτίας μνημονεῦσαι. … τίς δὲ πρότερος τῆς τοιαύτης αἰτίας ἥψατο, πότερον ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ὡς δοκεῖ, ἢ Ἑρμότιμος ἢ Ἡσίοδος ἢ Παρμε νίδης ἢ οἱ πρὸ τούτων, ἔξεστιν ὕστερον ζητεῖν. Op. cit. p. 31: Τούτους, φησίν, Ἐμπεδοκλέα τε καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν καὶ ἔτι Ἑρμότιμον καὶ τῶν ποιητῶν Ἡσίοδόν τε καὶ Παρμενίδην φαμὲν δύο αἰ τίων ἐφάψασθαι ὑλικοῦ τε καὶ ποιητικοῦ, περὶ ὧν αἰτίων ἡμεῖς εἰρήκαμεν ἐν τοῖς Περὶ φύσεως λόγοις. Op. cit. pp. 42 3: Οἱ πρῶτοι φυσιολόγοι σωματικὴν τὴν ἀρχὴν ὑπέθεντο· οἱ μὲν γὰρ ὕδωρ ὥσπερ Θαλῆς, οἱ δὲ πῦρ, ὡς Ἡράκλειτος, καὶ οἱ μὲν μίαν ὑπετίθεντο, οἱ δὲ πλείους, οἷον πῦρ καὶ γῆν, ὥσπερ Παρμενίδης· ἀμφοτέρας δὲ ὑλικὰς ὑπετίθεντο τὰς ἀρχάς. ἄλλοι δέ τινες καὶ πρὸς τῇ ὑλικῇ αἰτίᾳ καὶ ποιητικὴν εἰρήκασιν, καθάπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Ἑρμότιμος καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· οἱ μὲν τὸν νοῦν, οἱ δὲ νεῖκος καὶ φιλίαν. καὶ ὁ μὲν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δύο ὑπετίθετο εἶναι τὰ ποιητικά, καὶ τὸ νεῖκος καὶ τὴν φιλίαν, οἱ δὲ περὶ Ἑρμότιμον μίαν, τὸν νοῦν. … οὐ γὰρ διηρθρωμένως εἰρήκασιν οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν· πλὴν οἱ μὲν αὐτῶν μίαν ποιοῦσι τὴν ἀρχὴν τὴν ὑλικήν, οἱ δὲ δύο· πρὸς γὰρ τῇ ὑλικῇ ὑπετίθεντο καὶ ποιητικήν, ὥσπερ οἱ περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 8.5. Aristotle seems to regard even Pythagoras himself as a legen dary figure. Metaphysica, 985b23 24.

Anaxagoras, ‘the first’

23

these views⁵⁰ only because he saw that he had anticipated such notions as the First Mover, potentiality, and ‘the mind which comes from outside’ (θύραθεν νοῦς). Anaxagoras explained ‘motion’ by means of one kind only, whereas Aristotle had to introduce six ones; therefore, a much less scientific account of motion. We have commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Syrianus, and Asclepius of Tralles. Of them, Syrianus did not make much of Aristotle’s criticism of Anaxagoras. Asclepius of Tralles did not understand Aristotle and slipped into a gullible mistake, which should remain as a monument of how far the detriment of reading Greek could possibly go. He took Metaphysics 989a31‒34 as meaning that which a modern translator rendered as follows: If one were to infer that Anaxagoras recognized two elements,⁵¹ the inference would accord closely with a view which, although he did not articulate it himself, he must have accepted as one developed by others. ⁵²

This is utter misrendering, but it is very instructive. For this is by and large how Asclepius understood Aristotle, too. In order to see the flagrant distortion we only need to go back to Alexander of Aphrodisias, who is the sole Aristotelian commentator beside Asclepius (who largely copied from Alexander, anyway) that had something to say about this point of the Metaphysics. What Alexander read in the foregoing words of Metaphysics was not what the American translator, as well as Asclepius of Tralles, did. Aristotle did not say that Anaxagoras heard his doctrine from someone else but misunderstood its content, and the correct translation of 989a31‒34 goes thus: If one happens to understand Anaxagoras as introducing two elements, one would under stand him certainly according to a teaching that Anaxagoras himself did not actually artic ulate (κατὰ λόγον, ὃν ἐκεῖνος αὐτὸς μὲν οὐ διήρθρωσεν), but according to a teaching that followed as a necessary explanation by those who introduce his teaching (ἠκολούθησε μέντ᾿ ἂν ἐξ ἀνάγκης τοῖς ἐπάγουσιν⁵³ αὐτόν).

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989a31 34: ᾿Aναξαγόραν δ᾿ εἴ τις ὑπολάβοι δύο λέγειν στοιχεῖα, μά λιστ᾿ ἂν ὑπολάβοι κατὰ λόγον, ὃν ἐκεῖνος αὐτὸς μὲν οὐ διήρθρωσεν, ἠκολούθησε μέντ᾿ ἂν ἐξ ἀν άγκης τοῖς ἐπάγουσιν αὐτόν.  Aristotle refers to the Mind and the primeval undifferentiated ‘mixture’ of the ὁμοιομέρειαι.  Aristotle, The Metaphysics, Books I IX, tr. Hugh Tredennick, Loeb Classical Library, 271, Cambridge Mass. and London, England, 1933, p. 54.  The verb ἐπάγω means, among others, ‘introduce a person, or a person’s teaching, before the assembly’, or ‘propose’.

24

Introduction

This is quite different from the foregoing one by the modern translator, yet it is the correct one, which also happens to be the rendering commented upon by Alexander of Aphrodisias. This point is instructive, since it shows that dissemination of a philosopher’s theories was oftentimes a matter of hearing about them, not of first-hand reading. Concerning Anaxagoras, the testimonies about his teaching are sometimes contradictory. In this case, there is no much to think about: the best witness to Anaxagoras is Simplicius, of whom I am going to make special mention presently. There is a characteristic point that Aristotle utterly distorted – and I do not mean his modern translators, but Asclepius of Tralles, his commentator. Upon explaining Metaphysics, 989a31‒34, what he understood (ὥς φησιν ὁ ἡμέτερος φιλόσοφος, i. e. Aristotle) was that Anaxagoras would probably have found someone who was prepared to render his thought in a revised version which should be more articulate, and that man made the job for Anaxagoras, who did not really understand what the scribe wrote: he simply loved the idea of his thought being rendered properly and comprehensibly (ἀμέλει τοι εἰ εὗρε τινὰ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὀρέγοντα χεῖρα ἐπὶ τὴν διάρθρωσιν, ἠγάπησεν ἄν).⁵⁴ One would have thought that Asclepius was somehow facetious while making this comment: however, he meant every word of that. This is why he returns to this remark shortly later in order to claim once again that Anaxagoras stated vaguely to his scribe what he had in mind, and subsequently the written version of it was what the scibe had rendered (actually, edited) properly out of Anaxagoras’ narrative.⁵⁵ It seems that Asclepius himself loved this smearing understanding of how things went, which is why he attributed the same one to Empedocles, while adding that, like Empedocles, ‘Anaxagoras, too, followed another one who emended his philosophy, since he was himself unable to compose an orderly account of his work’.⁵⁶ Asclepius wrote this as a comment on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 993a23 (ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἄλλου λέγοντος), but he distorted Aristotle once again: for the latter had only written about Empedocles, ‘If anyone else had stated this, he would have agreed, but his own statement is unclear’ (in this context,  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 61.  Asclepius of Tralles, loc. cit.: Εἴ τις ὑπολάβοι τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν δύο λέγειν στοιχεῖα τὸν νοῦν καὶ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας, κατὰ λόγον ὁ τοιοῦτος ὑπολαμβάνει, ὃν λόγον ἐκεῖνος μὲν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὐ διήρθρωσεν, ὡς εἰρήκαμεν, ἠκολούθει δὲ τοῖς διαρθροῦσιν αὐτόν. ἠκολούθει οὖν τοῖς τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ οὕτως ἐξηγουμένοις ὡς εἰρήκαμεν, ὅτι δυνάμει πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ὑπάρχουσι καὶ οὐκ ἐνεργείᾳ.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 112: Φησὶν ὅτι εἰ ἔσχε τινὰ ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς χεῖρα ὀρέγοντα καὶ δεικνύντα ὅτι πάντα κατὰ τὸ εἶδος χαρακτηρίζεται, ἠγάπησεν ἂν τὰ λεγόμενα καὶ ἠκολούθησεν αὐτοῖς (αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ διαρθρῶσαι οὐκ ἴσχυσεν) ὥσπερ καὶ περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρου εἶπε τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ ἐπανορθῶν, ὅτι ἄλλῳ μὲν ἂν λέγοντι ταῦτα ἐπηκολούθησεν, οὐ μὴν αὐτὸς διήρθρωσε.

The H. Diels – W. Kranz collection and Aristotle

25

by ‘anyone else’ Aristotle always meant himself). This is exactly the point at which Aristotle gave some credit to Empedocles on the question of primary causes. However, there is no implication whatsoever of the fanciful extrapolation Asclepius of Tralles loved to repeat. Against all this, Alexander of Aphrodisias was unwavering about Aristotle’s words in Metaphysics, 989a: Aristotle said that what Anaxagoras ‘seemed to say’ (λέγεσθαι δοκοῦντα) ‘appeared to be absurd’ (ὡς ἄτοπα). But it was because of ‘apparent absurdities’ (διὰ τῆς ἀτοπίας τῶν δοκούντων λέγεσθαι) that Aristotle argued that in fact Anaxagoras ‘meant to say different things’ (τὸ ἄλλα αὐτὸν δι᾿ αὐτῶν βούλεσθαι λέγειν). Consequently, Aristotle set out to contribute to restoration of Anaxagoras’ teaching and rendered this according to what Anaxagoras really meant (προσβοηθῶν δὲ τῇ λέξει αὐτοῦ καὶ διαρθρῶν αὐτῆς τὸ βούλημα). What was the absurdity that Aristotle (and Alexander of Aphrodisias, too) had in mind? It was the impression that the idea of ‘everything being mixed with everything’ in the primordial state bespeaks a ‘fanciful envisioning of matter’ (συνάγει γὰρ ἐκ μὲν τοῦ λέγειν πάντα αὐτὸν ἐν πᾶσι μεμῖχθαι ὅτι τὴν ὕλην ὀνειροπολεῖ), which ‘is potentially everything, but in actuality it is none of the things that it can be’ (ἥτις δυνάμει μέν ἐστι πάντα, ἐνεργείᾳ δὲ οὐδὲν ὧν δύναται), thus forcing Anaxagoras into the corset of Aristotelian philosophy, which is the case at innumerable points of Aristotle’s philosophy. Following this, some fundamental lines of my methodology should be explained.

The H. Diels – W. Kranz collection and Aristotle The collection of Presocratics by Hermann Alexander Diels, and then Walther Kranz, was a conscientious work by industrious and learned men that deserves our respect. However, this is only a compilation of isolated fragments, and it would be precarious to rely on them in order to understand Anaxagoras and several other Presocratics. Fragments having been picked up from various testimonies simply because the name of Anaxagoras is there, is insufficient evidence, which could hardly prove anything with some certainty, and the usual case is that they only give rise to the ongoing confusion. It is not only the case that this collection did not include several instances of Anaxagoras not being mentioned by name, as it happens in Plato’s works. More importantly, these ‘fragments’ are considered out of context, and their actual meaning, which is inherently involved with the intention of respective reporters, is missed by the modern student who relies on them. For instance, if we consider that Aristotle made several references to Anaxagoras (almost all of them disapprobatory and adjusted to Aristotle’s own purposes), it is the Aristotelian context, not simply the seques-

26

Introduction

tered fragments, that need to be studied, and this should include points where Anaxagoras is not mentioned by name (and, consequently, they were not excerpted as ‘fragments’). What is the whole context in which a Presocratic fragment has been preserved? What were the possible reasons for a particular fragment to be quoted, or for a specific interpretation of it to be adopted? What are we to make of contradictory explanations of the same point concerning a passage of a Presocratic philosopher, or even his philosophical identity itself? Was the kind of questions Aristotle asked the same as those the Presocratics pursued? Are Aristotle’s terminology and notions suitable to render (and interpret) Presocratic ideas, once we consider that those philosophers had no inkling of such terminology and theories (e.g. the distinction between abstract qualities and an assumed qualified substratum, which was unknown before Plato; or of corporeal/incorporeal; or of ‘essence’ proper)? Is it legitimate to list the opinions of all Presocratics as if all all of them answered exactly the same questions in the same way? It is widely believed that the Presocratic thinkers had not yet separated the conceptual and the physical worlds. I subscribe to this as far as separation is understood anachronistically, that is, in Platonic terms, and more specifically, if by this a hiatus between different realms is meant, one of which comprises incorporeal entities existing apart in actuality, not potentially. However, having said that, I believe that the widespread allegation that all Presocratics meant to explain everything, indeed ‘to save the phenomena’, by means of corporeal entities, is absurd. On the contrary, those men were familiar with the idea that perceptible phenomena should be explained by means of certain principles, and to assume that those principles had to be always corporeal is a modern nonsense. When Anaximander described the encompassing (τὸ πάντα περιέχειν),⁵⁷ his statement did not necessarily suggest a corporeal entity only because the phrase appeared to Aristotle as fitting perfectly the heaven.⁵⁸ Although he decided differently, it is hard to imagine that Anaximander was so naïve as to posit that this ‘corporeal’ entity, which not only ‘encompasses’ but also ‘governs’ everything,⁵⁹ denotes arid corporeality. However ‘archaic’ this thought seems to modernity (especially after Hegel), this philosopher was not as unsophisticated as not to be aware that ‘governing’ involves some mental activity, and ‘mental’ is an abstraction pointing to non-material conception. After all, the notion of a principle being other than material was hard to deny to the Pythagoreans.  Aristotle, Physica, 207a19. Cf. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 95.  Simplicius, commCael, pp. 371; 699.  Aristotle, Physica, 203b11 12: περιέχειν ἅπαντα καὶ πάντα κυβερνᾶν. Cf. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 407.

The H. Diels – W. Kranz collection and Aristotle

27

When Empedocles posited the existence of four physical bodies (earth, water, fire, and air), he had to account for how mingling and re-arranging of those bodies bring about the varied complexes of the articulate world. Since the Parmenidian logic posited that these bodies themselves are immobile, Empedocles introduced two entities, namely, Love and Strife. He saw empirically their presence throughout the real world; he determined that their pervasion of the four bodies mingles them together and dissolves mixtures, and then it transforms them to different manifestations of perceptible reality. Are we to assume that, by introducing Love and Strife, Empedocles posited two more bodies? Democritus, the man who is considered as the epitome of Atomism, spoke of a certain ‘Necessity’, which is ‘stronger’ than the cohesive force that makes things what they are; ‘it is imposed on things, and it shakes them violently and separates them out’. What is that which generates this ‘Necessity’? It is the ‘encompassing’.⁶⁰ Was this ‘Necessity’ also a body, in the same sense his atoms were? This question could apply even to the more ‘archaic’ Thales, who saw the world operating by ‘daemons existing everywhere’.⁶¹ He made water a principle from which everything is generated, but, on closer look, this was not water alone; for ‘a divine force permeates the elementary water, and makes it possible for this water to move’.⁶² Was this force supposed to be a body, too? The short answer is that no such questions were asked by those philosophers, and the notion of a sharp distinction between corporeal and incorporeal (sometimes taken as distinction between abstract qualities and a material substratum) was the invention of Socrates and no intellectual before Plato cared about them. This, however, does not have to mean that, when Simplicius considers the system of Anaxagoras and proves that there is no way for this system to be consistent and to make sense other than recognizing the incorporeality of the principles, the reply should be that Simplicius’ analyses should be dismissed on the grounds that a conscious notion and terminology adumbrating incorporeality proper was not part of the Presocratic accounts. In short, the fact that Empe-

 Democritus, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 295: ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον οὖν χρόνον σφῶν αὐτῶν ἀν τέχεσθαι νομίζει καὶ συμμένειν, ἕως ἰσχυροτέρα τις ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἀνάγκη παραγενομένη διασείσῃ καὶ χωρὶς αὐτὰς διασπείρῃ.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 1.27: ἀρχὴν δὲ τῶν πάντων ὕδωρ ὑπεστήσατο, καὶ τὸν κόσμον ἔμψυχον καὶ δαιμόνων πλήρη. Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.1.29b: Θαλῆς νοῦν τοῦ κόσμου τὸν θεόν, τὸ δὲ πᾶν ἔμψυχον ἅμα καὶ δαιμόνων πλῆρες. Anonymous, Scholia in Platonem (scholia vetera), 600a: τὸν δὲ κόσμον ἔμψυχον ἔφη καὶ δαιμόνων πλήρη.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.1.29b: διήκειν δὲ καὶ διὰ τοῦ στοιχειώδους ὑγροῦ δύναμιν θείαν κινητικὴν αὐτοῦ.

28

Introduction

docles did not care to consider the question, ‘are Love and Stife bodies, or not?’, and likewise Democritus did not expound any analysis of whether ‘Necessity’ is a body or not, does not mean that those ‘forces’ should be posited as material: it only means that the Presocratics reflected in a different intellectual atmosphere, actually one in which Socrates craving ‘definitions’ and ‘essence’ of things had not yet appeared. The same goes for Anaxagoras: even if Aristotle believed that the ‘encompassing’ was an unformed material mixture (τὸ πᾶν ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἔχειν),⁶³ the fact that the Mind is ‘unmixed’ with the ‘homoiomeries’ (a term coined by Aristotle) and it (or, he) is ‘impassible’, means that it is impossible for both the Mind and the homoiomeries to be material. All of the apparently disparate phenomena of natural processes, or of mental activity, or of human conduct, are accounted for on the assumption that, outside the phenomenal process, there exist real entities which are the terminal factors of processes, the ultimate correlates of knowledge, and the causes that allow for, and determine, the cosmic operation. These are the Anaxagorean principles, which are both one and many, here and everywhere, now and ever. Aristotle decided to make them material particles, but Simplicius demonstrated that, once they were so considered, the text of Anaxagoras turned out a set of foolish and inconsistent propositions. Plato made them Ideas, but he encountered impasses in relation to the relation of particulars to Ideas, or to the interrelation among the Ideas themselves, only to incur the bitterly sarcastic criticism by Aristotle on both matters. No less critical (though not sarcastic) was Aristotle about Anaxagoras, only because he thought that to consider the principles as being both individual and universal is self-contradiction, all the more so, since he had decided that Anaxagoras’ principles are material, indeed not too different from the atoms of Democritus and of Leucippus. For indeed, no matter how careful a reading of Aristotle, his student would be unable to make out what was actually the essential difference between Democritus and Anaxagoras after all, other than how many the elementary particles are or how do they come to be arranged. Modern scholars are normally all too quick to associate the Presocratics with universal corporeality. In my view, this is a naïve misperception. For even Aristotle himself (the source of this modern claim, but flagrant contradictions are always there) said things that point to different directions. For one thing, he granted that both Empedocles and Democritus touched upon the notions of form and

 Aristotle, Physica, 205b1 4.

The H. Diels – W. Kranz collection and Aristotle

29

essence’. ⁶⁴ Is this different from acknowledging that those precursors touched upon the idea of incorporeality, considering that this is how Aristotle himself saw form and essence? For another, he postulated that ‘things that are numerically many, they are material’,⁶⁵ and ‘those which are material are subject to alteration’.⁶⁶ Besides, he entertained the Pythagorean notion of the Indeterminate Dyad (see chapters 1, 3, and 8), which he attributed also to Plato, in order to explain the transition from oneness to manyness. In fact, however, ‘Indeterminate Dyad’ suggests a state in which enumeration of distinct entities makes no sense, and this was a notion that the Pythagoreans invented in order to explain how the Monad becomes Dyad, that is, how did oneness turned to manyness. But if enumeration is impossible, and oneness makes no sense in that state, it follows that we are dealing not with material entities, but with immaterial ones, since only ‘those which are numerically many, they are material’, as Aristotle himself argued. The Pythagoreans had no problem with this, since they dealt with numbers that ipso facto were immaterial. However, within Aristotle’s context and wishful reflection, this was a problem, which he did not seem to realize: if Anaxagoras’ principles were ‘infinite’ (as Aristotle claimed, but Simplicius denied it) they should not be confined in any place, because ‘not everything that exists is confined in a certain place, but only a moving body is’.⁶⁷ Besides, since these principles were not only infinite (as Aristotle thought them to be), but also they were both ‘one and many’,⁶⁸ both here and everywhere, both now and ever, enumer-

 Aristotle, op. cit. 194a20 21: ἐπὶ μικρὸν γάρ τι μέρος Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Δημόκριτος τοῦ εἴδους καὶ τοῦ τί ἦν εἶναι ἥψαντο.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1074a33 34: ἀλλ᾿ ὅσα ἀριθμῷ πολλά, ὕλην ἔχει (‘those which are nu merically many, they are material’). De Anima, 432a3 7: ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐδὲ πρᾶγμα οὐθὲν ἔστι παρὰ τὰ μεγέθη, ὡς δοκεῖ, τὰ αἰσθητὰ κεχωρισμένον (‘nothing has a separate existence, except sensible magnitudes’). Cf. Physica, 204a8 10, and commentators. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMe taph, p. 716; commDeSensu, pp. 120 1. Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 115. Dexippus, commCateg, p. 59. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 178. Simplicius, commAnim, pp. 283 4. John Philoponus, com mAnim, p. 568; commPhys, p. 401; commGenCorr, p. 76. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Com mentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, Book 3, ch. 13.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b24: πάντα δ’ ὕλην ἔχει ὅσα μεταβάλλει (‘all things which change have matter’).  Aristotle, Physica, 212b29: οὐ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ ὂν ἐν τόπῳ, ἀλλὰ τὸ κινητὸν σῶμα (‘for everything which exists does not exist in a spatial place: only that which is a moving body exists in a spatial place’). Cf. op. cit. 223a19 20.  ‘One huge homoiomery, which contains all the homoiomeries in itself’, as Philoponus put it explaining Aristotle ambiguously (commPhys, p. 396). But how can infinite homoiomeries pos sibly be contained anywhere, unless this is all about incorporeality? See discussion in chapter 8. Simplicius discussed the principles being ‘one and many’, and rightly pointed out that this can happen only with immaterial entities.

30

Introduction

ation could not apply to them. But this happens only with immaterial entities. Moreover, if the Anaxagorean principles are ‘contraries’ (as Aristotle decided), according to Aristotle’s logic they had to be material, ‘but only potentially so’.⁶⁹ And if these principles themselves are as elementary as not to be subject to alteration (a ‘homoiomery’ of gold will always be what it is), could this possibly square with Aristotle’s proposition, ‘all things which change have matter’?⁷⁰ In other words, Aristotle’s conflicting statements upon determining what Anaxagoras’ philosophy was about are too many to be ignored. Furthermore, it is customary to appeal to Metaphysics, 986b18‒21, in order to argue that the Being of Melissus was corporeal, although the expression is that Melissus seems (ἔοικε) to have treated material unity, and this was why he made the One infinite. However, those who use this text in order to urge corporeality, do not use the words following the portion at that point: while sneering at Melissus, Aristotle added that Parmenides seems to have treated the One as conceptual (τοῦ κατὰ τὸν λόγον ἑνός), which is why Parmenides made it finite. Therefore, we are informed that Parmenides posited conceptual Being, and this he did as clearly as to be impossible for Aristotle to overlook it, notwithstanding his own different agenda. Of course, in the On Heavens, 298b21‒24, Aristotle once again decided differently, stating that ‘the followers of Melissus and Parmenides’ posited the existence of only sensible substance, but one should be stunned at studying the context and what actually Aristotle says: he admits that ‘although some of those things that they say are right’ (εἰ καὶ τἆλλα λέγουσι καλῶς), ‘we should not take them as propositions about Nature’ (οὐ φυσικῶς γε δεῖ νομίσαι λέγειν). What was that which Aristotle determined that should be placed outside the Physics of the Eleatic school? It was their axiom positing that ‘there are certain substances which are uncreated and absolutely unmoved’ (εἶναι ἄττα τῶν ὄντων ἀγένητα καὶ ὅλως ἀκίνητα). Therefore, the question is this: were the unchangeable and eternal substances that Parmenides and Melissus posited material? Actually, Aristotle was unable to cope with his aims at that point; hence, he decided that the Eleatics did posit substances that were inexorably incorporeal. Intolerable to him as this was, he adds (evidently being piqued and embarrassed) that such propositions ‘do not apply to the study of Nature, but to another kind of consideration, which is prior to the study of Nature’ (μᾶλλον ἐστὶν ἑτέρας καὶ προτέρας ἢ τῆς φυσικῆς σκέψεως). Why? Because Aristotle, in the teeth of sheer proof about the Eleatics, determined that they ‘believed that there is no being other than

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b22 23: πάντα γὰρ τὰ ἐναντία ὕλην ἔχει, καὶ δυνάμει ταῦτα ἔστιν.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1069b24 25, supra, note 66.

The H. Diels – W. Kranz collection and Aristotle

31

the substance of perceptible things’ (τὸ μηθὲν μὲν ἄλλο παρὰ τὴν τῶν αἰσθητῶν οὐσίαν ὑπολαμβάνειν εἶναι). Quite simply, ‘if a certain knowledge and practical wisdom were to be possible at all, those men realized, for the first time, that unchangeable entities were called for, and they transferred their considerations to the study of Nature’. This is a stunning claim which shows how calamitously has our approach to the Presocratics been hampered by Aristotle’s prejudiced claims, which aimed at sanctioning his own philosophical purposes, and, all too often have they obscured fatally the character of Presocratic thought. For what else other than explaining Nature by means of simple propositions of universal authority and rule was the Presocratic main and foremost concern? What ‘saving the phenomena’ meant other than positing principles which determine the phenomena, and they are themselves uncaused and not subject to corruption? Was it legitimate for Aristotle to interpolate anachronistically into the Presocratics the distinctions that he himself entertained, such as ontology, physics, theology, logic, incorporeal, essence, and the like? It was not only the ‘world’ that those philosophers maintained to be a ‘whole’. It was also their own philosophy, in which their principles were invented in order to explain everything in Nature, and they did not assort their exposition into such different ‘compartments’ as theology, philosophy, or science, which are currently assumed to be proof to each other. When Aristotle argued without argument against what he claimed that the Eleatics maintained, he just decided that Melissus and Parmenides, by their one Being, meant something corporeal; but what exactly (or what sort of thing, anyway) this was, he never determined. Therefore, using the passage of On Haevens, 298b21‒24 as evidence that the Being of the Eleatics was the material world was too wanting a scholarly venture. These are only a few examples of the quality of statements by Aristotle, which have been dignified as ‘testimonies’, and Presocratic thought is studied mainly based on them. H. Diels’ Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker was a milestone in the way to taking a first step towards revealing Presocratic thought; but they cannot be the final solution to the problem. For, although these fragments give a handy survey of ‘testimonia’, they can be misleading. All modern studies show that scholars feel they can dispense with the trouble of exploring those passages in their context, to see for themselves what is the wider point Aristotle (as well as Simplicius, and others) tried to make, and how he felt at having to concede that cardinal propositions of his were already present in previous thinkers. Of course, it is not Diels to blame for this; instead he deserves a lot of respect, and that he does not include ‘fragments’ where Anaxagoras is no mentioned by name is secondary, indeed immaterial. However, it has to be acknowledged that this doxographic method is antiquated; it is also unreliable, since the ultimate source of it

32

Introduction

is Theophrastus drawing on Aristotle, and then, Eudemus, that is, two devout Peripatetic pupils who were naturally happy to reproduce the analyses of their master. This collection is inadequate even in terms of material, since there are now much more sources available to approach the Presocratic thought – assuming that the context of the witness is considered. Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that Diels himself did realize that the value of doxographic tradition is not unlimited, and showed that Theophrastus’ Opinions of the Physicists employed Peripatetic categories and concepts, despite the fact that the collection aimed at being purely informative. In any event, this collection is outdated, and the solution to this problem certainly is not subsequent supplements aspiring to add ‘new fragments’ to doxography. The solution is only multiple critical assessment of each testimony, this time along with those not included in collections, and assessment of both the context and the spiritual personalitiy and aims of witnessess. In respect of this, an example is instructive: Philo’s references to Euripides recur (unlike ones to Sophocles and Aeschylus, each of whom is mentioned only once), and admiration for the tragic poet is manifest.⁷¹ He repeats a widely known testimony, namely, that Anaxagoras left his patrimonial fields to be devoured by the sheep because he was smitten with the desire for philosophy (Philo adds that Democritus, for his part, did exactly the same).⁷² In the fourth section of De Aeternitate Mundi, Philo, in manifest admiration, repeats Anaxagoras’ celebrated answer, that to contemplate the heaven is the reason for anyone to live. The context is consideration of three different definitions of what the cosmos is. Then (section 5), he considers what ‘destruction’ of the world possibly means, and this phrase occurred to him:

 Cf. Philo quoting verses of Euripides and mentioning him by name: Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit, 99; 116; 141; also, quoting from Euripides, though not by name: Legum Allegoriarum, 3.202; De Josepho, 78; Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit, 25; De Aeterniate Mundi, 5; 30; 144.  Philo, De Vita Contemplativa, 14. Cf. the same information by Plutarch, Pericles, 16.7; De Vi tando Aere Alieno, 831F. Maximus of Tyre (sophist, second century AD), Dissertationes, 16.1. Phil ostratus, Vitae Sophistarum, chapter 1, p. 517. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.14.8. Himerius (sophist and rhetorician, c. 315 386), Declamationes et Orationes, 3. Photius, Bibliotheca, Codex 243, p. 357b. Suda, letter kappa, entry 2341. Nicephorus Basilaces (rhetor, Constantinople, twelfth century), Orationes, B2, p. 38. Plato mentions this in the Hippias Major, 283a (if indeed this is a genuine work of his): he has it that Anaxagoras inherited a lot of money, but he was indifferent to them and lost them all. Diogenes Laertius (op. cit. 2.6 7) relates that he relinquished all of his property to his relatives.

The H. Diels – W. Kranz collection and Aristotle

33

None of the things can come to be from what is not, nor was it ever heard or brought to pass, that what exists should be utterly destructed.⁷³

He makes no attribution of this, but immediately he goes on with a similar quotation ‘by the tragic poet’,⁷⁴ which goes thus: No thing that is born can die, since its parts are separated out and take another form.

The poet is Euripides, this is one of the several points of Philo mentioning him, and the passage is one of the numerous poetic adaptations of the Anaxagorean philosophy by that tragic poet. Now, there is one more reference to the unattributed portion above by Aristotle, which he ascribed to Empedocles. Consequently, H. Diels, always seeking names of Presocratics along with (real or assumed) passages from their works, made it a ‘fragment’ of Empedocles’ own words (fr. 12). My own claim is that this is a wrong attribution, the passage belongs to Anaxagoras, and I should put briefly my argument as follows: 1. The passage which Aristotle and Philo quote does not come from the same source: Philo read it independently, and, unlike Aristotle (as explained in a moment), he quoted it accurately.⁷⁵ Philo normally quoted from his library and from books he had in front of him. This was not the case with Aristotle, who certainly had one of the best libraries available to him, but he did not want to quote from his predecessors, as discussed later in this book. For it becomes plain that Aristotle made assertions without caring to read Anaxagoras’ book first-hand, to say the least. On the contrary, all of his references indicate hearsay. Hence, his recurrent use of such expressions as ‘it seems that Anaxagoras believed’ (ἔοικε δὲ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας), and the like.⁷⁶ Presumably, Aristotle had this philosophy retailed

 Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 5; cf. op. cit. 28 30.  See discussion of this issue in the conclusion of Part I, pp. 488 ff.  Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 5: ἔκ τε γὰρ οὐδάμ᾿ ἐόντος ἀμήχανόν ἐστι γενέσθαι καί τ᾿ ἐὸν ἐξαπολέσθαι ἀνήνυστον καὶ ἄπυστον. Compare the same text quoted by Aristotle, De Melisso, 975b2 4: ἔκ τε τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἀμήχανόν ἐστι γενέσθαι, τό τε ὂν ἐξόλλυσθαι ἀνήνυστον καὶ ἄπρηκ τον, ἀεὶ γὰρ θήσεσθαι ὅπη κέ τις αἰὲν ἐρείδῃ. Euripides did use the adjective ἄπυστον. See Aris totle, Fragmenta, 15a: ἄπυστον ἀνθρώποισιν αἰθέρος βάθει ἔκρυψεν. However, there is no testi mony that he used ἄπρηκτον, as Aristotle had it. The mere fact that Aristotle wrote ὄντος instead of Philo’s ἐόντος (an archaic form of the participle, which recurs in Anaxagoras’ own words quoted by Simplicius) indicates that Aristotle had no specific Anaxagorean text in front of him, but he wrote by heart and hearsay.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 301a: Ἔοικε δὲ τοῦτο γε αὐτὸ καλῶς ᾿Aναξαγόρας λαβεῖν· ἐξ ἀκινήτων γὰρ ἄρχεται κοσμοποιεῖν. But then, Metaphysica, 985a: οὔτε οὗτοι ἐοίκασιν εἰδέναι ὅ τι

34

Introduction

to him by ‘followers of Anaxagoras’, yet there is nothing to suggest that he had read it himself. Apart from the opening ‘all things were together’ and ‘the Mind distinguished them’, and then ‘the Mind is unmixed’, he does not quote anything from Anaxagoras’ book. Instead, there are several references to what he heard about Anaxagoras’ views,⁷⁷ or what the ‘followers of Anaxagoras say’⁷⁸ or ‘they seem to say’. ⁷⁹ As it happens with other Presocratics,⁸⁰ Aristotle often writes that Anaxagoras ‘is said’ to have sustained this or that doctrine,⁸¹ but he does not tell us who said so. The way he introduces his citations is characteristically unlike the ones he cites or quotes from Plato, to whom he refers confidently: ‘Plato says’ or ‘wrote’ (Πλάτων λέγει, or Πλάτων φησίν, or Πλάτων ἔγραψεν), or ‘Plato believes’ (οἴεται Πλάτων), or similar expressions, and he frequently cites Plato’s works so as to make his references more clear.⁸² There is only a single point where he writes that ‘Plato seems to have used this analogy in his Republic’, which does indeed indicate a tentative assumption.⁸³ As a matter of fact, a few lines following this attribution to Empedocles, he turns to Anaxagoras once again, in order to report that, to him, ‘what comes into existence it comes from those that are [already] existent and infinite’ (ἐξ ἀεὶ ὄντων καὶ ἀπείρων τὰ γιγνόμενα γίγνεσθαι). Is this a quotation? As usual, it is not; this is only adduced as hearsay: “as some say that Anaxagoras says” (ὡς καὶ τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόρλέγουσιν· …. ᾿Aναξαγόρας τε γὰρ μηχανῇ χρῆται τῷ νῷ πρὸς τὴν κοσμοποιίαν. Ethica Nicoma chea, 1179a: ἔοικε δὲ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας. De Generatione Animalium, 723a: ὁ αὐτὸς γὰρ λόγος ἔοικεν εἶναι οὗτος τῷ ᾿Aναξαγόρου. Physica, 187a: ἔοικε δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας. Metaphysica, 1012a: ἔοικε δ᾿ ὁ μὲν Ἡρακλείτου λόγος, λέγων πάντα εἶναι καὶ μὴ εἶναι, ἅπαντα ἀληθῆ ποιεῖν, ὁ δ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρου, εἶναι τι μεταξὺ τῆς ἀντιφάσεως, πάντα ψευδῆ.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009b: ᾿Aναξαγόρου δὲ καὶ ἀπόφθεγμα μνημονεύεται πρὸς τῶν ἑταίρ ων τινάς. Ethica Eudemia, 1216a: τὸν μὲν οὖν ᾿Aναξαγόραν φασὶν ἀποκρίνασθαι πρός τινα διαποροῦντα. Protrepticus, fr. 19: Καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν δέ φασιν εἰπεῖν ἐρωτηθέντα. De Melisso, 975b: ὡς καὶ τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν φασί τινες λέγειν.  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 345a: οἱ δὲ περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν καὶ Δημόκριτον φῶς εἶναι τὸ γάλα λέ γουσιν ἄστρων τινῶν.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a: Ἐναντίως δὲ φαίνονται λέγοντες οἱ περὶ ᾿Aναξ αγόραν τοῖς περὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέα. De Partibus Animalium, 677a: Οὐκ ὀρθῶς δ᾿ ἐοίκασιν οἱ περὶ ᾿Aναξ αγόραν ὑπολαμβάνειν ὡς αἰτίαν οὖσαν τῶν ὀξέων νοσημάτων.  Cf. Metaphysica, 984a2 3: Thales ‘is said’ to have maintained, etc.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009b25 26; Ethica Eudemia, 1216a11; Protrepticus, fr. 19; De Melisso, 975b.  Cf. Aristotle, Topica, 122b; 140a; 140b; 148a; Physica, 187a; 203a; 206b; 209b; 251b; De Gener atione et Corruptione, 315a; 325b; 330b; 332a; De Anima, 404b; Problemata, 953a; 956a; Metaphy sica, 987a; 987b; 988a; 990a; 992a; 996a; 1001a; 1010b; 1019a; 1026b; 1028b; 1053b; 1064b; 1070a; 1071b; 1072a. 1083a; Ethica Nicomachea, 1095a; 1104b; 1172b; Politica, 1261a; 1266b; 1271b; 1274b; 1293b; Rhetorica, 1376a; 1398b; 1406b; De Virtutibus et Vitiis, 1249a; Epistulae, 4, line 16.  Aristotle, Magna Moralia, 1.33.10.

The H. Diels – W. Kranz collection and Aristotle

35

αν φασί τινες λέγειν).⁸⁴ Therefore, the accurate quotation of the phrase is that by Philo, not by Aristotle. 2. It is not only Aristotle who goes on with appealing to Anaxagoras, even in the form of hearsay. Philo also, at the very same point (speaking of the definition of cosmos) felt it necessary to refer to Anaxagoras by name in this context. It is exactly after that reference that he goes on with the unattributed quotation, which is so only because he had just mentioned Anaxagoras by name. There is a recurrent phenomenon, which is important in this respect: authors frequently mentioned Euripides as a pupil and follower of Anaxagoras. Beyond this, normally, whenever a view of Anaxagoras on a certain matter was reported or quoted, the name of Euripides followed only to reiterate that he said in verses from stage the same things that Anaxagoras wrote in his book in philosophical language. There are many instance of this phenomenon: once a view of Anaxagoras is recorded, a similar one by Euripides follows; or, one and the same view is stated as having been maintained by both of them.⁸⁵ Therefore, Philo speaks of Anaxagoras, then of Euripides; otherwise, he would have referred to Empedocles, yet he did not, only because he did not need to do so. In fact, he did not need to mention Anaxagoras, since, for one thing, he had just done so a couple of lines before that point, and, for another, the normal case was that an ensuing passage by Euripides was confirmation of an Anaxagorean proposition just put in verses of a theatrical play. Quite simply, Philo did not mention the same name twice within a few lines, which could be only a pleonasm, and because it was common to talk about the views of Anaxagoras and Euripides in the same breath. 3. This does not suggest that the view quoted there was not maintained also by Empedocles: it certainly was, since (as discussed later) there are many testi-

 Aristotle, De Melisso, 975a18 19.  Diodore of Sicily, Bibliotheca Historica, 1.7.3; 1.38.4; 1.39.1. Plutarch, Quaestiones Convivales, 644D. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 908D. Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 4.7.9. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 123. Origen, Cels, IV.77; VII.36. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 1.7.9. Pseudo Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ars Rhetorica, 8.10; 9.11. Iamblichus, Theo logoumena Arithmeticae, p. 6. John Laurentius Lydus, De Mensibus, 4.107. Theophylactus Simo catta (historian, seventh century AD), Historiae, 7.17.11. Eustathius of Thessaloniki (bishop and scholar, c. 1115 1195/6), Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam, p. 151. Anonymous, Scholia in Euri pidis Hippolytum, scholion on verse 601: ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὖν τὸν ἥλιον μύδρον ἔφησε, καὶ ἐξ αὐτοῦ πάντα γίνεσθαι. ᾧ ἀκολουθήσας ὁ Εὐριπίδης χρυσέαν βῶλον αὐτὸν εἴρηκεν. Anonymous, Scholia in Euripidem (scholia vetera), scholion in Orestem, 982. Anonymous, Scholia in Euripidis Orestem, scholion 981 1000. Anonymous, Vitae Euripidis, Vita 4; Vita 5. Anonymous, Scholia in Pindarum (scholia vetera), Ode 1, scholion 91a. Anonymous, Scholia in Apollonii Rhodii Argonautica (scholia vetera), pp. 44; 276. Anonymous, (apud FGrH, by F. Jacoby), De Nilo, 3c, 647, fr. 1.

36

Introduction

monies assuring that the proposition ‘nothing comes from nothing, and nothing perishes to nothing’ was a doctrine held by all of the physicists alike.⁸⁶ My point is that Diels picked up fragments, but critical redaction of them leaves much to be desired, since hardly was any context considered. Thus, a phrase of Anaxagoras became one by Empedocles, only because Aristotle carelessly said so, even though he had no problem with declaring that he quoted from hearsay, not from any book by either of those philosophers. Therefore, I have made no use of either the D-K fragments or of subsequent supplements to that collection aspiring to add ‘more fragments’. For I believe that, at the end of the day, this practice is catastrophic: scholars read isolated ‘fragments’ and struggle to decipher them as ‘oracles’. I have relied on all the authors from Classical and Late Antiquity until the fifteenth century, who had something to say about Anaxagoras, whether explicitly or implicitly. Modern scholarship appears to hope that it is possible to learn anything from Aristotle’s biased caricature of Anaxagoras, which he concocted for his own personal reasons. Little surprise then that this methodology has resulted only in endless inconclusive debate, which can cause only frustration, since disagreement as to the meaning of ‘fragments’ is so hopeless that it makes it seem best to abandon a sustainable solution to the investigation. The case with the collection of old Stoic thought by J. von Arnim was pretty much the opposite. The industrious and erudite compiler considered the passages he came upon critically, but, at many points, he went as far as to attribute them to Chrysippus, although there was reference neither to this specific philosopher nor to the Stoics at all. In general, such attributions to Stoic thought are plausible, but specific attributions to Chrysippus are not always tenable, certainly not in cases that there are no parallel testimonies. The second volume of this collection, which is about Chrysippus, is the most expansive one; however, on closer look, it turns out that several attributions are not really to Chrysippus, but simply references to ‘the Stoics’, sometimes not even that, and mostly there is no parallel textual evidence by any other author, which could have confirmed those tetimonies. I have pointed out several instances of this kind, but to consider all of those cases is not within the scope of this book.

 See, for example, Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, (ref. to Anaxagoras and Democri tus), p. 303: καὶ μηδὲν γίνεσθαι ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος. Themistius, paraphrPhys (ref. to Anaxagoras and to ‘all of the physicists’), p. 13: δεύτερον δὲ καὶ μάλιστα ἡ κοινὴ δόξα τῶν φυσικῶν καθ᾿ ἣν ἅπαντες ὁμοίως οὐδὲν ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος γίνεσθαι ὑπελάμβανον. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 162 (ref. to Parmenides, Melissus, Anaxagoras, and to ‘all of the physicists’): τὴν κοινὴν τῶν φυσικῶν εἶναι δόξαν τὴν λέγουσαν μηδὲν ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος γίνεσθαι, ἀλλὰ πάντα τὰ γινόμενα ἐξ ὄντος τὴν γένεσιν ἔχειν.

The H. Diels – W. Kranz collection and Aristotle

37

It is a thesis of this study that Anaxagoras, especially concerning ontology and cosmology, influenced the Stoics heavily; consequently, there are points making room for considering Stoic passages as echoes of the Anaxagorean philosophy. One more example is called for with respect to this case. Socrates scornfully remarked that Anaxagoras’ priorities were to explain how a body is composed of bones and sinews, and that bones are hard and have joints which divide them and the sinews can be contracted and relaxed and, with the flesh and the skin which contains them all, are laid about the bones; and so, as the bones are hung loose in their ligaments, the sinews, by relaxing and contracting, make me able to bend my limbs now, and that is the cause of my sitting here with my legs bent. Or, as if in the same way he should give voice and air and hearing and countless other things of the sort (καὶ αὖ περὶ τοῦ διαλέγεσθαι ὑμῖν ἑτέρας τοιαύτας αἰτίας λέγοι, φωνάς τε καὶ ἀέρας καὶ ἀκοὰς καὶ ἄλλα μυρία) as causes for our talking with each other, and should fail to mention the real causes.⁸⁷ In other words, Socrates blamed Anaxagoras not only for caring to explain how flesh and the skin, and bones and limbs and sinews function in human body, but also for dealing with explanations about ‘voice and air and hearing’, that is, how voice and hearing are explained in natural terms. We should recall that it was Anaxagoras who demonstrated by means of proverbial natural experiments that air is a body, on which Aristotle commented in irony.⁸⁸ To Anaxagoras’ mentality, caring to explain ‘voice and hearing’ was all too natural, but this is what Plato blamed him for. It is plain that the Stoics employed Anaxagoras’ theory on this (‘voice’ was defined as ‘a blow on the air’), but the question is why did J. von Arnim ascribe to Chrysippus a reference made by Galen about ‘medical doctors and philosophers’ who maintained that ‘air is a body, indeed a homogenous continuum’ (ἓν ὑπάρχειν σῶμα συνεχὲς ἑαυτῷ πάντῃ).⁸⁹ The vast majority of attributions to Chrysippus that Arnim made occur in authors who do not mention him by name, but they either speak of ‘Stoics’ in general, or not even that, although normally (though not always) the doctrine described can be confirmed to be a Stoic one. In this case, Galen mentions earlier ‘doctors and philosophers’ who reflected about air. There is no testimony that Chrysippus did so, whereas we know that both Galen himself and Athenaeus wrote on this subject. However, we also know that Anaxagoras was somewhat obsessed with

 Plato, Phaedo, 98d e. Italics are mine.  See Aristotle, Physica, 213a; Problemata, 914b; De Respiratione, 470b; De Melisso, 976b. The mistius, paraphrPhys, p. 123. Simplicius, commCael, p. 634; commPhys, pp. 647; 652; 655 6. Mi chael Psellus, commPhys, 4.20; In Parva Naturalia Commentaria, p. 112.  Galen, De Differentia Pulsuum, p. 672. See SVF, II.139.42 (fr. 424).

38

Introduction

demonstrating what air is, and there is a witness who authored a spurious Platonic text, which has it that Anaxagoras and Empedocles dealt with the issue of air.⁹⁰ Therefore, Galen’s testimony cannot be one to Chrysippus, but it would fit perfectly well with Anaxagoras, who qualifies for being one of ‘the philosophers’ Galen had in mind. I saw no reason or need for including in this study the one-sided modern claims disputing the accuracy of Simplicius’ quotations from Anaxagoras, which, anyway, normally are made in passing and peremptorily rather than arguably. This could only add unnecessary length to an already extensive book, since the extant bibliography (desperately few books, and several articles not too different from each other) mostly takes Aristotle’s remarks as reliable testimony rather than considering it critically. Besides, I have seen no painstaking study disputing Simplicius’ testimonies and analyses with convincing argument. Instead, in histories of philosophy, Anaxagoras has been considered as a rather ‘inferior’ case of a Presocratic. In spite of credible ancient evidence that such philosophers as Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, or Democritus, were concerned with ‘saving the phenomena’, I have read claims about the springboard of this philosophy, notably, that Anaxagoras simply ‘started from the problem of nourishment and growth of organic bodies’ and ‘was influenced by the consideration of the phenomenon of τροφή’.⁹¹ My view is that it could make no sense to rebut such fanciful extrapolations, which, as it happens, were widely upheld as pronouncements by authorities of old. This portion of Jaeger reminded me of other views claiming that Anaxagoras posited the Mind as the supreme principle because he had in mind his friend Pericles as head of the state, and, by parity of reason and analogy, this was how he came to positing the Mind as head of the state of the universe.⁹² Presumably, it appeared to certain ones that the pioneering notion of Mind occurred to Anaxago-

 Pseudo Plato, Sisyphus, 389a: Οὐκοῦν καὶ περὶ τοῦ ἀέρος ᾿Aναξαγόραν τε καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέα καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους τοὺς μεταρσιολέσχας ἅπαντας οἶσθα ζητοῦντας πότερον ἄπειρός ἐστιν ἢ πέρας ἔχων;  W. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, Oxford, 1947, p. 239, n. 9. This view was taken up by several authors, such as W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, Cam bridge, 1965, v. II, p. 272. G. Vlastos, “The Physical Theory of Anaxagoras”, Philosophical Review, 59 (1950), pp. 32 41. Against this, Diego Lanza argued that ‘the relevance of biology with the physics of Anaxagoras is certainly indisputable, and possibly fundamental. … This notwith standing, the empirical observation mentioned in this [fragment] is only a proof of a more wide logical intuition, namely, the intuition pertaining to the fundamental unity of things, which implicitly points to the concept of matter.’  However, the universe being considered as a ‘state’ was a much later perception, indeed a Stoic one.

The H. Diels – W. Kranz collection and Aristotle

39

ras because he saw Pericles governing, not because he observed a universe full of mysteries and wondrous phenomena. Such hypotheses are simply made in the teeth of testimonies, such as the one about Anaxagoras once having been asked what is reason for someone to live at all, and what the main task in life is, to which he replied, ‘to observe the heaven’ (τοῦ θεάσασθαι τὸν οὐρανόν), which I mention below. The lesson that some intellectuals of Classical and Late Antiquity, such as Aristotle and Porphyry, taught us is that, in history of philosophy, there are no voices coming from Mount Sinai, far less so modern ones. During the imperial Roman times, Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325) deplored his contemporaries for ‘neglecting their own wisdom while being completely yet uncritically confident in admitting the inventions of those that forewent them’, and he exclaimed that ‘so great is the authority of antiquity that it is said to be a crime to inquire into it (antaque est auctoritas vetustatis ut inquirere in earn scelus esse ducatur), which they take as ascertaining truth everywhere.⁹³ He had in mind the religious institutions handed down by ‘Roman ancestors’, ‘which people persist in maintaining and defending with the greatest obstinacy’ while ‘they do not consider of what character they are; but they feel assured of their excellence and truth on this account, because the ancients have handed them down’. However, what emanated from this conservatism was not only about religion, but also about society, which is why Lactantius also remarked that his contemporaries had set true philosophy, physics, and theology in a pillory.⁹⁴ Besides, he argued staunchly that the people of old were not superior (‘sapientia … antecesserunt’) in wisdom just because ‘they preceded us in time’ (‘temporibus antecesserunt), and added that people who uncritically approve of the inventions of their ancestors are like dumb animals led by others.⁹⁵ Lactantius’ contemporary Arnobius (died c. 330) averred that ‘antiquity is the most fertile mother of all errors’ (‘errorum … antiquitas plenissima mater’), and he assured that

 Lactantius, Institutiones Divinae, 2.7.2: Sed ex hoc probatas atque veras esse confidunt, quod eas veteres tradiderunt, tantaque est auctoritas vetustatis, ut inquirere in eam scelus esse dica tur. Itaque creditur ei passim, tamquam cognitae veritati.  He wrote over the first Contra Negantem Principia (‘Against him who denies the principles’); over the second, Virtus Specifica (‘Specific Virtue’, or ‘Power’); and over the third, Ecclesia Ro mana (‘The Roman Church’).  Lactantius, op. cit. II.7.1: Quare cum sapere, id est, veritatem quaerere, omnibus sit innatum, sapientiam sibi adimunt, qui sine ullo iudicio inventa maiorum probant, et ab aliis pecudum more ducuntur.

40

Introduction

‘there is less invention in matters of recent occurrence than in those of ancient obscurity’.⁹⁶ This trait has sealed indelibly modern western mindset while approaching Aristotle. Despite tremendous change of all sorts after the times of Thomas Aquinas, consideration of Aristotle appears as similar to touching an august museum item while taking an idiosyncratic proviso for granted, namely, that dramatic innovation after Aristotle is only continuation, even though such brilliant minds as Galileo proposed incisive relativistic approaches not only to knowledge-claiming, but also to such seemingly indisputable sentences as ‘x moves’, which he showed to be untrue (actually, either false or incomplete) since anything moves in relation to a given frame of reference. In fact, however, it was Aristotle himself who set forth the exemplar for all subsequent centuries: to those who were shocked at his excoriating criticism of his master who should have been dear to him, his reply was that Plato (or, Socrates) was indeed dear to him, ‘but truth is dearest of all’ (φίλος μὲν Σωκράτης, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον φιλτάτη ἡ ἀλήθεια), and ‘only a little should we attend to Socrates, but we should care very much for the truth’ (Σωκράτους μὲν ἐπ᾿ ὀλίγον φροντιστέον, τῆς δ᾿ ἀληθείας ἐπὶ πολύ). His anonymous biographer concludes that ‘actually this was what Aristotle himself did’ (τοῦτο οὖν καὶ ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης πεποίηκεν).⁹⁷ Quite evidently, the author had in mind Aristotle’s own statement, who, intending to review Plato’s theory of Ideas, acknowledged that

 Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, I.57.4 6: Sed antiquiora, inquitis, nostra sunt ac per hoc fidei et veritatis plenissima. Quasi vero errorum non antiquitas plenissima mater sit et non ipsa pe pererit res eas quae turpissimas diis notas ignominiosis concinnaverunt in fabulis. Ante milia enim annorum decem non potuerunt falsa et audiri et eredi aut non simillimum veri est, fidem vicinis et finitimis quam spatiorum inesse longinquitate distantibus? Testibus enim haec, illa opinionibus adseruntur et proclivius multo est, minus esse in recentibus fictionis quam in antiqua obscuritate summotis.  Anonymous, Vita Aristotelis (vulgate), 9. Both the attitude and the phrase became proverbial. Cf. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 9.49: ἀλλ᾿ ἔδει γε τῶν ἐκείνου λόγων ἀναμ νησθῆναι, ὅτι φίλος μὲν ὁ ἀνήρ, φίλη δὲ ἡ ἀλήθεια· ἀμφοῖν δὲ ὄντοιν φίλοιν, φίλτερον ἡ ἀλή θεια. John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 144: φίλος μὲν Πλάτων, φιλτέρα δὲ ἡ ἀλήθεια, ὃ δὴ καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ τοῦ Πλάτωνος μαθητὴς ᾿Aριστοτέλης καὶ ἕτεροι πεποιήκασιν. Eustathius of The ssaloniki, De Capta Thessalonica, p. 12: Κατὰ γὰρ τὸν ὀρθῶς ἀποφηνάμενον φίλος μὲν ὁ ἀνήρ, φίλτερον δὲ τὸ ἀληθές. Constantine Acropolites (died c. 1321), Epistulae, 12: οἶδα δὲ καὶ μετ᾿ ᾿Aρ ιστοτέλους φιλτέραν τοῦ φίλου ποιούμενον τὴν ἀλήθειαν καὶ οὐδενί τῳ ἂν τρόπῳ δεκάσοντα. Op. cit. 84: οἶδα γὰρ οἶδα ὡς τοῦ φίλου μᾶλλον ἤπερ ᾿Aριστοτέλης φιλτέραν ποιήσῃς ἂν τὴν ἀλήθειαν. Op. cit. 113: Φίλος μέν φησιν ὁ ἀνήρ, φιλτέρα δὲ ἡ ἀλήθεια. Op. cit. 144: καὶ διελθὼν ἐπιψήφισαι, τοῦ φίλου κατ᾿ ᾿Aριστοτέλην φιλτέραν ποιησάμενος τὴν ἀλήθειαν. Likewise, Gregory Acindynus (hieromonk, Constantinople, Thessaloniki, fourteenth century), Epistulae, 27. Bessa rion, De Sacramento Eucharistiae, 14.1: δυοῖν φίλοιν προκειμένοιν φιλτέραν νομίζομεν τὴν ἀλή

The H. Diels – W. Kranz collection and Aristotle

41

such an enquiry is as difficult as an uphill trek, because those who introduced the Forms are men dear [to us] (διὰ τὸ φίλους ἄνδρας). But perhaps it would appear to be better and incumbent upon us to confute theories that have been familiar to us (τὰ οἰκεῖα ἀναιρεῖν), all the more so, since we happen to be philosophers. Although both are dear to us (ἀμφοῖν γὰρ ὄντοιν φίλοιν),⁹⁸ it is our sacred duty to prefer the truth. ⁹⁹

In view of this, I have refrained from references to modern authors concerning specific interpretations, mainly disputatious ones, since, generally, it has been an entrenched custom to dismiss out of hand whatever Simplicius said about Anaxagoras as extrapolation, and piously to take Aristotle as a trustworthy witness. Despite a few dissenting¹⁰⁰ or doubting voices, modern scholarship has almost entirely relied on Aristotle’s parochial report. It has turned out that some points by authors of old, at which Anaxagoras’ philosophy is considered tacitly yet clearly, are often more important and revealing. Since there are such implicit considerations of Anaxagoras by both Plato and Aristole, I have tried to cast some light on their clandestine implications. Sometimes, though not always, later commentators grasped Aristotle’s implicit references to Anaxagoras and offered their own comments. Such references constitute a wealth of scholarship, sometimes sound. These quotations then (whch I put mainly in footnotes) are valuable evidence and make an essential part of my methodology, since I thought it incumbent upon me to share them with the readers of this book, so as to enable them consider the passages for themselves. To my experience, in modern bibliography there are several cases of citations which are entirely irrelevant to the point they are supposed to

θειαν. Michael Apostolius (a proverb writer, c. 1420, Constantinople; he died in 1474 or 1486, pos sibly in the Venetian Crete), Epistulae, 13: φίλος μὲν ὁ Σωκράτης, φιλτέρα δὲ ἡ ἀλήθεια.  Aristotle uses dual number, not plural, because he does not speak generally, but he has in mind two sides only: one, Plato himself; two, the truth.  Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, 1096a. His language at this point is deliberately ambiguous, since he means both the person and the theory of Plato. The expression τὰ οἰκεῖα ἀναιρεῖν in effect suggests τὰ εἴδη, that is, the ‘theory that nourished us since our youth’. I should remind that ἀναιρεῖν means ‘to refute’ as well as ‘to kill’. But then, by ἀμφοῖν γὰρ ὄντοιν φίλοιν, he re fers to his own theory as against the person of Plato (cf. διὰ τὸ φίλους ἄνδρας, a couple of lines above it), which is the source of the later Latin maxim, Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. See this passage of Aristotle discussed by later authors: Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Cu ratio, 9.49. John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, pp. 31; 248. Anna Comnena, Alexias, 14.7.3. Eustratius of Nicaea, In Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea i Commentaria, p. 42. Nicephorus Grego ras, Florentius, lines 992 8.  See the views of H. Cherniss, who argued that Aristotle misrepresented the Presocratics. Ar istotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy, John Hopkins Press, 1935. Also, an earlier work by Karl Reinhardt, Parmenides, Bonn, 1916.

42

Introduction

make. I believe that any reader should be able to check my argument for himself, and no one should have to visit a library every now and then in order to confirm the thousands of footnoted points of reference. An English translation of the great and respectable enterprise by H. Diels and W. Kranz was necessary and worthwhile, and this has indeed happened. However, I have not been able to see the point of producing new translations of the same excerpts, other than the desire of the translators to offer their own decipherments of those ‘oracles’ being always considered out of their context, while overlooking the aims of doxography, which ultimately goes back to Theophrastus, and in effect to Aristotle and his own purposes. Therefore, no matter how many English translations of the collection are produced, in no way can they further knowledge of the Presocratics; it would only add oracular resolutions by translators. Instead, it would be valuable to collect the instances of ancient scholarship in which Anaxagoras’ views are discussed without his name being mentioned. I realize that this is a much tougher proposition (I quote several portions of this kind in this book), but it would be pretty much like the work by J. von Arnim who compiled his collection of Old Stoic tenets by means of excerpts where no name of Stoic was mentioned, nor indeed the term ‘Stoic’ or ‘Stoicism’ appeared at all. Therefore, I should have thought that references of this kind could be of value only in the context of a comprehensive study about Anaxagoras’ thought, and this is what also I myself have essayed to do in this book.

Considering a triple context Now that I have revisited Plato and Aristotle in relation to Anaxagoras (and, inevitably, to several other Presocratics), I know that the points where they refer to Anaxagoras and criticize him implicitly are sometimes more important than those where mention of him is made by name. Only the latter are included in collections of excerpts, whereas all of the implicit (yet clear) references have been left aside, perhaps they were not noticed in the first place. In any event, it is plain that, in order for the D-K fragments to be properly assessed, a triple context is necessary. For when we read Simplicius, we should be alert to the fact that we read his commentaries on Aristotle, which should be also a warning signboard at the road to Presocratics. Therefore, we should consider the following: 1. Points which Simplicius and other Aristotelian commentators mean to make upon their own comments on portions of Aristotle, some of which deal with Anaxagoras, not always explicitly.

Considering a triple context

43

2. Points at which Aristotle criticizes Anaxagoras. We need to see how they affect his own exposition of other facets of his work, especially his consistency. What were the aims of Aristotle at the points where he felt it necessary to make explicit or implicit mention of Anaxagoras, normally (though not always) in order to degrade his contribution? In short, what was Aristotle’s own context? 3. Points that Anaxagoras himself made, in his own words. Almost all of them happen to be known to us from Simplicius alone. Aristotle criticized Anaxagoras heavily while concocting a caricature of him, in a manifestly jaundiced and spiteful spirit, which lends support to the claim that he did so only because Anaxagoras actually had anticipated him on such cardinal notions as the Immovable First Mover, the idea that the Mind/God is incorporeal, simple (ἁπλοῦν), unmixed (ἀμιγής), and ‘separate’ (χωριστός) from the things it produces, although ‘separate’ does not suggest utter and unapproachable transcendence; also, on the notion of the mind which comes from outside (θύραθεν νοῦς); besides, on the notion of Potentiality; likewise, on the divine nature of ‘aether’, which Aristotle made a ‘fifth body’ associated with the more divine realm of the cosmos. Moreover, Anaxagoras had grasped that there is only one kind of motion (namely, mutation following specific kinds of activity and interaction of the principles), whereas Aristotle was unable to posit less than six kinds of it. Any assessment of Anaxagoras calls for immediate access to texts, and for study of a threefold wider context (Anaxagoras speaking for himself, Aristotle’s aims speaking about Anaxagoras, Simplicius’ aims speaking about Aristotle speaking about Anaxagoras). Therefore, every now and then citation of ‘D-K’ (either ‘A’ or ‘B’) excerpts would be simply inadequate, since they would force the perplexed reader of any modern work on any Presocratic to pause reading and refer to that collection every two seconds, in order to discover what modern oracles determine that old excerpts mean. My thesis is that the best that can be done is studying Anaxagoras (as indeed all Presocratics) not on the basis of ‘fragments’, but of testimonies considered in their triple context. In respect of this philosopher, I thought it worth bringing Simplicius’ arguments about Anaxagoras’ philosophy to the fore, and to show the flagrant inconsistencies of Aristotle’s claims. Therefore, I am introducing a different methodology, which is much more difficult to pursue compared to deciphering ‘D-K’-passages, which I left aside altogether. Besides, a huge array of testimonies, from Plato right down to the end of the Byzantine era and beyond, heretofore ingnored, are put to use for the first time. Modern scholarship overlooks this indispensable duty of considering this triple context. Normally, a ‘DK’ citation is adduced proudly and confidently, which, it is believed, makes a modern work look ‘authoritative’, and the reader is expected to fall on his knees awaiting the pronouncement of the author’s resolution declaring what

44

Introduction

this D-K-solemn divination actually means. Little wonder then that, any assessment of the D-K fragments is analogous to decipherment of these passages as if they were Delphic oracles, the difference being that, when Aristotle pronounced his critical views, he was not in any Pythian ecstasy: he was absolutely sober, and focused on demonstrating that his own philosophy was the culmination and full revelation of truth that had been partially and inarticulately pronounced by his predecessors. During earlier decades it was noticed that Aristotle’s reports of earlier thinkers were of limited value, but the present book argues that the case is worse still: in fact, his comments are an obscuring veil hampering understanding of the Presocratics, particularly of Anaxagoras. Indeed, his accounts are not less hindering clear assessment than his views on physics caused retardation of science only because he was made an infallible authority venerated by the ecclesiastical establishment during the Middle Ages. Unlike all of existing modern bibliography on Anaxagoras, which by and large has been based on this assumption, the present book argues that we should free ourselves from Aristotle’s biased representation of his predecessors. Perhaps, since doxographic tradition depends ultimately on Aristotle himself and his successor Theophrastus, escaping influence of Aristotelian shenanigan would appear hopelessly impossible. I hope that the present book shows that it is not so. The deformation of Presocratic doctrines in (and by) later philosophy resulted in distortions which were determined by the aims of Aristotle’s own arguments. A way to point this out arguably is to consider his contradictory accounts about one and the same Anaxagorean doctrine, which happens also with other Presocratics: in the first book of the Metaphysics, we read that the Pythagoreans were materialists, whereas at other points he described them as upholders of the ‘formal cause’. Aristotle was not interested in Anaxagoras and in the other Presocratics for historical reasons: he only wanted to show that previous thinkers had only an obscure idea of true philosophy, which they were unable to articulate consistently and adequately. He represented their theories as only imperfect, stammering, and faint inarticulate anticipations of his own theories. For instance, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, and others, explained the variety of phenomena by the condensation and rarefaction of a single element, but Aristotle sought to read in this his own doctrine of contraries, although the premisses of Anaxagoras were very different. Aristotle was intelligent enough as to realize that his own analysis of Anaxagoras which resulted in preposterous conclusions was far too wanting, unless it were determined that Anaxagoras was a fool. Within his own context and premisses, Aristotle’s judgement was not lacking soundness: the problem was simply his determination to demean his predecessor. Had not this motive been there,

Considering a triple context

45

Aristotle himself would have considered Anaxagoras’ thought on the basis of the Clazomenian’s own premisses, not those of Aristotle’s, and he could have never rested content with his resolutions about Anaxagoras’ theory. This is the only reason why Aristotle’s analyses and answers ‘are more incomprehensible than the questions he set out to solve’. He knew himself perfectly well, but he chose to project his own deeper hermeneutic mood to his predecessors. In the second book of his treatise On the Heavens, he expresses his ostensible ‘amazement’ at the theories of Xenophanes and Thales, who did not realize that ‘the answers suggested [by them] are not recognized as being more incomprehensible than the question which they set out to solve’ (294a19‒22). Then, he makes a general remark (294b6‒13), which is illuminating in so far as it involves a personal confession: Thus, we may say of these theorists that they pursued the difficulty up to a point, but not as far as they might have. This is a habit which we all share, namely, relating an inquiry not to the subject matter itself, but to our opponent in argument. A man will even pursue a question in his own mind only up to the point at which he finds nothing to say against his own arguments. Therefore, anyone who aspires to conducting good research should be able to find objections to the genus of his own considerations, which means that he must [consider theories of his opponents] only after he has taken into account all of the differences [between his own philosophy and those of his opponents in argument]. Aristotle knew himself more than anyone else did, and he also knew that it was his ‘habit’ to consider Anaxagoras ‘only up to the point at which he found nothing to say against his own arguments’, even though he assured that he ‘aspires to conducting good research’. He declined ‘to find objections to the genus of his own considerations’ as much as did he refuse ‘to take into account all of the differences’ between his own philosophy and that of Anaxagoras. Hence, since Aristotle himself banned self-existence of incorporeal entities such as his own ‘forms’, he refused to consider the possibility of Anaxagoras’ principles being incorporeal. In the On the Heavens, 305a31‒33, he took it for granted that ‘generation from the incorporeal is impossible’ (οὔτε ἐξ ἀσωμάτου γίγνεσθαι δυνατόν), which is why ‘elements have to be generated from each other’. How could then have he ever allowed that the Anaxagorean principles which give rise to all reality are incorporeal? His inquiry stuck to his own ‘subject matter itself, but’ not to that of his ‘opponent’. Instead, like the mythological Procrustes, Aristotle forced Anaxagoras to fit the size of an iron bed, now stretching his views, then cutting off their legs, so as to compel them fit the size of Aristotle’s own iron bed. Since different lengths or sizes or properties had to comply with a Procrustean arbitrary standard, Aristotle forced Anaxagoras ‘to the genus of Aristotle’s own considera-

46

Introduction

tions’, and ‘only up to the point at which he found nothing to say against his own philosophical premisses’. It is indeed hardly a surprise that, following this parenthetical passage admitting ‘a habit’ that Aristotle himself ‘shared’, the names which occurred to him immediately upon resuming his exposition were those of Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and Democritus. What could be possibly made of Aristotle’s effort to reconcile an Anaxagorean point (which though he elsewhere condemns) with his own doctrine? I would not call this disputatiousness to the point of insincerity: I just believe this was all about ardent anxiety for self-justification. One can certainly concede that Aristotle was entitled to changing views even on fundamental points, which he actually did; one could even argue that it was legitimate for him to have adopted a Presocratic theory at one time, and then change it at another. But what should be made of shift of mood and argument occurring in the same work, indeed at points not too distant from one another? It is therefore important always to consider the context in which Aristotle mentioned (actually, criticized) Anaxagoras. What was Aristotle trying to make out of it? Normally, he strove to show that Anaxagoras had not anticipated Aristotle himself – although he had in fact done so, and Aristotle knew it, and conceded it at a few points (such as the doctrine of the First Immovable Mover, or that of the notion of potentiality). For indeed cardinal notions such as Potentiality, or the First Mover, were already there for Aristotle to avail himself of. His method was a twofold one: on the one hand, he essayed to render what Anaxagoras had said by representing a caricature of it. Beyond commonplace maxims circulating about Anaxagoras, he did not quote from the man who was ‘the first’ to expound his philosophy through a book: all of his references are in fact what he himself alleged that philosophy to be, and several of them are evidently the product of hearsay. On the other, at those points where it was impossible for him to obscure, hide, or lampoon Anaxagoras’ philosophy, he claimed that, although Anaxagoras had some inkling of those ideas, Aristotle himself couched them more articulately, and, what is more, he offered himself to ‘help’ (συνδιαρθρῶν) his predecessor to express himself more ‘philosophically’. According to Alexander of Aphrodisias, never did Aristotle suggest that Anaxagoras was not the real source of his own teaching; he only suggested that what appeared to be absurd was a specific rendering by exponents of his philosophy, who attributed their own understanding of Anaxagoras to Anaxagoras himself.¹⁰¹ This is why Aristotle wrote that, ‘if one were to follow

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 68: καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὴ εἶπε σαφῶς ταῦτα, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπη κολούθησεν ἂν τοῖς τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ οὕτως ἐξηγουμένοις, ὡς καὶ αὐτὸς ταῦτα βουλόμενος λέ γειν, ὅτι ταῦτα μὲν λόγον ἔχει, ἃ δὲ δοκεῖ λέγεσθαι ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἄτοπα παντάπασιν.

Considering a triple context

47

carefully’ what Anaxagoras said, ‘and interpret its meaning, perhaps it would be seen that [Anaxagoras] says something really new’,¹⁰² to which Alexander adds, ‘and entirely different from what all of the others said’ (καὶ ἰδιαίτερον παρὰ τοὺς ἄλλους). He concludes that Aristotle’s aim was to show how it was possible for the readers of Anaxagoras to follow his teaching and yet to be able to reconstruct what Anaxagoras really meant (λέγει δὲ καὶ πῶς ἔστιν ἐπακολουθοῦντα τοῖς λεγομένοις ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ συνδιαρθροῦν αὐτά). It appeared to Aristotle that history of philosophy had to wait until he himself came as the messiah destined to unveil the truth which, up to his times, had been articulated only falteringly and indistinctly, in shadow, as it were. At best, his polemic against them allows that they were only precursors of his own ideas. However, quite often, he misleads his readers by grouping together heterogeneous theories or thinkers (e.g. Atomists and Anaxagoras), which he represents as similar according to his volatile occasional points of view. In fact, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists appear as opposite to one another at one point, and as resembling theories at another. He feels free to call the elementary principles of the Presocratics στοιχεῖα, although the notion is not older than Plato, and to style Anaxagoras’ principles ὁμοιομερῆ, only because Aristotle himself decided to coin this term. Little wonder that modern scholars took them as notions of the Presocratics themselves, and confusion thereafter was only natural to prevail. In the first book of the Metaphysics, all of Presocratic thinkers are supposed to have held an unqualified, indeed crude, materialism, and Plato is represented as one who took Aristotle’s ‘formal cause’ to the extreme. Aristotle then represents himself as the one who sought a intermediate (or, a synthesis) between two extremes. After all, this was not only a learned way to trade on, but also a ‘virtuous’ one, since, by his own definition, virtue itself is the median between two extremes. But how can we trust that account of the Metaphysics, once Aristotle assured that Plato ‘for the most part, followed’ the Italian Pythagoreans, and the suggestion is that Plato should be commended for having been the first to recognize the formal cause? He represented the Presocratics as crude materialists, although even the fragmentary testimonies indicate that they were interested in processes as well as in the primary elements of bodies, and ascribing the notion of ὕλη to them was sheer anachronism. This is part of the well-known problem of erroneously

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989b4 6: ὅμως εἴ τις ἐπακολουθήσει τοῖς λεγομένοις ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ συν διαρθρῶν καὶ ἐξηγούμενος ἃ βούλεται λέγειν, φανείη ἂν καινοπρεπεστέρως λέγων, quoted by Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. pp. 68 9.

48

Introduction

reading into that thought ideas and notions of later philosophers, which some doxographers actually did: it appears as though Theophrastus read in Heraclitus a kind of Peripatetic pretty much like Theophrastus himself, whereas Hippolytus saw therein a sort of Gnostic, and others found it difficult to make out any distinction from Stoicism. The fact is, however, that men such as Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, or Democritus, were concerned with ‘saving the phenomena’ (σώζειν τὰ φαινόμενα), meaning, to discover the permanent principles which stand behind the multiplicity of natural processes, and to express all this in propositions which should be as simple as possible. To be a scientist meant looking for the hidden patterns underneath reality, and indeed this was the ideal pursued by scientists, as Eudemus reported.¹⁰³ Theon of Smyrna employed it, believing that it had been set forth by Pythagoras,¹⁰⁴ so did Posidonius,¹⁰⁵ as well as scientists such as Heraclides of Pontus and Aristarchus of Samos,¹⁰⁶ or Eudoxus of Cnidus and Callipus of Cyzicus.¹⁰⁷ Alexander of Aphrodisias, commenting on Aristotle’s On Heaven, 289b35, praised his treatment of heavenly spheres, and accorded him excellence on specific points in respect of some of his predecessors, who ‘tried to save the phenomena’ (τὰ φαινόμενα σώζειν πειρωμένων).¹⁰⁸ Proclus saw this ideal as a legacy employed by mathematicians and astronomers,¹⁰⁹ and claimed that Plato was equally interested in pursuing this.¹¹⁰ Simplicius confirmed that ‘saving the phenomena’ was of concern to Democritus, to the Pythagoreans, to Plato, and to Aristotle.¹¹¹ He mentioned respectfully this method at many points of his

 Eudemus of Rhodes (fr. 149, ref. to Callipus of Cyzicus, Euctemon, and Meton), apud Sim plicius, commCael, p. 497.  Theon of Smyrna (second century AD), De Utilitate Mathematicae, p. 150: καθὰ πρῶτος ἐνό ησε Πυθαγόρας, … περὶ δὲ τῆς θέσεως τῶν σφαιρῶν … ἥτις σώσει τὰ φαινόμενα διέξεισι ταῦτα. Cf. op. cit. p. 160: πῶς οὖν σώσει τὰ φαινόμενα; Op. cit. p. 161: καὶ σώσει τὰ φαινόμενα. Op. cit. p. 176: σώζεται γὰρ οὕτως τὰ φαινόμενα … σώσει τὰ φαινόμενα. Op. cit. p. 177: σωθήσεται τὰ φαινόμενα.  Posidonius, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 291 2.  Simplicius, commCael, pp. 445; 519. Cf. Plutarch reporting that Cleanthes accused Aris tarchus of impiety for striving to ‘save the phenomena’. De Facie in Orbe Lunae, 923A.  Simplicius, commCael, pp. 492; 504.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, quoted by Simplicius, commCael, p. 450.  Proclus, commRep, p. 229: οἱ μὲν οὖν ἀπὸ τῶν μαθημάτων ἐροῦσιν, ὅπως τὰ φαινόμενα δι ασώσωνται, τοιαύτας λαμβάνειν ὑποθέσεις. Op. cit. p. 230; Hypotyposis Astronomicarum Posi tionum, 2.36; 5.10; 5.113.  Proclus, commTim, p. 353.  Cf. Simplicius, commCael, pp. 32; 509; 510; 641. Cf. reference to Aristotle by Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 506; 516: ταύτας οὖν καὶ τὰς τοιαύτας ἐνστάσεις ὡς ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνων λύων ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης δύ νασθαί φησι τὰ φαινόμενα σώζεσθαι.

Considering a triple context

49

commentaries, and explained it accurately: in the first place, a few principles (in modern terms: axioms) are posited, and then everything should be explained by means of treating them logically and consistently.¹¹² John Philoponus also credited Aristotle with the scientific quest for ‘saving the phenomena’ as much as did he so for Greek astronomers.¹¹³ A famous story has it that Anaxagoras was once asked what is reason for someone to live, and what the main task in life is, to which he replied, ‘to observe the heaven (τοῦ θεάσασθαι τὸν οὐρανόν), and the stars all around it [the heaven] and [around] the sun and the moon.’ I. Düring attributed this to Aristotle, Protrepticus, but H. Pistelli deemed it a testimony from Iamblichus’ Protrepticus, p. 51.¹¹⁴ Probably, both Greeks did so, since Aristotle wrote that, when Anaxagoras was asked what is the reason for someone to live at all, his reply was ‘to contemplate the heaven and the cosmic order’ (τοῦ θεωρῆσαι τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν περὶ τὸν ὅλον κόσμον τάξιν).¹¹⁵ On the other hand, Iamblichus attributed the concern about contemplating the heaven not only to Anaxagoras, but also to Pythagoras himself, to whom he ascribed the same phrase.¹¹⁶ Philo, speaking of the heaven, gives a similar testimony: It was the heaven that Anaxagoras had been gazing at, when in answer to the person who asked why he suffered discomfort by spending the whole night under the open sky, he said he did so in order to contemplate the cosmos (τοῦ τὸν κόσμον θεάσασθαι), by cosmos meaning the choric movements and revolutions of the stars. ¹¹⁷

Diogenes Laertius and Philostratus had similar things to say.¹¹⁸ Actually, Laertius quotes an epigram that the Lampsacenes wrote on Anaxagoras’ grave, after they gave him a full honours funeral.

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 565: οἵ τε Πυθαγόρειοι καὶ ὁ Πλάτων, ἀλλ᾿ ὥσπερ οἱ ἀστρόνομοι ὑπ οθέσεις ὑπέθεντό τινας ἄλλοι ἄλλας οὐ πάντως τοιαύτας εἶναι ποικιλίας ἐν οὐρανῷ διαβεβαιού μενοι, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι τοιούτων ἀρχῶν ὑποτεθεισῶν σώζεσθαι τὰ φαινόμενα δυνατόν.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 331; De Opificio Mundi, p. 114.  Aristotle, Protrepticus, fr. 19. Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 51.  Aristotle, Ethica Eudemia, 1216a11 16.  Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 51: τί δὴ τοῦτο ἐστὶ Πυθαγόρας ἐρωτώμενος, τὸ θεάσασθαι εἶπε τὸν οὐρανόν, καὶ ἑαυτὸν δὲ θεωρὸν ἔφασκεν εἶναι τῆς φύσεως καὶ τούτου ἕνεκα παρεληλυθέναι εἰς τὸν βίον.  Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 4.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.10: ἐρωτηθείς ποτε, εἰς τί γεγέννηται, εἰς θεωρίαν, ἔφη, ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης καὶ οὐρανοῦ. Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, 2.5: τὸν μὲν Κλαζομένιον ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἀπὸ τοῦ κατὰ Ἰωνίαν Μίμαντος ἐπεσκέφθαι τὰ ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ.

50

Introduction

Anaxagoras, who in his quest of truth scaled all of the heaven up to the end of it (ἐπὶ τέρμα περήσας οὐρανίου κόσμου), is here laid to rest.¹¹⁹

Two intellectuals who lived during very different eras adduced the same testimony: Anaxagoras was not interested in transient things, but he sought to discover the laws standing behind generation and destruction;¹²⁰ in fact, his quest was to discover the truth of the real nature of things (τὰ ὄντα ὡς ἔχει), not simply the heaven as we see it from beneath (νέρθεν).¹²¹ However, prior to them all, Xenophon, who castigated Anaxagoras for having made the sun a mere fiery stone, wrote that Socrates dissuaded his pupils from prying into the mysteries of the heaven, because they were in danger of being deranged, just like Anaxagoras who went out of his mind, since he presumed that he was able ‘to explain the engines of gods’ (τὰς τῶν θεῶν μηχανὰς ἐξηγεῖσθαι).¹²² This epitomizes what Anaxagoras sought to understand throughout his life: mere phenomena do not reveal the truth about them; we need to discover ‘the engines of gods’ that make them be what they really are, which is no other than discovering the principles which determine the generation and function of the universe. By observing the heaven, Anaxagoras of course did not seek to find out what the heavenly bodies are made of: he sought to discover what stands behind this apparent reality, since he was famous (or notorious) for arguing that the sun is only a fiery one,¹²³ or simply a stone,¹²⁴ indeed all heavenly bodies are mere stones.¹²⁵

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.15.  Nicephorus Gregoras (Byzantine astronomer and historian, c. 1295 1360), Epistulae, 119a: ᾿Aναξαγόραν, ἐρωτηθέντα ὅτου χάριν εἰς γένεσιν ἥκειν ἕλοιτο μᾶλλον, τοῦ γε θεάσασθαι ἥλιον φάναι φασὶ καὶ οὐρανὸν καὶ ἀστέρας, ἅτε τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων, ὁπόσα γένεσιν καὶ φθορὰν ἐκτή σατο σύνοικον, οὐκ ὄντων ἀξίων αὐτῷ θεωρίας.  Maximus of Tyre, Dissertationes, 38.3: γενέσθαι δὲ αὐτῇ καὶ τὴν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ θέαν πολὺ τῆς νέρθεν σαφεστέραν. καὶ ἦν πιθανώτερος λέγων ταῦτα ὁ ᾿Aριστέας μᾶλλον ἢ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἢ Ξεν οφάνης ἐκεῖνος, ἤτις ἄλλος τῶν ἐξηγησαμένων τὰ ὄντα ὡς ἔχει.  Xenophon, Memorabilia, 4.7.6. This passage and context was quoted by Eusebius, Praepar atio Evangelica, 14.11.5. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 4.26. Stobaeus, op. cit. 2.31.127.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.8.6. Suda, letter alpha, entry 1981 & George Ce drenus, Compendium Historiarum, p. 278.  Plato, Apologia Socratis, 26d. Anonymous, Scholia in Pindarum, Ode 1, scholion 91a: περὶ δὲ τοῦ ἡλίου οἱ φυσικοί φασιν ὡς λίθος καλεῖται ὁ ἥλιος, καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρου δὲ γενόμενον τὸν Εὐρ ιπίδην μαθητὴν πέτρον εἰρηκέναι τὸν ἥλιον διὰ τῶν προεκκειμένων.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.11: φησὶ δὲ Σιληνὸς ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ τῶν Ἱστοριῶν τὸν δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρ αν εἰπεῖν ὡς ὅλος ὁ οὐρανὸς ἐκ λίθων συγκέοιτο. Michael Psellus attributed the idea to Anaxa

Considering a triple context

51

Certainly, this quest does not apply equally to all Presocratics, since differences between them were as many as the ideas they shared. In respect of pursuit of processes rather than phenomena themselves, difference of opinion were always there: to Protagoras, who believed that, in any phenomenon, ‘things are to me such as they seem to me, and to you such as they seem to you’,¹²⁶ perhaps seeking to ‘save the phenomena’ could make little sense, although I believe that this point needs to be studied further. The case was different with Democritus and Anaxagoras: while not granting credibility to human senses, they did not dispute that there is a certain truth concerning natural processes, which should be sought by means of logical argument. Sextus Empiricus reported that ‘at some points, Democritus abolishes the things that appear to the senses, and asserts that none of them appears in truth, but only in subjective opinion; the true fact in things is only the existence of atoms and void’.¹²⁷ On account of this, Democritus ‘praised Anaxagoras’, who maintained that ‘phenomena are a visual impression of non-evident things’ (ὄψις γὰρ τῶν ἀδήλων τὰ φαινόμενα).¹²⁸ Consequently, ‘some of the physicists, like Democritus, banned knowledge of all phenomena; others, like Epicurus and Protagoras, admitted them all; and others still, like the Stoics and Peripatetics, banned knowledge of some of them while allowing knowledgeability of others’.¹²⁹ Shortly before Sextus, Galen also confirmed that, on the same grounds, Democritus did not trust knowledge based on the senses (τὰ φαινόμενα διέβαλε), arguing that there is a reality to be explored beyond phenomena,¹³⁰ although this reality appears not to be the same to all living beings (τὸ μὴ ταὐτὰ πᾶσι φαίνεσθαι τοῖς ζῴοις), which is also what Theophrastus reported about Democritus.¹³¹ There is one point which would have been expected from Aristotle’s accounts: even if it were granted that a certain materialism was there, it is also evident that Presocratics sought to interpret natural processes rather than material things; therefore, the question was, on the one hand, what was the relation between material things and phenomena, and, on the other, what was the relation between the processes themselves? The fact is that he chose to obscure this cru-

goras, Empedocles, Democritus, and, ‘of the less ancient ones’, to Alexander of Aphrodisias. Mi chael Psellus, Opuscula i, 34, lines 105 6.  Protagoras, apud Plato, Cratylus, 386a1 2: οἷα μὲν ἂν ἐμοὶ φαίνηται τὰ πράγματα, τοιαῦτα μὲν ἔστιν ἐμοί· οἷα δ᾿ ἂν σοί, τοιαῦτα δέ σοι.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 7.135.  Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. 7.140. See discussion in the Conclusion of Part I, pp. 487 ff.  Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. 7.369.  Galen, De Experientia Medica, 15.7.  Theophrastus, De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 63.

52

Introduction

cial point by applying logical concepts of his own to a mindset that had never entertained them, and, in fact, those concepts were unheard of by his predecessors. For indeed Anaxagoras (as well as Anaximenes and Heraclitus) had never heard of substances and qualities, nor did they see moisture, dryness, heat, and cold as abstractions. My argument in this study is that Anaxagoras’ principles (which Aristotle dubbed ‘homoiomeries’) are not qualities, which are mere products of the principles. Simplicius discussing the views of Pythagoreans and Democritus in terms posterior to them, explained that those philosophers sought to discover ‘the origins of qualities’ (ἀρχὰς τῶν ποιοτήτων ἐπιζητοῦντας), and they were satisfied that positing fundamental principles could explain how qualities are produced out of them; this was part of their overall ambition to ‘save the phenomena’ (διαβεβαιούμενοι, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι τοιούτων ἀρχῶν ὑποτεθεισῶν σώζεσθαι τὰ φαινόμενα).¹³² It is all but coincidence that doxographic reports treat Anaxagoras’ ‘homoimeries’ as being different from ‘qualities’ which were taken as fundamental principles only by Strato of Lampsacus (c. 335 ‒ c. 269 BC), the Peripatetic philosopher and third director (scholarch) of the Lyceum after Theophrastus.¹³³ Aristotle sought to bring into relief specific features of his own philosophy, but this does not suffice to justify tendentious paraphrase of the arguments of his predecessors and his caring little about ascribing to them anything roughly resembling their real views. Therefore, no statement of Aristotle on Anaxagoras (indeed on any Presocratic) should be used unless all other passages dealing with the same argument, and with Anaxagoras’ thought as a whole, have been examined in their full context, in order to find out Aristotle’s aim while discussing it. Besides, in each particular case, we should be alert to the Aristotelian argument and outlook in which Anaxagoras’ supposed views are embedded, and we should try to discern opinionated interpretations of doctrine, or adoption of interpretations by Plato (such as the claim that Anaxagoras made nothing of the Mind, although he was the first to introduce this idea in philosophy). We should also examine if Anaxagoras’ accounts were actually deficient, as Aristotle described them, only because they were not couched in later (Aristotelian) terminology; that is, we should examine if the notions rather than the terms are implicitly there. Otherwise, confusion between archaic and classical ways of putting a problem could lead nowhere. The question is then whether ideas of Aristotle (such as that of potentiality) existed earlier, and if this can be shown by

 Simplicius, commCael, p. 565.  See discussion in chapter 7, pp. 463 7.

Considering a triple context

53

means of Anaxagoras’ statements and terms, not of those of Aristotle, and much besides. If this aspect of my analyses is seen as contribution to a negative understanding of Aristotle, so be it. The ambition of this book is to offer a key which could open some closed doors, and it is twofold: on the one hand, it considers all testimonies along with the context and aims of witnesses; on the other, it brings all pertinent inconsistencies and aims of Aristotle’s polemic to light, in respect of Anaxagoras at least. This is not simply about rebutting this polemic: what is more, it is hopefully a way out, since learned scholars of old, as well as more recent ones, did not care to draw conclusions as to the real content and meaning of critical aspects of Presocratic thought from that polemic. I have always believed that the Greeks set forth a didactic example: we should approach our patrimony with respect, but we should not fall to our knees while considering them; those who wrote them were not less of human beings that modern people are, with their merits, virtues, capabilities, as well as weaknesses, personal sympathies or animosities, and ambitions. This is all too human, after all, for which reason the standards to measure human nature either then or now are not as alien to each other as some people like to believe. However, whereas Aristotle’s taking account of his predecessors was made in behalf of justifying a personal philosophical view and ambition, modern criticism should be made in behalf of historical truth. Besides, although the Presocratic context is considered as much as possible, the present monograph is mainly about Anaxagoras, that is, about an individual philosopher. This means that my approach is different from that of Aristotle’s, who was interested not in the individuality of a single philosopher, but in belittling an entire tradition that preceded him. That all history of philosophy owes its existence to Aristotle, is a view that has been maintained by serious intellectuals. I myself can only advance this thesis by showing that he did write a book that was used by later doxographers. Quite evidently, Aristotle largely owed his own intellectual existence to the Presocratics. What history of philosophy would have been there had the works of those philosophers survived, I simply cannot tell. I believe then that criticism of Aristotle as a suspect and untrustworthy witness does not make the exposition less of an analysis. For it is impossible to square his indisputable scientific exactitude with the obscurity he forced upon the precise statements of his predecessors. Moreover, it is well known that Aristotle’s works, as we now have them, are only notes for classes, which is why they have not the elegance of the Platonic texts that were written by their author during the course of a convenient, glorious, and luxurious life. Little wonder that scholars, who otherwise admired Ar-

54

Introduction

istotle, rebuked him for his obscurity, which often made his students of Late Antiquity very nervous and unable to understand what he really meant to say. Consequently, they censured Aristotle for reconditeness, and hot controversy over what he really believed raged for very long, with commentators speaking of Aristotle’s notorious obscurity, complaining that a mantis rather than a scholar was needed in order for what he really believed to be deciphered.¹³⁴ Aristotle blamed Anaxagoras for being unclear concerning the doctrine of the soul. For all his admiration for Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias pointed out that there was something wrong about the way Aristotle treated Plato’s philosophy. Then, he wondered how was it possible for Aristotle not to say a single word about Plato’s mention of the poietic cause, since Plato had made a clear statement about it in the Timaeus. ¹³⁵ By the same token, why did Aristotle not mention that also Plato had posited a final cause? ¹³⁶ And when Hippolytus read Aristotle’s account of the same topic, he wrote that this was unintelligible: once one reads three tracts of Aristotle from start to finish, one cannot say for sure what he actually believed about the soul.¹³⁷ Sophonias was severe in his criticism and chastised almost every aspect of the Aristotelian text, even in terms of grammatical use of terms and unscrupulous composition of sentences; in this context, he used the rare word μεταξυλογία,¹³⁸ which means interpolation of irrelevant remarks between the beginning and end of a certain proposition, so that, when one reaches the end of a passage, they are already confused as to what Aristotle ac-

 Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 1 (proem): τίς γὰρ οὐκ οἶδεν ὥσπερ εἰ χρησμούς τινας πολλα χοῦ τὴν ᾿Aριστοτελικὴν οὖσαν φράσιν καὶ μαντείας δεῖσθαι; Likewise, p. 31: ὥσπερ γὰρ εἴπομεν πρότερον, οὐδὲ μαντεύσασθαι ῥᾴδιον ἐξ αὐτῶν. See discussion in chapter 8, pp. 570 9.  Alexander quotes Timaeus, 28c3 4: “Now, to discover the Maker and Father of this universe is hard indeed; and once one has dicovered Him, to declare Him to all men is impossible.” In this, Alexander saw proof that Plato did introduce a creative cause (καὶ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον ἐν οἷς λέγει). commMetaph, p. 59.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, loc. cit. He quotes from Plato’s Second Epistle, 312e (like everyone else in Late Antiquity, he considered this as genuine), as proof text that Plato introduced a final cause (ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ οὗ ἕνεκεν καὶ τέλος δι᾿ ὧν πάλιν λέγει). Plato’s phrase (which Alexander did not quote further) goes on with speaking of this ‘King’ as a ‘cause’: “and He is the cause of all good things (καὶ ἐκεῖνο αἴτιον ἁπάντων τῶν καλῶν)”. See a more detailed discussion of this in chapter 8. Attribution of Plato’s epistles has been a matter of controversy among modern schol ars, but discussing this is beyond my scope.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 7.19.4: Ὁ δὲ Περὶ ψυχῆς αὐτῷ λόγος ἐστὶν ἀσαφής· ἐν τρισὶ γὰρ συγγράμμασιν ὅλοις οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν σαφῶς ὅ τι φρονεῖ περὶ ψυχῆς ᾿Aριστοτέλης.  The term suggests idle talking between the beginning and end of a certain exposition, by interpolation of irrelevant digressions. It is hard to translate this term in English, since literally it could be rendered ‘between ology’.

Simplicius as a witness

55

tually meant to say.¹³⁹ Later still, the last Greek and erudite scholar George Gemistus (or, Plethon) remarked that Aristotle wrote about the immortality of the soul in an ambiguous manner (ἐνδοιαστῶς γοῦν ἁπανταχοῦ καὶ οὐδαμοῦ βεβαίως οὐδ᾿ ἰσχυριζόμενος ἅπτεται αὐτοῦ); also, that he used short and unclear statements (διὰ βραχυλογίαν οὐ πάνυ τοι σαφῶς) and made no definitive statements about this issue. In George Gemistus’ view, ‘Plato was much better than Aristotle’ (Πλάτων ᾿Aριστοτέλους πολὺ ἀμείνων) for another reason, which was more serious and more general: Plato was consistent with himself throughout (διὰ πάντων συμφώνως αὐτὸς αὑτῷ τῷ λόγῳ ἐπεξέρχεται), and this, not obscurity, is what befits a really wise man (σοφῷ πρέπον τὸ τοιοῦτο πολὺ μᾶλλον ἢ ἣν σὺ φῇς λέξεως ἀσάφειαν); on the other hand, Aristotle is caught at many points of his work to be inconsistent with his own doctrines (᾿Aριστοτέλης ἄλλοθί τε πολλαχοῦ καὶ δὴ καὶ ἐνταῦθα αὐτὸς τοῖς αὑτοῦ ἁλίσκεται δόγμασιν ἀσύμφωνος).¹⁴⁰ Late antique commentators treated Aristotle with respect, but they could not afford not to make mention of the stumbling blocks of vagueness they were faced with while reading his works. Therefore, a study of Anaxagoras should involve not only what Aristotle said of him mentioning his name, but also what he said of him implicitly, which calls for study of all of Aristotle’s commentators, who frequently dissented from each other as to what his text really meant.

Simplicius as a witness Simplicius’ analyses of Anaxagoras are currently being dismissed as ‘Neoplatonic’. However, his contribution supplying us with Anaxagoras’ own words cannot be discredited. Besides, living in the twenty-first century is an outstanding vantage point in order to assess not only Anaxagoras himself, but also Simplicius’ exposition of that philosophy, Aristotle’s criticism, and the quality of modern scholarship about Anaxagoras none the less. He is the sole ancient witness that gave us extensive access to Anaxagoras’ own words. He alone also perceived that this philosophy is about not a system of material elements, but a theory of immaterial principles, which are the generative and cohesive causes for the universe to exist and function. Against this, Aristotle imposed his own category of material homoiomeries on Anaxagoras. But once Aristotle’s rendering (I should not call it ‘understanding’) is pursued to its

 Sophonias, op. cit. p. 2: ἀλλὰ κινδυνεύειν ἐπιλελῆσθαι τῇ μεταξυλογίᾳ καὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ τοῖς ἑξῆς συγκεχυμένως προσφέρεσθαι.  George Gemistus, Contra Scholarii pro Aristotele Obiectiones, 25.

56

Introduction

ultimate consequences, then glaring implausibilities follow. I discuss the views of other Presocratics (Empedocles, Parmenides, Democritus, Anaximander, et. al.) to the extent that is called for by the exposition of my topic, and I have been at pains to point out that the intellectual universe of the Presocratics was quite different from the philosophical milieu in which later Greek thinkers assessed the views of their predecessors, and so was the philosophical locution they used to that purpose. With respect to the question, ‘why should we not suppose that Simplicius had his own philosophical agenda to promote, hence he interpolated the notion of immaterial principles into his analyses of Anaxagoras?’, I have engaged in extensive analyses, not only general ones, but also in ad hoc discussion of points of his commentaries that conspire to show indisputably that Simplicius had not such an intention. Concerning this issue, I should refer the reader also to the conclusion of this book, since some specific points are discussed therein. For the time being, I just mention some general ones: 1. Aristotle availed himself heavily of cardinal notions of the Anaxagorean philosophy, which is why he berated his predecessor. Nevertheless, he admitted that his notion of the Immovable First Mover was a loan from Anaxagoras, he adumbrated it in plain Anaxagorean terms, and also admitted that the notion of potentiality was already there for Aristotle himself to draw on it. 2. To this purpose, Aristotle did not quote a single passage from Anaxagoras, except for commonplaces circulating widely as catchphrases (e. g. ‘all things were together’, and the like). 3. Even Aristotelian commentators to whom Aristotle was a hero, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, saw some of Aristotle’s implausible assertions concerning Anaxagoras, and Asclepius of Tralles, in the sixth century, followed Alexander suit. The dissent between Aristotelian commentators on some of Aristotle’s assessment of Anaxagoras is noteworthy, and it is discussed throughout this book. Simplicius, who treated Aristotle gently and with respect, dialectically discusses some of Aristotle’s implausible claims, and any reader of Simplicius can assess such points for himself. 4. Unlike Aristotle, Simplicius had no intention of appropriating anything from anyone: he always humbly described himself as a mere commentator, indeed he did so more than all others did, ever since Plotinus. Moreover, at times he humbled himself further by reporting that what he wrote was only lessons having been delivered by his master Ammonius of Alexandria, or mere exegeses on propositions by philosophers of old. 5. The very fact that Simplicius, for the first time, quoted extensively from Anaxagoras make it possible for his readers to assess for themselves whether his exegeses of that philosophy were plausible, or they were only extrapolations

Simplicius as a witness

57

by a Neoplatonist. I have discussed several points which lend support to the argument that Simplicius did not essay to make Anaxagoras a ‘Neoplatonist’; rather, the case was that some earlier Neoplatonists availed themselves of Anaxagorean ideas, sometimes without even being aware of this. 6. This is what I have called ‘clandestine influence’ of Anaxagoras upon some philosophers, which is also discussed apropos of specific points made by Late Antiquity intellectuals. This means influence that was not always conscious of its debts, in like a manner Plotinus’ work ‘was covertly full of Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines, and the Metaphysics of Aristotle was there densely’.¹⁴¹ However, sometimes in history intellectuals are influenced through second or third hand intermediaries. In that case, influence on them by a primary source might appear to us as a sort of serependity, although actually it is not. I myself could not go as far as to consider the Monadology by G.W. Leibniz in that light, but I would urge reading it, since the blend which points to Pythagoreanism, Anaxagoras, and Atomism is too desperate to make out, and yet always something of either of them all is indeed there. Concerning Simplicius as a witness, these are some general considerations. There also specific instances in various authors, and in Simplicius himself, which are discussed, and they show why he was a trustworthy exponent, not an extrapolator. In chapter 12, it is shown that Aristotle’s references to many immovable movers of the heavenly spheres are inexorably incompatible with his philosophy, and they constitute a flagrant self-contradiction. To this purpose, I canvass some specific portions of his work introducing this idea that has tantalized inconclusively some good scholars of the twentieth century. Had the specific portions of Aristotle not survived, and were it only for Simplicius to know and report them, one can imagine the easy modern reception of it: Simplicius made it all up as ‘Neoplatonic’ interpretation of Aristotle while distorting it. But Aristotle’s passages are extant, only to confirm that Simplicius was a truthful exponent and his interpretation was the product of sincere reflection, not of wishful thinking. No matter how inconvenient, Simplicius considered Aristotle’s immovable movers in exactly the same way Aristotle himself did: heavenly bodies are moved by those movers which he styled ‘first moving causes’ (κινούμενα ταῦτα ὑπὸ τῶν πρώτως κινούντων αἰτίων), thus endorsing Aristotle who postulated that the First Immovable Mover is not the sole immovable cause of motion, nor is this alone a self-subsistent incorporeal being.¹⁴² Both propositions show  Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 14: Ἐμμέμικται δ᾿ ἐν τοῖς συγγράμμασι καὶ τὰ Στωικὰ λανθάνοντα δόγ ματα καὶ τὰ Περιπατητικά· καταπεπύκνωται δὲ καὶ ἡ Μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους πραγματεία.  See chapter 12, pp. 1096 ff.

58

Introduction

how trustworthy an exponent of the ancient legacy Simplicius was, notwithstanding those points being a detriment to Aristotle’s consistency. By the same token, Simplicius did not make Anaxagoras a ‘Neoplatonist’; in fact, things occurred the other way around: some Neoplatonists saw in Anaxagoras the real source of a consistent solution to the ancient problem of how exactly did the material universe come to be from immaterial principles. As ‘Neoplatonists’ as indeed they were, their thought was leavened by Anaxagoras’ ideas while they pursued their own purposes claiming allegiance to no other than Plato, and allegedly not abandoning the pattern of Plotinus. What the Physics of the twenty-first century has to say about the questions and answers that the Physicist Anaxagoras dealt with, leaves us with three alternatives: either Simplicius’ exegesis of Anaxagoras was a conspiracy to represent him as ‘Neoplatonist’; or, the latest achievements of Modern Physics, which vindicate Anaxagoras in some respects, are also ‘Neoplatonic’ ones; or, which I argue for, Anaxagoras was an insightful thinker, yet one who spoke out of sound reason, and his value can be only recognized in light of the recent scientific accomplishments that reveal a universe which has nothing to do with that of the Newtonean Physics. It is for the reader of this book to decide which of the three foregoing options he will cast his vote for.

Aristotle: a doxographic source for Aetius, Plutarch, and Stobaeus In this book, I am not going to refer readers to Aetius: his existence and book (entitled Περὶ ᾿Aρεσκόντων Ξυναγωγή) is indeed attested by Theodoret,¹⁴³ on which Diels based his entire hypothesis about the existence and work of Aetius. However, I prefer to cite evidence as it is found in extant literature, which is heavily quoted by Eusebius citing Plutarch, whose doxographic book is currently regarded as spurious, although all of ancient authors treated it as genuine.¹⁴⁴  Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 4.31; cf. 2.95; 5.16.  Despite slight differences stemming from currente calamo, four different sources quote the same title for Plutarch’s work. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.13.9: τὰς δόξας συναγαγὼν ὁ Πλούταρχος ἐν οἷς ἐπέγραψε Περὶ τῶν ἀρεσκόντων τοῖς φιλοσόφοις φυσικῶν δογμάτων. Theodor et, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 4.31: ἀναγνώτω δὲ Πλουτάρχου τὴν Περὶ τῶν τοῖς φιλοσόφοις δοξάντων ἐπιτομήν. Franciscus Philelphus, Epistulae, 63: Καὶ γὰρ παρὰ Πλουτάρχῳ ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ βίβλῳ τῶν περὶ τῶν τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ἀρεσκόντων οὕτως ἐστὶ κατὰ λέξιν εὑρεῖν. Michael Aposto lius (a proverb writer, c. 1420, Constantinople; he died in 1474 or 1486, possibly in Venetian Crete), Epistulae, Epistle 123: καὶ τὰ πονηθέντα Πλουτάρχῳ Περὶ τῶν ἀρεσκόντων τοῖς φιλοσόφοις.

Aristotle: a doxographic source for Aetius, Plutarch, and Stobaeus

59

The ‘epitome of doctrines of philosophers’ by Plutarch is also attested by Theodoret.¹⁴⁵ Although authors until the fifteenth century believed that this was a genuine work of Plutarch, I quote ‘Pseudo-Plutarch’ only by convention and concession to the modern editor believing so.¹⁴⁶ Hermann Diels, in his Doxographi Graeci, ¹⁴⁷ took Theodoret’s citation of Aetius’ book as meaning that Theodoret had full versions of the quotes which were shortened in the abridgements. He claimed that Aetius himself was merely abridging a work that Diels himself called the Vetusta Placita (‘Older Tenets’), by which it appears that he went a little too far. This proposition enjoyed much discussion by scholars, but I am not going to consider nor indeed dispute this in the present book, and certainly not to assume that Aetius’ ‘book’ is definitely reconstructed from Plutarch’s ‘Opinions of the Philosophers’ and from Stobaeus’ ‘Physical and Moral Extracts’, so as to be possible for me to cite Aetius, instead of the authors themselves, e.g. Plutarch, Galen (both styled ‘pseudo-’), Porphyry, Theodoret, and the fifteen-century Franciscus Philelphus, mentioned in a moment) who probably availed themselves of him to one extent or another. To say the least, Theodoret clearly says that he drew not only on Aetius, but also on Plutarch’s collection, as well as on Porphyry’s history of philosophy.¹⁴⁸ Aetius is anyway a real historical figure, but nothing can be really said either of when he actually lived, or of anything else about his life and work. I should only add an important note on this issue. In the fifteenth century, Franciscus Philelphus, the erudite humanist of the Italian Renaissance (1398‒1481, who translated portions of Aristotle, Plutarch, Xenophon and Lysias from Greek), wrote a letter in admirable classical Greek to Gennadius Scholarius, in which he said that, by that time, he was unable to find a book written by Aristotle, entitled De Placitis Philosophorum (περὶ τῶν ἀρεσκόντων τοῖς φιλοσόφοις). The list of Aristotle’s books by Laertius that we now have does not include this, but Philelphus says that Diogenes Laertius had reported that Aristotle wrote such a work,¹⁴⁹ and that Philelphus himself did not manage to discover it (εἴ τι δεῖ τῷ Διογένει Λαερτίῳ προσέχειν, οὔπω προστυχὴς ἐγενόμην), ‘either because

 Theodoret, op. cit. 4.31.  Cf. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, in J. Mau, Plutarchi Moralia, vol. 5.2.1, Leipzig, 1971, pp. 50 153.  H. Diels, Doxographi Graeci, Berlin, 1879 (repr. De Gruyter, 1965).  Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.95; 4.31; 5.16.  Franciscus Philelphus, Epistulae, Epistle 12: τῷ γὰρ Περὶ τῶν ἀρεσκόντων τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ᾿Aριστοτέλει ποιηθέντι βιβλίῳ οὔπω καὶ τήμερον ἐντετύχηκα· πλείστοις γὰρ καὶ ἄλλοις τῶν ἐκεί νῳ συγγεγραμμένων, εἴ τι δεῖ τῷ Διογένει Λαερτίῳ προσέχειν, οὔπω προστυχὴς ἐγενόμην.

60

Introduction

this was altogether lost (ἤτοι τὸ παράπαν ἀπολεσθεῖσιν), or because certain ignorant men dug this in, since they were unable to benefit themselves from it’ (ἢ καὶ παρά τισι τῶν ἀμαθῶν κατορωρυγμένοις, οὔτ᾿ ἐκείνους ὠφελεῖν οὐδ᾿ ὁπωσοῦν δυναμένοις).¹⁵⁰ Although Franciscus wrote that his efforts to find it were to no avail, he appears sure of the existence of that book. He added that he knew the doxographic work by Plutarch, but he was sure that, as regards Aristotle’s assessment of the Platonic Ideas, ‘Plutarch got it entirely wrong’ (τὸ δὲ τῷ ᾿Aριστοτέλει δοκοῦν πάμπαν ἡμαρτημένον).¹⁵¹ The erudite humanist was very specific as to what he was looking for, which was to determine what Aristotle actually believed the Platonic Ideas to be (τί ἔστιν ἰδέα κατ᾿ ᾿Aριστοτέλην).¹⁵² Nevertheless, he did not want to know this in general, namely, how Aristotle treats the Ideas: he had read many other works by Aristotle, such as his Ethics (meaning, Nicomachean and Eudemian ones) and Metaphysics, but he was disappointed, because ‘it was not easy to grasp’ from those books what Aristotle really believed about Plato’s Ideas (οὐ ῥᾴδιον τὴν ἐκείνου φωράσαι δόξαν). For ‘although in those works he seems to contradict Plato, in reality, he refutes different theories of Ideas (τῇ δ᾿ ἀληθείᾳ πρὸς διαφόρους περὶ ἰδεῶν δόξας), which was pointed out by commentators such as Simplicius, who said so in his commentary on [Aristotle’s] Physics’. Besides, authors such as ‘Porphyry and Simplicius showed that there were different theories of Ideas, and, before them all, Plato said so’. Whereas Plato himself maintained that the Ideas ‘are prior to the Demiurge, and they are distinct from both each other and from the Demiurge himself’, others maintained that such a distinction should be understood ‘only intellectually’ (λόγῳ μόνῳ), whereas others argued that this distinction was ‘also an actual’ one (καὶ πράγματι). Franciscus concludes that ‘in view of such a wide dissent’, it is impossible to determine accurately what Aristotle thought the Ideas to be (οὐ ῥᾴδιον τανῦν ἀκριβέστερον περὶ τούτου διορίσασθαι τὴν ᾿Aριστοτέλους ἀποφῄνασθαι δόξαν). Thus, in his next epistle, he says that the only way to determine what Aristotle held the Platonic Ideas to be could be reading Aristotle’s own doxographic book entitled Περὶ τῶν ἀρεσκόντων τοῖς φιλοσόφοις. Franciscus was aware of Plutarch’s book under the same title, and quotes from ‘the first book’ of it (παρὰ Πλουτάρχῳ ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ βίβλῳ τῶν περὶ τῶν τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ἀρεσκόντων οὕτως ἐστὶ κατὰ λέξιν εὑρεῖν), but he adds that ‘clearly Plutarch got that point wrong’ (τοῦτον τοίνυν τὸν τόπον διεφθαρμένον εἶναι

 Franciscus Philelphus, op. cit. Epistle 12, written in 1436.  Franciscus Philelphus, op. cit. Epistle 62, written in 1464.  Loc. cit.

Aristotle: a doxographic source for Aetius, Plutarch, and Stobaeus

61

σαφές),¹⁵³ and Philelphus was correct on this. For indeed Aristotle maintained that ‘forms’ are inseparable from matter, but he did not believe so about the Ideas.¹⁵⁴ The importance of those letters by Philelphus lies in this: he was a scholar that had abundant access to ancient texts, and he was confident that Aristotle had indeed written an ad hoc book expounding the theories of philosophers prior to his own era, until Plato; this book was included in the list of Aristotle’s work by Laertius, which should have been a copy now lost to us, but it was known to Philelphus; and ‘the similar work by Plutarch was dependent on that composition by Aristotle’. As far as I can tell, there is no other evidence that Aristotle wrote such a book. However, there are two references, one by Simplicius and another by Stobaeus, which, in my view, suggest something of the kind. Simplicius refers to certain views by the Pythagoreans, and cites the work in which he read this: the title of it was, Τῶν Πυθαγορείοις ᾿Aρεσκόντων Συναγωγή. ¹⁵⁵ This is strikingly similar to the one used by both Aetius and Plutarch in their own collections, and, in all probability, Simplicius cites not the entire work by Aristotle, but only the section of the book referring to the doctrines that the Pythagoreans espoused. The other testimony comes from Stobaeus: he refers to ‘the first book’ of Aristotle’s work entitled ‘On the philosophy of Pythagoras’ (Ἐν δὲ τῷ Περὶ τῆς Πυθαγόρου φιλοσοφίας πρώτῳ),¹⁵⁶ which is clearly an independent work, since, at the same point, the author quotes separately also from Aristotle’s Physics, 213b22. Hermann Diels took this quotation by Stobaeus as one having been taken up from Aetius. However, my own suggestion is that Stobaeus took this up directly from Aristotle’s own work, not only because he quotes at the same point from that work by Aristotle as confidently as he does from the Physics, but also because Simplicius attests to this work, too. And we know that Simplicius had

 Franciscus Philelphus, op. cit. Epistle 63, written in 1464. Likewise, Epistle 62: ᾿Aναγνοὺς ἐγὼ περὶ ἰδεῶν παρὰ Πλουτάρχῳ τινά, τἆλλα μὲν εὗρον κεῖσθαι καλῶς ἅπαντα· τὸ δὲ τῷ ᾿Aρισ τοτέλει δοκοῦν πάμπαν ἡμαρτημένον.  Aristotle styled the Theory of Ideas ‘twitterings’ (τερετίσματα), i. e. idle talking (Analytica Posteriora, 83a33), and the notion of ‘participation’ (μέθεξις) ‘poetic metaphors’ (Metaphysica, 991a, repeated on 1079b).  Simplicius, commCael, p. 386: ὡς αὐτὸς ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἱστόρησεν ἐν τῇ τῶν Πυθαγορείοις ἀρεσκόντων συναγωγῇ.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.18.1c.

62

Introduction

abundant and convenient access to all of Aristotle’s work, part of which is now lost to us. In view of this, my proposition is that the title itself that both Aetius and Plutarch used, in the first place had been used by Aristotle himself, and they somehow suggested that their doxographic work, up to their own times, was a supplement to Aristotle’s original exposition of old philosophy. H. Diels claimed that Aetius was merely abridging a work that Diels himself (who wrote his paper in Latin) entitled Vetusta Placita (‘Older Tenets’), which was an invention of his own, and it is normally dismissed rather than accepted by modern scholarship. My own suggestion is that probably Aetius, Plutarch, Stobaeus, and Simplicius, they all quoted from a book by Aristotle titled, Τῶν ᾿Aρεσκόντων τοῖς Φιλοσόφοις Συναγωγή, which is attested by Franciscus Philelphus, and somehow by Simplicius, and the same title was invariably taken up by Aetius and Plutarch, at least, who wrote their own collections in the spirit of supplementing Aristotle’s book. This means that the ultimate source that fatally determined all doxography was not in fact the Opinions of the Physicists by Theophrastus,¹⁵⁷ but Aristotle himself, and the specific term used in title, namely, τῶν ἀρεσκόντων, which was also taken up by his successors, as above, suggests that, to Aristotle, all those theories were what philosophers ‘liked’, not the truth itself. For he always was satisfied that absolute truth came into philosophy for the first time only with his own works. However, his aim was not doxography: it was to round up his predecessors and sterilize them, so that no spiritual offspring of them should be allowed to flourish. He was largely successful in sealing their fate, since study of the Presocratics predominantly has been based on his texts, no matter how inconclusive and contradictory they are. He painted Anaxagoras’ philosophy in black and white terms which wereAristotelian, not Anaxagorean, and all too often did he make nonsense seem common sense. Despite his commentators pointing out inconsistencies, obnubilation, reconditeness, ambivalence, and incomprehensibility of analyses, idolisation of Aristotle seemed irresistible throughout centuries. Philosophy had to start anew and earlier philosophers should be interpreted according to Aristotle’s ‘modern’ scientific gloss. Philosophy has a certain continuity as much as is it full of surprises. Aristotle made his best not to be a surprise.

 H. Diels, Doxographi Graeci, pp. 475 95.

Homage to an irreverent iconoclast

63

Homage to an irreverent iconoclast Aristotle contradicts himself, oscillating between his Platonic super-ego and his own philosophy. I discuss some of these points later, and I argue that they do not stem only from Aristotle indulging in his Platonic nourishment. Aristotle himself became notorious among authors of the Late Antiquity for his inconclusive vagueness (which I discuss in chapter 8), whereas his contradictions and ‘misuse’ of terms (κατάχρησις λέξεως) were pointed out by some of his commentators, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and John Philoponus (chapter 1). However, I am not the first to point out that Aristotle contradicted himself, although I do so considering different points, namely, those related to my topic. Should anyone have any doubts about this, let them read not Werner Jaeger, but Harold Cherniss, of whom Jaeger himself wrote an approbatory review,¹⁵⁸hailing that intellectual as ‘one of the most capable of the younger scholars in the field of Greek philosophy’, while acknowledging that the book had ‘consistency in pursuing its leading idea’. The leading idea (and title) of that book was Aristotle’s Criticism of the Pre-Socratic Philosophy, published in 1935 (followed by Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and the Academy, 1944). Another reviewer of this book (signing R.S.) wrote (also in the mid‒1930s)¹⁵⁹ that Cherniss ‘accused Aristotle of verbal misinterpretations of texts which he possessed’, of ‘conflicting passages on the same point’, and he pointed out ‘some cases in which other ancient writers correct’ Aristotle. Accordingly, the reviewer accused Cherniss of daring to write that Aristotle ‘tries to twist Presocratic theories into agreement with his own system’, and ‘he also distorts them in order to set in bold relief the differences that make his doctrine superior’. Moreover, the same reviewer was dismayed at Cherniss accusing Aristotle of ‘willful misinterpretation’, ‘unadorned misunderstanding of earlier texts and theories’, ‘utter confusion’, and at him arguing that Aristotle ‘has not only perverted details but has also obliterated the problems’. Thus, the reviewer, who cared to conceal his own identity, concluded that ‘this is the language of an extremist’, and ‘the author has no understanding of Aristotle’s dialectical method’, although, in the first place, this R.S. acknowledged that ‘a wealth of sound scholarship has gone into the book’ and ‘it is a work for specialists, but one which specialists will be glad to have’. Nevertheless, neither this reviewer, nor indeed Cherniss himself, appeared to be aware that such harsh remarks about Aristotle had been made many centuries ago by an author who was hardly an ‘extremist’ – indeed he

 Werner Jaeger, review in The American Journal of Philology, v. 58, no 3 (1937), pp. 350 6.  R. S., review in The Journal of Philosophy, v. 32, no 22 (Oct. 24, 1935), pp. 610 11.

64

Introduction

was an ardent admirer of Aristotle: to Alexander of Aphrodisias, Aristotle wrote ‘in a manner which is very troubled, utterly confused, and disorderly, as much as is it inconsistent with previous statements in the same book’.¹⁶⁰ As it happens, this pernicious modern criticism against Cherniss (the spirit of which is characteristic of a certain mindset) was pronounced as an oracular response in a review occupying less than one page, and no need to substantiate the invective was felt whatsoever. Unlike that, W. Jaeger spoke of ‘success’ of that book, adding that ‘it would be ungrateful not to recognize that it is distinguished by thoroughness and mastery of the highly problematic material, by consistency in pursuing its leading idea, and by unusual degree of logical penetration.’ R.S. wrote more than two years before W. Jaeger wrote his own extensive review of Cherniss’ book, but the latter paid no attention to those remarks, and wrote a highly approbatory and considered appraisal of it. This is indicative of the ethos of a man who was already a recognized celebrity of scholarship, and the fact that Cherniss did not cite him at a certain point (for which Jaeger complained politely)¹⁶¹ did not prevent Jaeger from making the foregoing enthusiastic remark. Such phenomena are long past to the present state of affairs of scholarship. Had Cherniss’ book been considered by readers of the outlook of modern ones who crave seeing themselves being cited and see their occasional assignment as an opportunity to force their work into citations in a work they review, Cherniss’ book could have never been published. But it was published (the author was only thirty-one years old at the time), and it was hailed as one of the finest pieces of scholarship of his times. Nevertheless, it is characteristic of the inconvenience it caused to scholars that this book has been not a priority

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 673 (commenting on Aristotle’s Metaphysica 1069b26): Πάνυ τεταραγμένως καὶ φύρδην καὶ οὐ τεταγμένως οὐδ᾿ ἀκολούθως ἐπάγει τὰ ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τούτῳ λεγόμενα, δι᾿ οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἢ δι᾿ ἣν ἀρχῆθεν ἐπετήδευσεν ἀσάφειαν.  Nevertheless, others did the job for him. See another review of Chreniss’ book by Richard Waltzer, The Philosophical Review, v. 48, no 36 (Nov. 1939), pp. 640 3. He wrote (p. 640) that ‘this is a book of great value for students interested in Presocratic philosophy. The problem which it deals with has long been in need of an adequate monograph. Diels’ monumental collection of the fragments of Presocratics […] is by no means the final solution’. Nevertheless, he concludes (p. 643), ‘We may be allowed to hope that the assured results of the most recent studies of Aris totle, and especially those by Werner Jaeger, will take a more important place there than they do in the present work’ (by ‘there’ meaning the next book by Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and the Academy, of which the reviewer knew that ‘the author is already at work’). Chreniss did make only a few references to Jaeger therein, but normally he did so in order to distance himself from that authority. This was natural to do, since his approach to Aristotle was sheer antipodal to Jaeger’s Hegelian one. Quite simply, Chreniss and Jaeger represent two inexorably irreconcil able points of view.

Homage to an irreverent iconoclast

65

to publishers, and it remains out of stock for a very long time (actually, during the last forty years, after it was reprinted in 1971), as if this nuisance should be put to oblivion, although, dismissal of it made in passing aside (casual footnotes by W. Guthrie and others are no counter-argument), no scholar has ever cared, or has been able, to confront its arguments. The reason why Cherniss’ work has been causing anxiety is simple: he disputed the approach of such high-flown Hegelian romantics as Eduard Zeller, who, although aspiring to a more scientific approach to the history of Greek philosophy, imposed the idea that Aristotle’s views of the Presocratics constitute contribution to the history of philosophy. Hegel, in his own History of Philosophy, sought to establish the idea, and he was eager to confirm that Aristotle’s discussion of his predecessors was simply part of the historical process, which reveals the uninterrupted development of truth. However, Hegel’s opinion that Aristotle was not interested in the individuality of the single philosophers that preceded him, is fatally undermined once Aristotle’s spiteful attacks on Anaxagoras are considered. This was only a flowery Hegelian idealization designed to fit into his dialectical system, yet the fact remains that Aristotle is the philosopher to whom all history of philosophy has been relying upon.¹⁶² In Aristotle’s exposition of the Presocratics, H. Cherniss saw such distortions as the following: (1) abbreviations and misunderstandings caused by the specific purpose of Aristotle’s argument, in which they were embedded; (2) conscious or unconscious tendentious interpretation of doctrines and principles, without, however, changing the original words; (3) errors attributable to misunderstanding, to slips of memory, to influence by other sources or adoption of interpretation by others, such as Plato; (4) translation of early doctrines into current terminology or drawing from the phraseology of an earlier statement the implication which those terms came to bear long afterwards, which resulted in confusion of old and modern ways of putting and treating a problem; (5) the assumption that ideas current in Aristotle’s own times existed also earlier, even when there was no reference to them by his contemporary writers, such as his presumptuous invention that his own doctrine of generation and passing away should have been the cornerstone for every Presocratic system; (6) a tendency to develop the ‘necessary’ presuppositions and consequences of any doctrine he discussed, and to reconstruct its ‘original’ purpose and meaning; (7) an arbitrary conception of the spiritual relations between various philosophers, which resulted in sundry groupings of them, which changed from one point to another only to make

 I argue that the ultimate source of Aetius was a history of philosophy by Aristotle himself; see supra, pp. 58 63.

66

Introduction

these categorizations accordant with the different concepts, under which Aristotle discussed them in different contexts. I should emphasize that I am not in agreement with Cherniss on several points. For example, I have argued that the case was not that Aristotle’s purpose was to read his own theories in his predecessors, particularly in Anaxagoras; rather, he appropriated cardinal concepts from him (such as that of a First Immovable Mover, or the idea of potentiality) and then he struggled to dilute the philosophy he availed himself of by means of incongruous extrapolations. H. Cherniss argued that Aristotle’s perspective was so imbued with the Platonic outlook and his own repository of concepts, methods, and analytical means, that he repeatedly distorted and misrepresented the views of the Presocratics with the purpose to find in them confirmation of the truth of his own ideas. Instead, my own argument is different: Aristotle appropriated key-notions of Presocratics, then, daunted as he was, he struggled to distort them so as to put them down by means of pernicious remarks, and then he represented himself as the messiah of philosophy whose advent meant that truth was established in philosophy for the first time. Sometimes, when recalling that Aristotle tutored Alexander of Macedonia for three years, I wonder whose megalomania was more swelled, and whose egotic narcissism affected the other’s more: Alexander felt that he should conquer the entire world because Macedonia was too small for him to reign over; Aristotle was satisfied that he was destined to capture the entire history of ideas, not simply of philosophy, because his predecessors, both the Presocratics and Plato, were of too small a stature compared to him, hence he berated all of them relentlessly. However, neither the notion of an incorporeal supreme cause, nor that of potentiality, nor the notion of the mind which comes from outside, nor the divine nature of ‘aether’, were Aristotle’s own ideas: they were Anaxagorean, and certainly some of them were maintained by other Presocratics, too. In respect of them all, Aristotle only argued that he expressed those ideas ‘better’ because his predecessors were too primitive or too naïve to express them properly. Whereas his predecessors did not need to reflect on such distinctions as corporeality/ incorporeality, or potentiality/actuality, Aristotle projected upon them a wholesale materialism. However, he never explained in what sense could such notions as Empedocles’ Love and Strife or Democritus’ Necessity be taken as material; and if it was impossible for them to be material, what were they after all? Although Cherniss did not call attention to such points, he rightly emphasized that Aristotle’s representation of the Presocratics cannot be taken as evidence by the historian, unless one recognized and assessed what Aristotle’s purposes were, and how they shaped his representation of earlier philosophers. He

Homage to an irreverent iconoclast

67

also set forth a shrewd criterion: whenever Presocratic theories are represented in terms of peculiarly Platonic or Aristotelian concepts, unless Aristotle’s process of interpretation is reversed, these points cannot be taken as Aristotle’s ‘testimonies’ to the Presocratics. Aristotle wanted his readers to see Greek philosophy as having developed according to a teleological pattern (in modern terms, Hegelian, as Hegel himself saw the case), and that early Greek thought progressed gradually towards perfection that was culminated in Aristotle’s own philosophy. The mere unadorned fact was that what Aristotle really sought was only self-assertion by historical self-repercussion. In doing so, he contradicted himself at many points, which is a telling fact indeed. However, my different line of argument with respect to Cherniss is immaterial. What matters is that he deserves our respect for having been as insightful (indeed at a very young age) as to see the deformation of Presocratic doctrines by Aristotle, for taking a firm hold of a problem integral to our understanding of Presocratic philosophy, for showing that Aristotle used the theories of his predecessors as building material for his own purposes, and for demonstrating that on no account could Aristotle be read as a doxographer, since (beyond the specific doxographic work that he wrote) this was not his purpose. Although Hermann Diels himself implied that his collection of Presocratic fragments can by no means be a final solution, and he warned about the nature of the doxographic tradition and its inexorably limited value in the reconstruction of the Presocratic thought, currently, scholars continue to assess Aristotle’s claims as if he were a doxographer, in the teeth of evidence brilliantly constructed by Cherniss showing that historians of philosophy have never developed clear principles for assessing Aristotle’s claims, which are taken as ‘evidence’. Cherniss’ argument was as simple as was it brilliant: how is it possible for a modern historian to rely on Aristotle once the former’s project is entirely different from that of Aristotle’s? I have to admit that he was too kind: he argued that Aristotle’s interest in the Presocratics was always philosophical, not historical. However, put in more realistic (or, forthright, or blunt) terms, Aristotle appropriated cardinal ideas of the Presocratics and represented them as ones of his own; he believed (or so he pretended) that those ideas were primitive, undeveloped, unsophisticated, uncultivated, inarticulate. The claim was that only with Aristotle himself were new theories introduced to philosophy, such as the ideas about (1) potential/actual being; (2) a First Mover which is incorporeal, simple, unmixed, and separate; (3) the cause of everything; generation of the universe out of unmoved principles. Aristotle is the eternal exemplar of the Scribe and Pharisee of philosophy. However, Cherniss spoke only of Aristotle having always a philosophical, not historical interest in his predecessors, and cautioned users of

68

Introduction

Diels’ Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker that these fragments are not proper doxographic accounts by Aristotle, despite the impression given by those excerpts, which were lifted out of their Aristotelian contexts and branded ‘A-fragmente’ or testimonies supposed to pertain to the lives and doctrines of the Presocratics. The detail in which Cherniss demonstrated this is admirable indeed. The plea of Cherniss, which was also a radical advance on how Aristotle should be considered, was that it would be naïve to rely on Aristotle’s allegations in the manner previous idealists such as Zeller and his contemporaries had suggested and argued for. However, what should have been a radical groundwork in Presocratic and Aristotelian studies remained idle: scholars and historians of philosophy went on with relying on Aristotle, since they obviously felt that they had no other way to lay down a basis for speaking of the Presocratics. Simplicius was dismissed on the pretext that he represented Anaxagoras as a ‘Neoplatonist’. This has been a convenient expedient in view of scholars seeing no alternative to studying the Presocratics apart from the fragments of Diels. To this purpose, dismissing Cherniss’ argument without excuse was a serviceable expedient: since he did not make any Presocratic either a ‘Neoplatonist’ or whatever, there was hardly ground for refuting him, as it happened with Simplicius’ analyses. Unless he had dismissed Cherniss’ argument, W. Guthrie could have never written the two volumes of his history on the Presocratic thought, which ipso facto is an exposition inherently determined by Aristotle’s outlook; and so he did, which was natural for him to do, since Cherniss’ book was always seen as a work to be done away with. To Guthrie, Aristotle only explored how far the Presocratics had travelled along the path that led to Aristotle’s own philosophy, and this author only allowed that disputing Aristotle’s trustworthiness on this is an ‘immense exaggeration’. He determined dogmatically that not only did Aristotle know how to handle historical evidence, but also he had first-hand knowledge of more of the writings of the Presocratics that we do, and assured of Aristotle’s sound judgment of the Presocratics, adding that his approach was a genuinely historical one. What Guthrie never cared to explain is why was it that, unlike Simplicius, Aristotle never provided some quotations from Anaxagoras except for commonplace shibboleths circulating and known to everyone? Why did he never cite Anaxagoras’ work, not at a single point, but always he wanted us to assume what all of his predecessors said only through Aristotle’s own derogatory remarks about them? And if it were argued that this was a kind of scholarly practice that Aristotle chose to apply, why was it that, unlike what he did with the Presocratics, Aristotle cared to cite and quote in detail from Plato

‘Systems’ in Aristotle?

69

(whose writings he knew all too well after twenty years of discipleship at the Academy)¹⁶³ whenever he felt it necessary to do so? The reply to such question is quite simple: Aristotle was eager to suppress any full account of the writings of his predecessors, and wanted his own students, as well as future ones, to read them only through his own deformed presentation. In fact, he succeeded in forcing all posterity seeing the Presocratics though Aristotle’s own bias, up to now. Had Guthrie endorsed the critical approach of Cherniss concerning Aristotle, he could have never been able to write the first two volumes (1962, 1965) of his history of Greek philosophy, because the ground that supplied him with ‘information’ could have collapsed under his feet. What is more, he should have followed an entirely different methodology, namely, the one which I have employed in the present book – but this would have been a far more demanding undertaking. It has been always an expedient to place (genuinely felt, or ostensible) ‘confidence’ by Aristotle rather than follow the uphill path of disputing his spiteful assessments and allegations. Little wonder then that Cherniss’ book came to be a nuisance to scholars who have no other way to assess the Presocratics, and that his book has come to be a collector’s item possessed by public libraries, while remaining always ‘out of stock’ for those who would wish to possess it for private use.

‘Systems’ in Aristotle? There is a theory that appeared in 1987, essaying to make Aristotle having ‘two systems’, which was somehow a slender reaction to W. Jaeger who introduced a developmentalist method in 1923 (therefore, a unitarian assessment of Aristotle’s thought). The argument went that Aristotle’s Organon (being an early work correlating logic and ontology) belongs to an early ‘system’, superseded by his mature form/matter theory, which is another ‘system’ based on his works on physics and metaphysics. The ‘two systems’ were argued to be logically incompatible, but the proposition was that each of them has internal consistency.

 Maybe, twenty five. Origen reports that Aristotle stayed with Plato for twenty years. Cels, II.12. John Philoponus, spoke of ‘about twenty years’. De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 211. Anonymous biographies also report twenty years. Vita Vulgata, 5 & 12, which reports that, prior to that, Ar istotle spent three years as a disciple of Socrates. Another anonymous commentator wrote of twenty five years. Scholia in Aelium Aristidem (scholia vetera), 249.8 & 249.10. So did another anonymous biography of Aristotle. Vita (cod. Marc. gr. 257), 10.

70

Introduction

I am far from endorsing this modern claim, which was constructed according to the Anglo-Saxonic tendency to apply analytical philosophy and semiology on Greek philosophy, so that they should help the rest of us understand what was this all about. In fact, Aristotle had neither one nor two systems: quite simply, he had no system whatsoever. He was only obsessed with presenting himself as the realization of progress that left the Presocratics behind. He used many ideas of his predecessors while criticizing them; he dissented from Plato, and made sarcastic comments on his theories, while writing as a faithful Platonist at other points, which cannot be grouped and classified into the Organon and the other works mentioned above. ‘System’ means an organic whole which is inherently coherent throughout. This new theory sought to discover coherence in each of ‘two systems’, against Jaeger’s claim that Aristotle’s philosophy was developed gradually in a process of evolution towards maturity. In the present book, it is shown every now and then that there is no such consistency, no matter how the Aristotelian corpus is grouped and read: he posits one First Immovable Mover, but then he entertains the idea of many immovable movers, each one assigned with the motion of each heavenly sphere.¹⁶⁴ While dismissing the theory of Platonic Ideas as ‘twitterings’ and ‘poetical metaphors’, he introduces two principles, namely the ‘forms’ and ‘formless matter’, supposedly following Plato’s ‘Indeterminate Dyad’,¹⁶⁵ but there is not a single word about it in the extant Platonic texts. Although the ‘forms’ are supposed to be active agents imposing themselves upon passive ‘matter’, suddenly he introduces the vague notion of ‘Nature’ doing the job that ‘forms’ are supposed to do. By the same token, whether Aristotle’s First Mover was also a creative principle remained a debated issue among his commentators throughout all of the Late Antiquity, with even his most ardent admirers and commentators complaining about Aristotle’s obscurity on critical issues of his exposition. Also, whereas he bans any notion of ‘forms’ being self-subsistent in themselves and by themselves, he speaks conveniently of the existence two ‘orders’: the Good exists both as a separate substance and as the order of the universe: this is like an army, the efficiency of which consists partly in the order and partly in the general; but chiefly in the general, because he does not depend upon the order, but the order depends upon him. In other words, the ‘order’, which exists in the mind of the general, is ontologically superior to the actual order of the army, which is dependent upon the intellectual  Aristotle, Physica, 258b11; 259a7 15; 259b28 31; 260a14 16. See chapter 12.  See an exhaustive discussion of this by Harold Cherniss, in three lectures he delivered in April, 1942, at Berkeley, which were published as The Riddle of the Early Academy (esp. pp. 1 30). He concluded that all of this was an invention by Aristotle who attributed it to Plato.

‘Systems’ in Aristotle?

71

order stemming from the general’s mind. One would be tempted to see in this a Platonic twofold order. However, I am going to argue that Aristotle speaks of the Anaxagorean Mind and the order it imposes upon the universe. This is why, his ensuing phrase is, ‘All things, both fishes and birds and plants, are ordered together in some way, but not in the same way; and the system is not such that there is no relation between one thing and another; there is a definite connection.’¹⁶⁶ No wonder that his text goes ahead with considering Anaxagoras’ philosophy, notably, the Mind being a First Mover. He argued against the Pythagoreans and Speusippus that perfect beauty and goodness do exist prior to the beautiful and good things, thus speaking as a good orthodox Platonist, and argued that ‘there is some subsistent being which is eternal and immovable and separate from the sensible things’ (ὅτι μὲν οὖν ἔστιν οὐσία τις ἀΐδιος καὶ ἀκίνητος καὶ κεχωρισμένη τῶν αἰσθητῶν), against the above philosophers who taught that beauty and goodness come from seeds of, say, plants and animals. Moreover, Aristotle went on with arguing that his god was ‘impartible, and indivisible, since it causes motion for infinite time’.¹⁶⁷ His supreme principle is ‘infinite’ because ‘an unlimited motion cannot be imparted to anything by a finite mover, hence a finite mover cannot cause motion during unlimited time’. This also entails that this mover has ‘infinite power’ (ἄπειρον δύναμιν).¹⁶⁸ However, not a word about this god being also a creative cause, which Alexander of Aphrodisias was rather embarrassed to point out, as discussed in due course. In the first book of his On the Soul (I.ii), Aristotle declared himself unable to understand how Anaxagoras’ Mind knew things, ‘because Anaxagoras did not explain this.’¹⁶⁹ However, when he came to considering the question of how the soul can cognize things (III.iv: 429a10‒430a5), he appeared confident as to what Anaxagoras thought about this, and, once again, he criticized him on the basis of what now he believed he knew about that theory.¹⁷⁰ He claimed that ‘before coming to think, the Mind has no actual existence.’¹⁷¹ This time (im-

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1072b 1073a.  Aristotle, Physica, 266a24 ff.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405b19 23: “Anaxagoras is alone in believing that the Mind cannot be acted upon (ἀπαθῆ), and that it has nothing in common with anything else. But if the Mind is of such a nature, how and on account of what cause can it ever know anything (πῶς γνωριεῖ καὶ διὰ τίν᾿ αἰτίαν), neither he [Anaxagoras] explained nor is this evident from what he has said.”  See discussion in chapter 6.  Aristotle, De Anima, 429a22 24: ὁ ἄρα καλούμενος τῆς ψυχῆς νοῦς (λέγω δὲ νοῦν ᾧ διανοεῖ ται καὶ ὑπολαμβάνει ἡ ψυχή) οὐθέν ἐστιν ἐνεργείᾳ τῶν ὄντων πρὶν νοεῖν. Then again, op. cit. 429b30 31: ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, πῶς νοήσει … ὅτι δυνάμει πώς ἐστι τὰ νοητὰ ὁ νοῦς, ἀλλ᾿ ἐντελεχείᾳ οὐδέν, πρὶν ἂν νοῇ.

72

Introduction

plicitly, yet casually, as ever) he deemed that it suited him to rely on Parmenides who identified Being and Thinking. However, when he wrote the Metaphysics, he appealed to the authority of Anaxagoras by name, in order to argue that the supreme principle (First Mover/Mind) is sheer actuality which is prior to everything.¹⁷² All of this, along with several other points discussed in this book, is not ‘two systems’: it is no system whatsoever. Concerning Anaxagoras, Aristotle now draws heavily on him, then he excoriates him, only because his own erratic (e. g. many immovable movers) or inconclusive (e.g. is ‘essence’ form? or is it formless matter? or is it both?) assumptions allowed for no full and consistent adaptation of the Anaxagorean theory, or of any other of his predecessors. Aristotle’s philosophical personality was somehow trisectioned. First, there was his own desire to set a great store by perceptible reality and ban self-subsistence of incorporeal entities. On that account, he criticized his teacher Plato relentlessly, in his usual style which was often either ironical or sarcastic. Secondly, there were his own Platonic traits, and time and again he spoke as an orthodox Platonist. Thirdly, he knew that he had taken up cardinal notions from Anaxagoras, which he presented as ones of his own (First Mover, the notion of potentiality, multiple heavenly movers, and others discussed in due course). To harmonize those streams of thought for himself was simply impossible, which is perhaps one of the reasons why, whenever he mentioned Anaxagoras, spite took the better of him. This was not the least of the reasons why he was inconsistent every now and then. Once one sees (particularly in chapters 1, 8, and 12) how Aristotle’s notorious obscurity and erratic use of critical terminology was excoriated by his commentators, it will be also possible to realize that any notion of ‘system’ applied to the Aristotelian corpus is simply absurd, no matter how one would like to ‘group’ its particular treatises. For, up until the fifteenth century, Aristotle’s readers could not make out what Aristotle actually believed the Platonic Ideas to be, not to mention those who complained that nothing could made out about Aristotle’s theory of the soul: to them, what he believed about the soul remained an inconclusive arcane mystery. Alexander of Aphrodisias was irritated at Aristotle’s discrepant use of such different terms as ἀρχαὶ and στοιχεῖα. Brilliant scholars such as Syrianus (whom many philosophers of the Late Antiquity styled ‘the

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a4 6: ὅτι δ᾿ ἐνέργεια πρότερον, μαρτυρεῖ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ὁ γὰρ νοῦς ἐνέργεια.

‘Systems’ in Aristotle?

73

great Syrianus’),¹⁷³ were upset at his obscurity, his incongruity, and his inconsiderate use of terminology. Hence, a few things need to be said in respect of this. When Hippolytus read Aristotle’s own account of the soul, he wrote that this was ambiguous: once one reads three tracts of Aristotle from start to finish, one cannot say for sure what he actually believes about the soul.¹⁷⁴ In his introductory lessons on Aristotle’s Categories, Ammonius of Alexandria listed the ten topics he was going to teach; the eighth of them was, ‘why does the Philosopher [i.e. Aristotle] seem to practice obscurity intentionally’ (ὄγδοον διὰ τί φαίνεται ὁ φιλόσοφος ἀσάφειαν ἐπιτηδεύσας).¹⁷⁵ Alexander of Aphrodisias remarked that Aristotle, at a certain point, expressed himself in a manner which is very troubled, utterly confused, and disorderly, as much as is it inconsistent with previous statements in the same book, although he essayed to rescue his hero by remarking that Aristotle ‘deliberately entertained obscurity right from the beginning’ of his Metaphysics. ¹⁷⁶ Moreover, he criticized Aristotle’s inaccurate use of terms.¹⁷⁷ In any case, Alexander of Aphrodisias had a great deal of difficulty with understanding and then explaining what Aristotle meant to say. Every now and then, while reading Aristotle, he pointed out abstruse and hardly intelligible points.¹⁷⁸ Although at two points he remarks that the reason for Aristotle’s obscurity was his ‘cut-short style of writing’ (διὰ τὴν βραχυλογίαν ἀσαφέστερον εἴρηται),¹⁷⁹ hardly did Alexander conceal his annoyance at that quality of exposition: he remarked in indignation that what Aristotle wrote is so unclear, that, in order to determine what he

 Ammonius of Alexandria, commDeInterpr, p. 137. Marinus of Neapolis (in Samarea, a pupil of Proclus, fifth century), Vita Procli, line 616. Damascius, Princ, p. 30. Vita Isidori, fr. 124. Sim plicius, commCael, p. 2; op. cit. p. 397; commPhys, pp. 192; 213; 241; 269; 618. Suda, letter alpha iota, entry 79 & letter epsilon, entry 3036. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 78.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 7.19.4: Ὁ δὲ Περὶ ψυχῆς αὐτῷ λόγος ἐστὶν ἀσαφής· ἐν τρισὶ γὰρ συγγράμμασιν ὅλοις οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν σαφῶς ὅ τι φρονεῖ περὶ ψυχῆς ᾿Aριστοτέλης.  Ammonius of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 1.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 673 (commenting on Metaphysica 1069b26).  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit., p. 599, saying that Aristotle used καταχρηστικώτερον the word ‘lie’ (ψεῦδος) instead of ‘ignorance’ (ἀντὶ τῆς ἀγνοίας ἔλαβε). He commented on Metaphy sica, 1051b17: Περὶ δὲ δὴ τὰ ἀσύνθετα τί τὸ εἶναι ἢ μὴ εἶναι καὶ τὸ ἀληθὲς καὶ τὸ ψεῦδος.  Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias speaking of either unclear or wanting writing by Aristotle. commMetaph, pp. 19; 21; 153; 214; 222; 240; 253; 276; 281; 339; 446; 462; 468; 474; 519; 550; 552; 579; 596; 643; 644; 653; 655; 663; 669; 677; 730; 736; 753; 758; 772; 774; 776; 805; 810; commAnalPr, pp. 21; 23; 121; 167; 195; 200; 210; 223; 225; 280; 299; 362; 364; 368; 373; 385; 398; 411; commTop, p. 55; 56; 84; 185; 239; 349; 575; commDeSensu, pp. 25; 149; 152; commMeteor, pp. 100; 131; 146.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 466; likewise, on p. 596: ἀσαφῶς καὶ αἰνιγμα τωδῶς τὸ παράδειγμα ἐπῆκται διὰ τὴν συνήθη βραχυλογίαν.

74

Introduction

means, one should have the power of divination’ (ἀσαφῶς δὲ ὄντως ἐπήγγελται καὶ μαντείας δεόμενον).¹⁸⁰ More than a thousand years later, the Aristotelian commentator Sophonias (fl. c. 1300) did not feel better about this: while sharing Alexander’s uneasiness about Aristotle’s inconsistency, he took it as a commonplace that Aristotle is all too often so obscure, that he proclaims oracles rather than philosophy, which calls for a mantis rather than a commentator.¹⁸¹ Aristotle’s inconsistency was pointed out explicitly by Syrianus. In his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, he considered the passage 1086b14‒1087b14, in which usage of ‘elements’ and ‘principles’ is desperately confounded. Syrianus paid no attention to Alexander of Aphrodisias having struggled to exonerate Aristotle in respect of the specific passage,¹⁸² and wrote that ‘it is very difficult to comment on this, because of the confusion surrounding the use of terms’ (χαλεπὸν μὲν ἀπαντῆσαι πρὸς τὰ ῥηθέντα διὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς ὀνόμασι σύγχυσιν). For Aristotle ‘using the terms principles and elements treats them as synonymous’ (ἀρχάς τε γὰρ καὶ στοιχεῖα τὰ αὐτὰ μεταλαμβάνων καλεῖ).¹⁸³ Philoponus complained about either unclear exposition of arguments¹⁸⁴ or misuse of terms,¹⁸⁵ and pointed out that a systematic explanation of them was offered not by Aristotle himself, but by his ‘exegetes’.¹⁸⁶ Nevertheless, he accused Alexander of Aphrodisias of contributing to confusion rather than to clarity of the text: “Whereas Aristotle’s exposition was already vague, he [sc. Alexander] made it more obscure (ἀσαφῆ δὲ οὖσαν τὴν ᾿Aριστοτέλους λέξιν ἀσαφεστέραν ἐποίησε)”.¹⁸⁷ Much later, in the fifteenth century, George Gemistus (Plethon) remarked that Aristotle wrote about the immortality of the soul in an ambiguous manner (ἐνδοιαστῶς γοῦν ἁπανταχοῦ καὶ οὐδαμοῦ βεβαίως οὐδ᾿ ἰσχυριζόμενος ἅπτεται αὐτοῦ), and made no definitive statements about the issue while opting for deficiently short, hence unclear, statements (διὰ βραχυλογίαν οὐ πάνυ τοι σαφῶς).

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 594. This is what Sophonias wrote, too. paraphrAnim, Proem, p. 1: τίς γὰρ οὐκ οἶδεν ὥσπερ εἰ χρησμούς τινας πολλαχοῦ τὴν ᾿Aριστοτέλους οὖσαν φράσιν καὶ μαντείας δεῖσθαι;  Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 1 (proem, copying from Alexander): τίς γὰρ οὐκ οἶδεν ὥσπερ εἰ χρησμούς τινας πολλαχοῦ τὴν ᾿Aριστοτελικὴν οὖσαν φράσιν καὶ μαντείας δεῖσθαι; Likewise, p. 31: ὥσπερ γὰρ εἴπομεν πρότερον, οὐδὲ μαντεύσασθαι ῥᾴδιον ἐξ αὐτῶν.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 785. See infra, chapter 1, p. 131.  Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 162. See infra, pp. 131 2.  John Philoponus, commAnalPr, p. 173.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 490.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 209.  John Philoponus, commMeteor, p. 79.

‘Systems’ in Aristotle?

75

In his view, ‘Plato was much better than Aristotle’ (Πλάτων ᾿Aριστοτέλους πολὺ ἀμείνων) for another reason, which was more serious and more general: Plato was consistent with himself throughout (διὰ πάντων συμφώνως αὐτὸς αὑτῷ τῷ λόγῳ ἐπεξέρχεται), and it is this, not obscurity, that befits a really wise man (σοφῷ πρέπον τὸ τοιοῦτο πολὺ μᾶλλον ἢ ἣν σὺ φῇς λέξεως ἀσάφειαν); on the other hand, Aristotle is caught also at many other different points of his work to be inconsistent with his own doctrines (᾿Aριστοτέλης ἄλλοθί τε πολλαχοῦ καὶ δὴ καὶ ἐνταῦθα αὐτὸς τοῖς αὑτοῦ ἁλίσκεται δόγμασιν ἀσύμφωνος).¹⁸⁸ Finally, as discussed in chapter 11, Aristotle could not see why was it that the Anaxagorean Mind did not move things beginninglessly, in which case his question was what the Mind was ‘prior’ to ‘distinguishing’ things. He decided that this Mind was ‘actually nothing’ before it created, treating this in manifest analogy to his formless matter, which is potentially everything but actually nothing.¹⁸⁹ That Aristotle appealed to Anaxagoras in order to confirm that ‘the Mind is sheer actuality’¹⁹⁰ did not deter him from saying different things at different points. Aristotle did not, and could not, elaborate on such conflicting statements. However, Theophrastus struggled to understand what was this all about; hence, he introduced the notions of Potential Mind and Actual Mind.¹⁹¹ Themistius did not feel the same about Aristotle’s contradictory statements and realized that the comments by Theophrastus did not really solve this intriguing pseudoproblem, which was created only by Aristotle himself. However, when Themistius strove to understand what Theophrastus actually made of Aristotle’s idea, he grew despondent and simply stated that it would be better to abandon study of this altogether. He concludes his paraphrasis by saying that ‘to determine what those two philosophers actually maintained about this, calls for a treatise of its own’ (τὸ μὲν ἀποφαίνεσθαι περὶ τοῦ δοκοῦντος τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ἰδίας καὶ σχολῆς ἐστὶ καὶ φροντίδος).¹⁹² Therefore, to speak of ‘system’ (let alone two or three or more ones) in Aristotle would be just absurd. Quite simply, we have to come to terms with the bare fact that the ‘Aristotelian corpus’ is only a set of oftentimes inconsistent class  George Gemistus, Contra Scholarii pro Aristotele Obiectiones, 25.  Aristotle, De Anima, 429b30 31: ἀπορήσειε δ᾿ ἄν τις, εἰ ὁ νοῦς ἁπλοῦν ἐστὶ καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ μηθενὶ … μηθὲν ἔχει κοινόν, ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, πῶς νοήσει, ὅτι δυνάμει πώς ἐστι τὰ νοητὰ ὁ νοῦς, ἀλλ᾿ ἐντελεχείᾳ οὐδέν, πρὶν ἂν νοῇ.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a4 6: ὅτι δ᾿ ἐνέργεια πρότερον, μαρτυρεῖ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ὁ γὰρ νοῦς ἐνέργεια.  Theophrastus, op. cit. fr. 53b.1, apud Themistius, paraphrAnim, pp. 107 8. See infra, chapter 11, pp. 984 93.  Op. cit. p. 109. Likewise, see Aristotle confusedly reflecting as a Platonist: infra, pp. 207; 250; 560; 583 4; 942; 945; 1104.

76

Introduction

notes, which Aristotle himself scarcely cared to harmonize with each other, to which it should be added that these are also texts that were heavily distorted during copy-and-editinging by some barbarous self-appointed ‘editors’ of the Roman era.¹⁹³ From Hippolytus of Rome and Alexander of Aphrodisias in the early third century AD, to Arethas of Caesarea in the ninth, then, to Sophonias (c. 1300), right down to George Gemistus (or, Plethon) and Franciscus Philelphus in the fifteenth century, Aristotle’s inconsistent and obnubilated exposition was a vexing issue that was frequently pointed out and reprimanded. At this point, I should mention only one instance supporting my thesis. In his vehement attack against Plato’s theory of Ideas, Aristotle argues that they do not contribute to the existence of either eternal or perceptible things whatsoever. For the Ideas are not the cause of either motion or change of things. Moreover, they are of no help towards knowledge of other things, because they are not substance of the particulars. If they were substance of things, they should be in the particulars, but the Ideas are not present in the things which participate in them. Furthermore, if the Ideas were present in things, they might perhaps seem to be causes of the existence of the latter, as it would happen with the admixture of those which should cause a thing to be white. All these remarks aimed to show what Plato’s Ideas are not. At the same time though they happen to be characteristics of what Anaxagoras’ principles are. Franciscus Philelphus was right in claiming that it is impossible to understand what was exactly Aristotle thought the Ideas to be. As discussed in chapter 13, there is nothing strange about this: even Plato’s successor Xenocrates proposed his own understanding of what Plato himself thought Ideas to be, but when Proclus described that definition by Xenocrates, he cared to take distances from it.¹⁹⁴ The fact of the matter is that Aristotle never managed to pave a way by means of a clear distinction between his own ‘forms’, the Anaxagorean principles, and the Platonic Ideas. He just wavered between his own theory of forms, the theory of Ideas, and the principles of Anaxagoras, and, somehow implicitly, it appears as though he acknowledged the merit of the latter’s theory. For indeed the principles are causes of motion or change of things; they are causes

 Strabo relates that Theophrastus left Aristotle’s books to Neleus; subsequently, the latter’s descendants handed them over to Apellicon of Teos, the famous book collector of the first cen tury BC. It was during that period that corrupted points of the books were restored spuriously resulting in editions full of mistakes. Then, when Sulla sacked the library of Apellicon, his gram marian Tyrannion gave them to unlearned scribes, who did not even care to compare the original manuscripts with the copies they produced. See Strabo, Geographica, 13.1.54.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 889 90.

‘Systems’ in Aristotle?

77

that allow any thing to be known, since knowledge proper is simply knowledge of the principles (or, logoi) which make it up; put in Aristotle’s terms, the prevailing principles which make up a specific thing are in fact that which the philosophers after Anaxagoras called ‘essence’ of a thing. Moreover, the principles are the causes of existence of particulars, and they make things what they are. However, as if he realized that he allowed himself to praise Anaxagoras, he came to his senses and decided that he should discredit him also, since those remarks were made in the first book of the Metaphysics, and Aristotle’s aim was to present a caricature of Anaxagoras so as to excoriate him. Consequently, at that very same point, he says that ‘this theory was stated first by Anaxagoras and later by Eudoxus’ but ‘it would be easy to discredit it by adducing plenty of impossibilities being involved in such a view’. How easy was it for Aristotle to discredit this? We shall see that it was not easy at all, which is why he slipped into glaring inconsistencies. It is characteristic that Aristotle inadvertently stated that Anaxagoras’ principles were analogous to Plato’s Ideas, that is, he treated Anaxagoras’ principles as incorporeal, and argued that Anaxagoras’ theory was superior to that of Plato, notwithstanding the fact that Aristotle considered himself as superior to both of his predecessors and as being able to overturn them easily (ἀλλ᾿ οὗτος μὲν ὁ λόγος λίαν εὐκίνητος, ὃν ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν πρῶτος).¹⁹⁵ That Aristotle himself, at other points, treated the same Anaxagorean principles either as material particles, or as analogous to his own ‘qualities’, did not deter him from making statements such as the forgeoing one. What matters is that, in the beginning of his Metaphysics, he inattentively admitted that which later he refuted passionately, namely, that Anaxagoras’ principles are incorporeal, even though, shortly before that point, he said different things and employed the criticism of Plato against Anaxagoras.¹⁹⁶ All of these instances, as well other similar ones discussed in due course, simply indicate that to strive to discover any notion of ‘system’ in Aristotle (whether one, or two, or more) would be simply a frustrating enterprise which could lead nowhere. History of philosophy had to wait for a thousand years after Aristotle’s death in order to learn what the exact words of Anaxagoras himself actually were: we owe them to the industry and honesty of Simplicius, who quoted pages upon pages from Anaxagoras’ own writings. Modern scholars content themselves with the illusion that whatever Simplicius said about Anaxagoras should be dis-

 Aristotle, op. cit. 991a9 ff. This text is the same almost to the letter with 1079b12 ff.  Cf. Aristotle, op. cit. 985a.

78

Introduction

missed as ‘Neoplatonist interpretation’, and that his accounts were biased. However, hardly do they notice the bias of Aristotle on this issue. I am convinced that this was a main reason for Origen to detest Aristotle, whose school he lumped together with those of the Sophists and the Epicureans: his argument was that philosophy proper should not be blamed because of those men (οὐ φιλοσοφίας ἔγκλημά εἰσιν) who maintained false doctrines.¹⁹⁷ Besides, he abhorred Aristotle for allowing providence only for the super-lunar world,¹⁹⁸ and saw him as the one who composed a philosophy that, more than any other system, set great store by the goods of human life.¹⁹⁹ Not least did he despise the way he treated Plato after having been his disciple for twenty years, and he obliquely endorses the accusation by later Platonists, which had it that ‘Aristotle was wicked and ungrateful to his teacher’ (πονηρὸς καὶ ἀχάριστος πρὸς τὸν διδάσκαλον).²⁰⁰

Scope Study of this book would take a keen interest in the philosophy of Late Antiquity, since a critical gap in the history of philosophy (i. e. the Theory of Logoi) is now being filled: this comes to the fore as a ‘thread’ originating with Anaxagoras, and then revived by Origen and Porphyry, to be partially reproduced by commentators of the sixth century. As things stand, everyone coming upon the notion of logoi (also in Origen, who consistently put this theory to use) speaks of ‘Logoi or Ideas’, which is plain wrong, only because this theory is still not known, and it has never been expounded ad hoc. Porphyry believed that the Achilles’ heel of Plato’s theory of Ideas was that it did not explain how do immaterial agents give rise to material reality. Aristotle castigated the notion of ‘participation’, and no sound rejoinder was ever adduced against the obloquy. At the same time though, Aristotle’s own ‘forms’ fell short of having the imposing generative and cohesive character of Anaxagoras’ principles, let alone that no selfsubstantial being was allowed for them. Thus, sixth-century commentators

 Origen, Cels, II.27.  Origen, Cels, I.21: Ἐπίκουρος καὶ ὁ ἔλαττον αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν πρόνοιαν ἀσεβῶν ᾿Aριστοτέλης. selPs, PG.12.1316.7 10: Ἐντεῦθέν τινες ἀπατηθέντες τὰ ὑπὸ τὴν σελήνην ἀπρονόητα ἀπεφήναντο εἶναι· ὧν ἐστι καὶ ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης.  Origen, Cels, I.10: ἔρχονται ἐπὶ τὸ ἀσκῆσαι, … τὸν περιπατητικὸν [λόγον] ὡς ἀνθρωπικώτατον καὶ μᾶλλον τῶν λοιπῶν αἱρέσεων εὐγνωμόνως ὁμολογοῦντα τὰ ἀνθρώπινα ἀγαθά.  Origen, Cels, II.12.

Scope

79

spoke of ‘logoi’, while describing Plato’s Ideas or Aristotle’s ‘forms’, and there are explicit satements identifying logoi with the Ideas and Aristotle’s forms. In fact, however, they described only the Anaxagorean principles, if not always consciously. Porphyry explained this by having recourse to Anaxagoras’ principles being creative and cohesive causes, which are also objects of cognition, and so did Origen who was never a Platonist, and Proclus was right in pointing out that Plato would have never counted Origen among his pupils, even though Origen was known as an eminent ‘exegete of Plato’ during his own times and later. In fact, only in relation to ethics did Origen move from Anaxagoras to Stoicism, which was a philosophy that would claim itself to be a heir to Anaxagoras’ thought (much more than this was the case in respect of either Heraclitus or Empedocles), notwithstanding the universal materiality that Stoicism postulated, thus dissenting from Anaxagoras, which though was all but substantial. Thus, to Origen, the Stoics were simply lapsed Anaxagoreans. The logoi became material along with their source, which was named Logos after Heraclitus, instead of Nous. However, they retained the essential meaning and function of the Anaxagorean principles. Whatever the Whole is, its parts are; thus, since the Mind is the Logos, the principles were called logoi, too. It will turn out that Origen is one of the best introductions to Anaxagoras, which is second only to that by Simplicius and to Porphyry’s testimony reported by Arab chroniclers. In turn, Anaxagoras is the best introduction to Origen real doctrine of creation, which has suffered flagrant distortions, and it still does. As a matter of fact, Origen’s doctrine of creation was consistent with his Trinitarian theory, which paved the way to Nicaea. How could possibly any subsequent Christian theologian have acknowledged that an ex-pagan philosopher, who was converted to Christianity only when he was a mature man, formed the current orthodox Trinitarian doctrine? The last one who could have been able to come to terms with this was Eusebius, hence his implausible hagiography of Origen. This book, among other things, casts light upon this theory, which is indeed totally un-Platonic. Origen is a staunch anti-Platonist because he was an Anaxagorean, both during his earlier life as a renowned philosopher, and after his conversion to Christianity, until the end of his life. Although Anaxagoras’ impact on Classical and Late Antiquity is discussed extensively, the aim of this book is far from making everyone Anaxagoras’ pupil, and it would take only partial or desultory study of it in order to assume such a simplicism. It is only argued that, all too often in antiquity, was Anaxagoras’ impingement not realized or acknowledged, although his impact can be traced even in intellectuals that probably had not read Anaxagoras’ work. Therefore, ‘drawing on Anaxagoras’ means that philosophers, such as Plotinus, Por-

80

Introduction

phyry, or some Stoics, would have encountered many Anaxagorean ideas, but most of them did not really practice direct and solicitous borrowing from him. Their fundamental lines of thought stood out in Greek philosophy, yet, not rarely, they were developed without awareness of the ultimate fountain from which the fresh water emanated. In view of this, my reference to ‘clandestine’ influence of Anaxagoras on both Classical and Late Antiquity is simply a succinct designation of this epiphenomenon.

Bibliography During the modern age, Anaxagoras’ philosophy was underestimated, mainly because of its distorted rendering by Aristotle. He was not actually blind to what Anaxagoras really meant, but he had his own axe to grind in not wishing to concede anticipation of the best of his own thoughts by an earlier thinker. I know that scholars relish compiling references, reverent or polemical, to authors who agree or disagree with a certain proposition or interpretation. This practice is often imposed (either tacitly, or not so), by supervisors of dissertations or peer-readers during a stage of consideration, but mostly this offers only a pedantic pleasantry, which is valuable only to those who see themselves being cited, not to the audience of a book. A few years ago, a scholar wrote an approbatory review of my Origen: Philosophy of History and Eschatology, ²⁰¹ and remarked that my bibliography was ‘lean’. In fact, the list of bibliography in that book comprises 506 works by 192 ancient authors, and 87 titles by 72 modern ones, the entire list comprising 23 heavily printed pages. However, to the reviewer, the bibliography appeared ‘lean’, because only 84 modern authors related to my topic were discussed and cited. This is symptomatic of how scholars have been educated to assess what ‘bibliography’ means, and indeed how they should use it themselves: it is not about providing references that would be likely to yield useful supplements to one’s arguments and to be useful to readers; rather, it is about impelling donnish discussion of whatever every other modern scholar wrote on a topic, just for the sake of the author appearing ‘informed’, and ostensibly ‘offering guidance on and discussion of the topic in other scholarship’, which though is mostly of no value to the reader, but it is certainly gratifying and flattering the vanity of those who see themselves being mentioned. I am indeed grateful that neither the present editors, nor those of

 Mark Edwards, review in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, v. 59 (03), 2008, pp. 520 1.

Bibliography

81

all of my previous books, did ever suggest to me anything even remotely pointing to such a practice. I should not conceal a feeling of frustration at reading modern scholarship about Anaxagoras: the universal methodology is total dependence on those celebrated ‘fragments’, and the general assumption is that Anaxagoras maintained two principles, that is, the incorporeal Mind and a material substrate. In short, there is only mere iteration of Aristotle’s allegations making Anaxagoras an inarticulate predecessor who had only a vague inkling of Aristotle’s own dual pattern of incorporeal forms and formless matter. This is why existent scholarship on this topic has been of no use to me whatsoever. Consequently, I did not need to discuss modern accounts which offer nothing really new, whereas similar discussions during the Late Antiquity were fuller and far more profound. Those who live in the age of the internet can easily come upon modern expositions of Anaxagoras and assess their value for themselves. What will be not easy to find are the views of a vast number of intellectuals of old, who are currently ignored, and they have been eclipsed and condemned to silence by the imposed modern practice concerning priorities of study, therefore, of bibliography. Thus, a weird conception of what a ‘proper scholarly manner’ of exposition should be has been prescribed, which is in fact a fruit of the last seventy years of the twentieth century, and which subsequently has forced upon scholarship a no less weird conception of what ‘scholarly decorum’ should be. By the same token, I do not need to cite those who argue that Plato did not say a word about the Indeterminate Dyad (attributed to him by Aristotle) against those who zealously argue that this is implied at many points of the Platonic texts. Likewise, I do not need to discuss modern dispute as to whether Aristotle’s God was a creative cause, or not. Suffice it to say that this discussion began among the Peripatetics right after Aristotle’s death, and what their master really believed about it has always remained controversial. Therefore, it is far more useful to revisit that debate, which lasted as long as until the fifteenth century, rather than reproducing modern exchange of arguments which are unaware of most of the ancient controversy. Alexander of Aphrodisias had his own doubts as to whether the First Immovable Mover was also a creative cause, and, five centuries later, Simplicius struggled to ‘assure’ Alexander that Aristotle did maintain that idea. Less known is, however, that this discussion persisted for much longer: in the fifteenth century, two learned opponents argued vehemently over this issue: the Platonist George Gemistus (or, Plethon) contended that Aristotle knew of no supreme creative principle. Against him, the Aristotelist Gennadius Scholarius rebuked ‘Plethon’s ignorance of Aristotle’ (which he made a title of one of his treatises) and claimed fiercely that Aristotle did in fact maintain that the First Mover is also a Creative

82

Introduction

God. The arguments of both sides are indeed knowledgeable and deserve our attention. Such discussions are nowadays largely ignored (since study of Hellenism ‘stops at 800 AD’, according to the hackneyed statement), but one should bear in mind that Plethon was the man who made Plato known to the West after a very long time of him being ignored: the times of Seneca and Cicero having informed the Roman world that there was such a notion as ‘the Ideas’ sustained by Plato, which they translated as forma or species, were long past. In the ensuing centuries, Aristotle, not Plato, was the prophet of the western world, to which the powerful Church of Rome helped a great deal. Against this long-established background, Plethon composed a detailed comparison between Plato and Aristotle’s’ conceptions of God, and lectured extensively about this in Florence, during the times of Cosimo de Medici, who attended those lectures and was thereby inspired to found the Academia Platonica in Florence. Only few of Plato’s writings were studied in the Latin West at that time, and, in essence, Plethon re-introduced much of Plato into the west, thus shaking the dominance that Aristotle had come to exercise over European thought during the Middle Ages. It was exactly the defence of Aristotelism against the recrudescence of Neoplatonism after a long period of quiescence, that involves much of the relation between the God of Aristotle and that of Anaxagoras, which I discuss in this book, since this is absent from modern scholarship concerning this Presocratic philosopher. In any case, to be able to read Greek is one thing, but to be always eager to find out what Greek texts themselves, not clashing modern scholars, have to say, without feeling this incessant research as a sweaty uphill trek, is quite another. While setting out to study ancient philosophy, students are given to understand that they should fall on their knees and await a few modern voices from the Mount Sinai, no matter how misled and misleading they may be, and that primary texts should be read according to what modern authors have been able to read in ancient sources. As for ancient commentators, let them rest in peace and in silence, let them remain in the obscurity imposed on them by this modern conception of ‘scholarship’ and ‘decorum’ upon writing a monograph, not to speak of a university thesis. Save for half a dozen of the most renown ancient authors related to a vast topic such as the present one, modern ignorance of the rest of them has been conveniently placed outside any conception of scholarly duty: ignoring or disregarding testimonies or assessment by some great minds of antiquity is not deemed that much important after all; by contrast, doing so with modern men of the hour is an unpardonable sin. It is certainly easier (and sometimes more utilitarian) to cite modern scholars in view of incapability to access the abundant wealth of ancient sources. This is typical of the modern trend to cite other modern scholars just for the sake of citing them,

Bibliography

83

which is normally dignified as ‘guidance on and discussion of treatment in other scholarship’. But the real implication of this deontologia is that some modern ‘stars of scholarship’ claim precedence over ancient witnesses who had firsthand access to many texts now lost to us. Thus, several modern authors aspiring to be hierophants of Hellenism essay to comply with the tinsel convention of what ‘serious scholarship’ should be, yet, all the same time, their work shows that ‘guidance to scholarship’ by means of the primary sources is a duty that ‘serious scholarship’ conveniently can do away with. The methodology of the present study is sheer antipodal to this gaudiness. Therefore, while studying ancient philosophy, the unremitting priority is the sources themselves, then their reception by ancient intellectuals, and then modern secondary bibliography, if indeed anything really new has been said, which is not the case with the study of Anaxagoras. In the case of Presocratics, we have no primary sources, but only second-hand reports and quotations. If then we have to consider how all of these were received, the first task is to examine how ancient intellectuals saw and assessed them. Modern accounts are exclusively based on such reports and comments, but the extent to which they are examined is desperately narrow, depending on the level of one’s knowledge of Greek, and on the extent to which such testimonies have been translated in modern languages. Since comprehensive access and study of the sources is a tough proposition, it has been dictated that what modern authors wrote should be the first priority of study, and the texts themselves the second. Speaking of tougher propositions, in Antiquity, there was a proverb, which was far-famed: “It is not possible for any ordinary man to set sail for Corinth” (οὐ παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἐς Κόρινθόν ἐσθ᾿ ὁ πλοῦς), meaning that the city was so wealthy that only the rich could afford to visit it.²⁰² The proper sequence while study-

 This proverb was attributed to Aristophanes the comic of Classical Athens (fifth fourth cen tury BC), Fragmenta (T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, vol. 1), fr. 902 & Anonymous, in T. Kock, op. cit. fr. 600. However, the author might well be another Aristophanes, namely, the gram marian of Byzantium (third second century BC), Paroemiae (fragmenta), fr. 5, who was probably the one quoted by lexicographers, such as Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, letter omicron, entry 1799, copied by Photius, Lexicon, letter omicron, p. 360, and Suda, letter omicron entry 924. Then, several other authors quoted it: Strabo, Geographica, 8.6.20 & 12.3.36 (quoted by Eu stathius of Thessaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, p. 448). Pausanias (second century AD), ᾿Aττικῶν Ὀνομάτων Συναγωγή, letter omicron, entry 39. Themistius (fourth century AD), Εἰς Θεοδόσιον· Τίς ἡ βασιλικωτάτη τῶν ἀρετῶν, p. 195: Οὐ παντὸς ἀνδρὸς εἰς Κόρινθόν ἐσθ᾿ ὁ πλοῦς, ἀλλὰ τοῦ κυβερνητικωτάτου καὶ ἀγρυπνητικωτάτου. Also, in Βασανιστὴς ἢ Φιλόσοφος, p. 257b. Olympiodorus of Alexandria (sixth century), In Platonis Alcibiadem Com mentarii, 166. Michael Choniates (theologian, twelfth thirteenth century), Epistulae, p. 129. Mi chael Apostolius (paroemiographer, Crete, Constantinople, fifteenth century), Collectio Paroe

84

Introduction

ing ancient philosophy is visiting the affluent ‘Corinth’ of the primary sources themselves in the first place, then their reception by ancient intellectuals, and then modern secondary bibliography, if necessary. Instead, eighty years after H. Cherniss pointed out that the Diels collection is respecrable but outdated, and that scholarship has to move on with studying their context and other points which are pregnant with information, the study of Presocratics is stuck to the desperately inconclusive fragmentary pursuit. The two classical languages increasingly appear to be a nuisance to do away with. It is probably a sign of the times that a series publishing philosophy under the auspices of a publisher that I think highly of, because another series of them holds fast to the values of European Humanism, advertises that, their books ‘will no longer assume a thorough knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin on the part of the reader’. The journey of Hellenism²⁰³ throughout the ages has been long, and transformations of it were inevitable. The modern term ‘Hellenistic’ means any postclassical cultural manifestation between the death of Alexander of Macedonia and that of Cleopatra, which was Hellenic-like, yet not purely so. Intellectuals who came from the east, such as Porphyry and Iamblichus, very often spoke of the Greeks as if they were ‘the others’, and virulent references were not rare, especially when a comparison with the eastern lore was made, as discussed later. Michael Psellus styled Proclus ‘the last torch-bearer and hierophant’ of Hellenism.²⁰⁴ From the rebirth of Greek studies in the Renaissance Florence, to the revival of editions of classical Greek texts at Leipzig in the nineteenth century and the fruitful inspiration of all aspects of European institutional and individual life received from that great legacy, marked the dawn of another Hellenism, which was neither Hellenistic nor the Late Antique one: it was the European version of it, within a civilization which was a synthesis of the Hellenic Logos, the Christian Love, and the Roman Law, plus the invigorating dynamism that came from the peoples of northern Europe. It had its merits, and the ancient lore was treated with the devotion and industry that made up the values of modern European Humanism, which is why the Europeans, not modern Greeks, deserve to be called real heirs of Hellenism. This civilization has been a real and huge step forward, not mere revival of the ancient Hellenic modus videndi, since the tempera-

miarum, Centuria 13.60. Anonymous, Scholia in Lucianum, (comm. on Lucian’s Hermotimus or Arversus Haereses), 27.  P. Tzamalikos, Ἑλληνισμὸς καὶ ᾿Aλλοτρίωση Ἡ Εὐρωπαϊκὴ Πρόκληση (Hellenism and Alien ation The European Challenge), Athens, 1982, chapter 1: Τί εἶναι Ἑλληνισμός; (‘What is Hellen ism?’), pp. 21 97.  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 74, lines 124 5: Ἑλλήνων δὲ παῖδες, ὧν δὴ τελευταῖος δᾳδοῦχος καὶ ἱεροφάντης ὁ Πρόκλος ἐγένετο.

Bibliography

85

ment of the Europeans was not that of the Athenians who took pride in ‘living remissly’ (ἀνειμένως διαιτώμενοι),²⁰⁵ but it was stimulated by unfailing dedication and hard work, which was invigorated by the spirit of Reformation. Nevertheless, every next stage left something of the previous one behind, which evidently bears on the character, background, and goals of those who took up the torch and fostered the ancient patrimony, as well as to aspirations within a new historical environment, all of which gave rise to the sole revival of Hellenism that modern times have seen. Besides, problems of translation of Greek should be always taken into account in this context. An example that plays pivotal role in this study is the term λόγος in its specific philosophical sense of active and cognitive principles, entertained by the Stoics, Porphyry and other Neoplatonists, and then during the fifth and sixth centuries AD. The logoi are neither the Platonic Ideas, nor the Aristotelian forms. Different modern translators have rendered λόγοι as either constructive principles, or, formative principles, or, principles, or, rational principles, or, rational forming principles, or, seminal reasons. All of them are correct, yet no one is full, since λόγοι may bespeak not only principles, but also objects of cognition or contemplation, and, normally, causes, which can be either generative or cohesive or dissolving ones, as much as do they indicate dynamic action. This is why I have opted for translating λόγος/λόγοι as logos/logoi, while striving in each case to make the import of it as clear as possible. As already mentioned, modern bibliography concerning monographs about Anaxagoras is very lean, unlike that on other Presocratics. There are a considerable number of papers, all of which, more or less, take for granted that we should rely on Aristotle’s testimonies, which they consider out of context. Concerning books, I should mention only as examples a monograph by F.M. Cleve (1949), and then, An Essay on Anaxagoras, by M. Schofield (1980), which appeared one year after J. Barnes’ The Presocratic Philosophers (1979). The latter made use of pompous semi-mathematical symbols (evidently, in order to give it a touch of semiology and a flavour of analytical philosophy); but, on closer look, this flamboyant symbolism indicates only platitudes and hardly any familiarity with modern science. To the point, Barnes merely paraphrased Aristotle and decided that ‘Anaxagoras’ things are stuffs’, but these ‘stuffs are not particulate’ (!), and the folly of this oxymoron was laid at the door of Anaxagoras instead at that of his modern interpreter, who went on defiantly: “Anaxagoras’ theory is self-stultifying: it is a theory about stuffs; but its main tenet is inconsistent with the existence of stuffs.” Moreover, whether logos in Heraclitus is a

 Pericles, Epitaphius, apud Thucydides, Historiae, 2.39.1.

86

Introduction

technical term indicating a ‘principle’,²⁰⁶ has been a point of dispute. J. Barnes argued with M.L. West, and against W.K.C. Guthrie, U. Holscher, and M. Marcovich, that striving to find a metaphysical sense in this logos is ‘vain’, since it only means ‘what a man λέγει, or says’.²⁰⁷ Then he sets out to prove that Heraclitus had a ‘Logos doctrine’ and indeed ‘a metaphysical theory to propound’! This is the fate of the Presocratic philosophers being studied by means of pedantically cited numbered ‘fragments’ and ‘testimonies’, whereas the wider context afforded by ancient witnesses is not taken into account, or it is deemed either hard or impossible to do so, only because ‘it is not possible for any ordinary man to set sail for Corinth.’ If Anaxagoras’ theory is studied through the distortive lenses of Aristotelian ‘fragments’ cheerfully taken as authoritative by inflated scholarly egotism, this theory appears ‘self-stultifying’, i.e. stupid, inconsistent, indeed ridiculous. But this is not contribution to understanding Anaxagoras: it is only a crude version of the argument that Aristotle put with ostensible indulgence,²⁰⁸ which though was far more skilled, no matter how embittered. Consequently, it depends on the mental capacities of any modern interpreter either to rest content with the ‘stupid-Anaxagoras’-resolution or to strive to find out if something different was going on there. If this is not possible at all, no swaggering propositions or swollen-headed oracles by those who are narcissistically far too fond of the sound of their own voices will save the phenomena. As for the Essay on Anaxagoras by M. Schofield, this is a philological rather than philosophical piece, with its material scarcely organized, and the ‘D-K-fragments’ being used only with the purpose to decipher them as ‘oracles’ considered out of context in a peremptory manner. The author is out of his depth at critical points calling for intrusive analysis and assessment of Aristotle’s points about Anaxagoras that were debated by his commentators, of which the author is totally uninformed. As it happened with Barnes’ book, those who really deserve to be discussed (the ancient commentators from Classical Antiquity down to the Late Byzantine era), that is, the vast host of authors who contribute to knowledge of the specific philosopher, are ignored; even the critical witnesses to the reception and treatment of Anaxagoras’ thought by Aristotle are absent. As an example, I should mention Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Asclepius of Tralles, Galen, Plutarch, Maximus of Tyre, Philo, Plotinus, Diogenes Laertius,

 To style this ‘metaphysical’ is only a detriment to the Presocratic thought.  Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, London, 1982, p. 59. See infra, p. 94, n. 218.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1007b; Physica, 188a4 9. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 17. John Phil oponus, commPhys, p. 396. Likewise, cf. commAnim, pp. 85; 101; 106. Asclepius of Tralles, comm Metaph, pp. 26; 61; 101; 267 8; 292.

Bibliography

87

Sextus Empiricus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Stobaeus, Ammonius of Alexandria, Syrianus, Philoponus (only three short footnotes, out of his extensive discussions about Anaxagoras), Damascius, Olympiodorus, Eustratius of Nicaea, not to mention Aristophanes, or the plays of Euripides (the devout student of Anaxagoras, who reproduced that philosophy from stage), and other late Byzantine ones, such as Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Sophonias, Gennadius Scholarius, let alone Arabic sources preserving Porphyry’s precious rendering of Anaxagoras’ philosophy. Likewise, there is total unawareness of Christian writers who cared to testify to Anaxagoras, such as Hippolytus, Origen, Eusebius, PseudoJustin, John Laurentius Lydus, Photius, Michael Psellus, Michael Glycas, the Homeric commentator Eustathius of Thessaloniki, then, Gennadius Scholarius and Plethon, and several western humanists of the Renaissance who had access to classical texts that we do not now possess. Moreover, the author has no inkling of those who speak of Anaxagoras but do not mention him by name, which sometimes are more important points than the explicit references to him, such as those by Plato (quoted in chapter 13, p. 1222), let alone all the references by ancient lexica of Greek. This is the fatal flaw of the current universal practice of studying the Presocratics on the basis of D-K ‘fragments’ out of context. Thus, all testimonies about Anaxagoras are reduced to unrelated and unconnected ‘fragments’ interpreted assertively in a Delphic manner. Anaxagoras, the man who employed natural experiments to demonstrate that air is a body, is branded by Schofield ‘dogmatist’, and one more oxymoron went unnoticed. For indeed the same scholar, who also engaged in translation of ‘fragments’ and sought to render Anaxagoras’ philosophy by means of them, decided that ‘Anaxagoras seems to try to win our assent by the methods of the hierophant, not a dialectician’.²⁰⁹ Were it for Anaxagoras to come back to this life, hardly would he be interested in learning what philologists think, or have thought, about his work. Rather, he would be eager to meet with modern scientists and to be advised on such questions as the following: has this universe had a beginning at all? He would learn that indeed this universe is assumed to have had a beginning, which is currently called Big Bang. Then, he would ask whether a rotation started following this beginning. Again, he would be assured that indeed rotation started, in which Anaxagoras would recall his own term περιχώρησις. Then again, he would ask, ‘is this rotation an accelerating one?’; to which the answer would be, ‘we do not know if this rotation is an accelerating one, but we do know that the universe keeps on expanding and new matter appears

 Malcolm Schofield, An Essay on Anaxagoras, Cambridge, 1980.

88

Introduction

out of the blue, indeed as if out of nothing, although we also know that matter is simply a condensed manifestation of energy, of which the universe is full’, since it is now believed that there is no ‘void’ in this universe, and what was believed to be ‘void’ is the fullest part of the universe. Anaxagoras then would be happy that his banning of void was correct. Then, Anaxagoras would ask them, ‘how was the very first moment of the universe like?’, to receive the answer that, during the first infinitely small time of the universe’s appearance, the laws of the Theory of Relativity did not yet hold. This was a total confusum, pregnant with potentialities that gave rise to subsequent reality, and they keep on doing so. These are some of the questions that Anaxagoras would be interested in being advised about. He would be delighted at such brilliant minds as Origen having re-discovered and revived his theory of active principles, and having entertained this in the context of Christian doctrine of generation and becoming. By contrast, he would be hardly interested in those who could tell him that there are some ‘fragments’, mainly from Aristotle’ representation of him, making ludicrous or spiteful allegations as to what he really believed. Hardly could an accomplished scientist of Physics such as Anaxagoras have ever cared ‘to win assent’ by those who were hardy equipped to grasp his propositions, which comprised a coherent whole, as Porphyry showed them to be. Instead, he would be selective as to his audience, among which philologists could not be those who would sit on the front seats. If, as M. Schofiled suggested, Anaxagoras spoke in a peremptory manner and without argument, what is that which makes it possible for modern scholars to ‘interpret’ him, unless those who aspired to ‘interpreting’ him felt as authoritative hierophants, too? If he fell short of being an ‘ideal philosopher’, and the ‘actual Anaxagoras’ was ‘dogmatic’, ‘didactic’, ‘authority’, ‘indeterminate’ (and the rest of epithets used by that scholar about the poor old chap of Clazomenae), well then, he should be put to rest as being redundant and unworthy of study. However, Anaxagoras was deemed worthy of having his ‘fragments’ translated and commented upon by the same modern scholar being confident that, unlike Anaxagoras, he himself based his own claims on ‘argument’. Anaxagoras’ time was an extraordinary one: the workings of the universe were being questioned and the foundations of scientific knowledge were laid down. However, he wanted more: he sought to understand not only form, but also function, or, as Porphyry put it, ‘the way to creation’ –which was the most glaring failure of both Plato and Aristotle, who were relentlessly censured by the most eminent commentators of Late Antiquity, as discussed in due course. But how far did this way of thinking apply under those circumstances? The Athenians were not prepared to take the astounding new world that was revealed before their eyes, and only a few of them were fascinated by the new ideas that

Bibliography

89

were opening up and by the revelation of the world which is so close and yet so unknown. The emerging era marking quest for certainty, stability, and truth, was getting into its stride and Anaxagoras was the foremost of those who summoned science into being through ‘saving the phenomena’, which meant an earnest yearn for understanding the world through reason, logic, and experiment, and eventually the implication was that superstition could be dealt with by reason, and that new way to the truth about the universe could be discovered. It is all but coincidence that one of the most discussed questions among the Presocratics was not a ‘natural’ one: it was whether, and to what extent, is a human being able to grasp the truth. Compared with Aristotle, Anaxagoras explained the minutest things by thinking big. For he reflected on a profounder, grander, and more adventurous scale, while not alienating himself from the familiar data of the senses. I can think of no Presocratic intellectual having cared to back his words by experiment other than Anaxagoras (Thales’ exertions to take geometry as a science from the abstract to the practical was a different matter), who carried out his proverbial experiments demonstrating air to be a body. And when he appeared at the Olympic Games wearing a fleece, explaining that he did so because it was going to rain, and when he foretold that a house was going to collapse, and he was proven true about all those and other predictions, this was not so because ‘he knew the art of magicians, as the ignorant mob thought, but because he was a wise man’ (κατὰ σοφίαν προγιγνώσκειν, as Philostratus put it). He was confident that those people at Olympia (that is, the gathering of all Greeks, τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν πᾶν, in Aelian’s words) would be bowled over by his theory, by means not of argument, but of experimental demonstration and by evincing that science can prognosticate on the basis of previous natural observation. Quite simply, rather than discovering something through argument, Anaxagoras was more interested in observing nature and drawing his conclusions from what actually happened and from grasping the innermost workings of nature. As the brilliant Scottish surgeon John Hunter put it, ‘don’t’ think; try the experiment’, which is what Anaxagoras did, and one would only snicker at the allegation that the mentality of any experimentalist is that of a ‘dogmatist’. Somehow, then, both his person and methodology was a harbinger to the Royal Society’s motto, Nullius in verba (‘take nobody’s word for it’). As it happened, Plato’s and Aristotle’s theories remained the pinnacle of human thought for centuries. However, Anaxagoras asked really bigger questions way beyond those of Plato, who had determined in advance what he was looking for, which is why all too often did he choose to overlook what he was looking at.

90

Introduction

There is a distinction, which is currently almost unknown, and it was Zeno of Citium that made it: the Stoic master distinguished those who are fond of learning (φιλολόγους) from those who are only fond of arguments, or unlearnedly talkative (λογοφίλους).²¹⁰ The Stoic point was that a φιλόλογος is a virtuous man who seeks after truth and is eager to listen and to learn. By contrast, a λογόφιλος is a wicked one, whose pervert thoughtlessness has made him blind and deaf. Philo, evidently writing in a Stoic spirit, said that a λογόφιλος is the antipode of a philosopher, indeed of prudence itself.²¹¹ And Stobaeus, reporting the Stoic ideas about this, wrote that to engage in interpretation of what philosophers of old said does not make one a man of philosophy, since praxis of philosophy means practicing the commandments of philosophy in deed. Only φιλόλογοι can be philosophers, whereas λογόφιλοι are frantic opponents of virtue.²¹² Is the fact alone that those fragments are ‘ancient’ that makes them worthy of being published and re-published, translated and re-translated, deciphered and re-deciphered, while Anaxagoras is showered with a battery of denigrative epithets (of course, the frivolous modern conception of ‘scholarly decorum’ is reserved only for modern scholars, especially those still alive), which can only suggest that he is unworthy of being studied? But we do not need modern scholars to do that, who believe that they are the first to do so, only because they are uninformed: Aristotle did the job for them all a long time ago, the difference being

 Stobaeus, Anthologium, 3.36.26 (Zeno, fr. 300): Ζήνων τῶν μαθητῶν ἔφασκεν τοὺς μὲν φιλολόγους (fond of learning) εἶναι, τοὺς δὲ λογοφίλους (= fond of arguments). Again, the SVF collection made it an attribution to Chrysippus (Fragmenta Moralia, fr. 682, apud Stobaeus, Anthologium, 2.7.11k, apud Arius Didymus, Liber de Philosophorum Sectis, p. 81.1), but Stobaeus wrote only of ‘Zeno and the Stoics that followed him’ (᾿Aρέσκει γὰρ τῷ τε Ζήνωνι καὶ τοῖς ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ Στωικοῖς φιλοσόφοις). The lexicon of Liddell and Scott knows not of λογόφιλος, but only of Philo’s λογοφίλης. However, there is no such Greek word as this, which is probably an editorial misreading. Nevertheless, neither λογόφιλος nor λογοφίλης survived in Greek vo cabulary.  Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 1.74: Μωυσῆς δὲ λογοφίλην μὲν αὐτὸν οἶδε, φρόνιμον δὲ οὐδαμῶς. Quaestiones in Exodum (fragmenta), fr. 7: ὡς οἱ νῦν λογοφίλαι τὴν φιλόσοφον ψευδώνυμον κλῆσιν ὑποδυόμενοι.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 2.7.11k (apud Arius Didymus): Μηδὲ φιλόλογον εἶναι τὸν φαῦλον μηδὲ φιλήκοον, παρὰ τὸ μηδ᾿ ἀρχὴν παρεσκευάσθαι πρὸς τὴν τῶν ὀρθῶν λόγων παραδοχὴν διὰ τὴν ὑπείκουσαν ἐκ τῆς διαστροφῆς ἀφροσύνην … Οὐ γὰρ τὸν προθύμως ἀκούοντα καὶ ὑπομ νηματιζόμενον τὰ λεγόμενα ὑπὸ τῶν φιλοσόφων ἕτοιμον εἶναι πρὸς τὸ φιλοσοφεῖν, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἑτοίμως ἔχοντα πρὸς τὸ τὰ διὰ τῆς φιλοσοφίας παραγγελλόμενα μεταφέρειν ἐπὶ τὰ ἔργα καὶ κατ᾿ αὐτὰ βιοῦν. … Οὐδένα δὲ τῶν φαύλων τοιοῦτον εἶναι, προκατειλημμένον τοῖς τῆς κακίας δόγμασιν. … Μηδ᾿ εἶναι φιλόλογον, λογόφιλον δὲ μᾶλλον, μέχρι λαλιᾶς ἐπιπολαίου προβαίνοντα, μηκέτι δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἔργοις ἐκβεβαιούμενον τὸν τῆς ἀρετῆς λόγον.

Bibliography

91

that he acknowledged some of his debts to his predecessor. Beyond this, the question is whether all those epithets attached to Anaxagoras apply to him exclusively. It appears though that M. Schofield believed that other Presocratics expounded their theories in a different manner, that is, dialectically. If there is one of them that did so, I would be glad to learn about him. In fact, however, there is none: quite simply, all these scornful designations could be used of all of them, and this scholar decided so only because he appears as having no inkling of the fact that the intellectual universe of the Presocratics was quite different from the philosophical milieu in which later Greek thinkers assessed that set of theories. The fact that no Presocratic tract is extant aside, if scholars, such as the above one, wished to find any ‘ideal philosopher’ who is neither ‘dogmatic’, nor ‘didactic’, nor writing as an ‘authority’, he should have started his search for such philosophers not earlier than Sextus Empiricus, which is also doubtful nevertheless, since, in a sense, Sextus had his own axioms, too. Dialectical argument (as much as quest for ‘definitions’) started only with Socrates, and yet, Plato is indeed a ‘dogmatic’ philosopher, as any philosopher has always been concerning his fundamental premisses. Aristotle, being always confident and not afraid of half-learned detractors, explicated this forcefully at such points as the Posterior Analytics, 72a7‒8 & 90b23‒31, On Generation of Animals, 742b30‒34, Metaphysics, 1011a13‒14 & 1013a15‒17, and the Nicomachean Ethics, 1142a26 & 1142b35‒1143b1. The dialectics of Plato’s dialogues do not actually compel any undeniable direction of reasoning; for many of Socrates’ interlocutors could have given different answers which could have made it hard for Socrates himself to make his own points. Those dialogues are simply staged performances, and their aim is only to expound Plato’s own philosophy in a manner which is no less dogmatic than that in which other philosophers set forth their ideas. Had those dialogues been relentlessly dialectic (especially on the part of Socrates’ interlocutors), then numerous obscurities and inconsistencies that tantalized posterity would have been eliminated in the first place, and Numenius could have never written an ad hoc tract entitled On the dissent of the Members of Academy from Plato (Περὶ τῆς τῶν ᾿Aκαδημαϊκῶν πρὸς Πλάτωνα διαστάσεως), a ‘dissent’ (διάστασις or διαφορά) which became a recurrent theme of discussion throughout Late Antiquity (Galen, Sextus Empiricus, Origen, Stobaeus, Proclus, Aeneas of Gaza, David of Alexandria, Damascius). Even Xenocrates, immediately after Plato, struggled to determine such elementary questions as what an Idea is after all.²¹³ But the Neoplatonist Aeneas of Gaza

 As discussed in chapter 13, pp. 1267 9, Proclus recorded what Xenocrates believed an Idea to be according to Plato, but Proclus himself was not prepared to expound that exegesis as one

92

Introduction

concluded that Plato ‘contradicted himself’, hence ‘no one could ever manage to tell what Plato meant’, and any such attempt could result only in ‘total extrapolation’ (παντελῶς ἐκβιάζεσθαι) because everyone read in Plato not Plato’s philosophy but one’s own ideas. Therefore, to grasp (let alone render) ancient philosophy takes more than modern smug criticism coming onstage as ‘authority’ in a ‘dogmatic’ and ‘didactic’ style, not to mention convoluted exhibitionism of misguided commonplace or complacent dysphemisms carrying on with a certain tradition of sardonic cynicism, which though is nothing more than prosaic reproduction of obsolete claims, mainly those of Aristotle. Origen clearly implies that he had read the Lives of Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, who, in all probability, was his contemporary.²¹⁴ And, an accomplished philosopher as he was, he was well aware of the predicament of the Academy after Plato: this is why he argued that Christianity could not be blamed because many sects appeared within it, any more than Socrates could be blamed because ‘from his teaching many schools have come into being, whose adherents do not hold the same opinions.’²¹⁵ Middle ground between Dogmatism and Scepticism appeared only with the ‘critical method’ of Kant. Nevertheless, Anaxagoras cared to associate human impression of reality with that which human mind grasps in accordance with the mental capabilities of the poor wretched human being. Certainly, this is not Kantian ‘critical philosophy’ in any sense whatsoever, but those who espouse the delusion that it is possible for any philosopher to set out to reflect without positing certain axioms dogmatically, let them read Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, 72a once more. This is only an example of the kind of modern works that I deemed pointless to consider in this book, since I saw in them nothing that could contribute to a better understanding of the present topic. Instead, I have negaged in heavy reference and quotation from all the ancient witnesses to Anaxagoras, the vast bulk of which modern scholarship about Anaxagoras has ignored altogether. To all those studies, the majority of Late Antique Greek testimonies are as if nonexistent, and perhaps considered as ones hard to study because of the barrier of language. This is not a question of just knowing Greek, even though earlier generations of scholars were far keener on studying this and making use of primary

of his own, too. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 888: Ὁ μὲν οὖν Ξενοκράτης τοῦτον ὡς ἀρέ σκοντα τῷ καθηγεμόνι τὸν ὅρον τῆς ἰδέας ἀνέγραψε.  Origen, Cels, II.12: ᾿Aπὸ δὲ τῶν γεγραμμένων ἐν τοῖς βίοις τῶν φιλοσόφων πολλὰ ἄν τις εὕροι τοιαῦτα.  Origen, op. cit. III.13 (& Philocalia, 16.2).

Bibliography

93

sources. Rather, it is a question of seeing consideration, even mere reading of primary sources, as too arduous to pursue; hence, it is a question of seeing this task as a strenuous activity causing anxiety rather than pleasure. However, if the auctoritas vetustatis appeals so much to some, well then, here is a long tradition and enormous bibliography of ancient scholarship to study. My thesis is that assumed modern ‘authorities’ that have had either indisposition or difficulty with accessing a vast array of primary Late Antique sources, have determined the methodology of how Anaxagoras should be studied and what the ‘axioms’ (which are always those of Aristotle) to this purpose should be. The present study is free from the outlook of those distorting lenses, and it has focused on the Greek sources instead. Nevertheless, in this book, there is a lot of tacit reference to modern scholarly views on Anaxagoras. However, I have opted for discussing views rather than scholars who expressed them, and there is indeed quite a lot of implicit reference to modern perinent views. In any case, coming upon a specific interpretation of Anaxagoras, or of any other Presocratic, I do not follow the habit of compiling comments, either pious or polemical, on modern scholars, who either agree or disagree with a certain interpretation. Such references could only add pointless volume to this book, while being only a pedantic pleasantry of no value to the reader. Hence, I make mention of modern scholars only at those few points where this is indispensable for my exposition to become clear. I have been arguing that, although Anaxagoras was an Ionian by extraction, his philosophy cannot be understood unless the philosophy of Parmenides is taken into account, too; that is, the thought of a man from Elea (i.e. a city located on the antipode of the Hellenic world), as well as considering that Anaxagoras heard also the lessons of the Pythagoreans: in fact, Anaxagoras’ principles were in effect an expanded notion of the Pythagorean ‘numbers’ – in any case, both kinds of ‘principles’ were understood to be immaterial ones. Little wonder that testimonies have it that Empedocles was a pupil of both Anaxagoras and ‘Pythagoras’ (presumably meaning ‘Pythagoreans’), doxography reports several views being shared by Parmenides and Anaxagoras alike, and Iamblichus tells us that ‘the followers of Anaxagoras and of Parmenides proposed the same views about Nature and the truth about it’. Therefore, I have been arguing that only once the Anaxagorean σπέρματα are understood as immaterial ones (which was Simplicius’ conviction, reasoned on the basis of extensive parts of Anaxagoras’ own work brought to light only by Simplicius himself) could it be possible for what appear to be ‘ludicrous implausibilities’ (as Aristotle himself styles certain views of Anaxagoras) to be explained. After all, Anaxagoras was a scientist as much as was he a philosopher. Certainly, he was not a self-contradicting fool,

94

Introduction

as Aristotle essayed to represent him, while appropriating the most inspired ideas of his predecessor. Modern scholars follow Aristotle and reproduce his normal verdict that the Anaxagorean χρήματα (which became σπέρματα upon their ‘distinction’) are material elements of one kind or another.²¹⁶ In fact, however, no theory of matter can be ascribed to Anaxagoras. For, to him, ‘matter’ is not a principle, as it was to some other Presocratics (and, to Aristotle, a ‘formless’ one, which was a notion excoriated by Sextus Empiricus and Philoponus alike as ‘a weird one which was unintelligible even to those who maintained it’): matter is simply a result of concurrence of certain principles, as any other thing is, be it a man, a plant, an item, or a phenomenon. ‘Matter’ is a contingent and derived reality, not a principle. A consequence of my methodology described above is the manner in which I am using the ancient sources. Anaxagoras’ thought could have become ‘controversial’ only after Simplicius came up with quoting extensively texts of that Presocratic; besides, although his general aim was to praise Aristotle as standing in harmony with Plato, in fact, he did contradic Aristotle severly at those points where he believed that Aristotle distorted Anaxagoras’ thought. However, although Simplicius constitutes the most afluent source supplying us with Anaxagoras’ own words, and he used them often in order to refute Aristotle’s allegations, in subsequent scholarship after Simplicius, no contrversy occurred in respect of Anaxagoras, even to date. The encroachment by Aristotle was too strong for Simplicius to be able to dilute it, far less to deflect it. Therefore, once this study runs counter to the one-sided Aristotelian account, the onus of supporting my assessment with indisputable evidence (not only from Simplicius, but also from Porphyry, as well as from others) is a burden of proof calling for quotations rather than citations that could be seen as meaning ‘different’ things, or indeed could be ignored altogether. A striking characteristic of modern scholarship, which is largely obsessive with mutual citing as a sort of compliment, is a manifest difficulty to approach ancient Greek scholarship itself, which is why a vast number of authors and testimonies are being left out of consideration, as if they never existed. I am referring not to increasing unfamiliarity with Greek, but to those who can read it in a more or less satisfactory manner, but having to survey the sources themselves does not exactly fill them with a sense of convenience or pleasure. It is felt  For example, J. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, p. 322: “Thus I propose that we read Anaxagorean ‘things’ as ‘stuffs’”, and “like his Ionian predecessors he has an ontology of stuffs”. But then (p. 325): “I conclude that we have no binding reason for ascribing to Anaxago ras a particulate theory of matter.”

Opting for old wine, not new bottles

95

that it is better to build the ‘scholarly’ character of a study on references to other modern scholars, which after all sometimes is serviceable to public relations or personal aspirations, while believing that ignorance of, or unfamiliarity with, critical testimonies of old would pass unnoticed (and so it does indeed). Modern scholarship on Anaxagoras is largely a more or less prosaic reproduction of Aristotle’s misleading statements, and certainly it involves mutual (or reciprocal) references to modern works, which causes, or it is meant to cause, pleasantry to complacent little local heroes, indeed to the smug petite bourgeoisie of the field, but it is hardly contribution. Against this state of affairs, the fact remains that the ancient authors that have things to tell us about Anaxagoras are far more numerous than those who have been excerpted in the Diels-fragments. And the instances of ancient references to Anaxagoras being made implicitly without mentioning his name are sometimes more illuminating, as it happens with those by Plato and Porphyry. In any case, neither Anaxagoras nor any other Presocratic did ever expound their theories be means of dialectics or syllogisms. If any modern scholar seeks to discover apodeictic exposition in any of those philosophers, this could only mean that one has missed the gist of the spiritual atmosphere of that period; no matter what any ‘contribution’ subsequent to this fundamental failure of grasp is, if indeed any, this would be all about philology, not philosophy; it would be only ‘philosophical gossip’, since ‘philosophy also has its own Scribes and Pharisees’.

Opting for old wine, not new bottles This book is about history of ideas, yet in a manner considering problems in a comprehensive scope, not in the prejudicial one that Aristotle imposed on philosophy. Normally, philosophers have one-sided education (dignified by being styled ‘specialization’), they tend to exaggerate the importance of things occurring in their narrow field, and they are quick to consider a certain author as ‘original’ only because they learned certain things from him for the first time. However, philosophy (indeed intellectual production, in general) are rooted in layers that are more profound and cavernous, which is a lesson that such philosophers as Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Wilhelm Dilthey taught. In chapter 13 (Theory of the Soul), I have engaged in brief discussion of some views of Martin Heidegger, in order to indicate how deeply rooted some ideas are in the history of philosophy. The case of this important philosopher, who occupied a considerable part of my youth, is an outstanding example of how the modern audience of phi-

96

Introduction

losophy tends to hail as ‘authoritative’ lessons which in reality come from old. Heidegger was an outstanding philosopher of the twentieth century, and my point is that he introduced concepts (such as Paul’s ‘inner man’) which are theological par excellence into his system, which though he meant to be atheist,²¹⁷ and he claimed that any moralism or criticism of civilization was beyond his scope.²¹⁸ He wrote certain things about the ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic self’, but I am now suggesting that these ideas were present in both Paul and Origen, who treated this issue in terms that were more clear, more simple, more intelligible, although not in the sophisticated manner Heidegger presented his own thoughts. An example could be instructive in this respect. We have been taught that Heidegger was the philosopher who invented the etymology of ‘truth’ as meaning ‘exit from oblivion’. He translated ἀλήθεια as ‘unconcealment’ (Unverborgenheit), which appears insightful, as well as impeccable, in terms of capturing the etymology of the word, and it is convincing, as far as the original meaning of it is concerned. For λήθη means forgetfulness, a state of oblivion, profound concealment. Consequently, in Greek, the α-privativum bespeaks the opposite, namely, un-concealment, dis-closure. In other words, once truth is defined by way of its opposite, untruth is determinative of truth. To Heidegger, therefore, Truth and Being essentially belong together. Truth means and is to force beings out of their concealment; it is to force them to be seen as not-secret ones; truth is revelation, because ‘ever since the very old times, philosophy associated Truth with Being.’²¹⁹ Thus, ‘truth has always to be extracted from beings, and they are snatched up from their secrecy’.²²⁰ Then, Heidegger comes to his celebrated etymology: “Is it mere chance that the Greeks express the essence of the truth by means of a deprivative expres-

 See discussion infra, pp. 1307 13: ‘The inner man: Paul, Origen, and Heidegger’.  I am not the first who noticed a religious character in Heidegger’s thought. See, for exam ple, Dominique Janicaud disputing Heidegger’s ‘Atheist Phenomenology’ (title of chapter 2), in her Phenomenology Wide Open: After the French Debate, Fordham, 2010, p. 13: “On the one hand, Heidegger is the pioneer of the ‘philosophies of absence’, and he separates the ‘appearing’ from any transcendent or ontic principle. On the other hand (even though he denies it), his argumen tation has crypto theological accents to it: being which conceals itself in its own names, like the unutterable God of negative theology, safeguarding its truth in a meditative and almost religious experience.” Martin Heidegger himself wrote in his Letter on Humanism: “Only from the truth of being can the essence of the holy be thought. Only from the essence of the holy is the essence of Divinity to be thought. Only in the light of essence of divinity can it be thought or said what the word ‘God’ is to signify.”  Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 33 (page numbers refer to the standard German edition of 1927); see §§ 7b; 44.  Op. cit. p. 222.

Opting for old wine, not new bottles

97

sion (ἀ-λήθεια)?”²²¹ In fairness to him, it has to be said that he did not claim explicitly that this etymology of ἀλήθεια was his own invention: he only said that this is what ‘the Greeks express’. His language is ambiguous none the less, indeed deliberately ambiguous, and I have no doubt that he was very careful in choosing the words of this equivocation: his tenor was designed to suggest that the etymology was his invention (and so it has been hailed ever since), but he did not claim explicitly that this was his own idea. Why so? Because he knew perfectly well that the etymology of ἀλήθεια which he propounded was not his own, although from then till now every one assumes that it was: his source was a Greek philosopher, namely, Damascius, yet he did not say so.²²² In two manuscripts of the commentary on Plato’s Phaedo, Damascius says that he quotes from Plutarch of Chaeronea giving a definition in a Platonic spirit: in the first of them, ‘the name truth suggests that science is expulsion of forgetfullness, which means, recollection.’²²³ In the second, ‘it is plausible to argue that truth means meeting with Being proper (τοῦ ὄντος).’²²⁴ I myself cannot see what was new in Heidegger arguing that the meaning of truth springs from the forgetfulness of being, the Seinsvergessenheit. Plutarch was satisfied that he wrote as a devout Platonist, and this etymology was supposed to derive from Plato speaking of ‘the plain of Oblivion’ (τὸ τῆς Λήθης πεδίον).²²⁵ This Platonic expression was by and large interpreted as sug-

 Loc. cit. In the text, ἀ λήθεια is in Greek. Cf. pp. 33 4; 219 20. Also, cf. ‘truth’ meaning ‘to be revealed’ (Wahrheit als Entdecktheit): § 44, pp. 218 20; 256; ‘truth as an event of revelation’ (Wahrheit als Entdeckendsein):, § 44, pp. 217 20; 222; 226 7; ‘truth as certainty’ (Wahrheit als Gewißheit): § 21, pp. 24; 95; 100; 136; 206; 256 7; 264 5; 335; ‘truth as wide openness’ (Wahrheit als erschlossnheit): §§ 44β, γ; pp. 220 1; 223; 228 8; 264 5; 297; 316; ‘untruth’ (Unwahrheit), § 44; pp. 221 3; 229; 298 9; 308; 311 2. About ‘openness’ (Offenheit), see pp. 137; 163; 307; 350 1; 386; 391 2; 408.  Stephen E. Gersh wrote, “Damascius could perhaps be described as the Heidegger of antiq uity” and styles his suggestion ‘radical’. Being Different: More Neoplatonism after Derrida, Lei den, 2014, p. 119. On p. 36, the author cites Heidegger’s etymology of ‘truth’, but he has no ink ling of the fact that Heidegger drew on Greek sources. Some similarities between Heidegger and Damascius have been noted in the past. See John Dillon, “Damascius on the Ineffable”, in Ar chivfür Geschichte der Philosophie 78 (1996), pp. 120 9, who cites some earlier oral comments by Dorothea Frede. However, none of them saw that the etymology of ‘truth’ was not Heidegger’s own.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 281: Ὅτι καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια τὸ ὄνομα δηλοῖ λήθης ἐκβολὴν εἶναι τὴν ἐπιστήμην, ὅ ἐστιν ἀνάμνησις.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 2), 28: Εἰ ἡ ἀλήθεια κατὰ ἀφαίρεσιν τῆς λήθης ἔντευξις τοῦ ὄντος ἐστίν. Λογικὴ ἡ ἐπιχείρησις.  Plato, Respublica, 621a2 3.

98

Introduction

gesting ‘death’ or ‘Hades’,²²⁶ and this is the suggestion of Proclus, too; but he makes the juxtaposition clear none the less: the ‘plain of Truth’ is antipodal to the ‘plain of Oblivion’.²²⁷ The text of Plutarch is not extant, and my suggestion is that Heidegger found the etymological inspiration in Damascius himself. However, Damascius is not our sole source revealing that the specific etymology of ‘truth’ was Greek: in the turn of the fifth to sixth century, the lexicographer Hesychius of Alexandria made this a lemma in his own lexicon of Greek terms.²²⁸ Later still, the Byzantine grammarian and priest George Choeroboscus (early ninth century) explained in more detail that the term ἀλήθεια involves a deprivative notion expressed by the first letter alpha of the word.²²⁹ Despite controversy surrounding this derivation of ἀλήθεια, the majority of scholars assumed this to be correct. But the question is not about this being either correct or not: rather, it is about whether it is Greek or not. And this no one noticed so far, except for Heidegger, who though did not inform us about which exactly were the Greek sources he had in mind. Consequently, the Greek concept of truth is inherently interwoven with the Greek understanding of being. Coming to presence is precisely to be understood in terms of emerging out of concealment into unconcealment. In effect then, this is a relationship between concealment and unconcealment. The essence of φύσις and the essence of ἀλήθεια mutually imply each other. This is why Heidegger

 Aristophanes, Ranae, verse 186. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae, 8.52.4. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 3.20. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.5.21; 2.8.39. Suda, letter alpha, entry 1998; letter tau, entry 655; letter chi, entry 135. Anonymous, Scholia in Aristophanem, Scholia in Ranas (scholia vetera), verse 186. Cf. Origen, frPs, Psalm 87:12 13: Ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς ἀπολολόσιν οὐκ ἔστιν ἀλήθεια, οὕτως ἐν τοῖς ἐσκοτισμένοις οὐκ ἔστι θαυμασία. Οὐ δυνατόν, φησί, τοὺς εἰς κόνιν διαλυθέντας νεκρούς, καὶ ἐν τῷ ζόφῳ τοῦ θανάτου διάγοντας, καὶ λήθῃ παραδεδομένους, τῆς σῆς αἴσθεσθαι φιλανθρωπίας, καὶ τῶν σῶν θεαμάτων θεατὰς καταστῆναι.  Proclus, commRep, p. 346: Ὅτι μὲν οὖν ἀντίθετόν ἐστιν πρὸς τὸ τῆς ᾿Aληθείας πεδίον τὸ τῆς Λήθης πεδίον, δῆλον.  Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, letter alpha, entry 2924: ἀληθής· δικαία ἢ δίκαιος. ἢ μνή μων, κατὰ στέρησιν τῆς λήθης.  George Choeroboscus (early ninth century), Prolegomena et Scholia in Theodosii Alexandrini Canones Isagogicos De Flexione Nominum, p. 187: Τὸ δὲ ἀληθής διὰ τοῦτο ἐν τῇ συνθέσει βαρύνεται, … πρόσκειται σύνθετα ἀπὸ ὀνόματος διὰ τὸ ἀληθής· τοῦτο γὰρ διὰ τοῦ ηθης ὂν ὀξ ύνεται, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἔστι σύνθετον ἀπὸ ὀνόματος, ἀλλ᾿ ἀπὸ τοῦ λήθω ῥήματος τοῦ σημαίνοντος τὸ λανθάνω καὶ τοῦ α στερητικοῦ ἐπιρρήματος γέγονεν ἀληθής, οἱονεὶ ὁ ἐστερημένος τῆς λήθης ἤγουν τῆς πλάνης· ὁ γὰρ ἀληθὴς οὐδένα πλανᾶ. Likewise, in his De Orthographia (epitome) (e cod. Barocc. 50), p. 179: ᾿Aλήθεια· Τὸ λη η· τὸ θει δίφθογγον· γέγονεν οὕτως· ἔστιν ὄνομα λήθη, ὃ σημαίνει τὴν πλάνην, καὶ διὰ τοῦ α τοῦ στερητικοῦ προελθόντος γέγονεν ἀληθής, ὁ μη δένα πλανῶν.

Opting for old wine, not new bottles

99

wrote that, in turn, emergence into unconcealment entails that being is also to be understood in terms of unconcealment. Heidegger was based on Heraclitus’ maxim, ‘Nature loves to conceal itself’ (φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ),²³⁰ and took this as meaning that concealment (or, self-concealment) is a fundamental determination of being per se. The assumption was that, to the Greeks, concealment belongs essentially to being, which is the critical fact that makes it understandable why the Greeks expressed their concept of truth in negative terms, namely ἀ-λήθεια. Truth as ἀ-λήθεια has an inherent connection with being as φύσις, and being as φύσις has an inherent connection with λόγος. This entails that there must be an inherent connection between ἀ-λήθεια and λόγος. Logos is the happening of unconcealment, and truth as unconcealment is the basic determination of the essence of the λόγος. As I argue in this book (in fact, it was Porphyry who said so) the principles of Anaxagoras are there, but they become known by unconcealing themselves by means of the things and phenomena that they give rise to and sustain. In other words, the truth about these principles comes to light by means of them becoming φύσις. This is how it is possible for human intellect to acquire an inkling of not only the principles/logoi, but also of the Mind/Logos itself (or, himself). Therefore, physis and logoi are mutually determined by a process of revealing, by emerging from being hidden into graspable presence, and the ground of their essential and inherent relationship is truth as ἀλήθεια. Damascius taught that the ‘ineffable’ transmits to the rest of the universe a certain ineffability which is inherent as ‘a trace’ (ἴχνος) in every individual, thing, or phenomenon. No matter how high or low the level of reality is (Being, Life, Intellect, Soul, Matter/Physis), there is always something ineffable in every manifestation of it. This is impossible to comprehend fully, but this is what makes everything to be what it is.²³¹ We shall see that, to Anaxagoras, this inherent presence is no other that the constitutive principles of each thing, phenomenon, or person, although he did not feel it necessary to speak of ineffability, and, a contrario, he attributed omniscience to the Nous alone. Hei-

 Themistius, Ὑπατικὸς εἰς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Ἰοβιανόν, p. 69b: φύσις δὲ καθ᾿ Ἡράκλειτον κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ καὶ πρὸ τῆς φύσεως ὁ τῆς φύσεως δημιουργός. D K excerpted this from The mistius. However, other authors quoted it, too. See Julian, emperor, Πρὸς Ἡράκλειον κυνικὸν περὶ τοῦ πῶς κυνιστέον καὶ εἰ πρέπει τῷ κυνὶ μύθους πλάττειν, 11. Proclus, commRep, p. 107: διότι καὶ ἡ φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ καθ᾿ Ἡράκλειτον. The Heraclitian maxim was quoted also by Socrates Scholasticus, Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.23, and by Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopulus, Historia Ec clesiastica, 10.36.  Damascius, Princ, pp. 13; 17; 54; 66; 72; 81; 267; 305; In Parmenidem, pp. 150; 154; 155; 157; 159; 160; 241; 282; 285; 312; In Philebum, 22.

100

Introduction

degger’s Ereignis (the realm in which Dasein’s movement from the state of care to transcendence takes place) is no different: to Damascius, the ineffable is present in everything, and yet it does not communicate anything of itself to anything either; to Heidegger, the ‘giving’ by the Ineffable is ‘withholding’ all the same. Could perhaps one imagine a better rendering of Anaxagoras’ theory arguing that, on the one hand, the Mind is ‘unmixed’ with everything, while on the other, the Mind ‘is present in all animate beings, no matter whether big or small’?²³² My argument, therefore, is that Heidegger had read Damascius and used his propositions, but he did not reveal critical points of his source, although he did not claim originality either: as he put it, this is what ‘the Greeks believed’. Thus, his readers read certain things in him and promptly attributed them to Heidegger, only because they had been accustomed and educated to giving precedence to modern authorities and to feeling that they conveniently can ignore the old ones. Consequently, the ‘guidance to scholarship’ needed by those who will study this book is indeed offered, yet this is so mainly concerning scholarship spanning from the Classical age right down to the end of the Byzantine era in the fifteenth century, that is, over a period of more than twenty centuries. It will be noticed that, in order to study ancient philosophers, reading testimonies or views of five, seven, or, at most, a dozen of ancient authors, is too far from sufficing and fulfilling the requirements of any treatise claiming to be accurate and informative. Least of all could it be judicious to rely on Aristotle, as it is the normal case with modern students of Anaxagoras. For the shadow of Aristotle over Anaxagoras has been too oppressive and distorting to allow considerations with an eye unjaundiced by a preconceived thesis. All too often has Aristotle considered Anaxagoras’ theory on the grounds of definitions while pretending to forget that attending to definitions appeared only with Socrates, and to overlook that Anaxagoras’ principles, which were the real object of natural processes and human activity (indeed the object of knowledge proper), were other than the perceptible things, though not separate from them, as the Ideas were supposed to be. Aristotle chose to deny this undeniable fact, and to refute what never needed refutation, since any other consideration of Anaxagoras’ philosophy leads to paradoxical corollaries, indeed to nonsensical results, which only Simplicius cared to demonstrate. By the same token, Aristotle sought to read Anaxagoras in Platonic terms, which though could have never

 Aristotle, De Anima, 404b; but Simplicius informed us that this Mind also rules over them all. commPhys, pp. 156; 177.

Opting for old wine, not new bottles

101

been part of Anaxagoras’ locution. Plotinus was impartial enough as to acknowledge that Anaxagoras posited an incorporeal Mind which is ‘pure, and unmixed and simple’, thus, a Mind which is the same as ‘the first and separate One, even though he was not accurate because of his ancientness’.²³³ Quite simply, Plotinus could read Anaxagoras in the terms of the third century AD and by means of the classical vocabulary. Aristotle did not want to do so. But when Anaxagoras speaks of ‘unmixed’ Mind, this is somehow relevant to (though not identical with) that which modern European terminology could call ‘transcendent’: for he clearly describes the Mind as that in which, and under the rule of which, and due to which, all phenomenal processes take place, and yet the Mind itself (indeed: himself) is not subject to any alteration and is unaffected by any of the events which come and go as a result of the Mind’s activity and dominion over the universe: the Mind rules over everything while remaining ‘unmixed’ with everything at the same time. There are no material principles whatsoever, even for sensible objects. There is no such thing as ‘material substrate of the phenomena’, as Aristotle liked to think: there are only immaterial principles, which are inherently present and acting in the phenomena, and yet they are separate from them, and they give rise to anything, including matter itself. The Mind is the ultimate principle acting by means of its surrogates, that is, the principles. Thus, although Aristotle’s account (indeed, excoriation) of Anaxagoras was a hypothesis set up to explain that philosophy, it came to be treated as if it were itself part of that philosophy needing to be explained. This is why I have used modern bibliography sparingly at peripheral points and only whenever I need to make my argument clear, but none of those studies relates directly to exposition of Anaxagoras thought. It is simply fruitless and unbecoming to indulge in the easy sport of playing off such fancies against one another, especially in cases when there is a tendency to rely on Aristotle’s evidence in the desire to reconstruct what turns out a travesty of Anaxagoras. Quite simply, this is not the way to keep abreast of Aristotle’s anacoluthic propositions. The phenomenon is as old as scholarship itself, and we would fancy that awareness of this lies behind the words of Plato making the king of Egypt address the mythical inventor of writing: You have found a charm not for remembering but for reminding; and you are providing your pupils not with reality, but with a semblance of wisdom. For you will find that they have heard much without having been taught anything, and that they will seem men

 Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.9.

102

Introduction

who know many things, though for the most part being ignorant and hard to get along with, since they have become conceited instead of wise. ²³⁴

This is probably telling of the experience of any teacher who surveys the distortion of his own thoughts written in his students’ notebooks. Plato himself possibly lived to experience this, but Anaxagoras did not have the chance of listening to Plato’s remarks of the Nous couched in mordant manner through the mouth of Socrates. And both Plato’s and Aristotle’s accounts were a classical case of non sequitur, the kind of reconstruction obtaining so often in history, the worst aspect of which is not the fact that the historian reflects analogically, but in the fact that he is unaware of this. Consequently, universal reliance on Aristotle’s ‘doxography’ has resulted in the typical error of mistaking general agreement for demonstration of propositions which, in the first place, were not demonstrable, not even likely. Therefore, the methodological question that I have described is about the broader state of things in modern scholarship, not simply about uninformed studies about Anaxagoras: modern scholars hail alleged contributions by other modern scholars only because of unawareness of ancient sources informing that the same things have been said long ago by ancient witnesses who are currently condemned to silence. Consequently, those who will honour this book with their study while having some idea of modern bibliography concerning this philosopher, probably will find themselves in the situation which the Greeks called peripeteia. This modern phenomenon in many cases has determined how fine pieces of scholarship, such as that by the aforementioned iconoclast Harold Cherniss, have been received. But many ancient authors, such as Anaxagoras and Origen, knew perfectly well that the fate of their writings was determined by various, multiple, and complex factors. Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli.

 Plato, Phaedrus, 275a b.

Part I The Philosophy of Anaxagoras

Chapter 1 The Principles Anaxagoras’ principles Anaxagoras’ fundamental statement, ‘all things were together; then Mi (νοῦς) came and set them in order’, came to be a shibboleth quoted by several authors of antiquity, sometimes without Anaxagoras being mentioned. In fact, the expression circulated anemophilously rather than following reading the philosopher’s work. Whether the report that he was the first philosopher whose work was published in the form of book, or this is an exaggeration, is not certain. What I can say though is that the sole author who definitely read his work was Simplicius, and thanks to him alone we have some portions of considerable length of Anaxagoras’ own words, as they appear in Simplicius’commentaries on Aristotle’s On Heaven and on the Physics, and in his commentary on Epictetus’ Enchiridion. In the extensive excerpts that he cared to quote, nowhere does Anaxagoras use the term ὁμοιομερῆ, nor any similar term is there. However, Aristotle’s coined term became famous, indeed it became characteristic of Anaxagoras, but the fact is that this was an invention by Aristotle,¹ who afforded a definition for them: The reason why we have just been taking them with the uniform substances and out of their proper order is that, in them, the name of the complete structure is the same as that of a portion of it (ὅτι συνώνυμα τοῖς ὅλοις τὰ μέρη, τὴν τάξιν ἀπέλαβεν ἐν τοῖς ὁμοιομερέσι), and also because the sources and principles of them all are bone and flesh.²

 Galen, Quod Animi Mores Corporis Temperamenta Sequantur, p. 773: ὁμοιομερῆ δ᾿ ὑπ᾿ ᾿Aρι στοτέλους ὀνομαζόμενα. De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 8.4.8 9: τίνα δ᾿ ὀνομάζω πρῶτα σώματα δηλώσω πρότερον, ὅπως μηδὲν ἀσαφὲς ᾖ κατὰ τὸν λόγον. αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ Ἱπποκράτης οὐκ ὠνόμασε σῶμα πρῶτον ἢ δεύτερον, ὥσπερ ᾿Aριστοτέλης· ὁ δὲ Πλάτων δευτέραν μέν τινα σύστασιν εἶπεν εἶναι σωμάτων, πρώτην δ᾿ οὐδ᾿ αὐτὸς ὠνόμασεν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ τοῦ δευτέραν τινὰ φάναι δῆλος ἐστὶ πρὸ αὐτῆς ἑτέραν τιθέμενος ἣν ὀνόματι τῷ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης οὕτως ὠνόμασεν, ὡς ἂν ἐπὶ πλέον περί τε τῶν ἐν τοῖς ζῴοις μορίων καὶ περὶ τῆς γενέσεως αὐτῶν διελθών. Likewise, In Hippocratis De Natura Hominis Librum Commentarii, p. 7.  Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium, 655b. Then, Ammonius of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 83: καὶ ὁμοιομερὲς μέν ἐστι τὸ ἔχον τὰ μέρη ὅμοια τῷ ὅλῳ, ὡς τὰ μέρη ὀνομάζεσθαι τῷ τοῦ ὅλου ὀνόματι καὶ μηδὲν ἀλλήλων διαφέρειν. Aristotle uses the examples of ‘wood’, ‘nerves’, ‘flesh’, and ‘veins’. In De Generatione Animalium, 715a9 11, he identifies ‘homoiomeries’ with ‘the elements of bodies’; see also, De Partibus Animalium, 655b21 22.

106

Chapter 1 – The Principles

The term ὁμοιομέρεια made its way into philosophical locution, which is telling of the tremendous impact of Aristotle upon subsequent intellectuals, not only upon his commentators.³ This was a fatal starting point: ὁμοιομέρεια was fancifully associated with matter, whether organs of animals, or portions of inanimate materials, and this is how this interpolated term was entertained by posterity in reference to Anaxagoras. The term ὁμοιομέρεια has a specific meaning: it suggests parts of a whole that are the same as the whole itself. In other words, it means that the name of any part is the same as that of the whole, and that the whole has the name of its parts (συνώνυμα τοῖς ὅλοις τὰ μέρη).⁴ One should have thought that Aristotle could have used the term ‘homogenous’ (ὁμογενής) to this purpose, which has exactly this meaning, but he decided otherwise, and opted for using this  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 235: ὧν τὰ μόρια τοῖς ὅλοις ἐστὶ συνώνυμα. comm Metaph, pp. 116; 426; commTop, p. 405; 406. Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, Problemata, 2.39; Ἠθικὰ Προβλήματα, p. 157. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 3.108. Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 82. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.49.32. Ammonius of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isago gen, pp. 81; 83; commDeInterpr, p. 15. Damascius, Princ, pp. 196; 199; In Parmenidem, pp. 81; 135; 144. Simplicius, commCael, pp. 535; 605; 606; commCateg, p. 61; commPhys, pp. 85; 175; 551; 577; commAnim, p. 76. John Philoponus, commCateg, p. 54; commGenCorr, pp. 195; 270; commGenAnim, p. 24; commAnim, pp. 14; 189; 200; commPhys, pp. 24; 202; 396; De Aeternitate Mundi, pp. 439; 440; 506. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 99. Elias of Alexandria, In Por phyrii Isagogen, pp. 68; 69. David of Alexandria, Prolegomena Philosophiae, pp. 65; 70 3; 155. Pseudo David (or, Pseudo Elias) of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, Praxis 20, pp. 39; 41; Prax is 21, p. 43; Praxis 24, p. 51; Praxis 35, p. 92. Stephanus (Athens, Alexandria, seventh century), In Aristotelis Librum De Interpretatione Commentarium, p. 4. John of Damascus, Dialectica, 6; 7; 12. Arethas of Caesarea, Scholia in Porphyrii Isagogen, scholion 81. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 33; Theologica [Gautier], 26; commPhys, 4.17. Eustratius of Nicaea, In Aristotelis Ethica Nicoma chea i Commentaria, p. 40. Pseudo Zonaras, Lexicon, letter omicron, p. 1448. Anonymous, In Eth ica Nicomachea ii v Commentaria, p. 215. Anonymous, Commentaria in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam (Scholia Vaticana), pp. 132; 133.  Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium, 655b. John Philoponus quoted Aristotle’s definition to the letter. commGenCorr, p. 11: ἀλλ᾿ ὁ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ· τί δέ ἐστιν ὁμοιομερές, αὐτὸς προσέθηκεν εἰπὼν ὧν ἑκάστου συνώνυμον τὸ μέρος ἐστίν [Aristotle, De Generatione et Cor ruptione, 314a18: ὧν ἑκάστῳ συνώνυμον τὸ μέρος ἐστίν]. Also, John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 24: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων ὑπετίθετο, ὁμοιομέρεια δέ ἐστιν ἧς τὸ μέρος τῷ ὅλῳ ὅμοιον. Cf. Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 8.4.11: τὰ τοίνυν ἐν μιᾷ περιγραφῇ σώματα πολλάκις μὲν ὁμοιομερῆ καλεῖται τῷ πάντ᾿ αὐτῶν τὰ μόρια καὶ ἀλλήλοις ὑ πάρχειν ὅμοια καὶ τῷ παντί, πολλάκις δ᾿ ἁπλᾶ καὶ πρῶτα. Pseudo Theodosius of Alexandria (grammarian, fourth fifth century AD), Epitome Catholicae Herodiani, p. 205: ὁμοιομερῆ μέν, ὅταν καὶ τοῦ ὀνόματος ὅλου ἀλλήλων μετέχουσι τὰ μέρη καὶ τοῦ μερισμοῦ, οἷον ὁ μέγας λίθος τέμνεται εἰς μικρὰ λιθίδια, ἅτινα καὶ τοῦ ὅλου λίθου τὸ ὄνομα καὶ ἀλλήλων ἔχει καὶ τὸν ὁρισμόν.

Anaxagoras’ principles

107

term in its strictly etymological sense, in relation to things that belong to the same genus.⁵ Ammonius of Alexandria elaborated, explaining that ‘the parts of a piece of wood are called wood, too, so that the parts are named after the name of the whole and they are in no wise different from each other’.⁶ Likewise, Simplicius wrote that ‘each ὁμοιομέρεια has in itself all the attributes of the whole’ (ἑκάστην ὁμοιομέρειαν ὁμοίως τῷ ὅλῳ πάντα ἔχουσιν ἐνυπάρχοντα).⁷ Michael Psellus cared to afford a clear definition: “ὁμοιομερῆ are the bodies which are the same throughout, and the nature of each ὁμοιομερὲς is the same both in the whole and in any part of it.”⁸ Despite this, careful reading of Aristotle’s numerous references to Anaxagoras and to his principles shows that what he meant by this term was in effect ‘homogenous’ rather that what this indicates grammatically. Thus, the ὁμοιομέρειαι are ‘the principles of all beings’ (ἀρχαὶ τῶν ὄντων,⁹ or

 Cf. Aristotle, Categoriae, 5b19; De Caelo, 306a11; 308b22; De Anima, 431a24; De Generatione et Corruptione, 320b20; 323a30; 324a1; 329b25 26; 333a34; Historia Animalium, 563b28; 577b6 9; De Partibus Animalium, 642b17; 665b17; De Generatione Animalium, 715a23 24; 715b9; 721a6; 723b3; 738b28; 746a30; 746b11; Meteorologica, 378b16; Metaphysica, 981b26 27; 1057b29; Ethica Eude mia, 1239b19; 1165a33; Rhetorica, 1407a17.  Ammonius of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 83: καὶ ὁμοιομερὲς μέν ἐστι τὸ ἔχον τὰ μέρη ὅμοια τῷ ὅλῳ, ὡς τὰ μέρη ὀνομάζεσθαι τῷ τοῦ ὅλου ὀνόματι καὶ μηδὲν ἀλλήλων διαφέρειν· τοῦ γὰρ ξύλου τὰ μέρη ξύλον ἕκαστον προσαγορεύεται καὶ οὐδὲν ἀλλήλων διαφέρει, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τοῦ νεύρου τὸ μέρος τῇ τοῦ ὅλου φωνῇ προσαγορεύεται καὶ ἡ σὰρξ καὶ ἡ φλέψ. … τὰ δ᾿ ἀνομοιομερῆ τῷ τοῦ ὅλου ὀνόματι οὐ προσαγορεύεται. Also, John Philoponus, commCateg, p. 54: ἐνταῦθα δὲ ἑκάτερον τῶν μερῶν τῷ τοῦ ὅλου ὀνόματι οὐσία κέκληται. πάλιν τὰ ὡς ὁμοιο μερῆ διαιρούμενα τὴν τοῦ ὅλου ἔχουσιν ὀνομασίαν καὶ τὸν ὁρισμόν, ὡς ἐπὶ τῆς σαρκός· ὁμοίως γὰρ τὸ τῆς σαρκὸς μέρος σὰρξ κέκληται καὶ τὸν ὁρισμὸν δὲ τὸν τῆς σαρκὸς ἐπιδέχεται.  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 460. Also, Simplicius, commCael, p. 604: ὁμοιομερῆ γάρ ἐστι τὰ εἰς ὅμοια τῷ ὅλῳ μέρη διαιρούμενα, τοιαῦτα δὲ σὰρξ καὶ ὀστοῦν καὶ ξύλον καὶ λίθος, ἅπερ ὅτι μή ἐστιν ἁπλᾶ δῆλον.  Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 33: σώματα ὁμοιομερῆ εἰσι δι᾿ ὅλου ἥκοντα, τῶν δὲ ὁμοιομε ρῶν τὸ αὐτὸ εἶδος ἐν τῷ μέρει καὶ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.12, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876B: ᾿Aναξαγό ρας Ἡγησιβούλου ὁ Κλαζομένιος ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀπεφήνατο. Sextus Empir icus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.32: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομένιος ὁμοιομερείας. … τοσαύτης τοί νυν καὶ ἔτι πλείονος διαφωνίας γεγενημένης περὶ τῶν ὑλικῶν ἀρχῶν παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς. Op. cit. 3.33: καὶ τοῖς περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν, πᾶσαν αἰσθητὴν ποιότητα περὶ ταῖς ὁμοιομερείαις ἀπολείπουσιν. Ad versus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 363: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομένιος ὁμοιομερείας. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 24: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων ὑπετί θετο, ὁμοιομέρεια δέ ἐστιν ἧς τὸ μέρος τῷ ὅλῳ ὅμοιον. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 6: ᾿Aναξα γόρας δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ Μίμαντος τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀρχὰς ἡγήσατο τοῦ παντός.

108

Chapter 1 – The Principles

ἀρχαὶ τῶν πάντων,¹⁰ or ἀρχαὶ τῶν ὅλων¹¹), which means that existence of all things is derived from them. In general, Anaxagoras’ σπέρματα, which Aristotle labelled ὁμοιομέρειαι, are ‘the principles of beings’ (ἀρχαὶ τῶν ὄντων). Therefore, one should have thought that they are principles, not ‘elements’ (but, in what follows, Aristotle has different things to say):¹² the latter are only the result of interaction between the principles, which means that this is a philosophy far too unlike those of Thales, Heraclitus, and others. However, Aristotle presented things differently, and all too often did he identify carelessly ‘principles’ and ‘elements’, thus laying the absurd notion of an infinite number of elements at the door of Anaxagoras. The opening of Anaxagoras work was normally quoted, ‘all things were together; then Mind came and distinguished them’ (ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ ταῦτα διέκρινεν), with minor variations of phrase.¹³ Certainly, the most au Pseudo Justin, Cohortatio ad Gentiles, p. 4E: ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὁ Κλαζομένιος ἀρχὰς τῶν πάντων τὰς ὁμοιομερείας εἶναι φησίν. Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, p. 505: ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὁ τοῦ Ἡγη σιβούλου ὁ Κλαζομένιος ἀρχὰς τῶν πάντων τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἔφησεν εἶναι.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 18: τὰς ἀρχὰς ὑποτίθενται τῶν ὅλων, ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομένιος τὰς ὁμοιομερείας. Cf. Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist (comm. on Physics), Book 1, line 61: αἱ ὁμοιομέρειαι κατ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόραν, αἱ ἀρχαὶ δηλονότι.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 214: οἱ δὲ αὐτῶν, οὐκ ἀτόμους, ὁμοιομερῆ δέ τινά φασιν ἄπειρα εἶναι σώματα, ἐξ ὧν ἡ τῶν αἰσθητῶν γένεσις σωμάτων γινομένη κατὰ σύγκρισιν καὶ σύνθεσιν, ἧς δόξης ᾿Aναξαγόρας τε καὶ ᾿Aρχέλαος δοκοῦσι γεγονέναι. Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 484: ᾿Aναξαγόρας … τὰς ὁμοιομερείας εἰσάγων. De Placitis Hippocratis et Plato nis, 5.3.18: εἴτ᾿ ἐξ ἀτόμων ὡς Ἐπίκουρος εἴτ᾿ ἐξ ὁμοιομερῶν ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας. Diogenes of Oenoan da (second century AD), Fragmenta, fr. 6 column 2: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δ᾿ ὁ Κλαζομένιος τὰς ὁμοιομε ρείας ἑκάστου πράγματος.  Plato, Phaedo, 72c (ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα). Also, in Gorgias, 465d, addressing the Anaxagor ean Polus, whereas Gorgias was an Empedoclean: τὸ τοῦ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἂν πολὺ ἦν, ὦ φίλε Πῶλε· σὺ γὰρ τούτων ἔμπειρος ὁμοῦ ἂν πάντα χρήματα ἐφύρετο ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ. See a comment on this point by Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Gorgiam Commentaria, 14.12. Also, another comment by Olympiodorus, In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 10.4. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1056b; 1069b; 1071b; Physica, 203a. Pseudo Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ars Rhetorica, 8.10. Plu tarch, Quaestiones Convivales, 644C; 679A. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876D: ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν, νοῦς δ᾿ αὐτὰ διῄρηκε καὶ διακεκόσμηκε, χρήματα λέγων τὰ πράγματα. Diels wrote, νοῦς δὲ αὐτὰ διέκρινε καὶ διεκόσμησε χρήματα λέγων τὸ πράγματα. Alexander of Aphro disias, commMetaph, pp. 291; 630; 673 (ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα καὶ ἓν ἦν τὸ πᾶν, ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἤρ ξατο ἀπὸ ἀρχῆς τινος ταῦτα διαχωρίζειν); 690. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Ad versus Physicos 1), 6: ἦν πάντα ὁμοῦ χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ ἐλθὼν αὐτὰ διεκόσμησεν. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 1.4: ὅθεν λαβὼν ᾿Aναξαγόρας πάντα ἔφη χρήματα γεγονέναι ὁμοῦ, νοῦν δὲ ἐλθόντα αὐτὰ διακοσμῆσαι. Op. cit. 2.6: πάντα χρήματα ἦν ὁμοῦ. Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 42, p. 124: πάντα δὲ ἦν ἀληθῶς ὁμοῦ χρήματα κατ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόραν. Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 13: ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ αὐτὰ διέκρινεν ἐπελθών. Syrianus, comm Metaph, p. 71: ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα. Loc. cit. πάντα ὁμοῦ χρήματα. Damascius, Princ, p. 53: ὁμοῦ

Anaxagoras’ principles

109

thentic exponent of Anaxagoras’ own words is Simplicius,¹⁴ and cases of misattribution are practically negligible.¹⁵ This proposition should be paid particular attention: the word he used for ‘things’ is χρήματα, not πράγματα.¹⁶ Normally, the two terms were treated as synonymous,¹⁷ but there is a slight, yet important, difference: χρήματα (which also means ‘money’) in the sense of ‘things’ is more

πάντα χρήματα. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 192: ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα. commPhys, p. 25: ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 267: ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 23: ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ ταῦτα διέκρινεν. commPhys, 1.14: ἦν ὁμοῦ χρήματα πάντα. Op. cit. 3.12: Ἐτίθει δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ ἀρχὴν ποιητικὴν τὸν νοῦν καὶ πάντα μὲν χρήματα ἐτίθει ὁμοῦ, ἀρχὴν δὲ ἐτίθει καὶ τῷ νοῒ τῆς νοήσεως εἰς τὸ διακρῖναι αὐτά. Op. cit. 8.2: Ἦν ὁμοῦ χρήματα πάντα. John Galen (grammarian, twelfth century), Allegoriae in Hesiodi Theogoniam, p. 324: ἦν γὰρ ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματά ποτε κατὰ ᾿Aναξαγόραν, νοῦς δὲ διέ κρινεν αὐτά. Op. cit. p. 332.  Here is the authentic rendering. Simplicius, commCael, p. 608: Λέγει δὲ ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἀρχόμενος τοῦ συγγράμματος· ὁμοῦ χρήματα πάντα ἦν ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ μικρότητα· καὶ γὰρ τὸ σμικρὸν ἄπειρον ἦν, καὶ πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲν ἔνδηλον ἦν ὑπὸ σμικρότητος, καὶ ὅτι ἐν σύμπαντι χρὴ δοκεῖν ἐνεῖναι πάντα χρήματα. Op. cit. p. 590: λέγει γάρ, ὅτι ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ αὐτὰ διακρίνας διεκόσμησεν. commPhys, pp. 34; 155; 163; 164; 172; 174; 301; 460; 462; 1121; 1153: ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ σμικρότητα.  There is a wrong ascription of the famous phrase to Democritus by Arethas, Scripta Minora (e cod. Mosq. Hist. Mus. gr. 315), Opus 55, p. 338: ἀλλ᾿ ἀνεπέφυρτο πάντα καὶ συνεκέχυτο καὶ τοῦτο ἐκεῖνο τὸ Δημοκρίτου ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα. See the same text in the anonymous Scholia in Lu cianum (scholia vetera et recentiora Arethae), commentary on Lucian of Samosata’s Juppiter Tragoedus, 38. Likewise, the fifteenth century collector of proverbs whom I mentioned earlier, made Anaxagoras’ opening, πάντα χρήματα, a provebial phrase, but he thought that this was a phrase of Democritus, and explained it, ‘things existing in fusion’. Michael Apostolius, Collec tio Paroemiarum, Centuria 14.3: πάντα χρήματα· ἐπὶ τῶν συγκεχυμένων πραγμάτων· ἐλήφθη δὲ ἐκ τοῦ Δημοκρίτου τοῦ φυσικοῦ. Nevertheless, in what follows it will be shown that Democritus admired Anaxagoras (which is why Democritus hated him, as sometimes it happens, see a tes timony by Favorinus, in Appendix I, pp. 1537; 1552), which should not exclude the possibility that Democritus had taken up some views of Anaxagoras. Cyril of Alexandria (Contra Julianum, 1.15) reported that ‘in the seventieth Olympiad, the physicists Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Heracli tus were all present’.  Anaxagoras, apud Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a: ἄρχεται δὲ οὕτως· ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν, νοῦς δὲ αὐτὰ διέκρινε καὶ διεκόσμησε χρήματα λέγων τὸ πράγματα. Also, Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876D.  Antiphon of Athens, sophist, fifth century BC, Fragmenta, (T. Thalheim, post F. Blass), fr. 183, apud Suda, alphabetic letter chi, entry 488: χρημάτων· κεῖται δὲ ἡ λέξις καὶ ἐπὶ πράγματος ἢ προ σώπου ἢ λόγου, ὡς ᾿Aντιφῶν. Likewise, alphabetic letter chi, entry 473. Julius Pollux (or, Poly deuces, or Naucratites), Onomasticon, 9.150. Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, alphabetic letter chi, entry 709. The anonymous lexicon, Glossae in Herodotum (= Ἡροδότου λέξεις), Herodotus book 1, entry 13. Etymologicum Gudianum, alphabetic entry chi, p. 570. Anonymous, In Aristotelis Artem Rhetoricam Commentarium, p. 256. Anonymous, In Ethica Nicomachea Commentaria, p. 176.

110

Chapter 1 – The Principles

abstract than the term πράγματα (which also means ‘goods’, ‘events’, ‘state of things’, or one’s ‘belongings’). In view of this, it is easy to grasp his proposition, ‘no thing (οὐδὲν γὰρ χρῆμα) either comes to be or passes away, but it [arises] from existent things (ἀπὸ ἐόντων χρημάτων) by means of either commingling or separation off’,¹⁸ and Simplicius explains that this is the background against which the axiom ‘all things were together’ (ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα) should be understood.¹⁹ In any event, all of the fragments quoting Anaxagoras’ own words show that he never used such terms as ὁμοιομερῆ or ὁμοιομέρεια, or any cognate of them. Later authors assumed that χρήματα and πράγματα are synonymous, but this synonymity was not applied universally throughout the Greek world: lexicographers assured that this usage was exclusive to the people of Attica, and to those who employed this dialect.²⁰ In any case, χρῆμα denoted more abstract notions such as ‘virtue’, ‘friendship’, the ‘parents’, or the idea of ‘homeland’: in pertinent considerations, all of them were stated as χρῆμα.²¹ When Protagoras resolved that ‘man is the measure of all χρημάτων’, he meant not simply ‘things’, but situations of life, abstract ideas and propositions,²² even persons.²³ It is no accident that Anaxagoras eschewed the term πράγματα, and opted for χρήματα instead. For what he meant was more than mere natural objects or situations of life: he suggested the creative forces causing them either to come to be, or to become this or that, which only a few later philosophers (starting with Origen and Porphyry) named λόγοι. Anaxagoras himself accorded no name to these funda-

 Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163: οὐδὲν γὰρ χρῆμα, οὐδὲ γίνεται οὐδὲ ἀπόλ λυται, ἀλλὰ ἀπὸ ἐόντων χρημάτων συμμίσγεταί τε καὶ διακρίνεται.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, loc. cit.  Moeris, Lexicon Atticum, letter chi, entry 24: χρήματα καὶ τὰ πράγματα καὶ τὰ ἀργύρια λέγου σιν· μόνως δὲ τὰ πράγματα χρήματα ᾿Aττικοί. Alphabetic letter chi, entry 474: Χρῆμα· πρᾶγμα. … ἔθος δὲ τοῖς ᾿Aττικοῖς ἐπαγωγῇ χρῆσθαι, οἷον ἵππος σπάνιόν τι χρῆμα· γυνὴ κακόν τι χρῆμα. καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὁμοίως, ὧν ἂν ἐξαίρειν βούλωνται. So entry 475. Lexica Segueriana, Collectio Ver borum Utilium e Differentibus Rhetoribus et Sapientibus Multis (recensio aucta e cod. Coislin. 345), alphabetic entry chi, pp. 416 417: χρῆμα· πρᾶγμα. κτῆμα. πλοῦτος. οὐσία. λῆμμα. παρὰ δὲ ᾿Aττι κοῖς χρῆμα μόνον τὸ πρᾶγμα λέγεται. Julius Pollux, Onomasticon, 9.87 88: χρήματα μὲν εἴποιεν ἂν οἱ ᾿Aττικοί, τὸ δὲ χρῆμα παρὰ μὲν αὐτοῖς ἐπὶ τοῦ πράγματος ἢ κτήματος, παρὰ δὲ τοῖς Ἴωσι κἀπὶ τῶν χρημάτων.  Aspasius, In Ethica Nichomachea Commentaria, p. 95.  Protagoras, apud Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 1.216: μέτρον μὲν μὲν λέγων τὸ κριτήριον, χρημάτων δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων, ὡς δυνάμει φάσκειν πάντων πραγμάτων κριτήριον εἶναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον. Likewise, Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.20.3.  Lexica Segueriana, Glossae Rhetoricae (e cod. Coislin. 345), alphabetic entry chi, page 316: Χρημάτων· σημαίνει καὶ τὸ ἀργύριον καὶ τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὴν ὅλην οὐσίαν. κεῖται δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ πράγ ματος ἢ προσώπου ἢ λόγου.

Anaxagoras’ principles

111

mental creative and cohesive causes, and simply used the general designation χρήματα,²⁴ all the more so since (as I argue later) the state of ‘being together’ precedes that of potentialities, which effectuate actual being. It was Aristotle who introduced the term ὁμοιομέρειαι or ὁμοιομερῆ for them, and this was the starting point of the long series of his distortions. Philoponus had a grasp of the notion, which was by and large this: ὁμοιομέρειαι are homogenous material elements,²⁵ which are made of atoms, even though, properly speaking, they are not atoms.²⁶ But once one accepts that atoms are more elementary factors than the ὁμοιομέρειαι, there is no way for them to be called principles, which are prior to the elements. In other words, Philoponus was inundated by Aristotle’s material conception of this notion.²⁷ It is remarkable that Psellus gave a definition which is diametrical to that of Philopo-

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 162 3: ἔνεστιν ἄρα ἐν τῇ ὁμοιομερείᾳ καὶ σὰρξ καὶ ὀστοῦν καὶ αἷμα καὶ χρυσὸς καὶ μόλυβδος καὶ γλυκὺ καὶ λευκόν, ἀλλὰ διὰ μικρότητα ἀναίσθητα ἡμῖν ἐστιν, ὄντα πάντα ἐν πᾶσι. πόθεν γὰρ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς φαίνεται γινόμενον (εἰ καὶ διὰ μέσων ἄλλων), εἰ μὴ πᾶν ἦν ἐν πᾶσι; φαίνεται δὲ καὶ προσαγορεύεται ἕκαστον ἐκ τοῦ μάλιστα ἐπικρα τοῦντος. καὶ γὰρ εἰλικρινῶς μὲν τοῦτο λευκὸν ἢ μέλαν ἢ γλυκὺ ἢ σάρκα ἢ ὀστοῦν μὴ εἶναι, οὗ δὲ πλεῖστον ἔχει, τοῦτο δοκεῖ ἡ φύσις εἶναι τοῦ πράγματος ἀεὶ πάντων ἐν πᾶσιν ὄντων. οὐδὲν γὰρ χρῆμα, φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, οὐδὲ γίνεται οὐδὲ ἀπόλλυται, ἀλλὰ ἀπὸ ἐόντων χρημάτων συμμίσγεταί τε καὶ διακρίνεται· διὸ καὶ ἀρχόμενος εὐθὺς τοῦ συγγράμματος, ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα φησί.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 312: ταῦτα δὲ καὶ πρὸ ᾿Aριστοτέλους ὁ Πλάτων ἐγκαλεῖ τῷ ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ, ὅτι ὥσπερ ἐξυπνισθεὶς τῶν ἄλλων καθευδόντων φυσιολόγων καὶ νοῦν τῆς τοῦ κό σμου γενέσεως αἰτιασάμενος, ἐν τῷ ποιεῖν τὰ πράγματα ὥσπερ ἐπιλελησμένος τοῦ νοῦ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας αἰτιᾶται, αἵπερ ὕλης αὐτῷ λόγον ἐπεῖχον.  John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 171: καὶ οὐκέτι ὁμοιομερεῖς αἱ ἄτομοι οὐδὲ πρῶται ἀρχαί, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκεῖνα ἐξ ὧν αὗται σύγκεινται.  Cf. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 91: ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν τούτοις ἐβάδισε· πάντων γὰρ σωματικὰς ἀρχὰς αὐτῇ δεδωκότων διὰ τὴν γνῶσιν, ἐκεῖνος τὸν νοῦν ψυχὴν εἶναι λέγων, ἐπειδὴ ἔργον μὲν ψυχῆς τὸ κινεῖν, τὸν δὲ νοῦν ἔλεγε κινεῖν τὸ πᾶν, ὥστε τὸν νοῦν ψυχὴν ἔλεγε, τοῦτον τὸν νοῦν καθαρὸν ἔλεγε καὶ ἀμιγῆ καὶ ἀπαθῆ, τουτέστιν ἀσώματον. τὰς γὰρ ὁμοιο μερείας λέγων ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων, ταύτας δὲ μεμῖχθαι ἐν ἀλλήλοις, τὸν νοῦν ἔλεγε τούτων ἀμιγῆ εἶναι καὶ καθαρόν, ὡς ἕτερον αὐτῶν ἔλεγε τῶν ἀρχῶν ἐξ ὧν τὰ πάντα, τὴν ἐναντίαν πᾶσι φερόμενος. commPhys, p. 24: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων ὑπετίθετο, ὁμοιομέρεια δέ ἐστιν ἧς τὸ μέρος τῷ ὅλῳ ὅμοιον. ὑπάρχειν οὖν ἐν ἀλλήλαις τὰς ὁμοιομερείας, οἷον ἐν τῷ ξύλῳ ὁμοιομερεῖ ὄντι ὑπάρχειν καὶ σάρκα καὶ ὀστοῦν καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ πῦρ καὶ χρυσὸν καὶ πάντα ἁπλῶς, καὶ ἐν ἑκάστῳ καὶ τῷ τυχόντι ἀπείρους ἐνυπάρχειν ὁμοιομερείας. Op. cit. p. 87: ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὄντων ὑπετίθετο ὑλικὰς μὲν τὰς ὁμοιομερείας (ταύτας δὲ ἀπείρους εἶναι τὸν ἀριθμόν) καὶ τὴν ἐναντίωσιν, πρίν τε τὸ πᾶν γενέσθαι, πάσας ἅμα μεμῖχθαι· τὸν δὲ νοῦν, ὃν καὶ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον ὑποτίθεται, ἀπό τινος χρόνου ἀρξάμενον θελῆσαι μὲν διακρῖναι ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων πάντα, μὴ μὴν δυνηθῆναι τελείαν ποιήσασθαι τὴν διάκρισιν. Op. cit. p. 96: εἰ αἱ ἀρχαὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ὁμοιομέρειαί εἰσιν, αἱ δὲ ὁμοιομέρειαι ἄπειροι, τὸ δὲ ἄπειρον ἄγνωστον τῇ αὑτοῦ φύσει, αἱ ἀρχαὶ ἄρα τῶν ὄντων ἄγνωστοι· ὧν δὲ αἱ ἀρχαὶ ἄγνωστοι, καὶ αὐτὰ ἄγνωστα· ἄγνωστα ἄρα τὰ ὄντα. ὥστε ἀνῄρηται ἐκ τῶν ὄντων ἡ ἐπιστήμη, εἴ γε καὶ ἡ γνῶσις.

112

Chapter 1 – The Principles

nus, and definitely more accurate: it is not the ὁμοιομέρειαι that consist of atoms, but the other way around: the atoms are made of ὁμοιομέρειαι. Whereas it was a general tendency to identify Empedocles with Anaxagoras, while pointing out only a few striking differences between them (which some authors hardly saw as differences), the polymath Psellus makes the real point: Having made the ὁμοιομέρειαι principles of all beings, Anaxagoras maintained that they make up the elements. And the fact was that, on the one hand, Empedocles thought of the elements as being simple and of the ὁμοιομέρειαι as composite, whereas, on the other, Anaxagoras considered the ὁμοιομέρειαι as simple and the elements as composite. ²⁸

The differentiation is accurate and felicitous, even though Psellus goes on with endorsing the Aristotelian invention that all of the ὁμοιομέρειαι are material, and embraces Plato’s criticism, according to which, once he had introduced them as principles, then he made nothing of the other principle, namely, the Mind.²⁹ The anonymous learned historian of philosophy (who might have been Galen though) got it right in two ways. First, he regarded the ὁμοιομέρεια as principles, not elements.³⁰ Secondly, he pointed out the mistake made by philosophers, who thought that a principle is the same notion as a cause. For they believe that a principle is only a hegemonic one of everything while they do not regard this as the cause of the universe having come into being; hence, they posited the cause, out of which aftereffects come about, as the supreme factor in everything.³¹

 Michael Psellus, Theologica, 6: ὁ δ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὰς ὁμοιομερείας μᾶλλον τῶν ὄντων τι θέμενος ἀρχάς, ἀπὸ τούτων ἔλεγε τὰ στοιχεῖα συνίστασθαι, ὡς συμβαίνειν τὸν μὲν Ἐμπεδοκλέα ἁπλᾶ ἡγεῖσθαι τὰ στοιχεῖα, σύνθετα δὲ τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ, τὸν δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἁπλᾶ μὲν τὰ ὁμοιο μερῆ, σύνθετα δὲ τὰ στοιχεῖα. Cf. commPhys, 8.2· τὰ δ᾿ ᾧδε παραγαγὼν συνέθετο ἀλλήλαις τὰς ὁμοιομερείας καὶ τὰ στοιχεῖα ἐποίησε πρώτως καὶ τἆλλα τὰ φυσικὰ σώματα· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων ταῦτα ἐγέννα ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν ἅπαντα.  I discuss this presently. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 6: τὸν δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἁπλᾶ μὲν τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ, σύνθετα δὲ τὰ στοιχεῖα. ὅπως δ᾿ ἂν αἱ δόξαι αὐτοῖς ἔχωσιν, ὑλικαὶ πάντως εἰσίν. ἐνια χοῦ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας νοῦν ἐφιστάνει τῷ παντὶ καὶ ὑπὸ νοῦ λέγει κεκοσμῆσθαι τὸ πᾶν· ἀλλὰ βραχὺ κατιών, ἐπιλανθάνεται τῶν δογμάτων καὶ πάλιν ἐπὶ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας τὸν λόγον ἐγκαθορμίζει.  See discussion infra.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 19: ᾿Aρχὴν δὲ καὶ αἰτίαν τινὲς μὲν ᾠήθησαν μηδὲν ἀλλή λων διαφέρειν, τινὲς δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν καθηγητικὴν πάντων εἶναι νομίζουσιν οὐκ αἰτίαν οὖσαν τοῦ παντὸς ἀποτελέσματος. τὸ δὲ ἐν ἑκάστῳ πρῶτον εἶναι δοκοῦν τὸ αἴτιον ἡγήσαντο καθεστάναι, δι᾿ ὃ γίγνεται τὰ ἀποτελέσματα.

Anaxagoras’ principles

113

Likewise, Michael Psellus saw them as analogous to the elements of all the other Presocratics, which invariably he called principles.³² It is remarkable that he is the sole author beside Philostratus³³ who reports that Anaxagoras came from Mimas, which was a mountain between Erythrae and Clazomenae.³⁴ Later still, the confusion between principles and elements persisted, and Anaxagoras’ fundamental notion was seen as only another name for the ‘atoms’ of Democritus, with only minor differences.³⁵ Following Aristotle, all of those authors saw the notion of ὁμοιομέρειαι as bespeaking material particles. Accordingly, they saw the Mind as analogous to the Demiurge, who sets a material substratum in order. In other words, a weird mixture of Platonism and Aristotelism was forced into the philosophy of Anaxagoras, although actually this had nothing to do with either of them. The example of Pseudo-Plutarch (perhaps Plutarch himself) is characteristic: “It is impossible to posit matter as the one and sole principle which gives rise to all beings; instead, it is necessary to introduce also a poietic cause”. Then he uses the normal example of Aristotle about the craftsman who imposes form upon matter, and produces a certain object.³⁶

 Michael Psellus, commPhys, 1.18: Ἐπεὶ γοῦν τὸ ἀπείρους λέγειν ἀρχὰς καὶ τοιαύτας [Aristotle] ἀπεδοκίμασε, βέλτιον, φησί, λέγειν ἐλάττους καὶ πεπερασμένας αὐτάς, ὡς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τὰ τέσ σαρα στοιχεῖα.  Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, 2.5: τὸν μὲν Κλαζομένιον ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἀπὸ τοῦ κατὰ Ἰωνίαν Μί μαντος ἐπεσκέφθαι τὰ ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ. In fact, Psellus quotes Anaxagoras’ origin from this text of Philostratus. Cf. Theologica, 6: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ ἀπὸ τοῦ Μίμαντος τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀρχὰς ἡγή σατο τοῦ παντός.  Cf. Eustathius of Thessaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, pp. 407 8: Ἐρυθραὶ δὲ ὀξυ τόνως αἱ τῆς Ἰωνίας, ὧν μέμνηται ὁ Γεωγράφος εἰπών, ὅτι μεταξὺ Ἐρυθρῶν καὶ τῶν Ὑποκρή μνων Μίμας ὄρος ὑψηλὸν εὔθηρον καὶ πολύδενδρον. [ὁ Γεωγράφος is Strabo, and the point im plicitly cited by Eustathius is Geographica, 14.1.33]. Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam, p. 120: ὁ δὲ γεωγράφος λέγει και ὅτι τὰ Ψύρα κύκλος σταδίων τεσσαράκοντα καὶ πόλις ἐν αὐτῇ ὁμώνυ μος. Μίμας δὲ ὄρος φασὶ κατέναντι Χίου, μεταξὺ Ἐρυθρῶν καὶ τοῦ ὑποκρήμνου ἀπὸ Μίμαντος γίγαντος ἐν αὐτῷ κειμένου. ἔστι δὲ εὔθηρον καὶ πολύδενδρον καὶ ἠνεμόεν ἤγουν ὑψηλόν.  Cf. Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 1.43: ὡς Δημό κριτος μὲν τὰς ἀπείρους ἀτόμους ἐτίθει τῶν πραγμάτων ἀρχάς· ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ τὰς ἀπείρους ὁμοιομερείας. adnotArist, Book 1 (comm. on Physica): Ὅτι εἰ ἄπειροι αἱ ὁμοιομέρειαι κατὰ ᾿Aνα ξαγόραν, αἱ ἀρχαὶ δηλονότι. Op. cit. Book 6 (marginal notes on Aristotle’s Physica), 1: Οἳ μὲν ἁπλᾶς ταύτας ἔλεγον καὶ μὴ ὁμογενεῖς, τὰς ὁμοιομερείας τιθέντες ἀρχάς, ὧν ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἦν, τὰς μὲν ὑλικὰς ἀρχὰς ἀπείρους ποιῶν, τὴν δὲ τῆς κινήσεως αἰτίαν καὶ γενέσεως μίαν, τὸν νοῦν.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876B: ἀδύνατον γὰρ ἀρχὴν μίαν τὴν ὕλην τῶν ὄντων, ἐξ ἧς τὰ πάντα, ὑποστῆναι· ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ποιοῦν αἴτιον χρὴ ὑποτιθέναι· οἷον ἄργυρος οὐκ ἀρκεῖ πρὸς τὸ ἔκπωμα γενέσθαι, ἂν μὴ καὶ τὸ ποιοῦν ᾖ, τουτέστιν ὁ ἀργυροκόπος· ὁμοίως καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ χαλκοῦ καὶ τοῦ ξύλου καὶ τῆς ἄλλης ὕλης.

114

Chapter 1 – The Principles

Anaxagoras’ principles being styled elements Since little was made of the difference between principles the elements, the authors who mentioned Anaxagoras’ doctrine presumed with Aristotle that the ὁμοιομέρειαι are material. It appeared to them that whether this or that name was used, it was of little importance. Consequently, most (though not all) relevant expositions indicate no care about taking such nuances seriously. That Anaxagoras accorded the name elements to his ὁμοιομερῆ is an assertion made only by later doxographers.³⁷ But the real source was Aristotle, who saw ὁμοιομερῆ in purely material terms, indeed as the smallest particle of a homogenous material, such as ‘veins, bones’, and the like, and all posterity adduced the same example in order to explain ὁμοιομερῆ in terms of parts or organs of the human body. Quite naturally then, Galen took up the notion (of Aristotle, not of Anaxagoras) and saw the principles as ‘the first and simplest sensible particles’ of the human body.³⁸ Galen plainly states that the source of his terminology is Aristotle who meant and entertained ὁμοιομερῆ in this way, whereas Plato had styled them ‘first-created’ (πρωτόγονα).³⁹ Other authors saw it plausible to associate the notions ὁμοιομερῆ and being simple. ⁴⁰ Little surprise then that Aristotle, referring to ‘those like Anaxagoras⁴¹ who regard all ὁμοιομερῆ as elements’, felt that he had discovered a logical flaw in that philosophy. To him, ‘none of

 Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.10.12, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876D: ἀπὸ τοῦ οὖν ὅμοια τὰ μέρη εἶναι ἐν τῇ τροφῇ τοῖς γεννωμένοις ὁμοιομερείας αὐτὰς ἐκάλεσε καὶ ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων ἀπεφήνατο· καὶ τὰς μὲν ὁμοιομερείας ὕλην, τὸ δὲ ποιοῦν αἴτιον τὸν νοῦν τὸν τὰ πάντα διαταξάμενον.  Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 479: ἐκ πρώτων οὗτος καὶ ἁπλουστάτων αἰσθητῶν στοιχείων ἐστὶ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν ὀνομαζομένων ἰνὸς καὶ ὑμένος καὶ σαρκὸς καὶ πιμελῆς ὀστοῦ τε καὶ χόνδρου καὶ συνδέσμου καὶ νεύρου καὶ μυελοῦ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων, ὧν τὰ μόρια τῆς αὐτῆς ἀλλήλοις ἰδέας ἐστὶ σύμπαντα. Cf. op. cit. p. 481: Ἐκ μὲν γὰρ τῶν χυμῶν τούτων ἕκα στον τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν ἐγένετο, συνιόντων δὲ τούτων ἀλλήλοις ἀποτελεῖται τὸ πρῶτον τε καὶ ἁπλούστατον ὄργανον, ὃ μιᾶς ἐνεργείας ἕνεκεν ὑπὸ τῆς φύσεως ἐγένετο. Cf. ὁμοιομερές τε καὶ ἁπλοῦν. De Naturalibus Facultatibus, pp. 13; 16; De Anatomicis Administrationibus, p. 511; De Methodo Medendi, pp. 309; 660.  Galen, Quod Animi Mores Corporis Temperamenta Sequantur, p. 774.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 84. Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae in Hexaemeron, 2.7: τοῦ φωτὸς ἁπλοῦ τὴν φύσιν ὄντος καὶ ὁμοιομεροῦς. Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, pp. 228 9: Ἢ οὐχ ὁρᾷς ὅπως ἁπλοῦν τρόπον τινὰ καὶ ὁμοιομερές ἐστι.  Anaxagoras had his followers, of course. In the Gorgias, Plato represents Polus as an ardent admirer of Anaxagoras, and styles him a learned Anaxagorean (465d4). Another distinguished enthusiast was Archelaus. See Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.23. Simplicius, commCael, p. 604; commPhys, pp. 27; 1121.

Anaxagoras’ principles being styled elements

115

those who hold this opinion have a proper conception of what an element really is. For we can see that many composite bodies are divisible into homoiomerous parts (ὁμοιομερῆ διαιρούμενα). If then that which is composite is not an element, it follows that an element is not any homoiomerous body, but only, as said before, one which cannot be divided into constituents differing in kind.’⁴² Aristotle makes a distinction between homoiomerous and simple. Homoiomerous is that which, however far it is divided by a cutting or breaking process, it will always produce parts which are the same as each other and as the whole. He considers a piece of stone as an example: a simple body is one which, no matter to what process it is subjected to, it will not reveal a composite nature; however, a piece of a stone is not homoiomerous, because, if, for instance, two pieces of stone are rubbed together, they turn out to contain fire in a potential state.⁴³ Hardly could the logic of this statement be disputed. But it is exactly this that shows Aristotle having an utterly distorted idea about Anaxagoras’ philosophy. For never did Anaxagoras make his principles elements, which is the fundamental conception on which Aristotle based his criticism. Some subsequent authors were misled by Aristotle on this, and made the ὁμοιομερῆ either ‘elements’⁴⁴ or material particles.⁴⁵ It seems that it was not

 Aristotle, De Caelo, 302b.  Cf. Damascius, Princ, p. 156. He considers the difference between elements and parts (Τίς οὖν ἡ διαφορὰ μερῶν καὶ στοιχείων;): parts are made of elements that are simpler (τὰ δὲ στοιχεῖα ἁπλούστερά ἐστι). Two elements at least are needed in order to make up a certain substance (οὐδὲ στοιχεῖον ἓν μόνον δύναται συμπληροῦν τὸ στοιχειωτόν, δύο δὲ τοὐλάχιστον). Any sub stance is of a nature that is different from the elements themselves that make it up (μὴ εἶναι τῆς αὐτῆς φύσεως τὰ στοιχεῖα τῷ στοιχειωτῷ). Consequently, the elements which give rise to a substance are not themselves substances (καὶ τῆς οὐσίας εἴ τινα εἴη στοιχεῖα, οὐκ ἂν εἶεν οὐ σίαι τινές. Οὐσία γὰρ ἦν τὸ στοιχειωτόν, τὸ δὲ στοιχεῖον οὐκ ἂν εἴη τὸ στοιχειωτόν). Damascius could not escape the language of Plato and Aristotle: the example he uses is ‘nerves’.  Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, 302a: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ τοὐναντίον· τὰ γὰρ ὁμοιομερῆ στοιχεῖα, λέγω δ᾿ οἷον σάρκα καὶ ὀστοῦν καὶ τῶν τοιούτων ἕκαστον· ἀέρα δὲ καὶ πῦρ μείγματα τούτων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων σπερμάτων πάντων· εἶναι γὰρ ἑκάτερον αὐτῶν ἐξ ἀοράτων ὁμοιομερῶν πάντων ἠθροισμένον. Physica, 187a: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας … διαφέρουσι δ᾿ ἀλλήλων τῷ τὸν μὲν ἄπειρα τά τε ὁμοιομερῆ καὶ τἀναντία, τὸν δὲ τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεῖα. Op. cit. 203a: ὅσοι δ᾿ ἄπειρα ποιοῦσι τὰ στοιχεῖα, καθάπερ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· καὶ Δημόκριτος, ὁ μὲν ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν, ὁ δ᾿ ἐκ τῆς πανσπερμίας τῶν σχημάτων. De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a: ὁ μὲν γὰρ τὰ ὁμοιο μερῆ στοιχεῖα τίθησιν οἷον ὀστοῦν καὶ σάρκα καὶ μυελὸν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων, ὧν ἑκάστου συνώνυμον τὸ μέρος ἐστίν. Cf. the proposition αὗται δὲ λέγονται ὁμοιομέρειαι καὶ στοιχεῖα in Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.1.29b, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 882A & Pseudo Galen, Historia Philo sophica, 35. Eusebius, who made extensive quotations of the context, believed that the source was a genuine work of Plutarch. See Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.10. Themistius weavered

116

Chapter 1 – The Principles

only the science of Physics that was stalled for many centuries because of Aristotle’s false assumptions and of the authority they had gained in the ruling circles of the Roman Catholic Church. Asclepius of Tralles, the commentator of Aristotle who was extremely hostile to Anaxagoras, did not rest content with making the ὁμοιομερῆ elements: he made the Mind an element, too. In fact, he simply copied from Aristotle,⁴⁶ while not caring to see that Aristotle’s statements about this were heavily contradictory (as discussed below); and although Asclepius normally copied from Alexander of Aphrodisias, he did not pay attention to Alexander not reproducing this statement of Aristotle. Even the highly learned Michael Psellus did not escape this folly: although he points out that, unlike Empedocles, Anaxagoras regarded the ‘elements’ as ‘composite’ (actually, made of ὁμοιομερῆ), he was quick to point out that ‘in any case, to both philosophers these principles are material’. Nevertheless, Psellus remarked that it is elements that are made of ὁμοιομερῆ, not the other way round.⁴⁷ In spite of his admiration for Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias cared to learn that Anaxagoras did not regard water, fire, earth, and air as elements, but as ‘compounds’ (συγκρίματα) that make up bodies.⁴⁸ For indeed Aristotle’s and styled them either ‘elements’ or ‘principles’, and fell short of consistency, but he incurred this only because he followed Aristotle’s text. paraphrPhys, p. 13.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876D (the same text in Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.12). Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 7. Alexander of Aph rodisias, De Mixtione, p. 213; commMetaph, pp. 61; 116 (quoted by Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 99); commTop, pp. 405; 406. John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 87; 229; 323; commAnim, pp. 82; 91. Of Christians, Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.2. Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 6 (marginal notes on Aristotle’s Physica), 1.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 61: Καὶ ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὖν, φησί, δύο ὑπετίθετο τὰ στοιχεῖα, τὸν νοῦν ποιητικὸν αἴτιον καὶ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ὑλικόν, καὶ ἔλεγε πάντα ἐν πᾶσι μεμῖχθαι. Loc. cit. τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν δύο λέγειν στοιχεῖα τὸν νοῦν καὶ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphy sica, 989a30 33.  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 6: ὁ δ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὰς ὁμοιομερείας μᾶλλον τῶν ὄντων τι θέμενος ἀρχάς, ἀπὸ τούτων ἔλεγε τὰ στοιχεῖα συνίστασθαι, ὡς συμβαίνειν τὸν μὲν Ἐμπεδοκλέα ἁπλᾶ ἡγεῖσθαι τὰ στοιχεῖα, σύνθετα δὲ τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ, τὸν δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἁπλᾶ μὲν τὰ ὁμοιο μερῆ, σύνθετα δὲ τὰ στοιχεῖα. ὅπως δ᾿ ἂν αἱ δόξαι αὐτοῖς ἔχωσιν, ὑλικαὶ πάντως εἰσίν. Cf. comm Phys, 8.2: the Creative Mind ‘combined the ὁμοιομέρειαι and produced the elements and the rest of natural bodies’ (νοῦς ὁ δημιουργικὸς … κίνησιν ἐνεποίησεν αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ μὲν ᾧδε, τὰ δ᾿ ᾧδε παραγαγὼν συνέθετο ἀλλήλαις τὰς ὁμοιομερείας καὶ τὰ στοιχεῖα ἐποίησε πρώτως καὶ τἆλλα τὰ φυσικὰ σώματα· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων ταῦτα ἐγέννα ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομε ρειῶν ἅπαντα).  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 28: οὕτως ᾿Aναξαγόραν φησὶ ταῦτα τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ ἄπειρα ὄντα καὶ ἀΐδια γίγνεσθαί τε δοκεῖν καὶ φθείρεσθαι, γίγνεσθαι μὲν τῇ τῶν πλειόνων ὁμοίων συνόδῳ, φθείρεσθαι δὲ τῇ διακρίσει. Σχεδὸν δὲ πάντα εἶπε [sc. Aristotle; italics are mine] τὰ

Anaxagoras’ principles being styled elements

117

fatal mistake was that (whenever he did not identify them) he thought of ὁμοιομερῆ as posterior, not prior to the ‘elements’.⁴⁹ Simplicius escaped this only because he cared to read the work of Anaxagoras itself, and made up his mind for himself. Although, when commenting on Aristotle, of necessity he used Aristotle’s vocabulary,⁵⁰ he knew perfectly well that the principles were not ‘elements’.⁵¹ However, Simplicius assumed that Aristotle’s expression ὁμοιομερὲς ὂν⁵² meant ‘simple being’.⁵³ This is what happened with John Philoponus,⁵⁴ too, although he also had a clear grasp of the ὁμοιομερῆ being not elements.⁵⁵ Prior to them both, Proclus had come to the fray, somehow replying Aristotle: It is not quite the same to be ὁμοιομερὲς and to be simple: for concerning those things that are made by nature, gold and silver are ὁμοιομερῆ, but they are not simple.⁵⁶

Simplicius added to this, pointing out the normal Aristotelian example of ‘bones and flesh, and the like’ (ὡς σὰρξ καὶ ὀστοῦν καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα). In respect of the ὁμοιομερῆ, he urges that both ‘the whole and the particle of it have the same definition, since ‘it makes no difference whether we speak about a clod of earth or of the whole of it;’⁵⁷ but when we talk about ‘bones and flesh and the like’, they are ὁμοιομερῆ (as Aristotle had it), yet they are composite.⁵⁸ Aristotle thought that he was entitled to censuring Anaxagoras, since he presumed as composite what Anaxagoras thought of as simple (such as flesh, wood etc.), and considered

ὁμοιομερῆ· οὐ γὰρ πάντα ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ἐτίθετο· τὸ γοῦν ὕδωρ καὶ τὸ πῦρ καὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὸν ἀέρα ὁμοιομερῆ ὄντα, ὡς ἔστιν ἐκ τῆς ἐναργείας μαθεῖν, οὐκ ἔλεγε στοιχεῖα εἶναι, ἀλλὰ συγκρίματα.  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 389b: ἐκ μὲν γὰρ τῶν στοιχείων τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ, ἐκ δὲ τούτων ὡς ὕλης τὰ ὅλα ἔργα τῆς φύσεως.  Simplicius, commCael, pp. 603; 632; commPhys, pp. 7; 459.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 155; 273; 532.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 275b13.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 239: τὸ γὰρ ὁμοιομερὲς ὂν ἀντὶ τοῦ ἁπλοῦν πρόσκειται. Cf. op. cit. p. 383: τὸν οὐρανὸν ἁπλοῦν ὄντα καὶ ὁμοιομερῆ.  John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 11: οὗτος γὰρ στοιχεῖα ποιῶν τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ, ἄπειρα ὄντα καὶ ἀμετάβλητα κατ᾿ αὐτόν, καὶ τῇ τούτων συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει καὶ ἐκκρίσει ποιῶν τὴν γέ νεσιν, τὸ γίνεσθαι καὶ φθείρεσθαι ἀλλοιοῦσθαι ἐκάλεσεν. commPhys, p. 93: ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὰ κατ᾿ αὐτὸν στοιχεῖα, λέγω δὴ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας, ἄπειρα ἔλεγεν.  John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 13: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ἔμπαλιν σύνθετα φάσκων εἶναι τὰ τέσ σαρα στοιχεῖα ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν.  Proclus, commEucl, p. 105. The idea was taken up by the anonymous author of the Scholia in Euclidis Elementa, Book 1, scholion 1, lines 255 7.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 482. He quotes Aristotle, De Caelo, 279b8 9.  Loc. cit.

118

Chapter 1 – The Principles

as simple what Anaxagoras considered as composite (earth, fire).⁵⁹ But this was nonsense, since in fact Anaxagoras did believe that flesh, wood, and the like, are simple in the proper sense:⁶⁰ the fact that these materials are produced from a specific concurrence of the ὁμοιομερῆ, does not make them composite. What Aristotle never grasped is that this ‘concurrence’ is one of immaterial λόγοι, which the Stoics regarded as corporeal and the Neoplatonists incorporeal (and so did Origen). To all of them, Anaxagoras was the real source and inspiration of a fundamental doctrine, as canvassed in Part II. For his Mind became to the Stoics the cosmic Logos, and his ὁμοιομερῆ became that which to the Stoics, to Porphyry, and to Origen were the creative λόγοι. Aristotle maintained to the end his simplistic impression of ὁμοιομερῆ being ‘those things of which all parts are the same throughout’.⁶¹ However, this is in fact the definition for ὁμογενὲς (homogenous), namely, a uniform material. Therefore, he mistook Anaxagoras’ ὁμοιομερῆ for the hackneyed ὁμογενῆ of common experience. But who would possibly think that Anaxagoras posited composites as his elementary ὁμοιομερῆ principles? There can be no question about Aristotle’s sound logic: it was only his understanding of the Anaxagorean ὁμοιομερῆ that was wanting. As Meletius of Tiberiopolis later remarked, one can think of the (Aristotelian) ὁμοιομερῆ and simple things (τοῖς μὲν ὁμοιομερέσι καὶ ἁπλοῖς κατ᾿ οὐσίαν) as being ‘simple concerning their substance; however, there

 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984a: “Anaxagoras … says that, as a general rule, all things are homoiomerous, like fire and water; only in this sense are they generated and destroyed, that is, by means of combination and differentiation; otherwise, they are neither generated nor de stroyed, but persist eternally’ (᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομένιος … σχεδὸν γὰρ ἅπαντα τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ καθάπερ ὕδωρ ἢ πῦρ οὕτω γίγνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαί φησι, συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει μόνον, ἄλλως δ᾿ οὔτε γίγνεσθαι οὔτ᾿ ἀπόλλυσθαι ἀλλὰ διαμένειν ἀΐδια). De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a b: “Anaxagoras and his followers apparently take a view opposite to that of Empedocles and his followers: for Empedocles says that fire, water, air, and earth, are four elements, and they are ‘simple’, unlike flesh and bone and the like which are ὁμοιομερῆ (καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν ὁμοιομε ρῶν), whereas the others [i.e. Anaxagoras and his followers] assert that these things [i.e. τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ] are ‘simple’ and they are ‘elements’ (ἁπλᾶ καὶ στοιχεῖα), but that earth, fire, water, and air are composite (σύνθετα). For each of them, they say, is a ‘general seed sowing’ (πανσπερ μίαν) [for things which have ingenerate convoluted parts]. By insisting on making the Anaxagor ean principles ὁμοιομερῆ or ‘elements, Aristotle forfeited grasp of a cardinal aspect of Anaxago ras’ real philosophy.  Cf. W.K.C. Guthrie, Aristotle VI On the Heavens, text and translation, Loeb series, n. 338, 1939 (repr. 1986), p. 289: “But since in fact Anaxagoras did believe flesh and wood etc. to be simple in the proper sense, the charge of misunderstanding the nature of an element is unjust.”  The idea is present throughout in Aristotle, and the Divisiones Aristotelae (currently included in the Aristotelian corpus) p. 39, col. 2, epitomized it: τὰ μέν ἐστιν ὁμοιομερῆ ὧν καὶ τὰ μέρη ὅμοια, οἷον ὕδωρ πῦρ χαλκὸς καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα.

Anaxagoras’ principles being styled elements

119

is something simpler which can determine them, which is heat, coolness, dryness, humidity’ (τὸ θερμόν· τὸ ψυχρόν· τὸ ξηρόν· τὸ ὑγρόν).⁶² This means that, although the smallest particle of a simple substance is styled ὁμοιομερές, this is actually composite, made of the four elements: it is not itself an element, let alone a principle. But Anaxagoras’ philosophy was about principles.⁶³ Simplicius mentioning the notion of ὁμοιομέρειαι deserves special attention, since he was the only author who knew Anaxagoras’ work first-hand. In general, to set out to write a commentary on Aristotle bespeaks that a commentator has a certain respect for its author, to begin with. Nevertheless, Aristotle’s commentators were also philosophers, and it was not rare for them implicitly to correct Aristotle. Simplicius does so, too, and on this issue he thought that he should correct Aristotle’s references to ‘elements’ as ‘principles’, since ‘it might be assumed that elements are principles, even though this cannot be said of all the cases where reference is made to ὁμοιομερῆ’ (εἴπερ ἀρχαὶ τὰ στοιχεῖα, ἀλλ᾿ οὐ προσεχῶς πάντα ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν).⁶⁴ Following this, and despite his concessions to Aristotle’s vocabulary while quoting or paraphrasing a portion he commented on, his main tendency is to style the ὁμοιομέρειαι ‘principles’, even at points where he explains Aristotle’s invective against Anaxagoras.⁶⁵ The principles of Anaxagoras are not elements and they are immaterial, not only because Simplicius said so, but mainly because there is no other way for them to make sense and to square with the rest of his propositions. In the history of ideas there is no parthenogenesis, which is true also of the history of philosophy. Anaxagoras posited his fundamental doctrine under influence by some predecessors. Eminent among them was Parmenides, which Aristotle and Simplicius recognized despite their different interpretations of Anaxagoras. Another in-

 Meletius of Tiberiopolis (medical doctor, probably, seventh to ninth century AD), De Natura Hominis, p. 134. Likewise, Michael of Ephesus, In Libros De Partibus Animalium Commentaria, p. 28: συμβέβηκεν ἐπὶ τῆς ἁφῆς ἔχειν μὲν ταύτην τὸ ὁμοιομερές, οὐ μὴν δὲ καὶ τὸ ἁπλοῦν, ὡς εἶναι καὶ ταύτην ἐξ ἑνὸς στοιχείου. οἷον ἐστὶν ἡ σὰρξ καὶ ὁμοιομερὲς καὶ οὐχ ἁπλοῦν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ τῶν τεσσάρων συγκείμενον στοιχείων.  Cf. Anaxagoras’ work designated (entitled perhaps?) Περὶ ᾿Aρχῶν, or, Περὶ τῶν ᾿Aρχῶν. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 69: τὴν ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξαν περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν. Euse bius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 10.14.12: ᾿Aναξαγόρας Ἡγησιβούλου Κλαζομένιος. οὗτος δὴ πρῶτος διήρθρωσε τὸν περὶ ἀρχῶν λόγον. Op. cit. 14.14.8: μόνος δ᾿ οὖν πρῶτος Ἑλλήνων ᾿Aναξαγόρας μνημονεύεταιἐν τοῖς περὶ ἀρχῶν λόγοις Νοῦν τὸν πάντων αἴτιον ἀποφήνασθαι. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 27: Αναξαγόρας μὲν γὰρ Ἡγησιβούλου Κλαζομένιος, κοινωνήσας τῆς ᾿Aναξιμένους φιλοσοφίας, πρῶτος μετέστησε τὰς περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν δόξας. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 62: Συγκεφαλαιοῦται τὴν ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξαν περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 155.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 614; commPhys, pp. 27; 44; 154; 163; 165; 171; 460; 461.

120

Chapter 1 – The Principles

fluence was definitely a modified reception of the teaching of Pythagoras. Anaxagoras realized that the principles could not be ‘numbers’, because they cannot act as dynamic, effective, and cohesive causes, as well as ones which cause not only generation of specific things, but also demolition and annihilation of them qua material. We may count things, we may even accept that there are simple and multiple entities in Nature; but we cannot see how would it be possible for numbers to act upon Nature and upon ourselves. Pythagoras’ theories were indeed criticized on those grounds, with Aristotle being the leading critic once again.⁶⁶ Syrianus was more lenient, and argued that, to Pythagoreans, numbers are not simply those ‘which co-exist with sensible bodies’ (τοὺς συνόντας τοῖς σώμασιν ἀριθμούς), and in effect he saw them as no different from the Platonic Ideas (which was the tendency of Academy under Xenocrates, too). However, he went too far: a number is considered not only as ‘self-generated cohesion’ (αὐτογενῆ συνοχήν, appealing to Philolaus), but also as a creative cause and model, which is both separate from bodies and superior to them (παράδειγμα κοσμοποιίας … δημιουργικήν τε ἅμα καὶ παραδειγματικὴν ὑπεροχήν), indeed it is ‘a critical organ of God the Creator’ (κριτικὸν ὄργανον κοσμουργοῦ θεοῦ, appealing to Hippasus). But this was an extrapolation, which made both the Ideas and Numbers identical, as well as inherent in perceptible objects. Hardly could any orthodox Platonist or a Peripatetic have accepted such an implausible inference.⁶⁷ At some points of this book, I express doubts as to whether really Aristotle had misunderstood Anaxagoras, or he misrepresented his thought deliberately. Attacking ‘numbers’ as incorporeal causes was a rather easy target, since common experience could support Aristotle’s argument. But once these incorporeal causes were identified not as numbers, but as efficient and cohesive causes in a more abstract – and yet natural – sense, Aristotle would have been entirely bereft of argument.

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 987b20 25; 991b7 ff; 1075b24 ff. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, comm Metaph, pp. 41 2; 53 4; 107; 224; 720; 766; 808; 826; commAnalPr, p. 81. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. pp. 37 38; 49; 69; 93; 204.  Syrianus, commMetaph, pp. 122 3; Cf. pp. 143; 190. There is unique testimony by Syrianus, supposedly quoting from Pythagoras: in this, the number is also called ‘mind’, as well as ‘skill ful logos’ (λόγον τεχνικόν). The first reminds of Anaxagoras; concerning the second, it is remi niscent of the Stoics who styled either Nature or God ‘skilful fire’ (πῦρ τεχνικόν). Syrianus, op. cit. p. 123: αὐτὸς μὲν Πυθαγόρας ἐν τῷ Ἱερῷ λόγῳ διαρρήδην μορφῶν καὶ ἰδεῶν κράντορα τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἔλεγεν εἶναι, καὶ θεῶν καὶ δαιμόνων αἴτιον καὶ τῷ πρεσβίστῳ καὶ κρατιστεύοντι τεχνίτᾳ θεῷ κανόνα καὶ λόγον τεχνικόν, νοῦν τε καὶ στάθμαν ἀκλινεστάταν τὸν ἀριθμὸν ὑπεῖμεν συστάσιός τε καὶ γενέσιος τῶν πάντων. However, there is no way to confirm this testimony, so as to deter mine whether, or to what extent, is Syrianus’ own vocabulary involved therein.

Anaxagoras’ principles being styled elements

121

The philosopher who saw the implausibility of identifying numbers with the Anaxagorean principles was Porphyry; it was also he who saw the consistency of the Anaxagorean philosophy, and he spoke of ‘logoi’, as we shall see considering Arab sources.⁶⁸ The difference of qualities cannot be reckoned in terms of numbers; still less could one see them as causes which come into bodies from the outside, and they form their qualities, or even they give rise to existence itself. He reflects in terms of the Anaxagorean term ‘mutation’ (ἀλλοίωσις), and argues that a difference between qualities (a shrill sound turning bass, or a black colour turning white) cannot take place as a result of numbers entering bodies from the outside. A shrill or bass, or a colour which is either black or white, cannot be explained by means of notions of quantity (such as numbers), but by means of quality, such as ‘mutation’. The difference between two objects, one being black the other white, is the same, no matter whether one of them is as small as a cubit-long, and the other is an entire mountain (κἂν τὸ μὲν ᾖ πηχυαῖον, τὸ δ᾿ ὅσον τὸ ὄρος). Quite simply, ‘the cause of mutation is different’ (κατ᾿ ἄλλην γὰρ αἰτίαν ἡ ἀλλοίωσις), even if it takes place by slight addition or subtraction, and it is not the size of magnitude or multitude that makes the difference. In short, mutation takes place not because of ‘numbers’, but because of the principles/logoi concurring in different ways and making up a thing as a result. Porphyry did not dispute the role that quantity (therefore, ‘number’) plays in formation of things, since both ‘things themselves and qualities come to pass in accordance with certain numerical analogies’ (καὶ οὐσίαι ἀριθμοῖς τισι καὶ λόγοις ἀριθμητικοῖς ἐπιγίνονται καὶ ποιότητες). This is why the Pythagoreans believed that ‘numbers are the causes of everything’ (πάντων αἴτιοι οἱ ἀριθμοί). However, ‘it would be a delusion to believe that this is true only because a shrill or bass sound occurs in accordance with certain numbers and meters’. Numbers may be involved in the causes of everything that happens, but this does not mean that everything happens, or exists, because of this fact (καὶ πάντων αἴτιοι οἱ ἀριθμοί, ἀλλ᾿ οὐδήπου πάντα ὅσα διὰ τοῦτο). For ‘if, for example, gravity were a quantity, then a musical sound would be produced only by analogy to how heavily a string is struck’, which though is not the case.⁶⁹ Therefore, how things come to pass, and how their qualities change, cannot be explained by making numbers the fundamental principles of either being or becoming. In short, the Anaxagorean principles are not the Pythagorean numbers. This was perhaps a reason why Anatolius of Laodicea (the teacher of Iamblichus) wrote that the Pythagoreans used to style the Monad ‘Nous’ and iden-

 See chapter 6, p. 366; chapter 9, p. 646.  Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 59.

122

Chapter 1 – The Principles

tified it with the supreme God.⁷⁰ However, Anatolius wrote on the basis of material which belonged to the Platonizing Neopythagorean tradition, and this idea does not belong necessarily to the old Pythagoreanism. Granted then, they are different: but the spirit and aim of Ammonius of Alexandria, and his pupil Simplicius, was to argue for harmony throughout mainstream Greek philosophy. Unlike the blatant identification of numbers and Ideas by Syrianus, which we just saw, to Simplicius, harmony does not necessarily mean being exactly alike. In order for Ammonius and Simplicius to make their point, it was deemed sufficient to show that the general direction of thought by different philosophers took place not by a process of either mutual refutation or sheer contrast, far less, by antithesis. To this purpose, Simplicius considered a little-known notion, namely, τὸ ἑκτόν, which I discuss later.⁷¹ By this general idea, he aimed to indicate the cohesive principles which are in things, and make them to be what they are. In effect, this meant that which ‘is had in’ by a thing (ἀπὸ τοῦ ἔχεσθαι ἑκτὸν ἐκλήθη), and it involves all essential and accidental attributes, as well as essence itself. This was an expedient in order to describe different philosophies and argue for harmony between them, which though did not have to suggest total identity with each other. Therefore, according to Simplicius, the Pythagoreans called the causes of things ‘numbers or logoi’ that are inherent in things.⁷² However, we should bear in mind that ‘logos’ in this case means ‘analogy between numbers’. Simplicius, although eschewing the explanation, was aware of this, which is why he refers to ‘others’, who posited these inherent causes as ‘incorporeal logoi’ (οἱ δὲ καὶ λόγους ἀσωμάτους ὑποτίθενται ταῦτα). It is plain that he refers to ‘logoi’ being different from those of the Pythagorean philosophy, which he just mentioned; this is why he speaks of ‘others’, that is, of those who expressed their philosophy differently. Those were the followers of Anaxagoras, and Simplicius makes this abundantly clear, as our discussion in the ensuing sections will show. John Philoponus commented on Aristotle’s treatise on the soul, but in fact he reflected in terms of the sixth century (indeed of his teacher Ammonius) that were Anaxagorean: he speaks of the ‘natural logoi existing in a seed, which are indivisible, hence incorporeal’ (καὶ αὐτοὶ οἱ φυσικοὶ λόγοι δείκνυνται ἐναργῶς ἀμερεῖς ὄντες καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἀσώματοι). Never did Aristotle speak of either ἀμερεῖς λόγοι or φυσικοὶ λόγοι, let alone consider them in the sense of natural causes

 Anatolius of Laodicea, Περὶ δεκάδος καὶ τῶν ἐντὸς αὐτῆς ἀριθμῶν, p. 5: ἐκάλουν δὲ αὐτὴν [τὴν μονάδα] οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι νοῦν εἰκάζοντες τῷ ἑνὶ αὐτήν, τῷ νοητῷ θεῷ, τῷ ἀγεννήτῳ, αὐτο καλῷ, αὐτοαγαθῷ, ἐν δὲ ἅπασιν, εἰ καὶ μάλιστα τῇ τοῦ ἑνὸς ὁμοιοῦντες φρονήσει ἐν ἀρεταῖς.  See chapter 7, pp. 454 8.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 209 10.

Anaxagoras’ principles being styled elements

123

of generation and becoming.⁷³ This was the language of the sixth century, and the idea was Anaxagorean from start to finish. Aristotle was so obssessed with interpolating the notion of corporeality into Anaxagoras’ philosophy, that he refrained from making even a single explicit statement about the self-evident, namely, that Mind/Nous is incorporeal (although he knew it, no doubt); he did not do so even at the point where his context impelled such a statement, i.e. in the De Anima, 405a. This obvious idea was explicated only by Xenocrates (that is, a member of the Academy, not of the Lyceum, which is telling),⁷⁴ and acknowledgement of the fact that the notion of incorporeality was inherently present in Anaxagoras’ thought was only a much later proposition.⁷⁵ What does Simplicius say about those ‘others’? Apart from the incorporeal logoi that exist within perceptible things, there are also ‘other logoi which exist always, and they are always different’ from each other (παρ᾿ οὓς ἑτέρους ἀεί, τοὺς δὲ ἑτέρους ὄντας). The variety of all things, and their differences (including differences between the first elements and the things that are derived from the first elements), are generated from these logoi (αἵ τε διαφοραὶ καὶ τῶν πρώτων στοιχείων καὶ τῶν ἐκ τούτων συγκριμάτων ὑφίστανται). Although these are everlasting (ἀΐδιοι), their movements, mutual positions, and orders are variable, and not everlasting. Thus, the logoi exist as if they were detached from

 John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 13. Further, he argues staunchly for the incorporeality of logoi: ἐν γὰρ ἑκάστῳ μορίῳ τοῦ σπέρματος οἱ αὐτοὶ φυσικοὶ λόγοι ἀμερίστως εἰσίν, οἵπερ καὶ ἐν τῷ παντὶ σπέρματι, οἱ θρεπτικοί, οἱ αὐξητικοί, οἱ διαπλαστικοί· … εἰ τοίνυν οἱ φυσικοὶ τοῦ ζῴου λόγοι σῶμα ἦσαν, … ἀμερίστως ἄρα ἐνυπάρχουσι πάντες ἐν ἑκάστῳ μορίῳ· ἀσώματοι ἄρα εἰσίν· τὸ γὰρ ἀμερὲς καὶ ἀσώματον. This perceptive analysis was copied to the letter by Mi chael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 33. Likewise, Michael of Ephesus (fl. early or mid twelfth century AD), In Aristotelis Sophisticos Elenchos Commentarius, p. 197: καὶ ὅτι οἱ φυσικοὶ καὶ σπερματικοὶ ἐν αὐτῇ λόγοι ἀσώματοί εἰσιν. Again, Anonymous, Scholia in Aristotelis Sophisticos Elenchos (scholia recentiora) (e cod. Vat. Urb. gr. 35), comm. on verses 183b23 24 (ὅσῳ γὰρ κράτιστον τῇ δυνάμει, τοσούτῳ μικρότατον ὂν τῷ μεγέθει χαλεπώτατόν ἐστιν ὀφθῆναι). The author states erroneously that these are verses from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but what matters is the analysis: ἔχει γὰρ τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ σπερματικοὺς λόγους ἀσωμάτους ὄντας ἐν ἑαυτῷ.  Xenocrates, Testimonia, Doctrina et Fragmenta, fr. 119, apud John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 82 (ref. to incorporeality maintained by Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus alike): Ἐμ πεδοκλῆς μετὰ τῶν τεσσάρων στοιχείων τὸ νεῖκος εἰσάγων καὶ τὴν φιλίαν ἀσωμάτους φύσεις καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας μετὰ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν τὸν νοῦν· ἀσώματον γάρ φησιν αὐτὸν εἶναι. εἴη δ᾿ ἂν καὶ Δη μόκριτος ἐν τούτοις μετὰ τῶν ἀτόμων σωμάτων εἰσαγαγὼν καὶ τὸ κενόν.  Cf. Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.9. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.14.8. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1214 & Sophonias (thirteenth fourteent century), paraphrAnim, p. 17 (both refer ring to the ‘soul’, not to the Mind, according to Anaxagoras). Simplicius (or, whoever), commA nim, p. 30. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 82. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 63. John Italus (eleventh century), Quaestiones Quodlibetales, 50.

124

Chapter 1 – The Principles

the things they generate. This means that they do not shape and give a certain form to the underlying material all at once; instead, they are like the logoi which exist in a seed: they are there accidentally, as it were, whereas they are inherently present and uncontrolled (κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς οἱονεὶ ἐνυπάρχουσιν ἀκρατήτως ἐνόντες). The logoi are in things, and yet they are there as if they were detached from them (οὕτως οἱ λόγοι ὥσπερ ἀφεστῶτες ἐνυπάρχουσιν).⁷⁶ This exposition marks the shift of spirit from the third to sixth century: Porphyry cared to point out the difference of the Pythagorean logoi/numbers from what he thought to be logoi proper, which he expounded as philosophy of Anaxagoras, according to Arabic sources. Simplicius, who was aware of Porphyry’s writings,⁷⁷ sought to emphasize affinities rather than point out differences. However, both of them appear aware of the fact that Pythagoras was somehow a precursor of Anaxagoras, indeed as much as Anaxagoras himself was so of Parmenides.⁷⁸ Somehow, ancient writers saw that there was no real difference between those two philosophers as to spiritual stature and achievement. Aristotle reports that a common characteristic of them was that the Italians buried Pythagoras of Samos and the Lampsacenes buried Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and ‘up to the present time’ they honour them: they were both outlanders buried by strangers, in a foreign country, and yet they are honoured by those strangers.⁷⁹ Maximus of Tyre, the second-century AD sophist, mentions the names of Pythagoras and Anaxagoras as antipodal to each other in respect of how they saw the sun: to Pythagoras, the sun was a god, to Anaxagoras, it was just a stone.⁸⁰ Anaxagoras realized that the principles which give rise to the perceptible universe are not apparent: they are concealed, and they can be grasped only intellectually. This was largely the Presocratic approach, after all: the idea of ‘saving the phenomena’ (σώζειν τὰ φαινόμενα) means quest for discovering the simple and few causes which give rise to phenomena themselves.⁸¹ Anaxagoras’ principles are not the Pythagorean numbers, hence they were immune to the criticism the latter theory underwent: but the reasoning which constructs the  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 210.  Simplicius mentions Porphyry and his views by name at no less than a hundred and twenty points.  See chapter 9, p. 610, about conflicting testimonies concerning the times during which Py thagoras and Anaxagoras lived.  Aristotle, Rhetorica, 1398b: καὶ Ἰταλιῶται Πυθαγόραν, καὶ Λαμψακηνοὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ξένον ὄντα ἔθαψαν καὶ τιμῶσι ἔτι καὶ νῦν.  Maximus of Tyre, Dissertationes, 19.3: καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἄλλως μὲν ὁρᾷ Πυθαγόρας, ἄλλως δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, Πυθαγόρας μὲν ὡς θεόν, ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὡς λίθον. There is value in the text of Max imus, since he gives details of Anaxagoras’ persecution.  See supra, pp. 26; 31 49; 51 2; 89.

Anaxagoras’ principles being styled elements

125

fundamentals of these theories is the same, and maybe some would be surprised to discover that the man who reported this accurately was the same one who made the most of the weaknesses of all philosophies, namely, Sextus Empiricus. The way in which he describes how the Pythagoreans saw ‘numbers’ will be valuable to recall and compare when we come to Simplicius describing how Anaxagoras saw his ‘principles’.⁸² Diogenes Laertius styled the ὁμοιομέρειαι ‘principles’, yet the context makes it clear that he saw them only as ‘little particles, which make up the universe’.⁸³ This was largely the approach by several authors.⁸⁴ The real question then is this: what is the difference between Epicurus’ ‘atoms’ and Anaxagoras’ ‘elements’ as Aristotle put the latter? (which is a name Plato first attached to the four ‘roots’ or ριζώματα of Empedocles, who never spoke of ‘elements’). No doxographer would have been able to answer this question, and the puzzlement went unnoticed. For indeed the doxographic description of them both is the same, and it was put in the same terms: both Anaxagoras and Epicurus are reported as having posited ‘particles which can be considered only intellectually’ (μόρια or σώματα λόγῳ θεωρητά).⁸⁵ The sole instance of attempt to make a distinction appears in Stobaeus reporting that some philosophers make use of these particles in a natural sense (οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι τὰ στοιχεῖα κεχρῶσθαι φυσικῶς), others make the particles able to participate in qualities in the first place (οἱ δὲ τὰ

 Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.33 4; the same text, in Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 9.364. See chapter 7 (Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle), pp. 421 87.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.8: ἀρχὰς δὲ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας· καθάπερ γὰρ ἐκ τῶν ψηγμάτων λεγομένων τὸν χρυσὸν συνεστάναι, οὕτως ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν μικρῶν σωμάτων τὸ πᾶν συγκεκρίσθαι.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876D & Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10: ἐν τῇ τροφῇ τῇ προσφερομένῃ πάντα ἐστὶ τὰ ὄντα καὶ ἐκ τῶν ὄντων πάντα αὔξεται. ἐν ταύτῃ οὖν ἐστι λόγῳ θεωρητὰ μόρια· καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὅμοια τὰ μέρη εἶναι ἐν τῇ τροφῇ τοῖς γεννωμένοις ὁμοιομε ρείας αὐτὰ ἐκάλεσε καὶ ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων. Καὶ τὰς μὲν ὁμοιομερείας ὕλην, τὸ δὲ ποιοῦν αἴτιον νοῦν, τὸν πάντα διαταξάμενον. Pseudo Plutarch, 876B C (Stobaeus, 1.10) ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὁ Κλαζο μένιος ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀπεφήνατο. ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομένιος τὰς ὁμοιο μερείας τὰς ἀρχὰς ὑποτίθενται τῶν ὅλων. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.8 (& Suda, letter omicron, entry 310): ἀρχὰς δὲ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας· καθάπερ γὰρ ἐκ τῶν ψηγμάτων λέγομεν τὸν χρυσὸν συ νεστάναι, οὕτως ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν μικρῶν σωμάτων τὸ πᾶν συγκεκρίσθαι.  Cf. references to Anaxagoras: Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.10.12, apud Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 876B C: τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀπεφήνατο … ἃ ἦν λόγῳ θεωρητὰ μόρια. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 16. But so was said about Democritus: Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.1b, apud Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 898D F. Pseudo Justin, Cohortatio ad Gentiles, p. 5B & Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.14.5. Like wise, about Epicurus: Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.10.14, apud Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 877D E. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (= Adversus Physicos 2), 42. Cf. Eusebius (op. cit. 14.14.5) re porting both Democritus and Epicurus on this.

126

Chapter 1 – The Principles

ὁμοιομερῆ ποιότητος μετέχειν τὰ πρῶτα), others make all atoms colourless (οἱ δὲ τὰ ἄτομα πάντα συλλήβδην ἄχροα) and maintain that visible qualities emerge from particles which are grasped only intellectually and they have no quality in themselves (ἐξ ἀποίων δὲ τῶν λόγῳ θεωρητῶν τὰς αἰσθητὰς ἀποφαίνονται γίνεσθαι ποιότητας).⁸⁶ There is only one instance of the fundamental principles being described as ‘bodies which can be considered only intellectually’ (σώματα λόγῳ θεωρητά), or as ‘particles which can be considered only intellectually’ (μόρια λόγῳ θεωρητά). No matter what the noun, they are posited as incorporeal, and the testimony comes from Sextus Empiricus describing the Pythagorean principles.⁸⁷ According to Sextus setting out to speak of numbers as principles, the Pythagoreans maintained that the first concern of any good physicist was to inquire ‘what are those into which the universe can be resolved’ (εἰς τίνα τὸ πᾶν λαμβάνει τὴν ἀνάλυσιν). This was the concern of Anaxagoras, too.⁸⁸ Like him, the Pythagoreans believed that to assert that the principle of all things is apparent is contrary to physical science; for every apparent thing must be composed of non-apparent ones, and that which is composed of things is not a principle; instead, each component of that compound is a principle. Therefore, it is not apparent things that are principles of all things, but the components of them are, and they themselves are not apparent. Sextus deems that the views of those who declared that atoms, or homoiomeries, or molecules or, in general, intelligible bodies, are the principles of all existing things proved partly right, but partly they were wrong: in so far as they considered the principles to be non-evident, their proposition was correct; but in so far as they assumed the principles to be corporeal, they were wrong. The Pythagoreans (and Sextus himself, it appears) sustained that the intelligible and non-evident bodies precede the sensible ones, therefore, the incorporeals ought to be the principles of the intelligible bodies (οὕτω καὶ τῶν νοητῶν σωμάτων ἄρχειν δεῖ τὰ ἀσώματα). The Pythagoreans believed that genuine philosophers are like those who work on language;⁸⁹ consequently, they argued that, as the elements of a word are not words, so the

 Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.16.1 (Chrysippus, fr. 419). However, this does not make any of them less ‘Atomist’ than the other, including Anaxagoras, whose ὁμοιομερῆ are explicitly included in this exposition.  Nevertheless, Sextus says that the Pythagoreans ‘attributed such great a potency to numbers as to deem them principles and elements of all things’ (ἀρχὰς καὶ στοιχεῖα τῶν ὅλων). Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (= Adversus Physicos 2), 10.248, treating principles and elements as synonyms.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35: τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν.  Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. 10.249.

Anaxagoras’ principles being styled elements

127

elements of bodies are not bodies, but they are certain incorporeals.⁹⁰ Moreover, it is not acceptable to say that to be eternal is a property of atoms, and, on that account, they can be the principles of all things although they are corporeal. Therefore, those who assert that homoiomeries, or molecules, or minimals, or indivisibles, are elements, they accord them eternal existence, so that the atoms are no more elements than these are. This is precisely the ground on which Aristotle made Anaxagoras in effect an Atomist, as argued in the following sections. For it makes no difference what the elementary particles are, namely, whether they are ‘atoms’, or smaller particles (no matter what their name) that make up atoms. But once the elementary principles are posited as incorporeal, the Pythagoreans argued that the components of them should be incorporeal too, and this process would continue ad infinitum, since the Whole is without beginning. Therefore, it only remains to accept that the intelligible bodies (λόγῳ θεωρητὰ σώματα) are composed of incorporeals (ἐξ ἀσωμάτων εἶναι τὴν σύστασιν τῶν νοητῶν σωμάτων), and accordingly, the principles of those bodies that are intellectually perceived must be incorporeal, too (ἀσωμάτους εἶναι δεῖ τὰς ἀρχὰς τῶν λόγῳ θεωρητῶν σωμάτων).⁹¹ Aristotle strove to represent all philosophy before him as utterly unsophisticated and primitive.⁹² At the particular point where he makes this statement (one of the many ones, which will be considered later) he names Empedocles, but he definitely had in mind also Anaxagoras and the Pythagoreans. For the point exactly preceding this statement was consideration of the problem of ‘how can one know what elements of things consist of?’⁹³ In order to answer this, his example was the question whether study of a ‘syllable’ could possibly render definite conclusions about it, and his verdict was that it cannot. But this was a distinctly Pythagorean practice;⁹⁴ and the fact that the example following immediately his disparaging view of his predecessors is Empedocles,⁹⁵ plainly shows that Aristotle lumped all of them together in contempt.

 Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. 10.253.  Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. 10.256 8.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 993a15 16: “For it seems that earlier philosophy speaks inarticulately on all subjects, because it was new and in its infance” (ψελλιζομένῃ γὰρ ἔοικεν ἡ πρώτη φιλοσοφία περὶ πάντων, ἅτε νέα τε καὶ κατ᾿ ἀρχὰς οὖσα).  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 993a3 4.  In Greek, στοιχεῖον means both ‘element’ and ‘a letter of the alphabet’. The Pythgoreans be lieved that study of the στοιχεῖα of words contributed to comprehension of the στοιχεῖα which make up the universe.  About Empedocles having studied first with Parmenides, then with Anaxagoras and the Py thagoreans, see chapter 9, p. 612.

128

Chapter 1 – The Principles

᾿Aρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion The first question that should be posed to those who aspired to expound Anaxagoras’ philosophy while criticizing it, should be this: were to him the ὁμοιομερῆ ‘principles’ or ‘elements’? I am afraid that hardly a clear answer could obtain out of doxography, even though his texts themselves make it clear that they were principles. Galen remarked that ancient authors had no inkling of the difference between principles and elements; hence, they ‘confused’ the terms and spoke of ‘elements’ while mening ‘principles’. In reference to ‘uncreated matter’ and the primary four qualities (coolness, warmth, dryness, wetness), he pointed out that they are not ‘elements’ but ‘principles’ (οὐ μὴν στοιχεῖα γε ταῦτ᾿ ἔστιν … ἀλλ᾿ ἀρχαί), and goes on thus: But the authors of old confused this (συνεκέχυτο οὖν τοῦτο παρὰ τοῖς ἀρχαίοις), since they had not realized the difference between a principle and an element (οὐδ᾿ εἰς ἔννοιαν ἀφιγμένοις τῆς διαφορᾶς ἀρχῆς τε καὶ στοιχείου). For they [felt] that they could use the term element also when they spoke of principles. However, these are two things clearly dif ferent from one another (ἀλλὰ δύο πράγματά ἐστι φανερῶς ἀλλήλων διαφέροντα): the for mer [sc. an element] is that which is the smallest particle of a whole, whereas the latter [sc. a principle] is that in which this smallest [particle] is transformed. For it is impossible to divide fire itself into two bodies and show that it is a compound of them, nor is it possible to do so with either earth, or water, or air. However, it is possible to perceive intellectually (νοῆσαι μέντοι δυνατόν) that the substance which undergoes a change is different from the change itself [of this substance] (ἑτέραν μὲν εἶναι τοῦ μεταβάλλοντος τὴν οὐσίαν, ἑτέραν δὲ τὴν μεταβολὴν αὐτοῦ). A body that undergoes a change is not the same as the change itself that is brought upon it (ἑτέραν μὲν εἶναι τοῦ μεταβάλλοντος τὴν οὐσίαν, ἑτέραν δὲ τὴν με ταβολὴν αὐτοῦ), because the changing body is a substratum (τὸ μὲν γὰρ μεταβάλλον ἐστὶ τὸ ὑποκείμενον), whereas any alteration of it takes place according to exchange of its qual ities (ἡ μεταβολὴ δὲ αὐτοῦ κατὰ τὴν τῶν ποιοτήτων ἀμοιβὴν γίνεται). ⁹⁶

Therefore, when we speak of ‘uncreated matter’ (ἡ ἀγένητος ὕλη), or of the four qualities (coolness, heat, dryness, humidity), we actually refer to principles, not to elements.⁹⁷ The anonymous doxographer who used the name of Galen admired Plato too much to allow this confusion to be attributed to him: ‘Whereas the Ionian philosophers thought that there is no difference between elements and principles’ (τῶν ἀπὸ Ἰωνίας φιλοσόφων οὐδὲν διαλλάττειν αὐτὰ νομιζόντων), Plato was aware of their difference, since he allowed nothing prior to a principle, from

 Galen, In Hippocratis De Natura Hominis Librum Commentarii, p. 30.  Galen, loc. cit.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

129

which this principle itself would be produced. Thus, a certain ‘shapeless and formless substance’ (ἀειδῆ καὶ ἄμορφον οὐσίαν) is prior to the elements; some philosophers called this ‘formless matter’ (ἄποιον ὕλην), others, complete reality and deprivation (ἐντελέχειαν καὶ στέρησιν). The elements are ‘compound’ and they are ‘products’ (σύνθετα καὶ ἀποτελέσματα), whereas a principle is neither of them. The author’s conclusion is that ‘naturally’ Plato ‘pointed out their difference, because he had grasped this’.⁹⁸ However, the author adduces no evidence about Plato having pointed out this difference, although also Simplicius argued that Plato was the ‘first who classified the elementary principles’ of the Presocratics (τὰς στοιχειώδεις ἀρχὰς τῶν ἄλλων),⁹⁹ and styled those principles elements’ (καὶ στοιχεῖα πρῶτος αὐτὸς ὠνόμασε τὰς τοιαύτας ἀρχάς).¹⁰⁰ This means that, to Plato, the Presocratic ‘elements’ were ‘principles’, which is possibly the reason why Aristotle did not care to distinguish between elements and principles, and Galen (the real one) was right in his remarks stated above. The commentators of Plato treated him as an infallible authority, and relied on him on the assumption that he was divinely inspired. Whether all Neoplatonists adored Plato’s propositions genuinely, or simply they sought to establish their own authority by appealing to him, and then pave their own way forward, is a different issue. This is why, not rarely, they arrived at propositions that probably hardly Plato himself could have ever endorsed. On the other hand, commentators of Aristotle frequently felt at liberty to consider critically his propositions, as well as his terminology, and to emend it, if necessary. This happened with use of such terms as ‘principles’ and ‘elements’, too. Some of them realized his loose and inconsistent use of these terms, and wrote pace him: for instance, at points where Aristotle (following both Empedocles and Plato) spoke of the soul made ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων, they wrote ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν, and considered his text on those grounds.¹⁰¹

 Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 21, entitled ‘On the difference between elements and a principle’ (περὶ διαφορᾶς στοιχείων καὶ ἀρχῆς).  Simplicius attributes this information to Eudemus of Rhodes (ὡς Εὔδημος ἱστορεῖ). Eudemus was a Greek philosopher, and the first historian of science who lived from c. 370 BC until c. 300 BC. He was one of Aristotle’s most important pupils, editing his teacher’s work and making it more easily accessible.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 7. Speaking of the Presocratics, Simplicius himself was as accu rate as to style them ‘elementary principles’ (στοιχειώδεις ἀρχάς), but he did not make this occa sional designation a technical term.  Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima, p. 91: οἱ μὲν οὖν ἀρχαῖοι τὴν ψυχὴν πάντα ἔλεγον εἶναι τὰ πράγματα τῷ ποιεῖν αὐτὴν ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν, ἐξ ὧν καὶ τὰ ὄντα πάντα αὐτοῖς ἦν. Themis tius, paraphrAnim, p. 10: οὕτω γὰρ αὐτὴν ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν συγκειμένην αὐτῶν τε ἐκείνων ἀντιλαμ

130

Chapter 1 – The Principles

Plotinus, whose philosophy is ‘implicitly full of Peripatetic and Stoc doctrines’,¹⁰² chose to ignore Aristotle’s inconsistent use of the terms, and this is how (clearly referring to him) he concludes his extensive first tract of the sixth Ennead, ‘On the kinds of Being’. But concerning all the others who have made different propositions about beings or the principles of beings (τὰ ὄντα ἢ τὰς ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων), whether they posited them infinite or limited, bodies or incorporeal, or both, one can enquire about each theory one by one, taking into account as well what the ancients said against these suppositions. ¹⁰³

In view of this, Sextus Empiricus remarked with good reason that ‘the opinions about the elements are, as we have shown, numerous and well-nigh infinite’ (καὶ ἐπεὶ πολλαὶ καὶ σχεδὸν ἄπειροί τινές εἰσιν αἱ περὶ στοιχείων δόξαι, καθὼς ὑπεμνήσαμεν); he excuses himself ‘from discussing each opinion’, but he remarks that ‘the elements, whatever view one takes of them, finally must be regarded as either corporeal or incorporeal’.¹⁰⁴

βάνεσθαι καὶ τῶν ἐξ αὐτῶν, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ἀρχὰς ἡγούμενος εἶναι πάντων τὰ τέτταρα στοι χεῖα καὶ τὸ νεῖκος καὶ τὴν φιλίαν ἐκ ταὐτοῦ ποιεῖ τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ τὴν αἴσθησιν. Likewise, op. cit. p. 12: Ἅπαντες μέντοι γε ὅσοι τὸ γιγνώσκειν οἰκεῖον ἔθεντο τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ διὰ ταῦτα ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν αὐτὴν συνεστήσαντο … ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν καὶ ταύτην ποιοῦσιν. Simplicius (or, whoever), commA nim, p. 27: ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν αὐτὴν ὑφιστᾶσιν, ἐπειδὴ καὶ ἡ τῶν ἀρχομένων γνῶσις ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν. Op. cit. p. 30: ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν συμπληροῦσι τὴν ψυχὴν οἱ περὶ αὐτῆς. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 73 (although he speaks of Empedocles, he attributes to him ‘principles’, not ‘el ements’): ἔνθεν οὖν πάντες οὗτοι ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν ποιοῦσι τὴν ψυχήν. Then, he says that Aristo tle’s phrase, τὴν ψυχὴν ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων (in De Anima, 404b13) referring to Empedocles, should be taken as pointing not to the four natural elements, but to the Pythagorean principles, ‘be cause Empedocles was a Pythagorean’). Op. cit. p. 78 (modifying Aristotle’s text): ἐπειδὴ οὖν ἡ ψυχὴ πάντα τὰ ὄντα γινώσκει, καὶ αὐτὴν εἰκότως ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν τούτων ἔλεγεν εἶναι. He does so more openly in op. cit. p. 81: ἄλλοτε δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ γνωστικοῦ ὡς ἐν Τιμαίῳ δι᾿ ὧν ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν τῶν ὄντων αὐτὴν συνίστησιν. Cf. op. cit. pp. 82 4; 121; 178 9; 184 (modifying Aristo tle’s text in 410b16, τὴν ψυχὴν ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων to ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν); p. 570 (ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν συγ κειμένη). Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina, 199: καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ὡς γνωστικὴν τῶν ὄντων ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν τῶν ὅλων ἐδημιούργει. Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 12: ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπετίθεντο. Also, op. cit. p. 14. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.4 5; 1.12; 3.4; adnotArist, (on De Anima), lines 67 75; 100 1.  Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 14.  Plotinus, Enneades, VI.1.30.  Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.36 7. Cf. op. cit. 3.55; Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 212; Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (= Adversus Physicos 2), 253 4.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

131

Aristotle’s inconsistency was pointed out explicitly by Syrianus, whom many philosophers of the Late Antiquity styled ‘the great Syrianus’:¹⁰⁵ in his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, he considers the passage 1086b14‒1087b14, in which usage of ‘elements’ and principles’ is desperately confounded. Syrianus paid no attention to Alexander of Aphrodisias having struggled to exonerate Aristotle in respect of the specific passage,¹⁰⁶ and writes that ‘it is very difficult to comment on this, because of the confusion surrounding the use of terms’ (χαλεπὸν μὲν ἀπαντῆσαι πρὸς τὰ ῥηθέντα διὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς ὀνόμασι σύγχυσιν). For Aristotle ‘using the terms principles and elements treats them as synonymous’ (ἀρχάς τε γὰρ καὶ στοιχεῖα τὰ αὐτὰ μεταλαμβάνων καλεῖ). Then, he explains that if Aristotle’s considerations were taken to be about true beings (περὶ τῶν ὄντως ὄντων), we should not attribute the term ‘elements’ to them; instead, we should call them ‘ultimate and creative principles’ (ἀρχὰς μὲν ἔχειν φήσομεν τελικὰς καὶ ποιητικάς), since those that are properly called elements (τὰ δὲ κυρίως λεγόμενα στοιχεῖα) do not belong to ‘the utterly simple forms’ (οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν τοῖς ἁπλουστάτοις εἴδεσιν). The passage of Syrianus is long and there is no reason to abide too much by it. It is only noteworthy that, eventually, he proceeds while taking Aristotle’s ‘ambiguous use of the terms’ (τῆς ἀμφιβολίας τῶν ῥημάτων) for granted, and essaying to find out what he meant to say, no matter what terms he used (πρὸς τὴν διάνοιαν ἀπιδόντας ἡμᾶς τὴν τοῦ φιλοσόφου).¹⁰⁷ Syrianus was right, once one considers that Aristotle, speaking of Anaxagoras, had no problem with styling both the Mind and the ‘mixture’ two elements, ¹⁰⁸ but then he styled the Mind principle; ¹⁰⁹ then again, he

 Ammonius of Alexandria, commDeInterpr, p. 137: ὁ μέγας Συριανός. Marinus of Neapolis (in Samarea, a pupil of Proclus, fifth century), Vita Procli, line 616: τὸν μέγαν Συριανόν. Damascius, Princ, p. 30: τὸν μέγαν Συριανόν. Vita Isidori, fr. 124. Simplicius, commCael, p. 2: Συριανὸς δὲ ὁ μέγας. Op. cit. p. 397 & commPhys, p. 192: ὁ μέγας Συριανός. Likewise, commPhys, pp. 213; 241; 269; 618: Συριανὸς ὁ μέγας. Suda, letter alpha iota, entry 79 & letter epsilon, entry 3036: τῷ με γάλῳ Συριανῷ. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 78: ὁ μέγας Συριανός. At that point, he refers also to Proclus, Plotinus, Iamblichus, ‘and all the Platonists’, but he accords the epithet ‘great’ Sy rianus alone.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 785. He sees no problem with Aristotle’s termi nology and argued to justify it by saying that ‘Aristotle spoke of the first principles in the Physics’ and ‘of the elements, in the On Generation and Corruption’. Alexander speaks of ‘the four mate rial elements’, but it is clear that Aristotle’s references, as above, go far beyond this specific meaning of ‘elements’. Moreover, see Alexander on next page.  Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 162.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989a30 33: ᾿Aναξαγόραν δ᾿ εἴ τις ὑπολάβοι δύο λέγειν στοιχεῖα.  Op. cit. 1075b8: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὡς κινοῦν τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀρχήν· ὁ γὰρ νοῦς κινεῖ. Op. cit. 1091b11: ὁ δὲ [᾿Aναξαγόρας] τὸν νοῦν ἀρχὴν ποιήσας. De Anima, 405a13 16: ᾿Aναξαγόρας …

132

Chapter 1 – The Principles

reports that Anaxagoras posited ‘one principle’, meaning Mind;¹¹⁰ then, he has it that Anaxagoras maintained infinite principles (meaning the ‘homoiomeries),¹¹¹ but then again he styled them elements (meaning the ‘homoiomeries’, too).¹¹² It would be futile to seek any consistency in this licentious use of terms. I should only note that, before Syrianus said so, Alexander of Aphrodisias was rather irritated at Aristotle’s inconsistent use of these terms. He refers to the Metaphysics, 1091b10‒12, where Aristotle said that Empedocles ‘made Love an element’¹¹³ and Anaxagoras ‘made the Mind a principle’¹¹⁴ (ὁ μὲν τὴν φιλίαν στοιχεῖον ὁ δὲ τὸν νοῦν ἀρχὴν ποιήσας). Quite simply, Aristotle interpolated the term ‘element’ in reference to Empedocles in exactly the same way he did so speaking of ‘homoiomeries’ about Anaxagoras. But the fact is that never did Empedocles himself use the term ‘element’ in any way, certainly not for earth, air, fire and water: he styled them ‘roots’ (ριζώματα) of all things, meaning that none of those four could be transformed or mutated into any of the other three. Alexander corrects the text of Aristotle about Empedocles, and writes that ‘Empedocles considered Love to be the Good and a principle (which Aristotle called element, thus misusing the word). Of them [sc. Empedocles and Anaxagoras], the former identified the Good with Love, the latter with the Mind.’¹¹⁵ It is characteristic that Alexander criticizes Aristotle’s use of terms by means of the same verb Aristotle himself used about Anaxagoras, namely καταχρῆται.¹¹⁶ Anyway, this was not the

ἀρχήν γε τὸν νοῦν τίθεται μάλιστα πάντων. Physica, 256b24 26: ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὀρθῶς λέγει, τὸν νοῦν ἀπαθῆ φάσκων καὶ ἀμιγῆ εἶναι, ἐπειδή γε κινήσεως ἀρχὴν αὐτὸν εἶναι ποιεῖ.  Aristotle, Physica, 252a10 11: τάχα δὲ καὶ οἱ μίαν ἀρχὴν ποιοῦντες, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξαγόρας.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 9844a11 13: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομένιος … ἀπείρους εἶναι φησὶ τὰς ἀρχάς. Cf. Physica, 189a16 20.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 302a30 302b5; De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a15 16; 314a17 28; Physica, 187a25 27; 203a19 21.  Cf. Metaphysica, 996a8 9.  Cf. op. cit. 984b15 19.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 821: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ Πυθαγόρειος καὶ ᾿Aναξαγό ρας τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἄριστον πρεσβύτατον τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων ἀποφαίνονται, ὁ μὲν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τὴν φιλίαν ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἀρχὴν εἰπών (ταύτην γὰρ ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης εἶπε στοιχεῖον, καταχρησάμενος τῇ λέξει), ὁ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὸν νοῦν. Cf. op. cit. p. 28: upon beginning with his commentary, Alexander indulged in Aristotle’s misleading vocabulary: ἔστι μέντοι ἐν οἷς καὶ τὴν ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξαν τῆς Ἐμπεδοκλέους δόξης προκρίνει. νῦν μέντοι ἔοικεν ὕστερον αὐτὸν τοῖς ἔργοις λέγειν διὰ τὴν τῶν στοιχείων ἀπειρίαν. In the De Mixtione, p. 214, Alexander speaks of ἀρχὰς καὶ στοι χεῖα, presumably being ambivalent about his own understanding.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 270b24 25: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ καταχρῆται τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ οὐ καλῶς· ὀνομάζει γὰρ αἰθέρα ἀντὶ πυρός. The term ‘misuse’ (κατάχρησις) was a technical one describing a grammatical phenomenon (indeed, a mistake). See the standard definition by Tryphon I (grammarian, first century BC), Περὶ Τρόπων, 192 & Tryphon II, De Tropis, 3.1 & Cocondrius (rhet

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

133

only point where Alexander criticized Aristotle for using terms inaccurately.¹¹⁷ So did John Philoponus, who remarked that, in the Physics, 427a6‒7, Aristotle speaking of the soul’s capabilities, wrote, ‘it is evident that sense-perception and possessing understanding is not the same’ (οὐ ταὐτόν ἐστι τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι καὶ τὸ φρονεῖν). The remark of Philoponus on this was again criticism of Aristotle’s use of the term: “You should notice that, at this point, he misused the term having understanding instead of contemplative mind” (ὅρα δὲ ὅτι τὸν θεωρητικὸν νοῦν ἐνταῦθα καταχρηστικῶς φρονεῖν ἐκάλεσε).¹¹⁸ For indeed, at that point, Aristotle meant (and so he went on) to draw the distinction of mere perception associated with stimulation of a sense organ or a specific body condition, from the capability to be wise, prudent, and to be able to reflect theoretically. Commentators had no problem with Aristotle’s language whenever he spoke of Anaxagoras’ principles, ¹¹⁹ and not to a single one of them did it ever occur to follow Aristotle’s misuse of the terms ‘elements’ and ‘principles’: they invariably spoke of ‘principles’,¹²⁰ and so did all the others who wrote not as commentators of Aristotle.¹²¹

or, after first century AD), Περὶ Τρόπων, p. 784 & George Choeroboscus (grammarian, deacon, ninth century AD), Περὶ Τρόπων Ποιητικῶν, p. 246 & Anonymous, Περὶ Ποιητικῶν Τρόπων, p. 208: Κατάχρησίς ἐστι λέξις μετενηνεγμένη ἀπὸ τοῦ πρώτου κατονομασθέντος κυρίως τε καὶ ἐτύμως ἐφ᾿ ἕτερον ἀκατονόμαστον κατὰ τὸ οἰκεῖον. The same, in the anonymous Commen taria in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam, Scholia Londinensia, p. 459.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 599, saying that Aristotle used κα ταχρηστικώτερον the word ‘lie’ (ψεῦδος) instead of ‘ignorance’ (ἀντὶ τῆς ἀγνοίας ἔλαβε). He commented on Metaphysica, 1051b17: Περὶ δὲ δὴ τὰ ἀσύνθετα τί τὸ εἶναι ἢ μὴ εἶναι καὶ τὸ ἀληθὲς καὶ τὸ ψεῦδος.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 490.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b8: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὡς κινοῦν τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀρχήν· ὁ γὰρ νοῦς κινεῖ. Alexander of Aphrodisias simply quoted this, commMetaph, p. 718. Then, Gennadius Schol arius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 39 (ref. to Metaphysica, 1075b): ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἐν τῷ τριακοστῷ τῶν Μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀρχὴν εἶναι λέγοντι ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ συγχωρεῖ, μέμ φεται δὲ ἀδιορίστως εἰπόντι. Aristotle treated the same question (‘is Anaxagoras’ Mind the Good as a principle causing motion, or else as Final Cause?’) in the Metaphysica, 1075b8 9.  Theophrastus, De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 38; 59; Physicorum Opiniones, 4. Alexander of Aph rodisias, commMetaph, p. 32; pp. 45 6 (comm. on Metaphysica, 987a2: Καὶ παρὰ τῶν συνηδρευ κότων ἤδη τῷ λόγῳ σοφῶν). Alexander recognizes that Aristotle refers to Anaxagoras and Em pedocles, even though they are not mentioned by name; op. cit. p. 718 (comm. on p. Metaphysica, 1075a25). Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 223. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 85; commPhys, pp. 397; 407 (comm. on De Anima 203b11). Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 54. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 3.12; 3.13. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.7; Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 34.  See, for example, Hermias (Christian philosopher and apologist, perhaps second third cen tury), Irrisio Gentilium Philosophorum, 6. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.8.1.

134

Chapter 1 – The Principles

Although Aristotle swayed his posterity and convinced everyone but Simplicius that Anaxagoras maintained ‘infinite material homoiomeries’, therefore, ‘elements’ (although he contradicted himself on this, too), his specific phraseology did not enjoy much currency, as if authors felt that something was wrong with associating ‘elements’ and ‘homoiomeries’.¹²² Finally, the perceptive Michael Psellus realized that, even if a philosopher spoke of ‘elements’ as being fundamental to his ontology, these are principles still. Thus, ‘Empedocles made the four elements universal principles’ (τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα ὁμοῦ ἀρχὰς ἐπέστησε τῷ παντί), and ‘Anaxagoras, who came from Mimas, posited the homoiomeries as universal principles’ (τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀρχὰς ἡγήσατο τοῦ παντός).¹²³ Hence, the general practice was to speak of Anaxagoras’ principles, no matter how each intellectual interpreted the nature of them.¹²⁴ Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus appears as having not clear grasp of what ‘principle’ means either: once he decided that Anaxagoras posited ‘infinite homoiomeries’ (which Simplicius rebutted), he himself went as far as to say that Anaxagoras thought pretty much like Anaximander, because he ‘posited two principles, namely, the nature of the infinite and Mind’. No other philosopher did ever go as far with distortion as to say that Anaximander’s ontological principle, i.e. the infinite, was a principle also to Anaxagoras.¹²⁵ Presumably, Theophrastus took Aristotle’s allegation about the homoiomeries being infinite in

 For example, see them being designated by means of both names at the same time: Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 214: τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ τὰ στοιχεῖα φασὶν εἶναι. Then, commMetaph, p. 28: διὰ τὴν τῶν στοιχείων ἀπειρίαν, but he made no more than that. Themistius followed Aristotle’s phraseology speaking of ‘elements’, but scarcely so. paraphrPhys, p. 13.  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 6, line 75.  Cf. Heron of Alexandria, Definitiones, 136. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 18. Pseudo Justin, Cohortatio Ad Gentiles, p. 4E. Themistius, paraphrPhys, pp. 2; 13 4; 16 7. Eusebius, Prae paratio Evangelica, 14.14.8. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.12. Simplicius, commCael, pp. 614; 635; commPhys, pp. 27; 44 5; 154 5; 163; 166 7; 172 4; 180; 300 (quoting Alexander of Aphrodisias); 460 2. John Philoponus, commAnalPost, p. 129; commGenCorr, pp. 13; 127; commAnim, p. 9; commPhys, pp. 24; 87; 96; 101 2; 108 10. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, pp. 4; 25; 29; 43; 86. Suda, letter omicron, entry 310. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 6. George Cedrenus, Compendi um Historiarum, p. 278. Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aqui nae, 1.43; adnotArist, Book 1, lines 61 6 & Book 6, lines 38; 255 (both commenting on Physica); commPhys, pp. 7; 41 2; Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii In Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, pp. 179 80; 185 6; 190.  Simplicius (quoting Theophrastus), commPhys, p. 27 (the same, on p. 154): καὶ ταῦτα φησὶν ὁ Θεόφραστος παραπλησίως τῷ ᾿Aναξιμάνδρῳ λέγειν τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν· … συμβαίνει δύο τὰς ἀρχὰς αὐτὸν λέγειν τήν τε τοῦ ἀπείρου φύσιν καὶ τὸν νοῦν. The only intellectual who employed this allegation was Plutarch, which shows the impact of Theophrastus’ doxography. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 370E: ̓Aναξαγόρας δὲ νοῦν καὶ ἄπειρον. Cf. 876B.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

135

number too seriously, and this was very long before Simplicius came up with a rebuttal of this, as I discuss later. On the other hand, Theophrastus did not pay much attention to his teacher’s statement that Anaxagoras posited two elements (meaning the Mind and the homoiomeries).¹²⁶ The confusion in using the two terms appears striking at the point where Aristotle considers views of his predecessors about the soul. First, he says that they postulated that the soul is made of the principles (each philosopher’s principles), whether they were many or one (οὗτοι δὲ λέγουσι τὴν ψυχὴν τὰς ἀρχάς, οἱ μὲν πλείους ποιοῦντες, ταύτας, οἱ δὲ μίαν ταύτην). His first example is Empedocles, who constructed the soul ‘out of all the elements’ (ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων πάντων). Then, ‘Plato, likewise, in the Timaeus, constructs the soul out of the elements’ (τὸν αὐτὸν δὲ τρόπον καὶ Πλάτων ἐν τῷ Τιμαίῳ τὴν ψυχὴν ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων ποιεῖ), because [he thought] that like is known by the like, whereas all things are made out of the principles (τὰ δὲ πράγματα ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν εἶναι)’.¹²⁷ Thus, to Aristotle, the hackneyed Greek principle, ‘like is known by the like’, meant that the soul can cognize things only if both of them are made of the same ‘stuff’. At the same time though, Aristotle at this point had no problem with saying that the soul is made of elements, and things are made of principles. John Philoponus criticized Aristotle on this, arguing that ‘many impossible things stem from this proposition’. For, if this axioms held, then ‘the soul would be able to cognize only its own constituents, that is, the elements and the principles of beings; but reality is consisted not only of principles and elements, but also of many, indeed infinite, other things, which are not made of either elements or principles, and they are different from both each other and from the principles themselves. How then could it be possible for the soul to know them?’¹²⁸ Little wonder, then, that Simplicius (who had access to more Platonic and Aristotelian texts than we now have) wrote that, when Aristotle spoke of Plato and claimed that Plato also maintained the notions of ‘[formless] matter’ and ‘form’, Simplicius read in Aristotle that these two are elements (διὰ τοῦτο λέγει, ὅτι ὁ Πλάτων δύο τὰ στοιχεῖα παραδίδωσι, τὴν ὕλην καὶ τὸ εἶδος).¹²⁹ How-

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989a30 33.  Aristotle, De Anima, 404b.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 175.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 245. We have not the precise passage of Aristotle on this. But Sim plicius definitely refers to Aristotle’s Physica, 187a17 20, where Plato is stated as having spoken of ‘the great and the small’ (τὸ μέγα φησὶ Πλάτων καὶ τὸ μικρόν). No extant Platonic work con tains this. In fact, however, this was a Pythagorean doctrine explaining how the Monad turns to

136

Chapter 1 – The Principles

ever, earlier in the same commentary, Simplicius (quoting from Alexander of Aphrodisias) noted that ‘Plato seems to have postulated two principles’, of which one is ‘the substratum’ (formless matter) (ὑποκείμενον καὶ ὕλην προσαγορεύων), and the other is ‘God’, whom also Plato calls ‘Mind and Good’ and he is a ‘moving cause’ (ὡς αἴτιον καὶ κινοῦν).¹³⁰ Aristotle accused Anaxagoras of making no distinction between mind and soul, and of being ‘not precise in his dealing with the subject’, because it appeared to Aristotle that Anaxagoras identified the soul with the mind.¹³¹ However, the difference of approach was profound in the first place: whereas to Anaxagoras ‘soul’ meant simply ‘life’ (which is why he regarded this as an attribute of ‘all living things, great and small, noble and base’),¹³² to Aristotle (as well as to Plato), the soul was a certain something that had to be considered apart from the life proper of an animate being. This is one of the strongest points of Anaxagoras, and this in this lies a substantial difference from all subsequent philosophers: the life of any living being (as indeed any thing or phenomenon) is consisted not of all the principles, but of only certain ones. Aristotle claimed that the ‘indeterminate dyad’, expressed as ‘the great and the small’,¹³³ means causation of good and evil, and attributed to Plato the theory that good is associated with the Formal Cause and evil with the Material

multiplicity. Here is a precise parallel to Aristotle’s reference by Iamblichus, Theologoumena Arithmeticae, p. 12: ἔλλειψις δὲ καὶ πλεονασμὸς λέγεται καὶ ὕλη, ἣν καὶ ἀόριστον δυάδα ὁμωνύ μως ταύτῃ καλοῦσι διὰ τὸ μορφῆς καὶ εἴδους καὶ ὁρισμοῦ τινος ἐστερῆσθαι ὅσον ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτῇ. Cf. pp. 7; 19. References to the Pythagorean character of this theory abound. For example, Iambli chus, In Nicomachi Arithmeticam Introductionem, p. 61. Pseudo Justin, Cohortatio ad Gentiles, p. 5A. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.6 (apud, Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876F; also, 877C; 881E; also, Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 35). Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 8.25. The notion was frequently mentioned by Alexander of Aphrodisias, and some of those references were quoted by Simplicius. The only author who cites the precise Pythagorean locus of it was Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 175: ὡς δὲ ἐν ταῖς αἰτίαις ταῖς πρωτίσταις τὴν ἀόριστον δυάδα, ἣν Χάος ὁ Πυθαγόρας ἐν τῷ Ἱερῷ λόγῳ κέκληκε, συντάτ των αὐτὴν τῷ Πρωτεῖ. Also, op. cit. pp. 11; 43; 134; 166 7; 180. Moreover, Proclus, commRep, pp. 93; 137 8; commCrat, 115; commTim, pp. 146; 176; et passim. Damascius, Princ, pp. 86; 88 9; 91; 97 9; et passim. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 150 1; 181; et passim. Also, John Philoponus, Ascle pius of Tralles, Photius, Suda. See the notion entertained by Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.5; V.4.2.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 43.  He made this a recurrent theme. Cf. op. cit. 404a b; 405a b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 404b4 5.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 988a13 14: ὅτι αὕτη δυάς ἐστι, τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν. See discus sion about the ‘Indeterminate Dyad’ (ἀόριστος δυάς) on pp. 29; 70 1; 81; 136; 225; 403; 605; 708 10; 1052; 1383; 1413.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

137

Cause.¹³⁴ To come upon Aristotle speaking of Empedocles in this way is rather natural,¹³⁵ given that Love is ‘good’ whereas Strife is ‘evil’ and destructive of the Sphaerus. But he adds that this happens also with Anaxagoras, ‘as we said earlier’.¹³⁶ Indeed, he did so a short while before that point, speaking of Hermotimus of Clazomenae and of Anaxagoras himself, claiming that ‘those thinkers assumed the supreme principle in things, which is the cause of goodness and it is the same principle which imparts motion to things’.¹³⁷ Of them, Aristotle claims that he knows that ‘apparently this was said by Anaxagoras’ (φανερῶς μὲν οὖν ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἴσμεν ἁψάμενον τούτων τῶν λόγων), but he surmised that Hermotimus had said so earlier. This means that, to Anaxagoras, the Mind was not only the primal cause of motion, but also the ultimate source of goodness, and this Mind is ‘in Nature, just as in animals, and it is the cause of all order and arrangement’.¹³⁸ In short, Aristotle seems to go along with Plato making the Supreme Principle the source of goodness, while at the same time he exposed Plato by saying that this idea had been expounded earlier by Anaxagoras,¹³⁹ which he mitigates by attributing this to Hermotimus. However, the extrapolation is his syllogism is all too plain: his purpose was to discover ‘two principles’, or causes, in his predecessors (namely, the Pythagoreans, Leucippus, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Plato) in order to argue that his own two principles (forms and formless matter, δυοῖν αἰτίαιν ὧν ἡμεῖς διωρίσαμεν) made a superior philosophy. In making ‘good and evil two principles’, Empedocles ‘spoke inarticulately’ (ψελλίζεται λέγων),¹⁴⁰ since ‘he made the source of motion not one but two principles, indeed two contrary ones.’¹⁴¹ Regarding Anaxagoras, he sees the Mind and the homoimeries as ‘two princi Aristotle, op. cit. 988a14 15, quoted infra, p. 139, note 147.  This Aristotle did in Metaphysica, 985a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 988a15 17: ὥσπερ φαμὲν καὶ τῶν προτέρων ἐπιζητῆσαί τινας φιλοσόφων, οἷον Ἐμπεδοκλέα καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν.  Aristotle, op. cit. 984b18 22: οἱ μὲν οὖν οὕτως ὑπολαμβάνοντες ἅμα τοῦ καλῶς τὴν αἰτίαν ἀρχὴν εἶναι τῶν ὄντων ἔθεσαν, καὶ τὴν τοιαύτην ὅθεν ἡ κίνησις ὑπάρχει τοῖς οὖσιν.  Aristotle, op. cit. 984b15 17: νοῦν δή τις εἰπὼν ἐνεῖναι, καθάπερ ἐν τοῖς ζῴοις, καὶ ἐν τῇ φύσει τὸν αἴτιον τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τῆς τάξεως πάσης.  Although in Metaphysica, 988a16 18, Aristotle refers to both Anaxagoras and Empedocles, earlier (984b15 20) he praised Anaxagoras alone, ‘who appeared as a sane man among the hap hazard statements of his predecessors’ (echoing Plato, Phaedo, 97b 98b). As it happened, Aris totle essayed to berate Anaxagoras’ contribution by saying that ‘perhaps Hermotimus said so earlier’ (Metaphysica, 984b19 20; Protrepticus, fr. 110). But the latter was a semi mythical person supposed to have been a pre incarnation of Pythagoras. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 8.5. Aristotle seems to regard even Pythagoras himself as a legendary figure. Metaphysica, 985b23 24.  Aristotle, op. cit. 985a4 8.  Aristotle, op. cit. 985a29 32.

138

Chapter 1 – The Principles

ples’, but then he disparages all of his predecessors who posited a Good cause (ὡς ἀγαθόν), because ‘they did not profess that anything exists or is generated for the sake of them (ἕνεκά γε τούτων), but only that motions originate from them’.¹⁴² The main point that bears on our present discussion is that he makes an extrapolation, in order to argue for his own two principles, thus interpolating two supreme principles into Anaxagoras’ thought, and regarding this an exact parallel to Empedocles: in like a manner Plato maintained the ‘Indeterminate Dyad’ (δυάς ἐστι, τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν) and attributed to each of those elements (τοῖς στοιχείοις ἀπέδωκεν ἑκατέροις) the cause of good and evil (ἦν τοῦ εὖ καὶ τοῦ κακῶς αἰτίαν)’, in exactly the same manner he thought of other philosophers ‘such as Empedocles and Anaxagoras’.¹⁴³ However, whereas Empedocles clearly did so, there is absolutely no ground allowing attribution of two contrary supreme principles to Anaxagoras, from whom Aristotle took up his own notion of the First Mover. This point is the conclusion of a section in which Aristotle assessed his predecessors, ‘the wise men that our discussion has assembled together’, in which he speaks of those who posited either one cause of motion, or two’ (τῶν μὲν μίαν παρὰ τῶν δὲ δύο … οἱ μὲν μίαν οἱ δὲ δύο ποιοῦσι, τὴν ὅθεν ἡ κίνησις).¹⁴⁴ However, we saw him speaking upon his conclusion of ‘elements’, and attributing to Anaxagoras two of them (meaning, principles). Following his analysis, this should mean that, to Anaxagoras, the source of motion is not one, but two, which is once again a glaring contradiction: not only a few lines below does he state that, to Empedocles, ‘the cause of motion’ was Love and Strive, whereas to Anaxagoras it was the Mind,¹⁴⁵ but also he had made his monistic view of Anaxagoras, namely, ‘Mind caused motion’, a recurrent motif.¹⁴⁶ One should wonder what is possibly different in Plato having called his ultimate principle Good (ἀγαθόν). However, there is indeed some difference, which spared Anaxagoras’ thought from the impasses that Plato’s theory faced: for to  Aristotle, op. cit. 988b8 12. In other words, he accuses his predecessors of not having made the supreme principle also a Final Cause.  Aristotle, op. cit. 988a13 18.  Aristotle, op. cit. 987a3 14.  Aristotle, op. cit. 33 36.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405a13 27: ᾿Aναξαγόρας … ἀρχήν γε τὸν νοῦν τίθεται μάλιστα πάντων· … λέγων νοῦν κινῆσαι τὸ πᾶν. … τὸ πᾶν ἐκίνησε νοῦς. Physica, 250b24 26: ᾿Aναξαγόρας λέγει … κίνησιν ἐμποιῆσαι τὸν νοῦν καὶ διακρῖναι. Op. cit. 256b24 26: ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὀρθῶς λέγει, τὸν νοῦν ἀπαθῆ φάσκων καὶ ἀμιγῆ εἶναι, ἐπειδή γε κινήσεως ἀρχὴν αὐτὸν εἶναι ποιεῖ. Op. cit. 265b22 23: τὸν νοῦν δέ φησιν ᾿Aναξαγόρας διακρίνειν τὸν κινήσαντα πρῶτον. Also, Metaphysica, 984b18 22; 1072a5 7.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

139

Anaxagoras, this supreme principle is involved with the world, in fact, it is the efficient cause that effects goodness by means of its surrogate principles. Alexander of Aphrodisias was the only commentator who dealt with this passage, but he got it wrong. Aristotle attributed the cause of goodness to the one, and the cause of evil to the dyad. He never said that the one principle of Anaxagoras is the cause of both good and evil; instead he said of Empedocles that ‘of the two principles’, Love is the source and cause of goodness, and Strife, of evil; also, that ‘either of the elements is the cause of good and evil’.¹⁴⁷ Against this, Alexander of Aphrodisias took it that Anaxagoras made Mind the source of both good and evil, which was absurd, given the almost universal Greek thesis that God is not the author of evil.¹⁴⁸ Nevertheless, in fairness to Alexander, it has to be said that he was misled by Aristotle’s foregoing statement, and Aristotle’s contradictory use of terms can be once again noticed: speaking of ‘good and evil’, he says that Plato, like Empedocles and Anaxagoras, attributed their cause ‘to the two elements’. This means that, now, Love and Strife to him are ‘elements’ (τοῖς στοιχείοις), and so are the Mind and the principles of Anaxagoras.¹⁴⁹ In the Metaphysica, 1025b1 (beginning of Book VI), Aristotle identifies ‘principles and causes’ (αἱ ἀρχαὶ καὶ τὰ αἴτια), and then (1025b5‒6) he speaks of ‘principles and elements and causes’ of mathematics. However, this is not simply about science, since later (1042a5‒6) he repeats that his ‘objects of enquiry are the causes and principles and elements of substances’ (τὰ αἴτια καὶ αἱ ἀρχαὶ καὶ τὰ στοιχεῖα). So he did later, arguing that ‘the ancients’ (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι) sought ‘the essence’ (περὶ τῆς οὐσίας) as much as did he so himself, which he identifies once again as enquiry about ‘the principles and elements and causes’

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 988a14 15: τὴν τοῦ εὖ καὶ τοῦ κακῶς αἰτίαν τοῖς στοιχείοις ἀπέδω κεν ἑκατέροις ἑκατέραν.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 60: ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ δὲ ὁ νοῦς τοῦ εὖ τε καὶ κακῶς μόνον ἦν ποιητικὸν αἴτιον, ὡς εἴρηκεν. As it happened normally, Asclepius of Tralles copied from Alexander, but this time he copied a mistake. commMetaph, p. 53: ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ δὲ ὁ νοῦς τοῦ εὖ καὶ κακῶς μόνον ποιητικὸν ὑπάρχει.  Likewise, a short while after that point, making Mind and principles ‘elements’. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989a30 31: ᾿Aναξαγόραν δ᾿ εἴ τις ὑπολάβοι δύο λέγειν στοιχεῖα. Moreover, Aristotle made various references to material principles being intermediate between certain pairs of ‘el ements’. They are taken as applying to Anaximander’s ἄπειρον, but his statements are extremely vague (Metaphysica, 989a12 19; Physica, 187a14; 189b3; 203a18) so that a definitive identification is in fact impossible. On Aristotle being notorious during the Late Antiquity for his ‘vagueness’, see discussion in chapter 8, pp. 568 ff.

140

Chapter 1 – The Principles

(ἀρχὰς καὶ στοιχεῖα καὶ αἴτια).¹⁵⁰ Although shortly after that he conceded that ‘a principle and an element are not the same, yet both of them are causes’,¹⁵¹ it is quite evident that he made nothing of it, and it is exactly this use of ‘principles’ and ‘elements’ by Aristotle that Syrianus took exception to. Actually, not only in the Metaphysics, but also in the Physics, Aristotle showed little care about a nuanced use of these terms: in the very beginning of that work, he states that ‘knowledge’ of all sciences is procured by acquaintance with the ‘principles or causes or elements’ (ἀρχαὶ ἢ αἴτια ἢ στοιχεῖα) of them.¹⁵² Commenting on this, Alexander of Aphrodisias felt it necessary to exonerate Aristotle from the ambivalence of his language by pointing out that ‘there is a difference between principle and element’ (διαφέρει ἀρχὴ καὶ στοιχεῖον), assuring that he saw this difference also in Aristotle’s expressions at that point.¹⁵³ Prior to Alexander, it seems that Eudemus of Rhodes (c. 370 ‒ c. 300 BC, a pupil and editor of Aristotle’s work) realized that this was a weak point of Aristotle’s exposition, which is why he felt it necessary and essayed to enquire ‘what is either a principle, or a cause, or an element’ (ἔστι δὲ ἄξιον ζητεῖν τί ἀρχὴ καὶ τί αἴτιον καὶ τί στοιχεῖον).¹⁵⁴ We owe these references by Eudemus to Simplicius, who presumably saw the flaw of Aristotle’s accounts (which his hero Syrianus had pointed out, anyway), and added that ‘it seems that Alexander follows Eudemus suit’ (ἔοικε δὲ τῷ Εὐδήμῳ κατακολουθεῖν ὁ ᾿Aλέξανδρος).¹⁵⁵ The cases in which doxography comes up with conflicting information are all but rare. One of them, is the report that Aristotle wrote a book entitled On Elements. In a very extensive catalogue of Aristotle’s works, Diogenes Laertius includes a treatise under this title (Περὶ στοιχείων) reporting that it comprised three books,¹⁵⁶ and it is not easy to dispute information by Laertius, who had access to information of old, not simply to Aristotle’s own references citing his work On Elements. So does the historian Pseudo-Hesychius of Miletus speaking of three volumes under the same title.¹⁵⁷ Aristotle wrote, ‘as we have said in our

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069a25 25: Likewise, a few lines above (1069a18 19): τῶν γὰρ οὐ σιῶν αἱ ἀρχαὶ καὶ τὰ αἴτια ζητοῦνται.  Op. cit. 1070b.  Aristotle, Physica, 184a10 16; then (184a23), likewise: τὰ στοιχεῖα καὶ αἱ ἀρχαί.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 13. See also, Gennadius Scholar ius, Epitome Primae Partis Summae Theologicae Thomae Aquinae, 6.85, lines 75 79, which simply reproduces Aristotle’s language without pointing out any difference between the terms.  Eudemus of Rhodes, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 10.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 10.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 5.23.  Pseudo Hesychius of Miletus (the Illustrius, sixth century), Vita Aristotelis (vita Menagi ana), line 56.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

141

treatment of the elements’ (ὥσπερ εἴρηται ἐν τοῖς περὶ στοιχείων).¹⁵⁸ His expression does indeed seem to indicate that the citation points to a specific treatise. Alexander of Aphrodisias explained that this simply suggests the On Generation and Corruption, ‘elements’ being the four material ones.¹⁵⁹ In line with Alexander, John Philoponus maintained that no such treatise as On Elements was ever written by Aristotle: his citations simply mean the work On Generation and Corruption, which was indeed written before the On the Soul, where this citation occurs.¹⁶⁰ By the same token, Aristotle’s reference to his earlier treatment of elements, which he made in the Sense and Sensibilia (γῆς δὲ τὸ ξηρόν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται ἐν τοῖς περὶ στοιχείων), fits well, since that work was written later on,¹⁶¹ and this was an implicit reference to another one made in his On Generation and Corruption. ¹⁶² Likewise, when, in the opening lines of his Meteorology, ¹⁶³ Aristotle says that he treated the question of elements earlier,¹⁶⁴ this is also plausible, since both the On the Heavens and On Generation and Corruption were written prior to that work. At another point, Philoponus argues that Aristotle expounded this issue in his On the Haevens. ¹⁶⁵ Simplicius (or, whoever wrote the commentary) likewise took it that, when Aristotle said that he had set forth a certain proposition while considered the question of elements, he simply meant On

 Aristotle, De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 441b12. Likewise, De Anima, 423b29: περὶ ὧν εἰρήκαμεν πρότερον ἐν τοῖς περὶ τῶν στοιχείων.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commDeSensu, p. 72: εἰρῆσθαι δέ φησι ταῦτα ἐν τοῖς περὶ στοιχείων, λέγων τὰ Περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς· ἐν ἐκείνοις γὰρ μάλιστα τὸν περὶ τῆς φύσεώς τε καὶ οὐσίας τῶν τεσσάρων σωμάτων, ἃ καὶ στοιχεῖα λέγεται. Also, commMetaph, p. 785 (comm. on Metaphysica, 1086a), in which though Aristotle speaks invariably of ‘first principles and first causes and elements’ (περὶ δὲ τῶν πρώτων ἀρχῶν καὶ τῶν πρώτων αἰτίων καὶ στοι χείων) referring his readers to the Physics. Alexander takes it that a discussion On Elements was carried out in the On Generation and Corruption: ἐν γὰρ τῇ Φυσικῇ ἀκροάσει εἴρηκε περὶ τῶν πρώτων ἀρχῶν, ὑλικοῦ εἰδικοῦ ποιητικοῦ καὶ τελικοῦ· ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ στοιχείων ἐν τοῖς Περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς, ὅτι τέσσαρά ἐστι καὶ ὅτι γίνονται ἐξ ἀλλήλων καὶ φθείρονται εἰς ἄλληλα.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 434 (comm. on De Anima, 423b19): ἐζήτησε δὲ καὶ ἐν τῷ Περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς (τοῦτο γάρ φησι τὸ περὶ τῶν στοιχείων).  Aristotle, De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 441b11 12.  Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 331b19: τῆς δὲ γῆς τὸ ξηρόν.  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 338a20 25: Περὶ μὲν οὖν τῶν πρώτων αἰτίων τῆς φύσεως καὶ περὶ πάσης κινήσεως φυσικῆς, ἔτι δὲ περὶ τῶν κατὰ τὴν ἄνω φορὰν διακεκοσμημένων ἄστρων καὶ περὶ τῶν στοιχείων τῶν σωματικῶν, πόσα τε καὶ ποῖα, καὶ τῆς εἰς ἄλληλα μεταβολῆς, καὶ περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς τῆς κοινῆς εἴρηται πρότερον.  Aristotle, op. cit. 338a22 24.  John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 124: ἤδη μὲν οὖν καὶ ἐν τῇ Περὶ οὐρανοῦ πραγματείᾳ ἐζήτησε περὶ τῶν στοιχείων, καὶ ἔδειξεν ὅτι τῇ τάξει πρῶτος ὁ περὶ τῶν στοιχείων λόγος.

142

Chapter 1 – The Principles

Generation and Corruption. ¹⁶⁶ When Galen said that authors of old were confused in respect of the meaning of ‘elements’ and ‘principles’, he exempted Hippocrates (c. 460 – c. 370 BC), arguing that he was the one who settled things concerning this issue.¹⁶⁷ He added that Aristotle ‘treated fully the question about the elements’ in his treatises On the Heavens and On Generation and Corruption, and that so did Chrysippus in his On Substance. However, Galen goes on, ‘neither of them entitled these sections On Elements, nor is it necessary to seek such a title, since what matters is their arguments’, and cites a treatise under this title, which he himself wrote as a commentary on Hippocrates’ views of the elements (περὶ τῶν καθ᾿ Ἱπποκράτην στοιχείων),¹⁶⁸ to which he referred his readers.¹⁶⁹ This means that, when Galen, Simplicius, and Philoponus referred to Aristotle’s treatment of ‘elements’, they meant the four natural elements. But the question that is invited is how was it that Aristotle used the terms ‘elements’ and ‘first principles’ in a loose and inconsistent manner, to which Syrianus is an undisputable witness as much as Aristotle’s own texts are. On the other hand, the title On First Principles (περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν) was also ascribed to Aristotle, which calls for a brief review of this title being used in Antiquity. This was a designation abundantly used by a long series of Greek philosophers, including Longinus,¹⁷⁰ the pupil and companion of Origen (the only Christian that used this title), but he did so only because he was a newly convert. Albinus wrote that ‘the discourse on the first principles’ is an alternative designation for exposition of ‘theology’,¹⁷¹ which is also what Clement of Alexandria¹⁷² and Iamblichus held alike.¹⁷³

 Simplicius, commAnim, p. 164: περὶ ὧν ἐν τοῖς περὶ στοιχείων εἰρηκέναι λέγει οὕτω τὰ Περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς προσαγορεύων.  Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 488: πρῶτος Ἱπποκράτης ἁπάντων ἐξευρὼν φαίνεται τὰ στοιχεῖα τῆς τῶν ὄντων φύσεως καὶ πρῶτος αὐτάρκως ἀποδείξας.  Galen, De Methodo Medendi, p. 462: βιβλίον ἐποιησάμεθα τὸ περὶ τῶν καθ᾿ Ἱπποκράτην στοιχείων ἐπιγεγραμμένον. Cf. Stephanus (medical doctor, philosopher) citing this: Scholia in Hippocratis Prognosticon, 1.3: ὥσπερ καὶ ὁ Γαληνὸς ἐν τῷ προοιμίῳ τοῦ Περὶ στοιχείων εἰρηκώς.  Galen, Ars Medica, p. 408: τρίβιβλος δ᾿ ἄλλη πραγματεία ἡ περὶ φυσικῶν δυνάμεών ἐστιν· ἣν εἴτε μετὰ τὰ δύο περὶ κράσεων, εἴτε μετὰ τὸ περὶ στοιχείων ἀναγινώσκειν τις ἐθέλοι. De Tem peramentis, p. 553: ὡς ἐν τοῖς Περὶ τῶν στοιχείων λόγοις δέδεικται. De Simplicium Medicamen torum Temperamentis ac Facultatibus, p. 668: ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ στοιχείων δέδεικται λόγοις.  Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 14 (The On First Principles by Longinus was read in class by Ploti nus): ᾿Aναγνωσθέντος δὲ αὐτῷ τοῦ τε Περὶ ἀρχῶν Λογγίνου.  Albinus, Epitome Doctrinae Platonicae, 8.1: Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα ἑπομένως περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν τὲ καὶ τῶν θεολογικῶν λέγωμεν θεωρημάτων. Op. cit. 11.3: Ὁ μὲν δὴ περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν λόγος τοιοῦτος ἄν τις εἴη θεολογικὸς λεγόμενος.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

143

Eusebius was definitely aware of this, and he wrote about Origen’s creative flare, namely, Anaxagoras, that he was the first who composed a treatise ‘on the first principles’, and he used the expression as if it were the title of this work, although Simplicius cited it simply ‘Physics’.¹⁷⁴ Likewise, an anonymous collection of maxims by various sages appeals to Thales and quotes from him, citing ‘the second book of his On First Principles’ (ἐκ τοῦ δευτέρου περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν).¹⁷⁵ On the other hand, Diogenes Laertius reported that Thales wrote only two books and cites different titles for them.¹⁷⁶ Presumably, Eusebius took up this designation from Alexander of Aphrodisias, a man he explicitly respected,¹⁷⁷ from whom he quoted a long section from De Fato. But Alexander himself spoke of Anaxagoras’ doctrine as one ‘on the first principles’,¹⁷⁸ because he followed Aristotle having spoken of him as the one who treated ‘the principles’.¹⁷⁹ However, it was also Aristotle who wrote in the Physics that Anaxagoras and Democritus

 Cf. Clement of of Alexandria, Quis Dives Salvetur, 26.8: ἐν τῇ περὶ ἀρχῶν καὶ θεολογίας ἐξ ηγήσει μυστήριον τοῦ σωτῆρος ὑπάρχει μαθεῖν. Cf. Stromateis, 3.21.2: ἐπειδὰν δὲ περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν διαλαμβάνωμεν. Op. cit. 3.3.13: ὁπόταν τὸν περὶ ἀρχῶν διαλαμβάνωμεν λόγον (in both cases meaning theological debate against Marcion). Op. cit. 4.1.2 (ref. to ‘the Greeks and barbarians’): τὰ περὶ ἀρχῶν φυσιολογηθέντα τοῖς τε Ἕλλησι τοῖς τε ἄλλοις βαρβάροις. Likewise, op. cit. 5.14.140.3 4: τὰς περὶ ἀρχῶν δόξας τὰς παρ᾿ Ἕλλησι φερομένας ἀναλεγώμεθα. Op. cit. 6.2.4.2: τὰ περὶ ἀρχῶν τοῖς Ἕλλησιν εἰρημένα ἐπιόντες διελέγχωμεν.  Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 8.3: Καὶ οὕτως ἄνωθεν ἄχρι τῶν τελευταίων ἡ περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν Αἰγυπτίοις πραγματεία ἀφ᾿ ἑνὸς ἄρχεται, καὶ πρόεισιν εἰς πλῆθος.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 10.14.12: ᾿Aναξιμένης Εὐρυστράτου Μιλήσιος· τούτου δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας Ἡγησιβούλου Κλαζομένιος. οὗτος δὴ πρῶτος διήρθρωσε τὸν περὶ ἀρχῶν λόγον. Op. cit. 14.14.7: μόνος δ᾿ οὖν πρῶτος Ἑλλήνων ᾿Aναξαγόρας μνημονεύεται ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἀρχῶν λό γοις Νοῦν τὸν πάντων αἴτιον ἀποφήνασθαι. … τόν τε περὶ ἀρχῶν λόγον πρῶτος Ἑλλήνων διήρθρωσεν.  Anonymous, Apophthegmata, Division 5, apophthegm 18. D K determined this as Thales, Fragmenta, fr. 3, citing that this is from Galen’s commentary on Hippocrates’ De Natura Hominis. But there is no such extant text by Galen.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 1.23.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 6.8.39 6.9.32.  Alexander of Aphrodisias (comm. on Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989b16 17), commMetaph, p. 69 (copied by Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 62): Συγκεφαλαιοῦται τὴν ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξαν περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν. Op. cit. p. 136; 237: καὶ τὰς δόξας τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ τὰς περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν ἐκθέμενός τε καὶ ἱστορήσας καὶ ἀντειπὼν πρὸς αὐτάς. Op. cit. p. 70: ἱστορήσας τὰς τῶν ἀρχαίων δόξας τὰς περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν (copied by Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 63: ἱστορήσας τὰς τῶν ἀρχαίων δόξας, ἃς περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν ἔσχον). Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii In Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, p. 185 (comm. on Physica, 188a20 30; cf. Metaphysica, 1004b31; 1075a28; 1087a29 30): Θεὶς τὰς δόξας τῶν ἀρχαίων φιλοσόφων περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν τῆς φύσεως.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989b16.

144

Chapter 1 – The Principles

posited ‘infinite elements’ (ἄπειρα ποιοῦσι τὰ στοιχεῖα).¹⁸⁰ Likewise, Eusebius also used this title citing the philosophy of Zeno of Citium.¹⁸¹ In any case, ‘On First Principles’ was a designation by Alexander of Aphrodisias himself, not a title of a specific work; he used it only in order to expound what Aristotle said of those of his predecessors who ‘treated the question of first principles’.¹⁸² Simplicius reports that Theophrastus wrote that ‘Anaxagoras was the first who modified the theories about the first principles and introduced a [creative] cause.’¹⁸³ This is how Simplicius himself saw the exposition of Anaxagoras.¹⁸⁴ Adrastus of Aphrodisias (philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, second century AD) was a Peripatetic who wrote a book entitled On the Order of Aristotle’s Treatises. In this, he advises that some students of Aristotle had given the title On First Principles to the treatise otherwise known as Physics. This work comprises eight books. When Simplicius wrote his commentary on Aristotle’s On Heavens, he believed that the first four books of the Physics were entitled On First Principles, whereas the next four had been given the title On Motion. ¹⁸⁵ By the designation ‘first principles’ in this context, Aristotle meant only formless matter and form.¹⁸⁶ However, when Simplicius came to composing the commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, he had read Adrastus and modified his view slightly: some Peripatetics accorded the title On First Principles to the entire Physics, whereas, to others, the title was applied only to the first five books of that work, and the title for the rest three was On Motion. ¹⁸⁷ Finally, (on the basis of

 Aristotle, Physica, 203a.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.14.1: ὅπως τε ὁ Ζήνων τὸν περὶ ἀρχῶν ἀπεδίδου λόγον.  Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 46 7; 60; 64; 143 4 (τὰς τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ περὶ τῶν πρώτων ἀρχῶν δόξας); 237; 261; 822.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 27 (Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4): ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν γὰρ Ἡγησιβούλου Κλαζομένιος, κοινωνήσας τῆς ᾿Aναξιμένους φιλοσοφίας, πρῶτος μετέστησε τὰς περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν δόξας καὶ τὴν ἐλλείπουσαν αἰτίαν ἀνεπλήρωσε.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 461: ἡ μὲν οὖν ἔννοια, καθ᾿ ἣν εἰς ταύτην ἦλθε περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν τὴν ὑπόθεσιν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, οὕτως φανερὰ γέγονεν.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 226: καλεῖ δὲ περὶ ἀρχῶν τὰ τέσσαρα πρῶτα βιβλία τῆς Φυσικῆς ἀκροάσεως, ὥσπερ τὰ λοιπὰ τέσσαρα περὶ κινήσεως ἐκάλει πρὸ ὀλίγου.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 309 (on Aristotle, Physica, 194b16): Τῆς πραγματείας οὔσης περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν καὶ αἰτίων τῶν φυσικῶν. Op. cit. p. 519: εἶπεν ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν τῶν ὡς στοιχείων τῆς ὕλης τοῦ εἴδους καὶ τῆς τούτοις συνυπαρχούσης στερήσεως.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 4: Ἄδραστος δὲ ἐν τῷ Περὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν ᾿Aριστοτέλους συγγραμμάτων ἱστορεῖ παρὰ μέν τινων Περὶ ἀρχῶν ἐπιγεγράφθαι τὴν πραγματείαν, ὑπ᾿ ἄλλων δὲ Φυσικῆς ἀκροάσεως, τινὰς δὲ πάλιν τὰ μὲν πρῶτα πέντε Περὶ ἀρχῶν ἐπιγράφειν φησί, τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ τρία Περὶ κινήσεως. οὕτω δὲ φαίνεται καὶ ᾿Aριστοτέλης αὐτῶν πολλαχοῦ μεμνημένος. Likewise, in op. cit. p. 6, he (Simplicius apud Adrastus) gives details about the content of each book. Op. cit. p. 801: διὸ καὶ τὸ πέμπτον τοῦτο βιβλίον τοῖς Περὶ ἀρχῶν, Φυσικοῖς λεγομέ

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

145

information that cannot be determined) Simplicius says that Aristotle himself used to call the first five books of the Physics, On First Principles (Περὶ ἀρχῶν).¹⁸⁸ John Philoponus¹⁸⁹ and Themistius¹⁹⁰ did not care about titles, and they saw the Physics as a treatise On First Principles (περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν). By the end of the Byzantine period, Gennadius Scholarius made references to the Physics of Aristotle (192a17), citing the work not as Physics, but On First Principles (Περὶ ᾿Aρχῶν).¹⁹¹ Therefore, whether it was Aristotle or his pupils who used the title, this was part of the Peripatetic tradition. This is why Aristoxenus of Tarentum (fl. 335 BC), the pupil of Aristotle, used the title On First Principles for his own treatise, cited by Porphyry who quoted from the first book of it.¹⁹² So did the Peripatetic Strato of Lampsacus (c. 335 – c. 269 BC), the third scholarch of the Lyceum after the death of Theophrastus. Diogenes Laertius reports that, among Strato’s prolific production, one was entitled On First Principles (Περὶ ἀρχῶν), in either three or two books’.¹⁹³ Porphyry also wrote a treatise under the same title, in two books.¹⁹⁴ Stobaeus quotes from the Pythagorean Archytas (428 – 347 BC), and the title (in archaic Greek) that he cites is indeed On First Principles (Ἐκ τοῦ ᾿Aρχύτου Περὶ

νοις, ᾿Aριστοτέλης καὶ οἱ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους ἑταῖροι συναριθμοῦσιν, ὥσπερ τὰ ἐφεξῆς τρία Περὶ κινήσεως καλεῖν εἰώθασι.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1126: Φυσικὰ καλῶν τὰ πρῶτα τῆς Φυσικῆς ἀκροάσεως πέντε βιβλία, ἅπερ καὶ Περὶ ἀρχῶν ὀνομάζει πολλάκις.  John Philoponus, commGenCorr (notes from the lectures of Ammonius), p. 1: Διαλαβὼν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἐν τῇ Φυσικῇ ἀκροάσει περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν τῶν φυσικῶν πραγμάτων. commAnim, p. 220: καὶ ἐν τῇ Φυσικῇ δὲ περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν διαλεγόμενος τῶν ὄντων, ὕλης καὶ εἴδους. He be lieves that it was with Physica, 184b15 that Aristotle really set out to explore the first principles. In Aristotelis Physicorum Libros Commentaria, p. 20: Ἐντεῦθεν εἰσβάλλει εἰς τὸν περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν λόγον.  Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 41: καὶ ταῦτα διώρισται σαφῶς καὶ ἡμῖν καὶ πρώτῳ ᾿Aριστοτέ λει ἐν τοῖς περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν τῆς ὅλης φύσεως. Op. cit. p. 50: πλεοναχῶς δὲ λεγομένης τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ τῆς αἰτίας ὁμοίως ἡ ψυχὴ κατὰ τοὺς διωρισμένους ἐν τοῖς περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν τρόπους τριχῶς ἐστὶν αἰτία τοῦ ζῶντος σώματος.  Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 31.  Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 78: Ἐν μέντοι τῷ πρώτῳ Περὶ ἀρχῶν φησιν [᾿Aριστόξενος].  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 5.59.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, p. 51: Πορφύριος δὲ αὖ μετὰ τοῦτον [sc. Plotinus] ἐν τῇ Περὶ ἀρχῶν πραγματείᾳ τὸν νοῦν εἶναι μὲν αἰώνιον ἐν πολλοῖς καὶ καλοῖς ἀποδείκνυσι λόγοι. Suda, letter pi, entry 2098: Πορφύριος, ὁ κατὰ Χριστιανῶν γράψας· … ἔγραψε βιβλία πάμπλειστα, … Περὶ ἀρχῶν βʹ.

146

Chapter 1 – The Principles

ἀρχᾶν).¹⁹⁵ Simplicius remarked that this title denotes a learned exposition, yet not an apodictic one.¹⁹⁶ The only philosopher who did not accept the designation περὶ ἀρχῶν for philosophy or theology was Proclus, on the ground that ‘principles’ indicate the supreme ones, whereas any discourse on this issue should be about one principle, namely, the One.¹⁹⁷ Nevertheless, Proclus reported that his teacher Plutarch of Athens had written also a treatise entitled On First Principles, even though he himself abode by his view that, ultimately, the entire treatise is about one principle, not many.¹⁹⁸ However, this did not deter Damascius from giving the title to his masterpiece On Problems and Solutions concerning the First Principles, which posterity mentioned simply as De Principiis (Περὶ ἀρχῶν). ¹⁹⁹ The anonymous writer who wrote under the name of Plutarch²⁰⁰ cared to write an ad hoc section entitled ‘What is the difference between a principle and elements’ (Τίνι διαφέρει ἀρχὴ καὶ στοιχεῖα). He states that ‘to the followers of Plato and Aristotle, a principle is different from the elements. Although Thales thought that they are the same thing, they are far too different from each other (πλεῖστον δ᾿ ὅσον διαφέρει ἀλλήλων): the elements are compound, whereas principles are neither compound nor are they products of anything prior to them. For instance, we accord earth, water, air, fire the term elements; but we call a principle so because there is nothing prior to it, from which it could receive its existence’. For ‘there are things which are prior to earth and to water, from which they came forth, such as the formless matter which has no shape (ὕλη ἄμορφος οὖσα καὶ ἀειδής), or a ‘form’ (εἶδος) which we call ‘complete reality’ (ἐντελέχεια), or deprivation (ἡ στέρησις). Therefore, ‘Thales made a mistake in styling water

 Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.41.2.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 18: δῆλον ὅτι τεκμηριώδης ἐστὶν ἡ γνῶσις ἡ περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἀποδεικτική.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1042: οὔτε περὶ ἀρχῶν ὁ διάλογός ἐστιν, ὥς φατε (φαῖεν ἂν), ἀλλὰ ἄρα περὶ ἀρχῆς· τὸ γὰρ ἓν περὶ οὗ ὁ λόγος ἀρχὴ μέν ἐστιν, ἀρχαὶ δὲ οὐδαμῶς. Cf. op. cit. pp. 1048: ὥστε ὁ περὶ τοῦ ἑνὸς παντὸς διαλεγόμενος περὶ ἀρχῶν ἂν ποιοῖτο τὸν λόγον, καὶ οὐδὲν ταύτῃ διενήνοχε περὶ ἀρχῶν λέγειν εἶναι τὴν πρόθεσιν ἢ περὶ τοῦ ἑνός.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 1058: Ἐπὶ τούτοις Πλούταρχος ὁ ἡμέτερος προπάτωρ … τὸ ἓν συνάγει τὰ ἀληθῆ τῶν δογμάτων … καὶ ὅτι περὶ ἀρχῶν ἡ πραγματεία.  Cf. Suda, letter delta, entry 39: Δαμάσκιος, … γέγραπται αὐτῷ ὑπομνήματα εἰς Πλάτωνα καὶ Περὶ ἀρχῶν καὶ Φιλόσοφος ἱστορία. Bessarion, Epistulae, Epistle 18, p. 456: τοῖς δ᾿ αὐτοῖς λόγοις ἔν τε τοῖς εἰς τὸν Φαῖδρον ὑπομνήμασιν Ἑρμείας, ἔν τε τῇ περὶ ἀρχῶν πραγματείᾳ Δαμάσκιος τὴν ψυχὴν αὐθυπόστατον συμπεραίνουσιν. Cf. Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 286: Ὁ δὲ διάλογός ἐστιν περὶ ἀρχῶν. p. 314: Καὶ ἵνα μὴ ἀποστῶμεν τοῦ περὶ ἀρχῶν λέγειν.  Eusebius regarded this as a genuine work by Plutarch, and cited this name confidently in his Preparatio Evangelica.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

147

element and principle.’ The fact of the matter is that, both in this section and in the ensuing one (Περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν τί εἰσιν), Plutarch (whether Pseudo-, or not, since all of the Late Antiquity considered this a genuine work of his) expounds the theories of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle down to Zeno and Epicurus (including Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Heraclitus, Empedocles), and the fundamental ontological theories of them are described as ones about principles. ²⁰¹ Diogenes Laertius attributed the distinction between ‘principles’ and ‘elements’ to the Stoics Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Archedemus of Tarsus, and to the one-time Stoic (but in fact Eclectic) Posidonius: They maintain that principles are different from elements. For the former are both without generation and incorruptible, whereas the elements perish during the [universal] conflagra tion. Furthermore, the principles are incorporeal and formless (ἀσωμάτους εἶναι τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ ἀμόρφους), whereas [the elements] are endowed with form. ²⁰²

Prior to Laertius, Galen reported that Chrysippus drew a distinction between ‘elements’ and ‘principles’: principles are not of necessity homogenous with their products, but elements definitely are. The principles are not necessarily homogenous with the things of which they are principles, whereas elements have to be homogenous with them.²⁰³

This was the old thesis, which we just saw, namely, the principles which make up things are not apparent or evident: the products of their activity are unlike the principles themselves.²⁰⁴ In fact though, the erudite Galen had a more nuanced

 Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 875C. The same text, with some variations of vo cabulary, in Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.16b c, who adds at the end a passage from Plato, Ti maeus, 30a, in order to show that there was a certain kind of matter prior to the matter we know of.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.134. This became a lemma in the Suda, letter alpha, entry 4092.  Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 470 (Chrysippus, fr. 408): ἐν τούτῳ γὰρ δὴ καὶ διή νεγκε στοιχεῖον ἀρχῆς, ἐν τῷ τὰς μὲν ἀρχὰς οὐκ ἐξ ἀνάγκης ὁμογενεῖς εἶναι τοῖς πράγμασιν, ὧν ὑπάρχουσιν ἀρχαί, τὰ δὲ στοιχεῖα πάντως ὁμογενῆ. The definition was taken up by Nemesius of Emesa introducing his section entitled ‘On Elements’. De Natura Hominis, chapter 5, p. 47: καὶ γὰρ πᾶν στοιχεῖον ὁμογενές ἐστι τοῖς, ὧν ἐστι στοιχεῖον. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀρχὴ οὐχ ὁμογενὴς τοῖς ἐξ αὐτῆς, τὸ δὲ στοιχεῖον πάντως ὁμογενές. He explains that ‘elements are also bodies, indeed the first and simple bodies which relate to all other bodies’ (σώματα καὶ αὐτὰ ὄντα πρῶτα τε καὶ ἁπλᾶ ὡς πρὸς τὰ ἄλλα σώματα).  See discussion on pp. 258; 504; 685; 353 4: about the principles are ‘concealed’ and be come manifest through the phenomena (cf. Heidegger, pp. 99; 326; 366).

148

Chapter 1 – The Principles

grasp of the distinction, which is why he says, ‘as I said right from the beginning, apparent elements are far too different from the real elements’.²⁰⁵ John Philoponus appears to be aware that these are two different notions, but we can gather this only from his statement that ‘in things there are not only principles and elements, but also many and infinite in number [factors] beside the principles and [the elements] of which [things] are made; the latter are different from the principles and from each other.’²⁰⁶ He does not elaborate on the distinction from each other, but, in another commentary, he does explicate that those which Aristotle called ‘homoiomeries’ (no matter what they are), to Anaxagoras himself they were ‘principles’.²⁰⁷ Aristotle agued extensively and passionately against Anaxagoras, but he cared little for supplying his readers with Anaxagoras’ own words, and the case is probably that he deliberately avoided doing so. In order to explain his attitude, an axiom of his philosophy should be taken into account: “Perhaps²⁰⁸ the principles of sensible things should be sensible, of eternal things eternal, and of perishable things perishable: put generally, a principle is of the same genus as that which is subject to it” (δεῖ γὰρ ἴσως τῶν μὲν αἰσθητῶν αἰσθητάς, τῶν δὲ ἀϊδίων ἀϊδίους, τῶν δὲ φθαρτῶν φθαρτὰς εἶναι τὰς ἀρχάς, ὅλως δ᾿ ὁμογενεῖς τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις). This is the ground on which he deemed that previous philosophers ‘had a wrong conception of primary principles’ (μὴ καλῶς λαβεῖν τὰς πρώτας ἀρχάς), and they made everything comply with their own beliefs’ (πάντα βούλεσθαι πρός τινας δόξας ὡρισμένας ἀνάγειν).²⁰⁹ Simplicius, who always treated Aristotle tactfully, commented on this, only to suggest that Aristotle contradicted himself. For he wrote that the principles must be homogenous with the things they produce (ἔδει γὰρ ὁμογενεῖς εἶναι τοῖς ἐξ αὐτῶν γινομένοις) … but he added [the word] perhaps (τὸ δὲ ἴσως προσέθηκεν), because the principles of sensible things are not necessarily sensible (ὅτι οὐ πάντως τῶν αἰσθητῶν αἰσθητὰς ἀνάγκη τὰς ἀρχὰς εἶναι). For matter itself, which is the principle of sensible things, escapes all perception (ἡ γὰρ ὕλη ἀρχὴ τῶν αἰσθητῶν οὖσα διαφεύγει τὴν αἴσθησιν). Simplicius was too kind,  Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 465: ἐμοὶ δὲ καὶ κατ᾿ ἀρχὰς εὐθὺς εἴρηται πάμπολυ διαφέρειν τὰ φαινόμενα στοιχεῖα τῶν ὄντως στοιχείων.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 176.  John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 13: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ πάντων τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀρχάς, φαίνεσθαι δὲ καὶ λέγεσθαι ἕκαστον κατὰ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν, εἴπερ δεῖ ἄρα ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν εἶναι τὰ ἀνομοιομερῆ.  The translation ‘for surely the principles of sensible things are sensible’ by W. Guthrie (Ar istotle VI On Heavens, Loeb, v. 338, p. 313) is plain wrong. Aristotle wrote, δεῖ γὰρ ἴσως (‘perhaps they should’), on which Simplicius made a comment that I quote in a moment.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 306a.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

149

since Aristotle clearly urged that the principles must be homogenous with their products, while forgetting that it was also himself who posited matter proper as non-sensible.²¹⁰ Certainly, Simplicius realized that Aristotle’s expression about previous philosophers ‘having made everything comply with their own beliefs’ pointed to those who referred everything to ‘eternal principles’ (τὰς ἀϊδίους ἀρχάς), such as numbers or levels.²¹¹ However, no good Neoplatonist could have ever gone along with Aristotle in such views, since these gave rise to insurmountable obstacles in what Porphyry saw as ‘the way to creation’ (τρόπον τῆς δημιουργίας),²¹² namely, how sensible things come to pass from incorporeal principles. Anyway, Porphyry urged against Aristotle that ‘there is neither a single genus for everything that exists, nor those who belong in the highest realm are homogenous with each other’.²¹³ John Philoponus did not see this as a contradiction; in fact, he believed that Aristotle had in mind matter proper, since, at another point, this is what he said about ‘the principles of generation’: “They are equal in number and identical in kind with those existing among eternal and primary things. For there is one [principle] in the sense of matter, a second in the sense of form … and a third must be present also.” As a matter of fact, this is the point where Aristotle refers to the three kinds of causes: material, formal, and final cause.²¹⁴ What Philoponus makes of this is that ‘the principles of both generated and eternal things are homogenous, since matter itself is both generated and eternal’. The fact that material things are inferior and eternal things are superior does not matter: for both

 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1042a b; 1045a b; 1049b; 1050a; 1060a; 1069b; 1071a; 1087a (ἡ μὲν οὖν δύναμις ὡς ὕλη τοῦ καθόλου οὖσα καὶ ἀόριστος τοῦ καθόλου καὶ ἀορίστου ἐστίν, ἡ δ᾿ ἐνέργεια ὡρισμένη καὶ ὡρισμένου); 1088b; 1092a; Physica, 217a (ἡμεῖς δὲ λέγομεν ἐκ τῶν ὑποκει μένων ὅτι ἔστιν ὕλη μία τῶν ἐναντίων, θερμοῦ καὶ ψυχροῦ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν φυσικῶν ἐναν τιώσεων, καὶ ἐκ δυνάμει ὄντος ἐνεργείᾳ ὂν γίγνεται, καὶ οὐ χωριστὴ μὲν ἡ ὕλη, τὸ δ᾿ εἶναι ἕτερ ον, καὶ μία τῷ ἀριθμῷ, εἰ ἔτυχε, χροιᾶς καὶ θερμοῦ καὶ ψυχροῦ ἔστι δὲ καὶ σώματος ὕλη καὶ μεγάλου καὶ μικροῦ ἡ αὐτή. δῆλον δέ· ὅταν γὰρ ἐξ ὕδατος ἀὴρ γένηται, ἡ αὐτὴ ὕλη οὐ προσλα βοῦσα τι ἄλλο ἐγένετο, ἀλλ᾿ ὃ ἦν δυνάμει, ἐνεργείᾳ ἐγένετο.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 642. With respect to whom Aristotle actually had in mind, Simpli cius quotes from Alexander of Aphrodisias at this point and mentions him by name. Actually, Aristotle alluded to Empedocles, Democritus, Anaxagoras, the Pythagoreans, and to the Platonic theory of generation from triangular surfaces.  See Proclus (reporting Porphyry), commTim, v. 1, p. 395.  Porphyry, Isagoge, p. 6: οὐ γάρ ἐστι κοινὸν ἓν γένος πάντων τὸ ὂν οὐδὲ πάντα ὁμογενῆ καθ᾿ ἓν τὸ ἀνωτάτω γένος, ὥς φησιν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 335a.

150

Chapter 1 – The Principles

generated and eternal things are referred to a common substratum. Therefore, the principles are homogenous.²¹⁵ For all his frequently unfair criticism of the Presocratics, Aristotle knew what they maintained: Democritus sustained atoms, which were homogenous; others dealt with such ‘elements’ as earth, water, air; Empedocles introduced his abstract twin principles. But Anaxagoras was the real scandal: every material of this world supposedly has an infinitely small particle, and each one of them is – what is it really? Aristotle could not decide whether he should style each one of them ‘principle’ or ‘element’. Hence, he used either of those terms at different points, and any attempt to discover consistency or logic in his vocabulary in reference to Anaxagoras could be pointless. There was only one thing which Aristotle passionately maintained: whether ‘principles’ or ‘elements’, Anaxagoras’ ‘homoiomeries’ were definitely material. Anaxagoras had indeed posited that his σπέρματα are not homogenous with the things that are generated out of them, namely, the χρήματα. In the really existing universe, the relation between σπέρματα and χρήματα should be clear: the former are the ‘seeds’ (thereafter called ‘principles’) which give rise to things; the latter are actual things themselves, that is, objects, plants, animals of any kind, and natural phenomena. It was assumed that his principles / σπέρματα were infinite in a twofold sense, namely, in terms of both form and number, which naturally invited the invective by Aristotle who presumed those principles as material elements.²¹⁶ Once again, it was necessary for Theophrastus to appear, and for Simplicius to record this successor of Aristotle, for a clear statement to be made: both Anaxagoras and his disciple Archelaus allegedly ‘posited principles that are infinite in number and not homogenous’.²¹⁷ However, Theophrastus, being a good disciple

 John Philoponus, commGenCorr, pp. 282 3: Ὁμογενεῖς φησιν εἶναι τὰς ἀρχὰς τῶν τε γενη τῶν καὶ τῶν ἀϊδίων. καὶ γὰρ ὕλη, φησίν, ἐπὶ ἀμφοτέρων θεωρεῖται τῶν γενητῶν καὶ τῶν ἀϊδίων, ὕλην δὲ σκοπεῖ ἐνταῦθα τὴν κατὰ τὸ ὑποκείμενον θεωρουμένην. διὸ εἰκότως ὁμογενεῖς αὐτάς φησιν εἶναι· τὸ γὰρ ὑποκείμενον κοινῶς ἐπ᾿ ἀμφοτέρων θεωρεῖται τῶν τε ἀϊδίων καὶ τῶν γενη τῶν. εἰ γὰρ καὶ εἴη ἡ μὲν κρείττων ἡ δὲ χείρων, οὐδὲν ἧττον ὁμογενεῖς ἔσονται.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 166: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ οὐ τῷ πλήθει μόνον ἀπείρους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ εἴδει ὑποθέμενος τὰς ἀρχάς, δέξεται τὸ δοκοῦν ἐπάγεσθαι ἄτοπον τὸ καὶ τὰ ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν ἄγνω στα εἶναι.  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4, apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 27 8: καὶ ᾿Aρχέλαος ὁ ᾿Aθηναῖος, ᾧ καὶ Σωκράτη συγγεγονέναι φασὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρου γενομένῳ μαθητῇ, ἐν μὲν τῇ γενέσει τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις πειρᾶταί τι φέρειν ἴδιον, τὰς ἀρχὰς δὲ τὰς αὐτὰς ἀποδίδωσιν ἅσπερ ᾿Aναξαγόρας. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν ἀπείρους τῷ πλήθει καὶ ἀνομογενεῖς τὰς ἀρχὰς λέγουσι, τὰς ὁμοιο μερείας τιθέντες ἀρχάς· δι᾿ ἣν δὲ αἰτίαν οὕτως ἔδοξαν, ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης μετ᾿ ὀλίγον ἐρεῖ. ἀπο

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

151

of Aristotle, was convinced that these ‘non-homogenous’ principles are material. Given the influence of the Peripatetics, it comes as no surprise that a scholar who lived during the very end of Byzantine empire believed likewise that Anaxagoras’ principles were infinite in number, non-homogenous, and material.²¹⁸ Simplicius was the exception, however: he did not go along with such claims and, at certain points, his commentaries constitute brilliant replies to Aristotle’s allegations. He praised Aristotle’s student Eudemus of Rhodes (c. 370 ‒ c. 300 BC) for having said that ‘it is necessary for anyone who studies nature to peruse the principles first’ (ἀναγκαῖον τῷ φυσιολογοῦντι τὰς ἀρχὰς πρῶτον ἐπισκέψασθαι). Then, Simplicius explores the difference and supplies us with an important remark that Alexander of Aphrodisias made about the difference between ‘principle, cause, and element’ (ἔστι δὲ ἄξιον ζητεῖν τί ἀρχὴ καὶ τί αἴτιον καὶ τί στοιχεῖον). According to Alexander, ‘the term principle is particularly attributed to that which creates (ἀρχὴν μὲν λέγεσθαι ἰδίως τὸ ποιητικόν) and causes motion (ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως)’. Secondly, ‘a cause is both a formative and a final one’ (αἴτιον δὲ τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα καὶ τὸ εἶδος); at least, ‘this is what holds for the things of nature, where the final cause’ is noticed (ἐν γὰρ τοῖς φύσει τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα τοῦτο). Finally, ‘an element is that which exists in matter’ (στοιχεῖον δὲ τὸ ἐνυπάρχον ὡς τὴν ὕλην). Of them, ‘principles and elements are styled causes’ by both Eudemus and Alexander ‘who seems to follow Eudemus’.²¹⁹ One should have thought that a reason for the widespread confusion among intellectuals between the notions of ‘principle’ and ‘element’ was that both of them were regarded as causes. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that Alexander of Aphrodisias had a really consistent grasp of the important distinction, even though he appears anxious to make something of this once Stoic philosophers had pointed out the need to do so.²²⁰ On the contrary, it can be reasonably assumed that he did not actually care to make such a differentiation, since he makes an implicit reference to the Atomists, without mentioning any names, who made atoms their ‘principles and elements’ (τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ τὰ στοιχεῖα), and, a few lines after that, he refers to Anaxagoras (and to Archelaus) who thought of ὁμοιομερῆ as ‘infinite bodies’ (ἄπειρα

γνόντες γὰρ τοῦ εἶναι γένεσιν, διότι τὸ γινόμενον ἢ ἐξ ὄντος ἢ ἐκ μὴ ὄντος ἀνάγκη γίνεσθαι, ἑκά τερον δὲ ἀδύνατον, συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει τὴν δοκοῦσαν γένεσιν καὶ φθορὰν ἀποδεδώκασι.  Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 6 (marginal notes on Aristotle’s Physica), 1: Οἳ μὲν ἁπλᾶς ταύτας ἔλεγον καὶ μὴ ὁμογενεῖς, τὰς ὁμοιομερείας τιθέντες ἀρχάς, ὧν ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἦν, τὰς μὲν ὑλικὰς ἀρχὰς ἀπείρους ποιῶν, τὴν δὲ τῆς κινήσεως αἰτίαν καὶ γενέσεως μίαν, τὸν νοῦν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 10.  Diogenes Laertius gives not only names, but also detailed citations of each philosopher’s work where this distinction between principle and element is expounded.

152

Chapter 1 – The Principles

σώματα). Then, he mentions ‘those who made indivisible bodies (ἀμερῆ σώματα) their principles and elements’. ²²¹ Despite such statements, we should not assume that Alexander had no inkling of the difference between the two notions. For we saw him earlier explicitly criticizing Aristotle for abusing the words ‘elements’ and ‘principles’:²²² he just was too tactful to do so time and again. Therefore, we should see how Anaxagoras’ fundamental notion (that is, the ὁμοιομερῆ) was reported, out of which it will turn out that hardly was posterity informed about his real philosophy, except for only a few intellectuals. Simplicius stood out among them, and a remark he made in passing is pithy indeed: when the Stoics posited God and Matter as their fundamental notions, ‘obviously they did not see God as element’: of those two principles, they saw God as the one who acts, and Matter as passive and subject to action.²²³ At points, Aristotle called Anaxagoras’ Mind ἀρχή,²²⁴ so he did of the ‘homoiomeries’ (τὰς ἀρχάς),²²⁵ and used the term ἀρχή in its general sense, mentioning Anaxagoras along with all other Presocratics, no matter what the specific principles of each philosopher were.²²⁶ However, at other points, he used the term elements for the homoiomeries (τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ στοιχεῖα τίθησιν) in a context which is in fact Aristotle’s own, namely, the incorporeal cause is a principle, and the material substratum is an element. ²²⁷ This he did speaking of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Leucippus alike.²²⁸ But he was not consistent anyway: whereas he said that, like Anaxagoras, also Democritus and Leucippus posited ‘infinite elements’ (meaning ‘atoms’), in the Metaphysics he said that Democritus and Leucippus posited two elements, namely, ‘the Plenum and the Void’ (τὸ

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 213: ἤδη δέ τινες καὶ ἀμερῆ τινα σώματα τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ στοιχεῖα τῶν πάντων προήχθησαν εἰπεῖν.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 821 (comm. on Metaphysica 1091b3 16): καὶ ἀρχὴν εἰπών (ταύτην γὰρ ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης εἶπε στοιχεῖον, καταχρησάμενος τῇ λέξει). At another point (commenting on Metaphysica, 998b14), he remarks that Aristotle uses the term ‘genera’ for ‘forms’ (γένη γὰρ καὶ τὰ εἴδη νῦν λέγει). Op. cit. p. 204.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 25: οἱ Στωικοὶ θεὸν καὶ ὕλην, οὐχ ὡς στοιχεῖον δηλονότι τὸν θεὸν λέγοντες, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς τὸ μὲν ποιοῦν τὸ δὲ πάσχον.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405a15&18; Metaphysica, 984b18 21; 1075b8 (᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὡς κινοῦν τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀρχήν); 1091b; Physica, 252a10 20 (οἱ μίαν ἀρχὴν ποιοῦντες, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξαγόρας).  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984a11 13.  Aristotle, op. cit. 984a b; 985a b; 988a; 996a; 998a; 1000a; 1075b; 1091b11 12; Physica, 184b15 26; 188a19 21; 189a10 20; 252a5 11; 265b17 24; Cf. De Caelo, 302b20 30; De Generatione et Corruptione, 314b15 17; 324b35 37; 329a b.  This Aristotle makes clear by referring to ‘principles and elements’ (ἀρχὰς καὶ στοιχεῖα), in De Generatione et Corruptione, 328b33 329a5. Cf. Metaphysica, 1069a25 26: τῆς γὰρ οὐσίας ἐζή τουν ἀρχὰς καὶ στοιχεῖα καὶ αἴτια.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

153

πλῆρες καὶ τὸ κενόν), of which the former was considered ‘being’, and the latter ‘non-being’.²²⁹ Then again, in the Physics he argued that Anaxagoras and Democritus posited ‘infinite elements’ (ἄπειρα ποιοῦσι τὰ στοιχεῖα),²³⁰ although it was Aristotle himself who wrote that Democritus maintained two elements, namely, the Plenum and the Void.²³¹ It would be pointless to try to square such references with each other, but in my view, more important of all is another reference by Aristotle which is inconsistent with all previous ones, yet it touches upon an essential part of Democritus’ philosophy: this Atomist posited Necessity as a principle, which I discuss also later.²³² Therefore, to Democritus, perhaps atoms were ‘elements’, but it was Necessity that was a principle in a proper sense.²³³ Nevertheless, to Democritus, the notion of principle was identified either with ‘the atoms’ themselves,²³⁴ or with ‘the Plenum and the Void’,²³⁵ or with different shapes²³⁶ (drawing on Aristotle, once again),²³⁷ which Simplicius saw as a common point between Democritus and the Pythagoreans,²³⁸ although he also cited Aristotle styling Democritus’ atoms principles, ²³⁹ only because Simplicius himself followed Aristotle’s text.²⁴⁰ Beside all this confusion, at one point, Aristotle posited a criterion determining the nature of a fundamental principle: in his view, Democritus thought of  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 985b.  Aristotle, Physica, 203a.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 985b.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 742b: Οὐ καλῶς δὲ λέγουσιν οὐδὲ τοῦ διὰ τί τὴν ἀνάγ κην ὅσοι λέγουσι ὅτι οὕτως ἀεὶ γίγνεται, καὶ ταύτην εἶναι νομίζουσιν ἀρχὴν ἐν αὐτοῖς, ὥσπερ Δημόκριτος ὁ ᾿Aβδηρίτης. See pp. 243; 247; 259 60; 526 7; 1068 70; 1080.  Against this designation of ‘principle’ (identified with Necessity), Aristotle says that the ‘el ements’ of Democritus were ‘the Plenum and the Void’. Metaphysica, 985b.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 18, in which case Epicurus was lumped together with Democritus.  Cf. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.3.7; 14.19.9. Nevertheless, at another point, Eusebius notes that Democritus’ ‘principles’ were the atoms; op. cit. 14.14.5. He quoted from the doxogra phy that was available to him, anyway.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, pp. 2; 42.  Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 315b; 316a; Physica, 184b; 203a; De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 442b.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 565: ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν εἰς ἔνδειξιν παρεθέμην τοῦ μὴ ἀλόγως καὶ τοὺς Πυθαγορείους καὶ Δημόκριτον ἀρχὰς τῶν ποιοτήτων ἐπιζητοῦντας εἰς τὰ σχήματα ἀνελθεῖν. Simplicius drew on Theophrastus, as he explains in the previous page (op. cit. p. 564). Simplicius praises Democritus on this also at another point (commPhys, p. 179): Demo critus was close to the Pythagoreans; he only failed to distinguish between ‘form’ and ‘matter’.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 242.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 242; 614. Cf. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 82; et passim.

154

Chapter 1 – The Principles

ἀρχὴ as something which ‘either is or occurs always’ (εἴ τι αἰεὶ ἢ ἔστιν οὕτως ἢ γίγνεται), and this is the ultimate explanatory exegesis (i.e. cause) of what happens in nature (ἀνάγει τὰς περὶ φύσεως αἰτίας), on the grounds that this has been so in all former times. Aristotle then argues that to think of a principle in this way ‘is not correct in all cases’, and Democritus ‘did not feel himself bound to seek any deeper principle behind what has always been.’ He adduces the example of a triangle: “The sum total of its angles is always equal to two right angles, but there is a certain other cause for the eternity of this property”. By contrast, any first principle proper is itself eternal on its own merit, and there is no cause prior to it.”²⁴¹ In fact, however, the first (or, ultimate, or fundamental) principle (ἀρχή) which Aristotle demands in this case, is simply another name for an axiom, which cannot be demonstrated by means of syllogism, it is derived from a truth of higher order, and asserts itself as true on its own merits. But it should be recalled that the name that Euclid attributed to such an axiom was στοιχεῖον, not ἀρχή. Besides, at the same point of Physics, 252a‒b, Aristotle criticizes his predecessors while making no allowance for use of ‘axioms’ or first principles by them: Anaxagoras was one of ‘those who posited one [supreme] principle’ (μίαν ἀρχὴν ποιοῦντες), but he should have explained why is it that an unlimited period of rest was there, and then, at a certain moment, motion supervened (τὸ δ᾿ ἄπειρον χρόνον ἠρεμεῖν, εἶτα κινηθῆναι ποτέ), which ‘is unnatural’ (οὐκέτι φύσεως ἔργον); for it would be asked, ‘why did the Mind not act sooner?’ (ὅτι νῦν μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον, μηδ᾿ αὖ τινὰ τάξιν ἔχειν, οὐκέτι φύσεως ἔργον).²⁴² Aristotle demanded that his predecessors were not entitled to positing axioms, and they had to prove their propositions even if those happened to be fundamental axioms;²⁴³ everything had to be argued and demonstrated by means of causative logical propositions (δεῖται λόγου τινός);²⁴⁴ only Aristotle himself was entitled to positing his own principles, such as the First Mover, or the aether,²⁴⁵ as well as to be at liberty to contradict them licentiously, as it happened with his introduction of multiple immovable movers, which I discuss in chapter 12.

 Aristotle, Physica, 252a b. Simplicius comments on this in his commPhys, pp. 1185 6.  Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 250b24 27: ἢ γὰρ ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας λέγει· φησὶν γὰρ ἐκεῖνος, ὁμοῦ πάν των ὄντων καὶ ἠρεμούντων τὸν ἄπειρον χρόνον, κίνησιν ἐμποιῆσαι τὸν νοῦν καὶ διακρῖναι.  Op. cit. 252a23 25: καὶ μὴ τίθεσθαι μηδὲν μηδ᾿ ἀξιοῦν ἀξίωμ᾿ ἄλογον, ἀλλ᾿ ἢ ἐπαγωγὴν ἢ ἀπόδειξιν φέρειν.  Aristotle expounds this demand of his in Physics, Book VIII, especially 252a6 252b7.  Origen excoriated ‘Aristotle and the Peripatetics, who say that aether is immaterial, and posit it as being of a fifth nature’. Cels, IV.56.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

155

The point that Aristotle made in Physics, 252a‒b, enjoyed little attention by commentators, save two of them,²⁴⁶ perhaps because Aristotle himself did not care for consistency whenever he used the terms principles in order to discuss the various theories of his predecessors. However, in view of this definition, it would be plausible to posit Necessity as Democritus’ supreme principle, indeed the principle par excellence, which was somehow parallel to (as much as is it different from) Anaxagoras’ Mind and to Aristotle’s First Mover: for in Democritus, even if atoms are ‘eternal’, it is Necessity that prevails over them and determines their positions, shapes, and movements, not the other way around. Moreover, even though Democritus posited no Creator of the universe, he determined that Necessity ‘preoccupies everything from all infinite time, namely, things that happened, things of the present, as well as future ones.’ This notion of domination over all things by a Supreme Principle has different connotations in either Democritus or Anaxagoras, but the terminology that describes this is strikingly parallel considered vis-à-vis Anaxagoras’ own words.²⁴⁷ Consequently, it is hard to see why Aristotle criticized Democritus for not having posited a principle which determines why the sum total of a triangle’s angles is always equal to two right angles. Democritus’ simple answer would have been that there is indeed a superior and more fundamental principle determining this axiom and makes it to be what it is, and the name of this supreme principle is Necessity, or ‘this is the nature of things’ (πέφυκεν οὕτως), as Aristotle himself admitted in the Physics, 252a6‒10, that this would have been the answer by Empedocles concerning his own fundamental axioms. In any event, once Aristotle himself was not consistent with his own definition whenever he used pertinent terminology, it was not unexpected that later philosophers used the term in a loose, and sometimes contradictory, sense, too. Concerning Anaxagoras with respect to this point, his philosophy suffered no less in the hands of Aristotle: he discussed it using the term he invented himself, namely, ‘homoiomeries’, which he styled principles as well as elements, and so he did about the Mind. In fact, he felt at liberty to identify the homoiomeries

 Pseudo Justin, Confutatio Dogmatum Quorundam Aristotelicorum, p. 139A. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 8.8.  Cf. Plutarch, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 1.8.7: Δημόκριτος ὁ ᾿Aβδηρίτης … καθόλου, οἷον πᾶν ἐστιν, ῥητῶς ἐκτίθεται μηδεμίαν ἀρχὴν ἔχειν τὰς αἰτίας τῶν νῦν γιγνομένων, ἄνωθεν δ᾿ ὅλως ἐξ ἀπείρου χρόνου προκατέχεσθαι τῇ ἀνάγκῃ πάνθ᾿ ἁπλῶς τὰ γεγονότα καὶ ἐόντα καὶ ἐσόμενα. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156; 165; 174; 177: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα καὶ διακρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς. καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν, ἅσσα νῦν μὴ ἔστι, καὶ ὅσα νῦν ἐστι καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς. See discussion on pp. 283 4; 329; 363 4.

156

Chapter 1 – The Principles

as elements, considering them as parallel to Empedocles’ four ones.²⁴⁸ Little wonder that, while acknowledging that the homoiomeries did not fit the traditional sense of ‘element’, Aristotle was unable to explain what they really are, and he just decided that they are material, which resulted in his absurd corollaries in respect of the proposition ‘everything is in everything’. History of philosophy had to wait until Simplicius demonstrated that those absurdities were simply the inevitable result of Aristotle’s erroneous presumption positing Anaxagoras’ principles as material. This is why Simplicius argued that Anaxagoras ‘saw the elements in a more profound manner than Empedocles did’, against Aristotle who always placed Anaxagoras sub par in respect of Empedocles.²⁴⁹ For to Simplicius, the elements were not mere matter: there were ‘powers inherent in the elements’ (περὶ τῶν στοιχείων καὶ τῶν ἐν τοῖς στοιχείοις ἐνυπαρχουσῶν δυνάμεων),²⁵⁰ and this was indeed Anaxagoras’ philosophy. Aristotle did not want to see in his predecessors anything reminiscent of incorporeality, only because this notion became a matter of ad hoc reflection not earlier than Plato. Once his Presocratic predecessors were ‘physicists’, he determined that it should be taken for granted that they spoke only and simply about bodies. In his view, ‘most of investigation about the Nature is about bodies; for all natural entities are either bodies or they emerge in association with bodies and magnitudes’.²⁵¹ Anyhow, the term principles was applied to any philosophy,²⁵² no matter whether it complied with Aristotle’s definition of ‘principle’ as above, or not, whereas the term ‘elements’ had sundry connotations, which varied widely.²⁵³ In short, principles was a comprehensive designation, whereas elements had al-

 Aristotle, De Caelo, 302a28. Cf. Simplicius commenting on this: commCael, pp. 603 8. Also, John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 13.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 179: οὕτως μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τὰ ἁπλᾶ εἴδη ἀναδραμὼν ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἀρχοειδέστερον δόξει τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους τὰ περὶ τῶν στοιχείων φιλοσοφεῖν.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 2.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 298b: φανερὸν ὅτι τὴν πλείστην συμβαίνει τῆς περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίας περὶ σωμάτων εἶναι· πᾶσαι γὰρ αἱ φυσικαὶ οὐσίαι ἢ σώματα ἢ μετὰ σωμάτων γίγνονται καὶ μεγεθῶν.  Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.55: ὁ περὶ ἀρχῶν λόγος. Alexander of Aphro disias, commMetaph, p. 262: ἡ περὶ τῆς οὐσίας θεωρία, ἥτις περιέχει καὶ τὸν περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν λόγον.  Cf. meaning the four elements. Aristotle, Meteorologica, 338a: περὶ τῶν στοιχείων τῶν σω ματικῶν. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 262: περὶ τῶν στοιχείων τοῦ ὄντος. Hippo lytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.13.2: περὶ στοιχείων, πλήρους καὶ κενοῦ (ref. to Leucip pus). John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 125: ὥστε πρὸς τὸν περὶ στοιχείων λόγον ἀναγκαῖος ὁ περὶ τοῦ ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν. Op. cit. p. 237 (ref. to 332a3): ἐξέθετό τινας τῶν παλαιοτέρων δόξας περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν … ἐκτίθεται πάσας τὰς περὶ στοιχείων δόξας. Asclepius of Tralles, comm Metaph, p. 2: ἀμέλει τοι καὶ περὶ στοιχείων διαλέγεται καὶ περὶ ἀρχῶν.

A ᾿ ρχαὶ and Στοιχεῖα: an eternal confusion

157

ways a specific meaning depending on the context.²⁵⁴ Eventually, ‘principle’ was understood to be something ‘immaterial and incorruptible’, whereas ‘elements’ were subject to destruction.²⁵⁵ Michael Psellus saw this likewise, if in his own terms: ‘form and matter’ are incorporeal principles, whereas an element is subsequent to them both, and consists of these two principles. Thus, matter is prior to the elements, and the elements are prior to all bodies.²⁵⁶ Consequently, ‘elements’ would mean the four ‘earthly’ ones (earth, water, air, fire), the components into which matter is ultimately divisible, and this was the most widespread meaning of it among philosophers²⁵⁷ and scientists alike,²⁵⁸ but this was also the name used by grammarians²⁵⁹ or intellectuals denoting a simple sound of speech²⁶⁰ as the first component of the syllable, or simply letters of the alphabet, and their order,²⁶¹ the elements of proof, e.g. in general reasoning,²⁶² elementary or fundamental principles.²⁶³ Famous among the usage of ‘elements’ was its appearance in titles of works on geometry by Hippo-

 Olympiodorus (alchemist, perhaps fifth or sixth century AD), Εἰς τὸ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν Ζωσίμου ὅσα ἀπὸ Ἑρμοῦ καὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων ἦσαν εἰρημένα (= De arte sacra), (e cod. Venet. Marc. 299, fol. 163r), p. 79: τινὲς γὰρ τῶν φυσικῶν φιλοσόφων τὸν περὶ τῶν στοιχείων λόγον ἐπὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἀνα φέρουσιν, ὡς καθολικωτέρας οὔσας τῶν στοιχείων. Εἴπωμεν τοίνυν πῶς ἡ ἀρχὴ καθολικωτέρα ἐστὶ τῶν στοιχείων.  Suda, letter alpha, entry 4092.  Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina, 82.  Diogenes Laertius cites a treatise Περὶ στοιχείων by the philosopher Sphaerus (in his biog raphy), Vitae, 7.178.  Claudius Ptolemaeus, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 20 (Πτολεμαῖος ἐν τῷ Περὶ τῶν στοι χείων βιβλίῳ). Cf. reference by Galen to a treatise entitled On the Elements by Asclepiades of Bi thynia (physician, c. 124 or 129 40 BC), De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 489; and De Curandi Ratione Per Venae Sectionem, p. 257.  Apollonius Dyscolus wrote a book entitled Περὶ στοιχείων (Suda, letter alpha, entry 3422). So did Diogenes of Cyzicus (Suda, letter delta, entry 1146) and the hardly known Pythodorus (Anonymous, Commentaria in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam, Scholia Vaticana, p. 183) and Epaphroditus (Dionysius Thrax, Fragmenta, fr. 51a).  Chrysippus, fr. 14, apud Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.192. Archedemus of Tarsus (Stoic philos opher, fl. c. 140 BC), apud Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.134 & 136.  Cf. Anonymous, Commentaria in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam, Scholia Marciana, p. 319. Op. cit. Scholia Vaticana, pp. 142; 161; 183; 211. Also, Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMe taph, p. 788. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos et Grammaticos, 1.92; 1.99. Lachares of Athens (sophist, fifth century AD), Rhetorica (fragmentum e cod. Paris. suppl. gr. 670), p. 292. Ammonius of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 5. John Philoponus, CommAnalPr, p. 24. Gennadius Scholarius, Grammatica, Part 1, pp. 351; 353.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1014b1.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 519: καὶ συμπληρώσας τὸν περὶ τῶν στοιχείων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων αἰ τίων λόγον καὶ ἔτι τὸν περὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς ὑποδυομένων.

158

Chapter 1 – The Principles

crates of Chios, Leon, Theudios, and Euclid, which in turn suggested whatever is most universal, such as the unit and the point, as well as fundamental propositions whose proof serves to proving other propositions.

Conclusion Anaxagoras used no noun for ‘those that were set in order’. To say ‘those things’ could be only an inaccurate convention,²⁶⁴ but we should be alert to the fact that, by σπέρματα, Anaxagoras always meant causes that give rise to things, to animals, and to natural phenomena, and then they maintain them as cohesive ones, until they cause things to perish so that other things come to pass. On the other hand, by χρήματα, he meant things, animals, and natural phenomena themselves. Certainly, so far as his extant texts go, he never used the term ‘principles’ (ἀρχαί), by which he would have meant σπέρματα. However, principles was the term used throughout Classical and Late Antiquity in order to speak of any philosopher’s fundamental axioms and supreme causes, no matter what or which these were, and no matter whether they were incorporeal or material. Sometimes, even if one had in mind fundamental material particles being accorded a profound ontological role, the normal case was to speak of ‘principles’.²⁶⁵ The term ‘elements’ would be immediately taken as indicating material principles, but we saw that pertinent terminology was not immune to confusion. Therefore, principles is an acceptable term to be used by convention of the first (or, ultimate) ones (whether material or incorporeal principles), whereas elements bespeak material first principles. Anaxagoras used neither of them, of course. But it is no accident that a usual title that several eminent Greeks em-

 In one more English translation aspiring to render Anaxagoras’ thought by means of con sidering isolated ‘fragments’ (D K, fr. 2), the author emends Simplicius’ text quoting Anaxagoras (commPhys, pp. 155 6), καὶ γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ ἀποκρίνονται ἀπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ τοῦ περιέχοντος to καὶ γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ ἀποκρίνονται ἀπὸ τοῦ πόλου τοῦ περιέχοντος. (I am not concerned about the emendation, but I explain the archaic usage of πόλος on p. 698). Then, he translates thus: “And (in fact?) aer and aither separate out of the vault of the surrounding matter.” Hence, those who do not know Greek and wish to read Anaxagoras’ own words at least in English, will remain with the impression that Anaxagoras used the term matter, and, worse still, that τὸ περι έχον means ‘surrounding matter’. In which case, any chance of grasping the real Anaxagoras is desperately missed. D. Sider, The Fragments of Anaxagoras, Academia, 2005, p. 77.  Cf. Sextus Empiricus considering the ‘principles’ of all Presocratics, as well as those of the Stoics: he entitled the section ‘On Material Principles’ (περὶ ὑλικῶν ἀρχῶν), and then explained that he is ‘going to discuss briefly the so called material principles’ (συντόμως δὲ καὶ περὶ τῶν ὑλικῶν καλουμένων ἀρχῶν λεκτέον). Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.36.

Conclusion

159

ployed to expound their fundamentals of philosophy was De Principiis (Περὶ ᾿Aρχῶν). The distinction between principles and elements was neither known nor necessary to the Presocratic intellectual atmosphere. Retrospective projection into that mindset was made only by Plato and Aristotle, and the latter turned out a source of puzzlement, which is evident not only from his own texts, but also from his confounded commentators, some of them (Alexander of Aphrodisias) clearing up things pace Aristotle, and sometimes mentioning the inconsistent use of the terms, others (Syrianus) explicitly pointing out and criticizing Aristotle’s unscientific usage of terms as a general characteristic of his exposition.²⁶⁶ Consequently, a reason that caused obfuscation was that, in certain Presocratics, elements were identified as principles, as it happened with Democritus and Leucippus, about whom later intellectuals reported the atomic elements as principles. It is quite telling that Origen and Plotinus alike criticized on the same grounds and in exactly the same terms those who ‘postulated corporeal principles’. But it is instructive that Plotinus had in mind the Atomists (Presocratics and Epicureans alike),²⁶⁷ whereas Origen used the same vocabulary in order to chastise the Stoics by name, and referred either to the Stoic logoi postulated as corporeal,²⁶⁸ or indeed to the Stoic God who was supposed to be corporeal,²⁶⁹ too. Therefore, no matter whether the reference was to Democritian or Epicurean ‘atoms’, or to Stoic corporeal logoi, or even to the Stoic God himself, all of them were styled principles, and naturally so: each and every intellectual of the Late Antique audience of either Plotinus or Origen knew perfectly well what those philosophers meant by ‘principles’, and no room for misunderstanding was allowed whatsoever. The same goes for the similar locution used two centuries later by Proclus, who also castigated those philosophers who postulated ‘material principles’, by which he meant certain Presocratics and the Stoics alike.²⁷⁰  The general question of Aristotle’s vague propositions, which was pointed out by several commentators, is discussed on pp. 568 ff.  Plotinus Enneades, III.1.2: οἱ μὲν τὰς ἀρχὰς σωματικὰς θέμενοι, οἷον ἀτόμους.  Origen, Cels, VI.71: Κατὰ μὲν οὖν τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, σωματικὰς λέγοντας εἶναι τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πάντα φθείροντας.  Origen, op. cit. I.21: καὶ οἱ σῶμα εἰπόντες τὸν θεὸν Στωϊκοὶ τοῦ λόγου τούτου ἤκουσαν· ἵνα μὴ πληρωθῇ ὁ κόσμος λόγου ἀθετοῦντος πρόνοιαν ἢ διακόπτοντος αὐτὴν ἢ ἀρχὴν φθαρτὴν εἰ σάγοντος τὴν σωματικήν, καθ᾿ ἣν καὶ ὁ θεὸς τοῖς Στωϊκοῖς ἐστι σῶμα. Whether the Stoic God was incorporeal or corporeal is a question that I discuss in chapter 9, pp. 682 90.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, p. 19: σωματικὴν μὲν εἶναι τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀδύνατον. Op. cit. p. 55: τοῖς τὰς ἀρχὰς σωματικὰς ποιοῦσιν.

160

Chapter 1 – The Principles

Instead of ‘principles’, I would use the term σπέρματα, which is more specific, and inherently it bespeaks the notion of potentiality being involved (see chapter 6) in a way easily grasped by the average student of philosophy. However, I have refrained from doing so, because both Aristotle and Theophrastus used it in the sense of ‘seed of a plant’, although this is actually about seeds of everything, or of all χρήματα (namely, inanimate things, plants, animals, humans, as well as natural phenomena).²⁷¹ Anaxagoras wrote that the primal union involved ‘seeds of all things, which were of sundry natures or kinds’ (ἰδέας παντοίας ἔχοντα) which had ‘different tendencies’ (ἡδονάς) and they were meant to carry out different functions.²⁷² The term ἡδονὴ means not only ‘pleasure’ (as usual): it means also a certain ‘tendency originating in the volition of the mind’,²⁷³ or ‘the source of certain occurrences that are to obtain’,²⁷⁴ or simply different colours or qualities.²⁷⁵ This is only another expression of Anaxagoras’ axiom, that all principles/seeds are different from each other and no one is like the other (καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλήθους οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις).²⁷⁶ This is also the meaning of the term used as an alternative to the expression, ‘ideas of all kinds’ (ἰδέας παντοίας): of course, no one would have taken the term ἰδέας in a Platonic sense entertained before Plato himself. Again, this is used to express the selfsame notion, and simply it means different ‘kinds, or sorts’,²⁷⁷ or modes of acting,²⁷⁸ or the nature (or fashion) of something.²⁷⁹ Even Plato himself by ἰδέα

 Cf. Theophrastus, Historia Plantarum, 3.1.4: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν μὲν τὸν ἀέρα πάντων φάσκων ἔχειν σπέρματα καὶ ταῦτα συγκαταφερόμενα τῷ ὕδατι γεννᾶν τὰ φυτά. At points, Aristotle saw the Anaxagorean ‘seed’ as human semen (De Generatione Animalium, 763b30: τοῦ ἄρρενος τὸ σπέρμα); elsewhere, he distorted the notion beyond repair: “According to Anaxagoras, the homo iomeries are elements (flesh, bones, and all things of the like), whereas air and fire are a mixture of these and all the other seeds; and each of them consists of invisible homoiomeries, all of which are agglomerated, which is why everything is made of these [homoiomeries].” This takes us to the old wisdom: half truths are far worse than lies. De Caelo, 302a28 b3; italics are mine.  Simplicius commPhys, pp. 35 & 156 & 157: καὶ σπέρματα πάντων χρημάτων καὶ ἰδέας παν τοίας ἔχοντα καὶ χροιὰς καὶ ἡδονάς.  Pseudo Zonaras, Lexicon, letter eta, page 976: ἡδονὴ θεῖα ἐστὶν ἡ ἐπὶ τοῖς θείοις χαρίσμασι τοῦ νοῦ θελητικὴ ἐνέργεια καὶ εὐφροσύνη ἐπίμονος. Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, letter eta, entry 130: ἡδονή· ἐπιθυμία.  Pseudo Zonaras, op. cit. letter iota, entry 604: ἡδονή, ἀπαρχὴ τῶν γινομένων.  Pseudo Zonaras, op. cit. letter pi, entry 2737: ποιότης· χρῶμα. ἡδονή.  Simplicius commPhys, pp. 34 & 156.  Herodotus, Historiae, 1.203; 2.71.  Herodotus, op. cit. 6.100 & 119.  Euripides, Bacchae, 471.

Conclusion

161

indicated a certain ‘power’ of man’s overall existence (εἰς μίαν τινὰ ἰδέαν),²⁸⁰ or ‘another species of state’ (ἄλλην ἰδέαν πολιτείας).²⁸¹ Clearly then, Anaxagoras spoke of ‘seeds’ all of which are different from each other and each of them is assigned with a different function, which is exclusive to it and unlike that of anyone else. These seeds’ (σπέρματα), which are of different kinds (ἰδέας παντοίας ἔχοντα), are the roots of all ‘things’ (χρήματα) in the sense explained above.²⁸² In any event, principles turned out a comprehensive term describing the fundamentals of a certain philosophy, whereas elements remained a narrow one that was accorded a more or less specific meaning, especially once Aristotle used this term for Empedocles’ four ‘roots’. No matter whom a report or consideration was about, reference was made to one’s principles, no matter what the nature of them. Even in relation to such striking examples as Democritus, considered as the Atomist par excellence, references were made to his principles, too. So it went for all Presocratics, then for Epicurus, and for the rest of philosophers,²⁸³ which is why it appeared not strange that, in the second century, Achilles Tatius could report conveniently that Empedocles’ principles were the four elements, ²⁸⁴ and Simplicius said likewise that the ‘water’ of Thales and the ‘infinite’ of Anaximander were to them ‘principles of beings’.²⁸⁵ Aristotle’s confounded use apart, the term ‘element’ was never and by no one used in order to indicate the specific character, or the nature, of the principles of any philosopher. In what follows, the particular character of Anaxagoras’

 Plato, Theaetetus, 184d3.  Plato, Respublica. 544c8.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 609; commPhys, pp. 35 & 156 & 157.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 985b5; Physica, 188a. However, since, according to the preceding analysis, Aristotle cannot be trusted on use of such terms, here are some others, from Aristotle’s era right down to the end of the Byzantine period, referring to Democtitus’ (as well as others’) principles. Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 8. Xenocrates, apud John Philoponus, commA nim, p. 82. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 18. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 2. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.3.7; 14.14.5; 14.19.9. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1014 (Epicurus). Simpli cius, commPhys, pp. 28; 43 5; 166; 180; 460 1; commCael, pp. 202; 242; 564; 565; 614; 617; 628; 679; commCateg, p. 428. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, pp. 21; 25; 127; 154 6; 160; commAnim, pp. 9; 24; 67; 82 4; 91; 110; De Opificio Mundi, p. 80. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 1.18; 8.8. Gen nadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 1.43; 2.39; Epitome Primae Partis Summae Theologicae Thomae Aquinae, 3.47; Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.3; 1.5; commPhys, pp. 41 2.  Achilles Tatius, Isagoga Excerpta, 3: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ ἀρχάς φησι τῶν ὅλων τὰ τέσσαρα στοι χεῖα, καὶ τὸ μὲν πῦρ καλεῖ Δία καὶ αἰθέρα.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 6 7: Thales and Anaximander κάτωθεν ἀρχόμενοι τὰς ὑλικὰς καὶ στοιχειώδεις ἀρχὰς ἐθεάσαντο καὶ ἐξέφηναν ἀδιορίστως ὡς πάντων τῶν ὄντων τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐκφαίνοντες. Cf. op. cit. p. 7, where he adds that Aristotle made ‘deprivation’ an ‘element’, too.

162

Chapter 1 – The Principles

principles (creative causes, or cohesive or destructive ones, as well as objects of contemplation or knowledge, etc.) is pointed out here and there, whenever necessary. Therefore, the term principle is a characterization, a general depiction, not a definition, and, in the present book, I am using it in this sense, although neither Anaxagoras nor any other Presocratic did ever use this designation, as far as our sources go.

Chapter 2 A religious outcast criticized Plato The Aristotelian commentator Asclepius of Tralles¹ believed that Aristotle had read a version of Anaxagoras’ work, which Anaxagoras had scribed by someone who edited the text while writing it down. Study of Aristotle though shows that Asclepius’ assumption was a fanciful misreading of the Metaphysics. Nevertheless, it is true that Aristotle had a double difficulty with assessing Anaxagoras’ work. The first one was philosophical: he could not understand how could it be possible for both ‘perishable and imperishable things’ to be generated from the same principles: if the first principles of all things are the same, why is it that some things are perishable whereas others are not? He declares himself unable to understand the Physicists on this, and then he determines that this is so only because their explanations were inconsistent and untenable.² The second difficulty was practical: Aristotle never really read Anaxagoras’ work; all he had available to him was oral testimonies about it. Consequently, he essayed to ‘interpret’ this philosophical system while reviewing it and berating all of his predecessors who ‘spoke inarticulately on all subjects’ (ψελλιζομένῃ γὰρ ἔοικεν ἡ πρώτη φιλοσοφία περὶ πάντων).³ This is why two Aristotelian commentators (Alexander of Aphrodisias and Asclepius of Tralles) state that, while writing his own Metaphysics, Aristotle became both a co-writer and editor of Anaxagoras’ views, in order to make them more reasonable and more scientific, according to his own criteria, of course. They use the verbs προσβοηθῶ (‘come to aid’) and συνδιαρθρῶ (‘express distinctly at the same time’), or simply διαρθρῶ, which means ‘make complete in detail, fill up so as to form an organic whole’.⁴ Aristotle strove to render a certain ‘Anax A student of Ammonius (son of Hermias) of Alexandria. He died in c. 560 570.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 299b5 ff.  Aristotle, op. cit. 993a.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 68 9: ᾿Aναξαγόραν δ᾿ εἴ τις ὑπολαμβάνει δύο λέγειν. Ἑξῆς ᾿Aναξαγόρου μνημονεύει ἐκφαυλίζων μὲν τὰ ἄντικρυς ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ καὶ φανερῶς λέ γεσθαι δοκοῦντα ὡς ἄτοπα, ἐνδεικνύμενος δὲ διὰ τῆς ἀτοπίας τῶν δοκούντων λέγεσθαι τὸ ἄλλα αὐτὸν δι᾿ αὐτῶν βούλεσθαι λέγειν, προσβοηθῶν δὲ τῇ λέξει αὐτοῦ καὶ διαρθρῶν αὐτῆς τὸ βούλημα, ὡς καὶ αὐτὸς λέγει. … ὅμως εἴ τις ἐπακολουθήσει τοῖς λεγομένοις ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ συν διαρθρῶν καὶ ἐξηγούμενος ἃ βούλεται λέγειν, φανείη ἂν καινοπρεπεστέρως λέγων καὶ ἰδιαίτερον παρὰ τοὺς ἄλλους. …. λέγει δὲ καὶ πῶς ἔστιν ἐπακολουθοῦντα τοῖς λεγομένοις ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ συν

164

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

agoras’, who at most points should be as ‘anti-Aristotelian’ as possible, so that he could be easily attacked; and, at a few other points, he should be made as ‘Aristotelian’ as possible, yet not perfectly, so that Aristotle should praise and agree with him, while claiming that he rendered Anaxagoras’ inarticulate exposition in a fuller and more sophisticated manner. Anaxagoras was generally praised along with Pythagoras and Plato for introducing monotheism.⁵ However, Plato himself did not show high regard for Anaxagoras. The text of (Pseudo‐) Plutarch (quoted by Eusebius as a genuine one) advises that, to Anaxagoras, in the beginning there were motionless bodies, and then the mind of God set them in order and brought all the things of the universe into being. For his part, Plato supposed that the primordial matter was not motionless, but it moved in a disorderly way: wherefore, says he, God having ordained that order is better than disorder, made an orderly distribution of them.⁶ Plato was unable to go further than his vague mythological notion, according to which the primordial bodies became what they became only after the Demiurge established a correspondence between them and their Ideas by means of ‘participation’ (μέθεξις). However, this statement could lead nowhere, which is why Aristotle lampooned Plato’s theory styling it τερετίσματα (‘twitterings’)⁷ or ‘idle talking’, and mere ‘poetical metaphors’.⁸ Plato criticized Anaxagoras (or, what he alleged to be his philosophy) in the Phaedo: Socrates is made to say that, one day, he heard a man who told him that he was reading in a book by Anaxagoras (97c) that it is the Mind that arranges and causes all things. Socrates was pleased with this theory of course, and it seemed to him that the idea of a Mind being the cause of all things was somehow right. He thought that, if this is so, the Mind, in arranging things, arranges everything and establishes each of them as it is best for it to be. Thus, if anyone wishes to find the cause of generation or destruction or existence of a particular thing, one must find out what sort of existence, or activity, or passive state of any kind, is best for it. Therefore, in respect to that particular thing (97d) , and other things too, a man needs to examine nothing but what is best and most excellent. For διαρθροῦν αὐτά. Italics are mine (Alexander quotes Metaphysica, 989b4 6). Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 61: προσβοηθῶν δὲ τῇ δόξῃ αὐτοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλης καὶ διαρθρῶν αὐτῆς τὸ βούλημά φησιν ὅτι εἴ τις ἀκολουθήσειε συνδιαρθρῶν ἃ βούλεται λέγειν, ἴσως ἂν φανείη καινοπρεπέστε ρον λέγων.  Cf. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.12.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881A, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.2.  Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, 83a33.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 991a (& 1079b): τὸ δὲ λέγειν παραδείγματα αὐτὰ εἶναι καὶ μετέχειν αὐτῶν τἆλλα κενολογεῖν ἐστι καὶ μεταφορὰς λέγειν ποιητικάς.

Plato

165

then he will necessarily know also what is inferior, since the science of both is the same. With his usual irony, Socrates goes on saying that, as he considered these things, he was delighted at the thought that he had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the cause of things (διδάσκαλον τῆς αἰτίας περὶ τῶν ὄντων), indeed a teacher that would tell Socrates whether the earth is flat or round, and then (97e) explain the cause and the necessity of it, as well as the nature of the best, and why is it best for the earth to be as it is; and if he said the earth was in the centre, he would proceed to show that it is best for it to be in the center. Socrates ostensibly believed that (98a) he should no longer yearn for any other kind of cause, provided a teacher made those things clear to him, and taught solutions to other questions, such as about the sun and the moon and the other stars, their relative speed, their revolutions, and their other changes, and why the active or passive condition of each of them is for the best. He was prepared to accept that those heavenly bodies were ordered by a certain intelligence, but he could not allow introduction of any other cause for these things to be so other than the proposition that it is best for them to be as they are. (98b) Consequently, he expected that, when his Anaxagorean teacher determined the cause of each thing and of all things in common, he would go on and explain what is best for each, and what is good for all in common. If there is any gist of historicity in this part of the Phaedo, and Socrates really said such things of which Plato made an extensive narrative, then that ‘teacher’ should have been no other than Clearchus, as explained in a moment. Following his earnest hope ‘to learn’, Socrates goes on saying that he seized the books very eagerly and read them as fast as he could, so that he might know as fast as he could about the best and the worse. However, he was disappointed at finding out that Anaxagoras made no use of the Nous (98c) and he did not assign any real causes for the ordering of things to it, ‘but he mentioned as causes only air and aether and water and many other absurdities’ (καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ καὶ ἄτοπα). It appeared to him that the case was very much like someone saying that Socrates does with intelligence whatever he does, and then, in trying to give the causes of the particular things he does, he should say first that he is now sitting here because his body is composed of bones and sinews, and the bones are hard, and have joints which divide them, and the sinews (98d) can be contracted and relaxed and, with the flesh and the skin which contains them all, are laid about the bones; and so, as the bones are hung loose in their ligaments, the sinews, by relaxing and contracting, make Socrates able to bend his limbs now, and that is the cause of his sitting here with his legs bent. Or, as if, in the same way, he should make voice and air and hearing and countless other things of the sort causes for our talking with each other, (98e) and should fail to mention the real causes (τὰς ὡς ἀληθῶς αἰτίας).

166

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

Here is then the complain of the ‘Platonic’ Socrates, perhaps not the ‘Socratic’ one: Plato could not understand why should his noble teacher have been put to death for his sublime teaching whereas Anaxagoras escaped it, and the following phrase is not very compatible with the context: the real causes are that the Athenians decided that it was best to condemn Socrates, and therefore he decided that it was best for him to sit there and that it was right for him to stay and undergo whatever penalty they ordered. Then, his argument goes on, (99a) with saying that he fancies these bones and sinews of his would have been in Megara or Boeotia long ago, carried thither by an opinion of what was best, if he did not think it was better and nobler to endure any penalty the city might inflict rather than to escape and run away. However, it is most absurd to call things of that sort causes. If anyone were to say that he could not have done what he thought proper if he had not bones and sinews and other things that he have, he would be right. But to say that those things are the cause of his doing what he does, (99b) and that he acts with intelligence but not out of choice of what is best, would be an extremely careless way of talking. Whoever talks in that way is unable to make a distinction and to see that, in reality, a cause is one thing, but the thing without which the cause could never be a cause, is quite another. So, Socrates argues, most people, when they give the name of cause to the latter, are groping in the dark, as it were, and they are giving it a name that does not belong to it. Thus, one man makes the earth stay below the heavens by putting a vortex about it, and another regards the earth as a flat being supported on a foundation of air; but they do not look for (99c) the power which causes things to be now placed as it is best for them to be placed, nor do they think it has any divine force: they think they can find a new Atlas more powerful and more immortal and more all-embracing than this; actually, they give no thought to the good, which must embrace and hold all things together. The conclusion is plain: there was nothing that Socrates owed to Anaxagoras, and Plato had to plough his own way. The gist of that criticism was that Anaxagoras allowed individual things to become and to perish by means of interaction of the principles within the world of natural reality. This was unacceptable to Plato: the notion of cause can assume its real sense only by associating it with the transcendent world of the Forms. It is by virtue of this association that the way in which things exist is the best possible one for them to exist. Accordingly, Plato expected that, when Anaxagoras ‘asserted that things were ordered by the Mind, he would ascribe no other cause to them, except that it was best for them to be

Plato

167

just as they are.’⁹ Instead, he ‘saw the man making no use of Mind, nor predicating any real causes for the ordering of things, but treating as causes a parcel of airs and aethers and waters, and many other absurdities’.¹⁰ Nevertheless, and for all his criticism of Anaxagoras, it seems that Plato acknowledged this as an insightful resolution and an answer to the problem of the first cause: some authors report a certain reference by Plato not found in his extant texts: it was as though Anaxagoras alone woke up while all other physicists were sleeping, and posited Mind as the creative cause of the universe.¹¹ Prior to him, some other Presocratics sustained that the universe had a beginning, but all of them, except for Anaxagoras, fancied some material causes, as if the universe were created by means an automatic process.¹² For all his criticism, Plato was at one with Anaxagoras on the principle that ‘everything which becomes must of necessity become because of a certain cause; for without a cause it is impossible for anything to come to be.’¹³ Several commentators hailed this celebrated remark,¹⁴ and John Philoponus saw it as praise for Anaxagoras, ‘the sole one’ who postulated such a cosmic cause before Plato.¹⁵

 Plato, Phaedo, 98a b: οὐ γὰρ ἄν ποτε αὐτὸν ᾤμην, φάσκοντά γε ὑπὸ Νοῦ κεκοσμῆσθαι, ἄλλην τινὰ αὐτοῖς αἰτίαν ἐπενεγκεῖν ἢ ὅτι βέλτιστον αὐτὰ οὕτως ἔχειν ἐστὶν ὥσπερ ἔχει.  Plato, op. cit. 98b c: καὶ ἀναγιγνώσκων ὁρῶ ἄνδρα τῷ μὲν Νῷ οὐδὲν χρώμενον οὐδέ τινας αἰτίας ἐπαιτιώμενον εἰς τὸ διακοσμεῖν τὰ πράγματα, ἀέρας δὲ καὶ αἰθέρας καὶ ὕδατα αἰτιώμενον καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ καὶ ἄτοπα. Quoted also by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.15.5.  Proclus, commTim, p. 2: καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ὃς δὴ δοκεῖ καθευδόντων τῶν ἄλλων τὸν νοῦν αἴ τιον ὄντα τῶν γιγνομένων ἰδεῖν.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 183: μόνον δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ὥσπερ ἐξ ὕπνου ἀνα στάντα, καθὼς ὁ Πλάτων φησὶν αὐτός, νοῦν ἐπιστῆσαι τῷ παντὶ καὶ τούτῳ τὴν δημιουργικὴν αἰτίαν ἀναθεῖναι. commPhys, p. 312: ταῦτα δὲ καὶ πρὸ ᾿Aριστοτέλους ὁ Πλάτων ἐγκαλεῖ τῷ ᾿Aνα ξαγόρᾳ, ὅτι ὥσπερ ἐξυπνισθεὶς τῶν ἄλλων καθευδόντων φυσιολόγων καὶ νοῦν τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως αἰτιασάμενος.  Plato, Timaeus, 28a. Cf. op. cit. 28b: “We must first investigate that primary question, which has to be investigated at the outset in every case, namely, whether it has existed always having no beginning of generation, or it has come into existence, having begun from some beginning, it has come into existence (πότερον ἦν ἀεί, γενέσεως ἀρχὴν ἔχων οὐδεμίαν, ἢ γέγονεν, ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἀρξάμενος, γέγονεν).”  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.29.2. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.13.1a. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 835; commTim, p. 258; De Malorum Subsistentia, 50. Simplicius, commCael, pp. 93; 126. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 150; commPhys, p. 54; De Aeternitate Mundi, pp. 137; 183; 184.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 183: ἐπειδὴ ᾔδει τινὰς τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ φυσικῶν γεγονέναι μὲν ἀπό τινος ἀρχῆς τὸν κόσμον οἰομένους καὶ οὐκ ἀΐδιον εἶναι, σχεδὸν δὲ πάντας πλὴν ἑνὸς τὴν ποιητικὴν αὐτοῦ ἀγνοοῦντας αἰτίαν, τὰ δὲ ὑλικὰ μόνον ἀποδιδόντας αἴτια ὥσπερ ἐκ ταυτομάτου τῆς εἰδοποιίας τε καὶ τάξεως γινομένης, μόνον δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ὥσπερ

168

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

The other authors who made implicit reference to Plato’s remark about Anaxagoras having waked from sleep whereas all other Presocratics were sleeping, were Asclepius of Tralles and Michael Psellus. Of them, Asclepius was in fact confused, since he thought that it was Aristotle in his Metaphysics, ¹⁶ not Plato, that used these words in praise of Anaxagoras; nevertheless, he reports the tenor of the reference accurately, through a paraphrase of his own.¹⁷ Michael Psellus is also accurate, although, at that point, he adds Plato’s criticism in the Phaedo 98b-c.¹⁸ This is a bit of a mystery, however: for Plato did not make such a reference either in the Phaedo, or at any other point of his extant works. There are two possible explanations in order to solve this. First, this remark was made not by Plato himself but by Proclus attributing the foregoing criticism to Plato; in fact, he adds the phrase, ‘for indeed Anaxagoras also, who seems to have seen Mind as the cause of everything that becomes’, and then he goes on with quoting Plato’s criticism (‘as Socrates says in the Phaedo’).¹⁹ The other possible explanation is that Plato made this reference in a lost work of his entitled Amatores, or ‘Rivals in love’ (᾿Aντερασταί).²⁰ Theodoret took this as a genuine dialogue, which evidently he had read,²¹ and so did Stobaeus who quoted extensively from there.²² However, Diogenes Laertius represents Thrasyllus of Mendes²³ (in ἐξ ὕπνου ἀναστάντα, καθὼς ὁ Πλάτων φησὶν αὐτός, νοῦν ἐπιστῆσαι τῷ παντὶ καὶ τούτῳ τὴν δημιουργικὴν αἰτίαν ἀναθεῖναι.  Aristotle said that Anaxagoras ‘stood out like a sober man from the random talkers that had preceded him’ (νήφων ἐφάνη παρ᾿ εἰκῇ λέγοντας τοὺς πρότερον). Metaphysica, 984b.  Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 4: ἐν γοῦν τῷ μείζονι ἄλφα διαλέγεται περὶ τῆς ἐννοίας τῆς φιλοσοφίας καὶ δείκνυσιν ὅτι οὐκ ἔστι τὰ ὑλικὰ αἴτια κυρίως ἀρχαί, ὥσπερ καὶ Πλάτων φησί. διὸ καὶ ἀποδέχεται τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν· τῶν γὰρ ἄλλων, φησί, καθευδόντων ὥσπερ ἀπὸ κάρου ἀναστὰς ᾿Aναξαγόρας μόνος ἐπέστησε νοῦν βασιλεύειν τοῦ παντός. Οὔτε δὲ τὰς ἰδέας φησὶν εἶναι τὰς πρώτας ἀρχάς, καθώς τινες ἐκλαμβάνουσιν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς λόγους. At this point, Asclepius appears conscious of the fundamental difference between Logoi and Ideas. However, all schol ars who read Origen’s exposition of ‘logoi’ have always spoken misleadingly of Logoi or Ideas. As explained later (pp. 750 89), Anaxagoras’ Theory of Logoi was recognized by Porphyry, and it revived only with Origen.  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 23: μόνος δ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ὥσπερ τῶν ἄλλων ὑπνούντων καὶ τοῖς ὑλικοῖς αἰτίοις βεβαπτισμένων, ἦν ὁμοῦ φησί πάντα χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ ταῦτα διέκρινεν. ἀλλ᾿ οὐδ᾿ οὗτος μέχρι παντὸς τὸν νοῦν ἐπεισάγει τοῖς πράγμασιν, ἀλλ᾿ ὥσπερ μεταμελόμενος ἐφ᾿ οἷς ἅπαξ ἀπεμνημόνευσεν, ὧν ἴστε ἀτόπων ἔχεται διακρίσεων.  Proclus, commTim, p. 2: καὶ γὰρ αὖ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ὃς δὴ δοκεῖ καθευδόντων τῶν ἄλλων τὸν νοῦν αἴτιον ὄντα τῶν γιγνομένων ἰδεῖν, οὐδὲν ἐν ταῖς ἀποδόσεσι προσχρῆται τῷ νῷ, μᾶλλον δὲ ἀέρας τινὰς αἰτιᾶται καὶ αἰθέρας τῶν γινομένων, ὡς ὁ ἐν Φαίδωνι Σωκράτης φησίν.  The word is indeed used in Plato’s extant corpus: Respublica, 521b.  Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 12.59.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 3.21.20.

Plato

169

Egypt) as doubting the authenticity of the work,²⁴ but Laertius himself mentions this as a genuine one at another point.²⁵ The important reference that concerns us here comes from Proclus: he treats the work as a genuine one by Plato, adding that Plato praised Anaxagoras in that work, saying that the Clazomenian along with Oenopides of Chios became very glorious for their knowledge of geometry.²⁶ Anaxagoras is indeed mentioned along Oenopides in that work, but no mention of them being ‘glorious’ is made: there is only mere reference to two little boys disputing about Anaxagoras and Oenopides at the house of grammarian Dionysius, who taught Plato grammar.²⁷ If that work is really Platonic, and if Plato himself was in the mood of praising Anaxagoras therein, it is possible that an approbatory reference was made to Anaxagoras having ‘waken from sleep’ and discovered the Mind, whereas all other philosophers ‘were sleeping’. Therefore, Proclus’ reference might be a joint reference to Anaxagoras made by Plato: the first half of it would be from the Amatores (which is not cited) and the second from the Phaedo (which is cited). At any rate, Socrates criticism as represented by Plato in the Phaedo is that he heard someone reading a book which supposedly was written by Anaxagoras. This attests to Plato himself rather than Socrates making the playful remark. For Socrates did not need to say that he ‘heard someone read from a book which was written by Anaxagoras, as he claimed’ (Phaedo, 97b): he himself had heard the teaching of Anaxagoras first-hand,²⁸ since testimonies assure that Socrates attended lessons by Archelaus, Anaxagoras’ closest pupil.²⁹

 Tiberius Claudius Thrasyllus (or Thrasyllus of Alexandria, fl. late first century BC to first cen tury AD) was an Egyptian Greek grammarian and literary commentator.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 9.37: Εἴπερ οἱ ᾿Aντερασταὶ Πλάτωνός εἰσι, φησὶ Θράσυλλος.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 3.4: καὶ [sc. Πλάτων] ἐπαιδεύθη μὲν γράμματα παρὰ Διονυσίῳ, οὗ καὶ μνημονεύει ἐν τοῖς ᾿Aντερασταῖς.  Proclus, commEucl, pp. 65 6: μετὰ δὲ τοῦτον [sc. Πυθαγόραν] ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὁ Κλαζομένιος πολλῶν ἐφήψατο τῶν κατὰ γεωμετρίαν καὶ Οἰνοπίδης ὁ Χῖος, ὀλίγῳ νεώτερος ὢν ᾿Aναξαγόρου, ὧν καὶ ὁ Πλάτων ἐν τοῖς ᾿Aντερασταῖς ἐμνημόνευσεν ὡς ἐπὶ τοῖς μαθήμασι δόξαν λαβόντων.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 3.4  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4. Aelius Aristides, Πρὸς Πλάτωνα περὶ Ῥητορικῆς, pp. 21; 176. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.51 (‘Socrates heard both Anaxagoras and Archelaus’). Suda, letter sigma, entry 829 (Socrates became a philosopher after having heard Anaxagoras first, then Damon, then Archelaus). Anonymous, Scholia in Aelium Aristidem (scho lia vetera), (comm. on Ars Rhetorica), 21.4; 21.8.  Porphyry, quoted by Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 12.67. Aelius Aristides, Πρὸς Καπίτωνα, p. 324. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 1.14.63.3. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosoph ica, 3. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 1.14; 2.16; 10.12. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 10.14.14; 14.15.11. Themistius, Ὑπὲρ τοῦ λέγειν ἢ πῶς τῷ φιλοσόφῳ λεκτέον, p. 317d. Theodoret, Graecarum

170

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

Plato’s misunderstanding can be assessed once a specific point of his Laws is considered. In the first place, he read Anaxagoras’ fundamental statement, ‘all things were together, then Mind came and set them in order’. It appeared to him that Anaxagoras ascribed to Mind the initiation of the cosmic order but then it remained inert, as if non-existent at all. This is wrong, as I will discuss in a moment: the Nous is present throughout the world as ‘the guardian’ of its function.³⁰ Anaxagoras explained the processes in this world and regarded the sun as being just a piece of fiery matter, that is, he explained everything by means of natural causes. Nevertheless, Mind is always there, since it imparts rationality to all the processes that take place in the world, indeed this is Mind’s own rationality, since ‘the Mind, both the great and the small, is the same’.³¹ However, this was not enough to Plato, who could only allow ‘that the soul is oldest of all things that partake of generation and it is immortal and rules over bodies’.³² This is one more case of Plato attacking Anaxagoras implicitly, speaking of ‘those who considered these [heavenly] objects and posited them as being soulless’; and, ‘even in those days, there were some who dared to hazard the statement that reason is the one who ordered of all that is in the universe. But the same thinkers, through mistaking the nature of the soul and conceiving her to be posterior, instead of prior, to body, upset again, as it were, the whole universe, and most of all themselves’.³³ It is plain that Plato’s hostility to Anaxagoras makes its mark also in statements in his work where he does not mention his predecessor by name, and those are the points where his odium is bitter. A case in point is characteristic: in the Laws, he expresses his usual dislike for those Presocratics, particularly the one who ‘holds fire, water, earth, and air to be the first of all things, and that it is precisely to these things that he gives the name of nature, while soul they assert to be a later product therefrom’.³⁴ This statement, which involves the four material elements, gives the impression that he had in mind other Physicists rather than Anaxagoras himself. But is it noteworthy how two later authors commented on this, each one for his own reasons. One of them was Eusebius, who quoted extensively from this Platonic work in order to make his favourite point, namely,

Affectionum Curatio, 2.23. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 27. John of Damascus, Passio Magni Martyris Artemii, 47. Suda, letter alpha, entry 4084.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 154.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157: νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων.  Plato, Leges, 967d.  Plato, op. cit. 967b c.  Plato, op. cit. 891c.

Plato

171

that Plato received the wisdom of the Hebrews in order to show that there is God and Providence.³⁵ The second author was Porphyry, who associated this remark with the Anaxagorean creative act by the Mind, if implicitly. He considers the views of Atticus and of his followers in order to rebut the theory that God co-exists eternally with uncreated matter. His point is that it is necessary to posit a rational creative agent who should be prior to formless matter and fusion. But, as everyone acknowledged (Plato being the first), it was only Anaxagoras who introduced this doctrine. Porphyry argued that Plato’s invective in the Laws was in fact directed against those who maintained that ‘it is possible for the irrational to be prior to reason, and for randomness [i.e. total fusion] to prevail over the intelligible work of art’ (εἴ τίς φησι πρὸ λογισμοῦ τὸ ἄλογον εἶναι καὶ πρὸ τῆς νοερᾶς τέχνης τὸ τυχαῖον ἐπικρατεῖν).³⁶ It was about them that the Athenian Stranger of the Laws said that this is ‘a very fountain-head of irrational opinion’ (πηγήν τινα ἀνοήτου δόξης).³⁷ No Presocratic Physicist other than Anaxagoras did ever posit a Creator who reflects and imposes order and distinction upon the primeval fusion, which Plato and Aristotle were quick to acknowledge. Porphyry, being a good Neoplatonist, quoted the specific apostrophe of Plato in order to argue that the Creative Cause cannot be prior to creation in terms of interval of time. In other words, in Plato’s statement he saw criticism against Anaxagoras alone, notwithstanding the preceding Platonic context. Probably he was not the only philosopher that Plato had in mind when he wrote this, but he would have been happy at Porphyry’s reception of it. It was in the sixth century that Simplicius explained that Porphyry’s criticism was not entirely fair with respect to Anaxagoras in view of Simplicius’ own exegesis of that philosophy.³⁸ Besides, Eusebius quoting this section from Plato, informs his readers that he is going to show how Plato ‘expounds the views of the atheists’ (ὅπως τὰς δόξας τῶν ἀθέων ἐκτίθησι).³⁹ Of all Presocratics, Anaxagoras stood trial for atheism, and escaped death only at the last moment. Plato had personal reasons for detesting Anaxagoras, anyway: for the latter was ‘the first one who averred that the poetry of Homer is about virtue and right-

 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 12.49.15. Then, he quotes the specific section of the Laws in op. cit. 12.50.8.  Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, commTim, p. 392.  Plato, op. cit. 891c.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1121: φαίνονται δὲ καὶ οὗτοι τάξεως ἕνεκα διδασκαλικῆς ἀρχὴν τῆς κοσμοποιίας ὑποθέμενοι. I discuss this in chapters 4 and 7.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 12.49.15.

172

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

eousness’ (περὶ ἀρετῆς καὶ δικαιοσύνης),⁴⁰ whereas Plato had expelled Homer from his State, deeming him dangerous to the youth.⁴¹ Besides, to him, it was intolerable that Socrates stood trial just like Anaxagoras did, as if they were men of the same quality, and, worse still, the latter got away with it, whereas Socrates did not escape death. In a telling apostrophe in the Statesman, he expresses this feeling in a covert manner: Socrates was condemned on charges of ‘corrupting youth’ (ὡς διαφθείροντα ἄλλους νεωτέρους), as if he were ‘a sophist, like those babblers who talk foolishly about the stars’ (μετεωρολόγον, ἀδολέσχην τινὰ σοφιστήν).⁴² The passage is telling, since it shows Plato’s conflicting feelings about Anaxagoras. In the Phaedrus, he used similar language (ἀδολεσχίας καὶ μετεωρολογίας) while expressing admiration for his predecessor by pointing out that Pericles added to his personal abilities through the teaching he received from Anaxagoras.⁴³ It was because both the μετεωρολόγος Anaxagoras and Socrates shared almost the same fate that Plato introduced also a negative meaning to μετεωρολόγος, contemptuously associating this with the term ‘sophist’. Otherwise, he used both μετεωρολόγος⁴⁴ and ἀδολέσχης⁴⁵ in a positive sense. Later, the disapprobatory sense of the terms became familiar to authors.⁴⁶ Simplicius reported that Diogenes of Apollonia (fifth century BC), although a Physicist himself, rebutted some other Physicists styling them ‘sophists’.⁴⁷ In his great lexicographic work, the second-century AD grammarian Julius Naucratites included only the negative sense of the term μετεωρολόγος, citing Plato by name.⁴⁸ However, long after those times, the Byzantine intellectual and cleric Michael Choniates (or Acominatus, c. 1140 – 1220), a pupil of Eustathius of Thessaloniki, spoke

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.11, quoting from the Miscellaneous History by Favorinus of Arelate (c. 80 160 AD), the Roman sophist and philosopher who flourished during the reign of Hadri an.  Cf. Plato, Respublica, 600b; also, 334a b; 377d; 378d; 379c; 383a; 387b; 389a; etc.  Plato, Politicus, 299b c.  Plato, Phaedrus, 269e 270.  Plato, Cratylus, 401b: οὐ φαῦλοι εἶναι ἀλλὰ μετεωρολόγοι καὶ ἀδολέσχαι τινές. Cf. 396c; 404c.  Plato, positive: Phaedrus, 269e; Cratylus, 401b; cf. the term in a negative sense (garrulous): Phaedo, 70c; Theaetetus, 195b c; Sophista, 225d; Parmenides, 135d; Respublica, 489a.  Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, 117b35. Aristophanes (for ἀδολέσχης), Nubes, verse 1485; Frag menta, 490. Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, 6.67.2 (contempt for astrology): μετεωρολο γοῦσα καὶ ἀδολεσχοῦσα. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 4.26: Τοῦτο δὴ ξυνορῶν ὁ Σωκράτης, μετεωρολόγοις καὶ φυσιολόγοις ἐρρῶσθαι φράσας, τὴν ἠθικὴν διδασκαλίαν ἠσπάσατο.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 151.  Julius Pollux, Onomasticon, 2.123.

Aristotle

173

of the μετεωρολόγος ᾿Aναξαγόρας not only in praise for having posited a Nous ruling over the entire universe, but indeed in order to eulogise Emperor Manuel I Comnenus, styling him one who supervised all things like the Nous of Anaxagoras.

Aristotle For all his scientific mind and his dissent from Plato, Aristotle levelled similar criticism against Anaxagoras, who ‘avails himself of Mind as an artificial device for producing order, and drags in it whenever he is at loss to explain some necessary result; but otherwise he makes anything rather than Mind the cause of what happens’.⁴⁹ That Aristotle is at one with Plato in censuring Anaxagoras on this point appears as almost incredible. Simplicius was not less of a man of rational thinking than Aristotle himself when he made an acute remark about Plato on this: Plato said that, although Anaxagoras introduced the Mind as a poietic cause, he made far too little use of this tenet in his considerations. … But there is nothing wrong about this. … For Timaeus (who was only a personage of Plato himself) posited a cause (poietic, exem plary, and final one) of everything that comes to be, and yet he explained creation of cor poreal things by means of levels, shapes, and in general from natural elements.⁵⁰

Both Plato and Aristotle were equally hostile to Anaxagoras, but in fact they departed from different premisses. Although Aristotle did not care for making the soul prior to the body, he went along with Plato on this because he had not grasped Anaxagoras’ concept of change, which resulted in positing only one kind of it, instead of the six kinds of motion that Aristotle theorized.⁵¹ Moreover, there was something which to Aristotle was real, and yet Anaxagoras did not dig-

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 985a. His commentators followed faithfully: Alexander of Aphrodi sias, commMetaph, p. 35. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 32.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 7: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομένιος ἐπέστησε μὲν ποιητικὸν αἴτιον τὸν νοῦν, ἐν δὲ ταῖς αἰτιολογίαις ὀλίγιστα αὐτῷ προσεχρήσατο, ὡς ὁ ἐν Φαίδωνι Σωκράτης ἐπέσκηψε. καὶ ἴσως οὐδὲν ἄτοπον τοῦτο. καὶ γὰρ καὶ ὁ Τίμαιος αὐτός τε καὶ ὃν ὁ Πλάτων ὑπε κρίνατο, καίτοι ποιητικὸν καὶ παραδειγματικὸν καὶ τελικὸν αἴτιον τῶν γινομένων προϋπο θέμενοι, ὅμως τὰς τῶν σωματικῶν αἰτίων ἀποδόσεις ἀπό τε τῶν ἐπιπέδων καὶ τῶν σχημάτων καὶ ὅλως ἀπὸ τῆς τῶν στοιχείων φύσεως ἐποιήσαντο. This is the point at which Simplicius ad vises that it was Plato who ‘first classified the elementary principles’ of the Presocratics (τὰς στοιχειώδεις ἀρχὰς τῶν ἄλλων), and it was also Plato who first styled the Presocratic principles elements’ (καὶ στοιχεῖα πρῶτος αὐτὸς ὠνόμασε τὰς τοιαύτας ἀρχάς).  See infra, p. 209, and note 48.

174

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

nify it with a place or function in his pattern: this was the form (εἶδος), which is granted upon matter and decorates it, so that ‘potential being’ (or, formless matter) is upgraded to actual material body.⁵² Aristotle sought something (namely, the form, εἶδος) standing midway between the decorating Mind and matter proper which is decorated: anything is made of two principles, matter and form, of which formless matter is potentially everything, according to the latent combination of the four qualities in it (namely, warmth, coolness, dryness, humidity) – but Anaxagoras said nothing about it, which was intolerable to Aristotle. Furthermore, the Stagirite saw Anaxagoras’ ὁμοιομερῆ as ‘infinite’ elements, which he dismissed, and opted for Empedocles, who posited two principles in all. Therefore, he saw a double fault in that philosophy: to be ‘infinite’ is tantamount to being ‘indefinite’; and that ὁμοιομέρειαι existed before Mind distinguished them, suggests also something which is only potential being. It appeared then to Aristotle that the expression ‘all things were together’ (ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα) actually means ‘nothing really exists’ (ὥστε μηθὲν ἀληθῶς ὑπάρχειν). For ‘they seem to speak of the indeterminate; and while they think that they are speaking of what exists, they are really speaking of what does not exist; for the indeterminate is that which exists potentially, not actually’ (τὸ ἀόριστον οὖν ἐοίκασι λέγειν, καὶ οἰόμενοι τὸ ὂν λέγειν περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος λέγουσιν· τὸ γὰρ δυνάμει ὂν καὶ μὴ ἐντελεχείᾳ τὸ ἀόριστόν ἐστιν).⁵³ In that primordial state, there was no concrete individual subject, which Aristotle called τόδε τι, and cherished it as the most authoritative manifestation of what he saw as real. In Anaxagoras, Aristotle saw only mere implicit reference to formless matter, which is potentially everything, but it is nothing in actuality’ (φησὶ τοὺς τοῦτο λέγοντας ἐοικέναι περὶ τῆς ὕλης τὸν λόγον ποιεῖσθαι. αὕτη γὰρ ἀόριστος τῷ δυνάμει πάντα εἶναι, ἐνεργείᾳ δὲ μηδέν).⁵⁴ Since ‘everything is generated from

 Cf. Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 13: ᾿Aριστοτέλης δὲ ὁμολογουμένως τὸν νοῦν εἰσηγήσατό τι τὸ τῆς ὕλης ὡς ὕλης αἴτιον· τοῦ μὲν γὰρ εἴδους τὸ παράδειγμα ἢ ὁ δημιουργός, ἢ καὶ τῆς ὕλης ἡ ἑκατέρου θεότης· τοῦ μὲν ὡς κοσμουμένης ὑπὸ τοῦ εἴδους, τοῦ δὲ ὡς δεχομένης ἁπλῶς τὸ εἶδος.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1007b.  This is Alexander of Aphrodisias explaining this point of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. commMe taph, p. 291: οὐδὲ γὰρ οἷον τε ἐνεργείᾳ πάντα εἶναι· ὥστε περὶ τοῦ ὄντος λέγειν βουλόμενοι περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος τὸν λόγον ποιοῦνται. μὴ ὂν γὰρ ὃ δυνάμει μὲν ἔστιν, ἐνεργείᾳ δὲ μή· οὔτε γὰρ ἄνθρωπος ἤδη ὁ δυνάμει τις ἄνθρωπος, οὔτε ἵππος, οὔτε τῶν ἄλλων τι. τοιοῦτον δὲ ἡ ὕλη· δυ νάμει γὰρ ἕκαστόν ἐστι τῶν ἐξ αὐτῆς γιγνομένων· οὐ γὰρ δὴ δύναταί τι ἐνεργείᾳ εἶναι πάντα. εἶπε δὲ καὶ περὶ τῆς ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξης ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις λέγων, ὡς δι᾿ ὧν ἔλεγε πάντα ἐν πᾶσι μεμῖχθαι τὴν ὕλην ὀνειροπολοῦντος, ἐνεργείᾳ πάντα τὰ ὄντα εἶναι. Cf. op. cit. pp. 68; 561; 639; commTop, p. 418.

Aristotle

175

that which is, but is potentially, not actually’, the opening statement of Anaxagoras ‘all things were together’ should have been better expressed as ‘all things were together potentially, but not actually’.⁵⁵ Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who was prior to Empedocles in point of age, but inferior to him in respect of work, says that the first principles are infinite in number. For he says that almost all things which are ὁμοιομερῆ, like fire and water,⁵⁶ are generated and de stroyed in this sense only, namely, by being either conjoined or separated off (συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει μόνον). Otherwise, they are neither generated nor destroyed, but remain eter nally (ἀλλὰ διαμένειν ἀΐδια). From this account, it might be supposed that the only cause is of the kind called ‘material’ (μόνην τις αἰτίαν νομίσειεν ἂν τὴν ἐν ὕλης εἴδει λεγομένην). But as men proceeded in this way, the very circumstances of the case led them on and com pelled them to seek further; because if it is really true that all generation and destruction is out of some one entity, or even more than one, why does this happen, and what is the cause? It is surely not the substrate itself which causes itself to change.⁵⁷

Aristotle’s point is that, once something happens, an agent that causes the event should be always there. For ‘neither wood nor bronze is responsible for changing itself; wood does not make a bed, nor bronze a statue, but something else is the cause of the change’.⁵⁸ This is correct. But who is the ‘cause of change’ (that is, the rational acting agent) when an earthquake or a lightning takes place? To this, as well as to Aristotle’s examples, Anaxagoras’ reply would have been that it is the Mind that causes things to happen the way they do. In the case of artefacts, it is human mind; in the case of Nature, it is the universal Mind; that is, the same cause that set it in order in the first place, and keeps on ruling over it incessantly. For all his hostility, Asclepius of Tralles saw that ‘Anaxagoras posited the Mind into plants and animals, and into the entire nature’. Also, ‘the Mind is

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b19 21: ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐξ ὄντος γίγνεται πάντα, δυνάμει μέντοι ὄντος, ἐκ μὴ ὄντος δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ. καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι τὸ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἕν. De Generatione et Corruptione, 317b25 32; De Caelo, 302a3 9. This point of Metaphysics is one of those demonstrating that Aristotle ac knowledged that he took up his notion of potentiality from Anaxagoras. See chapter 6.  This is a flagrant mistake showing that (the case of willful distortion aside) Aristotle never grasped the nature of Anaxagoras’ principles. The ‘elements’ (στοιχεῖα) of the Greeks (that is, air, earth, fire, water) are not ὁμοιομερῆ. Instead, they are posterior to the ὁμοιομερῆ (whatever they are), and the ‘elements’ are formed by means of different combinations of ὁμοιομερῆ. Alexander of Aphrodisias saw this mistake and corrected Aristotle discretely. ‘Water, fire, earth, and air’ are not ‘elements’: they are ‘compounds’ (συγκρίματα). commMetaph, p. 27: σχεδὸν δὲ πάντα εἶπε τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ· οὐ γὰρ πάντα ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ἐτίθετο· τὸ γοῦν ὕδωρ καὶ τὸ πῦρ καὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὸν ἀέρα ὁμοιομερῆ ὄντα, ὡς ἔστιν ἐκ τῆς ἐναργείας μαθεῖν, οὐκ ἔλεγε στοιχεῖα εἶναι, ἀλλὰ συγκρίματα.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984a.  Loc. cit.

176

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

the Cause of the world and of all order’, and it was he who ‘introduced the Mind into the entire world’.⁵⁹ This was a sixth-century assessment, at a time when Simplicius was writing the most authoritative assessment of Anaxagoras ever. By contrast, as early as the fourth century BC, Aristotle’s pupil Eudemus of Rhodes reported the mistaken lesson Plato and Aristotle had taught him, even though the latter condtradicted himself on this: “Anaxagoras abandoned the Mind and introduced a world that functions as an automaton”.⁶⁰ By the same token, Plutarch took sides with the portion of Plato’s Phaedo, and claimed that Anaxagoras introduced a totally naturalistic determinism, he was preoccupied only with natural causes, and set aside both the final cause of events (τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα) and the creative agent (τὸ ὑφ᾿ οὗ), which are more sublime causes and principles’.⁶¹ However, as early as during the turn to the third century AD, Alexander of Aphrodisias assured that Anaxagoras was greatly admired for having introduced a Creative Agent (that is, Mind) and had argued with reason about the causes of the universe having come into being. Not only did Anaxagoras posit that the presence of Mind can be found everywhere in nature (including animals and plants), but this is also the cause of motion.⁶² It is clear that, among the majority of intellectuals, there was a distorted, and clearly naïve, perception of Anaxagoras’ philosophy: it appeared to them that in the beginning was the Mind and the ὁμοιομερῆ alongside him (which they were presumed to be material), and then the Mind set those material

 Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 28: ὁ μέντοι γε ᾿Aναξαγόρας νοῦν ἐπέστησεν ἐν τοῖς φυτοῖς καὶ ἐν τοῖς ζῴοις καὶ ἐν τῇ φύσει καθόλου, καί φησι νοῦν αἴτιον εἶναι τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τῆς τάξεως πάσης … καὶ ἐπιστήσαντα νοῦν τῷ παντί.  Eudemus of Rhodes, Fragmenta, fr. 53, apud, Simplicius, commPhys, p. 327: καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ τὸν νοῦν ἐάσας, ὥς φησιν Εὔδημος, καὶ αὐτοματίζων τὰ πολλὰ συνίστησι.  Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum, 435E F: ἀπολογήσομαι δὲ μάρτυρα καὶ σύνδικον ὁμοῦ Πλά τωνα παριστάμενος· ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ὁ ἀνὴρ ᾿Aναξαγόραν μὲν ἐμέμψατο τὸν παλαιόν, ὅτι ταῖς φυσικαῖς ἄγαν ἐνδεδεμένος αἰτίαις καὶ τὸ κατ᾿ ἀνάγκην τοῖς τῶν σωμάτων ἀποτελούμενον πά θεσι μετιὼν ἀεὶ καὶ διώκων, τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα καὶ ὑφ᾿ οὗ, βελτίονας αἰτίας οὔσας καὶ ἀρχάς, ἀφῆκεν.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 32: ἐχομένη δὲ ἀρχὴ γενέσεως μετὰ τὴν ὑλικὴν ἡ ποιητική. καὶ δὴ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας νοῦν εἰπὼν τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς τῶν ὄντων γενέσεως ἐθαυμάσθη ὡς μόνος εἰπὼν κατὰ λόγον, τῶν ἄλλων εἰκῇ εἰπόντων ἃ εἶπον διὰ τὸ χωρὶς τῆς τοιαύτης εἰπεῖν αἰτίας. … δοκεῖ μὲν οὖν, φησί, [sc. Aristotle] φανερῶς πρῶτος ἐπὶ τὴν τοιαύτην αἰτίαν ἐλθεῖν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πρὸ αὐτοῦ Ἑρμότιμος ὁ πολίτης αὐτοῦ δόξαι ἂν τῆς τοιαύτης αἰτίας μνημονεῦσαι. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν ἅμα τῇ ποιητικῇ αἰτίᾳ τήν τε τοῦ καλῶς καὶ τεταγμένως γίνεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα ἀρχὴν καὶ αἰτίαν τῶν ὄντων ἔθεντο (τοιοῦτος γὰρ ὁ νοῦς), καὶ τὴν τοιαύτην κίνησιν τὴν ἐπὶ τὸ εὖ ἄγουσαν ἐκ τῆς αἰτίας δηλονότι τῆς ποιητικῆς· τὴν γὰρ τοῦ καλῶς κινεῖσθαι καὶ γίνεσθαι, οὐ τὴν τοῦ μόνον γίνεσθαι καὶ κινεῖσθαι αἰτίαν ἀρχὴν ἔθεντο· τοιοῦτος γὰρ ὁ νοῦς.

Aristotle

177

‘things’ in order – after which Mind withdrew from nature and from the entire world, which thereafter functioned as an automaton. Plotinus was happy with the prevalent and lonely imagery of Mind, which he revelled to identify with his own One: And Anaxagoras also, when he says that the Intellect (or Mind, νοῦν)⁶³ is pure and un mixed, posits that the first principle is simple and that the One is separate, but he neglected to give an accurate account because of his antiquity.⁶⁴

However, Plotinus did not actually care to study Anaxagoras, and rested content with a Peripatetic criticism against him. When Anaxagoras makes his mixture matter, and says that it is not a capacity for every thing but contains everything in actuality, he does away with Mind which he introduces by not making it the giver of shape and form, and not prior to matter but simultaneous with it. But this simultaneity is impossible. For if the mixture participates in being the ex istent is prior; and if both this mixture and that other [being] are existent, there will be need of a third over them, different from them. If then it is necessary for the maker to be prior, why did the forms have to be in small pieces in the matter, and why did Mind have to sep arate them out with endless trouble, when it could, as matter is without quality, extend quality and shape over the whole of it? And how is it not impossible that everything should be in everything?⁶⁵

This criticism by Plotinus is reasonable, and Aeneas of Gaza admired the rationale of this point, which he used to his own purposes.⁶⁶ Aeneas took this up while caring little about Plotinus not being well informed about the real philosophy of Anaxagoras. For indeed Plotinus at this point contradicts himself, since his criticism uses a Peripatetic logic, whereas Aristotle maintained that Anaxagoras had posited one supreme principle, that is, the Mind:

 The established habit of English speaking scholarship is to translate the same term Νοῦς as either Mind whenever reference is made to Anaxagoras, or Intellect in Neoplatonic context.  Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.9.  Plotinus, op. cit. II.4.7: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ τὸ μίγμα ὕλην ποιῶν, οὐκ ἐπιτηδειότητα πρὸς πάντα, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἐνεργείᾳ ἔχειν λέγων ὃν εἰσάγει νοῦν ἀναιρεῖ οὐκ αὐτὸν τὴν μορφὴν καὶ τὸ εἶδος διδόντα ποιῶν οὐδὲ πρότερον τῆς ὕλης ἀλλ᾿ ἅμα. ᾿Aδύνατον δὲ τὸ ἅμα. Εἰ γὰρ μετέχει τὸ μίγμα τοῦ εἶναι, πρότερον τὸ ὄν· εἰ δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ὂν τὸ μίγμα, κἀκεῖνο, ἄλλου ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῖς δεήσει τρίτου. Εἰ οὖν πρότερον ἀνάγκη τὸν δημιουργὸν εἶναι, τί ἔδει τὰ εἴδη κατὰ σμικρὰ ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ εἶναι, εἶτα τὸν νοῦν διὰ πραγμάτων ἀνηνύτων διακρίνειν ἐξὸν ἀποίῳ οὔσῃ τὴν ποιότητα καὶ τὴν μορφὴν ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ἐκτεῖναι; Τό τε πᾶν ἐν παντὶ εἶναι πῶς οὐκ ἀδύνατον;  Aeneas of Gaza, Theophrastus, p. 46: Καὶ τοῦτο Πλωτῖνος περιεργαζόμενος τὴν ὕλην σαφῶς πάνυ προλέγει καὶ τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν κωμῳδεῖ ὅτι μὴ προλέγει, ἀλλ᾿ ἅμα τὸν Δημιουργὸν καὶ τὴν ὕλην εἰσήγαγεν· ἀδύνατον δὲ ἅμα, δεῖ γὰρ εἶναι πρεσβύτερον τοῦ ποιήματος τὸν ποιητήν.

178

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

Anaxagoras indeed seems to regard soul and mind as different, as we have said before, but he treats them both as of one nature, except that he regards mind as above all things and the supreme principle (πλὴν ἀρχήν γε τὸν νοῦν τίθεται μάλιστα πάντων); at any rate, he speaks of it as the only existing being, which is simple, unmixed, and pure (μόνον γοῦν φησὶν αὐτὸν τῶν ὄντων ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ τε καὶ καθαρόν). But he assigns both the capacity of knowing and of moving to the same principle (ἀποδίδωσι δ᾿ ἄμφω τῇ αὐτῇ ἀρχῇ, τό τε γινώσκειν καὶ τὸ κινεῖν) when he says that Mind set everything in motion.⁶⁷

Philosophers were confounded as to whether Anaxagoras identified soul with mind; but the fact is that he did not actually care to say anything about the soul, as subsequent thinkers did.⁶⁸ The origin of confusion is once again the misinformed Plato, who wrote at one point that the world ‘was decorated by the soul and by the mind’.⁶⁹ Aristotle, for his part, could not resolve as to what Anaxagoras really believed about this. Quite reasonably, he says that the answer depends on what one understands a soul to be: is it the cause of movement only, or it is also the means to know? Aristotle correctly remarks, that Anaxagoras did not elaborate on these questions (ἧττον διασαφεῖ περὶ αὐτῶν).⁷⁰ It was clear nevertheless that ‘Anaxagoras alone’ posited that Mind ‘is impassible and it has nothing in common with the rest of beings’.⁷¹

 Aristotle, De Anima, 405a. Likewise, John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 72. Simplicius, commA nim, p. 25: ἴσως δὲ τὸ ἔνιοι [De Anima, 403b28] πρόσκειται καὶ δι᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόραν, οὐ σαφῶς ψυχὴν λέγοντα τὸν νοῦν, ὃν πρῶτον κινοῦν τίθεται. Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina, 45: ᾿Aνα ξαγόρας δὲ οὐ σαφῶς ψυχὴν λέγει τὸν νοῦν, ὃν πρῶτον κινοῦν τίθεται.  See infra, pp. 193; 595; 1229.  Plato, Cratylus, 400a: Τί δέ; καὶ τὴν τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων φύσιν οὐ πιστεύεις ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ νοῦν καὶ ψυχὴν εἶναι τὴν διακοσμοῦσαν καὶ ἔχουσαν;  Aristotle, Physica, 404b.  Aristotle, loc. cit. ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ μόνος ἀπαθῆ φησιν εἶναι τὸν νοῦν, καὶ κοινὸν οὐθὲν οὐθενὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἔχειν. Cf. Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 13: ᾿Aριστοτέλης δὲ ὁμολογουμένως τὸν νοῦν εἰσηγήσατό τι τὸ τῆς ὕλης ὡς ὕλης αἴτιον· τοῦ μὲν γὰρ εἴδους τὸ παράδειγμα ἢ ὁ δημιουργός, ἢ καὶ τῆς ὕλης ἡ ἑκατέρου θεότης· τοῦ μὲν ὡς κοσμουμένης ὑπὸ τοῦ εἴδους, τοῦ δὲ ὡς δεχομένης ἁπλῶς τὸ εἶδος. Aristotle was echoed by the following commentators: Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 10. Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 15. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.5. Nevertheless, as an appendix to Aristotle’s words, Themistius added his own understanding; the ὁμοιομερῆ are corporeal entities: μόνον γοῦν αὐτὸν ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀμιγῆ προσαγορεύει, τὰς δὲ ὁμοιομερείας ὡς ὕλην αὐτῷ ὑποτίθησιν. But this was only meant to reproduce the Aristotelian pattern of the incorporeal active ‘forms’ imposing themselves upon the passive ‘formless matter’. See infra, note 84: Sextus Empiricus notes that, to Anaxagoras, the Mind was ‘the active principle’ (δραστήριον ὑποτιθέμενος ἀρχήν). Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Ad versus Physicos 1), 6. This was the distorting impact of Aristotle. For the Mind is a ‘ruler’ and ‘su perintendent’ and ‘king’, but he is not the proximate active agent, since this ‘God’ acts by means of the Anaxagorean principles.

Assessing the criticism

179

Plotinus was justified in being apprehensive about the possibility of allowing for two principles to be there. For one of his cardinal axioms was that, once multiplicity is there, of necessecity simplicity should precede it.⁷² This is what Origen (who ‘shared the same education as Plotinus’, according to Proclus) took seriously into account while forming his own doctrine of creation: he employed the pattern of Anaxagoras, and instituted multiplicity into the Second Person of the Trinity. This multiplicity of logoi was the ‘embroidered body of the Logos’, which was placed in this Logos, or Wisdom. However, this is preceded by the oneness of the Trinitarian God, who is ‘one and simple’, and yet, his Logos ‘becomes many’:⁷³ This multiplicity, which is oneness all the same, comprises the logoi’ (λόγοι). In other words, these logoi are but a plain parallel to Anaxagoras’ principles, that Aristotle called ὁμοιομερῆ. In all cases, the problem to be solved was exactly the same, namely, how oneness becomes manyness, or, in Pythagorean terms, how the Monad becomes Dyad, which we will come upon at several points in this book. Proclus was anxious to distinguish his cherished One from the supreme principle of some earlier philosophers, such Anaxagoras, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In reference to this, he says that the One ‘is not incorporeal soul, as Anaxagoras maintained’ (οὔτε ψυχὴν ἀσώματον, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἔλεγεν).⁷⁴ Damascius had reasonable doubts about Plato’s representation of Anaxagoras, especially the identification of Mind with the soul. In fact he doubted as to whether the exclusively Neoplatonic notion of ‘imparticipable mind’ (ἀμετάβατος νοῦς)⁷⁵ could be seen as originating in Anaxagoras.⁷⁶

Assessing the criticism Once ancient references to Anaxagoras are studied, it becomes all too clear that this was made on superficial and second-hand knowledge of his philosophy. This  Plotinus, Enneades, V.3.12 & 16; V.6.3; VI.6.11.  Origen, commJohn, I.20.119: Ὁ θεὸς μὲν οὖν πάντη ἕν ἐστι καὶ ἁπλοῦν· ὁ δὲ σωτὴρ ἡμῶν διὰ τὰ πολλά, ἐπεὶ προέθετο αὐτὸν ὁ θεὸς ἱλαστήριον καὶ ἀπαρχὴν πάσης τῆς κτίσεως, πολλὰ γίνεται ἢ καὶ τάχα πάντα ταῦτα, καθὰ χρῄζει αὐτοῦ ἡ ἐλευθεροῦσθαι δυναμένη πᾶσα κτίσις.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1214.  Cf. Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 211; commTim, p. 12. commEucl, p. 214. Damascius, In Par menidem, p. 13. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 422; 792. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 7.6.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 13: Ἔτι δὲ τέταρτον ἐπιστήσωμεν ὅτι νῦν ἱστορεῖ τὸν ᾿Aναξα γόραν εἰσηγεῖσθαι τὸν ἀμετάβατον νοῦν· καίτοι ἄδηλον εἰ οὕτω τίθεται τὸν νοῦν ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ἐν ἄλλοις δὲ αὐτὸς ψυχὴν ἄζωνον ὑποτίθεσθαι τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόρειον νοῦν.

180

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

includes certainly Plato and Aristotle, even though the latter was at pains to criticize Anaxagoras recurrently through extensive analyses. We should therefore assess this criticism and see how much of fairness was there, if at all. The fundamental mistake about Anaxagoras was the allegation that, once Mind set things in order, it withdrew to idleness, and almost vanished from the world. This is the criticism by Plato, as well as by Aristotle, even though the latter acknowledged that Anaxagoras ‘was a sane man in contrast to the haphazard statements of his predecessors’ when he affirmed that ‘there is Mind in nature, just as in animals, and that this is the cause of all order and arrangement’.⁷⁷ The criticism by Plato has the standard characteristic of many of his statements: however, this is either contradicted or mitigated by statements made at other points of his work written at different periods of his life. Thus, whereas in the Phaedo 98b–c he represented Anaxagoras as having assigned his Mind with no role in the world, in the Cratylus, he says different things:⁷⁸ Justice is what Anaxagoras says it is, namely, it is Mind. For he says that Mind is ruled only by itself, it is mixed with nothing, orders all things, and permeates them all.⁷⁹

How could it be possible to argue that this Mind stands aloof from the world once it made it, whereas it is claimed that this same Mind ‘permeates all’ of this world? Alexander of Aphrodisias rendered Aristotle declaring that Anaxagoras posited not only a creative cause, but also he made it the cause of whatever good happens in the world.⁸⁰ Likewise, the hardly known Christian apologist Hermias

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984b.  If we follow the arrangement of Plato’s works in tetralogies according to Thrasyllus (Dio genes Laertius, Vitae, 3.56 58; 9.45), Phaedo is the last dialogue of the first tetralogy, and Cra tylus is the first of the second tetralogy. This may mean that Plato revised his views about Anax agoras shortly after he wrote the Phaedo. That Cratylus is the later of the two dialogues may also be inferred from the fact that the etymology of ᾅδης from ἀειδὴς (formless) (404b) is rejected, whereas it is accepted in the Phaedo, 80d.  Plato, Cratylus, 413c: εἶναι δὲ τὸ δίκαιον ὃ λέγει ᾿Aναξαγόρας, νοῦν εἶναι τοῦτο· αὐτοκράτορα γὰρ αὐτὸν ὄντα καὶ οὐδενὶ μεμειγμένον πάντα φησὶν αὐτὸν κοσμεῖν τὰ πράγματα διὰ πάντων ἰόντα.  Alexander of Aphrodisias (comm. on Metaphysica, 984b8), commMetaph, p. 32: οὗτοι μὲν [sc. ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Ἑρμότιμος] οὖν ἅμα τῇ ποιητικῇ αἰτίᾳ τήν τε τοῦ καλῶς καὶ τεταγμένως γί νεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα ἀρχὴν καὶ αἰτίαν τῶν ὄντων ἔθεντο (τοιοῦτος γὰρ ὁ νοῦς), καὶ τὴν τοιαύτην κίνησιν τὴν ἐπὶ τὸ εὖ ἄγουσαν ἐκ τῆς αἰτίας δηλονότι τῆς ποιητικῆς· τὴν γὰρ τοῦ καλῶς κινε ῖσθαι καὶ γίνεσθαι, οὐ τὴν τοῦ μόνον γίνεσθαι καὶ κινεῖσθαι αἰτίαν ἀρχὴν ἔθεντο· τοιοῦτος γὰρ ὁ νοῦς.

Assessing the criticism

181

(probably third century, also known as Hermias the Philosopher) had no doubts about the Mind of Anaxagoras acting ceaselessly within the world: Anaxagoras teaches me that Mind is the beginning of everything; he is also the Cause and Lord of everything; he bestows order upon the disorderly, movement upon the immovable, distinction upon those which are mixed, and adorns what is not decorated.⁸¹

This statement, which does justice to Anaxagoras, is reiterated also by John Philoponus commenting on how Aristotle saw the difference between Anaxagoras and Empedocles: in the primordial state of all the ὁμοιομέρειαι being fused, the Mind distinguished them, so that interaction between them began, and so did the function of the created order. This was not a momentary act by the Mind, but a continuous action, which will be performed for ever as much as is it performed now (νῦν δὲ ἀεί).⁸² Despite Plato’s criticism, Harpocration wrote that Anaxagoras’ Mind ‘is the guardian of everything’ (φρουρὸν πάντων).⁸³ Likewise, to Sextus Empiricus, ‘when Anaxagoras wrote that all things were together, and Mind came and set them in order, he assumes that the Mind, which according to him is God, is an active principle.’⁸⁴ Later still, Gennadius Scholarius had it that, to Anaxagoras, everything ‘moves according to the mastery and absolute rule’ of the Mind (κατὰ τὴν ἐπικράτειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν δεσποτείαν).⁸⁵ In view of such testimonies, when Simplicius quoted from the book of Anaxagoras saying that Mind ‘rules over all things that are animate, whether big or small’,⁸⁶ he was accurate.

 Hermias (Christian philosopher and apologist, perhaps second third century), Irrisio Genti lium Philosophorum, 6: ὅταν μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρας παραλάβῃ με, ταῦτα παιδεύει· ἀρχὴ πάντων ὁ νοῦς καὶ οὗτος αἴτιος καὶ κύριος τῶν ὅλων καὶ παρέχει τάξιν τοῖς ἀτάκτοις καὶ κίνησιν τοῖς ἀκι νήτοις καὶ διάκρισιν τοῖς μεμιγμένοις καὶ κόσμον τοῖς ἀκόσμοις. ταῦτα λέγων ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐστί μοι φίλος καὶ τῷ δόγματι πείθομαι.  John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 93 4: καὶ νῦν δὲ ἀεὶ ἐκκρίνεσθαι ἐξ ἀλλήλων· ἕκαστον γὰρ μῖγμα τι εἶναι φησὶ πολλῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν.  Harpocration, Lexicon in Decem Oratores Atticos, p. 33: ᾿Aναξαγόρας· σοφιστής, … νοῦς δ᾿ ἐπεκαλεῖτο, ἐπεὶ ὕλην τε καὶ νοῦν πάντων φρουρὸν εἶπεν. The lemma was copied by Photius, Lexicon, entry 1573; Suda, letter alpha, entry 1981; and, slightly modified, by George Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, p. 278.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 6: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας φησίν· ἦν πάντα ὁμοῦ χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ ἐλθὼν αὐτὰ διεκόσμησεν, τὸν μὲν νοῦν, ὅς ἐστι θεὸς κατ᾿ αὐτόν, δραστήριον ὑποτιθέμενος ἀρχήν.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.7.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156 & 176 7: ἔστι γὰρ λεπτότατόν τε πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον καὶ γνώμην περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἔχει καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον, καὶ ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ τὰ μείζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ.

182

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

Furthermore, Philoponus goes on, there is a difference between Anaxagoras and Empedocles: to the former, once the Mind introduced the distinction of the homoiomeries into the primordial fusion of them, it continues to do so for ever (ἐσαεὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖν), and he allowed for no possibility for the universe to revert to that fusion ever again. By contrast, Empedocles sustained that there will be infinite intermittent returns to that primeval state: the elements are distinguished from the Sphaerus, then they are fused again, and this recurrent fusion and distinction takes place infinitely (the former, because of Love, the latter because of Strife), and each period lasts for a specific period of time.⁸⁷ Likewise, Philoponus saw this Mind as constantly moving the universe (τὸν δὲ νοῦν ἔλεγε κινεῖν τὸ πᾶν), indeed he went as long as to consider whether Anaxagoras identified this with the Cosmic Soul.⁸⁸ By the same token, Asclepius of Tralles remarked that ‘Anaxagoras alone introduced the Mind as the King of the universe’ (᾿Aναξαγόρας μόνος ἐπέστησε νοῦν βασιλεύειν τοῦ παντός),⁸⁹ this Mind stands by ‘plants, animals, and by the nature as a whole, and it is the cause of creation of the universe and of the order in it’.⁹⁰ Olympiodorus of Alexandria wrote likewise: “Anaxagoras was the first who introduced the Mind over things; this is the exalted Ruler of what exists as inferior reality, whereas this [Mind] is not [ontologically] placed among these things.”⁹¹ Simplicius aptly took for granted that ‘Mind stands by all beings granting each one of them its distinctive character, and this is his function’ (ἀλλὰ πῶς βούλεται λέγεσθαι διακρῖναι τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ὁ νοῦς, εἴπερ ἐφέστηκε μὲν τοῖς οὖσιν ὡς διακρίνων αὐτὰ καὶ τοῦτο ἔχει ἔργον, ἀδύνατον δέ ἐστι τοῦτο;).⁹² This is one of the points where he engages in rendering Anaxagoras’ thought cor-

 John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 94: ὁ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἅπαξ τὸν νοῦν φησιν ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος τοῦ πρώτου ἀρξάμενον διακρίνειν εἰσαεὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖν. By the same token, Themistius, In Aristo telis Physica Paraphrasis, p. 13: ᾿Aναξαγόρας τε καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς, ὁ μὲν τάς τε ὁμοιομερείας καὶ τὸν νοῦν, ὁ δὲ τὰ στοιχεῖα τὰ τέσσαρα … ἀλλ᾿ ὁ μὲν καὶ παύει τὴν ἔκκρισιν ταύτην καὶ πάλιν ἄρχεται κατὰ περιόδους, ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ δὲ ἅπαξ ἀρχὴν λαβοῦσα οὐκέτι τελευτᾷ.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 91.  Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 4.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 28: ὁ μέντοι γε ᾿Aναξαγόρας νοῦν ἐπέστησεν ἐν τοῖς φυτοῖς καὶ ἐν τοῖς ζῴοις, καὶ ἐν τῇ φύσει καθόλου, καί φησι νοῦν αἴτιον εἶναι τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τῆς τάξεως πάσης.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem Commentarii, 137 8: παρὰ μὲν ᾿Aναξα γόρου ὠφελήθη τὸ ἄρχειν, πρῶτος γὰρ οὗτος τὸν νοῦν εἰσήγαγε τοῖς πράγμασιν, ἐξῃρημένως ἄρχοντα τῶν μετ᾿ αὐτόν, μὴ ἐγκατατεταγμένον αὐτοῖς ὄντα.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 175 6. Italics indicate Aristotle’s words from Physica, 188a9 10.

Assessing the criticism

183

rectly against the misconceptions of Aristotle, who urged that ‘Mind wants to distinguish the ὁμοιομέρειαι, but it is impossible for him to do so’.⁹³ Simplicius’ answer is as polite as is it unrelenting: “As far as I know (ὅσον ἐμὲ εἰδέναι),⁹⁴ this is not what Anaxagoras said, namely, that ‘whereas Mind wants to distinguish’ the ὁμοιομέρειαι, ‘it is impossible for him to do so’. What he really said is that Mind is the one who moves things and causes them to revolve,⁹⁵ and decorates them, and he is the Cause of all distinction’ (ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν ὁ κινῶν καὶ περιάγων καὶ διακοσμῶν καὶ τῆς ἐκκρίσεως πάσης αἴτιος).⁹⁶ It was this distinction that gave rise to the sensible world, since ‘it would have been impossible for material distinction to come to pass in the absence of motion’ (οὐ γὰρ ἦν διάκρισιν σωματικὴν ἄνευ κινήσεως γενέσθαι).⁹⁷ Simplicius did not really need to say much about this. For it was only a few pages before that point that he had pointed out that, according to Anaxagoras (and unlike Empedocles), there are no recurring cosmic periods: Once the world was made out of the primordial mixture, it is maintained in existence by the Mind, who stands by administering it and determining [its functions] (ἅπαξ γενόμενον τὸν κόσμον ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος διαμένειν λοιπὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ ἐφεστῶτος διοικούμενόν τε καὶ διακρινόμενον).⁹⁸

Wherefore, the Neoplatonic liabilities to Anaxagoras are all too evident.⁹⁹ To put it simply, any noetic function by human intellect or rational procedure in the na-

 Aristotle, Physica, 188a9 10: ὥστε ἄτοπος τὰ ἀδύνατα ζητῶν ὁ νοῦς, εἴπερ βούλεται μὲν δι ακρῖναι, τοῦτο δὲ ποιῆσαι ἀδύνατον καὶ κατὰ τὸ ποσὸν καὶ κατὰ τὸ ποιόν. For all his mistakes about Anaxagoras, Aristotle did recognize the notion of will attributed to the Mind.  Simplicius makes this modest statement, but he was the sole one who knew: there is no evi dence of any other author or commentator having read Anaxagoras’ work first hand. All the other references that we have originate in Aristotle who in turn wrote about them mostly from hearsay.  This is a allusion to heavenly bodies which ‘rotate’, as much as is it an implicit suggestion about the soul which ‘revolves’. Cf. Plato, Leges, 898d. Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.2.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 175 6, assessing Aristotle, Physica, 188a9 10. By contrast, when John Philoponus came upon this point while commenting on Aristotle’s work on the soul, he actually said nothing different from Aristotle’s text: quite simply, he had a limited knowledge of Anaxagoras’ true philosophy. Cf. John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 101; 107.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1123.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 154. Cf. op. cit. p. 176 (just cited in note 92, in relation to Aristotle’s criti cism); also, pp. 175 6: ἀλλὰ πῶς βούλεται λέγεσθαι διακρῖναι τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ὁ νοῦς, εἴπερ ἐφέστηκε μὲν τοῖς οὖσιν ὡς διακρίνων αὐτὰ καὶ τοῦτο ἔχει ἔργον, ἀδύνατον δέ ἐστι τοῦτο;  Cf. Proclus, commTim, p. 403: νοῦς ἐφέστηκε τοῖς ὅλοις καὶ διακυβερνᾷ τὸ πᾶν. Op. cit. p. 406: εἴτε ἄρα νοῦς ἐφέστηκε τοῖς ὅλοις, ἔμψυχον τὸ πᾶν, εἴτε ἔμψυχον, καὶ ἔννουν ἐστί.

184

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

ture is owing to no other than the Mind: particular instances are only specific manifestations of the one Mind being and functioning in the world. There are no different ‘Minds’, as it were: there is only one, which functions upon both the entire universe and any particular operation involving rationality. This is why Simplicius quotes Anaxagoras’ own words: ‘the Mind is the selfsame one, be it the greater or the lesser one’ (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων),¹⁰⁰ and ‘the Mind has control over all things that are animate, both the larger and the smaller ones’.¹⁰¹ It is plain, therefore, that Plato’s remark in the Phaedo alleging that Anaxagoras introduced the Mind and then he did not make anything of this, was an uninformed one that was reproduced by Aristotle because of the latter’s spiteful mood. To sum up, Plato made Socrates say that Anaxagoras made no use of the Mind at all; for Mind was ascribed no causal power whatever in the ordering of the universe, and everything was explained away by means of ‘airs, and aethers, and waters, and a host of other absurd things’. Following Plato, Aristotle said that ‘Anaxagoras uses the Mind as a deus ex machina to account for the formation of the world; and, whenever he is at a loss to explain why anything necessarily exists, he drags it in; but in other cases he makes the cause anything rather than the Mind.’¹⁰² Against this, posterity paid little attention to the particular claim of both Plato and Aristotle. For it would have appeared absurd for Anaxagoras to say that the Mind rules over everything while keeping aloof. Diogenes of Apollonia (fl. 425 BC), who wrote shortly after Anaxagoras, and was evidently influenced by him, made ‘air’ an intelligent supreme principle, instead of the Mind. He coupled Anaxagoras’ πάντων κρατεῖν (Mind ‘ruling over everything’) with καὶ ὑπὸ τούτου πάντας καὶ κυβερνᾶσθαι.¹⁰³ From Philodemus of Gadara (c. 110 BC ‒ c. 40/35 BC) and Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC),¹⁰⁴ up until the Byzantine philosopher and astron-

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 156; 177.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 985a: ᾿Aναξαγόρας τε γὰρ μηχανῇ χρῆται τῷ νῷ πρὸς τὴν κοσμο ποιίαν, καὶ ὅταν ἀπορήσῃ διὰ τίν᾿ αἰτίαν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἐστί, τότε παρέλκει αὐτόν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις πάντα μᾶλλον αἰτιᾶται τῶν γιγνομένων ἢ νοῦν.  Diogenes of Apollonia, fr. 5, apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 152 3. καί μοι δοκεῖ τὸ τὴν νόησιν ἔχον εἶναι ὁ ἀὴρ καλούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, καὶ ὑπὸ τούτου πάντας καὶ κυβερνᾶσθαι καὶ πάντων κρατεῖν· ἀπὸ γάρ μοι τοῦτο ἔθος δοκεῖ εἶναι καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶν ἀφῖχθαι καὶ πάντα διατιθέναι καὶ ἐν παντὶ ἐνεῖναι. καὶ ἔστιν οὐδὲ ἓν ὅτι μὴ μετέχει τούτου· μετέχει δὲ οὐδὲ ἓν ὁμοίως τὸ ἕτε ρον τῷ ἑτέρῳ, ἀλλὰ πολλοὶ τρόποι καὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ ἀέρος καὶ τῆς νοήσιός εἰσιν. Cf. op. cit. p. 156: ὥστε μηδενὸς χρήματος κρατεῖν ὁμοίως ὡς καὶ μόνον ἐόντα ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ.  Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I.11.26: “Anaxagoras, who was taught by Anaximenes, was the first to maintain that the order and disposition of all things is designed and perfected by the

Assessing the criticism

185

omer Nicephorus Gregoras (c. 1295‒1360),¹⁰⁵ all authors portrayed the action of Mind as an omnitemporal one: “God was, and is, and will be, and rules and controls all things. The Mind arranged all that exists, which is unlimited.”¹⁰⁶ I am going to argue later that the Mind of Anaxagoras was taken up by the Stoics and became the universal Logos, whereas the principles became the Stoic λόγοι (which play also an important part in Porphyry), and they are also the fundamental notion of Origen’s doctrine of creation.¹⁰⁷ The later Stoics spoke of the ‘seminal logoi’ (σπερματικοὶ λόγοι) which confer rationality on everything, including human beings, and they are the immediate active agents by means of which all things in the universe function. Origen asserted that the Logos / Son is present both in the transcendent timelessness, as much as is he present in the entire world sustaining it, as well as present in each individual rational being.¹⁰⁸ On that account, Anaxagoras’ own words are of particular importance. Speaking of his principles, he says this: There are many shares of many [things] (μοῖραι δὲ πολλαὶ πολλῶν εἰσι).¹⁰⁹ But none of them is altogether separate from one another, except for the Mind (παντάπασι δὲ οὐδὲν ἀποκρί νεται οὐδὲ διακρίνεται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου πλὴν νοῦ). The entire Mind is the same, both the greater and the lesser one (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων). And

power and reason of an unlimited mind’ (inde Anaxagoras qui accepit ab Anaximene discipli nam, primus omnium rerum discriptionem et modum mentis infinitae vi ac ratione dissignari et confici voluit).  Nicephorus Gregoras, Historia Romana, p. 336: “According to Anaxagoras, the Mind, which arranges everything and is the cause of everything, is wise “ (ἐπεὶ μέντοι κατὰ τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν νοῦς ἐστι σοφὸς ὁ τὰ πάντα διακοσμῶν καὶ πάντων αἴτιος).  Philodemus of Gadara (Epicurean philosopher, poet, c. 110 BC c. 40/35 BC), De Pietate, c. 4a: θεὸν γεγονέναι τε καὶ εἶναι καὶ ἔσεσθαι καὶ πάντων ἄρχειν καὶ κρατεῖν. καὶ νοῦν ἄπειρα ὄντα μεμειγμένα τὰ σύμπαντα διακοσμῆσαι. Cf. John Philoponus, commAnim, pp. 522 3: ᾿Aναξαγόρας πάντα λέγων ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν τὸν νοῦν οὐχ ὑπέθετο ἐξ αὐτῶν, ἵνα πάντων κρατῇ, τουτέ στιν ἵνα πάντα γινώσκῃ. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 156: ὥστε μηδενὸς χρήματος κρατεῖν ὁμοίως ὡς καὶ μόνον ἐόντα ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ. ἔστι γὰρ λεπτότατόν τε πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον, καὶ γνώμην γε περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἴσχει καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον· καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ τὰ μείζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ. Op. cit. pp. 176 7: ἔστι γὰρ λεπτότατόν τε πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον καὶ γνώμην περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἔχει καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον, καὶ ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ τὰ μείζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Tho mae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.7: περὶ οὗ δὴ νοῦ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἶπεν, ὅτι ἔστιν ἀμιγής, ἵνα πάντων κρατῇ.  See COT, pp. 39 64, and infra, pp. 867 963.  COT, ‘The Place of the Logos’, pp. 165 72.  Anaxagoras would have said πολλῶν χρημάτων. He meant the infinite possibilities of the principles interacting with each other in order to produces the infinity of objects and phenom ena in the universe.

186

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

nothing else [except for the Mind] is the same as the other (ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί),¹¹⁰ but it is they [sc. principles] which prevail in a certain thing and manifestly make [this thing] what it is and what it was (ἀλλ᾿ ὅτῳ πλεῖστα ἔνι, ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν).¹¹¹

This passage is pregnant with the core of Anaxagoras’ philosophy, but I will explain only what is relevant to the present point. He maintains a notion of a ‘Greater Mind’ and a ‘Lesser Mind’. What does this mean? It means the Mind as a whole (the Cosmic Logos, of the Stoics, and of Origen) and the Mind which is severally present in each individual being or phenomenon, not simply in each man, by means of its surrogates, namely, the principles. For it is not only human rationality, but also the making and growth of animals and plants, as well as all natural processes, that can occur because of the vicarious activity stemming from the Mind. In other words, the Mind acts ceaselessly within the world, it sustains its existence, it grants it cohesion, and makes each and every particular being and phenomenon to be and to become what it is and what it becomes. This is the ‘principle of distinction’ (ἀρχὴ διακρίσεως), which Aristotle did not understand: once he extrapolated materialism, he took it that Anaxagoras’ statement ‘all things were together’ meant that ‘flesh and bone’, and the like, were all together. He did not want see that Anaxagoras spoke of a state in which the principles that govern the being and becoming of the universe, were not formed yet as individual ones, but they were only fused and Mind made them individual causes, as well as objects of contemplation. It is not the case that ‘a piece of flesh comes out of a piece of bone’,¹¹² as Aristotle put it in a way that is deplorable and utterly unbefitting his genius. Anaxagoras simply said that things and phenomena come to be as results of certain concurrence of specific natural laws (laws being only a specific kind of principles). Once things were ‘distinguished’ (in effect: ‘made’, as Simplicius explains later) all cosmic laws are there, and they are ‘all together’, since they are incorporeal. But what becomes, or what happens, depends on the prevailing circumstances in each individual case, notably on the specific principles which concur at a time, while all principles continue to be together, because they are incorporeal. This is what Anaxagoras said, and this is his own ‘principle of distinction’ (ἀρχὴ

 This is a consequence of the Mind having ‘distinguished’ the ὁμοιομερῆ: each and every principle is different from all others. They produce all aspects of reality by interacting with each other.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157.  Aristotle, Physica, 203a.

Assessing the criticism

187

διακρίσεως), which Psellus correctly considered as both an act by the Mind ‘in the beginning’ and as uninterrupted action: for ‘in the beginning was the Mind and his intelligence’ (καὶ ἦν ἀρχὴ ὁ νοῦς καὶ ἡ ἐκείνου νόησις).¹¹³ One could have expected that, whereas Aristotle criticized Anaxagoras ruthlessly, he should have paid no attention to the specific unlearned point made by Plato, namely, that Anaxagoras invented the Mind but he made nothing of it. For Plato’s criticism was too fallacious to deserve serious consideration, which is why it was given no credit by posterity. Surprisingly though, Aristotle did employ the criticism of Plato. Since I happen to believe in Aristotle’s extraordinary brilliance, I have come also to believe that his invective against Anaxagoras was only the product of psychological bias and spite. For the latter had reached scientific heights that Aristotle never attained to, and it is only the present century, with the new scientific knowledge available to us, that can assess certain aspects of Anaxagoras’ thought properly. Thus, Simplicius refers to Aristotle quoting Empedocles, who had maintained that ‘a certain whole is consisted of elements that are not arranged at random, but according to a certain principle and specified composition’ (λόγῳ τινὶ καὶ συνθέσει).¹¹⁴ But this (initially Pythagorean thesis) is exactly the way in which things are formed according to Anaxagoras. Why is it then that Anaxagoras is not mentioned by Aristotle with respect to this? Simplicius quotes from Alexander of Aphrodisias who wrote that Aristotle ‘did not mention Anaxagoras at this point, even though the latter had posited the Mind as one of his principles; perhaps [Aristotle] did so because he [sc. Anaxagoras] did not make use of the Mind in respect of the [doctrine of] creation’.¹¹⁵ Since Alexander’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics is not extant, we have not this specific portion. However, we can detect this in his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where he made a scholion on Aristotle’s claim that Anaxagoras entertained only the notion of material ὁμοιομερῆ, whereas he left the Mind

 Michael Psellus, commPhys, 3.12.  Aristotle, De Anima, 410a. This is from the first book of this work. Simplicius quotes this portion citing ‘the first Book of the Physics’ (Λέγει γοῦν [Aristotle] ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν Φυσικῶν). There should be no doubt that this is a scribal error rather than one by the meticulous Simpli cius.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 300 (quoting Alexander of Aphrodisias): ᾿Aναξαγόρου δέ, φησὶν ᾿Aλέξανδρος, οὐκ ἐμνημόνευσε καίτοι τὸν νοῦν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς τιθέντος, ἴσως, φησίν, ὅτι μὴ προσ χρῆται αὐτῷ ἐν τῇ γενέσει.

188

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

aside.¹¹⁶ The comment which Alexander makes on Aristotle is in fact the comment that Plato had made earlier: Although he [sc. Aristotle] mentioned Anaxagoras and Empedocles as those who posited generative causes, yet again he mentioned them in order to declare which causes they used along with their predecessors, namely, that they used material ones. He blamed them for having entertained the notion of generative causes only in mere words, whereas in fact they did not say anything about the role [of those causes] in the process of gener ation, which they produce from the [material] elements.¹¹⁷

This is too much of distortion, Simplicius would have thought, which is why he takes exception to this Aristotelian falsification urged also by Alexander. But it is quite plain that [Anaxagoras] does make use [of the generative causes]. For he says that generation is nothing other than secretion, which secretion is effected by motion, and the cause of motion is the Mind.¹¹⁸

Then, Simplicius supplies posterity with one more precious passage of Anaxagoras:

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984a17 19 (writing about the views of Anaxagoras): “From this ac count it might be supposed that the only Cause is one of the kind called material.” (Ἐκ μὲν οὖν τούτων μόνην τις αἰτίαν νομίσειεν ἂν τὴν ἐν ὕλης εἴδει λεγομένην).  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 28 29: παρέθετο γὰρ τὰς ὑλικάς τε καὶ σωμα τικὰς ἀρχάς. καίτοι ἐμνημόνευσε καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρου, οἳ καὶ ποιητικὰ ἔθεντο αἴτια, ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτων ἐμνημόνευσε δηλῶν τίσι καὶ οὗτοι παρὰ τοὺς πρὸ αὐτῶν ὑλικοῖς αἰτίοις ἐχρήσαντο, ἐπεὶ καὶ τούτους ᾐτιάσατο ὡς μέχρι λόγου κεχρημένους τοῖς ποιητικοῖς αἰτίοις, οὐ κέτι δὲ αὐτὰ παραλαμβάνοντας ἐν τῇ γενέσει τούτων ἃ ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων γεννῶσι.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 300: ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι μὲν προσχρῆται, δῆλον, εἴπερ τὴν γένεσιν οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ ἔκκρισιν εἶναι φησί, τὴν δὲ ἔκκρισιν ὑπὸ τῆς κινήσεως γίνεσθαι, τῆς δὲ κινήσεως αἴτιον εἶναι τὸν νοῦν. At the same point (p. 300), Simplicius mentions the criticism by Plato, which Aristotle employed, too. It appeared to Simplicius that Aristotle styled ‘Physicists’ mainly those who entertained a Material Cause as first principle. He would have not included in them Empedocles who introduced Strife and Love (τὸ νεῖκος καὶ τὴν φιλίαν εἰσάγοντα), Simpli cius goes on. Perhaps, he would have excluded also Anaxagoras, who said that the Mind distin guished the ὁμοιομέρειαι, unless Aristotle did not do so because it appeared to him that Anax agoras made use not of the Mind, but of several material causes (ἴσως δὲ οὐδὲ τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν λέγοντα τὸν νοῦν διακρίνειν τὰς ὁμοιομερείας, εἰ μὴ ἄρα καθόσον ἐν ταῖς τῶν αἰτίων ἀποδόσε σιν, ὡς δοκεῖ, καὶ αὐτὸς οὐ τῷ νῷ προσχρῆται, ἀλλὰ ταῖς ὑλικωτέραις αἰτίαις). Despite this gen tle treatment of Aristotle’s claims, the fact is that Simplicius had already developed his argument against Aristotle in the preceding parts of his commentary.

Assessing the criticism

189

When the Mind began to move [things], he separated himself from everything that was moving, and all those which the Mind set in motion, they were distinguished. Wherefore, as they were moving and distinguished, rotation made them much more distinguished.¹¹⁹

These are words of Anaxagoras. Simplicius then goes on with his own explanation of why did Aristotle not mention Anaxagoras at Physics, 194a19‒22 (yet simplicius passed over Metaphysica, 984a17‒19 (see note 116). He did not mention Anaxagoras for a different reason, namely, because Anaxagoras did not consider the Mind as a Material Form (ὅτι τὸν νοῦν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὐκ ἔλεγεν εἶδος ἔνυλον), like that which [Aristotle] sought at that point, but as a Distinguishing and Decorative Cause, which was separate from those which were decorated, and it was also of a different nature than that of the decorated ones (ἀλλὰ διακριτικὸν καὶ κοσμητικὸν αἴτιον χωριστὸν ἀπὸ τῶν κοσμουμένων καὶ ἄλλης ὂν ὑποστάσεως παρὰ τὰ κοσμούμενα).¹²⁰ For he says, The Mind is infinite and ruler of his own self, and he is mixed with no other thing, but he alone is being in himself (νοῦς, γάρ φησιν, ἐστὶν ἄπειρον καὶ αὐτοκρατὲς ¹²¹ καὶ μέμικται οὐ δενὶ χρήματι, ἀλλὰ μόνος αὐτὸς ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ ἐστι), meaning that Mind is self subsistent and owes his own being to no other than himself. He then adds the cause of this.¹²² It may be the case, therefore, that [Aristotle] did not mention Anaxagoras, because this Mind appears

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 300 1: καὶ ἐπεὶ ἤρξατο ὁ νοῦς κινεῖν, ἀπὸ τοῦ κινουμένου παν τὸς ἀπεκρίνετο, καὶ ὅσον ἐκίνησεν ὁ νοῦς, πᾶν τοῦτο διεκρίθη· κινουμένων δὲ καὶ διακρινομέ νων ἡ περιχώρησις πολλῷ μᾶλλον ἐποίει διακρίνεσθαι. This is a perfect description of the uni verse during a very small fragment of a second following the Big Bang. According to the Theory of Relativity, at the initial moment of infinitely small duration, the laws of the universe (which are part of the Anaxagorean principles), as we know them, did not hold. They came into being shortly after that moment, and subsequent accelerated ‘rotation’ produced distinct things. Hippolytus reported that, to Anaxagoras, all of the heavenly order was produced by this rotation (which Anaxagoras himself called περιχώρησις). Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.8.2: καὶ τὰ μὲν κατὰ τὸν οὐρανὸν κεκοσμῆσθαι ὑπὸ τῆς ἐγκυκλίου κινήσεως.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 301. It should be observed that, like Anaxagoras himself, Simpli cius refrains from using nouns indicating ‘those which were decorated’, and certainly not the noun ‘things’. Anaxagoras used the noun χρήματα at the beginning of his book, and later he used the term χρήματα sparingly. Simplicius does so, too, only because he was the sole intellec tual that had grasped Anaxagoras’ true philosophy.  Notice the term αὐτοκρατές, which indicates that Plato had only a vague idea of Anaxago ras’ own words when he cited him. Cf. Plato, Cratylus, 413c: ᾿Aναξαγόρας, νοῦν εἶναι τοῦτο· αὐ τοκράτορα γὰρ αὐτὸν ὄντα καὶ οὐδενὶ μεμειγμένον πάντα φησὶν αὐτὸν κοσμεῖν τὰ πράγματα διὰ πάντων ἰόντα. History had to wait for nearly ten centuries in order to read Anaxagoras’ own words preserved by Simplicius. commPhys, p. 174: νοῦς δέ ἐστιν ἄπειρον καὶ αὐτοκρατές. See a fuller version of this, at two other points, pp. 176 & 301: νοῦς δέ ἐστιν ἄπειρον καὶ αὐτοκρατὲς καὶ μέμικται οὐδενὶ χρήματι, ἀλλὰ μόνον αὐτὸ ἐπ᾿ ἐωυτοῦ ἐστι.  Simplicius does not go on with this reference because he has already made a fuller quota tion of this point from Anaxagoras (commPhys, p. 156), according to which ‘the cause of this’ was the Mind’s own Being. See infra, pp. 322; 564 5; 1195.

190

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

to distinguish beings, not to create them. But it is plain that , the intellectual distinction itself which followed from the state of unity, where all things were together was creation.¹²³

This was Simplicius’ noble way of assessing the respective points of both Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias pace them both. Nevertheless, in effect he levelled his criticism against Plato as much as did he so against Aristotle, indeed at the very same point where he set things right in respect of Aristotle’s inaccurate rendering of Anaxagoras.¹²⁴ Now, in the Phaedo, Socrates blames Anaxagoras for not having made use of the Mind (μὴ τῷ νῷ κεχρῆσθαι) in explaining particular phenomena, and for having made use of only material explanations instead (ἀλλὰ ταῖς ὑλικαῖς ἀποδόσεσιν). But this is a method which is familiar to the inquiry of natural phenomena. For indeed, in the Timaeus, once Plato himself (καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Πλάτων) set forth a general account about the Creative Cause of the universe (τὴν ποιητικὴν πάντων αἰτίαν ὁλικῶς παραδούς), when he comes to consid ering particular differences between volumes and shapes, he explains them by means of either heat or coolness, and the like. Nevertheless, Socrates mentioned Anaxagoras as hav ing made use not of a final cause, but of material causes alone (ὡς τῇ ὑλικῇ μᾶλλον ἀλλ᾿ οὐ τελικῇ αἰτίᾳ χρωμένου), only because he wished to indicate that [the notion of] final cause should be put to use in order to provide a certain explanation (τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ τελικοῦ ἀπό δοσιν ὑποδεῖξαι βουλόμενος).¹²⁵

The Mind is the ultimate and supreme explanation of everything that exists and happens in the universe. For indeed it (rather: he)¹²⁶ did not retire into detachment after his creative act. This is why Aristotle wrote this: It is necessary that the Mind, since it thinks all things, should be unmixed, as Anaxagoras says, in order that it may dominate, that is, that it may know; for the intrusion of anything

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 301: μήποτε δὲ καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐμνημόνευσεν ᾿Aναξαγόρου, ὅτι ὁ παρ᾿ αὐτῷ νοῦς οὐ ποιεῖν ἀλλὰ διακρίνειν ὄντα τὰ εἴδη δοκεῖ. δῆλον δὲ ὅτι ἡ ἀπὸ τῆς ἡνωμένης ὑποστάσεως, καθ᾿ ἣν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν, διάκρισις ἡ νοερὰ ποίησις ἦν. Simplicius explains that the Mind actually produced two creations, one intellectual, the other material; see infra, pp. 263 310.  Supra, p. 173. Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 188a9 10.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 176.  See discussion about the notion of will being attributed to the Mind by Anaxagoras. How ever, the hackneyed assertion that the notion of divine will is a Jewish / Christian characteristic standing in contrast to the ‘Greek thought’ (in which this notion is supposedly absent) stands on precarious ground. Infra, pp. 315; 742 3; 1479.

Assessing the criticism

191

foreign hinders and obstructs it. Hence, the Mind, too, can have no characteristics except its capacity to be able to do anything.¹²⁷

All those who commented on this point, wrote ἵνα πάντων κρατῇ, instead of the current text of Aristotle ἵνα κρατῇ, which means that the original Aristotelian text read in the way his commentators quoted it.¹²⁸ Once again, Simplicius introduces us to the meaning of Aristotle: Mind dominates over the ὁμοιομέρειαι, because he is the one who ‘creates everything and knows par excellence’.¹²⁹ John Philoponus stressed that Mind is unmixed with matter in order be able to think matter (ἀμιγῆ δεῖ αὐτὸν ὑποθέσθαι τῆς ὕλης· εἰ γὰρ εἴποις αὐτὸν ἐκ τῆς ὕλης, οὐ νοήσει αὐτήν). In that case, the one who knows is different from that which is known, because, if Mind were part of the matter, he could be unable to know it.¹³⁰ It is remarkable that, although Thomas Aquinas (translated by Gennadius Scholarius) was aware that Aristotle referred to the Mind ‘which should know’, he added that Anaxagoras maintained that the Mind is unmixed with the ὁμοιομέρειαι, ‘so that he could move everything by his own power’.¹³¹ In any case, the important point is that, except for Aristotle, later commentators paid no attention to Plato’s unfounded remark that Anaxagoras made his Mind totally inactive once it distinguished (i.e. created) the principles.

 Aristotle, De Anima, 429a: ἀνάγκη ἄρα, ἐπεὶ πάντα νοεῖ, ἀμιγῆ εἶναι, ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξα γόρας, ἵνα κρατῇ, τοῦτο δ᾿ ἐστὶν ἵνα γνωρίζῃ (παρεμφαινόμενον γὰρ κωλύει τὸ ἀλλότριον καὶ ἀντιφράττει)· ὥστε μηδ᾿ αὐτοῦ εἶναι φύσιν μηδεμίαν ἀλλ᾿ ἢ ταύτην, ὅτι δυνατός.  Only Sophonias (thirteenth fourteenth century) wrote ἵνα κρατῇ, which means that omis sion of πάντων would have been a later emendation. paraphrAnim, p. 124. However, not too long after him, Gennadius Scholarius (rendering the text of Thomas Aquinas in Greek) wrote ἵνα πάντων κρατῇ. Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.7, line 133. But in lines 87 and 93: ἵνα κρατῇ.  Simplicius, commAnim, pp. 225 6: ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξαγόρας φυλάττει ἀμιγῆ πρὸς τὰς ὁμοιομερ είας τὸν νοῦν, ἵνα αὐτῶν πασῶν κρατῇ, οὗτος μὲν πάντα δημιουργῶν καὶ νοῶν ἐξῃρημένως. Cf. Themistius (referring to the Anaxagorean Mind), paraphrAnim, p. 13: τὸ γινώσκειν δὲ ὅτι μάλιστα νοῦ ἴδιον τοῦτο.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 523. At this point, Philoponus dissents from Alexander of Aphrodisias (mentioning him by name) on this: whereas Alexander sustained that the Mind knows the εἴδη because it is not itself an εἶδος, Philoponus urges that the Mind can know every thing because it is itself an εἶδος.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.7, lines 84 8: Εἰ δὲ μικτὸς ἦν ἐκ τῶν σωματικῶν φύσεων, ἢ εἶχε τινὰ τούτων ὁρισμένως, οὐκ ἂν ἠδύνατο πάντα κινεῖν τῷ ἰδίῳ κράτει· ὡρίζετο γὰρ ἂν πρὸς ἕν· καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἔστιν ὅ φησι τὸν ᾿Aνα ξαγόραν θεῖναι τὸν νοῦν ἀμιγῆ, ἵνα κρατῇ, τουτέστι πάντα τῷ ἰδίῳ κράτει κινῇ. ᾿Aλλὰ νῦν οὐ δι αλεγόμεθα περὶ τοῦ πάντα κινοῦντος νοῦ, ἀλλὰ περὶ τοῦ πάντα νοοῦντος.

192

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

In chapter 4, I consider some further words by Anaxagoras himself, preserved by Simplicius: The Mind, which always is, surely is also now, so that all the other things also should exist, namely, in the encompassing multitude [of the principles], and in the things that have been joined together, and in the things that have been separated off.¹³²

The principles can exist only because their existence is dependent upon the Mind, even though the two sides are ontologically different, indeed ‘separate’ (χωριστὸς ὢν ἀπ᾿ αὐτῶν), since the Mind is ‘unmixed’ (ἀμιγής) with anything else. This ontological difference can be made out on the basis of what we said so far, as well following our ensuing analyses: whereas the principles came to be as distinct ones out of the confusum, there was never a state in which the Mind itself existed potentially – it always existed in actuality, and started to ‘distinguish’ (i.e. create) things ‘as of a certain moment’, as Aristotle put it. The idea of Aristotle that the Mind is sheer actuality, whereas all other things are actualizations of certain potentialities, was present in Anaxagoras, which was intolerable to Aristotle. Therefore, it is possible to put this ontological difference in terms of the Mind being uncreated, whereas the principles, and the universe itself, are created. The Mind is unmixed with the world, and yet present in it. Little wonder then that brilliant minds of Christianity such as Origen sought and found inspiration in this philosophy. Aristotle attributed a different meaning to ὁμοιομέρεια, and considered it in its literal sense, or so he pretended to do. To him, the term meant very small homogenous particles of a certain material, which make up an object of a certain kind. But how did this kind appear in the first place? This was the critical point: Aristotle alleged that, to Anaxagoras, a ‘form’ (εἶδος) emerges from these material particles, which was utterly unacceptable to him, and it was John Philoponus who offered extensive accounts explaining this approach by Aristotle: the ‘form’ has to come from the outside, in the same sense that an artificer takes a certain amount of matter and imposes a form upon it. To him, it was unthinkable that the ‘form’ of a certain thing could emerge by mere concurrence of material elementary particles, however differently from those of Democritus they would be grasped. Actually, once Aristotle thought of ὁμοιομέρεια as material, it was impossible for him to make out the real difference between Anaxagoras and the Atomists. Therefore, it was felt that ‘the Physicists’ invariably thought that the

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157. See quotation and discussion infra, pp. 283 5; 354.

Assessing the criticism

193

‘form does not come from outside, but it exists inherently within matter, and it is created by matter’.¹³³ Of course, this entailed that the soul is a mere product of material composition, namely, the result of different kinds of matter being fused together.¹³⁴ The notion was outrageous to any Peripatetic, since it made ‘the causes inferior to their effects’ (οὐδὲ γὰρ δεῖ τὰ αἴτια χείρονα ποιεῖν τῶν αἰτιατῶν).¹³⁵ This was the selfsame criticism that Plotinus and other Neoplatonists levelled against the Stoics concerning their doctrine of the soul.¹³⁶ The only concession they made was that, in non-rational beings, such as plants, the cohesive power (or, ‘irrational soul’) that holds them together and makes them what they are, does not come from outside as a certain quid that exists in advance, but it emerges as an inherent power of the ‘creative logoi’ of such beings.¹³⁷ At any rate, it was a standard Peripatetic thesis that whatever come to be in Nature, it has of necessity a cause which comes from outside and acts upon matter proper;¹³⁸ matter itself is unable to give rise to an εἶδος. Otherwise, one should allow that the volatile matter (which is formless matter, therefore, ‘non-being’) is the creative cause of things. All this would mean that allowance is made for beings to arise from non-beings.¹³⁹ Consequently, it would appear that εἶδος, which is itself

 John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 239: ἐν μὲν τοῖς κατὰ τέχνην ἔξωθεν ὁ τεχνίτης παραλαβὼν τὴν ὕλην, οὕτως αὐτῇ τὸ εἶδος ἐπιτίθησι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἄλλης τέχνης ἐστὶ τὴν ὕλην καὶ ἄλλης τὸ εἶδος εἰδέναι, ἐν δὲ τοῖς φυσικοῖς οὐκ ἔξωθεν τῇ φύσει ἡ ὕλη δίδοται, ἀλλ᾿ ἐν αὐτῇ ὑπάρχει καὶ ὑπ᾿ αὐτῆς δημιουργεῖται. Cf. op. cit. pp. 157; 203; 231.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 90 (ref. to Aristotle’s De Anima, 405b9): Ἐπειδὴ τὸ ἐκ πάντων σημαίνει καὶ τὰ κατὰ κρᾶσιν γινόμενα, εἴδους τινὸς ἔξωθεν ἐπιγινομένου τῇ κράσει, ὥσπερ τὸ τῆς σαρκὸς εἶδος τῇ κράσει τῶν τεσσάρων στοιχείων, οἱ δὲ ἐκ πάντων λέγοντες οὐκ ἔλεγον οὕτως ὥσπερ καὶ ἡμεῖς φαμεν, ἀλλὰ ψιλὴν τὴν σύνθεσιν τῶν στοιχείων ἔλεγον τὴν ψυχήν.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 52. Cf. p. 191: τὸ χεῖρον τοῦ κρείττονος εἴη ἂν αἴτιον καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ ἄψυχον καὶ τῆς ζωῆς τὸ ἄζωον.  See infra, pp. 1262 3.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 52: ἀλλ᾿ ὥσπερ τὰ αὐτομάτως φυόμενα δεῖται μὲν πάντως τοιᾶσδε γῆς, δεῖται δὲ καὶ ὑετοῦ, οὐ μὴν ἱκανὸν τοῦτο εἰς γένεσιν αὐτῶν, ἀλλ᾿ οἱ λόγοι τούτων ἐκ τῆς ὅλης δημιουργίας προέρχονται, … τὸ εἶδος τὸ ἐν τοῖς αὐτομάτοις γενόμενον οὔτε ἐκ τῆς μίξεως τῆς γῆς καὶ τοῦ ὕδατος ἁπλῶς ἐπεγένετο οὔτε ἔξωθεν αὐθυποστάτως προϋφεστηκὸς ἐγ γίνεται, ἀλλ᾿ οἱ λόγοι οἱ δημιουργικοὶ ἐν τῇ τοιᾷδε τῶν στοιχείων ἐπιτηδειότητι ἐγγεννῶσι καὶ δημιουργοῦσι τὰ τῶν παθῶν εἴδη. Likewise, op. cit. p. 157.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 226: ἐπὶ γὰρ πάντων τῶν γινομένων φύσει ἔξω θέν τί ἐστι τὸ τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς γενέσεως αὐτῶν ἔχον καὶ τῆς πρώτης ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ μεταβολῆς αἴτιον. τά τε γὰρ ἁπλᾶ σώματα τῆς τε εἰς ἄλληλα μεταβολῆς ἔξωθεν ἔχει τὴν αἰτίαν. … ἀλλὰ καὶ οἷς ἡ γέννησις ἀπὸ σπέρματος, ἔξωθεν τὸ γεννῶν διὰ τῆς προέσεως τοῦ σπέρματος.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 191: ὥστε εἰ τὰ τοιαῦτα μὴ ἀΐδια ὄντα, ἀλλὰ γινόμενα καὶ ἀπογινόμενα, μὴ ἔκ τινος προϋποκειμένης ὕλης τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τὴν εἰς τὸ εἶναι ὕπαρξιν δέχεται,

194

Chapter 2 – A religious outcast criticized

‘a boundary and limit’ (ὅρος ἐστὶ τὸ εἶδος καὶ πέρας)¹⁴⁰ would be at the same time both a product of matter and a determining force upon it, which would be absurd. In effect, this means that the cause which comes from outside has to be something different from the material substratum upon which it acts. To Aristotle it was unacceptable that Anaxagoras allowed for no external factor to act upon matter. Accordingly, Aristotle inferred that nothing except the (assumed material) ὁμοιομέρειαι creates, moves, and transforms things from one form to another.¹⁴¹ Unlike Plato, whose criticism of Anaxagoras was superficial and grossly selfdefeating, Aristotle took pains to denigrate that philosophy to the best of his ability, since he had good personal reasons to do so. What went wrong then? I believe the flaw does not lie in Aristotle’s logic, but in the fact that he ‘constructed’ an Anaxagorean ‘system’ which had nothing to do with what the Clazomenian really sustained. This is why, at so many points, Anaxagoras’ philosophy rendered by Aristotle arrives at utterly irrational and impossible corrolaries. What irritated Aristotle was that his own description of that philosophy turned out untenable, unless Anaxagoras was utterly fool or mad, or indeed a stupid, as a modern scholar mentioned in the Introduction suggested only because he thought he could speak about Anaxagoras by making Aristotle his source. But this was hard for Aristotle to allege, and, realizing the genius of that outcast religious heretic, it only remained for him to be pretentiously appalled at the man who dared say that the sun is not god, but a mere stone,¹⁴² and escaped death only at the very last moment thanks to the manoeuvres of Pericles. If indeed Aristotle misunderstood that philosophy, the first and foremost fatally missed point had to do with the fundamental notion of Anaxagoras, which Aristotle was the first to label ὁμοιομέρειαι or ὁμοιομερῆ. A definition reported by Diogenes Laertius goes thus: “ὁμοιομερῆ are those things which are composed of similar parts, so that the whole does not differ πῶς ἄν τις παραδέξαιτο τὸ μηδὲν ἐκ τοῦ μηδαμῇ μηδαμῶς ὄντος γίνεσθαι, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἐκ προϋπο κειμένου ὑλικοῦ αἰτίου;  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 480.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 123: ἀλλ᾿ οὗτος ὁ λόγος οὐ σῳζόντων ἐστὶ τὰς ᾿Aναξαγορείους ὑποθέσεις, ὃς ἔλεγεν οὐδὲν ἕτερον εἶναι τὸ σύνθετον καὶ τὸ ὅλον ἢ τὴν συνδρομὴν τῶν ὁμοιο μερειῶν. ἡμῖν μὲν γὰρ τοῖς λέγουσιν ὅτι τῇ τοιᾷδε τῶν στοιχείων συνθέσει καὶ κράσει ἔξωθεν ἐπιγίνονται τὰ εἴδη ἕτερα ὄντα παρὰ τὰ ὑποκείμενα, εὐλόγως τοῦτο ἕπεται (οὐ γὰρ ὁπωσοῦν ἐχουσῶν τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν πέφυκε τὸ εἶδος ἐπιγίνεσθαι), ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ δὲ μηδὲν ἕτερον ἐπιγί νεσθαι ἔξωθεν λέγοντι παρὰ τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ, ἀλλὰ πάντως ἐν τοῖς ἁπλοῖς εἶναι τὰς ὁμοιομερείας.  Plato, Apologia Socratis, 26d. Anonymous, Scholia in Pindarum, Ode 1, scholion 91a, quoted in Introduction, p. 51, note 124.

Assessing the criticism

195

from the part except in bulk, just like water, gold, and everything that is fusible.”¹⁴³ This definition is surely correct so far as etymology goes; but the problem is that the same term was used in connection with a literal sense applying to any homogenous material object, particularly parts of the human body, such as veins, arteries, nerves, etc.: each of them is an organ made of the selfsame material throughout.¹⁴⁴ Therefore, when later scholars came to refer to Anaxagoras, the first notion they cared to mention was ὁμοιομερῆ, and the next step was to explain this by reference to parts of the human body made of similar material.¹⁴⁵ However, the sole intellectual who had read Anaxagoras’ book first-hand made this point: ὁμοιομερῆ are so called not because their molecules are the same with each other, but because the parts are the same as the whole.¹⁴⁶ This is a more abstract definition, but the fatal confusion about the nature of Anaxagoras’ notion was already long established. We need, therefore, to see how this was explained, and then try to clear this up from the heavy clouds of misconception that surrounds it. For indeed Anaxagoras had the same fate as Origen in terms of them both being famous during their lifetime, both having outstanding men of their day as pupils, both being utterly misunderstood and distorted by uninformed critics, and both being held to obloquy as heretics of religious faith.

 Anonymous, Divisiones Aristoteleae, 39, col1, apud Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 3.108: ὁμοιο μερῆ ὅσα ἐξ ὁμοίων σύγκειται καὶ μηδὲν διαφέρει τὸ ὅλον τοῦ μέρους εἰ μὴ τῷ πλήθει, οἷον τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ τὸ χρυσίον καὶ πᾶν τὸ χυτὸν καὶ τὸ τοιοῦτον.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 98: ἔπειτα ἔσται μὲν ὁμοιομερῆ, εἴ γε πάντα τὰ ἔχοντά τι μέρος ἐξ αὐτοῦ ὅμοιά ἐστιν ἀλλήλοις· πῶς δὲ οἷον τε τὰ εἴδη ὁμοιομερῆ εἶναι; οὐ γὰρ οἷον τε τὸ μέρος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἄνθρωπον εἶναι, ὡς τὸ τοῦ χρυσοῦ μέρος χρυσόν. Ammonius of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 81: καὶ εἰς ὁμοιομερῆ μὲν διαιροῦνται φλέβες, ἀρτηρίαι, ὀστᾶ, ταῦτα γὰρ διαιρούμενα ἔχει τὰ μέρη καὶ ἀλλήλοις ὅμοια καὶ τῷ ὅλω. John Philoponus, commGenAnim, p. 41: καὶ τὸ προσιὸν ἔσχατον σάρκας ποιεῖ καὶ ὀστᾶ καὶ νεῦρα καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ὁμοιομερῆ, ποιεῖ δὲ ταῦτα πάντα καὶ τὸ σπέρμα, εὐλογώτερόν ἐστιν ὅμοια ἀλλήλοις εἶναι τό τε αἷμα καὶ τὴν γονήν. τὰ γὰρ τῶν αὐτῶν ποιητικὰ τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ὅμοια ἀλλήλοις ἐστίν.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii in Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, p. 179: ὁ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἔθετο τὰς ἀρχὰς εἶναι τὰ ἄπειρα ὁμοιομερῆ καὶ τὰ ἐναν τία, οἷον τὰ ἄπειρα μέρη τῆς σαρκὸς ὅμοια ἀλλήλοις τυγχάνοντα, καὶ τὰ ἄπειρα μέρη τοῦ ὀστοῦ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων, ἅπερ ἔχουσιν ὅμοια μέρη.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 606: διότι τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ, εἰ καὶ ἀλλήλοις ὅμοια ἔχει τὰ μόρια, οὐ διὰ τοῦτο λέγεται ὁμοιομερῆ, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι τῷ ὅλῳ ὅμοια ἔχει τὰ μέρη.

Chapter 3 Aristotle as a critic Had Plato come back to life during modern times, he would have been utterly astounded at the monstrous volume of scholarship visiting and revisiting, considering and reconsidering, his theory of Ideas. For he could not see how his worst failure and personal disappointment could be of interest to modern scholarship, although he could appreciate that those philosophers of old who dignified themselves with the title of being his diadochi had good reason to justify his theory. Actually, he could have been not surprised at learning about the evolution of his own Academy right after his death: his immediate successor and nephew Speusippus turned to Pythagoras and to common mathematical numbers, and maintained that the essence of reality are not the εἰδητικοὶ ἀριθμοί (‘ideal numbers’, i. e. the numbers that are Ideas at the same time), whereas Xenocrates attempted to salvage Academy by identifying the Ideas with numbers. Nor would he have been surprised at learning that, under Philo of Larissa (c. 154 ‒ c. 84 BC), Platonism degenerated into Scepticism, and, later, Antiochus of Ascalon (c. 130 ‒ c. 68 BC) struggled to show that the Stoic doctrines were present already in Plato. All this might have appeared to him weird, yet inevitable all the same. Nevertheless, it was Plato himself who saw the flaws of his theory of Ideas by the end of his life and essayed to modify it by supposing that perhaps the Ideas are numbers. The mere truth is that both Pythagoras and Plato, each one in his own way, applied to Greek terms knowledge that they had heard from the exotic Egyptians and Chaldaeans.¹ However, Aristotle did not spare neither of them from his devastating criticism. Here is what he says of Speusippus, Xenocrates, and their followers: Those [sc. Speusippus] who recognize only the objects of mathematics as existing beside sensible things, abandoned the ideal number and posited mathematical number (ἀπέστη σαν ἀπὸ τοῦ εἰδητικοῦ ἀριθμοῦ καὶ τὸν μαθηματικὸν ἐποίησαν), because they perceived the difficulty of the theory of Ideas (ὁρῶντες τὴν περὶ τὰ εἴδη δυσχέρειαν). Others [sc. Xeno crates], wishing to maintain both Ideas and numbers (εἴδη βουλόμενοι ἅμα καὶ ἀριθμοὺς ποιεῖν), but not seeing, if one posits these as principles [sc. Unity and the Indeterminate Dyad]² (εἰ τὰς ἀρχάς τις ταύτας θήσεται), how a mathematical number can exist beside

 See Appendix I.  The ‘indeterminate dyad’ (ἀόριστος δυάς) was in fact a Pythagorean notion, which apparently Plato took up, although we learn this from Aristotle, and there are not extant texts of Plato say ing so. See pp. 29; 70 1; 81; 136; 138; 196; 605; 708 10; 1052.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

197

an ideal number (πῶς ἔσται ὁ μαθηματικὸς ἀριθμὸς παρὰ τὸν εἰδητικόν); they identified ideal with mathematical number (τὸν αὐτὸν εἰδητικὸν καὶ μαθηματικὸν ἐποίησαν ἀριθμόν), yet only in theory, since, in fact, mathematical number is done away with, because the hy potheses which they state are their own invention and not mathematical. And he [sc. Plato] who first assumed that there are Ideas, and that the Ideas are numbers, and that the objects of mathematics exist (ὁ δὲ πρῶτος θέμενος τὰ εἴδη εἶναι καὶ ἀριθμοὺς τὰ εἴδη καὶ τὰ μα θηματικὰ εἶναι), reasonably separated them (εὐλόγως ἐχώρισεν). Thus, it happens that all are right in some respect, yet not altogether right (κατὰ μέν τι λέγειν ὀρθῶς, ὅλως δ᾿ οὐκ ὀρθῶς); even they themselves admit as much by not agreeing but contradicting each other (καὶ αὐτοὶ δὲ ὁμολογοῦσιν οὐ ταὐτὰ λέγοντες ἀλλὰ τὰ ἐναντία). The reason of this is that their assumptions and first principles are false (αἴτιον δ᾿ ὅτι αἱ ὑποθέσεις καὶ αἱ ἀρχαὶ ψευδεῖς); and it is difficult to propound a correct theory from faulty premisses (χαλεπὸν δ᾿ ἐκ μὴ καλῶς ἐχόντων λέγειν καλῶς): as Epicharmus said, ‘no sooner is it said than it is seen to be wrong’ (ἀρτίως τε γὰρ λέλεκται, καὶ εὐθέως φαίνεται οὐ καλῶς ἔχον).³

Their mistake was that ‘they supposed that all things are one, indeed that they are the absolute Being’ (ἔδοξε γὰρ αὐτοῖς πάντ᾿ ἔσεσθαι ἓν τὰ ὄντα, αὐτὸ τὸ ὄν). ‘There are many causes for their failure, the chief being that they perused the problem in an archaic manner’ (πολλὰ μὲν οὖν τὰ αἴτια τῆς ἐπὶ ταύτας τὰς αἰτίας ἐκτροπῆς, μάλιστα δὲ τὸ ἀπορῆσαι ἀρχαϊκῶς).⁴ Aristotle was relentless at one shot with both the Presocratics and Plato as well as his followers, even though some of the latter sought some recourse to the theory that mathematical numbers stand ‘between’ (μεταξύ) sensible things and the Ideas.⁵ Aristotle dismissed all those theories and their variations. To him, mathematical entities exist, yet they are not self-existent: they are constant characteristics of sensible objects, but not separate self-subsistent beings. However, it was Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s theory of Ideas that preoccupied him in the first place: he was inexorably adverse to the notion of universals being both autonomous ontological entities and separate from the sensible objects which they are associated with, or referred to. Universal characteristics exist within any specific sensible being, but they cannot have independent subsis-

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1086a. about Epicharmus, see p. 1521.  Op. cit. 1088b 1089a.  See Aristotle and his comments on Plato, Metaphysica, 987b; 992b; 995b; 997b; 1059b. Plu tarch (ascribing the notion to Posidonius), De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1023B; 1031A. Claudius Ptolemaeus, Syntaxis Mathematica, p. 6. Alexander of Aphrodisias (copying from Aris totle, who ascribed the idea to Plato), commMetaph, pp. 52; 54; 93; 113; 128; 176; 196 8; 233 4; 729 30; 817. Likewise, Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, pp. 47; 49; 98; 108; 142; 166; 169 70; 218. Syrianus, commMetaph, pp. 4; 90. Iamblichus (sustaining the notion himself), De Communi Mathematica Scientia, 11.

198

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

tence of their own. The Platonists posited supreme genera called the ‘self-existent Idea of A’, such as the ‘Idea of man’ (αὐτοάνθρωπος),⁶ or the ‘Idea of an animal’ (αὐτοζῷον).⁷ Against this, Aristotle argued that accepting these supreme genera, which the Platonists called ‘Ideas’, does not contribute to understanding reality, since how Ideas communicate with material beings remains without explanation. Plato strove to hurdle this difficulty by urging that sensible beings have some kind of ‘participation’ (μέθεξις) to the Ideas, which to Aristotle was only idle talking (‘twitterings’, τερετίσματα)⁸ and ‘poetical metaphors’⁹ that explained nothing. If a certain Ideal Man (αὐτοάνθρωπος) existed separately from all the real humans of natural reality, then something should be needed which should act as intermediary in order to associate real humans with the Idea of Man. But then a fourth one would be needed between this ‘third man’ and the Idea of Man, as so on, ad infinitum. Therefore, once Ideas are posited as ‘patterns which are set up in the world’ (παραδειγμάτων ἐν τῷ ὄντι ἑστώτων),¹⁰ out of which real things have been made as mimes, as it were, it follows that these patterns should be the source of all motion. However, since the Ideas are immovable patterns, on no account can they be considered as the source of all motion that obtains in all sensible things of this world. Besides, how is it possible to envisage ‘participation’ of real beings in the Ideas, once each one of them participates in more than one Idea? For instance, a certain man participates both in the Idea of man (αὐτοάνθρωπος) and in the Idea of animal (αὐτοζῷον). How is this multiple participation possible? This could only mean that, in each individual being, there are many Ideas at the same time, that is, many subsistent (ideal) beings. In that case, however, this multiple co-existence of different substances could break up the essential unity which is a main characteristic of individual things. Therefore, if any universal is an Idea, it follows that a multiplicity of ‘Ideas’ should correspond to all kinds of material beings, even to the most insignificant of them. There should be, that is, an idea of such things as hair, mud, things that have grown corrupt, and in general, of things that involve a certain ‘multiplicity’. But to allow for ideas of non-existent things is tantamount to allowing that ‘non-being’ is a self-existent essence. From

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 991b; 1040b; Ethica Nicomachea, 1096b; 1079b; 1081a; 1084a; Topica, 137b; 148a.  Aristotle, Topica, 137b. Xenocrates, Testimonia, Doctrina et Fragmenta, frs. 197; 260.  Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, 83a33.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 991a (repeated on 1079b): τὸ δὲ λέγειν παραδείγματα αὐτὰ εἶναι καὶ μετέχειν αὐτῶν τἆλλα κενολογεῖν ἐστὶ καὶ μεταφορὰς λέγειν ποιητικάς.  Plato, Theaetetus, 176e3. Cf. Porphyry, De Abstinentia, 1.37. Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 77. Eu sebius quoted extensively from this Platonic text. Praeparatio Evangelica, 12.29.19.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

199

this follows that the assumption that self-existent Ideas represent the essence of many similar things is a theory that cannot stand up to critical analysis: quite simply, it is untenable. Therefore, a universal is not something that of necessity should exist separately and apart from ‘the many’ particular beings (ἕν τι παρὰ τὰ πολλὰ οὐκ ἀνάγκη), ‘but it is necessary that it should be a single predicate of a plurality of subjects’ (εἶναι μέντοι ἓν κατὰ πολλῶν ἀληθὲς εἰπεῖν ἀνάγκη); ‘otherwise, there will be no universal term’. Consequently, there must be something above all sundry particulars, which is one and the same, and does not merely share a common name with them’ (δεῖ ἄρα τι ἓν καὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ἐπὶ πλειόνων εἶναι μὴ ὁμώνυμον).¹¹ In short, whereas to Plato the Ideas exist independently of particulars, Aristotle’s universals are mere abstractions.¹² Accordingly, a universal exists within the concrete particular as a ‘secondary substance’ (δευτέρα οὐσία), not as a supreme genus. Secondary substances ‘are predicates which define primary substance’,¹³ and ‘it is better for them to be called substance rather than genus’.¹⁴ Hence, ‘apart from primary substances, species and genera alone of the things that will remain over are rightly called secondary substances, since, of all possible predicates, they alone define primary substance’. In other words, ‘man’ is a predication of a particular human being, and it corresponds to a certain substance; but ‘manhood’ is only a predication applied collectively, yet not to any specific human being.¹⁵ Aristotle urged that, once the supreme genera are posited as self-existent beings and ‘Ideas’, all we can get is multiplying without reason the number of substances which are eternal and not subject to corruption. On that account, hot-

 Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, 77a.  Cf. op. cit. 100a. Likewise, about ‘numbers’, in Metaphysica, 1090a: “Those then who posit the Ideas and identify them with numbers by their assumption (in accordance with their method of abstracting each general term from its several particular concrete examples, τῷ κατὰ τὴν ἔκθεσιν ἑκάστου παρὰ τὰ πολλὰ λαμβάνειν) that every [universal] is a separate entity, essay to explain why and how [each number exists independently]. Since, however, these arguments are neither necessary nor possible, one should not allow for the [independent] existence of num ber on that account.”  Aristotle, op. cit. 2b29 30: Εἰκότως δὲ μετὰ τὰς πρώτας οὐσίας μόνα τῶν ἄλλων τὰ εἴδη καὶ τὰ γένη δεύτεραι οὐσίαι λέγονται.  Aristotle, op. cit. 2b7 8: Τῶν δὲ δευτέρων οὐσιῶν μᾶλλον οὐσία τὸ εἶδος τοῦ γένους.  Aristotle, op. cit. 3a7 13: Κοινὸν δὲ κατὰ πάσης οὐσίας τὸ μὴ ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ εἶναι. ἡ μὲν γὰρ πρώτη οὐσία οὔτε καθ᾿ ὑποκειμένου λέγεται οὔτε ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ ἐστίν. τῶν δὲ δευτέρων οὐσιῶν φανερὸν μὲν καὶ οὕτως ὅτι οὐκ εἰσὶν ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ· ὁ γὰρ ἄνθρωπος καθ᾿ ὑποκειμένου μὲν τοῦ τινὸς ἀνθρώπου λέγεται, ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ δὲ οὐκ ἔστιν, οὐ γὰρ ἐν τῷ τινὶ ἀνθρώπῳ ὁ ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν.

200

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

ness, warmth, humidity, dryness, cannot be regarded as ‘substances’, since ‘contraries’ ontologically cannot be regarded as real beings. This is the point at which Aristotle meets Anaxagoras and his premisses, since it is by interaction of the principles that natural reality comes to be. Aristotle developed his criticism of Plato’s theory of Ideas well before that, that is, when he wrote the lost treatise On Ideas, of which only some fragments exist from Alexander of Aphrodisias commenting on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Probably, he wrote this while he was still a member of the Academy, that is, before 347 BC, and perhaps before Plato wrote his dialogues Parmenides and Sophist, in which concerns about his his own theory are plain. What is significant to our topic is that Aristotle thought that he should build his criticism against Anaxagoras on more or less similar grounds as he did against Plato. However, it will turn out that Anaxagoras was a different case, and a far tougher one to rebut: for his own premisses allowed him to entertain also relations as principles, even though they were not that which Aristotle could have styled ‘primary substances’ (πρῶται οὐσίαι). In short, Anaxagoras included interacting potentialities in his first principles, which would have been outrageous to Aristotle. What Aristotle labelled principles (and their successors are the logoi) are not simply principles: they are dynamic principles, which unfold their power by giving rise to matter and acting within it. It appears then that, although they are pre-existent, they act as thought they were in matter, which is their product and it is subject to their dynamic, formative, and cohesive operation, as well as to their dissolving power. The Anaxagorean principles are neither Platonic Ideas nor Aristotelian Forms: they are the active logoi, which are ‘coiled up’ in the ‘seeds’ (ὁ τῶν εἰδῶν λόγος … συνεσπειραμένος ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασι): the logos develops and unfolds itself in accordance with the nature of each thing or phenomenon (καὶ ὥσπερ ἐγκεκρυμμένος, ἐξαπλούμενος δὲ καὶ ἀνελιττόμενος κατὰ τὰς ἑκάστης φύσεως ἐνεργείας). Subsequently, ‘an imitation of the logos appears in technical theories, also, in the results of such theories, as well as in any kind of contemplation, speculation, such as the theory about prudence or that about wisdom’. In the first place, the logos of a thing (or, of a theory, or of a phenomenon) is not simply the definition of it: it is a creative force, indeed a creator that unfolds gradually its powers and makes things to come to pass. In the second place, once this logos is grasped and described theoretically, the definition or ‘essence’

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

201

(τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) of a certain thing or phenomenon may be rendered, as much as is it possible to reflect upon them theoretically.¹⁶ The difference from Plato should not elude us. To him, the self-identical Form is uncreated and indestructible; it neither receives into itself anything else from any quarter, nor does it itself pass whither into another (οὔτε εἰς ἑαυτὸ εἰσδεχόμενον ἄλλο ἄλλοθεν οὔτε αὐτὸ εἰς ἄλλο ποιόν); it is invisible and in all ways imperceptible by the senses (ἀόρατον δὲ καὶ ἄλλως ἀναίσθητον); it is the object which it is the province of Logos to contemplate.¹⁷ By contrast, an Anaxagorean logos is not imperceptible by the senses (ἀναίσθητον); instead, it can be felt at any time, whenever its action is required and thus it makes a mark. It does not stand aloof, as Plato described the Ideas, but it permeates the world and acts within it in every respect. These principles are not the immovable paradigms which dwell in the heaven. The world was made not by a Demiurge seeing the Ideas as models; it was made by the principles themselves interacting at the behest of the Mind to the purpose of actual creation. On the other hand, the ‘forms’ of Aristotle were only one of the three alternatives in his definition of ‘essence’ of a thing (being either ‘forms’ or ‘formless matter’ or both), and on this never did Aristotle make up his mind. Besides, he depicted the forms as passive passengers of a ‘ship’,¹⁸ not as dynamic constructive, cohesive, and destructive agents, which both make up and destroy all things: Aristotle left this job to Nature to carry out. His ‘forms’ then are mere models for Nature to do it: although he banned self-subsistence of them, in effect, they are as inactive as the Platonic Ideas. All Aristotle did was to transfer them Here from the sublime and obscure Beyond, and associate them firmly with the matter of perceptible things.¹⁹ Objects participate in the Ideas in order to make sense, indeed to exist, even as mere mimics, as Plato had it; they mime the Forms, thus appearing to be particulars – which is an aspect of Platonism serving to eschewing the famous Aristotelian argument of the Third Man, which though impugned the theory from another point of view: if we can observe only mere mimes, there is no way to know the Forms themselves, hence we can have no inkling of what representations they represent, or indeed that they are in fact representations. According to Anaxagoras, things do not ‘participate’ in anything in order for them to exist: the very fact that they exist means that there is an indissoluble reaction between

 See chapter 10, pp. 802 3, discussion by Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα (reporting the view of Thrasyllus). The present quotations are from this book of Porphyry, p. 12.  Plato, Timaeus, 52a.  Aristotle, Physica, 240b8 20. See discussion on p. 1493.  See further discussion of this infra, pp. 543 7.

202

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

matter and the principles, or, as it was put later, between matter and the λόγοι. However, matter proper is a product of the logoi; it is not anything existing in advance for the principles to act upon it, as Aristotle had it. These principles are here on earth,²⁰ always ready to work out things by interacting between themselves, provided the proper circumstances call for a specific interaction; or, to put it differently, they act and create whenever they are given the chance in order to perform the duties and functions which are proper to the specific character of each principle. Nevertheless, these active agents did not arrive ‘here’ from any ‘beyond’: they are as much here as their source and ruler (i. e. the Mind) is. Since the term ‘homoiomerous’ means that the part is the same as the whole, Anaxagoras’ successors such as the Stoics named their individual principles λόγοι,²¹ and the Mind was termed Λόγος. For that reason, I should not exclude the possibility of Origen having used the term νόες (‘minds’) in his De Principiis (as he was accussed)²² while he was still an incipient Christian and an already experienced, indeed famous, pagan intellectual. Since he had employed Anaxagoras’ Mind (Νοῦς) as the supreme principle (which later he transformed to Christian Trinity), at that stage of his intellectual life it would have been all too natural for him to term the Mind’s principles ‘minds’.²³ Besides, as baffling as it was, this notion comes from Aristotle, not Plato, as discussed in chapter 12. The failure of the theory of Ideas must have been a painful frustration to Plato by the end of his life. But it was more tantalizing to his successors and followers, as well as to modern scholarship, which did not set this intellectual bankruptcy to rest and struggled to modify it so as to rescue whatever could be rescued out of this construction. Since Aristotle’s relentless criticism of that theory was impossible to hurdle, the recourse to be had in by Xenocrates was Pythagoras. Therefore, following a period of the Academy becoming actually Pythagorean, eventually it fell under the spell of an inconclusive scepticism, which prevented inspiration for centuries. After Clitomachus and Carneades, all that was achieved with Philo of Larissa (c. 154 ‒ c. 84 BC, a pupil of Clitomachus)

 Nevertheless, the principles exist differently in different ontological levels at the same time. See infra, pp. 496; 1294 1303.  The Anaxagorean views of Empedocles about generation and destruction of things ex pressed in terms of concurrence or disjunction of λόγοι, probably suggest that Anaxagoras him self also used the term λόγος for his principles. See Aristotle, De Anima, 408a17 19, and infra, chapter 8, pp. 585, notes 262 & 266.  See infra, p. 220, note 82, and pp. 1335 6.  See chapter 12, discussion about Divine Intellects in Aristotle, Philo, Origen, and later au thors.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

203

was a more moderate scepticism than that of his teachers, which made allowance for provisional beliefs, yet without claiming certainty. Plato’s immediate successors as scholarchs of the Academy were Speusippus (347‒339 BC), Xenocrates (339‒314 BC), Polemo (314‒269 BC), and Crates (c. 269‒ 266 BC). Other distinguished members of the Academy include Aristotle, Heraclides, Eudoxus of Cnidus, Philip of Opus, and Crantor. Then the school became the Middle Academy, which sustained also scepticism, under Arcesilaus (c. 266‒ 241 BC). He was succeeded jointly by Lacydes of Cyrene (241‒215 BC), Evander, and Telecles (205‒c. 165 BC), and Hegesinus (c. 160 BC). The New, or Third, Academy began with Carneades, in 155 BC, the fourth scholarch in succession from Arcesilaus. It was still largely sceptical, denying the possibility of knowing any absolute truth. Carneades was followed by Clitomachus (129‒c. 110 BC) and Philo of Larissa. In c. 90 BC, Philo’s student Antiochus of Ascalon began teaching his own rival version of Platonism, rejecting Scepticism and advocating Stoicism, which initiated a new phase known as Middle Platonism. Therefore, entrapment into Scepticism lasted for more than two centuries and a half. However, to any one who claimed himself to be a Platonist, Stoicism was abhorrent on account of the assumed Stoic universal materialism.²⁴ What would be possibly more adverse to the glorious tradition of their golden era which made incorporeality its gospel? Nevertheless, Stoicism represented something very significant: however rude their materiality appeared to some, this philosophy owed its fundamental ontological inspiration to Anaxagoras, as discussed presently. In fact, it was their ethics rather than their ontology that could claim originality. Therefore, all that later Platonists needed was a renunciation of materiality while taking up the unparalleled inspiration of Anaxagoras and putting the good old wine into new bottles – and these bottles should at any cost revive and enshrine the most august principle of Plato himself, that is, positing incorporeality on top of any ontological pattern. Therefore, a transformation was called for, though in reality it was not a radical one. This transformation was accomplished by Porphyry and Origen (although, anyway, shifts of opinion of Porphyry are a characteristic of his intellectual life). Despite considerable difference of age, they were and remained always friends, no matter what their points of dissent. This relationship lasted even after Porphyry disowned Christianity, which he joined for a short period of his volatile life. A substantial difference of mentality between the intellectuals of Late Antiquity (both pagan and Christian) and those of our modern times should be pointed out. Today, the ideal of every intellectual is to furnish something absolutely

 Whether this was actually a universal materialism is discussed infra, pp. 682 90.

204

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

original, which is regarded as a springboard in order to attain glory. Even the mentality of our universities is founded on this principle: any doctoral thesis is called ‘thesis’ because it has to claim some points of originality – even a single original contribution, however unspectacular. Things with those scholars of old were far too different: all that Plotinus claimed for himself was to be recognized as a true and authentic exponent of Plato. This era marks the golden age of ‘commentaries’ either on Aristotle by Alexander of Aphrodisias, or on Plato by the chain of philosophers that came to be styled Neoplatonists. The same goes for Christians: none of them did ever claim that what he wrote or recited as sermons, was the fruit of his own mind. The measure of success was only recognition that those works were a faithful interpretation of the true import of the holy scripture. Introducing assertions that were deemed one’s own novelty was nothing short of heresy. By the same token, the most severe censure that Proclus levelled was that a certain exposition was not what Plato really thought: this was precisely his own anathema against Origen, whose theories ‘on no account could Plato have ever included among his own ones’.²⁵ The fact is, however, that Platonists in reality expounded their own philosophy, despite occasional appeal to the auctoritas vetustatis, only in order to have their own theories sanctioned as authoritative. Porphyry was a bit of exception, but not entirely so. He was reputed for his critical mind concerning iconic figures of old, such as Socrates, of whom ‘he wrote things’ that were far worse than those which Anytus and Meletus wrote against him.²⁶ Drawing on a Life of Socrates written by Aristoxenus of Tarentum,²⁷ Porphyry reports that Socrates had two women at the same time, the widely known Xanthippe and the hardly known Myrto. The former gave birth to a son named Lambrocles, the latter, to two sons, Sophroniscus and Menexenus. He married Xanthippe only because she ‘clung herself to him’ (προσπλακεῖσαν λαβεῖν). Whereas the two women engaged in physical fierce fight with each other (the trophy being Socrates himself), the man stood apart, watching them and laughing at seeing their mutual brutal beating. After that, however, both women used to join forces and rush against Socrates, in order to punish him for his sarcasm and amuse of himself at seeing them beating furiously each other, instead of intervening to obstruct their battle (διὰ τὸ μηδέποτε αὐτὰς μα-

 Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31.  Socrates Scholasticus, Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.23.12: Πορφύριος μὲν γὰρ …. Σωκράτους τὸν βίον διέσυρεν ἐν τῇ γεγραμμένῃ αὐτῷ Φιλοσόφῳ ἱστορίᾳ καὶ τοιαῦτα περὶ αὐτοῦ γράψας κατέ λιπεν οἷα ἂν μήτε Μέλητος μήτε Ἄνυτος οἱ γραψάμενοι Σωκράτην εἰπεῖν ἐπεχείρησαν.  Aristoxenus (fl. c. 335 BC) was a Peripatetic philosopher and a pupil of Aristotle. He wrote also biographies of Pythagoras, Plato, and Archytas.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

205

χομένας διακωλύειν, γελᾶν δὲ καὶ ἀλλήλαις καὶ αὐτῷ μαχομένας ὁρῶντα). Furthermore, Porphyry appealing to that biography of Socrates by Aristoxenus,²⁸ reported that, during his lessons, Socrates was quarrelsome, abusive, and insolent (φιλαπεχθήμονα καὶ λοίδορον καὶ ὑβριστικόν).²⁹ Porphyry added that, during his youth, Socrates was a nearly sex-maniac (σφοδρότατόν τε περὶ τὰ ἀφροδίσια), although he could not be blamed for any specific misdemeanor.³⁰ In view of such testimonies, no wonder that Michael Psellus remarked that Porphyry had little respect also for Plato, and no inhibition about dissenting from him. Also, that he pointed out the wide dissension among the eminent Greek philosophers, whereas all the others ‘were pulled from the nose’ (τῆς ῥινὸς ὥσπερ ἑλκόμενοι)³¹ and accepted anything they read, ‘no matter whether it was poison or real food’ (εἰ δηλητηριῶδες ἢ τρόφιμον).³² Thus, Aristotle ‘dismissed many Platonic doctrines’, whereas ‘Plato dismissed many Pythagorean ones’; Plotinus ‘studied them all, but he cast his vote in favour of Plato’. Furthermore, ‘Porphyry the Phoenician had no respect for the philosophers [Plato and Aristotle], he disputed the theory about formless matter, as well as the one about the fifth body. Iamblichus saw previous theories of soul as deficient, and added his own contribution. Moreover, whereas Proclus had utmost admiration for Iamblichus, when he came to considering the principles of different sciences, he did not agree with him on every issue’.³³ Little wonder then that Porphyry wrote to

 Porphyry’s testimony is reported by Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 12.61.  Porphyry, Historia Philosophiae (fragmenta), fr. 12, apud Theodoret, op. cit. 12.61 69.  Suda, letter sigma, entry 829. Likewise, Theodoret, op. cit. 4.2: καὶ γὰρ τὸν Σωκράτην τὸν Σωφρονίσκου φησὶν ὁ Πορφύριος εἰς ἀκολασίαν ἡνίκα νέος ἦν ἀποκλίναντα, σπουδῇ καὶ διδαχῇ τούτους μὲν ἀφανίσαι τοὺς τύπους, τοὺς δὲ τῆς φιλοσοφίας ἐκμάξασθαι.  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 79. The proverbial expression about someone being ‘pulled from the nose’ (ἑλκόμενοι τῆς ῥινός), indicating uncritical acceptance of any teaching or instruction, was introduced by Lucian of Samosata, Philopseudes sive Incredulous, 23: κεχηνότες ἀτενὲς προ σεῖχον αὐτῷ, γέροντες ἄνδρες ἑλκόμενοι τῆς ῥινός. Only Gregory of Nyssa and Michael Psellus used this, which is important since this is an indication that Gregory had read Lucian. I have suggested that Cassian the Sabaite (a devout student of Gregory) had studied Lucian, too (RCR, pp. 6; 162; 163; NDGF, pp. 71; 163; 220; 412; 440). Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 2.1.600: πειθέσθωσαν τοῖς εἰρημένοις οἱ τῶν ῥινῶν ἑλκόμενοι καὶ πρὸς τὸ δοκοῦν ἑκάστῳ περι αγόμενοι. Michael Psellus used the metaphor, Oratoria Minora, 8, line 194: πολλοῖς δὲ τῶν ἀρχαίων καὶ στασίμων ῥητόρων περιτυχὼν οὐ τὸ τῶν πολλῶν πέπονθα, ἵν᾿ ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν ἀγοίμην ἑλκόμενος ἀπὸ τῆς ῥινός.  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 79.  Michael Psellus, loc. cit.

206

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

the Egyptian Anebo that he needed to learn the truth from the Egyptians, because he was utterly disappointed at the Greeks.³⁴ We should bear in mind that philosophers such as Porphyry and Iamblichus did not feel any kind of ‘intellectual patriotism’, nor did they consider themselves as ‘Greek’: they had just studied with Greek teachers, while being all ears to the eastern lore, notably the Chaldean one. When Porphyry refers to ‘the Greeks’ (οἱ Ἕλληνες),³⁵ it is quite evident that he does not necessarily see himself as one of them. Actually, he speaks of the Greeks in the same manner as he does of the Brahmans (the savants of Indians), the Magi (the Persian hierophants), the Chaldaeans (the sages of Babylon),³⁶ or the Egyptians,³⁷ or the Romans, Syrians, and Thracians.³⁸ He does not downgrade his debts to the Greek culture, which is evident from his Life of Plotinus (but is therein Plotinus’ thought considered as a product of Greek culture alone?), he extols ‘the wisdom of the Greeks’ whenever he feels it necessary,³⁹ as much as he points out conveniently that ‘sciences such as geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy, were made known to the Greeks at a later stage’, implying the Chaldean and Egyptian origin of this knowledge.⁴⁰ In distancing himself from the Greek cultural mindset, and seeking only the truth, Porphyry, a non-Greek, resembles Anaxagoras, a Greek who expressed himself in similar terms once he had taken a first-hand taste of the oriental pat-

 Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 155: ἔγραψεν ὁ Πορφύριος πρὸς ᾿Aνεβὼ τὸν Αἰγύπτιον· παρ᾿ ἐκείνου λοιπὸν ἐπιζητῶ μαθεῖν τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ἐπειδὴ παρὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀπέγνων.  Porphyry, De Abstinentia, 1.13; 1.14; 3.3; 3.16; 4.2, et passim; Ad Marcellam, 4. In his commen taries on Homer, the juxtaposition Greeks / Trojans was called for by the theme of the books he commented on.  Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 28, apud Proclus, commTim, p. 208: Ἰνδῶν μὲν Βραχμᾶνες, Μάγοι δὲ Περσῶν, Ἑλλήνων δὲ οἱ θεολογικώτατοι, οἳ καὶ τελετὰς κατεστήσαντο καὶ μυστήρια· Χαλδαῖοι δὲ καὶ τὸ ἄλλο θεῖον ἐθεράπευσαν καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν ἀρετὴν τῶν θεῶν θεὸν εἰπόντες ἐσέφθησαν.  Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 10: Τὸ δὲ αὐτὸ δύναται Δημήτηρ παρ᾿ Ἕλλησι καὶ Ἴσις παρ᾿ Αἰγυ πτίοις· καὶ πάλιν Κόρη παρ᾿ Ἕλλησι καὶ Διόνυσος, καὶ Ἴσις καὶ Ὄσιρις παρ᾿ Αἰγυπτίοις.  Porphyry, Contra Christianos (fragmenta), fr. 76, apud Macarius of Magnesia, Μονογενής, Book 4, p. 200. We have this also from a quotation of Macarius’ text by Nicephorus I of Constan tinople, De Magnete, chapter 12: καὶ γὰρ τὴν καλουμένην ὑφ᾿ Ἑλλήνων ᾿Aθηνᾶν Μινέρβαν οἱ Ῥω μαῖοι καλοῦσιν, Αἰγύπτιοι δὲ καὶ Σύροι καὶ Θρᾷκες ἄλλως προσαγορεύουσι, καὶ οὐ δήπου τῇ τῶν ὀνομάτων διαφορᾷ συσχηματίζεται ἢ ἀναιρεῖται τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ προσηγορίας.  Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 3: Ὅρα δὲ τὴν τῶν Ἑλλήνων σοφίαν οὑτωσὶ διασκοπούμενος.  Porphyry, commCateg, pp. 119 20: ὡμολόγηται δὲ καὶ τὰ μαθήματα ὅτι ὀψὲ εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἦλθεν, οἷον ἡ γεωμετρία καὶ ἡ ἀριθμητικὴ καὶ ἡ ἀστρονομία· ἀλλ᾿ ὅμως ἦν ἐπιστητά, καίπερ τῶν Ἑλλήνων αὐτὰ μὴ ἐπισταμένων.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

207

rimony.⁴¹ As a matter of fact, whenever necessary, he speaks of the Greeks as though they were not of his own lot: they just happened to hold right views in one case and false ones in another.⁴² A comprehensive assessment of Aristotle’s criticism of his predecessors is out of my scope, all the more so since the question of his criticism of Plato’s theory of Ideas is still alive, indeed hotly alive. But this particular facet of his criticism is hot only because Plato’s texts are extant, indeed numerous. Besides, unlike Aristotle’s class-notes which we possess, the Platonic texts are elegant in terms of style and language. Therefore, however controversial, this criticism can be assessed. It shows that Aristotle did not really care for quoting from Plato (although, unlike what he did with Anaxagoras, he cites Plato’s works accurately); rather, he opted for summarizing specific points at his own liking. Thus, he treated alleged implications as if Plato had actually set them forth, or even defended them, whereas they were simply Aristotle’s own rendering and understanding. In his erudite book, Harold Cherniss⁴³ argued forcefully that Aristotle willfully misinterpreted Plato in almost every critical matter and misattributed portions to him that in fact were those of Plato’s successors. Since Plato has become an iconic, indeed religious figure in western philosophy, this thesis did not enjoy considerable support, and efforts to suppress it through silence are evident. The case of his criticism of Anaxagoras shows that this was Aristotle’s standard method. His arguments are so captious, that one wonders whether they are really obtuse, or in fact they were meant to discredit persons rather than theories. For indeed he did not aim at demolishing Platonism as a whole: on the contrary, he cared to salvage much of Plato’s theory which should serve to his own philosophy, let alone that, at points, he speaks as an orthodox Platonist.⁴⁴ When he says in the Metaphysics, ‘[the argument] they call the third man’ (οἱ δὲ τὸν τρίτον ἄνθρωπον λέγουσιν),⁴⁵ he evidently knew that much of Plato’s own dialogue Parmenides is an exposition of some of the weaknesses of the theory of Ideas. He knew also that this dialogue ends without resolution, so that one won See Appendix I.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163: τὸ δὲ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι οὐκ ὀρθῶς νομίζουσιν οἱ Ἕλληνες. But to argue that ‘the Greeks hold wrong views about and destruction’ clearly suggests that he had in mind certain others, who held the correct theories about this issue. Clearly then, Anaxagoras wrote as if he were a third party comparing the views of the Greeks with those of an earlier civilization, while he endorsed the latter’s theories and made them his own.  Harold F. Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and the Academy (discussed in Introduction), passim.  See infra, pp. 250; 560; 583 4; 945; 1004.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 990b.

208

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

ders whether Plato abandoned his own theory in despair, or he just highlighted the weak points of the theory and left them for his successors to address. Therefore, there is some truth in the contention that Aristotle lifted his argument from the Parmenides, since it was a plausible starting-point for him to build on, which he actually did. With regard to Anaxagoras, this much can be said: had Simplicius not cared to comment on Aristotle’s points where Anaxagoras was criticized, we could be unable to assess Aristotle’s criticism. However, not only did Simplicius assess those points, but also he cared to quote extensively form Anaxagoras’ book. It seems that literature had to wait until the sixth century in order to get a firsthand experience of what the Clazomenian philosopher actually wrote. From juxtaposition of Aristotle and Simplicius, one can easily notice that the former’s tactics of criticism of Anaxagoras looks like that which he levelled against Plato’s work. He did not quote from Anaxagoras and he criticized what Aristotle himself attributed to Anaxagoras by means of arbitrary rendering and total absence of quotations. In terms of philosophy, Anaxagoras is classified as one of the Presocratic philosophers, actually not as an eminent one. In terms of dates, he was indeed a person that lived before Socrates. However, there are a few things to be said at this point. Modern European history of philosophy has been always keen on generalized classifications. One of its victims was the set of philosophers before Socrates, all of whom were lumped together under the label ‘Presocratics’. However, there was considerable difference between Anaxagoras and Empedocles, on the one hand, and all the other Presocratics, on the other: the former sought to introduce clearly an Efficient Cause (ποιητικὸν αἴτιον) into their analyses, and this distinctive feature of them was pointed out by several commentators of Antiquity, normally echoing Plato, though not always his criticism.⁴⁶ Aristotle never admitted that Anaxagoras did not speak about material principles, let alone ‘elements’. In his own way then he forced Anaxagoras together with all the other ‘Presocratics’, even though he recognized that Empedocles and Anaxagoras were those who spoke of Efficient Cause. He thought that, since Anaxagoras was of Clazomenian extraction, he was an Ionian philosopher, with all the connotations that this entailed in terms of philosophy. But in fact

 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 2.4.14.2. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 28; 31; 33 5; 46; 60; 63; 134. Themistius, paraphrPhys, pp. 13; 59. Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 412. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 7; 8; 369; 459; 465; 1318; 1361; 1362. John Philoponus, commGen Corr, pp. 127; 281; 285; commAnim, p. 85; commPhys, pp. 397; 407. Asclepius of Tralles, commMe taph, pp. 26; 29; 32; 43; 53 5; 61. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 23; commPhys, 2.16; 3.12; 3.13. Gen nadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 6 (marginal notes on Aristotle’s Physica,), line 255.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

209

Anaxagoras was much of a spiritual offspring of Elea, namely, of Parmenides, and of Croton, that is, of Pythagoras, both from the other side of the Mediterranean sea – and from the other side of philosophy, that is, those who did not rest their cases on material molecules, but on incorporeal principles standing in universal unity. Against this, Aristotle strove to eclipse Anaxagoras by ostensibly employing the deplorable allegation by Plato that Anaxagoras made nothing of the Mind, although he was the first that introduced an incorporeal Efficient Cause acting ceaselessly in the world.⁴⁷ Aristotle never topped Anaxagoras on the issue of the kinds of motion: he posited six kinds of it,⁴⁸ whereas Anaxagoras posited only one, namely ‘alteration’ or mutation (ἀλλοίωσις).⁴⁹ In the Categories, Aristotle does not mention Anaxagoras, but he definitely knew of him eversince the times of the Academy. At any rate, he had not yet engaged in his own criticism of Anaxagoras. He was evidently apprehensive of this predecessor having posited only one principle concerning motion, namely ‘alteration’. This is why, at that very point of his definition, Aristotle cares to say a few things about this notion, which read thus: With a single exception, it is plain that all of these are distinct from each other. Destruction is not generation, and increase is not diminution, nor yet does it mean change of place. And the same goes for the rest. In the case of alteration, however, it may be objected (ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς ἀλλοιώσεως ἔχει τινὰ ἀπορίαν) that a subject, when altered, is altered by one of the five motions. And yet this is not true.⁵⁰

 Anaxagoras was slightly older than Empedocles. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984a. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 25.  Aristotle, Categoriae, 15a: “There are six kinds of motion: generation, destruction, increase, diminution, alteration, change of place (κινήσεως δέ ἐστιν εἴδη ἕξ· γένεσις, φθορά, αὔξησις, μείωσις, ἀλλοίωσις, κατὰ τόπον μεταβολή). However, in the De Anima, 406a12 14, he posits four kinds of it: τεσσάρων δὲ κινήσεων οὐσῶν (φορᾶς, ἀλλοιώσεως, φθίσεως, αὐξήσεως), ἢ μίαν τούτων κινοῖτ᾿ ἂν ἢ πλείους ἢ πάσας. Posterity took the six kinds as being his prevailing position. Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.64; Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (= Adversus Physicos 2), 37. Ammonius of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 5. Simplicius, commCateg, p. 427. John Philoponus, commCateg, pp. 197 9; commGenCorr, p. 43. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 146. Elias of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 253. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 4.1. Gen nadius Scholarius, Commentarium in Aristotelis Categorias, Treatise 18, lines 121 4; Translatio Petri Hispani Summulae Logicae, Treatise 3, p. 310. Damascenus Studites, Thesaurus, Oration 10. Anonymous, Commentarium In Librum De Interpretatione (e cod. Paris. gr. 2064), p. 7. John Philoponus essayed to explain, by making the four kinds exclusive to the soul. commAnim, p. 98. Simplicius also tried to exonerate Aristotle by referring the four kinds to four categoriae. commPhys, p. 1248; commCateg, p. 432. Consistency was not Aristotle’s strong point anyway. See chapters 1 and 12, and infra, pp. 570 9.  See infra, pp. 343; 369; 372 3; 404 7.  Aristotle, loc. cit.

210

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

On the face of it, he appears to doubt only about the kind of motion which Anaxagoras had stipulated as the sole kind of it. But this was an ostentatious defence of the theory of ‘alteration’ (ἀλλοίωσις) in order to show that this was the most weak of all kinds of motion to defend. The fact is that, later, he attacked Anaxagoras for making this the only kind of motion, which I canvass presently. In any case, Aristotle could not walk along such a way because of his own premisses: he defined motion as the realization of a specific potentiality, where the object is regarded as movable, not in itself.⁵¹ According to him, any real being had to be an actuality, whereas potentiality is the intermediate state between being and non-being, although both Aristotle and some of his commentators liked to see this also as a kind of being. To say (with Anaxagoras) that ‘in everything there is everything’, or ‘there is a share of everything in everything, except the Mind’ (ἐν παντὶ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστι πλὴν νοῦ) could only mean that real beings are numerically infinite, in which case they cannot be known. For the infinite principles can exist only in actuality. On the other hand, if perchance it was the case that they exist only potentially, then they are not really beings. In that case, it could appear that beings come from non-beings, which runs contrary to Anaxagoras’ own axiom maintaining that ‘nothing comes from nothing’. This is the real point of the pseudo-confusion fabricated by Aristotle himself in a manner befitting only a sophist, which is why Simplicius criticized Aristotle severely for his ‘absurdities’ (καὶ κατ᾿ ἄλλον δὲ τρόπον ἔτι ἀτοπώτερον δόξει τὸ ὑπὸ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους συναγόμενον).⁵² John Philoponus epitomized Aristotle’s doctrine about the form being instilled into matter from outside, using the example of a ship: in order for the material to become a certain object, a certain potentiality needs ‘action by someone, who brings potentiality into that actuality which is appropriate to it’ (ἀλλὰ δεῖ μὲν ἐνεργείᾳ τινὸς ἴσως τοῦ ἄγοντος τὸ δυνάμει εἰς τὴν οἰκείαν ἐνέργειαν). Pieces of wood are ship potentially, but what makes them ship in actuality is not the actual ship, but ‘the creative logoi which exist in the ship builder’.⁵³ As Pseudo-Galen put it, actuality is always preceded by its own potentialities (τοῦ ἐνεργείᾳ προηγουμένου ἐν πᾶσι τοῦ δυνάμει), and (in the case of his spe-

 Aristotle, Physica, 201a10 11, 201a27 29, 201b4 5. This is a point at which Aristotle speaks of motion while having no inkling of the concept of inertia, the fatal defect which runs throughout his Physics. See 201a20 29.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 175; further, loc. cit. πολλαχῶς οὖν τὸ ἄλογον τὸ ἐν τῇ τοιαύτῃ ὑποθέσει.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 53: τὰ γὰρ ξύλα δυνάμει ναῦν ὄντα ποιεῖ ἐνεργείᾳ ναῦν οὐχ ἡ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν ναῦς ἀλλ᾿ ὁ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν ναυπηγός· οὐδὲ γὰρ οἱ ἐν τῷ ναυπηγῷ δημι ουργικοὶ τῆς νεὼς λόγοι ἤδη καὶ ναῦς εἰσιν κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

211

cific example of a plant) the ‘logoi’ (λόγοι) which exist in a potential state are brought to actuality by nature.⁵⁴ Proclus reversely maintained that ‘actuality precedes potentiality everywhere’ (πανταχοῦ γὰρ πρὸ τοῦ δυνάμει τὸ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν ἡγεῖται), but he did not object to the Aristotelian tenet that any potentiality needs an acting agent in order to develop into actuality (ἀτελὲς γὰρ ὂν ἄλλου δεῖται τοῦ τελειώσοντος). In the case of living beings (plants, as well as humans), this agent is ‘nature, which is an incorporeal power and a principle of movement’. However, that which exists ‘in actuality’ in nature is the ‘actual logoi which are possessed by a certain being’ (τὸ ἔχον κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν τοὺς λόγους); they are incorporeal and mastered by ‘Nature, which is an incorporeal power and principle of all movement’ (ἡ φύσις, ἀσώματος οὖσα δύναμις καὶ ἀρχὴ κινήσεως).⁵⁵ Proclus made it a fundamental doctrine of his philosophy that Nature is an incorporeal power, and essayed to seek authority about this in Plato,⁵⁶ as he did with all of his doctrines. Everything visible and corporeal should stem from some incorporeal essence: the Monad is the cause for numbers to exist, the incorporeal Nature is the cause of bodies’ coming into being, the point is the cause for all actually extended bodies to exist. In short, multiplicity has to emanate from simplicity, and the handiest support to this is to make all bodies products of incorporeal entities that are superior to them and serve as their source.⁵⁷ With respect to the present point, what is more important about Proclus is that he appeals to Parmenides, who posited ‘an incorporeal logos’ (λόγον) that ‘determines things’, which Proclus himself saw as ‘a natural’ logos. Not only does this incorporeal logos shape individual objects, but also it governs their existence proper.  Pseudo Galen, Ad Gaurum Quomodo Animetur Fetus, 14.3 4: εἰ δὲ λόγοι μὲν ἐν τῷ σπέρματι φαντασίας καὶ ὁρμῆς, τούτους δὲ αὖθις προάγει εἰς τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἡ φύσις.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 792. ‘Nature is a principle of movement’ is a thesis recur ring in Proclus. Cf. commTim, v. 1, p. 237: ἀρχὴ κινήσεως ἡ φύσις. Op. cit. v. 2, p. 96: ἀρχὴ γὰρ ἡ φύσις κινήσεως. Op. cit. v. 3, p. 119: ἡ φύσις ἀρχὴ κινήσεως καὶ μεταβολῆς. De Malorum Subsis tentia, 55: κατὰ φύσιν αὕτη γὰρ αὐτῷ ἀρχὴ κινήσεως καὶ ἠρεμία.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 12: Ἐπειδὴ τοίνυν εἴρηται, τίς ἡ κατὰ Πλάτωνα φύσις, ὅτι οὐσία ἀσώματος, ἀχώριστος σωμάτων, λόγους ἔχουσα αὐτῶν.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 963: ἀλλ᾿ ὁρῶμεν ὅτι καὶ ἡ μονὰς αἰτία τῶν ἀριθμῶν, καὶ ἡ φύσις ἀσώματος οὖσα τῶν σωμάτων, καὶ τὸ σημεῖον τῶν μεγεθῶν, καὶ πανταχοῦ τὰ ἑνοειδέ στερα τῆς ὑποστάσεως ἐξηγούμενα τοῖς πεπληθυσμένοις καὶ μᾶλλον εἰς διάστασιν προεληλυ θόσιν. Cf. Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 96: Καὶ γὰρ ἡ φύσις καὶ ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς τῶν ἀσωμάτων σωματοειδῆ καὶ τῶν νοητῶν εἴδωλα προτείνουσιν αἰσθητὰ καὶ τῶν ἀδιαστάτων διαστατά. Op. cit. v. 2, p. 62: ἡ μὲν φύσις ἀσώματος, αἰτία σωμάτων ὑπάρχουσα, ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ παντελῶς ἀΐδιος, αἰτία δὲ τῶν γεννητῶν, ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἀκίνητος, αἴτιος γὰρ τῶν κινουμένων ἁπάντων. De Providentia et Fato, 12: ἡ τοῦδε τοῦ κόσμου φύσις οὐσία τις οὖσα ἀσώματος, ὡς τῶν σωμάτων προστάτης, καὶ ζωή.

212

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

Hence, this λόγος, although incorporeal in itself, has a certain relevance also with corporeal nature; ‘the way of participation is incorporeal, yet it has something in common with those [material things] which participate in incorporeal nature’.⁵⁸ This is what secures ‘both the corporeal mode of existence and the sharing of [material things] in the incorporeal nature’ (ὁ σωματικὸς τῆς παρουσίας τρόπος καὶ ἡ πρὸς αὐτὰ κοινότης).⁵⁹ As a matter of fact, the specific relevancy of perceptible things with the incorporeal entities from which they are generated, indeed the way in which this generation of corporeals from incorporeals takes place, was a principal desideratum of all philosophers of the Late Antiquity.⁶⁰ This is perfectly well as far as it goes, but it should have gone farther. For Proclus’ rationale on this point is not exactly Platonic, as he advertised it: it was Anaxagorean. For one thing, the very notion of Mind (Νοῦς) is an allegiance to Anaxagoras, although the patriarch of Neoplatonism acknowledged this only implicitly: Plotinus mentions Anaxagoras as the philosopher who envisaged the One, even though ‘he was too ancient an intellectual to be accurate’.⁶¹ For another, the λόγοι which are the creative forces that give rise to actual bodies are Anaxagoras’ principles, indeed they are not radically different from the Stoic seminal logoi. The man who saw this plain fact was another eminent Neoplatonist, namely, Iamblichus. It was Anaxagoras himself who had entertained the notion of ‘seeds of all things’ (σπέρματα πάντων χρημάτων) and ‘infinite number of seeds (σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλήθους) which have no resemblance with each other’.⁶² These were distinguished (i. e. created) by the Mind, and, thereafter, they interact with each other, thus giving rise to all things, animals and phenomena in the universe. Iamblichus saw this coexistence of all ‘seeds’ in the Pythagorean Monad, which ‘contains undistinguishable (or: mixed) logoi spermartically’ (ἡ μονὰς … καὶ σπερματικῶς ἀδιακρίτους τοὺς ἐν ἀριθμῷ λόγους περιέχει). Then he comes to the Presocratic ‘Physicists’ (ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς), but in fact he refers to Anaxagoras alone, since he makes an oblique, yet clear, reference to the famous open-

 Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 878: Ἄνεισιν [Parmenides] οὖν ἐπί τινα λόγον ἀσώματον, ὅν, εἰ ἐθέλοιμεν εἰς τὰ πράγματα ἀποβλέποντες ἀφορίζεσθαι, φυσικὸν εἶναι θήσομεν, καὶ εἶναι τὸν τρόπον τῆς μετοχῆς ἀσώματον μέν, ἀλλ᾿ ἔχοντά τι κοινὸν πρὸς τὰ μετέχοντα.  Loc. cit.  See infra, Porphyry and Origen, ‘The Theory of Logoi’, pp. 750 ff and 867 ff.  Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.9: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ νοῦν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ λέγων ἁπλοῦν καὶ αὐτὸς τίθεται τὸ πρῶτον καὶ χωριστὸν τὸ ἕν, τὸ δ᾿ ἀκριβὲς δι᾿ ἀρχαιότητα παρῆκε.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 34; the same on p. 156.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

213

ing of Anaxagoras’ book about ‘all things’ being mixed together. What Iamblichus understood in Anaxagoras was that ‘all of the seeds contain in themselves fused and mixed all the logoi of future beings; these seeds are potentially the ones from which future things will actually spring forth’.⁶³ Therefore, the principles are in fact ‘the seeds’ of all potentialities, out of which things develop; these ‘things’ are generated, formed, and sustained into being by means of the cohesive power of the principles, which are incorporeal and they determine future potential beings. Herein lies the point that Aristotle did not grasp, hence he introduced into his pertinent discussion examples about ‘bones’, ‘flesh’ ‘water’, ‘fire’, ‘veins’, and the like. Alexander of Aphrodisias reported accurately the folly of Aristotle: “When Anaxagoras said that everything is mixed with everything, he deluded himself by dreaming of such things about the matter (τὴν ὕλην ὀνειροπολοῦντος), namely, that all beings exist in actuality (ἐνεργείᾳ πάντα τὰ ὄντα εἶναι).” However, matter proper is different: “everything that is produced from it, it exists potentially” (τοιοῦτον δὲ ἡ ὕλη· δυνάμει γὰρ ἕκαστόν ἐστι τῶν ἐξ αὐτῆς γιγνομένων). For it is impossible for something to exist always in actuality (οὐ γὰρ δὴ δύναταί τι ἐνεργείᾳ εἶναι πάντα)”.⁶⁴ This is correct, of course: a rose is not always a rose; in the first place, it arises as a bud, which is a rose only potentially; the same goes for the human embryo, and so on. The mistake of Aristotle, and of all those who read him as an authority about everything (like Alexander of Aphrodisias – mostly, yet not always, and far too unlike Simplicius) was that Anaxagoras never had in mind matter proper existing in actuality, not even potentially as formless one: once the principles were ‘distinguished’, they govern the realm of potentialities, and they determine them. Plotinus (of whose work Porphyry wrote that ‘it is full of latent Peripatetic and Stoic doctrines’) fell a victim to the misleading analysis by Aristotle. Hence he made a pointless analysis: When Anaxagoras makes his mixture matter (τὸ μίγμα ὕλην ποιῶν), and says that it is not a capacity for everything but contains everything in actuality (οὐκ ἐπιτηδειότητα πρὸς πάντα,⁶⁵ ἀλλὰ πάντα ἐνεργείᾳ ἔχειν λέγων), does away with the Mind which he introduces by not making it the giver of shape and form (οὐκ αὐτὸν τὴν μορφὴν καὶ τὸ εἶδος διδόντα),

 Iamblichus, In Nicomachi Arithmeticam Introductionem, pp. 81 2: καὶ ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς δ᾿ ἂν εὕροιμεν τὰ σπέρματα πάντα τοὺς λόγους τῶν ἀποτελεσθησομένων ἐξ αὐτῶν ἀδιακρίτους καὶ συγκεχυμένους ἔχοντα, ὡς ἂν δυνάμει ὄντα ἐκεῖνα ἃ ἐξ αὐτῶν γενήσεται. It should be recalled that Anaxagoras is the sole and characteristic case of a Presocratic who made σπέρμα a cardinal notion of both his ontology and physics.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 291.  By the phrase ἐπιτηδειότητα πρὸς πάντα, Plotinus means ‘potentiality’.

214

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

and not prior to matter, but simultaneous with it (οὐδὲ πρότερον τῆς ὕλης, ἀλλ᾿ ἅμα). How ever, this simultaneity is impossible. For if the mixture participates in Being, it follows that Being is prior (εἰ γὰρ μετέχει τὸ μίγμα τοῦ εἶναι, πρότερον τὸ ὄν); and if this mixture itself is Being proper (εἰ δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ὂν τὸ μίγμα), there will be need of a certain third ruling over them [which should be different from them] (ἄλλου ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῖς δεήσει τρίτου). If, then, it is necessary for the Maker to be prior (εἰ οὖν πρότερον ἀνάγκη τὸν δημιουργὸν εἶναι), why did the forms have to be in small pieces in the matter (τί ἔδει τὰ εἴδη κατὰ σμικρὰ ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ εἶναι), and why did the Mind have subsequently to separate them out with endless trouble (διὰ πραγμάτων ἀνηνύτων διακρίνειν), when it could, as [matter] is without quality, extend quality and shape over the whole of it? (ἐξὸν ἀποίῳ οὔσῃ τὴν ποιότητα καὶ τὴν μορφὴν ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ἐκτεῖναι;)⁶⁶

This is the second reference to Anaxagoras by Plotinus. It only shows the professed Platonist Plotinus applying an Aristotelian criticism – but unfortunately he chose to avail himself of Aristotle in one of his worst moments. It is not the case that Plotinus wanted to suppress Anaxagoras’ own breakthrough: he just had not grasped his singular contribution, since he believed that the principles are material particles, and they are not what they really are, that is, the realm producing and governing all potentialities. This only means that Plotinus had a rough idea about Anaxagoras, still he had read about him only in Aristotle, which is why (as it mostly happened in the Late Antiquity) he incurred the flagrant mistakes that Aristotle himself made. Before coming to Simplicius, which will leave no doubt about how things really are, it would be instructive to see the Aristotelian point in advance, before any evidence is adduced against it. How could it be possible for ‘bodies’ to be in motion, indeed to pass through each other? Is this not a plausible and logical question? It is indeed, but this is not mine: centuries ago, Michael Psellus wondered about the Anaxagorean principles, of which Aristotle had urged that they were ‘homoiomerous bodies being extended throughout the whole; and the principles have the same form, both in part and in whole’.⁶⁷ However, Psellus exclaims, ‘it is impossible for a body to pass through another body’ (ἀλλὰ σῶμα διὰ σώματος οὐ χωρεῖ), and the only way for this proposition to make sense is to acknowledge that the principles are incorporeal.⁶⁸ Simplicius says that ‘when the Mind willed to distinguish the forms, which [Aristotle] calls homoiomeries, he set them in motion. For, in the absence of mo-

 Plotinus, Enneades, II.4.7.  Here is the reference from Anaxagoras: σώματά εἰσι ὁμοιομερῆ δι᾿ ὅλου ἥκοντα, τῶν δὲ ὁμοιομερῶν τὸ αὐτὸ εἶδος ἐν τῷ μέρει καὶ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 33.  Michael Psellus, loc. cit.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

215

tion, it was not possible for corporeal distinction to come to pass.’⁶⁹ This means that, in the primordial state, before any distinction was instilled, the situation was incorporeal, since no motion was there yet. Material reality appeared by means of rotation (περιχώρησις) which is constantly increasing, and it was caused by the Mind in the first place.⁷⁰ In other words, rotation and matter exist side by side, they appeared simultaneously, and they gave rise to the universe and to all the phenomena in this. As Gennadius Scholarius put it, whereas ‘to Democritus and to the ancient Physicists, matter is the sole cause of distinction’ (τὸ γὰρ τὴν ὕλην αἰτίαν εἶναι τῆς διακρίσεως, ᾗ μόνην, ὡς ὁ Δημόκριτος καὶ οἱ ἀρχαῖοι φυσικοὶ πάντες ἐτίθουν), Anaxagoras held that distinction is brought about by ‘the Mind being commingled with matter’ (ἢ τὴν ὕλην μετὰ τοῦ ποιοῦντος νοῦ, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐτίθει ἕλκειν τὸν νοῦν τὸ μεμιγμένον τῇ ὕλῃ καὶ διακρίνειν οὕτω τὰ ὄντα). Although it is not the ‘unmixed’ Mind, but its principles that are commingled with matter, this was an insightful conception none the less: for matter proper (that is, formless matter) is not actually ‘material’: rather, it was posited as immaterial and, according to Aristotle, it is non-being once considered in terms of actuality. Therefore, material objects can be distinguished not simply because of matter, but also because of form, and to Anaxagoras form is bestowed upon matter by the Mind acting by means of the principles.⁷¹ It is certainly not accident that Simplicius saw Anaxagoras as the predecessor of the matter/form notion of Plato and Aristotle, and of the notion of ‘formless body’ (ἀποίου σώματος),⁷² although, strictly speaking, the notion does not really belong to his philosophy.

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1123: βουληθεὶς ὁ κοσμοποιὸς νοῦς διακρῖναι τὰ εἴδη, ἅπερ ὁμοιο μερείας καλεῖ, κίνησιν αὐταῖς ἐνεποίησεν· οὐ γὰρ ἦν διάκρισιν σωματικὴν ἄνευ κινήσεως γενέσθαι.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 156: καὶ τῆς περιχωρήσιος τῆς συμπάσης νοῦς ἐκρά τησεν, ὥστε περιχωρῆσαι τὴν ἀρχήν. καὶ πρῶτον ἀπὸ τοῦ σμικροῦ ἤρξατο περιχωρεῖν, ἐπεὶ δὲ πλεῖον περιχωρεῖ, καὶ περιχωρήσει ἐπὶ πλέον. … πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς, καὶ τὴν περιχώρησιν ταύτην ἣν νῦν περιχωρέει τά τε ἄστρα καὶ ὁ ἥλιος καὶ ἡ σελήνη καὶ ὁ ἀὴρ καὶ ὁ αἰθὴρ οἱ ἀποκ ρινόμενοι. ἡ δὲ περιχώρησις αὕτη ἐποίησεν ἀποκρίνεσθαι. Likewise, on pp. 174; 176 7; 179; 181; also, 300 1: καὶ ἐπεὶ ἤρξατο ὁ νοῦς κινεῖν, ἀπὸ τοῦ κινουμένου παντὸς ἀπεκρίνετο, καὶ ὅσον ἐκί νησεν ὁ νοῦς, πᾶν τοῦτο διεκρίθη· κινουμένων δὲ καὶ διακρινομένων ἡ περιχώρησις πολλῷ μᾶλ λον ἐποίει διακρίνεσθαι.  Gennadius Scholarius (rendering Thomas Aquinas), Epitome Primae Partis Summae Theolo gicae Thomae Aquinae, 3.47: Καὶ ὅτι ἡ τῶν ὄντων διάκρισις κατὰ τὰ ἴδια εἴδη ἐστίν· ἡ δὲ ὕλη διὰ τὸ εἶδος ἐστίν, ἀνείδεος οὖσα ἑαυτῇ, ἵν᾿ ᾖ ἐπιτηδεία τοῖς διαφόροις εἴδεσιν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 179. Speaking of ‘formless body’, Simplicius had in mind not only Aristotle’s ‘formless matter’, but also Chrysippus and other Stoics who used the expression ἄποιος ὕλη as a technical one. Cf. SVF, II, frs. 320; 323; 326; 374; 794.

216

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

Later still, Michael of Ephesus set forth an old Greek tenet: “The more a principle is superior in power, the more smaller in size it is’ (πᾶσα γὰρ ἀρχὴ ὅσῳ κράτιστόν ἐστι τῇ δυνάμει, τοσούτῳ σμικρότατον τῷ μεγέθει). The extreme case of this principle is realized in the ‘seminal logoi’ which exist in matter and they work out development of plants:⁷³ these logoi are incorporeal; for, were it for them to be corporeal, it would be impossible for such a crowd to exist within a tiny seed.⁷⁴ Aristotle saw Anaxagoras as a downright materialist physicist, although he was also a theologian, and that part of his physics bore critically on his ontology. It appeared to him that Anaxagoras saw the world as a multitude of material elements, each of which was made of a different kind of stuff: wood, stones, bones, veins – each of them being homogenous, and consisting of elementwood, element-bone, and so on. How many kinds of different materials are there in this world? To human mind, practically they are infinite. Despite their respect for Aristotle, some of his commentators saw the folly of his account, and considered the absurdities that this entailed: if there is one homoiomery for each particular thing (say, one homoiomery for the specific flesh of an animal), it follows that each kind of animal should have a different set of homoiomeries for its flesh, hence, there should be an indefinite number of different homoiomeries for the flesh of animals, and so on.⁷⁵ John Philoponus took this idea to the extreme, saying that this would lead to the ridiculous assumption that an elephant has less particles of flesh than a mosquito, since in an infinite number of such elementary particles things become ‘indefinite’; therefore, any distinction between ‘more or less’ makes no longer sense.⁷⁶ It was Aristotle, not Anaxagoras, who styled the elementary particle of each one of them ὁμοιομερές, and he knew that to human mind there is an infinite number of different materials. Once Anaxagoras did indeed say that his principles are infinite, and ‘all’ of them ‘are in all’, Aristotle took issue with the proposition. He was under the impression that, whereas the other physicists had stipulated one principal element (Heraclitus, Thales, Anaximenes, and so on),  This is actually Michael’s own example: the seed of a fig tree contains in itself all the logoi which cause it to develop into a full tree.  Michael of Ephesus, In Aristotelis Sophisticos Elenchos Commentarius, p. 197: καὶ ὅτι οἱ φυσικοὶ καὶ σπερματικοὶ ἐν αὐτῇ λόγοι ἀσώματοί εἰσιν· οὐ γὰρ ἂν τοσοῦτοι ὄντες τῷ πλήθει ἐχώρησαν ἐν αὐτῇ οὕτως οὔσῃ σμικροτάτῃ τὸ μέγεθος.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, pp. 15 6. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 168. John Philoponus, comm GenCorr, p. 15. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii in Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, p. 183. Themistius and Simplicius were naturally unwilling to attribute this idea to Anaxagoras.  John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 103 4.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

217

and Empedocles posited that the four ones are governed by two principles (Love and Strife), Anaxagoras introduced an infinite number of them, which, worse still, are ‘all in all’. This appeared to him unscientific, since infinity cannot be known, which leaves no room for noesis whatsoever. For science has always striven to explain multiplicity by reference to a few principles and to simple models, and its aim has been (and it still is today, more than ever) to explain everything by means of a single principle, if possible. In view of this, Anaxagoras appeared to do exactly the opposite. Aristotle did not see that even a mediocre intellectual would have never attempted to construe natural multiplicity of phenomena by means of infinity, which would have been absurd. But there was more to it. Whereas Anaxagoras appeared as a naïve physicist, he was none the less insolent enough as to posit not six kinds of motion, but only one, namely, alteration or mutation (ἀλλοίωσις). This he did at the dawning of Greek science, when it was acknowledged by every intellectual worthy of his name that the less and simpler the principles a theory uses in order to explain nature the more insightful that theory is. As Aristotle put it, there is a great deal of toil until scientists ‘reach the supreme cause, which is the last thing that emerges out of a certain investigation’ (ἕως ἂν ἔλθωσιν ἐπὶ τὸ πρῶτον αἴτιον, ὃ ἐν τῇ εὑρέσει ἔσχατόν ἐστιν). For indeed ‘the very last result of analysis is itself first in the order of coming to be’ (καὶ τὸ ἔσχατον ἐν τῇ ἀναλύσει πρῶτον εἶναι ἐν τῇ γενέσει).⁷⁷ It appeared then that Anaxagoras introduced infinity of material elements as principles, whereas he dared to claim that there was one kind of motion only. What happened there? History of philosophy had to wait until the sixth century for Simplicius to appear in order to decipher things. It is well-known that, although a Platonist (nowadays styled Neoplatonist – a designation unknown to Simplicius himself), he was kind to Aristotle, since his teacher Ammonius had taught him that in essence Aristole did not really dissent from Plato. Nevertheless, Simplicius could not avoid dissenting from Aristotle. Hence, when he came to the crucial point, he could not help expose Aristotle’s flagrant distortion. Simplicius set out to defend a scientific logic and discipline rather than any specific person: the point was that the kinds of motion are not six (as Aristotle posited) but only one, namely, alteration or mutation, out of which things either come-to-be or perish, by means of concurrence or disjuncture of the causes which are in fact Anaxagoras’ creative, constitutive, and cohesive principles.

 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, 1112b.

218

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

In this respect, Simplicius (while expounding Aristotle’s criticism) tells us that this great principle was the fruit of another Presocratic, thus correcting Porphyry: Porphyry attributes [the proposition] all things were together (ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα) to Anaxagoras, but [he attributes the axiom that] becoming means to be altered (τὸ γίνεσθαι εἶναι τὸ ἀλλοιοῦσθαι) to Anaximenes, whereas [he attributes] the notions of concurrence and disjuncture (or, being conjoined and separated out, σύγκρισίν τε καὶ τὴν διάκρισιν) to Democritus and Empedocles. However, it is Anaxagoras who, in the first book of his Physics, urges that coming to be and being altered is in fact concurrence, and perishing is disjunction (τὸ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι συγκρίνεσθαι καὶ διακρίνεσθαι), by writing this: concerning the notion of ‘becoming and perishing’ (or, coming to be and passing away, τὸ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι) the Greeks have an erroneous view of it (οὐκ ὀρθῶς νομίζουσιν οἱ Ἕλληνες), since no thing really comes to be or passes away; instead, this is either mixing together or dissociation. Hence, they would be correct if they called coming to be mixing together and passing away disjuncture (οὐδὲν γὰρ χρῆμα γίνεται οὐδὲ ἀπόλλυται, ἀλλ᾿ ἀπὸ ἐόντων χρημάτων συμμίσγεταί τε καὶ διακρίνεται. καὶ οὕτως ἂν ὀρθῶς καλοῖεν τό τε γίνεσθαι συμμίσγεσθαι καὶ τὸ ἀπόλλυσθαι διακρίνεσθαι).⁷⁸

Then, Simplicius goes on with arguing that, in effect, all of the foregoing propositions actually make up one and the same philosophy – that of Anaxagoras, who did not contradict himself, as Aristotle alleged. This means that Simplicius does not simply quote Anaxagoras: he criticizes Aristotle’s criticism against the Clazomenian: For indeed all of these [axioms] (πάντα δὲ ταῦτα), that is, all things were together (καὶ τὸ ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα) and [the axiom] that coming to be obtains according to mutation, by either concurrence or disjuncture (καὶ τὸ κατ᾿ ἀλλοίωσιν ἢ κατὰ σύγκρισιν καὶ διάκρισιν τὴν γένεσιν εἶναι), have been postulated in order to confirm that nothing comes from nothing, but everything that comes to be stems from something that already exists. For mutation is something that Being proper undergoes, whereas concurrence and disjuncture is something that [particular] beings undergo (εἰς πίστιν εἴληπται τοῦ μηδὲν ἐκ μὴ ὄντος γίνεσθαι, ἀλλ᾿ ἐξ ὄντος γίνεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα· ἥ τε γὰρ ἀλλοίωσις πάθος περὶ τὸ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ἡ σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις περὶ τὰ ὄντα).⁷⁹

These are the words of Anaxagoras himself, shared also by Hippocrates who had a more vivid view of how things work in the case of human body.⁸⁰ Simplicius corrected the attribution of the four propositions to different Presocratics (Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, Democritus, Empedocles) by showing that these proposi-

   καὶ

Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163; italics are mine. Hippocrates, De Diaeta, 4: ἀπόλλυται μὲν νῦν οὐδὲν ἁπάντων χρημάτων οὐδὲ γίνεται, ὅτι μὴ πρόσθεν ἦν· συμμισγόμενα δὲ καὶ διακρινόμενα ἀλλοιοῦται.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

219

tions do not belong to different philosophies, because all of them conspire to sustain one specific theory, namely, that of Anaxagoras. This Simplicius did by quoting Anaxagoras’ own words, and fortunately so, since posterity was supplied with one more passage of Anaxagoras’ philosophy through Simplicius correcting some assessments of Porphyry. By the expression ‘coming-to-be and passing-away’ (τὸ δὲ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι), Simplicius (recording the words of Anaxagoras) simply and plainly pointed up Aristotle himself, who had used the expression γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι in order to excoriate Anaxagoras: what Simplicius actually did was defending the Clazomenian. For here is what Aristotle claimed: Of the ancient philosophers, some assert that what is called simple coming to be (τὴν κα λουμένην ἁπλῆν γένεσιν) is mutation (ἀλλοίωσιν), while others hold that mutation and coming to be are different processes. Those who hold that the universe is one simple entity (ἕν τι τὸ πᾶν λέγουσιν) and generate all things from a single thing (καὶ πάντα ἐξ ἑνὸς γεν νῶσι), must necessarily maintain that coming to be is mutation (τὴν γένεσιν ἀλλοίωσιν φάναι), and that what comes to be in the proper sense it appears by means of undergoing mutation (τὸ κυρίως γινόμενον ἀλλοιοῦσθαι). Those, on the other hand, such as Empedo cles and Anaxagoras and Leucippus, who hold that the matter of things is more than one (πλείω τὴν ὕλην ἑνός), should regard [the process of coming to be] as different. However, Anaxagoras did not abide by his own terminology (τὴν οἰκείαν φωνὴν ἠγνόησεν). For he says that coming to be and perishing (τὸ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι) constitute the same process as being altered (τῷ ἀλλοιοῦσθαι), even though, like others, he says that the ele ments are many (πολλὰ δὲ λέγει τὰ στοιχεῖα, καθάπερ καὶ ἕτεροι).⁸¹

Hardly could so many mistakes (or distortions) be committed into such a short passage. For Anaxagoras, (1) did not posit any ’elements’ (like Democritus et. al.), but ‘principles’, as just Simplicius felt it necessary to point out; (2) he did not ‘generate all things from a single thing’, but from interaction between those principles; (3) he never said that matter is ‘more than one’. This was only an erroneous assumption by Aristotle, who thought that ‘bones, flesh, fire, water’, and the like, are different, whereas Anaxagoras had explained that they are not different principles, but accidental manifestations of matter, owing to a occasional interplay between the ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα) in each particular case – which is in fact the tenor of his statement, ‘all things are everywhere’. As we shall see in the moment, his ‘seeds’ are incorporeal and things spring out of either specific concurrence or disjuncture of seeds reacting with each other.

 Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a. Cf. Aristotle developing his frustrating criti cism further on pp. 315b; 321a.

220

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

Therefore, Anaxagoras did not contradict himself, neither did he fail to abide by his own terminology: it was simply Aristotle who ignored the fundamentals of that teaching, and the man who first pointed out this was Simplicius who revealed to us Anaxagoras’ opinion, that ‘the Greeks have an erroneous view of coming-to-be and passing-away’. The principle on which Simplicius goes along with Aristole is the universal Greek axiom that whatever is infinite it is unknowable,⁸² which is why Aristotle claimed that, if the homoiomeries are infinite in number, they cannot be known. But if the infinite qua infinite is unknowable (εἰ δὴ τὸ μὲν ἄπειρον ᾗ ἄπειρον ἄγνωστον),⁸³ then, once something is infinite in terms of number or size, it is impossible to know how much it is; and if something is infinite in terms of form, it is impossible to know what it is (τὸ δὲ κατ᾿ εἶδος ἄπειρον ἄγνωστον ποῖον τι). Once, therefore, the principles are infinite in terms of both number and form (τῶν δ᾿ ἀρχῶν ἀπείρων οὐσῶν καὶ κατὰ πλῆθος καὶ κατ᾿ εἶδος), it is impossible to know anything that stems from them (ἀδύνατον εἰδέναι τὰ ἐκ τού των). For we believe that only once we know what and how many a composite entity is made of (ἐκ τίνων καὶ πόσων ἐστίν) are we able to know this [composite entity].⁸⁴

Simplicius cared to explain Aristotle’s argument by giving a ‘brief account of its implications’ (ὁ δὲ λόγος ὁ ἐλεγκτικός, ὃν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης συντόμως τέθεικε, δυνάμει τοιοῦτός ἐστιν).⁸⁵ Once the homoiomeries are infinite both in form and in number, and what is infinite cannot be known, it follows that they are unknown. Since they are ‘principles’, all things have unknown principles – and it follows of necessity that things that derive from infinite principles are themselves unknown. This much about Aristotle’s argument by Simplicius. Likewise, Aristotle made mention of both Democritus and Anaxagoras, aguing that they differed on this: whereas Democtirus believed that contrariety sug-

 This is possibly why, in the Latin translation of De Principis, Origen is represented as having claimed (which he never did: see chapter 13) that God created a definite number of souls, that is, as many souls as he could know, since what is infinite is unknowable. Definitely, that work was written at an early stage of his Christian life and under the spell of Anaxagoras. Perhaps, Origen named the operating principles ‘minds’ (νόες). Since the Creator was called also Νοῦς (e. g. Cels, IV.54&75; VII.38), those living on his Body and his own (divine) life had to be the same as the whole, they could have been styled νόες, too. See infra, pp. 813; 1130 8; 1162 4.  The translation by Philip Wicksteed and Francis Cornford (Loeb, vol. n. 228, p. 45) is a detri ment to Aristotle’s text: “But if a thing has no limit under some certain aspect, then we cannot define it is respect of that said aspect as to which it is unlimited.” This simply makes no sense. See infra Simplicius quoting this in his own words: τὸ ἄπειρον καθὸ ἄπειρον ἄγνωστον.  Aristotle, Physica, 187b. See comments on this by Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 21; 164 6, and Gennadius Scholarius, Prolegomena in Aristotelis Physicam ex Auctoribus Diversis, section 1, p. 47; Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii in Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, p. 182.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 165.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

221

gested difference of shape and position [of the atoms] (κατὰ τὸ σχῆμα καὶ τὴν θέσιν τὴν ἐναντίωσιν ἐτίθετο), Anaxagoras posited contrariety as difference between the principles in terms of both essence and genus (κατὰ τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τὸ γένος).⁸⁶ Simplicius made the similar (actually reverse) point later in the same work (commenting also on the first book of Aristotle’s Physics) about Aristotle urging that ‘infinite qua infinite is unknown’ (τὸ μὲν ἄπειρον ᾗ ἄπειρον ἄγνωστον):⁸⁷ Although this time Alexander of Aphrodisias thought that Aristotle meant Anaxagoras alone, Simplicius argues that this applies equally to the same philosophers mentioned in the previous report of Aristotle: the principles are infinite to Anaxagoras as much as are they so to Democritus and Leucippus. The difference is that, to the former, ‘the principles were infinite not only in number, but also in shape’ (οὐ τῷ πλήθει μόνον ἀπείρους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ εἴδει ὑποθέμενος τὰς ἀρχάς), whereas to the latter (Atomists) the principles were also infinite, but their shape and substance was one and the same’ (ἀλλὰ τὸ εἶδος αὐτῶν καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν ἓν ὑπέθεντο καὶ ὡρισμένον).⁸⁸ However, in reality things were not quite so, and Simplicius goes on so as to set things right: Anaxagoras spoke of ‘infinite’ principles only in relation to the human capabilities of cognition; otherwise, they were finite in number, which is why Anaxagoras said that ‘the Mind knew them all’. Since Simplicius agrees that infinity in unknowable, he argues that the very fact of the Mind knowing all the principles shows that they are not infinite. When Anaxagoras said that the initial number of forms was infinite, he did not mean in finite by its own nature, but unknown in relation to us (ὡς ἡμῖν ἀπερίληπτον, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ὡς φύσει ἄπειρον).

For they were known to the Mind, which entails that they are not infinite by nature (εἰ οὖν γνωστὰ τῷ νῷ ἐστιν, οὐκ ἂν εἴη φύσει ἄπειρα).⁸⁹ To sustain this, Simplicius provides us with one more passage of Anaxagoras’ own words:

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 44. He considers the phrase of Aristotle, Physica, 184b20, τὸ γένος ἕν, σχήματι δὲ ἢ εἴδει διαφερούσας ἢ καὶ ἐναντίας, which Simplicius himself also quoted at this point. Alexander of Aphrodisias urged that, by ἢ καὶ ἐναντίας, Aristotle suggested Democritus alone. Simplicius argued that Aristotle had in mind Anaxagoras, too. See discussion infra.  Aristotle, Physica, 187b.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 166.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 165. He returns to this in the commCael, p. 608: μήποτε δὲ τὸ ἄπειρον ὡς ἡμῖν ἀπερίληπτον καὶ ἄγνωστον λέγει·… ἐπεί, ὅτι τῷ εἴδει πεπερασμένα ᾤετο, δηλοῖ λέγων πάντα γιγνώσκειν τὸν νοῦν· καίτοι, εἰ ἄπειρα ὄντως ἦν, παντελῶς ἦν ἄγνωστα· ἡ γὰρ γνῶσις ὁρίζει καὶ περατοῖ τὸ γνωσθέν.

222

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

And the Mind knew them all, namely, the things that are mixed together, and those which are distinct beings, and those that are decomposed into elemental parts. Moreover, whatev er things were going to be, and whatever they were, and as many as they are now and will be, all these the Mind set in order (καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ τὰ ἀποκρινόμενα καὶ διακρι νόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὁπόσα νῦν ἔστι καὶ ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς).⁹⁰

Therefore, Simplicius urges, Aristotle’s argument against Anaxagoras is unsound, ‘even though it is certainly true [as a general rule] that, if the attributes of principles⁹¹ are unknown, those which derive from these [principles] are unknown, too’.⁹² In relation to this criticism by Aristotle, Simplicius reports that Porphyry took it as pointing to all those who posited ‘infinite elements’ (ἄπειρα τὰ στοιχεῖα ὑποτιθεμένους). However (Simplicius goes on), Alexander of Aphrodisias argued that this statement was made against Anaxagoras alone. Whom Aristotle actually had in mind at that point was not really a serious concern to Simplicius. Nevertheless, he took issue with the logic of Alexander, and argued that he went as far as to dispute the accuracy of the copies of Aristotle’s work in order to support his own [i. e. Alexander’s] claim, while at the same time he lacked accurate knowledge of both Democritus and Anaxagoras. If it is absurd to dispute that which is written in all of the copies [of Aristotle’s Physics] (εἰ οὖν καὶ τὸ τὰς γραφὰς ἀθετεῖν τὰς ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἀντιγράφοις συμφωνουμένας ἄτοπον), to strive to prove Aristotle’s account as deficient in terms of language and of classification of Presocratic doctrine is no less absurd (καὶ τὸ ἐλλιπῆ τὸν λόγον ἀποδεῖξαι καὶ κατὰ τὴν φράσιν καὶ κατὰ τὰ τμήματα τῆς διαιρέσεως οὐχ ἧττον ἄτοπον), especially to claim that mention of Anaxagoras’ philosophy is not made by Aristotle at that point, although Aristotle devoted extensive analyses of that philosophy (καὶ μάλιστα, ὅτι ἡ ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξα παραλιμπάνεται, πρὸς ἣν πολλοὺς λόγους ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης κατατείνει). It is no less unacceptable to distort Aristotle’s opinion about Democritus (ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ τὴν ᾿Aριστοτέλους περὶ Δημοκρίτου δόξαν ἀθετεῖν), given that Aristotle, like other exegetes, sustained that Democritus clearly included contrariety in his principles (οἰομένου σαφῶς ἐναντίωσιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ὑποτίθεσθαι, ὅπερ οἱ ἕτεροι ποιοῦσιν ἐξηγηταί, οὐκ εὐπαράδεκτον φαίνεται). Therefore, as noted earlier, Aristotle did make mention of both Democritus and Anaxagoras, who differed on this: whereas Democtirus believed that contrariety suggested difference of shape and posi-

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 165 6.  Meaning, what and how many the principles are, as Aristotle supra.  Loc. cit.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

223

tion [of atoms] (κατὰ τὸ σχῆμα καὶ τὴν θέσιν τὴν ἐναντίωσιν ἐτίθετο), Anaxagoras posited contrariety as difference between the principles in terms of both essence and genus (κατὰ τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τὸ γένος).⁹³ Simplicius argues that, once this rendering is employed, there is no need either to dispute the credibility of manuscripts, or to blame Aristotle for deficient construction of his phrase (οὔτε τὴν γραφὴν διορθοῦν ἀνάγκη οὔτε τὸν λόγον ὡς ἀναπόδοτον αἰτιᾶσθαι), or indeed to turn our back to Democritus’ conception of the notion of contrariety (οὔτε τὰ περὶ τῆς κατὰ Δημόκριτον ἐναντιώσεως κατανωτίζεσθαι).’⁹⁴ It is quite plain that both Porphyry and Simplicius sympathized with Anaxagoras. The former wished to take Aristotle’s foregoing criticism as a wholesale one, not as censure aimed at Anaxagoras ad hoc, if at all. For Porphyry interpreted this invective as aimed jointly ‘against Leucippus, Democritus, and Metrodorus, and all those who argued that the elements are infinite’. Not a word about Anaxagoras.⁹⁵ We also know that ancient historians of philosophy did not include Anaxagoras among those who posited infinite ‘elements’,⁹⁶ even though Aristotle himself had claimed so,⁹⁷ and some scholars (mainly his commentators) followed him on this,⁹⁸ including the learned Themistius,⁹⁹ which I have discussed in chapter 1. It was Simplicius that had full knowledge of Anaxagoras’ own text, so as to defend him against Aristotle’s faultfinding. Aristotle was obsessed with the impression that Anaxagoras posited principles which are infinite in number and material in substance, which is why he erroneously called them ‘elements’, although he was not consistent even on this, as discussed in chapter 1. This idée fixe is responsible for several absurd syllogisms. In his treatise On the Heavens,  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 44.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 44 5.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 165: Κοινὴ δὲ ἡ ἐπιχείρησις ἂν εἴη, ὥς φησι Πορφύριος, καὶ πρὸς Λεύ κιππον καὶ Δημόκριτον καὶ Μητρόδωρον καὶ πάντας τοὺς ἄπειρα τὰ στοιχεῖα λέγοντας.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 883F: Λεύκιππος Δημόκριτος Δημήτριος Μητρό δωρος Ἐπίκουρος τὰ μὲν ἄτομα ἄπειρα τῷ πλήθει, τὸ δὲ κενὸν ἄπειρον τῷ μεγέθει. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.18: Δημόκριτος καὶ ἕτεροι, Λεύκιππος, Μητρόδωρος, Ἐπίκουρος τὰ μὲν ἄτομα ἄπειρα τῷ πλήθει, τὸ δὲ κενὸν ἄπειρον τῷ μεγέθει.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a; Metaphysica, 988a; 1056b; Physica, 189a; 203a; De Melisso, 975b.  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 2; 4. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 370E; De Animae Pro creatione in Timaeo, 1026B. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (= Adversus Physicos 2), 318. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 28; 61; 461; 630. Clement of Alexandria, Pro trepticus, 5.66.1. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 10.7.5. John Philoponus, commGen Corr, p. 11; commPhys, pp. 2; 24; 87; 94; 96; 101; 102; 108; 109; 396; 409; 447; 448; 450. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, pp. 25; 53; 292; 377.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, pp. 2; 13; 14; 16; 81; 89.

224

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

he uses this presumption in his arguments denying that things are generated from one another (ὑπολείπειν τὴν ἐξ ἀλλήλων γένεσιν), because otherwise ‘a finite magnitude can have an infinite number of finite magnitudes within it’. His argument was that the process of generation from one another must of necessity come to a stop, unless finite magnitude can have an infinite number of finite magnitudes within it. For (if generation obtains by secration, εἴπερ ἐκκρίσει ἡ γένεσις), when water is generated from earth, something has been taken away from the earth, and so on, when more water is generated from the remainder. If therefore the process went on for ever, it would mean that the finite contained an infinity; but since this is impossible, these could not be generated from one another for ever.¹⁰⁰ Although Aristotle did not mention Anaxagoras by name at that point, Simplicius immediately saw that it was this Presocratic that Aristotle had in mind, since ‘generation from one another’ suggests the Anaxagorean idea of ‘everything being in everything’ (τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν) and ‘everything is generated from everything’.¹⁰¹ Besides, Aristotle refers to those who made generation obtain out of ἔκκρισις, and Simplicius explicitly attributes this to Anaxagoras.¹⁰² This is why, in discussing this portion of Aristotle, Simplicius mentions the name of Anaxagoras alone, in order to distance that theory from Aristotle’s claims: he argued once again that on no account could Aristotle’s argument touch upon Anaxagoras. Aristotle’s syllogism excludes ‘generation from one another’ on the ground that ‘an infinite number of finite magnitudes cannot exist within any body’ (ἐν τῷ πεπερασμένῳ μεγέθει μὴ ἐνυπάρχειν ἄπειρα πεπερασμέ-

 Aristotle, De Caelo, 305b20 27. See comment on this by Simplicius, commCael, pp. 632; 635, discussed infra, pp. 479 80.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 63: πόθεν γὰρ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς φαίνεται γινόμενον (εἰ καὶ διὰ μέσων ἄλλων), εἰ μὴ πᾶν ἦν ἐν πᾶσι; Op. cit. p. 164: πᾶν ἐν παντὶ καὶ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἐκκρίνεται. Op. cit. pp. 169 70 (an implicit reference to Anaxagoras): τοῖς πᾶν ἐν παντὶ λέγουσι καὶ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἐκκρίνεσθαι. … τὸ πᾶν ἐν παντὶ εἶναι καὶ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς γίνεσθαι ἤτοι ἐκκρίνεσθαι. Op. cit. p. 171: Τὸ πᾶν ἐν παντὶ εἶναι καὶ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἐκκρίνεσθαι. Then, he explains that not haphazard ‘is everything generated from everything’; pp. 174 5: ᾿Aλλ᾿ οὐδὲ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἁπλῶς ἔοικεν ἐκκρί νειν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, κἂν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα λέγῃ εἶναι. … ἐπειδὴ οὐ πᾶν παντὶ μίσγεται, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ γίνεται πᾶν ἐκ παντός. Op. cit. p. 460: ὁρῶν οὖν πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς γινόμενον, εἰ καὶ μὴ ἀμέσως ἀλλὰ κατὰ τάξιν. Op. cit. p. 461: πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἐκκρίνεται καὶ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 300: τὴν γένεσιν οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ ἔκκρισιν εἶναι φησί, τὴν δὲ ἔκκ ρισιν ὑπὸ τῆς κινήσεως γίνεσθαι, τῆς δὲ κινήσεως αἴτιον εἶναι τὸν νοῦν. Op. cit. p. 460: διὸ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἔλεγε μεμῖχθαι καὶ τὴν γένεσιν κατὰ ἔκκρισιν γίνεσθαι. commCael, p. 632: τοῦ δὲ ᾿Aνα ξαγόρου πάντα ἐν πᾶσι λέγοντος καὶ τὴν γένεσιν ἔκκρισιν τιθέντος. See next chapter, pp. 289 90, Philoponus holding the same view.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

225

να), which is clearly a disapprobatory allusion to Anaxagoras’ ‘everything being into everything’. Simplicius then develops his own argument: For even if bodies are divisible ad infinitum, to say ad infinitum is one thing, but infinite in actuality is quite another (ἄλλο τὸ ἐπ᾿ ἄπειρόν ἐστι καὶ ἄλλο τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ ἄπειρον).

When we say that an object is divisible ad infinitum, this simply suggests that this object is a continuum (τὰ μὲν ἐπ᾿ ἄπειρον διαιρετὰ συνεχῆ ἐστι), which is an idea that anyone could have been quick to endorse. But when Anaxagoras used the term ‘infinite’ speaking about his principles, he actually spoke about things that are not really infinite in number, but they are finite (τὰ δὲ κατὰ ᾿Aναξαγόραν πεπερασμένα ἐστίν). ‘For they are not unified with each other because they are dissimilar to each other’ (οὐ γὰρ ἥνωται πρὸς ἄλληλα ἀνομοειδῆ ὄντα).¹⁰³ Aristotle’s criticism of Anaxagoras was based on a fundamental assumption, which was that Anaxagoras’ principles (which Aristotle sometimes called ‘elements’, sometimes ‘homoiomeries’, and sometimes ‘principles’) are actual material objects, however infinitely tiny. This hypothesis imbues his analyses, and naturally it was taken up by some (though not all) of his commentators. Asclepius of Tralles, largely copying from Alexander of Aphrodisias, put it in the most straightforward terms, presuming that Anaxagoras said things which were ‘wrong and unclear’ (οὔτε ὀρθῶς οὔτε σαφῶς), indeed things that even an utterly naïve person could have never said: Anaxagoras’ ‘principle’ (ἔστι κατ᾿ αὐτὸν ἀρχή) was both the Mind and ‘something else, that is, the Indeterminate’ (καὶ θάτερον, τουτέστι τὸ ἀόριστον). Since Asclepius reflected in Aristotle’s, not Anaxagoras’, terms, he took the ‘indeterminate something’ to be Aristotle’s formless matter, which ‘can be everything potentially, but nothing in actuality’. This is what Asclepius saw as Anaxagoras’ ‘original mixture’ (ὁποῖον ἐκεῖνος τὸ μῖγμα ὑπέθετο), too. This is also what Asclepius fancifully extrapolated as Anaxagoras’ views, which he styled ‘wrong and unclear’. Consequently, he decided that Anaxagoras introduced ‘two principles instead of four’ (δύο γὰρ μόνον ἀρχὰς ἂν λέγοι ἀντὶ τεσσάρων), but we should recall that Asclepius was the sole commentator who claimed that Anaxagoras would have been unable to compose any philosophy of his own and these things were retailed to him by someone who wished to help him;¹⁰⁴ moreover, in the present case, these views can be assumed not because Anaxagoras meant or said them, but because Aristotle himself enunciated them in order to help the Clazomenian (εἰ οὕτως λέγει ὡς αὐτὸς αὐτῷ βοηθῶν εἴρηκεν αὐτὸν βούλεσθαι λέγειν). What was the

 Simplicius, commCael, p. 635.  Supra, p. 163.

226

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

gist of Aristotle’s ‘rendering’, as it were, of that philosophy? The answer comes forthwith: “the principles which existed in the primordial mixture, they existed in actuality, not potentially” (τὰ γὰρ ὁμοιομερῆ τὰ ἐν τῷ μίγματι φαίνεται οὐ δυνάμει λέγων εἶναι ἀλλ᾿ ἐνεργείᾳ).¹⁰⁵ The value of the references by Alexander and Asclepius lies in the fact that these are the most crude and blunt statements conveying what Aristotle believed of Anaxagoras (we should recall that he associated the supposedly Platonic Inteterminate Dyad with Anaxagoras, too, as discussed earlier – which is what Asclepius had in mind). Hence, they constitute a vulgar, though not entirely inaccurate, version of Aristotle’s criticism. Asclepius then summarized the report: “Anaxagoras posited two elements,¹⁰⁶ the Mind as the Creative Cause, and the homoiomeries as the material one. He said that everything is mixed with everything. But it is impossible for everything to be in everything in actuality.”¹⁰⁷ He then addressed the philosopher in second person: “Did you actually say these things, o Anaxagoras, and you meant matter by saying that everything is in everything, or in fact you were dreaming about matter when you said these things?”¹⁰⁸ John Philoponus commented on Aristotle who criticized the Physicists for allegedly maintaining distinct substances that were already present in the primal mixture.¹⁰⁹ In each of the unlimited number of primal substances, an unlimited amount of flesh and blood and brains would exist, separate from each other, but still existing, and each one of

 Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 62.  He speaks of ‘elements’, although he styled them ‘principles’ in the foregoing passage. Like Aristotle, Asclepius felt he could take the license of using either term at his liking, without caring for consistency.  Asclepius of Tralles, loc. cit. Καὶ ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὖν, φησί, δύο ὑπετίθετο τὰ στοιχεῖα, τὸν νοῦν ποιητικὸν αἴτιον καὶ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ὑλικόν, καὶ ἔλεγε πάντα ἐν πᾶσι μεμῖχθαι. τοῦτο δέ ἐστιν ἀδύνατον τὸ εἶναι πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐνεργεία. Up to this point, Asclepius copies from Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 72.  Asclepius of Tralles, loc. cit. This he also copied from Alexander of Aphrodisias, who wrote that, when Anaxagoras said those things, ‘he was dreaming of matter’. commMetaph, p. 68: τὴν ὕλην ὀνειροπολεῖ, ἥτις δυνάμει μέν ἐστι πάντα, ἐνεργείᾳ δὲ οὐδὲν ὧν δύναται. Op. cit. p. 291: ὡς δι᾿ ὧν ἔλεγε πάντα ἐν πᾶσι μεμῖχθαι τὴν ὕλην ὀνειροπολοῦντος, ἐνεργείᾳ πάντα τὰ ὄντα εἶναι. The real origin of this contemptuous expression is Plato (as Simplicius reports), referring to ‘phi losophers of old’ who ‘dreamed of matter, while believing that the Ideas exist within matter’ (ὡς οἱ παλαιοὶ πάντες ἐδόξαζον ὀνειροπολοῦντες τὴν ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ, ὡς ὁ Πλάτων φησί, τῶν εἰδῶν ὑπό στασιν). Simplicius, commPhys, p. 562.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a12 16.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

227

them is infinite (κεχωρισμένα μέντοι ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων, οὐδὲν μέντοι ἧττον ὄντα, καὶ ἄπειρον ἕκαστον), which is illogical (τοῦτο δ᾿ ἄλογον).¹¹⁰

This is Aristotle’s normal attribution to Anaxagoras allegedly maintaining that molecules of all distinguishable components of all things exist as ‘infinite’ ones, which he understood as ‘an infinite amount of a certain kind of matter’. Philoponus explained the expression ‘separate’ (from each other, κεχωρισμένα) urging that this bespeaks particles which exist in actuality (κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν) and each one of them is distinct from any other in terms of the space they occupy (καὶ τοῖς τόποις διακεκριμένα). However, Philoponus goes on, this is not the case, of everything existing within everything in the sense we speak about matter being potentially everything: this is not what Anaxagoras held. Instead, he thought that everything is there in the form of seed-aggregate (πανσπερμίᾳ), just like the seeds of barleycorns and grain. Aristotle then (according to Philoponus) believed that in each homoiomery there are infinite material bodies (ἐν ἑκάστῃ ὁμοιομερείᾳ ἄπειρα σώματα), and yet each of these bodies that ‘exist within’ (καὶ οὐδὲν ἧττον ἕκαστον τῶν ἐνυπαρχόντων) is itself infinite (καὶ αὐτὸ ἄπειρόν ἐστιν), and within each of these infinite things there are also an infinite number of other ones (ἔστι γὰρ καὶ ἐν ἐκείνῳ ἄπειρα). This is the idea that Aristotle ascribed to Anaxagoras about ‘infinitely infinite’ principles (ἀπειράκις ἀπείρους): in each infinitely small corporeal particle, there is an infinite number of other particles, and there is no end to this regression. Aristotle’s commentators admired his authority too much to dispute it,¹¹¹ and Simplicius had no problem with reporting such views, especially those by Theophrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias. As a matter of fact, he cast light on Theophrastus arguing that Anaxagoras said that ‘there is no the smallest part of what is small, but always there is something smaller’ (οὔτε τοῦ σμικροῦ ἐστι τοὐλάχιστον ἀλλὰ ἔλασσον ἀεί); and there is neither anything that can be styled the biggest nor anything that can be determined as the smallest. ¹¹²  Op. cit. 188a1 5.  Cf. Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 27. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 16. John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 81; 100; 101; 412; 430.  Theophrastus (fr. 47) ‘in the second book, entitled On Anaxagoras’, apud Simplicius, comm Phys, p. 164 (commenting on Aristotle’s Physica, 187b7); then, once again, on p. 166 (commenting on Aristotle’s Physica, 187b13). The argument was that ‘everything is in everything’ (πάντα ἐν παντί) on account of the principles being infinitely small (διότι καὶ ἐν μεγέθει καὶ ἐν σμικρότητι ἄπειρα). Following Aristotle, Theophrastus took for granted that Anaxagoras spoke of material elements. He was wrong as regards both notions, namely, material and elements. But the culprit who misled him was Aristotle, who also misled all doxography of and after Theophrastus con cerning the real Anaxagoras.

228

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

Lucretius (c. 99 BC ‒ c. 55 BC) strove to inform his fellow-Romans about the meaning of homoiomery as simply as he could, taking into account the poverty of his language (Quam grai memorant nec nostra dicere lingua concedit nobis patrii sermonis egestas): bones consist of little pieces of bones, flesh is made of little pieces of flesh, and blood is made of little drops of blood. The same goes for gold, earth, fire (made of ‘particles of fire’, ignibus ex ignis, umorem umoribus esse!), and a liquid is made of little particles of liquid. Everything is made in like a manner. Moreover, there is no void within any thing (nec tamen esse ulla de parte in rebus inane), and there is no end in the division of things (neque corporibus finem esse secandis). Hence, Anaxagoras made his own doctrine (id quod Anaxagoras sibi sumit) that everything is mixed with everything, and yet only one thing appears (res putet inmixtas rebus latitare, sed illud apparere unum); this appears as the foremost one even though there is mixture of many things in it (cuius sint plurima mixta et magis in promptu primaque in fronte locata).¹¹³ This is an account that did justice to Aristotle’s testimony referring to ‘those who made the elements infinite’.¹¹⁴ Whether it did justice also to Anaxagoras, we shall see in a moment. After all, the doxographer who was not impeded by the barrier of language found this account plausible: once men eat any kind of food, their nerves, blood, hair, arteries, flesh, bones, and the like, are sustained in life because in every food there is everything, that is, particles of nerves, blood, hair, and the rest. Thus, hair is fed from the particles of hair that exist in any food, nails from particles of nails and drops of blood existing therein, and so on.¹¹⁵ No matter how silly the foregoing account may seem, it is a faithful rendering of Aristotle’s narrative – it just went a little too far, which, however, is useful because it is revealing. Simplicius had good reason to mention Anaxagoras in order to defend him. For Aristotle had made it a leitmotif that Anaxagoras thought that all material bodies are within all material bodies, each one of them in the form of particles. However, Simplicius had an answer to that, which he set forth with rigour and this happened just for once, a good thousand years after Anaxagoras’ work had suffered flagrant distortion by Aristotle and his sweeping influence. Simplicius was of course an Aristotelian commentator who never concealed his admiration for the Stagirite, all the more so since he was one of those who believed that there is no essential difference between Plato and Aristotle – a the-

 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, verses 830 44 and 876 9.  Aristotle, Physica, 203a19.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.12, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876C.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

229

sis which, it should be recalled, was maintained also by Ammonius Saccas in the turn of the second to the third century.¹¹⁶ He certainly recorded this account, which the swaying personality of Aristotle imposed on Classical and Late Antiquity as allegedly being the sole one about Anaxagoras.¹¹⁷ For all his respect, however, he could not leave Aristotle’s absurdities without a proper reply, all the more so since anyone that would read those hopeless impossibilities would definitely wonder if all of this is really philosophy. Strabo wrote that Aristotle bequeathed his library to his successor Theophrastus, and that he was the first who composed a library of his own and also taught the Egyptian kings how do so, too.¹¹⁸ The question is if Anaxagoras’ book was on his bookshelves. For a careful reading of his references to Anaxagoras gives rise to the impression that he had heard rather than read the views of Anaxagoras. When Aristotle (384 ‒ 322 BC) was born, Anaxagoras was not only long dead, since 428 BC, but also he was remembered as the man who had been ostracized from Athens because of impiety and blasphemy. Euripides was dead since 406 BC, hence Aristotle missed the opportunity of an authoritative exposition of Anaxagoras’ philosophy being retailed to him faithfully. In contrast to Simplicius who mentions Anaxagoras’ book of Physics, all the expressions of Aristotle give the impression that he had heard of, rather than read, that philosophy. Thus, we read, ‘Anaxagoras says that the soul is a moving agent’ and Aristotle adds ‘and whether anyone else said this’ (καὶ εἴ τις ἄλλος εἴρηκεν),¹¹⁹ which is grammatically precarious, and it is probably owing to later editors.¹²⁰ The meaning would be this: “I have been advised that Anaxagoras said this, unless someone else also said so.” But this was not said by Anaxagoras, nor could he ever have said this at all, since the notion of ‘soul’ plays no role in this philosophy,¹²¹ and Aristotle knew it: he notes that all philosophers before him defined the soul by means of three capacities, that is, motion, perception, and incorporeality; he added that all Presocratics associated the soul with their principles ‘except for one’, namely, Anaxagoras. This is why those who define the soul by its ability to cognize make it consist of the principles (indeed all of the principles: ἐκ πασῶν τῶν ἀρχῶν) which are respective to each philosopher.

 Cf. Hierocles of Alexandria, apud Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 214, p. 173a.  Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 172 3.  Strabo, Geographica, 13.1.54.  Aristotle, De Anima, 404a. See this being discussed by Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 9. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 71. Sophonias, paraphrPhys, p. 11. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, Book 1, ch. 3, lines 115 26.  See Introduction, p. 136.  See infra, pp. 1189 90; 1197.

230

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

All, ‘except for one’, namely, Anaxagoras. Why? Because the Mind is impassible and has nothing in common with anything else – in later terms, one would have put it, ‘transcendent’. This is his point in order to argue that such a Mind cannot know anything at all and that Anaxagoras did not say anything about it.¹²² To this, the simple answer is that Anaxagoras attributed the capacity of knowing not to any entity called ‘soul’, but to the Mind, adding that ‘the Mind, whether the greater or the lesser one, is the same’ – but Aristotle did not know this statement, which we learn from Simplicius. Therefore, the way for human being to know on the grounds ‘like is known by the like’¹²³ is indeed there; what is not there is an account about the soul, which, in the context of the Anaxagorean philosophy, is not any specific quid: it is only a generalization and individualization of an aggregate of functions of all animate creatures, meaning simply ‘life’. Everything has to do with the Mind, but since Aristotle (who left the Academy, but, deep down himself, the Academy never left him) was obsessed with the ‘soul’, he declares that ‘Anaxagoras seems to treat mind and soul as being of one nature, yet he posits the Mind as the supreme principle of everything’.¹²⁴ There are crucial references to Anaxagoras made by Aristotle, which H. Diels did not include in his ‘testimonia’, although the philosopher is mentioned by name. These references by him have been paid little attention, since study of Anaxagoras is currently carried out by means of ‘fragments’. Aristotle attests that Anaxagoras dismissed the ‘principle of contradiction’ (or, ‘non-contradiction’). This principle is the second of the three classic principles of logic, and posits that contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time, e. g. the two propositions ‘A is B’ and ‘A is not B’ are mutually exclusive. This principle (stated as ‘law’ by some), along with its complement, the principle of excluded middle (the third of the three classic principles of logic), are correlates of the principle of identity (the first of the three principles). Since the law of identity partitions its logical universe into exactly two parts, it creates a dichotomy wherein the two parts are ‘mutually exclusive’ and ‘jointly exhaustive’. The principle of contradiction is merely an expression of the mutually exclusive aspect of that dichotomy, it betokens the excluded middle, indeed it is an expression of its jointly exhaustive aspect. The irony of Aristotle’s criticism against Anaxagoras on this issue is a vindication of Simplicius’ accounts of the Anaxagorean philosophy, which has been

 Aristotle, De Anima, 405b20 23.  Aristotle, op. cit. 405b15.  Aristotle, op. cit. 405a13 19.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

231

unnoticed so far, because of the absence of Aristotle’s passages from the collection of ‘testimonia’ by H. Diels. Let us then follow critically Aristotle on four points of his Metaphysics. In the first place, he argues that, if all contradictory predications of the same subject are true at the same time, clearly all things will be one (δῆλον ὡς ἅπαντα ἔσται ἕν). For if it is equally possible either to affirm or deny anything of anything, the same thing will be a trireme and a wall and a man, which is what necessarily follows for those who hold the theory of Protagoras (i. e. that all appearances and opinions are true). For if anyone thinks that a man is not a trireme, he is clearly not a trireme; however, he also is a trireme if the contradictory statement is true (εἴπερ ἡ ἀντίφασις ἀληθής). The result of this is the dictum of Anaxagoras, all things are mixed together; so that nothing truly exists (ὥστε μηθὲν ἀληθῶς ὑπάρχειν). It seems, then, that they are speaking of the Indeterminate (τὸ ἀόριστον οὖν ἐοίκασι λέγειν); and while they think that they are speaking of what exists, they are really speaking of that which does not exist (καὶ οἰόμενοι τὸ ὂν λέγειν περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος λέγουσιν); for the Indeterminate exists potentially but not actually (τὸ γὰρ δυνάμει ὂν καὶ μὴ ἐντελεχείᾳ τὸ ἀόριστόν ἐστιν). But indeed they must admit the affirmation or negation of any predicate of any subject (κατὰ παντὸς παντὸς τὴν κατάφασιν ἢ τὴν ἀπόφασιν); for it is absurd that in the case of each term its own negation should be true (ἄτοπον γὰρ εἰ ἑκάστῳ ἡ μὲν αὐτοῦ ἀπόφασις ὑπάρξει), and the negation of some other term which is not true of it should not be true (ἡ δ᾿ ἑτέρου ὃ μὴ ὑπάρχει αὐτῷ οὐχ ὑπάρξει). Aristotle’s example is that if it is true to say that a man is not a man, it is obviously also true to say that he is or is not a trireme. Then, if the affirmation is true, so must the negation be true (εἰ μὲν οὖν ἡ κατάφασις, ἀνάγκη καὶ τὴν ἀπόφασιν); but if the affirmation is not true, the negation will be even truer than the negation of the original term itself.¹²⁵ What does Aristotle do here? Actually, he treats the incorporeal principles of Anaxagoras forcing them to be material subjects or objects, such as man and a trireme. There is nothing absurd about that, once the analyses apply to material objects. The question then is this: was Anaxagoras so naïve as to ignore these simple arguments (a man is not a trireme, and a trireme is not a man) stemming from common experience, or something different was going on with his accounts? Not for a single moment did Aristotle care to consider the case that Anaxagoras was talking about incorporeal principles, not material objects.

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1007b.

232

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

The point that Aristotle overlooked (or chose to overlook) was that the Anaxagorean principles are both one and many (ἓν καὶ πολλά),¹²⁶ both united and distinct from each other, both here and everywhere, both now and ever. They are not confined in any spatial place, since they are all in all, and they act once specific circumstances call for it. Besides, they act by being inherent in and yet outside material objects at the same time, and it is possible to say about them that they are both here and everywhere as much as are they themselves nowhere specifically. In this sense, previous philosophers also were conscious of the fact that ‘there is nothing absurd about positing Being as both one and many’,¹²⁷ and Porphyry expounded insightfully and interpreted knowledgeably the patrimony before Socrates.¹²⁸ Aristotle attacked Anaxagoras for holding that all things were confounded together until the Mind distinguished and arranged them.¹²⁹ His objection was that allegedly Anaxagoras maintained that it is impossible for anything (which Aristotle thought to be material, of course) to exist as an absolutely pure and simple existence (εἰλικρινῶς). He blamed both him and Empedocles for holding that ‘the initial reality is both one and many’ (καὶ ὅσοι δ᾿ ἓν καὶ πολλά φασιν εἶναι, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας), that is, unity and multiplicity. Besides, Anaxagoras supposedly held an infinite number of homogenous particles and their contraries in each substance (ἄπειρα, τά τε ὁμοιομερῆ καὶ τἀναντία), whereas Empedocles posited the four ‘so-called elements’ (τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεῖα).¹³⁰ Aristotle made a categorization of the Physicists depending on how they allegedly understood the process of generation: those who posited an indeterminate prime material substance extract contrary characteristics and genera (ἐναντία διαφορὰς καὶ εἴδη) from this, through the process which he calls ‘secretion’ (or, procession, ἔκκρισις). The other group (Anaxagoras and Empedocles) understood generation as ‘secretion’ (ἔκκρισις), which though stems

 Aristotle, Physica, 187a20: οἱ δ᾿ ἐκ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἐνούσας τὰς ἐναντιότητας ἐκκρίνεσθαι, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξίμανδρός φησι καὶ ὅσοι δ᾿ ἓν καὶ πολλά φασιν εἶναι, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ἐκ τοῦ μείγματος γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι ἐκκρίνουσι τἆλλα.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 96: ὅπερ ἵσως καὶ νῦν ᾐνίξατο μηδὲν ἄτοπον εἰπὼν τὸ αὐτὸ ἓν καὶ πολλὰ εἶναι, πολλὰ μὲν κατὰ τοὺς τῶν πολλῶν συμβεβηκότων λόγους, ἓν δὲ κατὰ τὸ ὑποκείμε νον καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν, ὅπερ τὸ αὐτὸ μένον ἓν πολλά ἐστι κατ᾿ ἐκεῖνα.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 95 6: Ταῦτα τοίνυν αὐτὰ μὲν καθ᾿ αὑτὰ πολλῆς οἶμαι σπουδῆς ἄξια καὶ πρὸς τὰς φυσικὰς ζητήσεις καὶ πρὸς τὴν τῶν κατηγοριῶν διαίρεσιν καλῶς ὁ φιλοσοφώτατος ἀνέγραψε Πορφύριος ἀφορμὴν ἴσως πρὸς ταύτην τὴν ἐπιβολὴν λαβὼν τὸ ὡς μοναχῶς λεγομέ νου τοῦ ἑνὸς ἢ τοῦ ὄντος. See infra, pp. 920 1.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a26 188a5.  Aristotle, op. cit. 187a26. In 203a18, he suggests that Empedocles’ elements were not infinite in quantity, but only four. He attributes infinity to Anaxagoras and Democritus only.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

233

not from one primal substance, but from the primal mixture which is both ‘one and many’ (ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι ἐκκρίνουσι τἆλλα). This is why Anaxagoras maintained that there is a state beyond the formal contradiction, and yet this state is true and pertains to incorporeal principles, indeed it is consistent in the strictest sense with the notion of incorporeality proper. Ironically then, by treating Anaxagoras’ notion of ‘one and many’ and his denial of formal contradiction, Aristotle inadvertently confirmed in advance the analyses of Simplicius. According to his favourite practice, Aristotle associated Anaxagoras with Protagoras on the question of truth: since Protagoras urged that all appearances and opinions are true, he also made room for contradiction to hold, and thus for the ‘principle of contradiction’ not to hold. Besides, he urged that denial of the principle of contradiction entailed also that of the excluded middle,¹³¹ therefore, the thesis of Protagoras amounted to the doctrine of Anaxagoras. Aristotle’s favourite claim was that just as the Eleatic complications were due to ignorance of the distinction between potential and actual being and it could be eliminated only by entertaining the notion of substratum and privation,¹³² likewise, all the other Presocratic theories were bound to breach the principle of contradiction because they missed the true nature of the material substratum being formless matter which is informed by agents (forms) acting upon it.¹³³ In respect of incorporeal being and function, there is something which is true, and yet it is beyond (not ‘between’, as Aristotle put it)¹³⁴ the formal contradiction which nevertheless is true. In reality, Protagoras and Anaxagoras maintained entirely different views. The former attributed truth to subjective impression, since he deemed that there is not way to determine an absolute criterion which could make an impression more authoritative than another, and, anyway, he apparently spoke of the perceptible reality.¹³⁵ Sextus Empiricus put it succinctly: whereas the followers of Epicurus and Protagoras posited all phenomena as being true, those of Democritus denied that human senses grasp the absolute truth of them.¹³⁶

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1008a2 7.  Aristotle, Physica, 191b10 34.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009a22 30; 1010a1 4; 1011b13 22; 1062b24 33.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1012a26: ὁ δ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρου, εἶναι τι μεταξὺ τῆς ἀντιφάσεως.  Plato, Cratylus, 385e; Theaetetus, 151e 152a. Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 1.216; 1.219; Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 60; 65; 388 9. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 71: εἰ μὲν τὸ Πρωταγόρου λέγοιεν ἅπαν ὅπερ ἂν φαίνηται ὁτῳοῦν, τοῦτο καὶ ἔστιν.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 369: τῶν φυσικῶν οἱ μὲν πάντα ἀνῃρήκασι τὰ φαινόμενα, ὡς οἱ περὶ Δημόκριτον, οἱ δὲ πάντα ἔθεσαν, ὡς οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἐπί

234

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

Whereas Protagoras dignified everything as being true, Anaxagoras modestly did not speak about absolute truth: he only said that the truth of things appears to each one in accordance with one’s mental capabilities and physical structure. Sextus Empiricus reported the doctrine of Anaxagoras which asseverated that ‘we are unable to determine [absolute] truth because of the weakness of our senses’ (ὑπ᾿ ἀφαυρότητος αὐτῶν [i. e. τῶν αἰσθήσεων] οὐ δυνατοί ἐσμεν κρίνειν τἀληθές).¹³⁷ In spite of this, Aristotle lumped Protagoras and Anaxagoras together as if they maintained the same theory. But in fact the case of Anaxagoras was different: if ‘reality’ is the impression impacted upon (and reproduced by) a rational mind, then ‘reality’ cannot be the same to all rational minds alike: each impression depends on the structure of each of those minds. ‘All things are true’ (which Aristotle attributed to Anaxagoras) means that each one can grasp the truth of phenomena in a way which is allowed by his own physiological structure. Aristotle could not claim that he himself did not allow for this proposition. For once he defined time proper as ‘measure’ and ‘number’ (of fastness and slowness), it is quite evident that measurement presupposes a counting agent.¹³⁸ What Anaxagoras simply did was to account for grasping not only time, but also every phenomenon in exactly the same terms: comprehension of ‘reality’, and ultimately ‘reality’ proper, indispensably involves an intelligible agent grasping this reality and reproducing it mentally within, and by means of, one’s specific physical capabilities and functions. Things emerge in the reality of our Euclidian space, and we grasp them in the form that our specific physiological abilities allow and determine, but these occurrences are manifestations of the same principles also existing on different levels of being. In terms of Modern Physics, this could be described as grasping things either in a Euclidean space, or in a Riemann-one, not to mention others. The same occurrences produced by the same principles result in different manifestations, which are graspable according to specific capabilities of different rational beings. Anaxagoras said this in his own terms. One could grasp the meaning of the proposition by considering an example: a human hand or an ear performs operations befitting it, but the real function stems from the human brain. If all human beings understand such operations in more or less the same way, this is so onle because there is common human experience stemming from largely the same principles which constitute human beings and allow κουρον καὶ Πρωταγόραν, οἱ δὲ τινὰ μὲν ἀνεῖλον τινὰ δὲ ἔθεσαν, ὡς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς καὶ τοῦ Περιπάτου.  Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. 7.90.  See COT, pp. 183 4. Aristotle, Physica, 219b 223b; De Caelo, 279a.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

235

them to exist and act as such. Thus, the cognitive certainty of a certain human subject is not owing to the subject itself: this is only an illusion; it would be as if a hand ‘claimed’ that it is this hand itself which performs an action, although it is known that the source and cause of its functions is the human brain. Things happen in the brain in the first place, that is, mutatis mutandis, in a ‘higher’ reality, as it were. Therefore, the community of human conscience and experience is made possible only because of the community of the logoi which make up human nature in general, and specific human beings in particular. Knowledge then is the relation between two realities; but both the knowing agent and the knowable object in essence have the same origin and construction: both of them emerge out of specific concurrences of logoi. Therefore, knowledge is only two different concurrences of logoi coming to a certain relation with each other: one is human mind itself; the other is a specific phenomenon which is grasped by human mind. Consequently, the truth of the phenomena that we observe is only the result of our physiological constitution and function. Man stands vis-à-vis objects and phenomena in like a manner the waves of a sea stand one opposite another. This is the sense in which Anaxagoras argued that any grasp of reality that we reproduce within our brain is dependent on the specific constitution of our sense organs. In the case of knowledge, a specific concurrence of logoi (which makes up a sense organ) stands opposite a phenomenon or object, which should be ‘known’. Knowledge stems from (and is possible due to) the logoi; it is the common element in this encounter, not as a substratum, but as a reality common to everyone and everything. Therefore, any comprehension of phenomena, or of actions, or of qualities, is simply the way in which the principles are grasped from outside the objects which these principles generate, but this is not any absolute without: everything happens within the Body of the Logos (the ‘single body’ that Porphyry attributed to Anaxagoras). Consequently, there is no without, and there is nothing coming from without, neither change, nor motion, nor alteration. This is why Anaxagoras postulated only one kind of change, namely, mutation (or, alteration, ἀλλοίωσις): this comes to pass in exactly the same sense any empirical being does. Change or motion is not simply one of logoi, it is one caused by logoi. Motion is neither ‘inside’ nor ‘outside’ the logoi: this is the result of different concurrence or separation off the logoi; it is only the outcome of their existence and function as dynamic causes. To Anaxagoras, making motion and objects other than their creative logoi could be like wondering whether the bricks which make up a building are ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ this building. But they are neither ‘inside’ nor ‘outside’: the building is only the result of the bricks existing and being ordered in a specific manner, and this phenomenon will last for as long as the existence of the

236

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

building will be there. The logoi are not ‘inside’ anything, just like the winds that form a wave in the sea are not inside it. In like a manner, Anaxagoras did not need to posit any existence of intelligible ‘forms’ or ‘qualities’, since also they are themselves only the result of the activity of the logoi. The difference from Aristotle is plain: activity is not identified with the logoi, nor would it be accurate to say that the logoi are activity, since activity (just like motion proper) is only the result of a concurrence of logoi; they give rise to activity, not because they ‘contain’ it, but merely by virtue of the fact that the logoi exist as cohesive and dynamic causes. Activity is caused by Being, it is not Being proper¹³⁹ as Aristotle had it. Anaxagoras could have maintained this, since he posited a primordial state in which the Mind did not engage in any activity, whereas Aristotle banned this idea altogether, indeed he castigated it. Aristotle decided that Anaxagoras was speaking not about incorporeal realities (which Aristotle himself carefully left out of consideration), but about the Indeterminate (τὸ ἀόριστον), that is, formless matter. Nothing could be more absurd to allege about that philosophy, but he interpolated this notion in order to impugn Anaxagoras’ consistency, and, as it happened, in his discussion incorporeality per se was treated as almost non-existent. Persisting in branding Anaxagoras a materialist, Aristotle went on explaining that this view occurred to those who are perplexed from their observation of sensible things (ἐκ τῶν αἰσθητῶν). Thus, the belief that contradictions and contraries can be true at the same time (ἅμα τὰς ἀντιφάσεις καὶ τἀναντία ὑπάρχειν) comes to them from seeing the contraries generated from the same thing. Then, if what is not (τὸ μὴ ὄν) cannot be generated, a thing must have existed before as both of the contraries equally, just as Anaxagoras says that everything is mixed with everything; so did Democritus, for he also said that Void and Plenum are present equally in any part, and yet the latter is, whereas the former is not (καίτοι τὸ μὲν ὂν τούτων εἶναι τὸ δὲ μὴ ὄν). To those, then, who base their judgement on these considerations, Aristotle retorts that although in one sense their theory is correct, in another they are mistaken. For ‘being’ has two meanings, so that there is a sense in which something can be generated from ‘not-being’, and a sense in which it cannot; and a sense in which the same thing can at once be and not be, yet not in the same respect. For the same thing can at the same time ‘be’ contraries potentially, but not actually. Furthermore, he challenges them to conceive of

 See infra, pp. 406 7.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

237

another kind of existence of things (ἄλλην τινὰ οὐσίαν εἶναι τῶν ὄντων), in which there is absolutely no motion or destruction or generation.¹⁴⁰ This is a stunning passage indeed: for, on the one hand, Aristotle employs a didactic style in order to teach his ‘naïve’ predecessors that there is something which is potentially, and the like, indicating formless matter which is potentially ‘everything’ but actually ‘nothing’. And then, he demands that those philosophers should have come up with ‘another kind of existence of things’, challenging them to present something which could be a credible alternative to Aristotle’s own notion of formless matter. In fact however, the case was that Aristotle sought to obtain from such ‘antagonistic’ predecessors the notion of an unchangeable substance, not to mention that (in the Metaphysics, 1069b20‒24) he acknowledged that he came upon the notion of potentiality not only in Anaxagoras, but also in Anaximander, Empedocles, and Democritus, which I discuss in chapter 6. In the same way he essayed to interpret the principles of Anaxagoras as being no other than his own contrary qualities, he strove violently to reduce the mixture of Anaxagoras and the Sphaerus of Empedocles to equivalents of his own formless matter.¹⁴¹ To this purpose, he needed to make all those monists who posited a single principle mean that this principle was a material substratum. Consequently, contradictions make their mark on this, too: at one point, he identifies the ‘one of Anaxagoras, and the mixture of Empedocles and Anaximander’ and Democritus theory as suggesting potentiality which Aristotle assumed to be a material substratum;¹⁴² yet, at another point of the same work, he makes everything comprise contraries (τὰ δ᾿ ὄντα καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν ὁμολογοῦσιν ἐξ ἐναντίων σχεδὸν ἅπαντες συγκεῖσθαι· πάντες γοῦν τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐναντίας λέγουσιν),¹⁴³ such as even and odd,¹⁴⁴ warm and cold,¹⁴⁵ limited and unlimit-

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1069b. Actually, he goes as far as to identify not only these, but also the material principles of Anaximander and the Atomists with the formless matter, which is sheer potentiality.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1069b20 24.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1004b29 33.  The Pythagoreans. See Metaphysica, 986b2 4.  According to Alexander of Aphrodisias, this refers either to ‘those who use rarefaction and condensation as the generative principles of things, or to Parmenides, who makes fire and earth elements’. commMetaph, p. 262. Asclepius of Tralles believed that Parmenides is meant. Op. cit. p. 246. Perhaps Aristotle had in mind the second half of Parmenides’ poem, which can be as sumed once Metaphysica, 986b33 34, Physica, 188a20 22, and De Generatione et Corruptione, 318b6 7, 330b14 are compared.

238

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

ed,¹⁴⁶ Love and Strife (Empedocles). To the same purpose, he makes the terms rare and dense (λεπτὸν καὶ παχύ) equivalent to hot and cold,¹⁴⁷ only because the second couple makes the active contrariety of his own physics. Aristotle sought to establish generation and alteration as taking place by means of contraries.¹⁴⁸ Generation, as well as alteration and motion, proceed from contrary to contrary,¹⁴⁹ therefore, an ultimate substratum of alteration should be called for. This is a substance (rather, a subject) to which there is no contrary (and no contrary term), because this is prior to all contraries; it is that of which there are predicates, but it is itself predicable of nothing else. This is formless matter, and the way Aristotle describes it makes it clear that this is a principle in the full sense of the term, whereas the contraries are second to it, since this substratum can become either of the contraries by undergoing change from one state to another. This is exactly the substratum Aristotle which was determined to discover in the primal mixture of Anaxagoras, in the Sphaerus of Empedocles, in the limitless body of Anaximander, and in the unorganized atoms of Democritus. Thus, he interpreted the proposition ‘all things were together’ as meaning that all potential alterations were inherently latent in an undifferentiated material confusum. This was sheer alien to Anaxagoras’ philosophy, but Aristotle forced upon him (and almost on all of the others) the idea that generation and alteration should come to pass in the only way Aristotle allowed, namely, by means of contrariety. Once he forced this Procrustean framework, Aristotle urged that the proposition ‘all things were together’ had to mean ‘all things were together potentially but not actually’. Besides, the infinite material homoiomeries that were produced came to be differentiated by their matter itself, and no matter what things came to be in actuality, their original matter must have existed potentially. In other words, the original matter should have had contrary qualities potentially. The causes and principles, then, are three;¹⁵⁰ two of them are the pair of contraries, of which one is form and the other is privation; the third is formless matter. This is why Aristotle argued that is it not satisfactory to say that ‘all things were together’, because they differed in terms of their matter.¹⁵¹

 The Platonists.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 329b21 33.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1087a29 b3; Physica, 190a31 b5.  Aristotle, Physica, 261a32 b1; 226b1 f; 188b21 f; De Generatione et Corruptione, 331a14; etc.  Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 189b17. This classification occurs in the Physica, 189a12 191a24, but it does not fit with the main treatise of the Metaphysics.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

239

If Aristotle was particularly vexed at Anaxagoras, this was because he sought to interpret that philosophy in the same way he did with all the other Presocratic ones (i. e. seeking a substratum being subject to alteration out of a limited number of contraries),¹⁵² whereas Anaxagoras’ formulations appeared too abstruse and elusive to fit in this pattern of interpretation. This is why, when Aristotle sought to establish a common substratum for the interchange of qualities, he chose to accommodate the ‘elements’ of Empedocles (and make them qualifications of that substratum) rather than the ‘homoiomeries’ of Anaxagoras which involved some recondite propositions. In fact, he was so determined to construct a crashing put down of his predecessors, that he comes to branding Empedocles in effect an Atomist,¹⁵³ and hereafter treating both him and Democritus as unfit to account for generation. No matter how abstruse Anaxagoras’ formulations appeared to Aristotle, it was in them that he found inspiration for his own philosophy. He desperately needed a substratum in order to sustain his notion of a beginningless world of endless change; this was necessary for the interchange of the simple bodies into one another; but this substratum should be itself a body apart from the other four. For were for this to be a body, this would be subject to having itself natural motion as its essential quality. Therefore, this substratum, or formless matter, appears always in connection with a pair of qualities as one of the four simple bodies. What follows is a distinction between absolute generation (which is restricted to that material existing only potentially) and alteration. In order for generation to take place, an abiding constant substratum and a pair of contrary qualities was required in the first place. Contrary qualities cannot change in any way, but, by acting upon formless matter, they bring about generation of the simple bodies; these bodies themselves are somehow contraries because of the contrary qualities that produced them.¹⁵⁴ However, contraries cannot be affected directly by each other. This is why a third principle was necessary to effect this interaction, or at least to make it possible. This idea was expressed by no other than Anaxagoras, and Aristotle took it up while sneering his source and criticizing all of his predecessors for generating everything from contraries although certain things (i. e. the eternal substance) are not generated.¹⁵⁵ Besides, since contraries appeared to arise from the same substratum, it appeared that the same object primitively must have been both

 Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 225a12 20; De Generatione et Corruptione, 319b6 320a7.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 329a2 8; De Caelo, 304b23 305a14; 305b1 ff. This happened also with Anaxagoras, whom Aristotle made also an Atomist. See pp. 372 3; 400.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 329a24 b6.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075a28 31.

240

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

contraries. To this, the legacy to build on was the theory of Anaxagoras about everything being in everything, as well as the theory of Democritus maintaining that the Plenum and the Void (i. e. Being and non-Being) exist in every part of everything.¹⁵⁶ Such propositions appeared to defy the law of contradiction, but their actual philosophical content fitted perfectly with their own context. Anaxagoras had already posited another kind of substance of existing things, which was not formless matter, but the incorporeal principles, in which ‘there is absolutely no motion or destruction or generation’. Aristotle was asking from Anaxagoras to come up with a fundamental notion, which Anaxagoras had set forth long before Aristotle was born. He insisted that Anaxagoras dismissed the principles of contradiction of the grounds that there is something ‘between’ (μεταξύ) A and non-A (while Aristotle defiantly treated those principles as perceptible particles), although Anaxagoras meant that incorporeal principles are not ‘between’, but beyond the domain of this empirical logical rule.¹⁵⁷ Therefore, the recurrent theme that ‘that there can be no intermediate between contradictories’ adduced against Anaxagoras, in reality was entirely irrelevant. However, Aristotle liked to maintain that his predecessor sustained such absurd ideas as that ‘there something between (μεταξύ) A and non-A’, and sarcastically he added that this meant that even the sweetest things contain some bitter particles, and the like.¹⁵⁸ Aristotle’s obloquy against Anaxagoras on the principle of contradiction (a principle that Anaxagoras dismissed) is illuminating. For it is an oblique inadvertent confirmation of what Simplicius was going to claim about that philosophy nearly ten centuries later, namely, that Anaxagoras’ fundamental notion was incorporeal principles. He built his criticism by means of examples pertaining to perceptible reality, such as that a man is not a trireme and vice versa, or a certain thing can be either white or not white and there can be no third possibility between those two ones. He lumped his predecessors together, although he instilled secondary distinctions between them, such as that all propositions are true (attributing this to Heraclitus¹⁵⁹ and Protagoras¹⁶⁰) or they are all false (Anaxagoras,¹⁶¹ Democritus¹⁶²).

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1009a22 30.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1011b23&30 34; 1012a26: ὁ δ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρου, εἶναι τὶ μεταξὺ τῆς ἀντιφάσεως. Op. cit. 1055b2 9; 1057a34; 1067b13 14 (repeating the phrase of the Physica, 224b29); Physica, 227a10; Analytica Posteriora, 72a.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1063b25.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1005b; 1012a; 1063b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1007b.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

241

Aristotle’s commentators followed him suit both in his treatment of the principle of contradiction in general, and in his remarks about his Presocratic predecessors, while taking no exception to his criticism.¹⁶³ This is not surprising, anyway. But it is noteworthy and very telling that Simplicius stands out as the exception, since he refrained from endorsing Aristotle’s invective. He took heed to endorse Aristotle’s views of contradiction only as far as perceptible realities are concerned,¹⁶⁴ but he made no mention of his criticism of the specific Presocratics at all, perhaps because the extant commentaries of Simplicius are not on the Metaphysics, but on other works of Aristotle. However, when his analysis called for speaking strictly, he did endorse the Presocratic propositions that it is possible for apparently contradictory statements to be true, which he did about Heraclitus’ statement (καὶ ὁ τοῦ Ἡρακλείτου λόγος ἀληθής), ‘good and evil are the same thing’ (τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ τὸ κακὸν ταὐτόν), in order to endorse a similar statement by Porphyry who argued that it is possible to say the Being both is and is not. ¹⁶⁵ These views of Simplicius come as no surprise of course, since they also imbue all of his analyses of Anaxagoras’ philosophy. What is important about them is that his logic in rendering this philosophy is based not on premisses that all too easily are branded ‘Neoplatonic’: instead, it is plain that they emanate from presuppositions which are distinctly Presocratic, and the irony of which I spoke above lies in the fact that it is Aristotle himself who comes as a witness to the Presocratic identity of the lines along which Simplicius interpreted Anaxagoras’ philosophy. Unlike Aristotle, Porphyry showed not the slightest bit of resentment or jealousy of Anaxagoras, whereas Simplicius treated him with grace and gentleman-

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1007b; 1009a; 1012a; 1063b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1009a.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 238 9; 269 76; 290 9; 301 4; 311; 314; 318; 334 40; 650 1; 658; et passim. Syrianus, commMetaph, pp. 18; 33; 54; 65; 70 1; 74 5. John Phil oponus, commPhys, pp. 49; 63; 224; 251; 258; 292; 298. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. pp. 125; 158; 224; 259; 267; 270; 273 4; 285; 298 300.  Simplicius, commCael, pp. 136; 328 9; 334; 352; commCateg, p. 180; commPhys, pp. 138; 202; 491; 1021; 1235; commEpict, p. 136. The Aristotelian logic is applied only at one point, in order to show that ‘being’ is not ‘non being’, and there is nothing beyond ‘being’. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 117. But the text is a quotation from Eudemus, and another one by Porphyry follows.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 82: ὥστε οὐκέτι περὶ τοῦ ἓν εἶναι τὸ ὂν γενήσεται ὁ λόγος καὶ ἡ ζήτησις, ἀλλὰ περὶ τοῦ μηδέν, εἴπερ ὁμοίως ἐφ᾿ ἑκάστου ἀληθὴς ἥ τε ἀπόφασις αὐτοῦ καὶ ἡ κα τάφασις, ἢ ὡς ὁ Πορφύριος συνάγει, εἴπερ τὸ ὂν οὐκ ἔστι. καὶ γὰρ ὥσπερ τὸ ἄνθρωπος καὶ οὐκ ἄνθρωπος συναληθεύει, οὕτως καὶ τὸ ὂν καὶ οὐκ ὄν. See discussion and quotation of Porphyry’s proposition, in chapter 11, pp. 920 1 (Sententia 26).

242

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

liness. When Porphyry and Simplicius said that the Anaxagorean principles exist differently in different ontological levels,¹⁶⁶ they did not interpolate Neoplatonism in Anaxagoras: rather, they saw that there is no other way to explain Anaxagoras’ insistence that, despite the continual and never-ending rotation, ‘it is impossible for anything to exist apart’ (οὐδὲ χωρὶς ἔστιν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ πάντα παντὸς μοῖραν μετέχει), and ‘just as in the beginning, so also now, things are together’ (ἀλλ᾿ ὅπωσπερ ἀρχὴν εἶναι καὶ νῦν πάντα ὁμοῦ).¹⁶⁷ How can all things be possibly ‘together’ once common experience shows them to be separate? But of course, because the concurring principles that give rise to things do not exist exclusively in those things alone, which is why ‘in everything there is a share of everything’.¹⁶⁸ Besides, it was not only Porphyry, Simplicius, and Damascius who spoke about different existence of the principles: so did the Stoics, too, which was natural for them to do since Anaxagoras was the original fertile source for Zeno and his successors, as discussed later. At several points of his work, Aristotle groups Anaxagoras and Democritus together, and sometimes he appears to believe that Anaxagoras was in effect an Atomist. He attributes to both of them the idea that ‘everything is in everything’,¹⁶⁹ a common theory about comets,¹⁷⁰ earthquakes and motion of the earth,¹⁷¹ as well as that ‘the Milky Way is the light of certain stars’.¹⁷² More importantly, he believed that both of them maintained ‘infinite elements’.¹⁷³ The difference he saw between them was that Anaxagoras posited generation of ‘homoiomeries’ from each other, whereas Democritus did not hold that atoms are produced from each other.¹⁷⁴ Aristotle dismissed the idea that ‘everything is produced from eveything’ (οὐδὲ γίγνεται ὁτιοῦν ἐξ ὁτουοῦν).¹⁷⁵ Simplicius took note of this,¹⁷⁶ but, against Aristotle’s claims, he demonstrated that neither did Anaxagoras hold such an idea.¹⁷⁷

 Porphyry, Sententiae, 10. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34 5. See infra, p. 360 1.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 164.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 27; 164; 172.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009a27 28.  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 342b27 29.  Aristotle, op. cit. 365a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 345a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 203a20 21.  Aristotle, Physica, 203a. Cf. John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 396 7. Gennadius Scholarius, commPhys, pp. 7 & 42. Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii in Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, pp. 183; 187.  Aristotle, Physica, 188a34; 187b24; 203a23 24.  Simplicius, commCael, pp. 121; 124 5; commPhys, pp. 169 71.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 173 4; 237; 460 1.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

243

Simplicius draws on Aristotle’s text which had it that Democritus was an Atomist who maintained that atoms (or ‘little substances’, μικρὰς οὐσίας, ‘which elude our senses’) come in touch, and they are interwoven with one another. Democritus allowed solidity, shape, size, position, and motion to atoms, and there is nothing to suggest that he had any inkling of distinction between material substratum and qualities of them. Nevertheless, beyond this, here is a question: how are these ‘little substances’ held together? This happens by means of them being interwoven and mutually reacting with each other (αἰτιᾶται τὰς ἐπαλλαγὰς καὶ τὰς ἀντιλήψεις τῶν σωμάτων). This is all very well, but this interaction does not last forever. Here is then the intriguing notion that Democritus introduced: the results of interactions between the little substances last for as long as they are able to hold together to each other; but this does not last forever: a moment will come when a certain ‘necessity’, which is ‘stronger’ than the cohesive force that makes things what they are, ‘is imposed upon things, and shakes them violently and separates them out’. What is that which generates this ‘necessity’? It is the ‘encompassing’.¹⁷⁸ Therefore, Democritus’ physics is not just about ‘atoms’. It is also about a force (‘necessity’) dominating upon them and determining the function of atoms, and, ultimately, the function of the universe, in the same way Anaximander introduced goddess Justice (Δίκη) as the one who maintains cosmic order. Simplicius noted that Anaximander said all these ‘in more poetic terms’ (ποιητικωτέροις οὕτως ὀνόμασιν), meaning that he used the old mythical language, and showing no surprise at Aristotle having lumped Anaximander together with Anaxagoras (τοῖς περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν τοῦτον ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης συνέταξεν).¹⁷⁹ Aggregation, segregation, and dispersion are processes maintained by more than one Presocratics: in fact, these were maintained not only by Anaxagoras but also by Empedocles, Anaximander, at least. The mechanism which effected those processes was condensation / rarefaction, which causes changes of one thing into another, not merely alterations of quality of a single substratum. These ideas were not exclusive to Anaxagoras; they were a common stock to several Presocratics. As Simplicius tells us, Porphyry attributed the proposition ‘all things were together’ to Anaxagoras, ‘generation is alteration’ to Anaximenes, and ‘conjunction and separation out’ to both Democritus and Empedocles’. However, immediately after reporting Porphyry’s view, Simplicius goes on with quoting from Anaxagoras’ own words, and demonstratinging that Anaxagoras did in  Democritus, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 295: ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον οὖν χρόνον σφῶν αὐτῶν ἀν τέχεσθαι νομίζει καὶ συμμένειν, ἕως ἰσχυροτέρα τις ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἀνάγκη παραγενομένη διασείσῃ καὶ χωρὶς αὐτὰς διασπείρῃ.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 24. He comments on Aristotle, Physica, 187a.

244

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

fact maintain all of those three axioms.¹⁸⁰ Any kind of change was explained as translation of matter into other sorts of matter, or to no matter at all; but, in any case, no void was admitted, because transformation of matter does not need void whatsoever, as it happened with Democritus. This tendency of Aristotle is all too evident in his immediate followers, as we read about them in Simplicius: Theophrastus urged that by τὴν μῖξιν τῶν ἁπάντων Anaxagoras intended to adumbrate μίαν εἶναι φύσιν ἀόριστον καὶ κατ᾿ εἶδος καὶ κατὰ μέγεθος, which means that he was a pluralist ‘who posited two principles, namely, the infinite and the Mind (τήν τε τοῦ ἀπείρου φύσιν καὶ τὸν νοῦν)’. His conclusion was that ‘he [i. e. Anaxagoras] treats material elements in like a manner as Anaximander’.¹⁸¹ Simplicius quotes this and other long passages from Theophrastus at the beginning of his extensive commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, and he rebuts them later in the same work. Nevertheless, his Peripatetic quotations are valuable because they show how faithfully did Theophrastus reproduce the teaching of Aristotle, and consequently, how seriously could this doxographic tradition be taken. In Democritus, there is something else beside the atoms, and this is the ‘encompassing’, clearly described as a force which is as much cohesive as is it a dissolving one. We can derive more information about this delicate point once we read Aristotle carefully: when this ‘encompassing’ is about to give rise to new things, it acts upon atoms by ‘squeezing’ them (that is, forcing them together). Quite significantly, the term used for creation (or, formation) of new things (including also phenomena, of course) is ‘concurrence’ (σύγκρισις),¹⁸² and there is no need to consider it in detail, since σύγκρισις and διάκρισις was pretty common among Presocratics explaining generation and alteration. Therefore, things and phenomena exist for as long as a certain universal ‘necessity’ acts upon them and holds them by ‘squeezing’ them together’ (ὅταν γὰρ κρατῇ τὸ περιέχον συνθλῖβον). This force resists any other one which might aim at extinguishing a thing that is kept together; but once the cohesive force is overpowered by another external one, then a thing ceases to exist and it is dissolved (that is, transformed) into different materials. Democritus maintained a theory which was different form that of Anaxagoras. However, they shared several common ideas, as it happened with the Presocratics in general. Diogenes Laertius advises that, in the book entitled ‘Little Decoration, written seven hundred and thirty years after the fall of Troy’, Democritus

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 163.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 27.  Simplicius, loc. cit.: συγκρινομένων οὖν αὐτῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἐκθλίβοντος.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

245

wrote that he was a pupil of Anaxagoras at a time when the latter was an old man, indeed he was forty years older than Democritus. Also, that he visited the Magi and the Chaldeans, he heard their teaching, and Xerxes the king of Persia offered him hospitality; it was from them that he learned the fundamentals of theology and astrology, when he was still a boy. Furthermore, Laertius recounts, the Roman sophist and philosopher Favorinus of Arelate (c. 80 ‒ 160 AD) wrote that Democritus claimed that the theories of Anaxagoras about the sun and moon were not his own, but they were ancient ones (meaning that they were theories he had learned from the Magi and the Chaldeans). Accordingly, Democritus despised Anaxagoras’ theories about the Mind and cosmic decoration, and he felt animosity against his teacher, because Anaxagoras did not accept his theories (ὅτι δὴ μὴ προσήκατο αὐτόν). In view of this, Laertius naturally wonders, ‘how then could have been possible for Democritus to be a pupil of Anaxagoras, as certain people say?’¹⁸³ Definitely, there were differences between the theories of the two philosophers. The Anaxagorean principles were incorporeal, whereas Democritus introduced ‘infinite’ (according to Aristotle) corporeal particles, from which the four basic elements are produced. However, if we rely on the allegations of Aristotle, it will be hard to see what the major differences between the two philosophers were. Both of them endorsed the general Presocratic thesis that nothing comes from nothing; both of them subdued the activity of their elementary principles to a higher ‘force’; both of them saw only one kind of generation (namely, alteration); both of them shared the bold and blasphemous view that the heavenly bodies are not animate beings, which was contrary to the belief sustained by Plato, Aristotle, and almost all of subsequent philosophers; both of them argued that knowledge which is acquired by means of human senses is true, as far as human perception can grasp truth, since what men can grasp is only ‘an idol’ or reality (ὁρᾶν δ᾿ ἡμᾶς κατ᾿ εἰδώλων ἐμπτώσεις), which is not the philosophy of Protagoras, but the exact opposite of it, as Sextus Empiricus rightly explained.¹⁸⁴ Moreover, when Democritus argued that animals and plants¹⁸⁵ were produced from water in accordance with the rationality of the Creative Mind, he just echoed Anaxagoras. This he argued also of humans, although adding

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 9.34.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 390: πᾶσαν μὲν οὖν φαντασίαν οὐκ ἂν εἴποι τις ἀληθῆ διὰ τὴν περιτροπήν, καθὼς ὅ τε Δημόκριτος καὶ ὁ Πλάτων ἀν τιλέγοντες τῷ Πρωταγόρᾳ ἐδίδασκον.  Anonymous, De Astrologia (perhaps scribed from a text of Hermippus), p. 34: καὶ οὐδὲν θαυμαστὸν γῆν ὕδατι σύμμικτον συστήσασθαι τὴν ἀρχὴν ζῷά τε καὶ φυτὰ κατὰ νοῦν τῷ δημιουργῷ.

246

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

that they are of higher rank, since ‘man partakes of mind and rationality and intelligence.’¹⁸⁶ Democritus was also a follower of Anaxagoras when he proposed that a plant is an animal that only happens to be stuck on the soil, which is a view that Plato employed, too.¹⁸⁷ If, as it has been surmised, the ‘sententiae of Democrates’ are indeed ones written by Democritus, then such propositions as, ‘Always to be thinking of something fine is a characteristic of a divine mind’ (θείου νοῦ τὸ ἀεί τι διαλογίζεσθαι καλόν), are very much like this philosopher. Besides, Aristotle argued that both philosophers made no distinction between mind and soul, and that more or less they believed that these are the same thing.¹⁸⁸ To him, as well as to later philosophers, it was scandalous that Anaxagoras did not care to deal with the ‘soul’, but this was so only because there was nothing to be said about it once his theory was comprehended: in that context, soul meant life; this was just the collective name describing the functions of any animate being, whether human, or animal, or plant, where the principles act in accordance with each one’s nature. There was nothing to be said beyond this. It was later philosophy that deified the soul and made it an individual self-subsistent being, which persists after death, therefore, it is absolved from real participation in the world of change. To Anaxagoras, such a subsistent ‘being’ is simply fantasy, since everything is only the result of functioning principles. The theory of transmigration of souls was adopted by Empedocles, but it had been ridiculed by Xenophanes (satirizing Pythagoras), and this theory was probably introduced from the East and certainly stood outside the mainstream Greek philosophy. Were it for Plato not to have introduced this in his philosophy, merging this with self-defeating notions of theodicy, this exotic doctrine would have been long forgotten. If Anaxagoras’ principles were material, the question to which Aristotle should have answered is what is the actual difference between Anaxagoras and Democritus. In the Physics, 203a19‒23, his argument is that the principles of Anaxagoras and those of Democritus are ultimately the same, since both of them posit an infinitude which is a continuum by contact of unlike particles. To state that the former maintained the ‘homoiomeries’ whereas the latter did so with ‘seed-aggregate of shapes’ (ὁ μὲν ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν, ὁ δ᾿ ἐκ τῆς παν-

 Anonymous, op. cit. p. 35: καὶ τούτων μᾶλλον ὁ ἄνθρωπος … ἐρρύη δέ τι καὶ θειότερον εἰς αὐτόν, καθ᾿ ὃ νοῦ καὶ λόγου καὶ διανοίας μετέσχε καὶ τὰ ὄντα ἀνηρευνήσατο.  Plutarch, Aetia Physica, 911C D: ζῷον γὰρ ἔγγαιον τὸ φυτὸν εἶναι οἱ περὶ Πλάτωνα καὶ ᾿Aνα ξαγόραν καὶ Δημόκριτον οἴονται.  Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 404a b; 405a b. Cf. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 9.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

247

σπερμίας τῶν σχημάτων),¹⁸⁹ does not explain much, all the more so since Aristotle applies the term ‘aggregate of all sorts of seeds’ (πανσπερμία) to the Anaxagorean homoiomeries,¹⁹⁰ as much as does he so to Democritus’ ‘elements’ (πανσπερμίαν πάντων τῶν στοιχείων).¹⁹¹ Anaxagoras and the Atomists are grouped together against Empedocles, because allegedly the former posited an infinite number of principles. The difference that Aristotle saw was that, to Anaxagoras these were qualitatively different homogenous bodies, whereas to the Atomists they were material atoms of various shapes, positions, and arrangements, and this variety determines the sensible differences in the compound bodies which they constitute. Certainly, unlike Anaxagoras, Democritus accepted that there is void, but this was a necessary presupposition complying with Democritus’ material ‘little substances’, and it stood in the periphery rather than the centre of what could be called major differences. Perhaps, we could discover what Aristotle thought of as fundamental difference between Anaxagoras and the Atomists in that the elements of the former are all unlike each other, while those of the Atomists are not.¹⁹² Furthermore, to Anaxagoras, the primeval state from which generation began was total rest,¹⁹³ and to Democritus this was everlasting motion. Concerning Empedocles, Aristotle claimed that both he and Anaxagoras maintained elements being qualitatively distinguished, but while Empedocles had only four (earth, air, fire, water), Anaxagoras considered those to be compounds of the homogenous bodies that are irreducible and elementary.¹⁹⁴ The nature of those bodies was supposed to be one of a πανσπερμία, a multitude of all sorts of seeds, because they are compounds, and all compounds contain seeds of everything. Once the elementary principles are marterial, void is indispensable for things to be transformed into different ones according to the Atomic theory, but Anaxagoras did not need this, on account of the immateriality of his own principles. Aristotle represented Anaxagoras as being in effect an Atomist, which was a sheer travesty of the real thought of that philosopher. Besides, although it is customary to mention Democritus as an ‘Atomist’, little attention  Aristotle, Physica, 203a20 22. However, this was not just about ‘shapes’. Simplicius ex plained the difference between Democritus’ ‘little substances’ in terms of ‘quality, positions, shapes, and order’ (τὰς κατὰ ποιότητα αὐτῶν διαφορὰς ταῖς κατὰ τὴν θέσιν καὶ τὰ σχήματα καὶ τὴν τάξιν). commPhys, p. 196.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a25 29.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 303a. Cf. De Generatione Animalium, 769a.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 302b10 303b8.  Aristotle praised Anaxagoras for positing absolute rest as the state out of which generation began. De Caelo, 301a.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 302b10 303a3; Physica, 187a23 26.

248

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

has been paid to the fact that in effect he entertained Anaxagoras’ notion of Mind. The universal ‘Necessity’, which forces alteration of the ‘little substances’, thus generating and transforming things, could be hardly different from the Anaxagorean Mind. Besides, Laertius lists among Democritus’ books one entitled ‘About the mind’ (Περὶ νοῦ).¹⁹⁵ Aristotle refers implicitly to ‘those who explain movement and circular motion as an automaton-like one’; he goes on with attributing to those ones the theory that ‘nothing exists or happens because of blind chance, but there is another cause, which is called either Nature or Mind’; besides, not everything comes from everything, ‘but from the seed of an olive-tree come olives, and from the human one come humans.’¹⁹⁶ H. Diels attributed this portion to Democritus, but Aristotle mentions no names, and the argument against the idea of everything coming from everything is the one that Simplicius adduced in order to defend Anaxagoras against Aristotle. My own assumption is that this idea applies to both Presocratics, and that which Aristotle described as ‘automaton’ was simply the fact that, once the principles are there, the function of the universe takes place according to laws/principles that are already established therein. There is no need to introduce a crowd of godlike immovable movers for each and every heavenly sphere, as Aristotle himself did. Suffice it to remind that Eudemus reproduced the Platonic, and then Aristotelian, obloquy that Anaxagoras introduced the Mind, but hereafter he consigned creation of all things and phenomena to an automatic procedure and to chance.¹⁹⁷ Concerning the claim that both Anaxagoras and Democritus did not make any distinction between mind and soul, Aristotle seems to allow for some doubts, saying that whereas Democritus said so explicitly, Anaxagoras ‘seems to believe so’. However, we should not be moved by such ambiguities. John Philoponus put it bluntly, saying the obvious: these remarks of Aristotle about both

 Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 9.49.  Aristotle, Physica, 196a24 25. Cf. discussion of it, Pseudo Justin, Confutatio Dogmatum Quorundam Aristotelicorum, p. 126C. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 264.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 327: ἀλλὰ καὶ Δημόκριτος ἐν οἷς φησι δεῖνον ἀπὸ τοῦ παντὸς ἀπο κριθῆναι παντοίων εἰδέων (πῶς δὲ καὶ ὑπὸ τίνος αἰτίας μὴ λέγει) ἔοικεν ἀπὸ ταὐτομάτου καὶ τύχης γεννᾶν αὐτόν. καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ τὸν νοῦν ἐάσας, ὥς φησιν Εὔδημος, καὶ αὐτοματίζων τὰ πολλὰ συνίστησι. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 127: ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ δὲ ποιητικόν ἐστι συγκ ρίσεως καὶ διακρίσεως ὁ νοῦς. ἀλλὰ δὴ καὶ κατὰ Δημόκριτον ποιητικὰ ἂν εἶεν αἴτια ὁ ῥυσμὸς ἡ τροπὴ καὶ ἡ διαθιγή, πορρωτέρω δὲ καὶ ἡ τύχη καὶ τὸ αὐτόματον. Gennadius Scholarius, Epit ome Primae Partis Summae Theologicae Thomae Aquinae, 3.47. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984b. This was qualified by Pseudo Plutarch (speaking also of ‘providence’), op. cit. 885C (quot ed by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.39.1), & 887E. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 43; 51. Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.7.9a; 1.15.6c.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

249

Anaxagoras and Democritus are not based on any textual evidence; Aristotle just ‘inferred this by means of syllogism.’¹⁹⁸ In fact, Aristotle gathered this from their theory of knowledge: since ‘truth’ and ‘sensual grasp of phenomena’ are identified, it should follow that ‘any phenomenon itself is posited as being true; therefore, mind and soul is the same thing’.¹⁹⁹ Confusion was always at hand, and we need not abide too much by the idea that, to Democritus, ‘soul’ is fire-like.²⁰⁰ This, not because Aristotle attributed the same idea also to Thales,²⁰¹ but because Democritus presumably spoke not of any individual soul, but of the universal mind, which he envisioned as a source of energy. In any event, Stobaeus reports that the God of both Anaxagoras and Democritus is ‘Mind’, and that the latter saw this as somehow involved is a ‘sphere-like fire’.²⁰² Later still, Sophonias decided that, whether reference is made to soul or mind, in either case Democritus saw them as ‘fire’.²⁰³ Unlike Anaxagoras, who was reputed as never having been seen smiling, his pupil Democritus remained famously as the ‘laughing philosopher’. The testimonies to this are astonishingly many, and they extend throughout all Antiquity, until the Renaissance,²⁰⁴ but the juxtaposition was made in reference not to Anaxagoras, but to Heraclitus: whereas the latter mourned the human condition, Democritus laughed at this.²⁰⁵ This may suggest that Anaxagoras was not an easy character: references to him as ‘never laughing’ probably suggest that he was aloof and socially dysfunctional, perhaps sour and unfriendly. In any event, Anaxagoras and Democritus were evidently two characters very unlike each

 John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 71: ἔχομεν οὖν τοῦτο ἐναργῶς παρ᾿ αὐτῶν εἰρημένον ὅτι ταὐτὸν νοῦς καὶ ψυχὴ οὐδαμῶς, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ συλλογισμοῦ τοῦτο κατασκευάζει.  John Philoponus (commenting on Aristotle’s De Anima, 404a25), op. cit. p. 71: τὸ ἀληθὲς δὲ ταὐτόν ἐστι τῷ φαινομένῳ, ὡς Δημοκρίτῳ δοκεῖ, καὶ ὁ νοῦς ἄρα ταὐτὸν τῇ ψυχῇ.  Aristotle, De Anima, 404a; 405a; etc.  Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 411a.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.1.29b: ᾿Aναξαγόρας νοῦν κοσμοποιὸν τὸν θεόν. Δημόκριτος νοῦν τὸν θεὸν ἐν πυρὶ σφαιροειδεῖ.  Sophonias, paraphrPhys, p. 14.  Hippocrates (Corpus Hippocraticum), Epistulae, 17. Sotion of Alexandria, apud Stobaeus, op. cit. 3.20.53. Lucian of Samosata, Vitarum Auctio, 13; De Sacrificiis, 15; De Morte Peregrini, 7. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.13.4. Aelian, Varia Historia, 4.29. Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, 8.7. Suda, letter delta, entry 447. Gregory Antiochus, Epitaphia, Oration 2, p. 86. Julian, emperor, Epistulae Dubiae, 201. Nicetas of Heraclea, Fragmenta Commentariorum xvi Orationum Gregorii Nazianzeni, fr. 110. About Anaxagoras, see infra, p. 1241, note 286.  Euthymius Malaces, Epistulae, 1. George Tornices, Orationes, Oration 14, p. 283. Anacharsis or Ananias, Anacharsis, line 1477 9. Eustathius of Thessaloniki, De Thessalonicae Capta, p. 130. Nicephorus Gregoras, Historia Romana, p. 375; Epistulae, 30. Anthologia Graeca, 7.56; 7.58; 7.148. Pseudo Nonnus, Scholia Mythologica, 4.37.

250

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

other. This would have been a minor reason for Democritus not to like his teacher; but the major one was that Anaxagoras did not approve the materiality of his pupil’s ‘little substances’. Had he done saw, there could have been hardly any difference between the two philosophies. This is the point, namely their differences, which Aristotle could have never been able to point out and expound, once he misrepresented Anaxagoras’ principles as material ones. The fact is, therefore, that Democritus maintained a theory which was different from that of Anaxagoras, although they shared several common ideas none the less. Concerning the Democritian ‘encompassing’, it is quite clear that his theory is not simply about ‘atoms’: there is also a notion of a force which causes the multifarious motion of the elementary particles, and this is how generation and destruction of perceptible things takes place. This could be hardly anything other than a conception of the Anaxagorean Mind, and, whether implicitly or explicitly, Democritus took account of the notion. But this is precisely what brings also their difference to the fore: whereas to Anaxagoras ‘encompassing’ is the totality of distinct principles/logoi, to Democritus this is the force which causes the different motion of the elementary particles. Like other Presocratics, Democritus saw the encompassing as identified with the supreme force of the universe, whereas Anaxagoras saw as encompassing not the supreme principle (the Mind), but the incorporeal principles which the Mind has created and rules over them. Aristotle criticized his predecessors (such as Anaximander) for having called the ‘infinite’ ‘encompassing’: he argued that, since Presocratics opted for making matter a supreme principle, they should have called it ‘encompassed’, not ‘encompassing’.²⁰⁶ In his view, the fate of the material element is to ‘be encompassed’, whereas the incorporeal form ‘encompasses’,²⁰⁷ which is only one aspect of his theory that the ‘form’ is the active agent, and matter is the passive one. In one of the several points where he speaks like a Platonist, he urges that ‘the encompassing determines the limits’ of existence, and it is ‘the essence

 Aristotle, Physica, 208a2 4: φαίνονται δὲ πάντες καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι ὡς ὕλῃ χρώμενοι τῷ ἀπείρῳ· διὸ καὶ ἄτοπον τὸ περιέχον ποιεῖν αὐτὸ ἀλλὰ μὴ περιεχόμενον. Likewise, in 203b4 15, where he cites the phrase περιέχειν ἅπαντα καὶ πάντα κυβερνᾶν, which is supposed to be a quotation from Anaximander. Cf. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.6.1 (ref. to Anaximander): οὗτος ἀρχὴν ἔφη τῶν ὄντων φύσιν τινὰ τοῦ ἀπείρου … ταύτην δὲ ἀΐδιον εἶναι καὶ ἀγήρω, ἣν καὶ πάντας περιέχειν τοὺς κόσμους. Philoponus saw the phrase of Aristotle as bearing upon all Presocratics, not specifically on Anaximander. commPhys, p. 407.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 312a12 13: Φαμὲν δὲ τὸ μὲν περιέχον τοῦ εἴδους εἶναι, τὸ δὲ περιε χόμενον τῆς ὕλης.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

251

of things’, whereas matter is defined and limited by this encompassing, which is why the latter ‘is more honourable’.²⁰⁸ As he normally did, he did not mention his debts, but it is clear that he took up the words of Plato considering the Parmenidean ‘one’, and seeing the ‘encompassing’ as an active state and the ‘encompassed’ as a passive one: But, furthermore, if the ‘one’ is within itself, it would also be surrounding with itself no other than itself; for nothing can be in anything which does not surround it. Then that which surrounds would be other than that which is surrounded; for a whole cannot be both active and passive in the same action; and thus the ‘one’ would be no longer one, but two.’²⁰⁹

Statements such as this could make some sense, had something definitely material been posited as a supreme principle, and thus encompassing everything.²¹⁰ But his target was not Philolaus; it was Anaxagoras: thus, he assesses the latter’s notion of ‘aether’ and decides that ‘aether’ is considered the same as ‘fire’,²¹¹ and then he turns to ‘those who say that pure fire is the encompassing’,²¹² by which he meant Heraclitus. In Anaxagoras, things are clear and his thought is consistent throughout. Unlike those of his era who identified ‘the encompassing’ with God, his view was different: the notion does not pertain to the Mind, but to ‘the one single body’ from which all things stem, as Porphyry explained, according to the Arabic sources discussed later: to Anaxagoras, ‘everything stems from a single body’. The case is different from that of Heraclitus and Democritus, because Anaxagoras could afford it: ‘the encompassing’ is the Body of the Logos, that is, the total Aristotle, op. cit. 293b13 15: Τιμιώτερον δὲ τὸ περιέχον καὶ τὸ πέρας ἢ τὸ περαινόμενον· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ὕλη, τὸ δ᾿ οὐσία τῆς συστάσεώς ἐστιν. Cf. Metaphysica, 1023a11 17.  Plato, Parmenides, 138a b: ᾿Aλλὰ μὴν αὐτό γε ἐν ἑαυτῷ ὂν κἂν ἑαυτῷ εἴη περιέχον οὐκ ἄλλο ἢ αὑτό, εἴπερ καὶ ἐν ἑαυτῷ εἴη· ἔν τῳ γάρ τι εἶναι μὴ περιέχοντι ἀδύνατον. ᾿Aδύνατον γάρ. Οὐ κοῦν ἕτερον μὲν ἄν τι εἴη αὐτὸ τὸ περιέχον, ἕτερον δὲ τὸ περιεχόμενον· οὐ γὰρ ὅλον γε ἄμφω ταὐτὸν ἅμα πείσεται καὶ ποιήσει· καὶ οὕτω τὸ ἓν οὐκ ἂν εἴη ἔτι ἓν ἀλλὰ δύο.  For instance, Philolaus is attested to have said so, as we learn from Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.22.1d: καὶ πάλιν πῦρ ἕτερον ἀνωτάτω τὸ περιέχον.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 270b: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ καταχρῆται τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ οὐ καλῶς· ὀνομάζει γὰρ αἰθέρα ἀντὶ πυρός. Op. cit. 302b4 5: τὸ γὰρ πῦρ καὶ τὸν αἰθέρα προσαγορεύει ταὐτό. How ever, later Aristotle was not so sure of his allegation: “It seems to me that Anaxagoras believed that fire and aether mean the same thing.” Meteorologica, 339b22 23: ὁ γὰρ λεγόμενος αἰθὴρ παλαιὰν εἴληφε τὴν προσηγορίαν, ἣν ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν τῷ πυρὶ ταὐτὸν ἡγήσασθαί μοι δοκεῖ ση μαίνειν. For all this, he insisted on his claim; op. cit. 369b14 15: Αναξαγόρας δὲ τοῦ ἄνωθεν αἰθέρος, ὃ δὴ ἐκεῖνος καλεῖ πῦρ. Cf. Simplicius, commCael, p. 119. John Philoponus, commMeteor, p. 16.  Op. cit. 339b30: ὅσοι δὲ πῦρ καθαρὸν εἶναι φασὶ τὸ περιέχον.

252

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

ity of the principles having become distinct out of the creative act of the Mind. ‘The encompassing’ is not the original undifferentiated confusum: it is the outcome of the creative act of the Mind, that is, all principles being both together and all in all, once they were made distinct. The ‘aether’ and ‘air’ are not the ‘encompassing’ itself,²¹³ yet they are somehow distinct from that, and this is the point of Anaxagoras entertaining the archaic meaning of ‘aether’. Besides, the Mind makes its (or, his) mark in the things that are produced from the encompassing: whether concurring or separated out, the principles operate at the behest and under the supervision of the Mind. Everything exists because the Mind exists and dominates over, and supervises, the function of the totality of principles (that is, of the ‘encompassing’) acting as the Mind’s surrogates.²¹⁴ This means that the encompassing is a product of the creative act of the supreme principle, not the supreme principle itself, and certainly not the Deity, as Aristotle argued about the Presocratics. Nevertheless, Aristotle recognized that τὸ περιέχον of Anaxagoras is the totality of the principles, although he liked to believe that this was ‘infinite’, until Simplicius demonstrated that this was not so. Once these principles are incorporeal, it is pointless to engage in considerations about this ‘infinite’ either moving or not moving. However, the presuppositions of Aristotle were different: it is impossible for an infinite body to exist prior to the socalled elements, simply because, being a body, it must be sensible, and yet we have no perceptible sign of it. This was only a corollary of his conception of body, of which the essential characteristics is tactility, coupled with the axiom that no imperceptible magnitude actually exists. Since then Aristotle thought differently, he criticized Anaxagoras once again for holding that this infinity of principles is ‘fixed’. Anaxagoras gives an absurd account of why the infinite is at rest. He says that the infinite itself is the cause of its being fixed. This because it is in itself, since nothing else contains it, on the assumption that wherever anything is, it is there by its own nature. But this is not true: a thing could be somewhere by compulsion, not where it is its nature to be.²¹⁵

His argument was levelled against the possibility of a homogenous infinitude, and it assumed that it would be absurd to represent it as being everywhere at  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 155: καὶ γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ ἀποκρίνονται ἀπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ τοῦ περιέχοντος, καὶ τό γε περιέχον ἄπειρόν ἐστι τὸ πλῆθος.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 157: ὁ δὲ νοῦς, ὃς ἀεί ἐστι, τὸ κάρτα καὶ νῦν ἐστιν ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα, ἐν τῷ πολλῷ περιέχοντι καὶ ἐν τοῖς προσκριθεῖσι καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀποκεκριμένοις.  Aristotle, Physica, 205b1 4: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δ᾿ ἀτόπως λέγει περὶ τῆς τοῦ ἀπείρου μονῆς· στη ρίζειν γὰρ αὐτὸ αὑτό φησι τὸ ἄπειρον· τοῦτο δέ, ὅτι ἐν αὑτῷ· ἄλλο γὰρ οὐδὲν περιέχειν, ὡς ὅπου ἄν τι ᾖ, πεφυκὸς ἐνταῦθα εἶναι.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

253

rest. But this was what Anaxagoras did, arguing that all subsequent motion is being caused by the original impulse given by the Mind which initiated ‘rotation’. This is why Aristotle set out to refute the theory, by arguing (as he did many times) that rest and motion can be explained only as specific characteristics of matter. The reason Anaxagoras gave for immobility of the original mixture was that it rested in itself surrounded by nothing,²¹⁶ but it is impossible for an infinite body to exist actually, and there is no substantial infinity howsoever.²¹⁷ There is hardly any point to this criticism, since Aristotle saw that ‘infinite body’ as a homogenous totality similar to a chemical compound; besides, he did not demonstrate why could it have been impossible for the original motion of this assumed ‘material’ to have been imparted from outside. In fact, Aristotle could not make this point, which he assumed to be impossible, since he granted priority of motion (which is a positive state) over rest (which is privation).²¹⁸ Nevertheless, and however pointless, this criticism confirms that τὸ περιέχον of Anaxagoras is no other than the totality of his principles. Once commentators engaged in interpretation of Aristotle’s Physics, they could not help saying something about this point. However, they could say nothing substantial, which is why they simply paraphrased Aristotle’s text; the only value of this treatment of infinity is that commentators grasped that Anaxagoras’ ‘encompassing’ is the one explained above. In Anaxagoras, ‘everything stems from a single body’, as Porphyry reported. To Democritus, everything comes from ‘the common body’ which ‘is a source of all things’. Who says so? But this is a stupendous testimony by Aristotle himself. We should consider this, since serious conclusions arise in respect of the abstruse Presocratic notion of the ‘encompassing’ (τὸ περιέχον). Aristotle reported that ‘Democritus asserts that no element arises from another element; nevertheless, to him, the common body is a source of all things (τὸ κοινὸν σῶμα πάντων ἐστὶν ἀρχή), differing from part to part in size and in shape’, and it is ‘with good reason that they all make it a principle or source’ (εὐλόγως δὲ καὶ ἀρχὴν αὐτὸ τιθέασι πάντες). It cannot be argued that this com-

 Aristotle, op. cit. 205b1 24. This refutation of Anaxagoras is omitted in the argument against the notion of an infinite sensible body in the Metaphysica, 1066b22 1067a33. The corresponding passages are Metaphysica 1066b22 1067a23; Physica, 204b5 205a32. In Metaphysica 1066a35 b36, Aristotle propounds an explanation of the different meanings of ‘infinite’ applied to mag nitude, motion, and time.  Aristotle, Physica, 206b20 27.  Aristotle, op. cit. 251a26 27. Cf. Topica, 148a3 9. Presumably, Aristotle was conscious of his difficulty, since in the Metaphysica, 1072a4 5, he strives to show that to Anaxagoras ἐνέργεια is prior to δύναμις.

254

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

mon body exists without reason (οὔτε γὰρ μάτην οἷον τε αὐτὸ εἶναι), nor that the power which exists in it serves to no purpose other than this common body being a principle or source (οὔτε ἄλλην ὑπάρχειν αὐτῷ δύναμιν πλὴν ὡς ἀρχήν). There is no principle or source prior to this principle; but it is itself the principle or source of all others, which encompasses and rules over everything that exists (καὶ περιέχειν ἅπαντα καὶ πάντα κυβερνᾶν), as those assert who do not postulate, alongside the infinite, other causes, such as the Mind or Love (ἄλλας αἰτίας οἷον νοῦν ἢ φιλίαν). This is the Deity (καὶ τοῦτ᾿ εἶναι τὸ θεῖον), since it is immortal and indestructible, as Anaximander and the majority of the physicists say.’²¹⁹ This is the infinite and indeterminate ‘matter’, which is uncreated and incorruptible, and it is Deity itself’.²²⁰ It is all too clear that Aristotle excludes Anaxagoras and Empedocles from this group, since they did not make this ‘encompassing’ a supreme principle, but posited either Mind or Love prior to it. Alexander of Aphrodisias claimed that, in the Metaphysics, Aristotle argued that there can be no such thing as ‘common body’ (κοινὸν σῶμα).²²¹ This was indeed a view of Aristotle himself implying his theory that actual matter is always qualified by some combination of the ‘first contraries’ (hot/cold, wet/dry), hence, it is already fire, air, water, or earth, or some compound of them. There is no such thing as unqualified matter existing apart.²²² However, Alexander was plain wrong when he argued (later in the same commentary) that none of the Presocratics saw the ‘common body’ as a principle.²²³ For it was Aristotle himself

 Aristotle, Physica, 203a b.  See analysis of Physica 203b by John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 407: Ὅσοι, φησί, τῶν πάλαι φυσιολόγων μὴ ἀπέβλεψαν εἰς τὸ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν εἰς τὸν νοῦν, ὃν ποιητικὸν εἶναι αἴτιον ἔλεγεν, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ τὸ νεῖκος καὶ τὴν φιλίαν, οὗτοι ἣν ὑπέθεντο ὕλην εἶναι τῶν πάντων, ἄπειρόν τε αὐτὴν ὑπέθεντο τῷ μεγέθει καὶ ἀγένητον καὶ ἄφθαρτον, καὶ ταύτην εἶναι τὸ θεῖον, ὅπερ καὶ διακυβερνᾶν πάντα καὶ ἐπιστατεῖν τῇ τῶν ὅλων συστάσει, ἀθάνατόν γε καὶ ἀνώλεθρον, ὅπερ ᾿Aναξιμένης μὲν τὸν ἀέρα εἶναι ἔλεγε, Θαλῆς δὲ τὸ ὕδωρ, ᾿Aναξίμανδρος δὲ τὸ μεταξύ, καὶ ἄλλος ἄλλο.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 115: στοιχεῖον λέγειν εἶναι τούτων ὧν ἐστι κοι νόν, ὅπερ ἀδύνατον. … οὔτε γὰρ ἔστι τι κοινὸν σῶμα ὃ στοιχεῖον εἶναι δύναται, οὔτε μᾶλλον κοι νὸν ὃ μηδέ ἐστιν αὐτὸ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ κοινόν, ὡς καὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ εἶναι τι ὅλως τὸ κοινὸν ἔχοντος ἀμφισβήτησιν. ἐχρῆν μὲν οὖν ὁμοίως καὶ τούτους ὁρίσαντας τὸ ἕν τι, ὥσπερ οἱ σῶμα τι τὸ στοι χεῖον λέγοντες, τοῦτο ἀρχὴν ὑποτίθεσθαι.  Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 320b23.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 670: τὸ δὲ κοινὸν καθόλου σῶμα τὸ κατὰ παντὸς σώ ματος κατηγορούμενον οὐδεὶς εἶπεν ἀρχήν. Alexander was misled by Aristotle’s phrase in the Metaphysica, 992a4 6: καὶ γὰρ τούτων ἕκαστος οὐ τὸ κοινὸν λέγει στοιχεῖον, οἷον τὸ σῶμα, ἀλλὰ πῦρ καὶ γῆν, εἴτ᾿ ἔστι τι κοινόν, τὸ σῶμα, εἴτε μή. But in the Physics, he had made it clear that Democritus was a different case.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

255

who explained that Democritus derived everything from a ‘common body’. By contrast, John Philoponus reiterates this personal view of Aristotle, but he adds that this was one ‘maintained by certain’ Presocratics, meaning Democritus of course, and Anaximander none the less.²²⁴ Aristotle says that, to him, there is no ‘common body’; but he also says that to Democritus there was one: in the analyses of Aristotle, Democritus stood apart, along with his teacher Anaxagoras, although he differed from Anaxagoras in positing material principles. Thus, the irony is that Democritus is represented as having posited infinity of material particles, which is the notion that Aristotle persistently attributed to Anaxagoras! Alexander of Aphrodisias was wrong in claiming that no Presocratic sought to establish as principle the ‘common body’, that is, a real material that underlies all materials (which is not the ‘formless matter’, since the ‘common body’ is supposed to exist in reality and apart). Nevertheless, in fairness to Alexander, it has to be said that he wrote this only because Aristotle (contradicting himself once again) misled him, or at least he was not accurate in view of other pertinent statements of his. In the Metaphysics, 1069a, he refers to theories about ‘the principles and elements and causes’ (ἀρχὰς καὶ στοιχεῖα καὶ αἴτια) which give rise to perceptible things, and classifies them in two groups: one, the universals posited by his contemporary Platonists (οἱ μὲν οὖν νῦν); two, ‘those ancient’ [philosophers] (οἱ δὲ πάλαι), who posited particular material elements as principles, but they did not introduce any notion of ‘a common body’ assumed to be the constituent of all substances, and which is nothing determined and not an element. This is a contradiction of Aristotle, which caused Alexander of Aphrodisias to be misled, as above. For Aristotle himself used both the notion and expression κοινόν σῶμα in order to describe the theory of Democritus,²²⁵ and certainly this applies also to Anaximander, as explained in a moment.

 John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 206: οὐκ ἔστιν ὕλη κοινὴ τῶν αἰσθητῶν σωμάτων οὐδὲ κυρίως ἀρχή, οὔτε πάντα οὔτε ἕν τι αὐτῶν, ὥσπερ τινὲς ᾠήθησαν.  W.D. Ross, in his edition of the Metaphysics, argued that Aristotle intends that ‘there is no κοινὸν σῶμα’. He was right as far as the Metaphysics is concerned. However, in the Physics, Ar istotle treated this notion as one that had been advanced by Democritus. Therefore, the expres sion in the text is κοινὸν σῶμα, and Ross should not have introduced a comma (i. e. κοινόν, σῶμα). Aristotle used this himself, in the Physics 203a quoted above: τὸ κοινὸν σῶμα πάντων ἐστὶν ἀρχή. See note 29, in volume II of Ross’ edition of Metaphysics, p. 350. The same erroenous editorial emendation occurs in v. I, Metaphysica, 992a6, where Ross inserts a comma to the text once again. His text goes, εἴτ᾿ ἔστι τι κοινόν, τὸ σῶμα, εἴτε μή. He should have employed codices Ab and Γ, where τι is ommitted. Thus, the text should go, εἴτ᾿ ἔστι κοινόν τὸ σῶμα, εἴτε μή (‘whether there is a common body, or not’). For Aristotle implicitly refers to Democritus, who maintained the notion of ‘common body’, as in Physica, 203a. There is also more reference to

256

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

Having placed Anaxagoras and Empedocles apart, because they held a higher principle, Aristotle recognized a single exception, namely, Democritus: Democritus dissented from all the other thinkers and maintained a theory peculiar to him self. He asserts that agent and patient are identical, i. e. ‘like’. It is not possible (he says) that ‘others’, i. e. ‘differents’, should suffer action from one another: on the contrary, even if two things, being ‘others’, do act in some way on one another, this happens to them not qua ‘others’ but qua possessing an identical property.²²⁶

This is an astonishing statement, considering that Aristotle attributed the notion ὅμοιον ὁμοίῳ to Diogenes of Apollonia just one page prior to that point,²²⁷ he attested this in reference to Heraclitus,²²⁸ Anaxagoras,²²⁹ and Empedocles,²³⁰ and this was applied to all explanations of growth.²³¹ Moreover, Aristotle accused Empedocles of inconsistency for maintaining that similars are mutually impassible, and yet that sensation and intellection, which are modes of interaction, are based upon the principle ὅμοιον ὁμοίῳ.²³² Accordingly, Theophrastus interpreted Heraclitus and Anaxagoras as maintaining that alteration is a process involving dissimilars.²³³ Although this interpretation may stem from his Peripatetic theory that alteration involves a process between contraries, in respect of Anaxagoras it should be recalled that principles interact with each other yet no one of them is like any other, and little wonder that Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics attests to Euripides having said the same in poetic terms.²³⁴ Against all this, Aristotle wrote that, of those who abode by a material principle, Democritus was a peculiar case because Aristotle had in mind that Democritus was a lapsed pupil of Anaxagoras, yet a pupil still. In Democritus, there is no such notion as the Aristotelian ‘form’ acting upon matter considered as a pas-

this ‘common substratum’, which is a universal material principle of things. De Generatione et Corruptione, 334a16: Περὶ δὲ τῶν στοιχείων ἐξ ὧν τὰ σώματα συνέστηκεν, ὅσοις μὲν δοκεῖ τι εἶναι κοινὸν ἢ μεταβάλλειν εἰς ἄλληλα.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 323b1 15.  Aristotle, op. cit. 322b13 15.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405a25 28.  Aristotle, Physica, 203a23 ff.  Aristotle, De Anima, 409b23 ff; 416b33 ff.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 315b1 3.  Aristotle, De Anima, 410a23 26.  Theophrastus, De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 1.  Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, 1155b2 6: “Euripides writes that ‘Earth yearns for the rain’ when dried up, ‘And the majestic Heaven when filled with rain yearns to fall to Earth.’ Heraclitus says, ‘Opposition unites,’ and ‘the fairest harmony springs from difference,’ and ‘it is strife that makes the world go on.’”

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

257

sive substratum. Instead, he sustained the Anaxagorean model: things are what they are because of certain principles forming and keeping them together; if things are to change, other principles will interact with those which hold a thing together, and this is how a thing is transformed to something else. Generation and perishing is about interaction between principles, not about forms acting upon passive matter. Aristotle made a comment using the notion of a ‘common’ substratum once again: The theories that ‘there is something common to all the elements’, and that ‘they are trans formed to one another’, are so related, that those who accept either of them are bound to accept the other as well.²³⁵

No matter what the differences, Democritus and Anaxagoras saw things being generated by means of their principles either coming to conjunction with each other, or being separated out. Commentators, above them all Simplicius, pointed out at many points that the two philosophers shared this idea alike.²³⁶ Aristotle had it that the Presocratics were searching for the element which is common to all things, it constitutes them, and it is prior to them all, while underlying everything. He argued that each one of them gave a different answer as to the identity of this element (water for Thales, air for Anaximenes), but Anaximander understood the beginning or first principle to be an endless and unlimited primordial mass (ἄπειρον) that perpetually yielded fresh materials, it is subject to neither old age nor decay, and from this all perceptible things are derived.²³⁷ To Anaximander, the principle of things, the constituent of all substances, is nothing definite and not an element such as water was to Thales. It is something halfway (an ‘intermediate’) between air and water, or between air and fire, thicker than air and fire, and subtler than water and earth. Aristotle reported that Anaximander argued that water could not embrace all of the con-

 Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 334a: Περὶ δὲ τῶν στοιχείων ἐξ ὧν τὰ σώματα συ νέστηκεν, ὅσοις μὲν δοκεῖ τι εἶναι κοινὸν ἢ μεταβάλλειν εἰς ἄλληλα, ἀνάγκη εἰ θάτερον τούτων, καὶ θάτερον συμβαίνειν. He had in mind such predecessors as Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Anaximander. See infra.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163; also, p. 1050: τοῖς περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν καὶ Λεύκιππον καὶ Δη μόκριτον πᾶσα γένεσις καὶ φθορὰ συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει γίνεσθαι ἐδόκει, αὐτῷ μὲν τοῦτο οὐκ ἀρέσκει. Op. cit. p. 1120: οὕτω γὰρ καὶ Δημόκριτος κοσμοποιεῖ καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγό ρας, οἱ μὲν συγκρίνεσθαι καὶ διακρίνεσθαι τὰ ἄτομα σώματα καὶ τὰ τέτταρα στοιχεῖα λέγοντες, ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ἐκκρίνεσθαι τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀπὸ τοῦ μίγματος. Op. cit. pp. 43; 45; 154; 235; 461; 532; 1266; commCael, pp. 632 4.  Aristotle, De Xenophane, 975b; Physica, 187a; 203b; Metaphysica, 1069b. Cf. Pseudo Plu tarch, Placita Philosophorum, 875F.

258

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

traries found in nature (e. g. water can only be wet, never dry); therefore, it cannot be the one primary substance; nor could any of the other elementary materials. He postulated the ἄπειρον as a substance that, although not directly perceptible to us, could explain the contraries. Physicist Max Born, commenting upon Werner Heisenberg’s arriving at the idea that the elementary particles of quantum mechanics are to be seen as different manifestations (that is, different quantum states) of one and the same ‘primordial substance’, proposed that this primordial substance be called apeiron. John Philoponus remarked that, when Anaximander postulated his ‘intermediate’ (τὸ μεταξύ), which is ‘infinite and encompasses everything’ (ἀπείρου ὄντος καὶ πάντα ἐν ἑαυτῷ περιέχοντος), he also inferred that generation of all other things is ‘secretion’ (or, procession, ἐκκρίνεσθαι), since ‘generation is no other than secretion and manifestation’ (τὴν γὰρ γένεσιν οὐδὲν εἶναι ἄλλο ἢ ἔκκρισιν καὶ ἔκφανσιν); but, by positing that generation is ‘coming to the fore’ (ἔκφανσιν) out of the indeterminate infinite, namely, out of the ‘encompassing’ (τοῦ περιέχοντος), the case was actually that Anaximander did not dissent from Anaxagoras, but in fact ‘he lapsed into the latter’s theory’ (μᾶλλον οὖν εἰς τὴν ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξαν ἐκπίπτει ταῦτα λέγων).²³⁸ Philoponus was absolutely right, since Anaxagoras plainly posited generation of all things by means of ‘secretion’ (ἐκκρίνεσθαι).²³⁹ His expression identifying generation as ἔκφανσιν (‘manifestation’, or, coming to the fore, or coming to light) is telling, not only because this was used by Simplicius himself,²⁴⁰ but

 John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 88. Aristotle grouped Anaximander, Anaxagoras, and Em pedocles together, as being those who argued that things are both one and many, and derive their contraries from the One by means of separation. See Physica, 187a20 26.  Cf. ἔκκρισις being the cause of generation according to Anaxagoras: Simplicius, commCael, pp. 202; 601; 603; 605; 632; commPhys, pp. 153 4; 167; 171; 174 8; 300 1; 461 2; 1120. Simplicius also saw that Anaximander maintained the same theory as Anaxagoras. commPhys, p. 149: καί τοι τοῦ ᾿Aναξιμάνδρου, ὡς αὐτός φησι, μὴ οὕτως γεννῶντος, ἀλλὰ κατὰ ἔκκρισιν τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀπείρου. Op. cit. p. 150: ἕτερος δὲ τρόπος καθ᾿ ὃν οὐκέτι τὴν μεταβολὴν τῆς ὕλης αἰτιῶνται οὐδὲ κατὰ ἀλλοίωσιν τοῦ ὑποκειμένου τὰς γενέσεις ἀποδιδόασιν, ἀλλὰ κατὰ ἔκκρισιν· ἐνούσας γὰρ τὰς ἐναντιότητας ἐν τῷ ὑποκειμένῳ, ἀπείρῳ ὄντι σώματι, ἐκκρίνεσθαί φησιν ᾿Aναξίμανδρος, πρῶτος αὐτὸς ἀρχὴν ὀνομάσας τὸ ὑποκείμενον. Op. cit. p. 235: οἱ δὲ πολλὰ μέν, ἐνυπάρχοντα δὲ ἐκκρίνεσθαι ἔλεγον, τὴν γένεσιν ἀναιροῦντες ὡς ᾿Aναξίμανδρος καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 87: οὐ γένεσιν κριθῶν οὗτος ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ᾿ ἔκφανσιν μόνον καὶ ἔκκρισιν, οὕτως ἔχει καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν φυσικῶν πραγμάτων· ὅταν γὰρ ἐκ σαρκὸς ὀστοῦν γίνηται ἤ τι ἕτερον, οὐκ ἔστι τοῦτο γένεσις κυρίως, ἀλλ᾿ ἔκφανσις μόνον καὶ ἔκκρισις τοῦ πρὶν κρυπτομέ νου. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Aristotelis Meteora Commentaria, p. 114: γένεσιν γὰρ καλεῖ τὴν ἔκφανσιν. It would appear that Ammonius’ lectures were the common source for both com mentators. Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 740: δῆλον δὲ καὶ ὅτι οὐ μόνον φθορᾶς, ἀλλὰ καὶ γεν έσεως καὶ ἐκφάνσεως αἴτιος [sc. χρόνος]. However, ultimately this came from Hermias (Ammo

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

259

mainly because it betokens the Anaxagorean idea that the identity of a thing is determined by those acting principles which prevail upon it, they make it what it is, and make it possible for it to emerge in the light of the horizon of events.²⁴¹ This is the idea itself about principles unconcealing themselves out of concealment. It is plain, therefore, that the Presocratic mindset was not one of different philosophers being proof to each other’s theories. They shared many ideas, some of which were fundamental axioms, and others were modified alternatives on peripheral or supplementary matters. I am convinced that there is much yet to be learned about that spiritual environment, which is currently misunderstood on many issues. No matter how the ‘all-embracing’ or ‘encompassing’ was named by either of those thinkers, this was more or less identified with a certain conception of Deity. Anaximenes, who maintained air to be the principle of everything, argued that air holds together the entire world, in like a manner a soul holds together its body.²⁴² Heraclitus believed that the ‘encompassing’ is ‘a rational animal of sound mind’,²⁴³ and man becomes rational by means of ‘association’ with this ‘encompassing’, which is suspended for the most part of it only during sleep (χωρίζεται τῆς πρὸς τὸ περιέχον συμφυΐας ὁ ἐν ἡμῖν νοῦς).²⁴⁴ His encompassing then is the Logos, and Sextus Empiricus had no doubt that Heraclitus’ theory was that, whatever we do or think, it is made possible by means of participation in this divine Logos.²⁴⁵ For that reason, man is not a rational animal on his own merit: the only rational animal is the Logos who imparts his own rationality to men.²⁴⁶

nius’ father) sharing the notion with Proclus. Cf. Hermias, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 215: αὕτη γάρ ἐστιν ἡ γένεσις τῶν Μουσῶν ἡ ἔκφανσις ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ γενομένη εἰς τὸν αἰσθητὸν κόσμον. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, p. 121: τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν αἰτίων ἄρρητον ἔκφανσιν ἐπικρυπτόμενοι γένεσιν οἱ μῦθοι καλοῦσιν. See infra, p. 796, and note 418.  See Simplicius reporting this theory of Anaxagoras. commCael, pp. 605; 632; commPhys, pp. 27; 155; 163; 173. See infra, pp. 326; 504; 566 7; 685 6; 706; 796.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.10.12, apud Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. p. 876A.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 127: ἀρέσκει γὰρ τῷ φυσικῷ τὸ περιέχον ἡμᾶς λογικόν τε ὂν καὶ φρενῆρες.  Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. 129; συμφυΐα means natural junction, which though does not sug gest indentity of substance.  Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. 132 3: ἐναρχόμενος γοῦν τῶν Περὶ φύσεως ὁ προειρημένος ἀνὴρ καὶ τρόπον τινὰ δεικνὺς τὸ περιέχον φησί· λόγου … ἐπιλανθάνονται. διὰ τούτων γὰρ ῥητῶς παρα στήσας ὅτι κατὰ μετοχὴν τοῦ θείου λόγου πάντα πράττομέν τε καὶ νοοῦμεν.  Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. 134: καὶ μὴν ῥητῶς ὁ Ἡράκλειτός φησι τὸ μὴ εἶναι λογικὸν τὸν ἄνθρωπον, μόνον δ᾿ ὑπάρχειν φρενῆρες τὸ περιέχον.

260

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

The key-notion of ‘the encompassing’ (τὸ περιέχον), which has been briefly discussed, had different significations depending on particular philosophies. To Anaxagoras, this was the distinguished principles, the active totality of logoi operating at the behest and under the supervision of the Mind; in other words, ‘the single body’ from which all things stem, as Porphyry put it. To Democritus, it appears to be a comprehensive and underlying material reality, but I am myself all but convinced that Democritus was the arid materialist that he is normally represented to be: for he was alert to the fact that ‘atoms’, or ‘little substances’, need something that could provide them with the ability to move and bring about alterations to reality. What this something was remains unclear (he used the designation ‘Necessity’, or δῖνος, which Aristophanes identified with Zeus, and his commentators wrote that he received this from ‘the followers of Anaxagoras’, since δῖνος means ‘rotation’, too), but to consider further the extent to which the notion of Anaxagorean Mind was present in his thought is out of my scope. In fact, Simplicius himself appears ambivalent about this: in one commentary, he assures that Democritus maintained that his ‘little substances’ are held together until such a time as ‘a necessity stemming from the all-encompassing comes and shakes them and disperses them apart’,²⁴⁷ which means that there is something apart from the material particles, which governs their operation. However, in another commentary, the same commentator quotes from Democritus a proposition couched in characteristic Anaxagorean language and tenor, which suggests that different things proceeded from a primal ‘whole’ as a result of whirling, or rotation.²⁴⁸ Simplicius wrote that ‘when Democritus says that a swirl of forms of all kinds was separated off from the totality’, he did not explain ‘how and from what cause’ this happened. Consequently, Simplicius infers that Democritus ‘seems to bring this into being fortuitously and by chance.’²⁴⁹ However, at the same point, he implies clearly that this was an opinion of Eudemus, who also said that Anaxagoras did likewise, since he introduced the Mind and then he left everything to work like an automaton. But this was simply the criticism of Plato against Anaxagoras, which Aristotle employed promptly, and Eude-

 Democritus, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 295: ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον οὖν χρόνον σφῶν αὐτῶν ἀν τέχεσθαι νομίζει καὶ συμμένειν, ἕως ἰσχυροτέρα τις ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἀνάγκη παραγενομένη διασείσῃ καὶ χωρὶς αὐτὰς διασπείρῃ.  Democritus, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 327: δεῖνον ἀπὸ τοῦ παντὸς ἀποκριθῆναι παν τοίων εἰδέων. Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 609; commPhys, pp. 35 & 156 & 157 & 378: τούτων δὲ οὕτως ἐχόντων χρὴ δοκεῖν ἐνεῖναι πολλά τε καὶ παντοῖα ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς συγκρι νομένοις καὶ σπέρματα πάντων χρημάτων καὶ ἰδέας παντοίας ἔχοντα … πρὶν δὲ ἀποκριθῆναι, φησί, πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲ χροιὴ ἔνδηλος ἦν οὐδεμία.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 327: ἔοικεν ἀπὸ ταὐτομάτου καὶ τύχης γεννᾶν αὐτόν.

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

261

mus, the faithful pupil Aristotle, reproduced. I have discussed how unfair to Anaxagoras this criticism was, and we saw already that the notion of ‘Mind’ makes a mark in Democritus which is hard to overlook. Whether this can be associated with his ontology is a different matter, which I leave moot. All of this analysis suggests that Aristotle made assertions probably without having read this philosophy. In fact, nowhere does he indicate that he had read Anaxagoras’ book first-hand. On the contrary, all references indicate hearsay, and clearly show a man who was all ears for distorted versions, to which he was happy to contribute himself. Hence his recurrent use of such expressions as ‘it seems that Anaxagoras believed’ (ἔοικε δὲ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας), and the like.²⁵⁰ Presumably Aristotle had this philosophy retailed to him by ‘followers of Anaxagoras’, but still there is nothing to suggest that he read it. Apart from the opening ‘all things were together’ and ‘the Mind distinguished them’, and then, a few lines further, ‘the Mind is unmixed’, he does not really quote anything from Anaxagoras’ book. Instead, there are several references to what he heard about Anaxagoras’ views,²⁵¹ or what the ‘followers of Anaxagoras say’²⁵² or they ‘seem to say’.²⁵³ By contrast, when he refers to Plato, he notes confidently, ‘Plato says’, or ‘wrote’ (Πλάτων λέγει, or, Πλάτων φησίν, or, Πλάτων ἔγραψεν), or ‘Plato believes’ (οἴεται Πλάτων), or similar expressions, and frequently cites Plato’s works in order to make his own references more clear.²⁵⁴ There is only a single point where he writes that ‘Plato seems to have used this analogy in his Republic’, which does indeed indicate a tentative assumption.²⁵⁵ Aristotle’s account of Anaxagoras at points appears to be so naïve that one can plausibly wonder as to whether such an acute mind as Aristotle actually believed it, especially since Anaxagoras’ book was sold in Athens ‘at the price of one drachma’ to those (such as ‘the young ones’) who could not afford expensive

 Aristotle, De Caelo, 301a; Metaphysica, 985a; 1012a; Ethica Nicomachea, 1179a; De Genera tione Animalium, 723a; Physica, 187a.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009b; Ethica Eudemia, 1216a; Protrepticus, fr. 19. See quotations in Introduction, p. 34.  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 345a.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a; De Partibus Animalium, 677a.  Cf. Aristotle, Topica, 122b; 140a; 140b; 148a; Physica, 187a; 203a; 206b; 209b; 251b; De Gen eratione et Corruptione, 315a; 325b; 330b; 332a; De Anima, 404b; Problemata, 953a; 956a; Meta physica, 987a; 987b; 988a; 990a; 992a; 996a; 1001a; 1010b; 1019a; 1026b; 1028b; 1053b; 1064b; 1070a; 1071b; 1072a; 1083a; Ethica Nicomachea, 1095a; 1104b; 1172b; Politica, 1261a; 1266b; 1271b; 1274b; 1293b; Rhetorica, 1376a; 1398b; 1406b; De Virtutibus et Vitiis, 1249a; Epistulae, 4, line 16.  Aristotle, Magna Moralia, 1.33.10.

262

Chapter 3 – Aristotle as a critic

books and found second-hand books at a busy quarter of the Agora.²⁵⁶ Be that as it may, Aristotle’s distorted testimony of Anaxagoras remains a serious question that has to be answered one way or another, and I shall attempt such a proposition later. It is therefore the time for me to consider the step forward which we owe to Simplicius: whereas he commented on Aristotle’s views, and for all his respect for that philosopher, he felt that such a distortion should not pass without reply, which is the sole account of the true Anaxagoras that we have. This is what I am going to examine next.

 Plato, Apologia Socratis, 26d e. Plato’s biased reference to Anaxagoras is all too evident at this point: “It is sometimes possible for the youth to buy the books of Anaxagoras the Clazome nian for a drachma at the orchestra, if the price is high”. Ὀρχήστρα was part of the Agora in Athens, a kind of square serving as a place of celebrations (τόπος ἐπιφανὴς εἰς πανήγυριν), where the images of Harmodius and Aristogeiton were placed. Cf. Timaeus (sophist, grammar ian, a Neoplatonist, probably fourth century AD), Lexicon Platonicum (e cod. Coislin. 345), letter omicron, 997b. Photius, Lexicon, letter omicron, p. 351. Harmodius and Aristogeiton (both died in 514 BC) were two Athenians who became famous as the Tyrannicides (τυραννοκτόνοι) who killed the Peisistratid tyrant Hipparchus. To Athenians, they remained an eternal outstanding symbol of democracy.

Chapter 4 A twofold creation We should bear in mind the quite obvious fact, namely, however brilliant Aristotle was, he was a human being none the less, and he made mistakes. One should not approach the stars of ancient philosophy while falling on one’s knees and seeing every account of them as an infallible revelation. When one reads Aristotle’s represenation of Anaxagoras, and his writing about ‘nails that are fed from particle-nails’ and the like, one wonders whether this is really philosophy. Even the most faithful of Aristotle’s followers were shy about following him all along on such grotesque discussions. Therefore, we should never forget that Aristotle’s mistakes were responsible for the impediment of progress not only of science, but also of a fairly clear understanding of his predecessors. Against Aristotle’s accounts which in effect represent Anaxagoras as a fool (in Introduction, we saw a modern scholar styling his theory ‘self-stultifying’), Simplicius took notice of those who believed that he was a ‘wise man’ (σοφὸς ὤν), which was an opinion about Anaxagoras widely maintained. Diogenes Laertius reports that he was one of the seventeen ‘wise men’ of Antiquity,¹ along with Solon, Thales, Pythagoras, and others.² Even Plato is represented as having written that he was a wise man, although this apostrophe appears in the Alcibiades i,

 So Aelius Aristides, Πρὸς Πλάτωνα Ὑπὲρ τῶν Τεττάρων, p. 176; also, Πρὸς Καπίτωνα, quoting the foregoing reference from the Alcibiades i, which he considered as a genuine Platonic work. John Tzetzes states that Anaxagoras was one of the very few men that participated in Mind along with the gods, which made him as much a prophet as Sibylla was a prophetess. John Tzetzes, Chilades, 7.143, lines 534 41: Καὶ Πλάτων δὲ ὁ πάνσοφος φησὶν ἐν τῷ Τιμαίῳ, λόγου μὲν πάντα ἄνθρωπον μετέχειν δὴ φατέον, νοῦ δὲ θεοὺς καὶ γένος τι βραχύτατον ἀνθρώπων, δῆθεν τοὺς προγινώσκοντας φάσκοντες καὶ προφήτας, οἵπερ οὐ κατακούσαντες εἶπον περὶ μελλόντων, οἷος ὁ Πυθαγόρας τε καὶ ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς, Δημόκριτος, ἄλλοι σοφοὶ μυρίοι, ἡ Ἠπειρῶτις Φαεννὼ καὶ Σίβυλλα ὁμοίως. As late as the during turn of the thirteenth to fourteenth century, Nicephorus Gregoras (c. 1295 1360, Byzantine astronomer, historian, man of learning and reli gious controversialist) wrote this in his Florentinus, lines 1370 1: βέλτιον ἀκολουθῆσαι τοῖς πάλαι σοφοῖς, ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ καὶ Δημοκρίτῳ καὶ ᾿Aναξιμάνδρω. Likewise, George Gemistus recalled that the ‘wise men’ of old, such as Anaxagoras, sometimes were accused of impiety and risked being put to death because of their doctrines. Contra Scholarii pro Aristotele Obiectiones, 21. Later still, shortly before the fall of Constantinople, Demetrius Chrysoloras (fl. 1391 1425, during the reign of Manuel Paleologus) styled Anaxagoras along with Democritus ‘the wonderful ones among the wise men’ (θαυμάσιοι Δημόκριτος καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐν σοφοῖς). Comparatio Veterum Imperatorum et Nunc Imperatoris Manuelis Palaeologi, p. 230.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum, 1.41. Anaxagoras was younger than Thales by almost one generation.

264

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

which is currently regarded as spurious, but all ancient commentators treated it as a genuine work.³ Since I believe that Aristotle’s biased account of Anaxagoras was owing to resentment and enviousness rather than ignorance, his reference about Anaxagoras and Thales being ‘wise, but not prudent’ according to ‘some people’ (σοφοὺς μὲν φρονίμους δ᾿ οὔ φασιν εἶναι) is telling.⁴ In his Art of Rhetoric, he says that ‘wise men are honoured everywhere’, one of the cases being that ‘the people of Italy honoured Pythagoras, and the Lampsacenes buried Anaxagoras, although he was a foreigner, and they keep holding him in honour’, but he places these words on the mouth of Alcidamas.⁵ Since Simplicius was an accomplished scholar, he felt he had to make (actually, endure) a faithful exposition of Aristotle’s claims: he even expounded the absurdities about ‘nails and feathers’ being fed by particles of nails and feathers, and the like, which Aristotle alleged to be the true meaning of Anaxagoras’ proposition about ‘all things being together’ and everything being ‘all in all’. However, as if Simplicius felt that he had enough of it, he went ahead with saying a few things about the real Anaxagoras, who is entirely absent from Aristotle’s exposition. In what follows then, I am going to consider nine specific analyses by Simplicius, which cast light on Anaxagoras’ thought, and, unlike all other testimonies, they have the merit of using the philosopher’s own words to an unparalleled extent. I Everything that becomes, it becomes not all at once, but in a certain order (πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς γινόμενον, εἰ καὶ μὴ ἀμέσως, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τάξιν).⁶ In like a manner that every particular thing appears as of a certain moment, the universe was pro-

 Plato (or, Pseudo Plato), Alcibiades i, 118c. Alcibiades says to Socrates, ‘it is said’ that Pericles became wise not ‘automatically’ (οὐκ ἀπὸ τοῦ αὐτομάτου), but because he was taught by ‘wise men, such as Pythoclides and Anaxagoras’ (καὶ σοφοῖς συγγεγονέναι καὶ Πυθοκλείδῃ καὶ ᾿Aναξ αγόρᾳ). Likewise, in another work, which is considered as dubious. Epistulae, 2, 311a.  I believe there were at least three reasons for Aristotle to make such a claim: 1. Anaxagoras posited a primordial incorporeal creation, and Aristotle hated both the notion of self existent incorporeality (De Anima, 432a3 7) and generation of material reality from incorporeal causes (De Caelo, 305a31 32). 2. Anaxagoras anticipated the notion of potential being (δυνάμει ὄν), which Aristotle appropriated from Anaxagoras and advertized it as a theory of his own. 3. Anax agoras posited one kind of motion (namely, mutation, ἀλλοίωσις) in order to explain any mo tion, instead of Aristotle’s six. But the simpler and less the principles of science are, the higher the quality of science is and Aristotle knew this very well.  Aristotle, Rhetorica, 1398b: καὶ Λαμψακηνοὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ξένον ὄντα ἔθαψαν καὶ τιμῶσιν ἔτι καὶ νῦν.  This was also part of the legacy of Anaxagoras to the Stoics, as well as to Origen. Cf. ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει, infra, pp. 396 8; 629.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

265

duced also in a certain order (ὥσπερ οὖν ἐν ἑκάστῳ ἀρχὴ γίνεταί ποτε τῆς διακρίσεως, οὕτως καὶ ἐν τῷ παντί), and not everything appeared at the same time (καὶ ὥσπερ ἀπὸ ἑκάστου φαίνεταί τις γένεσίς ποτε γινομένη, οὕτως ἐπειδὴ καὶ πάντων ἐστὶ γένεσις, ἀπὸ τοῦ πάντων μίγματος ἡ πάντων γένεσις ἐξεκρίθη, εἰ καὶ μὴ ἅμα).⁷ Since bodies could not move out of themselves, but by something outside them, and they belong to the same ontological order (σώματα δὲ ὄντα καὶ ἑτεροκίνητα καὶ ὁμόστοιχά πως ἀλλήλοις), they needed an ontologically superior principle, which Anaxagoras calls Mind (ἀρχῆς καὶ αἰτίας ἐδεῖτό τινος κρείττονος, ἣν ᾿Aναξαγόρας καλεῖ νοῦν). Nevertheless, it was necessary for things to emerge by distinction from the original contraction (ἀπὸ τῆς συναιρέσεως) in a certain order (ἐν τάξει). Prior to that, however, something else (which eluded everyone) was indispensable: “It was necessary for the one which grants distinction and advances this distinction out of contraction according to a certain order, and which had also its own substance contracted (ἔδει γὰρ τὸ τὰ συνῃρημένα διακρῖνον καὶ προάγον ἐν τάξει τὴν διάκρισιν ἀπὸ τῆς συναιρέσεως αὐτὸ συνῃρημένην ἔχον τὴν οὐσίαν), to produce distinction into its own self in the first place (πρώτως ἀναφαίνειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν διάκρισιν)”.⁸ “Such was the Mind, whom Anaxagoras envisaged as working from a certain beginning, when he said that Mind began to distinguish things” (τοιοῦτος δὲ ὁ νοῦς, ὃν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐνόησεν ἐργαζόμενον, ἐν οἷς λέγει ἄρξασθαι τὸν νοῦν διακρίνειν).⁹ “This is the light that was cast upon the meaning according to which Anaxagoras arrived at his theory about the first principles” (ἡ μὲν οὖν ἔννοια, καθ᾿ ἣν εἰς ταύτην ἦλθε περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν τὴν ὑπόθεσιν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, οὕτως φανερὰ γέγονεν), by which he means, ‘this is how Aristotle rendered it’. If this theory is read superficially (ἐκ δὲ τῶν εἰρημένων πρόχειρον συννοεῖν), one (such as Aristotle) could assume this: since everything is produced from everything, and everything is in everything, it follows that not only the universe, but also every particular thing is infinitely infinite in terms of both number and size (ὅτι εἰ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἐκκρίνεται καὶ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, οὐ μόνον τὸ πᾶν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἕκαστον, οὐ τῷ πλήθει μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ μεγέθει ἀπειράκις ἄπειρον ἔσται). However, ‘what I have shown in my analyses on the first book of the Physics, where I described what Aristotle believed about Anaxagoras’ theory, is this’ (εἴρηται καὶ ἐν ταῖς εἰς τὸ πρῶτον σχολαῖς, ἐν αἷς τὰς πίστεις ἀπ᾿ αὐτῶν

 This, as well as what follows, is from Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 460 1.  In chapter 11, I will compare this doctrine with Origen’s theory of creation: in the first place, the Logos creates the incorporeal ‘embroidered wisdom’, out of which the actual material uni verse is produced.  This is from Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461, slightly paraphrasing Aristotle, Physica, 203a28 33.

266

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

ἐπειράθην παραγράψαι τῶν ᾿Aναξαγόρου ῥημάτων).¹⁰ Then, Simplicius explicates the conclusion, which was also stated earlier in the same book. Aristotle, for his part, expounds Anaxagoras’ philosophy as this appeared to him on the face of it (τὸ προφαινόμενον ἱστορεῖ τῆς ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξης). However, Anaxagoras, who was a wise man (σοφὸς ὤν), adumbrated a twofold orderly arrangement [of the universe] ¹¹ (διττὴν ᾐνίττετο τὴν διακόσμησιν): of them, one is united and intelligible (τὴν μὲν ἡνω μένην καὶ νοητήν): it exists in advance, not in terms of time (since [that arrangement] is not assumed to have taken place in time) (προϋπάρχουσαν οὐ χρόνῳ, οὐ γὰρ ἔγχρονος ἐκείνη), but in terms of superiority of essence and power (ἀλλ᾿ ὑπεροχῇ οὐσίας καὶ δυνάμεως). The second [arrangement of the universe] is distinct from the former one (τὴν δὲ διακεκριμένην ἀπὸ ταύτης), and it came to being by the Creative Mind in accordance with the former [cre ation] (καὶ κατὰ ταύτην ὑφίστασθαι ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργικοῦ νοῦ).¹²

Therefore, the perceptible world was made because the intelligible one exists in the first place, and Simplicius stresses this present tense: the incorporeal reality did not precede the sensible one, but is co-exists with it now, and corporeal things exist because of their respective incorporeal causes. Therefore, Simplicius argues, Anaxagoras implies ‘a certain order, which is other than that which we notice [empirically]’ (ἑτέραν τινὰ διακόσμησιν παρὰ τὴν παρ᾿ ἡμῖν αἰνίττεται), and which is neither perceptible (οὐδὲ αἰσθητὴν μὲν ἐκείνην οἴεται), nor did it ‘precede this present one in terms of time’ (τῷ χρόνῳ δὲ ταύτης προηγησαμένην).¹³ The expression ὑπεροχῇ οὐσίας καὶ δυνάμεως might appear as smacking of Platonism. In fact, however, Simplicius refers to Anaxagoras’ incorporeal creation of σπέρματα,¹⁴ and portrays its superiority in these terms, whereas Plato used these expressions in order to extol the Good as standing beyond essence

 Simplicius refers to the analyses made in his commPhys, pp. 34 5; 153 6, which I consider anon.  However, in effect διακόσμησις means ‘creation’. I render the text verbatim, although literal translation makes no justice to either Anaxagoras’ or Simplicius’ meaning. In the following, I translate ‘creation’ for διακόσμησις. The analyses of Syrianus, which I will consider presently, make it plain that this translation can be employed with good reason and without detriment to Anaxagoras’ and Simplicius’ real meaning. See infra, pp. 590 1; 764; 771.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461. Compare this with Origen’s two creations, the Providential and the Actual one; the latter came into being in accordance with the former. I postpone discussion of this until chapter 11. See a full analysis of Origen’s doctrine of creation in COT, pp. 39 175.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157. Simplicius argued that the theory of twofold creation was maintained by both Anaxagoras and Empedocles alike. commPhys, pp. 160; 1123.  As remarked earlier, ὁμοιομέρειαι or ὁμοιομερῆ are terms invented by Aristotle. Had either of these terms been Anaxagoras’ own, it would have been impossible for Simplicius not to quote at least one instance from the opening of Anaxagoras’ book, from which he quoted extensively.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

267

in terms of seniority and power, while not being ‘essence’ itself.¹⁵ Simplicius simply means things that are incorporeal. This he makes clear at another point, using the same notions (‘superiority of essence and power’) in order to adumbrate the substantial difference between corporeal and incorporeal entities.¹⁶ This vocabulary appears in Proclus extolling incorporeal realities (however ontologically different they are),¹⁷ but, before him, it appeared serviceable to Eunomius who essayed to argue for the supremacy of the Father over the Son, for which he was rebutted by Gregory of Nyssa, who rejected classifications within the Trinity put in either these or any other terms.¹⁸ Moving on, Simplicius feels that this fundamental feature of Anaxagoras’ doctrine of creation makes the way for elaboration: since sensible things exist ‘in accordance with’ the intelligible creation (κατὰ ταύτην), it is natural to gather that ‘each and every one of perceptible things participates in, and communicates with, everything’ (εἰκότως δὲ καὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἕκαστον κοινωνεῖ πᾶσι καὶ μετέχει πάντων), and quotes Hippocrates, who wrote, ‘there is one confluence, one union, one sympathetic interrelation’ (ξύρροια γὰρ μία, σύμπνοια μία, πάντα συμπαθέα).¹⁹ This correlation ‘is owing to the original and pre-existing union of all things in the incorporeal realm’, and, even though they have been set  Cf. Plato, Respublica, 509b: οὐκ οὐσίας ὄντος τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, ἀλλ᾿ ἔτι ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας πρε σβείᾳ καὶ δυνάμει ὑπερέχοντος.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 150: οὕτως δὲ τοῦ τόπου καθολικώτερον καὶ θεωρητικώτερον ἀποδοθέντος καὶ τὸ ἄνω κατὰ τὴν τῆς οὐσίας ὑπεροχὴν θεωρητέον καθαρότητι καὶ δυνάμει προ έχον καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς τοιούτοις, τὸ δὲ κάτω τοῖς ἀντικειμένοις. This point, along with its extensive context, appears to have been copied by the anonymous author of the Paraphrasis Categoriarum, p. 25. Following some research, my own guess is that the account involved therein is one by Speusippus retailed by the Stoic Boethus (second century BC), which is the common source for both Simplicius and this anonymous text. Cf. Simplicius, commCateg, p. 38.  Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 151: Πᾶν τὸ πατρικὸν ἐν τοῖς θεοῖς πρωτουργόν ἐστι καὶ ἐν τἀ γαθοῦ τάξει προϊστάμενον κατὰ πάσας τὰς θείας διακοσμήσεις. τὰς γὰρ ὑπάρξεις τῶν δευτέρων καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις ὅλας καὶ τὰς οὐσίας αὐτὸ παράγει κατὰ μίαν ἄρρητον ὑπεροχήν· διὸ καὶ πατρι κὸν ἐπονομάζεται, τὴν ἡνωμένην καὶ ἀγαθοειδῆ τοῦ ἑνὸς δύναμιν ἐμφαῖνον καὶ τὴν ὑποστατικὴν τῶν δευτέρων αἰτίαν. commTim, p. 142: ὅτι δὴ οὐ τοῖς τόποις δεῖ κρίνειν τὴν ἀξίαν τῶν πραγμ άτων, ἀλλὰ ταῖς δυνάμεσι καὶ τῇ οὐσίᾳ, καθάπερ δέδεικται ἐν ἄλλοις. τίσιν οὖν ἰδιότησι κριτέον τὰς ὑπεροχάς; After Proclus and before Simplicius, Hierocles of Alexandria wrote this in his In Aureum Carmen, 1.11: μήνυμα δὲ τῆς κατ᾿ οὐσίαν αὐτῶν ὑπεροχῆς τε καὶ ὑποβάσεως ἡ τῶν οὐ ρανίων σφαιρῶν τάξις κατ᾿ οὐσίαν καὶ δύναμιν τὴν θέσιν διαλαχοῦσα.  Eunomius, Apologia, 26: ἀλλὰ καθ᾿ ὑπεροχὴν ἀσύγκριτον οὐσίας καὶ δυνάμεως καὶ ἐξουσίας, γεννήσαντα. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 1.1.167: ᾿Aλλὰ μὴν οὐδὲ δυνάμεως οὐδὲ ἀγα θότητος οὐδὲ ἄλλου τινὸς τῶν τοιούτων ὑπεροχὴν τὸ ἄνω φήσει τῆς οὐσίας ἐνδείκνυσθαι.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461. Cf. Galen, De Naturalibus Facultatibus, p. 39; De Causis Puls uum, p. 88. Alexander of Tralles, Therapeutica, p. 595. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 106; De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 283.

268

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

apart,²⁰ they have not been absolutely detached from each other’ (διὰ τὴν ἀρχέγονον ἐν τοῖς νοητοῖς αὐτῶν προϋπάρχουσαν ἕνωσιν· καὶ διακρινόμενα γὰρ ταῦτα οὐκ ἀπέσπασται πάντῃ ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων). This is why Anaxagoras says that it is not possible for the principles to be altogether detached from each other: distinction is not all-complete severance’ (διό φησιν ᾿Aναξαγόρας μηδ᾿ ἐνδέχεσθαι πάντα διακριθῆναι· οὐ γὰρ παντελὴς διασπασμός ἐστιν ἡ διάκρισις). This means that incorporeal ‘things’ cannot be entirely detached from the material entities through which they make their mark in the natural world. Simplicius uses the example of the faculty of ‘walking’, or the attribute of one’s ‘colour’, and ‘passions’, and ‘habits’, which cannot be considered as absolutely separate from the ‘subjects’ in which they exist (οὐχ οἷον τε βάδισιν ἢ χρόαν ἢ ὅλως τὰ πάθη καὶ τὰς ἕξεις χωρισθῆναι τῶν ὑποκειμένων).²¹ II Simplicius attributes the notion of two modes of being (intelligible and sensible) not only to Anaxagoras, but also to Empedocles, who was a pupil of the former for some time. In almost the beginning of his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, he explains that this fundamental tenet exists in Empedocles and Anaxagoras alike. He points out what almost all philosophers saw since the times of Plato: of the Presocratics, it was only Empedocles and Anaxagoras that introduced a notion of poietic cause into their philosophies. What is new, is the assertion that Empedocles ‘taught about both an intelligible world and a material one’ (περί τε τοῦ νοητοῦ κόσμου καὶ περὶ τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ διδάσκων), of which the former is ‘the archetype’ (or, model) of the latter (ἀρχέτυπον παράδειγμα). Surprising though it appears, Empedocles made his four elements (πῦρ ἀέρα ὕδωρ καὶ γῆν) constitutive elements not only of both realms (ἐν ἑκατέρῳ μὲν ἀρχὰς καὶ στοιχεῖα τὰ τέτταρα ταῦτα τέθεικε), whereas the creative causes were Love (φιλία) and Strife (νεῖκος). In the intelligible realm, it is Love that holds everything together in intelligible union [of the Sphaerus] (τὰ μὲν ἐν τῷ νοητῷ τῇ νοητῇ ἑνώσει κρατούμενα διὰ φιλίας μᾶλλον συνάγεσθαι), whereas, in the sensible world, everything is distinguished from each other because of Strife (τὰ δὲ ἐν τῷ αἰσθητῷ ὑπὸ τοῦ νείκους μᾶλλον διακρίνεσθαι). This is exactly the interpretation that Origen (and Christianity, in general) furnished about the Biblical narrative of the primeval Fall, which occurred out of lack of love (notably, ‘lack of obedience’, which is not a substantial difference). The main theme of Origen is

 ‘They have been set apart from each other’ means that transition from incorporeality to the realm of matter entails ‘separation’, in terms of each thing appearing as an individual material entity.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

269

that ‘unity’ is a token of piousness, whereas ‘distinction’ is one of wickedness.²² Simplicius advises that this is a theory that Plato followed, which he learned from Timaeus who preceded him. We need not abide by this, but his point is plain: the sensible world is produced as ‘the last’ product from the ‘ideas’ of the four elements, ‘and Strife dominates in this world, because of the distinction that flowed from the intelligible union; anyway, distinction is a state bespeaking degradation (ὑποβᾶσαν διάκρισιν) from the the universal unity’ (τοῦ νείκους ἐνταῦθα κρατοῦντος διὰ τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς νοητῆς ἑνώσεως ὑποβᾶσαν διάκρισιν).²³ There is a subtle point, however: Empedocles spoke invariably about both realms at the same time (καὶ γέγονεν ὁ λόγος αὐτῷ περὶ ἀμφοτέρων τῶν κόσμων κοινός), but there is a misunderstanding by the hoi polloi (ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσι), namely, that Love produced only the intelligible world, and Strife made the sensible one. This is wrong, Simplicius argues: both creative causes produced both realms (ὅτι γὰρ οὐχ ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσι φιλία μὲν μόνη κατ᾿ Ἐμπεδοκλέα τὸν νοητὸν ἐποίησε κόσμον, νεῖκος δὲ μόνον τὸν αἰσθητόν, ἀλλ᾿ ἄμφω πανταχοῦ οἰκείως θεωρεῖ).²⁴ He argues for this by quoting from Empedocles’ Physics, which he had read as much as had he done so with the book of Anaxagoras. The reason for Empedocles to sustain this is plain: since he maintained intermittent construction and destruction of the universe, in order for this to occur, both causes should co-exist always: absolute original unity could never become distinction unless also Strife were there, too; and a world can never return to unity from the present decadence of distinction Love is also present here. There is recurrence, therefore: Oneness is produced from Many through Love, and Manyness

 See Origen, selGen, PG.12.112.9 13: Καὶ οὕτω τηρῶν τὴν Γραφὴν εὑρήσεις, ὅτι ὅπου πλῆθος ἀριθμοῦ, ὅπου σχίσμα, ὅπου διαίρεσις, καὶ διαφωνία, καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα, κακίας ἐστὶ γνωρίσματα· ὅπου δὲ ἑνότης, καὶ ὁμόνοια, καὶ πολλὴ δύναμις ἐν λόγοις, ἀρετῆς γνωρίσματα. frLuc, 186; and COT, p. 79.  ὑποβᾶσαν διάκρισιν. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 31. Cf. Hierocles of Alexandria, In Aureum Carmen, 1.11 12: νόμος μὲν ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς καὶ ἡ θεία βούλησις ἡ ἀϊδίως παράγουσα τὰ πάντα καὶ εἰς ἀεὶ διασῴζουσα, τάξις δὲ ἔννομος ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς τῶν ὅλων καὶ δημιουργοῦ τοῖς ἀθανάτοις θεοῖς συνεισελθοῦσα καὶ ποιοῦσα ἐν αὐτοῖς τοὺς μὲν πρώτους, τοὺς δὲ δευτέ ρους. εἰ γὰρ καὶ ὡς ἐν παντὶ τῷ λογικῷ διακόσμῳ τὴν ἀκρότητα ἔλαχον, ὅμως ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ποι κίλλονται καί εἰσιν ἄλλοι ἄλλων θειότεροι. μήνυμα δὲ τῆς κατ᾿ οὐσίαν αὐτῶν ὑπεροχῆς τε καὶ ὑποβάσεως ἡ τῶν οὐρανίων σφαιρῶν τάξις κατ᾿ οὐσίαν καὶ δύναμιν τὴν θέσιν διαλαχοῦσα, ὡς ἐν τῇ οὐσίᾳ αὐτῶν κεῖσθαι τὸν νόμον καὶ τὴν τάξιν ὁμοφυῆ εἶναι αὐτῶν τῇ ἀξίᾳ. οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἔτυ χεν ὑποστάντες ὕστερον διεκρίθησαν, ἀλλὰ τεταγμένοι προῆλθον εἰς τὸ εἶναι. Hierocles’ account is sheer Anaxagorean. His expressions ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς should be paid particular attention. The same goes for the notion of will, speaking of the ‘Creative Mind and the Divine will’, ‘which produce all things eternally and sustain them to all eternity’ (ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς καὶ ἡ θεία βούλησις ἡ ἀϊδίως παράγουσα τὰ πάντα καὶ εἰς ἀεὶ διασῴζουσα).  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 31 2.

270

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

comes forth from One once Strife prevails (ὥστε καὶ τὸ ἓν ἐκ πλειόνων, ὅπερ διὰ τὴν φιλίαν συμβαίνει, καὶ τὸ πλείονα ἐξ ἑνός, ὅπερ τοῦ νείκους ἐπικρατοῦντος γίνεται).²⁵ Wherefore there are successive cosmic ‘periods’ (κατὰ περιόδους), with either Strife or Love prevailing intermittently (κατὰ περιόδους δηλονότι ἄλλοτε ἄλλας ποτὲ μὲν τοῦ νείκους ποτὲ δὲ τῆς φιλίας ἐπικρατούσης). His final remarks are also interesting, and they are also reminiscent of Origen, who posited different ranks of being (daemons, humans, angels of different kinds) comprising the one world. Simplicius sees the idea of the intelligible world in Empedocles, too: “Perhaps this progression of unification and distinction of beings indicates that there are more differences in the intelligible world than in this sensible one, in accordance with Love prevailing, either more or less” (μήποτε δὲ προποδισμόν τινα τῆς τῶν ὄντων ἑνώσεως καὶ διακρίσεως παραδίδωσι πλείονας διαφορὰς τοῦ νοητοῦ κόσμου ὑπὲρ τόνδε τὸν αἰσθητὸν κατὰ τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον τῆς φιλίας ἐπικράτειαν αἰνιττόμενος), but Empedocles bespeaks ‘the differences that transpire in the sensible world in accordance with the prevalence of Strife, as I essayed to indicate at other points²⁶ [of my work]’ (καὶ ἐν τῷ αἰσθητῷ δὲ τὰς διαφορὰς τῆς τοῦ νείκους ἐπικρατείας παραδείκνυσιν ὅροις τισὶ διειλημμένας, ὡς ἐν ἄλλοις ἐπειράθην ὑποδεῖξαι).²⁷ Simplicius returns to the same point also in his commentary on Aristotle’s On Heavens, in order to argue that ‘Empedocles adumbrates two worlds: of them, one is united and intelligible, the other is made of distinct beings and is perceptible.’²⁸ Once he made this analysis, he feels he can come to Anaxagoras, who, to Aristotle, ‘although older than Empedocles, in terms of quality of work was inferior’.²⁹ Simplicius pointed out the core of Anaxagoras’ philosophy right from the start of his commentary:

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 34.  These ‘other points’ at which Simplicius expounds his views of Empedocles are the follow ing: commCael, pp. 293; 528; 529; 587. He returns to this later, namely, commPhys, in pp. 159; 1124; 1153; 1184.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 34.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 294: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ ὅτι δύο κόσμους ἐνδείκνυται, τὸν μὲν ἡνωμέ νον καὶ νοητόν, τὸν δὲ διακεκριμένον καὶ αἰσθητόν, καὶ ὅτι καὶ ἐν τούτῳ τῷ κόσμῳ τὴν ἕνωσιν ὁρᾷ καὶ τὴν διάκρισιν, ἐν ἄλλοις οἶμαι μετρίως ἐκ τῶν αὐτοῦ δεδειχέναι ῥημάτων. Likewise, commPhys, p. 1186: ὅτι καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἡνωμένον μὲν τὸν νοητὸν ἔλεγον κό σμον, διακεκριμένον δὲ τὸν αἰσθητόν. ἀμφοῖν δὲ ἀεὶ ὄντων τὴν κατὰ χρόνον μεταβολὴν εἰς ἔν δειξιν ἐλάμβανον τῆς τάξεως αὐτῶν καὶ τῆς τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ γενέσεως ἀπὸ τοῦ νοητοῦ Ἐμπεδο κλῆς δὲ καὶ τῆς τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ πρὸς τὸ νοητὸν ἐπιστροφῆς.  Aristotle used a dubious expression for this. Metaphysica, 984a: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομέ νιος τῇ μὲν ἡλικίᾳ πρότερος ὢν τούτου, τοῖς δ᾿ ἔργοις ὕστερος ἀπείρους εἶναι φησὶ τὰς ἀρχάς. Commentators that shared Aristotle’s dislike of Anaxagoras, interpreted ὕστερος as ‘inferior’,

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

271

“Besides,³⁰ Anaxagoras the Clazomenian seems to classify the existence of all kinds of beings in three categories”, which are the following: First, existence according to the intelligible union (κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν συνῃρημένην). Second, distinct existence, which became so following the intelligible distinction introduced by Mind into the primordial unity (κατὰ τὴν νοερὰν διάκρισιν διακεκριμένην). Third, existence in this sensible world, which was made in likeness to the previous one, that is, to the realm of intelligible distinction (πρὸς ἣν ἡ ἐνταῦθα ἀφωμοίωται).³¹ Simplicius is by far the sole intellectual who accompanies his assessment of Anaxagoras with extensive quotations from that philosophy. No other author did ever care to quote any substantial portion from Anaxagoras’ work, and all we have from them is small portions of a few words, against Simplicius’ wide-ranging material from Anaxagoras’ work, some of which is absent from the current editions of his fragments and their supplements. III Simplicius comes to Anaxagoras once again upon considering Aristotle’s passage in Physics, 184b15, ‘it is necessary for either one or many principles to exist’ (ἀνάγκη δὲ ἤτοι μίαν εἶναι τὴν ἀρχὴν ἢ πλείους). At that point, by and large he quotes the same passages as those at the previous point that we just discussed. The difference is that now he adds an extensive account of what Mind is, which I am going to discuss later. His main point concerning creation is that Anaxagoras ‘posits a twofold creation: one, the intelligible one; two, the sensible one that proceeded from the former, which is clear from both what we have said earlier, and what we are saying at this point’ (ὅτι δὲ διττήν τινα διακόσμησιν ὑποτίθεται τὴν μὲν νοεράν, τὴν δὲ αἰσθητὴν ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνης, δῆλον μὲν καὶ ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων, δῆλον δὲ καὶ ἐκ τῶνδε).³²

not ‘posterior’. This was the interpretation by Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 27 8, and Asclepius of Tralles (who by and large copied from Alexander), commMetaph, p. 25. Theo phrastus wrote that Empedocles was slightly younger than Anaxagoras. Physicorum Opiniones, 3, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 25: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ ᾿Aκραγαντῖνος οὐ πολὺ κατόπιν τοῦ ᾿Aνα ξαγόρου γεγονώς, Παρμενίδου δὲ ζηλωτὴς καὶ πλησιαστὴς καὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον τῶν Πυθαγορείων. In the analyses throughout his works, Aristotle always holds Empedocles in higher regard than Anaxagoras, mainly because he believed that, unlike Empedocles, Anaxagoras maintained an infinite number of principles, which frequently Aristotle styled ‘elements’ (which he did for the ‘four roots’ of Empedocles, too). At this point Aristotle happens to consider the notion of in finity, but infinity of elements was abhorrent to him.  Meaning ‘along with Empedocles’, whose philosophy, as just discussed, was treated exactly before that point.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 34.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 157.

272

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

IV The next reference to the same idea of Anaxagoras by Simplicius is remarkable, not only because it confirms the preceding analysis, but also because it repeats his assessment of the way Aristotle expounded the views of that philosopher (and, to a certain extent, of the other Presocratics). It should be recalled what Simplicius said earlier: Aristotle, for his part, expounds Anaxagoras’ philosophy as this appeared to him on the face of it (τὸ προφαινόμενον ἱστορεῖ τῆς ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξης). However, Anaxagoras, who was a wise man (σοφὸς ὤν), adumbrated a twofold orderly arrangement.³³ What Aristotle presented as ‘Anaxagoras’ was a figment of his own making, but the real philosophy was different from what his accounts desperately conspired to show. Once again, Simplicius uses the same phraseology against Aristotle’s mischievous shenanigan: “This is how Aristotle objected to what appeared to him to be Anaxagoras’ philosophy” (οὕτως μὲν οὖν πρὸς τὸ φαινόμενον τῆς ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξης ὑπήντησεν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης). He refers to Aristotle’s criticism in Physics, 205b1‒19, about what he thought to be Anaxagoras’ theory ‘of the Infintie being stationary’, and about the notion that the Infinite stabilizes itself because it is self-contained. The entire argument of Aristotle is based on the presumption that Anaxagoras’ principles are material ‘elements’: this is all about bodies, which is why, to Simplicius’ analysis, Aristotle reached such absurd conclusions, since ‘it not possible for any body to move itself out of its own nature’ (οὐδὲν τῶν σωμάτων κατὰ φύσιν κινηθήσεται), which was attributed to Anaxagoras. Naturally, Simplicius took exception to such syllogisms by Aristotle, which are indeed frustrating to anyone that reads them, and utterly unworthy of their author. Therefore, all Simplicius could do was what he was expected to do: “But this is utterly absurd and it is contrary to [the thought] of Anaxagoras, who did not even appear to say that beings are immovable” (τοῦτο δὲ καὶ ἀτοπώτατον καὶ τῇ δόξῃ τῇ ᾿Aναξαγόρου μαχόμενον οὐδὲ κατὰ τὸ φαινόμενον ἀκίνητα τὰ ὄντα λέγοντος). Once again, Aristotle blundered because he did not take into account (or he did not grasp) that there is an incorporeal creation to be considered, only because this contradicted his own philosophical premisses, which though were not always consistent.³⁴

 In effect, however, διακόσμησις means ‘creation’, as explained above (p. 266, note 11).  In the Metaphysica, 1075a12 17, Aristotle argued that the Good exists both as separate sub stance and as the order of the universe: “We must also consider in which sense the nature of the universe contains the Good and the Supreme Good; whether as something separate and inde pendent, or as the orderly arrangement [of its parts]. Probably in both ways, as it happens with an army. For indeed the efficiency of an army consists partly in the order and partly in

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

273

When Anaxagoras spoke of this incorporeal reality as ‘standing in itself’ (αὐτὸ ἐν ἑαυτῷ), the question was not about place or space (περὶ τόπου); but Aristotle considered this on that ground, and sought ‘a natural cause of stationariness’ (φυσικὴν αἰτίαν τῆς μονῆς). Therefore, Simplicius had to repeat what he had already said: “If what I said earlier is true (εἰ δὲ ἀληθῶς πρότερον ἔλεγον), namely, that Anaxagoras indicates a twofold world, one intelligible the other sensible, the former united the latter comprising distinct objects, it has been said very consistently [by Anaxagoras] that [the intelligible order], like the Infinite, is not in any place, but it is self-contained, and it establishes its own self firmly³⁵’ (διττὸν ἐνδείκνυται κόσμον ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, τὸν μὲν νοητὸν τὸν δὲ αἰσθητόν, καὶ τὸν μὲν ἡνωμένον τὸν δὲ διακεκριμένον, τὸ μὴ εἶναι ἐν τόπῳ ἀλλ᾿ ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ στηρίζειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ πάνυ οἰκείως εἴρηται περὶ τοῦ νοητοῦ ὥσπερ καὶ τὸν ἄπειρον).³⁶ V In his third book of the On the Heavens, Aristotle’s aim was to show that ‘the elements’, whatever they are, of necessity must be finite.³⁷ If bodies are distinguished from one another by their proper differentiae, and bodily differentiae are finite in number (since they are different on account of their sensible qualities, which are finite), it is clear that the elements themselves must be finite. He adds that ‘this is something which calls for demonstration’ (δεῖ δε τοῦτο δειχθῆναι), which in fact he does in his treatise On Sense and Sensible Things. Simplicius comments on this passage of Aristotle’s Physics, ³⁸ and declares that indeed Aristotle ‘showed this in the eighth book of the Physics and in the On Sense and Sensible Things’, from which he summarizes the argument: Every sensible thing involves contrariety (πᾶν τὸ αἰσθητὸν ἔχει ἐναντίωσιν); each kind of those what involves contrariety has extremes (τὸ ἔχον ἐναντίωσιν ἔχει ἔσχατα κατ᾿ εἶδος); any kind of thing that has extremes is finite (τὸ ἔχον ἔσχατα κατ᾿ εἶδος πεπερασμέ

the general; but mainly in the latter, because he does not depend upon the order, but the order is depended upon him.”  Aristotle, Physica, 205b4: στηρίζειν γὰρ αὐτὸ αὑτό φησιν [sc. Anaxagoras] … ὅτι ἐν αὑτῷ.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 487.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 302b30 303a2. I have discussed this above, p. 115. Aristotle indicates how his argument should be developed, which in fact he does more fully in the De Sensu et Sen sibilibus, 445b.  Aristotle developed this argument in Physica, 205b24 35, that is, in the fifth book of that work, not in the eighth, as Simplicius’ text has it. Obviously, something went wrong with tran scription of Simplicius’ manuscript, not with his own indisputably profound knowledge of Ar istotle’s work. The eighth book of Aristotle’s Physics deals with motion of things and the conclu sion of Aristotle’s syllogisms culminates in the logical need for a first thing in the series of moving things to exist, in other words, the First Immovable Mover.

274

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

νον κατ᾿ εἶδος ἐστί); consequently, all kinds of sensible things are limited (τῶν ἄρα αἰσθητῶν τὰ εἴδη πεπέρανται).³⁹

Simplicius points out that Aristotle showed that the difference between sensible things are sensible differences, and, on that account, these differences themselves are finite, and the conclusion out of this is that elements (which are sensible objects) have to be finite in number. This is of course supposed to be an argument against Anaxagoras’ allegedly infinite principles (or, elements, according to Aristotle) – which Simplicius points out explicitly (ταῦτα μὲν ἐν τούτοις τῷ ᾿Aναξαγόρου λόγῳ προσήγαγεν). It was then inevitable for Simplicius to make his commentary of Aristotle’s Physics at that point an authoritative exposition of what Anaxagoras really maintained. He recalls that, ‘in the first book of the Physics’, Aristotle criticized Anaxagoras’ doctrine ‘everything is in everything’ (πάντα ἐν πᾶσι μεμῖχθαι) and ‘each sensible thing has in itself an infinite number of homoiomeries’ (ἕκαστον τῶν αἰσθητῶν σωμάτων ἄπειρα ἔχειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ ὁμοιομερῆ), only because Aristotle attributed to Anaxagoras the absurd corrolary that, inevitably, ‘each of the sensible things has to be infinite in size’ (ἔδειξεν οὖν ἀκολουθοῦν τούτῳ τὸ ἕκαστον τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἀπειρομέγεθες γίνεσθαι). Aristotle’s syllogism was based on the assumption that anything that consists of entities that are in actuality infinite in number (τὸ γὰρ ἐξ ἀπείρων τῷ πλήθει μεγεθῶν κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν συγκείμενον) of necessity has to become itself an entity infinite in size (μέγεθος ἄπειρον ἀνάγκη γίνεσθαι τῷ μεγέθει). However, since this is impossible, it follows that there is no way for the elements to be infinite in number (εἰ οὖν τοῦτο ἀδύνατον, οὐκ ἂν εἴη ἄπειρα τὰ στοιχεῖα).⁴⁰ The first remark of Simplicius is that this argument of Aristotle rebuts the notion of infinity in terms of number, but it fails to disprove infinity of species (καὶ δῆλον, ὅτι τοῦτο τὸ ἐπιχείρημα τὴν κατ᾿ ἀριθμὸν ἀπειρίαν ἀναιρεῖ, ἥτις τῇ κατ᾿ εἶδος ἀπειρίᾳ οὐ συνανῃρέθη). Consequently, he set out to show what Anaxagoras really believed by the only way he knew, that is, by quoting from Anaxagoras’ book – which neither Aristotle nor any other author did. He quotes then from the beginning of that book once again: All things were together, infinite in number and [infinitely] small; for also the small was infinite, [since] everything was infinite in terms of both multitude and smallness. In fact,

 Simplicius, commCael, p. 608, summarizing Aristotle, De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 445b.  Simplicius considers the passage of Aristotle’s, Physica, 187a27 188a18 in his commCael, p. 608.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

275

what was small was infinitely small, and although they were all together, nothing could be manifest because of its smallness.

He adds that ‘it is right to maintain that all things were present in the whole’ (ἐν σύμπαντι χρὴ δοκεῖν ἐνεῖναι πάντα χρήματα).⁴¹ But probably he uses the term infinite in order to indicate what is incomprehensible and unknowable to us. For indeed he [sc. Anaxagoras] suggests this by [the statement], ‘so as not to know the multitude of the things being separated, either in word or in deed’ (μήποτε δὲ τὸ ἄπειρον ὡς ἡμῖν ἀπερίληπτον καὶ ἄγνωστον λέγει· τοῦτο γὰρ ἐνδείκνυται διὰ τοῦ ὥστε τῶν ἀποκρινομένων μὴ εἰδέναι τὸ πλῆθος μήτε λόγῳ μήτε ἔργῳ). By saying that Mind knows everything, he makes it clear that things were finite in terms of their difference of kind (ὅτι τῷ εἴδει πεπερασμένα ᾤετο, δηλοῖ λέγων πάντα γιγνώσκειν τὸν νοῦν); for if they were really infinite [in number], they would be altogether unknowable (καίτοι, εἰ ἄπειρα ὄντως ἦν, παντελῶς ἦν ἄγνωστα), because knowledge proper sets forth a definition and limits to what is known (ἡ γὰρ γνῶσις ὁρίζει καὶ περατοῖ τὸ γνωσθέν).⁴²

In other words, whenever Anaxagoras uses the term ‘infinite’, he only suggests both a large number and ungraspable smallness in relation to human intellectual abilities; in reality, however, no notion of infinity proper is involved in his considerations, since he says that ‘Mind knew them all, [that is,] the things that are mixed together and the things that are separated off; and [Mind knew also] what they were to become and what they were’ (καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν).⁴³ A fuller quotation of this passage appears at two points of Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, in which we read that ‘Mind knew’ in advance not only what things were in the beginning, as well as what the were going to become at each and every moment of the cosmic process, but also knew ‘how many they were, and how many they are now, and how many they will be’.⁴⁴ This means

 Simplicius (quoting from Anaxagoras), commCael, p. 608: Λέγει δὲ ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἀρχόμενος τοῦ συγγράμματος· ὁμοῦ χρήματα πάντα ἦν ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ μικρότητα· καὶ γὰρ τὸ σμικρὸν ἄπειρον· [I added a semicolon here] πάντα ἦν ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ μικρότητα· καὶ γὰρ τὸ σμικρὸν ἄπειρον ἦν, καὶ πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲν ἔνδηλον ἦν ὑπὸ σμικρότητος. On the meaning of ‘smallness’, see infra, p. 1063 4.  Simplicius, loc. cit; italics are mine  Simplicius, commCael, p. 608. Cf. commPhys, pp. 156; 165; 174; 177.  See a fuller statement of this in Simplicius, commPhys, p. 156: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα καὶ διακρινόμενα, πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς. καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὅσα νῦν ἐστι καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται. Op. cit. p. 165: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ τὰ ἀποκρινόμενα καὶ διακρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὁπόσα νῦν ἔστι καὶ ἔσται.

276

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

that Mind always contains the σπέρματα, both in terms of what they are themselves and what they produce within the continuum of space/time. In this way, Simplicius showed that Aristotle was wrong when he attributed the notion of infinite principles to Anaxagoras. The argument goes on with demonstrating that Aristotle was also wrong in alleging that these principles were material, indeed that they were elements. Once again, the same point is made: It seems that Anaxagoras indicates a twofold order (ἔοικε δὲ διττὴν ἐνδείκνυσθαι διακόσ μησιν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας). [Of them,] one is intelligible and united (τὴν μὲν νοητὴν καὶ ἡνωμέ νην), in which all things were together (ἐν ᾗ ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν), and each one of them was all the others because of the intelligible union (καὶ ἕκαστον πάντα ἦν τὰ ἄλλα διὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν). The other [order] is perceptible and distinct from that union (τὴν δὲ αἰσθητὴν καὶ διακεκριμένην ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνης τῆς ἑνώσεως): this was made by the Creative Mind (ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργικοῦ νοῦ), who, as he [sc. Anaxagoras] says, also proceeded from the intelligible realm and set everything in order (ὃν καὶ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ νοητοῦ προ ελθόντα διακοσμῆσαι πάντα φησίν).⁴⁵

Modern excerptors of ‘fragments’ of Anaxagoras did not pay much attention to this part of Simplicius’ account, although this is a unique testimony: Anaxagoras introduces the idea of a Creative Mind (δημιουργικοῦ νοῦ), which was produced upon the intelligible union being ‘distinguished’, and it was this Mind that decorated everything, thus fulfilling the will of the everlasting Mind.⁴⁶ The notion of Creative Mind recurs also in Simplicius’ commentary of the Physics of Aristotle and his remarks are illuminating. This Creative Mind is the proximate Maker, and Simplicius adds that this was the tenet held by Plato in contrast to Aristotle. The latter consigned this role to Nature, although Plato sustained that Nature is only an ‘instrumental cause’ (ὀργανικὸν αἴτιον), since it is moved by a cause superior to it and this is what enables it to move other things in turn.⁴⁷ Simplicius took for granted that the notion of the Creative Mind being the proximate Maker

 Simplicius, commCael, pp. 608 9.  See infra, p. 761, ref. to Anaxagoras: “It was necessary for that [sc. Mind] which distinguished those that were contracted (ἔδει γὰρ τὸ τὰ συνῃρημένα διακρῖνον) and caused distinction from contraction in an orderly way (καὶ προάγον ἐν τάξει τὴν διάκρισιν ἀπὸ τῆς συναιρέσεως), and that which had its own essence contracted, too (αὐτὸ συνῃρημένην ἔχον τὴν οὐσίαν), to give rise to distinction first and foremost within itself (πρώτως ἀναφαίνειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν διάκρισιν).” Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461. See discussion of the notion of will of Mind being in volved in Anaxagoras’ doctrine of creation, in chapter 5.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 223: οὕτως δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ ποιητικοῦ αἰτίου ὁ μὲν Πλάτων τὸ κυ ρίως ποιητικὸν παραδίδωσι τὸν δημιουργικὸν νοῦν, ὁ δὲ ᾿Aριστοτέλης πρὸς τούτῳ καὶ τὴν φύσιν, ἣν ὁ Πλάτων ἐν τοῖς ὀργανικοῖς τέθεικεν αἰτίοις, ὡς κινουμένην μὲν ὑπ᾿ αἰτίου, κινοῦσαν δὲ ἕτερα.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

277

of the perceptible world after the pattern of the intelligible one belongs to Anaxagoras, and reminds that he set forth this notion right from the beginning of his own commentary, as noted earlier.⁴⁸ Later, he insinuates that one would accept Aristotle’s ‘Nature’ as identified with ‘the Creative Mind, which permeates everything’ (διὰ πάντων διήκοντα).⁴⁹ But we should recall that Plato used the same expression about the Anaxagorean Mind, ‘which orders all things, and permeates them all’ (διὰ πάντων ἰόντα).⁵⁰ This is not really what Aristotle said, but Simplicius was always prone to find points of reconciliation between Plato and Aristotle, even though this terminology (Creative Mind, δημιουργικὸς νοῦς) was later not only to Plato, but also to Plotinus, and makes a mark only with Porphyry, and then with Proclus, who used it at scores of points.⁵¹ Neverthelss, some commentators of Aristotle indicated that the notion of Creative Mind could be read in Aristotle’s work.⁵² It hardly needs to be said that this idea lent itself to the Arian version of Christianity, but I postpone this discussion until later. For the time being, we have to keep following Simplicius reiterating the fundamental idea of a twofold creation sustained by Anaxagoras. That he suggests an intelligible ordering before the present perceptible one, which antici pated [the perceptible order] both causally and spermatically (νοητὴν ἐνδείκνυταί τινα δι ακόσμησιν πρὸ ταύτης τῆς αἰσθητῆς κατ᾿ αἰτίαν καὶ σπερματικῶς ταύτην προειληφυῖαν), is clearly showed, I believe, by these statements: Since these things are so, it should be main tained that there are many and different things present in everything that is compound, and seeds of all things having all sorts of forms, colours, and flavours, and that humans and also the other animals that have soul were compounded. Also, that there are cities that have been constructed for humans and works made, just as with us, and that there are a sun and a moon and other [heavenly bodies] with them, just as with us.⁵³ Quite evidently, he meant that these

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 461: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας σοφὸς ὢν διττὴν ᾐνίττετο τὴν διακόσμησιν, τὴν μὲν ἡνωμένην καὶ νοητὴν προϋπάρχουσαν οὐ χρόνῳ (οὐ γὰρ ἔγχρονος ἐκείνη), ἀλλ᾿ ὑπεροχῇ οὐ σίας καὶ δυνάμεως, τὴν δὲ διακεκριμένην ἀπὸ ταύτης καὶ κατὰ ταύτην ὑφίστασθαι ὑπὸ τοῦ δημι ουργικοῦ νοῦ.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1218: ἄλλην τινὰ τὴν φύσιν ἐκείνην οἰητέον τὸν διὰ πάντων διήκοντα δημιουργικὸν νοῦν.  Plato, Cratylus, 413c7. See discussion of this in chapter 2, pp. 180; 189.  Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 3. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 8.3. Julian, emperor, Εἰς τὴν Μητέρα τῶν Θεῶν, 3. Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 171. Hierocles of Alexan dria, In Aureum Carmen, 1.10. Proclus, commRep, pp. 107; 165; Theologia Platonica, v. 1, pp. 96; 117; 124; et passim. Damascius, De Principiis, pp. 149; 224; 228; In Parmenidem, pp. 141; 170; 191.  Syrianus, commMetaph, pp. 4; 110; 117. John Philoponus, commAnalPost, p. 243; commMeteor, p. 12; De Aeternitate Mundi, pp. 575; 577. See discussion in chapter 11, pp. 984 98.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 609. He made this quotation from Anaxagoras’ book also in his commPhys, pp. 35; 156; 157.

278

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

things⁵⁴ exist there in the form of seed and (as he put it) they are anticipated and ordered in different kinds of character (καὶ ταῦτα δηλονότι σπερματικῶς ἐκεῖ καὶ κατ᾿ ἰδέας, ὡς εἶπε, προειλημμένα).⁵⁵

As I argue later,⁵⁶ to exist in this provisional manner does not suggest any sort of either ‘latency’ of existence or ‘preformationism’. This is all about potentiality ⁵⁷ and about Mind being omniscient and having in advance full knowledge of everything that will come to be,⁵⁸ as well as about the doctrine that the sundry aspects of reality are produced out of those spermatic causes by means of a rational causal process (κατ᾿ αἰτίαν), according to the cosmic laws.⁵⁹ Simplicius defended his interpretation also at another point, arguing that these words of Anaxagoras mean nothing that is either perceptible or temporally antecedent.⁶⁰ For he ‘used more than once the phrase just as for us’ (τὸ ὥσπερ παρ᾿ ἡμῖν οὐχ ἅπαξ μόνον εἰρημένον), by which he bespeaks enigmatically another world-order, in addition to that of ours’ (ἑτέραν τινὰ διακόσμησιν παρὰ τὴν παρ᾿ ἡμῖν αἰνίττεται). Furthermore, he wrote, the most valuable of which they gathered into their household and use (ὧν ἐκεῖνοι τὰ ὀνήιστα συνενεικάμενοι εἰς τὴν οἴκησιν χρῶνται): he did not write used, but use (οὐ γὰρ ἐχρῶντο εἶπεν, ἀλλὰ χρῶνται). Nor does Anaxagoras mean that in some other regions [of the earth] there are circumstances similar to those of our own (ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ ὡς νῦν κατ᾿ ἄλλας τινὰς οἰκήσεις ὁμοίας οὔσης καταστάσεως τῇ παρ᾿ ἡμῖν). For he did not say ‘there are the sun and the moon for them just as also with us’, but ‘a sun and a moon just as also with us’, as though speaking of certain others (οὐ γὰρ εἶπε τὸν ἥλιον καὶ τὴν σελήνην εἶναι καὶ παρ᾿ ἐκείνοις ὥσπερ καὶ παρ᾿ ἡμῖν, ἀλλ᾿ ἥλιον καὶ σελήνην, ὥσπερ παρ᾿ ἡμῖν, ὡς δὴ περὶ ἄλλων λέγων)’.⁶¹ Simplicius saw a great deal of value in this statement, which he also quoted at three different points of his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, and cared to secure his interpretation:  That is, all sorts of forms, colours, flavours, humans, animals, cities and other constructions, a sun and a moon.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 609.  See infra, discussion of the notion of προειλημμένα, chapter 8, pp. 601 6.  Discussed infra, pp. 362; 600 1; 840 1; 892 3.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 156. See statements by Anaxagoras infra.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 148: ἐν τῇ γενέσει τῆς διαιρέσεως ταύτης ἀναφαινομένης καὶ εἴπερ ἄρα κατ᾿ αἰτίαν ἐν τῇ νοερᾷ διακρίσει προειλημμένης.  Misunderstanding was inevitable once Anaxagoras’ philosophy was reported through hear say rather than following first hand reading of that. Michael Psellus thinks that ‘Anaxagoras posited infinite worlds’ (ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἀπείρους ὁριζόμενος κόσμους), which is an absurd asser tion that no author before him ever claimed. Chronographia, 3.16.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157. The same argument in op. cit. p. 35.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

279

It might seem to some that [Anaxagoras] is comparing not the generation [of the universe] with an intellectual distinction (καὶ δόξει μὲν ἴσως τισὶν οὐ πρὸς νοερὰν διάκρισιν τὴν ἐν τῇ γενέσει παραβάλλειν), but [that he compares] the region which we inhabit with other places of the earth. However, he could not have said [the following] of other places [on the earth], and there are a sun and a moon and other [heavenly bodies] with them just as with us. In stead, he called those things seeds of all things and forms (καὶ σπέρματα δὲ πάντων χρημάτων καὶ ἰδέας ἐκάλεσε τὰ ἐκεῖ). And listen to what he says a little further, comparing the two [modes of being]. As these things were rotating in this way and separated off by force and speed (the speed produces force), and their speed resembles the speed of nothing that is now present among humans, but it is altogether many times as fast. ⁶²

On no account could any twenty-first century physicist see such statements as unintelligible or extravagant: the Theory of Relativity has no inhibitions about entertaining the notion of infinity: as a matter of fact, it teaches that ‘in the beginning’ the universe had infinitely small matter and infinite energy, and matter started to make its mark once the Big Bang was followed by rotation in a speed ‘that resembles the swiftness of nothing that is now present among humans, but is altogether many times as fast’; we also know that the universe continues to expand, as indeed Anaxagoras’ ‘rotation’ (περιχώρησις) was posited as constantly accelerating. Einstein also taught that, upon the very moment of eruption, the natural laws of the macrocosm, as we know them, did not hold. Nevertheless, we know that everything was there potentially. The laws of the universe that appeared in actuality shortly after the big eruption determined that, after nearly fourteen billion years, human race should appear on the earth, which should have been formed a little earlier. Nevertheless, upon the Big Bang, everything was there potentially, which means that everything should appear in due course: the laws of the universe, the earth, human race, and everything else in this material world. The statement of Anaxagoras is stunning indeed, considering that ‘speed produces force’ is a modern statement, too. ‘Things which rotate and are separated from each other’ is an ongoing process in the universe; actually, it tantalizes scientists, who are wondering how is it possible for the universe to expand for ever, which runs against what our theories consider as ‘plausible’, let alone the possibility of the universe itself being ‘infinite’. Then, Simplicius’ argument goes on towards its conclusion: He [Anaxagoras] says that everything is in everything in a way that is different in the state of their intelligible union, different in the state of their essential incorporeal union, and differ

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 35.

280

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

ent still during concurrence [of principles] in matter, in order either to generate perceptible things or to cause them dissolve [into those principles].⁶³

This is the conclusion of Simplicius’ analysis which started with the proposition that ‘Anaxagoras the Clazomenian seems to see a threefold difference between all kinds [of things]’ (᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομένιος ἔοικε τῶν εἰδῶν πάντων τριττὴν θεάσασθαι τὴν διαφοράν): One, [existence] according to the contracted intelligible union (τὴν μὲν κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν συνῃρημένην), by saying that all things were together, infinite in number and [infinitely] small (ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ σμικρότητα); again, he says, before there was separation off, because all things were together, there was not even any colour being manifest (πρὶν δὲ ἀποκριθῆναι ταῦτα πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲ χροιὴ ἔνδηλος ἦν οὐδεμία); for the commixture of all things prevented it (ἀπεκώλυε γὰρ ἡ σύμμιξις ἁπάντων χρημάτων), of the wet and dry and of the hot and cold and of the bright and dark, and there was much of earth being present (καὶ γῆς πολλῆς ἐνεούσης), and an infinite multitude of seeds, which were in no way similar to one another (καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλήθους οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις). Since things are so, it is right to hold that all things are present in the universe (τούτων δὲ οὕτως ἐχόντων ἐν τῷ σύμπαντι χρὴ δοκεῖν ἐνεῖναι πάντα χρήματα). And this universe would be the ‘one’ of Parmenides, since it is one.⁶⁴ Secondly, Anaxagoras saw a certain other [kind of existence], namely, one which is distinct according to the intelligible distinction (τὴν δέ τινα ἐθεάσατο κατὰ τὴν νοερὰν διάκρισιν διακεκριμένην). From the initial unity, ‘in which everything was one, as Parmenides himself says’, the ‘intelligible distinction comes forth’, which means that ‘parts’ were distinguished out of that which remained indivisible nevertheless: this reality was ‘indivisibly divided’ (ἀμερίστως μερισθεῖσαν).⁶⁵ This is an expression mainly applied by Neoplatonists to the soul supposed to be of a nature which is both indivisible and divisible; the former pertains to its cognitive function, the latter sees the soul as the agent that makes movement possible. The commentary of Simplicius on Aristotle’s pragma-

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35: ἄλλως μὲν πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι φησὶ κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν, ἄλλως δὲ κατὰ τὴν νοερὰν συνουσίωσιν καὶ ἄλλως κατὰ τὴν αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 34. He quotes the same fragment of Anaxagoras in op. cit. p. 157, where he adds, οὐδὲ γὰρ τῶν ἄλλων οὐδὲν ἔοικε τὸ ἕτερον τῷ ἑτέρῳ immediately after the present text’s οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις. In this, Anaxagoras only repeats that ‘no seed is similar to any other one’, obviously intending emphasis.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 136.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

281

ty on the soul ascribes the idea to Aristotle, but some scholars regard the attribution as dubious.⁶⁶ Plutarch entertained it confidently, in relation to both numbers and the soul, implying that this is a Platonic liability to Pythagoras.⁶⁷ Definitely, Plotinus used the notion abundantly,⁶⁸ and more so did Proclus, who used it at scores of points. Thirdly, the perceptible world, which has been made in likeness with the former one (πρὸς ἣν ἡ ἐνταῦθα ἀφωμοίωται), yet it is characterized by division into individual things being separate from one another, which Simplicius calls ‘perceptible severance’ (αἰσθητὸν διασπασμόν).⁶⁹ Although he cared to introduce the caveat that this severance materializes ‘by virtue of’ the intelligible creation (κατὰ ταύτην), it is natural to assert that ‘each and every one of things participates in, and communicates with, everything’ (εἰκότως δὲ καὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἕκαστον κοινωνεῖ πᾶσι καὶ μετέχει πάντων); also, as we saw above,⁷⁰ even though perceptible things have been set apart, they have not been absolutely detached from each other’ (διὰ τὴν ἀρχέγονον ἐν τοῖς νοητοῖς αὐτῶν προϋπάρχουσαν ἕνωσιν· καὶ διακρινόμενα γὰρ ταῦτα οὐκ ἀπέσπασται πάντῃ ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων).⁷¹ Therefore, according to Anaxagoras, ‘distinction is not complete severance’ (οὐ γὰρ παντελὴς διασπασμός ἐστιν ἡ διάκρισις), wherefore the correlation of all things ‘being everywhere’ somehow holds also for the sensible reality,⁷² on the grounds that this severance materializes ‘by virtue of the intelligible creation’. Nevertheless, this does not suggest total commingling: there is no way to apply ‘intelligible union’ to the present ‘perceptible severance’ (οὐ γὰρ ἐπιδέχεται τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν ὁ αἰσθητὸς διασπασμός); nor is it possible to see the absolute unity (first case) into the intelligible distinction (mentioned above, second case), even though the former contains the latter in itself causally (οὐδὲ ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς νοητοῖς ἡ ἡνωμένη ὕπαρξις αἰτιωδῶς τὴν πεπληθυσμένην περιέχει διάκρισιν, ὡς δύνασθαι καὶ ταύτην ἐκεῖ θεωρεῖν). By the same token, it is not possible to see the absolute union of the perfect oneness (first case) within the perceptible reality (third case) (οὕτως ἐν τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς τὴν παντελῆ τοῦ  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 221 (Aristotle, Fragmenta Varia, fragment 46, from De Anima): τὴν δὲ λογικὴν ψυχὴν ὡς μὴ μόνον ὁριζομένην ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅρον οὖσαν· μεταξὺ γὰρ ὡς τοῦ ἀμερίστου καὶ μεριστοῦ ἄμφω πως οὖσα.  Plutarch, De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1012E (about numbers); 1024D (about the soul).  Plotinus, Enneades, IV.1.1; IV.2.1; IV.3.19.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 136.  Supra, p. 267 8 ; infra, pp. 311; 327; 476; 784; 939.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 461. Cf. Galen, De Naturalibus Facultatibus, p. 39; De Causis Pulsuum, p. 88. Alexander of Tralles, Therapeutica, p. 595. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 106; De Ae ternitate Mundi, p. 283.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461.

282

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

ἑνὸς ἕνωσιν ὁρᾶν δυνατόν). For no matter how perfect union and communion is achieved in this world, on no account can this bear on the unity of the absolute oneness (τὸ οὖν ἐνταῦθα ἀδιαίρετον καὶ τὸ συνεχὲς καὶ ἡ κατὰ τὸν ἕνα λόγον κοινωνία οὐκ ἐφαρμόττει τῷ ἑνί).⁷³ The volume of a material object is one thing, but the ideal numerical figure which counts this volume is another (ἄλλος ἐστὶν ὁ ὄγκος ὁ τῶν αἰσθητῶν οἰκεῖος καὶ ἄλλο τὸ εἰδητικὸν μέγεθος). Likewise, severance of material things into individual entities is one thing, but arithmetical distinction of them is another (ἄλλος μὲν ὁ διασπασμὸς τῶν αἰσθητῶν εἰδῶν, ἄλλη δὲ ἡ ἀριθμητικὴ διάκρισις), which is evident from the fact that numbers are ‘logoi, as well as dimensionless and indivisible forms’ (δῆλον ἐκ τοῦ ἐκεῖνα μὲν λόγους εἶναι καὶ εἴδη ἀδιάστατά τε καὶ ἀμέριστα).⁷⁴ The visible distinction in the empirical reality has been received passively upon its generation by the indivisible nature which gave way to divisibility (παθητικὴν δὲ μᾶλλον τὴν διάκρισιν ἡ γένεσις ἀνεδέξατο ἀπὸ τῆς ἀμερίστου φύσεως εἰς μερισμὸν ὑπελθοῦσα). This is why multitude is not the same notion when it is applied either to the intelligible distinction (second case), or to the present visible reality (third case): in the former case, there is only the notion of multitude that started to make sense; in this world, this multitude became perceptible severance into distinct individual entities, whether animate or inanimate (καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ὁ μὲν τοῦ πλήθους ἐκεῖ διορισμὸς ἐνταῦθα διασπασμὸς γέγονεν). To put the same idea differently, in the intelligible distinction, wholeness is at the same time an inherently distinctive characteristic (ἡ ἐκεῖ συμφυὴς ὁλότης); but once that intelligible distinction was applied to this world as a model, it became the present ‘continuum made of individual entities’ (ἐνταῦθα διεστῶσα συνεχῶς), and it is currently being manifested as material quantity (ποσότης ἔνυλος ἀναπέφανται).⁷⁵ It is necessary to stress once again that the translation ‘things’ for χρήματα is bound to be inaccurate, and it should be read with caution. Anaxagoras only means that all seeds were together, and, although they were distinguished into different kinds, they are still everywhere in the universe as immaterial principles. It is according (and because of) these principles that things are generated and perish, they are composed and decomposed into what they were made of, that is, into their constituents, namely, the immaterial principles, which, in turn, generate different things or phenomena.⁷⁶

   

Simplicius, op. cit. p. 88. Simplicius, op. cit. p. 231. Simplicius, loc. cit. See the notion of ἀνάλυσις being used in this context, pp. 397; 468 9; 917.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

283

Once the immateriality of principles is understood, everything becomes more clear. When Anaxagoras says that they neither become nor do they perish (οὐδὲ γίνεται οὐδὲ φθείρεταί τι τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀεὶ τὰ αὐτά ἐστι), he means this: even though these things have been dissociated in this way, it is right to recognize that all things are in no way less or more (πάντα οὐδὲν ἐλάσσω ἐστὶν οὐδὲ πλείω); for it is impossible that they be more than all, but all things are always equal (οὐ γὰρ ἀνυστὸν πάντων πλείω εἶναι, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἴσα ἀεί). To these words of Anaxagoras, Simplicius adds his own clarification: “He says this about the mixture and the homoiomeries (περὶ τοῦ μίγματος καὶ τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν).”⁷⁷ In the primal commixture, or in the state of the immaterial principles having become distinct from each other, they cannot be ‘less or more’, simply because they are immaterial, and Aristotle himself argued that ‘those which are many in number, are material’.⁷⁸ In other words, ‘less or more’ suggests countable quantity, but no such a notion is applicable to incorporeality. VI Following this analysis, and as a kind of corollary, Simplicius feels that he can establish further the notion of a twofold creation: Mind is stated as dominating over everything, and any formation of things and their function in the world can take place because Mind is always present making all kinds of action and reaction possible, although this Nous is ‘separate form all things’ (χωριστὸς ὢν ἀπ᾿ αὐτῶν, that is, ontologically different). Things are made because certain principles concur, and they perish once these principles cease to cooperate towards a specific purpose. Whether things are ‘big or small, Mind dominates over them all’.⁷⁹ The Mind did so in the beginning, causing that which was infinitely small to begin to increase; so does he now when the universe is so big; and he will do more so in the future, over the universe as a whole, as well as over all things, no matter how big or small. The Mind knows everything, because He is the finest and the purest of all things (ἔστι γὰρ λεπτότατόν τε πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον), and he maintains his discerning knowledge about everything and has the

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 774.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1074a33 34: ἀλλ᾿ ὅσα ἀριθμῷ πολλά, ὕλην ἔχει (‘those which are numerical ly many, they are material’). De Anima, 432a3 7: ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐδὲ πρᾶγμα οὐθὲν ἔστι παρὰ τὰ μεγέθη, ὡς δοκεῖ, τὰ αἰσθητὰ κεχωρισμένον (‘nothing has a separate existence, except sensible magni tudes’). Cf. Physica, 204a8 10, and commentators. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 716; commDeSensu, pp. 120 1. Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 115. Dexippus, commCateg, p. 59. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 178. Simplicius, commAnim, pp. 283 4. John Philoponus, com mAnim, p. 568; commPhys, p. 401; commGenCorr, p. 76. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Com mentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, Book 3, ch. 13.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 177: καὶ τὰ μείζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ.

284

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

greatest power (καὶ γνώμην γε περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἴσχει καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον). And Mind con trols all things that have soul, both the larger and the smaller ones (καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ μείζω καὶ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ). And Mind controlled the whole revolution so as to make it start in the beginning (καὶ τῆς περιχωρήσιος τῆς συμπάσης νοῦς ἐκράτησεν, ὥστε περιχωρῆσαι τὴν ἀρχήν). First, it began to rotate from a small region, but it is rotating yet more, and it will rotate still more (καὶ πρῶτον ἀπὸ τοῦ σμικροῦ ἤρξατο περιχωρεῖν ἐπεὶ δὲ πλεῖον περιχωρεῖ, καὶ περιχωρήσει ἐπὶ πλέον). And Mind knew them all (πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς): the things that are mixed together (καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενα), the things that are sepa rated off (καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα), and the things that are distinct (καὶ διακρινόμενα). And what ever kinds of things those were going to be, and whatever kinds were and now are, and as many as they are now and whatever kinds will be, all these Mind set in order (καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὅσα νῦν ἐστι καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς). And Mind also set in order the revolution, in which the things that are now separated re volve (καὶ τὴν περιχώρησιν ταύτην ἣν νῦν περιχωρέει), the stars and the sun and the moon and the air and the aether. It was this revolution that caused them to separate off (ἡ δὲ περ ιχώρησις αὐτὴ ἐποίησεν ἀποκρίνεσθαι).⁸⁰

Why is it possible for all things to be mixed with all other things in the universe? It has now become plain that this is possible ‘because their primal nature is incorporeal’ (καὶ τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ εἴδη διά τε τὴν ἀρχέγονον ἑαυτῶν νοερὰν φύσιν καὶ διὰ τὴν ἐν τῇ γενέσει σύγχυσιν μέμικται ἀλλήλοις).⁸¹ The very idea of being ‘all in all’ is applicable only to incorporeal entities, which Aristotle ostensibly did not to realize. Therefore, Mind rules over and knows everything because he is himself incorporeal, he is the cause of everything, and sustains the existence of everything. The Mind’s nature supplies Simplicius once again with the opportunity to stress that Anaxagoras maintained a twofold creation: That he posits a twofold world order (ὅτι δὲ διττήν τινα διακόσμησιν ὑποτίθεται), the first intelligible (τὴν μὲν νοεράν), the other perceptible having stemmed from the first (τὴν δὲ αἰσθητὴν ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνης), is clear from what has been said, and it is also clear from the follow ing [which Anaxagoras wrote]: Mind, which always is, certainly is also now, so that all the other things also should exist, namely, in the encompassing multitude [of the principles], and in the things that have been joined together, and in the things that have been separated off (ὁ δὲ νοῦς, ὃς ἀεί ἐστι, τὸ κάρτα καὶ νῦν ἐστιν,⁸² ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα [ᾖ],⁸³ ἐν τῷ πολλὰ περιέχοντι,⁸⁴ καὶ ἐν τοῖς προσκριθεῖσι, καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀποκεκριμένοις).⁸⁵

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 156.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 177.  Simpliicus’ text has it, ὅσα ἐστί τε κάρτα (one manuscript has it ἔσται). I wrote, ὃς ἀεί ἐστι, with Diels.  I added ᾖ. See next, p. 285.  Cf. Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 155 6: ἀποκρίνονται ἀπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ τοῦ περιέχοντος.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 157.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

285

This passage has been considered as difficult by scholars. Since this is attested by Simplicius, one should plausibly read this in the way he meant to construct his argument. He refers to the three states in which the principles exist: (1) total unity; (2) intelligible state of union, in which Mind instilled distinction; (3) the perceptible objects, which emerge in accordance with, and because of, the distinct principles. However, how the text itself must be read in terms of grammar, has nothing to do with Simplicius, who simply quotes it. The essential point is the conjunction ἵνα (‘so that’ all the other things exist, too, etc.). Formally, the expression ἵνα καὶ has to be followed by a Subjunctive form, but it would be possible not to add ᾖ at all, and omitting this was not an uncommon practice,⁸⁶ since this is clearly implied once the verb ἐστὶν precedes it: “this exists, so that the others exist, too”. Actually, although I added ᾖ in order to make it clear, I do not believe that Anaxagoras wrote it, since any Greek could have grasped the meaning of the phrase, even though the ensuing Subjunctive was omitted, since this is patently suggested. Anaxagoras means, ‘Mind is always, so that everything else [i. e. the incorporeal principles, and then, the universe] should be there, too’. In other words, everything that exists is ontologically different and yet dependent on Mind, and they can exist because Mind exists. The world is not self-sustained, nor is its existence independent from Mind. Put in later terms, the world it is eternally reliant on a transcendent Poietic and Cohesive Cause. Anaxagoras says that ‘the Mind is [i. e. exists] always’ (put in later, i. e. Platonic and thereafter, terms: Mind is eternal), and since it is eternal, ‘certainly he is [i. e. exists] now, too’. Then, Anaxagoras goes on, ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα.⁸⁷ The Mind exists eternally, so that all other things exist, too. The meaning of this passage has been missed in translations, which is why this is considered ‘difficult’, although in fact it is not difficult at all, and it is brilliantly consonant with the rest of this philosophy.

 Cf. ᾖ being used. Plato, Philebus, 48b5: ἵνα καὶ ἐν ἄλλοις ῥᾷον καταμαθεῖν τις οἷος τ᾿ ᾖ μεῖξιν λύπης τε καὶ ἡδονῆς. Plotinus, Enneades, VI.3.21: Τί οὖν ἐστι τοῦτο, ὃ ἑτέρου ὄν ἐστί τι, ἵνα καὶ ἑτέρου ᾖ. Cf. ᾖ being omitted: Aristophanes, Aves, lines 821 823: ἆρ᾿ ἐστὶν αὕτη γ᾿ ἡ Νε φελοκοκκυγία, ἵνα καὶ τὰ Θεογένους τὰ πολλὰ χρήματα τά τ᾿ Αἰσχίνου γ᾿ ἅπαντα;  However, notice how ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα was rendered by David Sider, The Fragments of Anaxagoras, p. 144: ‘Nous came to control all that is, and is now where all the rest is’. Instead of ὃς ἀεί ἐστι, τὸ κάρτα, he emended to ὅσα ἐστί τ᾿ ἐκράτησε, which is sheer interpolation that ob scures the meaning. Also, Patricia Curd, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, pp. 25 & 68: ‘Nous, which always is, is even now where all the other things also are’. Both translators missed the point, because they missed the conjunction ἵνα (‘so that’) upon which the ensuing phrase, καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα, is dependent.

286

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

I made this digression only because it retains Anaxagoras’ words themselves. Otherwise, I am not particularly interested in pertinent modern scholarship, since all of it has four fatal flaws: First, it is based on ‘fragments’, which are deciphered as oracles, normally without considering the context of the ancient witnesses. Secondly, because those ‘fragments’ have been excerpted from ancient texts where Anaxagoras is mentioned by name; but it is now shown that points where this philosophy is considered implicitly are often more important and revealing. Sometimes, though not always, later commentators grasped such points and they mention Anaxagoras by name, normally referring to Aristotle’s implicit statements about him. Thirdly, because modern scholars delude themselves with the hope that it is possible to learn anything from Aristotle’s biased caricature of Anaxagoras which he concocted for his own personal reasons. Little wonder then that this methodology has resulted only in inconclusive debate, which can cause only frustration. Fourthly, there is too much of anxiety to cite modern scholarship while the vast majority of ancient commentators, from Classical Antiquity right down to the fifteenth century, remains out of consideration. VII In the second book of the Physics, Aristotle considers ‘nature’ as an ambiguous notion, which may point to either form or matter. Therefore, study of it can be pursued from two points of view, since nature cannot be isolated from the material element in which it exists, although not constituted by it. The question that he raises is this: if nature is a compositum consisting of two aspects (form and matter), which one of them should claim the attention of physicists? His assertion is that, in reading the ancients, one might well suppose that physicists were concerned only with the material element, and he mentions the names of Empedocles and Democritus, who ‘had touched only too little upon the form and the essence of things’ (ἐπὶ μικρὸν γάρ τι μέρος Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Δημόκριτος τοῦ εἴδους καὶ τοῦ τί ἦν εἶναι ἥψαντο).⁸⁸ However, Simplicius disputed this claim: for Empedocles ‘introduced Love and Strife as formative causes’ (ὡς εἰδοποιοὺς αἰτίας ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ἀποθέμενος), whereas Democritus did concern himself with the question of ‘form’ by positing that atoms are distinguished by their ‘shape, position, and order’, which is precisely what determines the different forms of things (τὸ σχῆμα καὶ τὴν θέσιν καὶ τὴν τάξιν, τὸ εἶδος οἶμαι κατὰ τὸν λόγον ἀφορίζει).⁸⁹ Nevertheless, he is particularly concerned with Anaxagoras: why did Aristotle not mention him among ‘the physicists’ at that point? With re-

 Aristotle, Physica, 194a. Cf. Democritus’ notion of δῖνος, supra, pp. 260.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 300.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

287

spect to this, Simplicius mentions the explanation of Alexander of Aphrodisias, by quoting a passage from the latter’s non-extant commentary on Aristotle’s Physics: He [sc. Aristotle] did not mention Anaxagoras, even though he posited Mind among his principles, perhaps because he [sc. Anaxagoras] does not make use of this [sc. Mind] in his [doctrine of] generation.⁹⁰

Therefore, Alexander should be rebutted, too: But it is plain that he [sc. Anaxagoras] does indeed make use [of Mind] (ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι μὲν προσχρῆται, δῆλον), albeit he says that generation is no other than secretion itself (εἴπερ τὴν γένεσιν οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ ἔκκρισιν εἶναι φησί). He says also that secretion is produced by motion (τὴν δὲ ἔκκρισιν ὑπὸ τῆς κινήσεως γίνεσθαι) and the cause of motion is Mind (τῆς δὲ κινήσεως αἴτιον εἶναι τὸν νοῦν). For here is what Anaxagoras says: When Mind began to move [things] (καὶ ἐπεὶ ἤρξατο ὁ νοῦς κινεῖν), there was separation off from the whole that was being moved (ἀπὸ τοῦ κινουμένου παντὸς ἀπεκρίνετο), and whatever Mind moved was separated from one another (καὶ ὅσον ἐκίνησεν ὁ νοῦς, πᾶν τοῦτο διεκρίθη); and as things were being moved and separated from one another (κινουμένων δὲ καὶ διακρινομένων), the revolution caused them to become separated from one another much more (ἡ περιχώρησις πολλῷ μᾶλλον ἐποίει διακρίνεσθαι).⁹¹

Consequently, to the question why Aristotle made no mention of Anaxagoras, Simplicius proposes his own explanation: But the reason why [Aristotle] did not mention him is that Anaxagoras posited Mind not as a material form (τὸν νοῦν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὐκ ἔλεγεν εἶδος ἔνυλον) (which is what was in vestigated [by Aristotle] at that point), but [he posited Mind] as a Distinguishing and Order ing Cause (ἀλλὰ διακριτικὸν καὶ κοσμητικὸν αἴτιον). This existed apart from the things that were being set in order (χωριστὸν ἀπὸ τῶν κοσμουμένων), since its hypostasis was [onto logically] different from that of those that were set in order (καὶ ἄλλης ὂν ὑποστάσεως παρὰ τὰ κοσμούμενα). For he says, Mind is infinite and self ruling and has been mixed with no thing, but he alone is by himself (νοῦς ἐστὶν ἄπειρον καὶ αὐτοκρατὲς καὶ μέμικται οὐδενὶ χρήματι, ἀλλὰ μόνος αὐτὸς ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ⁹² ἐστι), and then he adds the reason for that

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, quoted by Simplicius, loc. cit.: ᾿Aναξαγόρου δέ, φησὶν ᾿Aλέξανδρος, οὐκ ἐμνημόνευσε καίτοι τὸν νοῦν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς τιθέντος, ἴσως, φησίν, ὅτι μὴ προσχρῆται αὐτῷ ἐν τῇ γενέσει.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 300 1.  The meaning of ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ is explained at another point: the ontological status of Mind is absolutely distinct from that of the ‘seeds’, or principles, or whatever one would like to call them. The Mind stands in himself and by himself (ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ), being unmixed with no other being; he alone stands in himself (ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ) being distinct from all the seeds/principles he distinguished and set in order. The Mind owes his existence to no other than himself. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 156; likewise, p. 301. Simplicius provides a brilliant explanation of the expression

288

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

being so.⁹³ Perhaps [Aristotle] did not mention Anaxagoras also for another reason, namely, because, in his [sc. Anaxagoras’] philosophy, Mind appears not to create, but only to dis tinguish beings (ὅτι ὁ παρ᾿ αὐτῷ νοῦς οὐ ποιεῖν ἀλλὰ διακρίνειν ὄντα τὰ εἴδη δοκεῖ). How ever, it is plain that distinction from existence in unity, in which all things were together, was the intelligible creation itself (δῆλον δὲ ὅτι ἡ ἀπὸ τῆς ἡνωμένης ὑποστάσεως, καθ᾿ ἣν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν, διάκρισις ἡ νοερὰ ποίησις ἦν).⁹⁴

Likewise, he explained that, to Anaxagoras, the elements ‘become’ upon their being ‘distinguished’.⁹⁵ This is why Simplicius uses the terms ‘creation’ (δημιουργία) and ‘creature’ (δημιούργημα) at several points, also in reference to the creation of intelligible things.⁹⁶ This is a crucial point in order to understand this theory. By arguing that Anaxagoras maintained a twofold creation, Simplicius never suggested that, in the beginning, there was a sort of intelligible world that was analogous to the Platonic realm of Ideas, which stand still and apart. The distinction of the incorporeal principles coincides with the beginning of ‘rotation’ (περιχώρησις), which is the force that gave (and it is still giving) rise to distinct things (ἡ περιχώρησις πολλῷ μᾶλλον ἐποίει διακρίνεσθαι)”.⁹⁷ To Empedocles, Democritus, and Anaxagoras alike, ‘the elements come to being upon distinction’ (τότε γίνεσθαι δοκεῖν, ὅταν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων διακριθῇ), even though this did not take place in time,

ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ: “this which is neither in something else, nor of something else” (τὸ ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ ὂν καὶ οὔτε ἐν ἄλλῳ οὔτε ἄλλου). Simplicius, op. cit. p. 218.  Simplicius expounds ‘the reason for this’ in his fuller exposition of this tenet of Anaxagoras, quoting from him: commPhys, pp. 156; 176. Cf. the Ionian variant ἐπ ̓ ἐωυτοῦ (instead of ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ = in Himself) in op. cit. pp. 176 & 301.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 300 1. Cf. supra, p. 189, note 121.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 632: τοῦ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρου πάντα ἐν πᾶσι λέγοντος καὶ τὴν γένεσιν ἔκκρισιν τιθέντος, … ὑπαντᾷ [sc. Aristotle] τοὺς περὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέα καὶ Δημόκριτον καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρ αν κοινὸν ἐνιδὼν αὐτῶν τῇ δόξῃ τὸ τὰ παρ᾿ ἑκάστῳ τιθέμενα στοιχεῖα ἀΐδια ὄντα τότε γίνεσθαι δοκεῖν, ὅταν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων διακριθῇ. However, at a preceding point of the same work, he seems to attribute the doctrine to Anaxagoras alone. Op. cit. p. 202: τὴν γένεσιν ἐκκρίσει πάντα ὑφίστασθαι λέγοντες, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξαγόρας. At that point, he comments on Aristotle who argued that, if ‘generation’ is ‘alteration’, it follows that the ‘elements’ should exist only poten tially. In this group he lumped together all those who (in Aristotle’s view) argued that everything comes from one element (mentioning Anaximander, Anaximenes, but he could have added oth ers, such as Thales).  Simplicius, commCael, p. 491: τῆς θείας δημιουργίας. commCateg, p. 318: ἐν τῇ δημιουργίᾳ τῶν θεῶν. commPhys, p. 249: καὶ γὰρ ἡ ὕλη καὶ ἡ στέρησις, ἥτις ποτέ ἐστιν, αὕτη θεόθεν παρήχθη καὶ ἐκ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ὑπέστη, καὶ πολλὴν χρείαν τῇ δημιουργίᾳ παρέχονται καὶ ἀγαθά. Op. cit. p. 1077: τὴν τῶν ἀϊδίων δημιουργίαν. Op. cit. p. 1102: διὸ οὐδὲ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων τεχνῶν τῶν τὴν ὅλην δημιουργίαν μιμουμένων οὐδεμία δύναται χωρὶς ἀριθμοῦ συστῆναι.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 300 1; see supra, p. 190: ‘distinction’ means ‘creation’.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

289

which is why it is possible also to style these elements ‘eternal’ (ἀΐδια).⁹⁸ Therefore, the principles are both united and distinct from each other, and this twofold state is made possible by their generative source, namely, Mind (καὶ διακέκριται οὖν καὶ ἥνωται κατὰ ᾿Aναξαγόραν τὰ εἴδη καὶ ἄμφω διὰ τὸν νοῦν ἔχει). This holds not only for the principles considered in themselves, but also for them being considered as acting agents: Also, the forms in the world are mixed with each other, because of both their primal intel lectual nature and of the fact that they were fused together upon their generation (καὶ τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ εἴδη διά τε τὴν ἀρχέγονον ἑαυτῶν νοερὰν φύσιν καὶ διὰ τὴν ἐν τῇ γενέσει σύγχυσιν μέμικται ἀλλήλοις).⁹⁹

Therefore, twofold creation does not mean an eternally pre-existent intelligible world which, at some moment, deigned to get involved with matter: the principles became involved with matter (indeed they generated it) upon the distinction/creation of themselves, and yet they continue to exist both in themselves (according to their nature proper, i. e. the incorporeal one), as well as in the state of them being involved with matter. This is what both Simplicius and Porphyry pointed out in respect of the Anaxagorean principles: they ‘are all in all’, but they exist differently in their original union, differently in their incorporeal co-existence, and different still during their concurrence which generates sensible things.¹⁰⁰ It was probably because Simplicius and Philoponus studied together under Ammonius the son of Hermias in Alexandria, that the latter also grasped that Anaxagoras’ ἔκκρισις (secretion, or, procession out of something else)¹⁰¹ in fact meant creation. This term is normally translated ‘separation’, which may be misleading. It would help the English-speaking reader to understand Anaxagoras better if the verb ἐκκρίνω were understood as meaning ‘single out’. The Mind ‘created’ the seeds by ‘singling them out’, out of a primeval chaotic and indistinguishable fusion. This means that Mind made each seed assigned with a certain character within the world. Unless this is understood in this way, which is what Anaxagoras meant, the non-Greek audience will have considera Simplicius, commCael, p. 632.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 176. About ‘forms’ meaning ‘causes’, see op. cit. pp. 10; 106; 203; 218; et passim.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 34 35. Likewise, Porphyry, Sententiae, 10. See quotation on p. 497.  See supra, p. 287, Simplicius arguing that ἔκκρισις is produced by motion (= rotation) (τὴν δὲ ἔκκρισιν ὑπὸ τῆς κινήσεως γίνεσθαι), and ἔκκρισις is synonymous with ‘creation’ (εἴπερ τὴν γένεσιν οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ ἔκκρισιν εἶναι φησί). Also, supra, p. 288, and Simplicius, commCael, p. 632: τοῦ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρου πάντα ἐν πᾶσι λέγοντος καὶ τὴν γένεσιν ἔκκρισιν τιθέντος.

290

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

ble difficulty to see the difference between three closely related compounds, namely, διάκρισις, ἀπόκρισις, ἔκκρισις. Philoponus did grasp Anaxagoras’ tenet accurately: Mind creates the causative and cohesive principles in the incorporeal realm by pointing them out, and allotting a specific task to each one of them.¹⁰² Consequently, what Mind actually did was creation, and this is the meaning of Anaxagoras’ use of the term ‘distinction’ (διάκρισις). The testimony of Simplicius is invaluable on this point, but, centuries before him, a Christian author, namely Hippolytus, had a clear grasp of this, notwithstanding the heavy cloud of distortion imposed by Aristotle: according to Anaxagoras, the principles of the universe are Mind and matter (οὗτος ἔφη τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχὴν νοῦν καὶ ὕλην); Mind is the Creator, and matter was created (τὸν μὲν νοῦν ποιοῦντα, τὴν δὲ ὕλην γινομένην). For whereas all [things] were together (ὄντων γὰρ πάντων ὁμοῦ), Mind came upon and set order (νοῦς ἐπελθὼν διεκόσμησεν). Hippolytus did not escape the sway that the Aristotelian rendering of Anaxagoras held, which is why subsequently he says that Anaxagoras sustained ‘infinite material principles’ (τὰς δ᾿ ὑλικὰς ἀρχὰς ἀπείρους ὑπάρχειν), and the smallest of them Anaxagoras called infinite (καὶ τὰς σμικροτέρας αὐτῶν ἄπειρα λέγει).¹⁰³ A remark should be made at this point: in the criticism by Aristotle that we just discussed, he did not mention Anaxagoras’ name along with those of Empedocles and Democritus. In that context, he developed his syllogisms, which involved the Nature considered ‘as the goal for the sake of which the rest of things exist’ (τοῦτο ἔσχατον καὶ τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα), and ‘this goal is an end in the sense of the purpose’, still ‘it does not mean any kind of termination, but only the best’ (οὐ πᾶν εἶναι τὸ ἔσχατον τέλος, ἀλλὰ τὸ βέλτιστον). He cites a verse by ‘the poet’, whom he styles ‘ridiculous’, since he wrote of someone who died, ‘He has reached his end, for the sake of which he was born’ (ἔχει τελευτὴν ἧσπερ οὕνεκ᾿ ἐγένετο).¹⁰⁴ But termination of life is not an ‘end’ in the sense of something ‘for the sake of which’ something is done, and certainly this is not ‘the best’ end.

 John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 95: καὶ ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ δηλονότι ἐκκρίνεσθαι λέγων τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ καὶ ταύτην εἶναι τὴν γένεσιν. In chapter 3, pp. 224, and note 101, we saw that Aristotle knew of this (De Caelo, 305b23 24: εἴπερ ἐκκρίσει ἡ γένεσις), but he did not mention Anaxagoras explicitly, which Simplicius did, explaining this reference of Aristotle.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.8.1. Nevertheless, he did not follow the Aristo telian practice of calling them ‘elements’; instead, he saw that they are ‘principles’, although he employed the Aristotelian designation ὁμοιομερῆ for them.  Aristotle, Physica, 194a.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

291

This remark and quotation by Aristotle has suffered tremendously during modern times. Francis Cornford, the translator of this part of the book,¹⁰⁵ made a remark, which he signed, informing the reader that the phrase by the poet is included in the Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum (addenda to the anonymous fragments), which were edited by August Meineke (1790‒1870). Accordingly, he translated Aristotle’s διὸ καὶ ὁ ποιητὴς γελοίως προήχθη εἰπεῖν ἔχει τελευτήν, ἧσπερ οὕνεκ᾿ ἐγένετο, thus: “A confusion on this point betrayed the poet into the unintentionally comic phrase in reference to a man’s death He has reached his end, for the sake of which he was born.” Where did this translator discover such words, as ‘confusion’, ‘betrayed’, ‘unintentionally’ into the Greek text, is impossible to guess. I can only surmise that he translated the adverb γελοίως προήχθη εἰπεῖν as ‘was betrayed into the unintentionally comic phrase’. However, the entire rendering is detriment to Aristotle’s text, and the general remark that should be made is that those who aspire to translate Aristotle in modern languages (which is a noble undertaking) should have some idea of Aristotle’s commentators, at least. When Simplicius set out to comment on Aristotle, he had read his predecessors who had engaged in the same task, such as Theophrastus (whom he mentions 58 times, which is how several propositions of that man have been preserved), Sosigenes (12 times), Alexander of Aphrodisias (several hundreds of times), Plotinus (106 times), Porphyry (123 times), Iamblichus (210 times), Themistius (56 times), Proclus (38 times), and certainly his masters Ammonius the son of Hermias (styling him respectfully, ὁ ἡμέτερος καθηγεμών, 7 times), and Damascius (τὸν ἐμαυτοῦ καθηγεμόνα, 18 times); he mentioned even his contemporary John Philoponus at more than two dozens of points, although he always called by ‘the Grammarian’, and spoke of him in bitterness and contempt.¹⁰⁶ I am not in fact suggesting that such predecessors should be mentioned: I only deem it useful to have read works that could prevent from mistakes. The phrase of Aristotle should be translated thus: “This is why the poet took the ridiculous initiative to say, … etc.”, which has nothing to do with the forego Aristotle, Physics, Book I IV, tr. P.H. Wicksteed and F.M. Cornford, Loeb, n. 228, 1929 (repr. 1980), p. 122, note c, signed by Cornford (C.).  The worst moment of this invective is perhaps when he calls Philoponus ‘inattentive and uneducated’ (ἀνεπίστατόν τε ἅμα καὶ ἀπαίδευτον). Simplicius, commCael, p. 71. Presumably, there were grievances after their common study under Ammonius at Alexandria. Simplicius does not try to conceal his repugnance at Philoponus having written against Aristotle in order to rebut the idea of eternity of the world. Once the intellectual battle against eternalism became one of Philoponus’ major preoccupations, Simplicius naturally did not like him, but the context of his invective suggests that his bitterness involved also precedents of personal ex perience.

292

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

ing translation. In effect, Aristotle styles the poet ‘ridiculous’, no matter how obliquely. And since I mentioned the commentators, let us see how they read this passage. Alexander of Aphrodisias did not care much about the unnamed ‘poet’, nor did he comment on the term γελοίως: he only reproduced and paraphrased Aristotle’s main remarks pointing out what the real final cause is.¹⁰⁷ Themistius writes, γελοίως δὲ ὁ ποιητής, ἔχει τελευτὴν ἧσπερ οὕνεκ᾿ ἐγένετο, using Aristotle’s phrase itself, but the analysis (both before and after this point) of what the real notion of final cause (i. e. goal of life) is, leaves no doubt that, by γελοίως, he means ‘ridiculously’: the ‘poetic’ phrase in the midst of his expanded paraphrase of Aristotle’s text makes it sound ridiculous indeed. It should be remarked that this work of Themistius was meant as a ‘paraphrasis’ rather than commentary, and it is in fact a paraphrase.¹⁰⁸ Then comes Simplicius, who was more explicit: “And he [Aristotle] says that the poet who said, He has reached his end, for the sake of which he was born, is ridiculous (καὶ γελοῖον εἶναι φησὶ τὸν εἰπόντα ποιητήν· ἔχει τελευτὴν ἧσπερ οὕνεκ᾿ ἐγένετο)”.¹⁰⁹ Simplicius (along with John Philoponus) is the commentator who returns to this point once again in order to make the same point;¹¹⁰ he is also the one who made Aristotle’s adverb γελοίως an adjective (γελοῖον), and attributed this not to the verse of the poet, but to the person of the poet himself. Nevertheless, the real question is, who was this poet? We owe the solution of the riddle to John Philoponus, who advised posterity (without having been heard heretofore) that this poet was Euripides, the ardent admirer and pupil of Anaxagoras. This is in fact Philoponus’ first phrase following quotation of Aristotle’s Physics, 194a31‒32, on which he comments: “By saying ‘poet’, he speaks of Euripides” (Ποιητὴν τὸν Εὐριπίδην λέγει), and he goes on to explain: Euripides applied the common empirical experience and thought that the ultimate goal of any continuous action is that, for the sake of which that action happened. He applied the common and widespread experience to a specific philosophical analysis in a ridiculous way (γελοίως δὲ τὴν κοινὴν ταύτην ἔννοιαν καὶ καθολικὴν ἐφαρμόσας τοῖς κατὰ μέρος).¹¹¹ Philoponus returns to the issue of the real mean-

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 411.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 42.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 302.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 755: διὸ καὶ τὸν ποιητὴν ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ βιβλίῳ τῆσδε τῆς πραγματείας γελοίως ἐκεῖνο φησὶν εἰπεῖν· ἔχει τελευτὴν ἧσπερ οὕνεκ᾿ ἐγένετο.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 236. Διὸ καὶ ὁ ποιητὴς γελοίως προήχθη εἰπεῖν ἔχει τελευ τήν, ἧσπερ οὕνεκ᾿ ἐγένετο (Physica, 194a, then Philoponus’ comment). βούλεται γὰρ οὐ πᾶν εἶναι τὸ ἔσχατον τέλος, ἀλλὰ τὸ βέλτιστον. In the second part of this phrase, one might wonder what

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

293

ing of ‘goal’ later, in order to emphasize Aristotle’s doctrine: “If by end, anything which is the very last or simply an ending were understood, this would be a false doctrine (εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἁπλῶς τὸ ἔσχατον πᾶν καὶ τὴν ἀποτελεύτησιν, ψευδὴς ὁ λόγος); for he [sc. Aristotle] said above that telos does not mean any kind of termination, but only the best” of all possible eventualities. This is why he censured Euripides for having said the phrase (διὸ καὶ ἐμέμφετο τῷ Εὐριπίδῃ εἰπόντι τό), He has reached his end, for the sake of which he was born. ¹¹² The verse was not intended as a comic one; it was the poet that intended to philosophize whom Aristotle in effect styled ‘ridiculous’, although he applied the word to the poet’s manner rather than to himself. Asclepius of Tralles did not care for making any particular comment on this point,¹¹³ but the polymath Michael Psellus comes as the second source confirming Philoponus’ information, and evidently he wrote independently from him, as Psellus’ analysis itself shows. His comment is telling: a final cause is not simply an end; it is the best end, ‘which is why he denounces Euripides (διὸ ἐπισκήπτει καὶ τῷ Εὐριπίδη) for having said, He has reached his end, for the sake of which he was born. For that man was not born for the sake of dying, nor is death the goal of man, nor does human nature set it as a goal to make itself suitable for death’.¹¹⁴ Definitely then, this verse has no place among the fragments of comic writers.¹¹⁵ Instead, this should be added to the extant fragments of Euripides’ lost works. The case was not that Euripides intended a facetious statement: it was Aristotle who censured Euripides’ verse and styled it ridiculous. Aristotle had mixed feelings about Euripides. He definitely resented his allegiances to Anaxagoras, and he criticized him on questions that seemed to echo some relevance concerning perception or evaluation of instances of life,¹¹⁶ but he believed that Euripides ‘appears as the most tragic of all tragedians, even though

is the subject of the verb βούλεται (since the ensuing ἀλλὰ τὸ βέλτιστον follows the phrase where the subject is ‘the poet’), which is why Philoponus adds that by βούλεται (in this case: ‘intends’) Aristotle means ‘not the poet, but the nature of things’ (βούλεται οὐχ ὁ ποιητής, ἀλλ᾿ ἡ τῶν πραγμάτων φύσις).  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 309.  Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 341.  Michael Psellus, commPhys, 2.8.  Cf. the anonyma Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta (T. Kock), fr. 447: ἔχει τελευτήν, ἧσπερ εἵνεκ᾿ ἐγένετο.  Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, 1136a: ᾿Aπορήσειε δ᾿ ἄν τις, εἰ ἱκανῶς διώρισται περὶ τοῦ ἀδικεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδικεῖν, πρῶτον μὲν εἰ ἔστιν ὥσπερ Εὐριπίδης εἴρηκε, λέγων ἀτόπως. See infra, pp. 497 504, discussion about Anaxagoras and Protagoras.

294

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

he does not handle other things well’ (εἰ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα μὴ εὖ οἰκονομεῖ, ἀλλὰ τραγικώτατός γε τῶν ποιητῶν φαίνεται).¹¹⁷ VIII In the ninth book of the Physics, Aristotle discusses the question whether motion and change exist at all times, or they had a beginning and will come to an end. He considers the answers produced by the physicists, and says that all of them accorded motion a prime cosmic significance. The Atomists maintained that motion is everlasting, since they postulated that innumerable worlds always come into existence and then perish. Others maintained a single world and held that the cosmos and motion had no beginning in time. Others, such as Anaxagoras, argued that the cosmos began at some moment after an indefinite duration of motionlessness, whereas Empedocles held that there are periods in which the cosmos and motion exist, preceded and followed by periods of motionlessness.¹¹⁸ Simplicius comments on the opening of the book (Physics, 250b19‒24) and supplies the names of Presocratics according to his own knowledge. He attributes the tenet about an infinite number of worlds, which become and perish, to Anaximander, Leucippus, Democritus, and to Epicurus. Plato and Aristotle sustained that the world was not made in time and it does not perish. Moreover, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Diogenes, and then the Stoics, believed in one world which is perishable, therefore, although it is one, it is not always in the same condition. Beyond them, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, and Metrodorus of Chios, seemed to sustain that the universe was made as of a certain temporal beginning and that motion itself had a beginning, too. Before things were caused by Mind to move, they were at rest. However, it seems that these [philosophers] posited a beginning of creation (ἀρχὴν τῆς κοσμοποιίας)¹¹⁹ only for reasons of didactic

 Aristotle, Poetica, 1453a. It is difficult to determine what Aristotle means here. Almost cer tainly, he had not in mind his own criticism of Euripides’ plays (i. e. his choruses are often ir relevant; the character of the heroine in his Iphigenia at Tauris is inconsistent; in the Medea, the deliberate killing of the children is ineffective and the play is inartistically ended by the ma chine; the character of Menelaus in the Orestes is needlessly depraved; Melanippe is too philo sophical for a woman). The possibility of ‘other things’ meaning Euripides’ faithfulness to Anax agoras should not be excluded.  Aristotle, Physica, 250b 251a. Empedocles maintained that, whenever either Love or Strife prevails, there is neither world nor motion existing. A subsequent world can appear once either Strife breaks Oneness into Manyness, or Love causes Manyness into Oneness.  An expression characteristic of Origen. This is a probably an Anaxagorean term (Cf. Aristo tle, Metaphysica, 985a18) employed by a vast number of authors (Aristotle and his commenta tors, all of the Neoplatonists except Plotinus, numerous Christian authors following Clement of Alexandria and Origen), as well as some others (Philo, Celsus, Strabo, et. al.).

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

295

methodology.’¹²⁰ For when Anaxagoras says, all things were together, he clearly indicates a primal intelligible fusion on which Mind instilled distinction (καὶ ὅ γε ᾿Aναξαγόρας σαφῶς ἀπὸ τῆς νοητῆς ἑνώσεως, ἐφ᾿ ἧς ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, ὥς φησι, τὴν κοσμικὴν διάκρισιν ὑποστῆσαι τὸν νοῦν λέγει).¹²¹ Aristotle recognized that Anaxagoras sustained a beginning of creation,¹²² and his argument is much the same as that of Simplicius. Since there was a beginning of distinction, there must have been a beginning not only of each separate thing, but also of all things in general (ἀρχὴ γὰρ οὐ μόνον ἐν ἑκάστῳ ἐστὶ τῆς διακρίσεως, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντων). The Mind is the ἀρχὴ of generation as a cause of it (ἀρχὴν δεῖ εἶναι τῆς γενέσεως. Αὕτη δ᾿ ἐστὶ μία, ὅν ἐκεῖνος καλεῖ νοῦν). And this Mind must have made a beginning of its intelligible action as such; so there must have been a time when all things were indistinguishably one, and a point of time at which stirring of movement began.¹²³

This was of course one more point of dissent between Aristotle and Anaxagoras, who (unlike Aristotle) posited a beginning of creation,¹²⁴ and (as Themistius put it) ‘once the world had a beginning, it will never cease to exist’ (ἅπαξ ἀρχὴν λαβοῦσα οὐκέτι τελευτᾷ).¹²⁵ Simplicius, however, commenting on this point of the Physics, went a step beyond Aristotle. It was not simply the case of ‘a superior cause, which Anaxagoras calls Mind’ (καὶ αἰτίας ἐδεῖτο τινὸς κρείττονος, ἣν ᾿Aναξαγόρας καλεῖ νοῦν): in the first place, ‘it was necessary for that [sc. the Mind] which distinguished those that were contracted (ἔδει γὰρ τὸ τὰ συνῃρημένα διακρῖνον) and caused distinction from contraction in an orderly way (καὶ προάγον ἐν τάξει τὴν διάκρισιν ἀπὸ τῆς συναιρέσεως), and that which had also its own essence contracted (αὐτὸ συνῃρημένην ἔχον τὴν οὐσίαν), to give rise to distinction first and foremost within itself (πρώτως ἀναφαίνειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν διάκρισιν)’.¹²⁶ This intelligible distinction within the Nous himself is the original act towards creation, through which potentialities began to exist and make sense, whereby creation of the actual sensible world was made possible. Therefore,  See infra, p. 296, and note 132.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1121.  Aristotle, Physica, 203a31 34.  Aristotle, op. cit. 203a23 34.  Michael Psellus put the notion of beginning in more vivid terms: “Once Mind came, he caused them [sc. the ὁμοιομέρειαι] to move” (ἐλθὼν ὁ νοῦς ἐκίνησε ταύτας). commPhys, 8.1.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 13.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461.

296

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

not only does Simplicius recognize a beginning of the creative act of the Mind, but also he posits two beginnings: one, the beginning of the intelligible distinction within the Mind; two, the beginning of creation of the visible world. We have already seen that this notion does not have to involve any actual temporal period extended between these two beginnings.¹²⁷ Simplicius is naturally quick to add that to speak about ‘beginning’ of ‘distinction’ is a convention that was usual among both physicists and theologians, ‘who allowed for this [expression] on account of the weakness of our ability to comprehend these things’ (τὸ δὲ χρονικὴν δοκεῖν λέγεσθαι τὴν τῆς διακρίσεως ἀρχὴν σύνηθες ἦν τοῖς πάλαι φυσιολόγοις τε καὶ θεολόγοις συγκαταβαίνουσι τῇ ἀσθενείᾳ τῆς ἡμετέρας νοήσεως). For it is impossible for our mind to follow and grasp the extent of eternity, hence, when we set out to consider these things, we need to speak about a certain beginning (οὐ γὰρ δυνάμεθα τῇ ἀϊδίῳ παρατάσει συμπαρατείνειν τὴν νόησιν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀπαιτοῦμεν ἀρχῆς τινος ὑποτιθεμένης ἐφεξῆς θεωρεῖν τὰ ἀκόλουθα).¹²⁸ Naturally, Simplicius did not sympathize with the idea of the world having a beginning: he only cared to emphasize the derivative character of it. Hence, he argued that the ‘theologians’ did not introduce any temporal beginning of the universe while expressing their doctrines in a mythological garment: what mattered to them was that the universe owes its existence to a Poietic Cause.¹²⁹ By ‘theologians’, he had in mind Anaxagoras, as well as Plato, although subsequently he quoted a statement by Heraclitus urging that ‘this world was made by no God or man, but it has existed always’ (κόσμον τόνδε οὔτε τις θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ᾿ ἦν ἀεί).¹³⁰ The same view he attributes to Empedocles, ‘who believed that the universe, and movement in it, has existed always’.¹³¹ Simplicius then argues that ‘Anaxagoras, Archelaus, and Metrodorus of Chios seem to sustain that the universe was made as of a certain temporal beginning’, as above, and those philosophers spoke of ‘beginning’ for the sake of educational methodology (τάξεως ἕνεκα διδασκαλικῆς).¹³² In other words, he re Supra, p. 266; Simplicius, loc. cit.: προϋπάρχουσαν οὐ χρόνῳ, supra p. 277, note 48.  Simplicius, loc. cit.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 294: ὅτι δὲ οἱ θεολόγοι οὐχ ὡς ἀπὸ χρονικῆς ἀρχῆς, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἀπὸ αἰτίας ποιητικῆς λέγουσι τὴν γένεσιν τοῦ κόσμου καὶ ταύτην μυθικῶς ὥσπερ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα, πρόδηλον.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 294. Nevertheless, Simplicius goes on with reporting that Alexander of Aphrodisias interpreted Heraclitus differently.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1121: καὶ τὸν σφαῖρον εἶναι βούλεται καὶ τὸν κόσμον ἀεί, καὶ κί νησιν ἐνόμιζεν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἀεί εἶναι.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1121: ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς δὲ χρόνου δοκοῦσι λέγειν γεγονέναι τὸν κόσμον ᾿Aνα ξαγόρας τε καὶ ᾿Aρχέλαος καὶ Μητρόδωρος ὁ Χῖος· οὗτοι δὲ καὶ τὴν κίνησιν ἄρξασθαί φασιν· ἠρε

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

297

ports that, to Anaxagoras, the Mind is causally responsible for the existence of the universe, although not in the sense of giving it a beginning, notwithstanding the language we are compelled to use in order to couch this tenet in discursive terms. To speak of such a ‘beginning’ only for reasons of ‘educational methodology’ means that Simplicius drew a sharp division between natural and conceptual considerations, and accorded priority not to intellectual formulations, but to non-discursive direct apprhension of ‘the nature of things’ itself (ἡ τῶν πραγμάτων φύσις),¹³³ which I discuss in a moment. Studying the concept of a twofold creation, one would have thought that Simplicius renders Anaxagoras’ thought in terms reminiscent of Plotinus, to some extent at least. But it would be equally plausible to think the other way round, namely, that Anaxagoras inspired Plotinus himself and the latter’s ontological pattern in an adaptation of the former’s essentials of philosophy. Quite simply, there is no way to opt for either of the two arguments. The fact remains that Simplicius was an honest and accurate scholar, and, unlike Aristotle, he constantly proved this by always accompanying his understanding of Anaxagoras with extensive quotations – and he is the sole intellectual who honoured his work with this noble methodology. On the subject of time and its relation with the cosmic beginning, Simplicius understood eternity not as atemporality, but as a certain kind of time, which is eternal duration stretching alongside with the eternal things: although there is time stretching alongside them, they are not in time, which does not affect their existence in any way, and no notion of ‘beginning and middle and end’ could make sense in respect of eternal things. Simplicius praises Aristotle for having eschewed the notion of ‘generation’ altogether while speaking of eternal things (τὸ ὄνομα τῆς γενέσεως παραιτήσασθαι σαφῶς ἐπὶ τῶν ἀϊδίων λέγειν), because this notion could induce into supposing a temporal beginning (διὰ τὸ ῥᾳδίως τὴν φαντασίαν ἀρχὴν χρονικὴν ὑποβάλλειν τοῖς γίνεσθαι λεγομένοις).¹³⁴ This is what many people suffered, because their apprehension could not grasp the nature of eternal creatures (καὶ πολλοὶ πεπόνθασιν οὐ δυνάμενοι τοῖς ἀϊδίοις δημιουργήμασι ταῖς ἐννοίαις συμπαρατείνεσθαι): once they heard

μούντων γὰρ τὸν πρὸ τοῦ χρόνον τῶν ὄντων κίνησιν ἐγγενέσθαι φασὶν ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ, ὑφ᾿ ἧς γε γονέναι τὸν κόσμον. φαίνονται δὲ καὶ οὗτοι τάξεως ἕνεκα διδασκαλικῆς ἀρχὴν τῆς κοσμοποιίας ὑποθέμενοι. Likewise, Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1186, quoted supra, p. 270, note 28.  Simplicius, commCael p. 118; cf. pp. 139; 159; 512; 530; 589; commCateg, pp. 43; 136; 214; commEpict, p. 68; commAnim, p. 160.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1359. This ‘direct apprhension’ setting discursive propositions aside, put in Stoic terms, was the καταληπτική φαντασία (‘direct apprehension’). COT, pp. 139; 158 61. See infra, pp. 562; 1247.

298

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

about something being generated from a certain cause, and existing because of it (ἀλλὰ τῷ ἀπ᾿ αἰτίας ὑφισταμένῳ καὶ γίνεσθαι λεγομένῳ), they presumed a notion of temporal beginning. They did so only because they believed that assuming a temporal beginning and middle and end of creation could make it easier for them to understand those things (χρονικὴν ἀρχὴν προστιθέντες καὶ ῥᾷον δοκοῦντες μανθάνειν, εἴ τις ἀρχὴν καὶ μέσα καὶ τέλος χρονικῶς ὑποθοῖτο τῆς δημιουργίας).¹³⁵ However, Simplicius conceded that to explain out such things in terms of temporal beginning is a general human characteristic, since human intellect is incapable of extending its apprehension as far as the infinite existence of eternal things, and ‘demands’ the idea of a ‘certain beginning’, to which things should be ‘subsequent’ (ἀπαιτοῦμεν ἀρχῆς τινος ὑποτιθεμένης ἐφεξῆς θεωρεῖν τὰ ἀκόλουθα).¹³⁶ Nevertheless, he believed that ‘time’ being understood as everlasting dura¹³⁷ tion was a notion widely accepted by ancient philosophers, and he essays to accommodate even Plato into this group, by attributing the notion of a certain time proper existing per se prior to the actual generation of the universe.¹³⁸ As regards Anaxagoras, Simplicius considers his statement in Aristotelian terms, namely, the proposition, ‘a verb indicates time’.¹³⁹ Consequently, when Anaxagoras wrote that ‘all things were together’, he indicated that time existed prior to ‘the distinction by means of which the world was created’ (καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας δέ, ὅταν λέγῃ ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, χρόνον ἐνδείκνυται πρὸ τῆς κοσμοποιοῦ διακρίσεως). For the verb was has a temporal connotation (καὶ γὰρ τὸ ἦν χρονικόν): therefore, Anaxagoras suggests that it was at a subsequent time that the Mind

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1360.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 461.  See, COT, pp. 183 4; 206 19.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1155: εἰ οὖν καὶ Πλάτων διὰ τὸν χρόνον φησὶ τῆς δυνατῆς ἀϊδιότητος τὸ πᾶν μετέχειν, δῆλον ὅτι καὶ κατ᾿ αὐτὸν ἀΐδιος ἐστὶν ὁ χρόνος, εἰ καὶ μὴ οὕτως ὡς ὁ αἰών.  Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 16b: Ῥῆμα δέ ἐστι τὸ προσσημαῖνον χρόνον. Likewise, op. cit. 19b; Poetica, 1457a. This was taken up by the following authors: Ammonius of Alexandria, commDeInterpr, pp. 32; 34; 47 53; 57; 90; 128; 155; 158; 166; 189; commCateg, p. 11. Simplicius, commCateg, p. 43. John Philoponus, commAnalPr, p. 11; De Aeternitate Mundi, pp. 108; 111. Olym piodorus of Alexandria, Prolegomena, p. 21. Elias of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 131. Michael Psellus, Opuscula i, 52, lines 276 84. John Italus, Quaestiones Quodlibetales, section 28, lines 159 66. Eustratius of Nicaea, In Aristotelis Analyticorum Posteriorum Librum Secundum Commen tarium, p. 174. Gennadius Scholarius, Commentarium in Aristotelis De Interpretatione, Treatise 1, lines 126 52; Treatise 3 (ad hoc); also, Treatises 8; 9; 10. Anonymous, Commentarium In Librum De Interpretatione (e cod. Paris. gr. 2064), pp. 5; 7; 74. Also, Christians: Origen, frJohn, 1; 110. Di dymus, Commentarii in Ecclesiasten (7 8.8), Cod. p. 236. The only philosopher who developed an interesting argument against Aristotle’s proposition was Stephanus (philosopher, Athens, Alex andria, seventh century), In Aristotelis Librum De Interpretatione, p. 7; cf. pp. 11 14.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

299

distinguished and set in order the things that were indinstinguishable during the preceding infinite time’ (καὶ ἀδιάκριτα ὄντα τὸν ἄπειρον πρὸ τοῦ χρόνον ὕστερον διακρῖναι καὶ κοσμῆσαι τὸν νοῦν φησι).¹⁴⁰ The notion of eternity as everlasting duration being extended alongside the intelligible reality appealed to both pagans¹⁴¹ and Christians¹⁴² alike. Simplicius attributed this also to Anaxagoras, but he caveated that this was his own understanding: once intelligible realities came to being (which is also the incorporeal creation of Anaxagoras), time was there as a beginningless concomitant of that reality. Following the primal fusion, the distinction of the incorporeal order (meaning, creation) and time proper constitute a concomitant occurrence.¹⁴³ However, what ‘eternal’ really means, namely, whether it bespeaks everlasting duration or timelessness, was a controversial issue, even during the times of Simplicius. Strato of Lampsacus, who criticized Aristotle’s concept of time, had argued that ‘if by being in time’ one understands ‘to be contained by time’, it is

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1153.  Proclus, commTim, p. 254: ὁ αἰὼν συμφυής ἐστι τοῖς νοητοῖς, ἔχων καὶ περιέχων τὸν ἄπει ρον χρόνον, καὶ τὸ αἰώνιον νοητὸν ὄντως ἐστίν. εἰ δὲ τοῦτο, τὸ δὲ ἀεὶ ὂν τὸ αἰώνιον δηλοῖ, τί δεῖ τὴν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ φύσιν εἰς τοῦτο ἀνάγειν τὸ ἀεὶ ὄν, ἀλλὰ μὴ λέγειν ἀεὶ γινόμενον αὐτόν, ὡς κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου ἀϊδιότητα συμπαρατεινόμενον; Op. cit. p. 278: δεῖ τῶν αἰωνίως ἀϊδίων καὶ τῶν ἐν μέρει χρόνου γενητῶν εἶναι μεταξὺ τὴν κατὰ τὸν ἄπειρον χρόνον γενητὴν ὑπόστασιν, καὶ ταύτην διττήν, ἢ τὸ μὲν ὅλον ἀΐδιον ἔχουσαν εἰς τὸν ὅλον χρόνον, τὰ δὲ μέρη ἐν μέρεσι τοῦ χρόνου, οἷα τὰ τῇδε στοιχεῖα, ἢ καὶ τὸ ὅλον καὶ τὰ μέρη συμπαρατείνοντα πρὸς τὴν ἀϊδιότητα τοῦ χρόνου παντός, ὡς τὰ οὐράνια· οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἡ αὐτὴ ἀϊδιότης κατὰ τὸν αἰῶνα καὶ τὸν ὅλον χρόνον· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἡ αὐτὴ ἀπειρία χρόνου καὶ αἰῶνος· οὐδὲ γὰρ ταὐτὸν αἰὼν καὶ χρόνος. … Σκοπὸς μὲν οὖν αὐτῷ δεῖξαι γενητὸν ἁπλῶς τὸν κόσμον ὡς καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τὴν δύναμιν καὶ τὴν ἐνέργειαν καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν ἀϊδιότητα τῷ ὅλῳ χρόνῳ συμπαρεκτεινομένην ἔχοντα.  Origen (using this only as a metaphor), commJohn, I.29.204: οὐκ ἔνι γὰρ ἑσπέρα θεοῦ, ἐγὼ δὲ ἡγοῦμαι, ὅτι οὐδὲ πρωΐα, ἀλλὰ ὁ συμπαρεκτείνων τῇ ἀγενήτῳ καὶ ἀϊδίῳ αὐτοῦ ζωῇ, ἵν᾿ οὕτως εἴπω, χρόνος ἡμέρα ἐστὶν αὐτῷ σήμερον, ἐν ᾗ γεγέννηται ὁ υἱός, ἀρχῆς γενέσεως αὐτοῦ οὕτως οὐχ εὑρισκομένης ὡς οὐδὲ τῆς ἡμέρας. Gregory of Nazianzus, In Theophania, PG.36.320.14 18 & In Sanctum Pascha, PG.36.628.30 34: Αἰὼν γάρ, οὔτε χρόνος, οὔτε χρόνου τι μέρος· οὐδὲ γὰρ μετρητόν· ἀλλ᾿ ὅπερ ἡμῖν ὁ χρόνος, ἡλίου φορᾷ μετρούμενος, τοῦτο τοῖς ἀϊδίοις αἰών, τὸ συμ παρεκτεινόμενον τοῖς οὖσιν, οἷον τι χρονικὸν κίνημα καὶ διάστημα. John of Damascus para phrased this in Expositio Fidei, 15 (see COT, pp. 262; 265 6; 370): Λέγεται πάλιν αἰὼν οὐ χρόνος οὐδὲ χρόνου τι μέρος ἡλίου φορᾷ καὶ δρόμῳ μετρούμενον ἤγουν δι᾿ ἡμερῶν καὶ νυκτῶν συνι στάμενον, ἀλλὰ τὸ συμπαρεκτεινόμενον τοῖς ἀϊδίοις οἷον τι χρονικὸν κίνημα καὶ διάστημα· ὅπερ γὰρ τοῖς ὑπὸ χρόνον ὁ χρόνος, τοῦτο τοῖς ἀϊδίοις ἐστὶν αἰών. Also, copied by Michael Psel lus, who added an inspired analysis of his own, while essaying to temper Gregory Nazianzen’s gross Platonism. Opuscula i, 41. I have discussed these in COT, pp. 262 6; 370; and RCR, pp. 291 3; 295; 302.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 639: καὶ ὥσπερ τὸν χρόνον ἐπειράθημεν ὁμοφυῆ πρὸς τὴν δημι ουργίαν ἀποδοῦναι.

300

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

obvious that no eternal thing can be said to be in time. On the other hand, Simplicius argues that, according to Aristotle, ‘eternal’ means existence throughout all time, but ‘eternal’ itself is neither temporal nor is it encompassed by time (ἀλλ᾿ ἔοικεν ᾿Aριστοτέλης τὸ ἐν τῷ παντὶ χρόνῳ ὑφεστὼς αἰώνιον λέγειν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἔγχρονον ἅτε οὐ περιεχόμενον χρόνω). For the being proper of time lies in its own eternally becoming (ἐν τῷ ἀεὶ γίνεσθαι τὸ εἶναι ἔχει ὁ ἀεὶ χρόνος). Subsequently, to speak of ‘eternal’ in the sense of everlastingness (τὸ ἐν χρόνῳ ἀΐδιον) is tantamount to speaking of infinite duration (τὸ ἀεὶ κατὰ τὸ ἐπ᾿ ἄπειρον ἔχειν), not timelessness. This means that any duration, which we determine by counting, is ‘a time, which is contained by another time’ (πᾶς ὁ λαμβανόμενος χρόνος ὑπὸ χρόνου ἄλλου περιέχεται). Simplicius believed that Aristotle ‘made the distinction between the flux of time’ (τὸν ῥέοντα χρόνον διεῖλε) and everlastingness which he thought to be somehow divine. The noble example of this is the existence of heavens, which ‘became eternal by participating in this everlastingness’. This statement is tantamount to saying that the essence of the heaven is eternal because it participates in everlastingness, in accordance with the nature of everlastingness, which means that the heaven contains all time in its own essence (τοῦ γὰρ ἀεὶ μετασχοῦσα ἡ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ οὐσία γέγονεν ἀΐδιος κατ᾿ αὐτὸ τὸ ἀεί, ταὐτὸν δὲ εἰπεῖν τὸν σύμπαντα χρόνον οὐσιωθεῖσα).¹⁴⁴ To say that the heaven is ‘uncreated does not mean that it owes its existence to no cause (καὶ ὅτι οὕτως ἀγένητός ἐστιν, οὐχ ὡς ἀναίτιος): it only means that it is eternal, and it did not appear at some moment of time, as if it started to exist as of a certain moment whereas it did not exist prior to that’ (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἀΐδιος καὶ μὴ ἐν μέρει χρόνου γενόμενος, μηδὲ πρότερον μὲν ὢν ὕστερον δὲ μὴ ὤν).¹⁴⁵ Although the meaning of the statement would not change, there must be a scribal oversight here, since evidently Simplicius means πρότερον μὲν μὴ ὢν ὕστερον δὲ ὤν. Nevertheless, even as it stands, the meaning is the same: the existence of heavens is omnitemporal. Of course, Aristotle said that, in any statement, always ‘a verb indicates time’. Simplicius endorses this (πανταχοῦ οὖν ῥήματος ἐνόντος καὶ χρόνος προσδηλοῦται), but his understanding of it is more sophisticated: not everything involved in our temporal (verbal) statements bespeaks one and the selfsame time, nor should we understand it according to common experience, that is, in terms of succession of prior and posterior (οὐ συσσημαίνων ὅτι ἄμφω ἐν ἑνὶ χρόνῳ οὐδὲ ὅτι πρότερον τὸ ἕτερον). Common verbal (i. e. temporal) statements involve time only in the sense that they indicate relation of an accidental occurrence to

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 780.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 435.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

301

both their subject and its temporal moment (ἀλλὰ τὴν τοῦ συμβεβηκότος μόνην πρός τε τὸ ὑποκείμενον καὶ τὸν χρόνον σχέσιν παρίστησιν). In everyday life, events occur and then pass; therefore, they cannot be of the same nature as eternal things; for, were it for them to be of the same nature, it would be unnecessary to use temporal statements indicating what is either prior or posterior (τοῦτο δὲ ἐπειδὴ κατὰ χρόνον παραγίνεται καὶ ἀπογίνεται τὰ κυρίως συμβεβηκότα, ὡς εἴγε ἦν ἀχώριστα πρὸς τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ ἀϊδίως ὑπάρχοντα, οὐκ ἂν χρόνος προεσημαίνετο). Consequently, ‘when we say that the Mind thinks [or considers, or apprehends] it is us who add a temporal implication to it’ (κἂν γὰρ λέγωμεν ὅτι ὁ νοῦς νοεῖ, τὸ χρονικὸν ἡμεῖς προστίθεμεν). We can make out the difference between that which involves inevitable interpolation of temporal notions by ourselves and the reality itself without any interpolation of this kind, only once we follow the nature of things itself, and discover the real difference between the actual concepts that are involved in such propositions (τὰ δὲ κατὰ συμπλοκὴν λεγόμενα καὶ τὰ ἄνευ συμπλοκῆς ἀνευρήσομεν τῇ φύσει τῶν πραγμάτων ἀκολουθοῦντες καὶ τῇ τῶν νοημάτων διαφορᾷ). Simplicius adds with some admiration that the Pythagorean Archytas treated these issues and Aristotle in the Categories followed him suit. In his own book, Archytas considered the difference between ‘words as signs’ of certain realities and ‘that which is really meant by these words’ (καὶ τὴν μὲν σημαίνουσαν εἶπεν εἶναι λέξιν, τὴν δὲ σημαινομένην διάνοιαν). Also, he distinguished and determined the nature of things that are either simple or composite, and either perfect or wanting (τά τε ἁπλᾶ καὶ σύνθετα καὶ τὰ τέλεια καὶ ἐλλιπῆ διωρίσατο); he taught that one should strive to comprehend the difference between statements that inevitably involve our own human way of comprehension and realities themselves (καὶ ἀφ᾿ ὧν δεῖ τά τε κατὰ συμπλοκὴν καὶ ἄνευ συμπλοκῆς δοκιμάζειν ἐδίδαξεν).¹⁴⁶ Simplicius had a clear grasp of the need to envisage how things are in themselves, and to try to escape as much as possible the inevitable distortion that human language and understanding instil into relevant considerations. This is the meaning of his recurrent appeal to ‘the nature of things’, which is Aristotelian.¹⁴⁷ To this purpose, he makes a significant point: strictly speaking, ‘being in time’ means that something ‘is encompassed by time’ (τὰ κυρίως λεγόμενα ἐν χρόνῳ οὕτως λέγεται ὡς τὰ περιεχόμενα ὑπὸ τοῦ χρόνου), in the same manner that countable things are encompassed by the number proper which indicates their quantity (ὥσπερ καὶ τὰ ἐν ἀριθμῷ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ). Things that  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 43.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 301a; Ethica Eudemia, 1216b; Metaphysica, 1041b. Simplicius, comm Cael, pp. 118; 139; 159; 530; 589; commCateg, pp. 43; 116; 214; commPhys, p. 209; commEpict, p. 68; commAnim, p. 160.

302

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

are temporal in a proper sense are said to be so because of time, and they always need more time, so that they can continue to exist (τῶν γὰρ κυρίως ἐν χρόνῳ ὄντων πλείονα χρόνον ἔστιν ἀεὶ λαβεῖν τοῦ εἶναι αὐτῶν).¹⁴⁸ To be in time means (and entails) needing more time in order to exist (ταῦτα ἐστὶν ἐν χρόνῳ, ὧν πλείονα χρόνον ἔστι λαβεῖν), as well as undergoing and accommodating oneself to everything that temporal existence involves (πάσχει τὰ ἐν χρόνῳ ὑπὸ τοῦ χρόνου).¹⁴⁹ The relation of time proper to temporal things is the same as the relation of space proper to spatial things, and of number proper to countable entities (οὕτω γὰρ ἔσται περιεχόμενα ὑπὸ τοῦ χρόνου καὶ κυρίως ἐν χρόνῳ λεγόμενα, ὥσπερ ἐν τόπῳ καὶ ἐν ἀριθμῷ).¹⁵⁰ Aristotle had already said that those which exist eternally, qua existing eternally, are not in time (τὰ ἀεὶ ὄντα ᾗ ἀεὶ ὄντα, οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν χρόνῳ), since they are not embraced by time, nor is their being measured by time. This is indicated by the fact that none of them suffers anything because of the passage of time, as though they were outside its scope.¹⁵¹ On this, there is a noteworthy dissent between Simplicius and Alexander of Aphrodisias, which was owing to the meaning ascribed to the (always dubious) term ἀΐδιος. Alexander, following Aristotle’s statement, argued that ἀΐδια are not in time, since time does not embrace their being. Now Simplicius says that, if by ἀΐδια Alexander means αἰώνια, in the sense of timelessness indicated by Plato in Timaeus 37d3, this could be granted; but if ἀΐδιον suggests existence of infinite duration (εἰ δὲ ἀΐδιον λέγει τὸ κατὰ πάντα τὸν χρόνον ὑφεστηκός), it is not true that this is not temporal (οὐκ ἔστιν ἀληθὲς ὅτι οὐκ ἔστι τοῦτο ἐν χρόνῳ), unless this means that this existence is not in time (εἰ μόνον οὕτως ὑποτεθείη ὡς ἐν χρόνῳ τὸ εἶναι ἔχειν). For being in time can only be said of temporal things, which become and exist in time, and not all of them exist simultaneously as eternal things do (τοιαῦτα δὲ τὰ ἐν τῷ γίνεσθαι τὸ εἶναι ἔχοντα καὶ μὴ ἅμα ὅλα ὑφεστηκότα ὥσπερ τὰ αἰώνια).¹⁵² Things become as time goes by, like ‘motion’, which emerges out of the process of becoming, and ‘it is like the day’: not all of it exists simultaneously, but it comes to pass gradually (ἡ γὰρ κίνησις ἐν τῷ γίνεσθαι τὸ εἶναι ἔχει ὥσπερ ἡ ἡμέρα, καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἅμα ὅλη).¹⁵³ ‘For were it for all of motion proper to exist simultaneously, this would be idle and could not move’, and (just like time, as above)

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 739.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 741.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 739.  Aristotle, Physica, 221b. F. Cornford (op. cit. p. 405) translated ὡς οὐκ ὄντα ἐν χρόνῳ, ‘with in its scope’, which though is exactly the opposite of what Aristotle wrote.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 739.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1339.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

303

‘motion owes its existence proper to becoming itself’ (ἡ γὰρ κίνησις οὐκ ἔστιν ἅμα ὅλη, ἀλλ᾿ ἐν τῷ γίνεσθαι τὸ εἶναι ἔχει. εἰ γὰρ ἅμα ὅλην τὸ κινούμενον κατεδέχετο, εἱστήκει ἂν καὶ οὐκ ἐκινεῖτο).¹⁵⁴ Then, he explains that this is a time different from ‘the time of beings’, and it existed before motion appeared along with those which came into being. From this ‘different time’ of motionlessness, motion (indeed revolution) was produced (ἠρεμούντων γὰρ τὸν πρὸ τοῦ χρόνον τῶν ὄντων κίνησιν ἐγγενέσθαι φασὶν ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ, ὑφ᾿ ἧς γεγονέναι τὸν κόσμον).¹⁵⁵ Therefore, there was an infinite time, and an infinite period of rest before motion was caused by the Mind, and this was a kind of time where everything was at rest, including the Mind itself. This sounds rather paradoxical, since time in the absence of motion is a time which is not measurable. Nevertheless, in order to describe what this is like, Simplicius uses the analogy to space: we can envisage something that is present throughout all space and call it ubiquitous or omnipresent, such as this material world itself as a whole (εἰ ἔστι τι ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ τόπῳ ἅμα ὃ πανταχοῦ λέγομεν οἷον τὸν ὅλον σωματοειδῆ κόσμον); by the same token, we can also conceive of a presence which expands throughout all time, which presence is always invariably one (εἶναι καὶ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ ἅμα χρόνῳ τὸ ἀεὶ ὂν ταὐτὸν ἐν ταὐτῷ κατ᾿ ἀριθμόν). No one finds it absurd to say that space proper is ubiquitous, that is, present everywhere at the same time (τὸν μὲν γὰρ ὅλον τόπον εἶναι ἅμα οὐδὲν ἄτοπον), since space proper is not given rise by means of the process of becoming: this happens only with motion (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐν τῷ γίνεσθαι τὸ εἶναι ἔχει ὁ τόπος ὥσπερ ἡ κίνησις). Why then should we not visualize a certain time proper which exists per se eternally and it is not dependent on, or given rise to, by things that are in time? He appeals to his master Damascius, who argued for an analogy of space with time, since space proper defines the limits of those which exist in space, and time sets the limits of those existing in time, as indeed a number sets the limits to those which are counted (ὁ χρόνος ὁρίζει καὶ περιέχει τὸ ἐν χρόνῳ, ὥσπερ καὶ ὁ τόπος τὸ ἐν τόπῳ καὶ ὁ ἀριθμὸς τὸ ἐν ἀριθμῷ λεγόμενον).¹⁵⁶ Therefore, ‘Aristotle’s claim that eternal things are not in time was absurd’ (ἀτόπως δέ φησιν ὑπὸ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους τὰ ἀΐδια λέγεσθαι μὴ εἶναι ἐν χρόνῳ).¹⁵⁷ Why is it that both space and number proper are eternal and prior to the corruptible reality whereas time is not? (διὰ τί δέ, φησί, τόπος μὲν καὶ ἀριθμός ἐστιν

 Simplicius,  Simplicius,  Simplicius, χρόνου).  Simplicius,

op. cit. p. 1328. op. cit. p. 1121. op. cit. p. 776. He appeals to a treatise by Damascius entitled On Time (Περὶ op. cit. p. 777.

304

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

ἀΐδιος πρὸ τοῦ φθαρτοῦ, χρόνος δὲ οὐκ ἔστιν;).¹⁵⁸ Or should we accept that there is also an eternal time (since Aristotle himself posits that time is incessant), but this (like motion) is produced by the process of becoming, and they exist eternally, yet not all of time exists at the same time, but it is eternally produced (ἢ ἔστι μὲν καὶ χρόνος ἀΐδιος [ἀνέκλειπτον γοῦν ἀποδείκνυσι τὸν χρόνον ᾿Aριστοτέλης], ἀλλ᾿ ἐν τῷ γίνεσθαι τὸ εἶναι ἔχων ὥσπερ καὶ ἡ κίνησις καὶ τὸ ἀεὶ αὐτοῖς ὑπάρχει, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ἅμα ὅλον ὄν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπ᾿ ἄπειρον προϊόν).¹⁵⁹ Therefore, there must be a time proper which is not identical with the flux of time. Of course, Simplicius adds, one might ask, ‘what is the difference between eternity and a certain kind of time proper which is considered as existing in oneness?’(meaning the oneness of all principles being together in union).¹⁶⁰ This time proper Aristotle called ‘eternity’, but Damascius insisted on calling it ‘time’, because this is not produced by itself, and it is only the life of the Producer of everything in the universe that deserves the privilege of being associated with ‘eternity’: time is only ‘an image of eternity’, as Plato put it.¹⁶¹ Quite simply, Simplicius and Damascius appear as paying they respects to Plato, or so they felt; in fact, however, their respects were paid to Plotinus, who ‘was the first that pursued the notion of the primal time’ which determines the time of the universe (ἐν δὲ τοῖς νεωτέροις Πλωτῖνος φαίνεται πρῶτος τὸν πρῶτον ἐκεῖνον ἐπιζητήσας χρόνον), and he was followed by Iamblichus and Proclus.¹⁶² Simplicius had a clear grasp of this kind of time, in which neither before nor after makes sense, but it is an eternal now (that is, sheer everlasting duration, not atemporality), and yet time still it is. This he calls ‘the simultaneously existing time’ (ὁ ἅμα ὢν χρόνος),¹⁶³ which is in fact an Aristotelian expression, but any similarity with Aristotle’s conception of time is there only in bare letter.¹⁶⁴

 Simplicius, loc. cit. quoting Damascius.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 777, going on with the argument by rendering Damascius rather than quoting from him.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 871: καὶ τί διοίσει, φαίη τις ἄν, τοῦ αἰῶνος ὁ συνηγμένος εἰς ἓν ὡς λέγομεν χρόνος; ὁ γοῦν ᾿Aριστοτέλης αἰῶνα τοῦτον ἂν λέγοι εἶναι ἐν τῷ περιέχεσθαι τὸν ἑκά στοτε γινόμενον ἕκαστον χρόνον.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 181: ἡμεῖς δὲ οἱ τὸ ὑπὸ ἑτέρου ὑφιστάμενον γενητὸν εἶναι καὶ γινόμε νον ὁμολογοῦντες εἰκότως ἂν οὐκ αἰῶνα καλοῖμεν αὐτὸν ἀλλὰ χρόνον, αἰῶνος εἰκόνα πρώτην τιθέμενοι ταύτην. This is an allusion to Plato, Timaeus, 37d: time is ‘a moving image of eternity.’  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 790; cf. pp. 791 ff.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 720; cf. pp. 722; 731. While supposedly explaining Aristotle, Simplicius makes the non Aristotelian distinction of ‘time that contains’ and time which is ‘contained’ (πε ριέχων καὶ περιεχόμενος). Op. cit. p. 764, commenting on Physica, 223b. But Aristotle only treats the question of whether all the nows of different things that are in time are the same nows.  Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 219b11: ὁ δ᾿ ἅμα πᾶς χρόνος ὁ αὐτός.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

305

Simplicius had in mind the temporal everlastingness which is stretched out along with the intelligible realities, such as the universals: speaking of ‘growth’ or ‘alteration’, it is not possible to apply any notion of ‘before’ or ‘after’ to these universals (οὐδὲ καθὸ ἡ μὲν φορά ἐστιν ἡ δὲ αὔξησις ἡ δὲ ἀλλοίωσις τὸ πρότερον καὶ ὕστερον ἔχουσιν); they exist simultaneously within the same time, which is why they are said to be ‘of the same age’ (διὸ καὶ ὁμήλικα λέγεται), in like a manner ‘number five’ is always the same, even if the things in which it is present are different things (ὥσπερ καὶ πεντὰς ἡ αὐτή, κἂν τὰ ἐν οἷς ᾖ διαφέρη). In the realm of ‘the simultaneously existing time’, there is neither before nor after (τοῦ δὲ ἅμα ὄντος χρόνου οὐκ ἔστι τὸ μὲν πρότερον τὸ δὲ ὕστερον), which is why in ‘the simultaneously existing time’ (ὥστε οὐδὲ διαφέρει ὁ ἅμα ὢν χρόνος) no notion of ‘difference’ makes sense.¹⁶⁵ Does this make the Anaxagorean Mind temporal? The answer to this delicate question is both yes and no. There is another kind of time existing alongside ¹⁶⁶ of Mind, but Mind itself is not in time. To support this, Simplicius had recourse in Aristotle, who said, ‘to be in existence while time is in existence does not constitute being in time (οὔκ ἐστι τὸ ἐν χρόνῳ εἶναι τὸ εἶναι ὅτε ὁ χρόνος ἐστίν), just as neither is a thing constituted as being in motion or in a place, because motion and place exist while it exists.’¹⁶⁷ Subsequently, Simplicius (quoting Aristotle) argues that ‘to say that Being is in time just because time exists, is an improper use of the expression in time’ (τὸ γὰρ λέγειν ἐν χρόνῳ εἶναι τὸ εἶναι ὅτε χρόνος ἐστὶν ἀκυρώτερον λέγεται ἐν χρόνῳ).¹⁶⁸ His further argument is brilliant: in order for motion to make sense, both time and space are needed, and motion itself is somehow in the middle, partaking of both space and time. If there is a ‘number’ measuring what is either prior or posterior (which was Aristotle’s definition of time),¹⁶⁹ this can make sense on account of both space and time being there (μέση γὰρ οὖσα ἡ κίνησις τοῦ τε τόπου καὶ τοῦ χρόνου ἑκατέρωθεν προσλαμβάνει μέτρον ἤτοι ἀριθμὸν τοῦ προτέρου καὶ ὑστέρου). Put in modern terms, any event is a spatio-temporal occurrence. Nevertheless, with reference to space, motion is localized (κατὰ μὲν τὸν τόπον τοπίζεται), and, with reference to time, motion is expressed in temporal

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 720.  About time existing ‘alongside with’ (συμπαρεκτεινόμενος), COT, pp. 218; 262 5; 309. How ever, the case with Mind is its existence alongside a kind of ‘time’ other than the present time of the universe, indeed a time prior to the universe itself.  Aristotle, Physica, 221a.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 739, quoting the foregoing passage of Aristotle.  Aristotle, Physica, 219a 220a; 223a; 251b. See also COT, pp. 183 5.

306

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

terms (κατὰ δὲ τὸν χρόνον χρονίζεται): it is localized (τοπίζεται) in so far as its spatial size occupies a certain space (καθόσον θέσιν ἔχει αὐτῆς ἡ διάστασις), and it is located in time (χρονίζεται) in so far as its existence is in a state of flux (καθόσον ἐν ῥοῇ ἦν ἡ ὑπόστασις). For if an event had a place only, it should be in need also of time (otherwise, it would remain in an endless and still now); and if it had only flux, it would be in need also of place, so that the flux could be realized.¹⁷⁰ In other words, Mind can exist alongside with time, and yet not to be in time. The point which Simplicius made is that this kind of time, no matter what its nature, is not atemporality: it is everlasting duration, yet a duration in a different kind of time. This is about an incorporeal reality, which means that Mind is in no need of space proper, hence, this ‘time’ does not have to be associated with spatial motion, since there is neither space nor motion at all. The Mind is self-existent (αὐθυπόστατον), therefore, it should be understood as existing ‘in its wholeness at the same time’ (ὅλον ἅμα εἶναι χρή), causing all things to subsist, as well as supporting its own Being (ὑφιστάνον τε καὶ ὑφιστανόμενον). By contrast, the entire realm of Becoming does not exist at the same time (τὸ δὲ γινόμενον ὅλον ἅμα οὐκ ἔστιν),¹⁷¹ which is in fact the raison d’être of time in the material realm. Simplicius treated this question in the context of his conciliatory effort, which is perhaps why he maintained that Aristotle ‘distinguished the flux of time’ (τὸν ῥέοντα χρόνον διεῖλε) from a different kind of time. In any case, he sympathized with the idea of a kind of time ‘which exists always and it is never in a state of flux’ (τὸν ἀεὶ ὄντα καὶ μηδέποτε ῥέοντα χρόνον), which ‘should be associated with all eternity’ (μᾶλλον δὲ ταῦτα ἐκείνῳ συνδήσει πρὸς τὸ ἀΐδιον), by ‘eternity’ meaning τὸ ἀΐδιον understood as everlasting duration, not as timelessness.¹⁷² His thesis is that time has existed always, and this he attributes to Anaxagoras, too. In doing so, he used Anaxagoras’ own words verbatim, so that no room should be left for the usual claim that this was only a ‘Neoplatonic’ interpolation by Simplicius himself. IX According to Anaxagoras, the material universe came to be upon the very moment Mind distinguished the principles out of the primal fusion. The sensible re-

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 716: εἴτε γὰρ εἰ θέσιν μόνην εἶχεν, ἐδεῖτο χρόνου (ἅμα γὰρ οὖσα ἐν τῷ νῦν ἂν ἦν), εἴτε εἰ ῥοὴν μόνην, ἐδεῖτο τόπου. The οὔτε γὰρ … οὔτε εἰ is a mistake, either a scribal or an editorial one. I wrote, εἴτε γὰρ … εἴτε εἰ, since both the text and Simplicius’ argument, which is supported by the context, can make no sense otherwise.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 126  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 780.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

307

ality owes its existence to this distinction of principles, but this is subsequent to their appearance not in terms of temporal succession. Once the principles came to be, a constantly accelerating ‘rotation’ began, which gave rise to the universe, and it keeps doing so. It is interesting then to explore the very moment when the principles appeared, and they started to act so as to produce the material reality without delay. In this context, I will consider the last explicit reference of Simplicius to the intelligible ordering (τὴν νοητὴν διακόσμησιν, meaning, creation), which came to being in one go (τὴν ἅμα ὅλην ὑφεστῶσαν) unlike the material one which came to pass, and still does, gradually, by means of motion and in time. This analysis will be helpful in order to understand his final solution concerning the philosophy of Anaxagoras, which will be canvassed in chapter 7. Simplicius explains Aristotle’s statement, ‘we regard the heaven as uncreated and indestructible, and impervious to either growth or alteration’.¹⁷³ The heaven is subject to no alteration other than a spatial one, and even that takes the form of only circular motion. Likewise, Aristotle drew a line between the reality of the sublunary region and the higher one, and averred that the heaven is uncreated in relation to whatever exists in the sublunary region: it is this kind of circular movement that makes the heaven susceptible of neither growth nor any kind of change (τὸ ἀναυξὲς καὶ τὸ ἀναλλοίωτον ἀπὸ τοῦ εἴδους τῆς κυκλικῆς κινήσεως λαμβάνει). The question though is this: why did Aristotle style the heaven ‘uncreated’? Simplicius develops a syllogism that Aristotle could have made: to any body which revolves, there is no ‘opposite’; by contrast, everything that comes to be and perishes has an opposite: it comes to be out of its opposite and perishes into it. Since a revolving body has no opposite, it neither becomes nor perishes.¹⁷⁴ Moreover, to whatever comes to be and perishes, there must be always a substratum, from which a body becomes and to which it perishes. But there is no ‘opposite’ to circular movement.¹⁷⁵ To answer the question, ‘why is the heaven styled uncreated?’, Simplicius develops an argument that Aristotle could have made (but in fact he did not): the Whole is a continuum, which has neither  Aristotle, De Caelo, 270a13 14. Simplicius, commCael, p. 91; cf. pp. 109; 116; 144; 383.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 92: τὸ κυκλοφορητικὸν σῶμα οὐκ ἔχει ἐναντίον· τὸ γινόμενον καὶ τὸ φθειρόμενον ἔχει ἐναντίον, ἐξ οὗ γίνεται καὶ εἰς ὃ φθείρεται· καὶ συμπέρασμα, τὸ κυκλο φορητικὸν ἄρα σῶμα οὔτε γίνεται οὔτε φθείρεται.  Simplicius, loc. cit.: πᾶς ἑνὸς μὲν τοῦ εἰ μέλλει τι γίνεσθαι καὶ φθείρεσθαι, ὑποκείμενόν τε εἶναι τι πάντως δεῖ καὶ ἐναντίον, ἐξ οὗ γίνεται καὶ εἰς ὃ φθείρεται, ἑτέρου δέ, ὅτι τῇ κύκλῳ κινή σει οὐκ ἔστιν ἐναντία κίνησις. Cf. op. cit. p. 191: ὅτι δύο παρελήφθησαν προτάσεις εἰς κατασκευὴν τοῦ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀγένητον καὶ ἄφθαρτον εἶναι, ἡ μὲν μείζων λέγουσα, ὅτι τὸ γινόμενον καὶ φθειρόμενον ἐναντίον ἔχειν ἀνάγκη, ἐξ οὗ γίνεται καὶ εἰς ὃ φθείρεται, ἡ δέ, ὅτι ὁ οὐρανός, ταὐ τὸν δὲ εἰπεῖν ὅτι τὸ κυκλοφορητικὸν σῶμα, οὐκ ἔχει ἐναντίον.

308

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

parts nor dimensions, and its characteristics befit only itself and no other; for it exists by itself and moves by itself (ἀμερὲς γὰρ ἀνάγκη καὶ ἀδιάστατον εἶναι καὶ ὅλον ὅλῳ ἑαυτῷ ἐφαρμόττον τὸ κυρίως αὐθυπόστατόν τε καὶ αὐτοκίνητον). By contrast, any divisible entity receives its being only from outside of it (τὸ δὲ μεριστὸν καὶ διεστὼς ἔξωθεν μόνως ἔχει τὸ εἶναι), which is why it is composite, and it changes with time, which determines and counts its physical existence (μεταβάλλει καὶ κινεῖται ἀεὶ ἀπὸ τῆς προτέρας ἕξεως· διὸ καὶ ὁ χρόνος αὐτῷ συμπαραθέει μετρῶν αὐτοῦ καὶ εὐθετίζων ταύτην τὴν ἔκστασιν). In short, all divisible things are composite (τὶ σύνθετον), which is why they do not receive their identity in one go (μὴ ὅλον ἅμα ἐστίν, ὅπερ ἐστίν), but they assume their own being during the flux of their becoming (ἐν τῷ γίνεσθαι τὸ εἶναι ἔχει). This is what distinguishes ‘generated’ things from Being proper (τοῦτο κυρίως ἤδη γενητόν ἐστιν ὡς πρὸς τὸ κυρίως ὂν ἀντιδιῃρημένον) and determines their mutual relationship, which is their receiving existence from Being proper. Whatsoever this Being is, it has its own being from and by itself, and the whole of it exists at one and the same time (ὃ καὶ τὸ εἶναι παρ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ ἔχει καὶ ἅμα ὅλον ἐστὶ τοῦτο, ὅπερ ἐστί). ‘Properly speaking’, this is the radical difference from any generated thing (τοῦτο τὸ κυρίως γενητόν ἐστιν).¹⁷⁶ This analysis is made for one purpose only, namely, to determine the nature of the heaven, which is the ‘most precious’ being ‘that appeared in the corporeal nature first and foremost’ (ὁ πολυτίμητος οὐρανὸς ἀνεφάνη πρῶτος ἐν τῇ σωματικῇ φύσει). This received its existence ‘directly from the Being proper’ (προσεχῶς ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄντος ὑφιστάμενον), which is immovable, unchangeable, and always the same, in terms of essence, power, and action (ἅτε ἀκινήτου τούτου ὄντος καὶ ἀεὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἔχοντος κατάστασιν καὶ κατ᾿ οὐσίαν καὶ κατὰ δύναμιν καὶ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν). Although the heaven belongs to the realm of becoming (because everyone can notice motion taking place in heaven), ‘it has to remain always the same, because it always becomes what it is’ (δεῖ καὶ αὐτὸ μένειν ἀεὶ γινόμενον). This apparent paradox stems from the fact that heaven itself marks the first encounter between Being proper and the corporeal creation, wherefore ‘Being proper related itself to Becoming’ (τοῦ μὲν κυρίως ὄντος εἰς τὸ γινόμενον ὑπελθόντος), by virtue of which ‘eternal everlastingness’ consented to becoming involved with ‘temporal everlastingness’ (τοῦ δὲ ἀεὶ τοῦ αἰωνίου εἰς τὸ χρονικὸν ἀεί). This means that the heaven ‘as much as possible, and to a certain extent, receives in itself the perfection and the allness (παντότητα) of Being, which exists at one and the same time in its wholeness’ (τὴν γὰρ τοῦ ὄντος

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 95. Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 176 & 301, quoted on pp. 287 8.

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

309

τελειότητα καὶ παντότητα τὴν ἅμα ὅλην ὑφεστῶσαν). The heaven receives also ‘the infinite power’ of Being proper and ‘imitates it in the infinite time’ (τοῦτο κατὰ μέρος ὡς δυνατὸν ὑποδέχεται τὴν ἄπειρον ἐκείνου δύναμιν τῷ ἐπ᾿ ἄπειρον τούτῳ μιμούμενον). Therefore, the heaven is the closest creature to the eternal Being, since it came to be first and foremost ‘after the intelligible creation’ (μετὰ τὴν νοητὴν διακόσμησιν ὑποστάς). Its supreme value notwithstanding, this is part of the material universe: it is an ‘image’ by means of ‘resemblance’, but not so because of any essential association with Being proper (εἰς ὁμοιότητα τὴν πρὸς τὸ ὂν τὸ γενητὸν ὑπελθὸν εἰκὼν γέγονεν ἅτε τῷ ἐοικέναι λοιπόν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχὶ τῷ εἶναι πρὸς τὸ ὂν συναπτόμενον). For the supreme reality is sheer ‘union and identity’ (ἀπὸ γὰρ ἑνώσεως καὶ ταυτότητος), which can apply to no creature at all,¹⁷⁷ including the heaven, in which motion, not stillness, is all too evident. A careful reading of Simplicius’ account can show that, when he speaks of ‘heaven’, he actually has in mind ‘space proper’, which is why his vocabulary appears paradoxical: the heaven ‘moved immovably and changed unchangeably’ (κινηθεὶς δὲ ἀκινήτως καὶ μεταβαλὼν ἀμεταβλήτως), and this change was the minimum one, indeed it was change that could grant the heaven also a certain unchangeable character (μόνας ἐκείνας ἔσχε τὰς μεταβολάς, ὅσαι τῷ μονίμῳ συνυπάρχειν ἠδύναντο). By this, he meant circular movement, which is the one that ‘touches upon both the essence and arrangement [of the heaven] at the very least’ (αὕτη γὰρ τῶν μεταβολῶν ὡς ἥκιστα τῆς οὐσίας καὶ τῆς διαθέσεως ἅπτεται), and it does not cause transition to another place, but the heaven is moving while remaining in the same place (οὐκ ἐξίσταται τοῦ τόπου, ἀλλ᾿ ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ μένει κινούμενος).¹⁷⁸ Paradoxical however it is (once put to the test by conventional syllogism), this reality can indeed be grasped by means of non-discursive thought. For all his hostility to Philoponus, Simplicius quotes from his work against Aristotle concerning the eternity of the world. It is ironical that he quotes from the point where Philoponus appeals to Aristotle in order to urge that ‘time is associated with motion, and there is no time in the absence of motion’ (ὁ μὲν γὰρ χρόνος ἐν κινήσει, καὶ ἄνευ κινήσεως ὁ χρόνος οὐκ ἔστιν).¹⁷⁹ Simplicius (who never called Philoponus by any name other than the contemptuous ‘the Grammarian’) says that he quotes from that section of Philoponus, but in fact he paraphrases it considerably, which is a telling account of his (accurate) understanding of the value and function of non-discursive thought.¹⁸⁰

 Simplicius, loc. cit.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 95 6.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 575.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 575: τοῦ γὰρ δημιουργικοῦ νοῦ ἴδιον ἡ ἀθρόα καὶ ἀμερὴς ἅμα πάντων νόησις. οὐκοῦν τὸ μέν τι πρῶτον νοεῖ ὁ νοῦς, τὸ δὲ δεύτερον, τὸ δὲ τρίτον. Simplicius,

310

Chapter 4 – A twofold creation

In this chapter, I have considered the arguments of Simplicius about the notion of a twofold creation in Anaxagoras. To this purpose, he quoted extensively from that work, whereby valuable extensive parts of Anaxagoras’ treatise were saved for posterity, which make it possible for us to assess both Anaxagoras’ philosophy and Simplicius’ arguments about it. In this context, he argued for a certain kind of time, which is everlasting duration rather than timelessness, and it existed alongside with Mind, whereas Mind itself is not in this time, but it remains ‘unmixed with everything’. I am aware that Simplicius, universally known as a Neoplatonist, should have been expected to argue for atemporality rather than everlasting duration. This can give a measure of his truthful assessment of Anaxagoras’ philosophy, against those who are all too quick to invent ‘Neoplatonic interpolation’ in his presentation of Anaxagoras. Following this analysis of Mind existing alongside this kind of time, I should explore further properties of this supreme principle, namely the notion of will attached to it (or, him), which is what I am going to examine next.

commCael, p. 1157 (saying that this is a quotation from Philoponus): συνωμολόγηται, φησί, περὶ τοῦ νῦν, ὡς εἰ ἀμερὴς αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀδιάστατος ἡ πρὸς τὰ νοητὰ τυγχάνει ἐπιβολὴ καὶ μὴ δεομένη συλλογισμῶν εἰς τὴν τοῦ νοητοῦ κατάληψιν ὡς διανοίᾳ μεταβαίνουσα ἐπὶ προτάσεις ἀπὸ προτά σεων, ἀλλ᾿ ἢ ἅπτεται ἢ οὐχ ἅπτεται. Why Simplicius quotes conveniently from Philoponus is not difficult to guess, since, at that point, Philoponus rests his argument with Proclus, and quotes from Proclus’ De Decem Dubitationibus Circa Providentiam, 5: καὶ γὰρ νοῦς πᾶς εἷς καὶ πολὺς καὶ τῷ εἶναι καὶ τῷ νοεῖν. See Simplicius developing his argument further, in op. cit. pp. 1158 68.

Chapter 5 The will of Mind Simplicius did not dispute Aristotle’s understanding of sensible things, and found his arguments sound. His dissent concerning Anaxagoras related to the fact that Anaxagoras’ principles were incorporeal, whereas Aristotle developed his criticism on the premiss that they were material, and presumed them to be elements rather than principles, although he wavered on this, as discussed in chapter 1. This sufficed for his entire criticizing enterprise to collapse. The implications of this cardinal doctrine for the assessment of Anaxagoras’ philosophy are profound and they explain each and everyone of his statements. On account of their incorporeality, the principles have to be all in all, not only in the primal union, but also now, since obviously there is no specific space occupied by each one of them, and they all exist apart from any space. This is why the principles ‘are not separated from one another, nor can they be hacked apart with an axe’,¹ ‘everything is in everything, it is impossible for anything to stand apart [i. e. to be disunited from all the others], which is why all things participate in everything’ (καὶ οὕτως ἂν εἴη ἐν παντὶ πάντα· οὐδὲ χωρὶς ἔστιν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ πάντα παντὸς μοῖραν μετέχει).² Things appear and disappear because of the interactions between the principles, which were created once and for all, and they are always the same, each one having its own particular character, which is unlike any other: therefore ‘neither do they come to be nor they pass away, but they are always the same’ (οὐδὲ γίνεται οὐδὲ φθείρεταί τι τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀεὶ τὰ αὐτά ἐστι), which Anaxagoras himself declared by saying, ‘Even though they have been dissociated in this way, one should know that all of them are in no way either less or more (for it is impossible that they be more than all), but they are always the same’. So he says about the primal mixture and the principles:³ they are present in everything, even though only certain principles are active in different objects and phenomena, making them what they are. Objects become different, or even they perish, once the relevant principles cease to be active upon them; then, other principles take over in order to transform a thing into something else. The omnipresent principles are the ‘seeds of all things’ (σπέρμα-

 Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 175: οὐδὲ διακρίνεται οὐδὲ ἀποκρίνεται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου διὰ τὸ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι· καὶ ἀλλαχοῦ· οὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκει οὔτε τὸ θερμὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ οὔτε τὸ ψυχρὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ θερμοῦ.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 164.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 156.

312

Chapter 5 – The will of Mind

τα πάντων χρημάτων),⁴ they exist in all things, and they are all different from each other (σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλήθους οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις).⁵ Anaxagoras postulated two creations and made the distinction of three ontological states. In the first place, there is an undifferentiated fusion and, in the proper sense, it is only Mind that can be said to exist. Then, Mind assumes a generative function and produces an intelligible totality of principles, in which the χρήματα are distinguished and acquire a certain identity, which is how everyone of them became a specific seed (σπέρμα). This marks also the beginning of the material world. Whereas it is Mind that produces it, the means to do so are the ‘seeds’: they function as dynamic causes, which are productive, cohesive, and disintegrative none the less. The intelligible ‘ordering’ is in fact ‘creation’, and the sole Uncreated being is Mind alone, since, in Simplicius’ definition, ‘everything that receives its existence from a certain cause is called generated’ (γενητὸν τοίνυν κοινῶς λέγεται τὸ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ὑπόστασιν ἀπό τινος αἰτίου δεχόμενον). The Mind is the Ultimate Cause of everything, even though in ontological terms it is different from (indeed alien to) everything that it produced. This difference guarantees also Mind’s utter simplicity (ἀγένητον μόνον ἐστὶ τὸ πρῶτον τῶν πάντων αἴτιον, ὃ καὶ ἓν καὶ ἁπλούστατόν ἐστιν). Everything that exists, whether corporeal or incorporeal, it exists by virtue of the fact that Mind is there through its surrogates (i. e. the principles), but it is participated in by nothing and by no one (εἴπερ πάντα μετέχει τοῦ ἑνὸς καὶ τὸ μὴ μετέχον οὐδέν ἐστι). The Mind is of course incorporeal and it creates an incorporeal realm of productive and functional causes. Despite this common incorporeality, Mind is in no way involved with that incorporeal multitude, it cannot be described or expressed by this multitude, it has noting to do with it, except for the fact that Mind is the Cause that produced this multitude and he oversees their activity. The Mind’s oneness is absolute and not compromised by his having produced the incorporeal multitude.⁶ The Mind acts, since he is present in everything, granting each thing its specific character, ‘which is his work’ (ὁ νοῦς, εἴπερ ἐφέστηκε μὲν τοῖς οὖσιν ὡς διακρίνων αὐτὰ καὶ τοῦτο ἔχει ἔργον);⁷ he is constantly present everywhere, know-

 Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 609.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 34.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 92: τὸ δὲ ἓν οὐδὲ μετέχει τοῦ πλήθους, ὥστε τὸ γινόμενον πᾶν πε πληθυσμένον ἐστί· τὸ γὰρ πλῆθος προσεχῶς ὑπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς ὑφίσταται, εἴπερ καὶ μετέχειν ἀνάγκη τὸ πλῆθος τοῦ ἑνός, ἵνα μὴ ἀπειράκις ἄπειρον ᾖ· τὸ δὲ ἓν ἀνέμφατον τοῦ πλήθους ἐστίν, εἴπερ κυρίως ἕν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 176.

Chapter 5 – The will of Mind

313

ing and controlling everything’ (καὶ γνώμην περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἔχει καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον),⁸ since ‘Mind, which always exists, surely he exists also now, so that all the other things also should exist, namely, in the encompassing multitude [of the principles], and in the things that have been joined together, and in the things that have been separated off’ (ὁ δὲ νοῦς, ὃς ἀεί ἐστι, τὸ κάρτα καὶ νῦν ἐστιν, ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα [ᾗ], ἐν τῷ πολλὰ περιέχοντι, καὶ ἐν τοῖς προσκριθεῖσι, καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀποκεκριμένοις).⁹ This is why Anaxagoras argued that ‘the Greeks do not think correctly about generation and passing away; for no thing either comes to be or passes away, but it is produced by means of already existing χρήματα being either conjugated or separated from [each other]. Therefore, they would be correct if they called generation concurrence and passingaway disjunction (or, separation out).’¹⁰ I do not translate χρήματα as ‘things’ (although this is commonly the case, even in the present book, as explained earlier), since it would be misleading at the present point. It should be noticed that, in reference to those which were united in the primal mixture and then distinguished by the Mind, Anaxagoras deliberately opted for as much abstraction as possible: he used the figurative χρήματα, not the term πράγματα (‘things’). Naturally, then, the opening of Anaxagoras’ book, which Simplicius quotes more than twenty times, reads ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, not ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα πράγματα. The Mind rules over everything (πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ),¹¹ which means, he embraces and knows all things,¹² and he is the ‘Guardian’ and ‘Lord’ and ‘King’ of the universe,¹³ acting by means of the principles. Therefore, Mind is both entirely different from the universe in terms of ontology, and yet he acts within it, by means of the vicarious activity of the principles. In short, Mind is God. Furthermore, ‘Mind has known everything’ since the beginning, indeed ‘whatever everything was going to be, and whatever they were, and how many they were, and whatever they will be (πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς· καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν

 Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 156 & 177.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 157.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 163: τὸ δὲ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι οὐκ ὀρθῶς νομί ζουσιν οἱ Ἕλληνες· οὐδὲν γὰρ χρῆμα γίνεται οὐδὲ ἀπόλλυται, ἀλλ᾿ ἀπὸ ἐόντων χρημάτων συμ μίσγεταί τε καὶ διακρίνεται. καὶ οὕτως ἂν ὀρθῶς καλοῖεν τό τε γίνεσθαι συμμίσγεσθαι καὶ τὸ ἀπόλλυσθαι διακρίνεσθαι.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 156 & 177.  Aristotle, Physica, 429a: ἀνάγκη ἄρα, ἐπεὶ πάντα νοεῖ, ἀμιγῆ εἶναι ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ἵνα κρατῇ, τοῦτο δ᾿ ἔστιν ἵνα γνωρίζῃ. Quoted by John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 522, and Gen nadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.7.  See chapter 2, p. 181, and infra, pp. 395; 644.

314

Chapter 5 – The will of Mind

ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὅσα νῦν ἐστι καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται).¹⁴ What is more, Mind ‘has a will about everything and has the greatest power’ (καὶ γνώμην¹⁵ περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἔχει καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον).¹⁶ Anaxagoras depicts an omnipresent Mind that causes things to move, and he rules, acts, supervises, knows, judges everything which it created, and continues to create. To this, Aristotle, followed by his commentators, added also a notion of will attached to Mind,¹⁷ which can be gathered from Anaxagoras’ own words, as above. Therefore, Mind has all the attributes which adumbrate a personal hypostasis, and, properly speaking, he should be referred to as he, not as it. Plato saw the soul as having these attributes in relation to the body: it causes it to move, it knows, acts, thinks, and it is the soul that constitutes the personal identity of a human being. A man is his soul vested with a garment, which is the body, and the soul is regarded as a personal hypostasis. However, unlike the Christians, the Greeks did not care to lay any particular emphasis on the personal identity of the superior ontological principles. This is not to say that they did not do so, but they preferred mythological rather than philosophical representations, such as those of Uranus, Cronus, Zeus, which is a triad loaded with different ontological imports in Neoplatonism. I should only remark that, if it were assumed that the Greeks did not set any store by the personal identity of their gods, one should wonder why was it that prayer and hymns had a prominent position in their religious activity, from Cleanthes (whose Hymn to Zeus is discussed in chapter 9) to Proclus and later – not to mention Socrates’ religiousness, his frequent visits to Delphi, as well as the opening of the Republic, in which he says that he went ‘to Piraeus in order to pray to the goddess’.

 Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156 & 177.  The noun γνώμη may well mean will, disposition, thought, judgement, opinion, verdict, proposition. The present context indicates a Mind that rules, acts, supervises, knows, which sug gests that Mind reflects, judges, and determines everything. Therefore, in this case, all of the foregoing senses of γνώμη are applicable.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 156 & 177.  Aristotle, Physica, 188a10: ὥστε ἄτοπος τὰ ἀδύνατα ζητῶν ὁ νοῦς, εἴπερ βούλεται μὲν δια κρῖναι, τοῦτο δὲ ποιῆσαι ἀδύνατον καὶ κατὰ τὸ ποσὸν καὶ κατὰ τὸ ποιόν. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 87: τὸν δὲ νοῦν, ὃν καὶ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον ὑποτίθεται, ἀπό τινος χρόνου ἀρξάμενον θελῆσαι μὲν διακρῖναι ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων πάντα, μὴ μὴν δυνηθῆναι τελείαν ποιήσασθαι τὴν διάκρισιν. Also, pp. 101; 107; 264: καὶ τοῦ κατὰ ᾿Aναξαγόραν νοῦ ἔργον τὸ βουλεύεσθαι διακρίνειν τὰς ὁμοιο μερείας. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1123: the phrase, βουληθεὶς ὁ κοσμοποιὸς νοῦς διακρῖναι τὰ εἴδη ἅπερ ὁμοιομερείας καλεῖ, κίνησιν αὐταῖς ἐνεποίησεν suggests that Mind exercised a creative will. Cf. Simplicius’ comments on Aristotle concerning this point, op. cit. p. 176.

Chapter 5 – The will of Mind

315

It has been argued that the Christian view of Deity differs from the Platonic one on account of the role of will. ¹⁸ Whereas the Platonic illustration of body and shadow, or sun and light, has been regarded as excluding God’s will and choice, the Christian theory is that creation involves divine will, not necessity.¹⁹ However, the notion of will is not altogether absent from the Platonic texts. For example, this can be found in the Timaeus, where the Demiurge is repeatedly represented as deliberating, that is, thinking out how to achieve his aims.²⁰ On the question ‘whether the world has existed always having no beginning of generation, or it has come into existence, having begun from some beginning’ (ἢ γέγονεν, ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἀρξάμενος), Plato replied, ‘it has come from some beginning’ (γέγονεν).²¹ Besides, he associated this beginning with a divine will: For God willed (βουληθείς) that so far as possible, all things should be good and nothing evil; wherefore, when then took over all that was visible, seeing that it was not in a state of rest but in a state of an erring and disorderly motion, he brought it into order out of disor der, deeming that the former state is in all ways better than the latter.²²

However, Neoplatonists were loath to draw a sharp line between divine substance and divine will. Proclus stressed repeatedly and staunchly the doctrine that God creates by being what he is (τῷ εἶναι δημιουργεῖ),²³ and Simplicius re-

 Cf. J. Pépin, Théologie cosmique et théologie chrétienne, Paris, 1964; pp. 502 6. C. Tresmont ant, La Métaphysique du christianisme et la naissance de la philosophie chrétienne, Paris, 1961; pp. 190 4; 319 26; 364. A.H. Armstrong, “Elements in the thought of Plotinus at variance with classical intellectualism”, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 3, 1973, pp. 13 22.  I have canvassed this in COT, pp. 120 64. Cf. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 2.1.1; 2.30.9; 3.8.3. Christian writers after Origen pointed out this distinction, too. Cf. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XI.24: Enarratio in Psalmum 134, sermo 10. Thomas Aquinas, In Caelo I, lectio 29, n. 12.  Plato, Timaeus, 29e 30a; 41b.  Plato, op. cit. 28b4 7.  Plato, op. cit. 30a: βουληθεὶς γὰρ ὁ θεὸς ἀγαθὰ μὲν πάντα, φλαῦρον δὲ μηδὲν εἶναι κατὰ δύ ναμιν, οὕτω δὴ πᾶν ὅσον ἦν ὁρατὸν παραλαβὼν οὐχ ἡσυχίαν ἄγον ἀλλὰ κινούμενον πλημμελῶς καὶ ἀτάκτως, εἰς τάξιν αὐτὸ ἤγαγεν ἐκ τῆς ἀταξίας, ἡγησάμενος ἐκεῖνο τούτου πάντως ἄμεινον. Pseudo Plutarch saw this as a confirmation of divine providence: De Fato, 573C. So did Sto baeus, Anthologium, 1.21.1, who also saw it as suggesting the formless matter which preceeds or dered arrangement of the world (op. cit. 1.10.16b; the same text in Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Phil osophorum, 875C). Proclus also saw divine providence in this Platonic passage: In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 125; commTim, p. 370.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 56: αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι ποιεῖ. Institutio Theologica, 122: τῷ γὰρ εἶναι ὅ εἰσι πάντα ἀγαθύνουσιν, πᾶν δὲ τὸ τῷ εἶναι ποιοῦν ἀσχέτως ποιεῖ. Op. cit. 174: ποιεῖ δὲ ἃ ποιεῖ τῷ εἶναι, καὶ παράγει κατὰ τὸ εἶναι ὅ ἐστι. In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 762: αὐτῷ γὰρ τῷ εἶναι δημιουργεῖ. Op. cit. p. 786: αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι ποιεῖ. Op. cit. p. 787: ἐστὶν αἰτία τοῦ παντὸς αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι ποιοῦσα. Et passim. The most comprehensive Christian reply to Proclus came

316

Chapter 5 – The will of Mind

mained faithful to this.²⁴ The source was of course Plotinus, who presumably felt he could be dismissive of volition in connection with lower tiers of reality. Thus, although notions of will are found in the Enneads (βούλησις, θέλησις, ἔφεσις),²⁵ they are mainly used in order to dismiss the idea that secondary beings exist through the will of the One.²⁶ In any event, Plotinus makes it clear that ‘if one must bring in these names what we are looking for, let it be said again that it was not correct to use them’. For, if we were to grant activities to God and ascribe them to what we might call his will (since indeed he does not act without willing), and if his activities are what we might call his substance, his will and his substance will be the same thing (ἡ βούλησις αὐτοῦ καὶ οὐσία ταὐτὸν ἔσται). But, if this is so, then God’s essence and will and action is one and the same thing (ὡς βούλεταί τε καὶ ἐνεργεῖ ἡ οὐσία ἐστὶν αὐτοῦ). Therefore, he does not will and act as it is his nature to do, any more than his substance is as he wills and acts. So, he is altogether the master of himself, since he has his being in his own power. Language, of course, poses restrictions to couching higher realities, which is why ‘one must go along with words (δεῖ δὲ συγχωρεῖν τοῖς ὀνόμασιν), if one, in speaking of that Good, is bound to use expressions which, strictly speaking, we do not allow to be used.’²⁷ John Philoponus made much of this passage, seeing it as an explicit statement positing a beginning of creation,²⁸ and argued for the divine will being distinct from the divine substance.²⁹ He also saw the consistency of Anaxagoras and the value of his philosophy towards formation of the Christian doctrine: if there

from Pseudo Justin in an ad hoc extensive argument, in his Quaestiones Christianorum ad Gen tiles, pp. 176 ff. He urged that God acts in accordance with his will, not by being what he is. This was the thesis of Origen, too. Cf. COT, pp. 120 64. Likewise, Pseudo Theodoret, Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Orthodoxos, p. 137. This work is the same as the one of Pseudo Justin just cited, with only scanty parts of it not appearing in either of them. This is only about two different editorial attributions. I have surmised that this work was probably written by Cassian the Sa baite. RCR, pp. 38; 121; 376.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 99: τὸ γὰρ πάσχον ὑπὸ ποιοῦντος πάσχον καὶ ποιοῦντος κατὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν καὶ αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι· οὕτω γὰρ ποιεῖ τὰ κατὰ φύσιν ποιοῦντα. commCateg, pp. 327 8: ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰ τῷ εἶναι τινὰ ἀπεργάζοιτο, ὥσπερ ὁ ἥλιος τῷ εἶναι φωτίζει. commPhys, p. 780 (quot ing Damascius) ποιεῖ δὲ τῷ εἶναι τὰ πρῶτα τῶν γινομένων.  Plotinus, Enneades, VI.8.9 (44 8); VI.8.13; VI.8.15 (1 10); VI.8.18 (35 52); VI.8.21 (8 19). Never theless, Plotinus dismisses many of these references as inaccurate: op. cit. VI.8.13 (1 5 & 47 50); VI.8.18 (52 53). See discussion of this in COT, p. 134.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.6 (25 7).  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.8.13.  John Philoponus quotes the Platonic passage in the De Aeternitate Mundi, pp. 390; 541; 588; De Opificio Mundi, p. 78.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 23.

Chapter 5 – The will of Mind

317

is a creative agent giving rise to a non-beginningless creation, it is hard to eschew the notion of will being attributed to this agent. This is why Philoponus explicitly recognizes the Anaxagorean Mind as ‘the creative principle (ἀρχὴ) of generation’.³⁰ He puns with the term ἀρχὴ using it also as ‘beginning’, and states that Mind is the principle (ἀρχή) of distinction of things because it started doing so from a certain beginning’ (ἀπό τινος ἀρχῆς), and Philoponus is not sparing of temporal notions: “Before (πρίν) Mind started (ἄρξηται) to distinguish things, there was nothing being distinguished. Therefore, the cause (αἴτιον) of distinction is no other than Mind.” By the way, he uses the same arguments as Simplicius, which I discussed in the previous chapter, arguing against Aristotle for the consistency of Anaxagoras. In all probability, this similarity of argument bespeaks that both commentators followed their common teacher, namely Ammonius of Alexandria. Philoponus argues that it was necessary and consistent of Anaxagoras to posit that ‘all things were together’: for Mind is the cause of distinction, and, if it were not allowed that ‘it is in the nature of everything to be generated from everything’, then it would be impossible for all things to be together. Besides, if it were in the nature of everything to be generated from everything, but Mind were not posited as the sole cause of distinction, it would be unnecessary for everything to be in everything. For it would be possible to consider the universe as being divided in small homoiomeries, as other philosophers thought it to be the case.³¹ The argument is important, not only because it displays the consistency of Anaxagoras’ arguments, but also because it reminds of what I have argued in chapter 1: Aristotle in effect made Anaxagoras an Atomist, while ignoring that this philosophy had nothing to do with Atomism. It is also important to notice that Philoponus’ arguments are expounded not only while writing ‘On the Eternity of the World against Aristotle’, but also in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. Despite his temporary flirtations with the two great streams of philosophy of the Classical Antiquity, in reality Philoponus was neither an Aristotelist nor a Neoplatonist: he questioned them both (as the above instance shows) and paved his own way in terms of methodology, which also involved respect for the empiricism of the natural sciences. Perhaps the invective by Simplicius against him³² was not irrelevant to this fact. Modern scholars, who are always quick to dispute the testimony of Simplicius about Anaxagoras on the grounds

 John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 398: δεῖ δέ, φησί, καὶ ἀρχήν τινα τῆς γενέσεως ποιητικὴν εἶναι, αὕτη δέ ἐστι κατ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ὁ νοῦς.  John Philoponus, loc. cit.  See supra, p. 291.

318

Chapter 5 – The will of Mind

that this was a ‘Neoplatonic interpretation’ (or, extrapolation), should pay Philoponus’ case particular attention in this respect.³³ Likewise, Asclepius of Tralles, his (and Simplicius’) classmate under Ammonius, did not wish to allow that creation was given rise to by the divine being alone, and urged that the notion of providence should be associated with this, too.³⁴ Certainly Philoponus wrote as a Christian. Little wonder then that Simplicius sought to disallow any concept of literal beginning, by arguing that Plato ‘did not really say what the text indicates on the face of it’ (καὶ ἐν τούτοις οὖν οὐ τοῦτο φησίν, ὅπερ δοκεῖ λέγειν τὸ φαινόμενον), namely, ‘that there was a sensible disorderly reality preceding time’ (ὅτι ἦν ποτε τῷ χρόνῳ προϋπάρχον τὸ αἰσθητὸν ἄτακτον), and then ‘the Creator, as if he woke up from sleep, as it were, set this in order’ (καὶ ὕστερον ὡς ἐξ ὕπνου τινὸς ἀναστὰς ὁ δημιουργὸς ἔταξεν αὐτό). If the Creator creates because of his goodness, and his goodness is always perfect and active, and bestows goodness upon everything on account of the Creator’s own being’ (εἰ γὰρ διὰ τὴν ἀγαθότητα δημιουργεῖ, ἡ δὲ ἀγαθότης αὐτοῦ ἀεὶ τελεία καὶ ἐνεργός ἐστι καὶ τῷ εἶναι πάντα ἀγαθύνει), ‘it is plain that the creative providence has always been there, along with the goodness of God’ (δῆλον ὅτι τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ ἀγαθότητι συνυφέστηκεν ἡ δημιουργικὴ πρόνοια). Therefore, Plato’s ‘statement only means that the Creator is the Cause of the world and of the order in it’ (ἐνδείκνυται δὲ τὸ λεγόμενον, ὅτι κόσμου καὶ τάξεως ὁ δημιουργὸς αἴτιός ἐστι τῷ παντί), which, prior to the divine act, was disorderly and wanting.³⁵ Simplicius rests his case with the Neoplatonic thesis which allows no distinction between divine will and divine action: God does what he does by being what he is (τῷ εἶναι). This is a thesis that Philoponus attacked vehemently, considering it a flagrant distortion of Plato by his exegetes, no doubt having in mind Simplicius along with those whom he named. He knew that the aim of Simplicius was to reconcile Plato and Aristotle: on the question of whether time had a beginning, Simplicius felt he should make allowance for Plato to take a step approaching Aristotle, not the other way around; therefore, Plato should be represented as holding the notion of time without beginning. In this context, following Philopo-

 I return to this point later; see Conclusion, pp. 1473; 1491.  Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 441: οὔτε γὰρ ἐκ τῆς ὕλης θέμις λέγειν τὰ τῇδε γί νεσθαι, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ προϋπαρχούσης αἰτίας, εἰ μήτι εἴποι ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης ὅτι ἡ φύσις αὐτὰ τῷ εἶναι ποιεῖ, ὥσπερ τὸ πῦρ αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι θερμαίνει. ἀλλὰ δεῖ καὶ τὴν πρόνοιαν αἰτίαν ὑποτίθεσθαι· αὕτη δὲ οὐκ ἀλόγως ποιεῖ. By contrast, Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 109: πᾶς θεὸς αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι ποιεῖ.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 704.

Chapter 5 – The will of Mind

319

nus’ implicit attacks on Simplicius, one more instance of this kind is worth following. Some interpreters of younger generations, who argued for the essential agreement between Plato and Aristotle (so Philoponus says), also advance the ‘myth’ that Aristotle wrote his criticism not against Plato himself, but against those who misunderstood the doctrines of Plato (ἐξ ὧν ἔστιν μάλιστα συνιδεῖν, ὡς οἱ κατὰ Πλάτωνος ᾿Aριστοτέλους ἔλεγχοι οὐ πρὸς τοὺς κακῶς τὰ Πλάτωνος ἐξειληφότας ἐνίστανται, ὥς τινες τῶν νεωτέρων ἐμυθολόγησαν τὴν τῶν φιλοσόφων διαφωνίαν αἰδεσθέντες). This is an allegation that infuriated Philoponus, who was convinced that the difference between the two ancient stars of philosophy was essential and profound (ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὰς Πλάτωνος αὐτοῦ ὑπονοίας τὴν ἀντιλογίαν πεποίηνται). If Aristotle’s purpose was to rebut those who ‘misheard the doctrines of Plato’ (εἰ γὰρ μὴ πρὸς αὐτὸ διεμάχετο τὸ περὶ τῶν ἰδεῶν Πλάτωνος ᾿Aριστοτέλης δόγμα, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τοὺς κακῶς τῶν Πλάτωνος, ὥς φασιν, παρακούσαντας), he could have said so in the first place (πρῶτον μὲν αὐτὸ δὴ τοῦτο προσδιορίζεσθαι ἤμελλεν), and he could not have made a wholesale and comprehensive refutation of the theory of Ideas (καὶ οὐχ ἁπλῶς καὶ ἀδιορίστως τὴν περὶ τῶν ἰδεῶν ἀπελέγχειν δόξαν). Besides, ‘in the passages [of Aristotle] that we just quoted’, we confuted Plato as not having grasped what Socrates had said (ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ ἐν αἷς παρεθέμεθα ῥήσεσιν οὐ τὸν Σωκράτην ηὔθυνεν τὰς ἐν τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς κοινότητας ὁριζόμενον ἀλλὰ Πλάτωνα Σωκράτους οὐ καλῶς ἐπακούσαντα).³⁶ Philoponus, therefore, argued passionately that Plato had posited a beginning for both the world and time,³⁷ which was serviceable to Philoponus’ own enterprise of attacking Aristotle on this question. In view of this, it is interesting to see how Simplicius treats Anaxagoras on this issue: he expounds Aristotle’s criticism, but, surprisingly, he does not care to defend Anaxagoras on this. More surprising still, he adds a reference by Eudemus of Rhodes criticizing Anaxagoras for not having explained whether the present universal motion is to be succeded by rest, or not. More importantly, Eudemus understood Mind as a personal hypostasis endowed with free will of his own: For what would be the impediment for Nous to have all things come to a standstill [anew], in the same way [in the first place] he ordered that they should be set in motion?³⁸

 John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 29.  John Philoponus, op. cit. pp. 186 7.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1185, quoting from the text of Eudemus: τί γὰρ κωλύει, φησί, δόξαι ποτὲ τῷ νῷ στῆσαι πάντα χρήματα, καθάπερ ἐκεῖνος εἶπεν κινῆσαι; To this Themistius had al

320

Chapter 5 – The will of Mind

We should recall that Simplicius attributed to Anaxagoras the idea of endless duration (being contrasted with atemporality) in the state before Mind set up to create the principles.³⁹ Surprisingly, Aristotle did not criticize the notion of will being attributed to Mind (whether the locution is by Aristotle himself or by Anaxagoras is just impossible to say). He levelled his criticism against the notion that Mind exercised his will and set up to create without any reason being given as to why was it that this took place then. In other words, we have the argument that I have summarized as ‘why not sooner?’ elsewhere,⁴⁰ which might well be, ‘why not later?’ The same goes for Empedocles, who, once again, is lumped together with Anaxagoras. Aristotle says that Anaxagoras’ reply would have been, ‘this is the way things are by nature’ (πέφυκεν οὕτως).⁴¹ But the verb πέφυκεν is a cognate of φύσις (nature), and it should be said that nature has rationality, it does everything with good reason, and setting things in order is a special manifestation of this rationality. Therefore, to say that there was an unlimited period of rest, and then, at a certain point, motion supervened,⁴² without setting forth a certain reason for this to have happened then rather than earlier (τούτου δὲ μηδεμίαν εἶναι διαφοράν, ὅτι νῦν μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον), and without positing any specific order for this to happen (μηδ᾿ αὖ τινα τάξιν ἔχειν), this can no longer be seen as a work performed by the nature (οὐκέτι φύσεως ἔργον). For nature has a simple and plain order, and so it acts, not now thuswise and now otherwise; and, in cases that natural process are not simple, then there is a certain principle that explains it (ἢ λόγον ἔχει τὸ μὴ ἁπλοῦν).⁴³ All of this criticism stemmed from Aristotle’s ideas: in his Physica, 251a, he introduces the assertion that a potential agent cannot suddenly pass from inactivity to activity, unless a previous cause to do so exists, which suggests that action is prevented by some ‘cause’ of arrest, which prevents earlier agency. Simplicius paraphrases Aristotle’s account without taking any particular care to defend Anaxagoras, except for adding (accurately, as he always did) that the reply πέφυκεν οὕτως, which both Empedocles and Anaxagoras could ready replied that, to Anaxagoras, once motion started, it will never come to an end; para phrPhys, p. 209: ὥστε ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ μὲν ἡ κίνησις ἀρξαμένη συνεχῶς ἔστι καθάπερ δὴ καὶ ὁ κόσμος.  See supra, chapter 4, pp. 297 310.  COT, pp. 148 9; 152 3; 156.  Aristotle, Physica, 252a.  This is what Aristotle argued about Anaxagoras’ philosophy a short while before that point, in Physica, 250b24.  Aristotle, Physica, 252a. Once again, Aristotle feels better with Empedocles rather than Anax agoras, on the grounds that the former alternates cessation and recurrence of motion, which re sults in ordered succession.

Chapter 5 – The will of Mind

321

have given, is not part of their writings, it is πλασματώδης (‘fictitious’) and it was assumed by Aristotle himself. To this criticism of Aristotle, Simplicius adds one by Eudemus of Rhodes, quoting from him to the word: “Eudemus finds fault with Anaxagoras, saying this: ‘How is it possible for deprivation to precede its opposite? For if rest is deprivation of motion, rest cannot be prior to motion.’”⁴⁴ Simplicius leaves this quotation with no comment, and this is the end of the section containing his remarks on Aristotle’s passage. Then, he carries on with his commentary, in order to consider the ensuing text of Aristotle.⁴⁵ Simplicius could have made a comment on this remark of Eudemus, but he did not. For one thing, he could have said that, by the same token, motion is deprivation of rest, which is why this is prior to motion, but this would make the exchange of arguments idle talking. More to the point, he could have said that, since disorder is deprivation of order,⁴⁶ disorder cannot be prior to order. Why Simplicius did not use such a rejoinder is easy to understrand: for had he done so, he could have disputed the basis of Plato’s Timaeus. Nevertheless, Plato had already given a reply to the argument of Aristotle in advance, but hardly could a Neoplatonist such as Simplicius have been expected to adduce it. It came from Simplicius’ antagonist, namely the Christian Philoponus, who quoted Plato having made a Biblical-like statement: Gods of Gods, those works whereof I am creator and father are indissoluble, unless I will so (ἐμοῦ γε μὴ ἐθέλοντος). For all that is bound can be dissolved, yet to will to dissolve that which is fairly joined together and in good case would be the will of a wicked one. You will not incur the doom of death, since in my will you possess a bond greater (τῆς ἐμῆς βουλή σεως μείζονος) and more sovereign than the bonds wherewith, at your birth, you were bound together.⁴⁷

Aristotle demanded a natural explanation. Plato had already given a metaphysical one, and this Philoponus explains: although Plato admitted that, according

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1185.  Cf. the same treatment of this passage of Aristotle’s Physics by Michael Psellus, commPhys, 8.7.  This is why John Philoponus was careful enough as to point out that ‘order is deprivation of disorder, not the other way around’ (τοῦ ἀτάκτου νῦν, ὡς εἶπον, τὴν στέρησιν τοῦ τεταγμένου σημαίνοντος, οὐ τὸ ἐναντίον). De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 311.  Plato, Timaeus, 41a b. John Philoponus quotes and comments on this in De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 311; so on pp. 226; 227; 601. This statement was quoted also by Proclus, Theologia Pla tonica, v. 1, p. 119; v. 5, p. 68; commTim, pp. 215; 219. Simplicius, commCael, pp. 106; 107; 351; 353; commPhys, p. 1337. The idea of divine freedom involved in this appealed to Philo and to some Christians alike. Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 13. Pseudo Justin, Cohortatio ad Gentiles, p. 21D. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.32.4; 13.18.10.

322

Chapter 5 – The will of Mind

to the natural order, dissolution and death always follows, he knew all the same that God’s will is more powerful than any natural bond. This is why he made the immortality of the world dependent on the divine will (τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ βούλησιν). He did so, not because God cannot dissolve the world, which is anyway dissoluble by its own nature, but because God does not will to do so (ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ μὴ βούλεσθαι). This means that Mind determined that he should create the principles, and he did so because the divine will is unlimited, therefore, it is not subject to the restrictions imposed by Nature. Philoponus points out that Plato was controverted on this, even by those who professed themselves to be his most faithful followers, such as Proclus: he disregarded that the world is being sustained only because God wills so and urged that, since the universe was produced from disorder which was set in order, it will definitely follow of necessity according to both nature and God’s will that order will turn to disorder anew. Thus, Proclus appears to reflect on grounds that are both Aristotelian and Empedoclean, and, in effect, he subdues the divine will to what he sees as natural necessity. However, Alexander of Aphrodisias got it right: Empedocles and Anaxagoras posited their principles as being ‘good, as well as beneficent’ (ἀγαθὰ μὲν καὶ ἀγαθοποιά), but everything that came to be it did not come in relation to this goodness:⁴⁸ Mind is good in itself, and creatures came out of Mind’s untrammelled will. In other words, creation came into being without any cause, other than Mind’s free will and goodness, which is what Plato said following Anaxagoras.⁴⁹ Therefore, Aristotle’s assumption that Anaxagoras would have replied to him ‘this is the way things are by nature’ (πέφυκεν οὕτως) was not correct; it was indeed a πλασματώδης (‘fictitious’) one, as Simplicius styled it. In fact, the reply of Anaxagoras would have been, ‘because Mind’s untrammelled freedom determined so’.⁵⁰ But this is an argument that Simplicius would have never adduced in favour of Anaxagoras, notwithstanding his sympathy for him.

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 63: ὁ γὰρ ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὸν νοῦν εἰσαγαγὼν καὶ ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τὴν φιλίαν ἀγαθὰ μὲν καὶ ἀγαθοποιὰ αἴτια τίθενται ταῦτα, οὐ μὴν τούτων χάριν τὰ γινόμενα γίνεσθαί φασιν, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτὰ ταῦτα τὰ ποιητικὰ ἀγαθά ἐστιν αὐτοῖς.  So said Plato, Timaeus, 29d e. Λέγωμεν δὴ δι᾿ ἥντινα αἰτίαν γένεσιν καὶ τὸ πᾶν τόδε ὁ συνι στὰς συνέστησεν. ἀγαθὸς ἦν, ἀγαθῷ δὲ οὐδεὶς περὶ οὐδενὸς οὐδέποτε ἐγγίγνεται φθόνος.  John Philoponus De Aeternitate Mundi, pp. 311 12: ὁ δὲ Πρόκλος φησίν, ὡς, εἴπερ ἐκ τοῦ ἀτάκτου τὸ τεταγμένον γέγονεν, ἀκολουθήσει πάντως καὶ κατὰ φύσιν καὶ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ βούλησιν τὸ πάλιν τὸ τεταγμένον ἀντιμεταβάλλειν εἰς τὸ ἄτακτον.

Chapter 6 Potentiality Aristotle determined that Anaxagoras assumed molecules of tissues and the distinguishable components of all things to be the homoiomeries, and he commented on this basis: In each of the unlimited number of primal substances, an unlimited amount of flesh and blood and brains would exist, not indeed gathered together in recognizable aggregates, but still existing; so that each of these substances would exist without limit within each of the others, which also would exist without limit within it. But this is absurd (τοῦτο δ᾿ ἄλογον).¹

Alexander of Aphrodisias assured that Aristotle saw Anaxagoras’ original ‘mixture’ as apparently being a set of homoiomeries that exist ‘in actuality’, not ‘potentially’ (τὰ γὰρ ὁμοιομερῆ τὰ ἐν τῷ μίγματι φαίνεται οὐ δυνάμει λέγων εἶναι ἀλλ᾿ ἐνεργείᾳ).² Although he allowed with Aristotle that Anaxagoras posited ‘two principles’, yet he had some reservations, which is why he adds that ‘one cannot say with certainty that he [sc. Anaxagoras] actually said so’ (δύο γὰρ μόνας ἀρχὰς ἂν λέγοι ἀντὶ τεσσάρων· ἔτι οὐδὲ πάντῃ οἷον τε λέγειν αὐτὸν οὕτως εἰρηκέναι).³ He was right in doubting this, because in fact Anaxagoras posited one supreme principle, namely the Mind, and that which emerged from the primal fusion was creation by the Mind. Nevertheless, Aristotle convinced Alexander that, in any material thing, all qualities co-exist simultaneously, ‘and everything is in everything not potentially, but in actuality’ (οὐ δυνάμει ἀλλ᾿ ἐνεργείᾳ).⁴ John Philoponus assumed this, too, which is surprising since he was a classmate with Simplicius under Ammonius the son of Hermias in Alexandria.⁵

 Aristotle, Physica, 188a.  Asclepius of Tralles copied this section word for word from Alexander of Aphrodisias. Cf. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 62.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 70.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, loc. cit.: ὅταν γὰρ ἐν παντὶ καὶ τῷ τυχόντι πράγματι λέγῃ ὁ ᾿Aνα ξαγόρας εἶναι πάντα καὶ γλυκὺ καὶ πικρὸν καὶ λευκὸν καὶ μέλαν καὶ ἁπλῶς πάντα (πάντα γὰρ ἐν πᾶσι καὶ οὐ δυνάμει ἀλλ᾿ ἐνεργείᾳ καὶ ἀποκεκριμένα καὶ καθ᾿ αὑτά), οὐδὲν ἕτερον λέγει ἢ τὰ ἐναντία ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ εἶναι.  John Philoponus (paraphrasing Aristotle), commPhys, p. 396: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, φησίν, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ κατὰ ἀρχὰς πάντα μεμῖχθαι ἔλεγε, καὶ εἶναι οἷον μίαν ὁμοιομέρειαν μεγάλην ἔχουσαν πάντα ἐν ἑαυτῇ, οὕτω καὶ ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν κατὰ μέρος πάντα ἐνυπάρχειν ἔλεγεν. εἰς ταύτην δέ, φησί, τὴν δόξαν ἠνέχθη διὰ τὸ ὁρᾶν πάντα ἐκ πάντων γινόμενα, γίνεσθαι δὲ μηδὲν ἐκ τοῦ μὴ

324

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

These as well as other commentators allowed for no possibility that Anaxagoras spoke of anything other than material objects: while they considered this theory, Anaxagoras was assumed to be lost in the obnubilation of his self-defeated propositions, in fact, ‘he was dreaming of matter, even though not even this did he teach us clearly’.⁶ For ‘who could possibly hear all of this and assume that this theory is about matter?’⁷ Alexander of Aphrodisias was so confident of Aristotle’s credibility on this that not for a single moment did he allow for the possibility that Anaxagoras ‘did not teach clearly’ about these things only because he was not speaking about matter, but about incorporeal principles. Alexander went as far as to assume logically that Anaxagoras’ statements could not square with what everyone held matter to be. However, he did not go as far as to consider whether Anaxagoras was not speaking of matter at all. Simplicius commenting on this does indeed agree that ‘this is absurd’ (ὅπερ ἄλογον).⁸ But one can be only astonished at reading how Aristotle rendered that philosophy assuring his students at the Lyceum that Anaxagoras’ ‘elements’ were invariably present ‘all in all’, which can only mean that, in each and every spatial point, infinite elementary material particles, of all infinite kinds, are contained at the same time. What is more surprising is that no one dared point out the absurdity of such a statement until Simplicius saw what was obvious. In other words, Aristotle’s account of Anaxagoras remained unchallenged for almost a thousand years. To Simplicius then, the principles (not ‘elements’) of Anaxagoras are incorporeal. To say that all ‘elements’ (as Aristotle thought them to be) were simultaneously at each and every point of the one space (since there are not many spaces, but only one) would mean that two corporeal entities would exist simultaneously at the same point.⁹ This in effect meant that a body could pass through another body. This idea was considered as ‘a flagrant absurdity by all ancient people’, until the Stoics made it a doctrine of their own

ὄντος, μήτε ἐξ ὄντος μὲν ἑτεροειδοῦς δέ, ἀλλὰ τὸ ὅμοιον ἐκ τοῦ ὁμοίου· ὥστε ἐνυπῆρχεν ἐν τῇδε τῇ σαρκὶ πάντα κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν, καὶ ἐκκρίνεται ἐξ αὐτῆς ὅπερ ἂν τύχῃ πρότερον ἐπιτηδείως ἔχον πρὸς τὴν ἔκκρισιν. ἔνθεν γάρ, φησίν, ἔοικε καὶ ὁμοῦ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι ποτὲ ἀποφήνασθαι.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 673: ὅταν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας λέγῃ ὡς ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα καὶ ἓν ἦν τὸ πᾶν, ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἤρξατο ἀπὸ ἀρχῆς τινος ταῦτα διαχωρίζειν, ἐνδείκνυται ὡς ὠνείρωττε μὲν τὴν ὕλην, οὐ κατέλαβε δέ, καὶ ἐπὶ τούτῳ οὐδὲ σαφῶς ἡμᾶς ταύτην ἐδίδαξε.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 673: τίς γὰρ ἀκούων ὅτι ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα, δύναται νοεῖν ὅτι αὕτη ἡ φωνὴ τῆς ὕλης ἐστὶ δηλωτικὴ τῆς δυνάμει πάντα οὔσης;  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 172. See supra, p. 323, Aristotle, Physica 188a being quoted.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 577: ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ τόπον ἐν τόπῳ γίνεσθαι ἀνάγκη οὐδὲ πολλοὺς ἅμα τό πους, οὐδὲ μεταβάλλειν τὸν τόπον κατὰ τὴν τοιαύτην ὑπόθεσιν, εἴπερ ἕν ἐστι τὸ διὰ πάντων χωροῦν διάστημα ἄλλοτε ἐν ἄλλοις ἑαυτοῦ μορίοις ἄλλο τι καὶ ἄλλο τῶν σωμάτων δεχόμενον.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

325

philosophy,¹⁰ ‘since this was a corollary of their fundamental premisses’.¹¹ Certainly, Alexander of Aphrodisias criticized both this idea and the Stoics,¹² but what matters at this point is that Alexander being misled by Aristotle resulted in irony: whereas Aristotle represented Anaxagoras as an Atomist, Alexander made him a Stoic before Stoicism. There is no need to follow this further; we should only add that Anaxagoras’ principles are the means for potentialities to develop into actualities (μόνον δυνάμει ὡς τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ), which produce the world of real material things within the continuum of the one space.¹³ Anaxagoras said about the principles that ‘none of them is like any other’ (ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί); any specific thing, which is produced by concurrence of principles, is what it is because certain principles prevail in this specific conjunction, thus bestowing a thing (or phenomenon) its specific character.¹⁴ Since principles are incorporeal, they are everywhere, they exist also in unity for that reason, therefore, they are not confined by spatial limitations. Nevertheless, in each material thing or phenomenon, there are only certain principles manifestly present: they are those that make a thing to be what it is. However, this expression, Anaxagoras tells us, in not complete: therefore, I repeat it as Anaxagoras had it: the prevailing principles are those which make a thing to be what it is and was (ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν). What does this mean? It means that every sensible thing is in fact the actualization of a certain potentiality; only God is a full actuality, never a potentiality. This is a proposition that, of course, Aristotle would have been quick to endorse. When Anaxagoras says that any material thing is made what it is and was, he plainly means what Aristotle set forth only later: was means that the actual thing is a realization of a potentiality which determines its existence in advance. All things are actualizations of their respective potentialities. This is the only sense that Anaxagoras’ expression it is and was (ἐστι καὶ ἦν) can make. Nearly ten centuries after Aristotle, it took for Simplicius to care inform us about the real words of Anaxagoras; and only once we read Simplicius can we set forth a suspicion, which probably haunted Aristotle when he wrote about Anaxagoras,

 Cf. SVF, I.28.21; II.151 6 (Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, pp. 213; 216; 219; 226); II.210.4; II.220.42; II.221.4&12.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 530. He rebuked this doctrine at several points of his work.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 219.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 577 8: συνεχοῦς οὖν ὄντος τοῦ τόπου καὶ ἔχοντος καὶ αὐτοῦ μέρη, τὸ συνεχὲς ἔσται ἐν αὐτῷ σῶμα καθ᾿ ὅλον τε καὶ κατὰ μόρια.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 157 & 165 & 172: ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτῳ πλεῖ στα ἔνι, ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν. The second half of the phrase, also on p. 27.

326

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

while caring to conceal this phrase of that philosopher: why is Aristotle’s τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι different from Anaxagoras’ ἐστὶ καὶ ἦν, both describing the essence of a certain thing, even though the very notion of essence is a fruit of the Classical age? As a matter of fact, we have not just one phrase: we have the entire context available. The expression is the closure and conclusion of a proposition in Anaxagoras’ own words, describing not only what things are, but also why things are what they are. The ‘what’-question is the question of essence; the ‘why’-one, is the question of science. To the first question, Aristotle’s solution was that the essence of a thing is either its matter, or its form, or both; but he never made up his mind conclusively. Anaxagoras’ solution is different, and (unlike that of Aristotle’s) it is confident and conclusive. All of the incorporeal principles exist also in unity parallel to their apparent separation upon involvement with matter; obviously, not all principles, but only certain ones, are involved in order for a certain sensible thing or phenomenon or animal to come to pass. However, the unity of all principles is not suspended by the fact that some of them need to react with each other in order to generate sundry aspects of the perceptible reality. Those ‘some’ principles are said to be the ‘manifest’ ones (ἐνδηλότατα). The adverb¹⁵ used by Anaxagoras himself is telling: it is derived from the adjective ἔνδηλος, which means ‘manifest’ or ‘visible’, or indeed ‘clearly revealed to the mind or to the senses’. Therefore, he speaks about those principles which are visible to us upon seeing and describing the specific character of an object. Besides, ‘visible’ means that the unity of all principles is not suspended, but it is necessary for a certain empirical reality to appear to our senses by means of only certain principles being manifest to our grasp, even though all principles continue to co-exist in unity. This is the way for principles to come to light and to be grasped by human intellect: coming to presence is understood in terms of emerging out of concealment into unconcealment. In effect then, this is a relationship between concealment and unconcealment. The essence of φύσις and the essence of ἀλήθεια mutually imply each other. This is why Heidegger wrote that, in turn, emergence into unconcealment entails that being is also to be understood in terms of unconcealment. In other words, this is why the Greek concept of truth is inherently interwoven with the Greek understanding of being. Anaxagoras stressed this many times, but Aristotle’s successors, such as Theophrastus, were lost in their master’s allegations: if something is a piece of

 Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 27; 157; 165; cf. pp. 34; 156: καὶ πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόν των οὐδὲν ἔνδηλον ἦν ὑπὸ σμικρότητος· … πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲ χροιὴ ἔνδηλος ἦν οὐδεμία.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

327

‘gold’, this means that all sorts of materials of the world are present in a tiny piece of gold; simply, there is more gold there, which is why we see this piece as ‘gold’, while all other materials of the entire world (wood, flesh, bones, mud, and any other possible and impossible material) are there, too, along with this gold.¹⁶ Could anyone possibly believe that Anaxagoras gave his pupils such a madness, and presented it as ‘philosophy’? What he actually said is that the principles are never completely separate from each other: their unity is there, no matter what their action upon matter, or how some of them concur in order to produce different objects. Complete and utter distinction can exist only between the Mind and the principles.¹⁷ The principles are not severed from each other ‘in this one world’ (οὐ κεχώρισται ἀλλήλων τὰ ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ κόσμῳ),¹⁸ ‘as if by an axe’, because they are ‘all in all’: there is no such principle as one existing in itself in absolute separation from all others (εἰλικρινὲς καθ᾿ αὑτό).¹⁹ The fact that some principles may occasionally concur to certain purposes does not mean ‘complete severance’.²⁰ In fact, the principles comprise the realm of potentialities, of which not only Simplicius but also long ago Alexander of Aphrodisias was aware, although the latter liked to associate the Anaxagorean axiom with Aristotle rather than with its own author, which though Aristotle himself did first.²¹ Aristotle represented all of this as suggesting different sorts of materials, and the question is, why was it that such a genius pretended to be so naïve? One of the reasons is that there is more to what Anaxagoras said: the principles which make up the character ²² of a specific object reveal not only what

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 27, quoting Theophrastus.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 157: παντάπασι δὲ οὐδὲν ἀποκρίνεται οὐδὲ διακρίνε ται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου πλὴν νοῦ.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 176: οὐδὲ ἀποκρίνεται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου … οὐ κεχώρισται ἀλλήλων τὰ ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ κόσμῳ οὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκει.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 175: oὐδὲ διακρίνεται οὐδὲ ἀποκρίνεται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου, διὰ τὸ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι· καὶ ἀλλαχοῦ· οὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκει οὔτε τὸ θερμὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ οὔτε τὸ ψυχρὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ θερμοῦ (οὐ γὰρ εἶναι τι εἰλικρινὲς καθ᾿ αὑτό).  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 461: οὐ γὰρ παντελὴς διασπασμός ἐστιν ἡ διάκρισις.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 291: ἔσεσθαι γάρ φησιν οὕτως τὸ τοῦ ᾿Aναξαγό ρου ἀληθὲς τὸ ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα· ἀλλὰ κατ᾿ ἐκεῖνον μὲν ὡς εἰλικρινῶς μηδὲν ἓν εἶναι καὶ τόδε τι, ὃ λέγεται, τῶν πραγμάτων τῷ πάντα λέγεσθαι ἐν πᾶσιν.  The term ‘essence’ was coined later, but this fact does not affect the exposition of Anaxago ras’ real views.

328

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

this object is, but also what this was (ἐστὶ καὶ ἦν).²³ Why was it necessary for Anaxagoras to describe what a thing is (using Present tense, which is normal) by attaching also an Imperfect form, namely, ἦν? Is it mere coincidence that Aristotle, for his part, described the ‘essence’ of a thing by means of not only the Present εἶναι, but also of the Imperfect ἦν? My suggestion is that Aristotle was haunted by Anaxagoras’ propositions, and it is all but chance that he suppressed them to the best of his ability. There is a difference, however: Aristotle used τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι out of the blue, and every now and then (some ten dozens of instances in the extant texts of his), he said that this bespeaks the essence, but never did he actually give an argued account of why was it necessary for him to use such a weird phrase, which, along with many other difficulties, is impossible to translate in English. Probably this was so because everything is actualization of a potentiality, except for the supreme principle which is sheer actuality. However, he cared to emphasize that ‘no one’ before him ‘gave a clear account of what the essence and τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι is’ (τὸ δὲ τί ἦν εἶναι καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν σαφῶς μὲν οὐθεὶς ἀποδέδωκε), and he says so immediately following reference by name to Plato, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles, all of whom of course he regards as inferior to himself.²⁴ We should ask the same question concerning Anaxagoras: why did he use the phrase ‘is and was’ (ἐστὶ καὶ ἦν), even though this is less abstruse than the τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι of Aristotle, and it can be easily translated in English? Why was it that ‘was’ had to be added? We have not Anaxagoras’ text explaining this, but we have his statements indicating that the existence of perceptible things is contingent and it depends on something else, which is anterior to them, namely, the Mind and the operating principles. Things exist because they are being thought by the Mind and they are realized by the principles acting at the behest of the Mind. Thus, there is a causative relation between the perceptible things themselves and something which is prior to them: The Mind, which always exists, certainly exists also now, so that all the other things also should exist, namely, in the encompassing multitude [of the principles] (ὁ δὲ νοῦς, ὃς ἀεί ἐστι, τὸ κάρτα καὶ νῦν ἐστιν, ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα [ᾖ], ἐν τῷ πολλὰ περιέχοντι).²⁵

 Simplicius quotes the specific part of the proposition at three different points: commPhys, pp. 27 & 157 & 165: ἀλλ᾿ ὅτῳ πλεῖστα ἔνι, ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 988a.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 157; italics are mine. See discussion of this in chapter 4, pp. 284 5. Cf. Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 155 6: ἀποκρίνονται ἀπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ τοῦ περιέχοντος.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

329

Everything exists because the Mind exists, who also knows the future of the world as present. Aristotle could not say this about the First Mover. Therefore, as far as divine knowledge is concerned, it can be said that things ‘were’, and the real origin of their existence are the omnipresent principles under the rule of the Mind.²⁶ Put anachronistically, it could be said that the ‘essence’ of things is the principles which concur in order to generate them. However, this is not necessary to do in relation to Anaxagoras, who, unlike Aristotle, did not need to make abstract constructions, such as ‘essence’, ‘soul’, or ‘nature’, let alone make them self-existent entities.²⁷ The Mind is the guardian and ruler who ‘knew’ (ἔγνω) in advance those which do not exist yet (ὅσα νῦν μὴ ἔστι, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται). Again, this was impossible for Aristotle to maintain. This ‘in advance’ suffices in order for the expression ‘a thing is and was’ (ἐστὶ καὶ ἦν) to make sense, since it suggests that a thing emerges from causes prior to itself. This is evident also from the expression of Anaxagoras which might appear strange only if it were studied out of this context: he says that the Mind ‘decorated’ (διεκόσμησε, Past tense) not only those which existed in the past and exist now, but also those which will exist (καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, or καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλον ἔσεσθαι, or ἅσσα νῦν μὴ ἔστι, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, that is, Future tense).²⁸ All of this has nothing to do with preformationism.²⁹ The idea imbuing these statements is that the Mind knows what and how a thing or phenomenon is going to be generated, only because the principles are there and they act as the tools of the Mind. Not only did Anaxagoras introduce the notion of potentiality, but also his statements make it clear that he had a perfect grasp of why and how this  Discussion of the term προειλημμένα (infra, pp. 599 604) would be worth mentioning at this point.  See further, infra, pp. 499; 555; 593; 1061; 1185; 1444.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 156: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα καὶ διακρινόμενα, πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς. καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὅσα νῦν ἐστι καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς. Op. cit. pp. 165 6: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ τὰ ἀποκρι νόμενα καὶ διακρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὁπόσα νῦν ἔστι καὶ ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς. Op. cit. p. 174: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ διακρινό μενα καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλον ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν, ὅσα νῦν μὴ ἔστι, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς. Op. cit. p. 177: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ διακρι νόμενα καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα, πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς. καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλον ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν, ἅσσα νῦν μὴ ἔστι, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς. Likewise, Simplicius quotes Anaxagoras, in his commCael, p. 608: ἐπεί, ὅτι τῷ εἴδει πεπερασμένα ᾤετο, δηλοῖ λέγων πάντα γιγνώσκειν τὸν νοῦν· καίτοι, εἰ ἄπειρα ὄντως ἦν, παντελῶς ἦν ἄγνωστα· ἡ γὰρ γνῶσις ὁρίζει καὶ περατοῖ τὸ γνωσθέν. λέγει δέ, ὅτι καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν.  See infra, pp. 363; 599 602; 839 41; 892 4.

330

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

works. This cannot be said about Aristotle. For he posited that, apart from the First Mover which is sheer actuality, all other things are actualizations of potentialities, but he did not explain why should things work in this way. This is why he had to make much of such notions as ‘Nature’, ‘soul’, or indeed ‘essence’, which sometimes are made to exist in themselves as individual entities, which though is incompatible with fundamental Aristotelian axioms. Aristotle could not afford not to assume that Anaxagoras’ primal mixture was ‘potential being’ (δυνάμει ὄν).³⁰ However, this notion, which to Anaxagoras was an integral and consistent part of his overall philosophy, to Aristotle was only a liability to his predecessor. Potentialities are brought to pass by means of principles being supervised by the Mind. Although ‘separate’ (χωριστός) and ‘unmixed’ (ἀμιγής), the Mind is present in the universe, as much as is he ontologically different from it. The principles exist prior to the perceptible reality (which is only the occasional and transient product of them) and, on that account, there is a (divine) knowledge of future occurrences as present, since this is about actualization of certain potentialities created by the Mind in the first place. Therefore, when occurrences actually come to pass, the verb was applies to the potentialities which precede actualization of those occurrences. Consequently, this is not simply about knowledge, indeed foreknowledge. It is also about activity. Put in terms posterior to Anaxagoras, the ‘essence’ of things is no other than specific concurrences of principles, which generate them, and sustain them as cohesive causes. These causes already exist in different existential levels, namely, in the absolute unity of them all, as well as in the intelligible union, in which distinction exists, too. Involvement with the material object itself is the third state of existence of the principles. The specific principles of any thing or phenomenon make up one’s essence. Since they are prior to their respective objects and phenomena, the term was applies to this case, too. All these mean that Anaxagoras’ premisses were far too different from those of Aristotle. The notion of potentiality is inherent in the former’s philosophy, and so is his expression ἐστὶ καὶ ἦν, unlike Aristotle’s τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, which is only his Anaxagorean liability put to use in the absence of Anaxagorean premisses, especially of the incorporeal principles operating at the behest and under the supervision of the Mind. Aristotle knew that Anaxagoras had preceded him on pivotal ideas currently known as ‘Aristotelian’, which he resented. More specifically, he knew that his τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι is nothing more than a mere echo of Anaxagoras’ ἐστὶ καὶ ἦν, and this

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1007b26 29.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

331

was hardly tolerable to him. It is a pity that resentment took the best of such a brilliant philosopher, who allowed himself to be inundated by such feelings. But this was Aristotle’s character: he was not Socrates, who did not care about writing anything for posterity, and went straight to his death defiantly. Instead, Aristotle cared for his own posthumous fame, both through his own writings, and definitely through his students; and on no account was he prepared to face death while defending his philosophical ideas, which is why he decamped to Chalkis, under the philosophical pretext that the Athenians should not be given the chance to commit one more crime against philosophy.³¹ Aristotle was a brilliant mind, who loved philosophy – but what he loved more was enjoying what he believed to be a pleasant life,³² while looking forward to posterity seeing him as the messiah who demonstrated the flaws of all previous philosophy, and ushered humanity to real philosophy for the first time and ab ovo. These are some of the reasons why Aristotle set out to caricature his source and eminent predecessor. Nevertheless, he could not afford not to report that Anaxagoras had posited the Mind as being ‘simple, unmixed and pure’ (ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ τε καὶ καθαρόν),³³ and then to appropriate it as a statement of his own (καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής).³⁴ His commentators (Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Ammonius, John Philoponus, Simplicius, Gennadius Scholarius) were content with quoting this as an Aristotelian passage from his treatise on the soul, whereas not all of them cared to quote that this was in fact a proposition of Anaxagoras. Reference to Aristotle in this context was made by Themistius, John Philoponus, Simplicius, Asclepius of Tralles (reporting Aristotle), Michael Psellus, and Gennadius Scholarius, all of them comment-

 See Origen, Cels, I.65 (Philocalia, 18.14). Elias of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 123. Anonymous, Vita Aristotelis (Vita Vulgata), 19. Anonymous, Vita Aristotelis (Vita Marciana), 41.  Cephisodorus of Thebae (second half of the fourth century BC) was a pupil of Isocrates (436 338 BC); he styled Aristotle voluptuous and gourmand (τρυφερὸν καὶ τένθην), according to a report by Aristocles of Messene (second century AD) adduced by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangel ica, 15.2.7 8. Besides, Theodoret was all ears to reports of this kind about Aristotle, since he be lieved that Aristotle understood ‘happiness’ in terms of such kinds of pleasantness (ἐν τούτοις γὰρ δὴ ἐκεῖνος τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν ὡρίζετο). Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 12.51 2. Suda (letter alpha, entry 3930) reports that, according to Timaeus, Aristotle was ‘tolerant of evil, bold, and presumptuous’ (εὐχερῆ, θρασύν, προπετῆ). Likewise, Elias of Alexandria styled Aristotle ‘bitter’ (δριμύς); commCateg, p. 123. Suda also reproduces the information, adduced by the historians Philo of Byblοs and Theodore of Ilium, according to which Aristotle had a lover and pupil called Palaephatus of Abydus. Suda, letter pi, entry 71 (παιδικὰ δὲ ᾿Aριστοτέλους τοῦ φιλοσόφου). See the meaning of παιδικά, in Plato, Phaedrus, 239a.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405a18; 429a17; Metaphysica, 989b15; Physica, 256b25.  Aristotle, De Anima, 430a17 18.

332

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

ing on Aristotle. But the philosophers who reported this statement as an Anaxagorean one were Plotinus,³⁵ and, of course, Simplicius, who rebutted Aristotle’s assessment of Anaxagoras at several points. Therefore, in the material world, there are potentialities that develop to actuality by means of the Anaxagorean principles, which are the causes that effect this. The ‘earth’ itself existed in the primal intelligible realm of these principles, yet it existed potentially. Once the Mind ‘distinguished’ the principles and assigned to each one of them its own particular character, certain principles concurred and thus the earth ‘was produced from potentiality to actuality’ (καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ ἐκ τοῦ δυνάμει γινομένην).³⁶ We should consider this point, because it is revealing. Simplicius comments on Aristotle’s On Heaven, 297a8‒26, but we should recall the context of Aristotle’s text itself. This portion follows the point where he was satisfied that he had made it ‘clear that the earth does not move, neither does it lie anywhere but at the centre’, and ‘in addition, the reason for its immobility is clear from our discussions’.³⁷ Following this, his conclusion is that ‘the shape of the earth of necessity must be spherical’.³⁸ Then, the important part of Aristotle’s words begins to make its mark. In order to show why is it necessary for the earth to be spherical, he recalls views by ‘some of the physicists’ (τῶν φυσιολόγων τινές). He does not mention anyone by name, and, once again, I have to point out the fatal flaw of the collection by Diels and his followers, who made ‘fragments’ and ‘testimonies’ only passages mentioning Anaxagoras by name. However, as I emphasize every now and then in this book, some of the points where Anaxagoras is not mentioned by name are more important, and none of them was dignified with being included in ‘collections of fragments’. Who are those ‘physicists’ mentioned anonymously by Aristotle? This is fairly evident, but once again Simplicius cared to say that this was Anaxagoras alone. Aristotle mentioned ‘some physicists’ because he strove to argue that his analysis of why the earth is spherical was better. However, a few lines after this, he acknowledges that, whether either the analyses of those physicists or those of his own were employed, ‘the same result will be produced’ and this re-

 Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.9.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 543: ὑποθέμενος οὖν τὴν γῆν μεμιγμένην τέως τοῖς ἄλλοις, εἶτα δι ακρινομένην, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐδόκει λέγειν, καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ ἐκ τοῦ δυνάμει γινομένην καὶ φερομένην ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 296b26 28.  Aristotle, op. cit. 297a9.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

333

sult will be ‘the shape of a sphere’ about the earth, and ‘it will make no difference to the argument’.³⁹ What ‘some of the physicists’, namely, Anaxagoras, said was, ‘The Mind is the first principle of motion; heavy bodies, such as earth, occupied the lower region; light ones, such as fire, the higher; water and air occupied the middle.’⁴⁰ Also, ‘the aether naturally moves upwards and when it is trapped in the hollow places under the earth, it moves the earth; … it is as though the whole sphere has an up and down, and the up is that portion on which we live, and down is the other.’⁴¹ So far so good; but we need to see Aristotle’s language closer: he magnanimously concedes that he is in agreement with those ‘physicists’, and expounds the common ground concerning the shape of the earth: When the mixture existed in a state of potentiality, those which were separated off moved from every side alike towards the centre.⁴²

Is this phraseology (such as, δυνάμει, τοῦ μίγματος, τὰ διακρινόμενα) not familiar to us? It certainly is:⁴³ this is the one that Aristotle used particularly of Anaxagoras, in the Metaphysics: Hence, not only may there be generation accidentally from that which is not, but also every thing is generated from that which is (καὶ ἐξ ὄντος γίγνεται πάντα), yet it is potentially but is not actually (δυνάμει μέντοι ὄντος, ἐκ μὴ ὄντος δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ). And this is the one of Anax agoras (καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι τὸ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἕν); for his all things were together and the mixture (τὸ μῖγμα)⁴⁴ of Empedocles and Anaximander and the doctrine of Democritus would be better expressed as ‘all things were together potentially, but not actually.’⁴⁵

 Aristotle, op. cit. 297a13 30.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.8.  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 365a.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 297a17 19: Ἐν δυνάμει οὖν ὄντος τοῦ μίγματος τὰ διακρινόμενα ἐφέρετο ὁμοίως πάντοθεν πρὸς τὸ μέσον.  Simplicius saw this, of course. commCael, p. 543, discussed infra.  The mixture (τὸ μῖγμα) is a term that Aristotle used also for Anaxagoras’ σύμμιξις. Cf. Aris totle, Physica, 187a21 23: καὶ ὅσοι δ᾿ ἓν καὶ πολλά φασιν εἶναι, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγό ρας· ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι ἐκκρίνουσι τἆλλα. Naturally, this is how subsequent authors named Anaxagoras’ original confusum. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 336; 691. Plotinus, Enneades, II.4.7. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.9.1. Themistius, para phrPhys, pp. 89; 212. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 154; 155; 460; 485; 486; 1120; 1188. John Philo ponus, commPhys, pp. 93; 94; 396; 448. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 428. Michael Psel lus, commPhys, 1.14; 1.16; 3.12. Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 1 (comm. on Aristotle’s Physica), 3, line 166.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b.

334

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

Therefore, in the On Heaven Aristotle speaks of Anaxagoras, but he does not mention him by name. And the important statement he makes is that ‘the principles in the primal mixture existed in a state of potentiality’. These statements make it clear that Aristotle knew perfectly well that his predecessor maintained the notion of potentiality. For Anaxagoras argued, on the one hand, that ‘nothing comes from non-being’,⁴⁶ and, on the other, the Mind ‘distinguished’ those which were in the primal mixture, thus, the actual universe came into being. This means that the universe appeared from a state which was neither actual being nor non-being. This was a state of potentiality, and this was ‘the one’ that Aristotle himself recognized in Anaxagoras (τὸ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἕν), since this was the sole way for Anaxagoras’ fundamental statements to make sense: Everything is generated from that which is, but it is potentially, not actually.⁴⁷

Therefore, when Simplicius gently remarks that Aristotle’s notion of potentiality was nothing new,⁴⁸ he did so not because he wished to misrepresent Anaxagoras as a ‘Neoplatonist’, but because Aristotle himself could not obnubilate his real source altogether: the principles were in fact created upon their being distinguished, ‘and this is the one of Anaxagoras’, in which ‘all things were together potentially, but not actually.’⁴⁹ Why then did it appear strange to some when Simplicius explicated that which Aristotle clearly suggested while refusing to allow incorporeal principles, namely, that distinction from existence in unity, where all things were together, bespeaks the intelligible creation (δῆλον δὲ ὅτι

 Simplicius notes that Anaxagoras took up this doctrine from Melissus, and quotes the lat ter’s text: commPhys, p. 162.  See supra, p. 175, note 55. Aristotle, who realized that Anaxagoras had preceded him on the notion of potentiality, since ‘everything is generated from that which is, but is potentially, not actually’, urged that the opening statement of Anaxagoras ‘all things were together’ should have been better expressed as ‘all things were together potentially, but not actually’. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b. In his own words, all Aristotle did was ‘expressing’ the notion ‘better’, in order ‘to help’ Anaxagoras express himself more articulately. Appropriating critical notions of his predecessor was Aristotle’s peculiar conception of ‘helping’ him.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 632 (ref. to Aristotle speaking of ‘the common belief’ shared by Em pedocles, Democritus, and Anaxagoras alike): κοινὸν ἐνιδὼν αὐτῶν τῇ δόξῃ τὸ τὰ παρ᾿ ἑκάστῳ τιθέμενα στοιχεῖα ἀΐδια ὄντα τότε γίνεσθαι δοκεῖν, ὅταν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων διακριθῇ. At a previous point of the same work, he attributes the doctrine to Anaxagoras alone. commCael, p. 202: τὴν γένεσιν ἐκκρίσει πάντα ὑφίστασθαι λέγοντες, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξαγόρας. See this being canvassed in chapter 7, pp. 444 5.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

335

ἡ ἀπὸ τῆς ἡνωμένης ὑποστάσεως, καθ᾿ ἣν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν, διάκρισις ἡ νοερὰ ποίησις ἦν)”?⁵⁰ Consequently, whether ‘potential being’ should be styled either ‘being’ or ‘non-being’ is immaterial, since this is only a matter of words used by convention. Aristotle remarked that although Anaxagoras thought he was talking about ‘being’, he actually spoke about non-being, indeed of ‘potential being’,⁵¹ which makes evident that Aristotle was haunted by the shadow of Anaxagoras as the inventor of the notion of potential being, no matter whether Aristotle himself liked to style this ‘being’ or ‘non-being’. For potential being can be styled being as much as non-being, and both designations can be explained as suggesting the same thing in this context.⁵² In fact, Simplicius argued that, in respect of another ambiguity of this kind (namely, speaking of accidental being), it was Plato, not Aristotle, who first saw that ‘non-being can be suggested in two alternative ways’ (Πλάτων διττὸν οἶδε τοῦ μὴ ὄντος τὸ σημαινόμενον πρὸ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους): in a sense, accidental being is being, while, in another, it is non-being (πῇ μὲν ὂν πῇ δὲ μὴ ὂν καὶ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ μὲν μὴ ὄν, κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς δὲ ὄν, ὅτι τῷ ὄντι συμβέβηκε).⁵³ However, the aim of Simplicius was not simply to speak about accidental being: he goes on with his argument reporting (after four pages) a view by Eudemus of Rhodes, who argued that Plato should be credited with precedency over Aristotle not simply with respect to accidental being, but also concerning the notion of potential and actual being (τὸ δυνάμει δὲ καὶ ἐνεργεία).⁵⁴ In fact though, reporting Eudemus’ argument was only one step for Simplicius’ to demonstrate that the notion of potentiality was not the invention of Aristotle. He agreed then that Plato did in fact ‘make distinctions of also other notions which are said in

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 300 1. See supra, pp. 287 8.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1007b26.  The expression ‘in a sense, being; in another, non being’ (πῇ μὲν ὂν πῇ δὲ μὴ ὄν) was a man ner of suggesting potential being. Cf. Simplicius (writing about Parmenides), commPhys, p. 78: ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ ἐκ τοῦ πῇ μὲν ὄντος πῇ δὲ μὴ ὄντος, ὡς τὸ γενητὸν γίνεται· οὐ γὰρ ἂν τοῦ ἁπλῶς ὄντος προϋπάρχοι τὸ πῇ μὲν ὂν πῇ δὲ μὴ ὄν, ἀλλὰ μετ᾿ αὐτὸ ὑφέστηκε. This was somehow sub sequent to Aristotle’s statement that formless matter is potentially everything, but actually it is nothing. Metaphysica, 1009a; 1089b. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 68 (comm. on Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989a30): συνάγει γὰρ ἐκ μὲν τοῦ λέγειν πάντα αὐτὸν ἐν πᾶσι μεμῖχθαι ὅτι τὴν ὕλην ὀνειροπολεῖ, ἥτις δυνάμει μέν ἐστι πάντα, ἐνεργείᾳ δὲ οὐδὲν ὧν δύναται.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 239. He makes an extensive quotation from Plato, Sophista, 258d6 259a4.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 242 (reporting Eudemus of Rhodes, fourth century BC): καὶ τὸ δυνάμει δὲ καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ καὶ τὸ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ καὶ κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς πρῶτος φαίνεται διορίσας ὁ Πλάτων καὶ τὸ πῇ μὲν ὄν, πῇ δὲ μὴ ὄν, ὡς εἴρηται πρότερον.

336

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

multiple ways’ (καὶ γὰρ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὁ Πλάτων τὰ πολλαχῶς λεγόμενα διεστείλατο),⁵⁵ but, in reality, Simplicius agreed with Aristotle who, in the On Heaven, 297a17‒19, and Metaphysics, 1069b19‒21, suggested that the source of the notion was Anaxagoras: when Aristotle said that the earth came to be actually from being potentially in the first place, he merely echoes Anaxagoras who (in Aristotle’s own words) said that the earth was first mixed with everything else and then it was distinguished.⁵⁶ In conclusion, it was in fact Aristotle himself who acknowledged that the union of distinct principles that was caused by the Mind out of the primeval fusion, was creation of potentialities, from which the actual reality of the universe emerged in due course, and it keeps emerging, and will continue to do so, by means of the distinct principles causing specific potentialities to grow to actualities at specific times and instances. Simplicius simply saw that, no matter how bitter the pill was to swallow, Aristotle could not help mentioning his liabilities, however implicitly. It would be instructive to consider this view of Anaxagoras vis-à-vis the opening of Genesis, ‘In the beginning … the earth was without form and was void’ (ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος).⁵⁷ It received exegeses by different authors, including Simplicius,⁵⁸ of which one by Gregory of Nyssa is a stunningly Anaxagorean one.⁵⁹ This distinction by the Mind means only that each principle was assigned with a different function:

 Simplicius, loc. cit.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 543: ὑποθέμενος οὖν τὴν γῆν μεμιγμένην τέως τοῖς ἄλλοις, εἶτα δι ακρινομένην, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐδόκει λέγειν, καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ ἐκ τοῦ δυνάμει γινομένην καὶ φερομένην ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον. Quoting Aristotle, De Caelo, 297a17 19.  Genesis, 1:1 2.  Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 19. Pseudo Clement of Rome, Homiliae, 11.22.2. Justin Martyr, Apologia, 59.3; 64.3. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 11.11. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.14.90.1. Origen, Cels, VI.49; commGen, PG.12.49. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 6.30.9. Pseudo Justin, Cohortatio ad Gentiles, p. 29B C. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 7.20.9; 13.13.4. Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae in Hexaemeron, 2; Adversus Eunomium, PG.29.541. The odoret, Quaestiones in Octateuchum, p. 910. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentarii in Joannem, fr. 2. Pseudo Caesarius (= Cassian the Sabaite), Quaestiones et Responsiones, 62. Julian Emperor, Contra Galilaeos, pp. 170 1. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1166. John Philoponus, De Opificio Mundi, pp. 59; 161; 180.  Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 77: Γέγραπται γάρ ὅτι Ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος· ὡς ἐκ τούτου δῆλον εἶναι ὅτι τῇ μὲν δυνάμει τὰ πάντα ἦν ἐν πρώτῃ τοῦ Θεοῦ περὶ τὴν κτίσιν ὁρμῇ, οἱονεὶ σπερματικῆς τινος δυνάμεως πρὸς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς γένεσιν καταβλη θείσης, ἐνεργεία δὲ τὰ καθ᾿ ἕκαστον οὔπω ἦν. Ἡ γὰρ γῆ, φησίν, ἦν ἀόρατος, καὶ ἀκατασκεύ αστος. Ὅπερ ἴσον ἐστὶ τῷ λέγειν, ὅτι ἦν, καὶ οὐκ ἦν. Οὐ γάρ που συνδεδραμήκεισαν περὶ αὐτὴν αἱ ποιότητες· ἀπόδειξις δὲ τῆς διανοίας ταύτης, ὅτι ἀόρατον αὐτὴν ὁ λόγος εἶναι φησίν.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

337

“All of the Mind is alike, both the greater and the lesser; but nothing else is like anything else” (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων. ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί).”⁶⁰ The distinct character of each principle determines its peculiar individual function in the world. Gennadius Scholarius, treating the issue ‘On the number or distinction of beings’ (Περὶ τοῦ πλήθους ἢ τῆς διακρίσεως τῶν ὄντων), wrote that, whereas to Democritus matter alone sufficed for beings to be distinguished, Anaxagoras posited that it is the Mind being mixed with matter that makes it possible for things to be distinguished.⁶¹ Despite slight inaccuracies (since the principles are those which mix with matter, not the Mind), Gennadius got it right. The principles are all unlike each other (οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις),⁶² since evidently there is no need for two selfsame principles to be there: there is no need for two laws of gravity, or anything like this, to exist. Therefore, in regard to their nature, they are distinct from each other (καὶ αὐτὰ οὖν τῇ οἰκείᾳ φύσει ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων κεχώρισται) – and we should note that Simplicius speaks of ‘nature’ (which denotes action and function), not ‘essence’ (which simply suggests incorporeality and ideation).⁶³ This is one more issue on which Simplicius shows how absurd Aristotle’s criticism was. If these principles (to Aristotle, ‘elements’) were ‘infinite in number’, and they all co-existed in every thing while being ‘distinct from one another’, as indeed they are, it should follow that infinity exists in actuality within a certain amount ‘of flesh or blood or brain’; what is more, other homoiomerous things should exist within each of them, like ‘gold’, et cetera. In other words, there should be a double infinity existing in actuality (ἔσται οὖν ἄπειρα μεγέθη πλείονα κατ᾿ ἀριθμόν, μᾶλλον δὲ ἄπειρα καθ᾿ ἑκάστην γὰρ ὁμοιομέρειαν), which is absurd’ (ὅπερ ἄλογον). For this should suggest that infinity could be made an actuality, instead of a potentiality which is never really actualized (καὶ οὐ δυνάμει τὸ ἄπειρον, ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν ἐπ᾿ ἄπειρον γινομένων ἢ διαιρουμένων, ἀλλ᾿ ἐνεργείᾳ

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 157; 165; 172.  Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Primae Partis Summae Theologicae Thomae Aquinae, 3.47: Τὸ γὰρ τὴν ὕλην αἰτίαν εἶναι τῆς διακρίσεως, ἢ μόνην, ὡς ὁ Δημόκριτος καὶ οἱ ἀρχαῖοι φυσικοὶ πάν τες ἐτίθουν, ὡς εἶναι κατ᾿ αὐτοὺς ἐκ ταὐτομάτου τὴν τῶν ὄντων διάκρισιν· ἢ τὴν ὕλην μετὰ τοῦ ποιοῦντος νοῦ, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐτίθει ἕλκειν τὸν νοῦν τὸ μεμιγμένον τῇ ὕλῃ καὶ διακρίνειν οὕτω τὰ ὄντα. Actually, Anaxagoras meant the principles generating matter and inherently acting upon it, since the Mind himself is not mixed with anything (ἀμιγής).  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34; 156.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 172.

338

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

ἤδη τὸ ἄπειρον),⁶⁴ and that ‘this indeed already exists’ as actuality (ἤδη γὰρ ὑφέστηκε). The absurdity of Aristotle’s syllogisms is evident, and Simplicius goes ahead with reinforcing his own argument, since ‘there is also another way to show that Aristotle’s assumption is even more absurd’ (καὶ κατ᾿ ἄλλον δὲ τρόπον ἔτι ἀτοπώτερον δόξει τὸ ὑπὸ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους συναγόμενον). The reasoning is not too different from the previous one, since it proves that, according to Aristotle, ‘every’ material particle ‘should be in every other’ one, which would result in infinity upon infinity of material particles existing in actuality within each other (ἐνεργείᾳ εἶναι πάντων ὑποκειμένων, ἀλλ᾿ οὐ δυνάμει). But ‘this is a hypothesis that involves irrationality in many respects’ (πολλαχῶς οὖν τὸ ἄλογον ἐν τῇ τοιαύτῃ ὑποθέσει).⁶⁵ Aristotle sought to determine what elements are, and why should they exist at all. An element is that into which other bodies disintegrate, but it cannot itself be disintegrated further. Compounds contain it, but an element does not contain them, not even potentially. It all depends on how one sees the process of generation. If everything is generated from a single underlying element, then this is assumed to contain the product as much as the product contains the element. In order for this to be true, it has to be also true that the process of generation is simply ‘secretion’ (or, procession, or extraction, or emanation, ἔκκρισις). Aristotle, however, made a distinction⁶⁶ which was not sound: he divided the physicists into two classes; of them, ‘secretion’ (ἔκκρισις) is attributed to such Atomists as Democritus, whereas Anaxagoras and Empedocles are classified as those

 Cf. Simplicius, op. cit. p. 492: τὸ γὰρ ἐπ᾿ ἄπειρον οὐ κατὰ τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸ δυνάμει ἔχει τὸ ἄπειρον.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 172. The epithet ἄλογον, which Simplicius uses, is in fact a riposte styl ing Aristotle’s argument ‘irrational’. Ironically, Aristotle used this himself in order to brand Anaxagoras’ philosophy ‘irrational’. Physica, 188a4 9: τοῦτο δ᾿ ἄλογον. … ὥστε ἄτοπος τὰ ἀδύ νατα ζητῶν ὁ νοῦς. John Philoponus read it ‘the Mind is irrational’ (καὶ ἀνόητον ἔλεγεν εἶναι τὸν νοῦν) for Aristotle’s ‘this is irrational to maintain’ (τοῦτο δ᾿ ἄλογον). commPhys, p. 396. Likewise, cf. commAnim, pp. 85; 101; 106. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 17.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a b: ἔοικε δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἄπειρα οὕτως οἰηθῆναι διὰ τὸ ὑπολαμβάνειν τὴν κοινὴν δόξαν τῶν φυσικῶν εἶναι ἀληθῆ, ὡς οὐ γιγνομένου οὐδενὸς ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος (διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ οὕτω λέγουσιν, ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα, καὶ τὸ γίγνεσθαι τοιόνδε καθέστηκεν ἀλλοιοῦσθαι, οἱ δὲ σύγκρισιν καὶ διάκρισιν)· ἔτι δ᾿ ἐκ τοῦ γίγνεσθαι ἐξ ἀλλήλων τἀναντία· ἐνυπῆρχεν ἄρα· εἰ γὰρ πᾶν μὲν τὸ γιγνόμενον ἀνάγκη γίγνεσθαι ἢ ἐξ ὄντων ἢ ἐκ μὴ ὄντων, τούτων δὲ τὸ μὲν ἐκ μὴ ὄντων γίγνεσθαι ἀδύνατον (περὶ γὰρ ταύτης ὁμογνωμονοῦσι τῆς δόξης ἅπαντες οἱ περὶ φύσεως), τὸ λοιπὸν ἤδη συμβαίνειν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἐνόμισαν, ἐξ ὄντων μὲν καὶ ἐνυπαρχόντων γίγνεσθαι, διὰ μικρότητα δὲ τῶν ὄγκων ἐξ ἀναισθήτων ἡμῖν. De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a: Καίτοι ᾿Aναξαγόρας γε τὴν οἰκείαν φωνὴν ἠγνόησεν· λέγει γοῦν ὡς τὸ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλ λυσθαι ταὐτὸν καθέστηκε τῷ ἀλλοιοῦσθαι, πολλὰ δὲ λέγει τὰ στοιχεῖα, καθάπερ καὶ ἕτεροι.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

339

who sustained not ‘secretion’ (ἔκκρισις), but ‘alteration’ (ἀλλοίωσις), which means that a qualitative change takes place for the ‘elements’ to bring about their products. He believed that ‘alteration’ is change of quality, whereas generation and passing away is change of substance.⁶⁷ Accordingly, he stipulated that, to those who sustained ‘secretion’ (ἔκκρισις), the elements exist ‘in actuality’ (ἐνεργείᾳ), whereas to those who sustained ‘alteration’ (ἀλλοίωσις), the elements exist only ‘potentially’ (δυνάμει).⁶⁸ However, instead of the principles, Aristotle saw in Anaxagoras ‘homoiomeries’ taken as elements (flesh, bone, etc.), whereas air and fire are mixtures of these and all the other elements, because each of them is an agglomeration of all the homoiomeries in invisible quantities. This is why everything is generated from these two.⁶⁹ All of Aristotle’s considerations were largely based on empirical experience, which means they did not involve incorporeal entities, except for the immovable First Mover, which is ‘eternal substance and actuality’.⁷⁰ Once, however, Anaxagoras is considered in light of Simplicius’ rendering, this Aristotelian classification makes no sense. For in Anaxagoras’ philosophy there are no ‘elements’ whatsoever: these are only produced by incorporeal principles. This alone renders all of Aristotle considerations redundant. Furthermore, material things are produced by means of different principles concurring in different combinations, which Philoponus somehow grasped, if ambiguously, as explained in a moment.⁷¹ Aristotle dismissed becoming by means of ‘secretion’ (ἔκκρισις) in order to dismiss the idea of everything being in everything. He criticized Anaxagoras and Empedocles for having said that the root of existence is both unity and multiplicity (ἓν καὶ πολλά)⁷² only because he presumed that they posited a material substratum in the first place, which allowed Aristotle himself to reflect on their doctrines on purely material terms. In reality, however, the Anaxagorean Mind is both united with the multitude it produced and ontologically distinct from that. It rules over an intelligible multitude of incorporeal causes, which are the means for the sensible world to come to pass.⁷³  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 319b 320a.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 601: ἐπειδὴ τοῖς μὲν συγκρίσει ἢ ἐκκρίσει λέγουσι τὴν γένεσιν γί νεσθαι, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ἀκολουθεῖ τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ τὰ στοιχεῖα ἐνυπάρχειν, τοῖς δὲ ἀλλοιώσει τὸ δυνάμει. He comments on Aristotle, De Caelo, 302a10 19.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 302a.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a. Cf. 1073a: “There is some substance which is eternal and im movable and separate from sensible things”.  Infra, pp. 339 41.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a22. Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 154 ff.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 92.

340

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

John Philoponus, commenting on this apostrophe of Aristotle, saw something of the real Anaxagoras: the principles (which Philoponus calls homoiomeries) were produced by the Mind (ἐκκρῖναι αὐτὰς τὸν νοῦν); they are acting and reacting with each other, and this interaction will last for ever (ὁ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὸ πρὶν ἐμμιχθείσας πάσας ἅμα τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος ἐκείνου ἐκκρῖναι αὐτὰς τὸν νοῦν, καὶ νῦν δὲ ἀεὶ ἐκκρίνεσθαι ἐξ ἀλλήλων). Once the Mind set out to distinguish them from the primal fusion, it (or, he) will continue to do so eternally, and they will never become an undifferentiated fusion anew (ἅπαξ τὸν νοῦν φησιν ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος τοῦ πρώτου ἀρξάμενον διακρίνειν εἰσαεὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖν, καὶ μηκέτι ἐνδέχεσθαι πάλιν ἓν μῖγμα πάντα γενέσθαι). Each thing is a mixture of many homoiomeries (ἕκαστον γὰρ μῖγμα τι εἶναι φησὶ πολλῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν),⁷⁴ which means that a material entity is produced from incorporeal principles. Of course, Aristotle could have not granted that intelligible elements can produce a certain ‘size’ (that is, a corporeal entity), nor would have he allowed that it is possible for incorporeal causes to produce a thing of tangible dimensions (οὔτε γὰρ τὰ νοητὰ στοιχεῖα μέγεθός τι ἔχει, οὔτε ἐκ νοητῶν στοιχείων ἀμεγεθῶν ὄντων γένοιτ᾿ ἄν τι μέγεθος). But Simplicius politely remarked that this is indeed possible, even on the grounds of an Aristotelian syllogism: quite simply, if everything is made of ‘matter’ and ‘form’, it should be recalled that both matter proper (i. e. formless matter) and form are incorporeal entities (ἡ γὰρ ὕλη καὶ τὸ εἶδος ἐστὶ τὰ πρῶτα στοιχεῖα τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἀσώματα ὄντα ἄμφω). This means that incorporeal entities can produce material objects,⁷⁵ and this is the meaning not only of ‘everything is in everything’ (since they are all incorporeal), but also of the proposition, ‘everything becomes from everything’ (κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν τὰ πάντα ἐξ ἀλλήλων γίνονται).⁷⁶ For all possible different combinations of principles reacting with each other, and producing everything in this world, is ‘infinite’ in respect of the human mind. This is somewhat ironical, since Psellus correctly attributes to Anaxagoras a doctrine that Aristotle appears to endorse, too. Aristotle set out to explore if ‘all things are produced from each other’ (ἐξ ἀλλήλων γίνεται πάντα) in order to conclude that ‘it is evident that all things are of such a nature as to change into one another’ (ὅτι μὲν οὖν ἅπαντα πέφυκεν εἰς ἄλληλα μεταβάλλειν, φανερόν),⁷⁷ which was compatible with his notion of formless matter being everything po-

 John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 93 4. He uses the Aristotelian term ‘element’, though with some diffidence: ὁ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὰ κατ᾿ αὐτὸν στοιχεῖα, λέγω δὴ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας. Other wise, his statement contains some accurate remarks concerning Anaxagoras.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 532.  Michael Psellus, commPhys, 3.12.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 332b3.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

341

tentially and nothing in actuality. Nevertheless, John Philoponus was quick to point out that this does not mean that anything can change into anything. ⁷⁸ This was in fact a view of Anaxagoras: for even if he says that ‘all things were together’ (κἂν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα λέγῃ εἶναι), it is plain that the process of ‘secretion’ (ἔκκρισις) does not take place at random, but there is action and reaction between those which are opposite (σαφῶς γὰρ ἐν τῇ ἐκκρίσει τὰ ἐναντία ἀπὸ τῶν ἐναντίων, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχὶ τὰ τυχόντα ἐκκρίνεσθαι λέγει). For he said, ‘this revolution caused them to separate off: the dense is separated from the loose [texture], and the warm from the cold, and the bright from the dark, and the dry from the moist’.⁷⁹ Consequently, it is not the case of everything at random being produced from everything (ὥστε οὐ τὰ τυχόντα ἀπὸ τῶν τυχόντων), nor is it possible for flesh or brain⁸⁰ to be produced from water (οὐδὲ ἐξ ὕδατος σὰρξ ἢ ἐγκέφαλος). Therefore, ‘Anaxagoras does not appear to sustain production of anything from anything in general’ (ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἁπλῶς ἔοικεν ἐκκρίνειν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας).⁸¹ Both Philoponus referring to Aristotle, and Simplicius expounding Anaxagoras, characteristically use the selfsame words. Philoponus states that οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸ τυχὸν εἰς τὸ τυχόν for Aristotle, whereas Simplicius, οὐ τὰ τυχόντα ἀπὸ τῶν τυχόντων for Anaxagoras. But Anaxagoras was prior to Aristotle and it is the latter that had liabilities to the former.

 John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 232: τἀναντία ἐξ ἀλλήλων γίνεται (εἰς ἄλληλα γὰρ μετα βάλλει· οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸ τυχὸν εἰς τὸ τυχόν, ὡς ἀποδέδεικται), τὰ δὲ στοιχεῖα ἐναντίως ἔχει, τὰ στοι χεῖα ἄρα πάντα ἐξ ἀλλήλων γίνεται καὶ εἰς ἄλληλα μεταβάλλει. Cf. commPhys, p. 24: τοῦτο δὲ ὑπετίθετο, διότι ἑώρα πάντα ἐξ ἀλλήλων γινόμενα, εἰ καὶ μὴ κατὰ πρώτην γένεσιν, ἀλλ᾿ οὖν διὰ πλειόνων μέσων. Cf. Michael Psellus discussing the same principle, commPhys, 1.22, com menting on Aristotle, Physica, 189a22.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156; 174; 176; 179; 181: ἡ δὲ περιχώρησις αὕτη ἐποίησεν ἀποκρί νεσθαι. καὶ ἀποκρίνεται ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀραιοῦ τὸ πυκνὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ τὸ θερμὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ζοφεροῦ τὸ λαμπρὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ διεροῦ τὸ ξηρόν.  Simplicius points out that Aristotle was mistaken in considering ‘brain’ as ὁμοιομερές (Phys ica, 188a), that is, homogenous, since it is made, among others, of veins and arteries. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 172: ἐπιστῆσαι δὲ ἄξιον, ὅτι τὸν ἐγκέφαλον ὡς ὁμοιομερές τι παρέλαβεν ὁ ᾿Aριστο τέλης καίτοι ὀργανικὸν ὄντα μόριον, εἴπερ καὶ φλέβας ἔχει καὶ ἀρτηρίας τὰς συμπληρούσας αὐτὸν καὶ ὑπὸ μηνίγγων διείληπται. On this, Aristotle misled posterity, since remarkable authors followed him, stating that brain is homoiomerous. Cf. Galen, De Naturalibus Facultatibus, p. 13; De Symptomatum Causis, pp. 87; 263; De Locis Affectis, pp. 180; 181; 235. Nemesius of Emesa made the same mistake, De Natura Hominis, chapter 4, p. 45. Although Meletius of Tiberiopolis copied almost entirely from Nemesius, he emended this point, and distinguished the brain as ‘element of the body’ made of ‘simple parts’, such as blood etc. De Natura Hominis, p. 45.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 174; 184 5; 841; commCael, pp. 696 7.

342

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

There is more irony to go as regards Aristotle. For there are considerations which are plain debts to Anaxagoras, which probably explain Aristotle’s hostility that implelled him exercise a kind of criticism which is stunningly absurd, only because he could not tolerate that Anaxagoras had preceded Aristotle himself on critical ideas. The parts of animals that are to be formed are present potentially in matter (ἐνυπαρχόντων δ᾿ ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ δυνάμει τῶν μορίων), once the principle [= cause] of movement is supplied, one thing follows after another without interruption (ὅταν ἀρχὴ γένηται κινήσεως ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς αὐτομάτοις θαύμασι συνείρεται τὸ ἐφεξῆς) … and the meaning of the statement made by some physicists about like ‘making its way to like’ (φέρεσθαι εἰς τὸ ὅμοιον)⁸² must be taken as meaning not that the parts of the body ‘move’ in the sense of changing their position, but that, while remaining in the same position, they undergo alteration as regards softness, hardness, colour (ἀλλὰ μένοντα καὶ ἀλλοιούμενα μαλακότητι καὶ σκλη ρότητι καὶ χρώμασι), and the other differences which belong to the homoiomerous parts (καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις ταῖς τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν διαφοραῖς). That is, they become in actuality what previously all along they had been potentially (γιγνόμενα ἐνεργείᾳ ἃ ὑπῆρχεν ὄντα δυνάμει πρότερον).⁸³

It is hardly necessary to point out what is evident, namely, that we are upon ample use of the language and thought of Anaxagoras. The difference is that what Aristotle thought of ‘semen’ that produces animals, Anaxagoras posited about everything that happens in the sensible world. For when he styles his principles σπέρματα, his plain aim is to alert his readers to the fact that the process of generation of the universe, both as a whole and in its particulars, is in essence the same as the one we see in animals and plants: there is a ‘seed’ which contains in itself potentially all the creative causes that will collaborate in order for a full animal or a flower to come to be in actuality, and, subsequently, to be sustained, and eventually to perish. The principles are there because the Mind created them and assigned each of them with a particular function. Furthermore, Aristotle’s statement that, during development of an embryo, there is no spatial movement but only ‘alteration’ (ἀλλοίωσις), to Anaxagoras was a general rule: there are not six kinds of motion, as Aristotle thought,⁸⁴ but only one, namely, alteration, which Aristotle could not tolerate either, presumably because that

 Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 740b: φέρεσθαι τὸ ὅμοιον πρὸς τὸ ὅμοιον. Simpli cius, commPhys, p. 460: ἀλλ᾿ εἰς μὲν τὴν τοιαύτην ἔννοιαν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἦλθεν ἡγούμενος μηδὲν ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος γίνεσθαι καὶ πᾶν ὑπὸ ὁμοίου τρέφεσθαι. See John Philoponus considering this principle, commAnim, pp. 280; 283 (stating that Aristotle espoused this principle). Also, Suda, letter tau, entry 930.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 741b.  See supra, p. 209, and note 48.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

343

principle was of higher scientific value by virtue of the fact that it was a more simple one. The difference that Aristotle sustained against the universal doctrine of ‘the physicists’ was that he did not espouse the principle ‘nothing comes from nothing and nothing perishes into nothing’.⁸⁵ For his part, he believed he could make propositions such as, ‘generation is the process of coming-to-be from non-being, and decay is [the process of] returning from being to non-being’ (ἔστι γὰρ ἡ μὲν γένεσις ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος εἰς τὸ ὄν, ἡ δὲ φθορὰ ἐκ τοῦ ὄντος πάλιν εἰς τὸ μὴ ὄν),⁸⁶ although this does not involve creation ex nihilo in an absolute sense.⁸⁷ By contrast, Anaxagoras held that a particular being (whether a man, or a plant or a stone, or a phenomenon, or the entire universe) comes to be only because there are certain principles, which are everlasting and imperishable once they were created: they collaborate and concur, be they natural laws or whatever kind of causes they may be, and this is how things come to be and pass away. These incorporeal principles produce a certain being and sustain it for a certain period of time, which period is also determined by certain principles. When a material being perishes, there is no notion of non-being involved: this is only alteration. In the case of a human being, the specific principles that made it up and sustained it, cease to concur, in which case there is an imbalance of their collaboration (for instance, a heart-attack takes place, and a man dies). In that case, the matter of the body alters into dust, but the cosmic principles continue to exist as such, and they continue to produce human and other beings by means of different kinds of concurrence of them. Any kind of such a collaboration (or absence of it) is only alteration. In any event, not all of the principles that concur cease to be there all at once: this may be true for the main physical and psychic or spiritual functions, but, for instance, those which make up the material existence of a human being are not separated out immediately after death: the body is still there, and it will take some time for this to be transformed to different materials. Therefore, any being is only a casual manifestation of a certain function of principles acting upon a given amount of matter. Decay means only alteration, since neither the matter (for some time) and certainly nor the principles that formed it cease to exist. The reasons why Aristotle could not accept this theory are all too plain: he did not allow for the existence of immaterial principles in the fist place, in which

 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1062b; De Gorgia, 979b; De Melisso, 974b; 975a.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 741b.  Aristotle point was that, in this case, ‘non being’ suggests ‘potential being’ (that is, being potentially, which is not ‘being’ in actuality). Metaphysica, 1069b19 23, quoted infra, note 105.

344

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

case all his criticism against Plato’s theory of Ideas could have become redundant. Sometimes it seems hard to believe that pupils who studied under the same master had diametrically different views on points that are cardinal in respect of Anaxagoras. A case in point is Asclepius of Tralles (died c. 560‒570), who studied under Ammonius the son of Hermias, and was a classmate of both Simplicius and John Philoponus. As it was normally the case, his comment on Aristotle’s Physics 989b20‒21 is largely a verbatim copy from Alexander of Aphrodisias,⁸⁸ but (as it happened with other points where he attacks Anaxagoras out of his own initiative) he felt he should add this: Although Anaxagoras spoke of the Mind as being incorporeal, he did not consider partic ular incorporeals such as the soul and the like. So did the other physicists, too.⁸⁹

Against this, his schoolmate Simplicius was composing his own commentaries reconstructing Anaxagoras in the way we have seen. Well into the sixth century, Asclepius carried on with the misleading legacy of Aristotle: Anaxagoras posited ‘two principles, namely, the Generative along with the Material one’ (τὴν ποιητικὴν πρὸς τῇ ὑλικῇ).⁹⁰ That he speaks of principles’ instead of ‘elements’ should not impress us: his use of the term is casual and hardly consistent, since, at an earlier point, he quotes conveniently from Aristotle who had decided that Anaxagoras ‘posited two elements, namely the Mind and the homoiomeries’ (τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν δύο λέγειν στοιχεῖα τὸν νοῦν καὶ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας)⁹¹ and he is himself confident that the proposition about ‘everything being in everything’ suggests the chaotic absurdity that all material things are within all other material things.⁹²

 Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 63, commenting on Aristotle’s Physica, 989b20 21. As usual, he copies from Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 72.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 63: ὁ γοῦν ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἰ καὶ εἶπε νοῦν ἀσώματον, ἀλλ᾿ οὖν γε περὶ τῶν κατὰ μέρος ἀσωμάτων οὐ διαλέγεται, ψυχῆς καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτα· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι φυσικοί. He echoes, Aristotle, De Anima, 404b1 6; 405a13 19.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 111. He attributed this to Anaxagoras and Empedocles. He was wrong about both of them.  Asclepius of Tralles (quoting Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989a30 31), op. cit. p. 61. Likewise, op. cit. pp. 26; 29; 43; 53; 55; 111. On p. 31, Asclepius is all too quick to embrace the criticism of Plato in the Phaedo against Anaxagoras, and elaborates further along that wrong line.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 61. The vituperative mood of the author against Anaxagoras (whom he addresses in second person) should be particularly noticed: ἰστέον οὖν ὅτι ἢ συμβο λικῶς ἔλεγες ταῦτα, ὦ ᾿Aναξαγόρα, ὅτι πάντα ἐν πᾶσι, βουλόμενος ἐντεῦθεν δηλῶσαι τὴν ὕλην, ἐπειδὴ πάντα ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ ὑπάρχουσιν, ἢ τῷ ὄντι περιφανταζόμενος τὴν ὕλην ταῦτα ἔλεγες.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

345

Later still, Michael Psellus made one more apt remark: although Aristotle branded Anaxagoras’ principles ‘elements’, the fact is that elements (like all other material things) were produced from those principles, ‘which were in absolute rest during the infinite time’ before the Mind distinguished them (ἠρέμουν πάντως τὸν ἄπειρον ἐκεῖνον χρόνον),⁹³ and thus the Mind became Creative Mind. For Anaxagoras did not produce natural bodies from the elements in one way or another, but from the homoiomeries, which were combined with one another following the motion caused upon them by the Mind.⁹⁴

The principles create all things, sustaining and holding them together. Nevertheless, their intelligible union is a constant fact notwithstanding their incessant cosmic activity. Since their distinction is an intelligible one, their union and oneness is always there, and so is their omnipresence: no incorporeal entity can be associated with a specific spatial place, which is why the principles are all in all, by virtue of their incorporeal nature. Their union is in fact sustained by the Mind (διὰ δὲ τὸ νοητὴν εἶναι τὴν διάκρισιν πάντα τῇ τοῦ ἑνὸς ὄντος ἑνώσει κεκράτηται), even though the perceptible reality of distinct objects is impervious to manifesting the intelligible oneness and union (οὐ γὰρ ἐπιδέχεται τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν ὁ αἰσθητὸς διασπασμός). Any oneness in the empirical realm has nothing to do that of the supreme intelligible reality and with the Mind itself (τὸ οὖν ἐνταῦθα ἀδιαίρετον καὶ τὸ συνεχὲς καὶ ἡ κατὰ τὸν ἕνα λόγον κοινωνία οὐκ ἐφαρμόττει τῷ ἑνί).⁹⁵ Considering the philosophy of Parmenides and Melissus, Aristotle made the arrogant statement that they were departing from false premisses, and fell short of logic, which is why their syllogisms could not stand up to reason (καὶ γὰρ ψευδῆ λαμβάνουσι καὶ ἀσυλλόγιστοί εἰσιν). In other words, he alleged that they made erroneous assumptions and argued unsoundly about them. Then, he makes this remark, couched in a proverbial style: But once one departs from an absurd premiss, it is not difficult for many absurdities to fol low (ἀλλ᾿ ἑνὸς ἀτόπου δοθέντος τὰ ἄλλα συμβαίνει· τοῦτο δὲ οὐδὲν χαλεπόν).⁹⁶

 Quoting Aristotle, Physica, 250b.  Michael Psellus, commPhys, 8.2: ὁ δέ γε νοῦς ὁ δημιουργικὸς … κίνησιν ἐνεποίησεν αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ μὲν ᾧδε, τὰ δ᾿ ᾧδε παραγαγὼν συνέθετο ἀλλήλαις τὰς ὁμοιομερείας καὶ τὰ στοιχεῖα ἐποί ησε πρώτως καὶ τἆλλα τὰ φυσικὰ σώματα· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων ταῦτα ἐγέννα ᾿Aναξαγό ρας, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν ἅπαντα.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 88.  Aristotle, Physica, 185a11 12; then again, 186a9 10. Simplicius used the phrase as an Aristo telian proverb, presumably following his teacher Ammonius. commCael, p. 90; commPhys, p. 52.

346

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

August Immanuel Bekker (1785‒1871) proposed to excise this passage along with its context (185a9‒14: ὅπερ ἀμφότεροι … χαλεπόν) and consider it as ‘an editorial interpolation’, since Aristotle makes the same statement in 186a6‒12. Subsequently, modern translators are content with not to translating it, or translating only the above proverbial phrase while leaving the rest of that out. However, this is a genuine statement by Aristotle himself. One should have thought that it is telling of his disposition towards eminent Presocratics, and perhaps it has something to say also about his character. Bekker’s suggestion was not correct because Simplicius comments on Physics 185a9‒14 take this text for granted; actually, he wrote a section for the portion 185a10‒11 alone (criticism of Melissus) which included the foregoing proverbial phrase of Aristotle.⁹⁷ This phrase actually never became a proverb, and only Simplicius used it at one more point.⁹⁸ John Philoponus also considered this as not an interpolated text, and commented on 185a9‒14, too; when he came upon the same remark later (i. e. on Physics, 186a6‒12), he considered it conveniently once again.⁹⁹ Later, Gennadius Scholarius also seems to accept both of the similar references in the Physics as ones having been written by Aristotle,¹⁰⁰ whereas one of his contemporaries only used the proverbial phrase in a context of admiration for Aristotle, which though is not a commentary that could allow for identification of the present point.¹⁰¹ One more irony about Aristotle is that his criticism of Anaxagoras turns those statements which he aimed against Parmenides and Melissus, against himself. For he departed ‘from absurd premisses’ from which ‘many absurdities followed’. This is what Simplicius noticed, actually not only in Aristotle, but also in Alexander of Aphrodisias. The latter followed Aristotle in considering Anaxagoras’ principles as eternally divisible elements, which was their normal springboard of criticism. He did not grasp that the principles are immaterial, although Anaxagoras had said that, however small a piece of matter, there is always one which is smaller. The mistake which Simplicius points out is that Alexander Likewise, John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 59. Theodore Gazes (philologist, fifteenth century), Antirrheticon, 77.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 52.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 90: ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐνταῦθα τὸ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους εἰπεῖν εὔκαιρον, ὅτι ἑνὸς ἀτόπου δοθέντος τὰ ἄλλα συμβαίνει.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 59.  Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 6 (marginal notes on Aristotle’s Physica, 185a9 14), lines 49 & 170; Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii in Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, p. 170 (ref. to Physica, 186a6 12).  Theodore Gazes, op. cit. 77: ἑνὸς γὰρ ἀτόπου δοθέντος τὰ ἄλλα συμβαίνει.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

347

sought ‘the minimum quantity’ of presumed elements, to which he replies that this is impossible: the underlying notion is distinction of each principle as such, not any idea about the minimum of it: for if, per impossibile, following infinite successive divisions, a ‘minimum’ quantity were reached, and (by definition) any ‘smaller’ than that should be excluded, then Anaxagoras’ fundamental notion of ‘secretion’ (ἔκκρισις)¹⁰² could cease to make sense (ποσῷ μὲν γάρ, ὅτι οὐ φθάσει τὸ ἐλάχιστον, εἰ δὲ μή, στήσεται ἡ ἔκκρισις). The same could happen with his principle ‘everything is in everything’. Besides, ‘infinity’ proper is always a potentiality, never actuality; and, more to the point, infinite divisibility can be only a potentiality, never actuality.¹⁰³ The same goes for this procedure, were it for this to be understood in terms of quality, which would be a kind of severing matter from its qualities. However, this is impossible, according to Aristotle who posited that qualities are inseparable from matter. What is indeed there, it is neither any quantity nor any quality to be determined: it is ‘secretion’ (ἔκκρισις), that is, the distinctive character (or, nature) of the principle assigned with a certain character determined by the creative act of the Mind. Therefore, the issue is not whether division ad infinitum is either possible or not, or whether this is actuality (which is not) or potentiality (which it is): the real point is that division ad infinitum would result in propositions contrary to the fundamentals of Anaxagoras’ philosophy (οὐ γὰρ στήσεται, οὐ διὰ τὴν ἐπ᾿ ἄπειρον τομήν, ὡς ᾿Aλέξανδρος ἤκουσεν, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι στήσεται ἡ ἔκκρισις). Aristotle then (Simplicius explains) decided that the Mind of Anaxagoras was ‘absurd’ (ἄτοπος οὖν ὁ νοῦς), either because ‘he [i. e. the Mind] had no inkling of what is impossible’ (ἢ τὸ ἀδύνατον ἀγνοῶν), or because he was aware of this, and yet he sought to undertake tasks which are impossible’ to carry out (ἢ γινώσκων μὲν ὅτι ἀδύνατον, ἐγχειρῶν δὲ τοῖς ἀδυνάτοις).¹⁰⁴ The double mistake of Aristotle was that he treated Anaxagoras principles both as material ones and as elements. It was not the first time he engaged in considering a Presocratic philosopher by presuming comprehensive materiality existing in actuality. This adds to the irony, since Aristotle did in fact consider the possibility of Anaxagoras having posited potentiality: he only said that Anaxagoras was inarticulate, and Aristotle himself expressed the notion of potential-

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 176.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 141; 167; 171; et passim. In fact, he followed Aristotle, Physica, 207b10 11: ἄπειροι γὰρ αἱ διχοτομίαι τοῦ μεγέθους. ὥστε δυνάμει μὲν ἔστιν, ἐνεργείᾳ δ᾿ οὔ. Cf. Physica, 206a14 21; Metaphysica, 1048b14 17; De Generatione et Corruptione, 318a20 21.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 176. See supra, p. 183, note 93; also, p. 338, note 65.

348

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

ity perfectly.¹⁰⁵ He had not grasped that Anaxagoras posited creation of intelligible principles which keep causing the perceptible universe to being, and existing simultaneously with it, and there was no such time when the former preceded the latter: once the principles were ‘distinguished’, or ‘ordered’, the material world came to pass, too. Thus, Aristotle wrote only a few lines in order to exorcize the phantom that haunted him, namely, that Anaxagoras had preceded him concerning the notion of potentiality: It must be matter, then, that admits of both contraries that changes. And since being is two fold (διττὸν τὸ ὄν), everything changes from being potentially to being actually (μεταβάλλει πᾶν ἐκ τοῦ δυνάμει ὄντος εἰς τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ ὄν); e. g. from potentially white to actually white. The same applies to increase and decrease. Hence, not only may there be generation acci dentally from non being, but also everything is generated from being, that is to say, from potential being, not from actual being (ὥστε οὐ μόνον κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς ἐνδέχεται γίγνεσθαι ἐκ μὴ ὄντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐξ ὄντος γίγνεται πάντα, δυνάμει μέντοι ὄντος, ἐκ μὴ ὄντος δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ). And this it the one of Anaxagoras (for [speaking of one] is better [than the expression] all things were together, καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι τὸ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἕν· βέλτιον γὰρ ἢ ὁμοῦ πάντα), and the ‘mixture’ of Empedocles and of Anaxagoras, and the doctrine of Democritus would be better expressed as ‘all things were together potentially but not ac tually’. Hence these thinkers must have had a conception of matter.¹⁰⁶

It is not the case that Anaxagoras did not ‘have a conception of matter’, as Aristotle put it: for indeed the concept of potentiality imbued Anaxagoras’ analyses, which is the only way for them to make sense, and this is the ghost besetting the foregoing passage of Aristotle. He took the primal undifferentiated fusion as the realm of potentialities, out of which the homoiomeries were produced by the Mind, and blamed Anaxagoras for not having said that this was a potential Being. However, he was wrong: the primal undifferentiated fusion was not a realm of potentialities. This came to be so once the Mind engaged in his creative activity and made that chaotic fusion capable of producing potentialities by distinguishing (meaning: creating) the principles out of that. This, not the primal fusion, was the one of Anaxagoras, as already discussed.¹⁰⁷ Aristotle assumed that

 Aristotle contended that he saw the notion of potentiality not only in Anaxagoras, but also in Empedocles, Anaximander, and Democritus. Metaphysica, 1069b19 23: ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐξ ὄντος γίγνεται πάντα, δυνάμει μέντοι ὄντος, ἐκ μὴ ὄντος δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ. καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι τὸ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἕν· βέλτιον γὰρ ἢ ὁμοῦ πάντα, καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους τὸ μῖγμα καὶ ᾿Aναξιμάνδρου, καὶ ὡς Δημόκριτός φησιν, ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα δυνάμει, ἐνεργείᾳ δ᾿ οὔ.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b; see introduction to his reasoning, in 1062b. Alexander of Aphrodisias commented on this, and of course he employed Aristotle’s view. commMetaph, p. 673; cf. pp. 69; 291.  See supra, pp. 213 4; 327; 332.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

349

what was produced from the chaotic fusion was the infinity of material particles which he himself (not Anaxagoras) dubbed ‘homoiomeries’. But the sensible world was produced as a third (not second) reality,¹⁰⁸ following the primal undifferentiated fusion and then the intelligible principles that were produced out of it. This Aristotle did not grasp (or, did not want to admit), hence his misled (and misleading) logomachy which collapsed only because Simplicius cared to peruse it in detail. The earth did in fact appear actually whereas it existed only potentially. However, this happened once the principles were created, or distinguished, or ordered, or however one would like to call it. This potentiality did not exist in the primal fusion, but it did exist in the primal union of the newly created principles, which was the union of the distinguished principles, not the primeval fusion. This is easy to understand in the century we live: upon the Big Bang, during the first infinitely small fraction of a second, the laws of this universe were created. The Theory of Relativity teaches that these laws did not hold right upon that event, but they came to be only a very short time later (probably 10‒23 of a second after that event). The actual earth was not there yet, since the infinitely small amount of matter (which theoretically had infinite energy) began to rotate, as indeed it appeared to Anaxagoras who spoke of ‘rotation’ (περιχώρησις) the cause of expansion and creation of things. However, the laws of the universe that could result in the appearance of this actual planet after some billions of years were already there. What is the difference between the description of Anaxagoras by Aristotle and Simplicius speaking about the earth being there potentially, and that which we know now?¹⁰⁹ Alexander of Aphrodisias followed along the same line. While opening his treatise, he was convinced that Anaxagoras was ‘dreaming of matter’ and that he was in fact speaking of matter unconsciously: his statements should be understood as suggesting the notion of potentiality. Alexander added out of his own to the pernicious metaphor of Aristotle’s invective, and argued that while Anaxagoras ‘was dreaming of matter’ he said nothing substantial about its role. Aristotle never said anything about Anaxagoras having such ‘dreams’, except once, when he spoke about ‘dream’ in a context referring to those who ‘dream of a third cause, but never put it into words’.¹¹⁰ This, however, was aimed against Plato’s Phaedo, where the ‘forms’ were argued to be efficient causes, as well as against the Atomists in general, who allegedly did not care to ac See supra, p. 271.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b. Simplicius, commCael, p. 543.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 335b7 8: Δεῖ δὲ προσεῖναι καὶ τὴν τρίτην, ἣν ἅπαντες μὲν ὀνειρώττουσι, λέγει δ᾿ οὐδείς. Nevertheless, cf. Metaphysica, 1069b20 24.

350

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

count for a Generative Cause of matter. This criticism of course included Anaxagoras, who (in Plato’s view, reproduced by Aristotle) posited the Mind, but allegedly he did not make anything of it. John Philoponus said that, by that apostrophe, Aristotle ‘implied Anaxagoras and Plato’ (in fact, Plato was pointed out by name at that point). He also believed that Aristotle was referring to Anaxagoras, because he said that the Mind is a creative cause, but he did not use it in his theory of generation (᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν γὰρ ποιητικὸν τὸν νοῦν εἰπὼν οὐ χρῆται αὐτῷ ἐν τῇ γενέσει τῶν πραγμάτων).¹¹¹ Likewise, the anonymous author who wrote after the sixth century, remarked that Aristotle had in mind Anaxagoras, ‘who was dreaming while deeply sleeping’; for he mentioned the Mind, and yet he did not entertain the notion in the way he should have done.¹¹² This is all very well, and perhaps Aristotle indeed had in mind Anaxagoras alongside Plato. However, the fact is that never did Aristotle say of Anaxagoras that, when he proposed that ‘all things were together’, he was dreaming of matter, even though apparently this was the tenor of his analyses. This information originates only with Alexander of Aphrodisias,¹¹³ who rightly read Aristotle presuming that Anaxagoras’ propositions were about ‘matter’. Alexander, who was the most faithful reproducer of Aristotle’s invective, added this calumniation out of his own, in order to make the traditional Aristotelian vilification more harsh: his point was that, whereas Anaxagoras allegedly thought that, in the primal undifferentiated fusion, all beings existed in actuality (which suggests that they were material), he did not say anything about their materiality, or, at least, about matter itself.¹¹⁴

 John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 285, commenting on Aristotle, De Generatione et Corrup tione, 335b7 8. Cf. Philoponus, op. cit. p. 281: ἔστι δέ, φησί, καὶ τρίτον αἴτιον ποιητικόν, … τὸ δὲ ποιητικὸν ὠνείρωξαν μὲν διήρθρωσε δὲ οὐδείς. … οὗτος γὰρ ἐπιτιμήσας τοῖς ἄλλοις ὡς μηδεμίαν ἔννοιαν λαβοῦσι τοῦ ποιητικοῦ αἰτίου, ἔνθα καὶ τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν ὑπεδέξατο εἰπόντα τὸν νοῦν ποιητικὸν αἴτιον, εἰ καὶ ὅτι οὐδ᾿ ἐκεῖνος ἐχρήσατο αὐτῷ ἐν τῇ γενέσει τῶν γενητῶν.  Anonymous, Prolegomena Philosophiae Platonicae, 8: εἰ δὲ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὥσπερ ἐκ βα θέος κάρου ὀνειρώττων λέγει ποιητικὸν εἶναι αἴτιον τὸν νοῦν, ὅμως οὐκ ἐχρῆτο αὐτῷ ἐν τῇ γενέσει καὶ φθορᾷ, ἀλλ᾿ ᾐτιᾶτο δίνας ἀέρων καὶ ἀνέμους, μηδαμοῦ τὸν νοῦν αἰτιώμενος.  Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 68 (comm. on Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989a30), quoted supra, p. 335, note 52; op. cit. p. 673: τοῦτο ἐστὶ τὸ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἕν, δυνάμει λέγων ὅτι ὅταν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας λέγῃ ὡς ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα καὶ ἓν ἦν τὸ πᾶν, ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἤρξατο ἀπὸ ἀρχῆς τινος ταῦτα διαχωρίζειν, ἐνδείκνυται ὡς ὠνείρωττε μὲν τὴν ὕλην, οὐ κατέλαβε δέ, καὶ ἐπὶ τούτῳ οὐδὲ σαφῶς ἡμᾶς ταύτην ἐδίδαξε.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 291: εἶπε δὲ καὶ περὶ τῆς ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξης ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις λέγων, ὡς δι᾿ ὧν ἔλεγε πάντα ἐν πᾶσι μεμῖχθαι τὴν ὕλην ὀνειροπολοῦντος, ἐνεργείᾳ πάντα τὰ ὄντα εἶναι.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

351

That aside (since, in Aristotelian terms, formless matter is potentially everything, but it is nothing in actuality) in effect Aristotle urged that Anaxagoras was speaking not of being, but about non-being.¹¹⁵ He did not realize that in fact Anaxagoras described an incorporeal reality. In the first place, he styles Anaxagoras’ principles either ‘elements’ or ‘homoiomeries’, he presumed them to be material, and he ended up with speaking about formless matter, that is, nonbeing. However, Anaxagoras knew what he was talking about, and, fortunately, Simplicius cared to explain the theory. We have already seen Themistius correctly affirming that Anaxagoras did not make everything dependent on the nature of material bodies’.¹¹⁶ Despite the learnedness of this early voice against the old criticism by both Plato and Aristotle against Anaxagoras, history had to wait for Simplicius to set things in order. I should emphasize that the principles themselves are not potentialities. The principles are the way to creation,¹¹⁷ they are the causes which effectuate potentialities under the constant rule of the Mind, who is not simply a ‘principle’, but a personal hypostasis, who knows all the principles, and willed to create them. Therefore, the difference from Plato is plain, since, to him, the Ideas stand aloof, apart from any creative activity, and they are eternal, self-subsistent, and transcendent. To Anaxagoras, the principles (later: the logoi) are not the ultimate reality; the Mind is prior to them, being ontologically sheer different, and yet he is the one who created them, and keeps on supervising over their activity.¹¹⁸ The Mind is the ‘guardian’ and ‘lord’ of everything that exists and happens as a result of the interaction of the activity of principles, and he is not simply the First Mover: everything ‘moves according to his mastery and absolute rule’.¹¹⁹ As Sextus Empiricus reported, ‘by writing, all things were together, and Mind came and set them in order, Anaxagoras assumed that the Mind, who is God according

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1007b: “And the result is the dictum of Anaxagoras, all things were together; so that nothing truly exists. It seems, then, that they are speaking of the Indeterminate; and while they think that they are speaking of that which exists, they are really speaking of that which does not exist (τὸ ἀόριστον οὖν ἐοίκασι λέγειν, καὶ οἰόμενοι τὸ ὂν λέγειν περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος λέγουσιν); for the Indeterminate is that which exists potentially, not actually (τὸ δυνάμει ὄν καὶ μὴ ἐντελεχείᾳ τὸ ἀόριστόν ἐστιν).”  Themistius, Ὑπὲρ τοῦ λέγειν ἢ πῶς τῷ φιλοσόφῳ λεκτέον, p. 317c d: καὶ ἐῶ τὸν Κλαζομένιον ᾿Aναξαγόραν καὶ ἐφ᾿ ὅσον οὗτος ἐνεωτέρισε, νοῦν καὶ θεὸν πρῶτος ἐπαγόμενος τῇ κοσμοποιίᾳ, καὶ οὐ πάντ᾿ ἀνάψας τῆς φύσεως τῶν σωμάτων.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 395; see infra, p. 757.  Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 2.77: Ὁ δὲ Πλά των, διὰ τὸ ὑποτιθέναι καθ᾿ αὑτὰ νοητὰ τὰς ἰδέας, οὐκ ἠναγκάζετο τιθέναι νοῦν τὸν ποιοῦντα ἐνεργείᾳ νοητά.  See chapter 2, p. 181; further, infra, pp. 20; 1192.

352

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

to him, is an active principle’,¹²⁰ which is why Gennadius Scholarius reported that, to Anaxagoras, everything ‘moves according to the mastery and absolute rule’ of the Mind. The principles are incorporeal effective causes; they were distinguished (meaning, created)¹²¹ by the Mind who set them in motion, and the actual world came into existence out of their activity. They are the predecessors of the Stoic logoi (which are corporeal, but this is not an essential difference), and of Origen’s and Porphyry’s logoi, which are incorporeal and constitute ‘the way to creation’ according to Porphyry, as Proclus put it.¹²² To Origen, they are the object of creation. And Simplicius made an analysis of the logoi, which is analogous to the one made by Iamblichus.¹²³ Simplicius himself says that he is ‘surprised’ (θαυμάζω δὲ ἔγωγε τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους) at the criticism of Aristotle against Parmenides’ exposition of the oneness of the One Whole (as in Physics, 184b15‒186a3). He is confident that ‘to those men’ (meaning Parmenides and Melissus) ‘the arguments of Aristotle would have appeared absurd’ (καὶ τὰ ἐπαγόμενα δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους ὡς ἄτοπα ταύταις ταῖς ὑποθέσεσι δέξαιντο ἂν οἱ ἄνδρες ἐκεῖνοι), which Simplicius himself demonstrates on their behalf. His conclusion is that Aristotle did not grasp the real import of their statements (τὴν ἐκείνων ἔννοιαν) and accused them of having said ‘absurd things’ on the wrong assumption that they had spoken of material realities (ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ὅλον καὶ τὰ μέρη καὶ τὸ συνεχὲς ὡς ἐπὶ σώματος λαμβάνων ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης τὰ ἄτοπα ἐπήγαγεν).¹²⁴ This is precisely what Aristotle did also with Anaxagoras, although he knew that, no matter what the principles (styled ‘elements’ or ‘homoiomeries’ by Aristotle) were in the primeval fusion, they were ‘at rest during an infinite time’¹²⁵ until the Mind caused them to move. However, during that infinite time, it was impossible for corporeal nature to exist: for one thing, ‘it would have been impossible for material distinction to come to pass in the absence of motion’ (οὐ γὰρ ἦν διάκρισιν σωματικὴν ἄνευ κινήσεως γενέσθαι);¹²⁶ for another, Aristotle stipulated that ‘motion’ and ‘bodily na Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 6.  See supra, p. 334.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 395.  Iamblichus, In Nicomachi Arithmeticam Introductionem, p. 81: καὶ ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς δ᾿ ἂν εὕ ροιμεν τὰ σπέρματα πάντα τοὺς λόγους τῶν ἀποτελεσθησομένων ἐξ αὐτῶν ἀδιακρίτους καὶ συγ κεχυμένους ἔχοντα, ὡς ἂν δυνάμει ὄντα ἐκεῖνα ἃ ἐξ αὐτῶν γενήσεται. Likewise, op. cit. p. 10; Theologoumena Arithmeticae, pp. 3; 13; 79 81; De Mysteriis, 3.28. See quotations in chapter 10, p. 790, note 386.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 86, commenting on Aristotle, Physica, 185b11 12.  Aristotle, Physica, 250b.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1123.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

353

ture’ entail each other.¹²⁷ Furthermore, ‘materiality’ makes sense only when numerical multitude is there, and vice versa,¹²⁸ which means distinction. Against this, in the original fusion, there is no distinction; how then could it be possible to speak of ‘material’ things (whatever they might be) in the absence of distinction? Therefore, it was total absence of motion that would have been a factor guiding Aristotle to grasping the real doctrine of Anaxagoras. However, this did not happen, and, once again, the argument against Aristotle was developed only by Simplicius. Gennadius Scholarius saw that Anaxagoras posited ‘principles’, and that the ‘distinction’ of them by the Mind was a creative act. He also saw that the world was created once and for all, and this is going to stay in existence forever under the constant supervision and continuous administration by the Mind (which is a tacit rebuttal of the relevant criticism by both Plato and Aristotle).¹²⁹ The reason for Scholarius to be so accurate becomes evident from a careful reading of that point of his work, which is largely (but not adequately) dependent on Simplicius.¹³⁰ To Anaxagoras, the Mind was the First Mover. But motion means individuality, and individuality means numerical multitude, therefore, corporeality. Subsequently, the Mind ‘distinguished’ the primal χρήματα, hence corporeality and indeed matter appeared. Scholarius grasped the rationale of Anaxagoras and rendered it succinctly: Whatever comes to be, it is produced from either being or non being; since it is impossible to come from non being, it follows that it comes from being; consequently, whatever is pro duced, it is contained into that from which it is produced; therefore, within a homoiomery everything is one.¹³¹

 Aristotle, De Caelo, 274b4 5; 288b4 6; 304b13 14; Physica, 212b7 8 & 29. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 686. Simplicius, commCael, p. 426; commPhys, pp. 620; 1243. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 97. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, pp. 77; 78.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1074a33 34: ἀλλ᾿ ὅσα ἀριθμῷ πολλά, ὕλην ἔχει (‘those which are numeri cally many, they are material’). De Anima, 432a3 7: ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐδὲ πρᾶγμα οὐθὲν ἔστι παρὰ τὰ μεγέθη, ὡς δοκεῖ, τὰ αἰσθητὰ κεχωρισμένον (‘nothing has a separate existence, except sensible magnitudes’). Cf. Physica, 204a8 10.  Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 6 (marginal notes on Aristotle’s Physica), lines 255 66: ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὰς ὁμοιομερείας κατὰ τὸ ὑποκείμενον ἀρχὰς θέμενος, ἀπείρους ἔλεγε ταύ τας, καὶ τὸ ποιητικὸν δὲ αἴτιον ἓν ἔλεγε, τὸν διακρίνοντα νοῦν. … τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν λέγειν ἅπαξ γενόμενον τὸν κόσμον ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος διαμένειν λοιπόν, ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ ἐφεστῶτος κυβερνώμενόν τε καὶ διοικούμενον.  Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 154.  Gennadius Scholarius, op. cit. Book 6 (marginal notes on Aristotle’s Physica), lines 271 4: ᾿Aναξαγόρας τοιοῦτον τινὰ δυνάμει λόγου ἠρώτα· τὸ γινόμενον ἢ ἐξ ὄντος γίνεται, ἢ ἐξ οὐκ

354

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

This one homoiomery is the union of all the distinct principles sustained by the Mind. Actually, the designation comes from Aristotle, whereas Anaxagoras himself called it ‘encompassing’ (περιέχον). The term περιέχον means that which embraces, it was almost universal among Presocratics, but its import varied. Put in Anaxagorean terms, if the universe came from a ‘seed’, then περιέχον is the envelope of a seed along with its content, which is the source and emanative cause giving rise to all potentialities for the material realm to exist, to function, to evolve and to be transformed. The idea in this sense was taken up by the Stoics, who named so both the encompassing (the Logos) and that which is encompassed (the spermatic logoi).¹³² Presocratics used the term τὸ περιέχον in the sense of something ‘containing something else’ (e. g. the Pythagorean time is the container of the world), and I should have thought that Anaxagoras took this from Heraclitus: to him, there is affinity between the individual reason and the universal one. During sleep, our individual mind (νοῦς) is temporarily separated from its ‘natural affinity’ with ‘the Divine Logos, who is common to all people’, it is ‘that which contains’ all human minds (χωρίζεται τῆς πρὸς τὸ περιέχον συμφυΐας), and human minds become rational only by participation in this Logos (κατὰ μετοχὴν γινόμεθα λογικοί).¹³³ This is the meaning that stands closest to the Anaxagorean περιέχον, although it is not identical with it, on the face of the testimony about Anaxagoras that we have. His proposition was that the Mind, ‘whether the greater or the lesser one, is the same’, and it is present is all animate creatures; but it the case might well be that, on this, he shared the same ideas with Heraclitus. Anyhow, in the two specific extant passages, τὸ περιέχον is a general term indicating that which was, and is, other than the Mind, and yet it is encompassed by it. This is the epitome of the notion of otherness in respect of the Mind, which though rules, dominates over it, and encompasses it. As it is used, the term has a bearing on both the primal fusion and the subsequent ordered union of the principles.¹³⁴ Therefore, τὸ περιέχον is other than the Mind, and yet it is encompassed by it.

ὄντος· ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ μὴ ὄντος ἀδύνατον· ἐξ ὄντος ἄρα· εἰ δὲ τοῦτο, καὶ ἐνυπάρχοντος τῷ ἐξ οὗ ἐστιν· ἕν ἐστιν ἄρα πάντα ἐν τῇ ὁμοιομερείᾳ. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1062b; 1069b.  See infra, p. 608. Cf. Origen, homJer, 12.10: συνεσκότασε τὸ περιέχον, meaning the ‘heaven’, which is plain Aristotelian influence. Cf. Aristotle De Caelo, 279a; Physica, 212a. Simplicius, commCael, p. 699. I have argued that Origen studied Aristotle through Alexander of Aphrodisias, whose view is reported by Simplicius, op. cit. p. 371.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 129.  Cf. (primal fusion) Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys. p. 155 6: καὶ γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ ἀποκρίνονται ἀπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ τοῦ περιέχοντος, καὶ τό γε περιέχον ἄπειρόν ἐστι τὸ

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

355

This testimony by Scholarius is valuable, although he eventually wrote (in compliance with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, whose thought he rendered at this point anyway) that Anaxagoras never grasped the notion of potentiality, and that the principles were only material elements.¹³⁵ Moreover, the principles are like drops of water which result in making up an amount of water as a material aggregate.¹³⁶ He set three logical axioms, as a presupposition in order to be possible to speak about ‘principles’. According to them, principles (1) should not be derived from anything else (μὴ εἶναι ἐξ ἄλλων); (2) they should not be derived from each other (μὴ εἶναι ἐξ ἀλλήλων); (3) all other things should be derived from them (τὰ ἄλλα πάντα εἶναι ἐξ αὐτῶν). He adds the ‘glorious argument’ of Aristotle, according to which these three axioms entail that there must be ‘contrariety’ of the principles (τὰ πρῶτα ἄρα ἐναντία εἰσὶν αἱ ἀρχαί). It is ironical that all of these axioms express accurately the principles of Anaxagoras, although a couple of lines before that point Scholarius (actually, Thomas Aquinas) said that ‘in a way Anaxagoras and Empedocles posited contrariety in the principles’ (ἐτίθεσαν μὲν καὶ οὗτοι τρόπον τινὰ τὴν ἐναντιότητα ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς λέγοντες πάντα γίνεσθαι συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει, αἳ συνίασι κατὰ τὸ γένος τῷ μανῷ καὶ πυκνῷ).¹³⁷ Quite evidently, he said so only because he followed Aristotle’s Physics, 189a11‒20. Reference to one homoiomery should not mislead us, since it can be ambiguous: for this is only another name for the misapprehension of Aristotle as discussed earlier, who erroneously thought that the original undifferentiated fusion was ‘the one of Anaxagoras’.¹³⁸ Of Aristotle’s commentators, John Philoponus

πλῆθος. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 157 (ordered union of the principles): ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα, [ἦ] ἐν τῷ πολλὰ περιέχοντι.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii in Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, pp. 180 1: Καὶ οὗτοι πάντες [i. e. Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Empedocles] ἠπά τηνται· οὐ γὰρ ᾔδεσαν διακρίνειν δύναμιν καὶ ἐνέργειαν· τὸ γὰρ δυνάμει ὂν ὥσπερ μέσον ἐστὶ τοῦ τε κυρίως μὴ ὄντος καὶ τοῦ ἐνεργείᾳ ὄντος. Τὰ φύσει τοίνυν γινόμενα οὐ γίνονται ἐκ τοῦ ἁπλῶς μὴ ὄντος, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ τοῦ δυνάμει μὲν ὄντος, ἐνεργείᾳ δὲ μὴ ὄντος· ὅθεν τὰ γινόμενα οὐ δεῖ προϋπάρχειν ἐνεργείᾳ, ὡς αὐτοὶ ἔλεγον, ἀλλὰ δυνάμει μόνον. … τὸ γὰρ ψυχρὸν δυνάμει ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ θερμῷ, οὐκ ἐνεργείᾳ, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐδόξασε διὰ τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι αὐτὸν λαμβάνειν τὸ δυνάμει εἶναι, ὅπερ ἐστὶ μεταξὺ τοῦ τε εἰλικρινοῦς μὴ εἶναι καὶ τοῦ ἐνεργείᾳ εἶναι.  Gennadius Scholarius, op. cit. p. 185: ὁ γὰρ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, λέγων μέγα τι γίνεσθαι ἐκ συνθέσεως πολλῶν μερῶν ὁμοίων τε καὶ μικρῶν, ὥσπερ κρουνόν τινα ἐκ πολλῶν σταγόνων, οὕτως ἐπὶ πάντων ἔχειν ἐνόμισεν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο φησὶν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης οὐκ ὀρθῶς λαμβάνειν αὐτὸν τὴν γένεσιν τῶν ὁμοειδῶν, τουτέστιν ἀεὶ δεῖν γίνεσθαί τι ἔκ τινων κατὰ τὸ εἶδος ὁμοίων.  Gennadius Scholarius, op. cit. pp. 186 7. Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 181: σαφῶς δὲ καὶ αὐ ταῖς λέξεσι τὰς ἐναντιότητας ἐν τῇ γενέσει παραδίδωσιν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b.

356

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

vaguely and ambiguously spoke of one homoiomery, by which he meant the primal union of the principles which contained all potentialities.¹³⁹ The incorporeal multitude created by the Mind is itself a certain oneness, since ‘distinction’ within incorporeality is only intellectual, not an material one. Accordingly, this remains united under the Mind, notwithstanding their own different ontological status, since the principles are essentially determined by their creaturliness; this state of unity is their closest existential participation in the Mind (τὸ δέ γε πρῶτον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς προελθὸν πλῆθος ἅτε προσεχῶς αὐτοῦ μετέχον ἡνωμένον τέ ἐστι καὶ ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ μένον καὶ καθ᾿ ὅσον μὲν ὁπωσοῦν προῆλθεν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνός, τὸ ὁπωσοῦν γενητὸν ἔχει). Since ‘all the Mind is alike, both the greater and the lesser one’, and ‘none of them is like anyone else’ (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων. ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί),¹⁴⁰ meaning, all principles are unlike each other, οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις¹⁴¹), it is reasonable to form some idea about what the Mind is, through an analogy to the human mind. This is what Themistius did, who partially accepted Aristotle’s understanding of Anaxagoras’ principles, but also he had himself some grasp of what the Mind is. Lets us then follow him. The Mind is present throughout the world and supervises everything and he is ready to settle things. But in order to do so, a need must arise and a certain action should be called for. To this purpose, the Mind is alerted by the intelligible principles it created, which are always the way and means for things to get done. Themistius¹⁴² calls this alert ‘passion’, emphasizing that this is only an analogy

 John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 396: ὁ δὲ A ᾿ ναξαγόρας, φησίν, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ κατὰ ἀρχὰς πάντα μεμῖχθαι ἔλεγε, καὶ εἶναι οἷον μίαν ὁμοιομέρειαν μεγάλην ἔχουσαν πάντα ἐν ἑαυτῇ. Op. cit. p. 397: ἐνταῦθα δέ φησιν ὅτι τὴν μίαν καὶ ἄπειρον τῷ μεγέθει ὁμοιομέρειαν, ἐν ᾗ πάντα ἦν τὰ ὄντα, δι᾿ ἣν καὶ ἔλεγε τὸ ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, διακρίνει εἰς μερικὰς ὁμοιομερείας, οὐκ εἰλικρινεῖς, ἀλλὰ πάντα καὶ αὐτὰς ἐχούσας, φαινομένην δὲ καὶ ὀνομαζομένην ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐπικρατοῦντος.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 157; 165; 172.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 34 & 156: καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλήθους οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις.  Having in mind, Aristotle, De Anima, 429b22 31, who criticized Anaxagoras, only because he reflected on the Anaxagorean Mind as if it were a human one perceiving sensible things. Cf. De Memoria et Reminiscentia, 450a10 14. Aristotle identified the Nous (Mind, Intellect) with its objects (De Anima, 431b17) and argued for priority of sense objects to sense (Categoriae, 8a11; cf. De Anima, 429b23 26). Since any stimulus by the object of sense precedes sense itself, the Mind cannot exist unless objects of thinking exist, too. In order for Mind itself to exist, it has to be thinking Mind, and it is identified with the objects of its own thinking. These objects are unremit tingly necessary for Mind to be granted existence proper. Plotinus took up both ideas of Aristotle and applied them to the letter. Enneades, V.4.2 (44 48). Consequently, the Neoplatonic funda mental thesis that God ‘creates by being what he is’ (a phrase with which Proclus was obsessed) is ultimately an Aristotelian, not a Platonic one.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

357

(πάσχοι ἄν τι καὶ ὁ νοῦς ὑπὸ τῶν νοητῶν, ὥσπερ ὑπὸ τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἡ αἴσθησις, τὸ πάσχοι δ᾿ ἂν καὶ ἐνταῦθα ἀκουστέον παραπλησίως): the case is analogous to a human sense, which is aroused by sensible things, although human sense and sensible things are two different realities. Put more accurately (κυριώτερον γὰρ εἰπεῖν), it is the dynamics of the sensible reality that calls for the Mind to act through his principles, his subordinate surrogates (ὅτι μᾶλλον τελειοῖτο ἂν εἰς ἐνέργειαν ἐκ δυνάμεως προαγόμενος). This stimulus, which invites the Mind to act, is evident from the fact that we do not always perceive the same things, but we have different perceptions depending on different stimuli that we are faced with (διὰ γὰρ τοῦτο οὔτε αἰεὶ νοοῦμεν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ τὰ αὐτὰ αἰεί, ἀλλὰ ἄλλοτε ἄλλα). This is a clear sign that this Mind involves a certain potentiality (τοῦτο γὰρ σημεῖον τοῦ δυνάμει εἶναι τοῦτον τὸν νοῦν), since this acts always ad hoc, and we know that if A circumstances concur, then B action by the Mind will ensue. Therefore, the Mind will react only as a sort of response invited by a certain natural stimulation (οὐ γὰρ οἷον τε μεταβαίνειν ἐξ ἄλλης εἰς ἄλλην ἐνέργειαν μὴ δυνάμεως ὑπομενούσης, ἣ τὰς διαφόρους ἐνεργείας ἀποδίδωσιν). These are the ‘forces’ that invite a certain action by the Mind, and this is why Themistius metaphorically called this reaction a ‘passion’, meaning that this action is stimulated by natural circumstances. However, strictly speaking, the Mind is impassible, that is, not liable to change or to any other sort of influence external to him (δεῖ τοίνυν αὐτὸν ἀπαθῆ εἶναι τοῦ κυρίως λεγομένου πάθους); this is also why the Mind has no form of his own (καὶ μὴ ἔχειν οἰκείαν μὲν μορφήν), although he can assume any form (δεκτικὸν δὲ εἶναι παντὸς εἴδους), and, in sundry cases, he can be potentially appearing as someone, but he is in himself no one of the forms he assumes circumstantially (καὶ δυνάμει τοιοῦτον ἀλλὰ μὴ τοῦτο). The relation of the Mind to the intelligible principles that he created is the same one as the relation of the human senses to sensible things (καὶ ὁμοίως ἔχειν πρὸς τὰ νοητὰ ὥσπερ ἡ αἴσθησις πρὸς τὰ αἰσθητά). Human perception itself is entirely different from the things it perceives or it feels by means of physical sensation (καὶ ὥσπερ ἐκείνη κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν οὐδ᾿ ὁτιοῦν ἦν ὧν ᾐσθάνετο). In like a manner, the Mind is sheer different from intelligible things (οὕτω μηδὲ τὸν τοιοῦτον νοῦν κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν εἶναι τὶ τῶν νοουμένων). Therefore, the Mind has neither form nor shape of his own (μὴ ἔχειν εἶδος οἰκεῖον μηδὲ μορφήν), which follows of necessity (ἀνάγκη ἄρα) from the fact that the Mind apprehends everything (ἐπειδὴ πάντα νοεῖ), and the Mind is potentially everything (πάντα εἶναι δυνάμει). The conclusion of Themistius epitomizes his admiration for the man who inspired him: “Therefore, it was not without thoughtfulness how Anaxagoras envisaged the Mind as being unmixed and of a nature which is different from all those which he knows” (οὐ φαύλως ἄρα ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὠνειροπόλει τὸν

358

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

νοῦν ἀμιγῆ ποιῶν καὶ φύσεως διαφερούσης ἁπάντων τῶν ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ γινωσκομένων),¹⁴³ that is, the principles and their vicarious action at the behest of the Mind, who is nevertheless present and standing by throughout the world. I hardly need to remark that this is an effort to rescue Aristotle, indeed an answer to him, who pretended to believe that ‘knowledge’ by the Anaxagorean Mind literally involves ‘passion’. In De Anima, Aristotle criticized Anaxagoras also for not having explained how the Mind knows and understands; the claim was that he gave no adequate explanation of how can the Nous know, given its utter difference from everything else and its impassibility, that is, its imperviousness to being affected by anything else. In other words, Aristotle argued that, unless God is subject to passion (i. e. subject to stimuli by already existing things, which is how they are knowable by the Mind), He is unable to know. But this argument assumes in the first place that knowledge means that the Mind is affected by what is known, in like manner a human eye or ear is affected by visual perception or sounds. Thus, he chose to ignore the fundamental statement that the ‘unmixed’ Mind knows everything before they come to pass. Speaking of the human soul being a cognitive agent, Aristotle posed the question of ‘how thinking comes about’ (πῶς ποτε γίνεται τὸ νοεῖν). His answer was that this is ‘either a process through which the soul feels or it is acted upon (ὥσπερ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι, ἢ πάσχειν τι), or something else of a similar kind’. Therefore, although the soul ‘is impassible’ (ἀπαθές), it should be ‘receptive of the form of its object’ and ‘potentially the same as its object, although not identical with it.’ It is more than plain that he considers the soul (τῆς ψυχῆς) as identical with the mind (τὸν νοῦν), and speaks also of ‘the mind of the soul’ (ὁ τῆς ψυχῆς νοῦς) in the context of exploring what human cognition means. That he wrote at this point having in mind Anaxagoras it is Aristotle himself who says so (ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας). The problem is that he believed that Anaxagoras identified mind and soul, although, at the same time, Aristotle was perplexed at his predecessor not appearing to do so throughout.¹⁴⁴ Nevertheless, by implicitly relying on Parmenides who identified Being and Thinking, he decided that the Mind is

 Themistius, In Aristotelis Libros De Anima Paraphrasis, 3, p. 94. See further: οὕτω γὰρ ἂν ῥᾷστα γνωρίζοι μηδενὸς οἰκείου παρεμφαινομένου καὶ συνυπάρχοντος· κωλύσει γὰρ καὶ ἀντι φράξει τὸ ἐνυπάρχον εἶδος τὰ ἄλλα ὥσπερ ἀλλότρια. ἀναγκαῖον ἄρα τοῦ τοιούτου νοῦ μὴ εἶναι φύσιν οἰκείαν μηδεμίαν μηδὲ μορφὴν ἀλλ᾿ ἢ ταύτην, ὅτι δυνατὸς περιλαβεῖν τὰς ἀλλοτρίας φύσεις τε καὶ μορφάς, καὶ μηδὲν ἔχειν εἶδος ἀφωρισμένον, ἐπειδὴ καταλαμβάνειν ἅπαντα πέφυ κεν. ὁ ἄρα καλούμενος τῆς ψυχῆς νοῦς (λέγω δὲ νοῦν ᾧ διανοεῖται καὶ ὑπολαμβάνει ἡ ψυχή, οὐχ ὃν πολλάκις καταχρώμενοι φέρομεν καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς φαντασίας) οὐδέν ἐστιν ἐνεργείᾳ τῶν ὄντων πρίν τι νοεῖν. διὸ οὐδὲ μεμῖχθαι αὐτὸν εὔλογον τῷ σώματι. See infra, pp. 682 3.  Aristotle, De Anima, 404b1 3; 404b13 19.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

359

actually ‘nothing’ before it came to think. In any case, Aristotle chose to consider the universal Mind as being no different from the human soul being identified with human mind.¹⁴⁵ Even so, however, he could not make sense of Anaxagoras’ statements: if ‘the Mind is simple and impassible, and he has nothing in common with anything else, how will he think, since thinking is a state of being acted upon?’. This was the stumbling block that Aristotle never managed to hurdle, but this was one created to himself by himself. For his part, Aristotle decided that ‘the Mind should be potentially identical with the objects of thought’ while setting aside the axiom that this Mind was posited as ‘unmixed with everything else’, which he knew perfectly well and stated all the same.¹⁴⁶ Quite simply, Aristotle came to a dead end because of his own distortions of the philosophy he considered. Why did that happen? Aristotle did not consider the fact that the Anaxagorean Mind was a divine being, which also created things by the only way a Mind could have done so, namely, by thinking of those things that came to be. This reinforces the argument of those of his commentators (such as Alexander of Aphrodisias) who argued that Aristotle’s supreme principle was a Mover, but not a Creator, as I discuss later.¹⁴⁷ Aristotle thought that there is a Mind on the one hand, and the things that the Mind thinks of, on the other, which is correct in respect of human cognition, but it was wrong in reference to the Mind which created things. He knew that his solution of identifying the Mind with the object of its thinking was untenable, since it did not square with the idea about the Mind being ‘unmixed’ with anything else. He knew also that ‘knowledge’ by the Mind suggested only ruling over things, not being subject to passion by them in the manner a human eye is affected by a perceptible vision or an ear by a sound.¹⁴⁸ Consequently, divine thinking (thus, divine knowledge, too) is not ‘passion’: it is action, since the only way that the Mind could be understood to act is no

 ‘Before coming to think, the Mind has no actual existence’. Aristotle, De Anima, 429a22 24: ὁ ἄρα καλούμενος τῆς ψυχῆς νοῦς (λέγω δὲ νοῦν ᾧ διανοεῖται καὶ ὑπολαμβάνει ἡ ψυχή) οὐθέν ἐστιν ἐνεργείᾳ τῶν ὄντων πρὶν νοεῖν. Then again, op. cit. 429b30 31: ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, πῶς νοήσει … ὅτι δυνάμει πώς ἐστι τὰ νοητὰ ὁ νοῦς, ἀλλ᾿ ἐντελεχείᾳ οὐδέν, πρὶν ἂν νοῇ. By the way, these expressions make it clear that he identifies ἐνεργείᾳ with ἐντελεχείᾳ.  Aristotle, op. cit. 405a13 17.  See infra, pp. 545 6; 554 69.  Aristotle, De Anima, 429a18 20: ἀνάγκη ἄρα, ἐπεὶ πάντα νοεῖ, ἀμιγῆ εἶναι, ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ἵνα κρατῇ, τοῦτο δ᾿ ἐστὶν ἵνα γνωρίζῃ.

360

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

other than thinking. On this Aristotle got it right: to say that the Anaxagorean Mind knows is tantamount to saying that the Mind rules. However, this divine action is also a creative one: everything exists and it is what it is only because the Mind thinks of it¹⁴⁹ – and this is the point that Aristotle did not wish to take into account at all. This is why he declared himself unable to understand how was it possible for Anaxagoras’ Mind to know things. Actually, he did so in the first book of his On the Soul (I.ii),¹⁵⁰ but we just saw him returning to this in the third one (III.iv: 429a10‒430a5), yet without success. The notion of potentiality imbues the gist of Anaxagoras’ philosophy and can be understood only in that context, which Aristotle realized but chose to obscure. However, the principles themselves are not potentialities: they are the means through which the Mind created potentialities, and, subsequently, things develop to their full reality in due course, which Aristotle later called ἐντελέχεια. If one sees the principles from the point of view of the world, and notices that they are not always active, one might be tempted to think of them as potentialities, even latencies. But this is only a consideration in cosmological terms, that is, intellection from the point of view of Becoming. However, in ontological terms, the principles are unfailingly, universally, and fully real. In the realm of Being, they are eternally and completely real, and they serve as instruments for the Mind to rule upon the world. Only when they are considered in the realm of Becoming do they ostensibly appear or are hidden, although they are always there. What is in fact either present or absent is a material system upon which the principles act, which is not any sort of formlees matter but system is produced by them, too. It was Porphyry who grasped this, and said that ‘certainly everything is in everything, but in a manner befitting the essence of each reality’.¹⁵¹ This was only one facet of the enormous impact that Anaxagoras’ axiom ‘everything is in everything’ (τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι) made on Late Antiquity.

 As I argue later, this is exactly what constitutes the personal relation of each rational being with God: the personal identity is there only because God thinks of someone. In this sense, death of the soul, or utter punishment, means God ceasing to think of a certain human being. Cf. Matt. 7:23: “And then, I will profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniq uity.” Cf. Psalm 6:9. Origen, Princ, IV.1.2 (& Philocalia, 1.2); cf. Cels, VII.19; VII.22; homJer, 1.8.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405b19 23: “Anaxagoras is alone in believing that the Mind cannot be acted upon (ἀπαθῆ), and that it has nothing in common with anything else. But if the Mind is of such a nature, how and on account of what cause can it ever know anything (πῶς γνωριεῖ καὶ διὰ τίν᾿ αἰτίαν) neither he [Anaxagoras] explained nor is this evident from what he has said.”  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10: Πάντα μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ οἰκείως τῇ ἑκάστου οὐσίᾳ· ἐν νῷ μὲν γὰρ νοερῶς, ἐν ψυχῇ δὲ λογικῶς, ἐν δὲ τοῖς φυτοῖς σπερματικῶς, ἐν δὲ σώμασιν εἰδωλικῶς, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐπέκεινα ἀνεννοήτως τε καὶ ὑπερουσίως. Likewise, Damascius, De Principiis, p. 243: πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστοις, ὅπου μὲν ἀδιάκριτα, ὅπου δὲ διακρινόμενα,

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

361

The principles which hold a certain thing together, thus making it what it is, are fully present in this thing. But the perceptible entity ‘thing/principles’ is produced because these principles act as causes that develop a certain potentiality to actuality. It is not exactly the same to envisage these principles either being in the Mind (which set them in order) or being in a certain thing and acting as productive and cohesive causes. The name of a principle is the same of course, but the realities are different. The order in the Mind (τῇ ἐν τῷ νῷ τάξει) is Ontology. Generation of things and phenomena through the principles is Physics. Simplicius argues that ‘it is not absurd to use the same name’ when reference to them is made;¹⁵² but to think that each individual thing corresponds to a certain principle within the Mind (in the same sense that some people think that such a correspondence with the Ideas also exists) is absurd. Everything that comes-to-be is produced from certain causes, which act not only as universal ones, but also ad hoc in order to produce individual things (τὸ δὲ γενόμενον ὑπ᾿ αἰτίας ἀνάγκη γενέσθαι καὶ οὐχὶ κοινῆς μόνον, ἀλλ᾿ ἀφωρισμένης καὶ τοῦδε τινὸς οἰστικῆς). They pre-exist in the Mind as distinct causes, in the same sense that an architect has in his mind various specific principles according to which he can produce either a wall or a roof.¹⁵³ If one applies a certain definition to the worldly order, qua worldly, neither this definition nor the terms used apply to the order that exists in the Mind.¹⁵⁴

Although this would appear to ring a Platonic bell, Simplicius appeals to Aristotle, that is, to the most vehement critic of Plato’s theory of Ideas, in the spirit of

ὅπου δὲ διακεκριμένα. This is also how Simplicius understood Anaxagoras, which I canvass in the next chapter. Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34 5. See the caveat against any easy brush off of this analysis as not Anaxagorean but merely ‘Neoplatonic’, chapter 9, pp. 616 7.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 295: τὰ δὲ ὀνόματα μεταφέροντες ἐντεῦθεν ἐκεῖ, εἰ μὲν ὡς αἰτίας τούτων ἀφωρισμένας καὶ τοῦτον ἐχούσας ἐκεῖ τὸν λόγον, ὃν ἐνταῦθα ἔχει τὰ ἀποτελούμενα τοῖς αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασι καλοῦμεν, οὐδὲν οἶμαι ἄτοπον.  Simplicius, loc. cit.: δεῖ πάντως προϋπάρχειν ἐν τῷ δημιουργικῷ νῷ τὰς τῶν γινομένων κατ᾿ εἶδος διακεκριμένας αἰτίας, ὡς καὶ ἐν τῷ οἰκοδόμῳ ἄλλον μὲν τοίχου τεχνικὸν λόγον, ἄλλον δὲ ὀροφῆς. Cf. Origen, commJohn, I.19.114: Οἶμαι γάρ, ὥσπερ κατὰ τοὺς ἀρχιτεκτονικοὺς τύπους οἰ κοδομεῖται ἢ τεκταίνεται οἰκία καὶ ναῦς, ἀρχὴν τῆς οἰκίας καὶ τῆς νεὼς ἐχόντων τοὺς ἐν τῷ τεχνίτῃ τύπους καὶ λόγους, οὕτω τὰ σύμπαντα γεγονέναι κατὰ τοὺς ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ προτρανω θέντας ὑπὸ θεοῦ τῶν ἐσομένων λόγους.  Simplicius, loc. cit.: καίτοι εἴ τις τὴν ἐνταῦθα τάξιν ὡς ἐνταῦθα οὖσαν ὁρίζοιτο, οὐκ ἂν ὁ ὁρισμὸς ἐφαρμόσῃ τῇ ἐν τῷ νῷ τάξει, ὥστε οὐδὲ τὸ ὄνομα. Simplicius implicitly refers to Aris totle’s Metaphysica, 1075a11 15; see this quoted on p. 553, note 123.

362

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

his master Ammonius who sought to reconcile the two philosophies, as I discuss later.¹⁵⁵ For indeed also Aristotle himself said that there is a double order: one in the world, the other in the cause of the world, in like a manner that there is a certain order in the encamp ment, and another one in [the mind of] the general.¹⁵⁶

This reference is revealing, and it shows that Simplicius actually has in mind the philosophy of Anaxagoras, which he evidently endorses: for Aristotle made this remark precisely at the point where he reported the philosophy of Anaxagoras concerning ‘the nature of existing things’ (τὴν τῶν ὄντων φύσιν). This happens to be one of the very few approbatory references to Anaxagoras, who did not rest content with fire or earth being ‘the cause for all things to exist or to become well and beautifully disposed’ (εὖ καὶ καλῶς ἔχειν). Instead, he sought ‘the principle which is involved’ (τὴν ἐχομένην ἀρχήν) as a generative and cohesive one. Therefore, Anaxagoras ‘said that the Mind is in nature, just as in animals, and that this is the cause of all order and arrangement’. This ‘principle is the cause of beauty, as well as the cause imparting motion to things’.¹⁵⁷ The terminology which Simplicius uses at this point is Platonic indeed, but he essays to show that Aristotle did not dissent from Plato as radically as it was believed, whereas Simplicius argued that the idea of a supreme principle originated with Anaxagoras. His point is that Aristotle strove to clear the theory from the misconception that the Ideas are fully involved with individual objects, which is ‘what the folk believes about the Ideas’ (καλῶς ᾿Aριστοτέλης πρὸς τὰς δημώδεις περὶ τῶν ἰδεῶν ἐννοίας ἀντείρηκεν). For the multitude believes that the Ideas are fully present in all perceptible objects, while they also pre-exist in the Creative Mind (ἐν τῷ δημιουργικῷ νῷ προϋπάρχειν φαντάζονται).¹⁵⁸ However, this only betokens inability to strip off material objects from matter proper, so as to grasp their formative cause as being something that exists in the Mind in the first place. Hence, the multitude believes that all material objects pre-exist in the Mind as models. This would mean that the creative act of the Mind was complete instantly, and all at one go, and that now the created world conducts itself based on what was made then. Once, however, the notions of will and knowledge

 Infra, chapter 8, pp. 545 54.  Simplicius, loc. cit.: καὶ γὰρ καὶ αὐτὸς ᾿Aριστοτέλης διττὴν ἔφατο τὴν τάξιν τὴν μὲν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, τὴν δὲ ἐν τῷ αἰτίῳ τοῦ κόσμου, ὥσπερ τὴν μὲν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ, τὴν δὲ ἐν τῷ στρα τηγῷ. He has in mind Aristotle’s Metaphysica, 1075a11 15.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984b.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 295.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

363

were applied to the Mind, this impression only implies a thoroughgoing ‘preformationism’. This was only misunderstanding of Anaxagoras’ tenet that nothing comes from what is not, since this is not ‘preformationism’, but dynamic ‘evolutionism’. Simplicius argues that formation of perceptible things is a process that ceaselessly takes place by means of the continuous action of the Mind through the principles, which should be considered either in themselves (i. e. in their being proper, which is incorporeal), or as being involved with every perceptible thing, which they cause either to be or to perish. Fortunately, we have Anaxagoras’ own words on this: he did not say that, once the Mind created the principles, it intervened so as to anticipate (or, ‘preform’) whatever real things and situations were going to be from the beginning of the world right through its infinite duration. He actually said that the Mind ‘dominated and dominates upon all things’ (πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ … νοῦς ἐκράτησεν), in the sense that he knew everything that was going to be generated by either conjunction or disjunction of the principles: in fact, the Mind knew what they were going to be, what they were at the very moment of creation, and how many they are now, and likewise about the future. The Mind ‘decorated everything’ (πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς) in the sense that it set things not only in motion, but also in dynamic order. In other words, the Mind established the laws according to which the principles were going to act and react with each other from a certain beginning to the infinite time.¹⁵⁹ Strictly speaking, each and every cosmic law is either a principle or a particular concurrence of principles. Phenomena and perceptible things are preceded by their respective indestructible immaterial principles, which either concur or are separated out.¹⁶⁰ All things are generated by reacting principles and they are destined to dissolve into those principles, once the latter cease to concur and collaborate in the particular manner which gives rise to the specific phenomena or things.¹⁶¹

 Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 156: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα καὶ διακρινόμενα, πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς. καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὅσα νῦν ἐστι καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς.  Simplicius ascribes this also to Plato. commCael, p. 305: Πλάτων καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aνα ξαγόρας καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι φυσικοὶ τὴν τῶν συνθέτων ἀπὸ τῶν ἁπλῶν γένεσιν κατὰ τὸν ἐξ ὑποθέσεως τοῦτον τρόπον φαίνονται παραδιδόντες ἀπὸ τῶν νῦν ὁρωμένων τὴν ἀνάλυσιν ποιούμενοι τὴν ἐπὶ τὰ ἁπλᾶ καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν ἁπλῶν σύνθεσιν ἐξιστοροῦντες, ὡσεὶ καὶ προϋπῆρχον τῷ χρόνῳ τὰ ἐξ ὧν γίνεται τὰ γινόμενα. … ὁ γοῦν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς, οὐδὲν ἄλλο, φησίν, ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι καὶ ἡ φθορά, ἀλλὰ μόνον μῖξις τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων. καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι δὲ φυσικοὶ οὐχὶ φθαρέντος τοῦ ὕδατος ἢ τοῦ ἀέρος ἢ τοῦ μεταξὺ γενέσθαι τὸν κόσμον φασίν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐνυπαρχόντων τῶν ἁπλῶν ἐξ αὐτῶν γίνεσθαι τὰ σύνθετα καὶ εἰς αὐτὰ ἀναλύεσθαι.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35: ἄλλως μὲν πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναί φησι κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνω σιν, ἄλλως δὲ κατὰ τὴν νοερὰν συνουσίωσιν καὶ ἄλλως κατὰ τὴν αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν καὶ τὴν ἐκ

364

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

This is the only sense in which all things are preceded: it is all about foreknowledge and creation of potentialities, not preformation; it is about potentialities developing to actualities, and this is precisely the doctrine that Origen maintained, too.¹⁶² For example, the proposition that an object which was created ‘in the beginning’ is the product of certain immaterial principles, means that the Mind created the solfa, not the entire music of the cosmic drama which was to evolve. It is plain that music really exists when it is played, not when it is just written on paper. The Mind knows the entire ‘music’ which is to be played until the end of the world; but the whole of it is not already accomplished in one go; it takes the specific instances and episodes of the cosmic drama for things to come to be and pass away. If a bud of rose (i. e. potentially a rose) has just been formed, one can notice the principles acting; but if an unexpected snowfall occurs during spring, the bud will perish, and one might assume that these principles are no longer there. However, this does not indicate absence of them: it only means that they are not noticed only because their disjunction and concurrence of other principles caused the material phenomenon of the bud to perish. The principles are always there and everywhere, now and always, as discussed in the next chapter. Therefore, only ostensibly do they seem to be present here and now, and absent either before or after a specific instance of material function. The difference from Aristotle then is all too plain, since, to him, a potential being develops into its full reality by means of the action of Nature, which is the active agent. By contrast, to Anaxagoras, a bud will be formed, it will develop into a full rose, it will perish – and all of these phenomena occur as results of collaboration of specific principles being inherent in, and acting upon, the rose-seed at the behest of the Mind. His conception of the active agent is entirely different, and this is not Nature. It appears, therefore, as though Aristotle’s First Mover instigated motion in the first place, and then there is no role for this in the perceptible universe. Instead, Anaxagoras’ Mind is the guardian and lord of the entire universe and acts ceaselessly within it by means of its principles. In Aristotle, the obscure notion of ‘Nature’ is supposed to be the force that operates; but then, the universal rationality is considered severally: concerning human reason, he introduced the equally obscure notion of the ‘mind which comes from outside’ (θύραθεν νοῦς), of which there was a widespread dissent among his com-

τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν. Italics are mine, emphasizing the expression about things which ‘are dissolved anew into the pre existing principles that made them up in the first place’.  See infra, ‘Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras’, chapter 11, pp. 859; 893.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

365

mentators as to what he really meant by this.¹⁶³ None of these ideas was necessary for Anaxagoras to introduce and consider. Aristotle’s ‘Nature’ was an opaque notion, which in fact was only a collective designation for the overall activity of the Mind and its principles. Likewise, the soul¹⁶⁴ was an equally abstruse notion assumed to be a subsistent being (notwithstanding its indispensable co-existence with the body), although to Anaxagoras this was only another collective name for the functions of any animate being. Neither of those illusionary notions was necessary for Anaxagoras to introduce: every aspect of reality, from the most humble material phenomenon to the highest intellectual human functions, was only the product of the principles acting and reacting with each other. Each and every thing, each and every function in this universe, including all human ones, is only the result of the action by the Mind through the vicarious activity of the principles. Fictitious notions such as ‘Nature’ or ‘soul’ are only generalizations describing collectively particular facets of action by the real agents that make up the universe and all phenomena within it, namely, the principles, which act so as to cause potentialities develop into actualities. The criticism of the Anaxagorean notion of Mind by Aristotle actually turned against himself, since it was Anaxagoras who introduced potentiality, but, unlike Aristotle, he remained consistent with his entire premisses from start to finish. Following this, it is imperative to consider how Arab philosophers received this philosophy. In this analysis, I will draw on Harry Austryn Wolfson, who wisely considered the philosophy of Kalam and the influences upon it by Christian and Greek sources. In fact, Arabic sources speak explicitly of influence by Greek philosophers, and they mention specific philosophical origins of certain Kalam views. According to al-Ash‘-ari,¹⁶⁵ the theory of latency, which is identified with the name of al-Nazzam,¹⁶⁶ was sustained by many of the heathen, and the doxographer al-Shahrastani¹⁶⁷ ascribes it to various ‘philosophers,’ mentioning Anaxa-

 See infra, pp. 594 8.  See chapter 13, pp. 1184; 1208; 1230 2.  Abu Musa Abd Allah ibn Qays al Ash’ari, better known as Abu Musa al Ashari (died c. 662 or 672) was a companion of the prophet Muhammad and important figure in early Islamic his tory. At various times, he was governor of Basra and Kufa and involved in the early Muslim con quests of Persia.  Al Nazzam, Abu Ishak Ibrahim b. Sayyar b. Hani, Mu‘tazili was a theologian, who died be tween 835 and 845. He was renowned also for his poetic and rhetorical talent.  Taj al Din abu al Fath Muhammad ibn Abd al Karim al Shahrastani (1086 1153) was a Per sian historian of religions, doxographer, philosopher, and theologian. His book, Kitab al Milal wa al Nihal (The Book of Sects and Creeds) paved the way to a scientific study of religions.

366

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

goras and Thales.¹⁶⁸ Considering the various views of the masters of the Kalam, Max Horten¹⁶⁹ commented briefly on their origin in Greek philosophy, listing numerous references and philosophic terms (Homoiomeries, Idea, Logos) to Greek philosophers such as Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Atomists, Carneades, Democritus, Empedocles, Galen, Heraclitus, Neoplatonists, Plato, Plotinus, Socrates, Sophists, and Stoics.¹⁷⁰ The most important Arabic doxography was Siwan-alhikma (The Chest of Wisdom), ascribed to Abu-Sulayman al Sijistani al Mantiqi (died in 987). This is extant in two large extracts, one of them in print. It contains entries of 170 men, most of them Greek, as early as Homer, Thales, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and as late as John Philoponus, followed by Arab authorities. When al-Shahrastani wrote 150 years later, he maintained the order of persons as they appear in Siwan-al-hikma, and he reproduced a report by Porphyry on the teaching of Anaxagoras. Here is al-Shahrastani’s testimony: He is the first who advanced the theory of hiding and appearing¹⁷¹ insofar as he supposed that all things are hidden in the first body and their coming into existence is only their emergence into appearance out of that body as a species, a genus, a mass, a shape, and a denseness or a rareness, just as the ear of corn emerges into appearance out of a single grain, a stately palm out of small date stone, a man, perfectly shaped, out of a paltry drop of sperm, and a bird out of an egg. All these are instances of the emergence of appearance out of hiding, of actuality out of potentiality, of form out of the disposition of matter. Cre ation (al ibdda‘), however, is only of one thing, and it applies to no other thing except to that first body.¹⁷²

The expression ‘emergence into appearance out of that body as a species, a genus, a mass, a shape, and a denseness or a rareness’ is particularly important, since it confirms that which is evident in Anaxagoras but it suffered distortions. He spoke of ‘wetness and dryness, and warm and cold’¹⁷³ as examples of principles, but scholars took them as the only possible description of principles.

 Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam, Cambridge, Mass. and London, Eng land, 1976, p. 64.  Max Horten, Die philosophischen Systeme der spekutlativen Theologen im Islam, Bonn, 1912.  H. Wolfson, op. cit. pp. 65 6.  Compare this with the notion of ‘concealment unconcealment’ of M. Heidegger, discussed in chapter 13, pp. 1307 13.  H. Wolfson, op. cit. p. 508.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34; 156: ἀπεκώλυε γὰρ ἡ σύμμιξις πάντων χρημάτων τοῦ τε διεροῦ καὶ τοῦ ξηροῦ καὶ τοῦ θερμοῦ καὶ τοῦ ψυχροῦ καὶ τοῦ λαμπροῦ καὶ τοῦ ζοφεροῦ καὶ γῆς πολλῆς ἐνεούσης καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλήθους οὐδὲν ἐοικότων

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

367

This led to the anachronism of identifying the principles with ‘qualities’. However, we are informed that a principle may be either a species, or a genus, or a mass, or a shape, or denseness or rareness, and this list could go very far, including natural laws, all objects of cognition and contemplation, et cetera. Anaxagoras (as indeed Anaximenes and Heraclitus, too) had never heard of substances and qualities, nor did he see moisture, dryness, heat, and coldness as abstractions. My argument is that Anaxagoras’ principles (which Aristotle branded ‘homoiomeries’) are not qualities, which are only produced by certain principles. Simplicius, discussing the views of Pythagoreans and Democritus in terms posterior to them, explains that those philosophers sought to discover ‘the origins of qualities’ (ἀρχὰς τῶν ποιοτήτων ἐπιζητοῦντας); also, they were satisfied that positing fundamental principles which could explain how qualities are produced out of them, was part of their overall ambition to ‘save the phenomena’ (διαβεβαιούμενοι, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι τοιούτων ἀρχῶν ὑποτεθεισῶν σώζεσθαι τὰ φαινόμενα).¹⁷⁴ It is certainly no coincidence that doxographic reports treat Anaxagoras’ ‘homoimeries’ as being something different from ‘qualities’: the latter was a notion indicating fundamental principles and it was attributed to Strato of Lampsacus (c. 335 ‒ c. 269 BC), which I discuss in the next chapter. Nevertheless, this point deserves some discussion. Aristotle classified his predecessors into two groups: those who identified generation with alteration, and those who considered them as essentially different processes. There is no way to confirm such a distinction from the passages of the Presocratics themselves, but Aristotle insisted that all materialist monists had to consider generation as alteration of the single primary material element that they posited, and that pluralists such as Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Leucippus had to distinguish between generation and alteration.¹⁷⁵ Aristotle grouped those three philosophers together also in another respect: they were those who posited actuality as prior to potentiality (ὅτι δ᾿ ἐνέργεια πρότερον).¹⁷⁶ When he claimed that ‘Anaxagoras himself failed to understand his own terms’ (τὴν οἰκείαν φωνὴν ἠγνόησεν) because ‘he identified generation with alἀλλήλοις. Op. cit. pp. 156 7; 174; 176; 179; 181: καὶ ἀποκρίνεται ἀπό τε τοῦ ἀραιοῦ τὸ πυκνὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ τὸ θερμὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ζοφεροῦ τὸ λαμπρὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ διεροῦ τὸ ξηρόν.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 565.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a. But then, in 315b6 8, he omits the name of Anaxagoras, and mentions only Democritus and Leucippus in the same context. Then again (315b15 19), he claims that ‘almost all [Presocratics] made the distinction between generation and alteration, only to specify ‘those who introduced the elements’ doing so (322b6).  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a4 7. However, Aristotle did not abide by any classification: at different points he grouped his predecessors differently, each time according to his own specific purposes.

368

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

teration’,¹⁷⁷ he meant that Anaxagoras did not understand that this identification implies material monism, even though Aristotle included Empedocles in this group, too.¹⁷⁸ His point was that Anaxagoras asserted a plurality (indeed infinity) of elements, and yet he argued that generation and destruction were the same as alteration (ἀλλοίωσις). But the mistake was that Anaxagoras did not posit any material element as a primary one: any sort of matter, as indeed matter itself, is the result of interacting incorporeal principles, and any notion of aggregation or segregation refers to incorporeal principles, not to material elements. Galen reported that this was the doctrine of Democritus and Epicurus, ‘but Anaxagoras and Empedocles thought of this in a different way’ (ἑτέρῳ τε τρόπῳ).¹⁷⁹ Presumably, not only Simplicius but also other Neoplatonists had an inkling of Anaxagoras’ principles being incorporeal, which is why they were unmoved by the identification of conjunction or disjunction of them with alteration.¹⁸⁰ Now, the question is, was Anaxagoras according to Aristotle a monist or a pluralist? In the Physics, he classifies not only Anaxagoras, but also Empedocles, with Anaximander as being monists: they say that existent things are both one and many, and derive the contraries from the One by secretion.¹⁸¹ Although he uses the term ‘One’ (then designating it as ‘mixture’) for all three of them alike, in fact, the ‘infinite’ of Anaximander, the Sphaerus of Empedocles, and the ‘mixture’ of Anaxagoras were different to each of those philosophers. Quite simply, Aristotle’s aim was to represent all three notions as standing for his own formless matter, in which the contraries inhere potentially. However, whether monists or pluralists, the Presocratics made no room for absolute gen Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a12. Once again, Aristotle made Anaxagoras an Atomist, since this was the theory he attributed to Democritus. Cf. Aristotle, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 295: κατὰ Δημόκριτον ἀλλοίωσις ἂν εἴη ἡ γένεσις. Also, Simplicius, commCateg, p. 431; commPhys, pp. 163; 1069; 1266.  Also in De Generatione et Corruptione, 329a3 5.  Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 483. Cf. Hippocrates, De Diaeta, 4: ᾿Aπόλλυται μὲν οὖν οὐδὲν ἁπάντων χρημάτων, οὐδὲ γίνεται ὅ τι μὴ καὶ πρόσθεν ἦν· ξυμμισγόμενα δὲ καὶ διακρινό μενα ἀλλοιοῦται.  Simplicius saw nothing strange about identifying them: commPhys, p. 163: ἥ τε γὰρ ἀλλοίω σις πάθος περὶ τὸ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ἡ σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις περὶ τὰ ὄντα. Cf. pp. 420; 1073; 1266 7; 1273: προσεχῶς μὲν τῆς διακρίσεως καὶ συγκρίσεως, τουτέστι τῆς ἀλλοιώσεως. On p. 1319, he refers to Alexander of Aphrodisias as being one who thought likewise: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aλέξανδρος συγκρι νομένων καὶ ἀλλοιουμένων γράφει καὶ ἐξηγεῖται προσφόρως· παρὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀλλοίαν τῶν ἀτόμων θέσιν καὶ τάξιν ἀλλοιοῦσθαι τὰ συγκρίματά φασιν. Cf. Damascius (referring to a comment on Plo tinus made by Iamblichus), In Parmenidem, p. 253: ὅμως δὲ ἀλλοιούμενον ἀμηγέπη καὶ σχήματι καὶ οὐσίας συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει τινί.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a20 26.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

369

eration or destruction, since, to them all, nothing could either come from nothing, or perish into nothingness. As for ‘qualities’, Aristotle’s claims were simply impossible, since the abstract distinction of qualities from the qualified subject appeared only with Socrates and Plato.¹⁸² On the other hand, at the beginning of his treatise on generation, he was at pains to demonstrate that Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus posited a plurality of material principles (which he calls ‘elements’), and then he set out to point out the differences between those principles. Aristotle blamed Empedocles for speaking part of the time as a monist and then as a pluralist,¹⁸³ but in reality Aristotle cared little about the distinction itself. His priority was to show that, whether monists or pluralists, all Presocratics should have distinguished generation from alteration. His main difference form the monists was that they made the material substratum a sensible body, whereas his own formless matter was only a potential (and certainly incorporeal) being. To him, this was the reason for monists to reduce generation and destruction to alteration.¹⁸⁴ On the other hand, the pluralists who saw both processes as one, namely, as either conjunction or disjunction of particles, should have distinguished generation from alteration, because the qualities (in accordance with which alteration occurs) are constitutive differentiae of their elements.¹⁸⁵ As always, Aristotle’s purpose was to ‘correct’ his predecessors while drawing on them, therefore, he had to represent them as it suited himself. This was the reason that determined his contradictory statements representing them at one point as pluralists and at another as monists. However, it was not this erratic designation that mutilated seriously the doxographic tradition; rather, it was the application of a single wholesale refutation of the systems of the Atomists, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles, which obscured the substantial differences between those theories. A main motive for Aristotle to attack Anaxagoras in Physics 187a26‒188a18, was his impression that (1) the principles were contraries, and (2) that they were infinite in number. It appeared to him that the one and single kind of motion that Anaxagoras allowed (namely, alteration) was based on the hypothesis that (since nothing arises from non-being, and ‘all is in all’) everything was present in each

 Plato, Theaetetus, 157b: γιγνόμενα καὶ ποιούμενα καὶ ἀπολλύμενα καὶ ἀλλοιούμενα (= but, in accordance with nature, we should speak of things as ‘becoming’ and ‘being made’ and ‘being destroyed’ and ‘being altered’).  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 315a3 25. This was so only because Aristotle es sayed to read his own philosophy into Empedocles, which resulted in misinterpretation of the Sphaerus.  Aristotle, op. cit. 314b1 8.  Aristotle, op. cit. 314b8 26.

370

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

and every thing in small and imperceptible masses, and consequently contraries arose from contraries. But the criticism was based on the assumptions that the principles are corporeal, they are infinite in number, and ‘everything being in everything’ assumes the existence of minimal quanta – which though is a notion that Anaxagoras explicitly banned. On the basis of these, Aristotle’s censure was that the theory makes knowledge impossible; for one can know a certain composition only if the component parts are known, whereas infinity is unknowable. Further (hinting at the notion of formal cause), he argues that if the constituent parts are of any size, so is the whole thing, as it happens with animals and plants. Therefore, the Anaxagorean parts cannot be infinite, but they should be limited in size. Moreover, if, in any body, there are parts of everything and these may be separated out, this process of separation should be able to exhaust the parts in a limited quantity of water; but in such a case the axiom will be false; otherwise, there will be an unlimited number of finite bodies in a finite body. However, as I said above, never did Anaxagoras posit minimal quanta. Anyway, Aristotle’s argument goes on thus: in a minimal quantity of any substance nothing else could exist inherently, since it would be smaller than the minimum. Were it for an infinite body to exist (a notion that Aristotle bans¹⁸⁶), it should contain a multiplicity of co-existent infinite bodies, which is impossible. Furthermore, Aristotle declares himself prepared to endorse the proposition that complete segregation never takes place, but he does so only on his own premisses and in order to expose Anaxagoras: to Aristotle, this can happen only because qualities are inseparable from their subjects, since no incorporeal entity can have separate substantial existence – but Anaxagoras allegedly did not know this; therefore, he did not know the true reason why complete segregation is impossible. This was the ground on which Aristotle styled the Anaxagorean Mind seeking to bring about segregation ‘absurd’: it was impossible for the Mind to do this, in terms of both quantity (since there is no minimal quantity) and quality (since qualities are inseparable). However, Aristotle criticized a philosophy of his own making, not that of Anaxagoras. For the latter’s principles were neither corporeal, nor infinite in number; besides, to Anaxagoras, qualities were only the result of interacting principles, and they did not exist in themselves, although for reasons different from those which Aristotle posited. Consequently, as far as Anaxagoras was concerned, the argument that infinite division could reduce a quality to simpler ingredients was absurd. Finally, Aristotle argues that Anaxagoras produced air and water by simple synthesis, and that it

 Aristotle, De Caelo, 271b1 276a17 (see part of his argument, infra, 381, note 221); De Motu Animalium, 699b; Physica, 204b 205b; Metaphysica, 1066b 1067a.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

371

would have been better for him to agree with Empedocles who assumed a limited number of constituents. All of this rebuttal aimed at one target, which was to show that, in the theory of Anaxagoras, true generation was impossible: to say that everything comes from everything is absurd, and only Aristotle’s generation of contraries from each other could make it possible to hurdle the impasse caused by an infinite number of simple bodies.¹⁸⁷ Nevertheless, Aristotle believed that, despite their errors, all Presocratics made the principles contraries.¹⁸⁸ Such statements, however, involved no intention of acknowledging them as predecessors to whom substantial ideas Aristotle himself owed. The implication always was that philosophy had to wait until he himself was born in order to afford the complete and perfect articulation of previous faltering theories. Anaxagoras makes the Good a principle causing motion; for Mind moves things, but moves them for some end; therefore, there must be some other Good,¹⁸⁹ unless it is as we say; for in our view the art of medicine is in a sense health. It is absurd also not to provide a con trary for the Good, i. e. for the Mind. But all those who recognize the contraries fail to make use of the contraries (οἱ τἀναντία λέγοντες οὐ χρῶνται τοῖς ἐναντίοις), unless someone re formulates their theories systematically (ἐὰν μὴ ῥυθμίσῃ τις).¹⁹⁰

His point is that there should be a final cause for the Mind to move things (κινεῖ ἕνεκά τινος), but he forgot that, earlier in the same work, he had embraced Plato’s criticism, and he himself also accused Anaxagoras of introducing a Mind which actually does nothing; moreover, he had said that he could find no reason why is it necessary for the Mind to exist at all (διὰ τίν᾿ αἰτίαν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἐστί), since nothing is owing to this existence.¹⁹¹ Aristotle argued that all of those physicists who set up a single material principle were bound to associate their principle with the infinite. Then, those who posited an infinite number of principles, as Democritus and Anaxagoras did, were led to the same result. For, in them, infinity emerges from the continuity resulting from the contact of their primary bodies.¹⁹² This was the prelude to the description of Anaxagoras’ system. His intentions are clear, namely, to reduce the doctrines of Anaxagoras and Democritus to essential identity with

     

Aristotle, Physica, 187a26 188a18. Aristotle, op. cit. 188a19 30. The claim is that motion presupposes a final cause. Cf. Metaphysica, 988b8 12. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b11 13. Aristotle, op. cit. 985a18 23. Aristotle, Physica, 203a16 ff; cf. 189b36 ff.

372

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

those of all materialist monists. His main argument is that, to each of those predecessors, the primary matter is qualitatively homogenous. But whereas this was true about Democritus, and of the Atomists in general (as well as of Anaximenes), to bracket Anaxagoras together with them was just absurd: for he had explicitly said that his principles are totally unlike each other (οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις),¹⁹³ there are no two principles which could be the same, therefore, their differences inexorably should be understood on ontological grounds, which means these differences are original and immutable: the character of each principle is strictly exclusive to itself. However, Aristotle had his own specific aim, which was to maintain the permanence of qualities. Hence, he emphasized the cosmological moment of the Anaxagorean primal mixture, and represented it as a continuous infinite homogeneity. Whereas Anaxagoras maintained that any immaterial principle is itself both here and everywhere, both now and ever (whereby it is somehow like the Whole), Aristotle wrenched the idea for his own purposes: in order to maintain the permanence of qualities, he attributed to Anaxagoras the theory that each individual object is a mixture of the same kind as the Whole, and that all qualities are present in every object. Besides, since Anaxagoras introduced a definite commencement of distinction of the principles (not merely of each object from which another one is engendered in the present state of Nature), therefore a first act of genesis, Aristotle decided that there was a time prior to the unique impulse by the Mind, when the whole of Nature was consisted of an homogenous mixture of all qualities. This is how presdigitation turned the trick, and Anaxagoras was suddenly made no different from Anaximenes, as well as no different from any Atomist. What is more, since the principles are eternal, it follows that, in them, the potential does not differ from the actual; therefore, the notion of infinite matter is introduced ipso facto. Needless to say that there is no homogeneity in the original distinguished mixture, other than its universal incorporeality, which though Aristotle ignored altogether.¹⁹⁴ Nor did Anaxagoras take homogeneity seriously, or assigned any role to it in philosophical or natural considerations, since this is only an apparent attribute owing to the weakness of the senses. In Aristotle’s system, qualities are only secondary principles, yet principles still. When Simplicius commented on Aristotle explaining the change of qualities from one contrary to another, he had grasped the mood of Aristotle and explained that ‘alterations’ and ‘changes’ occur ‘either on the homoiomeries, as

 Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34; 156.  In the De Generatione et Corruptione, 327B19 31, Aristotle based his criticism on this pre sumption of his own, namely, on the idea of total mixture of all qualities.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

373

Anaxagoras had it, or on atoms, as Democritus had it, or on qualities, as Aristotle said’.¹⁹⁵ Nevertheless, to Aristotle, the prime principles are forms acting upon an unformed substratum, that is, formless matter. Anaxagoras did not need this notion, since everything (including matter itself) is produced from, and formed by, the active principles (not by the Aristotelian ‘forms’), which need no substratum whatsoever, and they can effect any change by means of a single kind of motion, namely, alteration, or mutation. This is the simplicity of a cohesive and operational philosophical system which could produce comprehensive explanation about both generation and motion, but Aristotle always resented this while selectively appropriating its ideas. This selectiveness was largely the cause for his contradictions. Simplicius, who had a clear grasp of the real system of Anaxagoras, only perfunctorily styled the original state ‘mixture’: instead, he opted for calling it ‘unity’ of incorporeal principles, not one of material elements, and he knew that Aristotle’s term ‘mixture of qualities’ was self-defeating.¹⁹⁶ Aristotle could not go along with this single kind of motion being understood as mutation. For one thing, (against Democritus) he did not allow this to be a re-organization of elemental particles having only quantitative or spatial distinctions, and Aristotle was very critical of atoms being considered as the ultimate principles of physical generation. For another, (against Anaxagoras) he based all qualitative differences of bodies upon primary and irreducible elemental qualities. By contrast, to Anaxagoras, qualities are not primary, since they emerge from the activity of certain principles. Aristotle simply essayed to interpret the principles of Anaxagoras as being no different from his own contrary qualities. But his self-contradiction was flagrant: on the one hand, he represented the proposition ‘all things were together’, that is, all things were in a state of mixture, as meaning that all qualities were combined together; on the other, it was a fundamental doctrine of his that qualities are not self-subsistent and they can never be found apart from the bodies which they qualify. Question: since only things that have substantial existence can be combined and mixed with each other, how was it possible for the primal mixed ‘things’ (χρήματα) of Anaxagoras to be qualities once these have no substantial existence

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1069 (comm. on Aristotle, Physica, 246b): καὶ κατὰ τίνας μετα βολὰς πρώτας καὶ ἀλλοιώσεις αἱ ἕξεις ἐγγίνονται, εἴτε τὰ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας, εἴτε τὰ τῶν ἀτόμων, ὡς Δημόκριτος, εἴτε τὰ τῶν ποιοτήτων, ὡς ᾿Aριστοτέλης.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 590: Anaxagoras posited that generation started not from a state of motion and distinction, but from one of rest and unity (οὐκ ἐκ κινουμένων καὶ διακεκριμένων ἀλλ᾿ ἐξ ἠρεμούντων καὶ ἡνωμένων κοσμοποιεῖ). Likewise, Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 2 (comm. on De Caelo), lines 30 38.

374

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

of their own? But certainly, the founder of the science of logic did not lack logic himself: he knew that Anaxagoras’ highly abstract term χρήματα stood for something that was incorporeal, and appropriated the notion to his own purposes. Anaxagoras stood apart on very distinct grounds: in his own era, motion was largely taken for granted and rest had to be accounted for (which is one of the reasons why the Eleatic ideas appared so intriguing and became famous). In Aristotle’s times, rest was taken for granted and motion had to be explained.¹⁹⁷ He praised Anaxagoras who first saw that ‘no natural event occurs haphazard, because he starts his cosmogony from unmoved things’ (ἐξ ἀκινήτων γὰρ ἄρχεται κοσμοποιεῖν); and ‘others consider things as collected together, and somehow try to make them move and be distinct from each other’, but ‘it is not reasonable to start generation from an original state in which bodies are separated and in motion’. This is what ‘Empedocles did by beginning with a process ruled by Love, but he passed over the state prior to it’ (i. e. the state of Love prevailing); for he could not have built up the heaven out of separate elements and combine them by Love, since the world has its constituent elements in separation, therefore, it must have proceeded from unity and aggregation’.¹⁹⁸ This unity Aristotle saw as one of qualities. He explained change as actualization in a substratum of the quality potentially present; this quality is the contrary of a quality actually present, and these two qualities, as contraries, imply each other. This is what baffled him about Anaxagoras: once he saw the ‘mixture’ as the equivalent of his own formless matter (which is pure potentiality), and the homoiomeries as his own qualities, the proposition ‘everything comes from everything’ and ‘all things were together’ could only confuse and irritate him. In order to justify himself, he tended to generalizations, such as treating Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus as though their differences were exhausted by the name of each one’s ‘principles’ alone;¹⁹⁹ or reducing Empedocles, Anaxagoras and the Atomists to materialist monists (not essentially differing from the Ionians), and identifying material principles (or the immaterial ones of Anaxagoras) with his own formless matter which was sheer potentiality. But the problem was that Aristotle had made it a crux of his philosophy that qualities are at the same time other than the substratum which they qualify, and yet inseparable from the objects they characterize. Therefore, this was a problem of substrate and quality, of subject and predicate. On that account, seeing the Anaxagorean principles as distinct qualities already vested with matter,  Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, 300b 301a: disorderly movement is ‘against nature’ (τὸ παρὰ φύσιν), since, to perceptible things, order is their proper nature. Likewise, Physica, 250b15 18.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 301a.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984a.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

375

and considering all of this as the outcome of the original ‘distinction’ by the Mind, could lead nowhere other than blatant incongruities of the Aristotelian analyses. For, to Anaxagoras, there was not such thing as ‘quality’ considered on its own account apart from the object of which it was characteristic. Both matter and quality, which make up a certain object of phenomenon, arise at the same time out of concurrence of certain immaterial principles. There was neither room nor need for considering abstract qualities separately from their respective object, and, in the Presocratic intellectual atmosphere, there was no inkling of making anything of qualitative abstractions. That Anaxagoras spoke of hot, cold, wet, or dry, does not mean that he introduced abstract qualities. For one thing, all Presocratics had used such examples already, especially in their cosmogonies; for another, there is nothing to suggest that such terms indicated fundamental and primary ‘contraries’ involved in all natural processes (hot/cold, wet/dry), in the way Aristotle decided to see them. Anaxagoras’ system is not based upon a single material substratum in which contrary qualities inhere, nor was the actualization of such qualities the basis for the universe to come to pass. Aristotle was anxious to see this, and once his exertions failed, he remarked that ‘those who recognize the contraries fail to make use of the contraries, unless someone reformulates their theories systematically’.²⁰⁰ But how could have he discovered the fundamental dual sets of contraries in Anaxagoras, once this philosopher spoke not only of separation of hot from cold, and dry from wet, but also simultaneously he spoke of separation of dense from rare (ἀπό τε τοῦ ἀραιοῦ τὸ πυκνόν), and bright from dark (ἀπὸ τοῦ ζοφεροῦ τὸ λαμπρόν)?²⁰¹ In other words, he made not only cold/hot and dry/wet, but also the pairs dense/rare and dark/[bright] explicit factors involved in the arrangement of the universe,²⁰² and there is nothing to suggest that he considered those pairs, however prominent, as ones exhausting all those involved in the cosmogony. Therefore, the primal separation was not one of qualities. It was only Aristotle who was anxious and determined to see the distinction of substrate and quality into an intellectual atmosphere that was past and different,  Aristotle, op. cit. 1075b11 13.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34; 156: ἀπεκώλυε γὰρ ἡ σύμμιξις πάντων χρημάτων, τοῦ τε διεροῦ καὶ τοῦ ξηροῦ καὶ τοῦ θερμοῦ καὶ τοῦ ψυχροῦ καὶ τοῦ λαμπροῦ καὶ τοῦ ζοφεροῦ. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 156; 174; 176; 179; 181: καὶ ἀποκρίνεται ἀπό τε τοῦ ἀραιοῦ τὸ πυκνὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ τὸ θερμὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ζοφεροῦ τὸ λαμπρὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ διεροῦ τὸ ξηρόν.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 179: τὸ μὲν πυκνὸν καὶ διερὸν καὶ ψυχρὸν καὶ τὸ ζοφερὸν ἐνθάδε συνεχώρησεν, ἔνθα νῦν ἡ γῆ, τὸ δὲ ἀραιὸν καὶ τὸ θερμὸν καὶ τὸ ξηρὸν ἐξε χώρησεν εἰς τὸ πρόσω τοῦ αἰθέρος. The bright in not mentioned, because it is assumed that ‘aether’ is bright, and perhaps because what is rare, hot, and dry, is also bright.

376

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

and to instil this in the Presocratic mindset, which had neither inkling nor need of such a distinction. Let this analysis suffice to show that Anaxagoras’ principles, due to their nature proper and function, were not qualities. This was only to be expected, since, before Plato, both the name and notion of abstract were unknown. The philosopher who followed him suit was Origen, who argued that not only matter, but also qualities came to be while they did not exist before.²⁰³ In the passage quoted from Porphyry, upon which al-Shahrastani made his observation about Anaxagoras being the first who advanced the theory of ‘hiding-and-appearing,’ there is no mention of the terms ‘hiding’ and ‘appearing.’²⁰⁴ However, as I discuss in the next section, no matter what the precise specific terms, Plotinus following Anaxagoras also advanced the idea.²⁰⁵ Nevertheless, there is something which is more important: Porphyry is quoted as saying is that ‘the root of things is one single body’ and that ‘from this proceed all bodies and bodily forces and species and genera.’²⁰⁶ Al-Shahrastani styled that theory as one of ‘hiding-and-appearing’, because this was familiar to the Muslims and widely known among them as a theory sustained by al-Nazzam. Besides, he declared that Anaxagoras was the ‘first’ to advance a theory that was similar to al-Nazzam’s theory of hiding-and-appearing, and he saw this as a theory of latency. We should be cautious about this, since Anaxagoras was misunderstood. He maintained that there is no particle that cannot be smaller: there is always a smaller.²⁰⁷ Likewise, al-Nazzam cited by al-Ash‘-ari: “There is no part that does not have a part; no portion that does not have a portion; and no half that cannot be halved. Every particle can be divided for ever; it has no limit in terms of division”.²⁰⁸ The doxographer al-Shahrastani noted the correspondence of al-Nazzam’s theory of latency (kumum) with the theory of Anaxagoras. Nevertheless, al-Nazzam’s thought seems to have been that things never

 See infra, pp. 464; 866; 1489 91.  H. Wolfson, op. cit. p. 508.  See, chapter 10, p. 724.  This is what Origen maintained about the Body of the Logos, which is his own refinement of the Anaxagorean theory. See COT, pp. 39 64, and infra, chapter 11, pp. 867 ff.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 164: οὔτε γὰρ τοῦ σμικροῦ, φησίν, ἐστὶ τό γε ἐλάχιστον, ἀλλ᾿ ἔλασσον ἀεί.  Maqalat, 318.6 8. The Maqalat e Shams e Tabrizi (The Conversations of Shams i Tabrīzī) is a Persian prose book written by Shams i Tabrīzī, or Shams al Din Mohammad (1185 1248), a Per sian Muslim, who is supposed to have been the spiritual instructor of Mewlānā Jalāl ad Dīn Mu hammad Balkhi, also known as Rumi, who cited Shams with great reverence in his collection of poems. The Conversations mostly convey a mystical interpretation of Islam and contain spiritual advice.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

377

become what they are not, because all things contain already all what they become or produce. The new is present, not potential, but hidden, in the old; the effect is in the cause; the oil is in the olive or in the sesame, the spark is in the stone. Therefore, all depends on what one means by ‘hidden’. If the incorporeal nature of the principles is not grasped, then the theory of latency secrets a whole of other bodies in bodies, which has nothing to do with Anaxagoras, whose notion of potentiality does not conceal only accidents in bodies, but it is meant in its full sense: once certain principles create a certain material system and act upon it, there are no ‘hidden bodies’ which come to light; the case is only about things that become and reach their full development by means of the action of principles, which cause things to exfoliate the potential of their own natures. Later, I discuss a reference also by Porphyry, who quoted a brilliant definition by Thrasyllus of Alexandria,²⁰⁹ describing the form and becoming of things not as coming from Above, indeed from the Beyond and the transcendent Ideas, but from the logos of a thing, which is ‘coiled up’ in ‘seeds’: the logos (which is another name for the principles, as discussed later) develops and unfolds itself in accordance with the nature of each thing. Subsequently, ‘an imitation of the logos appears in technical theories, also, in the results of such theories, as well as in any kind of contemplation, speculation, such as the theory about prudence or that about wisdom’. Thrasyllus saw the logos of a thing (or, of a theory) not as the definition of it: he saw it as a creative force, indeed a creator that unfolds gradually its inherent powers and causes things to come to pass. In the second place, once this logos is grasped and described theoretically, the definition or ‘essence’ (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) of a certain thing or phenomenon may be rendered, as much as is it possible to reflect upon this theoretically. Therefore, the notion of latency applies not to the principles, but to natures of things gradually attaining their full development as such. By ‘as such’, I mean that the principles collaborate with each other, so as a certain potential nature to become fully what it is: an embryo will become a human being; a rosebud will become a full rose. This was the meaning of the statement by Simplicius defending Anaxagoras against Aristotle, namely, that not everything is produced from everything at random (ὥστε οὐ τὰ τυχόντα ἀπὸ τῶν τυχόντων), nor is it possible for flesh or brain²¹⁰ to be produced from water (οὐδὲ ἐξ ὕδατος σὰρξ ἢ ἐγκέφαλος), and ‘Anaxagoras does not appear to sustain production of anything  See chapter 10, pp. 805 10.  Simplicius points out that Aristotle was mistaken in considering ‘brain’ as ὁμοιομερές (Physica, 188a), that is, homogenous, since it is made up, among others, from veins and arteries. See supra, p. 341, note 80.

378

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

from anything’ (ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἁπλῶς ἔοικεν ἐκκρίνειν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας).²¹¹ Consequently, potentiality in Anaxagoras does not mean that A will become not-A because it is potentially non-A, nor because it contains within itself what is apparently non-A. The ‘new’ creation is not already there all along, nor is it the case that change is only the manifestation of what is already present but hidden. Quite simply, notions such as those of being ‘hidden’, or being ‘all in all’ and ‘already there’, or ‘nothing comes from nothing’, apply to the principles considered from the point of view of human perception: it is not about material things being hidden within other material things, as Aristotle ostensibly considered them to be. There is no flesh, hair, bones, and nails in an embryo: there is only a certain amount of matter which in itself is neither of them yet: there are only certain natural principles acting in due order therein, which gradually transmute this amount of matter to a human being with flesh, hair, bones, and nails. In any A, there is not any non-A being ‘hidden’, which emerges out of it at a subsequent stage: there is only A which ceases to be A once the concurring combination of principles that form A changes and then something different emerges out of it, yet not at random, but according to natural laws: a rosebud will become a full rose, and then it will fall into decay; a human being will evolve out of the womb, at some future moment it will cease to be alive, and it will gradually become ‘dust from dust’. Therefore, the ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα) within each thing are not material particles, but only certain incorporeal principles, which cause (so long as they concur) the peculiar nature of each thing or phenomenon to evolve unto its fully developed nature, and subsequently (once they cease to concur) they cause it to dissolve into different things. This undeveloped specific nature of each thing that normally should develop fully to a specific nature is the only sense in which one can speak of latency in Anaxagoras, but this term would be not correct, because, in reality, this is all about potentiality, since this is the term describing accurately the dynamic ²¹² character of the mutative process. The Aristotelian assertion about latent particles which become manifest is just absurd. He forced Anaxagoras’ principles into the realm of the concrete, indeed of the material concrete. No matter how implicitly, in reality Anaxagoras was concerned with questions about the general and the specific, the universal and the particular. Along with Empedocles, no doubt carrying on with Parmenides’ idea, they were the pioneers that had already raised both the problem of the Many (particular) in the One (universal), and the problem of the One (universal) in the Many (particular). The former

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 174. Cf. John Philoponus, supra, p. 341, note 78.  It should be reminded that Aristotle used the term δυνάμει for potentiality.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

379

gave rise to Anaxagoras’ Ontology; the latter was the springboard for his Cosmology. It was possible for him to compose both these expositions by means of θεωρία, or abstract thinking, which went beyond the deceptive multiplicity of material objects and phenomena. Aristotle sought to explain out both aspects of Anaxagoras’ philosophy by means of an arid materialism, which resulted in a caricature of Anaxagoras’ real views. Taking into account that, in Anaxagoras, latency makes some sense once it is considered not ontologically, but in terms of cosmic function, I can see no contradiction²¹³ in al-Shahrastani also saying that Thales and Anaxagoras were at one ‘in the assumption of a prime matter and imaginable forms within it, or of a primary body and existences hidden in it.’ The main point is that al-Shahrastani actually knows that Aristotle was dependent upon Anaxagoras. For alShahrastani’s use of the terms ‘prime matter’ and ‘forms’, as well as his description of what he saw as Anaxagoras’ theory of latency (in the passage quoted above), namely, one that maintains ‘the emergence of actuality out of potentiality, or of form out of the disposition of matter’ (terms characteristically Aristotelian), allusively suggests that, beside Thales and Anaxagoras, Aristotle himself also had a theory of latency. What we really have in this passage is al-Shahrastani’s own opinion that the theory of latency is in reality a theory which was held by certain Greek philosophers, such as Thales and Anaxagoras, who believed, as he says, in ‘a primary matter and in existences hidden in it’, since all such philosophers believed in the ‘emergence of appearance out of hiding’, which is not really different from Aristotle’s tenet about a prime matter and forms in it, or in the emergence of actuality out of potentiality.²¹⁴ Consequently, as Wolfson rightly points out, terms ‘hiding’ and ‘appearing’ are nontechnical equivalents of the Aristotelian technical term ‘potentiality’ and ‘actuality’. That the use of the terms ‘hiding’ and ‘appearing’ as nontechnical equivalents of the Aristotelian technical terms ‘potentiality’ and ‘actuality’ was not uncommon, may be evidenced by the following two examples adduced by Wolfson. First, in the Arabic version of the Enneads of Plotinus, the so-called Theology of Aristotle, the author tries to show that nothing in nature stands still. He proves this by the analogy of the grain of seed (badhr), which, when planted in the ground, never ceases to grow, to change, and to become something else, saying this: “In the seed lie high creative logoi which are inseparably joined to it, yet they are hidden (hafiyyah) and do not fall under our eyes. But when it performs its tasks and falls under our eyes, its great and wonderful powers become appa-

 Neither does H. Wofson; op. cit. p. 509.  H. Wolfson, loc. cit.

380

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

rent (banat)”. Here then we have the ancient concept: that which seems to be a new creation is but the unfolding of something which is already in existence described as the becoming ‘apparent’ of that which was ‘hidden’. This is the doctrine of Anaxagoras’ principles, who urged that nothing comes from nothing, but everything appears as mutation of something existing in advance. Secondly, there is the system of the Gnostic Simon reproduced from his Great Announcement by Hippolytus,²¹⁵ who represents this as a combination of Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle espousing Heraclitus, who was followed by the Stoics. Simon says that ‘fire is the principle of all things’.²¹⁶ According to him, in this fire, there is a double nature, and of this double nature he calls one part hidden (κρυπτόν) and the other apparent (φανερόν).²¹⁷ He then goes on saying that ‘the hidden parts have been in the apparent parts of the fire, and apparent parts of the fire have come into being from the hidden’.²¹⁸ These hidden and apparent parts he identifies respectively that which Aristotle calls ‘potentiality’ (δύναμις) and ‘actuality’ (ἐνέργεια), as well as with Plato’s ‘noetic’ (νοητόν) and ‘perceptible’ (αἰσθητόν).²¹⁹ Therefore, the Aristotelian concept of potentiality and actuality is described as transition from that which is ‘hidden’ to that which is ‘apparent’, and one should wonder what is the actual breakthrough that Aristotle made so as history to associate the notion of potentiality with him instead of Anaxagoras. The principles (along with their guide and master, namely, the Mind) that are ‘hidden’ are not in fact absent from any place whatsoever, since anything incorporeal is in no place at all, and yet it exists everywhere.²²⁰ They appear to be hidden so long as they have not given rise to material entity and do not act upon it yet. Once a human being is alive, the innumerable principles that determine and support its physiological existence and function, are present; but upon death, these principles are apparently ‘absent’. They are not really absent, however: they are omnipresent, as it happens, for instance, with all the ubiquitous natural laws of this world; they continue to function upon all other living human beings, and they will take over again and again, every time a new human embryo is

     

Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 6.9.3. Hippolytus, op. cit. 6.9.5. Hippolytus, op. cit. 6.9.6. Hippolytus, loc. cit. H. Wolfson, op. cit. pp. 509 10. See this being discussed in the next chapter.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

381

formed. Anaxagoras’ principles are present throughout all cosmic space (ἕκαστον πανταχοῦ ὄν).²²¹ No matter how crude the following example, one can take an idea of the notion from modern circumstances. Suppose we see a class which is empty and nobody is there. But is this really empty? Once students and the teacher are there, a student may claim that he hears ‘voices’. Had he lived in the era of Jean d’Arc, he would have risked his body being thrown to fire so that his soul should be saved; but, fortunately, he lives in the twenty-first century and the case might be simply that he has a small radio set in his pocket and listens to a certain programme through his headphones. Quite simply, the class is not ‘empty’, even in the absence of all those who might use it: it is in fact full of waves of all kinds, and the most tangible example is the hundreds of frequencies of television ones. All one needs in order to make these waves present to him is a television set. Then, he can choose from several channels and make both visual signal and sound ‘present’. Now, in the absence of this set, and indeed of any human being, the class appears to be empty, but in reality, it is not. One then could say that the image and sound of a certain channel is there ‘potentially’, and it appears ‘actually’ once a television set is in place and in use. However, this idea of potentiality/actuality is desperately relative, depending upon the grasp of an observer. The class is full of a hardly countable multitude of waves notwithstanding their being invisible, and the notion of potentiality (as indeed that of incorporeality) in that case is only a false human impression. One should wonder about what was actually new about Aristotle’s doctrine of the Immovable First Mover (which is ‘eternal substance and actuality’)²²² that Anaxagoras had not already said. Aristotle sought a first cause of motion which should be immaterial (ἄνευ ὕλης), eternal (ἀΐδιον), and on no account should its essence be potentiality: this should be unfailing actuality (δεῖ ἄρα τὴν ἀρχὴν εἶναι τοιαύτην, ἧς ἡ οὐσία ἐνέργεια), ‘since that which exists potentially may not exist’ (ἐνδέχεται γὰρ τὸ δυνάμει ὂν μὴ εἶναι).²²³ Aristotle rejected the ideas of earlier ‘theologians’ (meaning Hesiod) who made potentiality prior to actual-

 Simplicius, commCael, p. 229. Aristotle, who posited Anaxagoras’ principles to be material, argued thus: if we have a composite material object and suppose that all of the different parti cles that make it up are ‘infinite’, this could be absurd: for how could it be possible for masses of infinite quantity to co exist with an infinite number of other masses, which are also of infinite quantity? Assuming the infinite principles to be material elements, Aristotle urged that each of the infinite homoiomeries could be in need of infinite space, thus he slipped into arguments considering ‘infinity upon infinity ad infinitum’. Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, 274b.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1071b.

382

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

ity, while acknowleding that Anaxagoras had already posited that actuality is prior (ἐνέργεια πρότερον) and ‘Mind is actuality’ (ὁ γὰρ νοῦς ἐνέργεια).²²⁴ He tried to obscure his debt to Anaxagoras by saying that the proposition ‘all things were together’ (ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα) ‘is impossible’.²²⁵ In fact though he contradicted himself: his argument for this impossibility was, ‘for how can be there motion if there is no actual cause?’ (πῶς γὰρ κινηθήσεται εἰ μὴ ἔσται ἐνεργείᾳ τι αἴτιον;). But a few lines further he appealed to Anaxagoras (whose statement ‘all things were together’ he criticized as being ‘impossible’) who said that the ‘Mind is actuality’, and Alexander of Aphrodisias rightly explained that Anaxagoras is in fact exempt from that criticism. Sextus Empiricus explained likewise that ‘Anaxagoras posited the Nous, who is God, as an Active Principle’,²²⁶ and Simplicius quoted Anaxagoras who wrote that ‘the Mind alone is himself by himself’ (αὐτοκρατές), that is, self-subsistent who owes his being to no other than himself, and he is also ‘unlimited and self-ruling and has been mixed with no thing.’²²⁷ Therefore, Anaxagoras posited that there was the Mind (which is sheer actuality) that distinguished the principles from the primal fusion, and set everything in order upon instilling circular motion. This gist of Aristotle’s doctrine is based on Anaxagoras despite the criticism shortly later: he argued that Anaxagoras made the Good a principle causing motion, since the Mind moves things; but it moves things for some end, therefore, there must be some other Good (as in the case of medicine which has health as its end).²²⁸ Aristotle rested his criticism on a certain identification he argued for, namely, that the efficient cause should be in a sense identified with the final cause.²²⁹ The fact is, however, that Anaxagoras saw the Mind as Creator of the principles, which serve as instruments for the Mind eternally to make the world what it is. Thus, if considered in

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1071b 1072a. See Alexander of Aphrodisias explaining Aristotle’s Meta physica, 1071b, in the commMetaph, p. 690: “Aristotle blames not the physicists Empedocles and Anaxagoras, who posited actuality as being prior to potentiality, but those theologians who make potentiality prior to actuality.”  Aristotle, op. cit. 1071b; then again, in 1072a.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 6 7: τὸν μὲν νοῦν, ὅς ἐστι θεὸς κατ᾿ αὐτόν, δραστήριον ὑποτιθέμενος ἀρχήν.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156 & 164 & 174 & 176 & 301. It is character istic that, explaining Aristotle, Categoriae, 1a20 27, he accounts for the passage by means of the term αὐτοκρατὲς (which Aristotle himself never used) and provides an a contrario definition: “That which is not self ruling, it needs something other than itself in order to exist.” commCateg, p. 44: μὴ ὂν αὐτοκρατὲς ἑτέρου δεῖται πρὸς τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ εἶναι.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1075b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1034a b.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

383

Aristotle’s terms, it can be said that the four causes²³⁰ are indeed there: there is matter (material cause), the Mind (efficient cause), the formation of things by means of the principles (formal cause), and the final cause, which is the rationality granted to the formation of things by the Mind considered as the master, guide, and superintendent of the principles. For nature does not arise by blind chance, but there is an intelligent being which organizes it, wherefore its action is essentially characterized by rationality. Once again, the perceptive Simplicius argued that, in effect, Aristotle actually praised²³¹ Anaxagoras for having posited the Mind as an efficient cause as well as a final one.²³² As discussed in chapter 9, this was part of the legacy of Anaxagoras to the Stoics, who made their universal Logos the successor of the Mind, the particular reasons (λόγοι) the successors of the principles, and the notion of being and acting ‘according to nature’ (κατὰ φύσιν, as opposed to ‘against nature’, παρὰ φύσιν) the successor of that which was in effect Anaxagoras’ final cause, which Aristotle did not see, or rather he preferred not to see.²³³ Aristotle argued that ‘the primal substances’ are ‘infinite’ in number, and he identified them as ‘flesh and blood and brains’, and any other sort of material, which exist separate from one another, they are without limit, and yet they exist actually (κεχωρισμένα μέντοι ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων, οὐδὲν δ᾿ ἧττον ὄντα, καὶ ἄπειρον ἕκαστον).²³⁴ By this he meant that there was no notion of potentiality involved

 On the four causes, see Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, 94a: αἰτίαι δὲ τέτταρες, μία μὲν τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, μία δὲ τὸ τίνων ὄντων ἀνάγκη τοῦτ᾿ εἶναι, ἑτέρα δὲ ἡ τί πρῶτον ἐκίνησε, τετάρτη δὲ τὸ τίνος ἕνεκα. De Generatione Animalium, 715a: ὑπόκεινται γὰρ αἰτίαι τέτταρες, τό τε οὗ ἕνεκα ὡς τέλος καὶ ὁ λόγος τῆς οὐσίας (ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὡς ἕν τι σχεδὸν ὑπολαβεῖν δεῖ), τρίτον δὲ καὶ τέταρ τον ἡ ὕλη καὶ ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως. Metaphysica, 1013b: ἅπαντα δὲ τὰ νῦν εἰρημένα αἴτια εἰς τέτταρας τρόπους πίπτει τοὺς φανερωτάτους. Op. cit. 1070b: ὥστε στοιχεῖα μὲν κατ᾿ ἀναλογίαν τρία, αἰτίαι δὲ καὶ ἀρχαὶ τέτταρες· ἄλλο δ᾿ ἐν ἄλλῳ, καὶ τὸ πρῶτον αἴτιον ὡς κινοῦν ἄλλο ἄλλῳ. Divisiones Aristoteleae, p. 23, col. 2: ἕκαστον τῶν ὄντων ἀποτελεῖται διὰ τέσσαρας αἰτίας.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984b.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1362: ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν νοῦν ὡς ποιητικὸν καὶ τελικὸν αἴτιον θεασαμένους γράφει ταῦτα· [then he quotes Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984b; then] … ἐπαινεῖ οὖν τοὺς καὶ τελικὸν καὶ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον τιθέντας τὸν νοῦν, ὥσπερ καὶ πρὸ ὀλίγων ἐπῄνει τὸν ᾿Aνα ξαγόραν, ὅτι τὸν νοῦν ἀρχὴν κινήσεως λέγων ἀπαθῆ καὶ ἀμιγῆ αὐτὸν ἐφύλαττεν.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b. His criticism of previous (Presocratic) theories at that point is largely unfounded (he alleged that they did not explain why all things come from the same first principles; or, why some things are perishable and others imperishable; or, why should always be generation and what the cause of generation is).  Aristotle, Physica, 188a3. W.D. Ross emended to [οὐ] κεχωρισμένα, but this was not really what Aristotle meant, since we have his text quoted and commented upon without [οὐ] by the following commentators: Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 16. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 172 3. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 106.

384

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

in Anaxagoras’ account. Consequently, he posited the absurdity of material stuff of different kinds existing one into another, each of which is infinite and interwoven with all others that are infinite, too. However, his commentators did not care to consider this allegation critically, and reproduced this farce of infinite materials existing one alongside the other, all of them actually, not potentially.²³⁵ The sole exception was Simplicius who showed how absurd Aristotle’s allegation was.²³⁶ Against both Aristotle himself and his commentators, he showed that Anaxagoras did hold the notion of potentiality; indeed it is only on this assumption that his philosophy can be understood and make sense, since any other fanciful rendering definitely leads only to preposterous absurdities. We can see this clearly also in the case of the notion of the earth assumed to be the centre of the rotating heavenly sphere, that is, the centre of the universe. Testimonies assure that the idea that the heavenly sphere is moving eternally and the earth is the centre of this orbit was Presocratic: Simplicius notes that the theory was sustained by Empedocles, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and then it was taken up by Plato.²³⁷ It is remarkable though that, at other points, he concentrates this attribution on Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus,²³⁸ and then on the first two of them, namely Anaxagoras and his pupil Empedocles.²³⁹ Accordingly, other authors agreed that Aristotle reached this theory by being mainly under the influence of those two philosophers,²⁴⁰ for which Simplicius had an explanation to give, anyway: the earth

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 658; 673. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 192; commPhys, p. 106. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 61. See also the Greek rendering of Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics by Gennadius Scholarius. The comment is made on Aristotle, Physica, 187a b, where Aristotle discusses the axiom ‘everything that comes to be, it pre exists in actuality’, which he claimed was a view of the Presocratic physicists. Gen nadius Scholarius, Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii In Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, pp. 180; 206.  Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 187a b.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 511: τῶν δὲ πεπερασμένον τὸν κόσμον λεγόντων οἱ μὲν πλεῖστοι ἐπὶ τοῦ μέσου κεῖσθαι λέγουσι τὴν γῆν, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξίμανδρος καὶ ᾿Aναξιμένης καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Δημόκριτος καὶ Πλάτων· ἀντιφάσκουσι δὲ οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι (who posited the anti chthon, opposite earth).  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 375: καὶ ἡ τῆς γῆς ἐν τῷ μέσῳ στάσις, ὡς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τε ἐδόκει λέγειν καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Δημόκριτος.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 526 7: Εἶτα μεταξὺ εἰπών, ὅτι διὰ τὴν δίνην τοῦ οὐρανοῦ εἰς τὸ μέσον συνελθεῖν τὴν γῆν λέγουσι πάντες οἱ γένεσιν τοῦ κόσμου παραδιδόντες· οὐ γὰρ Ἐμπεδο κλῆς μόνος, ἀλλὰ καὶ οἱ περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν καὶ ἄλλοι.  Nicephorus Gregoras, Florentius, lines 1377 81: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Δημό κριτος καὶ ᾿Aναξίμανδρος καὶ οἱ τῆς Πυθαγορικῆς αἱρέσεως ἅπαντες ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἵστασθαι μέσον τὴν γῆν ἔφασαν συνεχομένην ὑπὸ τῆς οὐρανίου περιφορᾶς καὶ μὴ συγχωρουμένην κινεῖσθαι

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

385

is being kept in the middle of the universe because all creation started with Anaxagoras’ ‘rotation’ (περιχώρησις); it is because of this rotation (which Simplicius calls by its Democritean synonym δῖνος) that this evolved in this way, since the earth was very heavy and remained in the centre of this whirlpool.²⁴¹ This takes us to the heart of our point: like all of Anaxagoras’ χρήματα in the primal state (which Aristotle mischievously styled ‘elements’), the ‘earth’ was formerly ‘mixed with everything else, and it was made distinct afterwards’ (ὑποθέμενος οὖν τὴν γῆν μεμιγμένην τέως τοῖς ἄλλοις, εἶτα διακρινομένην), which means not the absurdities Aristotle gave to his posterity: it means that the earth existed potentially, ‘and it was brought to actuality out of potentiality’, and then it became the centre of the universe (καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ ἐκ τοῦ δυνάμει γινομένην καὶ φερομένην ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον), ‘according to that which seems to have been Anaxagoras’ theory’ (ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐδόκει λέγειν).²⁴² When Origen interpreted the passage of Genesis, 1:2, ‘and the earth was invisible and unformed’ (ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος) as suggesting the creation of the logoi of the earth, not the material earth itself, he wrote as a genuine pupil of Anaxagoras once again.²⁴³ A note on how the relation of Aristotle to his predecessors was received by posterity is necessary. Porphyry and Origen are the two philosophers who instituted a valuable liaison with the fundamentals of eminent, yet misunderstood, Presocratics, such as Parmenides, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras. I will now consider a hardly known testimony by Porphyry, which is not included in his published text. It comes from Andronicus Callistus (1400‒1486), who was one of the most erudite Greek scholars in the Renaissance of the fifteenth century, and cousin of the distinguished scholar Theodore Gazes. He was born in Thessaloni-

τῇδε ἢ τῇδε. Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 4 (comm. on the Meteoroplogica), 2, lines 98 102: εἶναι φησὶ καὶ εὐέλεγκτον, τῆς γῆς μὲν τὸ ἔσχατον καὶ μέσον τῆς γῆς ἐχούσης, τοῦ δὲ πυρὸς τὸν ἄνω τόπον ἔχοντος καὶ τῶν κούφων πάντων, καὶ ἔτι τῆς γῆς, κατ᾿ αὐτὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν, βαρυτάτης οὔσης διὰ μεγέθους ὑπερβολὴν καὶ οὐκ ἂν δυνηθείσης ὑπὸ βραχείας οὕτως αἰτίας κι νεῖσθαι ὅλης· οὕτω γὰρ ἔλεγεν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 386: διὰ τοῦτο οὕτω συνέστη ὁ κόσμος καὶ ἐγένετο κάτω μὲν ἡ γῆ, ἄνω δὲ τὸ πῦρ, ἢ ὅτι διὰ τὸν δῖνον μέσον ἡ γῆ κρατεῖται. Simplicius’ alternative interpreta tion (loc. cit.) suggests influence on Aristotle by Empedocles. About Democritus’ notion of δῖνος, see supra, pp. 260 1.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 543.  Origen, commGen, PG.12.49.30 31. Cf. Cels, XXXVI.49. See COT, pp. 39 64. When Celsus branded the Christian theory of creation ‘naïve’, Origen replied that he had already expounded this theory in his commentary on Genesis, but he was loath to explain why was this theory not naïve. Cels, XXXVI.49: οὐκ εὔλογον δέ μοι φαίνεται πρὸς τὴν ἀπόφασιν αὐτοῦ κατασκευάσαι, τίνα τρόπον οὐκ ἔστιν εὐηθική.

386

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

ki, and grew up and studied in Constantinople. After the fall of the city in 1453, he decamped to Italy, and worked as a professor in Bologna, Rome, Florence, and Paris. He also travelled extensively to northern Europe, and then he taught in London, where he died in 1486. Among his works is a defence of Theodore Gazes’ positions against the criticism by Michael Apostolius (Andronicus Callistus Defensio Theodori Gazae Adversus Michaelem Apostolium). He was an Aristotelist, and his success in France was so renown that it is believed that it was with him that systematic teaching of Greek studies started in France. We owe to Andronicus two passages preserving the words of Eudemus of Rhodes²⁴⁴ and of Porphyry. He quotes from them in order to argue that Aristotle was right when he boasted that philosophers before him ‘spoke falteringly on all subject’ (ψελλιζομένῃ γὰρ ἔοικεν ἡ πρώτη φιλοσοφία περὶ πάντων),²⁴⁵ and that it was he who offered real sophisticated accounts. Andronicus Callistus was an Aristotelist and it was natural for him to appeal to the words of Eudemus. I will not abide by his words then, since we have a fuller version, of which Simplicius wrote that he ‘quoted it from Eudemus’ Physics.’ ²⁴⁶ But I will consider the quotation from Porphyry, who could hardly be styled Aristotelist. The passage (with some slight differences, editorial ones, no doubt) appears in Simplicius, too, who quotes a much wider context from Porphyry. Since Andronicus quotes Porphyry along with Eudemus, it is almost certain that he received the texts from Simplicius, who did so, too.²⁴⁷ Andronicus says that he is going to adduce the testimony of Porphyry, ‘who expounded the teaching of almost all of those who considered Being in terms of both simplicity and multiplicity’ (ἐκθέμενος τοὺς λόγους σχεδὸν ἁπάντων τῶν ἕν τε τὸ ὂν εἰπόντων καὶ τῶν πολλά), and showed that those who came after the Presocratics ‘were baffled and they tried to decipher those teachings’ (καὶ τοὺς ὕστερον δείξας θορυβηθέντας τε καὶ τοὺς λόγους ἐπιχειρήσαντας λύειν), ‘but they fell into other absurd theories because of ignorance’ (ἑτέροις ὑπ᾿ ἀγνοίας ἀτοπωτέροις ἑαλωκότας). This is why Porphyry considered certain questions, ‘in order not to appear as eschewing investigation of them’ (πρὸς τὸ μηδ᾿ ἐκπε-

 Eudemus of Rhodes was a philosopher, regarded also by some as the first historian of sci ence, c. 370 300 BC. He was one of Aristotle’s most important pupils, who edited his work, in order to make it more easily accessible.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 993a.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 115 8.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 94 6.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

387

φευγέναι τὴν ζήτησιν).²⁴⁸ He then quotes from Porphyry, presumably reading the passage in Simplicius. Porphyry wrote that it was Aristotle alone who realized that he ought to solve the problem concerning simplicity or multiplicity of Being. His solution was that not all beings exist in the same manner, since ‘Being’ is not the universal genus of them all. In other words, there are different modes according to which something is. Therefore, each one of the things that are said to ‘be’, does not partake of Being in the same manner, but there are different ways of this partaking.²⁴⁹ Evidently, this was all about something existing either actually or potentially. This is the argument adduced by Andronicus Callistus aiming to show that real philosophy started with Aristotle, who was the first to reflect by means of argument, in contrast to all previous ones who proclaimed their teaching without caring to furnish any proof.²⁵⁰ Considering that Andronicus was an illustrious professor who taught in the most important cities of Europe, one can see how Greek philosophy was received in the West. For the truth is quite different indeed: he quoted Porphyry from Simplicius’ work, but he left out of consideration the specific context of both authors. For Simplicius said many important things, both before and after the point that Andronicus quoted. And although we have not the text of Porphyry itself, we know that he also said important pertinent things in his extant works. Simplicius quotes Porphyry’s considerations of Aristotle in admiration and accepts them as ‘a novel’ interpretation.²⁵¹ But he does not accept the claim that Presocratics had no inkling of Aristotle’s ideas, and argues that this was Porphyry’s gist of his interpretation of Aristotle. Hence, at that very point, he argues that Porphyry ‘gave a vehement reply to all those interpreters [of Aristotle], and said that they did not grasp this fact: if Being is not assumed to exist in ten ways, not only the followers of Parmenides and Melissus, but also all the others will be baffled’.²⁵² In short, Porphyry argued that, long before Aristotle, certain Preso Andronicus Callistus (fifteenth century, Constantinople, Italy), Defensio Theodori Gazae ad versus Michaelem Apostolium, 8.3.  Andronicus Callistus, loc. cit. Also Simplicius, commPhys, p. 94: τὰ δὲ ὄντα μὲν οὐχ ὁμοίως δὲ μετειληφότα τοῦ ὄντος, ἀλλὰ κατ᾿ ἄλλον τρόπον τῷ ἐκείνῳ εἶναι καὶ ἠρτῆσθαι ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνου πρὸς τὸ εἶναι.  Andronicus Callistus, loc. cit. ταῦτα δ᾿ ἐκ τῶν λόγων καὶ τῶν ἀντιλογιῶν ἐθεωρήθη καὶ τὸ συλλογίζεσθαι· οὐ γὰρ συνεχωρεῖτο, εἰ μὴ φαίνοιτο ἀναγκαῖον. οἱ δὲ πρότεροι ἀναποδείκτως ἀπεφαίνοντο.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 92: τοῦ δὲ Πορφυρίου καινοπρεπῶς αὐτὴν ἐπιδραμόντος.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 93: ἐὰν μὴ δεκαχῶς λέγεσθαι ὑποτεθῇ τὸ ὄν, οὐχ οἱ περὶ Παρμενίδην μόνοι καὶ Μέλισσον, ἀλλὰ καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι πάντες θορυβήσονται. … πολὺς οὖν θόρυβος οὐ πρὸς τοὺς

388

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

cratics were conscious of the fact that to exist in actuality is one thing, but to exist potentially is another; and it is one thing to be essentially, and another to be accidentally, and so on. In this sense, those previous philosophers were also conscious of the fact that ‘there is nothing absurd about positing Being as both one and many’.²⁵³ On that account, Porphyry expounded insightfully and interpreted knowledgeably the patrimony before Socrates:²⁵⁴ the inquiries of the Presocratics and those of Aristotle were the same.²⁵⁵ Aristotle said that ‘one and being have various meanings, and all other terms which are used in relation to one and being must vary in meaning accordingly’.²⁵⁶ In any event, certain Presocratics could not have been baffled at Aristotle’s philosophy, since they were conscious of the notion of potentiality.²⁵⁷ Aristotle himself, of course, had a different opinion about this, which takes us to a final question that calls for discussion: how is it that potentiality develops to actuality? To Anaxagoras, potential being makes sense once certain principles concur in order to generate a specific thing or phenomenon. The process is constant, continuous, and it develops gradually: it does not really stop once the full reality of a thing is realized, but it continues from generation to decay. Everything depends on which the principles that concur are and how their interaction takes περὶ Παρμενίδην μόνον, ἀλλ᾿ ἁπλῶς πρὸς πάντας τοὺς συνώνυμον ὑποθεμένους τὸ ὂν καὶ ὡς ἓν μὲν αὐτὸ ὑποτιθεμένους, σῴζειν δὲ μὴ δυναμένους ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῦ τὴν τοῦ ἑνὸς καθαρὰν πρόληψιν.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 96: ὅπερ ἵσως καὶ νῦν ᾐνίξατο μηδὲν ἄτοπον εἰπὼν τὸ αὐτὸ ἓν καὶ πολλὰ εἶναι, πολλὰ μὲν κατὰ τοὺς τῶν πολλῶν συμβεβηκότων λόγους, ἓν δὲ κατὰ τὸ ὑποκείμε νον καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν, ὅπερ τὸ αὐτὸ μένον ἓν πολλά ἐστι κατ᾿ ἐκεῖνα.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 95 6: Ταῦτα τοίνυν αὐτὰ μὲν καθ᾿ αὑτὰ πολλῆς οἶμαι σπουδῆς ἄξια καὶ πρὸς τὰς φυσικὰς ζητήσεις καὶ πρὸς τὴν τῶν κατηγοριῶν διαίρεσιν καλῶς ὁ φιλοσοφώτατος ἀνέγραψε Πορφύριος ἀφορμὴν ἴσως πρὸς ταύτην τὴν ἐπιβολὴν λαβὼν τὸ ὡς μοναχῶς λεγομέ νου τοῦ ἑνὸς ἢ τοῦ ὄντος.  Aristotle appears aware of this in the Sophisticos Elenchos, 182b, at least in relation to ‘the followers of Parmenides and Zeno [of Elea]’. Simplicius urged that Anaxagoras said the same things. commPhys, p. 34.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1018a. Cf. op. cit. 1003a b; 1026a b; 1028a; 1060b; 1061b; 1089a; Phys ica, 185a b; 186a. In Metaphysica, 996a & 1001a, Aristotle wrote, ‘to the Pythagoreans and Plato, one and being is the same, which is no other that the essence of things itself’. To him, one and being is described in many ways, while always bearing in mind his own categories. Metaphysica, 1018a; Physica, 185b.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 95 96: ἔστι δέ, φησί [sc. Alexander of Aphrodisias] τὸ ὅλον ἕν τε καὶ πολλά, οὐ κατὰ ταὐτὸν δέ, ἀλλ᾿ ἐντελεχείᾳ μὲν ἕν, δυνάμει δὲ πολλά. ὥστε εἰ μέλλοι καὶ ἡ ἀπὸ τῶν συμβεβηκότων ἀπορία λύεσθαι, καλῶς ὁ Πορφύριος τὸ ὑπὸ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους ᾐνιγμένον διὰ τοῦ ὡς μοναχῶς λεγομένου τοῦ ἑνὸς ἢ τοῦ ὄντος· πολλὰ δὲ τὰ ὄντα ἐνόησέ τε καὶ ἐξέφηνεν, ἐνδειξαμένου μέν πως καὶ τοῦ Εὐδήμου τὸ τοιοῦτον, καὶ αὐτοῦ δὲ τὴν λύσιν εἰς τὸ δυνάμει καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ κατακλείσαντος.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

389

place. Therefore, in this context, transition from potentiality to actuality takes place by means of the incessant action and interaction of the incorporeal principles. In Aristotle, the issue is not that simple, since it was impossible for him to employ the foregoing rationale. His difficulty stemmed from the fact that he took up the basic concept from Anaxagoras, he went some way along with him, but he could not, and did not, go far enough. For had he done so, it would have been impossible for him to herald himself as the messiah of all philosophy, who came in order to elucidate thing that some of his predecessors said only casually and falteringly. He was prepared to allow that Empedocles and Democritus ‘touched a little on the issue of form and essence’,²⁵⁸ and he would also go as far as concede that Anaxagoras said things inarticulately, and that Aristotle himself ‘helped’ him to enunciate them properly; but this was all he was prepared to concede, because otherwise no room for ‘Aristotelian’ philosophy would have remained whatsoever. Aristotle was unable to follow Anaxagoras all the way through because he posited some axioms, such as the following ones. 1. The principles are many, but those which are many in number, have mat²⁵⁹ ter. He made no allowance for the fact that incorporeal principles can exist in both unity and multiplicity, and oneness does not necessarily contradict manyness, as I discus further in the next chapter. 2. The principles are supposed to change (although actually they do not), but this entails that they have to be material, since whatever changes has to be material.²⁶⁰ Somehow Aristotle entrapped himself into a vicious circle: since he presumed the principles to be material, he had to posit that they change; and if they change, of necessity they should be material. It is certainly not accidental that he discusses this at the point where he considers the ideas of Presocratics, lumping together Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Anaximander, and Democritus, and seeing the concept of potentiality in them all. The problem is that, in his view, this potentiality is associated with multiplicity (notwithstanding the primal fusion of Anaxagoras’ mixture); therefore, multiplicity has to involve materiality. This is why his wholesale conclusion about all these philosophers makes no distinction between them: they all posited a material primal reality from which they pro-

 Aristotle, Physica, 194a20 21: ἐπὶ μικρὸν γάρ τι μέρος Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Δημόκριτος τοῦ εἴ δους καὶ τοῦ τί ἦν εἶναι ἥψαντο.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1074a33 34. See supra, p. 353, note 128.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1069b24: πάντα δ᾿ ὕλην ἔχει ὅσα μεταβάλλει.

390

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

duced the universe (ὥστε τῆς ὕλης ἂν εἶεν ἡμμένοι).²⁶¹ To Aristotle, all thinkers down to the time of Empedocles seem to have grasped two out of the four causes which Aristotle himself posited,²⁶² but they did so only vaguely and indefinitely. He saw those intellectuals like untrained soldiers in a battle, who rush about and often strike good blows, yet without science; likewise, they do not seem to understand their own statements, since it is clear that they seldom or never apply them upon the whole.²⁶³ Hardly could Aristotle have been accused of observing the scholarly decorum too much. 3. The principles are contraries, and, to Aristotle, ‘all contraries involve matter, and they exist only potentially’. Contradictions on this point reach their climax: he argues that if there is nothing else beside sensible things, there will be no first principle, no order, no generation, no celestial motions, and every principle will be based upon another, as it happens with the accounts of all the ancient theologians and physicists.²⁶⁴ I emphasize this ‘all’ because Aristotle certainly knew that Anaxagoras did espouse ‘a first principle, order, and generation’, since there was the Mind mastering upon and administering the principles. His argument was that, if there is nothing apart from those which are sensible or potential, there can be no prime mover (which is sheer actuality) to cause motion in the first place. 4. Concerning the principles themselves, Aristotle could not allow that they came out of the primal mixture as potentialities that were distinguished by the Mind, thus becoming actualities once and for all. Since the principles are ‘incorruptible’, they should always be actualities. For nothing which is absolutely imperishable is absolutely potential (οὐθὲν ἄρα τῶν ἀφθάρτων ἁπλῶς δυνάμει ἔστιν ἁπλῶς) (although there is no reason why it should not be potential in some particular respect; e. g. in terms of quality or place); therefore all imperishable things are actual (ἐνεργείᾳ ἄρα πάντα). Nor can anything that exists of necessity be potential; and indeed these things are primary, for if they did not exist, nothing could exist.²⁶⁵ Any Anaxagorean would have endorsed this statement, save the point where Aristotle did not allow that the principles were created, since to him the world was beginningless.

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1069b24 25. Cf. op. cit. 988a25 (ref. to Plato, Parmenides and his followers ‘the Italians’, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras): οὗτοι τε δὴ πάντες τῆς τοιαύτης αἰτίας ἡμμένοι εἰσί.  See supra, pp. 382 3, discussion showing that this allegation by Aristotle was unfair and wrong.  Aristotle, op. cit. 985a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1075b22 23: πάντα γὰρ τὰ ἐναντία ὕλην ἔχει, καὶ δυνάμει ταῦτα ἔστιν.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1050b16 19.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

391

These axiomatic differences perhaps partially explain why Aristotle attributed to Anaxagoras an arid materialism, on the pretext that all Presocratics were materialists: he only wished to make room for himself to expound the notion of potentiality as being one of his own.²⁶⁶ Nevertheless, these dissenting premisses made it difficult for him to develop his concept of potentiality on purely Anaxagorean grounds, as those discussed above, namely, that potentiality develops to actuality by interaction of the immaterial principles, which produce only one kind of motion, that is, mutation. This was a theory that could be vindicated by empirical experience; besides, it was more simple, which means, more scientific. Instead, Aristotle was compelled to introduce notions which Anaxagoras never needed, such as the ‘Nature’, the ‘soul’, ‘essence’,²⁶⁷ et cetera. Although these are abstractions formed following collective functions being observed by human experience, Aristotle virtually treated them as if they were subsistent beings. In the visible world, potentialities become actualities thanks to action by a ‘being’ called ‘Nature’,²⁶⁸ but despite his antipathy for self-existent incorporeal entities, Aristotle had to concede not only that the incorporeal ‘form’ is actuality,²⁶⁹ but also that the incorporeal formless matter as potentiality,²⁷⁰ even though he allowed for none of them to exist in itself, that is, apart from one another. Anaxagoras and Aristotle would have been at one on that transition from potential being to actuality is a continuous process. But agreement would go only as far as that. For one thing, in Anaxagoras, the Aristotelian ‘full (or complete) reality’ (ἐντελέχεια) of things plays no role, since this is a state which lasts for

 Probably, Aristotle knew that Anaxagoras’ principles were immaterial. He slipped into this confession inadvertedly, in such points as the Physica, 187a23 25 and Metaphysica, 991a15 17, but he chose to make a caricature of that philosophy for his own purposes. See supra, pp. 77 8; 231 3; 274; 333; and infra, p. 394.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1032b14: λέγω δὲ οὐσίαν ἄνευ ὕλης τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι. Op. cit. 1035b32: εἶδος δὲ λέγω τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι. Op. cit. 1074a35 36: τὸ δὲ τί ἦν εἶναι οὐκ ἔχει ὕλην τὸ πρῶτον· ἐντελέχεια γάρ.  Nature is a self existent being, that is, a ‘substance’. Aristotle, op. cit. 1005a34: ἓν γάρ τι γένος τοῦ ὄντος ἡ φύσις. Op. cit. 1015a13: καὶ ἡ φύσις οὐσία τίς ἐστιν. Op. cit. 1073a33 34: ἥ τε γὰρ τῶν ἄστρων φύσις ἀΐδιος οὐσία τις οὖσα. Likewise, Meteorologica, 378b31 33.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1071a7 10: ἐνεργείᾳ μὲν γὰρ τὸ εἶδος, ἐὰν ᾖ χωριστόν, καὶ τὸ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν στέρησις δέ, οἷον σκότος ἢ κάμνον, δυνάμει δὲ ἡ ὕλη. Cf. op. cit. 1050b16 18. Therefore, Simplicius explains, since things are consisted of matter and form (and both of them considered together constitute one of the three alternative Aristotelian definitions of essence), a thing is ‘passive’ and ‘potential’ qua being material, but it is ‘active’ and exists ‘in actuality’ in so far as it is regarded as having form. commPhys, p. 419: τοιγαροῦν πάσχει μὲν κατὰ τὴν ὕλην ἕκα στον, καθ᾿ ἣν τὸ δυνάμει ἔχει, δρᾷ δὲ κατὰ τὸ εἶδος, καθ᾿ ὃ ἐνεργείᾳ ἐστὶν ὅ ἐστι. Also, infra, note 274.  Cf. Aristotle, op. cit. 1042b9 11.

392

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

a relatively short, or less short, while. Nevertheless, the important issue is this: what is the agent which realizes the process of such a transition? Aristotle opted for being obscure on this, but a more careful reading reveals his Anaxagorean allegiances, which he sought to conceal. Whereas the principle that effects actualization of potentialities is called Nature, if we seek to determine precisely what this is, we can only discover that Nature is no other than the final cause which is identified with ‘the form and essence’ (εἶδος καὶ οὐσίαν) of a thing, which means that these two comprise one’s ‘nature’. However, it would be futile to seek consistency in his statements, since he also declares at the same point that ‘nature can be defined from two points of view, either the form or matter’, that is, ambiguously.²⁷¹ Aristotle’s definition of ‘essence’²⁷² has it that this is ‘either the form or matter’, or both of them. This means that such statements suggest identification of ‘nature’ and ‘essence’, which is hardly scientific or accurate, since ‘essence’ is a static intellectual abstraction, whereas ‘nature’ indicates one’s action in relation to their environment. To assume one’s full nature is simply to possess fully one’s particular ‘form and fashion’ (τὸ εἶδος καὶ τὴν μορφήν).²⁷³ Matter is mere potentiality until is comes to be governed by the form; once this happens, matter is also an actual existence.²⁷⁴ This means that the active agent is ‘form and fashion’ (τὸ εἶδος καὶ ἡ μορφή).²⁷⁵ Therefore, actuality means simply assumption of one’s ‘essence and form’ (ἡ οὐσία καὶ τὸ εἶδος).²⁷⁶ In relation to animals, Nature’s movement is located in the thing itself which is produced, and it is derived from another natural organism which possesses the form in actuality.²⁷⁷ In other words, Aristotle repeats the idea that an offspring receives the nature of its progenitor. All of these are more or less naturalistic statements that simply describe what is obvious to experience and they can claim no philosophical insight. How-

 Aristotle, Meteorologica, 379b25 26: τὸ δὲ τέλος τοῖς μὲν ἡ φύσις ἐστίν, φύσις δὲ ἣν λέγο μεν ὡς εἶδος καὶ οὐσίαν. Cf. Physica, 194a12 13: ἐπεὶ δ᾿ ἡ φύσις διχῶς, τό τε εἶδος καὶ ἡ ὕλη.  Aristotle, De Anima, 414a; De Generatione et Corruptione, 335b5 7; Metaphysica, 1023b1 2; et passim.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1015a4 6: οὔπω φαμὲν τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν ἐὰν μὴ ἔχῃ τὸ εἶδος καὶ τὴν μορφήν. φύσει μὲν οὖν τὸ ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων τούτων ἐστίν.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1050a15 16: ἔτι ἡ ὕλη ἔστι δυνάμει ὅτι ἔλθοι ἂν εἰς τὸ εἶδος· ὅταν δέ γε ἐνεργείᾳ ᾖ, τότε ἐν τῷ εἴδει ἐστίν.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1060a16 22: μᾶλλον τ᾿ ἂν ἀρχὴ κυριωτέρα ταύτης δόξειεν εἶναι τὸ εἶδος καὶ ἡ μορφή.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1050b2 3: ὥστε φανερὸν ὅτι ἡ οὐσία καὶ τὸ εἶδος ἐνέργειά ἐστιν.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 735a2 3: ἡ δὲ τῆς φύσεως κίνησις ἐν αὐτῷ ἀφ᾿ ἑτέρας οὖσα φύσεως τῆς ἐχούσης τὸ εἶδος ἐνεργείᾳ.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

393

ever, once again, Aristotle appears inconsistent: on the one hand, he states that ‘Nature fulfills her purpose by perpetuating existence’ (ἡ φύσις ἀναπληροῖ τὸ ἀεὶ εἶναι); but he goes on, ‘with this purpose in view, the Deity has fashioned providentially the nature of man and of woman for their partnership’.²⁷⁸ Thus, Aristotle presents us with a mixture of natural and metaphysical propositions, and the result is that he appears with no clear view of what after all is the agent that effects the development of potentialities into actualities. Little wonder then that Strato of Lampsacus, his successor and third director (scholarch) of the Lyceum after the death of Theophrastus, though a Peripatetic philosopher he was, denied the need for an active god to construct the universe, and placed the administration of the universe in the unconscious force of Nature alone. Nevertheless, this is the conclusion once one strives to determine what Aristotle believed by reading his writings alone. For in reality he was under the commanding spell of Anaxagoras, from which he was unable to escape, despite his dissent on particular points as above, which only made his escape impossible and Aristotle himself inconsistent. If one seeks to see what Aristotle believed on this, one will be lost in erratic usage of the terms ‘nature’ (φύσις), ‘essence’ (οὐσία), ‘form and fashion’ (τὸ εἶδος καὶ τὴν μορφήν), ‘form and essence’ (εἶδος καὶ οὐσίαν), which is desperately inconclusive, and finally one will be referred to ‘the Deity’ and to the Divine ‘Providence’, in order to discover what Aristotle’s resolution was, still to no avail once again. Simplicius noted that ‘whereas Anaxagoras, Plato, and the Pythagoreans posited the Divine Mind (τὸν θεῖον νοῦν) as Poietic Cause (ποιητικὸν αἴτιον)’, Aristotle ‘made Nature a poietic cause of what happens in it, because he sought the proximate cause’ (τὸ προσεχὲς ζητῶν τῶν φύσει γινομένων ποιητικὸν αἴτιον τὴν φύσιν εἶναι φησίν). However, ‘he did not consider Nature as the first and foremost cause (πρώτης ἢ κυρίως ποιητικῆς), but he elevated his exposition up to the Immovable Mover which is a cause that moves everything (ἐπὶ τὸ ἀκίνητον καὶ πάντων κινητικὸν αἴτιον ἀνῆλθε), and made everything dependent on it (καὶ πάντα τούτου ἐξῆψεν) by the end of this treatise’, namely, the Physics. ²⁷⁹ But whether Aristotle really did so, or not, has been eternally disputed,²⁸⁰ and Simplicius, against his normal practice, does not care to quote text proof from Aristotle, which is unlike him.

 Aristotle, Oeconomica, 1343b: Οὕτω προῳκονόμηται ὑπὸ τοῦ θείου ἑκατέρου ἡ φύσις, τοῦ τε ἀνδρὸς καὶ τῆς γυναικός, πρὸς τὴν κοινωνίαν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 8. According to Plato, Nature generates things and moves them, but Nature itself is a cause of movement that is moved by someone else, namely, by God. Plato, Timaeus, 46d; 50d. Cf. Simplicius, op. cit. p. 8.  See chapter 8, pp. 554 ff.

394

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

Therefore, we have to follow the other way around: it is not Aristotle that is needed to interpret Anaxagoras; rather, he should be deciphered in light of Anaxagoras’ crystal‒clear philosophy. Behind all these inconclusive expressions, it is quite plain that Aristotle had in mind Anaxagoras’ thought, while being unable to follow him all the way through. As it happened in such cases, Aristotle plumped for Plato: the form is a little demiurge which acts upon an imaginary formless matter and effects any form/matter entity.²⁸¹ However, the imagery was no less mythological or ‘poetical metaphor’, as Aristotle himself had accused Plato: once self-existence of forms was banned, whence is it that they come from? And what is that which makes them active upon matter? Little wonder then that Aristotle had recourse to the ambiguous notion of ‘Nature’, which may mean either anything or indeed nothing, but it is familiar to common experience, though hardly so to the philosophical one. Little wonder also that such points were serviceable to the sixth century tendency to discover harmony between Aristotle and Plato. What Aristotle could not acknowledge openly was that, to Anaxagoras, there was no such thing as ‘Nature’ which effects actualization of potentialities by means of ‘forms’. Instead, this process takes place by means of the action of the principles, which operate at the behest and under the supervision of the Mind. There is no underlying formless matter upon which active agents / forms act, like the artificer who produces an artifact (a simile that Aristotle liked to repeat): matter is included in all those that appear as a result of action by the incorporeal principles (but in the On the Heavens, 305a31‒33, Aristotle banned generation of corporeal things from incorporeal causes). As simple as it is, this proposition knows of no ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ agents: everything is clear, straightforward, and uncomplicated, provided that Anaxagoras’ philosophy is read without preconceptions, such as the allegation that Simplicius’ enterprise was to misinform posterity. Actually, this is what Aristotle himself did while not quoting from that philosophy at all. Instead of making ‘form’ an active agent that effects actuality, and frequently call it ‘Nature’, it would have been simpler for Aristotle to acknowledge that the incorporeal principles of Anaxagoras do the job under the guidance of the Mind. It was only once and inadvertently that he slipped into admitting this incorpo-

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1050b2 3: ὥστε φανερὸν ὅτι ἡ οὐσία καὶ τὸ εἶδος ἐνέργειά ἐστιν. The form is the constitutent agent that effects actuality. However, Aristotle introduced the some what mythological figure called ‘Nature’, and sometimes it is hard to see exactly who is the real ly active agent is it a form or Nature itself?

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

395

reality, in the first book of his Physics, but thereafter he chose to concoct a caricature of that philosophy for his own purposes.²⁸² The very fact that the Mind is ‘king’, ‘ruler’, ‘guardian’, and ‘lord’ of the universe, means that it safeguards realization of potentialities, and vouchsafes the natural and rational character of all pertinent processes. This is an idea that Aristotle found in Anaxagoras, and, in one of the few points that he speaks favourably of him, he employs the latter’s viewpoint: “No natural event occurs haphazard” (οὐδὲν ὡς ἔτυχε γίγνεται τῶν κατὰ φύσιν).²⁸³ However, he could not go too far in order to follow his predecessor: unlike the Anaxagorean Mind, Aristotle’s First Mover is hardly an overseer of the universe, and the question of how Aristotle understood of providence remained controversial. The same happened with the issue of whether the supreme principle is creator, not simply a mover, and was debated as late as the fifteenth century.²⁸⁴ Definitely, no notion of will could be attached to it either. Therefore, when Aristotle avers that ‘no natural event occurs haphazard’, he seems to attach rationality to the obscure entity called ‘Nature’ rather than to God. Be that as it may, the fact is that he praises Anaxagoras as the philosopher who introduced the notion of intentionality in the natural occurrences, and that the source of this thoughtfulness is the Mind. The question then is this: once Aristotle openly acknowledged this, why did he take up, indeed he intensified, the criticism by Plato accusing Anaxagoras of having made nothing of the Mind? Following this analysis, realization of potentialities is not simply a natural process: it is also a rational one; and this rationality stems from the sole source of it, namely, the Mind. This rationality determines that the process should always take place according to reason, which determines how the principles act to this purpose. In between the appearance of a certain potentiality and actualization of it, there is not only time intervening: there is also need for order. Therefore, this kind of actualization takes place in due time and in due order. This is a necessary corollary stemming from the fact that the Mind oversees this process and unfailingly bestows rationality upon it. Nevertheless, Simplicius cared to put this explicitly: Anaxagoras saw that everything becomes from everything, yet not all at once, but in due course’ (ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας … ὁρῶν οὖν πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς γινόμενον, εἰ καὶ μὴ ἀμέσως ἀλλὰ κατὰ τάξιν).²⁸⁵ John Philoponus said so, too, if

 Aristotle, op. cit. 991a9 ff. This text is the same as the one in 1079b12 ff. See supra, p. 198, note 9. Simplicius explicated Anaxagoras’ view of the Mind in commPhys, p. 154.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 301a11 13. See infra, pp. 542 3, notes 75, 76.  See infra, pp. 554 ff, and p. 805, note 456.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 460.

396

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

in different terms,²⁸⁶ but it is plain that both Simplicius and Philoponus recorded lectures of Ammonius, since Simplicius making this point uses exactly the same language as Philoponus.²⁸⁷ Generation of everything from everything is a rational and orderly process: not everything comes out of everything in a haphazard way, nor is this a random emergence of everything from everything; ‘it is not possible for water to produce flesh or human brain’,²⁸⁸ and it is not possible to have a white colour and produce a line out of it; for white colour can only produce either black or grey colour.²⁸⁹ In respect of this, there is a hardly noticed intellectual tradition, which did not live on very long, nor did it enjoy much currency; but the authors that used it are highly characteristic of the tradition that inspired it. This idea was expressed by such heirs of Anaxagoras as the Stoics, first Cleanthes and then Chrysippus, and the normal expression for the action of the principles methodically and systematically was ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει. The phraseology of Cleanthes arguing that phenomena take place ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει is strikingly Anaxagorean: In like manner that all parts of a certain thing are produced from seeds in due course and time, likewise the parts of the Whole (which include also animals and plants) are generated at the appropriate times. Also, in like manner that certain logoi of parts concur so as to form a seed, and then they are separated off anew once the parts are formed, everything is generated from one, and then [all things] mingle [anew] into one, in an orderly manner and in accordance with the [length of a cosmic] period.²⁹⁰

 John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 24: ᾿Aναξαγόρας … τοῦτο δὲ ὑπετίθετο, διότι ἑώρα πάντα ἐξ ἀλλήλων γινόμενα, εἰ καὶ μὴ κατὰ πρώτην γένεσιν, ἀλλ᾿ οὖν διὰ πλειόνων μέσων.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163 (ref. to Anaxagoras): πόθεν γὰρ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς φαίνεται γινό μενον (εἰ καὶ διὰ μέσων ἄλλων), εἰ μὴ πᾶν ἦν ἐν πᾶσι;  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 174: ᾿Aλλ᾿ οὐδὲ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἁπλῶς ἔοικεν ἐκκρίνειν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, κἂν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα λέγῃ εἶναι. σαφῶς γὰρ ἐν τῇ ἐκκρίσει τὰ ἐναντία ἀπὸ τῶν ἐναντίων, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχὶ τὰ τυχόντα ἐκκρίνεσθαι λέγει … ὥστε οὐ τὰ τυχόντα ἀπὸ τῶν τυχόντων, οὐδὲ ἐξ ὕδα τος σὰρξ ἢ ἐγκέφαλος. καὶ οὕτως πάντα τὰ ἐπαχθέντα ἐγκλήματα διαφεύξεται ᾿Aναξαγόρας.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 175 (quoting from Eudemus): ἐπειδὴ οὐ πᾶν παντὶ μίσγεται, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ γίνεται πᾶν ἐκ παντός. ἐκ τοῦ λευκοῦ γὰρ οὐ γίνεται γραμμή, ἀλλὰ μέλαν ἢ φαιόν.  Cleanthes, Testimonia et Fragmenta, fr. 497 (SVF, II.137.6) apud Stobaeus (drawing on Arius Didymus), Anthologium, 1.17.3: Ὥσπερ γὰρ ἑνός τινος τὰ μέρη πάντα φύεται ἐκ σπερμάτων ἐν τοῖς καθήκουσι χρόνοις, οὕτω καὶ τοῦ ὅλου τὰ μέρη, ὧν καὶ τὰ ζῷα καὶ τὰ φυτὰ ὄντα τυγχάνει, ἐν τοῖς καθήκουσι χρόνοις φύεται. Καὶ ὥσπερ τινὲς λόγοι τῶν μερῶν εἰς σπέρμα συνιόντες μίγνυνται καὶ αὖθις διακρίνονται γενομένων τῶν μερῶν, οὕτως ἐξ ἑνός τε πάντα γίνεσθαι καὶ ἐκ πάντων [εἰς] ἓν συγκρίνεσθαι, ὁδῷ καὶ συμφώνως διεξιούσης τῆς περιόδου. Cf. ὁδῷ meaning ‘methodically’. Plato, Respublica, 533b, and Chrysippus in the ensuing passage.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

397

Of course, Cleanthes expounds the Stoic doctrine of recurrent worlds. However, as it happened in general, the Anaxagorean tenor could not be escaped, nor indeed was this the wish of any Stoic. Not only the notion of logoi/principles,²⁹¹ but also the entire idea of generation from ‘seeds’ (σπερμάτων), as well as the expressions for σύγκρισις and διάκρισις (διακρίνονται … συγκρίνεσθαι) hardly need to be pointed out as distinctive Anaxagorean influence. Chrysippus used both the idea and the phraseology, too: speaking of the sun (‘which is pure fire’), he argued that it generated things from its own self in an orderly way (ὥστε γένεσιν διδόναι ἀφ᾿ αὑτοῦ ὁδῷ), and everything will be dissolved into this fire through a similar orderly way (καὶ ἐξ ἐκείνου τὴν ἀνάλυσιν δέχεσθαι εἰς ἑαυτὸ τῇ ὁμοίᾳ ὁδῷ). Accordingly, he expressed the systematic and methodical function of universe by means of the expression τεταγμένως καὶ ὁδῷ.²⁹² The Stoics did not make the apparently Aristotelian distinction potentiality/ actuality (δυνάμει/ἐνεργείᾳ) part of their technical locution. Nevertheless, while eschewing the idiom, they did make use of the notion, which they took up from Anaxagoras, like other cardinal ideas of their philosophy.²⁹³ The foregoing passage of Cleanthes shows that the spermatic logoi operate not simply in order to produce a full flower from a seed, or an animal from parental semen: all of the universe functions in the same manner, and generation and regeneration of it is in no wise different from the potential of a seed which develops to actual and fully developed flower. Therefore, this specific phraseology, which underscores the orderly and rational manner of generation, suggests that they did not avail themselves of the Aristotelian formulation; rather, they opted for taking up the idea directly from Anaxagoras, along with his distinctive technical language. This makes it all too probable that Anaxagoras himself had used the expression ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει in that part of his physics which did not survive among the quotations by Simplicius. The Anaxagorean notion of potentiality conveyed by this expression appeared in the philosopher who was influenced by this Presocratic par excellence, namely, Origen.²⁹⁴ Usage both before and after him appears in authors who are

 About this identification, see infra, pp. 649 ff. and 750 ff.  Chrysippus, fr. 413 (SVF, II.137.6), apud Stobaeus (drawing on Arius Didymus), Anthologium, 1.10.16c. Cf. Simplicius (on Anaxagoras), commPhys, p. 35: τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν.  See infra, chapter 9.  Origen, Cels, I.66 (Philocalia, 18.13): τῷ δεῖν τὸ ἐγχωροῦν ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει περὶ τῆς σωτηρίας τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ᾠκονομῆσθαι. commJohn, VI.57.295: ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει τὰ εὐεργετούμενα εὐεργετεῖ. Op.

398

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

closely related to him. Galen²⁹⁵ and Alexander of Aphrodisias²⁹⁶ (both mentioning Anaxagoras abundantly) were those who saliently influenced Origen, whereas his most prominent pupils, such as Eusebius, Didymus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil of Caesarea followed him suit.²⁹⁷ One of the ideas that Aristotle thought he found in Anaxagoras, and abominated most, was that the Mind/First Mover assumed the function of distinction or creation of the principles. Since to Aristotle everything was actualization of a certain potentiality, and only God is sheer actuality,²⁹⁸ this meant to him that the supreme cause should have never been idle, because such an idleness is tantamount to non-existence. This was a main reason for him to maintain a beginningless world, unlike Anaxagoras who urged that the world had a beginning, it is one, and will have no end. Besides, ‘potentiality as such’ means ‘motion’, in view of the Aristotelian definition, which has it that ‘motion is the actualization of the potential as such’ (τὴν τοῦ δυνάμει ᾗ τοιοῦτον ἐστὶν ἐνέργειαν λέγω κίνησιν).²⁹⁹ This means that motion is a process by means of which potentiality seeks to develop to actuali-

cit. XXXII.3.35: ἵνα ἔλθῃ τὰ ἐξελθόντα εἰς τὰς χεῖρας ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει τοῦ Ἰησοῦ. Exhortatio ad Mar tyrium, 29: ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει οἰκονομοῦντος τὰ πράγματα.  Galen, De Diebus Decretoriis, p. 916: ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει μᾶλλον πρόεισιν ἡ τῶν ἑβδομάδων περίοδος. De Methodo Medendi, p. 116: εἴ τις ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει μέλλει προϊέναι. In Hippocratis Librum Primum Epidemiarum, p. 35: καθ᾿ ἃς χρὴ περὶ πασῶν τῶν ὁπωσοῦν γενομένων καταστάσεων ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει προϊόντας ἡμᾶς ἐξευρίσκειν. Pseudo Galen, Ad Gaurum Quomodo Animetur Fetus, 17.6: οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ζῷον γεννᾷ ὁ ἄνθρωπος οὐ σῶμα μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ψυχὴν ἔχον, εἴτ᾿ οὖν λόγους ἐθέλει τις αὐτὴν καλεῖν εἴτε δυνάμεις εἴτε μέρος εἴτε γένεσιν· ἴδιον δὲ τῶν σπερμάτων τὸ ἀεὶ ὁδῷ τινι καὶ τάξει προβαίνειν καὶ τὸ τόδε μετὰ τόδε προάγειν.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima, p. 35: τὸ δὲ τρεφόμενον τάξει τινὶ καὶ ὁδῷ πρόεισιν καὶ ὅρον ἔχει τινά.  Cf. ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει being used by Didymus, In Genesim, Cod. p. 242. Cf. Commentarii in Zac chariam, 1.144. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 2.1.279; op. cit. 3.4.27; In Canticum Cantico rum, p. 17. Pseudo Gregory of Nyssa, Liber De Cognitione Dei (= Θεογνωσία), PG.130.261.38 39 (the same phrase: Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae in Hexaemeron, 3.2). Eusebius, Praeparatio Evan gelica, 7.10.1 2; Demonstratio Evangelica, 5.Proem.2; 8.2.88. Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae Super Psalmos, PG.29.252.2; Homilia in Psalmum 115, PG.30.105.1 10. John Chrysostom, In Matthaeum, PG.57.255.7; In Joannem, PG.59.59.39; In Epistulam i ad Corinthios, PG.61.158.52 53; De Mutatione Nominum, PG.51.118 25; Expositiones in Psalmos, PG.296.10.  See the fundamental proposition of Aristotle about God being sheer actuality, which is couched in an entirely Anaxagorean vocabulary, Metaphysica, 430a17 18: καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής, τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια. Cf. op. cit. 1049b9 11: ἀρχὴ γὰρ κινητική, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἐν ἄλλῳ ἀλλ᾿ ἐν αὐτῷ ᾗ αὐτό. πάσης δὴ τῆς τοιαύτης προτέρα ἐστὶν ἡ ἐνέργεια καὶ λόγῳ καὶ τῇ οὐσίᾳ.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1065b15 16.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

399

ty,³⁰⁰ and thus a potential being pursues its complete reality (ἐντελέχεια),³⁰¹ or its full essence by becoming what it was meant to be (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι). However, God is immovable,³⁰² which means that God cannot move, since there is no potentiality involved in his being per se. God cannot become anything that he has not always been; therefore, he cannot become a creative principle as of a certain beginning, even if this beginning is supposed to be not in time. Were it for this beginning to be in time (even in a time of a different nature, as Simplicius believed about Anaxagoras), then the case would be worse still in Aristotle’s view. For creation as of a certain moment could only suggest instilling potentiality in God himself. Anaxagoras propounded a God setting out to create out of free will; but a will to change the primal state of things appeared to Aristotle as introducing a change into God himself. Since, in his view, Anaxagoras’ primal mixture was a totality of potentialities,³⁰³ to Aristotle, gradual actualization of potentialities meant that God who is potentially creator, actually became creator as of a certain moment onwards. Thus, he assumed that the primal undifferentiated mixture, on the one hand, and the distinct (meaning, created) principles, on the other, represent two realities corresponding to God willing the one reality beginninglessly, and then willing the subsequent reality of the ordered universe to come to pass. This meant to Aristotle change of will, and, in effect, change of the Mind itself (or, himself). What Aristotle did not consider was that the notion of Mind willing a change does not necessarily entail change of the Mind’s will, much less, change of the Mind per se. To him, it was intolerable, as much as was it baffling, that Anaxagoras had preceded him on cardinal ideas, and yet the Mind was different from Aristotle’s God. However, this was only an illusion, since Aristotle did not see that Anaxagoras banned any notion of change of God himself, by positing that ‘the Mind, whether the greater or the lesser is the same’; which means that the Mind con-

 Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 418: things which move, they move because they are in a state of potentiality; but those which cause them to move, they are in a state of actuality (πάντα τὰ κινοῦντα ἐνεργείᾳ ἐστὶν οὐ δυνάμει … ὥστε ὅσα κινούμενα κινεῖ διὰ μὲν τὸ δυνάμει εἶναι κιν εῖται, διὰ δὲ τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ εἶναι κινεῖ).  Cf. Simplicius, loc. cit.: ἐντελέχεια τοῦ δυνάμει ὄντος ἡ κίνησις ἀποδέδοται. He has in mind Aristotle, Physica, 201b5 6: ἐντελέχεια φανερὸν ὅτι κίνησίς ἐστι. We should always bear in mind that Aristotle often uses the term ἐντελέχεια as synonymous with ἐνέργεια, which is vague and ambiguous.  On this, there is a flagrant contradiction of Aristotle: althougth his First Mover is posited as the sole immovable agent, he introduced a plurality of immovable movers for each heavenly sphere. In chapter 12, I discuss this inconsistency that has tantalized scholarship.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b20 23.

400

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

ceived as existing along with the undifferentiated primal mixture, and the Mind during creation, and the Mind which exists in all universe by means of the vicarious activity of its surrogates, that is, the principles, bestowing rationality upon this function and upon the ‘Nature’, is the same Mind. Everything operates by means of the principles interacting with each other. The Presocratics were not proof to each other: they shared some common ideas, even though they posited different principles. It was natural then that the character of their fundamental premisses imbued some cardinal notions. The case of potentiality is particularly telling in this respect, and it shows how misleading it was to misrepresent Anaxagoras as a sui generis Atomist.³⁰⁴ Once again, Aristotle was the leader of distortion. He reports that, of the ancient philosophers, the Monists regarded generation as ‘mutation’, whereas the Pluralists held that ‘mutation’ is a different process from ‘generation’. He added that those who maintained that the universe is a simple entity (ἕν τι τὸ πᾶν λέγουσι) and generate everything from a single thing, of necessity had to maintain that generation is mutation, and anything which is supposed to be generated in fact it has undergone a process of mutation. However, there are also the ‘others’, such as Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Leucippus, whom Aristotle considers together as if they sustained the same philosophy: these, he claims, held that the matter of things is more than one; therefore, they were bound to believe that mutation and generation are two different processes. But here is the ‘scandal’ committed by Anaxagoras:

 Cf. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.20.1d (apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 884D) lumping together Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, and the Atomists, who ex plained ‘mutation’ (ἀλλοίωσις) by means of σύγκρισις and διάκρισις, positing the two processes as identical. However, the same text reported by other doxographers states only the names of Empedocles and Epicurus. So Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 39. Galen reported that this idea was sustained by Epicurus and Democritus, whereas Empedocles and Anaxagoras at tributed to it a different import. Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 483; cf. De Naturalibus Fac ultatibus, p. 4 (but reference to ‘Anaxagoras’ is only an erroneous editorial addition, see infra, pp. 448 9). Galen, agreeing with Chrysippus, understood ‘mutation’ as ‘change of qualities’. Chrysippus, fr. 494, apud Galen, De Methodo Medendi, p. 46; cf. Galen, De Semine, p. 563; In Hip pocratis De Victu Acutorum Commentaria, p. 810. For his part, Plotinus argued robustly against this idea. Enneades, VI.3.25. Aristotle was sympathetic to the theory of ‘mutation’ being interpret ed as simply change of qualities. Simplicius attributed this idea to Plato; commCateg, p. 429; commPhys, pp. 1081; 1098; 1101; 1265. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, pp. 186 7; 232; 239; comm Phys, pp. 828; 838.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

401

Anaxagoras, however, misunderstood his own statement, since he says that generation and destruction constitute the same process as mutation, although, like others, he says that the elements (τὰ στοιχεῖα) are many.³⁰⁵

The expression ‘misunderstood his own statement’ simply means, ‘Anaxagoras contradicted himself’, and the implication is that he did not differ from Leucippus, since both of them spoke of ‘elements’. It was only the sophisticated Simplicius who cared to make a nuanced consideration of these views,³⁰⁶ and he was accurate enough as to note that ‘the philosophers of old held that whatever happens or becomes is the result of mutation, meaning either concurrence or separation off of the principles.³⁰⁷ Potentiality means that a thing or a phenomenon changes gradually from an elementary or spermatic form and eventually develops, so as to assume its full and complete reality. On this, the difference between philosophers was profound, even though they happened to use the same terminology. Democritus and Leucippus saw the change of things as ‘mutation’ (ἀλλοίωσις) by means of σύγκρισις and διάκρισις, and so did Anaxagoras.³⁰⁸ But although in some doxographic reports they all were lumped together, their difference was essential. For to Atomists, this process meant reshuffling of indivisible material particles, whereas to Anaxagoras it meant re-arrangement of the way in which the immaterial principles concur and react with each other. The case with Atomists was about material particles changing in terms ‘of position and order’,³⁰⁹ whereas with Anaxagoras it was about immaterial causes collaborating in different manners. To Atomists, the material element was already there as an indestructible substratum. To Anaxagoras, matter was generated from the principles and no material substratum was necessary in the first place. Therefore,

 Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a: λέγει γοῦν ὡς τὸ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι ταὐτὸν καθέστηκε τῷ ἀλλοιοῦσθαι, πολλὰ δὲ λέγει τὰ στοιχεῖα, καθάπερ καὶ ἕτεροι. Cf. Simpli cius, commPhys, p. 163. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, pp. 10 11; 15 6; 22; 24; 41 2; 160. Both commentators did not take Aristotle’s accusation against Anaxagoras seriously, and they prefer red to eschew it tacitly.  Simplicius (about Democritus and Empedocles), commCael, pp. 295; (about Anaxagoras) commPhys, p. 163. He discusses Aristotle’s lumping together Democritus, Anaxagoras, and Em pedocles in commPhys, pp. 1266 7.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 420: κατὰ γὰρ τὴν τῶν ἀρχῶν διάκρισιν ἢ σύγκρισιν ἢ ἀλλοίωσιν ἔλ εγον οἱ πάλαι γίνεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1266.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a; 315b6 9 (ref. to Democritus and Leucippus). Aristotle denied that generation emerges from association of small particles, and that passing away is only their dissociation from one another; op. cit. 317a. See also, Aristotle, Fragmenta Varia, Category 5, treatise title 32, fr. 208, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 295.

402

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

they all shared the principle that nothing comes from nothing, but the actual import of this varied. Democritus meant that absence of material particles is unthinkable, whereas Anaxagoras did not care about pre-existing matter, and claimed that absence of the immaterial principles (which give rise to matter, as much as they transmute it) is impossible for generation to obtain. Michael Psellus grasped this when he wrote that the only kind of generation according to Anaxagoras was mutation (οὐκ ἐδόξαζεν ἑτέραν τὴν γένεσιν παρὰ τὴν ἀλλοίωσιν), but the Presocratics understood generation as σύγκρισις and διάκρισις differently,³¹⁰ because each one of them posited the substratum differently, indeed as different as a material particle is from an immaterial principle. Aristotle admitted that all of the Presocratics recognized plurality and change in the perceptible world, but the question was the ontological value attached to plurality and motion, as well as the relation of them to the supreme principle, no matter what this principle was supposed to be. In this respect, he saw two schools of physicists. One of them maintained unity in a universal underlying element (ἓν σῶμα τὸ ὑποκείμενον, water, air, fire, or some intermediate form), whereas diversity stemmed from different degrees of compression (συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει ἢ μανώσει καὶ πυκνώσει τὰ ἄλλα γίνεσθαι λέγοντες).³¹¹ The second school held distinct substances being already present potentially in the primal mixture.³¹² In terms of ontology, Aristotle essayed to clarify the Presocratic statement ‘everything is one’ (ἓν τὸ πᾶν),³¹³ which was normally attributed to Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Melissus, although those who posited a single element as universal principle were entitled to claiming participation in the group. On that account, Philo and Philoponus added Heraclitus,³¹⁴ and doxographers added the Stoics, too.³¹⁵ It all depended on what the term πᾶν meant, and normally this was a notion wider than the world.³¹⁶ Aristotle was prepared to endorse this proposition of oneness, on condition that the meaning attached to it was that the elements that make up the world are of one nature, although dissimilar  Michael Psellus, commPhys, 1.14: ὡς διαφόρως τοῖς ἄλλοις ἄλλων φυσικῶν εἰπόντων οὕτω, commenting on Aristotle, Physica, 187a.  See Simplicius, commPhys, p. 203, explaining the pertinent analyses of Aristotle in Physica, 189b.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a12 26.  Aristotle, op. cit. 185b5 ff; 188a19 ff.  Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 3.7. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 29.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.22.3a, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 879A (quot ed also by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.33.1). Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 32.  Cf. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.33.3: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ κόσμον μὲν ἕνα, οὐ μέντοι τὸ πᾶν εἶναι τὸν κόσμον, ἀλλ᾿ ὀλίγον τι τοῦ παντὸς μέρος, τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν ἀργὴν ὕλην.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

403

each other (fire being contrary to water, and the like).³¹⁷ What he was loath to accept was neglect of common experience which attests to multiplicity, and this is why he criticized Parmenides for relying on theoretical analyses alone while neglecting empirical observation.³¹⁸ Aristotle criticized Parmenides on the same grounds also shortly after that point,³¹⁹ and styled Xenophanes, the teacher of Parmenides, ‘the first Monist’ (Ξενοφάνης δὲ πρῶτος τούτων ἑνίσας), who did not clarify the doctrine. Anyway, he suggested that the proposition ‘everything is one’ cannot be one that makes either a principle or a cause ‘one’.³²⁰ Subsequently, he attacked Anaxagoras for holding that all things were confounded together until the Mind distinguished and arranged them.³²¹ His objection was that Anaxagoras allegedly maintained that it is impossible for anything (which Aristotle thought to be material) to exist as an absolutely pure and simple (εἰλικρινῶς) existence. He blames both him and Empedocles for holding that ‘the initial reality is both one and many’ (καὶ ὅσοι δ᾿ ἓν καὶ πολλά φασιν εἶναι, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας), that is, both unity and multiplicity.³²² Besides, he alleged that Anaxagoras posited an infinite number of homogenous particles and their contraries in each substance (ἄπειρα, τά τε ὁμοιομερῆ καὶ τἀναντία),

 See Aristotle, Physica, 189a34 ff, mentioning Thales, Heraclitus, Anaximenes, and Diogenes of Apollonia. Simplicius believed that Aristotle favoured the opinion of Diogenes of Apollonia. Cf. commPhys, p. 203: ἐπαινεῖ δὲ μᾶλλον τοὺς τὸ μεταξὺ λέγοντας καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν προστίθησι. Also, John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 10.  Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 325a13: “Moreover, they say that it is equally necessary to deny the existence of motion. The result of these arguments is that, going beyond and disregarding sense perception (ὑπερβάντες τὴν αἴσθησιν), on the plea that they ought to fol low reason, they say that the universe is one and immovable’. John Philoponus explained that Aristotle ‘criticizes the followers of Parmenides, who maintained that one should paid no atten tion to the manifest facts of sense perception, but one should follow only reasonable arguments (τῶν πραγμάτων μὴ δεῖν ὅλως προσέχειν, μόνῃ δὲ τῇ τῶν λόγων ἀκολουθία) against those who maintained that the All is one, immovable, and infinite (ἓν τὸ πᾶν ἔλεγον εἶναι καὶ ἀκίνητον καὶ ἄπειρον)’. commGenCorr, p. 157 8. Aristotle criticized Parmenides on the same grounds in the Metaphysica, 984a b & 986b.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 986b.  See analysis and argument in support of Aristotle by John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 22 & 116, and Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 41. On the other hand, it was natural for Proclus to favour the pristine Parmenidian unity, which he cherished as an august ontological principle. Cf. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 704, and commTim, p. 27.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a26 188a5.  See discussion about the Indeterminate Dyad, which Aristotle claimed he had read in Plato, supra, pp. 70 1; 81; 136; 138; 196; 225; and infra, pp. 605; 708 10; 1052.

404

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

whereas Empedocles posited the four ‘so-called elements’ (τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεῖα).³²³ Aristotle made the distinction between the physicists depending on how they allegedly saw the process of generation: those who posited an indeterminate prime material substance, they extracted the contraries (ἐναντία διαφορὰς καὶ εἴδη) from this, through the process which he calls ‘secretion’ (or, procession, ἔκκρισις). The others (Anaxagoras and Empedocles) understood generation as ‘secretion’ (ἔκκρισις), yet not from one primal substance, but from the primal mixture which is both ‘one and many’ (ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι ἐκκρίνουσι τἆλλα). It should be noted that ‘secretion’ or procession (ἔκκρισις) is not different from ‘mutation’ (ἀλλοίωσις), since both of them adumbrate the same process; quite simply, mutation is the process and secretion is the result of it. It is noteworthy that, despite categorizing two groups of physicists, Aristotle uses the same word for their understanding of generation (Anaximander: ἐκκρίνεσθαι, Anaxagoras and Empedocles: ἐκκρίνουσι), and makes the distinction a few lines further. Meantime, he ascribed to Anaxagoras the view that there are infinite different substances, each of which is made of an infinite number of uniform particles. He urged also that Anaxagoras based his conviction about infinite primal substances on the doctrine, common to all the physicists, that ‘nothing can be produced from what is non-existent’ (ὡς οὐ γιγνομένου οὐδενὸς ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος), which is why Anaxagoras maintained that ‘all things were together’ (ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα) and that ‘generation is but mutation’ (τὸ γίγνεσθαι τοιόνδε καθέστηκεν ἀλλοιοῦσθαι). This is the point at which Aristotle draws a line between the two groups of the Presocratics as regards the process of generation, the other comprising those who thought that generation ‘is concurrence and disjunction’ (οἱ δὲ σύγκρισιν καὶ διάκρισιν). Hence, he represents Anaxagoras as maintaining that all things arose from something that already existed in actuality, which allegedly was infinity of material particles being as minute as to escape notice by the senses (διὰ μικρότητα δὲ τῶν ὄγκων ἐξ ἀναισθήτων ἡμῖν). This is why that school said that ‘everything is in everything’ (διό φασι πᾶν ἐν παντὶ μεμῖχθαι). Let us pause for a moment, since it is now clear on how many points Aristotle’s account was both misled and misleading. This is the case that was proverbially described by him, as discussed above, namely, that once an absurd premiss is posited, many absurdities follow. He abhorred the idea of anything incorporeal existing apart from being conjunct with matter. Since ‘qualities’ and

 Aristotle, op. cit. 187a26. In 203a18, he suggests that Empedocles’ elements were not infinite in quantity. He attributes this infinity to Anaxagoras and Democritus only.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

405

‘characteristics’ are certainly incorporeal, they are always associated with the objects which they make up a certain quid. Aristotle could not disallow this notion, but he resolved that this applies only to ‘qualities’ and to characteristics that cannot exist apart and self-subsistently. As always, he appears to overlook the fact that Anaxagoras posited immaterial principles, not material elements. In view of previous discussion, it is now clear that it is possible for everything to be in everything, because all of them are incorporeal. What probably needs to be considered further is Aristotle’s classification of the Presocratics on the grounds of how generation takes place. This is the point where his last misperception was worse than the first. He implies that Anaxagoras somehow used the verb ‘mutate’ (ἀλλοιοῦσθαι) in order to describe the process by which a multitude of things arises from one mixture. He states that ‘of the ancient philosophers, some assert that what is called coming-to-be is mutation (or alteration). Those who hold that the universe is a simple entity, and generate all things from a single thing, must necessarily maintain that generation is alteration, and whatever comes to be in the proper sense of the term is alteration’. These are the Monists and those whom he places opposite them are Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and, this time, Leucippus is added to them. He then attributes to Anaxagoras the tenet of generation by means of ‘concurrence and disjunction’ of ‘infinite’ particles,³²⁴ and argues that this cannot be alteration or mutation. This is why he adds that ‘Anaxagoras misunderstood his own statement by saying that generation and perishing is mutation, since, like others, he says that the elements are many’.³²⁵ However, Aristotle was wrong: ἀλλοίωσις was in fact the proper word to be used by those whom he described as Monists in order for them to adumbrate ‘mutation’ of a single element (water, air). His classification was incorrect from start to finish. For Anaxagoras held that the principles, all of which are everywhere, produce material things by being conjugated together in sundry combinations. Things perish once these principles are separated off. Whether ‘concurrence’ or ‘disjunction’, the result of this interaction between the principles is alteration, or mutation of a thing, no matter whether it comes to be or it perishes. If a woman gets pregnant, she feeds the embryo from the matter of her own body: the food that she receives from the environment is transmuted into nourishing substances within her body and so the embryo is fed. But this mutation, resulting in nourishment of the embryo, can take place because several spe Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 314a: Καίτοι ᾿Aναξαγόρας γε τὴν οἰκείαν φωνὴν ἠγνόησεν· λέγει γοῦν ὡς τὸ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι ταὐτὸν καθέστηκε τῷ ἀλλοιοῦσθαι, πολλὰ δὲ λέγει τὰ στοιχεῖα, κα θάπερ καὶ ἕτεροι.

406

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

cific principles (or natural laws, in this case) concur in order to keep this mother alive, and in order to make it possible for the embryo to develop into a full human being. Besides, other principles concur, such as the natural laws that allow the existence of the earth itself, those which support human life, as well as innumerable other ones. The development of an embryo is made possible because all the principles of the universe are operating and sustain both the whole and the particular, and make it possible for them to operate. Consequently, ‘concurrence’ and ‘disjunction’ are not alternatives to mutation: ‘concurrence’ or ‘disjunction’ is mutation. The former describes what happens to particular things or phenomena, that is, to beings, whereas mutation is what happens to Being, which Simplicius described precisely: For indeed all these [axioms] (πάντα δὲ ταῦτα), that is, all things were together (καὶ τὸ ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα), and [the axiom] that coming to be obtains according to mutation, by either concurrence or disjuncture (καὶ τὸ κατ᾿ ἀλλοίωσιν ἢ κατὰ σύγκρισιν καὶ διάκρισιν τὴν γένεσιν εἶναι), have been postulated in order to confirm that nothing comes from nothing, but everything that comes to be stems from something that already exists. For mutation is something that Being undergoes, whereas concurrence and disjuncture is something that [particular] beings undergo (εἰς πίστιν εἴληπται τοῦ μηδὲν ἐκ μὴ ὄντος γίνεσθαι, ἀλλ᾿ ἐξ ὄντος γίνεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα· ἥ τε γὰρ ἀλλοίωσις πάθος περὶ τὸ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ἡ σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις περὶ τὰ ὄντα).³²⁶

In modern times, the distinction was made by Martin Heidegger: the adjective ontic (ontisch) is the counterpart to ontological (ontologisch). It characterizes beings, not their being proper. Anything that in any way ‘exists’ is ontic. The synonym for ontic is existent, the word to be understood (but only approximately, indeed not too widely) in the sense of real, concrete, empirical, given to experience, perceptible. Therefore, ontic denotes the concrete manifestation (or, a certain type of analysis) of a being, such as analysis of the properties of an object.³²⁷ Being proper is not a genus of particular beings (Sein und Seiendes, Unterschied), and yet it pertains to all beings. Its universality should be sought in a higher realm. Being proper, as well as the structure of Being proper, are beyond any particular being and beyond any ontic characterizations of particular beings. Being proper is transcendent par excellence (transcendens).³²⁸ During a certain investigation and exposition of Being proper, particular beings are a preliminary issue

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163.  Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 12 13; 15 16; 43 44; 63 6; 74; 84 85; 94 95; 116; 120; 135; 179 182; 184 185; 199 200; 221; 246 248; 260; 266; 310 312; 322; 340; 356 357; 382; page numbers refer to the standard edition of 1927.  Op. cit. p. 38.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

407

of consideration, which is perused along with Being proper; however, the main and foremost issue is being proper.³²⁹ Consequently, the lesson that Simplicius taught about Anaxagoras and Parmenides alike, was that the ontological and the ontic make sense at the same time, the former denoting unity, and the latter distinction.³³⁰ Therefore, it was not the case that ‘Anaxagoras contradicted himself by saying that generation and perishing is mutation’, because, ‘like others, he says that the elements are many’, as Aristotle took it. Anaxagoras knew what he was talking about: generation and perishing is mutation, because the principles (not ‘elements’) are many, and they act ceaselessly in order to secure the process of endless alteration by means of ‘concurrence’ and ‘disjunction’ (or conjunction and separation off). It is because many operating principles are there that alteration takes place, and the most sublime manifestation of this is the development of potentialities into actualities by means of concurring principles which effect this alteration in its numerous manifestations. Aristotle did not see (or, did not want to see) this because of his resentment against Anaxagoras, because of his biased obsession with representing the immaterial principles as material elements, and because he did not allow that immaterial principles can produce material things. He insisted that the proposition ‘everything is in everything’ means every sort of material particle existing in every other sort of material particle, and that each of them definitely has a certain ‘magnitude’, since there is nothing which is as small as to have no size at all. He thought also that those which he styled ‘elements’ of Anaxagoras exist in infinite numbers into every material thing, and that these elements are ‘particles so minute as to escape our senses’, which is why ‘everything exists in everything else, and all kinds of things emerge from each other’.³³¹ This persistent belief was not the major point that Aristotle missed about Anaxagoras. What eluded him (and determined all subsequent errors) was the unifying factor which permeated all of that philosophy. Plato did not worry about the diversity of matter and found unity in the Idea (ταῦτα ποιεῖ ὕλην τὸ δὲ ἓν τὸ εἶδος); Monists found unity in the underlying matter, and they were not upset by differences and sundry kinds of thing being around (οἱ δὲ τὸ μὲν ἓν τὸ ὑποκείμενον ὕλην, τὰ δ᾿ ἐναντία διαφορὰς καὶ εἴδη): matter secured the harmonious function of the world by being itself the progenitor of all the differ-

 Op. cit. pp. 4; 6 8; 27; 38 39; 67; 94 95; 152; 196; 207 208; 230; 315.  See further, chapter 13, pp. 1269 70.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a b: ἐξ ὄντων μὲν καὶ ἐνυπαρχόντων γίγνεσθαι, διὰ μικρότητα δὲ τῶν ὄγκων ἐξ ἀναισθήτων ἡμῖν. διό φασι πᾶν ἐν παντὶ μεμῖχθαι, διότι πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἑώρων γιγνόμενον.

408

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

ent manifestations of life.³³² But when Anaxagoras allowed at the same time both unity and multiplicity, Aristotle was baffled, and decided that the primal mixtures of Anaxagoras and Empedocles were analogous to the indeterminate formless matter. However, this did not really help. Given what he presumed about Anaxagoras, he determined that this philosophy was not only confounding but also (rather: consequently) unacceptable and contradictory. That this was neither contradictory nor unacceptable, Simplicius reasoned ten centuries later. Themistius was cautious enough as to designate his work as a paraphrasis rather than commentary. He therefore follows the lesson Aristotle had taught him: Anaxagoras is lumped together with Anaximander and Empedocles; his principles were ‘elements’ (στοιχεῖα); he does not entertain mutation (ἀλλοίωσις) in relation to generation of things, but he thinks that, since all elements are together, particulars are formed by procession (ἔκκρισις) from the infinity of elements co-existing in each and every thing. This kind of generation (that is, secretion or procession, ἔκκρισις) has been established once and for all; and once it began, it will never end (ἅπαξ ἀρχὴν λαβοῦσα οὐκέτι τελευτᾷ). Like Aristotle, Themistius confuses the terms: he identifies σύγκρισις with ἀλλοίωσις, and attributes this idea to Anaxagoras (τὴν γὰρ σύγκρισιν ἀλλοίωσιν ὀνομάζει), whereas he quotes a phrase of his: ‘generation is conjunction and perishing is separation off’ (τὸ γίνεσθαι συγκρίνεσθαί ἐστι καὶ τὸ φθείρεσθαι διακρίνεσθαι). He echoes Aristotle who argued that Anaxagoras used the verb ἀλλοιοῦσθαι for generation, which means that he did not know the meaning of the term he used, hence he contradicted himself (᾿Aναξαγόρας ἀλλοιοῦσθαι τὸ γίνεσθαι λέγει, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ τῶν πραγμάτων δῆλος ἐστὶν οὐ γινώσκων τὴν οἰκείαν φωνήν· τὴν γὰρ σύγκρισιν ἀλλοίωσιν ὀνομάζει).³³³ Therefore, the ‘elements’ are material particles of infinite number, they cannot be noticed by the senses because of their smallness (ἀναίσθητα δὲ ἡμῖν εἶναι διὰ μικρότητα); but since everything is in everything, and every substance is what it is because of an element prevailing in it whereas all others are there, it follows that any elementary particle of any ma Aristotle, Physica, 187a. He says that this took place by means of ἔκκρισις (οἱ δ᾿ ἐκ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἐνούσας τὰς ἐναντιότητας ἐκκρίνεσθαι, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξίμανδρός φησι); then, he adds that Empedo cles and Anaxagoras also (καὶ οὗτοι) produced all things from the [primal] mixture (ὥσπερ Ἐμ πεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι ἐκκρίνουσι τἆλλα). What is the differ ence then? As already said, although he attributed the same term ἔκκρισις to both groups, and used the copula ‘also’, he classified them in the way I mentioned above: the materialist Monists espoused ‘concurrence’ and ‘disjunction’ (σύγκρισιν καὶ διάκρισιν); Anaxagoras and Empedocles argued for mutation (ἀλλοίωσις). The mistake of Aristotle was that neither of those groups saw the two processes as different ones: quite simply, philosophers accorded them an import befit ting their own premisses.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 13. Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

409

terial (water, flesh, earth) can be said to be an absolutely pure and simple (εἰλικρινῶς) existence. All of this is Aristotle paraphrased, of course; but Themistius adds some remarks which seem to be his own. After appealing to the axiom positing that infinity is unknowable, he somehow presents himself as a defender of Anaxagoras: although he posited an infinite number of principles, he set a limit to the number of their ‘qualities’ (καὶ εἰ μὲν τὸ πλῆθος αὐτῶν ἄπειρον λέγων ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὰς ποιότητας ἀριθμῷ περιώριζεν): “We could not say how many qualities comprise each principle; but we would be successful in stating what they are (ἐξ ὁπόσων μὲν ἕκαστον, οὐκ ἂν εἴχομεν ἀποδιδόναι, ἐξ ὁποίων δὲ εὐπορήσομεν ἄν)”. Besides, ‘it is Anaxagoras himself who does not deny that he does not know how many they are, which is why he does not pretend that he can teach about the kind and number of the homoiomeries’ (νῦν δὲ οὐδὲ τοῖς εἴδεσιν οὔτε τῷ πλήθει τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἄγων εἰς ἀριθμὸν φενακίζει διδάξειν ἐπαγγελλόμενος, ἃ πρῶτος αὐτὸς ἀγνοεῖν οὐκ ἀρνεῖται). Subsequently, Themistius remained with the same questions which Philoponus repeated later:³³⁴ once everything is in everything and the notion of infinity is involved in many respects, there is no way to determine what either the minimum or the maximum of homoiomeries is (οὔτε τοὐλάχιστον οὔτε τὸ μέγιστον λαβεῖν). There is nothing really new in this analysis. The only interesting point is that Themistius speaks as if he had read Anaxagoras’ book first-hand, notably, the point where it was allegedly written that Anaxagoras himself had said that it is impossible to distinguish every principle by means of a specific description for each one of them (οὐ γὰρ δὴ διακριθήσεταί ποτε εἰς τὰς εἰλικρινεῖς καὶ πρώτας ἀρχάς· τοῦτο γὰρ ἡμῖν αὐτὸς ἀμήχανον εἶναι διαμαρτύρεται).³³⁵ However, this is not the case: if Themistius had some immediate knowledge of that philosophy, he would have quoted Anaxagoras’ own words, instead of repeating the old shibboleths, of two or three words each, here and there. What can be definitely said is that Themistius had read Alexander of Aphrodisias, whom he mentions at some points, and at the present one, at which he makes a summarized use of the argument of Alexander supposedly aiming at ‘helping’ Anaxagoras make himself clear (εἰ δέ τις βοηθῶν ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ).³³⁶

 See supra chapter 3, p. 216.  Themistius, op. cit. p. 16.  Themistius, loc. cit.: εἰ δέ τις βοηθῶν ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ τὰς μὲν ἀρχὰς οἴοιτο ἀμίκτους εἶναι, ἐπειδὴ καὶ ἀρχάς, ἐν δὲ τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς καὶ συγκρίμασι πάντα ἐν πᾶσι μεμῖχθαι, μετενεγκάτω τὸν λόγον καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν συγκριμάτων. This is like Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989b4 6, who also of fered to help to Anaxagoras by ‘re phrasing what he meant to say, so that he might appear as propounding a novel doctrine’.

410

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

There is no reason to doubt testimonies by Photius or the Suda that Themistius was a very copious writer. But there is no reason to regard him as a brilliant philosophical mind either. Simplicius honoured him with more than fifty-five references, he paid attention to his work on Aristotle, and mentioned him alongside such personalities as Theophrastus and Porphyry; however, it is evident that he regarded him more of an ‘eloquent’ orator (τὸν εὐφραδῆ Θεμίστιον)³³⁷ and a man capable of producing extensive paraphrases (ἡ διωλύγιος τῶν Θεμιστίου παράθεσις),³³⁸ rather than a reliable authority. Whenever he mentions Philoponus (who is always contemptuously mentioned as ‘the Grammarian’) having drawn of Themistius, the apostrophe is hardly a compliment.³³⁹ This point deserves a short digression. For indeed a careful reading of Philoponus reveals that the feeling was mutual, since he never mentioned Simplicius by name either. Nevertheless, contemptuous references to Simplicius are present in his work, especially in his arguments against the eternity of the world. His recurrent claim is that Plato did posit a beginning of the world in time (ὡς Πλάτων γενητὸν εἶναι φησὶν κατὰ χρόνον τὸν κόσμον).³⁴⁰ Whereas in his references to the ‘interpreters of Plato’, normally he adds specific names of them, there are points where no name is there and statements by such ‘exegetes’ are expounded in paraphrase. Two examples will suffice for the time being. He remarks ironically that one would be surprised at some ‘wise exegetes of Plato’ (ἄξιον θαυμάσαι τῶν σοφῶν τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐξηγητῶν) who were confused on many issues (πολλὰ κυκήσαντες) and invented scores of interpretations of what generation is (μυρίας γενητοῦ σημασίας ἐπινοήσαντες) so as not to appear that they dissented from Plato who posited that the world was made in time (ἵνα μὴ τῷ κορυφαίῳ τῶν φιλοσόφων ἀντιφθέγγεσθαι δόξωσιν κατὰ χρόνον γενητὸν εἶναι τὸν κόσμον ὑποτιθεμένῳ); they dismiss results of painstaking exploration of truth, and, being oblivious of the doctrines which are familiar to their own convictions, they claim that the sense in which Plato said that the world was generated as of a certain beginning whereas it did not exist before, is only a proposition which Plato made for the sake of making his teaching clear (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἐν ὑποθέσει ταῦτα παρὰ τοῦ φιλοσόφου λέγεσθαί φασι τοῦ σαφοῦς τῆς διδασκαλίας

 Simplicius, commCael, p. 72.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 70.  Cf. Simplicius mentioning Themistius: commPhys, p. 1130; et passim.  A recurrent statement followed by strongly felt arguments. Cf. John Philoponus, De Aeter nitate Mundi, pp. 124; 125; 135; 190; 211; 242; 519.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

411

ἕνεκεν); however, this is not actually the nature of things (οὐ μὴν ὡς οὕτως τῆς τῶν πραγμάτων ἐχούσης φύσεως).³⁴¹ Philoponus believed that Simplicius was a lapsed Platonist who struggled to show that Plato and Aristotle were consonant with each other, yet by doing so Simplicius disowned his previous Platonic beliefs and, in effect, he was confused. Without mentioning any names, he directs his invective against the one ‘in whom there is no measure of impertinence’ (οὐκ ἔστιν μέτρον ἀναιδείας οὐδέν): despite Plato’s clear and loud statements (Πλάτωνος ἐναργῶς οὑτωσὶ βοῶντος) that everything, including the heaven, is made of the four elements (fire, earth, water, air), ‘some people came up’ (γεγόνασί τινες ἄνθρωποι) with saying different things. They alleged that they vested themselves with the sublime garment of philosophy (τὸ σεμνὸν τῆς φιλοσοφίας ἐπαγγελλόμενοι πρόσχημα) and declared allegiance to the Platonic doctrines (καὶ τῶν Πλάτωνος ὑφηγηταὶ δογμάτων εἶναι βουλόμενοι), and yet they are those who unseemly transgressed all limits of ungratefulness (εἰς τοσαύτην ὑπερβολὴν ἀγνωμοσύνης ἐλάσαντες, οὓς ἥκιστα ἐχρῆν). ‘They dared say, although it seems to me that they did not really believe it (ὡς τολμῆσαι εἰπεῖν, οὐ γὰρ φρονεῖν γε, ὡς ἐμοὶ φαίνεται), that, according to Plato, the heaven was made of a different substance’ other than the four elements. Subsequently, Philoponus promises to show that not only Plato, but also Proclus, believed that the heaven is made of the four elements.³⁴² Clearly this lapsed Platonist was Simplicius,³⁴³ and yet Philoponus magnanimously granted ‘pardon to those who are fond of Plato, but, in defiance of truth, they represent him as agreeing [with Aristotle]’ (ὅμως δ᾿ οὖν συγγνώμη τοῖς φιλοπλάτωσι εἰς συμφωνίαν αὐτὸν εἰ καὶ παρὰ τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἄγουσιν).³⁴⁴ Philo-

 John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 186. Then, he quotes from the Middle Platonist Taurus, op. cit. pp. 186 7: καὶ γὰρ περὶ τῶν ἀγενήτων ὡς γενητῶν γίνονται οἱ λόγοι διδασκαλίας χάριν. But this was an expedient by Philoponus, aiming to eschew any mention of Simplicius, who had written that those who spoke of the world as having had a certain beginning of time did so only for ed ucational reasons. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1121: φαίνονται δὲ καὶ οὗτοι τάξεως ἕνεκα διδασκα λικῆς ἀρχὴν τῆς κοσμοποιίας ὑποθέμενοι. See infra, pp. 544; 755.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 482. Further, the anonymous ‘exegete’ is presented as utterly confused and cotradicting himself: συκοφαντεῖ μὲν τὸν συνηγορούμενον Πλάτωνα, αὐτὸς δὲ πρύμναν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις κρουσάμενος παλινῳδίαν ᾄδει. Yet again, see the disparaging comments on this claim by Simplicius, against ‘the one who venerates David’ (that is, a Biblical figure), commCael, p. 90.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1165: καὶ ὁ Πλάτων ἄλλην τοῦ οὐρανοῦ τὴν οὐσίαν παρὰ τὰ τέτ ταρα στοιχεῖα τὰ ὑπὸ σελήνην φησίν.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 484. Cf. one more instance referring anonymously to ‘the exe gete’. John Philoponus, commAnalPr, pp. 159 60: ᾿Aπορεῖ δὲ ἐν τούτοις ὁ ἐξηγητὴς τί δήποτε ὁ

412

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

ponus visibly reciprocated the contempt Simplicius felt for him: he only expressed it without naming him either. At another point, he speaks scornfully of ‘the recent exegetes, who had no respect for either the prestige of Alexander [of Aphrodisias] nor did they comply with Plutarch, and, in effect, they rejected Aristotle himself by inventing a novel interpretation’. The novelty was that those ‘recent exegetes’ who interpreted Aristotle (in other words, Simplicius) invented a sixth power of the soul, which they called ‘attentive’ (προσεκτικήν), which permeates all the other powers of the soul (namely, the five ones, νοῦν, διάνοιαν, δόξαν, βούλησιν, προαίρεσιν).³⁴⁵ Philoponus was not quite fair to Simplicius. For the notion of ‘attentive power’ was in fact maintained by Atticus commenting on Plato’s Timaeus, 37b3‒6, with which Porphyry disagreed (explaining this as denoting the ‘charioteer’ of the soul), whereas Iamblichus took this to mean the soul as a whole.³⁴⁶ It appears, therefore, that Philoponus derided Simplicius’ enterprise to reconcile Plato with Aristotle, thus betraying his own Platonic identity. Simplicius, for his part, saw Philoponus only as a ‘grammarian’ (that is, not a philosopher) who dared discredit the idea of a beginningless world and was insolent enough as to write an entire treatise to rebut Aristotle on this. What matters for our topic is that Simplicius paid no attention to the foregoing allegations of Themistius placing some strange statements on the mouth of Anaxagoras. The analysis by John Philoponus casts further light on how Aristotle understood Anaxagoras’ statement ‘all things were together’, seeing this as a material mixture and considering it on this presumption, according to the empirical expe-

᾿Aριστοτέλης μὴ ὥσπερ τὰς ἀποφατικὰς μεταλαμβάνει εἰς καταφατικὰς καὶ οὕτως ποιεῖ συλλο γιστικὰς τὰς συζυγίας, οὕτως καὶ τὰς καταφατικὰς μεταλαμβάνει εἰς ἀποφατικὰς καὶ δείκνυσιν ἀσυλλογίστους τὰς συλλογιστικὰς συζυγίας. Simplicius makes an implicit reference to Themis tius: commPhys, p. 105: καὶ ἔστι τὸ μὲν σχῆμα δεύτερον, ἀσυλλόγιστος δὲ ἡ συζυγία, διότι κἂν μὴ ὦσιν ἀποφάσεις ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ μεταθέσεως καταφάσεις, ἐν δευτέρῳ σχήματι ἐκ δύο ὁμοιοσχημόνων οὐ συνάγεταί τι ἀναγκαῖον … ἀλλ᾿ ἴσως ἐρεῖ τις ὅτι καὶ ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡγουμένου ἀντιστροφὴ ἀληθής ἐστι πολλάκις, ἐφ᾿ ὧν ἐξισάζει τὸ ἑπόμενον τῷ ἡγουμένῳ. He had in mind Aristotle, Analytica Priora, 33a34.  John Philoponus, commAnim, pp. 464 6. Michael Psellus copied this, referring anonymous ly to those who added to the five powers of the soul a sixth one, and uses the same examples as Philoponus. Opuscula ii, p. 63 (also, p. 74). The anonymous text, Miscellanea Philosophica, in Codex Baroccianus Graecus 131, chapter 25, p. 81, is in fact this text of Psellus. Philoponus refers to analyses made by Simplicius in a tract that probably was the latter’s last work. Simplicius, Commentarius in Epicteti Enchiridion, pp. 112 4. Later still, Michael of Ephesus took it for granted that this was an Aristotelian notion. In Ethica Nicomachea ix x Commentaria, p. 517.  We have this testimony from Proclus, commTim, p. 306.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

413

rience of what a mixture is. Everyone knows that, in such a mixture, it can be said both that the components are there and they are not (δυνατόν καὶ εἶναι πως καὶ μὴ εἶναι τὰ μιχθέντα). For any mixture is potentially each of its components, but in actuality this is neither of them: in fact, it is a third substance (τὸ γὰρ ἀποτελεσθὲν δυνάμει μέν ἐστιν ἑκάτερον ἐξ ὧν μέμικται, ἐνεργείᾳ δὲ οὐδέτερον).³⁴⁷ Aristotle’s fundamental position is that we can speak of ‘mixture’ only if the components are both distinct before they are mixed and it is possible to separate them from each other anew.³⁴⁸ This does not mean, Philoponus explains, that in a mixture the components exist in actuality, and that they can be separated anew (οὐ τοῦτο δὲ ὅτι ἐνεργείᾳ ὑπάρχοντα ἐν τῷ πράγματι τὰ μιχθέντα, οὕτω πάλιν χωρίζεσθαι δύναται): instead, they do undergo a certain alteration, because, if they continue to be in actuality what they originally were, it is not possible to consider them as being ‘mixed’ (οὐκ ἂν γὰρ οὐδὲ μεμιγμένα ἦν, εἰ ἦν ἐνεργείᾳ ἔτι καὶ ἄνευ μεταβολῆς τινος). What Aristotle means is that, upon mixture, the components do not lose their own form per se: what they lose is only their absolutely pure and simple individual existence (ἀλλ᾿ ἢ τοῦτο φησὶν ὅτι πέφυκε τὰ κεκραμένα, διὰ τὸ μὴ τὸ τέλειον εἶδος ἀπολέσαι ἀλλὰ μόνον τὸ εἰλικρινές). To Philoponus, this is the difference between ‘mutation’ and ‘mixture’ (ταύτῃ τε καὶ τῆς γενέσεως καὶ ἀλλοιώσεως διαφέρει ἡ μίξις).³⁴⁹ On this, Philoponus was more royalist than the king himself, and he goes on defiantly in order to invent two different kinds of potentiality. Since ‘form’ is inseparable from ‘matter’, to say that a component exists within a mixture potentially is not the same as saying that water is potentially air: for when we consider generation, the matter of air is potentially water, yet it is water in actuality (ἐπὶ μὲν γὰρ τῆς γενέσεως ἡ ὕλη τοῦ ἀέρος δυνάμει μὲν ἀήρ ἐστιν ἐνεργείᾳ δὲ ὕδωρ). However, within a mixture, components exist potentially without their matter; what is there is their form alone, and we say that they exist potentially because they do not exist in the pure and absolutely simple way they existed before they were mixed: it is only their forms that are there (ἐν δὲ τῷ κράματι δυνάμει ἐνυπάρχει τὰ ἐξ ὧν, οὐχ ἡ ὕλη αὐτῶν, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτὰ τὰ εἴδη κεκολασμένα, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο δυνάμει, διὰ τὸ μὴ εἶναι εἰλικρινῆ μηδὲ τοιαῦτα οἷα ἦν πρὸ τῆς κράσεως).³⁵⁰ This is a stunning proposition, indeed. Pushing Aristotle’s plausible natural considerations too far, and although he conceded the paragon of Aristotelism

 John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 191, commenting on Aristotle, De Generatione et Corrup tione, 327b22: Ἐπεὶ δ᾿ ἐστὶ τὰ μὲν δυνάμει τὰ δ᾿ ἐνεργείᾳ τῶν ὄντων.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 327b27: Φαίνεται δὲ τὰ μιγνύμενα πρότερόν τε ἐκ κεχωρισμένων συνιόντα καὶ δυνάμενα χωρίζεσθαι πάλιν.  John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 192.  John Philoponus, loc. cit.

414

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

that a form cannot exist apart from matter, he says that, within a mixture, the ‘forms’ exist apart from matter (τὰ εἴδη κεκολασμένα). To this purpose, he uses the participle τὰ κεκολασμένα, which would be taken as meaning ‘mutilated and yet distinct from each other’, since he adds that it is because of this that the components of a mixture exist potentially. Why am I insisting on this? Because the aim of this analysis is that Aristotle made his exposition in order to ‘reprimand the followers of Anaxagoras, who maintained that all things were together in a certain primal state’ (ταῦτα εἰπὼν ἐπιπλήττει τοῖς περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν, λέγουσιν εἶναί ποτε ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα). Once it is not possible for everything to be mixed with everything (since a passion cannot be mixed with another passion), how was it that all things were mixed together? (εἰ γὰρ μὴ ἔστιν ἅπαν παντὶ μικτόν, πάθος γὰρ πάθει οὐ μίγνυται, πῶς ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα;).³⁵¹

In other words, he assumed that Anaxagoras’ primal mixture comprised infinite material particles of different qualities (which is what Philoponus suggests by ‘passion’). But this is a self-defeating assumption. For what is the sense that different qualities could possibly make in an undifferentiated fusion? Aristotle made a lengthy analysis of what a natural mixture is, in order to conclude with the philosophy Anaxagoras, who, however, had in mind incorporeal realities. Departing from wrong premisses many absurdities followed once again. However, to apply his syllogisms to Anaxagoras’ philosophy on that account, in order to discredit it, was not difficult to do, but it was not an ingenious feat either. From one absurdity many ones follow,³⁵² to which Philoponus added some of his own, leaving no doubt about what he had understood. Thus, he claims unreservedly that Anaxagoras maintained infinite principles of beings called homoiomeries along with ‘contrariety’ (Philoponus confuses Empedocles with Anaxagoras on this), all of which were fused before the world was made.³⁵³ The generative cause was the Mind, who ‘willed, starting from a certain time’ (ἀπό τινος χρόνου ἀρξάμενον θελῆσαι) for all things to be distinguished from one another, but he was unable to make this distinction completely (μὴ μὴν δυνηθῆναι τελείαν ποιήσασθαι τὴν διάκρισιν). Hence, the Mind distinguished also non-homogenous things assumed to consist of homogenous ones (ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν

 John Philoponus, loc. cit.  See supra in this chapter, p. 345.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 87: Ἔστι δὲ ἡ μὲν τοῦ ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξα τοιαύτη. ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὄντων ὑπετίθετο ὑλικὰς μὲν τὰς ὁμοιομερείας (ταύτας δὲ ἀπείρους εἶναι τὸν ἀριθμόν) καὶ τὴν ἐναντίωσιν, πρίν τε τὸ πᾶν γενέσθαι, πάσας ἅμα μεμῖχθαι.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

415

ἀνομοιομερῆ διέκρινε συγκείμενα καὶ αὐτὰ ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν). Even so, however, the Mind did not succeed in granting the homogenous particles an absolutely simple and clear existence (τὰ μέντοι ὁμοιομερῆ εἰλικρινῶς οὐκ ἴσχυσε διακρῖναι). Nevertheless, once the Mind caused ‘secretion’ (or, procession, ἔκκρισις) ³⁵⁴ to start, he keeps doing so for ever (ἀλλ᾿ οὖν ἐκεῖθεν ἀρχὴν τῇ ἐκκρίσει δόντα ἐσαεὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖν). Subsequently, there is everything in everything, and everything is generated from everything, as it happens with wood, flesh, bones, gold, et cetera. Nothing in this mixture is entirely pure and simple (εἰλικρινές).³⁵⁵ Hence, no material thing has such a pure character: it is impossible for flesh, or stone, or gold or anything to be an absolutely pure material, since every one of them contains all the other components. In letter, Philoponus says the same things that Simplicius said: the principles are both united and distinct from each other, which is a twofold state that is made possible by their generative source, namely, the Mind (καὶ διακέκριται οὖν καὶ ἥνωται κατὰ ᾿Aναξαγόραν τὰ εἴδη καὶ ἄμφω διὰ τὸν νοῦν ἔχει).³⁵⁶ However, the crucial and fatal difference was that Philoponus was misled by Aristotle and spoke of material elements, whereas Simplicius spoke of immaterial principles. Thus, in the case of Philoponus, the same statement describes a preposterous impossibility, whereas in the exposition of Simplicius this is a coherent and tenable theory. Philoponus used for this mixture the term πανσπερμία (‘seed-aggregate’), following Aristotle. This is a term that Aristotle used to attribute to the physicists, whenever he was confused about their doctrines.³⁵⁷ He was nervous about the notion of seed containing everything and its product being determined by what prevailed in it. This was also a tenet of Anaxagoras speaking of the cosmic principles, but Aristotle was particularly uneasy at Empedocles and Democritus applying the idea to procreation of animals: There are some who hold that the semen, though a unity, is as it were a seed aggregate con sisting of many [ingredients] (πανσπερμίαν εἶναι τινὰ πολλῶν). … So, they say that it is with the semen, which is a mixture of a large number of ingredients, and in appearance the off spring takes after that parent from whom the largest amount is derived. This theory is ob scure, and at many points it is sheer fabrication (δὲ ὁ λόγος οὐ σαφὴς μὲν καὶ πλασματίας

 Philoponus turns from διάκρισις to ἔκκρισις within the same sentence, which suggests that either he cared little about such nuances, or he was not aware of their difference.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 87.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 176.  Aristotle, De Anima, 404a (Democritus, Leucippus); De Caelo, 303a (Democritus, Leucip pus); De Generatione et Corruptione 314a b (Anaxagoras, Empedocles); Physica, 203a22 (Anaxa goras, Democritus); De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 441a 16 20 (Empedocles).

416

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

ἐστὶ πολλαχῆ). At the same time, it aims at a better formulation (βούλεται δὲ καὶ βέλτιον λέγειν), namely, that it [i. e. the seed aggregate] exists not in actuality (μὴ ἐνεργείᾳ ὑπ άρχειν), but only as a certain potential (ἀλλὰ κατὰ δύναμιν), which they call seed aggregate (πανσπερμίαν). For this cannot exist in the way they say (ἐκείνως μὲν γὰρ ἀδύνατον), but it can indeed exist in the way I say (οὕτως δὲ δυνατόν).³⁵⁸

There is a tenor of bitterness underlying this statement, since he speaks about ‘a better formulation’ of the Presocratic proposition (which he does not quote, however) whereas the main issue was whether the notion of potentiality was there, as indeed it was. This bitterness is most probably aimed at Anaxagoras, even though Aristotle prefers to eschew this name in this statement. For the notion of ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα) renders Anaxagoras distinctly standing out among all Presocratics, and so does the notion of ‘all seeds’ which ‘were together’. Besides, this is one more oblique confession by Aristotle himself conceding that the notion of potentiality was an ancient one, and Anaxagoras had preceded him. It should be noticed that Simplicius did not care about this word,³⁵⁹ but Philoponus used it³⁶⁰ with characteristic obsession to associate it with Anaxagoras,³⁶¹ perhaps with good reason, since probably he saw Aristotle’s covert resentment at his predecessor having anticipated the notion of potentiality. All that remained for Aristotle was to propose a better phrasing of a notion that was already there, and this must have been too bitter a pill for him to swallow. The comments of Philoponus on this point are illuminating and tempt us to recall once again what Simplicius felt of him. He says that, to Aristotle, the theory of the Presocratics was ‘obscure, and at many points sheer fabrication’ because it was not clear as to whether the elements of a seed exist in actuality or potentially, in the same way as the previous philosophy maintained (οὐ γὰρ σαφῶς εἴρηκεν, εἴτε ἐνεργείᾳ εἰσὶ τὰ μόρια ἐν τῷ σπέρματι εἴτε δυνάμει, ὥσπερ ἡ προτέρα δόξα ἔλεγεν). What was about the previous philosophy which, in Philoponus’ view, should have been stated clearly? His own attitude comes forthwith: “Because that [sc. the philosophy of the physicists] clearly taught that in a seed the particles exist in actuality” (ἐκείνη γὰρ σαφῶς εἶπεν ἐνεργείᾳ εἶναι τὰ μόρια ἐν τῷ σπέρματι). It should be remarked that neither the physicists,  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 769a b (ref. to Empedocles, Democritus, and ‘certain ones’).  At one point only does Simplicius say that Aristotle attributed this to Democritus. comm Phys, p. 459: πανσπερμίαν δὲ σχημάτων εἶπε τὴν τῶν Δημοκριτείων ἀτόμων, ἐπειδὴ ἀπείρους ὑπετίθετο τῶν ἀτόμων καὶ τὰς κατὰ τὸ σχῆμα διαφοράς. Likewise, in the dubious commentary: Simplicius, commAnim, p. 26.  John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 87; 95; 106; 396; De Opificio Mundi, p. 81.  John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 22; commGenAnim, p. 184; commAnim, p. 67.

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

417

whom Philoponus has in mind, nor Aristotle, spoke of πανσπερμία in this context. In reference to the powers which constitute the potential of the semen, Aristotle used no noun whatsoever. One can see that there was abyssal difference between Simplicius and Philoponus regarding their knowledge of the Presocratic thought. It is impressive that two intellectuals who studied under the same master gave so diverse accounts on such a pivotal notion as potentiality. Their difference is that Simplicius supported his views with extensive quotations from Presocratic texts, which would have not survived otherwise, whereas Philoponus imitated Aristotle who expounded his own paraphrased (and often distorted) version of what those philosophers had said, and then he commented on his own version of those views. Despite Aristotle being clear in the foregoing statement,³⁶² Philoponus says that Aristotle appears to sustain that ‘the particles’ (τὰ μόρια, though no such word was used by Aristotle) exist potentially, ‘but he does not say so explicitly’.³⁶³ Then, he urges that it is ‘both better and possible to say that they exist potentially, because to say that they exist in a seed in actuality is impossible’.³⁶⁴ But Anaxagoras had said a long time before Aristotle, and much longer before Philoponus, that the principles exist actually and effect potentiality to actuality. This analysis shows that the idea which Philoponus, following Aristotle, had formed about Anaxagoras’ doctrine was this: there is the seed-aggregate (πανσπερμία), in which the seeds are material, they exist in actuality (ἐνεργείᾳ), and yet none of them has a pure and simple existence (εἰλικρινές) so as to be possible for each one of them to be said that this is this one (τόδε τι).³⁶⁵

 Supra, note 358; Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 769a b.  John Philoponus, commGenAnim, p. 184: τὸ δὲ βούλεται δὲ καὶ βέλτιον λέγειν μὴ ἐνεργείᾳ ἴσον ἐστὶ τῷ φαίνεται μὴ λέγειν τὰ μόρια ἐνεργείᾳ ἐνεῖναι ἀλλὰ δυνάμει ἐκ τοῦ λέγειν αὐτὰ παν σπερμίαν. φανερῶς δὲ οὐ λέγει.  John Philoponus, loc. cit.: βέλτιον δὲ καὶ δυνατὸν λέγειν δυνάμει, ἐκεῖνο δὲ ἀδύνατον, του τέστιν ἐνεργείᾳ δὲ εἶναι ἐν τῷ σπέρματι ἀδύνατον.  John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 87 8: ἐπὶ μὲν τοῦ σωροῦ τῆς πανσπερμίας ἔστιν ἕν τι εἶδος εἰλικρινὲς ἐκκρῖναι, οἷον κριθάς, ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν τοῦτο ἀδύνατον· οὐκ ἐνδέχεται γὰρ οὐδέποτε σάρκα εἰλικρινῆ ἐκκριθῆναι ἢ λίθον ἢ χρυσὸν ἢ ἄλλο τι, ἀλλ᾿ ἀεὶ ἐν παντὶ τῷ ἐκκρινο μένῳ ὁπηλίκον ἂν ᾖ πάντα ἔνεστι, καλεῖται δὲ ἐκ τοῦ πλεονάζοντος. Op. cit. p. 89: ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὕτως ἐδόξασε πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι καὶ μηδὲν εἶναι εἰλικρινὲς ὅπερ ἐστί. Op. cit. p. 106: Κε χωρισμένα εἶπεν ἀντὶ τοῦ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν καὶ τοῖς τόποις διακεκριμένα, οὐχ ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ δυ νάμει λέγομεν πάντα ἐνυπάρχειν (οὐ γὰρ οὕτως ἔλεγεν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας πάντα ἐν ἀλλήλοις ὑπ άρχειν, ὥσπερ λέγεται ἡ ὕλη πάντα εἶναι δυνάμει), ἀλλ᾿ ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ πανσπερμία πάντα ἐνυπάρχει κριθὴ καὶ σῖτος καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ τῶν σπερμάτων ἐνεργείᾳ ὄντα. καὶ ἐνυπάρχουσιν οὖν, φησίν, ἐν ἑκάστῃ ὁμοιομερείᾳ ἄπειρα σώματα, καὶ οὐδὲν ἧττον ἕκαστον τῶν ἐνυπαρχόντων καὶ αὐτὸ ἄπειρόν ἐστιν· ἔστι γὰρ καὶ ἐν ἐκείνῳ ἄπειρα. Loc. cit.: ἀλλὰ τὸ μηδέποτε διακρι θήσεσθαι πάντα, εἰ καὶ ἀγνοῶν ἔλεγεν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ἀλλ᾿ οὖν ὀρθῶς ἔλεγεν· αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ

418

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

There are some further problems to be considered in Aristotle’s account. He argued that the Anaxagorean Mind was ‘absurd’ (ἄτοπος), since it sought to do things that are impossible: for once there is no minimum quantity, it would be unfeasible to distinguish things in terms of quantity, as much as was it impossible to do so with respect to quality, since the properties (qualities) of things cannot exist by themselves apart from the material bodies which they qualify.³⁶⁶ On the other hand, Aristotle also said that the Mind distinguished the homoiomeries and started doing so as of a certain moment.³⁶⁷ However, there is a logical incongruity in this account: either the Mind always wanted to distinguish the principles and was unable to do so, or it started to do so from a certain moment. This contradiction was noticed by Philoponus, who struggled to accommodate things: what Aristotle meant by the first statement was that it is impossible for each particular homoiomery (e. g. flesh) to exist in itself as an absolutely distinct and pure being without at the same time containing in itself all the other homoiomeries (e. g. bones, gold, stones, etc.). In the second statement, Aristotle allegedly had in mind ‘one homoiomery of infinite size’³⁶⁸ where ‘all things were together’ and the Mind distinguished ‘particular homoiomeries, which though are not absolutely distinct and pure beings, and they have everything in themselves’.³⁶⁹ It is quite evident that both Ar-

τὰ σώματα ἔλεγε μηδέποτε ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων διακριθήσεσθαι, ἤτοι καὶ τὰ πάθη καὶ τὰς ἕξεις, οὐ διὰ τὸ μὴ φύσιν ἔχειν καθ᾿ αὑτὰς ὑποστῆναι, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ τὴν μῖξιν μὴ δύνασθαι εἰλικρινῶς χωρίσαι τὰ μιχθέντα, ὥσπερ εἴ τις καὶ τοῦ οἰνομέλιτος εἴποι μὴ ἐνδέχεσθαι τὸν οἶνον καὶ τὸ μέλι χωρισθῆναι.  Aristotle, Physica, 188a: ὥστε ἄτοπος τὰ ἀδύνατα ζητῶν ὁ νοῦς. There are two traditions of how this passage was reproduced by commentators. One, those who took it that Aristotle attrib uted the epithet ἄτοπος (‘absurd’) to the Mind. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 176. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 1.18. Gennadius Scholarius quoted the Aristotelian adjective, but then he used that of Themistius and Philoponus. commPhys, p. 8: ὅτι ὁ πρῶτος ἴδιος νοῦς ἀνοητότατος ἔσται, ἐν τῷ· διὸ ἄτοπος. In another work, he also uses ἄτοπος. Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commen tarii in Aristotelis De Physico Audito, 1.185. Secondly, it was argued that Aristotle wrote ἀνόητος (‘without reason’, ‘mindless’). Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 17. John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 101; 106; 107; 397. This shows the dependence of Philoponus upon Themistius, whom he men tions by name at thirty two points, and draws on him heavily, although at some points he criti cizes him severely. Cf. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 576; commAnim, pp. 409; 410; 450.  Aristotle, Physica, 250b25 26; 265b22 23.  Simplicius showed how absurd such an attribution to Anaxagoras was. See commPhys, pp. 168 9.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 397: ἐκεῖ μὲν γὰρ περὶ ἑκάστης τῶν κατὰ μέρος ὁμοιομε ρειῶν ἔλεγεν ὅτι οὐ δύναται εἰλικρινῶς ἑκάστην διακρῖναι ὁμοιομέρειαν, οἷον σαρκός, μηδὲν ἔχουσαν ἐν αὑτῇ ἑτέρας οὐσίας, ἐνταῦθα δέ φησιν ὅτι τὴν μίαν καὶ ἄπειρον τῷ μεγέθει ὁμοιο μέρειαν, ἐν ᾗ πάντα ἦν τὰ ὄντα, δι᾿ ἣν καὶ ἔλεγε τὸ ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, διακρίνει εἰς μερικὰς

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

419

istotle and Philoponus were confused. This contradiction is only one of the many absurdities which follow once one absurdity has been presumed in the first place. As late as the fifteenth century, Gennadius Scholarius echoed Aristotle’s accounts taking them to the extreme, which is instructive, since it shows how absurd the Aristotelian representation of Anaxagoras was. Gennadius attributed to Anaxagoras the idea that what is cold contains in itself also hot, since everything is in everything in actuality. He then ‘explains’ why this mistake was made: Anaxagoras was unable to see that there is a state between what is absolutely non-being and what exists in actuality – meaning of course that this intermediate state is potential being.³⁷⁰ This analysis shows that it was Aristotle that erected obstacles to himself, which banned following Anaxagoras all the way through. To him, the First Mover was the source of motion, but it is a question whether this was also a Creator, and the dispute about this never really ended up with any conclusive argument. This Mover was hardly a ‘king’ who cared constantly for the operation of the universe, surely not the ‘ruler’ and ‘guardian’ of the forms, and certainly we cannot draw on Aristotle in order to argue that this Mover (which he conveniently designated by means of the Anaxagorean name ‘Nous’) is the source of rationality. Consequently, Aristotle had to introduce the notion of the ‘mind which comes from outside’ (θύραθεν νοῦς), that baffled all his commentators, who never managed to agree as to what Aristotle really meant by this. Conclusion: Aristotle did not father the notion of potentiality, which was earlier, and he only took this up and made it a paragon of his own philosophy. However, it was not realized that the real source of it was Anaxagoras, which I am going to discuss further in chapter 8, in the context of Anaxagoras’ impact on Classical and Late Antiquity.³⁷¹ The man who definitely knew of this was Aristotle himself and this was one of the main reasons for him to concoct a caricature of Anaxagoras as part of his wider agenda aiming at belittling all of his predecessors, both the Presocratics and Plato, and represent himself as the messiah of philosophy, whereas all his predecessors had seen the truth only ‘through a glass darkly’, and they had spoken by means of inarticulate formulations ob-

ὁμοιομερείας, οὐκ εἰλικρινεῖς, ἀλλὰ πάντα καὶ αὐτὰς ἐχούσας, φαινομένην δὲ καὶ ὀνομαζομένην ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐπικρατοῦντος.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii in Aristotelis De Physico Audito, 1.180: τὸ γὰρ ψυχρὸν δυνάμει ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ θερμῷ, οὐκ ἐνεργείᾳ, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐδόξασε διὰ τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι αὐτὸν λαμβάνειν τὸ δυνάμει εἶναι, ὅπερ ἐστὶ μεταξὺ τοῦ τε εἰλικρινοῦς μὴ εἶναι καὶ τοῦ ἐνεργείᾳ εἶναι. See further, 1.181.  See chapter 8, pp. 598 ff, ‘The idea of potentiality’.

420

Chapter 6 – Potentiality

scurely through vague illustrations ‘in figures and shadows’, and History had to wait for Aristotle to appear, so that the fullness of the light of truth should appear – and scientific thought should be stalled for many centuries because the Middle Ages, especially western prelature, made him a sacred authority and hallowed prophet. There is no need to pursue these accounts about this aspect of Anaxagoras’ philosophy further at this point. It is indeed a serious problem in the history of philosophy that such gifted men as some of the Aristotelian commentators did not seek to get a first-hand idea of what Anaxagoras wrote, and to appraise him for themselves. It is then time for us to hear the voice of Simplicius going beyond the false allegations about the entire philosophy of Anaxagoras. He was the first and remained the sole one that cared to make extensive quotations from Anaxagoras’ book, so that his readers could assess his considerations. This fact alone provides a token of his intellectual calibre. An honest scholar and commentator as he was, Simplicius reported accurately the allegations Aristotle made about Anaxagoras, but he made it a task to himself to rebut the distorted exposition on which Aristotle based his criticism. This is what I am going to examine next.

Chapter 7 Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle The figment that Aristotle represented as philosophy of Anaxagoras, without quoting any passage from that, was not an account of it: it was only a caricature contrived in order to serve to the exposition of Aristotle’s own views while either obscuring or berating critical points on which Anaxagoras had preceded Aristotle himself. This brickbat was based on two fundamental presumptions: one, the incorporeal principles were treated as corporeal elements; two, the number of them was infinite. Once this was the basis of consideration, Anaxagoras’ propositions were bound to appear absurd, and sometimes preposterous. In this chapter, I am going to discuss Simplicius’ reply to this. It is important to note from the beginning that he was always gentle with Aristotle, which is one of the reasons that determined his methodology: he considered the arguments themselves, as well as their premisses and context, but he took them to their ultimate consequences, which resulted in illogical theses that of necessity should be attributed to Anaxagoras; yet those inferences are so self-defeating that not only this philosopher, but even the most unlearned writer could have never presumed to posit. This methodology is extended also to Aristotle’s commentators, only to show that reproduction of their master’s arguments (sometimes qualified, but sometimes taken to their extreme consequences) only added to the absurdity of considering Anaxagoras on the basis of Aristotle’s allegations. We have seen so far that Simplicius explained that Anaxagoras’ principles and his relevant considerations could make sense only if these principles are incorporeal. Scholars have always been unanimously all too quick to dismiss Simplicius’ explanation, branding this ‘Neoplatonic’. It never occurred to them that the case might have been that Neoplatonists (starting with Plotinus) found in Anaxagoras insightful notions, which they employed and built on.¹ In this section, we shall see that incorporeality and non-infinity of the principles is the only way for this philosophy to make sense and to be interpreted consistently. Once Simplicius is virtually the sole source supplying us with Anaxagoras’ own words, it would be observed that nowhere does Anaxagoras use the term ‘incorporeal’, even though his considerations can make sense on that major postulate alone. So what? Is this a good reason for brushing the idea aside? Were it for the term ‘incorporeal’ to be a sine qua non condition in order to allow for the notion of incorporeality to be there, I see no reason why God in Judaism, in

 See chapter 10.

422

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

Christianity, even in Islam, should not be described as being corporeal (which indeed such Christians as Melito of Sardis and Tertullian did). Neither the Old nor the New Testament do ever describe God by any term meaning ‘incorporeal’. God is depicted (indeed so described directly only in the Old Testament) only as being unlike any of His created beings, from which Philo, and then Origen, derived their doctrine of the incorporeality of God.² In the scriptures, God is only described as elevated above any likeness to creatures. Little wonder then that Tertullian (180‒125 AD) boldly asserted that ‘God is a body even though He is a spirit, since spirit is also a sui generis body’;³ for ‘nothing is, unless it is a body; whatever is, it is a body of sorts; nothing is incorporeal, unless that which is not’.⁴ So did the apologist Melito of Sardis (died c. 180 AD, a Millenarist following Irenaeus), to be rebuked by Origen, even though the wise inquisitors of Christian doctrine canonized him as a saint, while they anathematized Origen as a heretic. What is important, therefore, is not seeking whether the term ‘incorporeal’ (or indeed the term ‘principle’) is explicated, or not. What is really needed is perusal of what all aspects of a certain philosophy conspire to express, and this is what a brilliant intellect such as Simplicius offered. He explained Anaxagoras’ principles as being incorporeal not because he aimed anachronistically to make him a Neoplatonist, but because all the aspects of that philosophy conduce to incorporeality, which was the sole way for any reader of Simplicius, and indeed of Anaxagoras himself, to be ‘logical to the bitter end’.⁵ It is then time for us to see Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle and to his commentators: following his statements confirming the notion of incorporeal principles, he will also rebut the idea of them being infinite in number, arguing that not only did Anaxagoras not hold this notion, but also that he did not need this at all. Aristotle took it that the principles are elementary homogenous corporeal particles and they are as many as the different kinds of stuffs that exist in the world, which appeared to him to be infinite. Consequently, he turned to consid-

 Philo, De Vita Mosis, 1.158; De Specialibus Legibus, 2.176; Legum Allegoriarum, 1.92; De Cheru bim, 49; Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis, 83. Origen, Cels, I.15; VI.64; VI.71; VII.27 (appealing to John, 1:18 and Col. 1:55); VII.38; VII.66; commJohn, II.32.195; XIII.21 23; frJohn, 13; 37; Fragmenta in Lucam, 186; Commentarii in epistulam ad Romanos (e cod. Vindob. gr. 166), fr. 6; schMatt, PG.17.289.17 19.  Tertullian, Adversus Praxeam, 7.  Tertullian, De Anima, 7, echoing an allegedly fundamental Stoic tenet; but see infra, pp. 679 80.  See chapter 13, pp. 1179; 1457; 1462.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

423

ering the (smaller or larger) ‘size’ of each ‘element’, which resulted in syllogisms that had nothing to do with Anaxagoras’ philosophy, who had indicated the incorporeality of principles positing that they are unlimited (ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ σμικρότητα),⁶ which is to say, the notion of size is not applicable to them. In this sense, the proposition, ‘all things were together’ entails that ‘they are unlimited in both amount and smallness’ and ‘there is neither a smallest nor a largest among the first principles’ (οὔτε τὸ ἐλάχιστόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς οὔτε τὸ μέγιστον): of a small there is always a smaller, and of a large there is always a larger.⁷ Aristotle’s comment on this was that ‘it is impossible for flesh or bone or anything else to be whatever size you please, either large or small’.⁸ While seeing the irrelevance of this comment to Anaxagoras, Simplicius quotes from Theophrastus, who wrote this in his treatise On Anaxagoras: Moreover, saying that everything is in everything because (τὸ διὰ τοῦτο λέγειν εἶναι πάντα ἐν παντί) they are infinite in largeness and in smallness, and that it is not possible to de termine either the largest or the smallest, does not suffice in order to convince anyone.⁹

Anaxagoras actually said so, but Aristotle ostensibly did not realize that ‘infinite’ does not have to suggest numerical endlessness, nor even enumeration. To him, this is why Anaxagoras’ proposition should not be ‘all things were together, infinite it terms of multitude and in smalleness’; instead of ‘smallness’, Anaxagoras should have said ‘in fewness’; for things cannot be infinite in fewness, since fewness is constituted not by one but by two’.¹⁰ Thus, Aristotle presumed that Anaxagoras meant ‘smallness’ (μικρότης) to be the opposite of ‘multitude’ (πλῆθος). However, Anaxagoras did not mean this and he knew what he was talking about: the principles of which things consist are ‘infinitely many and infinitely small’, by which he only meant that they are subject neither to enumeration nor to having any shape: in other words, they are ‘incorporeal’. Quite simply, the term ‘incorporeal’ was not part of the locution of his era, and Anaxagoras had to render this periphrastically. It is hard to imagine that Aristotle was unable to perceive the notion of incorporeality being involved in such circumlocutions of Anaxagoras, given that, much later, Plotinus grasped conveniently similar

 Simplicius, commCael, p. 608; commPhys, pp. 34; 155; 164; 172.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 164; 166.  Aristotle, Physica, 187b13 21.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 166. On the real meaning of ‘smallest’ in this context, see infra, pp. 433 4; 863 4.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1056b28 33. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 630.

424

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

ones.¹¹ However, Aristotle chose to turn a blind eye the notion of incorporeality that was involved therein. Later, the Stoics maintained that infinite means also ‘that which has neither beginning nor middle nor end’ (τὸ δ᾿ ἄπειρον οὔτ᾿ ἀρχὴν οὔτε μέσον οὔτε τελευτὴν ἔχει), as indeed ‘it has neither up nor down’.¹² However, this simple truth was not invented by the Stoics: it was Anaxagoras’ teacher Parmenides that had posited it before Aristotle, his clear proposition describes exactly what an incorporeal principle is, and Anaxagoras certainly was perfectly aware of this lesson.¹³ Likewise, when Anaxagoras wrote that ‘there is neither a smallest nor a largest among the first principles’, this was because these were infinite (not numerically), and, once again, such heirs to Anaxagoras’ philosophy as the Stoics realized that, when one speaks ‘of infinite things, one cannot speak of either more or less in them’ (τῶν δ᾿ ἀπείρων οὐθέν ἐστι πλέον οὐδ᾿ ἔλαττον). For there is no ‘multitude exceeding them (οὐδ᾿ ὅλως ὑπερβάλλον πλῆθος), nor is it possible to sever them so as to aquire any kind of multitude out of such a division of them’.¹⁴ It is then hard to see what exactly would have been difficult for Aristotle to grasp, had an analysis such as the later one by Simplicius been retailed to him. I am myself satisfied that Aristotle would have no problem with comprehending this whatsoever. The fact that he would not disagreed with some facets of this system (since, for example, in the On the Heavens, 305a31‒33, he argued that ‘generation from the incorporeal is impossible’, οὔτε ἐξ ἀσωμάτου γίγνεσθαι δυνατόν), is a different matter, but certainly he would have been able to grasp the rationale of Anaxagoras. For instance, the principle of gravity is everywhere in the universe and no notion of size can be accorded this; no matter how small, a certain body has always a certain weight; but even if there is no body around, whose size one seeks to measure, the principle is always present and it is activated whenever a body appears therein. Actually, not only the law of gravity, but all natural laws are everywhere: in order for any natural law to make its mark to human senses, it only takes for the proper circumstances to be there.

 Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.9.  Plutarch (expounding Stoicism), De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1054B.  Albinus, Epitome Doctrinae Platonicae, 6.6: μάλιστα δ᾿ ἐν τῷ Παρμενίδῃ τοιούτους εὕροιμεν ἂν λόγους· εἰ μὴ ἔχει μέρη τὸ ἕν, οὔτε ἀρχὴν οὔτε μέσον οὔτε τελευτὴν ἔχει· εἰ μήτε ἀρχὴν μήτε μέσον μήτε τελευτὴν ἔχει, οὐδὲ πέρας ἔχει· εἰ μὴ ἔχει πέρας, οὐδὲ σχήματος μετέχει· εἰ ἄρα μὴ ἔχει μέρη τὸ ἕν, οὐδὲ σχήματος μετέχει. Cf. Proclus embracing this Parmenidian analysis: In Pla tonis Parmenidem, p. 1132; Theologia Platonica, p. 9.  Plutarch (speaking of the Stoics, once again), De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1079B.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

425

This is the meaning of everything being in everything: all laws are everywhere, and one would find this ‘unconvincing’, even irrational, only if comprehension of this simple fact were based on the assumption that natural laws are material bodies. Aristotle’s syllogisms on this point (as well as those of Theophrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias, which we also learn from Simplicius) are developed on the premiss of corporeality. Consequently, all of their arguments are about the number and size of these principles presumed as different corporeal elements corresponding to any possible or impossible kind of stuff that can be found in this world. However, Simplicius (making the point that the principles are incorporeal) was patient and gentle with Aristotle, while assessing the rationale of the Stagirite to its bitter end: ‘Perhaps one would say in defence of Anaxagoras’ (ἴσως δὲ φαίη ἄν τις ὑπὲρ ᾿Aναξαγόρου λέγων) are Simplicius’ introductory words, to be followed by showing how absurd the corollaries of Aristotle’s syllogism were. If each animal or plant contained a single constituent homoiomery for each of its parts, that is, one for flesh, one for bone, and one for blood, it should follow that the differences of size of animals and plants would be analogous to the increase and decrease of the number of homoiomeries. But if (say, animals) contain a number of each sort of homoiomery (e. g. many little bits of flesh), certainly it would be possible to purge away flesh alone ad infinitum, while leaving the animal as animal. He then demolishes the assumption that homoiomeries are bodies, on the ground that they can be said to be neither finite nor infinite in number. If they are finite, say three or four or ten thousand, the size of the smallest and the largest would be finite; if they are infinite in number, a magnitude composed of an infinite number of magnitudes should be infinite, too. For it was Aristotle himself ¹⁵ who argued that whatever is finite it is divided into finite parts. Simplicius leaves the point there, and concludes his scholion, but in effect he showed that Aristotle assessed Anaxagoras based on erroneous assumptions: on Aristotelian grounds, a magnitude composed of an infinite number of magnitudes must be infinite. However, this is not true, and such a kind of ideas supplied Zeno of Elea (a contemporary of Anaxagoras) with arguments upon constructing his paradoxes. For instance, if we have a line of one centimetre long, we can say that it consists of the aggregate of 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + … ad infinitum. This aggregate will tend to make up the size of the line; but, no matter how long the series, it will never match the size of the line: it will always remain short of one centimetre. Simplicius of course did not need to say this, since he knew that those which Aristotle labelled ‘homoiomeries’ actually had nothing

 Aristotle, Physica, 187b25 26.

426

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

to do with material entities. The fact that he stopped his argument at that point while simply reminding of Aristotle’s own assumptions denotes that he assessed Aristotle’s arguments by ostensibly condescending to premisses that were erroneous in the first place, thus showing that they entailed absurd corollaries. If one was under the impression that some irony by Simplicius is implicit at this point, this probably would be not entirely wrong: although, in general, treatment of the notion of infinity is one of the weak aspects of Greek thought, in the nineodd centuries between Aristotle and Simplicius some progress on tackling this abstruse issue (and mathematical logic in general) had indeed taken place. Simplicius did not insist much on showing Aristotle’s self-defeating syllogism. For the real issue was not that of infinity, but Aristotle essaying to impose counting on incorporeal principles. Next, Aristotle challenged the principle ‘everything is in everything’ on the same premiss, namely, that there is a minimum actual amount of any kind of natural stuff.¹⁶ He argued that, if all things are present in one another, and they do not come into being, but they emanate (ἐκκρίνεται) thereof, and the identity of things is determined by the predominant element, and anything is produced from anything (e. g. water issues from flesh and flesh from water), and every finite body is exhausted by a finite body, – it is then clear that it is impossible for everything to be in everything. For once flesh is subtracted from water, and yet more flesh flows from the remainder, even if what is emanated every time is less and less, it will not exceed a certain magnitude in smallness. In other words, there is a minimum size of each substance, so that no body can be smaller than this minimum size. Consequently, should emanation end, not everything would be in everything, since there will be no flesh in the remaining water. On the other hand, if there is no end of emanation, and there is endless subtraction, then, there will be an infinite number of finite equal magnitudes in a finite magnitude, which is impossible.¹⁷ Actually, this is not ‘impossible’, but Aristotle reflects on purely material terms, and, once again, he is based on the previous premiss, namely, that there is a minimum actual amount of any natural material.¹⁸ It is quite evident that Simplicius is not sparing of long expositions rebutting distorted imputations to Anaxagoras, not only by Aristotle, but also by such commentators as Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius. A superficial reading of his text might give the impression that Simplicius is eager to expound

 Aristotle, op. cit. 187b29 30. Simplicius comments on Physica, 187b22 34.  Aristotle, op. cit. 187b22 34.  Cf. Aristotle, op. cit. 187b29 30.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

427

these arguments because he wishes to endorse them. However, in reality he does so only in order to show that the Aristotelian arguments could lead nowhere: once the principles are taken to be material and infinite, the more Simplicius expounds Aristotle’s arguments the more their absurdity comes to the fore. As a matter of fact, exposition of the analyses by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius only leads to the conclusion that neither can generation take place by ‘emanation’ nor is everything in everything (οὔτε ἐκκρίσει ἡ γένεσις οὔτε πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν … οὐ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἐκκριθήσεται).¹⁹ It never occurred to those commentators that something should have gone wrong with the Aristotelian arguments, since their analyses resulted in conclusions which run contrary to Anaxagoras’ fundamental axioms. Instead, they preferred the other way around: since Aristotle’s arguments result in propositions contrary to Anaxagoras’ axioms, these axioms have to be wrong. It is like the case of an astronomer who gave a lecture developing a mathematical analysis of the motion of a certain constellation: upon the end of the lecture, someone from the audience said, ‘this is all very well, but observation of the phenomena in the heaven shows a much different motion of the constellation’. To which the lecturer replied, ‘this is too bad for the phenomena’. Aristotle and his commentators struggled to show that Anaxagoras’ fundamental propositions do not square with the notion that these principles are infinite material elements, instead of incorporeal principles, which they actually are. However, instead of questioning Aristotle’s claim that these were infinite material elements, they rested content with discrediting Anaxagoras’ philosophy as a whole. In expounding this story, Simplicius is obliging indeed: he ostensibly adds to the arguments of the Aristotelian band, as if he were anxious to add support to their case. It is only later that his true motives come forcefully to the fore: Simplicius pushes Aristotle’s arguments to their limits, so as to show their absurdity, and finally overturns them all at one stroke. He then goes on, saying that it may be possible to establish the present argument even without the previously demonstrated conclusion, if Aristotle is now perhaps agreeing that there can be a magnitude of any size, however small. Simplicius appears to suggest that, in the Physics, 187b29‒30 (‘even if that which is extracted is always smaller, all the same it will not exceed a certain magnitude in smallness’), Aristotle conceded to Anaxagoras the idea which he himself maintained to be impossible in 187b13‒21 (that is, there is no minimum quantity of any natural material), in order to show that, even with that concession, it is im-

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 169. See infra, pp. 439 41.

428

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

possible for everything to be in everything. However, there is nothing in Aristotle’s text suggesting that he withdrew his earlier axiom that there is a minimum quantity of any natural material. On the contrary, the entire section in the Physics, 187b13‒188a2, is based on that principle. Why is it then that Simplicius makes this allowance, even though Aristotle himself did not actually say so? The case is the same as above, where Simplicius (again, ostensibly adding to Aristotle’s argument) showed that, whether finite or infinite in number the homoiomeries are supposed to be, either way absurd conclusions flow. This is what he does here, too: whether emanation comes to an end (in case there is a minimum quantity of any natural material), or it does not come to an end, either way an absurd consequence follows for those who say that everything is in everything (καὶ τῷ ἐπιλείπειν καὶ τῷ μὴ ἐπιλείπειν ἄτοπόν τι ἀκολουθεῖ τοῖς πᾶν ἐν παντὶ λέγουσι); in which case, the proposition, ‘everything emanates from everything’, is the same as saying that this emanation is generation (καὶ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἐκκρίνεσθαι, ταὐτὸν δὲ εἰπεῖν γίνεσθαι ἀξιοῦσι). What does Simplicius say here? Is this a ripost to what Alexander and Themistius supposedly said, namely, that Aristotle was seeking to show that the material extraction from a certain substance does come to an end? But there is nothing of the kind either in Themistius’ text²⁰ or in the summary of it given by Simplicius. What Simplicius actually does, once again, is showing that no matter in what direction Aristotle’s argument is developed, absurd conclusions flow from it. Aristotle did not allow that continuous extraction from a natural stuff never ends. Simplicius shows that even if Aristotle had conceded that this process never ends, it would follow that this analysis of Anaxagoras’ philosophy would result in absurdities. For the problem is not whether or not is this process assumed to come to an end: the real problem is that Aristotle once again developed his argument on the premiss that he was dealing with material elements. This was his fundamental mistake (whether intentional, or not), and demonstration of this mistake is the point Simplicius actually makes: if the extraction of flesh from a certain amount of water came to an end, it is not the case that everything will be in everything, nor that everything will be extracted from everything. For in the water which is left after that extraction, no flesh will be present. On the other hand, if they were to say that extraction never ends, but it is always possible to take away more flesh from water, in this finite magnitude of water there should be infinitely many magnitudes, which is impossible.

 Cf. Themistius’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, 16.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

429

Therefore, speaking of continuous extraction of one stuff from another, whether the assumption is that it comes an end, or that it never comes to an end, either way absurd consequences follow for those who say that ‘everything is in everything’ and that ‘everything proceeds (or, is extracted) from everything’ (τοῖς πᾶν ἐν παντὶ λέγουσι καὶ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἐκκρίνεσθαι, ταὐτὸν δὲ εἰπεῖν γίνεσθαι ἀξιοῦσι),²¹ and maintain that ‘generation’ should be understood on material assumptions. On the other hand, who are ‘those who say’ that ‘generation’ is a process which is no different from the interaction between principles that are all in all? But of course Anaxagoras and his followers. Besides, it is Simplicius himself who posited that distinction out of (and in) existence in unity, in which all things were together, bespeaks intelligible creation (δῆλον δὲ ὅτι ἡ ἀπὸ τῆς ἡνωμένης ὑποστάσεως, καθ᾿ ἣν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν, διάκρισις ἡ νοερὰ ποίησις ἦν).²² Consequently, taking Anaxagoras’ immaterial principles as material stuff (such as water, flesh, and the like) is bound to result in absurdities. Such conclusions are untenable, as Simplicius just showed. The problem lies in the false interpretations, which mainly stemmed from the presumption positing the principles as material elements. Once again, ‘from one absurd premiss, many absurdities followed’. The fact that Anaxagoras’ principles are immaterial can be detected in the inconsistent objections of Aristotle’s criticism of them, even in the wrenched representation of it. To him, an elemental component should be only a simple body irresolvable into specifically different parts. He then claims that the theory of Anaxagoras would allow to set many bodies which are the result of mixture as his ‘seeds’, so long as they are divisible into homogenous parts. In short, Aristotle objects, arguing that this theory does not allow for any elements at all. He was inadvertently right: Anaxagoras’ theory was that there are no simple elements, since these are only products of sundry concurring principles. Aristotle used the term ὁμοιομερῆ as a technical one, although this is not Anaxagorean. It means the homogenous materials of which the organs of the animal body are made. His suggestion is that Anaxagoras really spoke of bone, flesh, et cetera, as the constituents of those bodies, whereas Empedocles had consigned this role to the four ‘elements’ (but never did Empedocles use the tem ‘elements’ which is one more coinage by Aristotle). He argues that it would have been better if Anaxagoras posited a finite rather than infinite number of ‘elements’, and then he says this:

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 170.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 300 1.

430

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

Even with an infinite number, they do not succeed in forming everything out of homoge nous parts: they do not construct a face out of faces, nor any other finished products of nature similarly. Therefore, it would clearly be much better to make the principles finite, and indeed as few as possible.²³

This implies that the ‘seeds’ were minute particles of individual things. However, Aristotle’s term ὁμοιομερῆ shows that he did not believe that this was what Anaxagoras really had in mind. For Aristotle’s terminology indicates that, to him, a ‘face’ or ‘hand’ is not ὁμοιομερές.²⁴ Beyond the fact that Aristotle contradicts himself on this, in Plato there is preemptive evidence against the meaning Aristotle assigned to this term (i. e. elementary particles of homogenous stuff). Actually, Plato is the source of Aristotle using the foregoing example of ‘constructing a face out of faces’, indicating the difference between ‘organs’ and ‘homogenous tissue’. In the Protagoras, Plato used the term ‘particles’ (μόρια, which characteristically was used for material elementary particles) in order to adumbrate both the whole and parts of incorporeal notions. The discussion was about ‘virtue’ (considered as a ‘whole’) and the ‘parts’ of it. By ‘parts of virtue’ (τῆς ἀρετῆς μόρια), Socrates meant such qualities as wisdom, bravery, knowledge, justice, temperance, and holiness. But since the term μόριον had a material connotation, Socrates asked what the meaning of it was: did this mean parts, in the sense of the parts of a face, as mouth, nose, eyes, and ears? Or, as it happens with parts of gold, was it the case that there is no difference between those pieces, notably, between parts themselves or between a part and the whole, except in greatness and smallness? To this, the answer was that the expression ‘particles of virtue’ was used in the former sense, that is, in a manner analogous to the parts of a face in relation to the entire face.²⁵ Therefore, Aristotle knew that ‘particles of the face’ do not have to be ‘many elementary faces’: this meant only such ‘parts’ as mouth, nose, eyes, and ears. He knew this from Plato, and, in fact, this point of Protagoras is the source of his own example. However, he pretended that he did not know this simple fact, and not only did he attribute to Anaxagoras the term ὁμοιομερῆ, but also endowed it with the absurd notion that they are of such nature as to be elementary, yet full, particles of individual things, no matter how composite these individual things may be. The arguments by Aristotle, Alexander, and Themistius result in Anaxagoras’ axioms ‘everything is in everything’ (τὸ πᾶν ἐν παντὶ εἶναι), and ‘everything

 Aristotle, De Caelo, 302b.  See, for example, De Partibus Animalium, 646a20 25; Topica, 135a20 b6; De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a18 20.  Plato, Protagoras, 329d e.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

431

is produced from everything’ (which means, ‘emanates from everything’, πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς γίνεσθαι ἤτοι ἐκκρίνεσθαι), being abolished, indeed appearing ridiculus. The reason is that these arguments rely on the axiom that every finite body is measured and exhausted by a finite body (πᾶν σῶμα πεπερασμένον ὑπὸ σώματος πεπερασμένου καταμετρεῖται καὶ δαπανᾶται).²⁶ Anaxagoras’ principles exist everywhere actually, not potentially, and they give rise to different things (including matter itself) because of different combinations and interactions between them. This is the sense in which the propositions, ‘everything is in everything’ and ‘everything emanates from everything’ account for generation. Their philosophical and natural implications can be considered consistently only if the principles are immaterial. Once they are posited as material, one has to consider their implications to their bitter end, and, once again, Simplicius does so with the Aristotelian rationale, as follows: If you continually subtract from a finite cubit a finite quantity, the cubit will be exhausted, and eventually it will cease to exist. Since Aristotle attributes material elements to Anaxagoras, this subtraction should be understood as not theoretical, which will never come to an end, but as subtraction of parts being actually present in it,²⁷ however small (κατὰ τὰ ἐνεργείᾳ ἐνυπάρχοντα μόρια, κἂν τὰ ἐλάχιστα ἴσως τοιάδε). Having assumed this, he demonstrates that it is not possible for each one of them to be in each and every other, that is, everything to be in everything, or everything to be extracted from everything, as follows: if an amount of flesh were extracted from water, and again another, even if the extracted quantity is always smaller, it will have some magnitude nevertheless. Besides, one must also assume the following as an axiom of the demonstration: either the extraction will stop, or it will not stop; if it stops, it is not the case that everything will be in everything (for no flesh will be left in the remaining water);

 Aristotle, Physica, l87b25 26. Simplicius, op. cit. p. 170. He quotes, πᾶν σῶμα πεπερασμένον ὑπὸ σώματος πεπερασμένου καταμετρεῖται καὶ δαπανᾶται, adding that Aristotle actually wrote ἀναιρεῖται instead of καταμετρεῖται καὶ δαπανᾶται. Aristotle’s extant manuscripts have it ἀναι ρεῖται. Simplicius uses a variant which appears to be known only to Philoponus, who says that Aristotle wrote ἀναιρεῖται, instead of καταμετρεῖται, and then he explains: τὸ γὰρ μετρού μενον ἴσα ἀεὶ τῷ μέτρῳ ἀφαιρούμενον ἐπιλείπει καὶ καταδαπανᾶται. John Philoponus, comm Phys, p. 105. By this, he means that, in order to measure a body, one has to use another body (such as a cubit) and subtract the latter’s size as many times as the measured body contains it. Cf. Physica, 238a22 29, about ἀναιρεῖν meaning exhaust, use up, in the sense of measuring. The variant of Aristotle’s expression occurring only in Simplicius and Philoponus presumably bespeaks their common education under Ammonius and the specific version of the Aristotelian text that the latter used in class.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 170: ὁ μέντοι πάντα ἐν πᾶσι λέγων καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ αὐτὰ ἐνεῖναι λέγει, καὶ οὐ δυνάμει, ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν ἐπ᾿ ἄπειρον διαιρουμένων.

432

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

if it does not stop, there will be subtraction endlessly, therefore, there will be an infinite number of similarly finite magnitudes in a finite magnitude, which is impossible. For according to the axiom, the finite magnitude will itself cease to exist through the finitely repeated removal of one of the finite magnitudes contained in it. Therefore, in a finite magnitude, no longer will be there an infinite number of finite magnitudes. Once again, Simplicius emphasizes that the syllogism is based on actual subtraction, not a theoretical one that assumes division to infinity. If the division were theoretical and not actual, it would never come to an end, nor is the conclusion absurd that something finite is composed of things divided to infinity.²⁸ In those cases, the infinity is potential, not actual. But Anaxagoras’ extraction (or, emanation, or procession) is produced from parts that allegedly are present in actuality (ἡ δὲ κατὰ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἔκκρισις τῶν ἐνεργείᾳ ἐνυπαρχόντων ἀπείρων ἐστίν).²⁹ Simplicius takes Aristotle’s argument to its limits, and shows that, if generation of things is assumed to take place from material elements, then absurd conclusions flow, no matter whether this generation takes place either ad infinitum, or it ends at some point. This absurdity stems not from whether it stops or not, but from the materiality imposed upon Anaxagoras’ principles. Once again, his irony is hardly concealed: he concludes his argument by speaking of ‘those infinite things which exist within’ (τῶν ἐνεργείᾳ ἐνυπαρχόντων ἀπείρων), although, in a moment, he is going to demolish the notion of infinity which Aristotle claimed he saw in Anaxagoras. The core of his argument at this point is that the principles are indeed present and they act in every material thing actually, not potentially. But once these immaterial principles are posited as material elements (as Aristotle saw them), the illogical conclusions that flow contradict Anaxagoras’ own fundamental axioms. Therefore, positing immateriality of principles is not an enterprise purporting to instil Neoplatonism into Anaxagoras, as modern scholars like to believe: it is an indispensable axiom for the fundamental premisses of this philosophy to make sense. When Anaxagoras styled them ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα), he had in mind the natural analogy: once a seed is planted into the soil, the natural laws that will develop it to a full flower are already there at work; day in day out, never is the seed the same, but it gradually develops because of the function of these principles.

 See supra, p. 425, the series 1/2 +1/4 + 1/8+ 1/16 + 1/32 + … ad infinitum, tends to number one, but it will never amount to this number.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 170 1.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

433

Simplicius goes on with expounding Aristotle’s arguments, while moving along the same line of methodology: he pushes Aristotle’s arguments further, apparently giving the impression that his aim is to reinforce them. However, what he actually does is demonstrating that these arguments make sense only if the immaterial principles are taken to be material – but, in that case, one is faced with flagrant conflict with some of Anaxagoras’ fundamental propositions. Aristotle went on with arguing that, since of necessity every body becomes smaller when something is subtracted from it, and a mass of flesh cannot be infinitely large or small, it is clear that the moment will come when no other body will be possible to be extracted from the minimum amount of flesh. For in that case there should be something smaller than the minimum.³⁰ Of course, Aristotle knew that this had nothing to do with Anaxagoras, but he was not concerned about it. His aim was to justify his own philosophy at the expense of his predecessor, whom he was eager to discredit and belittle because he had anticipated Aristotle himself on some critical notions. For, in fact, never did Anaxagoras speak of ‘minimum’ in this sense: on the contrary, he wrote that ‘in reference to the principles, there is neither a minimum nor a maximum in them (οὔτε τὸ ἐλάχιστόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς οὔτε τὸ μέγιστον); for of the small there is not a least, but always there is a lesser (οὔτε γὰρ τοῦ σμικροῦ ἐστι τό γε ἐλάχιστον, ἀλλ᾿ ἔλασσον ἀεί)’.³¹ Subsequently, Anaxagoras adds a phrase, the significance of which has not been grasped: τὸ γὰρ ἐὸν οὐκ ἔστι τὸ μὴ οὐκ εἶναι. Some scholars thought that the manuscript requires emendation, and they would be probably eager to do so. Patricia Curd argued that the thought is that, since there is no minimum quantity of anything, there can be no process of diminution by which a magnitude could be reduced to nothing. However, as always, the context is critical. Anaxagoras was not as fool as Aristotle represented him to be. He knew that the proposition of endless smallness or greatness of material particles was illogical and senseless. We have a double negation here, namely, μὴ and οὐκ applied to εἶναι. However, the meaning which Anaxagoras strove to express could not be simply read-

 Aristotle, Physica, 187b35 188a2.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 164. I should draw attention to Anaxagoras’ term σμικρότητος, in his phrase, ‘while all things were together, nothing was manifest because of its smallness’ (οὐδὲν ἔνδηλον ἦν ὑπὸ σμικρότητος); apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 608 & commPhys, p. 155. Although ‘smallness’ is a correct literal translation for σμικρότητος, later (p. 1063 4) I explain that in fact this means, ‘none of things was manifest because they were supressed’. For this is not about size, but about things prior to ‘distinction’ not yet having any ontological identity of their own.

434

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

ing a double negation as affirmation, as it usually happens. There is something more to it: since endless smallness might appear as self-defeating to common sense (on this Aristotle did not make any stunning discovery, anyway), Anaxagoras, speaking of his principles (which is normally forgotten) spoke of ‘seeds’, thus anticipating the reality of potentialities and the endless possibilities that are open to realization by means of interaction of those principles. To say that something is there does not necessarily suggest pointing to a certain thing or phenomenon which is, and it is distinguished from non-being. There is also another mode of existence, which is beyond both that which is and that which is not: between empirical existence and non-existence, there is also something else. This is the potential existence which is inexorably involved in Anaxagoras’ propositions, and, to this purpose, he was the only Presocratic who ingeniously used the term seed: a small seed is equipped with several convoluted powers which are not identified with any fragment of the seed itself, and it could make no sense to engage in speculation about how great or small they are. Quite simply, he indicated the incorporeality of his principles by disentangling them from such notions as ‘small’ or ‘great’. The portion, therefore, goes as follows, and it is an explanation by Anaxagoras himself introducing a caveat against crude considerations involving application of empirical experience to those principles. That which exists is not simply that which is not non-being. ³² In other words, the principles are present, and they are at work in order to form a natural thing even during the stage when this thing is not yet fully formed and the process of its formation is under way. They exist, even though they are not the objects of empirical observation as visible things: quite simply, they are incorporeal. And let all those who think they discover Neoplatonic ‘contamination’ of this philosophy by Simplicius explain whether the processes according to which a seed develops to a bud, and then to a rose, or an embryo is formed and then it becomes a human being, in other words, all the natural laws (which are only part of Anaxagoras’ principles) are corporeal things, or even mere ‘qual-

 Cf. the construction τὸ μὴ οὐκ εἶναι in Xenophon, Cynegeticus, 5.31: ἔστιν οὖν ἀδύνατον μὴ οὐκ εἶναι ἐκ τοιούτων συνηρμοσμένον ἰσχυρόν, ὑγρόν, ὑπερέλαφρον. Galen, Quod Optimus Med icus Sit Quoque Philosophus, p. 60: τί δὴ οὖν ἔτι λείπεται πρὸς τὸ μὴ οὐκ εἶναι φιλόσοφον τὸν ἰατρόν, ὃς ἂν Ἱπποκράτους ἀξίως ἀσκήσῃ τὴν τέχνην; De Usu Partium, p. 525: οὐδὲν ἐνδεῖ τῷ πνεύμονι πρὸς τὸ μὴ οὐκ εἶναι φωνητικῷ τε ἅμα καὶ ἀναπνευστικῷ διὰ τὰς τραχείας ἀρτηρίας ὀργάνῳ. De Utilitate Respirationis, p. 500: περὶ μέντοι τῶν γερόντων οὐδεὶς ἀμφισβητεῖ τὸ μὴ οὐκ εἶναι πολὺ ψυχροτέρους αὐτοὺς τῶν παίδων καὶ νεανίσκων. De Differentia Pulsuum, p. 645: τὸ μὴ οὐκ εἶναι πληγὴν ἀπ᾿ ἀρτηρίας. Eustathius of Thessaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam, v. 2, p. 189: οὐκ ἂν δέ τις ἀπισχυρίσαιτο μὴ οὐκ εἶναι καὶ τὸν ἀῤῥάβακα ἐθνικόν.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

435

ities’, or ‘latencies’, and not active forces, all of which co-exist in this universe, they are all in all, and fully and actually present in any material system, whereas they are always near at hand, in order to give rise to potentialities and develop them to actualities in a relevant material system. Later, Aristotle spoke of ‘potential being’ (δυνάμει εἶναι) and distinguished it as a sui generis being. But he knew perfectly well that Anaxagoras had preceded him, and this he could hardly tolerate. Consequently, he opted for making Anaxagoras’ principles corporeal and produce the caricature of that philosophy, which some people now believe is worth studying seriously following Aristotle’s own analyses concerning what is either small or smallest, and the like. However, Anaxagoras himself had declared that neither the ‘maximum’ nor the ‘minimum’ have any place in the realm of ontological principles (οὔτε τὸ ἐλάχιστόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς οὔτε τὸ μέγιστον).³³ Despite all this, Aristotle carried on unyieldingly with his criticism, but once again Simplicius showed that the line of argument could only result in contradicting the premisses of Anaxagoras’ philosophy. He shows the ultimate consequences of Aristotle’s ‘axiom’ while ostensibly following its assumptions (προλαβὼν [sc. Aristotle] κἀνταῦθα ἐναργὲς ἀξίωμα).³⁴ The didactic style of Simplicius should not elude us: he speaks in second person as if he addressed a pupil of his. Once you follow these assumptions (τούτων δὲ προειλημμένων), you can reason as follows (συλλογίσαιο ἂν οὕτως): if something is subtracted from the smallest-particle of flesh, there will be a flesh from which a smaller portion than the smallest was subtracted; but this is certainly impossible (ἀλλὰ μὴν τοῦτο ἀδύνατον); for the minimum flesh was that than which there is no smaller particle-flesh. Consequently, there is no way to extract any body from the minimum amount of flesh. This is not in fact Simplicius’ conclusion: it stems from Aristotle’s own assumption: “The conclusion is true because of the premiss (καὶ τὸ μὲν συνημμένον ἀληθὲς διὰ τὸ ἀξίωμα)”, from which, however, one more conclusion flows of necessity (ἡ δὲ πρόσληψις ἐναργής): if it is impossible to extract any body from the smallest amount of flesh, then Anaxagoras’ axioms  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 164 & 166.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 171. The expression προλαβὼν [sc. Aristotle] κἀνταῦθα ἐναργὲς ἀξίωμα implies that Aristotle posited an axiom based on empirical experience, which is a practice that Simplicius himself did not endorse, since philosophical axioms may well be true and yet beyond common experience. Cf. Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1297: προλαμβάνει δὲ ὡς ἐναργὲς ἀξίωμα. Besides, it was Aristotle himself who argued that ‘a thesis is a proposition which appears paradoxical [to laymen] but it is propounded by someone who is famous as a philosopher; … alternatively, a thesis is a proposition about which we hold a reasoned view contrary to current opinions.’ Top ica, 104b19 20; again, 104b34. I discuss this famous proverbial proposition of Aristotle, infra, p. 473; see quotation on p. 477, note 181.

436

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

that everything is in everything, or everything is extracted from everything, no longer holds. But this is absurd (ἄτοπον), since we are no longer considering this philosophy, but another one stemming from the premisses of Aristotle, not those of Anaxagoras. Moreover, there is another absurdity which follows (καὶ ἄλλο δὲ ἄτοπον ἕπεται) from the assumption that something will be extracted from the smallest amount of flesh, since that which is smaller than the minimum amount of flesh will no longer be flesh; thus, it has been destroyed qua flesh (ἔφθαρται ἄρα ὡς σάρξ). This means that the homoiomeries are destructible, which, however, is a principle that the followers of Anaxagoras reject (ὅπερ οὐ βούλονται). From this would follow that neither is everything is in everything, nor does everything come to be from everything. In other words, once again, Aristotle considered a philosophy of his own fabrication, not that of Anaxagoras. However, Aristotle went on defiantly, expounding what he assured his readers was the philosophy of Anaxagoras: he argued that, in the infinite number of all bodies, infinite flesh and blood and brain should be present, not indeed gathered together as discernible from one another, yet existing none the less, and each of these substances should exist both without limit and within each of all the other kinds of bodies, which is absurd.³⁵ Simplicius is once again patient and gentle with what he reads. He informs his readers that this is the ‘fifth and most robust refutation’ of the philosophy of Anaxagoras, but this is so only ‘if one takes it at face value’ (εἴ τις αὐτὸν ἐκδέχοιτο κατὰ τὸ φαινόμενον). The attack is directed against the supposition that the principles (τὰς ἀρχάς) are homoiomeries infinite in quantity, and that everything is mixed with everything. Simplicius’ ironical disapproval should not elude us: he is going to assess this criticism, he styles ‘principles’ those which Aristotle branded ‘homoiomeries’, and immediately he brings up those of Anaxagoras’ axioms that are contradicted by Aristotle’s argument. He has already stated that this philosophy is about ‘immaterial principles’, not material elements, and he knows that he is going to demolish this ‘fifth attack’, although he is not in a hurry to do so. On the contrary, once again, he cares to explain Aristotle’s rationale in detail, just in case someone had not grasped this completely, even though, in a moment, he will state that what Aristotle actually did was a wishful reading, and that the claim he reasoned out of that criticism was ‘absurd’. If he said so about the present point of Aristotle’s criticism, which he considers in much more length, one can imagine how he felt about the previous ones, which evidently were to him less ‘robust’.

 Aristotle, Physica, 188a2 5.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

437

Simplicius starts with setting things in order for Aristotle’s argument to be understood: Right upon the beginning of his treatise, Anaxagoras states that ‘All things were together, infinite in number and in smallness; for the small was infinite, too’. Moreover, he often says that ‘in everything there is a portion of everything except the Mind’. Hence, if the homoiomeries are infinite, and in each one of them there is everything, there would exist (indeed actually, not potentially) infinite flesh and blood and brain. The infinite quantity of flesh which exists in the infinite homoiomeries makes the whole of flesh infinite in size, and the same goes for blood, and brain, and evidently for gold, and for each one of all the other things of this world. Therefore, there will be a numerical plurality of infinite magnitudes, actually, an infinite number of them (with each infinite magnitude corresponding to each homoiomery), which is absurd (ὅπερ ἄλογον). For, by definition, we call ‘infinite magnitude’ that for which there is no magnitude external to it. Furthermore, this infinity assumed by Aristotle is not potential (καὶ οὐ δυνάμει τὸ ἄπειρον), as we see it in the case of things which either come to be or they are divided to infinity, but it is already an actual infinity (ἀλλ᾿ ἐνεργείᾳ ἤδη τὸ ἄπειρον): all things already exist ‘separately from one another’ and ‘being no less real’³⁶ than the things in which they are.³⁷ This means that Aristotle rendered an entirely self-defeating and absurd account of what Anaxagoras really said. However, there is more to that, and Simplicius marshals his argument to a greater extent, in a way that demolishes Aristotle’s account further: he adds that to argue that the homoiomeries are separate from another and yet they are infinite, is even more absurd (ἔτι δὲ ἀλογώτερον). For things which are separate from one another are limited in relation to one another. Aristotle says that these infinite elements are ‘separate’, not merely because flesh and bone, and each of the others, exist in the infinite separate homoiomeries, but because Anaxagoras himself says, ‘Nothing is like anything else’, which means that they are themselves separate from one another by virtue of their particular nature (τῇ οἰκείᾳ φύσει ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων κεχώρισται). This is the absurdity of Aristotle’s exposition, but Simplicius has more things to say, and he goes on like a storm: “The conclusion which Aristotle draws will seem even more absurd for another reason (καὶ κατ᾿ ἄλλον δὲ τρόπον ἔτι ἀτοπώτερον δόξει τὸ ὑπὸ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους συναγόμενον)”, which goes thus: if the homoiomeries are infinite, and everything is in everything, it follows that everything should be in each and every one of the infinite homoiomeries.

 Aristotle so describing Anaxagoras’ homoiomeries. Physica, 188a3 4.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 172.

438

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

Therefore, in every homoiomery there would be infinite amounts of flesh, bones, blood, and brain, and of all the other things, which are infinite. This goes on to infinity, since each thing contains everything, and, in turn, each of the things in that thing contains everything actually not potentially (καὶ ἀεὶ τοῦτο καίτοι ἐνεργείᾳ εἶναι πάντων ὑποκειμένων, ἀλλ᾿ οὐ δυνάμει). This is one more preposterous corollary stemming from Aristotle’s rendering, indeed ‘there is a multiple illogicality in such a supposition’ (πολλαχῶς οὖν τὸ ἄλογον ἐν τῇ τοιαύτῃ ὑποθέσει). For it is absurd to believe that it is possible for an infinite actual magnitude to exist within an actual finite magnitude (ὅτι ἐν πεπερασμένῳ μεγέθει ἄπειρον εἶναι μέγεθος, ἄλογον). Worse still, in this case, we should speak not of infinite things, but of ‘infinitely infinite’ ones (ἀπειράκις ἄπειρα): infinite things will exist actually (not potentially) in a tiny portion of flesh, and then infinite things in each of the infinite things, and so οn, ad infinitum. Moreover, it is absurd to say that the infinite homoiomeries should be separate from one another (ἄλογον δὲ καὶ τὸ ἄπειρα κεχωρισμένα ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων εἶναι), not merely because, by definition, all separate things are limited by one another, but also because an infinite magnitude cannot be composed of separate parts. For in that case, there would be something larger than the infinite, since the distance between the separate parts of the infinite added to the infinite would be larger than the infinite itself. Furthermore, the infinitely infinite will be a plurality, indeed infinite both in quantity and in magnitude; also, this infinity would be actual (ἄπειρον ἔσται καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ τοῦτο), not potential (that is, grasped and assumed to be so only theoretically). This is gathered from Aristotle saying, ‘since they are separate from one another, each of them is no less infinite’, which is what he means by ‘separate from one another, being no less real, and each infinite’.³⁸ Therefore, all the false premisses on which Aristotle based his caricature of Anaxagoras are demolished. Central among them is the notion of representing the immaterial principles as material elements. It is all to clear that Simplicius argues on the grounds of ineluctable logic alone: there is nothing to allow for the allegation that he instilled any aspect of Neoplatonism in his argument, according to current frivolous claims. It is instructive to see how Aristotle’s commentators received his presentation, and if any stand against it was ever taken. It will be surprising to find out that his remarks were received as gospel, with hardly any room for questioning the master’s theses being allowed whatsoever. We know that the exception

 Aristotle, Physica, l88a3 4.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

439

was Simplicius, but it would be informative to see how Alexander of Aphrodisias had doubts about Aristotle’s rendering of Anaxagoras, all the more so since never did Aristotle care or wish to quote from Anaxagoras, so as to allow his readers assess for themselves. According to the following quotation from Alexander by Simplicius, the former grasped some of Aristotle’s defective rendering, and sought to reinterpret Anaxagoras by explaining ‘everything in everything’ as meaning ‘everything in every material body’. Alexander of Aphrodisias appears willing to build on Aristotle’s argument and make it stronger. He wrote also a commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, which is not extant, but we have passages of it quoted by Simplicius in his own commentary on the same work of Aristotle. Alexander’s mood was not to exonerate Anaxagoras. Nevertheless, he struggled honestly to understand points which were baffling because of Aristotle’s distorted exposition, which he deemed too extravagant to accept, and another way should be followed in order to elucidate Anaxagoras’ theses (οὐχ οὕτως χρὴ τὸν λόγον εὐθύνειν).³⁹ Hence, he advanced a different way of criticizing the theory: when Anaxagoras said ‘everything is mixed with everything’, perhaps he did not mean the principles (οὐκ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν ἴσως ἔλεγεν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, therefore, Alexander dismisses Aristotle’s term ‘elements’), as if ‘everything was present within each principle’ (ὡς ἐν ἑκάστῃ τῶν ἀρχῶν πάντων ὄντων), effecting as a result that in each of the principles there is everything (ὡς ἐν ἑκάστῃ τῶν ἀρχῶν πάντων ὄντων). For in that case, they would not be principles (that is, absolutely simple entities), but ‘compounds’ (οὕτως γὰρ οὐδὲ ἀρχαὶ ἂν ἦσαν ἔτι, εἴπερ συγκρίματα ἦν). His alternative was that the meaning of Anaxagoras’ statement was that ‘everything was mixed with everything’ within each material body which is consisted of principles (ἀλλ᾿ ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν αἰσθητῶν σωμάτων τῶν ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν συγκεκριμένων πάντα ἔλεγε μεμῖχθαι), since all kinds of generations and emanations originate in the principles (ἐκ τούτων γὰρ καὶ αἱ γενέσεις καὶ αἱ ἐκκρίσεις). The ‘elements’ (so-called by Aristotle in this case) are neither purely simple, nor do they exist in themselves, nor is it possible to distinguish their distinct identity (τὰ γὰρ στοιχεῖα τὰ εἰλικρινῆ μήτε αἰσθητὰ εἶναι τὴν ἀρχήν, ἀλλὰ μηδὲ εἶναι καθ᾿ αὑτά· μηδὲ γὰρ διακριθῆναι ταῦτα δύνασθαι). However, this analysis was to no avail, since Alexander discovered that it simply changes the subject whereas the problem remains the same and unsolved: instead of pondering into the mysterious primal mixture, the problem that now arises is the mixture within each particular material object (ἀλλ᾿ ὁ ταῦτα λέγων οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ μεταφέρει τὸν ἔλεγχον εἰς τὰ συγκρίματα). Now,

 From this point onwards, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 173.

440

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

each object is supposed to be a mixture containing everything in it (εἰ γὰρ ἕκαστον τῶν αἰσθητῶν μῖγμα ὂν ἐκ πάντων ἐστί) and it appears to become what it specifically is (τόδε τι εἶναι δοκεῖ) on account of that which prevails in this particular mixture (κατὰ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν ἐν τῇ μίξει). Within each compound there is everything else, and it is only the prevailing homoiomery that makes a thing to be what it is specifically (ἔστι δὲ πάντα καὶ ἐν τοῖς συγκρίμασι κατ᾿ ἐπικράτειαν ἑκάστης τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν χαρακτηριζόμενον). Since the ὁμοιομέρειαι are infinite in number, every other thing is produced from all of them (ἀπείρων οὐσῶν ἄλλο κατ᾿ ἄλλην, ἅπερ καὶ ἐκκρίνεται εἴπερ πάντα ἐκ πάντων) with a certain homoiomery prevailing each time, thus allotting a specific character to each particular thing. Therefore, since material things are produced by an infinite number of principles (which also he calls homoiomeries), which are all present in each one of them at the same time, it follows that there is an infinite number of infinite material objects (ἄπειρα ἄρα καὶ τὰ αἰσθητά) alongside the infinity of the homoiomeries. In that case, there is no real distinction, even though the fundamental doctrine of Anaxagoras was that the Mind distinguished each and every one of the principles and made each one of them different from all others.⁴⁰ Subsequently, a certain piece of flesh should be infinite in terms of both mass and size (εἰ οὖν ἕκαστον αὐτῶν ἐκ πάντων μέμικται, ἄπειρος ἂν εἴη ἡ σὰρξ καὶ τῷ πλήθει καὶ τῷ μεγέθει). By the same token, every material species should be assumed to have a double infinity (καὶ τῶν ἄλλων εἰδῶν ἕκαστον ἄπειρον ὁμοίως), since it is one of infinite number of things and it contains infinite homoiomeries within itself. In addition to this double infinity, if every material object is produced from another by means of emanation, then the result is infinite infinity, too (εἰ δὲ καὶ ἐκ παντὸς αἰσθητοῦ πᾶν γίνεται τῇ ἐκκρίσει, εἴη ἂν καὶ οὕτως ἀπειράκις τὸ ἄπειρον). For in that case everything will be present in everything that is produced by way of emanation, and each one of them will give rise to another infinite number of material objects (ἐν γὰρ τῷ ἐκκρινομένῳ πάλιν πάντα ἐνέσται καὶ ἐκκριθήσεται). This infinity upon infinity will go on for ever, each time producing a new infinity which will be added to the previous ones (καὶ ἐπ᾿ ἐκείνων τῶν ἐκκριμάτων τὰ αὐτὰ ῥηθήσεται. καὶ τοῦτο ἐπ᾿ ἄπειρον). For the material things which are produced by emanation are themselves mixed (τὰ γὰρ ἐκκρινόμενα τὰ μικτὰ καὶ αἰσθητά ἐστι), since only those which were in the first place unmixed (that is, the principles)⁴¹ cannot be produced by emanation (διότι τὰ ἄμικτα τὴν ἀρχὴν οὐδὲ ἐκκριθῆναι οἷα τέ ἐστιν). Alexander’s argument  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 291; cf. op. cit. p. 340: ἀλλὰ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ τῷ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι μεμῖχθαι λέγοντι καὶ μηδὲν διὰ τοῦτο τῶν ὄντων εἰλικρινῶς εἶναι ὃ λέγεται εἶναι.  This was Alexander’s initial premiss (supposedly alternative to that of Aristotle’s) on which this syllogism was based entirely.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

441

was based on the assumption that the things that are produced from other things are perceptible mixtures. He grounded this on the major premiss that the primal things (that is, Anaxagoras’ principles) were unmixed in the beginning; hence, it would have been impossible for them to produce emanation (τὰ ἄμικτα τὴν ἀρχὴν οὐδὲ ἐκκριθῆναι οἷα τέ ἐστιν). Alexander adduces the alternative syllogism with the expressed purpose to ‘help’ the theory, but then he refutes it. His exegesis was doomed to lead nowhere, because, to Anaxagoras, nothing (meaning, none of the principles) is separable from anything else: therefore, the components themselves of any material body will turn out to be mixtures of all components, and so on ad infinitum. This means that, in any case, we would be faced with the objection of Aristotle. The fatal mistake of Alexander was that, although he wished to take some distances from Aristotle, he did not go far enough: he spoke of ‘principles’ in Anaxagoras, but he saw them as material, too. Probably Alexander’s problem was that he found it impossible to determine what Anaxagoras’ χρήματα and σπέρματα actually were (and he wavers between styling them either ‘principles’ or ‘elements’). Nevertheless, it is evident that he was not happy with Aristotle styling them ‘elements’, which is why, at one point, he is explicitly critical of Aristotle for having ‘misused the term element’ (εἶπε στοιχεῖον, καταχρησάμενος τῇ λέξει) in the cases of Empedocles and Anaxagoras.⁴² This is the syllogism developed by Alexander of Aphrodisias as an alternative to that of Aristotle. His purpose ostensibly was to find a way out, in order for Anaxagoras’ statements to make some sense to Alexander himself. But Simplicius, who reported this in his own exposition, notes in disappointment: Thus, although Alexander came up with what appeared to be an argument of support, he eventually annulled this (οὕτως μὲν τὴν δοκοῦσαν εἶναι τῷ λόγῳ βοήθειαν ἐνεγκὼν ἀνεῖλε καὶ ταύτην ὁ ᾿Aλέξανδρος).⁴³

The fact is that never was Alexander’s aim to defend Anaxagoras: his actual motive was to defend Aristotle. He saw that Aristotle’s arguments about Anaxagoras were developed while no quotation of his own words was made, and Aristotle expounded that at his own liking. Even so, those arguments were self-defeating and sometimes too extravagant for any reader to believe that this was really Anaxagoras’ philosophy. The ‘help to argument’ (τῷ λόγῳ βοήθειαν) by Alexander, of which Simplicius spoke, was in fact one to Aristotle, so that Alexander would reach the same conclusion, which he actually did: even if Aristotle did

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 821 quoted supra, p. 152, note 222.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 173.

442

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

not grasp Anaxagoras’ philosophy accurately and argued on wrong grounds, it is still possible to sustain Aristotle’s final conclusions simply by reading Anaxagoras in a slightly different way. Both Aristotle and Alexander built their criticism of Anaxagoras on two premisses, namely, that the principles are both material and infinite in number. Once again, Simplicius shows that this leads nowhere other than absurd conclusions, and he pushes their argument further in order to show that, no matter how it is modified, illogical deductions cannot be escaped. He says then that perhaps Anaxagoras’ theory would be more plausible if one did not say that from a single perceptible thing some other perceptible thing would emanate (for example, from this amount of flesh alone a perceptible bone would emanate, and from that another perceptible thing could be produced in turn), but that everything is in each perceptible thing, and yet it is imperceptible (ἐνεῖναι μὲν ἑκάστῳ τῶν αἰσθητῶν πάντα, ἀναίσθητα δέ), and everything will be extracted from each and every the perceptible thing, but it will remain imperceptible, until from more perceptible things more things of the same kind are extracted and combined, and so they become perceptible; while everything is once again present in each of the compounds, each one of them is characterized by what predominates in it (κατὰ δὲ τὴν ἐπικράτειαν ἑκάστου χαρακτηριζομένου). However, also from this argument, incongruous inferences would follow none the less: either it will not be the case that every perceptible thing will arise from every perceptible thing, as they maintain, or the conclusion about ‘infinitely many times as infinite’ will follow, as it happened above. Furthermore, even if it were assumed that the elements are infinite in quantity, it would follow that an infinite quantity of homoiomeries could be present within a finite perceptible thing, which would be also absurd, as before (ὁμοίως ἄλογον ἦν). Why so? Because the exponents of the theory (Aristotle, Alexander) took it for granted that these homoiomeries are material and infinite in number. It is then time for Simplicius to express his own interpretation of Anaxagoras by adducing textual evidence from that philosophy, which no other commentator did. Anaxagoras described the elements as infinite not in the sense that they are literally infinite and innumerable, but only as being incomprehensible to human intellect, although, in themselves, they are finite and circumscribable in terms of both nature and number. For, he says, ‘the Mind knew them all, [that is,] the things that are mixed together and the things that are separated off and separated apart; and [the Mind knew also] what they were to become and what they were’ (καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ διακρινόμενα καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

443

νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλον ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν, ὅσα νῦν μή ἐστι, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς).⁴⁴ By definition, the notion of knowledge itself being applied to things means (and imposes) a limit to them and bans infinity, since infinity is unknowable, and to be knowable is tantamount to being finite.⁴⁵ If the elements and the compounds of the elements were numerically infinite in actuality (ἐνεργείᾳ), not even the Mind would have known them or have set them in order. Setting in order is a certain arrangement; but arrangement does not apply to infinity; therefore, knowledge by the Mind is a finite conception, and it applies to finite things, not to infinite ones. Likewise, by ‘infinite’ (ἄπειρον), Anaxagoras did not mean a multitude that cannot be exhausted (ὡς ἀδιεξίτητον). This is clear from the fact that he described the Mind itself as infinite, through the words ‘and Mind is something infinite and self-ruling’.⁴⁶ Since then Anaxagoras did not actually say that the elements are infinite in kind, the compounds formed from them would not be infinite either: they should be finite, and there should be finite homoiomeries in each of them. Furthermore, Anaxagoras’ phrase, ‘All things were together’, does not mean that he simply and generally (ἁπλῶς) produced anything from anything. For he says plainly that, in the process of emanation, contraries emanate from their contraries, which means that this is not a random process. His words are, ‘And this rotation made them be separated off: the dense is separated from the rare, and the hot from the cold, and the light from the dark, and the dry from the wet’ (ἡ δὲ περιχώρησις αὕτη ἐποίησεν ἀποκρίνεσθαι. καὶ ἀποκρίνεται ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀραιοῦ τὸ πυκνὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ τὸ θερμὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ζοφεροῦ τὸ λαμπρὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ διεροῦ τὸ ξηρόν). Therefore, things do not come from one another haphazardly: never did Anaxagoras mean that flesh or brain can be extracted from water (ὥστε οὐ τὰ τυχόντα ἀπὸ τῶν τυχόντων, οὐδὲ ἐξ ὕδατος σὰρξ ἢ ἐγκέφαλος).⁴⁷ Once these two points are taken into account, then ‘Anax-

 Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 156; 165; 174; 177. Cf. commCael, p. 608.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 503: τὸ γὰρ περατοῦν περιέχει τὸ περατούμενον καὶ τὸ εἶδος τὴν ὕλην. εἰ δὲ πᾶσα μὲν γνῶσις ὅρος τις οὖσα καὶ περίληψις κατὰ τὸ εἶδος γίνεται. Cf. Origen, comm Matt, 13.1: ἄπειρα γὰρ τῇ φύσει οὐχ οἷον τε περιλαμβάνεσθαι τῇ περατοῦν πεφυκυίᾳ τὰ γινω σκόμενα γνώσει.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156; 164 (bis); 174; 176; 301: νοῦς δέ ἐστιν ἄπει ρον καὶ αὐτοκρατές.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 174. Likewise, John Philoponus dismissed Aristotle’s distortion: all things are produced from specific concurrences of homoiomeries, and any composite thing, even the universe itself, is only the product of such a concurrence; however, this does not mean that a specific form of thing is produced from a haphazard conjunction of homoiomeries (οὐ γὰρ ὁπωσοῦν ἐχουσῶν τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν πέφυκε τὸ εἶδος ἐπιγίνεσθαι). John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 103. Only Gennadius Scholarius did not notice the perceptive remarks of the

444

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

agoras will be exonerated from all the accusations made against him’ (καὶ οὕτως πάντα τὰ ἐπαχθέντα ἐγκλήματα διαφεύξεται ᾿Aναξαγόρας). Aristotle blamed Anaxagoras of random mixing ‘anything with anything’, and argued that ‘this is contrary to nature’. He knew that he was unfair to his predecessor (as Simplicius now demonstrates), which is probably why, at the same point, he adds, ‘if one were to follow his [sc. Anaxagoras’] doctrine carefully and interpret its meaning, perhaps he would be seen to be introducing a novel theory’.⁴⁸ For, at one point, Aristotle denied to Anaxagoras the idea that he spoke of two realities (which Aristotle calls στοιχεῖα, not ἀρχάς), although the former clearly described the ‘unmixed’ Mind, on the one hand, and the primal confusum, on the other, which were stated as two different things.⁴⁹ Simplicius further argues that, if the principles are not infinite, neither they themselves nor the things that come from them will be unknowable, nor will it be possible to speak of smaller or larger infinities, nor infinite extraction will be there, as if all kinds of things were made of infinite mass. Instead, entirely different questions are invited, following Anaxagoras’ thesis that things are produced by emanation (ἀλλ᾿ εἴπερ ἄρα, ἑτέρων δεήσει πρὸς αὐτὸν λόγων, εἴπερ κατὰ ἔκκρισιν τὴν γένεσιν λέγει). He actually means that the term ἔκκρισις (which I translate ‘emanation’ or ‘procession’ or ‘extraction’ or ‘secretion’) is a qualitative change, a mutation (ἀλλοίωσις), that Aristotle did not grasp, which is why he censured Anaxagoras for what was in fact one of his most ingenious ideas, namely, that coming-to-be and perishing is no other than mutation.⁵⁰ To this purpose, Simplicius poses questions about natural instances that cannot be accounted for by means of the crude notion of empirical ‘extraction’ from a certain stuff, as Aristotle argued. Such questions are the following: How could so much of air be extracted by evaporation from a ladleful of water if there is no qualitative change? What is it that makes a human being from flesh and bones and the rest? Certainly, no human is already present in them; and if we see a human coming from what is not a human, what is there to prevent flesh itself proceeding from whatever

two commentators, and took Aristotle’s words to the letter unquestionably. commPhys, 41 42: ὁ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἔθετο ἕκαστον μέρος τοῦ κόσμου μεμιγμένον τῷ ὅλῳ ὁμοίως διὰ τὸ νομίζειν ὁτιοῦν ἐξ ὁτουοῦν γίνεσθαι· ὅθεν προήχθη εἰπεῖν καὶ τὸ Ἦν ὁμοῦ ποτὲ πάντα χρήματα.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 989a.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a b. John Philoponus followed Aristotle’s Cate goriae, 15a (six kinds of motion) and averred that ‘mutation’ is not the same process as ‘gener ation’ (οὐ ταὐτὸν ἔσται ἀλλοίωσις καὶ γένεσις). commGenCorr, p. 43. Cf. his analysis in op. cit. pp. 8 10; 14; 20; 24; 43; 72; 207 8. About the kinds of motion in Aristotle, see p. 209, note 48.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

445

is not flesh? And, in general, if Anaxagoras’ detractors do not venture to construct non-homoiomerous things, like animals and plants, by emanation, why is it necessary for the homoiomerous things to come into being in that way? Or, why are the homoiomerous things non-generated and indestructible, but the things formed from them should be generated and destructible? He has of course the answer to these questionss, which go as follows: what appears as generation and perishing in the natural world is only different ways in which the immaterial principles either concur or cease to concur. Whether the case is that water turns to vapour or to snow, or an embryo becomes a human being, the function is always the same: it is the principles that concur and collaborate with each other in order for a certain being (an object, or an animal, or a phenomenon) either to come to be or to perish. Aristotle’s own understanding of ‘extraction’ explains none of these processes, because of his crude premisses. Actually, Simplicius exposes him, adding that Aristotle censured Anaxagoras by using the example of ‘brain’ as a homoiomery, even though brain is not a homoiomery: instead, it is a compound organic part, with veins and arteries supplying it, and membranes dividing it.⁵¹ Simplicius did not exhaust his battery of arguments concerning the obloquy about ‘infinity’ laid at the door of Anaxagoras. He returns to this a short while later, commenting on Aristotle’s statement, ‘it is better to have fewer and finite primal substances, as Empedocles does’, rather than infinite ones, as Anaxagoras.⁵² Simplicius observes that, even though Empedocles and Anaxagoras agree οn ‘the way of generation’ (ὁ τρόπος τῆς γενέσεως), since both of them explain it by conjunction and separation off (κατὰ σύγκρισιν καὶ διάκρισιν), they have different views about the number of the elements. Aristotle said that it is better to have fewer and finite primal substances, because the finite is better than the infinite, and it is comprehensible by human perception and science, whereas the infinite is neither perceptible nor knowable. Besides, it is better for science to posit as less principles as possible. This is a bit of irony, once we recall that Aristotle accused Anaxagoras of employing many principles instead of few, in the teeth of the fact that it was Anaxagoras who posited only one kind of motion instead of the six ones of Aristotle. Simplicius knew this perfectly well and goes ahead with his defence: Of things generable and perishable, some are generated and others perish; therefore, destruction of those which were generated earlier serve to generation of subsequent ones (ἀρκοῦσιν αἱ τῶν προτέρων φθοραὶ ἀρχαὶ ἄλλοις γενέσεων

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 175.  Aristotle, Physica, 188a17 18. Simplicius, op. cit. p. 178.

446

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

εἶναι). Those who, like Democritus, postulate infinitely many worlds, necessarily say that, like the different worlds, the elements are infinite in number, too. However, not even they are bound to say that these elements are infinite in kind. On the other hand, those, such as Anaxagoras and Empedocles, who maintain that there is a single world, are in no need of postulating infinity whatsoever (ὅσοι δὲ ἕνα τὸν κόσμον φασίν, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς, οὐδεμίαν τῆς ἀπειρίας ἀνάγκην ἔχουσι). This is why Empedocles appeared to Aristotle as doing better by saying that the elements are finite: for earth, water, air, and fire are simpler than everything they produce. In this respect, they are more genuine principles than those postulated by one who thinks that the elements are similar to the things composed of them. This is why he escaped Aristotle’s criticism concerning the consequences resulting from postulation of infinity. However, Simplicius showed that Anaxagoras did not aver that the elements are infinite in the sense of being innumerable: even if one wished to style Anaxagoras’ primary substances elements, it has been also shown that he calls them ‘infinite’ not in the sense of ‘innumerable multitude’ (οὐχ οὕτως ἄπειρα ὡς ἀπεριήγητα τῷ πλήθει). Moreover, those which Anaxagoras understood as ‘elements’ were not such compounds as earth and aether, but the more simple and principal qualities (τὰς ἁπλᾶς καὶ ἀρχοειδεῖς ποιότητας), since he said, ‘It was this rotation which made them separate out, and the dense is separated from the rare, and the cold from the hot, and the bright from the dark, and the dry from the wet’; moreover, ‘the dense and dry and cold and the dark came together here, where now the earth is, and the rare and the hot and the dry went out to the extremity of the aether’. Therefore, once Anaxagoras saw such qualities (dense, rare, cold, hot, bright, dark, dry, wet) as more simple than compounds (earth, water, air, fire), he should be credited with pursuing more fundamental elements than Empedocles (᾿Aναξαγόρας ἀρχοειδέστερον δόξει τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους τὰ περὶ τῶν στοιχείων φιλοσοφεῖν).⁵³ In other words, Simplicius places Anaxagoras rather than Empedocles on a higher pedestal. Following this analysis, one might be apt to surmise that Anaxagoras’ ‘principles’ can be identified with ‘qualities’ or indeed with ‘contraries’. This is not the case, however. The principles themselves are ontologically higher to both of them. In fact, neither a single quality nor any pair of contraries constitutes a principle: all of these exist and make their mark because of the principles, they are ontologically posterior to principles.⁵⁴

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 179; cf. pp. 156; 174; 176.  See infra, pp. 465; 866; 885; 1331; 1489 93.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

447

Identifying the principles with ‘qualities’ is a resolution by some modern scholars, following the general practice of reading the D-K fragments and supplementary editions as they stand (that is, out of any context), and then engaging in speculation as to what these principles may possibly be. However, this is like the effort to decipher a Delphic oracle, since the entire enterprise normally ignores the testimonies available to us beyond the ‘D-K’ facility. Except for one modern editorial erroneous addition of the name of Anaxagoras in Galen’s text,⁵⁵ no ancient source did ever assert that the principles of Anaxagoras should be identified with qualities. Sextus Empiricus reports that ‘the followers of Anaxagoras make all qualities dependent on the homoiomeries’.⁵⁶ In other words, the principles are the causes that bring about qualities upon perceptible things. Although Themistius, paraphrasing Aristotle, said that Anaxagoras posited ‘infinite principles, thus banning any knowledge of things’ (ἀρχὰς ἀπείρους, which Simplicius rebutted), he adds that ‘he set a limit to qualities in terms of their number’ (τὰς ποιότητας ἀριθμῷ περιώριζεν), which means that Themistius believed that ‘principles’ are one thing and they are numerically infinite, but ‘qualities’ are quite another and they are finite.⁵⁷ Simplicius clearly associated ‘changes and mutations’ (μεταβολὰς καὶ ἀλλοιώ Galen, De Naturalibus Facultatibus, p. 4. In any event, Galen does not mention the name of Anaxagoras, which was an erroneous addition by Galens’ modern editors, namely, G. Helmreich, J. Marquardt, and I. Müller. I discuss this in a moment.  Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.33 34: καὶ τοῖς περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν, πᾶσαν αἰσθητὴν ποιότητα περὶ ταῖς ὁμοιομερείαις ἀπολείπουσιν. This means that Anaxagoras explains qualities by means of the homoiomeries. The expression ἀπολείπω τινὰ περί τι means ‘surpass’ or ‘leave someone or something behind’, thus putting it in an inferior position. Cf. Isocrates, Panegyricus, 50: “And so far has our city surpassed the rest of mankind in thought and in speech’ (τοσοῦτον δ᾿ ἀπολέλοιπεν ἡ πόλις ἡμῶν περὶ τὸ φρονεῖν καὶ λέγειν). In Sextus Empiricus himself, we have an exactly parallel structure showing that ἀπολείπω τινὰ περί + Dative, means ‘make something dependent on’ or ‘explain something out by means of’. Cf. Adversus Dogmati cos 2 (= Adversus Logicos 2), 8.13: οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Ἐπίκουρον καὶ Στράτωνα τὸν φυσικὸν δύο μόνον ἀπολείποντες, σημαῖνον τε καὶ τυγχάνον, … καὶ περὶ τῇ φωνῇ τὸ ἀληθὲς καὶ ψεῦδος ἀπολείπειν (meaning, Epicurus and Strato make either truth or falsity dependent on sound). Had Sextus meant to say ‘they posit homoiomeries to be qualities’, he would have used Accusative, namely, πᾶσαν αἰσθητὴν ποιότητα περὶ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀπολείπουσιν. Cf. Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.239; Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 15; 55; 110; 163; 217; 260; 300; 302; 441; Ad versus Dogmaticos 2 (= Adversus Logicos 2), 13; 130; et passim. In case only ἀπολείπω+Dative (without περί) is used, instead of ἀπολείπω περὶ+Dative, then the meaning is ‘assign an attribute to something’, which is irrelevant to the present structure. Cf. Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 2.219: εἰ δὲ ἰδίαν ὑπόστασιν αὐτοῖς ἀπολείπουσιν (‘if they assign self existence to them [scil. genera and forms]’). Nevertheless, in Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1),363, Sextus, writing under dead hand of the Aristotelian past, classified the homoimeries among material principles.  Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 14.

448

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

σεις) as stemming from either ‘homoiomeries, according to Anaxagoras’, or ‘from atoms, according to Democritus’, or from changes of ‘qualities, according to Aristotle’ (εἴτε τὰ τῶν ποιοτήτων, ὡς ᾿Aριστοτέλης). Therefore, the specific character of things stems not from ‘qualities’, but from ‘homoiomeries’, which is the term of the Anaxagorean principles that Simplicius used by convention because he quoted and commented on Aristotle’s text.⁵⁸ Likewise, the translation of Thomas Aquinas’ commentary by Gennadius Scholarius,⁵⁹ endorses the words of Aristotle, which show that neither did Aristotle himself identify the ‘homoimeries’ with ‘qualities’. As a matter of fact, for all his criticism, Aristotle clearly held that both ‘quantity’ and ‘quality’ are what homoimeries have, not what they are themselves.⁶⁰ Modern confusion about ‘qualities’ should not come as a surprise, since in Antiquity there was no less controversy about it.⁶¹ Simplicius remarked that the term ‘quality’ (ποιότης) was first introduced by Plato, who acknowledged that this was an abstruse notion to grasp.⁶² Then, Simplicius reports the wide variety of theories that surrounded it; one point ‘which was disputed by everyone’ (διαμφισβητεῖται δὲ καὶ τοῦτο παρὰ πᾶσιν) was whether qualities were a sort of underlying causes to which things owe not only what they are, but also their existence itself. Also, it was a point of controversy whether qualities are selfsubsistent and act upon themselves, or they are in need of other causes for them to appear.⁶³ In view of such a long-standing debate, which was alive as late as during Simplicius’ lifetime, to mistake Anaxagoras’ principles for qualities would have been not unexpected. And yet, during both the Classical and the Late Antiquity this did not happen at all. There is only a single reference by Galen, as mentioned above, who did not really mention the name of Anaxagoras. He reports that ‘there are some philosophers, who believe that the qualities themselves exist in formless matter’ (τῆς ὑποκειμένης οὐσίας), and ‘they are unchangeable and immutable’ (ἀμεταβλήτους δὲ καὶ ἀτρέπτους) ‘from one cosmic period to another’ (ἐξ αἰῶνος εἰς αἰῶνα). The visible qualities (καὶ τὰς φαινομένας ταύτας) occurring on matter  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1069.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii in Aristotelis De Physico Au dito, 1.85, commenting on Aristotle, Physica, 188a9. Aristotle argued that, since in the primal fu sion there is neither quality nor quantity, the Nous of Anaxagoras desired things that are impos sible.  Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 188a9.  See infra, p. 463, Simplicius following Iamblichus in criticizing Plotinus’ ideas about what a ‘quality’ is.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 208; he quotes from Plato, Theaetetus, 182a.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 208 9.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

449

are simply ‘mutations, by means of conjunction and disjunction’ (ἀλλοιώσεις τῇ διακρίσει τε καὶ συγκρίσει). Then, the modern editors added in brackets [ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας].⁶⁴ This is an erroneous emendation, since Anaxagoras did not believe in ‘cosmic periods’, he did not believe in beginningless formless matter, and he did not believe that the qualities themselves exist in formless matter.⁶⁵ Besides, Simplicius, reporting Porphyry, advised that ‘conjunction and disjunction’ (σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις) was sustained by Democritus and Empedocles, ‘mutation’ (ἀλλοίωσις) as a process of generation was maintained by Anaximenes, whereas ‘all things were together’ was a distinctly Anaxagorean doctrine,⁶⁶ not to mention that ‘mutation’ (ἀλλοίωσις) meaning ‘change of quality’ (ἡ κατὰ ποιότητα μεταβολή) was also a Stoic tenet. However, at the same point of his commentary, Simplicius assures that all of these doctrines were expounded by Anaxagoras none the less. I should have thought that the fact that the notions of cosmic periods and underlying matter are involved, makes it likely that it was not Anaxagoras that Galen had in mind; rather, it was Chrysippus, since the testimony about him comes also from the same author, namely, Galen,⁶⁷ who uses the idea more than once.⁶⁸ Therefore, the case is that we are upon a testimony to Stoic philosophy. This is important because Galen advises that, along with all other debts to Anaxagoras, the Stoics also made use of the notion that things come to be and perish by means of ‘conjunction and disjunction’ (σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις), which would have been all too natural for them to do, considering how extensively and essentially they relied on Anaxagoras. As I discuss in chapter 9, about Anaxagoras’ influence on Stoicism, it comes as no surprise that the founder of the school, namely Zeno of Citium, turned to Anaxagoras for inspiration, and naturally appears closer to him, notwithstanding his own novel axioms. In this context, a testimony by Arius Didymus in telling: to Zeno, matter proper was everlasting and the sum total of it throughout the entire universe was fixed; it could become neither more nor less. However, ‘the parts of matter do not remain the same, but they undergo division and mixture’ (τὰ δὲ μέρη ταύτης οὐκ ἀεὶ ταὐτὰ διαμένειν ἀλλὰ διαιρεῖσθαι καὶ συγχεῖσθαι)’, and matter itself ‘is permeated by the universal Logos’ (διὰ ταύτης δὲ διαθεῖν τὸν τοῦ

 Galen, De Naturalibus Facultatibus, p. 4.  See the notion of quality being discussed in relation to principles in Introduction, p. 52, and chapter 1, pp. 121; 125 6.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163.  Chrysippus, fr. 494 (SVF, II.161.4), apud Galen, De Methodo Medendi, p. 46.  Galen, De Semine, p. 563. Plotinus argued against this conception. Enneades, VI.3.25. Simpli cius attributed this idea to Plato (commCateg, p. 429) and to Aristotle none the less (commPhys, p. 1098; cf. p. 1265. Also, John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 239). See chapter 6, pp. 401 2.

450

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

παντὸς λόγον). Now, Zeno described the sundry transformations of matter by means of ‘mixing up’ and ‘division’ of its ‘parts’,⁶⁹ and it is hard not to observe that this is only one alternative (yet not too different) way of adumbrating the ‘conjunction and disjunction’ (σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις) of his Presocratic predecessors. Likewise, Cleanthes described the same process by means of the same terms, namely ‘mixing’ and ‘disjunction’ (μίγνυνται καὶ αὖθις διακρίνονται): a seed is a certain concurrence of logoi, which function as long as it is necessary for generation and maintainance of everything that comes to be; then, sooner or later, the logoi part ways from each other, but then they still belong to the unity of all universe.⁷⁰ Simplicius made the crucial distinction that ‘the elevated form’ (τὸ ἐξῃρημένον εἶδος), even if it happens to be a universal (such as whiteness or humanity), is not a ‘quality’ (ἀλλὰ ποιότης οὐκ ἔστιν). For the logoi are prior and superior to qualities (τῶν γὰρ ποιῶν προηγουμένως εἰσὶν οἱ λόγοι), which means that qualities are not the causes, or logoi, that give rise to qualities themselves (οὐκ ἔσονται λόγοι ἑαυτῶν αἱ ποιότητες), nor are qualities logoi which generate other logoi out of themselves, even if these logoi were to be understood as ones that engender only qualities (ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ λόγοι εἰσὶν αἱ ποιότητες διδόντες ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτῶν λόγους ἑτέρους γεννήματα ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτῶν, εἴπερ ὅλοι τῶν ποιῶν εἰσιν). Since quality may be applied to either corporeal or incorporeal entities, if qualities were posited as logoi, the case would be that one logos would remain still in the realm of incorporeality, whereas another logos departs from it and becomes part of the corporeal reality (ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ μένει ἕτερος, ὁ δὲ προέβη εἰς τὸ ἐκτός), or one logos is incorporeal and another is corporeal (ἢ ὁ μέν ἐστιν ἀσώματος, ὁ δὲ σωματοειδής), or one is indivisible whereas another is divisible (ἢ ὁ μὲν ἀμέριστος, ὁ δὲ μεριστός), by virtue of all the qualities being logoi (ὅλοι γάρ εἰσιν τῶν ποιῶν). But this is impossible, since there is not a single logos whose nature would involve a twofold action (ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ εἷς ἐστι λόγος διπλᾶς ἔχων τὰς ἐνεργείας), and none of them is the same with another, as Anaxagoras taught. Then, Simplicius goes on with exalting the supreme principle, namely, the Mind, which he styles Logos, following the long established tradition. By being participated in, it is this, not quality, which makes things what they are (καὶ ὅτι μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν τὸ ἐξῃρημένον καὶ ἀμέθεκτον εἶδος ἡ ποιότης, ἀλλὰ τὸ μετεχόμενον λόγος, δῆλον). But how is it possible for the Mind to be ‘participated

 Zeno, fr. 87, apud Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.11.5a [Arius Didymus, Physica (fragmenta), fr. 20].  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.17.3 [apud Arius Didymus, Physica (fragmenta), fr. 38. Cleanthes, fr. 497]: Καὶ ὥσπερ τινὲς λόγοι τῶν μερῶν εἰς σπέρμα συνιόντες μίγνυνται καὶ αὖθις διακρίνονται γενομένων τῶν μερῶν, οὕτως ἐξ ἑνός τε πάντα γίνεσθαι καὶ ἐκ πάντων εἰς ἓν συγκρίνεσθαι, ὁδῷ καὶ συμφώνως διεξιούσης τῆς περιόδου.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

451

in’ once the Anaxagorean one is distinct and unmixed with anything apart from itself? This is the delicate point at which (very smoothly) Simplicius makes the crucial distinction, actually an Anaxagorean one, while attributing it to Aristotle: on the one hand, he describes the supreme Anaxagorean Mind, which he styles ‘the one Logos’ (εἷς μέν ἐστι λόγος); on the other, he speaks of the logos which is proximate to a thing and it gives rise to it (in other words, the Anaxagorean principles or logoi): Simplicius opts for styling it in an Aristotelian mood, namely ‘the logos which grants form’ (ὁ κατὰ τὴν μορφὴν λόγος). On the face of it, this appears as affinity between Anaxagoras and Aristotle, which is not surprising in view of Aristotle’s debts to his predecessor, which are discussed also in chapter 8. However, Simplicius also embarks on pointing out their differences. 1. The Mind is ‘immovable activity’ (ἀκίνητον ἐνέργειαν);⁷¹ it carries out all of its works (ποιεῖν πάντα τὰ καθ᾿ ἑαυτὸν ἔργα) neither by means of corporeal instruments (ἄνευ δὲ ὀργάνων σωματικῶν), nor by being dislodged from another place (καὶ ἄνευ μοχλείας πάσης), nor by performing any kind of spatial movement (καὶ χωρὶς σωματικῆς πάσης κινήσεως). This active logos is not an immovable idea contemplating itself, nor does it assume action by either being contemplated, or by being requested to do anything (οὐχ ὡς θεωρῶν ἑαυτὸν οὔτε ὡς ἐκ θεωρίας οὔτε ὡς ἐκ ζητήσεως παραγινόμενος); but, as it were, it acts and gives whatever it has (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἔχων καὶ διδοὺς ἅπερ ἔχει) by being what it is (ὡς αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι ποιῶν); what it does is what it has, and it carries out everything by being what it is (ὡς ἐν τῷ μένειν τὰ πάντα ἀπεργαζόμενος). 2. ‘The logos which grants form’ (ὁ κατὰ τὴν μορφὴν λόγος) is different from the Mind/ Logos/ Immovable Mover. This is the lowest agent from that realm of incorporeality and it is not itself the source of its own action (ἔσχατος γὰρ οὗτος καὶ οὐδὲν ποιεῖ),⁷² since it acts at the behest of the Mind. By contrast, the Mind itself ‘performs many things, and it is not the last one’ (ὁ δὲ ποιεῖ πολλὰ καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν τελευταῖος). By the same token, the proximate logos which acts upon matter ‘is considered lifeless’ (καὶ ὁ μὲν ἄψυχος θεωρεῖται), but the Mind ‘has a certain manifestation of life’ (ὁ δὲ ἔχων τινὰ ζωῆς ἔμφασιν). Likewise, the Mind can be understood in terms of his activity (κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν νοεῖται), whereas a logos

 Aristotle’s ἐνέργεια does not have to be always translated ‘actuality’, but at points it means ‘activity’. It may even mean ‘active actuality’, as in De Anima, 430a17 18: Καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια, which was copied even by Proclus (The ologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 66). See infra, pp. 978;, note 694; p. 1225.  This is reminiscent of Origen’s notion of ‘the logos of this world’ which is the last of the in corporeal and the first of the corporeal ones. See pp. 1401 10.

452

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

acting in the universe has not energy of its own (ἀνενέργητος).⁷³ Simplicius then can determine ‘what kind of being the logos of quality is’ (ποδαπὸς οὖν λόγος ὁ τῆς ποιότητος;) and, by parity of reason, of what kind a logos is in general. It is evident that quality is not the exalted and imparticipable form;⁷⁴ instead, it is something that participates in a logos (καὶ ὅτι μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν τὸ ἐξῃρημένον καὶ ἀμέθεκτον εἶδος ἡ ποιότης, ἀλλὰ τὸ μετεχόμενον λόγος, δῆλον). This is why Simplicius feels he can speak of ‘the logos of a certain quality’, meaning that the logos is the cause giving rise to a certain quality. Therefore, whether the logos of a certain quality exists in either small or big things, this is one and the selfsame one (ὅθεν ἐάν τε ἐν σμικρῷ ἐάν τε ἐν μεγάλῳ ὁ τῆς ποιότητος ὑπάρχῃ λόγος, εἷς καὶ ὁ αὐτὸς ὑπάρχει), since it is itself divided indivisibly, while acting upon per ceptible bodies (ἀλλ᾿ ἔστιν ἀμερίστως περὶ τὰ σώματα μεριζόμενος).⁷⁵

Asserting that a logos acting upon either small or big things is the same one, is no different from Anaxagoras’ proposition that ‘the Mind is the same, whether the small or the big one’ (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων),⁷⁶ and ‘the Mind rules over all animated thing, whether big or small’ (καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ μείζω καὶ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ).⁷⁷ At the same time, however, following Anaxagoras who maintained that all the principles are unlike each other, Simplicius explains that ‘there is not a single logos which has a double character of action’ (ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ εἷς ἐστι λόγος διπλᾶς ἔχων τὰς ἐνεργείας), which is the selfsame proposition.⁷⁸ Consequently, he employs the Anaxagorean language without inhibition: the logos of quality is in no way ‘perfect’ in itself, and one cannot determine this as a certain strictly confined quid (τέλειος μὲν καὶ ὡρισμένος παντάπασιν οὐδαμῶς

 Simplicius, commCateg, pp. 218 9.  The author who wrote using the name of Simplicius (perhaps Simplicius himself) made the distinction between the soul as a formative principle, which ‘immediately participates in the forms’ (προσεχῶς ἐχομένη τῶν εἰδῶν), and the supreme exalthed and imparticipable forms. Simplicius, commAnim, p. 218: καὶ διοίσει δηλαδὴ τὸ μετεχόμενον τοῦτο εἶδος καὶ τῶν πρώτων καὶ ἀμεθέκτων εἰδῶν ὡς μετεχόμενον καὶ οὐ πάντῃ μεῖναν ἐν ἑαυτῷ οὐδὲ ὅρος ὢν χωριστός, ἀλλ᾿ ἑτέρου ὑπάρχων τῆς ψυχῆς, αὐτὸ δὲ τοῦτο ὅρος τῆς εἰς τὸ ὁριζόμενον ὑποβάσης. The au thor believes that all of this can be attributed to Aristotle.  Simplicius, commCateg, pp. 218 9.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 156 & 175.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 219.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

453

ἐστιν). For a logos is one and many (ἓν καὶ πολλά),⁷⁹ the logoi are both united and distinct from each other, they are both here and everywhere, both now and ever. A principle/logos is not confined in any spatial place, since the logoi are all in all, and they act once a material entity and certain circumstances call for it.⁸⁰ Nevertheless, it ‘mixes itself with what is entirely incomplete and indefinite’ (μίγνυται γὰρ πρὸς τὸ ἀτελὲς πάντῃ καὶ ἀόριστον), that is, matter proper, even though a logos itself is neither the lowest of being⁸¹ nor an indeterminate one (ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ ἔσχατος πάντῃ καὶ ἀόριστός ἐστιν), but it ‘decorates every material entity in an orderly manner’ (διακοσμεῖ γὰρ τὸ ὑλικὸν πᾶν τεταγμένως), it ‘takes care of it’ (καὶ ἐπιμελεῖται αὐτοῦ), and, ‘which is most important of all’ (καὶ τὸ μέγιστον), this logos is united with things so as to bring about one single entity’ (εἰς ἓν ὁ τοιοῦτος λόγος συνέρχεται)’.⁸² This is why it would be perhaps possible to allow that the peculiar perceptible form of a thing (τοῦ κατὰ τὴν μορφὴν ἰδιώματος) is somehow a passion that this thing withstood (κατὰ πάθος ἐγγίνεται ὁ χαρακτὴρ οὗτος τοῦ σώματος); however, it is not correct to say that the logos of a thing, considered as a whole which determines a thing’s peculiar quality (περὶ παντὸς λόγου τοῦ κατὰ τὴν ποιότητα), is a passion. For the shape of a thing is different from its quality (τοῦ σχήματος ἡ ποιότης ἑτέρα ὑπάρχειν), because the shape is determined simply by the spatial limits of this thing; by contrast, a quality is prior to the shape (τὸ δὲ ποιὸν προηγεῖται τοῦ μεγέθους), since quality determines all the characteristics of a thing. The gist of old doctrines was plain to Simplicius seeking to discover harmony between different schools: there are certain causes which act upon matter, thus forming and distinguishing all perceptible objects. The Pythagorean numbers are the principles which bring about harmony and measure to the visible world, and they exist in themselves apart from perceptible things. In other

 Aristotle, Physica, 187a20: οἱ δ᾿ ἐκ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἐνούσας τὰς ἐναντιότητας ἐκκρίνεσθαι, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξίμανδρός φησι καὶ ὅσοι δ᾿ ἓν καὶ πολλά φασιν εἶναι, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ἐκ τοῦ μείγματος γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι ἐκκρίνουσι τἆλλα.  See supra, pp. 429 35.  A few lines before that point, Simplicius said that a logos which is involved in producing material things is ‘the last’ one. This is not a contradiction: a logos which gives rise to matter is the lowest of the logoi, all of which belong to the realm of incorporeality, but it is the highest one in the realm of corporeality. Cf. Origen, In Canticum Canticorum, pp. 230 3 & Scholia in Can ticum Canticorum, PG.17.265. Plotinus, Enneades, IV.6.3. This is how also the ‘soul’ was described, since the soul itself is a logos standing midway between incorporeality and corporeality. Proclus, commTim, p. 11. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 3.28, quoted on p. 790. Cf. John Philoponus, commA nim, p. 25: ἔσχατον γὰρ τῶν νοητῶν τε καὶ θείων ἡ ψυχή. However, unlike Neoplatonists, when Origen spoke of ‘first’ and ‘last’, he had in mind the ‘logoi’ themselves, not the ‘soul’.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 219.

454

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

words, the cosmos is arranged by virtue of intellectual and intelligent principles. Likewise, Plato made the Ideas self-existent and separate from the visible things that participate in the immutable Ideas, only because he thought that this could solve the question of change and knowledge. Aristotle sought to solve the problem of permanence and change by means of the notions of potentiality and actuality, expressed in terms of matter and form: perceptible things exist only by concurrence of these two factors, which are inseparable and impossible for either of them really to exist as an independent substance. Simplicius saw little new in this and made an extensive analysis in order to show that the notion of incorporeal and simple principles which are called logoi and they are involved with matter, was in effect a description of the Pythagorean numbers and the Anaxagorean principles alike. Perhaps one would argue that Simplicius’ exposition should be assessed in light of his overall spirit of reconciliation between major philosophies of the classical past. However, long before Simplicius, Heron of Alexandria (perhaps first century AD), who evidently had read all of Anaxagoras’ work, assured that this philosopher reflected after Pythagoras, namely, in terms of ‘incorporeal principles’, and he saw a fundamental spiritual lineage from Pythagoras to Anaxagoras, and then to Plato.⁸³ An analysis by Simplicius is illuminating and worth following, while bearing in mind that he demonstrated that it would be a mistake to identify Anaxagoras’ principles with ‘qualities’. In the following account, he departs from Aristotle’s analysis of ‘quality’ in order to explain the meaning attached to it during a span of time stretching form the Presocratic era and Aristotle (ἡ δὲ ᾿Aριστοτέλους περὶ τούτων δόξα καὶ τῶν παλαιῶν) until his own age, when his contemporaries called them ἑκτά, and accorded them an Anaxagorean sense (καὶ ὡς ἂν οἱ νῦν φαῖεν τὰ ἑκτά).⁸⁴ There is a fact which has not been appreciated, and sometimes not noticed: the Neoplatonists entertained the notion of ‘spermatic logos’ (σπερματικὸς λόγος) in relation to considerations of both the first principles and generation of perceptible things. As discussed also in chapter 9, this is a patrimony bequeathed by Anaxagoras: the Stoic usage of it was only a specific case of the Anaxagorean concept of incorporeal seeds (σπέρματα) being put to use while invested with a material import. Revisiting Anaxagoras was the way to hurdle the

 Heron of Alexandria (perhaps first century AD), Definitiones, 136.1: ὁ Πυθαγόρας ἄνωθεν τὰς ἀρχὰς αὐτῆς ἐπισκοπούμενος καὶ ἀΰλως καὶ νοερῶς τὰ θεωρήματα διερευνώμενος καὶ μετὰ τοῦ τον ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ ὁ Πλάτων καὶ Οἰνοπίδης ὁ Χῖος καὶ Θεόδωρος ὁ Κυρηναῖος καὶ Ἱπποκράτης πρὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 209.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

455

impasse of Plato’s theory of Ideas, notwithstanding the tribute paid to Plato by Neoplatonists. In fact, it was Origen who saw the value of making Anaxagoras’ theory a solution, whereas his younger friend Porphyry saw ‘the way to creation’ in like terms, even though Proclus wished to venerate Porphyry as a devout Neoplatonist, and perhaps rightly so.⁸⁵ It is then instructive to see how Simplicius expounded what he alleged to be Aristotle’s concept of quality, that is, one of the ten categories. It will turn out that the latter’s exposition is in fact an Anaxagorean account. The commentary of Simplicius on Aristotle’s Categories (where Aristotle divides what exists in the sensible world into ten categories, namely, substance, quantity, relative, quality, and the rest) is valuable for two reasons: first, because it recapitulates the approach to that treatise during the centuries until Simplicius wrote on the same subject; secondly, because there is a characteristic care to expound different views in a succinct and simple way, which makes it plausible to assume that the commentary was intended for beginners, after they were ‘purified’ by means of the teaching of Epictetus and of the Pythagorean Golden Verses, and before they were introduced to the syllogisms of Plato’s dialogues and Aristotle’s scientific and metaphysical considerations. Certainly, in this commentary of Simplicius, there are sophisticated analyses, and there is no need to assume that all of this was intended for beginners: the case might well have been that the text which we have is a synthesis of lessons taught in different classes, either introductory or advanced ones. Definitely, the section which I am going to consider belongs to introductory teaching, and it is a brief account of different views of the category of ‘quality’. Since Simplicius’ expressed aim was to present Plato and Aristotle as being in harmony on most things, it is important to see how he deals with the tantalizing question, namely, if the categories classify either mere terms, or concepts, or real beings. Thus, he notes that Plato was the first who used the name ‘quality’,⁸⁶ then he briefly reviews different conceptions of ‘quality’ by philosophers of old, concerning existence (or non-existence) of quality proper; also, whether this is corporeal or incorporeal, and whether quality is a primal cause or it arises from other causes prior to it. He also makes a general remark on the notion of ‘substantial qualities’ (οὐσιώδεις ποιότητας), ‘about which a lot of arguments have been exchanged’, but he does not mention that the debate originated with Porphyry’s introduction of this idea⁸⁷ while having Plotinus in mind.⁸⁸ Simplicius cares to  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 395.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 209. He quotes from Plato, Theaetetus, 182a.  Porphyry suggested that a definition of quality as something being distinct (i. e. a substantial quality) should be introduced. But it was objected that this was tantamount to introducing an

456

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

discuss in some length that the name ‘quality’ (ποιότης) was used as a synonym for ‘entrenched habit’ (ἕξις) by the Stoics,⁸⁹ whereas the members of the Academy called the particular qualitative content of this ἑκτόν, i. e. something that is possessed as a result of a certain ἕξις, in which case it bespeaks a specific natural coherence of objects, which makes them to be what they are and maintains their existence as such. Beyond the fact that ἑκτὸν is a term difficult to translate,⁹⁰ it is a delicate concept to grasp. Regarding translation, literally it indicates ‘that which is being possessed’ or ‘is being had in’ (τὸ ἐχόμενον).⁹¹ As to its content, let us read the example of Simplicius considering a man who is ‘healthy’: he is in this state (ὑγιαίνων) because he possesses the quality called ‘to be healthy’ (ὑγιαίνειν), which is in turn manifested as ‘health’ (ὑγίεια). The state of one being healthy arises from the condition of one’s body functioning properly: when we say that a man is ‘healthy’ (ὑγιαίνων), we do so because this man is in good ‘health’ (ὑγίεια). The category of ‘health’ stands ‘midway’ between the abstract notion of ‘state of health’ (ὑγιαίνειν) and the perfect physical function of a body which is characterized as ‘healthy’ (ὑγιαίνων). Likewise, speaking of ‘prudence’, there is a state ‘midway’ between the notion of ‘prudence’ (φρόνησις) and the ‘ultimate’ manifestation of it. The latter is the phenomenon of a man being prudent. What stands between the abstract notion of prudence and the ultimate manifestation of it, is ‘a prudent man’.⁹² Therefore, from ‘health’ (ὑγίεια) stems ‘being healthy’ (ὑγιαίνειν), and from ‘prudence’ (φρόνησις) stems ‘being prudent’ (φρονεῖν): the latter is called ‘predicate’ (κατη-

eleventh category to the ten ones posited by Aristotle. Porphyry, commCateg, pp. 95 6; 99; 115. Cf. Dexippus, commCateg, p. 49; 59. Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 25. Damascius, Princ, p. 28. Sim plicius, commCateg, pp. 101; 103; 112; 134; 203; 276; 286; commPhys, p. 826. John Philoponus, commCateg, pp. 73; 135; commGenCorr, p. 212; 232; 295; commAnim, p. 295; 323; commPhys, pp. 114; 156; De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 245. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, pp. 429; 431; 433; 434.  Plotinus, Enneades, VI.1.10; VI.3.14.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 209: ἐκάλουν δὲ τὴν ποιότητα καὶ ἕξιν οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς.  The translation of ἑκτὸν by Liddell and Scott as ‘quality’ (that is, ποιότης) is not accurate, especially in relation to this point where the delicate distinction between ἕξις and ἑκτὸν is can vassed by Simplicius, who just mentioned that ‘the Stoics used also the term ἕξις for ποιότης’. Therefore, it is ἕξις, not ἑκτόν, that means ‘quality’ (ποιότης), among other meanings, of course.  Cf. Herodian of Alexandria, De Prosodia Catholica, pp. 218; 900: ἑκτός = ὁ ἐχόμενος. So, Pseudo Arcadius of Antioch (grammarian, prob. fourth century AD), De Accentibus, p. 92. This is a ‘verbal name’ (ῥηματικὸν ὄνομα) derived from the verb ἔχω (‘have’), meaning that which ‘is being had’.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 210: μέσον δὲ ἀεὶ τὸ σῶμα τάττεται, οἷον ὁ φρόνιμος, τῆς τε πρώτης αἰτίας, οἷον τοῦ εἴδους τῆς φρονήσεως, καὶ τοῦ ἐσχάτου ἀπ᾿ αὐτῆς ἀποτελουμένου κα τηγορήματος, οἷον τοῦ φρονεῖν.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

457

γόρημα). What always stands between them is the body (μέσον δὲ ἀεὶ τὸ σῶμα τάττεται) through which the manifestation of a ‘predicate’ takes place. But this takes place only because such incorporeal entities as ‘health’ (ὑγίεια) and ‘prudence’ (φρόνησις) are ‘possessed’. This is precisely the ground on which these are called ‘possessed’ (ἑκτά). What is the actual import of ἑκτόν? It signifies several things, such as ‘relations’ (σχέσεις), various kinds of ‘movement’ (κινήσεις), ‘composite states made of movements and relations’ (συνθέτους ἐκ κινήσεων καὶ σχέσεων καταστάσεις), and other situations. Simplicius also explains that the term ἑκτόν, which is an adjective, initially was produced from the verb ἔχεσθαι. Later, however, it became a noun, and it was not associated with any predicate.⁹³ This means that the term became a technical one, and no longer did it indicate simply ‘quality’ (ποιότης), or ‘entrenched habit’ (ἕξις). Hence, a far wider sense was attached to it, so that, although any ‘quality’ (ποιότης) or ‘entrenched habit’ (ἕξις) is definitely an ἑκτόν (καὶ εἴ τι μὲν ἕξις καὶ ποιότης, πάντως τοῦτο καὶ ἑκτόν), the reverse proposition does not hold: ἑκτόν does not have to mean only ‘quality’ or ‘entrenched habit’, since ‘ἑκτόν is a notion which is wider than an entrenched habit’ or a state of being (ἐπὶ πλέον δὲ τὸ ἑκτὸν τῆς ἕξεως).⁹⁴ An anonymous author of a paraphrasis of Aristotle’s Categories grasped the point and put it more clearly. His testimony is in fact the exegesis of Simplicius, since this anonymous author copies largely from Simplicius’ own text. “Every ἕξις καὶ ποιότης is ἑκτόν. But the reverse does not hold (οὐκ ἔμπαλιν δέ)”.⁹⁵ This is why I suggested earlier that ἑκτὸν cannot be translated as ‘quality’. For eventually it came to be a general notion indicating the principles which are in things and make them to be individually what they are. Literally, this meant that which ‘is being had in’ by something or someone (ἀπὸ τοῦ ἔχεσθαι ἑκτὸν ἐκλήθη), and it involves not only essence itself, but also all essential and accidental attributes. In this way, Simplicius attached to the term ἑκτὸν a much wider import than that of ‘quality’; actually, he saw it as another name for the principles of such philosophers as Pythagoras and Anaxagoras: ἑκτὸν is a synonym for logoi, and this served to expressing different philosophies while arguing for harmony between them (though not identity). To Pythagoreans, the ‘causes’ that are inher-

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 209: ὕστερον δὲ κύριον ἔδοξεν τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ ἑκτοῦ καὶ μὴ ἀνακε κλάσθαι ἀπὸ κατηγορήματος. John Philoponus did not wish to go as far as Simplicius did; hence, he did not allow for τὸ ἑκτὸν to be placed on such high a pedestal. Cf. John Philoponus, commCateg, pp. 161 2, commenting on Aristotle’s Categoriae, 11a23 27.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 209; likewise, p. 217: καὶ ὥσπερ ἐπὶ πλέον τὸ ἑκτὸν τῆς ἕξεως λέ γεται, οὕτως ἐπὶ πλέον τὸ πῶς ἔχον τοῦ ποιοῦ ὑπετίθεντο.  Anonymous, Paraphrasis Categoriarum, p. 39.

458

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

ent in things and make them what they are qua existent beings (ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ τὰ αἴτια τῶν ὄντων ᾗ ὄντα) were the ‘numbers and logoi’ of things (ἀριθμοὺς καὶ λόγους), and Simplicius’ contemporaries would have called them ἑκτά, too (καὶ ὡς ἂν οἱ νῦν φαῖεν τὰ ἑκτά). Others, posited as ἑκτὰ the ‘incorporeal logoi’ (λόγους ἀσωμάτους) ‘that make all things they generate different from each other, which included not only things composed of the primal elements, but also the elements themselves’, and ‘Antipater extended the name even to the common properties applying to both corporeals and incorporeals, such as the notion of essence’ (ἐπεκτείνει τοὔνομα τοῦ ἑκτοῦ μέχρι τοῦ κοινοῦ συμπτώματος σωμάτων καὶ ἀσωμάτων, οἷον τοῦ τί ἦν εἶναι).⁹⁶ Once he made this point clear, he goes on with announcing that he is going to expound ‘the doctrine of Aristotle and of the philosophers of old’ concerning this notion (ἡ δὲ ᾿Aριστοτέλους περὶ τούτων δόξα καὶ τῶν παλαιῶν ἐστι τοιαύτη). Certainly, lumping Aristotle and the ‘philosophers of old’ together betokens his wish for harmony. Not an easy enterprise, to be sure. What he actually does then is expounding the theories of Pythagoras and Anaxagoras, while claiming that this was the philosophy of Aristotle, too. Thus, ‘Aristotle and the philosophers of old’ posited all ἑκτὰ as incorporeal (ἀσώματα τὰ ἑκτὰ πάντα οὗτοι ὑπολαμβάνουσιν), since all ἑκτὰ are utterly simple and primary by nature (ἁπλούστατα γὰρ καὶ τῇ φύσει πρῶτα πάντα). They are not parts of those things which have the ἑκτὰ (καὶ ὡς οὐδὲ μέρη ἐκείνων ὧνπερ τὰ ἑκτά): they are only the causes of their existence (αἴτια δὲ μόνον), indeed these causes do not function upon things from outside (καὶ ταῦτα οὐκ ἔξωθεν), but they are inherent in the things which have them as causes of their existence (ἀλλ᾿ ἐν τοῖς ἔχουσιν ἐμπεριέχονται πάντα).⁹⁷ What are these ἑκτὰ then? They are ‘certain numbers and logoi within matter’ (ἀριθμοὶ καὶ λόγοι τινὲς ἐν ὕλῃ ταῦτα ὄντες), and here is how Simplicius gets things clear: The Pythagoreans called these causes of beings qua beings (τὰ αἴτια ταῦτα τῶν ὄντων ᾗ ὄντα) numbers and logoi within matter (ἀριθμοὺς καὶ λόγους ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ). This is what our contemporaries would call ἑκτὰ (καὶ ὡς ἂν οἱ νῦν φαῖεν τὰ ἑκτά). Others postulated them as incorporeal logoi (οἱ δὲ καὶ λόγους ἀσωμάτους ὑποτίθενται ταῦτα), which are al ways different from each other (παρ᾿ οὓς ἑτέρους ἀεί). The fact that they are different from each other gives rise to the variety of all existing things, and to their differences, in cluding differences between the primary elements and the things that are derived from those primary elements, and they are generated from these combinations (αἵ τε διαφοραὶ

 Simplicius, commCateg, p. 210. He refers to Antipater of Tarsus, Stoic philosopher of the sec ond century BC.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 209.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

459

καὶ τῶν πρώτων στοιχείων καὶ τῶν ἐκ τούτων συγκριμάτων ὑφίστανται).⁹⁸ These numbers and logoi are everlasting, just like matter is (ἀΐδιοι δέ εἰσιν οἱ ἀριθμοὶ οὗτοι καὶ λόγοι, ὥσπερ καὶ ἡ ὕλη). However, their movements and their mutual positions and orders are var iable and not everlasting (αἱ μέντοι κινήσεις αὐτῶν καὶ ἐν ἀλλήλοις θέσεις καὶ τάξεις μετά πτωτοι καὶ οὐκ ἀΐδιοι). These logoi are inherent in the objects which they generate, whereas they exist therein as if they were detached from them (οὕτως οἱ λόγοι ὥσπερ ἀφεστῶτες ἐνυπάρχουσιν); [and yet] they act not as [external forces]. They do not shape and give a cer tain form to the underlying material all at once (οὐδέπω ῥυθμίζοντες τὸ ὑποκείμενον καὶ σχηματίζοντες); instead, [they act] like the logoi which exist in a seed (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς οἱ ἐν τῷ σπέρματι λόγοι): they are there accidentally, as it were, whereas they are inherently present and untrammeled (κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς οἱονεὶ ἐνυπάρχουσιν ἀκρατήτως ἐνόντες).⁹⁹

The Anaxagorean principles are neither Platonic Ideas nor Aristotelian Forms, much less are they Pythagorean numbers: they are the logoi which are ‘coiled up’ in the ‘seeds’ (ὁ τῶν εἰδῶν λόγος … συνεσπειραμένος ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασι): an active logos develops and unfolds itself in accordance with the nature of each thing (καὶ ὥσπερ ἐγκεκρυμμένος, ἐξαπλούμενος δὲ καὶ ἀνελιττόμενος κατὰ τὰς ἑκάστης φύσεως ἐνεργείας). Subsequently, ‘an imitation of the logos appears also in technical theories, and in the results of such theories, as well as in any kind of contemplation, speculation, such as the theory about prudence or about wisdom’. In the first place, the logos of a thing (or, of a theory) is not the definition of it: it is a creative force, indeed a creator that unfolds gradually his powers and makes things to come to pass. In the second place, once this logos is grasped and described theoretically, the definition or ‘essence’ (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) of a certain thing or phenomenon may be rendered, as much as is it possible to reflect upon them theoretically,¹⁰⁰ and this is no other than rendering which are the logoi that make up a thing, a person, or a phenomenon. Simplicius explained that the term logos has several imports: it may mean either ‘consideration’ by someone casting his vote (τὸν ἐν ταῖς ψήφοις λογισμόν), or a man’s immanent  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 210: τοὺς δὲ ἑτέρους ὄντας καὶ ποικιλία τῶν ὄντων αἵ τε διαφοραὶ καὶ τῶν πρώτων στοιχείων καὶ τῶν ἐκ τούτων συγκριμάτων ὑφίστανται.  Simplicius, loc. cit. Italics are mine. Philoponus reported that, to Anaxagoreans, there is no distinction between form and substratum whatsoever: there are only the principles (which nat urally he calls homoiomeries, since he was swayed by Aristotle), and there is nothing which en ters from outside into any perceptible object or phenomenon. In other words, there is no matter existing independently as a passive principle, as Aristotle’s fundamental doctrine had it: in stead, matter is simply the product of specific concurring principles, as indeed any perceptible thing of phenomenon as a whole is. In other words, Philoponus has it that, on this issue, the Anaxagorean philosophy was sheer different from that of Aristotle. He was right. See further dis cussion in chapter 10, pp. 738 40.  See analysis in chapter 10, pp. 804 5, and quotation from Thrasyllus by Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 12.

460

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

reason upon considering a certain concept (τὸν ἐνδιάθετον κατὰ τὴν ἔννοιαν), or oral speech (τὸν προφορικόν), or the seminal reason (τὸν σπερματικόν); but it may also mean the descriptive logos of any thing or concept, as well as the definition (ὁριστικόν) of essence. However, in relation to the latter, an important distinction is made: a definition proper means essence proper (ὁ δὲ ὁριστικὸς τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι ἑκάστου καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτήν), whereas the logos of essence means both the definition and the description of essence (ὁ οὖν λόγος τῆς οὐσίας καὶ τὸν ὁριστικὸν λόγον καὶ τὸν ὑπογραφικὸν¹⁰¹ περιείληφεν). Aristotle criticized both the Platonic Ideas and the Pythagorean numbers, saying that ‘if the Forms or numbers are to exist, they will be causes of nothing; or, if not of nothing, at least not of motion’. Furthermore, ‘extension, that is, a continuum, cannot be produced from that which has no extension, since a number, either as a moving cause or as a formal one, cannot produce a continuum.’¹⁰² Platonic Ideas and Pythagorean numbers were an easy prey to Aristotle’s invective; but Anaxagorean principles were not: he argues that ‘no contrary can be essentially productive and kinetic, because then it would be possible for it not to exist’. For in that case ‘the act of production could be posterior to the respective potentiality’.¹⁰³ But the Anaxagorean principles are not themselves potentialities: instead, they create potentialities, and Aristotle’s argument fails to discredit philosophies which reflected outside the Platonic and Pythagorean scope. Although Aristotle’s forms are active upon passive matter,¹⁰⁴ he could have never employed this model of the incorporeal principles being actively ‘mingled’ with matter. For ‘it is impossible for that which is incorporeal to be commingled with a corporeal body’ (ἀδύνατον γὰρ τὸ ἀσώματον σώματι μεμεῖχθαι).¹⁰⁵ Granted, a form is something that exists really (although it is not a self-subsistent being); it is active upon a certain material system, e. g. a flower or an embryo; but, strictly speaking, it could have been hard for Aristotle to say that the acting form is there, indeed in the material system which evolves from potentiality to actuality. For ‘not every being can be said to be in a spatial place: only a movable

 The term ὑπογραφικός means descriptive, as opposed to definition.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b27 30.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1075b30 34.  Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 724b5 6: πότερον ὡς ὕλην καὶ πάσχον ἢ ὡς εἶδος τι καὶ ποιοῦν. Likewise, 740b21 24; De Generatione et Corruptione, 324a; 335b; Meteorologica, 368a; De Anima, 430a18 19: ἀεὶ γὰρ τιμιώτερον τὸ ποιοῦν τοῦ πάσχοντος καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς ὕλης. Nevertheless, the actual active agent is supposed to be Nature. See further, chapter 8, pp. 542 4.  Aristotle, Topica, 149b2.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

461

body can’,¹⁰⁶ that is, only a corporeal entity can be said to be here or there or in something else. Nevertheless, with Anaxagoras things are plain: the principles in fact are not in anything, because there is no prior substratum for the principles to get into it. The principles can be noticed (‘unconcealed’, as explained earlier) only when they act on material systems which are produced by the principles themselves. Therefore, any discussion about principles being in something is only a description of how human perception notices the activity of them, as it happens, for instance, in a growing flower or an embryo in the womb. All of this exposition is a plain account of Anaxagoras philosophy as canvassed in the previous sections. Although in the beginning Simplicius mentions the Pythagoreans, when he comes to expounding this philosophy he uses no names: ‘others hold’ (οἱ δέ). He then speaks of ‘spermatic logoi’, but he does not really mean the Stoics, since he is all too quick to explicate that these logoi are incorporeal. The terminology is Anaxagorean, since he was the only physicist who spoke of ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα), all of which are different from each other (οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις), and that things are formed by means of concurrence of logoi, the term being σύγκρισις, and at this point Simplicius uses the cognate term, namely, συγκρίματα. Besides, the analysis about the logoi acting upon matter by being inherent in it, and yet outside it at the same time, is one of Anaxagoras that I have already canvassed, since it is possible to say that they are both here and everywhere as much as are they themselves nowhere specifically, in the sense that any incorporeal entity cannot be confined to a certain place. The expressed aim of Simplicius at that point was to speak about Aristotle. In fact, however, he used a distinctly Pythagorean and then Anaxagorean terminology, although certainly he knew that, to Aristotle, an object is produced by a form being imposed upon matter, but the proximate dynamic ‘creator’ is the ‘Nature’, which is the first and foremost cause (πρώτης ἢ κυρίως ποιητικῆς).¹⁰⁷ Besides, the foregoing exposition is about a dynamic process out of which things are generated: the spermatic logoi are inherent, they are there, and yet they are there as if the were detached (οὕτως οἱ λόγοι ὥσπερ ἀφεστῶτες ἐνυπάρχουσιν), although hardly would Aristotle have allowed that it is possible for any ‘form’ (even if Simplicius calls it logos) to exist in itself separately

 Aristotle, Physica, 212b29: οὐ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ ὂν ἐν τόπῳ, ἀλλὰ τὸ κινητὸν σῶμα. Cf. op. cit. 223a19 20.  Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 8: Aristotle ‘made Nature a poietic cause of what happens in it, because he sought the proximate cause’ (τὸ προσεχὲς ζητῶν τῶν φύσει γινομένων ποιητικὸν αἴτιον τὴν φύσιν εἶναι φησίν). See infra, pp. 542 54.

462

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

from the matter which it informs. Only at the end of this analysis does Simplicius feel that he somehow has to introduce Aristotelian terms in this, which is why his terminology (initially about the action of the spermatic logoi) takes a sudden Aristotelian shift: And the immediate cause [of generation] is the nature of the specific object, and there is nothing between that which is participated and that which participates; for [this nature] by being present, immediately fashions [the thing] that participates.¹⁰⁸

Why does Simplicius care to point this out? He does not explain, but, in the previous pages,¹⁰⁹ I have noted that Aristotle posited as an axiom that ‘it is impossible for any body to be intermingled with an incorporeal [being]’.¹¹⁰ This axiom had to be accommodated within Simplicius’ text, so that Aristotle should appear as standing in agreement with an analysis which is otherwise Anaxagorean. The closure of this analysis is that ‘this is the doctrine of Aristotle about the prime causes, which [some philosophers] call ἑκτά’.¹¹¹ All this means that Simplicius expounded the philosophy of Anaxagoras representing it as Aristotle’s one. However, this is not a false representation: he sincerely believed that the Anaxagorean philosophy would serve as a unifying factor, since he assumed also that the logoi were the principles which Aristotle employed as ‘forms’ instead of the Platonic Ideas,¹¹² which seems to have been the teaching of Ammonius, since the younger pupil of that school, namely Asclepius of Tralles argued for this, too.¹¹³ However, the presuppositions of the Aris-

 Simplicius, commCateg, p. 210: ἀμέσως δὲ ἡ τοῦ εἴδους φύσις αἰτία ἐστὶν μηδενὸς μεταξὺ παρεμπίπτοντος τοῦ τε μετεχομένου καὶ τοῦ μετέχοντος· παροῦσα γὰρ ἐν τῷ εἶναι εὐθὺς εἰδο ποιεῖ τὸ μετέχον.  See supra, p. 460.  Aristotle, Topica, 149b2: ἀδύνατον γὰρ τὸ ἀσώματον σώματι μεμεῖχθαι.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 210: τοιαύτη μὲν οὖν καὶ ἡ ᾿Aριστοτέλους ἐστὶν δόξα περὶ τῶν πρώτων αἰτίων, ἃ καλοῦσιν τινὲς ἑκτά.  Aristotle argued staunchly that there is no way to reconcile his own Forms with Plato’s Ideas. “The arguments for the Forms do away with those about the existence of Ideas”. Metaphy sica, 990b; 1079a. Nevertheless, he maintained that substances are either ‘essence and substrate’ or, ‘from another point of view, they are the genus and the universal’. Metaphysica, 1042a. Cf. 1028b34 1030b14; 1033a24 1034a9.  Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 4: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μόνος ἐπέστησε νοῦν βασιλεύειν τοῦ παντός. οὔτε δὲ τὰς ἰδέας φησὶν [sc. Aristotle] εἶναι τὰς πρώτας ἀρχάς, καθώς τινες ἐκλαμβάνου σιν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς λόγους. In respect of Nature, Aristotle believed that logos is only the orderly ra tionality which prevails in it. Physica, 252a12 13; Problemata, 921a3. This is why ‘Nature does nothing in vain’, Politica, 1253a9. However, the specific meaning of logos which the sixth century

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

463

totelian philosophy banned full acclimatization of the Anaxagorean principles within that context. In any event, hopefully it is now clear that, in the context of Anaxagorean philosophy, the principles are prior to the Aristotelian ‘forms’; in fact, the former are the generative causes of the latter. These ‘forms’ cannot produce anything out of their own action as the principles do. For ‘forms’ need also formless matter as an indispensable substratum, and, not rarely did Aristotle qualify the active character of the forms by introducing the obscure entity called ‘Nature’ as an active agent. He censured Plato for using ‘poetic metaphors’ in the case of how the Ideas relate to the visible reality. However, the precise relation of Nature to the forms is no less obscure. Plotinus, at least, when he set out to represent a personified Nature being interrogated by a philosopher asking her why she creates, employed consciously this superb metaphor only as a mythological representation.¹¹⁴ In some doxographic testimonies, which are in fact catalogues of first principles maintained by different philosophers, Anaxagoras is associated with the term ‘homoimeries’ that Aristotle attached to his principles, never with ‘qualities’. However, there was indeed a philosopher whose first principles were reported to be ‘qualities’: this was Strato of Lampsacus,¹¹⁵ the Peripatetic philosopher and third director of the Lyceum after the death of Theophrastus. He denied the need for an active god to construct the universe, and placed the administration of the universe in the unconscious force of Nature alone, while rejecting the existence of Aristotle’s fifth element. The lists of names which have reached us are long,¹¹⁶ and Anaxagoras is mentioned as espousing the ‘homoiomeries’, whereas Strato opted for ‘qualities’ instead. Moreover, in chapter 11, it is

commentators attributed to Aristotle does not really stem from his philosophy. Instead, the ac tual trajectory of the specific notion was Anaxagoras Stoics Origen Porphyry.  Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.4.  See supra, pp. 299 300; 393.  Pseudo Clement of Rome (on the nature of the universe), Recognitiones, 8.15.1 (Pythagoras, Strato, Alcmaeon, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Epicurus, Diodorus [Cronus], Asclepiades, Demo critus, Thales, Heraclitus, Diogenes, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle). Sextus Empiricus (on the nature of matter), Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.32 34 (Democritus, Epicurus, Anaxagoras, Diodorus Cronus, Heraclides of Pontus, Asclepiades of Bithynia, Pythagoreans, the Mathematicians, Strato); the same text, in Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 9.364. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1069 (distinguishing ‘homoiomeries’ from the ‘qualities’ of Ar istotle). Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 18 (on the ‘active cause’, δραστικὴ αἰτία) (Phere cydes, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Diogenes of Apollonia, Hippasus of Metapontium, Xenophanes of Colophon, Hippo of Regium, Oenopides of Chios, Onomacritus the Orphic, the Stoics, Aristotle, Empedocles, Democritus, Epicurus, Heraclides of Pontus, Asclepiades of Bithy nia, Anaxagoras, Diodorus Cronus, Pythagoras, Strato).

464

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

shown that Origen was conscious of the principles/logoi being ontologically prior to qualities, which he discussed in the second book of his De Principiis, in a context rebutting Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic doctrines, and developed his arguments demonstrably along Anaxagorean lines.¹¹⁷ All of the consituents of a thing, of a person, or of a phenomenon are results of logoi, whether this is about essential attributes, or accidental ones, or qualities, or even matter itself, which emerges and is held together because of no other cause than the logoi which are proper to it. My point is simply that the qualities themselves should not be identified as principles. The philosopher who realized this was Iamblichus criticizing Plotinus. Then, Simplicius himself ‘corrected the theory of Plotinus’ (καὶ οὕτως ἡμῖν καὶ ἡ Πλωτίνου δόξα διορθωθήσεται) and quoted Iamblichus who argued that a ‘quality’ is only one of the incorporeal substances that cause a perceptible thing to have certain characteristics. Before quoting Iamblichus’s passage from Simplicius’ text, I should explain briefly what was this all about: Considering ‘Kinds of Being’ (Ennead VI, in the the first tract of it), Plotinus posed this question: with regard to quality, the source of what we call a ‘quale’ (τὴν δὲ ποιότητα, ἀφ᾿ ἧς ὁ λεγόμενος ποιός), first, we must consider what its nature is (τίς οὖσα) so as to be able to produce the so-called qualia (τοὺς λεγομένους ποιούς), and whether, remaining one and the same by virtue of what is common to all kinds of quality, it has also differences whereby it produces the variety of species, or, if there is no common ground and the term quality involves many connotations, there cannot be a single genus of quality. ¹¹⁸ He returns to this with his reply in the third tract, arguing that the differentiated qualia (ποιούς) should be ranked with quality proper (ποιότης), in so far as there is quality in them; by not bringing them into consideration, he avoided having two categories (ἵνα μὴ κατηγορίαι δύο), but going up from them to that which after them are called qualia.¹¹⁹ This means that change of quality in any quale should mean change of quality proper. This is what both Simplicius and Iamblichus understood, and the latter refuted Plotinus’ proposition, by arguing that ‘it would be absurd to allow that ‘the simple (i. e. quality) would possibly undergo the same alterations as the compound (i. e. the quale)’. For ‘this runs contrary to the fundamental

 Cf. Origen, Princ, II.1.4 5; infra, pp. 866; 885; 950; 956; 1489 93.  Plotinus, Enneades, VI.1.10.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.3.19.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

465

axiom concerning incorporeal things, namely, that they are impassible and unalterable.’¹²⁰ Then, he goes on thus: For this [i. e. quality proper] is one of the logoi, and it is an incorporeal substance (οὖσα γάρ τις τῶν λόγων ἀσώματος οὐσία) giving itself to those that it receives within itself (δίδωσιν ἑαυτὴν τοῖς δεχομένοις), thus causing a body to assume a certain quale (καὶ ποιοῦσα τὸ ποιὸν περὶ τῷ σώματι). Nevertheless, within this body, [quality] itself remains incorporeal (μένει καθ᾿ ἑαυτὴν ἀσώματος ἐν τῷ σώματι) having substantial being of its own (τὸ εἶναι καθ᾿ ἑαυτὴν ἔχουσα), and imparting [this body] its own hypostasis (καὶ τῆς ὑποστάσεως αὐτῷ μεταδιδοῦσα), while the quality’s own nature proper is not destroyed at all (μετὰ τοῦ μὴ ἀπολλύναι τὴν οἰκείαν φύσιν).¹²¹

There is no need to quote further from this long passage, but it is important to note that Simplicius endorsed this, styling Iamblichus’ rebuttal of Plotinus ‘the truest consideration of the doctrine’ (τὴν ἀληθεστάτην ἐπάγει θεωρίαν τοῦ δόγματος).¹²² It is noteworthy that Iamblichus styled quality proper a logos, not a ‘form’, while explicating the incorporeal nature of it. At the same time though, quality proper is only one of the logoi (τις τῶν λόγων). Simplicius was more clear-cut in asserting that ‘the logoi are not qualities, but they are prior to qualities’, which is why qualities are destructible whereas the logoi are not.¹²³ Besides, since any thing, or person, or phenomenon is but a collaboration of principles/logoi giving rise to those perceptible realities, it is evident that any reality is the result of relations (σχέσεις) between logoi, and relations are themselves ipso facto incorporeal. Notwithstanding several of them being inherently involved with material substrata (τῶν δὲ σχέσεων αἱ μὲν συνυπάρχουσι τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις, ὅσαι συνουσίωνται αὐτοῖς), any relation in itself can emerge only from ‘the incorporeal logoi’ which give rise to it (διότι καθ᾿ ἑαυτὰς ἔχουσιν ἀσωμάτους λόγους αἱ σχέσεις).¹²⁴

 Iamblichus, apud Simplicius, commCateg, p. 289.  Iamblichus, loc. cit.  Simplicius, loc. cit.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 218 9: διὰ δὲ ταῦτα οὐκ ἔσονται λόγοι ἑαυτῶν αἱ ποιότητες· τῶν γὰρ ποιῶν προηγουμένως εἰσὶν οἱ λόγοι· ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ λόγοι εἰσὶν αἱ ποιότητες διδόντες ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτῶν λόγους ἑτέρους γεννήματα ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτῶν, εἴπερ ὅλοι τῶν ποιῶν εἰσιν. … καὶ ὅτι μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν τὸ ἐξῃρημένον καὶ ἀμέθεκτον εἶδος ἡ ποιότης, ἀλλὰ τὸ μετεχόμενον λόγος, δῆλον.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 175. His example is that we can speak of the ‘right or left part of an animal’, evidently in accordance with such relations inherently being present in the animal’s body. However, these relations themselves are ‘incorporeal logoi’. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias correcting Aristotle: “But we should not understand this in this way (i. e. as Aristotle explains it): perhaps Anaxagoras said that ‘everything is mixed with everything’ in reference to specific

466

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

Moreover, Simplicius addressed the issue of ‘qualities’ by considering an expression of Aristotle comparing Empedocles and Anaxagoras. He wonders¹²⁵ if there are contrarieties also in the elements (καὶ ἐν τοῖς στοιχείοις εἰσὶν ἐναντιώσεις), such as, hot-cold, dry-wet, heavy-light, and the like, and if Aristotle’s words ‘and the contraries’ (καὶ τἀναντία)¹²⁶ refer to both Presocratics alike, or to Anaxagoras alone.¹²⁷ He grants that perhaps there are certain contrarieties in the elements, but in the homoiomeries all contraries are there at the same time, and so are all the differences (ἐν δὲ ταῖς ὁμοιομερείαις ἁπαξάπαντα τὰ ἐναντία ὥσπερ καὶ πᾶσαι αἱ διαφοραί). This is the reason why the expression ‘and their contraries’,¹²⁸ including the conjunction, applies rather to the opinion of Anaxagoras. Even if all contraries are in the elements, assuming that the elements are principles (εἴπερ ἀρχαὶ τὰ στοιχεῖα), not all of them are connectedly present therein as in the case of homoiomeries (ἀλλ᾿ οὐ προσεχῶς πάντα ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν). For if sweet and bitter happened to be there, on the supposition of elements, they are not primary characteristics of the elements, but they occur because of heat and cold and dryness and wetness; but on the supposition of homoiomeries they occur as primary ones and in their own right (ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν ὡς πρῶτα καὶ καθ᾿ αὑτά), as do the contrarieties of colour. Or perhaps, even in the case of homoiomeries, some contrarieties are prior to others, and the secondary contrarieties occur because of the primary ones (ἢ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν ἄλλαι πρὸ ἄλλων ἐναντιώσεις ὑπάρχουσι καὶ διὰ τὰς πρώτας αἱ δεύτεραι). In other words, contrarieties (including contrary qualities) are not the homoiomeries themselves, as Aristotle liked to call these principles: they are in the homoiomeries, indeed all of them are there at the same time, because in reality homoiomeries are immaterial, and there is no way for any immaterial entity to be present in one place while being absent from another.¹²⁹ Therefore, contrarieties are placed in the primal creation of the distinct principles, but

perceptible things in which the principles are combined with each other. For generations and secretions result from these [combinations of the principles].” Alexander, quoted by Simplicius, commPhys, p. 173: οὐχ οὕτως χρὴ τὸν λόγον εὐθύνειν· ἀλλ᾿ ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν αἰσθητῶν σωμάτων τῶν ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν συγκεκριμένων πάντα ἔλεγε μεμῖχθαι· ἐκ τούτων γὰρ καὶ αἱ γενέσεις καὶ αἱ ἐκκρίσεις.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 154.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a25 26.  John Philoponus took it for granted that Aristotle had in mind Anaxagoras only. commA nim, p. 185: ἀνταπέδωκε τὸ ἕτερον τῆς διαιρέσεως μόριον εἰπὼν ἢ ἐναντίας, ὡσανεὶ ἔλεγεν ἢ ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας λέγει ἐναντίας.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a25 26: τά τε ὁμοιομερῆ καὶ τἀναντία.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 154.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

467

the principles themselves are prior to contrarieties. The latter appeared as a result of interaction of principles, once the principles were created by the Mind.¹³⁰ It should be pointed out that Aristotle had his own reasons for insisting that ‘homoiomeries’ are ‘contraries’. For his own doctrine was that ‘contraries must of necessity be material, and they exist potentially’ (πάντα γὰρ τὰ ἐναντία ὕλην ἔχει, καὶ δυνάμει ταῦτα ἔστιν);¹³¹ from which he concluded that ‘if there is to be nothing else beside sensible things, there will be no first principle, no order, no generation, and no celestial motions, but every principle will be based upon one prior to it, as in the accounts of all the theologians and physicists’.¹³² Moreover, the principles are supposed to change, which entails that they have to be material, because whatever changes has to be material.¹³³ Besides, the principles were many, and those which are many in number, have matter.¹³⁴ We should not forget that, at that point, Aristotle concluded a short section which began with a single name: “Anaxagoras makes the Good a principle as causing motion; for Mind moves things”.¹³⁵ This was devastating to Aristotle, since Anaxagoras had preceded him on his most famous alleged contribution, that is, the First Immovable Mover, which impugned Aristotle’s alleged originality. Quite understandably then, he set out to discredit the Clazomenian. His argument was that, if there is nothing but what is sensible or potential, there can be no First Mover (which is sheer actuality) to excite motion in the universe, and no teleology in causation. However, Anaxagoras’ principles themselves are neither sensible nor potential: what is potential is only a possible outcome of a specific concurrence of certain principles. Therefore, it was not the case ‘with all the theologians and physicists’ that an infinite regression of principles should be invented: Anaxagoras was a distinct case of his own, and Aristotle knew it.

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 181: “Clearly Anaxagoras places the contrarieties in the primal crea tion (σαφῶς τὰς ἐναντιότητας ἐν τῇ γενέσει παραδίδωσιν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας)”. Then, he mentions the Pythagoreans who posited the ‘contraries’ as secondary principles, though ‘not principles in the strict sense’: Καὶ οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι δὲ οὐ τῶν φυσικῶν μόνων ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντων ἁπλῶς μετὰ τὸ ἕν, ὃ πάντων ἀρχὴν ἔλεγον, ἀρχὰς δευτέρας καὶ στοιχειώδεις τὰ ἐναντία ἐτίθεσαν, αἷς καὶ τὰς δύο συστοιχίας ὑπέταττον οὐκέτι κυρίως ἀρχαῖς οὔσαις.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b22 23.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1075b24 27.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1069b24: πάντα δ’ ὕλην ἔχει ὅσα μεταβάλλει (‘all things which change have matter’).  Aristotle, op. cit. 1074a33 34: ἀλλ᾿ ὅσα ἀριθμῷ πολλά, ὕλην ἔχει (‘those which are numeri cally many, they are material’). De Anima, 432a3 7: ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐδὲ πρᾶγμα οὐθὲν ἔστι παρὰ τὰ μεγέθη, ὡς δοκεῖ, τὰ αἰσθητὰ κεχωρισμένον (‘nothing has a separate existence, except sensible magnitudes’). Cf. Physica, 204a8 10.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b8.

468

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

In respect of this, we can see Aristotle reflecting in Anaxagorean terms, and some of the points at which he does not name Anaxagoras are perhaps the most interesting ones concerning Aristotle’s personal intentions. Thus, he set out to ‘investigate the contraries which are not contained in a genus, and to discover what their intermediates are composed of. For things which are in the same genus must be either composed of differentiae which are not compounded with the genus, or incomposite.’ He concludes, that ‘contraries are not compounded with one another, therefore, they are first principles’ (τὰ μὲν οὖν ἐναντία ἀσύνθετα ἐξ ἀλλήλων, ὥστε ἀρχαί). But what else are Anaxagoras’ principles which Aristotle branded ‘homoiomeries’? Simplicius supplied us with Anaxagoras’ own statement: in the primal reality, there were seeds which had no similarity with each other (καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλήθους οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις).¹³⁶ In Aristotle’s own terms, therefore, these ‘seeds’ are principles. Furthermore, he postulates that, ‘from the contraries something is generated in such a way that change will reach it before reaching the contraries themselves’ (ἐκ δὲ τῶν ἐναντίων γίγνεταί τι, ὥστ᾿ ἔσται μεταβολὴ εἰς τοῦτο πρὶν ἢ εἰς αὐτά). For there must be something which is less in degree than one contrary and greater than the other. Therefore, this will be also intermediate between the contraries (μεταξὺ ἄρα ἔσται καὶ τοῦτο τῶν ἐναντίων) and ‘everything else which is intermediary has to be composite’ (καὶ τἆλλα ἄρα πάντα σύνθετα τὰ μεταξύ … ἅπαντ᾿ ἂν ἐκ τῶν ἐναντίων εἴη τὰ μεταξύ … ἐκ τῶν πρώτων ἐναντίων ἔσονται)’, namely, made out of the principles. In other words, everything is produced from the principles, which are all unlike each other, all of them exist at the same time, all of them are of the same genus, since ‘there are no genera which are prior to the contraries’ (οὐκ ἔστιν ἕτερα πρότερα ὁμογενῆ τῶν ἐναντίων). Conclusion: “since there is nothing else which is homogenous and prior to the contraries, all intermediates must be composed of contraries. Therefore, all the lower terms, both contraries and intermediates, must be composed of the primary contraries. Thus, it is clear that intermediates are all of the same genus, they stand between contraries, and they are all composed of contraries (καὶ σύγκειται ἐκ τῶν ἐναντίων πάντα).”¹³⁷ This is Aristotle’s text, but in fact his analysis is about the Anaxagorean principles. Simplicius said absolutely nothing different when he explained Anaxagoras’ words as meaning that the principles generated perceptible things by means of their concurrence, and that all things that seem to perish are in fact dissolved

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34 & 156.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1057b33 34.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

469

into these principles (κατὰ τὴν αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν).¹³⁸ Aristotle’s enterprise was to show that contraries themselves could not be principles.¹³⁹ The idea is correct, but his mistake was that he associated his syllogism with Anaxagoras, who never made the contraries his principles. For contraries can be determined as such only if there is a common substratum prior to them, and they are determined by means of a principle prior to them, too. Anaxagoras was not such a fool as to make the ‘contraries’ principles, as Aristotle thought or (which is more likely) he pretended to think.¹⁴⁰ Aristotle praised Empedocles for producing everything from his four substances.¹⁴¹ Fair enough. But Empedocles was able to do this because he established two principles, Love and Strife being prior the four ‘roots’. At the same point, Aristotle shuns Anaxagoras for producing everything from ‘infinite’ principles. However, Simplicius proved that no notion of infinity was involved: to human intellect, the principles are difficult to count only because they are far too many, yet they are finite still. Besides, Anaxagoras produced everything (including the four elements) from these principles. If Empedocles was able to do this by means of his two antithetical principles, all other Presocratics could not: for positing four elements does not suffice: one has to show what is that which causes them to combine with each other, and to produce the numerous manifestations of perceptible volatile reality. No matter what this is, it has to be prior to the four elements. Anaxagoras said that his principles were those that give rise to reality. Today, we know that he was correct: all natural reality is produced by means of numerous (though not infinite) natural laws. No one is so naïve as to say that these laws, qua laws, are something material, and everyone knows that the perceptible ‘matter’ is produced by interaction of universal laws, as indeed is this produced by something

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 35. This was the doctrine of several Presocratics: all things return to the elements of their origin. Anaximander maintained that all dying things return to the element which they came from (to him: the ἄπειρον); Aristotle revisited the concept; Metaphysica, 983b8 11; Physica, 204b33 34. Naturally, Euripides from stage echoed Anaxagoras: “What comes from earth must return to earth.” Supplices, verses 532 3.  Aristotle, Physica, 189a.  Aristotle, Physica, 189a. Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 200. Themistius, paraphrAnim, pp. 21 2. John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 137 41. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii in Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, p. 193. Also, Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1002b; 1059a; 1086a. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 235. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. pp. 216 22.  Aristotle, Physica, 189a; meaning that it is better to use ‘four’ (i. e. finite ones) rather than ‘infinite’ ones (for which he blamed Anaxagoras at this point, too).

470

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

else, which is also ‘immaterial’ (to our senses) and it is acted upon by these laws, and which we call ‘energy’. Aristotle was always unclear in his use of the terms ‘element’ and ‘principle’. The reason was not simply that he believed that the term ‘principle’ (or, beginning’, ἀρχή) has multiple significations.¹⁴² His commentator Syrianus says that Aristotle used the terms as interchangeable,¹⁴³ and he himself was unable to determine whether Aristotle applied the term ‘beings’ (ὄντα) to anything that exists in nature, or he reserved this for the ‘intelligible bodies’.¹⁴⁴ He conceded, however, that any treatment of the notion of ‘principles’ should introduce several kinds of classification. For instance, a ‘principle’ per se has a separate standing of its own, whereas ‘elementary principles’ are inseparable from perceptible objects.¹⁴⁵ Likewise, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite made the distinction between principles that function as either models, or goals, or generative, or elementary ones (ἀρχὴ παραδειγματική, τελική, ποιητική, εἰδική, στοιχειώδης), and they are also cohesive causes that determine the limits of all things (πᾶσα συνοχή, πᾶν πέρας).¹⁴⁶ When Simplicius concluded the foregoing analysis of Aristotle’s criticism of Anaxagoras, he used the expression ‘elementary principles’ (στοιχειώδεις ἀρχάς) in order to compare Anaxagoras’ concept with those of Plato, of Aristotle, and of the Pythagoreans. The context makes it clear that, by this term, he meant the principles which generate every sort of thing or function in this world, and the world itself as a whole.¹⁴⁷ His references also show that he did not call them simply ‘elementary’: addition of the term ‘principles’ indicated the dynamic causes which stimulate and effect sundry interactions between elements, whereby things are generated and perish. In other words, the ‘elementary principles’

 Aristotle, De Anima, 415b. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 399.  Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 162: ἀρχάς τε γὰρ καὶ στοιχεῖα τὰ αὐτὰ μεταλαμβάνων καλεῖ.  Loc. cit.: καὶ ἔτι ὄντα πότερον τὰ νοητὰ σώματα δηλοῖ ἢ τὰ ὅπως ποτὲ ὄντα, διστάσειεν ἄν τις ἴσως.  Loc. cit.: ὅμως δὲ οὐχ εἷς ὁ λόγος περὶ πασῶν ἀρχῶν, ἀλλ᾿ αἱ μὲν στοιχειώδεις ἀχώριστοι, αἱ δὲ κυρίως ἀρχαὶ χωρισταί.  Pseudo Dionysius the Arepopagite, De Divinis Nominibus, p. 155.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 179 (in op. cit. p. 7, he attributes this term to Plato). He says that perhaps Plato, Aristotle, and the Pythagoreans expressed Anaxagoras’ function of the principles by speaking of ‘matter and form’ as ‘elementary principles’, and those who introduced the no tion of formless matter did so ‘even more perfectly’. Cf. op. cit. p. 223: Plato posited two elemen tary principles, namely, matter and the material form: διὸ καὶ τὰς στοιχειώδεις ἀρχὰς δύο τίθησιν ὁ Πλάτων τήν τε ὕλην καὶ τὸ εἶδος τὸ ἔνυλον. He adds that Plato saw the generative cause as a creative mind, whereas Aristotle saw this cause in Nature itself.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

471

are closely related with the function of matter, and with Nature in general.¹⁴⁸ This is the operation of Anaxagoras’ principles, but Simplicius was always quick to remind of the ‘primal incorporeal nature’ of them. Plato exalted the super-natural realities (τά ὑπὲρ τὴν φύσιν), but he did not fail ‘to distinguish the elementary principles of generated and natural things’ (κἀν τοῖς φυσικοῖς καὶ γενητοῖς τὰς στοιχειώδεις ἀρχὰς τῶν ἄλλων διέκρινε), and he was the first who styled them ‘elements, as Eudemus reports’.¹⁴⁹ Empedocles made ‘contrariety’ the ‘first elementary principle of generated things’ (τῶν γενητῶν ἀρχὰς καὶ αὐτὸς στοιχειώδεις μὲν τὴν πρώτην ἀντίθεσιν ἔθετο).¹⁵⁰ Since Simplicius attributes an almost divine nature to the heaven,¹⁵¹ he emphasizes that this cannot be made of ‘elementary principles’, because they are involved only in generation of ‘composite things’.¹⁵² He also seems to endorse the statement by Alexander of Aphrodisias, who said that ‘elementary principles’ are incorruptible, which entails that not all of the principles that determine natural coming-to-be and corruption are incorruptible. To this Simplicius adds, agreeing with Alexander, that Plato did not style the supreme creative principle ‘elementary’ (τὴν πρωτουργὸν ἐν πᾶσιν ἰδιότητα ποιητικὴν οὖσαν ἀρχὴν ἀλλ᾿ οὐ στοιχειώδη), but simply ‘beginning and source of movement’,¹⁵³ since it is self-moving and ungenerated, in contrast to the ‘elementary principles of bodies’ (τὴν στοιχειώδη τῶν σωμάτων ἀρχήν). Alexander of course believed that the elementary principles (form and matter) are incorruptible.¹⁵⁴ Therefore, on the one hand, Simplicius sees ‘principle’ proper as separate, intelligible, and immovable (τῆς κυρίως κατὰ τὸ εἶδος ἀρχῆς τῆς χωριστῆς καὶ νοητῆς καὶ ἀκινήτου): they may be either one or many, but properly speaking, they are one and many (εἴτε μία ἐστὶν ἢ πολ Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 6 7: Thales and Anaximander κάτωθεν ἀρχόμενοι τὰς ὑλικὰς καὶ στοιχειώδεις ἀρχὰς ἐθεάσαντο καὶ ἐξέφηναν ἀδιορίστως ὡς πάντων τῶν ὄντων τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐκφαίνοντες. Cf. op. cit. p. 7 (adding that Aristotle made ‘deprivation’ an ‘element’, too); op. cit. p. 204: the physicists styled their ‘elementary principles’ not simply ‘principles’ but ‘ele ments’; op. cit. p. 246: one could argue that ‘deprivation’ should be added to the ‘elementary principles of the physicists’, but (op. cit. p. 252) this is could not be correct, since an ‘element’ acts by its own presence, not by its absence; op. cit. pp. 256 7; 259; 309: Aristotle considered matter as an elementary principle and saw three kinds of it, namely, form, matter, deprivation. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b; 1070b; 1071a.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 7.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 30.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 219; 419; 482; commCateg, p. 318; commCael, passim.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 220: εἰ δὲ καὶ στοιχειώδεις εἰσὶν αἱ παραδεδομέναι ἀρχαί, αἱ δὲ τοιαῦται συνθέτων εἰσὶν ἀρχαί, τὸ δὲ οὐράνιον σῶμα ἁπλοῦν ἀποδείκνυται πέμπτης ὂν ἄλλης οὐσίας ἐκφύλου παρὰ τὴν γένεσιν, οὐκ ἂν ἔχοι ἐκεῖνο τὰς στοιχειώδεις ἀρχάς.  Plato, Phaedrus, 245c9.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 234 5.

472

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

λαί, ἢ ὅπερ ἀληθέστερον καὶ μία καὶ πολλαί). On the other hand, there are ‘elementary principles’ (ἀρχαὶ στοιχειώδεις), which are the ‘proximate specific causes of natural things’ (προσεχῆ αἴτια εἰδικὰ τῶν φυσικῶν εἰσιν).¹⁵⁵ Plotinus, who realized that Anaxagoras’ principles are immaterial, wrote of the Nous which possesses the principles within the Nous himself, ‘not as if they were in a place (οὐχ ὡς ἐν τόπῳ ἔχων), but as possessing himself and being one with them (ὡς αὑτὸν ἔχων καὶ ἓν ὢν αὐτοῖς)’; therefore, ‘all things are together therein, while they are separate none the less (πάντα δὲ ὁμοῦ ἐκεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν ἧττον διακεκριμένα)’.¹⁵⁶ Likewise, Gennadius Scholarius, who also grasped this point, wrote that ‘in a way, Empedocles and Anaxagoras posit both one and many principles’, and ‘Anaxagoras sets the Mind as superintendent and creator of everything’.¹⁵⁷ The notion of ‘elementary principles’ was also entertained by John Philoponus, who agreed with Simplicius that Aristotle saw them as ‘form and matter’ (‘deprivation’ is not added by Philoponus at that point, but it is used elsewhere),¹⁵⁸ whereas the other two (higher) principles are (1) the poietic one, (2) the final cause (τὸ ποιητικὸν καὶ τὸ τελικόν).¹⁵⁹ In fact, however, these are different kinds of ‘causes’ rather than ‘principles’, which Simplicius himself did point out and then discussed.¹⁶⁰ Therefore, when Simplicius concluded his defence of Anaxagoras by mentioning his ‘philosophy about the elements’ (τὰ περὶ τῶν στοιχείων φιλοσοφεῖν) and made mention of ‘elementary principles’ (στοιχειώδεις ἀρχάς),¹⁶¹ he treated not the ontology of Anaxagoras, but his cosmology, which is evident also from the quotations from that philosophy which he made at that point. Accordingly, he refers to the ‘simple and primal qualities’ (τὰς ἁπλᾶς καὶ ἀρχοειδεῖς ποιότητας)

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 257.  Plotinus, Enneades, V.9.6. Plotinus assessed Anaxagoras and the Stoics, while seeing the common points of them both. See infra, p. 721. I wrote Nous for Intellect/Mind (νοῦν).  Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 1 (comm. on Aristotle’s Physica), lines 61 64: ᾿Aλλὰ καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας τρόπον τινὰ καὶ μίαν καὶ πολλὰς τὰς ἀρχὰς λέγουσι· καὶ τοῦτο δείκνυσιν ἐκ τοῦ ἑκάτερον αὐτῶν τῷ πλήθει τῶν ἀρχῶν τὸν μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόραν τὸν πάντων ἐπι στάτην καὶ ποιητὴν νοῦν ἐφιστᾶν. Furthermore, the principles ‘are generated from that one’ (as in Physica, 187a20), they are ‘elements of the four elements, as well as of all the things in the world’, whereas Empedocles thought that the four elements are produced from the primal fusion and they are the principles of all other things. commPhys, p. 7 (comm. on Physica, 187a10 11).  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 32.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 399. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 256; 464.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 259.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 179.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

473

which Simplicius (like Aristotle) styles ‘passions’ of the things that were generated by the primal principles once the latter were distinguished by the Mind. Simplicius never interpreted the axiom ‘all things were together’ as ‘all qualities were together’. Although misled by Aristotle, John Philoponus got it right that ‘it is impossible for passion to be mixed with passion’ (πάθος γὰρ πάθει οὐ μίγνυται); therefore, if Anaxagoras’ principles were seen as ‘passions’ (that is, qualities), then (Philoponus adds) it would have been impossible for all things to be together.¹⁶² The principles (simply by being what the are) are the efficient causes that make things function under the supervision of the Mind. Since they are immaterial, they are both one and many, both now and always, they are not confined in any spatial place, they are all in all, and they act once a material entity and circumstances call for them to operate.¹⁶³ Although the principles act ceaselessly in specific places and times at which they are invited to do so, this does not mean that these principles qua principles are characterized by incessant motion. For their unity is as real as their apparent diversity during their sundry operations. John Philoponus evidently considered only the latter (that it, their function, not their being proper), which is why he asserted that ‘according to Anaxagoras, everything moves [ceaselessly] (ἢ ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας πάντα κινεῖσθαι)’.¹⁶⁴ Likewise, in the same commentary, he took this for granted and wrote that this was what Aristotle thought.¹⁶⁵ However, Philoponus believed that the principles are incessantly moving because he saw them from the point of view of their activity alone, while ignoring their essential unity. Besides, Aristotle himself did not really hold this opinion. In one of the few points that he speaks favourably of Anaxagoras, he employs the latter’s viewpoint, namely, ‘no natural event occurs haphazard’ (οὐδὲν ὡς ἔτυχε γίγνεται τῶν κατὰ φύσιν), and ‘it is just this point that Anaxagoras seems to have well taken, when he starts his cosmogony from immovable things’ (ἐξ ἀκινήτων

 John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 192.  Cf. supra, pp. 430; 452.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 29. He says this as an implicit praise of Anaxagoras, not for the proposition itself, but in order to argue that ‘glorious philosophers’ said things that were not comprehensible by the multitude. He quoted the proverbial phrase of Aristotle in Topica, 104b19 20 & 34, which I mentioned earlier (quoted infra, p. 477, note 181). Aristotle himself did not mention the name of Anaxagoras among the ‘glorious philosophers’. But Philoponus did, and added this name out of his own while commenting on Aristotle.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 833: Πανταχοῦ τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἐπαινεῖ ὅτι νοῦν ἐπέστησε δια κοσμήσει τοῦ παντός, πάσας εἶναι λέγων τὰς ὁμοιομερείας μεμιγμένας καὶ κινεῖσθαι ταύτας ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ διακρινομένας.

474

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

γὰρ ἄρχεται κοσμοποιεῖν).¹⁶⁶ It was natural then for Simplicius to reject this assertion of Philoponus, and to argue that incessant motion of principles applies only to those physicists who posited material principles (whether one or many ones), as well as to the Stoics,¹⁶⁷ who did so, too. Likewise, he mentions Aristotle’s approbatory endorsement of Anaxagoras, namely, that he started his cosmogony from immovable things.¹⁶⁸ Despite other inconsistent reports that he made, Aristotle had a clear grasp of the Mind as being the First Immovable Mover, which is one of his most conspicuous debts to Anaxagoras. He praised him for having been the first who saw that ‘no natural event occurs haphazard, because he [i. e. Anaxagoras] makes his cosmogony stem from unmoved things’. It would be a serious mistake to assume that Aristotle criticized Anaxagoras for failing to endow his moving cause per se with prior actuality.¹⁶⁹ In the Metaphysics, Aristotle praised Anaxagoras for this, and appealed to him as the authority which posited the Mind as sheer actuality.¹⁷⁰ He only could not understand why was it that a supreme principle which is actuality did not engage in moving things ‘earlier’. But this is the so-called ‘why not sooner?-argument’¹⁷¹ which has not to do with what the Mind is, but with what he does, as well as with Aristotle’s conviction about the world being beginningless, unlike Anaxagoras who posited a beginning of it. Therefore,

 Aristotle, De Caelo, 301a11 13. Cf. Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 2 (comm. on De Caelo), lines 30 33.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 419: [Aristotle] ἐπήγαγεν ὅτι τισὶ δοκεῖ μὴ εἶναι τι κινοῦν ἀκίνη τον, ἀλλὰ πᾶν τὸ κινοῦν κινεῖσθαι … καὶ δῆλον ὅτι ταύτης εἰσὶ τῆς δόξης τῶν τε παλαιῶν φυσιολόγων ὅσοι σωματικὴν ἢ μίαν ἢ πλείους ὑπέθεντο τὴν ἀρχήν, καὶ τῶν νέων οἱ Στωικοί, κατὰ γὰρ τὴν τῶν ἀρχῶν διάκρισιν ἢ σύγκρισιν ἢ ἀλλοίωσιν ἔλεγον οἱ πάλαι γίνεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 590: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aριστοτέλης τοῦτο γε αὐτὸ μόνον ἀποδέχεται τοῦ ᾿Aναξ αγόρου τὸ ἐξ ἀκινήτων καὶ ἡνωμένων κοσμοποιεῖν. Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 203a30 33.  This mistake Harold Cherniss made in his Aristotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy, p. 172. Despite some apt remarks concerning how Aristotle treated Anaxagoras, the author based his analyses on the mistaken hypothesis that Anaxagoras’ ‘mixture’ was ‘a mechanical arrangement of particles which does not present true homogeneity’ (p. 18); it is ‘merely a fine mechanical mixture’ (p. 32) made of ‘different homogenous bodies’ (p. 108), ‘a merely mechan ical aggregation of imperceptible quantities’ (p. 142).  Harold Cherniss (p. 172) cited Metaphysica, 1071b27 29, in order to argue that Aristotle ‘ob viously criticizes Anaxagoras for failing to endow his moving cause with prior actuality’. This is a mistake, and it is surprising that the author failed to read Aristotle only a few lines below (1072a4 6): “But that actuality is prior is testified by Anaxagoras (since Mind is actuality)” (ὅτι δ᾿ ἐνέργεια πρότερον, μαρτυρεῖ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ὁ γὰρ νοῦς ἐνέργεια). As for erratic statements by Aristotle having in mind the soul, see infra, pp. 981; 985; 1182 90.  I have discussed this in COT, pp. 148 9; 152 3; 156; see supra, pp. 154; 320.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

475

this was only about what the Mind did, or did not do, not with what Mind is, on which Aristotle was at one with Anaxagoras, but he failed to understand why should the Mind impart motion to others only contingently.¹⁷² Nowhere did Aristotle suggest that Anaxagoras did not endow the Mind with prior actuality; instead, he employed the notion openly and acknowledged his debt. The comment of John Philoponus was inaccurate, but we do not need to take Aristotle’s praise of Anaxagoras too seriously; in fact, this was accidental and stemmed from his not having understood how Anaxagoras really meant the process of generation and passing away of things. As we saw, Aristotle could not understand how is it possible for ‘mutation’ (ἀλλοίωσις) to be the same process as conjunction and separation off (σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις), because he believed that these were two different phenomena, and, by identifying them, ‘Anaxagoras contradicted himself’.¹⁷³ Thus, the phrase following his praise of Anaxagoras is, ‘some other philosophers struggle to posit motion as conjunction and separation off; but to make generation start from things that are separated off and moving is irrational’. Aristotle speaks of ‘generation’ (γένεσιν) having in mind, and meaning, creation of the universe, and mentions Empedocles by name, who produced the world from two opposite principles. But somehow this applied to Anaxagoras none the less, who did so by means of innumerable (yet finite) principles, which is why Aristotle praised Empedocles for using less principles than Anaxagoras did, and criticized the latter in the same work of his, indeed only a few pages after that point of praise.¹⁷⁴ As already said, the incorporeal ‘things’ cannot be entirely detached from the material entities through which they make their mark in the perceptible reality. In this respect, Simplicius used the example of ‘walking’, and the attribute of one’s ‘colour’ and ‘passions’ and ‘habits’, which cannot be considered as ab-

 In Metaphysica, 1071b12 37, Aristotle refers to ‘the physicists’, and cites the well known ex pression of Anaxagoras, while attributing this to all of them: ‘all things were together, they say ’ (ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματά φασι). He only implied his earlier view that some of them posited gener ation as having started from absolute rest and immobility (De Caelo, 301a), but then immediately he extolled Anaxagoras for having made the Mind sheer actuality, and appeals to him. Likewise, Physica, 250b24 26: ἢ γὰρ ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας λέγει· φησὶν γὰρ ἐκεῖνος, ὁμοῦ πάντων ὄντων καὶ ἠρεμούντων τὸν ἄπειρον χρόνον, κίνησιν ἐμποιῆσαι τὸν νοῦν καὶ διακρῖναι. Only in Metaphysics 1075b8 10 does Aristotle criticize the Mind of Anaxagoras for lacking a final cause of motion, although he acknowledged that this Mind is an efficient cause. However, in the same work (984b11 22), he had already acknowledged that the Anaxagorean cause of motion was indeed a final cause, and identified it with the Good (1075b8, quoted supra, p. 133, note 119).  See infra in this chapter, p. 484, where the point is canvassed further.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 302a28 303a2, esp. 302b26 27: φανερὸν ὅτι πολλῷ βέλτιον πεπερασμέ νας ποιεῖν τὰς ἀρχάς.

476

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

solutely separate from the ‘subjects’ in which they exist (οὐχ οἷον τε βάδισιν ἢ χρόαν ἢ ὅλως τὰ πάθη καὶ τὰς ἕξεις χωρισθῆναι τῶν ὑποκειμένων).¹⁷⁵ Consequently, since sensible things exist ‘in accordance with’ (i. e. by virtue of) the intelligible creation (κατὰ ταύτην), it follows that ‘each and every thing participates in, and communicates with, everything’ (εἰκότως δὲ καὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἕκαστον κοινωνεῖ πᾶσι καὶ μετέχει πάντων). He quotes also Hippocrates, who wrote that ‘there is one confluence, one union, one sympathetic interrelation’ (ξύρροια γὰρ μία, σύμπνοια μία, πάντα συμπαθέα).¹⁷⁶ This correlation ‘is owing to the original and pre-existing union of all things in the incorporeal realm’; and even though they have been set apart,¹⁷⁷ they have not been absolutely detached from each other’ (διὰ τὴν ἀρχέγονον ἐν τοῖς νοητοῖς αὐτῶν προϋπάρχουσαν ἕνωσιν· καὶ διακρινόμενα γὰρ ταῦτα οὐκ ἀπέσπασται πάντῃ ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων). ‘This is why Anaxagoras said that it is not possible for them to be altogether detached from each other:¹⁷⁸ distinction of the principles does not suggest complete severance’ (διό φησιν ᾿Aναξαγόρας μηδ᾿ ἐνδέχεσθαι πάντα διακριθῆναι· οὐ γὰρ παντελὴς διασπασμός ἐστιν ἡ διάκρισις)’.¹⁷⁹ This is not a Neoplatonic extrapolation imposed on Anaxagoras: it was Aristotle himself who reported it first, even though his aim was to interpret that philosophy according to his own aims: Empedocles and Anaxagoras say that beings are both one and many.¹⁸⁰

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 461. Cf. Galen, De Naturalibus Facultatibus, p. 39; De Causis Pulsuum, p. 88. Alexander of Tralles, Therapeutica, p. 595. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 106; De Ae ternitate Mundi, p. 283.  ‘They have been set apart from each other’, meaning that transition from incorporeality to the realm of matter entails ‘separation’ from each other, in the sense that each thing is an indi vidual material entity.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 175: οὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκει οὔτε τὸ θερμὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ οὔτε τὸ ψυχρὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ θερμοῦ (οὐ γὰρ εἶναί τι εἰλικρινὲς καθ᾿ αὑτό). Op. cit. p. 176: οὐ κεχώρισται ἀλλήλων τὰ ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ κόσμῳ οὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκει.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 461.  Aristotle, Physics, 187a21 22: ὅσοι δ᾿ ἓν καὶ πολλά φασιν εἶναι τὰ ὄντα, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι ἐκκρίνουσι τἆλλα. Despite Aristotle’s aims, his ensuing analysis in essence conforms with Simplicius’ rendering of it: all things stem from one unity, and yet always they are both one and many, since multiplicity co exists with the unity of the incorporeal principles. Cf. the preceding discussion in Physics, 185b (supra, p. 402), which shows that other Presocratics, such as Parmenides and Heraclitus, shared similar views, no mat ter how Aristotle strove to lampoon it by means of sophistic arguments. Ironically, he ridiculed this notion of ἓν καὶ πολλὰ also in the Sophistici Elenchi, 168a & 169b.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

477

In any event, Aristotle would have been the last one to be impressed, much less baffled, by such seemingly contradictory statements. For it was he who posited that, once propositions by learned philosophers are set forth, one has to study them in order to grasp their meaning: A thesis is a proposition which appears paradoxical [to laymen], but it is propounded by someone who is famous as a philosopher. … Or, a thesis is a proposition about which we hold a reasoned view contrary to current opinions.¹⁸¹

Aristotle then was not impressed by ‘paradoxical statements’, and mentions such propositions by Antisthenes, Heraclitus, and Melissus, as examples at that point. This definition was hailed by his commentators, and it was received as almost one more proverbial phrase of his. Moreover, each commentator added examples of his own. Alexander of Aphrodisias comments that Aristotle wrote this having in mind ‘a certain celebrated philosopher’ (τινος τῶν ἐνδόξων κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν), and then he adds his own examples of apparently ‘paradoxical’ phrases by Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, and Chrysippus.¹⁸² Three points are noteworthy in this context. First, although Aristotle did not mention Parmenides as an example, almost all of those who quoted his phrase felt it necessary to do so, evidently because Parmenides’ notion of simplicity and multiplicity might have appeared to be paradoxical.¹⁸³ Secondly, John Philoponus added the name of Anaxagoras to the list of ‘celebrated philosophers’ whose propositions might appear bizarre to the multitude.¹⁸⁴ Thirdly, Christian interest in the phrase of Aristotle can be noticed, since this was a good argument in order to show that apparently paradoxical Christian propositions had to be studied more deeply so as to be comprehended.¹⁸⁵ The essence of a certain thing is a particular concurrence of logoi. This concurrence determines the logos of a thing, and this logos is both one and many, as  Aristotle, Topica, 104b19 20: Θέσις δέ ἐστιν ὑπόληψις παράδοξος τῶν γνωρίμων τινὸς κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν. Then, 104b34: ὑπόληψίς τις παράδοξος ἡ θέσις ἐστίν.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commTop, p. 81. His text was taken up by the Suda, letter theta, entry 263.  Cf. Ammonius of Alexandria, commDeInterpr, p. 9 (ref. to Heraclitus and Parmenides). Elias of Alexandria (ref. to Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno), commCateg, p. 108. Stephanus (seventh century, ref. to Heraclitus, Parmenides), In Aristotelis Librum De Interpretatione, p. 2. Eustratius of Nicaea (ref. to Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno), In Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea i Commentaria, p. 37.  John Philoponus mentioned theories by such ‘glorious men of philosophy’ as Heraclitus, Zeno of Elea, and Anaxagoras. commPhys, p. 29. See supra, p. 473, note 164.  John of Damascus (ref. to Heraclitus, Parmenides), Dialectica, 65. Also, Doctrina Patrum (ref. to Heraclitus, Parmenides), p. 251.

478

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

indeed all the principles are both one and many (ἓν καὶ πολλά),¹⁸⁶ both united and distinct from each other, both here and everywhere, both now and ever. They are incorruptible, because they were created once and for all, and henceforth neither they come to be nor do they perish; each one of them is always the same (οὐδὲ γίνεται οὐδὲ φθείρεταί τι τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀεὶ τὰ αὐτά ἐστι) and unlike any other. Since every principle is both one and many, there can be no notion of either ‘less’ or ‘more’ that can be applied to them (πάντα οὐδὲν ἐλάσσω ἐστὶν οὐδὲ πλείω); for it is impossible for any of them to be more than all, since all of them are equal (οὐ γὰρ ἀνυστὸν πάντων πλείω εἶναι, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἴσα ἀεί).¹⁸⁷ This happens because ‘everything is in everything’ (καὶ οὕτως ἂν εἴη ἐν παντὶ πάντα), and yet, they are all unlike each other (καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλῆθος οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις).¹⁸⁸ ‘Everything has a share in everything’ (πάντα παντὸς μοῖραν μετέχει),¹⁸⁹ and ‘the smallest is equal with the entire multitude and each [principle] itself is both great and small’ (καὶ ἴσον ἐστὶ τῷ σμικρῷ πλῆθος, πρὸς ἑαυτὸ δὲ ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ μέγα καὶ σμικρόν),¹⁹⁰ which is why ‘it is impossible to determine anything as being either the biggest or the smallest’ (καὶ οὔτε τὸ ἐλάχιστον οὔτε τὸ μέγιστόν ἐστι λαβεῖν).¹⁹¹ These principles along with the various species which they produce in the world (καὶ τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ εἴδη) ‘are mixed with each other’ (μέμικται ἀλλήλοις) ‘because of both their primal incorporeal nature and their fusion during the stage of creation’ (διά τε τὴν ἀρχέγονον αὐτῶν φύσιν καὶ διὰ τὴν ἐν τῇ γενέσει σύγχυσιν).¹⁹² Aristotle granted omnitemporal and ubiquitous presence his First Mover only, and banned any possibility of the incorporeal nature being ‘intermingled’ with the corporeal one.¹⁹³ Consequently, even if he had conceded that the prin-

 Aristotle, Physica, 187a20: οἱ δ᾿ ἐκ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἐνούσας τὰς ἐναντιότητας ἐκκρίνεσθαι, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξίμανδρός φησι καὶ ὅσοι δ᾿ ἓν καὶ πολλά φασιν εἶναι, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ἐκ τοῦ μείγματος γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι ἐκκρίνουσι τἆλλα.  See infra, chapter 10, pp. 706 8.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 34.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 164. So on p. 157: τὰ μὲν ἄλλα παντὸς μοῖραν μετέ χει, νοῦς δέ ἐστιν ἄπειρον καὶ αὐτοκρατὲς καὶ μέμεικται οὐδενὶ χρήματι. … ἐν παντὶ γὰρ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστιν. … μοῖραι δὲ πολλαὶ πολλῶν εἰσι. παντάπασι δὲ οὐδὲν ἀποκρίνεται οὐδὲ διακρίνε ται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου πλὴν νοῦ. νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 164.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 166, apud Theophrastus, De Anaxagora, Book 2. There is no treatise by Theophrastus under this title, but he treats aspects of Anaxagoras’ phi losophy (namely, the theory of perception) in his De Sensu et Sensibilibus.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 177.  See supra, p. 459, Aristotle, Topica, 149b2: ἀδύνατον γὰρ τὸ ἀσώματον σώματι μεμεῖχθαι.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

479

ciples of Anaxagoras are incorporeal (which was impossible for him to do, as explained above), he could have never been able to concede the Anaxagorean manner in which they operate in the universe. In his Physics, 259b‒260a, he argues for the need to posit a first immovable mover. Simplicius was more than happy to quote the comment by Alexander of Aphrodisias on this (i. e. on Physics, 259b21‒28) in order to argue that ‘there is nothing strange about a certain incorporeal nature and essence to exist simultaneously throughout all over the universe, because this is not a body bound to occupy a certain limited space’.¹⁹⁴ It is all too evident that Simplicius promptly endorses and emphasizes this, because this is what he argued about the Anaxagorean principles, too. The Mind caused and instilled the primal distinction, and Anaxagoras granted that this took place in time, although the prior everlastingness is a time of an undetermined nature. However, once the principles were distinguished (i. e. created), no actual temporal duration elapsed until material reality came into being. Simplicius makes the point that motion and material distinction appeared simultaneously upon the creative act by the Mind, since ‘it was not possible for corporeal distinction to appear in the absence of motion’ (οὐ γὰρ ἦν διάκρισιν σωματικὴν ἄνευ κινήσεως γενέσθαι). This is a perfectly Aristotelian idea, as we saw in the previous chapter.¹⁹⁵ Nevertheless (on account of the simultaneity of the primal distinction of the principles and corporeality), Simplicius also says that the things that appeared in time following that distinction had existed always (τὴν ἀεὶ συνυπάρχουσαν),¹⁹⁶ which is a statement that only makes sense on the basis that the primal mixture contained the undifferentiated principles as a confusum, which had to do with the contingent action of the Mind, not with the Mind’s being proper, as explained above. This makes sense on Aristotelian grounds, too: although the principles were made once and for all, they are creatures none the less; consequently, the notion of potentiality applies to their operation, too, since only God himself is exempt from this.

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1260 (quoting Alexander of Aphrodisias): οὐ γὰρ δὴ σῶμα ἐστίν, ὡς τόπον τινὰ κατέχειν ἀφωρισμένον· ἀσώματον δὲ φύσιν τινὰ καὶ οὐσίαν οὐδὲν θαυμαστὸν ἐν ὅλῳ τινὶ ἅμα εἶναι.  See chapter 6, pp. 352 3, and note 127 (Physica, 212b7 8 & 29).  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1123: ὡς ἐδόκει λέγειν ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὴν ἀεὶ συνυπάρχουσαν τῶν δευτέρων ἀπὸ τῶν προτέρων ὑπόστασιν διὰ τῆς κατὰ χρόνον λέγεσθαι δοκούσης ἐκφάνσεως. In other words, those which appeared ‘second’ (i. e. the material objects and phenomena) received their existence from ‘the former ones’ (that is, from the immaterial principles).

480

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

Philoponus said that these principles are ‘impassible’: their action takes place only by their concurrence or separation out (συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει),¹⁹⁷ and by their interaction with each other, which is why everything comes from everything.¹⁹⁸ This is what makes ‘generation’, ‘mutation’, and ‘emanation’, the selfsame process, even though Aristotle criticized it¹⁹⁹ only because he did not grasp (or, did not want to concede, or turned a blind eye to) the immaterial, indestructible, and non-infinite character of those principles.²⁰⁰ Aristotle, like modern scholars, made too much of the ‘contraries’ as a characteristic of Anaxagoras’ philosophy because so it suited Aristotle’s own philosophical premisses. However, in the end, this proves nothing, and Simplicius pointed out that this was a universal characteristic of all the physicists. Moving on with his review of Aristotle’s criticism, he says that Aristotle cared to point out that the principles are neither one nor infinite in number, and that those who posited them as being more than one and yet as non-infinite in number (like Empedocles) did better. Simplicius remarks that Aristotle should have stated explicitly how many these ‘more than one principles are’ (πόσαι εἰσὶν οἱ πλείους αὗται), but he eschewed doing so (τοῦτο παρείς). He concedes some logic to this omission, because, if one demonstrated what the principles are, at the same time, how many they are would come to light, too (τῷ τίνες συναποδείκνυται καὶ τὸ πόσαι). In the case of Empedocles, once he spoke of ‘contraries’, evidently these supreme principles had to be two (εἰ γὰρ ἐναντίαι, δύο πάντως αἱ ἀνωτάτω, that is, Love and Strife).²⁰¹ The reason why Aristotle insisted on the notion of formless matter was that, if things are transformed to each other, the only way for this to happen is prior existence of a substratum which, by its own nature, has no quality whatsoever. To him, it was unthinkable that anything could be generated without any underlying something existing prior to opposite qualities, all the more so, since ‘con-

 John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 127: τὰ στοιχεῖα οὐ κέχρηνται τῷ ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν, ἀλλὰ μόνον συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει. … οὗτοι δὲ ἦσαν οἱ περὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέα Δημόκριτον ᾿Aναξαγό ραν· ἀπαθεῖς γὰρ ἕκαστος τὰς οἰκείας ἀρχὰς ὑπετίθετο.  John Philoponus op. cit. p. 5: ἀλλ᾿ εἰ μὲν ἐνεργείᾳ ἀλλήλοις ἐνυπάρχοντα γεννᾶται ἐξ ἀλλή λων, κατὰ ἔκκρισιν ἔσται ἡ γένεσις, καθάπερ οἱ περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ὑπετίθεντο. Op. cit. p. 15: ἀλλὰ δὴ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐκκρινομένας τὰς ὁμοιομερείας καὶ συνιούσας ἀλλήλαις δηλονότι ἢ σάρκα ποιεῖν ἢ ὀστοῦν.  Aristotle, Physica, 314a. Cf. John Philoponus commGenCorr, pp. 11; 24.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.20.1d: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς, ᾿Aναξαγόρας, Δημόκριτος, Ἐπίκουρος καὶ πάν τες ὅσοι κατὰ συναθροισμὸν τῶν λεπτομερῶν σωμάτων κοσμοποιοῦσι, συγκρίσεις μὲν καὶ δια κρίσεις εἰσάγουσι, γενέσεις δὲ καὶ φθορὰς οὐ κυρίως· οὐ γὰρ κατὰ τὸ ποιὸν ἐξ ἀλλοιώσεως, κατὰ δὲ τὸ ποσὸν ἐκ συναθροισμοῦ ταύτας γίνεσθαι.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 179.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

481

trariety involves two terms’.²⁰² This means that generation can take place only from corporeal entities. His syllogism is this: since there are definitely things that are generated, their generation must be either from the incorporeal or from the corporeal; and if from the corporeal, it should be so either from some extraneous body or from each other. The theory that generates things from the incorporeal involves a void separate from any body, because everything that comes to be, it comes to be in something, and that in which its coming to be takes place must be either incorporeal or corporeal: if corporeal, there will be two bodies in the same place at once, namely, that which is in the process of formation and that which was there before; if incorporeal, there must be a separate void.²⁰³ However, earlier he had argued that generation ex nihilo demands a ‘separate’ void and that this generation is impossible.²⁰⁴ In short, elements are generated from one another, because it is impossible for generation to take place either from the incorporeal or from any other body.²⁰⁵ Hence, in the ensuing chapter,²⁰⁶ he argues that his Presocratic predecessors, such as Democritus Empedocles,²⁰⁷ as well as Plato, who spoke of ‘generation out of one another’, got it wrong, since they actually spoke of ‘a semblance of generation out of one another’. As always, Simplicius expounded Aristotle’s theory faithfully and fully.²⁰⁸ Nevertheless, he had certain things of his own to say. Aristotle conceded to Presocratics that he himself also allowed for the principle ‘nothing comes to be from the non-existent’.²⁰⁹ However, his analysis was based on the notion potential / actual being and on the usual punning made with ‘potential’ being either ‘existent’ or ‘non-existent’, depending on how one  Aristotle, Physica, 190b 191a.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 305a14 23. Cf. Simplicius, commCael, p. 629 38; 658; 673 6; 721. Also, Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 319a. Cf. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 303. Ascle pius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 58.  Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, 302a b, recalling also arguments that he expounded in the Physica, iv.6 9, especially 214a b & 216b, where he denies the possibility of the ‘separate void’ (κενὸν κε χωρισμένον), meaning empty ‘incorporeal’ void between bodies (i. e. one in which bodies can move), contrasted with interstitial void, that is, void existing within bodies, which some Preso cratics (e. g. Democritus, Leucippus) posited as a sine qua non condition, by virtue of which con densation and rarefication can take place.  Cf. Simplicius, commCael, p. 631: Ταῦτα δὲ δείξας εἰκότως συμπεραίνεται τὸ ἐξ ἀλλήλων γίνεσθαι τὰ στοιχεῖα, ἐπεὶ μήτε ἐξ ἀσωμάτου δυνατὸν μήτε ἐξ ἄλλου σώματος, ὡς ἀποδέδεικται.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 305a33 306b3.  To them, Simplicius adds the name of Anaxagoras out of his own; op. cit. pp. 598 9; 632; 635.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 648 9; 672 4; commPhys, p. 225.  Aristotle, Physica, 191b13 29.

482

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

could see it. Aristotle played with ‘generation of an animal from an animal’ by using ‘animal’ either as a species or a particular animal (horse, dog, are his examples). However, Simplicius commented on Aristotle’s analysis by introducing and considering a term which Aristotle did not use at that section, namely, ‘seed’ (σπέρμα), which is distinctly Anaxagorean. Aristotle said that ‘an animal can be generated from another animal’ yet not qua animal (for the genus ‘animal’ is already there, and it cannot ‘become’ what it is already), but only accidentally, namely, as this specific animal. Against this, Simplicius argues that, speaking of this animal (i. e. accidental generation), the case is not really that ‘an animal is generated from an animal’ (οὐκ ἐκ ζῴου ἂν ἐγένετο, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ μὴ ζῴου οἷον ἐκ σπέρματος), but ‘an animal is generated from something which is not an animal, that is, a seed’ (ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ μὴ ζῴου οἷον ἐκ σπέρματος); therefore, the animal, qua a body, which is generated of an animal, is not in fact ‘a body produced from another body’ (καὶ ᾗ σῶμα οὐκ ἐκ σώματος): it is a body which is produced from a certain incorporeal (ἀλλ᾿ ἐξ ἀσωμάτου).²¹⁰ Therefore, Simplicius concludes, why should we not accept that ‘the ancient’ philosophers (i. e. the Presocratics) did not hold the same idea as that which Aristotle expounded, when they posited that, in reality, ‘no being qua being comes to be, nor does it pass away’? In other words, if all of this theory is considered by Aristotle in terms of potentiality / actuality, why should we not accept that those intellectuals of old thought likewise,²¹¹ all the more so since Aristotle himself saw this notion in some Presocratics, too?²¹² Moreover, the ‘seed’ itself is not a sort of ‘form’ (οὐκ ἔστιν εἶδος τι καὶ τὸ σπέρμα), but it is an inchoate form (ἀλλὰ ἀτελὲς εἶδος), which serves as ‘matter’, as it were, to the formation of a full-grown hypostasis (ὕλης λόγον ἔχον πρὸς τὴν τοῦ τελείου εἴδους ὑπόστασιν), and this is what it is only by comprehensive reference to the eventual full-grown being (καὶ εἰς ἐκεῖνο τὴν ὅλην ἔχον ἀναφοράν). This was a brilliant remark indeed: to appreciate this, we only need to recall a notion that the Stoics entertained as true heirs of Anaxagoras:

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 239 40.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 240: μήποτε οὖν οὕτως ἔλεγον καὶ οἱ ἀρχαῖοι μηδὲν τῶν ὄντων ᾗ ὂν γίνεσθαι μηδὲ ἀπόλλυσθαι.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b: “And since being is twofold, everything changes from that which is potentially to that which is actually; … Hence, not only may there be generation acci dentally from that which is not, but also everything is generated from that which is, but is po tentially, not actually. And this is the one of Anaxagoras; for his all things were together, and the mixture of Empedocles and Anaximander, and the doctrine of Democritus, would be better ex pressed as all things were together potentially, but not actually.”

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

483

When a seed is sown into the womb and it is stuck fast in it, it receives motion and is trans formed into nature. For nature is superior to a seed, since in all generated things motion is superior to rest.²¹³

This means that a ‘seed’ is not ‘nature’ yet: it is wanting, and that which it needs in order to become ‘nature’ is exactly the same as that which the Mind caused upon the σπέρματα πάντων χρημάτων in the first place, and hence creation began, namely, motion. In other words, the process by means of which any seed of any plant or animal becomes nature is considered in the selfsame terms as the initial generation of the universe, or, of the physis. Therefore, when Aristotle argued that generation has to take place exclusively by means of contrary qualities acting upon a pre-existing substratum, he was not right: for a ‘seed’, from which a human being is produced, is not a form that is ‘contrary’ to anything whatsoever (διὸ οὐχ ὡς ἐξ εἴδους ἐναντίου τοῦ σπέρματος γίνεται ὁ ἄνθρωπος). ‘And even if in the human seed there are some qualities which happen to have a certain contrariety to each other, this does not prove Aristotle’s theory, because these contrarieties are undeveloped (therefore, imperfect and unformed), and they are not like the fully developed ones, which obtain in full-grown beings’.²¹⁴ The fact is that Aristotle, with his preoccupation with natural objects, spoke about the ‘elementary principles of natural objects’ (αἱ ἀρχαὶ δηλονότι τῶν φυσικῶν πραγμάτων αἱ στοιχειώδεις). But this is not a distinctive characteristic of Anaxagoras alone, since ‘almost all the physicists were at one on this, notwithstanding their dissent on other issues’ (τῆς πάντων σχεδὸν τῶν φυσικῶν κατὰ τοῦτο συμφωνίας, κἂν ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις διαφωνοῦσι). Subsequently, Simplicius supplies us with some precious quotations from Parmenides and Democritus, while also referring to Thales and Anaximenes, in order to show that the notion of contraries was an integral part of those philosophies, and, further, he  Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 67. J. von Arnim attributed this passage to Chrysippus (fr. 745, SVF, II.212.13 20), although no name is mentioned by Philo. However, I believe that this is a wrong attribution. For the passage starts with the statement, ‘to an animal, a seed is the beginning of generation. Since this is the most mean of all things, it is considered as being similar to foam (τοῦθ᾿ ὡς ἔστι φαυλότατον ἐοικὸς ἀφρῷ, θεωρεῖται)’. So far as sources go, only one Stoic spoke of ‘foam’ meaning ‘seed of an animal’, and this was not Chrysippus, but Diogenes of Apol lonia. See Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, 1.6.48.3 (also, in Catena in Epistulam ad Hebraeos [catena Nicetae, e cod. Paris. gr. 238], p. 493): Τινὲς δὲ καὶ τὸ σπέρμα τοῦ ζῴου ἀφρὸν εἶναι τοῦ αἵματος κατ᾿ οὐσίαν ὑποτίθενται … ἐντεῦθεν γὰρ ὁ ᾿Aπολλωνιάτης Διογένης τὰ ἀφροδίσια κε κλῆσθαι βούλεται. Otherwise, the doctrine was attributed to Pythagoras. Pseudo Plutarch, Pla cita Philosophorum, 905A & Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 107: Πυθαγόρας ἀφρὸν τοῦ χρηστοτάτου αἵματος τὸ σπέρμα.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 168.

484

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

cares to show what the contraries were according to each one of these philosophers. His conclusion is that Aristotle’s reference to Empedocles and Anaxagoras as holding the idea of contraries was nothing new, since, in both of them, several pairs of contraries can be found, and Simplicius states some of them.²¹⁵ When Anaxagoras stated wetness, dryness, and the rest, he only wished to give some examples of his main doctrine that all the notions which make things in this world to be what they are as individual things distinct from one another, were created by the Mind through that primal procedure. To abide by ‘wetness’, and the like, and to say that these are the homoiomeries is just a naïve misperception. Besides, ‘quality’ is not as universal a notion as some believe, and Simplicius knew this perfectly well. There are qualities which impose themselves on things, they are called ‘active qualities’ (δραστικαὶ ποιότητες),²¹⁶ and, subsequently, they give rise to others; there are also ‘passive qualities’ (παθητικαὶ ποιότητες),²¹⁷ of which Aristotle maintained that they alone are subject to ‘mutation’ (κατὰ γὰρ τὰς παθητικὰς μόνας ποιότητας τὴν ἀλλοίωσιν γίνεσθαί φησιν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης). He contrasted them from the foregoing ones (or, from others, such as ‘virtue’), which come to be part of one’s distinctive character (εἶδος γίνονται τοῦ μετέχοντος), hence they do not really bring about mutation, but they make the subject ‘another’ one (οὐ ποιοῦσιν ἀλλοῖα τὰ κατ᾿ αὐτὰς μεταβάλλοντα, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἄλλα).²¹⁸ Strictly speaking, therefore, a quality is regarded as ‘passion’ only once this is ‘accidental’, and it has no permanent effect on the subject, in terms of either its species or its very existence.²¹⁹

 Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 179 81.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 636. He mentions heat, coolness, dryness, and wetness. In fact, δραστικαὶ ποιότητες is not an Aristotelian technical expression (Aristotle discussed only ‘passive qualities’), but it comes from Galen who used the notion abundantly in medical context. Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias defined the distinction, by advising that philosophers and medical doctors enterained it; Problemata, 1.132; also, De Febribus, 8.3. Cf. Simplicius discussing the dis tinction, commCael, pp. 172; 174 6; 192 7; 399; 636; commCateg, p. 226; commPhys, pp. 435; 1176. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 217; commPhys, p. 424. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Aris totelis Meteora Commentaria, pp. 274 5; 283; 297; 312; 317.  Aristotle, Categoriae, 9a b; Ethica Eudemia, 1220b; Physica, 226a b; 244b. Alexander of Aph rodisias, commMetaph, pp. 242; 393; 401; 418; 734; 738. Plotinus, Enneades, VI.1.10 & 12. Porphyry, commCateg, pp. 130 2; Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου, p. 41. Themistius, paraphrAnim, pp. 27; 171. Ammonius of Alexandria, commCateg, pp. 81 3; 86 7. Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 39. Simplicius, commCael, pp. 7; 87; 114; 172; 174 6; 192 7; 399; 564; 600; 661; 663; 668; 671 2; commCateg, pp. 220; 228; 233; et passim. Likewise, almost all of the Aristotelian commentators.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1081.  Simplicius, loc. cit. (building on Aristotle): καὶ αἱ κατὰ τὰς ἀρετὰς οὖν μεταβολαὶ τελειοῦσαι τὸ ὑποκείμενον καὶ εἰς τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι συντελοῦσαι οὐκ εἰσὶν ἀλλοιώσεις οὐδὲ αἱ κατὰ τὰ σχήματα

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

485

Aristotle criticized the notion of ‘mutation’ in Anaxagoras only because he did not want to concede the primal incorporeal character of the principles. However, Simplicius set things in their actual order, arguing that all those [axioms] (πάντα δὲ ταῦτα), namely, all things were together (καὶ τὸ ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα), and [the axiom] that coming-to-be obtains according to mutation, by either concurrence or disjuncture (καὶ τὸ κατ᾿ ἀλλοίωσιν ἢ κατὰ σύγκρισιν καὶ διάκρισιν τὴν γένεσιν εἶναι), were postulated in order to confirm that nothing comes from nothing, but everything that comes-to-be stems from something that already exists (which is, the once-made and thereafter everlasting principles). For indeed mutation is something that Being undergoes, whereas concurrence and disjuncture is something that [particular] beings undergo (εἰς πίστιν εἴληπται τοῦ μηδὲν ἐκ μὴ ὄντος γίνεσθαι, ἀλλ᾿ ἐξ ὄντος γίνεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα· ἥ τε γὰρ ἀλλοίωσις πάθος περὶ τὸ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ἡ σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις περὶ τὰ ὄντα)”.²²⁰ Therefore, mutation, on the one hand, and concurrence and disjuncture, on the other, is the same process, and Anaxagoras did not really ‘contradict himself’, as Aristotle thought.²²¹ Quite simply, mutation is the process considered in relation to Being, whereas concurrence and disjuncture is the same process considered in relation to beings. Once the principles were created by the Mind, they are there forever. The different ways in which they either concur or are separated out, determines the manner in which things either come-to-be or perish. Simplicius explains that concurrence and disjunction of principles (σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις) is a process that determines how particular beings come to be or perish, but, whenever we read of ‘mutation’ (ἀλλοίωσις), we should bear in mind the sundry ways in which the principles act and react with each other. These, however, are two faces of the same coin, since reaction between principles and change brought about by them upon particular objects or phenomena are simultaneous occurrences. This chapter hopefully has made it clear that Simplicius assessed Aristotle’s considerations of Anaxagoras only to show that, once perused to their bitter end, they are inherently self-defeating and finally they render a system presumed as ‘Anaxagorean’ which not even a madman could have ever written. In Simplicius’ analysis, hardly does anything relating to Neoplatonism appear: almost everything is only a test of logical consistency and the cheerful presumption about

καὶ τὰς μορφάς. ἀλλ᾿ ἐκεῖναι μόναι αἱ κατὰ τὰς συμβεβηκυίας ποιότητας, αἵτινες πάθη μόνον ἐμ ποιοῦσι τοῖς μετέχουσι καὶ οὐκ οὐσιοῦσιν οὐδὲ εἰδοποιοῦσιν αὐτά.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 163.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a12: ᾿Aναξαγόρας γε τὴν οἰκείαν φωνὴν ἠγνόησεν.

486

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

Simplicius interpolating Neoplatonism in Anaxagoras is not tenable. I hope this book will show that things should be considered the other way around, and Neoplatonic debts to Anaxagorean fundamentals should be acknowledged after all, which is discussed later, also in connection to Origen. I am far from suggesting that Simplicius ever became an Anaxagorean philosopher: his aim only was to explain that philosophy in an unbiased, reasonable, and consistent manner, and to show that this Presocratic was not as fool and naïve as Aristotle represented him to be. Any multitude is preceded by unity, and the particular identity of many [particulars] grant ed to the many by one. Therefore, all particular principles (αἱ μερικαὶ ἀρχαί) are founded in one [universal principle] (ἐνίδρυνται τῇ ὅλῃ); they are contained in it, in neither spatial nor numerical terms (οὐ διαστηματικῶς οὐδὲ πληθυντικῶς περιέχονται), but as parts within a whole (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ τὰ μέρη).²²²

Origen said exactly the same when he described the logoi that were created in the Body of the Logos and placed on that Body: For we know that even if heaven and earth and the things in them pass away, yet the logoi about each thing, being like parts in a whole, or forms in a species (οἱ περὶ ἑκάστου λόγοι ὄντες ὡς ἐν ὅλῳ μέρη ἢ ὡς ἐν γένει εἴδη τοῦ ἐν ἀρχῇ λόγου), of the Logos who was in the beginning with God, namely, of God the Logos, will in no wise pass away.²²³

Moreover, Origen having in mind the Stoics, described the action of the spermatic logoi in similar terms: they ‘seize’ the surrounding matter (δραξάμενος τῆς παρακειμένης ὕλης … περιδραξάμενος αὐτῆς)’ and ‘permeate all of it’ (δι᾿ ὅλης αὐτῆς χωρήσας); a logos then ‘seizes the form’ that matter (i. e. a seed) had in the first place, and then forcefully it imposes a new form (περιδραξάμενός τε αὐτῆς τοῦ αὐτοῦ εἴδους) upon that which was previously soil, water, air, and fire. Thus, a logos subdues the qualities of those elements under its own force and gives rise to a new quality, which it creates (καὶ νικήσας τὰς ἐκείνων ποιότητας μεταβάλλει ἐπὶ ταύτην ἧς ἐστιν αὐτὸς δημιουργός). This is the way a logos makes up a complete wheat, which is exceedingly different (εἰς ὑπερβολὴν διαφέρων) from the initial grain, in terms of size, and shape, and diverseness.²²⁴ In turn, Simplicius said exactly the same, indeed using the same example: when a seed is planted into the soil, it unfolds its own logoi, it causes them to expand, and attracts the surrounding matter and shapes the logoi that are in-

 Simplicius, commEpict, p. 5.  Origen, Cels, V.22.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1097.20 32, apud Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, pp. 426 7.

Chapter 7 – Simplicius’ reply to Aristotle

487

herent in it.²²⁵ This might give the impression that it is the plant that causes the logoi to act, instead of the logoi causing the plant to grow. But this Simplicius says in order to criticize the Stoics for deviating from the correct description of this process, and for ‘confusing active and passive agents during that kind of movement’ (τὴν ποίησιν οὐ τηροῦσιν καθαρὰν ἀπηλλαγμένην τοῦ πάθους), while they fail to confirm that ‘the source of motion is immovable’ (τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς κινήσεως οὐ τηροῦσιν ἀκίνητον), as ‘Aristotle maintained’, but Simplicius made abunbdantly clear that Aristotle’s immovable mover was no other than the Anaxagorean Mind.²²⁶ Defending Aristotle, or appealing to him, does not make Simplicius a Peripatetic, nor describing Anaxagoras’ thought accurately makes him an Anaxagorean, since neither of those was his purpose. However, I postpone further discussion of this until chapter 10, where it is shown that outstanding treatises paying respects to Plato during the Late Antiquity, and later still, are illuminating in the sense that they are not typical of Neoplatonism: rather, they show considerable influence by Anaxagoras, notwithstanding casual (but not profound) modification of terminology.

 Simplicius, commCateg, p. 306: καταβληθὲν γὰρ τὸ σπέρμα ἀναπλοῖ τοὺς οἰκείους λόγους καὶ ἐπισπᾶται τὴν παρακειμένην ὕλην καὶ διαμορφοῖ τοὺς ἐν ἑαυτῷ λόγους.  Simplicius, loc. cit.

Conclusion of Part I: Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras The spirit of Anaxagoras marks a violent transition from a society securing its coherence by means of traditional theological convictions to a society that was in a limbo: it employed reason for its political structures, but hardly was it prepared to allow the authority of reason form its metaphysical ideas. It might be assumed that Socrates was a victim of this cultural transience. Likewise, Aristotle escaped death only by decamping to Chalkis, ‘so that the Athenians should not have the chance to commit a second crime against philosophy’.¹ Anaxagoras introduced the novel (and outrageous to the establishment) idea that the sun is not a divine being but only a fiery stone.² Galen wrote that he was a blasphemer against the sun, which offers people the different seasons of the year and brings fruits to maturity. Consequently, he lumped Anaxagoras together with such notorious atheists as Epicurus and Diagoras of Melos.³ The anonymous author who used Galen’s name wrote that the three most notorious atheists of Antiquity were Diagoras of Melos, Theodore of Cyrene, and Evemerus of Tegea. He added though that, to them, also Euripides, Anaxagoras’ ardent ad-

 Vita Aristotelis, Vita Vulgata, 19; Vita Marciana, 41.  Cf. Plato, Apologia Socratis, 26d, quoted infra, p. 510, note 95. Anonymous, Scholia in Pinda rum, Ode 1, scholion 91a: περὶ δὲ τοῦ ἡλίου οἱ φυσικοί φασιν ὡς λίθος καλεῖται ὁ ἥλιος, καὶ ᾿Aνα ξαγόρου δὲ γενόμενον τὸν Εὐριπίδην μαθητὴν πέτρον εἰρηκέναι τὸν ἥλιον διὰ τῶν προεκκειμέ νων. Achilles Tatius, Isagoga Excerpta, 2 & 11. Hippolytus, op. cit. 1.8.6. Suda, letter alpha, entry 1981. George Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, p. 278. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.25.3a. Michael Glycas, Annales (copying from Stobaeus), p. 40. Lucian of Samosata (disapproving, and castigat ing ‘those who are so presumptuous as to dare make assertions about ineffable things’), Icaro menippus, 7 & 20. Harpocration, Lexicon in Decem Oratores Atticos, p. 33 (styling Anaxagoras ‘a sophist’). Photius, Lexicon, letter alpha, entry 1573. Michael Psellus attributed the idea to Anax agoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and, ‘of the less ancient ones’, to Alexander of Aphrodisias, ‘a man who spoke about the secret things of nature, and indeed of everything, very superficially’. Michael Psellus, Opuscula i, 34, lines 105 6. There is only one, possibly misinformed, testimony urging that this doctrine was maintained and staunchly argued by sophist Gorgias. Sopater of Athens, Διαίρεσις Ζητημάτων, p. 23: μέγας εἰς σοφίαν Γοργίας, μύδρον εἶναι λέγων τὸν ἥλιον· καὶ τῷ λόγῳ φιλονεικῶν πρὸς τὴν τοιαύτην ὑπόθεσιν.  Galen, De Usu Partium, p. 21, adding, ‘and yet, the Creator continues to create, despite the in gratitude of such men’. Likewise, Aelius Aristides, Πρὸς Πλάτωνα περὶ Ῥητορικῆς, p. 60: Diago ras and Anaxagoras blasphemed against the gods (ἐβλασφήμησαν περὶ θεούς). Diagoras of Melos (fifth century BC) was a poet and sophist, who divulged the Orphic and Eleusinian mys teries, disparaging them as superstition. As it happened with Anaxagoras, the Athenians ac cused him of impiety, which forced him to flee from the city.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

489

mirer and pupil, should be included, although he expressed his atheistic views in disguise and clandestinely, as he normally did, out of fear of the jury of Areopagus.⁴ The testimony by Diogenes Laertius has it that Anaxagoras posited the sun as a fiery stone as large as Peloponnesus, even bigger than that.⁵ However, an anonymous commentator of Aratus wrote that, to Anaxagoras, the sun was eighteen times as large as the earth;⁶ according to another author, to Anaxagoras this is ‘many times as big as the earth’ (πολυπλάσιον τῆς γῆς).⁷ Diogenes Laertius reported that Cleon accused Anaxagoras of impiety for having said this about the sun.⁸ Pericles managed to save him, and only a fine of five talents was imposed on him, on condition that he should decamp from Athens.⁹ This decision was made by a narrow majority of five votes, which means that Anaxagoras escaped death only just and with difficulty.¹⁰ Olympiodorus of Alexandria had a different account to offer: he did not employ the information that, after his ‘banishment by ostracism’, Anaxagoras died at Lampsacus;¹¹ instead, following some time after his ‘ostracism’, he returned to Athens thanks to the rhetorical skill of his pupil Pericles.¹² It is very likely that this testimony is true, since Plutarch, writing the biography of Pericles, recounts that Anaxagoras was with Pericles when he was very old and Pericles took care of the old man. By the end of his life, Anaxagoras was in Athens living in utter poverty, indeed starving to death. When Pericles realized this, he dashed to the man and implored him with tears and lam-

 Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 35.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.8, copied by Suda, letter mu, entry 1378, and George Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, p. 278.  Anonymous, Prolegomena in Aratum (e cod. Paris. suppl. gr. 607A), 17: τὸν δὲ ἥλιον οἳ μὲν ὡρί σαντο τὸ πῦρ, οἳ δὲ μύδρον, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας, καί φασιν αὐτὸν κυκλοτερῆ ὄντα ὀκτωκαιδεκαπλά σιον εἶναι τῆς γῆς. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.24.2, quoting from Pseudo Plutarch, Pla cita Philosophorum, 890C: to Anaxagoras, the sun is many times as big as Peloponnesus; to Anaximander, it is as big as the earth; to Heraclitus, as big as a human foot; to Epicurus, the sun is as big as it appears to our eyes.  Pseudo Galen, op. cit. 63. Thus, Anaxagoras dissented from Anaximander who believed that the sun has a size equal to that of the earth, even though Anaximander was the teacher of Anax imenes, who in turn was the teacher of Anaxagoras himself (Pseudo Galen, op. cit. 3).  Athenian statesman and general, who died in 422 BC.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.12.  Josephus, Contra Apionem, 2.265.  Suda, letter alpha, entry 1981. See the epigram on Anaxagoras’ tomb, in Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.15.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Aristotelis Meteora Commentaria, p. 17. The anonymous com mentator of Lucian of Samosata mentions only that the philosopher just escaped death with the help of Pericles. Scholia in Lucianum (scholia in Icaromenippum), 7.

490

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

entations to allow to be taken care of, since he could not afford to lose such a wise counselor of the state. Upon this, Anaxagoras, uncovered his head and said to his pupil, ‘O Pericles, even those who are in need of a lamp care to add some oil to it.’¹³ This answer is very much like Anaxagoras, who, when he was told that his sons (or son) had died, he replied ‘I knew that I gave birth to mortal sons’ (ᾔδειν αὐτοὺς θνητοὺς γεννήσας).¹⁴ Euripides remained in history as the devout pupil who embraced Anaxagoras’ views and instilled them in poetic form into his own plays.¹⁵ He called the sun χρυσέαν βῶλον (‘a gold clod of earth’), for which later he was mentioned jointly with his inspirer.¹⁶ Anaxagoras’ views were a violent break with the official religious outlook; to posit the sun as a red-hot mass of stone was outrageous even to his admirers such as Origen, who saw this as putting God’s creatures to shame.¹⁷ Considering that, more than eight centuries later, Emperor Constantine did not abolish the cult of the sun even after he made Christianity the favoured religion of the empire, no wonder that Anaxagoras escaped death only at the very last moment. This teaching appeared amidst a tension between three cardinal manifestations of human society: one, science; two, religion; three, social ideas, which were on the making following the Persian wars. Were it for the traditional reli-

 Plutarch, Pericles, 16.8 9.  The phrase became proverbial of Anaxagoras being an exemplar of what it means not to be subject to passions. This was quoted by authors throughout all of Late Antiquity. The following authors spoke of one son. Plutarch, De Cohibenda Ira, 463D; De Tranquillitate Animi, 474D. Pseu do Plutarch, Consolatio ad Apollonium, 118E. Epictetus, Dissertationes ab Arriano Digestae, 3.24.105. Dio Chrysostom, Orationes, 37.37. Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 4.7.9. Sto baeus, Anthologium (quoting from Aelian’s History, who though wrote of ‘two sons’), 4.44.62. Hi erocles of Alexandria, In Aureum Carmen, 11.6. Procopius of Gaza, Epistulae, 125. Simplicius, commEpict, p. 54. Nicetas Choniates, Orationes, Oration 6, p. 51. Nicephorus Gregoras, Epistulae, 110. Of two sons wrote Aelian, Varia Historia, 3.2. Diogenes Laertius mentions only sons, adding that some authors attributed this phrase to Solon, and others to Xenophon, Vitae, 2.13; 2.55; but all authors of whom we know mentioned only Anaxagoras having said this.  Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 783; Fragmenta Phaethontis Incertae Sedis, fr. 5; Orestes, verse 983b.  Anonymous, Scholia in Apollonii Rhodii Argonautica (scholia vetera), p. 44. Anonymous, Scholia in Euripidem (scholia vetera) (comm. on Oresteia), verse 982. The author explains that although μύδρος means a fiery piece of iron, Euripides used it in the sense of ‘piece of earth’ (πέτραν δὲ καὶ βῶλον). Op. cit. (comm. on Hippolytus, verse 601). Anonymous, Scholia in Pinda rum (scholia vetera), Ode 1, scholion 91a.  Origen, Cels, V.11. Before him, the only Christian writer who cared to deny this view was Ta tian, Oratio ad Graecos, 27.2: πῶς πεισθήσομαι τῷ λέγοντι μύδρον τὸν ἥλιον καὶ τὴν σελήνην γῆν; τὰ γὰρ τοιαῦτα λόγων ἐστὶν ἅμιλλα καὶ οὐκ ἀληθείας διακόσμησις. After Origen, the only Christian to mention this was John of Damascus, Passio Magni Martyris Artemii, 47.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

491

gious premisses to be overturned, the looming danger was that radical changes would be brought about to fundamental ideas about social philosophy, therefore, to the social fabric, and eventually to the political system itself. In other words, collapse of ‘traditional scientific’ ideas would bring down also the religious, cultural, and political foundations of society. However, that would be too much for any society to endure, considering that the Athenian state strove to take a step beyond the legacy of such law-makers as Solon, nearly a hundred years after his death, and to follow the ideas of more recent ones, such as Cleisthenes and Ephialtes. This is why the ideas of Anaxagoras were bound to be rejected, and why Athens was eager to get rid of him. As powerful as he was, Pericles was able to save his friend’s life, but not to secure his living at Athens. Lampsacus received Anaxagoras with honour, but that city was far enough for the tribute paid to the philosopher to have any effect on Athens. Consequently, once the menace was hurdled and the blasphemy was exorcized, Athenians were delighted at any philosophical account belittling, even ridiculing, Anaxagoras’ ideas. This was the glorious way for both Plato and Aristotle to tread on: both of them, especially Aristotle, disparaged Anaxagoras, while plundering his ideas. Aristotle knew that Anaxagoras’ philosophy could not be interpreted within the corset of the empirical premisses posited by Aristotle himself; but he chose to consider them apart from their real connotations because he wanted to degrade this philosophy. The reason why he sought to do so was that Anaxagoras had preceded him in many respects, and he had the merit of being based on fewer and simpler scientific principles that made it better science. Quite simply, resentment got the better of Aristotle. One should read carefully the beginning of the Metaphysics. Anaxagoras is mentioned in passing as the one who posited ‘the infinity of homoiomeries’ (τὴν τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν ἀπειρίαν), and he was honoured along with Empedocles as the one who treated the question of ‘the source of motion’ (ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως).¹⁸ However, Aristotle draws a line demarcating his own superiority: “As for what essence and real being is, no one expounded it clearly” (τὸ δὲ τί ἦν εἶναι καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν σαφῶς μὲν οὐδεὶς ἀποδέδωκε).¹⁹ Why should Anaxagoras, and indeed any Presocratic physicist, have spoken about ‘essence proper’ which was alien and hardly necessary to that mindset, and whether introduction of this notion was really progress or detriment to philosophy is a question that one should consider carefully. It is certainly not mere chance that, although fascinated by the notion of ‘essence’, Aristotle never made

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 988a.  Loc. cit.

492

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

up his mind as to what the essence of a thing is: he wavered between definitions positing this as either formless matter or form or both (τὸ συναμφότερον), but eventually he left the question moot. Nevertheless, once the real nature of Anaxagoras’ principles is studied, it turns out that the Aristotelian expression τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι (meaning ‘essence’ of things, but this expression is always hard to translate accurately in English) was formulated in this way with good reason: although this is translated ‘essence’, ‘essential nature’, and the like, and it appears as a rather weird term in the Aristotelian context, Anaxagoras knew of no such things as ‘essence’, and the value of using it in philosophy is debatable anyway. Translated literatim, it means that which was meant to be, and the expression makes full sense in the context of Anaxagoras rendered by Simplicius, where we are instructed about the notion of potentiality as the kind of being that precedes any reality other than the Mind, and it is impossible for any sensible reality to come-to-be unless by means of potentialities developing into actualities. Anaxagoras said that any principle is unlike anyone else (ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί), but each thing is and was (ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν) a set of properties that appears most manifestly (ἐνδηλότατα) present in it. This means that the identity of each thing is determined by those principles (manifested as specific characteristics of it) which prevail in it (ἀλλ᾿ ὅτῳ πλεῖστα ἔνι)²⁰ and make it to be what it is and was. This is why Simplicius suggested that the Aristotelian notion of τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι was nothing new, and that it was Anaxagoras who said that first.²¹ In the beginning of the Metaphysics, Aristotle says that the Pythagoreans used first principles which are ‘more abstruse’ (ἐκτοπωτέροις) than those of the Physicists. The reason was that the Pythagoreans did not draw them from the sensible world (οὐκ ἐξ αἰσθητῶν),²² but they used mathematical (i. e. incorporeal) principles in order to explain the physical world (πραγματεύονται τὰ περὶ φύσεως πάντα), which implicitly he himself deemed incongruous. For such ‘causes and principles which they describe are capable of application to superior realities, and indeed they are better fitted to those than to theories about nature’ (τὰς δὲ αἰτίας καὶ τὰς ἀρχάς, ὥσπερ εἴπομεν, ἱκανὰς λέγουσιν ἐπαναβῆναι καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ ἀνωτέρω τῶν ὄντων).²³ In short, once incorporeal principles are introduced,

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 157 & 165 & 172.  Cf. Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 27. Simplicius himself makes plain his own opinion in op. cit. p. 157: that which Aristotle saw as ‘essence’, or τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, can be explained and understood in the context of Anaxagoras’ notion of a twofold cre ation, which I canvassed in chapter 4.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 990a.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

493

they are more suitable for explaining realities which are superior to the perceptible nature. Once Anaxagoras’ principles are shown to be of that rank (which Heron saw, if speaking specifically of geometry),²⁴ why was it unexpected that Simplicius applied them to a reality which ‘is above nature’ (ἐπὶ τὰ ἀνωτέρω τῶν ὄντων),²⁵ as indeed Aristotle himself deemed it more reasonable to do? Aristotle thought (or so he pretended) that Anaxagoras (like all Physicists, in his view) posited as ‘reality’ only whatever is sensible and is contained by the socalled heavens’ (τό γε ὂν τοῦτ᾿ ἐστὶν ὅσον αἰσθητόν).²⁶ In any event, Aristotle himself was apt to such a conception of reality. Nevertheless, Anaxagoras never said so, and Aristotle knew it: for how the Mind, which, to Anaxagoras, is ‘being’ par excellence, could be possibly considered ‘as sensible and contained by the so-called heavens’? Hence, Aristotle strove to devalue Anaxagoras right from the start of that work, sometimes under the paternalistic pretext that he wanted ‘to help’ him to make himself clear (and commentators made too much of Aristotle’s ‘helping’ his predecessor).²⁷ Although Anaxagoras ‘did not actually articulate this’ (κατὰ λόγον, ὃν ἐκεῖνος μὲν οὐ διήρθρωσεν),²⁸ ‘if one pursued what he wanted to say, while one also contributes to articulation of what he meant to say (συνδιαρθρῶν ἃ βούλεται), it would appear that he says something more up-to-date’ (ἴσως ἂν φανείη καινοπρεπεστέρως λέγων).²⁹ Aristotle’s implication was that, if there was something ‘up-to-date’ in Anaxagoras’ allegedly inconsistent formulations, the credit for enunciating them clearly and consistently should go to Aristotle himself, who ‘helped’ Anaxagoras express his otherwise primitive formulations. We should bear in mind that Aristotle regarded experience as the prime source of knowledge, hence, philosophical accounts should be based on empirical data. Simplicius pointed out that Aristotle’s arguments rely on knowledge drawn from the senses (ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν αἰσθήσει ἐναργῶν τὰς ἐπιχειρήσεις ποιεῖσθαι), in contrast to Plato who treated such knowledge with contempt.³⁰ Ar-

 Heron of Alexandria, Definitiones, 123.1: ὁ Πυθαγόρας ἄνωθεν τὰς ἀρχὰς αὐτῆς [τῆς γεωμε τρίας] ἐπισκοπούμενος καὶ ἀΰλως καὶ νοερῶς τὰ θεωρήματα διερευνώμενος καὶ μετὰ τοῦτον ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ ὁ Πλάτων καὶ Οἰνοπίδης ὁ Χῖος καὶ Θεόδωρος ὁ Κυρηναῖος καὶ Ἱπποκράτης πρὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος.  Aristotle, loc. cit.  Aristotle, loc. cit.  Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 68 & Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, pp. 61 2. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 16.  Aristotle, op. cit. 989a; but to Simplicius (commPhys, p. 21), Aristotle ‘helped’ the frivolous readers of Anaxagoras.  Aristotle, op. cit. 989b.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1249.

494

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

istotle saw sense-perception as the real source of reliable knowledge: once any kind of understanding is obtained from either intellection or sense-perception, he opted for comprehension derived from the senses, since he was conversing with people endowed with senses.³¹ Once again, Simplicius was accurate, since Aristotle himself declared that experience (ἐκ δ᾿ ἐμπειρίας) provides the starting-point of art and science: art, in the world of process; science, in the world of being (ἐὰν δὲ περὶ τὸ ὄν, ἐπιστήμης). Knowledge is not derived from contact with (less still, by participation in) a higher plane of knowledge, but it arises from sense-perception (ἐξ αἰσθήσεως).³² Aristotle rightly pointed out that Anaxagoras was a Physicist.³³ The problem is that he did not care to report this ‘physics’ accurately, but only used it at his own liking in order to expound his own philosophy and represent it as an original one. His representation of the Presocratics generally implies that their thought was too a primitive one and the world had to wait for Aristotle himself to expound truth in its fullness. He was then acknowledged as ‘one who was able to predict’ (προγνωστικός),³⁴ which modern terminology would have it ‘true scientist’. Up until the sixth century, philosophers claimed that they were only mere commentators of the Classical lore bequeathed by Plato and Aristotle: they did not claim originality for that matter; they only cared to denounce such earlier ‘heretics’ as the Stoics, Epicureans, Cynics, and Sceptics, who had dared to dissent from those giants. The truth is, of course, that Plotinus, despite the respects he always cared to pay Plato, was neither a mere commentator, nor exactly a Platonist, since his Chaldean liabilities were too striking to be branded ‘Platonism’, not to mention his heavy liabilities to Aristotle and the Stoics, which Porphyry pointed out, but he should have added Anaxagoras to them, too. In the history of philosophy, there is neither universal methodology, nor do philosophers have the same object of investigation, nor indeed is there any linear evolution from forbears to subsequent philosophers: on the contrary, there are varieties of method, of priorities bearing on the prime object of concern, of fundamental principles and premisses set forth; above all, almost every philosopher felt that he should start building his own system ab ovo. Hence, during and after the Renais-

 Simplicius, commCateg, p. 6: οὐδαμοῦ δὲ ἐθέλει τῆς ἐναργείας ἐξίστασθαι. διττῆς δὲ οὔσης ἐναργείας εἰς πίστιν, τῆς μὲν ἀπὸ νοῦ, τῆς δὲ ἀπὸ αἰσθήσεως, τοῖς μετὰ αἰσθήσεως ζῶσιν διαλε γόμενος τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς αἰσθήσεως προτιμᾷ.  Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, 100a.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 763b (φυσιολόγος); op. cit. 756b; Physica, 187a (φυσικός); Metaphysica, 989b 990a (φυσιολόγοι); et passim.  Hippolytus, op. cit. 1.8.10: τοῦτον λέγουσι καὶ προγνωστικὸν γεγονέναι.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

495

sance, it was deemed that every system was a new beginning for philosophy, and philosophers were satisfied that their own system was the true philosophy. In Physics, things were different: scientists felt that they should see a little further as ‘dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants (nani gigantum humeris insidentes)’.³⁵ Whereas Anaxagoras’ universe was one of unity, where ‘everything is in everything’, Aristotle introduced another conception of it, which actually lasted until the end of the nineteenth century, to be overturned only upon the middle of that century. His world was one of distinct objects entirely separate from one another, where each and every object was determined by means of space, time, and its own mass. To Anaxagoras, there was a universal relevance of principles, therefore, of individual things and phenomena, too. Aristotle maintained that, unless something is endowed with matter, it does not really exist. There is not such reality as intelligible substance existing per se. Whatever is material it cannot be produced from the intelligible alone, since matter is indispensable to this effect. This is why, to him, matter proper is one of the three definitions of what ‘essence’ (or, real ‘substance’) of a certain thing is. In order to argue for real existence of any thing, this thing has to be perceptible, as it happened with the Empiricism of John Lock in the seventeenth century and with David Hume in the eighteenth. Really existing things are only those which fall under the domain of empirical observation and they can be measured, although the question is what kind of ‘perception’ of ‘measurement’ would apply to such things as the ‘fifth body’ or the aether. Even time itself (abstruse a notion as it is) can be measured by means of clocks and diaries, and Aristotle made this notion familiar by defining it by means of such notions as ‘motion’, ‘measure’, and ‘number’.³⁶ All of these were recognizable by common experience, in contrast to Anaxagoras’ principles which were not, and they continue to appear weird to modern scholars only because they stick to Aristotle’s conflicting accounts of it. No wonder that Aristotle, striving to obscure his heavy debts to Anaxagoras, associated those principles with matter and measure, in order to ridicule the entire theory about them, and a modern scholar mentioned in the Introduction styled Anaxagoras’ philosophy ‘self-stultifying’ (i. e. stupid, inconsistent, indeed

 A metaphor meaning ‘one who develops novel intellectual pursuits by understanding and building on the research and works created by notable thinkers of the past’. The metaphor was first recorded in the twelfth century, supposedly used by Bernard of Chartres. Isaac Newton repeated (in a letter to Robert Hooke, in February 1676), ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’. But he implied ones of old, not such scientinsts as Robert Hooke, of whom he felt exactly the same as Aristotle did of Anaxagoras.  See COT, pp. 183 5.

496

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

ridiculous) being under the impression that he said something new while reproducing Aristotle’s views in just a more rude manner. It was this Aristotelian (and, ispo facto, anti-Anaxagorean) conception of reality that determined what is assumed common sense, namely, such distinctions as here / there, left / right, up / down, yesterday / today / tomorrow, past / present /future, one / many, nothing / less / more.³⁷ However, we know today that the existence of Time is radically different, so that concepts of common sense such as past / present / future make no scientific sense any longer, as indeed such notions as here/there, and others, make no sense either. Within the universe of today’s scientific reality, here is everywhere and now is identified with yesterday and tomorrow. Simplicius attributed these ideas to Anaxagoras, but several modern scholars were all too quick to dismiss it as ‘Neoplatonic’ interpretation, only because they had no inkling of the fact that a real and consistently argued comprehension of Anaxagoras’ physics comes from the future, not from the past. Today, a fundamental scientific assumption is that whatever falls into the grasp of human senses is not reality; actually, it is a false impression: this is only a matrix created by the human physiology. This means a made-up representation of reality created by the human senses and brain. The answer to the question, ‘are the data provided by the human senses the objective reality itself, or is this only an illusion?’ determines the significance of the notions space, time, matter, which, in turn, circumscribe not only our conception of what reality is, but also the values (and, eventually, the quality) of a certain civilization. Democritus used to say that external impressions have not the same impact upon different individuals; hence, it is uncertain which of these impressions are true or false, since any kind of them is no truer than another, hence they are all equally true. Consequently, either there is no truth, or we cannot discover it.³⁸ On that account, appearances should be identified with truth (τὸ ἀληθὲς δὲ ταὐτόν ἐστι τῷ φαινομένῳ),³⁹ yet Democritus and Anaxagoras held that sense-percep-

 Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 164: “There is neither the minimum nor the max imum among the principles.” Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 164: “The shares of the large and the small are equal in number; therefore, everything is in everything; nor is it possible that anything be separate, but all things have a share in everything; it would not be possible for anything to exist by itself, but, just as in the beginning, now too all things are together. In all things there are many things present, equal in number, both in the greater and in the lesser of the things which are separated off.”  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009b.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 71: ταὐτὸν τὸ φαινόμενον καὶ τὸ ἀληθές.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

497

tion does no supply us with absolute truth, which should be sought through reasonable investigation, so as ‘to save the phenomena’. Whereas Heraclitus argued that everything both exists and does not exist (πάντα εἶναι καὶ μὴ εἶναι), Anaxagoras said this in different terms by rejecting the principle of contradiction, since he allowed that there is an intermediate state between two logically opposite propositions.⁴⁰ Consequently, he did not care for any absolute objective truth, but he was prepared to concede that human beings are bound to see as reality whatever comes from the data of sense-perception. Stobaeus reported a catalogue of philosophers who argued that sense-perception is false: Pythagoras, Empedocles, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Melissus, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Metrodorus of Chios, Protagoras, Plato.⁴¹ Syrianus wrote that Empedocles and Parmenides identified phenomena (that is, appearances) with truth, and, significantly, he distinguished Protagoras from Anaxagoras. For whereas Protagoras argued that truth is any subjective personal impression (ὡς ἄρα τὸ φαινόμενον ἑκάστῳ τοῦτο καὶ ἔστιν), Anaxagoras maintained that how phenomena appear to us is dependent on ourselves, that is, on our physiology (τοιαῦτα ἡμῖν ἔσεσθαι τὰ πράγματα διισχυριζόμενον ὁποῖοι ποτ᾿ ἂν ὦμεν αὐτοί).⁴² Porphyry, as well as Zeno of Citium before him, explained this at the point where he commented on Anaxagoras’ proposition ‘everything is in everything’. The principles exist differently in either the mind, or in the soul, or in plants, or in inanimate bodies, and differently still in their most pure incorporeal existence. The term he used for the existence of the logoi in things (and in phenomena) is characteristic, namely, εἰδωλικῶς (‘as an idol’).⁴³ This adverb means an object being seen ‘through its reflection by a mirror’, which is why perception of it is bound to be vague.

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1012a. This was outrageous to Aristotle, who decided that Anaxagoras made all knowledge ‘false’ (πάντα ψευδῆ).  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.50. Cf. Plato, Theaetetus, 158a.  Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 75.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10: Πάντα μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ οἰκείως τῇ ἑκάστου οὐσίᾳ· ἐν νῷ μὲν γὰρ νοερῶς, ἐν ψυχῇ δὲ λογικῶς, ἐν δὲ τοῖς φυτοῖς σπερματικῶς, ἐν δὲ σώμασιν εἰδωλικῶς, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐπέκεινα ἀνεννοήτως τε καὶ ὑπερουσίως. Likewise, Damascius, Princ, p. 243 (quoting Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 44): πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστοις, ὅπου μὲν ἀδιάκριτα, ὅπου δὲ διακρινόμενα, ὅπου δὲ διακεκριμένα. These statements constitute as much legacy of Anaxagoras to Neoplatonism as was it so to the Stoics (infra, p. 640; 809). Cf. Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 103; commTim, v. 2, pp. 26; 44; 150. Damascius, Princ, pp. 228; 232 3; In Phaedonem (versio 1), 534; In Parmenidem, p. 195; In Philebum, 130 (reporting the views of Porphyry, Iambli chus, and Proclus on this). Cf. Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.8 (13 24). See further, chapter 13, pp. 1298 1307.

498

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

Once involved with perceptible things, the principles/logoi are grasped indirectly, that is, from their action and generative or dissolving results. Using modern language, I would render εἰδωλικῶς as ‘virtual reality’. What we see as ‘reality’ is in fact a matrix dependent on our perceptible abilities. This is like a television-set: the images on screen are only the converted product of the electronic machinery of the device which is located behind the screen. Beside these testimonies, once again we have Damascius, the noble sixthcentury teacher of Simplicius, who mentioned Parmenides, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras as being those who believed that ‘the senses provide us with the truth, against Protagoras and Epicurus who dismissed sensible impression as false, while Damascius himself placed Plato in between.⁴⁴ These testimonies are not contradictory, as one might assume on the face of it; actually, both of them expound the same idea, which is this: how a certain human being perceives reality depends on one’s physiological constitution. Anaxagoras received this idea from his teacher Parmenides, and this is what Empedocles (Anaxagoras’ pupil) believed, too. In respect of this, Aristotle’s testimony is of some value: Democritus said that either there is no truth or we cannot discover it. In general, the idea was that thought is sense-perception, and sense-perception is physical alteration, therefore, the impression given through sense-perception is necessarily true. It was on those grounds that both Empedocles and Democritus, and in effect all the others, were obsessed by such opinions as these, if we are to believe Aristotle. Empedocles said that those who change their bodily condition, they change also their thought: “For it is according to that which is present in men that thoughts emerge in them.” Besides, in another passage, Empedocles says: “And as they change into a different nature, so it ever comes to them to think differently.” Parmenides thought likewise: For as each one at any time has the temperament of his many jointed limbs, so thought comes to men. For in each and every man the substance of his limbs is that very thing which thinks; for thought is that which preponderates.⁴⁵

This means that knowledge is dependent on the constitution of human body: the nature of things corresponds to the nature of human organs through which man perceives reality. Then, Aristotle goes on, a saying of Anaxagoras to some of his disciples is also recorded, which urged that things would be for them as they

 Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 80.  Aristotle quotes this in Metaphysica, 1009b23 25. See the same in Theophrastus (with slight differences), De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 3. Also, Alexander of Aphrodisias (abbreviating, yet using the same phraseology), commMetaph, p. 370.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

499

judged them to be.⁴⁶ It was believed that Homer appeared to hold this view, because he made Hector,⁴⁷ when he was stunned by the blow, lie with thoughts deranged, thus implying that even those who are ‘out of their minds’ still have an understanding of reality, although not the same grasp of it as other people. Clearly then, if these are different kinds of thought, reality also should be ‘both so and not so.’ It is along this path that the consequences are most difficult; for if those who have the clearest possible vision of truth (and these are all those who seek and love truth most) maintain such opinions and make this kind of pronouncements about truth, surely those who are trying to be philosophers may well despair: for the pursuit of truth will be ‘chasing birds in the air’.⁴⁸ Thus, Anaxagoras is represented as believing, along with Homer and Parmenides, that ‘having an understanding of reality and a feeling of it, is as real as any other grasp of things.’⁴⁹ The wounded Hector’s perception of reality was not less real than that of those who were nearby or opposite him.⁵⁰ Why is that so, Aristotle could not grasp, but a man fairly educated in the science of the second half of the twentieth century could, as much as Parmenides was able to see what was that all about. Any observer comprehends reality while believing that he himself stands opposite reality, indeed as if the whole scenery were that, on the one hand there is the observer, and, on the other, the phenomena which are observed. However, this is an illusion as old as Aristotle and as modern as Isaac Newton. Both the observer and the observed phenomenon are one reality, and Parmenides and Anaxagoras would have added that all reality is one thing. The point is that any manifestation of reality is simply  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009b: ᾿Aναξαγόρου δὲ καὶ ἀπόφθεγμα μνημονεύεται πρὸς τῶν ἑταί ρων τινάς, ὅτι τοιαῦτ᾿ αὐτοῖς ἔσται τὰ ὄντα οἷα ἂν ὑπολάβωσιν. Cf. Asclepius of Tralles following to the letter; commMetaph, p. 277. Alexander of Aphrodisias simply identified Empedocles, Par menides, Democritus, and Anaxagoras, with Protagoras, and saw no difference between them on this point. commMetaph, p. 307. Likewise, a late Byzantine intellectual lumped Anaxagoras to gether with Protagoras, placing them midway between the scepticism of Pyrrho and the dogma tism of Plato. Nicephorus Gregoras, Epistulae, 30: ὧν ὡς ἐν μεταιχμίῳ γενόμενος ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὁ Ἡγησιβούλου καὶ Πρωταγόρας ὁ ᾿Aβδηρίτης, οὕτω τε καὶ οὐχ οὕτως ἔχειν ἀπεφήναντο τὰ πράγ ματα καὶ τοιαῦτ᾿ εἶναι ἑκάστῳ, οἷα ἑκάστῳ καὶ φαίνεται, καὶ οἷα μὲν ἐκείνῳ, τοιαῦτα μὲν ἐκείνῳ, οἶα δ᾿ ἑτέρῳ, τοιαῦτα δ᾿ ἑτέρῳ.  But there is no such instance in the Ilias. In De Anima, 427a25 26, Aristotle argues likewise by means of an interpretation of Odyssea, XVIII.136 7.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009b. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 307.  Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 307: προσάγει δὲ [sc. Aristotle] καὶ τὸν Ὅμηρον ταύτῃ τῇ δόξῃ τῇ ταὐτὰ ἡγουμένῃ τό τε φρονεῖν καὶ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι καὶ πᾶσαν δόξαν ἀληθῆ εἶναι.  Cf. comments on this by Simplicius (or whoever the author), commAnim, p. 27. John Philo ponus, commAnim, p. 72. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 278. Sophonias, paraphrPhys, pp. 11 12.

500

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

a specific concurrence of principles, while all of the principles stand in universal unity, and the particular character of a certain phenomenon (or thing) is determined by the preponderant principles acting upon it (ἐκ τοῦ μάλιστα ἐπικρατοῦντος).⁵¹ We should recall Philo’s reference to the ‘active cause’ (δραστήριον αἴτιον), which Sextus made ‘active principle’ (δραστήριος ἀρχή), with reference to two principles (an active and a passive one), speaking not of the Stoics, but of Anaxagoras, whom he regarded as ‘the leader of this doctrine’ (τῆς δόξης ἀρχηγός), indeed a leader that was second only to Homer. We have seen that the notion of two principles in this respect was not an accurate report, since the logoi are inherent in the objects which they generate, whereas they are there as if they were detached from them.⁵² The Anaxagorean principles are both here and everywhere, as much as are they themselves nowhere specifically, and matter is simply a product of circumstantially concurring principles, as indeed any perceptible thing or phenomenon is. And yet, there are always certain principles which preponderate and make something to be what it is. These principles, as a whole, are the principle of a thing, or its logos, or its own ‘essence’, as philosophers posterior to Anaxagoras would have had it. These principles make their mark not only in the object itself, but also in the entire reality (since an object is as much a universe as the universe itself is), and certainly they do so also in the reality that surrounds the specific object or phenomenon. Aristotle erroneously believed that the reality of a thing is exhausted in the thing itself, which he called quid (τόδε τι). He took no account of the reality surrounding this thing; consequently, all chances of seeing the truth of this thing in relation to its surrounding reality was missed. To Anaxagoras, the environing reality of a thing is indeed the entire universe, and what happens to this thing in turn affects the entire universe itself. No matter how we limit our remarks to the neighbouring reality which is close to a specific thing that is observed, it can be said that the principles that make this reality up are not the same, and yet this is one and the selfsame reality. Once Hector is wounded, certain principles are there, caus Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 27. Cf. Simplicius, op. cit. p. 163: φαίνεται δὲ καὶ προσαγορεύεται ἕκαστον ἐκ τοῦ μάλιστα ἐπικρατοῦντος. commCael, pp. 605 6: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ καὶ ταῦτα σύνθετα ἐξ ὁμοιομερῶν, ὥσπερ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα τὰ αἰσθητὰ σύνθετα ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν ποιεῖ κατ᾿ ἐπικράτειαν ἑνὸς τῶν ἐν αὐτοῖς χαρακτηριζόμενα. Op. cit. p. 632: τὰς ὁμοιομερείας στοιχεῖα λέγων καὶ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι, κατὰ δὲ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν χαρακτηρίζεσθαι. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 13: φαίνεσθαι δὲ καὶ λέγεσθαι ἕκαστον κατὰ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 86: οὗτοι πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ὑπετίθεντο εἶναι καὶ ἔλεγον ἐκ τοῦ ἐπικρατοῦντος ὀνομάζεσθαι σάρκα ἢ λευκὸν ἤ τι τοιοῦ τον ἄλλο.  Supra, chapter 7, pp. 459 61. See also infra, p. 633.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

501

ing the imbalance of his physiological and mental functions. These principles also make up the specific reality (or, the scenery which Homer described), but it is only Hector alone who feels them, and they shape Hector’s own perception of reality. This grasp is no less real whatsoever than that by others who were present at that circumstance, but their comprehension of reality was determined by certain other principles that formed their physical condition. Therefore, we have two different perceptions of reality, neither of which can be said to be superior to the other: both of them are equally real, and the verisimilitude of each of them stems from different activities by different logoi. In the case of Hector, the preponderant principles are different owing to the condition of his wounded body.⁵³ This would have appeared strange to Aristotle and to his readers of old, but this is what Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901‒1976) described as the correct approach to reality: while performing an experiment, one can no longer consider the observer who carries this out as being independent from the experiment itself. The scientist who does this work is as much part of the experiment as the ingredients of it are, and the scientist’s presence itself affects the results of the experiment. What would be possibly the difference between this idea and the statements of Parmenides and Anaxagoras? Therefore, Anaxagoras was once again the victim of Aristotle’s distorted representation, which gave rise to conflicting subsequent accounts. However, we can conclude from them that Anaxagoras was modest enough as to set very little store by the sense-perception and not delude himself with the impression that this can provide any assumed objective truth. Unlike Protagoras, who sanctioned every personal perception as ‘truth’, Anaxagoras saw it as only relatively true and conceded no absolute authority to it, although ‘truth’ still it was.⁵⁴ Modern scientific discoveries reveal that the simulacrum which we create by means of our senses and the organs we use to reinforce these senses, is not a true representation of the real universe: it is only a false semblance created by the human brain, through the extremely imperfect and fallible human perceptible abilities.⁵⁵

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009b: φασὶ δὲ καὶ τὸν Ὅμηρον ταύτην ἔχοντα φαίνεσθαι τὴν δόξαν, ὅτι ἐποίησε τὸν Ἕκτορα, ὡς ἐξέστη ὑπὸ τῆς πληγῆς, κεῖσθαι ἀλλοφρονέοντα, ὡς φρονοῦντας μὲν καὶ τοὺς παραφρονοῦντας ἀλλ᾿ οὐ ταὐτά. δῆλον οὖν ὅτι, εἰ ἀμφότεραι φρονήσεις, καὶ τὰ ὄντα ἅμα οὕτω τε καὶ οὐχ οὕτως ἔχει.  Cf. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 71: Σχεδὸν οὖν ἐνταῦθα τὸ Πρωταγόρειον πάθος ὁ λόγος ὑπέμεινεν. κἀκεῖνος γὰρ πᾶσαν δόξαν βεβαίαν εἶναι καὶ ἀληθῆ διισχυρισάμενος οὐδὲν ἧττον πᾶσαν ψευδῆ λέγειν ἀναγκάζεται διὰ τοὺς ἀντιφάσκοντας ἀλλήλοις.  See the stunning statement discussed in chapter 13, p. 1363: if the soul is taken to be a cog nizant agent, then what is known is not the object itself but what appears as a representation of things in accordance with the specific cognitive capacities of man qua man (οὐκ αὐτὰ οὖν ἐν τῇ

502

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

If our human grasp of the universe stems from our physiology, and it is limited thereby, we are unable to create a representation of an assumed ‘true’ objective reality, nor can we argue in a scientific manner that such a ‘true reality’ really exists. Therefore, this grasp is like a dream, to which Prospero’s words fit perfectly: We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.⁵⁶

Somehow, our perception is an illusion and a dream. Life is but a dream, and we are the ‘stuff’ dreams are ‘made on’ (built of). When Anaxagoras was asked what death is like, he replied that one could find the answer by thinking ‘of either the time before one’s birth, or of sleep’.⁵⁷ ‘Our little life’ is like a brief dream in some divine mind, ‘rounded with a sleep’, that is, either ‘surrounded’ by sleep or ‘rounded off’ (completed) by sleep. The real nature of the four-dimension non-Euclidean universe is non-perceptible: it can be described only by means of mathematical relations. This great modern scientific revolution has occurred amid specific social, intellectual, and religious circumstances. The relevant institutions are yet unprepared to accommodate them, and scholars of ancient thought are unequipped to consider them. Consequently, once they hear about ‘non-perceptible reality’, they react spontaneously speaking of ‘Platonism’; once they hear about Anaxagoras having said the same things about human sense, they immediately open the chapter ‘Protagoras’ in histories of philosophy; and once they are advised that the Anaxagorean principles are both one and many, as well as here and there, they brand this ‘Neoplatonic’ extrapolation by Simplicius. But if what Simplicius explained as Anaxagorean philosophy were ‘Neoplatonism’, then the vanguard of modern science would be ‘Neoplatonism’, too. However, this is not the case: quite simply, Anaxagoras anticipated ideas that modern science now maintains as a result of mathematical demonstration, of observation of phenomena, and of natural experiments. In reality, things happened the other way around: Neoplatonism was to a certain extent influenced by the ideas of Anaxagoras, as indeed Aristotle himself was, and so were the Stoics and such insightful intellectuals as Origen. The fact remains that, when scholars study Simplicius’ analysis of Anaxagoras, they have recourse to the easy shibboleth of branding this ‘Neoplatonism’.

οὐσίᾳ τῆς ψυχῆς τὰ γινωσκόμενα πράγματα, ἀλλ᾿ αἱ πρὸς αὐτὰ συγγενεῖς εἰδητικαὶ ἰδιότητες). Simplicius, commAnim, p. 67.  William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 4, scene 1, verse 156 8.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 4.52b.39: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δύο ἔλεγε διδασκαλίας εἶναι θανάτου, τόν τε πρὸ τοῦ γενέσθαι χρόνον καὶ τὸν ὕπνον.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

503

However, Modern Physics has exactly the same things to say about what reality is – and this product of knowledge, which has been produced by means of both experiment and reasoning, no one is able to brand ‘Neoplatonism’. This modern revolution does not pose any threat to philosophy whatsoever: on the contrary, it may help towards a new understanding of the past in light of the stunning achievements of the present, as well as of the forthcoming ones. Revisiting Anaxagoras is then a good start, since this study reveals a prophet who anticipated some of the most stunning ideas of the twenty-first century. Matter is a fundamental notion of Aristotle’s philosophy, which sometimes he identified with the essence of a certain object. We saw that he forced this notion into Anaxagoras’ thought, even though Anaxagoras himself reflected on sheer different terms. Since it was Aristotle, not Anaxagoras, that made an indelible impact on Western civilization, matter became also important for modern scientific, as well as social, shape and cynosure. Matter has been understood as an objective reality, and, nowadays, often enough matter and its products are deified by Western societies: in the altar of it, all human values, such as freedom, justice, human dignity, even human life, can be sacrificed. However, all of the common current conception of what matter actually is, now is yesterday’s knowledge. Both experimental and theoretical proof has revealed that any manifestation of material phenomena is only a casual manifestation of an imperceptible reality. The universe is a ‘soup’ of boiling energy, and in realty ‘material objects’ are a tiny part of this space, in which there is only slightly more density of energy. Everything within the universe belongs to a unified reality, in which there is neither division nor individuality. Everything is one: any action at any point of space affects the entirety of space, as indeed any action definitely effects re-action. Anaxagoras set forth this idea twenty-five centuries ago: Stobaeus reported that, to Anaxagoras and Democritus, human senses are only a source of falsehood (ψευδεῖς εἶναι τὰς αἰσθήσεις),⁵⁸ and the highly critical Sextus Empiricus, who regarded Anaxagoras as ‘the most erudite Physicist’, also wrote that the Clazomenian ‘despised human senses as being too feeble’ to grasp reality (ἀσθενεῖς διαβάλλων τὰς αἰσθήσεις). Sextus saved a celebrated maxim by the same philosopher, which became proverbial, even though some of those who quoted it forgot its source:

 Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.50.

504

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

Phenomena are only the external manifestation of those [things] which are not manifest (ὄψις γὰρ τῶν ἀδήλων τὰ φαινόμενα).⁵⁹

In this proposition, there is nothing different from the testimonies that the Anaxagorean principles come to light by unconcealment out of concealment. In both cases, this means that appearances are only a visual representation of the invisible reality, since our senses are inadequate to determine truth: perception is dependent on, and proportional to, the kind of the perceiving animal and its sense organs. Oddly enough, Christian authors cherished this proverbial phrase,⁶⁰ whereas Greeks did not pay attention to it.⁶¹ Nevertheless, Anaxagoras did not maintain that any natural observation is as authoritative as any other. Sextus explains in admiration that Anaxagoras saw the inability to see the real nature of things because he recognized the deficiency of human senses. However, like modern science, he introduced the criterion of reason. His difference from the Pythagoreans was that he meant sound reason in all if its functions, whereas the Pythagoreans meant only the mathematical logic, and they maintained that God made everything in accordance with mathematics, therefore, like should be known by the like, according to the old maxim.⁶² Consequently, when Aristotle represented Anaxagoras as a predecessor of Protagoras, he was unfair to him once again: what Anaxagoras actually meant was not introduction of any promiscuous subjectivism; he only argued that phenomena are not the objective truth: they are only what we make of them. Use of experiment in Physics had to wait for several centuries, but when it was employed, it only confirmed Anaxagoras’ intuition, who had used such experiments  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 140, adding that Democri tus praised Anaxagoras for having said this. Cf. op. cit. 3.23; 3.58; 7.374; Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 1.138. Therefore, when he attributed this to Chrysippus, he knew that the origin was Anaxagoras. Cf. Chrysippus, fr. 56, apud Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (Adversus Logicos 1), 372. The apologist Athenagoras of Athens (Legatio, 5.2) attributed this to Euripides.  Cf. Justin Martyr, quoted in the Catena in Marcum (recensio ii), p. 265. Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio, 5.2. Eusebius, De Laudibus Constantini, 16.11; De Theophania (fragmenta), fr. 6. Anony mous, Vitae S. Alypii Stylitae (vita altera) (sixth century), 11. Macarius Chrysocephalus (Metropol itan of Philadelphia, paroemiographer, fourteenth century), Paroemiae, 6.84. Appendix Prover biorum, 4.50. Theoctistus Studites (fourteenth century), Vita Athanasii Archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani, p. 50.  Pseudo Plutarch (attributing this to Diocles of Carystus, the physician of the fourth century BC), Placita Philosophorum, 910F.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 91 2: ἔνθεν ὁ μὲν φυσικώτατος ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὡς ἀσθενεῖς διαβάλλων τὰς αἰσθήσεις ὑπὸ ἀφαυρότητος αὐτῶν φησὶν οὐ δυνατοί ἐσμεν κρίνειν τἀληθές…. ὥστε ὁ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρας κοινῶς τὸν λόγον ἔφη κριτή ριον εἶναι. See this text further.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

505

himself as a method to confirm that air is a body. Whereas air was definitely a body,⁶³ and Anaxagoras’ natural experiments proving this remained proverbial,⁶⁴ aether was distinguished from the air,⁶⁵ the implications of which I discuss in chapter 11. Once the principles were created, nothing became everything, and the increasing cosmic rotation (maintained by Anaxagoras and Modern Physics alike) and continuing expansion of the universe was the cause for separate things such as the stars and the sun and moon to appear. This accelerating rotation (ἐπὶ δὲ πλέον περιχωρεῖ, καὶ περιχωρήσει ἐπὶ πλέον, confirmed by Modern Physics, too) involves endless appearance and disappearance of material objects and of all phenomena. In fact, Anaxagoras described the first moments of the universe following the Big Bang, which is now knowledge available to any layman. Modern science speaks of an initial infinitely small ‘thing’ which theoretically had infinite energy; Anaxagoras spoke of explosion, sudden rotation, and accelerating expansion of an initial something which contained all the seeds/principles/logoi, according to which the universe started to take shape, so it does now, and so it will do for ever. This is what Anaxagoras meant when he claimed that nothing comes from nothing, and nothing perishes into nothing: the principles ‘are neither generated nor destroyed, but they persist eternally’.⁶⁶ Consequently, they were revolving and separated off from each other by force and velocity (since velocity produces force). And their velocity is unlike the amount of velocity noticed in current human circumstances, but it is utterly many times as fast.⁶⁷ … And the Mind

 Anaximenes confidently made air his all generative principle, and presumably he was aware that Anaxagoras had already established the theory of air being a body. Therefore, definitely Anaximenes wrote this after Anaxagoras.  See Aristotle, Physica, 213a; Problemata, 914b; De Respiratione, 470b; De Melisso, 976b. The mistius, paraphrPhys, p. 123. Simplicius, commCael, p. 634; commPhys, pp. 647; 652; 655 6. Mi chael Psellus, commPhys, 4.20. Michael of Ephesus, In Parva Naturalia Commentaria, p. 112. Gen nadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 1 (comm. on Physica), line 241. Following reference to Anaxagoras by Plato, Phaedo, 98e, I have argued that it was Anaxagoras who showed that ‘voice is a blow on the air’. See chapter 9, pp. 641 3.  Theophrastus, De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 59.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984a: οὕτω γίγνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαί φησι συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει μόνον, ἄλλως δ᾿ οὔτε γίγνεσθαι οὔτ᾿ ἀπόλλυσθαι, ἀλλὰ διαμένειν ἀΐδια.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35. Now, in Modern Physics, ‘velocity produces force’ means of course angular velocity, as well as that centripetal force on an object of mass m moving at tangential speed v along a path with radius of curvature r is commensurate to the square of velocity multiplied by the amount of mass: F = mv2/r. In effect, Anaxagoras is modern on this, too.

506

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

ruled over the entire revolution and made it start in the beginning. First, it was a small thing that began to revolve, but it is revolving yet more, and it will revolve more still. And the Mind knew them all, namely, the things that are mixed together and those which are separated off, and those which are dissociated from one another. … The Mind also ordered this revolution, which is now performed by the stars and the sun and the moon, as well as the air and the aether, which are distinct from one another. This revolution caused them to appear as distinct ones.⁶⁸ … separation is produced from motion, and the cause of motion is the Mind. … Once the Mind gave rise to motion, separation off took place upon everything that moved; and whatever the Mind moved, all of this was made distinct. Thus, as things were being moved and made distinct from one another, rotation caused them to be dissociated from each other even more.⁶⁹

Despite this distinction, the things which have become (and they still become, and will become even more) distinct from one another are not radically separated off: for the existence of the principles, which are universally present throughout all space guarantee the unity of the universe, and interrelation between everything in it.⁷⁰ Hence, despite the accelerating rotation of everything, ‘nothing is completely separated off or dissociated from the other, except the Mind,”⁷¹ since all these principles are ‘all in all’.⁷² Aristotle accused Anaxagoras of misusing the term ‘alteration’ (or, ‘mutation’, ἀλλοίωσις), but he was wrong: ἀλλοίωσις was the proper word to describe the mutation of a certain material object to another, or even to pure energy. The principles are ‘impassible’, since their action takes place only by their concurrence or disjunction (συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει),⁷³ and by their interaction with each other, which is why everything comes from everything.⁷⁴ This is what makes ‘generation’, ‘mutation’, and ‘emanation’ one and the same process,⁷⁵ even though Aristotle criticized it⁷⁶ only because he did not grasp (or intentionally overlooked) the immaterial and indestructible character of those principles.⁷⁷ For Anaxagoras held that the principles, all of which are everywhere, pro Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156 & 177.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 300.  To this, Simplicius adds op. cit. p. 461: “This is why Anaxagoras says that it is not possible for anything to be separated off; for separation is not complete severance.”  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 157.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 175 & 176.  John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 127. See quotation supra, p. 480, note 197.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 5. See quotation supra, p. 480, note 198.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163: “Anaxagoras says clearly in the first book of his Physics that generation and passing away is [the same as] combining and dissociating. See full quotation supra, p. 111, note 24.  Aristotle, Physica, 314a. Cf. John Philoponus commGenCorr, pp. 11; 24.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.20.1d. See quotation supra, p. 480, note 200.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

507

duce material things (and matter itself) by being conjugated together in sundry combinations; they are also those that cause things to perish by being separated out from each other. Whether ‘concurrence’ or ‘disjunction’, the result of this interaction between the principles is always alteration, or mutation, of a thing, no matter whether it comes to be or it perishes. Therefore, ‘concurrence’ and ‘disjunction’ is not an alternative to mutation: ‘conjunction’ or ‘disjunction’ is mutation. This Aristotle did not understand, hence he castigated the idea as self-defeating.⁷⁸ By contrast, the author of a Hippocratic text⁷⁹ was perfectly aware of the notion, and expounded his thought in what it was probably the most faithful Anaxagorean account, as well as language, after Anaxagoras. Moreover, Galen argued that separation-off and mixing-together (διάκρισίς τε καὶ σύγκρισις) was identified with ‘mutation’ (ἀλλοίωσις) by the followers of Epicurus and Democritus; he added that ‘both Anaxagoras and Empedocles maintained the same theory, although differently from one another, since the former introduced the homoiomeries, whereas the latter believed that the four elements are unchangeable.’⁸⁰ Anaxagoras did not care to make the four elements primary ones: instead, he was the one who determined that whether earth or fire or water or air, all the elements and everything that exists in the universe are products of the principles.⁸¹ Aristotle objected to the theory of ‘Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus’, according to which any generation and passing away is in fact coming-together and separation-off (σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις).⁸² He argued so because he thought (or pretended to believe) that Anaxagoras’ incorporeal principles were the same as the material elements of Democritus and Leucippus.⁸³ Anaxagoras held that

 Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 187a; De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a b.  Hippocrates, De Diaeta, 4, quoted supra, p. 210, note 80.  Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 484. Likewise, Galen attests to the same doctrine of Anaxagoras in De Naturalibus Facultatibus, p. 4. He reports correctly that the actual import of the doctrine ‘separation off and mixing together is mutation’ was not the same to all Presocrat ics.  Gennadius Scholarius, commPhys, p. 7: ὁ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐτίθει ἐξ ἐκείνου τοῦ ἑνὸς γεν νᾶσθαι ὁμοιομερείας ἐναντίας καὶ ἀπείρους, αἵτινες εἰσὶ στοιχεῖα τῶν τεσσάρων στοιχείων καὶ πάντων τῶν κοσμικῶν. By contrast, Empedocles produced the four elements from the original confusum and made them principles of all things in turn. Loc. cit.  Aristotle, Physica, 243b. Simplicius interpreted this in his commPhys, pp. 1050 52. Cf. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 7.8.  Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 329a; cf. 315b (ref. to Democritus and Leucip pus); 316b; 317a; 322b; 329a; 333b (ref. to Empedocles); Metaphysica, 984a (ref. to Anaxagoras); 988b; Meteorologica, 369b; Physica, 187a; 243b; 260b; 265b; De Caelo, 307b.

508

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

any generation is ‘mutation’ (ἀλλοίωσις), which is the same as coming-together and separation-off (σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις).⁸⁴ This is why ‘everything is produced from everything’,⁸⁵ since everything is produced not from ‘elements’ but from certain principles.⁸⁶ Aristotle urged that coming-together and separationoff (σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις) could be understood only as a kind of σύνωσις (forcing together) and δίωσις (pushing asunder).⁸⁷ ‘A kind of’ means that σύνωσις and δίωσις are genera whereas σύγκρισις and διάκρισις are particular manifestations, or species, of these genera. Simplicius reports that this is how Alexander of Aphrodisias interpreted Aristotle’s specific statements (they are part of Aristotle’s Physics which is far from being clear), but he disagreed, arguing that σύνωσις (forcing together) and δίωσις (pushing asunder) are not a kind of coming-together and separation-off, but they are terms describing both coming-together and separation-off themselves. ⁸⁸ Therefore, it was not the case that ‘Anaxagoras misunderstood his own statement’ (as Aristotle alleged complacently and sarcastically, as usual) by saying that generation and perishing is mutation, ‘since, like others, he says that the elements are many’.⁸⁹ For, in fact, Anaxagoras knew what he was talking about: generation and perishing is mutation because the principles (not ‘elements’) are many, and they act ceaselessly, in order to secure the process of endless alteration by means of ‘concurrence’ and ‘disjunction’. It is because many operating principles are there that alteration takes place, the more sublime manifestation of which is the development of potentialities into actualities by means of concurring principles which effect alteration in its numerous manifestations. ‘Perceptible’ comes to pass because of density of matter/energy (today we know that matter and energy is the salefsame thing, ostensibly appearing as different only because of different density of energy). ‘Imperceptible’ occurs because of thinness which results in things escaping the human capabilities to no-

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 27. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 1.14. The same idea was attributed to Empedocles (Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 3, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 25), and by others to Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Epicurus (Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.20.1d, apud Pseudo Galen, op. cit. 39).  Michael Psellus, commPhys, 3.12.  Michael Psellus, op. cit. 8.2.  Aristotle, Physica, 243b.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1052: δυνατὸν δὲ ἴσως συμφώνους δεικνύναι τούτους τοὺς λόγους τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους τὴν σύγκρισιν καὶ τὴν διάκρισιν οὐχ ἁπλῶς ὑπὸ τὴν σύνωσιν καὶ τὴν δίωσιν ἤτοι τὴν ἕλξιν καὶ τὴν ὦσιν ὡς ὑπὸ καθολικωτέρας ἀνάγοντος, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς τὰς αὐτὰς ἐκείναις ταύ τας λέγοντος. Alexander’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, from which Simplicius quotes at this point, is not extant.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a13.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

509

tice them. This eternal motion is the fundamental characteristic of alteration, which does not come from outside: this is the outcome of acting and reacting principles, which are both one and many, both here and everywhere, both united and distinct from each other, both here and everywhere, both now and ever; they are incorruptible, always the same, and there can be no notion of either ‘less’ or ‘more’ that could be applied to them; it is impossible to determine anything as being either the biggest or the smallest; everything is in everything, and everything participates in everything. This is why all principles are mixed with each other. The Whole becomes Parts, and Parts become Whole again, because of the unity of the Whole. This idea was known to Anaxagoras, but it was destroyed by Aristotle only to be restored by modern science. This is the unity of Anaxagoras’ universe, in which perceptible things are not severed from their causes/principles, nor is there any distinction between Here and Beyond. This unity was fragmented by Plato’s dualism, which sharply severed perceptible things from their causes and introduced a mythological Beyond and the weird notion of ‘participation’. Subsequently, this unity was demolished by Aristotle, who saw the universe as a sum of material objects entirely distinct and separate from each other. This delusive idea was his legacy to the Western civilization, which pushed this conception to its most extreme limits, and made the distinct and self-existent material Subject identical with the political Individual, which should be venerated as an idol, along with its concomitant material substratum and its individual material needs, which, in turn, resulted in matter becoming an idol, too. The question then, which is called for, is this: what are the ‘phenomena to be saved’ out of the perceptible reality? Anaxagoras saw this as neither matter, nor elements, not atoms, nor spirit, nor soul, nor Ideas, nor forms. He saw only immaterial principles which can either generate or dissolve anything, matter included. In this way, he explained how and why this alteration takes place: this happens because principles either converge with or diverge from one another, and all of this takes place under the supervision of a cosmic Mind, which uses the principles as its instruments. During an era when the winds were assumed to come from Zeus, Anaxagoras said that winds arise when the air is rarefied by the sun’s heat, thus impiously belying Homer.⁹⁰ He also argued that thunder is a clashing together of the

 Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.9: ᾿Aνέμους δὲ γίνεσθαι λεπτυνομένου τοῦ ἀέρος ὑπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου. Hippolytus, op. cit. 1.8.11: ᾿Aνέμους δὲ γίνεσθαι λεπτυνομένου τοῦ ἀέρος ὑπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου καὶ τῶν ἐκκαιομένων πρὸς τὸν πόλον ὑποχωρούντων καὶ ἀποφερομένων. Cf. Anonymous, Scholia in Ae schyli Prometheum Vinctum (scholia vetera), verse 88c: Οἱ ἄνεμοι κατὰ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἐκ τῆς γῆς γίνονται, καθ᾿ Ὅμηρον δὲ πατρὸς Διὸς ἐκ νεφελάων [Ilias, II.146]. ἀλλ᾿ ὁ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρας

510

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

clouds, lighting is their violent friction,⁹¹ and he cared to explain how snow and hail are produced from freezing clouds, indeed why hailstones are spherical.⁹² Furthermore, he ‘was the first one who set out to interpret the phenomenon of eclipses’,⁹³ on which ‘Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and mathematicians’ followed him.⁹⁴ Moreover, he determined that the moon is made of the same material as the earth, and it has likewise mountains and chasms.⁹⁵ Also, the moon’s light is no other than the one it receives from the sun,⁹⁶ and the sun and moon were formed simultaneously, since it was the same cause which produced them – in modern terms, the same causes apply to the formation of our solar system. Proclus (commenting on Timaeus, 38d) acknowledged that, on this, Anaxagoras preceded Plato.⁹⁷ Certainly, the earth is not flat, as Anaxagoras had it.⁹⁸ Likewise, it is not the centre of the universe either, but this idea persisted for at

τὸ ὑλικόν φησιν αἴτιον τῶν ἀνέμων, Ὅμηρος δὲ τὸ ποιητικόν, μᾶλλον δὲ ἀμφότερα, τό τε ὑλικὸν καὶ τὸ ποιητικόν.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.9: βροντὰς σύγκρουσιν νεφῶν· ἀστραπὰς ἔκτριψιν νεφῶν. Hip polytus, op. cit. 1.8.11 12: Βροντὰς δὲ καὶ ἀστραπὰς ἀπὸ θερμοῦ γίνεσθαι, ἐμπίπτοντος εἰς τὰ νέφη.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.31.2: ᾿Aναξαγόρας νέφη μὲν καὶ χιόνα παραπλησίως χάλαζαν δ᾿ ὅταν ἀπὸ τῶν παγέντων νεφῶν προωσθῇ τινα πρὸς τὴν γῆν, ἃ δὴ ταῖς καταφοραῖς ἀποψυχρούμενα στρογ γυλοῦται. Likewise, Hippolytus, op. cit. 1.7.7.  Hippolytus, op. cit. 1.8.10: οὗτος ἀφώρισε πρῶτος τὰ περὶ τὰς ἐκλείψεις καὶ φωτισμούς.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 891F, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.51.4: Πλάτων, ᾿Aριστοτέλης, οἱ Στωικοί, οἱ μαθηματικοὶ συμφώνως τὰς μὲν μηνιαίους ἀποκρύ ψεις συνοδεύουσαν αὐτὴν ἡλίῳ καὶ περιλαμπομένην ποιεῖσθαι, τὰς δ᾿ ἐκλείψεις εἰς τὸ σκίασμα τῆς γῆς ἐμπίπτουσαν, μεταξὺ μὲν ἀμφοτέρων τῶν ἀστέρων γινομένης, μᾶλλον δὲ τῆς σελήνης ἀντιφραττομένης. So Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.26.3.  Hippolytus, op. cit. 1.8.10: ἔφη δὲ γηίνην εἶναι τὴν σελήνην ἔχειν τε ἐν αὑτῇ πεδία καὶ ὄρη καὶ φάραγγας. So Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.26.5, apud Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 891C. Pseudo Galen, op. cit. 67. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 4.23. Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.26.1e. Plato, Apologia Socratis, 26d: ἐπεὶ τὸν μὲν ἥλιον λίθον φησὶν εἶναι, τὴν δὲ σελήνην γῆν.  Plato, Cratylus, 409a b: Ἔοικε δηλοῦντι παλαιότερον ὃ ἐκεῖνος νεωστὶ ἔλεγεν, ὅτι ἡ σελήνη ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου ἔχει τὸ φῶς. Furthermore, 409b. Plutarch, De Facie in Orbe Lunae, 929B: ὁ μὲν οὖν ἑταῖρος ἐν τῇ διατριβῇ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ ᾿Aναξαγόρειον ἀποδεικνύς, ὡς ἥλιος ἐντίθησι τῇ σελήνῃ τὸ λαμπρόν.  Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 63.  Plato, Phaedo 97b (γῆ πλατεῖα); quoted also by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.15.3. Hippolytus, op. cit. 1.8.3. Simplicius, commCael, p. 520. Also, Anonymous, Excursus Astronomiae (cod. Vaticanus 381). Michael Psellus, Opuscula i, 29. George Cedrenus attributed the idea to Anaximenes: Compendium Historiarum, p. 277.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

511

least another thousand years after Anaxagoras, since Aristotle had sanctioned it.⁹⁹ It is instructive to study some more criticism levelled against Anaxagoras, since this shows how close to modern science that man stood. Xenophon argued that Anaxagoras ‘was mentally deranged’ (παρεφρόνησεν), since he was so ‘presumptuous’ as to dare ‘come up with his own exegeses on questions which touch upon the activity of gods.’ For when he said that ‘the sun is fire’, he did not take into account the fact that men can see any fire easily, but they are unable to stare at the sun. Likewise, Anaxagoras dared το say that those men who are exposed to the sun get a darker complexion, but he neglected the fact that no such effect takes place upon those who stand in front of a fire. Moreover, Anaxagoras was not aware of the fact that plants cannot grow unless they receive the light of the sun, but they are destroyed when they are placed near a fire. Furthermore, when Anaxagoras said that the sun is a fiery stone, he did not know that, when fire is set on a stone, this stone does not become bright, nor does such a fire last for long; on the contrary, the sun is the brightest of all things and it remains so all over the entire time. Conclusion: the sun cannot be a stone of fire.¹⁰⁰ Quod erat demonstrandum! By means of similar quality of dialectics, Aristotle argued about how rain comes to pass: “The process is just the opposite of what Anaxagoras says it is. He says that it takes place when a cloud descends into the warm air and is most violent when the cloud descends farthest.”¹⁰¹ Today, we know that one of the three main causes for rain to be produced is air being cooled, which results in its inability to maintain moisture in the form of air or small liquid drops. Likewise, we know that life was produced out of the water, and then by evolution from each other;¹⁰² also, that the presence of the moon is associated with the sun,¹⁰³ and the moon owes its light to the light cast upon it by the sun.¹⁰⁴ To produce natural explanations of different phenomena once the Mind was established as the supreme principle appeared absurd to some, who thought  Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, 295a. To him, the earth is the immovable centre of the moving circu larly heavenly sphere, and, by analogy, it has also a spherical shape. Cf. Physica, 205b15 16.  Xenophon, Memorabilia, 4.7.6 7.  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 384b.  Hippolytus, op. cit. 1.8.12 (reporting Anaxagoras): ζῷα δὲ τὴν μὲν ἀρχὴν ἐν ὑγρῷ γενέσθαι, μετὰ ταῦτα δὲ ἐξ ἀλλήλων.  Proclus reported that this idea, which was maintained by Plato, according to Eudemus of Rhodes was in fact Anaxagoras’ one; commTim, v. 3, p. 363.  Plato, Cratylus, 409C. According to Stobaeus (op. cit. 1.26.2), this was a theory set forth first by Thales, and it was taken up by Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Met rodorus.

512

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

that, by this, Anaxagoras made the function of the world an automaton. The distortion came from Aristotle’s pupil Eudemus of Rhodes (c. 370 BC ‒ c. 300 BC), who urged that Anaxagoras ‘abandoned the Mind and introduced the idea that all other things function without external agency’, that is, as automata,¹⁰⁵ although Aristotle himself granted that Anaxagoras did not make the cause of becoming either ‘the automaton or mere chance’,¹⁰⁶ and Aristotle’s commentators explicitly endorsed this, saying that it is the Mind that stands behind the function of Nature.¹⁰⁷ History of philosophy did some justice to Anaxagoras, reporting that, to him, certain things occur out of necessity, others according to Heimarmene (the orderly succession of cause and effect, or, the fate of the universe as a whole),¹⁰⁸ others by chance, and others according to automaton, that is, a set of self-regulating laws operating in Nature. This came to be also the theory of the Stoics.¹⁰⁹ One should be alert to the proposition about things taking place ‘by chance’: this does not suggest random or casual blind things taking place haphazardly; it means occurrences of which men do not know the causes, and phenomena that appear not to have an assignable cause, but they have a cause still. No wonder that the idea was taken up by the Stoics, who, like Anaxagoras, maintained the notion of universal ‘sympathy’, that is, interrelation of all things and phenomena: thus, ‘chance’ (τύχη) means unknown causes, not absence of causes.¹¹⁰ In view of the fact that Plato posited heavenly bodies as animate, and this remained a moot question to such minds as Origen, Jerome, and Augustine,¹¹¹

 Eudemus of Rhodes, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 327: καὶ αὐτοματίζων τὰ πολλὰ συνίστησι.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984b.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 32. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 127; commPhys, p. 264; De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 183. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 28.  Anaxagoras maintained that the cause of winds is purely natural: they are not produced by any god giving rise to them, as Homer believed. See Anonymous, Scholia in Aeschyli Prometheum Vinctum (scholia vetera), verse 88c.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.7.9a, apud Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 885C. Pseudo Galen, op. cit. 43. Con cerning Anaxagoras’ theory about generation of plans from seeds existing in the air, see Theo phrastus, Historia Plantarum, 3.1.4.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.7.9a, apud Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 885C: ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ οἱ Στωικοὶ [τύχην] ἄδηλον αἰτίαν ἀνθρωπίνῳ λογισμῷ. The same, in Pseudo Galen, op. cit. 43, and Theodor et, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 6.15. All of them attributed the notion to Anaxagoras and to the Stoics, except for Theodoret, who added to the list also the name of Democritus.  Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Primae Partis Summae Theologicae Thomae Aquinae, 5.70: Ὁ μὲν οὖν Ὠριγένης ἔμψυχα εἶπεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Ἱερώνυμος συνδοξάζειν αὐτῷ δοκεῖ. Βασίλειος δὲ καὶ Δαμασκηνὸς ἰσχυρίζονται μὴ εἶναι ἔμψυχα. Αὐγουστῖνος δὲ ἐν ἀμφιβόλῳ κατέλιπε, μηδετέρωθι φανερῶς ῥέπων. But in his De Verbis Patrum Latinorum De Processu Spiritus Sancti,

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

513

it is remarkable that Anaxagoras confidently averred that these are simply made of earthly material and denied that they are animate.¹¹² Little wonder then that, as late as the fourth century, the rhetor Libanius (c. 314 ‒ c. 394), who always remained a pagan and saw himself as a Hellene on religious matters, wrote that ‘Anaxagoras was justly put to jail, because he held impious theories about the sun and the moon’.¹¹³ It comes as no surprise that the writer of the lemma ‘Mind’ in the Suda wrote things that after Proclus were perceived as the Anaxagorean gist of his theories, notwithstanding Proclus’ obsession to interpolate everything in Plato: human mind contains all the logoi in itself; however, it contains in the form of images those logoi which are prior to it, whereas it contains those logoi that human mind gives rise to as exemplars which produce other things.¹¹⁴ In short, the Mind is the receptacle of logoi, which are grasped differently, depending on the existential level of their function. There is an interesting notion which was entertained by only a couple of authors: this is ‘idle matter’ (ἀργὴ ὕλη). Doxography reports that, according to Empedocles, not the entire material universe that we see is in fact the whole of matter in it. We can see only the visible matter, which is only a tiny fragment of all p. 54, Scholarius assures that both Augustine and Jerome maintained that heavenly bodies are animate beings: Καὶ Ἱερώνυμος μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ [sc. Αὐγουστίνου] ἔμψυχά φησι τὰ οὐράνια σώματα. He appealed to Thomas Aquinas who rejected this view of Jerome and Augustine. Epitome Sum mae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 2.90. Also, Tractatus De Processu Spiritus Sancti III, p. 484; De Verbis Patrum Latinorum De Processu Spiritus Sancti, p. 54; Epistulae Contra Unionem Floren tinam, Epistle 2, p. 140.  Achilles Tatius, Isagoga Excerpta, 11; 13. Achilles was probably not the same person as Achilles Tatius of Alexandria, the second century AD writer of the romance The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon, mentioned by Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 87, p. 66a; Cod. 94, p. 73b; Cod. 166, p. 111b, although the Suda, letter alpha, entry 4695, seems to identify them as the same person, calling him ᾿Aχιλλεὺς Στάτιος. The testimony is very interesting, because Achilles Tatius cites apposite works and advises us about relevant arguments. The view that stars are in animate was employed by ‘Democritus in his Great Decoration, by Epicurus in his Epitome to Herodotus, whereas it was dismissed by Plato in the Timaeus [40b], by Aristotle in the second book of On the Heavens [292b], and by Chrysippus in his On the Providence of Gods.’ Further more, ‘the Epicureans argued that the stars are not animate because they are cohered by bodies, whereas the Stoics claimed the opposite’ (i. e. since they are held together by bodies, they are animate). ‘But Posidonius asseverated that the Epicureans missed the point, namely, that it is not bodies which keep souls together, but the other way around, just like a glue keeps together both itself and those outside it.’  Libanius, Declamationes, 1.1.154: ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐδέθη δικαίως ἀσεβῶν περὶ ἡλίου τε καὶ σελήνης.  Suda, letter nu, entry 524: Νοῦς· ὅτι ὁ νοῦς πάντων ἔχει τοὺς λόγους ἐν ἑαυτῷ, ἀλλὰ τῶν μὲν πρὸ αὐτοῦ εἰκονικῶς, τῶν δὲ μετ᾿ αὐτὸν παραδειγματικῶς.

514

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

matter existing in the universe. The rest of it is ‘idle matter’.¹¹⁵ We should bear in mind that Empedocles was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and they shared several ideas, as it was the case with all Presocratics, anyway. The notion of ‘idle matter’ remained idle itself, since it was not used by authors and it never became an established technical term.¹¹⁶ However, we have a unique reference by an unexpected side, namely Epiphanius of Salamis: in his exposition, he plainly envisages that the end of the world will be a sort of ‘conflagration’ (ἐκφλόγωσιν), but he insists that this does not mean total destruction of it. Here is his argument then: the universe will never return to the state it was before ‘the universal decoration’ of it by God, so that it should be ‘re-decorated anew’. What was the state of the world before it was made? Christian imperial orthodoxy would promptly urge that it was absolute nothingness, but this is not what Epiphanius said: the state (κατάστασιν) before ‘decoration’ was not nothingness: it was ‘idle matter’.¹¹⁷ Epiphanius was not an erudite scientist, although he had a remarkable library available to him: he was a fanatic monk seeing himself as a great inquisitor of all theological aberration, and an active lobbyist in the corridors of powerful quarters of Constantinople. He did use the expression ‘from those which did not exist’ (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων) at a few points,¹¹⁸ but the idea he implied was that God did not make use of any pre-existing material (ἐκ μὴ ὑποκειμένων),¹¹⁹ and yet, the divine act was a ‘decoration’, which is, of course, inconsistent. Otherwise, his suggestion was that the divine creative act was a decorative one.¹²⁰ The important point is that he enunciated what he really believed at the specific point cited above: ‘before creation’ (πρὸ τῆς διακοσμήσεως) the ‘state’ of things (κατάστασιν) was ‘idle matter’ (ὕλην ἀργήν), and his assertion that the world will never be annihilated by God is explained as meaning that the world will

 Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 879A, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.33.2: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ κόσμον μὲν ἕνα, οὐ μέντοι τὸ πᾶν εἶναι τὸν κόσμον, ἀλλ᾿ ὀλίγον τι τοῦ παντὸς μέρος, τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν ἀργὴν ὕλην. The same in Pseudo Galen, op. cit. 32.  Another couple of authors used the notion is a sense which is of no interest, since it only means a rough material before it is sculped so as to become the statue of an idol, and the like (Philo, Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius).  Cf. Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, p. 462: οὔτε γὰρ εἰς ὕλην ἀργὴν καὶ τοιαύτην ἔτι κατάστασιν, οἵα καὶ πρὸ τῆς διακοσμήσεως ἦν, διαλυθὲν ἀναστοιχειωθήσεται τὸ πᾶν οὔτ᾿ αὖ εἰς ἀπώλειαν παντελῆ καὶ φθοράν.  Epiphanius of Salamis, op. cit. v. 2, p. 464; v. 3, pp. 385; 406.  Epiphanius of Salamis, op. cit. v. 3, p. 406.  Epiphanius of Salamis, op. cit. v. 2, pp. 462; 464; 374 (speaking specifically of the creation of earth, as in Gen. 1:2); op. cit. v. 3, pp. 374; 385; 406; but in v. 3, p. 311, he considers ‘decoration’ as creation out of an already existing material.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

515

never return to that primeval state. It would appear then that Epiphanius had in mind ‘formless matter’, as perhaps the author of the biblical Genesis did. Nevertheless, the notion that Eusebius ascribed to Empedocles is more than that: it refers to the created world, not to the state prior to that, and it is now that ‘idle matter’ exists in overwhelmingly dominating quantity throughout the universe. What this really means, I would not like to press further; but it seems as though Empedocles could have meant not any primeval confusum, but the invisible matter which is not dense enough so as to be seen. Incidentally, Modern Physics insists that the visible material universe occupies less than four per cent of the matter actually existing: the rest it calls ‘dark matter’. What the difference between ‘idle matter’ and ‘dark matter’ could possibly be, is a question that I leave moot in the absence of more evidence. Therefore, if matter is an illusion of the human senses, which are unable to perceive physically the real causes that make it visible to us, it could be said that what we see as death is transition from that which does not exist but it is perceptible, to that which is not perceptible but it does exist.¹²¹ This is only a change of condition, not abolition of the real setting itself. This was a view shared by Anaxagoras and Empedocles alike, and Philo quotes from them both: It is imposoble for anything to come to be from non being, and it was never heard of or happened that being could perish into non being.¹²²

Then, he turns once again to Euripides, the credible witness to Anaxagoras. None of the things that come to be dies, but they appear in different form by separating off from one another.¹²³

 See infra, discussion of the text of Apollonius of Tyana; pp. 520 3.  Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 5. Actually, Philo does not mention the name of Empedocles upon quoting these verses. But Aristotle does mention this name, and quotes from from him, in De Melisso, 975b: “It is impossible that anything can come into being from what does not exist, and incredible and impossible that what exists should be destroyed. For it will ever be in the place where someone has fixed it.” When Origen quoted Matt. 24:35, Mark, 13:31, and Luke 21:33, in order to sustain the same idea, in fact he had in mind Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Cf. Cels, V.22; commMatt, p. 123.  Philo, loc. cit. Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis, 6.2.24.4) reports that Euripides wrote these verses in a work entitled Chrysippus (Εὐριπίδης ἐν Χρυσίππῳ μεταγράφει) (Euripides, Frag menta, fr. 839: θνῄσκει δ᾿ οὐδὲν τῶν γιγνομένων, διακρινόμενον δὲ ἄλλο πρὸς ἄλλο μορφὰς ἑτέ ρας ἐπέδειξεν). Philo quotes the same in the Legum Allegoriarum, 1.7, in order to argue that ‘birth is accomplished through the decay of other things, and decay through fresh births’. Likewise, in the De Aeternitate Mundi (5; 30; 144), he urges that ‘each thing changes into the nature of its neighbour: it is not destroyed, but rather rendered immortal.’ This quotation from Euripides

516

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

Doxographic tradition cherished these references by Euripides,¹²⁴ rightly regarding them as a faithful exposition of the Anaxagorean philosophy. “The Epicureans believe that animals are generated by alteration of one into another; for these, too, are part of the world, as Anaxagoras and Euripides say”, and then doxographers quoted the foregoing passage of Euripides.¹²⁵ Anaxagoras declared that animals were produced from moisture, heat, and an earthly substance; later, the species were propagated by generation from one another.¹²⁶ Not surprisingly, this was a view of Origen, too.¹²⁷ We should be grateful to Simplicius who preserved Anaxagoras’ own words for us, so that we can confirm his real philosophy: Anaxagoras says clearly in the first book of his Physics that generation and passing away are [in fact] convergence and divergence [of the principles]; for he writes this: ‘The Greeks have the wrong conception of what generation and passing away is; for no thing either comes to be or perishes, but it is mixed together and dissociated from the things that al ready exist. Consequently, they would be right to call generation ‘mixing together’ and passing away ‘dissociating.’“

He adds that ‘these words, along with other propositions, such as all things were together and that generation is convergence and divergence [of the principles] (κατὰ σύγκρισιν καὶ διάκρισιν), or (which is the same) mutation (κατ᾿ ἀλλοίωσιν), [were written by Anaxagoras] in order to confirm that nothing comes from what does not exist (μηδὲν ἐκ μὴ ὄντος γίνεσθαι); instead, whatever is generated it comes to be from that which exists [already] (ἀλλ᾿ ἐξ ὄντος γίνεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα), and mutation is simply something which happens to Being (ἥ τε γὰρ ἀλλοίωσις was used by Posidonius (fr. 310) and probably by Theophrastus (Physicorum Opiniones, 12) fol lowing Aristotle (Fragmenta Varia, Category 1, treatise Περὶ Φιλοσοφίας, fr. 20), as the foregoing third passage by Philo suggests.  These verses are a succinct exposition of Anaxagoras’ philosophy. See parts of them quoted by Marcus Aurelius, Τὰ εἰς Ἑαυτόν, 7.50.1; Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 30; Posidonius, Fragmen ta, fr. 458 (apud Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.60); Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Musicos, 17; Themis tius, paraphrPhys, p. 86.  Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 908D. Pseudo Galen, op. cit. 123. These authors attribute the verses to both Anaxagoras and Euripides. See further discussion in chapter 14, p. 1195: “ὁτιοῦν ἐξ ὁτουοῦν γιγνόμενον”.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.9: ζῷα γίγνεσθαι ἐξ ὑγροῦ καὶ θερμοῦ καὶ γεώδους, ὕστερον δὲ ἐξ ἀλλήλων. Hippolytus, op. cit. 1.8.10: ζῷα δὲ τὴν μὲν ἀρχὴν ἐν ὑγρῷ γενέσθαι, μετὰ ταῦτα δὲ ἐξ ἀλλήλων.  Origen endorsed Celsus’ claim that ‘a snake is formed out of a dead man, and a bee from an ox, and a wasp from a horse, and a beetle from an ass, and, in general, worms from most ani mals’, because this was a particular manifestation of the Anaxagorean principle, ‘everything comes from everything’. Cels, IV.57.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

517

πάθος περὶ τὸ ὄν ἐστι), whereas concurrence and disjunction is something that happens to particular beings (καὶ ἡ σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις περὶ τὰ ὄντα).¹²⁸ This is a vivid exposition of the concept of the unity of the universe, that is, of the idea that everything is one, and any change at any point of the universe actually affects the whole of it, as Modern Physics has confirmed. Thus, concurrence and disjunction refers to interaction between specific principles (it is about ‘particular beings’, περὶ τὰ ὄντα), whereas mutation, which springs up from concurrence and disjunction of specific principles, results in appearance or disappearance of specific (animate or inanimate) things, and this Anaxagoras saw as affecting not simply these things (περὶ τὰ ὄντα), but the entire universe; in other words, this is about the whole of Being (περὶ τὸ ὄν ἐστι).¹²⁹ Simplicius calls this interaction of principles also ‘perceptible concurrence’ (αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν), noting that all things are generated out of their collaboration, and perishing of things is no other than ‘dissolution’ into those principles (καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν).¹³⁰ The principles/logoi were created once and for all, and this was the really ‘new’ that happened. Any subsequent generation or passing away is only about different manifestations of the sundry ways of these principles either converging with, or diverging from, each other. There is nothing ‘new’ that comes to be, and there is nothing that really passes away. Only the principles exist really, and they neither come to be nor do they perish. Their occasional reaction, which either gives rise to things or causes others to perish, is neither real generation nor real death. This was the ingenious legacy of Anaxagoras that both Plato¹³¹ and Aristotle struggled to destroy, while selectively plundering it along with other

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163.  Simplicius, loc. cit. He adds that, according to Porphyry, the axiom ‘all things were together’ was sustained by Anaxagoras, whereas ‘passing away is mutation’ was held by Anaximenes, and ‘converging and diverging’ was a doctrine of Democritus and Empedocles. He corrects this report arguing that all of these propositions were also ideas of Anaxagoras, and quotes from this phi losopher. In any event, several doctrines were sustained by more than one Presocratics.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 35.  Plato introduced a proposition ‘every living being is born from the dead’, which is a render ing of Anaxagoras’ natural philosophy in Plato’s favourite mythological terms. Cf. Phaedo, 70c d; 71d; 72a d; 77c. However, this theory was untenable outside Anaxagoras’ premisses. Although Proclus endorsed it without questioning its rationale (commTim, v. 3, p. 43; In Platonis Parmeni dem, p. 1014), later Neoplatonists such as Damascius took exception to it: following reference to Plato’s theory (In Phaedonem [versio 1], 197; 212), he argues against it (op. cit. 230), and finally states that this theory had been rebutted by Syrianus, who argued that Plato’s theory is indefen sible: to say that all men are born from the dead runs contrary to the fact that the first men were alive and they did not come from any prior dead ones.

518

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

cardinal ideas of Anaxagoras, taking them as spoils and making them part of their own expositions. However, the legacy of Anaxagoras did survive throughout Antiquity, especially the Late one, when it became evident that Plato’s theory of Ideas actually resulted in bankruptcy and Aristotle’s alternative propositions were unable to explain both the ‘way to creation’ and the process of Becoming. What stood firm from Aristotle’s philosophy was the notion of the Supreme Principle, which though was a genuine copy of Anaxagoras’ Mind. Whether surreptitiously entertained or unconsciously availed of, the Anaxagorean tradition made its way well into the Late Antiquity. I will then give two examples that relate to the present point. No matter who he was, the author of a Hippocratic text appears as the sole writer who had read Anaxagoras’ physics first-hand, well before Simplicius saved part of it for posterity. His usage of identical terminology is impressive indeed. He considers the attributes of warmness, dryness, coolness, and wetness, in order to recommend to his readers a healthy diet. However, all of a sudden, he sets out to consider those notions in themselves, and his text turns out an Anaxagorean exposition, evidently because Anaxagoras had considered the same attributes as examples of the ‘things’ which were distinguished by the Mind. Since these things have many and different forms (οὕτω δὲ τούτων ἐχόντων πουλλὰς καὶ παντοδαπὰς ἰδέας¹³²), they are distinguished from each other (ἀποκρίνονται ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων),¹³³ whether seeds or animals (καὶ σπερμάτων¹³⁴ καὶ ζώων), which are all different from each other (οὐδὲν ὁμοίων ἀλλήλοισιν)¹³⁵ concerning either their form or function (οὔτε τὴν ὄψιν οὔτε τὴν δύναμιν); for they never remain the same (ἅτε γὰρ οὔποτε κατὰ τωὐτὸ ἱστάμενα); and since they always mutate to these or those [forms] (ἀλλ᾿ αἰεὶ ἀλλοιούμενα ἐπὶ τὰ καὶ ἐπὶ τά), those which are produced from them of necessity become also unlike each other (ἀνόμοια ἐξ ἀνάγκης γίνεται καὶ τὰ ἀπὸ τούτων ἀποκρινόμενα). Cer-

 Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 156 (also, p. 157): τούτων δὲ οὕτως ἐχόντων χρὴ δοκεῖν ἐνεῖναι πολλά τε καὶ παντοῖα ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς συγκρινομένοις καὶ σπέρματα πάντων χρημάτων καὶ ἰδέας παντοίας ἔχοντα καὶ χροιὰς καὶ ἡδονάς. The same, in op. cit. p. 35; also, commCael, p. 609.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156 7: καὶ ἀποκρίνεται ἀπό τε τοῦ ἀραιοῦ τὸ πυκνὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ τὸ θερμὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ζοφεροῦ τὸ λαμπρὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ διεροῦ τὸ ξηρόν.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 35: καὶ σπέρματα … ἰδέας ἐκάλεσε τὰ ἐκεῖ.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 34: ταῦτα πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲ χροιὴ ἔνδηλος ἦν οὐδεμία· ἀπεκώλυε γὰρ ἡ σύμμιξις πάντων χρημάτων, τοῦ τε διεροῦ καὶ τοῦ ξηροῦ καὶ τοῦ θερμοῦ καὶ τοῦ ψυχροῦ καὶ τοῦ λαμπροῦ καὶ τοῦ ζοφεροῦ, καὶ γῆς πολλῆς ἐνεούσης καὶ σπερμά των ἀπείρων πλῆθος οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

519

tainly, none of all things perishes (ἀπόλλυται μὲν οὖν οὐδὲν ἁπάντων χρημάτων), nor does anything ever become what previously it was not (οὐδὲ γίνεται ὅ τι μὴ καὶ πρόσθεν ἦν). Besides, [things] mutate by being either mixed together or dissociated from each other (ξυμμισγόμενα δὲ καὶ διακρινόμενα ἀλλοιοῦται). Now, he goes on, people think that generation means something that has been grown and has come to light out of the Hades (νομίζεται δὲ παρὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸ μὲν ἐξ Ἅͺ δου ἐς φάος αὐξηθὲν γενέσθαι), and that passing away means to be reduced and finally extinguished into the Hades (τὸ δὲ ἐκ τοῦ φάεος ἐς Ἅͺ δην μειωθὲν ἀπολέσθαι). However, these people believe in their eyes rather than in reason, because they are unable to judge rightly even what they see (ὀφθαλμοῖσι γὰρ πιστεύουσι μᾶλλον ἢ γνώμῃ, οὐχ ἱκανοῖς ἐοῦσιν οὐδὲ περὶ τῶν ὁρεομένων κρῖναι). Therefore, I explain this as follows (ἐγὼ δὲ τάδε γνώμῃ ἐξηγέομαι): certainly both that situation and the present one are life (ζώει γὰρ κἀκεῖνα καὶ τάδε); and it is not possible for a living being to die, unless everything in the universe dies (καὶ οὔτε, εἰ ζῶον, ἀποθανεῖν οἷον τε, εἰ μὴ μετὰ πάντων). For where is it that one could go to, once one dies? (ποῦ γὰρ ἀποθανεῖται;). It is not possible for non-being to become being (οὔτε τὸ μὴ ὂν γενέσθαι). For whence could non-being possibly receive its existence? (πόθεν γὰρ ἔσται;). Instead, everything increases and decreases between two possible limits, a maximum and a minimum (ἀλλ᾿ αὔξεται πάντα καὶ μειοῦται ἐς τὸ μήκιστον καὶ ἐς τὸ ἐλάχιστον, τῶν γε δυνατῶν). Therefore, whenever I make reference to either coming-to-be or passing-away, I use these terms only for the sake of the multitude (ὅτι δ᾿ ἂν διαλέγωμαι γενέσθαι ἢ ἀπολέσθαι, τῶν πολλῶν εἵνεκεν ἑρμηνεύω); for what I actually mean is mixing-together and dissociating from each other (ταῦτα δὲ ξυμμίσγεσθαι καὶ διακρίνεσθαι δηλῶ). Here is then how things really are (ἔχει δὲ ὧδε): whether coming-to-be or passing-away, this is the same thing (γενέσθαι καὶ ἀπολέσθαι τωὐτό); mixing-together and dissociating from each other is the same thing, too (ξυμμιγῆναι καὶ διακριθῆναι τωὐτό); to increase and to decrease is the same thing (αὐξηθῆναι καὶ μειωθῆναι τωὐτό); coming-to-be and mixing-together is the same thing (γενέσθαι, ξυμμιγῆναι τωὐτό); to perish means to decrease, and this is the same as dissociating from each other (ἀπολέσθαι, μειωθῆναι, διακριθῆναι τωὐτό). Each one is the same as all things are,¹³⁶ and all things are the same as each one is (ἕκαστον

 Meaning, all principles. See supra, chapter 7. The essence of any thing is a specific concur rence of logoi, which is why the logos of a thing is both one and many: everything is in every thing’, and ‘everything participates in everything’, and ‘the smallest is equal with the entire mul titude’, and this is why ‘it is impossible to determine anything as being either the biggest or the smallest’. The principles are both one and many, both united and distinct from each other, both

520

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

πρὸς πάντα καὶ πάντα πρὸς ἕκαστον τωὐτό); and none of them is the same as the other (καὶ οὐδὲν πάντων τωὐτό), which is an established law concerning their nature (ὁ νόμος γὰρ τῇ φύσει περὶ τούτων ἐναντίος).¹³⁷ The second example comes from Apollonius of Tyana, or perhaps one of his pupils. Apollonius’ biographer Philostratus of Lemnos mentioned Anaxagoras with manifest respect for his wisdom, while insinuating that he did not receive the credit he deserved: as it was widely known that Anaxagoras abandoned all his paternal property in Clazomenae in order to dedicate himself to philosophy, Philostratus wrote that, according to Apollonius, the sheep which found food in the abandoned fields of Clazomenae received more benefit than those who heard Anaxagoras – evidently because he was one more philosopher whom his contemporaries were unable to understand and appreciate.¹³⁸ As it happened with the foregoing Hippocratic text, the following one is also attributed to a celebrity such as Apollonius, yet we cannot be sure whether the attribution is genuine. Whatever the case, this was written definitely by a follower. The author considers what death is, in order to argue that ‘there is no death for anything, except only ostensibly’ (θάνατος οὐδεὶς οὐδενὸς ἢ μόνον ἐμφάσει), ‘in like a manner that there is neither generation of anything, except only ostensibly’ (καθάπερ οὐδὲ γένεσις οὐδενὸς ἢ μόνον ἐμφάσει). ‘For what appears as generation is only transformation of Essence into Nature’ (τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἐξ οὐσίας τραπὲν εἰς φύσιν ἔδοξε γένεσις), whereas ‘by the same token, death is transformation of Nature into Essence’ (τὸ δὲ ἐκ φύσεως εἰς οὐσίαν κατὰ ταὐτὰ θάνατος). ‘There is not anything which is really generated, nor does anything ever really perish’ (οὔτε γιγνομένου κατ’ ἀλήθειάν τινος, οὔτε φθειρομένου ποτέ): what really happens is that, ‘what is perceptible, subsequently it becomes imperceptible’ (μόνον δὲ ἐμφανοῦς ὄντος ἀοράτου τε ὕστερον). The former (i. e. the perceptible object) is so ‘because of the density of its matter’ (τοῦ μὲν διὰ παχύτητα τῆς ὕλης); the latter (i. e. the imperceptible object) is so ‘because of the thinness of its substance’ (τοῦ δὲ διὰ λεπτότητα τῆς οὐσίας), ‘which is always the same, and it differs only in terms of either motion or stillness’ (οὔσης μὲν

here and everywhere, both now and ever; they are incorruptible, since they do not come to be nor do they perish. There is no notion of either ‘less’ or ‘more’ that could be applied to them; for it is impossible for any of them to be more than all, since they are all equal, and yet they are all unlike each other.  Hippocrates, De Diaeta, 4.  Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, 1.13; copied by Suda, letter alpha, entries 1981 & 3420. George Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, p. 278. See other approbatory remarks in Philostratus, op. cit. 1.2; 2.5.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

521

αἰεὶ τῆς αὐτῆς, κινήσει δὲ διαφερούσης καὶ στάσει). Although such ‘different manifestations of things happen of necessity’ (τοῦτο γάρ που τὸ ἴδιον ἀνάγκῃ), this kind of ‘change does not take place as if it were introduced from the outside’ (τῆς μεταβολῆς οὐκ ἔξωθεν γινομένης ποθέν). What really happens is that ‘owing to the unity of the universe, the Whole changes into Parts, and Parts change into the Whole’ (ἀλλὰ τοῦ μὲν ὅλου μεταβάλλοντος εἰς τὰ μέρη, τῶν μερῶν δὲ εἰς τὸ ὅλον τρεπομένων ἑνότητι τοῦ παντός). In view of this, one might ask, ‘what is that which is intermittently either perceptible or imperceptible, and it appears in either this or another form?’ (τί τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ ποτὲ μὲν ὁρατόν, ποτὲ δὲ ἀόρατον, ἢ τοῖς αὐτοῖς γινόμενον ἢ ἄλλοις;). To this question, the answer is that the visible has to do with the things that pertain to the genera perceived by the human condition (ὡς ἔθος ἑκάστου ἐστὶ τῶν ἐνθάδε γενῶν): a certain genus becomes visible only because it is filled with a dense condition of solid matter (ὃ πληρωθὲν μὲν ἐφάνη διὰ τὴν τῆς παχύτητος ἀντιτυπίαν); likewise, this is invisible once it turns void of such matter, which becomes thin (ἀόρατον δέ ἐστιν, εἰ κενωθείη διὰ λεπτότητα τῆς ὕλης). This happens only because the form of visible matter undergoes ‘a violent embracement’ by circumstances which cause ‘the eternal measure, which determines its state, to fall away’ (βίᾳ περιχυθείσης ἐκρυείσης τε τοῦ περιέχοντος αὐτὴν αἰωνίου μέτρου). However, no matter what ‘the measure’, this thing (whether perceptible or imperceptible) ‘is in no way either generated or perishable’ (γεννητοῦ δ’ οὐδαμῶς, οὐδὲ φθαρτοῦ). What is this ‘measure’? The author of the Hippocratic text above put it in terms of everything either increasing or decreasing between two possible limits, a maximum and a minimum one (ἀλλ᾿ αὔξεται πάντα καὶ μειοῦται ἐς τὸ μήκιστον καὶ ἐς τὸ ἐλάχιστον, τῶν γε δυνατῶν). Modern science couches the same notion in similar terms: ‘matter’ is simply a region of the space in which curvature towards time (the fourth dimension) stands between certain limits. Therefore, matter is in fact only a ‘ditch’ within the three-dimensional space, and the depth of this ditch if the fourth dimension (time) so long as the amount of this depth stands within certain limits. Following this, it is quite evident that how the universe operates is explained by means of the Anaxagorean principles: whether a certain reality will be visible or invisible, is determined by the different ways of mutual concurrence or divergence of certain principles. In this context, the present author argues that, since the cosmic principles determine what ostensibly appears as generation, it can be said that a child is born not from its parents, but by means of (or, through) its parents (ὁ γεννηθεὶς διὰ γονέων γεγέννηται, οὐχ ὑπὸ γονέων). It is impressive but not surprising that Origen fully endorsed this notion: although parents provide the material for offspring to be formed, and thus ‘we have parents as far as our bodies are concerned’, otherwise ‘there is neither mother nor father of any

522

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

soul, since the latter was created by God alone’ (οὐ γάρ ἐστι ψυχῆς μήτηρ ἢ πατήρ· ταύτης γὰρ ὁ Θεὸς μόνος ἐστὶ ποιητὴς καὶ πατήρ). This is what God means by saying ‘all souls are mine’, since ‘every soul has an existence of its own’, and it stands on its own account, not on that of anything else.¹³⁹ Apollonius, or whoever the author, goes on, arguing along the same line: it is not the earth that gives birth to plants; the soil is only the medium upon which the cosmic principles act and cause a plant to grow (τὸ διὰ γῆς φυὲν οὐκ ἐκ γῆς φύεται). All of these are phenomena which are not isolated and independent from each other: the author of the Hippocratic text emphasized that all particular manifestations which we perceive as either generation or death, and, in general, as ‘mutation’, do not really pertain to the particular things involved in such phenomena, but all of this happens to Being (ἥ τε γὰρ ἀλλοίωσις πάθος περὶ τὸ ὄν ἐστι). Likewise, in remarkably similar terms, the present author writes that the phenomena that he described do not actually pertain to those phenomena themselves (πάθος τε οὐδὲν τῶν φαινομένων περὶ ἕκαστον); rather, each particular occurrence or phenomenon actually ‘refers to one’ (ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον περὶ ἓν ἑκάστου). What is this ‘one’? ‘What else could it possibly be other than the primary substance, if one were to use the proper terms?’ (τοῦτο δὲ τί ἂν ἄλλο τις εἰπὼν ἢ τὴν πρώτην οὐσίαν ὀρθῶς ἂν ὀνομάσειεν;). For it is this primary substance (that is, the cosmic principles) alone that either creates or undergoes changes (ἣ δὴ μόνη ποιεῖ τε καὶ πάσχει). This ‘primary substance’ the author of the Hippocratic text called ‘Being’ (τὸ ὄν).¹⁴⁰ In the final analysis, this ‘primary substance’ suggests the concept of Mind acting by means of the principles, which serve to it as tools. These are the logoi, according to which the universe is eternally fashioned, sustained, and re-fashioned. This ‘substance’ the author calls ‘the eternal God who permeates everything and becomes everything to everything’ (πᾶσι γινομένη πάντα διὰ πάντων θεὸς ἀΐδιος), a God ‘that has received sundry names and persons, which are a detriment’ to his own real identity (ὀνόμασι καὶ προσώποις ἀφαιρουμένη τὸ ἴδιον ἀδικουμένη τε).

 Origen, selEz, PG.13.817.16 23: ἑκάστη ψυχὴ ἰδίαν ὑπόστασιν ἔχει, ἐν τῷ ἰδίῳ λόγῳ ἱστα μένη, καὶ οὐκ ἐν ἄλλῳ. Commenting on Ezekiel, 18:4, ‘all souls are mine’. The expression ἐν τῷ ἰδίῳ λόγω means ‘in itself’. A unique parallel appears in Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, ᾿Aπορίαι καὶ Λύσεις, p. 52. Once again, Origen wrote after Alexander’s vocabulary.  The notion of πάθος attributed to the cosmic order by both authors actually suggests the possibilities of human freedom: mind and soul are concurrences of logoi, which can generate logoi that affect the entire universe. Infra, pp. 1368 74.

Conclusion of Part I – Truth and Becoming in Anaxagoras

523

The conclusion is the selfsame as that of the Hippocratic writer: Apollonius urges that ‘in no way does Being perish, which is why it is called Being, namely, it is so called because it will exist for ever’ (τὸ γὰρ ὂν οὐκ ἀπόλλυται, διὰ τοῦτο ὄν, ὅτι ἔσται διὰ παντός). Likewise, non-Being cannot come to be: for in order for non-Being to take over, Being should perish, which is impossible to happen (ἢ καὶ τὸ μὴ ὂν γίνεται, πῶς δ’ ἂν γένοιτο μὴ ἀπολλυμένου τοῦ ὄντος;).¹⁴¹ In essence, this is the same analysis as that by the author of the Hippocratic text, who argued that none of things perishes nor does it ever become what it was not previously; it is not possible for a living being to die, unless everything in the universe dies.¹⁴² For where is it that one would go to, once one dies? (ποῦ γὰρ ἀποθανεῖται;). It is not possible for non-being to become being (οὔτε τὸ μὴ ὂν γενέσθαι). For whence is it that non-being would receive existence? (πόθεν γὰρ ἔσται;). Therefore, if the principles are essence and their product is nature, it follows that ‘generation’ is transformation of essence to nature, whereas ‘death’ is transformation of nature to essence. There are only incorporeal principles which concur in order to give rise to material things, and to sustain them until such a time when they depart from one another, which results in things perishing, while others come to pass endlessly. This continuous alteration does not affect the principles as such: it affects only the temporary products of their convergence with each other or divergence from one another. Conclusion: that which our human senses perceive as ‘matter’ is only the coupling of two human illusions, namely, Space and Time. These, along with Matter, are the three constituents of a dream, which lasts as long as that which we call ‘duration of our life’. Our senses are only the organs that maintain and preserve continuance of our dream. Matter gradually fades, like all dreamy mental images. Along with matter, our senses, which keep up these dreamy images, fade, too. Then the dream is over and a new day dawns – a day which is in fact infinite, within the bosom of the real and infinite universe, the universe of the principles of Anaxagoras.

 Apollonius of Tyana, Epistulae, 58 (‘To Valerius’).  Cf. a work of the Corpus Hermeticum, entitled. None of the things that exist does ever perish: it is only those who are misled that call passing away and deaths what are only alterations (Ὅτι οὐδὲν τῶν ὄντων ἀπόλλυται, ἀλλὰ τὰς μεταβολὰς ἀπωλείας καὶ θανάτους πλανώμενοι λέγου σιν). The argument goes that everything in the world is part of it, and man is so par excellence, and no part of the world does ever perish.

Part II The Legacy of Anaxagoras to Classical and Late Antiquity

Chapter 8 Plato and Aristotle Plato In the Philebus, Socrates says that ‘the Mind is to us the king of both heaven and earth’; this is ‘the unanimous opinion of all philosophers, who perhaps are right’.¹ Soon after this, he states that the Cause of All, on account of its potency, has implanted a kingly soul and a kingly mind in the nature of Zeus (βασιλικὸν δὲ νοῦν ἐγγίγνεσθαι διὰ τὴν τῆς αἰτίας δύναμιν). How did Socrates know this? He provides his answer forthwith: “Do not imagine, Protarchus, that this is mere idle talk of mine; it confirms the utterances of those of old who declared that the Mind always rules the universe” (τοῖς μὲν πάλαι ἀποφηναμένοις ὡς ἀεὶ τοῦ παντὸς νοῦς ἄρχει). There was only one philosopher of old who said so, but Plato felt he had to eschew his name, notably Anaxagoras,² and, in antiquity, it was widely known that Socrates had been taught philosophy by Anaxagoras’ pupil and successor Archelaus.³ Following Anaxagoras, Plato says that ‘the Mind orders all things, that is, the sun, moon, stars, and the entire revolving universe’ (νοῦν πάντα διακοσμεῖν αὐτά),⁴ and ‘there is in the universe a by no means feeble cause, which orders and arranges years and seasons and months, which may most justly be called wisdom and mind’ (αἰτία οὐ φαύλη κοσμοῦσά τε καὶ συντάττουσα ἐνιαυτούς τε καὶ ὥρας καὶ μῆνας, σοφία καὶ νοῦς λεγομένη δικαιότατ᾿ ἄν).⁵  Plato, Philebus, 28c: ἀλλὰ μὴν ῥᾴδιον· πάντες γὰρ συμφωνοῦσιν οἱ σοφοί, ἑαυτοὺς ὄντως σεμνύνοντες, ὡς νοῦς ἐστι βασιλεὺς ἡμῖν οὐρανοῦ τε καὶ γῆς. καὶ ἴσως εὖ λέγουσι.  Plato, op. cit. 30d e.  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 27. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 360. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 1.14; 2.16; 9.41; 10.12. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 3. Porphyry, Historia Philosophiae (fragmenta), fr. 12, apud Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 12.67. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haere sium, 1.10.1; 1.18.1. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 1.14.63.3. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.15.11: ἦν δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρου μὲν διάδοχος τῆς τε διατριβῆς ὁμοῦ καὶ τῆς δόξης ᾿Aρχέλαος, ᾿Aρχελάου δὲ ἀκουστὴς γεγονέναι λέγεται Σωκράτης. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.22 23; 2.51; 12.67. Isidore of Pelusium, Epistulae, 1470, line 100. John of Damascus, Passio Magni Martyris Artemii, 47. John Italus, Quaestiones Quodlibetales, 91. George Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, p. 278. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.3. Suda, letter sigma, entry 829. Anonymous, Scholia in Platonem, (comm. on Eu thphro), p. 11c.  Plato, Philebus, 28e.  Plato, op. cit. 30c.

528

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

In the Timaeus, he speaks of those who see Nature and the things and processes in it, as a real manifestation of the Mind’s generative and cohesive activity. His option is to play down all those manifestations of Nature and see them only as ‘auxiliary causes’ (τῶν συναιτίων), while remarking scornfully that natural phenomena and processes ‘are supposed by most of men to be not auxiliary but primary causes of all things’ (δοξάζεται δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν πλείστων οὐ συναίτια ἀλλὰ αἴτια εἶναι τῶν πάντων). He evidently has in mind Anaxagoras, and perhaps the Atomists.⁶ Nevertheless, only a short while later, he speaks in admiration of the physical constitution of human body (44d‒46c) and concludes that ‘all these have been created through the Mind’ (τὰ διὰ νοῦ δεδημιουργημένα),⁷ and then he proceeds with describing how the Mind prevailed over Necessity (48c). Mention is made not of the Demiurge, but of the Nous, because Plato wrote under the spell of Anaxagoras: while censuring him for having seen as prime causes those which Plato himself saw as secondary ones, he could not escape Anaxagoras’ fundamental proposition, namely, that the creator of the universe is called Mind, not Demiurge. In the Phaedo, only a short while before Socrates was about to die, he is made to say that the teaching of Anaxagoras was a cardinal moment of his life,⁸ even though, subsequently, Plato himself does his best to play that philosophy down. For if Anaxagoras’ teaching was really disappointing to Socrates (as Plato put it), the question is why should Socrates have spent his time studying with Archelaus, the pupil of Anaxagoras, in order to realize that there is nothing that Mind is made of, a conclusion which would have taken only a few minutes to arrive at. Likewise, in the Timaeus, the world is said to have been produced by the Mind and Necessity, yet the former prevailed upon the latter ‘by intelligent persuasion’, which means that the power of the cosmic Nous prevailed upon formless matter, which Plato calls ‘wandering cause’ (πλανωμένης αἰτίας).⁹ In other words, the Nous was the force that made the creative act of the Demiurge looking at the eternal Forms possible, and rational order was instilled into the universe as a result. What Plato really resented about Anaxagoras is simple to understand. By positing the Mind as first cause, Anaxagoras made the greatest discovery of all

 Plato, Timaeus, 46c d.  Plato, op. cit. 47e. Cf. Philebus, 28c; 30c d; Leges, 966e; 967b.  Plato, Phaedo, 97b d: ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἀναγιγνώσκοντος, καὶ λέγοντος ὡς ἄρα νοῦς ἐστιν ὁ δια κοσμῶν τε καὶ πάντων αἴτιος, ταύτῃ δὴ τῇ αἰτίᾳ ἥσθην τε καὶ ἔδοξέ μοι τρόπον τινὰ εὖ ἔχειν τὸ τὸν νοῦν εἶναι πάντων αἴτιον.  Plato, Timaeus, 47e 48a. Simplicius was the only philosopher who cared to explain this no tion and comment on it: commPhys, p. 392.

Plato

529

philosophy. Plato saw this as a theological notion only, and expected his predecessor to have explained everything in theological terms. However, Anaxagoras was above all a physicist and made ample room for explanation of phenomena in natural terms. This was not really detriment to his fundamental concept, since he did not posit any radical hiatus between the action of the Mind and the natural processes, which in effect was the same thing. As for Mind’s being proper, he saw this as sheer ontological otherness, but he did not need to make too much of it: the Mind just is, and further adumbration of this appeared to be pointless.¹⁰ There is nothing wanting in his exposition because of this: while Anaxagoras was writing his own physics, Jewish writers and prophets spoke of their God and made it a distinct characteristic of their religion that no need for any detailed adumbration of this God was necessary: all one needed was to be aware of his action, not of his being proper, which is unknowable anyway. In this respect, Simplicius notes that the ancient philosophers who engaged in investigation of ‘principles’ sought them as ‘principles of beings’ (οἱ γὰρ περὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς φιλοσοφοῦντες ὡς ὄντων ἀρχὰς ἐζήτουν); some of them did not make any distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ (τὰ φυσικὰ ἀπὸ τῶν ὑπὲρ φύσιν), but others did. The latter were the Pythagoreans, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles, but they did not wish to make this distinction too an emphatic one, hence this distinction eluded the hoi polloi, because of its obscurity (τῇ δὲ ἀσαφείᾳ λανθάνοντες τοὺς πολλούς).¹¹ The fact of the matter is that the ontological otherness of the ‘unmixed’ Mind did not prevent its action within the world. Nevertheless, echoes of the Anaxagorean theory are present in Plato once some critical statements of his are read carefully. The notion that the Demiurge is not a representation of Deity in its fullness (i. e. the Demiurge is not the Good itself) is plain, but there is further distinction: the Demiurge ‘constructed the present universe, which is one single Living Creature containing within itself all living creatures, both mortal and immortal’; but, then, the Demiurge ‘became creator of the divine beings (τῶν μὲν θείων αὐτὸς γίγνεται δημιουργός), whereas, in turn, he ordered those creatures of his to create mortal beings’ (τῶν δὲ θνητῶν τὴν γένεσιν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ γεννήμασιν δημιουργεῖν προσέταξεν).¹² The pattern is in

 This is what the Stoics did, too; infra, pp. 681 3. Also, Themistius, supra, pp. 356 8.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 21.  Plato, Timaeus, 69c. However, Plato’s statements suggest that he attributed the name Nous to the Demiurge rather than to the Good. Phaedo, 97a7; 97b c, referring to Anaxagoras’ Mind, and then somehow seeing this as the Demiurge. Leges, 966e3 4; 967b5 6; Timaeus, 39e7 9; 47e4; 48a1 (arguing that the world was made by both Nous and Necessity, but Nous prevailed over Necessity by means of persuasion). In the Cratylus, 396a1 c2, considering the pedigree Ura

530

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

no way different: the Anaxagorean Mind, while remaining ‘unmixed’ with everything (in later terms: transcendent), created the principles/logoi, through the Logos,¹³ and thereafter everything is constructed, maintained, and dissolved following action of these principles. The Platonic supreme Good is not involved in creation, which takes place through the Demiurge, and yet the latter is not the proximate creator of ‘mortal beings’, which come to be by means of the Demiurge’s ‘progenies’ (τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ γεννήμασιν). In both cases, not only is the supreme principle not involved directly in creation, but also the proximate Creator of the universe creates his own surrogates, which in turn act as creative and sustaining principles operating within the actual processes of the universe. The difference between Anaxagoras and Plato did not lie in the theological basis of their philosophy; for, to them both, there was a common springboard, no matter what the name or adumbration of it. When Diogenes Laetius wrote that Plato ‘designated God as Nous and Cause’ (θεὸν … ὃν καὶ νοῦν προσαγορεύει καὶ αἴτιον),¹⁴ he was aware of the Anaxagorean tenor of that proposition. The real difference was that Plato demanded that theological reflection should be applied all the way through, even if one dealt with purely natural realities. Hence, Plato was apt to theology, and indeed to mythology by means of vague formulations, and there is reasonable doubt as to whether he really understood them, or just somehow he reproduced fragmentary propositions he had received from the East.¹⁵ An example is his definition of time proper, which I have canvassed elsewhere.¹⁶ This character of Plato’s thought and exposition was after all what allowed ample room for Neoplatonism to read in him whatever they wished to make of them, but we should never forget that, after Plato’s death, the Academy

nus/Cronus/Zeus, he calls Cronus ‘the logos of Uranus’. However, in the Philebus, 30c d, it is plain that he appeals to Anaxagoras’ Nous and regards this as a supreme principle (which also explains his references in 28c7 8). Proclus saw in this ‘two minds’, and thought that Plato meant Cronus and Zeus (Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 15, quoted infra, p. 1163, note 303). Therefore, to Proclus, this Nous (of whose nature Anaxagoras taught Pericles, Phaedrus, 270a) is not the Good (which he identified with the One), but Cronus. However, Origen (whom Proclus criticized) argued that this was the supreme principle. Hence, when Proclus accused Origen of anti Platonism for having made the Mind the supreme God (see infra, p. 756), he probably had in mind this point of the Philebus. In any case, Plato owed the notion of Nous to no other than Anaxagoras, and indeed he says so in Philebus, 28c7 8 and 30d6 7.  See discussion in chapters 10 and 11.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 3.69.  See Appendix I.  COT, pp. 181 2; 187 206; 208 21.

Plato

531

was left bewildered, and, following a short flirt with Pythagoreanism, it plunged into deed scepticism for centuries.¹⁷ Anaxagoras departed from the same point as Plato did, namely a fundamentally theological notion; he was universally acknowledged as the first exponent of it, after all. But once the primary and cardinal principle was posited, nature had to be explained in the way we know, namely, by means of natural theories, and Anaxagoras explored ingeniously many aspects of nature, both earthly and celestial. This is why Plato spoke with contempt of Anaxagoras, who ‘made no use of the Mind’ and ‘did not assign any real causes for the ordering of things, but mentioned as causes air and aether and water and many other absurdities’ (καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ καὶ ἄτοπα).¹⁸ For his part, Plato despised any investigation of nature, indeed one of such things as air, aether, fire, and the like, and normally his way out was to offer fanciful etymological interpretations of such names.¹⁹ Once the Mind was there, in Plato’s view, Anaxagoras had to explain everything by means of theological exegeses, and if Plato himself went a little too far, and theology became mythology, this was just as well: for how is it possible to have such a precious notion as the Mind available to you, and yet seek to construe celestial things by means of natural explanations, and indeed go as far as blasphemy, by saying that the sun is not god, but merely a fiery stone? The invective by Plato turned out betokening a difference between theology and science, which is implicit in this vituperation. To Presocratics, there was no difference between theology, philosophy, and science; in fact, there was no inkling of such difference: these are only particular aspects of seeking to explain the Whole. How specific manifestations of it were deciphered by means of reason did not need particular labels styling respective enquiries. The modern difference between philosophy and science made no sense until a long time after Aristotle; and when the Greeks spoke of ‘theologians’, they only had in mind such poets as Hesiod and Orpheus, and had no problem with profane stories intermingling religion, myth, and sometimes divination, together. The fact is that Anaxagoras was the first who posited a supreme Creative Cause; he saw the world as real, not as a shadow of something transcendent and remote, as Plato did. Besides, this Cause cares for the world; it acts within it, it knows everything and keeps it to existence by providing also cohesive causes, whereas Plato never cared to explain how the remote self-subsistent Ideas relate to this world, a world that

 See supra, pp. 196; 202.  Plato, Phaedo, 98c.  Plato, Cratylus, 408d; 410b.

532

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

he utterly despised. Hence, he sought to interpret everything by making it dependent on the transcendent and inexorably alien Beyond;²⁰ but once he never determined the relation between Here and Beyond, his interpretations were bound to be mythological rather than philosophical,²¹ and it appears that Plato was very happy about it, notwithstanding the baffling impasses of his thought, which Aristotle castigated relentlessly and systematically. All Plato cared to preserve was an august doctrine, since the world is dependent, as much as is it essentially unreal, whereby natural processes could not be explained by what happens in the world itself. Hence, there was a twofold reason why he never forgave Anaxagoras: his predecessor was the genius who first spoke of God being a Nous, and yet he also went on with explaining the function of this world by means of interrelating natural causes acting within it. While rebutting the Aristotelian caricature of Anaxagoras, Simplicius saw in this philosophy the seeds that flourished through the ‘more perfect’ (τελειότερον) philosophies or Plato and Aristotle, and ‘before them both’ (πρὸ ἀμφοῖν) the Pythagoreans did so ‘much more perfectly’ (ἔτι τελειότερον) with respect to how incorporeal causes are involved with material objects.²² However, his implicit, yet clear, assertion is that Anaxagoras had already expressed the fundamental truth underlying those philosophies.²³ Although all of Presocratics were credited with explaining the composite structures of nature departing from simple presuppositions, only Anaxagoras (and, sometimes, Empedocles) was mentioned alongside Plato and the Pythagoreans. The reason was that they had spoken of a poietic cause, which in effect was an abstract one²⁴ identified with the Deity, wherefore sometimes Anaxagoras was classified among the

 According to Plato, Nature gives rise to things and moves them, but this is a cause a move ment which is itself moved by someone else, namely, by God. Plato, Timaeus, 46d; 50d. Cf. Sim plicius, commPhys, p. 8: τὴν φύσιν ὁ Πλάτων ἐν τῷ ὀργανικῷ τέθεικε κινουμένην μὲν ὑφ᾿ ἑτέ ρου, κινοῦσαν δὲ ἕτερα.  Simplicius remarks kindly that Aristotle saw ‘the enigmatic character’ of Plato’s statements, and rendered them in a clearer manner, thus adding accuracy to them’. commPhys, p. 8: τὸ αἰ νιγματῶδες ἐκείνων εἰς τὸ σαφέστερον μετέβαλε καὶ ἀκρίβειαν ταῖς ἀποδείξεσι προσέθηκε. How ever, being the most formidable detractor of his teacher, Aristotle’s aim was not to establish ac curacy in Plato, but to demonstrate that his own philosophy was superior.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 179 81.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 179.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 305: Πλάτων καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι φυσικοὶ τὴν τῶν συνθέτων ἀπὸ τῶν ἁπλῶν γένεσιν κατὰ τὸν ἐξ ὑποθέσεως τοῦτον τρόπον φαίνονται παραδιδόντες ἀπὸ τῶν νῦν ὁρωμένων τὴν ἀνάλυσιν ποιούμενοι τὴν ἐπὶ τὰ ἁπλᾶ καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν ἁπλῶν σύνθεσιν ἐξιστοροῦντες, ὡσεὶ καὶ προϋπῆρχον τῷ χρόνῳ τὰ ἐξ ὧν γίνεται τὰ γινόμενα.

Plato

533

theologians, even though he was normally mentioned as a physicist.²⁵ Constantine Porphyrogenitus saw analogies in the philosophies of Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, and the Stoics,²⁶ which was plausible for him to assume: for the supreme principle of them all seems to be different only in name; especially the Stoic Logos was in effect no different from Anaxagoras’ Mind, notwithstanding the supposed Stoic allegiances to the idea of corporeality. While expounding his account about incorporeality of the soul, Sophonias (fl. c. 1300) mentioned only two names: Plato and Anaxagoras.²⁷ Later (fifteenth century), Gennadius Scholarius explicitly styles Anaxagoras ‘the forerunner of Plato’s doctrines’ (᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ, τῷ προγόνῳ τῶν Πλάτωνος δογμάτων),²⁸ and although he thinks that Plato ‘was the most important of all the philosophers that preceded him’, he adds that ‘he received some higher impressions of the truth from Anaxagoras and Pythagoras’.²⁹ He also mentions Plato along with Anaxagoras in relation to the doctrine of the soul,³⁰ and when he needs to make the point that apostle Paul’s ‘foolishness’ was ‘more wise’ than the wisdom of the Greek philosophers, his list of the greatest philosophers includes four names: Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras.³¹ In his extensive exposition of the Greek philosophical views, Eusebius wrote an entire section in order to show ‘how Plato discredited (or, misinterpreted) his predecessors’ (Ὅπως ὁ Πλάτων τοὺς πρὸ αὐτοῦ διαβέβληκεν),³² meaning of course the Presocratics, specifically the Atomists, who taught that nothing exists except atoms and the void. Following an extensive quotation from the Thaeetetus, he uses the Sophist in order to turn it against those who refused real exis-

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 8: καὶ τὸ ποιητικὸν δὲ αἴτιον τῶν μὲν ἄλλων παραλιμπανόντων, τοῦ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρου καὶ τοῦ Πλάτωνος, ταὐτὸν δὲ εἰπεῖν τῶν Πυθαγορείων, τὸν θεῖον νοῦν τι θέντων, αὐτὸς τὸ προσεχὲς ζητῶν τῶν φύσει γινομένων ποιητικὸν αἴτιον τὴν φύσιν εἶναι φησίν, ἣν ὁ Πλάτων ἐν τῷ ὀργανικῷ τέθεικε κινουμένην μὲν ὑφ᾿ ἑτέρου, κινοῦσαν δὲ ἕτερα.  Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Virtute et Vitio, p. 114: καὶ γὰρ Πυθαγόρας καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Πλάτων καὶ οἱ μετ᾿ ἐκείνους τῆς Στοᾶς φιλόσοφοι μικροῦ δεῖν ἅπαντες οὕτω φαίνονται περὶ τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ φύσεως πεφρονηκότες.  Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 17: εἰ ἔστιν ἡ οὐσία τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ κινεῖν ἑαυτήν, … πῶς οὖν ἀσώ ματος κατ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόραν καὶ Πλάτωνα;  Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 104.  Gennadius Scholarius, op. cit. p. 102: Πλάτων δὲ σπουδαιότατος τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ πάντων γε γενημένος καὶ ἅμα ἐκ τῶν ᾿Aναξαγόρου καὶ Πυθαγόρου ἀμυδράς τινας τῆς ὑψηλοτέρας ἀληθείας ἐμφάσεις δεξάμενος.  Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 3 (comm. on De Anima), 1, line 67: σχεδὸν εἰς ταὐτὸν ἥκουσι Πλάτων καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας τιθέντες πάντες τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοκίνητον, οὐδὲ εἰς τὸ γνωστικὸν αὐτῆς ἀποβλέψαντες, ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν τῶν ὄντων αὐτὴν ἐνόμισαν συνεστάναι.  Gennadius Scholarius, Dialogi De Processu Spiritus Sancti, 1, p. 13.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.4.

534

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

tence to anything that is not a tangible material object. Plato argued that they ‘maintained stoutly that only what can be seen and touched, that alone exists (τοῦτο εἶναι μόνον ὃ παρέχει προσβολὴν καὶ ἐπαφήν τινι); for they determine that real existence and material body is one the same thing (ταὐτὸν σῶμα καὶ οὐσίαν ὁριζόμενοι), and if one says that something else which is incorporeal really exists (ἄλλων εἴ τις φήσει μὴ σῶμα ἔχον εἶναι), they despise him utterly and do not listen to any other theory than their own’. However, against them, there are those ‘who defend themselves very piously with arguments derived from a certain realm which is on high, urging that real existence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal forms (νοητὰ ἄττα καὶ ἀσώματα εἴδη βιαζόμενοι τὴν ἀληθινὴν οὐσίαν εἶναι). But the bodies of their opponents, and that which is called by them truth, they break up into small particles (κατὰ σμικρὰ διαθραύοντες) in their arguments, calling them not real existence, but generation’.³³ Hardly could Plato have imagined that when he criticized his predecessors of having failed to grasp ‘the real existence’ of things, his pupil Aristotle was going to do the same against Plato himself, arguing that his teacher based true existence on ‘archetypes’, and all of this was only ‘twitterings’ (τερετίσματα)³⁴ and mere ‘poetic metaphors’.³⁵ Worse still, Aristotle himself sought to determine ‘the real existence’ of Anaxagoras’ principles in the manner Plato despised, namely, ‘by breaking that up into small particles’ while not allowing any possibility that the specific physicist had used ‘arguments derived from a certain realm which is on high, urging that real existence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal forms’.³⁶ Aristotle would have felt very uneasy at times when Plato emphasized his fundamental premisses. Whereas empirical experience was to Aristotle the fore-

 Eusebius, op. cit. 14.4.9, quoting Plato, Sophista, 246b c. At this point, Plato uses οὐσία as equivalent with ὄν, which is why I translate οὐσία as ‘real existence’. Clement of Alexandria also quoted the passage, Stromateis, 2.4.15.1. It is surprising that J. von Arnim took this quotation by Clement as a reference to Stoicism, assuming that Plato (424/423 348/347 BC) reported the philosophy Chrysippus (c. 279 c. 206 BC)! Although Clement mentioned Plato, von Arnim in cluded this as a testimony to Chrysippus’ Physics, fr. 359. SVF, II.123. Theodoret used the same Platonic passage in his battery of arguments against the Greek doctrines: “These words were pronounced neither by [apostle] Peter nor by Paul, but by the most eloquent Plato and the most wise Socrates”. How then could possibly one ‘use such people as guides to the truth, once they [i. e. the Greeks] had fallen in such errors and waged a wild war against each other?’ Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.18.  Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, 83a33.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 991a (repeated on 1079b): τὸ δὲ λέγειν παραδείγματα αὐτὰ εἶναι καὶ μετέχειν αὐτῶν τἆλλα κενολογεῖν ἐστὶ καὶ μεταφορὰς λέγειν ποιητικάς.  Plato, Sophista, 246b c.

Plato

535

most source of deductive reasoning and knowledge, Plato despised those ‘who preferred their ears to their minds’ (ὦτα τοῦ νοῦ προστησάμενοι).³⁷ According to Plutarch, Plato reprimanded Eudoxus, Archytas, and Menechmus, for having employed instruments and mechanical devises for the solution of a problem (i. e. how can the volume of a geometrical body be doubled?) instead of using abstract reasoning (δίχα λόγου). Once geometry, which is a divine science, is mixed with sensible objects, it is demeaned and destroyed. For it does not orient itself upwards, in the realm of eternal and incorporeal mental images, in the realm where God himself dwells.³⁸ Plato himself taught that a soul that has never seen the truth could never pass into human form. For it is a specific characteristic (and task) of a human being to form a general conception produced by collecting the multitude of perceptions of the senses into a unity by means of reason. This is a recollection of those things that our soul once beheld, when it journeyed with God and, lifting its vision above the things, which we now say, exist, rose up into real being. Therefore, it is just that the mind of the philosopher only has wings, for he is always, so far as he is able, in communion through memory with that reality, and attains communion with those things on account of which God is divine (πρὸς οἷσπερ θεὸς ὢν θεῖος ἐστίν).³⁹ As discussed later, posterity gave credit to Aristotle’s caricature of Anaxagorean philosophy, especially his claim that Anaxagoras’ principles were material. If we go along with Hermann Diels ascribing the work of Pseudo-Plutarch to Aetius, then the work of the latter was a fatal doxographic turning point a couple of centuries BC, which perpetuated Aristotle’s travesty of Anaxagoras. However, in the Introduction, I have argued that, no matter who Aetius really was, his source was Aristotle himself. According to this testimony, the Mind set order upon bodies that were still, whereas Plato’s Demiurge did so on bodies which were moving. We should bear in mind that the doxographer allegedly quoted, but, in reality, he had not the texts themselves of philosophers on his desk: he just paraphrased freely, and I should have thought, promiscuously.⁴⁰ But when he  Plato, Repsublica, 531b.  Plutarch, Quaestiones Convivales, 718E; likewise, Marcellus, 14.4 12.  Plato, Phaedrus, 249b c.  See, for example, Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881A B (allegedly quoting from Anaxagoras): ὁ δ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρας φησὶν ὡς εἱστήκει κατ᾿ ἀρχὰς τὰ σώματα, νοῦς δὲ αὐτὰ διεκόσμησε θεοῦ καὶ τὰς γενέσεις τῶν ὅλων ἐποίησεν. (Then, allegedly quoting from Plato) ὁ δὲ Πλάτων οὐχ ἑστηκότα ὑπέθετο τὰ πρῶτα σώματα, ἀτάκτως δὲ κινούμενα· διὸ καὶ ὁ θεός, φησίν, ἐπιστήσας ὡς τάξις ἀταξίας ἐστὶ βελτίων, διεκόσμησε ταῦτα. But these were not Plato’s words, who wrote this in the Timaeus, 30a: βουληθεὶς γὰρ ὁ θεὸς ἀγαθὰ μὲν πάντα, φλαῦρον δὲ μηδὲν εἶναι κατὰ δύναμιν, οὕτω δὴ πᾶν ὅσον ἦν ὁρατὸν παραλαβὼν οὐχ ἡσυχίαν ἄγον ἀλλὰ κινούμενον πλημμελῶς καὶ ἀτάκτως, εἰς τάξιν αὐτὸ ἤγαγεν ἐκ τῆς ἀταξίας, ἡγησάμενος ἐκεῖνο τούτου πάντως ἄμεινον.

536

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

comes to reporting what Socrates and Plato understood God to be, his description is the God of Anaxagoras, and the characteristic vocabulary is indeed there: the author says that all the names Plato used of God (‘single’, ‘unique’, ‘truly Good’) ‘actually bespeak the Mind’ (πάντα δὲ ταῦτα τῶν ὀνομάτων εἰς τὸν νοῦν σπεύδει), which is a ‘separate species’, ‘unmixed with any sort of matter’ (ἀμιγὲς πάσης ὕλης), and immune to any external influence.⁴¹ Anaxagoras’ philosophy is different from that of Plato, and his principles have nothing to do with Plato’s theory of Ideas. The latter was doomed once Anaxagoras’ principles were posited as acting ones, whereas the Ideas were self-existent incorporeal entities standing aloof and idle in a presumed atemporality, and they were supposed to grant existence to perceptible things simply by being participated by them. Against this, Anaxagoras’ Mind stood apart and yet acted by means of the principles, and no notion of ‘participation’⁴² was involved: the Mind is not only impassible and unmixed with anything, but also impossible to be participated by anything.⁴³ This was the decisive line of demarcation between Anaxagoras and Plato, although otherwise the latter availed himself of the former.⁴⁴

Therefore, what the doxographer adduced as allegedly Anaxagoras’ words (unlike those quoted by Simplicius) should not be taken literatim. The gist of what this witness believed about Anax agoras was in fact Aristotle’s allegations. Once again, we are faced with Aristotle’s detrimental influence upon doxography, through Theophrastus, as discussed in the Introduction and in the Conclusion.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881F. Also, Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.7.  Aristotle argued that Plato’s ‘participation’ (μέθεξις) to the Ideas is simply another term for the Pythagorean ‘imitation’ (μίμησις) of Numbers by perceptible things. Metaphysica, 987b.  Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 102: ὅτι ὁ νοῦς οὗτος θεῖος καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ταὐτὸν ἔχων τῇ οὐσίᾳ τὴν ἐνέργειαν καὶ οὗτος μόνος ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀΐδιος καὶ χωριστός. Op. cit. p. 104: ὁ δὲ νοῦς παντάπασιν ἀπαθὴς καὶ χωριστός. Op. cit. p. 105: ὁ δυνάμει [sc. νοῦς] δὲ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἄμικτος τῷ σώματι καὶ χωριστός (ταῦτα γὰρ περὶ αὐτοῦ διαρρήδην φησίν), οἷον πρόδρομος τοῦ ποιητικοῦ. … χωριστὸς μὲν οὖν καὶ αὐτὸς καὶ ἀμιγὴς καὶ ἀπαθής … οὐ μὴν ὁμοίως χωριστὸς τῷ ποιητικῷ. Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina, 21: ὁ δὲ πρῶτος νοῦς ὑπ᾿ οὐδὲ μιᾶς ψυχῆς μεθεκτός ἐστιν. … πάσης γὰρ τῆς νοερᾶς πληθύος καὶ τοῦ πλήθους τῶν νόων ἡγεῖται τὶς νοῦς καὶ ἀμέθεκτος. καὶ πρῶτος μὲν οὗτος νοῦς καὶ ἔστι καὶ ὀνομάζεται. ὑπερκόσμιος καὶ χωριστὸς τοῦ κόσμου. καὶ ἡ ἐγκόσμιος ψυχὴ οὐκ εὐθὺς μετέχει τοῦ ὑπερκοσμίου νοός, ἀλλὰ πρώτως τοῦ ἐγκοσμίου. ἔστιν οὖν ἡ τάξις καὶ ὁ ἀριθμὸς καὶ τὰ ὀνόματα οὕτως· ὁ ἀμέθεκτος νοῦς, ὁ ὑπερκόσμιος, καὶ ὁ ἐγκόσμιος, ἡ ὑπερκόσμιος ψυχὴ καὶ ἡ ἐγκόσμιος.  Cf. Plato, Cratylus, 413c: εἶναι δὲ τὸ δίκαιον ὃ λέγει ᾿Aναξαγόρας νοῦν εἶναι τοῦτο· αὐτοκρά τορα γὰρ αὐτὸν ὄντα καὶ οὐθενὶ μεμειγμένον πάντα φησὶν αὐτὸν κοσμεῖν τὰ πράγματα διὰ πάν των ἰόντα.

Aristotle

537

Aristotle Liabilities to the criticized ancestor For all his invective against Anaxagoras, Aristotle acknowledged not only that the Mind is the First Mover itself and he depicted it in plain Anaxagorean terms, but also he identified it with Plato’s Good, although, as it happened, he accompanied his statement with self-defeating criticism.⁴⁵ Nevertheless, he declared that, whereas he reviewed the theories of previous philosophers, he was prepared to employ whatever ‘had been well said’ by them (τὰ μὲν καλῶς εἰρημένα λάβωμεν).⁴⁶ Although actually he said this in relation to the doctrine of the soul, Philoponus correctly took it as a general statement concerning other doctrines, too. While recalling this, he says that Aristotle’s conception of the First Mover is in fact Anaxagoras’ doctrine of the Mind (ὅθεν καὶ ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ αὐτὸς περὶ τοῦ νοῦ ἀποφαίνεται).⁴⁷ In other words, the Mind is no other than Aristotle’s God,⁴⁸ who is always sheer actuality⁴⁹ described

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b. See supra, p. 467, and discussion infra. He accused Anaxagoras of not making the Mind’s opposite a principle (that is, to posit evil as contrary to Mind/Good) even though Aristotle himself (actually in the very same work of his) argued that evil cannot be a principle. However, at another point (Metaphysica, 988a15 17), he attributed to Anaxagoras this idea (wrongly, anyway, see chapter 1, p. 137 8).  Aristotle, De Anima, 403b23.  John Philoponus, commAnim, pp. 85 6: ὁ μέντοι ᾿Aναξαγόρας μάλιστα ἀρχὴν εἶναι φησὶ τὸν νοῦν ὡς ποιητικὴν δηλονότι. καὶ ἐπαινεῖ γε αὐτὸν κατὰ τοῦτο καὶ ὅτι ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀμιγῆ σώματος αὐτὸν ὑποτίθεται καὶ οὐχ ὥσπερ τὰς ὁμοιομερείας λέγει μεμῖχθαι πάσας ἐν πᾶσιν, οὕτω καὶ τὸν νοῦν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀμιγῆ καὶ καθαρὸν καὶ ἁπλοῦν φησιν αὐτὸν εἶναι. ὅθεν καὶ ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ αὐτὸς περὶ τοῦ νοῦ ἀποφαίνεται, καὶ ὅπερ ἐπηγγείλατο τοῦτο καὶ ποιεῖ, λέγω δὴ τὰ καλῶς εἰ ρημένα λαμβάνων. φησὶ γοῦν περὶ αὐτοῦ ἀποδίδωσι δὲ ἄμφω τῇ αὐτῇ ἀρχῇ, τό τε γινώσκειν καὶ τὸ κινεῖν, λέγων νοῦν κινῆσαι τὸ πᾶν· διὰ γὰρ τοῦ εἰπεῖν νοῦν τὴν γνωστικὴν τῇ ἀρχῇ ταύτῃ ἀποδέδωκε δύναμιν, τὴν αὐτὴν δὲ σαφῶς καὶ κινῆσαι τὸ πᾶν φησιν. John Italus, Quaes tiones Quodlibetales, 50: Ἐπεὶ οὖν πάντα νοεῖ, ὥς φησιν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, φανερὸν ὡς ἀμιγὴς καὶ χωριστὴ τῶν αἰσθητῶν καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἀθάνατος ἅμα καὶ ἀΐδιος. Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 2.68: Οὔτε τὸ ᾿Aριστοτελικὸν ἐκεῖνο προσίσταται, ὅτι ὁ νοῦς ἀπαθής ἐστι καὶ ἀμιγὴς καὶ χωριστός.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b: ᾿Aναξαγόρας νοῦν κοσμοποιὸν τὸν θεόν. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 6: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας … τὸν μὲν νοῦν, ὅς ἐστι θεὸς κατ᾿ αὐτόν, δραστήριον ὑποτιθέμενος ἀρχήν. Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 48: Ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός, εἴθ᾿ Ἑρμότιμος εἴτ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἶπε τοῦτο. This expression, ‘Mind, in each one of us, is God’, has been attributed to Aristotle, but I myself cannot see on what grounds (see pp. 592 ff, Aristotle’s ‘mind which comes from outside’ was one more obscure expression that was controverted among his commentators as to its real meaning). Cf. Aristotle, Protrepticus, fr. 110 & Fragmenta Varia (the editor quotes from Iamblichus), Category 1 (comm. on Physica),

538

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

in Anaxagorean terms.⁵⁰ On the whole, it can be claimed that he owes to Anaxagoras the following ideas, at least: 1. The notions of potentiality and of the Mind,⁵¹ which he describes conveniently in characteristic Anaxagorean language. And in fact this Mind is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another one which is what it is by virtue of making all things: this is a sort of positive state like light; for in a sense light makes potential colours actual ones. Mind in this sense is separate, im passible, unmixed (καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής), since, in its essential nature, it is actuality (τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια). For the active agent is always superior to the passive one, hence, so is the originating force to matter [which it forms].⁵²

Nevertheless, this is not simply about employing Anaxagorean language: Aristotle cites his predecessor as an authority in order to establish his cardinal doctrine: The [proposition that] actuality is prior (ἐνέργεια πρότερον) is testified by Anaxagoras (since Mind is actuality, ὁ γὰρ νοῦς ἐνέργεια), and by Empedocles with his theory of Love and Strife, and by those, such as Leucippus, who maintain that motion is eternal.⁵³

2. The idea that the Mind/God is incorporeal,⁵⁴ simple (ἁπλοῦν), unmixed (ἀμιγής), and separate (χωριστός) from the things it produces,⁵⁵ even though fr. 125. Plutarch attributed this sentence to Menander. Platonicae Quaestiones, 999D: Πότερον οὖν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν ὡς κριτικωτέραν ἢ γονιμωτέραν οὖσαν θεὸν προσεῖπε, καθάπερ Μένανδρος ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός. Furthermore, Themistius, Ὑπὲρ τοῦ λέγειν ἢ πῶς τῷ φιλοσόφῳ λεκτέον, p. 317: καὶ ἐῶ τὸν Κλαζομένιον ᾿Aναξαγόραν καὶ ἐφ᾿ ὅσον οὗτος ἐνεωτέρισε, νοῦν καὶ θεὸν πρῶτος ἐπαγόμενος τῇ κοσμοποιίᾳ, καὶ οὐ πάντ᾿ ἀνάψας τῆς φύσεως τῶν σω μάτων. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 8: τοῦ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρου καὶ τοῦ Πλάτωνος, ταὐτὸν δὲ εἰπεῖν τῶν Πυθαγορείων, τὸν θεῖον νοῦν τιθέντων.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a: ὅτι δ᾿ ἐνέργεια πρότερον, μαρτυρεῖ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ὁ γὰρ νοῦς ἐνέργεια. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 690 1.  Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 405a; 430a; Physica, 256b.  See supra, chapter 6, p. 381.  Aristotle, De Anima, 430.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a.  Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 429b26: εἰ ὁ νοῦς ἁπλοῦν ἐστὶ καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ μηθενὶ μηθὲν ἔχει κοι νόν, ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, .. ἔτι δ᾿ εἰ νοητὸς καὶ αὐτός; Alexander of Aphrodisias, comm Metaph, pp. 694 5 (comm. on Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a30 31): ἀσώματον καὶ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ ὂν καὶ ἄϋλον, τοῦτό ἐστιν ἐνεργείᾳ νοητὸν τῇ τε ἑαυτοῦ φύσει, καὶ ἐξ αὑτοῦ τὸ εἶναι ἐνεργείᾳ νοη τὸν ἔχει, καὶ οὐ παρὰ τοῦ χωρίζοντος αὐτὸ τῆς ὕλης νοῦ (ἄϋλον γὰρ νοῦς καὶ νοητόν ἐστιν), ἀλλ᾿ ἔστιν ἐνεργείᾳ νοῦς καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ νοητόν, ὡς μετ᾿ ὀλίγον ἐρεῖ. De Anima, p. 89: τοιοῦτον δὲ ὂν δέδεικται ὑπ᾿ ᾿Aριστοτέλους τὸ πρῶτον αἴτιον, ὃ καὶ κυρίως ἐστὶ νοῦς. τὸ γὰρ ἄϋλον εἶδος ὁ κυ ρίως νοῦς. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 82: καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας μετὰ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν τὸν νοῦν·

Aristotle

539

‘separate’ does not suggest utter and unapproachable transcendence,⁵⁶ as Plotinus saw the Anaxagorean Mind and identified it with the One,⁵⁷ while he felt at liberty to describe properties of his Neoplatonic Intellect in terms of the Anaxagorean Mind (νοῦς being the term for both Intellect and Mind). 3. The Mind is the Immovable First Mover and the cause of everything.⁵⁸ Although Aristotle himself acknowledged his debts,⁵⁹ his commentators were content with making him rather than Anaxagoras the father of this cardinal doctrine. One of the reasons for doing so was that Aristotle criticized Anaxagoras

ἀσώματον γάρ φησιν αὐτὸν εἶναι. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 63: ὁ γοῦν ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἰ καὶ εἶπε νοῦν ἀσώματον, ἀλλ᾿ οὖν γε περὶ τῶν κατὰ μέρος ἀσωμάτων οὐ διαλέγεται.  Aristotle, De Anima, 430a: Καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια. ἀεὶ γὰρ τιμιώτερον τὸ ποιοῦν τοῦ πάσχοντος καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς ὕλης.  Cf. the comment on the foregoing passage of Aristotle by Simplicius (or whoever the author was), commAnim, p. 243: Τὸ χωριστὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ προκειμένου νῦν εἰς θεωρίαν νοῦ οὐ τὸ ἀεὶ κε χωρισμένον ἀκουστέον (ἐπάξει γοῦν περὶ αὐτοῦ χωρισθεὶς δέ ἐστιν μόνον τοῦτο ὅπερ ἐστίν, ὡς ποτὲ χωριζομένου), ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ποτὲ μὲν ἤδη κεχωρισμένου πάσης τῆς ἔξω τεινομένης ζωῆς ἢ παρεσκευασμένου πρὸς χωρισμόν· ἑκατέρως γὰρ καὶ χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς καὶ τῇ οὐσίᾳ ἐστὶν ἐνέργεια, καὶ ὡς ἤδη πρὸς τὰ εἰλικρινῆ τοιαῦτα ἐπειγόμενός πως ἢ κατ᾿ αὐτὰ ἑστώς. Op. cit. p. 258: ὅθεν καὶ αὐτὸς ἐνέργειαν εἰπὼν τὸν τοιοῦτον νοῦν προσέθηκε καὶ χωριστός. τότε γὰρ ἐνέργεια καὶ ἀμιγὴς καὶ πάντα ὅσα περὶ αὐτοῦ ἠξίωται νῦν, ὅταν χωρισθῇ. οὐ γὰρ δεῖ τὸ χωριστὸν ἀκούειν ὡς ἐπὶ ἀεὶ κεχωρισμένου, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ποτέ· χωρισθεὶς γάρ, φησιν, ἔστιν ὅπερ ἐστίν.  Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.9: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ νοῦν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ λέγων ἁπλοῦν καὶ αὐτὸς τίθεται τὸ πρῶτον καὶ χωριστὸν τὸ ἕν, τὸ δ᾿ ἀκριβὲς δι᾿ ἀρχαιότητα παρῆκε.  Aristotle, Physica, 250b: ἢ γὰρ ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας λέγει· φησὶν γὰρ ἐκεῖνος, ὁμοῦ πάντων ὄντων καὶ ἠρεμούντων τὸν ἄπειρον χρόνον, κίνησιν ἐμποιῆσαι τὸν νοῦν καὶ διακρῖναι. Op. cit. 256b: διὸ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὀρθῶς λέγει τὸν νοῦν ἀπαθῆ φάσκων καὶ ἀμιγῆ εἶναι, ἐπειδήπερ κινήσεως ἀρχὴν αὐτὸν ποιεῖ εἶναι. οὕτω γὰρ ἂν μόνως κινοίη ἀκίνητος ὢν καὶ κρατοίη ἀμιγὴς ὤν. Op. cit. 265b: καὶ τὸν νοῦν δέ φησιν ᾿Aναξαγόρας διακρίνειν τὸν κινήσαντα πρῶτον. De Caelo, 301a: Ἔοικε δὲ τοῦτο γε αὐτὸ καλῶς ᾿Aναξαγόρας λαβεῖν· ἐξ ἀκινήτων γὰρ ἄρχεται κοσμοποιεῖν. Metaphysica, 984b: φανερῶς μὲν οὖν ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἴσμεν ἁψάμενον τούτων τῶν λόγων, … ἅμα τοῦ καλῶς τὴν αἰτίαν ἀρχὴν εἶναι τῶν ὄντων ἔθεσαν, καὶ τὴν τοιαύτην ὅθεν ἡ κίνησις ὑπάρχει τοῖς οὖσιν. Op. cit. 989b: ἐκ δὴ τούτων συμβαίνει λέγειν αὐτῷ τὰς ἀρχὰς τό τε ἓν (τοῦτο γὰρ ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀμιγές) καὶ θάτερον οἷον τίθεμεν τὸ ἀόριστον πρὶν ὁρισθῆναι καὶ μετασχεῖν εἴδους τινός. Op. cit. 1075b8: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὡς κινοῦν τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀρχήν. ὁ γὰρ νοῦς κινεῖ. De Anima, 404a: ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ψυχὴν εἶναι λέγει τὴν κινοῦσαν, καὶ εἴ τις ἄλλος εἴρηκεν, ὡς τὸ πᾶν ἐκίνησε νοῦς. Op. cit. 405a: ἀρχήν γε τὸν νοῦν τίθεται μάλιστα πάντων· μόνον γοῦν φησιν αὐτὸν τῶν ὄντων ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ τε καὶ καθαρόν. ἀποδίδωσι δ᾿ ἄμφω τῇ αὐτῇ ἀρχῇ, τό τε γιγνώ σκειν καὶ τὸ κινεῖν, λέγων νοῦν κινῆσαι τὸ πᾶν. Op. cit. 405b: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ μόνος ἀπαθῆ φησιν εἶναι τὸν νοῦν καὶ κοινὸν οὐθὲν οὐθενὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἔχειν. Op. cit. 429a: ἀνάγκη ἄρα, ἐπεὶ πάντα νοεῖ, ἀμιγῆ εἶναι ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ἵνα κρατῇ, τοῦτο δ᾿ ἔστιν ἵνα γνωρίζῃ.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b8.

540

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

for not determining the Mind as final cause:⁶⁰ in his view, ‘the Mind has to move thing to some end, therefore, there must be some other Good’. He added that ‘it is absurd not to posit a [notion] contrary to the Good, that is, to the Mind’. However, this criticism was absurd, since Aristotle represented Anaxagoras as recognizing such contraries as good and evil, which he did not. Besides, the criticism was biased: had Anaxagoras posited ‘the opposite of Good’, which should be ‘evil’, Aristotle would have been the first to excoriate him for making ‘evil’ a principle, which Aristotle himself denied.⁶¹ His commentators were always gentle with him, and they eschewed pointing out his contradiction.⁶² They mentioned either that Aristotle acknowledged that the Mind corresponded to the Good, or simply that Aristotle’s point was that Anaxagoras made the Mind a Creative Cause,⁶³ yet not a Final one.⁶⁴ Only Alexander of Aphrodisias mentioned that Ar-

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1075b.  Cf. Aristotle, op. cit. 1051a: δῆλον ὅτι οὐκ ἔστι τὸ κακὸν παρὰ τὰ πράγματα. Evil cannot have a separate substantial existence of its own and it cannot exist apart from particular instances of evil. Aristotle criticizes the Platonic Idea of evil appearing in Plato’s Respublica, 476a. Had Anax agoras made the same, he would have received the same criticism. However, when Aristotle at tributed this idea to Anaxagoras (Metaphysica, 988a15 17), he did not criticize him, because his aim at that point was different: he had set out to prove that the notion of two principles (form, and formless matter) existed in his predecessors (Plato, Empedocles, Anaxagoras) in an obscure manner.  This is not the only contradiction in Aristotle’s texts. See infra, discussion of one of the most flagrant ones, chapter 12: ‘Divine Intellects in Aristotle’. Also, confusion between ‘principles’ and ‘elements’, chapter 1.  But did Aristotle himself make the First Mover a poietic cause? The debate over this went on hot throughout the Late Antiquity, with Simplicius arguing against Alexander of Aphrodisias’ conviction that the First Mover was also a poietic cause. This was also a major point of dispute between Gennadius Scholarius and George Gemistus (Plethon) in the fifteenth century. Simpli cius, commCael, p. 271; commPhys, pp. 8; 288; 367; 401; 1362. Also, Gennadius Scholarius, Epit ome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, Book 1, chapter 1. Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, pp. 10; 28; 30; 34 6; 40. George Gemistus, Contra Scholarii pro Aristotele Obiec tiones, 14.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 821: οὕτω καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ Πυθαγόρειος καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἄριστον πρεσβύτατον τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων ἀποφαίνονται. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 29: οὗτοι μὲν οὖν τὴν τῶν ἀγαθῶν αἰτίαν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ἔθεντο· ἀλλ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν ὡς ποιητικὸν ἀγαθόν. Op. cit. p. 55: τρόπον μὲν γάρ τινα λέγουσι τὸ ἀγαθὸν αἴ τιον, οὐ μὴν ὡς τέλος καὶ ὡς τούτου χάριν γινομένων τῶν ἄλλων, ὡς πέφυκεν εἶναι τὸ ἀγαθὸν αἴτιον, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ποιητικῷ αὐτῷ χρῶνται. Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 34: Διὸ καὶ περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρου λέγει, τἀγαθὸν πρώτην ἀρχὴν εἶναι φάσκοντος ὡς τὸ κινοῦν, ὅτι κινεῖ μὲν ὁ νοῦς πάντα, ἀλλ᾿ ἕνεκά του· ὅθεν ἔδει καὶ ἀρχήν τινα ἑτέραν τιθέναι, δι᾿ ἣν κινεῖ. Op. cit. p. 39: ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἐν τῷ τριακοστῷ τῶν Μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀρχὴν εἶναι λέγοντι ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ συγχωρεῖ, μέμφεται δὲ ἀδιορίστως εἰπόντι· … Ὅπου δῆλός ἐστιν ᾿Aριστο τέλης τῷ ἀγαθῷ προσήκειν βουλόμενος τὸ εἶναι ἀρχῇ, ὡς τέλει μᾶλλον ἢ ὡς κινοῦντι καὶ εἴδει.

Aristotle

541

istotle accused Anaxagoras of not making evil a principle, but, surprisingly, he took no exception to this self-defeating statement of Aristotle.⁶⁵ 4. The meaning of ‘soul’ (ψυχή) is simply ‘life’ of the body: this is what makes a body alive and makes its development to full form of a species possible.⁶⁶ Therefore, to have a soul simply means to be animate, whether this is about humans, or animals, or plants. The difference is that, whereas other parts of the soul come physically from the parents, the human mind (νοῦς) comes into the body from outside, because it is divine and has nothing in common with the energy (ἐνέργεια) of the body.⁶⁷ Nevertheless, the notion of ‘the mind that comes from outside’ baffled Aristotle’s commentators, who did not manage to agree on an exegesis accepted by all of them alike.⁶⁸ Aristotle chose to rely on knowledge that can be guaranteed by the senses. To this purpose, corporeality is indispensable and it is granted the foremost importance. Unlike Plato’s commitment to the priority of incorporeal reality, Aristotle accorded material things a prime importance while determining that existence proper (οὐσία) means corporeal one. Although he allowed a threefold conception of ‘essence’ (assumed to be either matter, or form, or both),⁶⁹ it is the perceptible individual which is real existence par excellence (διὰ τοῦτο μάλιστα οὐσίαι λέγονται), or ‘primary substance’ (πρώτη οὐσία), and ‘every substance suggests a concrete individual things’ (πᾶσα οὐσία τόδε τι σημαίνει). Species and genera which include individuals are only ‘second substances (δεύτεραι οὐσίαι).⁷⁰ Despite his threefold definition of essence made for the sake of theory, it is evident that he was happy with considering the perceptible individual exis-

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 718: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ἀρχὴν κινητικὴν τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἤτοι τὸν νοῦν ἐτίθετο. … ἐγκαλεῖ δὲ τῷ ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ καὶ ἕτερον λέγων ἄτοπον δὲ τὸν νοῦν ἀγαθὸν λέγοντα μὴ ποιῆσαι αὐτῷ ἐναντίον τὸ κακόν.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 609 & commPhys, pp. 35 & 157 (Anaxagoras): καὶ ἀνθρώπους συμ παγῆναι καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ζῷα, ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει. Op. cit. (Anaxagoras), pp. 156; 177: καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ μείζω καὶ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ. Op. cit. p. 863: τὰ μέντοι ἔμψυχα καὶ τοῦ κινεῖ σθαι καὶ τοῦ στῆναι ἀρχὴν ἐν αὑτοῖς ἔχοντα τὴν ψυχήν. Op. cit. p. 1257: ὅτι ἔστι τινὰ τῶν ὄντων κινούμενα καὶ ἱστάμενα, ἃ οὐκ ἔξωθεν τὸ κινοῦν καὶ ἱστάνον ἔχει, ἀλλ ἐν αὑτοῖς, ὥσπερ τὰ ζῷα καὶ ὅλως ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 736a b.  See infra, pp. 594 8.  Aristotle, De Anima, 414a: τριχῶς γὰρ λεγομένης τῆς οὐσίας, καθάπερ εἴπομεν, ὧν τὸ μὲν εἶδος, τὸ δὲ ὕλη, τὸ δὲ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν. Cf. John Philoponus, In Aristotelis Libros De Anima Commen taria, p. 212: οἶδε γὰρ αὐτὸς ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης πολλαχῶς τὸ τῆς οὐσίας ὄνομα· τριττὴν γὰρ εἶναι φησὶ τὴν μὲν κατὰ τὴν ὕλην, … τὴν δὲ κατ᾿ εἶδος … ἢ τὸ συναμφότερον.  Aristotle, Categoriae, 2a 3b.

542

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

tence as being the real one.⁷¹ The incorporeal Ideas do not contribute to sensible things, they stand aloof in the remote Beyond, they are not causes, they do not help our knowledge, they do not explain the existence of things, and calling them ‘patterns’ is no help to theory whatsoever.⁷² In view of this background, the fact that he took it for granted that Anaxagoras’ principles should be examined and assessed by being presumed as material, appears natural for Aristotle to have done, although there are serious indications that this was a deliberate misrepresentation. It is then necessary to discuss some of his alleged advances in relation to the Anaxagorean philosophy.

Anaxagorean Principles/Logoi, Platonic Ideas, and Aristotelian Forms Simplicius was definitely aware of Aristotle’s debts to Anaxagoras. However, hardly could Aristotle himself have been happy at a theory of generation expounded by later philosophers in terms of logoi (whether ‘spermatic’ or ‘natural’ ones, as discussed in chapter 9). Aristotle criticized severely the Platonic theory of ‘participation’ as a ‘poetical metaphor’,⁷³ and reserved this terminology for questions of logic.⁷⁴ However, despite his heavy debts to the Anaxagorean philosophy, his ‘forms’ could not meet the needs of Late Antiquity. Anaxagoras’ theory of ‘principles’ being active agents was revived by Origen, who styled these principles ‘logoi’, and Porphyry followed suit and made himself an authoritative witness to Anaxagoras, as we have seen. Several later commentators strove to represent the Theory of Logoi as Aristotelian legacy. However, this was a misinformed tralatitious reproduction of an original misperception. For Aristotle himself dissented from Anaxagoras on the following critical point: Anaxagoras’ incorporeal principles are active causes, which act ceaselessly as generative, cohesive, and dissolving ones. Once the Mind caused things to move in the first place, the principles keep on acting. Considered in its relation to an underlying material entity, a ‘form’ is assumed active in a sense, but, strictly speaking, the real agent is supposed to be the Nature.⁷⁵ Only at one point does Aristotle

 Cf. Aristotle, Topica, 130b: “for body and substantial existence of a certain kind are one and the same thing” (ἕν γὰρ καὶ ταὐτόν ἐστι σῶμα καὶ οὐσία τοιαδί).  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 991a b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 991a (repeated on 1079b): τὸ δὲ λέγειν παραδείγματα αὐτὰ εἶναι καὶ μετέχειν αὐτῶν τἆλλα κενολογεῖν ἐστὶ καὶ μεταφορὰς λέγειν ποιητικάς.  Cf. Aristotle, Topica, 121a; 134b. Ethica Eudemia, 1217b.  ‘Nature does nothing haphazardly’ is his leitmotif. De Anima, 432b21; 434a31; De Caelo, 291b13 14; De Generatione Animalium, 741b4 5; 744a36 37; De Incessu Animalium, 704b15;

Aristotle

543

speak of ‘God and Nature doing nothing haphazardly’.⁷⁶ It is remarkable that, to him, ‘chance’ (τύχη) produces effects, but such effects are in fact produced by the Mind, in like a manner something ‘happening out of itself’ (automaton, τὸ αὐτόματον) is related to Nature. In either case, he posits ‘Mind and Nature’ as ‘prior causes’.’⁷⁷ Anyway, Nature acts by means of ‘forms’⁷⁸ which though cannot be essentially ‘mingled’ with matter, since ‘it is impossible for that which is incorporeal to be commingled with a corporeal body’ (ἀδύνατον γὰρ τὸ ἀσώματον σώματι μεμεῖχθαι).⁷⁹ Granted, a form is something that exists really (although it is not a self-subsistent being); it is active upon a certain material system, e. g. a flower or an embryo; but it could have been hard for Aristotle to allow that the acting form is there, or that it is in the material system growing from potentiality to actuality. For ‘not every being can be said to be in a spatial place: only a movable body can’,⁸⁰ that is, only a corporeal entity can be said to be either here or there or in something else. To this predicament there was only one way out: since the form is incorporeal (and, by definition, it is exempt from motion), and yet it has to bring about a specific character upon matter none the less; a form should be seen as both mov708a9 10; De Partibus Animalium, 658a8 9; 661b23 24; 695b19; Politica, 1253a9; 1256b21; De Res piratione, 476a12 13.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 271a33. Although he mentions God only in one out of the foregoing four teen references, it is stunning to observe that his commentators mostly chose to quote this one in order to refer to his fundamental doctrine. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 708 (but no mention of God is made in his De Anima, pp. 27; 28; De Fato. p. 178). Syrianus, comm Metaph, p. 18. Proclus, In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 162; 238; In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 791; comm Tim, v. 2, pp. 90; 235. Simplicius, commCael, pp. 150 4; 197; 271; commPhys, pp. 288; 1030; 1218; 1361; commAnim, p. 88. John Philoponus, commGenAnim, p. 104; commAnim, pp. 15; 47; comm Phys, p. 143. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, pp. 122; 158; 187. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem Commentarii, 58; In Platonis Gorgiam Commentaria, 50.3. Elias of Alexan dria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 93. David of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 106. Stephanus, In Aristotelis Librum De Interpretatione, p. 36. Aristotle’s normal phrase was quoted by the fol lowing authors: Theophrastus, De Causis Plantarum, 1.1.1; 2.1.1; 4.4.2. Heron of Alexandria, Ca toptrica, line 2. Plutarch, Quaestiones Convivales, 646C. Galen, De Naturalibus Facultatibus, p. 91, et passim (at scores of points). Also by Themistius, Ammonius of Alexandria, Philoponus, Simplicius, at points mostly invited by the Aristotelian text being commented on.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1065b: εἰ ἄρα τύχη ἢ τὸ αὐτόματον αἴτιον τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, πρότερον νοῦς αἴτιος καὶ φύσις. Cf. Physica, 197a36 198a14.  Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 724b5 6; 740b21 24; De Generatione et Corruptione, 324a; 335b; Meteorologica, 368a; De Anima, 430a18 19.  Aristotle, Topica, 149b2.  Aristotle, Physica, 212b29: οὐ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ ὂν ἐν τόπῳ, ἀλλὰ τὸ κινητὸν σῶμα. Cf. op. cit. 223a19 20.

544

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

ing and not moving: this is like a passenger on a ship, who does not really move, but the ship takes him to the desired destination: That which is without parts cannot be in motion except accidentally (τὸ ἀμερὲς οὐκ ἐνδέ χεται κινεῖσθαι πλὴν κατὰ συμβεβηκός): i. e. it can be in motion only in so far as the body or the magnitude is in motion and the partless is in motion by inclusion therein, just as that which is in a ship may be in motion in consequence of the locomotion of the ship (καθάπερ ἂν εἰ τὸ ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ κινοῖτο ὑπὸ τῆς τοῦ πλοίου φορᾶς), or a part may be in motion in virtue of the motion of the whole. … As we have said, then, that which is without parts can be in motion in the sense in which a man sitting in a ship is in motion when the ship is travelling, but it cannot be in motion out of itself (οὕτω μὲν ἐνδέχεται κινεῖσθαι τὸ ἀμερὲς ὡς ὁ ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ καθήμενος τοῦ πλοίου θέοντος, καθ᾿ αὑτὸ δ᾿ οὐκ ἐνδέχεται).⁸¹

This means that the ‘indivisible form’, which Aristotle sees as one of his three alternative definitions of essence of a thing, is like a passenger. Given that development from potentiality to actuality is motion (as in Metaphysica, 1045b, settling the question set forth in 996a10‒11), it is not the form itself that forms a thing in virtue of its own motion; rather, the form offers its presence, and the entire process is the product of Nature, rather than of the form. The ‘form’ is the ‘passenger’, and what moves it is the Nature/ship. Aristotle ridiculed Plato’s notion of ‘participation’ of things in Ideas as being a meaningless ‘poetical metaphor’, but he himself is not always consistent as to how a certain form acts upon matter. For instance, he speaks of formless matter which ‘participates in a certain form’.⁸² This means that an object becomes what it is by means of certain participation; ‘matter’ is the ‘feminine’ element which is ‘acted upon’, whereas the ‘masculine’ is that which acts upon matter and moves it.⁸³ Taking into account that, to Aristotle, (unlike Plato’s Ideas) a form does not exist individually and independently, this notion of ‘participation’ is no less vague or ‘poetic’ than the Platonic one. Nevertheless, Aristotle felt he could speak of scientific knowledge and of health as being ‘certain forms’ (εἶδος τι), and at the same time describe them as ‘acts by the recipient, as it were’ (οἷον ἐνέργεια τοῦ δεκτικοῦ), by which he means forms which describe one who

 Aristotle, op. cit. 240b8 20.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989b: οἷον τίθεμεν τὸ ἀόριστον πρὶν ὁρισθῆναι καὶ μετασχεῖν εἴδους τινός (‘which is such as we suppose the Indeterminate to be before it is determined and partic ipates in a certain form’). Ironically, this is a statement made at the heart of a passage criticizing Anaxagoras. See Aristotle’s statements attributing to Plato the Pythagorean Indeterminate Dyad, Fragmenta Varia (On Good), fr. 28.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 740b: τὸ ποιητικὸν καὶ τὸ παθητικὸν ὅταν θίγωσιν, ὃν τρόπον ἐστὶ τὸ μὲν ποιητικὸν τὸ δὲ παθητικόν (τὸν δὲ τρόπον λέγω τὸ ὣς καὶ οὗ καὶ ὅτε), εὐθὺς τὸ μὲν ποιεῖ τὸ δὲ πάσχει. ὕλην μὲν οὖν παρέχει τὸ θῆλυ, τὴν δ᾿ ἀρχὴν τῆς κινήσεως τὸ ἄρρεν.

Aristotle

545

has either knowledge or health.⁸⁴ Whereas a ‘form’ is that which makes things to be what they are, motion is neither caused nor experienced by the form itself (οὔτε γὰρ κινεῖ οὔτε κινεῖται τὸ εἶδος).⁸⁵ Depending on their kind, natural objects are moved by Nature,⁸⁶ and animate things by the soul according to Nature,⁸⁷ and the ultimate cause of it (as it happens in the universe) is God.⁸⁸ This induced many students of Aristotle to arguing that he did not regard God as poietic cause, but only as a final one. This Simplicius set out to refute by argument of his own,⁸⁹ also adding that his ‘master Ammonius wrote an entire book in order to demonstrate this’ (ὁ ἡμέτερος καθηγεμὼν ᾿Aμμώνιος ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ βιβλίῳ τοῦτο δεικνύς)’, namely, that Aristotle’s God is not only a final cause, but also a creative one (οὐ τελικὸν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον οἶδε τοῦ κόσμου τὸν θεὸν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης)’.⁹⁰ The ‘students of Aristotle’ who disputed the notion that the supreme principle is a creative one were ‘Alexander [of Aphrodisias] and certain other Peripatetics’, which was a serious reason for Simplicius, based on the lectures of Ammonius, to argue against them. He terms Aristotle’s supreme principle ‘Mind’ (νοῦς) and sets out to prove that this is the creator of the heaven, not only the mover of it (φέρε καὶ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ δείξωμεν ποιητικὸν αἴτιον ἡγούμενον τὸν νοῦν).⁹¹ Thus, he made it a recurrent claim that ‘the First Mover, which Aristotle extols calling it Mind and Aeon and God’ (τὸ πρώτως κινοῦν, ὅπερ καὶ νοῦν καὶ αἰῶνα καὶ θεὸν ἀνυμνεῖ) is not only a final cause, but also a creative one, which ‘rules over generation and passing away’.⁹² In Simplicius’ view, when Aristotle says that the supreme principle moves everything, what he means by ‘motion’ is ‘not only spatial transition, but also generation and passing away, as well as any kind of change in general’. Furthermore, he argues that Aristotle deliberately eschewed using the term ‘generation’

 Aristotle, De Anima, 414a.  Aristotle, Physica, 224b. Cf. Physica (treating space proper), 209a: οὔτε ὡς εἶδος καὶ λόγος τῶν πραγμάτων οὔθ᾿ ὡς τέλος, οὔτε κινεῖ τὰ ὄντα.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 268b: τὴν γὰρ φύσιν κινήσεως ἀρχὴν εἶναι φαμὲν αὐτοῖς.  Aristotle, De Anima, 404a: ὑπολαμβάνοντες τὴν ψυχὴν εἶναι τὸ παρέχον τοῖς ζῴοις τὴν κί νησιν. 412b; Metaphysica, 1046b; et passim.  Aristotle, Ethica Eudemia, 1248a.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 154: καὶ προσκείσθω, ὅτι τοῖς νομίζουσι μὴ λέγειν τὸν ᾿Aριστοτέλην ποιητικὸν αἴτιον τὸν θεόν, ἀλλὰ τελικὸν μόνον, ἔδει καὶ τὸ ἐνταῦθα ῥηθὲν προφέρειν οὕτως σαφῶς εἰρημένον, ὅτι ὁ θεὸς καὶ ἡ φύσις οὐδὲν μάτην ποιοῦσιν. Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, 271a33.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 271.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1362.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1359: οὐδὲ γὰρ μόνης τῆς κυρίως κινήσεως ὑπερανέχει, ἀλλὰ καὶ γε νέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς. Op. cit. p. 1365: ὡς καὶ τῆς κατὰ γένεσιν καὶ φθορὰν κινήσεως καὶ μεταβολῆς ὑπερανέχον· καὶ ὅτι ἕν ἐστιν.

546

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

in respect of eternal things’ (τὸ ὄνομα τῆς γενέσεως παραιτήσασθαι ἐπὶ τῶν ἀϊδίων), because people easily indulge in envisioning a temporal beginning of them, ‘which happened with many people, who were incapable of reflecting in a way befitting eternal things’. For they believed that ‘if they introduced a temporal beginning (χρονικὴν ἀρχὴν προστιθέντες) into a relation involving a generative cause and its product (τῷ ἀπ᾿ αἰτίας ὑφισταμένῳ καὶ γίνεσθαι λεγομένῳ), and assumed a temporal beginning and middle and end (εἴ τις ἀρχὴν καὶ μέσα καὶ τέλος χρονικῶς ὑποθοῖτο τῆς δημιουργίας), it would be easier to grasp this relation (ῥᾷον δοκοῦντες μανθάνειν).’ Actually, most of philosophers engaged in such terminology only because they wanted to make it easier for their audience to learn (εἰς τὸ εὐμαθὲς τῶν ἀκουόντων ἀποβλέψαντες … διὰ τὴν τῶν ἀκουόντων εὐμάθειαν). Aristotle then, who knew that this kind of teaching could only cause misunderstanding, namely, postulation of a temporal beginning (χρονικὴν ἀρχήν), refrained altogether from speaking either of ‘creation of the world’ (οὔτε κοσμοποιεῖν ἠνέσχετο), or of ‘generation of eternal things’ (καὶ γενητὸν ἐπὶ τῶν ἀϊδίων προφανῶς λέγειν παρῃτήσατο). This is why he used the term ‘movement’: this has the merit of indicating the same notion as generation, but it does not impel presumption of any temporal beginning (ταὐτὸν μὲν δηλοῦντι, μὴ ἀπαιτοῦντι δὲ χρονικὴν ἀρχήν).⁹³ We saw that Philoponus implicitly criticized severely Simplicius for essaying to show that Plato and Aristotle held similar views of the issue about creation of the world. He insisted passionately that Plato did posit a beginning of the world in time (ὡς Πλάτων γενητὸν εἶναι φησὶν κατὰ χρόνον τὸν κόσμον), and that, on this, his difference from Aristotle was irreconcilable.⁹⁴ Philoponus quoted from Taurus, who argued that ‘speaking of uncreated things as being created ones, was only a method of teaching’, not a literal statement,⁹⁵ but in fact he attacked Simplicius who urged that those who spoke of the world as having been made from a certain temporal beginning did so only for educational reasons.⁹⁶ In his desire to smooth out differences between his eminent predecessors, Simplicius argued that Aristotle maintained ‘participation’ of things in the ‘creative logoi’ (Simplicius eschewed the term ‘Ideas’), which of course has nothing

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 1359 60. To prove this, Simplicius quotes Aristotle, Physica, 206a21 23.  Cf. John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, pp. 124; 125; 135; 190; 211; 242; 519. See chapter 6, p. 411.  Op. cit. pp. 186 7 (quoting Taurus): καὶ γὰρ περὶ τῶν ἀγενήτων ὡς γενητῶν γίνονται οἱ λόγοι διδασκαλίας χάριν.  Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1121: φαίνονται δὲ καὶ οὗτοι τάξεως ἕνεκα διδασκαλικῆς ἀρχὴν τῆς κοσμοποιίας ὑποθέμενοι. See supra, pp. 296 7.

Aristotle

547

to do with what Aristotle really believed,⁹⁷ since it was he who had styled Plato’s notion of participation ‘poetic metaphors’. However, once again, Simplicius had in mind Anaxagoras and the creative principles that give rise to perceptible things. Consequently, he argued extensively that ‘qualities’ are not self-subsisting entities, in the manner Plato’s Ideas were supposed to be. When Philoponus wrote that harmony between Plato and Aristotle can be achieved only by extrapolating Aristotle’s view’s at one’s liking, he actually criticized his own teacher Ammonius, as well as such pupils of Ammonius as Asclepius of Tralles, who wrote that Aristotle accepted Plato’s Ideas in the form of logoi.⁹⁸ The extrapolation by Asclepius is all too evident: first, he styled Plato’s Ideas ‘the foremost genera’ (γένη τὰ πρώτιστα);⁹⁹ then, he made them ‘generative logoi’ (δημιουργικοὶ λόγοι) which exist in the divine Intellect;¹⁰⁰ and then, he argued that, according to Aristotle, everything is generated according to, or from, these logoi.¹⁰¹ However, neither Plato nor Aristotle would have ever conceded this medley as their philosophy whatsoever: Plato would have not impugned the independent existence of Ideas outside the divine Intellect, and Aristotle would have raised eyebrows at this notion, which is Middle-Platonic. Therefore, merely asserting that ‘Aristotle said that the first principles are the Logoi, not the Ideas’ (οὔτε δὲ τὰς ἰδέας φησὶν εἶναι τὰς πρώτας ἀρχάς, καθώς τινες ἐκλαμβά-

 Aristotle speaks of ‘participation in (the, or, a) logos’ in two senses only. One, participation of the soul (or, of parts of it) in rationality. Ethica Eudemia, 1219b: δύο μέρη ψυχῆς τὰ λόγου μετέχοντα. Op. cit. 1224b: ἡ δὲ ἐπιθυμία οὐ πείσασα ἄγει· οὐ γὰρ μετέχει λόγου. Ethica Nicoma chea, 1102b: ἔοικε δὲ καὶ ἄλλη τις φύσις τῆς ψυχῆς ἄλογος εἶναι, μετέχουσα μέντοι πῃ λόγου. .. τὸ μὲν γὰρ φυτικὸν οὐδαμῶς κοινωνεῖ λόγου, τὸ δ᾿ ἐπιθυμητικὸν καὶ ὅλως ὀρεκτικὸν μετέχει πως, ᾗ κατήκοόν ἐστιν αὐτοῦ καὶ πειθαρχικόν. Two, upon arguing that species partake of genera, but not genera do so of species. In this case, he urges that ‘the definition of participating has to be susceptible of the definition of that which is participated in (ὅρος δὲ τοῦ μετέχειν τὸ ἐπιδέ χεσθαι τὸν τοῦ μετεχομένου λόγον)’, and ‘logos being participated in’ means a certain definition of a genus being applicable to that of a particular species. Topica, 121a. All of this has nothing to do with the Platonic theory of Ideas.  See infra, pp. 548 50.  Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 173.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 70: τὰ οὖν αἴτια ἐξῃρημένα ὑπάρχουσι, τουτέστιν αἱ ἰδέαι καὶ οἱ παρὰ τῷ δημιουργῷ τῶν πραγμάτων λόγοι, καὶ οὐδέποτε συγκαταριθμοῦνται τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς, ἐπειδὴ οὔτε συμφύονται αὐτοῖς. Op. cit. pp. 165 6: πρὸς τούτοις δέ φαμεν ὅτι καὶ νοηταὶ οὐσίαι ὑπάρχουσιν οἱ λόγοι οἱ παρὰ τῷ δημιουργῷ, καθ᾿ οὓς λόγους ποιεῖ τε πάντα καὶ προάγει· οὔτε γὰρ ἀλόγως ποιεῖ· πάντων γὰρ τῶν ὄντων ἔχει λόγους ἐν ἑαυτῷ. Op. cit. p. 177: ποῖα ἄρα γένη δεῖ ἡμᾶς νομίζειν ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὄντων, τὰ πρῶτα καὶ ἐξῃρημένα, … καὶ δῆλον ὅτι κυρίως τὰ πρῶτα, τουτέστι τοὺς λόγους τοὺς δημιουργικούς.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 48: τῷ ὄντι γὰρ ἐκ τῆς ἑνάδος αἱ ἰδέαι, τουτέστιν ἐκ τῆς μιᾶς τῶν πάντων ἀρχῆς οἱ δημιουργικοὶ λόγοι· ἐκ δὲ τῶν δημιουργικῶν λόγων τὰ τῇδε γίνεται πάντα.

548

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

νουσιν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς λόγους),¹⁰² is only an extrapolation that falls short of advancing the cause of reconciling Greek schools of old. Were it for this to be what really Aristotle believed, he would have had no difficulty to posit that the essence of things is a specific mode of concurrence of logoi, instead of wavering on whether essence is either matter, or form, or both. The fact of the matter is that a midway had to be found between Plato and Aristotle to make them compatible with each other. However, the actual content of compromise varied, so that it was located closer to either Plato or Aristotle, which means that either Plato was made willy-nilly a nearly Aristotelian, or vice versa. In this respect, the case of Asclepius of Tralles is most characteristic. His aim was to show that the logoi are in fact Plato’s Ideas, but they are not independent: they exist in the mind of God. Hence he uses the terms ‘idea’ and ‘logos’ as interchangeable. For instance, he ostensibly goes along with Aristotle’s criticism of the theory of Ideas endorsing the syllogism about the ‘third man’,¹⁰³ but he goes further: “This is how Aristotle criticizes those who assume that the Ideas exist independently and separately from the Demiurge.”¹⁰⁴ But this is a plain extrapolation, since Aristotle cared to argue not so much against the Ideas (ἰδέαι) existing separately from the Demiurge, but against the forms (εἴδη) existing substantially in a sublime mode, separate from the perceptible objects to which they bestow a specific identity. Then, Asclepius identifies ‘ideas’ with ‘logoi’: “For an Idea is not similar to a perceptible object, since a perceptible object is one thing whereas a logos is raised far above the perceptible object [which it forms]. Hence, there can be no Idea of an Idea, that is, an Idea of a creative logos. Therefore, there is no Idea of an Idea. And this is how we argue that there is no third man”.¹⁰⁵ Likewise, Asclepius uses Aristotle’s Metaphysics 999a16‒17 (‘but again, it is not easy to say in what sense should we understand these principles’), which is in fact a section where Aristotle sets forth questions rather than answers. He does indeed say that the principles themselves should exist apart from those of which they are principles, but he does so in order to suggest that ‘it is rather the more universal principles that should be considered as principles’, meaning that universals, that is, ‘primary genera should be the principles’ (ὥστε ἀρχαὶ τὰ

 Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 4.  See supra, p. 207.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 75: καὶ οὕτως μὲν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἐλέγχει τοὺς ὑποτιθεμένους εἶναι ἰδέας αὐτὰς καθ᾿ αὑτὰς κεχωρισμένας τοῦ δημιουργοῦ.  Loc. cit. ἡ γὰρ ἰδέα οὐκ ἔστιν ὁμοία τῷ αἰσθητῷ, εἴ γε τὸ μὲν αἰσθητόν ἐστι, τὸ δὲ λόγος ἐξῃρημένος τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ. ὥστε οὐ δυνατὸν εἶναι ἰδέαν ἰδέας, φημὶ δὴ τοῦ λόγου τοῦ δημιουρ γικοῦ. οὔτε γάρ ἐστιν ἰδέας ἰδέα. καὶ οὕτως μὲν ἀπολογούμεθα ὅτι οὐκ ἔστι τρίτος ἄνθρωπος.

Aristotle

549

πρῶτ᾿ ἂν εἴησαν γένη, 999a22‒23). However, all this is only a bundle of difficult questions that Aristotle poses to himself, since he adds what he also previously said, namely, ‘it is impossible for the genera to exist apart from individual things’,¹⁰⁶ in which case the new difficulty is that, if there is nothing apart from the concrete thing, there will be neither knowledge, nor eternity, nor immobility, nor generation.¹⁰⁷ He comes up with partial solutions to this problem later, which involve arguments that the universal is not substance and the Ideas are not substances either.¹⁰⁸ In the teeth of these, Asclepius goes on defiantly, arguing (after Metaphysics 999a16‒17) not only that Aristotle believed that ‘rather the genera are the principles of existing things’ (μᾶλλον τὰ γένη ἀρχαὶ τῶν ὄντων ὑπάρχουσι, which Aristotle wrote only tentatively in a context of groping for a solution to the problem of universals), but also that ‘evidently they exist in a sublimely separate mode of being’ (ἐξῃρημένα δῆλον).¹⁰⁹ Then, he quotes a phrase allegedly written by Aristotle: “And the productive cause must be separate from the things of which it is a principle’ (δεῖ τὴν ἀρχὴν τὴν παρακτικὴν κεχωρίσθαι τῶν πραγμάτων, ὧν ἐστιν ἀρχή). However, this is only a paraphrase of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 999a18‒20 (τὴν μὲν γὰρ ἀρχὴν δεῖ καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν εἶναι παρὰ τὰ πράγματα ὧν ἀρχή), who never really spoke of παρακτική ἀρχή.¹¹⁰ It was by means of all this selective and distortive reading that Asclepius felt he could obtain the desired conclusion: “Therefore, he [Aristotle] too, believes that the Ideas and the Creative Logoi of things stand above, being separate from [perceptible] things” (ὥστε οἶδε καὶ αὐτὸς τὰς ἰδέας καὶ τοὺς λόγους τοὺς δημιουργικοὺς τῶν πραγμάτων ἐξῃρημένους καὶ χωριστοὺς ὄντας). This, only because Aristotle (in order to treat universals, and setting forth questions rather than answers) wrote tentatively that the principles should exist apart from those of which they are principles, even though, later in the same work, he came up with solutions hardly compatible with Asclepius’ allegations. Asclepius saw it fit to focus on a tentative phrase of Aristotle in order to make him a Platonist. In doing so, he interpolated the word καθόλου (‘universal’) and smuggled this as being both prior to things and independent of them.¹¹¹ Also, he de-

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 999a30 32.  Aristotle, op. cit. 999a33 b9.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1034b20 1036a12; 1037a9 1039b19. See arguments which aim at showing that a universal is not substance (1038b37 1039a23) and arguments meant to demonstrate that the Ideas are not substances (1039a24 1039b19).  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 183.  Aristotle only meant that a class name can so exist only as being universally predicated.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 183: τί γάρ; φησὶν ὅτι δεῖ εἶναι τὴν ἀρχὴν καθόλου καὶ κε χωρίσθαι τῶν αἰσθητῶν.

550

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

clared openly that the ‘logoi’ are ‘separate and elevated’ (ἐξῃρημένοι) and ‘selfexistent’ (αὐθυπόστατοι), and so they exist ‘alongside the Creator’ (παρὰ τῷ δημιουργῷ). In like a manner, there is a universal logos according to which the Nature is made (ἡ ὁλικὴ φύσις καὶ ὁ λόγος αὐτῆς), which is the cause of every kind of natural being (ὅς ἐστιν αἴτιος τοῦ εἶναι καὶ τῇ φύσει καὶ τοῖς σώμασιν), and this is also self-existent (αὐθυπόστατος).¹¹² This method of clandestine argument did not pass unnoticed. Later, Eustratius of Nicaea (c. 1050/1060 ‒ c. 1120) gave some idea of what those who attributed to Plato the notion of logoi really meant. The crucial point was the notion of ‘universal’, which Aristotle allowed of course, but those who decided to make him a Platonist presented the universal as self-existent and prior to things. Aristotle did in fact use the term in its Platonic sense, meaning the Universal Good. But he did so in the Nicomachaen Ethics with the purpose to refute this notion.¹¹³ Eustratius makes an incisive remark about how he is going to examine the notion of ‘universal’: In order to see what Aristotle says, the best thing to do is examine the notion of universal. But in this case [i. e. used in reference to Plato], universal is not understood in the way it is used in the context of [Aristotle’s] theories of logic; for, in that case, universal means that which is drawn from a multitude and is posterior to that (τὸ ἐπὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς καὶ ὑστερο γενές); but here [i. e. in reference to Plato’s theory], it means that which exists prior to the many, and it is from this that the many receive their existence (τὸ πρὸ τῶν πολλῶν ὡς προϋ φεστηκὸς αὐτῶν κἀκείνων πρὸς αὐτὸ δεχομένων τὴν ὕπαρξιν).¹¹⁴

At that point (i. e. Ethica Nicomachea, 1096a), Aristotle carried out a detailed refutation of Plato’s Idea of Good on the basis of Ethics, and argued that this notion can be disproved by means of the doctrine of the Categories. At the time when Eustratius of Nicaea wrote, the efforts of reconciling the great stars of Greek philosophy was long past, only to be revived in the twentieth century. It was certainly along this line that, a century later, bishop Nicolas of Methone wrote in a hardly concealed triumphant tenor that ‘the affluently wise Aristotle’ (ὁ περιττὸς τὴν σοφίαν ᾿Aριστοτέλης) demolished Plato’s theory of Ideas, he aptly (εὐστόχως)

 Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. pp. 209 10.  Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, 1096a10 13: Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἀφείσθω. Τὸ δὲ καθόλου βέλτιον ἴσως ἐπισκέψασθαι καὶ διαπορῆσαι πῶς λέγεται, καίπερ προσάντους τῆς τοιαύτης ζητήσεως γι νομένης διὰ τὸ φίλους ἄνδρας εἰσαγαγεῖν τὰ εἴδη. (‘But perhaps it is desirable that we should examine the notion of a Universal Good, and review the difficulties that it involves, although such an inquiry is not very enjoyable to us, because the [Theory of] Ideas was introduced by men who are dear to us’).  Eustratius of Nicaea, In Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea i Commentaria, p. 40.

Aristotle

551

styled this ‘twitterings’ (τερετίσματα), and all subsequent Peripatetics maintained that the Ideas were ‘mere intellectual constructions’ (ἐν ἐπινοίαις κεῖσθαι ψιλαῖς).¹¹⁵ Eustratius recalls that the followers of Plato introduced certain logoi (λόγους τινὰς ἐπεισαγαγόντες), which were posited as self-subsistent, divine, and incorporeal (ἐνυποστάτους θείους νοερούς), and as causes of all perceptible objects (πρὸς οὓς ἔλεγον πάντα τὰ ἔνυλα εἶναι καὶ γίνεσθαι). They called these logoi ‘forms and ideas’ (εἴδη καὶ ἰδέας), as well as ‘wholes and universals’ (ὅλα καὶ καθόλου); they posited them as existing prior to all kinds of material species (προϋφεστηκότας μὲν τῶνδε τῶν ἐν σώμασιν εἰδῶν), as being separate from and above all perceptible things (ἐξῃρημένους δὲ τούτων ἁπάντων), and as existing in the mind of the Creator (ἐν τῇ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ θεοῦ διανοίᾳ ὄντας).¹¹⁶ This vocabulary of Eustratius (Aristotelian commentator and bishop of Nicaea)¹¹⁷ is in reality characteristic not merely of Middle-Platonists, but also of those Neoplatonists who, more or less, argued for harmony between Plato and Aristotle, and, above all, of Asclepius of Tralles.¹¹⁸ Of course, all of the statements of Asclepius were supposed to be ‘from the voice of Ammonius’ (ἀπὸ φωνῆς ᾿Aμμωνίου),¹¹⁹ that is, from the lectures of his master who reportedly wrote a book (now lost, but some of its arguments are preserved by Simplicius) arguing that Aristotle’s God was the efficient cause of the world’s existence.¹²⁰ However, the real story is that the struggle to harmonize the

 Nicolas of Methone, Orationes, Oration 6, p. 324. Cf. Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, 83a33.  Eustratius of Nicaea, op. cit. p. 40.  Cf. also Eustratius of Nicaea, op. cit. p. 56: εἴτε ὡς ἐξῃρημένου λόγου καὶ ἰδέας ὑπάρχοντος, χωριστοῦ τῶν πολλῶν καὶ καθ᾿ ἑαυτό.  Cf. Ammonius of Alexandria, commDeInterpr, p. 243. Syrianus, commMetaph, pp. 30; 31; 45; 49; 124; 163 (τὸ ἐξῃρημένον τούτων εἶδος καὶ νοερόν). Simplicius, commCateg, pp. 218; 219. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 70: τὰ οὖν αἴτια ἐξῃρημένα ὑπάρχουσι, τουτέστιν αἱ ἰδέαι καὶ οἱ παρὰ τῷ δημιουργῷ τῶν πραγμάτων λόγοι. Op. cit. p. 75: ἡ γὰρ ἰδέα οὐκ ἔστιν ὁμοία τῷ αἰσθητῷ, εἴ γε τὸ μὲν αἰσθητόν ἐστι, τὸ δὲ λόγος ἐξῃρημένος τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ. Op. cit. p. 84: τῇδε, τὰς δὲ ἰδέας, ὡς εἴρηται, ἐξῃρημένας τίθενται. … ἡ γὰρ φύσις ἔχουσα ἐν ἑαυτῇ τὰς ἰδέας, τουτέστι τοὺς λόγους τοὺς δημιουργικούς, ποιεῖ ἃ ποιεῖ. Op. cit. p. 145: ὡς δὲ ἐξῃρημένα αἴτια … οἱ δημιουργικοὶ λόγοι. Op. cit. p. 175: οἱ λόγοι οἱ δημιουργικοὶ οἱ ἐξῃρημένοι. Op. cit. p. 177: τὰ πρῶτα καὶ ἐξῃρημένα, ἤγουν τὰ ἔσχατα καὶ προσεχῶς κατηγορούμενα τῶν ἀτόμων. καὶ δῆλον ὅτι κυρίως τὰ πρῶτα, τουτέστι τοὺς λόγους τοὺς δημιουργικούς. Op. cit. p. 183: τὰς ἰδέας καὶ τοὺς λόγους τοὺς δημιουργικοὺς τῶν πραγμάτων ἐξῃρημένους καὶ χωριστοὺς ὄντας. Op. cit. p. 209: οἱ μέντοι γε λόγοι αὐτῶν οἱ ἐξῃρημένοι. Op. cit. p. 211: τοῖς λόγοις αὐτῶν, εἴ γε ἐξῃρημένα ὑπάρχουσιν.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. pp. 1; 113; 137; 222.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 271: καὶ ὁ ἡμέτερος καθηγεμὼν ᾿Aμμώνιος ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ βιβλίῳ τοῦτο δεικνύς, ὅτι οὐ τελικὸν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον οἶδε τοῦ κόσμου τὸν θεὸν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης. commPhys, p. 1363: γέγραπται δὲ βιβλίον ὅλον ᾿Aμμωνίῳ τῷ ἐμῷ καθηγεμόνι, πολ

552

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

two greatest philosophers of Classical Greece had been initiated long before Ammonius, by another Ammonius, namely, Saccas, according to the testimony of Hierocles of Alexandria, but this enterprise did not flourish. Quite definitely, Origen and Porphyry took up the Theory of Logoi, but their purpose was not to reconcile Plato and Aristotle; instead, they had in mind the philosophy of Anaxagoras. Neither Plato’s Ideas, nor Aristotle’s Forms were actually what Ammonius of Alexandria in the fifth century struggled to represent them to be. The implications of the two notions were too different to reconcile. The only way to invent an approach was to revisit Anaxagoras. As far as Origen and Porphyry were concerned, they employed Anaxagoras’ principles or logoi, and, of them, Origen saw no point in any enterprise supposed to establish the harmony that Ammonius desiderated. Iamblichus also argued that Aristotle did not actually contradict Plato’s theory of Ideas, for which Elias criticized him in the sixth century. Elias outlined the profile of the perfect exegete, arguing that one should not sympathize excessively with a philosopher whom he essays to interpret, ‘which is what Iamblichus befell: following his excessive sympathy for Plato, he granted that Aristotle did not contradict Plato on the theory of Ideas’.¹²¹ This means that, in the sixth century, agreement of Plato with Aristotle was not a universally accepted opinion. Therefore, concerning the champions of this debate, two periods should be distinguished: one, Ammonius Saccas, his pupil Origen, and then Porphyry; two, Ammonius of Alexandria (c 440 ‒ c. 520), the pupil of Proclus. Although both Ammonii struggled to demonstrate harmony between Plato and Aristotle, study of their pupils reveals a profound difference of method. Ammonius Saccas presumably sought a common ground by referring both philosophers to Anaxagoras. The Theory of Logoi, which imbues Origen’s thought, especially his doctrine of creation, and which Porphyry took into account describing ‘the way to creation’ (according to Proclus), is no other than the philosophy of Anaxagoras. Whereas Origen virtually remained faithful to Anaxagoras throughout his life,

λὰς πίστεις παρεχόμενον τοῦ καὶ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον ἡγεῖσθαι τὸν θεὸν τοῦ παντὸς κόσμου τὸν ᾿Aρ ιστοτέλη, ἀφ᾿ οὗ καὶ ἐγώ τινα μεταγαγὼν ἐνταῦθα τοῖς προκειμένοις ἀρκούντως, καὶ ἔξεστι τὴν τελειοτέραν περὶ τούτου διδασκαλίαν ἐκεῖθεν λαβεῖν. εἰ δέ τις ζητεῖ, τί δήποτε ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης οὐχ οὕτως φανερῶς ποιητικὸν αἴτιον τὸν θεὸν εἶπεν ὡς τελικόν, τὸν περὶ τοῦ γενητοῦ ῥηθέντα πρότερον καὶ νῦν ἐρῶ λόγον. See the argument of Ammonius rendered by Simplicius, in op. cit. pp. 1360 (line 24) 1363 (line 12).  Elias of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 123: δεῖ αὐτὸν μὴ συμπάσχειν αἱρέσει τινί, ὃ πέπονθεν Ἰάμβλιχος· οὗτος γὰρ προσπάσχων τῷ Πλάτωνι συνδίδωσι τῷ ᾿Aριστοτέλει ὅτι οὐκ ἀντιλέγει τῷ Πλάτωνι διὰ τὰς ἰδέας.

Aristotle

553

Porphyry had shifts of opinion, but his understanding of creation as described by Proclus is plainly Anaxagorean. Besides, Proclus himself sometimes reflected in like terms, as, for instance, when he wrote that ‘the Mind is he who supplies the logoi to the generated beings, while being separate and above from them’ (νοῦς αὐτὸς ὢν γενεσιουργὸς τῶν εἰς γένεσιν πεμπομένων ἄρχων … ὡς λόγων χορηγός, καὶ ἐξῃρημένος ἀπ᾿ αὐτῶν).¹²² The case with Ammonius of Alexandria was different, since he sought the desired harmony by reference to the Middle Platonic notion of the Ideas being thoughts in the mind of God. John Philoponus used the imagery of Aristotle, who considered ‘the nature of the universe’ and spoke about the efficiency of an army which consists partly in the order and partly in the general, but chiefly in the general, since he does not depend upon the order, but the order depends upon him.¹²³ Philoponus quoted this in order to argue that ‘the order in the universe has a double character’, since it was produced from the order that exists in the Creator himself (οὕτω καὶ ἡ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ τάξις ἐκ τῆς ἐν τῷ δημιουργῷ τάξεως γέγονεν). He comments on De Anima, 402b7 (‘whether the universal [notion] animal is either meaningless or posterior [to an actual animal]’), and argues that Aristotle had not in mind Plato’s theory of Ideas: for Aristotle actually refers not to the Ideas, but to ‘the elevated and separate logoi of things’ (ὥστε οἶδε καὶ τοὺς ἐξῃρημένους λόγους τῶν πραγμάτων). He also urges that, to Aristotle, universals (genera, species) are prior to the actual multitude of things, in which case one should wonder why is this analysis not Platonic, as Philoponus wished to urge. As a matter of fact, this is Middle Platonic (or, Philonian), and certainly Plato himself would have not been prepared to endorse the statement, ‘all forms are in the divine mind’ (περὶ τοῦ νοῦ τοῦ θείου διαλεγόμενός φησι πάντων τὰ εἴδη ἐν αὐτῷ εἶναι), which is one more case of the logoi being identified with the divine thoughts.¹²⁴ Furthermore, the logoi are not only in the soul (which was posited, mainly by Neoplatonists, as the locus of all the logoi), but also they exist in a more sublime mode, namely, in the Creative Mind (τῶν γὰρ εἰδῶν τῶν ἐνύ Proclus, commRep, v. 2, p. 256; likewise, Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 49: περὶ τοῦ ἑνὸς ὃ πλή θους ἐστὶ παντὸς ἐξῃρημένον πρωτίστην ἔλαχε τάξιν καὶ ἀπ᾿ αὐτῆς ἡ τῶν λόγων ἁπάντων ἀνέ λιξις ὥρμηται (‘the One is above any multitude in the peramount order of being, and from this all the logoi have emanated’).  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075a11 15: “We must also consider in which sense does the nature of the universe contain the good or the supreme good; whether as something separate and in dependent, or as the orderly arrangement [of its parts]. Probably in both senses, as an army does; for the efficiency of an army consists partly in the order and partly in the general; but chiefly in the latter, because he does not depend upon the order, but the order depends upon him.” Simplicius used this trope of Aristotle in his commPhys, p. 295.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 37.

554

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

λων εἰσὶ καὶ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ λόγοι, εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ ἐξῃρημένοι ἐν τῷ δημιουργικῷ νῷ),¹²⁵ and all material species are in fact ‘progenies procured by the logoi’ (κυήματι δὲ τὰ ἐκ τῶν λόγων τῶν δημιουργικῶν ἀναβλαστάνοντα ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ φυσικὰ εἴδη).¹²⁶ As late as the turn of the thirteenth to fourteenth century, the Byzantine monk and Aristotle’s commentator Sophonias conveniently used the Anaxagorean tenor of a text of Philoponus in order to argue that the logoi of the perceptible things, which are grasped by the soul, are preceded by the elevated and sublime logoi which exist in the Creative Mind.¹²⁷ Likewise, David of Alexandria used Aristotle’s metaphor in order to attribute to him the theory that ‘the forms exist first in God and then in matter’. For God ‘first knows them, and subsequently Nature creates them’ in material form, since Aristotle meant that ‘Nature itself does not know; but when it creates, it does not escape knowledge by God (ἡ μὲν φύσις οὐ γινώσκει, δημιουργοῦσα δὲ τὸν θεὸν οὐ λανθάνει)’.¹²⁸ This is all very well, but we only should recall Porphyry, Simplicius, and Damascius, who described the Anaxagorean logoi existing both here and there, indeed existing differently in different ontological states, in order to realize that this exegesis is in fact an integral part of Anaxagoras’ philosophy.¹²⁹

Is the Immovable First Mover also a poietic cause? The main problem of Classical and Late Antiquity was not to discover (or invent) a supreme principle: it was to expound how this principle gives rise to the perceptible cosmos, and then, what are the causes by means of which this cosmos functions and interrelates to the supreme principle. Plato’s answer to this was in

 John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 58.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 516.  Sophonias, paraphrAnim, pp. 9 10: ἔνεισι γὰρ οἱ τῶν ἐνύλων εἰδῶν ἐν τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ ψυχῇ λόγοι, καὶ πρὸ τούτων ἐν τῷ δημιουργῷ νῷ οἱ καὶ ἐξῃρημένοι. τῶν δὲ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ λόγων οἱ μέν εἰσι διαστατοὶ καὶ μεριστοὶ οἱ κατὰ φαντασίαν, οἱ δὲ ἀμέριστοι καὶ ἑνιαῖοι οἱ ἐν τῷ λογιστικῷ. τρίγωνα μὲν γὰρ καὶ τετράγωνα διαστατά, ἀνθρώπου δὲ λόγος καὶ ζώου ἀμερῆ. Sophonias cop ied from John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 58.  David of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 1156.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10: Πάντα μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ οἰκείως τῇ ἑκάστου οὐσίᾳ· ἐν νῷ μὲν γὰρ νοερῶς, ἐν ψυχῇ δὲ λογικῶς, ἐν δὲ τοῖς φυτοῖς σπερματικῶς, ἐν δὲ σώμασιν εἰδωλικῶς, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐπέκεινα ἀνεννοήτως τε καὶ ὑπερουσίως. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35: ἄλλως μὲν πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι φησὶ κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν, ἄλλως δὲ κατὰ τὴν νοερὰν συνουσίωσιν καὶ ἄλλως κατὰ τὴν αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν. See infra, pp. 712; 765 8; 882.

Aristotle

555

effect a single word, namely, ‘participation’ (μέθεξις) in the Ideas, for which Aristotle excoriated him: this word is only a ‘poetical metaphor’ and the theory is simply ‘twitterings’. Alexander of Aphrodisias carried on, arguing that ‘an Idea can be neither a generative cause nor a cause of motion’; therefore, ‘participation’ is only ‘an empty word’ (κενὴν φωνήν), since Plato and his followers never explained how does participation in Ideas take place.¹³⁰ In turn, Aristotle was accused of not positing a generative cause either: to be the cause of motion does not necessarily make the supreme principle a productive one, let alone an omniscient and ubiquitous presence. Whereas Plato used one word (μέθεξις) to solve the problem, Aristotle used three: the First Mover moves things by being itself the object of ardent love (κινεῖ ὡς ἐρώμενον).¹³¹ One can see then Alexander of Aphrodisias being anxious to ascertain that, by this, Aristotle suggested not only the foremost cause of motion, but also a poietic one. However, his argument was too weak: he quotes a casual phrase from Aristotle’s Meteorologica, and argues that, when Aristotle spoke of ‘cause [i. e. beginning] of motion’, he suggested also ‘the poietic cause’.¹³² But this was sheer extrapolation of his own, since Aristotle actually wrote this: For we know the cause and nature of a thing when we have determined the material or for mal principle of its generation, par excellence [we know it when we have determined] both [the principles] of [its] generation and destruction and whence is its motion generated from (οὕτω γὰρ ἴσμεν ἕκαστον διὰ τί καὶ τί ἐστιν, ἐὰν ἢ τὴν ὕλην ἢ τὸν λόγον ἔχωμεν, μάλιστα δ᾿ ὅταν ἄμφω τῆς τε γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς, καὶ πόθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως).¹³³

Aristotle then speaks of ‘principles of generation and destruction’ and of ‘cause of motion’ as being two different things. What is more, one could certainly assume that, had Aristotle wished to identify the First Mover as generative cause, he would have done so extensively in the proper place, namely, in the Metaphysics, not by means of an inadvertent statement made in passing at the very end of his Meteorologica.

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 96: στάσεως γὰρ μᾶλλον ἂν αἱ ἰδέαι αἰτίαι εἶεν τοῖς οὖσιν ἢ κινήσεως, οὖσαι γε ἀκίνητοι κατ᾿ αὐτούς· ὥστε οὐδ᾿ ἂν ποιητικὸν αἴτιον αἱ ἰδέαι εἶεν. Op. cit. p. 121: πῶς δὲ τούτων ἐκεῖνά ἐστιν εἴδη οὐκέτι λέγουσιν· κενὴν γὰρ φωνὴν προφέρονται τὴν μετοχήν· οὐ γὰρ διασαφοῦσι πῶς ταῦτα τῶν ἰδεῶν μετέχει, ὡς ἤδη φθάνει εἰ ρηκώς. Cf. op. cit. p. 59.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072b3 4.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMeteor, p. 227: προσέθηκε δὲ τὸ δεῖν εἰδέναι καὶ τὸ ποιητι κὸν αἴτιον διὰ τοῦ καὶ πόθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως (quoting Aristotle, Meteorologica, 390b19).  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 390b.

556

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

Alexander of Aphrodisias certainly realized that it was hard to establish this point by quoting the above phrase of Aristotle, which in fact proves the opposite of what Alexander himself wished to show. Hence, his want of support for the Aristotelian proof text is characteristic, since he has in mind natural empirical objects,¹³⁴ for which he otherwise posits ‘Nature’ as the cause of both generation and motion.¹³⁵ In reality, Alexander was sincerely groping for an answer to this pivotal question, and we have seen that eventually his thesis came to be that Aristotle’s supreme principle was not a creative one, as Simplicius informed us.¹³⁶ Whether the First Mover is also a poietic cause is a question that always remained controversial. Simplicius wrote that, even during the sixth century, there were critics of Aristotle who pointed out that he did not actually affirm that the First Mover is the universal generative cause: Aristotle ‘exalted the First Mover styling it Mind and Aeon and God’, but he did so meaning it ‘only as final cause of the world, mainly of the heaven, not a generative one’.¹³⁷ Simplicius would not rest content with this, of course; but his predicament was evident all the same: he made this point almost upon concluding his voluminous commentary on Aristotle’s work, indeed upon considering the closure of it (Physics, 267b10‒27), but it is characteristic that he felt he should have recourse to his own master Ammonius (᾿Aμμωνίῳ τῷ ἐμῷ καθηγεμόνι), who wrote an ad hoc book in order to prove that Aristotle considered the First Mover also the generative cause of the world. Simplicius says that everything he wrote at that point he took it from that book.¹³⁸ More strangely still, he writes that ‘Alexander [of Aphrodisias] and some other Peripatetics believed that, according to Aristotle, the Mover is the final, not creative, cause of the heaven, since the heaven was not created in the first place.’¹³⁹ It appears, therefore, that Alexander wavered on this question, which tantalized him, as his above statement shows. Finally, which is the most characteristic, Simplicius set out to rescue Aristotle by quoting the latter’s word of praise of Anaxagoras, who

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 181; cf. op. cit. p. 179: εἰ δὲ καὶ τὸ ποιητικὸν καὶ τὸ τελικὸν αἴτιον εἴδη καὶ αὐτά, ὡς εἶπεν ἐν Φυσικῇ ἀκροάσει, περὶ πάντων ἂν εἴη τῶν αἰτίων εἰρηκώς. Alexander means Physics, 200b, which though deals with perceptible objects, not the First Mover. The same goes for his analyses in op. cit. p. 678.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 561; commMeteor, p. 7.  See supra, p. 545, and note 89.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1360: Ἐπεὶ δέ τινες οἴονται τὸν ᾿Aριστοτέλη τὸ πρώτως κινοῦν, ὅπερ καὶ νοῦν καὶ αἰῶνα καὶ θεὸν ἀνυμνεῖ, τελικὸν μόνον, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχὶ καὶ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον λέγειν τοῦ κόσμου καὶ μάλιστα τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ὡς ἀϊδίου ὄντος καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἀγενήτου, ἀκούοντες αὐτοῦ πολλάκις λέγοντος, καὶ ὅτι κινεῖ ὡς ἐρώμενον, καὶ πολλάκις ὡς τελικὸν αἴτιον ἀνευφημοῦντος.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 1360 3.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1362.

Aristotle

557

‘said that there a Mind in nature, just as in animals, and that this is the cause of all the universe and of all arrangement in it, and thus he appeared as a sane man in contrast with the haphazard statements of his predecessors’.¹⁴⁰ The discussion remained inconclusive, since Simplicius did not set forth any real argument (either of his own, or from his teacher’s book, which he mentioned) that Aristotle saw the First Mover as a poietic cause. As late as during the fifteenth century, a ferocious debate is characteristic: Gennadius Scholarius accused George Gemistus (Plethon) of total ignorance of Aristotle. Against Plethon, he argued that Aristotle did posit the supreme principle as also a creative one.¹⁴¹ The commentary on Aristotle’s pragmaty on the soul, which was attributed to Simplicius, points out that the Mind is the First Cause of movement, it is incorporeal (τὸ κινητικὸν καὶ τὸ ἀσώματον ὡς αἴτια), and it knows everything (τὸ γνωστικόν). These attributes caused some intellectuals to identify the soul with the Mind, on account of the old principle ‘like is known through the like’ (τὸ ὅμοιον τῷ ὁμοίῳ γινώσκεσθαι). However, Anaxagoras did not care to treat the soul as something special: he saw this not as a self-subsistent quid, but as a collective action, indeed as the result of functions following the concurrence of certain logoi generating an animate being.¹⁴² Simplicius (or whoever the author) notes that Aristotle praised Anaxagoras for not making it a necessary premiss that like is known by the like (ὡς μὴ καθ᾿ ὁμοιότητα ἡγούμενον γίνεσθαι τὴν γνῶσιν), since the Mind is unmixed with all things, it has nothing to do with them (ἀμιγῆ γὰρ ὄντα πρὸς τὰ ἄλλα τὸν νοῦν καὶ οὐδὲν ἔχοντα πρὸς αὐτὰ κοινόν), it is not ‘participated in’ by any thing or any person (which is the real meaning of the Mind being ‘impassible’) (ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ μετεχόμενον ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν, τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ ἀπαθὲς δηλοῖ), and yet the Mind ‘knows everything’ (ὅμως γινώσκειν πάντα).¹⁴³ This means that the Mind is unmixed with all things in the

 Simplicius, loc. cit. quoting Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984b.  Simplicius’ remarks reveal that Aristotle’s successors dissented as to whether the First Mover is also a poietic cause. This discussion was never really resolved. In the fifteenth century, there was a fierce exchange between Gennadius Scholarius, arguing for an Aristotelian genera tive cause, and George Gemistus (Plethon), who claimed that the First Mover is only a Mover, not a productive cause. See Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, pp. 10; 28; 30; 34 40. To this, Gemistus replied through his Contra Scholarii pro Aristotele Obiec tiones, esp. section 14. Gennadius believed he had read this also in Thomas Aquinas. Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 1.1.  See chapter 13, pp. 1183 6; 1196 8.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 33: τῆς δὲ τοιαύτης αἰτίας μόνον τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἐξαίρει, com menting on Aristotle, De Anima, 405b12, considering ‘the communication of the soul with the principles’. Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1227: τὴν ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξαν ἐπαινέσας, ὃς τὸν νοῦν

558

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

sense that it is of a different ontological status, and yet it can communicate with them without compromising its own ontological state. This is the commentator’s explanation¹⁴⁴ to Aristotle’s criticism.¹⁴⁵ Aristotle posited some questions and argued that all of his forerunners gave no clear answers. Criticizing Anaxagoras, he says that he did not make clear why, and to what purpose, did the Mind become the First Mover. But Anaxagoras’ plain answer was that the Mind moved things in order for the world to come to be. The world cannot exist without motion; therefore, First Mover is only an attribute bespeaking action by the Creator causing the world to come to pass, as Anaxagoras’ text made it clear, adding that this happened (and still does) by means of accelerating rotation (περιχώρησις). While implicitly, yet clearly, recognizing Anaxagoras’ Mind as being Plato’s Good, he claims that ‘it is absurd not to posit a contrary to the Good and the Mind’ (ἄτοπον δε καὶ τὸ ἐναντίον μὴ ποιῆσαι τῷ ἀγαθῷ καὶ τῷ νῷ). This is a flagrant self-contradiction of Aristotle himself, who, a couple of lines after this, argued that ‘those who posit two principles must admit another superior principle’ (καὶ τοῖς δύο ἀρχὰς ποιοῦσιν ἄλλην ἀρχὴν κυριωτέραν εἶναι). He criticizes Anaxagoras (allegedly having postulated two principles), who, however, posited one principle, namely the Mind that gave generation to the principles. Had Anaxagoras introduced any principle positing this as ‘contrary to the Mind’, there would have been two principles, a sort of early Greek Manichaeism, such as that of Empedocles; but, in that case, Aristotle could have argued against Anaxagoras that, since he had introduced two principles, it was necessary ‘to admit another superior principle’, which is only a vicious cycle of Aristotle’s own making. Besides, as already discussed above, had Anaxagoras posited ‘the opposite of Good’, which should be ‘evil’, Aristotle would have been the first to excoriate him for making ‘evil’ a principle, which Aristotle himself denied.¹⁴⁶ Furthermore, Aristotle castigates his ancestors thus: “Again, no one explains why there must always be generation, and what the cause of generation is (ἔτι

τὸ πρῶτον κινοῦν ὑποθέμενος ἀκίνητον αὐτὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ καὶ ἁπλοῦν ὑπέθετο. Op. cit. p. 1362: ἐπαινεῖ οὖν τοὺς καὶ τελικὸν καὶ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον τιθέντας τὸν νοῦν, ὥσπερ καὶ πρὸ ὀλίγων ἐπῄ νει τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν, ὅτι τὸν νοῦν ἀρχὴν κινήσεως λέγων ἀπαθῆ καὶ ἀμιγῆ αὐτὸν ἐφύλαττεν.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 33: ἁπλῶς δὲ ἀμιγῆ μόνον εἰπόντι τὴν ἀρχήν, φαίνεται τὴν μὲν ὡς ἐν συστοίχοις ὁμοιότητα τῆς ἀρχῆς πρὸς τὰ ἀπ᾿ αὐτῆς μὴ ἀποδεχόμενος, οὐ προσιέμενος δὲ οὐδὲ τὸ παντελῶς ἀκοινώνητον.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405b21: “But how the Mind, once he is of such a status (τοιοῦτος δ᾿ ὤν), can ever cognize anything, and by what agency, he [sc. Anaxagoras] does not explain, nor is this clear from his expressed views”.  See supra, p. 540, note 61; also, infra, p. 584.

Aristotle

559

διὰ τί ἀεὶ ἔσται γένεσις καὶ τί αἴτιον γενέσεως, οὐδεὶς λέγει).”¹⁴⁷ But it was not only Simplicius who explained that ‘the cause of generation’ was the Mind and the will of the Mind, as canvassed earlier.¹⁴⁸ As for the question, ‘why is it that there must always be generation’, this can be replied along with the next question posed by Aristotle in the same section, which (not accidentally) begins with an invective against Anaxagoras. Further, if there is nothing else alongside sensible things, there will be no first principle, no order, no generation, and no celestial motions, but every principle will based upon another, as in the accounts of all the theologians and physicists. And if the forms or numbers are to exist, they will be causes of nothing; or, if not of nothing, at least not of motion.¹⁴⁹

Against this, Anaxagoras posited the immaterial principles/logoi, which are the generative and cohesive causes of all perceptible reality, as well as every notion and object of cognition or contemplation. Certainly, it is not the case that ‘every principle will be based upon another’, since there is not a single principle which is the same as any other (ἕτερον δὲ οὐδὲν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί).¹⁵⁰ It is then absurd to claim that ‘every principle is based upon another’ was a proposition urged by ‘all the theologians and physicists’. Likewise, it is absurd to claim that ‘no one explains why is it that generation should take place always’. For Anaxagoras plainly explained that once the principles/logoi were generated and rotation began, there will always be generation because motion will be there always, as indeed ceaseless action and interaction of the principles will be there, too. Aristotle did not understand, or so he pretended, that immaterial principles generate material reality. This is the reply to his ensuing question, ‘how can extension, that is, a continuum, be produced from that which has no extension?’ (πῶς ἔσται ἐξ ἀμεγεθῶν μέγεθος καὶ συνεχές;).¹⁵¹ Whether as a moving or as a formal cause, number cannot produce a continuum. His assumption was that, if there is nothing except those which are sensible or potential, there can be no First Mover (which is sheer actuality) to excite motion in the universe; therefore, there will be no teleology of causation. Anaxagoras said that all that is needed for the perceptible world to be generated are the immaterial logoi. To those who would be quick to style this ‘Platonism’, the reply could be this,

    

Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b16 17. See an answer to this, infra, pp. 1194 5. Supra, pp. 311 22. Aristotle, op. cit. 1075b. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 157 & 165 & 172. Aristotle, op. cit. 1075b29. Cf. supra, pp. 264; 340; 394.

560

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

and it is canvassed in chapter 13: Anaxagoras anticipated the most up-to-date views of modern cosmology. Upon the first infinitely small fragment of time following the Big Bang, there was no matter, and theoretically there was only infinite energy. At that very moment, those which came to be were the (evidently immaterial) natural laws of the universe, rotation started, and now, a good nearly fifteen billion years after that moment, rotation keeps on, and the universe keeps on expanding. Had Anaxagoras lived today, he would be not surprised at this cosmological theory and pattern. And had Aristotle lived today, he would see (along all the other failures of his theories) that it is indeed possible for ‘extension to be produced from something that has no extension’: the laws of both General Relativity and Quantum Theory did produce the universe and keep sustaining this. During the first seconds of creation, these laws were the means for the potentialities of this universe to start being realized, ‘in due course and order’ (ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει, Anaxagoras would have had it). In other words, they were (and still they are) Porphyry’s ‘the way to creation’, and certainly this universe is not produced by means of Pythagoras’ numbers, but from Anaxagoras’ principles, namely, the logoi. The question then is this: what would have been the point for Aristotle to posit a creator of a world which is beginningless? Introducing the notion of things having moved for the first time by the supreme cause was already too much. It seems that he simply did not need to say this. It is characteristic that he argued against the Pythagoreans and Speusippus that perfect beauty and goodness do exist prior to beautiful and good things. He speaks like a good orthodox Platonist, and argues that ‘there is some subsistent being which is eternal and immovable and separate from the sensible things’ (ὅτι μὲν οὖν ἔστιν οὐσία τις ἀΐδιος καὶ ἀκίνητος καὶ κεχωρισμένη τῶν αἰσθητῶν), against the above philosophers who taught that beauty and goodness come from seeds of, say, plants and animals. Aristotle goes on with arguing for his god being ‘impartible, and indivisible, since it causes motion for infinite time’.¹⁵² His supreme principle is ‘infinite’ because ‘an unlimited motion cannot be imparted to anything by a finite mover, hence a finite mover cannot cause motion during unlimited time’. This also entails that this mover has ‘infinite power’ (ἄπειρον δύναμιν).¹⁵³ However, not a word about this god being also a poietic cause. I should have thought that it was natural for Aristotle to express himself the way he did. Speaking of a world which is beginningless, it was more natural and easier to envisage only the cause of motion of it, and eschew the rest. Whenever

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1072b 1073a.  Aristotle, Physica, 266a24 ff.

Aristotle

561

he mentions those who spoke of ‘beginning’ (or, first cause), his sentiment is that they were not akin to his own mode of thinking.¹⁵⁴ Although he admits that ‘nothing can be prior to the first principle’,¹⁵⁵ he himself considers ‘the first principle and primary reality’ which ‘is immovable, both essentially and accidentally’,¹⁵⁶ but turns the argument the other way around: Plato cannot even explain what is this which he sometimes thinks to be the source of mo tion, i. e. that which moves itself; for, according to him, the soul is posterior to motion and coeval with the sensible universe.¹⁵⁷

He acknowledged that there were those who apprehended the supreme cause as the source of motion (ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως), such as Empedocles and Anaxagoras.¹⁵⁸ However, he was not apt to speak of ‘creation’, since, unlike Anaxagoras who envisaged a beginning of the world, Aristotle himself did not endorse the theory. He could not afford to disown his fundamental point of departure, after all: To argue from primary premisses is to argue from appropriate first principles. And by ‘pri mary premiss’ and ‘first principle’, I mean the same thing. The starting point of a demon stration is an immediate premiss; and an immediate premiss is one that has no other prem iss prior to it.¹⁵⁹

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 988a18 ff.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1087a32 33.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1073a23 25.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1072a1 5. He refers to Plato’s inconsistent exposition made in Timaeus, 30 34.  Aristotle, op. cit. 988a34 35. He adds those who made Eros the causative principle of mo tion (ἢ ἔρωτα ποιοῦσιν ἀρχήν), but he gives no names. According to Alexander of Aphrodisias, this reference suggested Hesiod and Parmenides. commMetaph, p. 32. Later, Asclepius of Tralles (normally copying Alexander’s commentary) wrote that ‘it was either Hesiod or Parmenides who posited Eros among the principles of motion’. commMetaph, p. 29. Likewise, Plutarch, Amator ius, 756F. The most clear report about this comes from Sextus Empiricus, who wrote that, ‘accord ing to Aristotle’, Anaxagoras’ view of the Mind ‘as an active principle’ was sustained before him by Hermotimus of Clazomenae, Parmenides of Elea, and, earlier still, by Hesiod; all of them in cluded Eros in their theories of generation of everything, which was held to be the moving and unifying cause of all existence’. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 9. Sextus then quotes from Hesiod, Theogonia, 116 ff, which is a verse that was quoted first by Plato, Symposium, 178b3 9 10, and then by Plutarch, Amatorius, 756F, Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.9, and Simplicius, commPhys, p. 39. Sextus’ citation of Aristotle implies Metaphysica, 984b18 31.  Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, 72a.

562

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

However, as it happened with other points, Aristotle qualified this axiom: It is right to say that we cannot undertake to try to discover a starting point [a first princi ple, ζητεῖν ἀρχήν] in all things and everything; but it is not right to deny the possibility in the case of all the things that always are and always come to be (τῶν ὄντων ἀεὶ καὶ γιγνο μένων). This is impossible only with the first principles of the eternal things (ἀλλ᾿ ὅσαι τῶν ἀϊδίων ἀρχαὶ τυγχάνουσιν οὖσαι). For indeed knowledge of the first principles is achieved not by demonstration, but by means of another mode of cognition (τῆς γὰρ ἀρχῆς ἄλλη γνῶσις καὶ οὐκ ἀπόδειξις). Thus, the first principle of those things that are immutable (τοῖς ἀκινήτοις)¹⁶⁰ is their essence; but to the things that come into being, there are several principles, they are discovered by a different way, which is not the same for all things. The source whence the movement comes (ὅθεν ἡ κίνησίς ἐστιν) is only one of these [princi ples].¹⁶¹

Aristotle argues for ‘another mode of cognition’ which is not formal demonstration: it is the one that the Stoics later called ‘direct apprehension’ (καταληπτικὴ φαντασία),¹⁶² which is neither susceptible of discursive demonstration, nor does it need dianoetic proof at all. In other words, Aristotle allowed also for intuition (αἴσθησις), by means of which human mind (νοῦς) apprehends things that cannot be proven by means of formal reasoning.¹⁶³ There is one more point nevertheless: Aristotle speaks of things that are ‘uncreated and immovable’ (τῶν ὄντων ἀγένητα καὶ ὅλως ἀκίνητα).¹⁶⁴ Although he noted that the term ἀγένητος (uncreated) might have different and indeed relative meanings, there is a point at which he emphasizes that he speaks of ἀγένητος in its most proper and literal sense: I am using the words ‘uncreated’ (ἀγένητον) and ‘indestructible’ (ἄφθαρτον) in their pri mary senses, namely, ‘uncreated’, to mean something which now is, and which could

 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1015b14 14: ἀΐδια καὶ ἀκίνητα (things eternal and immutable). Op. cit. 1067b10 (abstract notions); 1020b203: ὡς τὰ ἀκίνητα καὶ τὰ μαθηματικὰ (mathematical notions); so in 1026a14 16; 1052a5 (geometry). See a fuller account in Physica, 198a21 236. In De Caelo, 298b19 21, he argues that ‘the existence of certain things that are not created and they are entirely immovable (τὸ γὰρ εἶναι ἄττα τῶν ὄντων ἀγένητα καὶ ὅλως ἀκίνητα) is not a matter for natural science to peruse, but rather one calling for another and higher study.’ He says so blaming ‘the followers of Melissus and Parmenides’ who made such a sublime study a topic of natural science.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 742b30 36. Cf. the different definitions of ἀρχὴ in Met aphysica, 1013a.  See supra, p. 297 and note 134.  Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, 1142a26; 1143b1; Metaphysica, 1011a13; 1013a15 17; Analy tica Posteriora, 72a7 8 & 90b23 31; De Generatione Animalium, 742b30 34.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 298b19 21.

Aristotle

563

not at any time in the past have been truly said not to be; and ‘indestructible’, something which now is and which cannot at any time in the future be truly said not to be.¹⁶⁵

This proper use of the term ‘uncreated’ is applied to the heaven, which could mean that no notion of Creator could properly make sense, at least in respect of the heaven. However, his thought was more complicated: for he sustained that it is possible to speak about something being both ‘uncreated’ and having ‘a first beginning’. Melissus’ argument, that the universe is eternal, assumes that the universe has not come to be (for from what is not, nothing could possibly come to be), and that what has come to be has come from a first beginning. If, therefore, the universe has not come to be, it has no first beginning, therefore, it is eternal. Nevertheless, this does not follow of necessity: for even if what has come to be always has a first beginning, it does not follow also that what has a first beginning has come to be (οὐκ ἀνάγκη δὲ τοῦτο συμβαίνειν· οὐ γὰρ εἰ τὸ γενόμενον ἅπαν ἀρχὴν ἔχει, καὶ εἴ τι ἀρχὴν ἔχει, γέγονεν) any more than it follows that, if a man in a fever is hot, a man who is hot must be in a fever.¹⁶⁶

Consequently, whether the First Mover should be also considered as Creator is an inconclusive issue that Aristotle left for his students to guess, or indeed invent an answer of their own. As far as Anaxagoras’ text goes, while positing a beginning of the universe, he did not style the Mind ‘Creator’. Simplicius explained that he meant the Mind also as creator of the principles, but this can be grasped only by direct apprehension, and not in temporal terms.¹⁶⁷ If Anaxagoras did not say so, still less could Aristotle have done this, since he argued for no beginning of the world. However, by allowing room for intuition and for the weird idea that uncreated things can have a beginning, he left it to his audience take his analyses according to each one’s liking. Little wonder then that hot controversy over what he really believed raged for very long, and commentators spoke of Aristotle’s notorious obscurity, and of a mantis being needed to decipher for what he really believed.¹⁶⁸ It has been shown that Anaxagoras was the philosopher who posited the Mind as the cause of both generation and motion. Furthermore, he explained that the Mind caused motion as ‘rotation’ (περιχώρησις), which in turn produced  Aristotle, op. cit. 282a25 30. Cf. 283a29 31; 284a11 16; 288b1 4. He refers to the ‘object of cognition’ (τὸ ἐπιστητόν), which likewise he considers as ‘uncreated and incorruptible’ (ἀγένητα καὶ ἄφθαρτα). Cf. Ethica Nicomachea, 1139b22 24. This stands in contrast to Origen, who regard ed the object of cognition as ‘created logoi’. See infra, pp. 867 ff.  Aristotle, Sophisticos Elenchos, 167b. Italics are mine.  See supra, pp. 296 7; 546.  See infra, pp. 570 ff.

564

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

all things, so it (or, he) still does, and so it (or, he) will keep on doing. How close this rotation correlates to modern science is a point worth considering, which I have mentioned earlier. The striking irony about it is that both Plato and Aristotle accused Anaxagoras of making nothing of the Mind as productive cause. Alexander of Aphrodisias endorsed the remarks of Aristotle, and noted that ‘he said the same things as those Plato said in the Phaedo’. ¹⁶⁹ In fact, however, Aristotle went further, and accused Anaxagoras of not saying why was it that the Mind set out to move things in the first place.¹⁷⁰ Quite evidently, he was happy with his own answer, namely, that the First Mover moves things by being itself the object of ardent love (κινεῖ ὡς ἐρώμενον).¹⁷¹ He styled Plato’s ‘participation’ (μέθεξις) in the Ideas ‘poetical metaphor’, but the question that could have been invited is why is ‘ardent love’ less of a metaphor, whether a poetic one, or not. As far as Anaxagoras is concerned, his idea was that the Mind did what it did, and still does, without being forced to do so by any cause external to it whatsoever. Quite simply, the Mind created merely out of goodness, and Plato took up the idea wholeheartedly, while Alexander perpetuated Aristotle’s demand that creation should have taken place because of a good reason.¹⁷² However, all too often was Aristotle inconsistent: while he rebuked Anaxagoras for not having stated the reason why the Mind’s creative act happened at all, he himself recognized that many things are produced by the mere necessity of material and efficient cause alone.¹⁷³ In the case of the earth being the centre of the universe, he criticized the man from whom he took up the idea, that is, Anaxagoras, although he did not mention him by name: he spoke of those people who think that ‘it is in the nature of heavy things to move downwards’ (τὰ μὲν βαρέα κάτω πέφυκε φέρεσθαι), and ‘whatever is light, by its nature it is on top’.¹⁷⁴ When Simplicius writing his commentary on the Physics came upon that point, he realized that Aristotle was blaming Empedocles and Anaxagoras once again. He remarked then that the

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 34: λέγει δὲ τὰ αὐτὰ περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἃ καὶ Πλάτων ἐν Φαίδωνι. Cf. op. cit. pp. 46; 60.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b: ὁ γὰρ νοῦς κινεῖ. ἀλλὰ κινεῖ ἕνεκά τινος, ὥστε ἕτερον, πλὴν ὡς ἡμεῖς λέγομεν.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1072b3 4.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 718: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ἀρχὴν κινητικὴν τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἤτοι τὸν νοῦν ἐτίθετο. ἀλλ᾿ ἐπεὶ τὸ κινοῦν ἕνεκά τινος κινεῖ, ἔσται τι οὗ ἕνεκα ὁ νοῦς κινεῖ, καὶ τί ἐστι τοῦτο λεγέτωσαν. Op. cit. p. 821: οὕτω καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ Πυθαγόρειος καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἄριστον πρεσβύτατον τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων ἀποφαίνονται, … ὁ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὸν νοῦν. ἀλλὰ τούτων, ὡς εἴρηται, ὁ μὲν τὴν φιλίαν φησὶν ἀγαθὸν ὁ δὲ τὸν νοῦν.  Cf. Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium, 642a1.  Aristotle, Physica, 200a.

Aristotle

565

two Presocratics gave their explanations (Anaxagoras appealing to the notion of ‘rotation’),¹⁷⁵ but they did not feel it necessary to set forth a cause, namely, ‘because of what’ or ‘to what good purpose’ did all this happen (οὐκέτι τὸ εὖ καὶ τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα αἰτιώμενοι): they believed that cosmic development was a phenomenon which simply had to do with the natural behaviour a matter and with natural laws in general. This is what determined, as well explained, the ‘end’ and the ‘necessary’ in that case (ἀλλὰ τὴν ὕλην μόνην, ἀναγκαίως ἕπεσθαι ταύτῃ τὸ τέλος καὶ τὸ χρειῶδες νομίζοντες).¹⁷⁶ Thus, Simplicius defends Anaxagoras and Empedocles, and counters Aristotle by means of Aristotle’s own theory: he had challenged those from whom he received his main idea about the earth, by demanding not only the simple necessity of material and efficient cause alone, but also a hypothetical necessity supposed to be hidden in the processes of Nature, in like a manner it exists in the process of artistic production. To this, Simplicius replied that such an additional explanation was not necessary at all. Nevertheless, Aristotle could not afford not to acknowledge some of his dues, and noted that Anaxagoras posited the Mind as against any notion of blind chance concerning creation and function of the world. Nevertheless, he was too spiteful to leave this as it stood, hence he added that probably Hermotimus said these things before Anaxagoras.¹⁷⁷ However, Asclepius of Tralles commenting on that point of Aristotle’s text, was more explicit speaking of Anaxagoras: God created everything because of his goodness alone.¹⁷⁸ Aristotle challenged also other philosophers, asking them, ‘why did God create?’, not because he was interested in being informed about any why, but only because he actually challenged the notion of the world having a beginning. Simplicius grasped and explained this: Aristotle could not stand those who envisaged a ‘temporal beginning’ (χρονικὴν ἀρχὴν συνεπινοούντων), nor could he tolerate those who spoke of an original creative act (οὔτε κοσμοποιεῖν ἠνέσχετο), and he rebuffed the notion of any incorporeal reality being a product of creation (καὶ γενητὸν ἐπὶ τῶν ἀϊδίων προφανῶς λέγειν παρῃτήσατο); he only allowed for ‘motion’ which ‘did not call for any temporal beginning’ (μὴ ἀπαιτοῦντι δὲ χρονικὴν ἀρχήν) while connoting ideas that were close to those who maintained

 See this passage of Simplicius being discussed supra, pp. 384 5.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 386: διὰ τοῦτο οὕτω συνέστη ὁ κόσμος καὶ ἐγένετο κάτω μὲν ἡ γῆ, ἄνω δὲ τὸ πῦρ, ἢ ὅτι διὰ τὸν δῖνον μέσον ἡ γῆ κρατεῖται.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984b, but he knew that ‘Hermotimus’ was a semi mythical figure. See supra, pp. 21 2; 137; 561.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 28: ἀλλὰ θεῷ μόνῳ τῷ διὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ ἀγαθότητα πάντα παρα γαγόντι. ὁ μέντοι γε ᾿Aναξαγόρας νοῦν. Nevertheless, see supra, pp. 139; 318.

566

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

the above theories (this is what Simplicius believed, aiming to reconcile the most eminent of Greek philosophers with each other).¹⁷⁹ Aristotle was at pains to show that no one before him spoke of ‘final cause’, and no one made God a cause of this kind. But in pursuing the glory for making this point, it eluded him that he himself did not make God a poietic cause. Thus, he criticized not only Anaxagoras, but also Plato, arguing that they posited a supreme Mind or Good, while they did not make it a final cause, meaning that creatures do not exist for the sake of the supreme principle, while ‘desiring’ this (ὡς ἐρώμενον).¹⁸⁰ Asclepius of Tralles, who retailed this argument, was posterior enough to Aristotle, so as to forget part of the latter’s criticism. Hence, he conceded that Anaxagoras was one of those who made the Mind a productive cause.¹⁸¹ The fact is that Aristotle named his cardinal concept of forming principle εἶδος, which is plainly a Platonic notion: since εἶδος is immaterial, it can be grasped by mind alone, but he chose to indicate this comprehension by means of a term which inherently bespeaks seeing. A ‘form’ can be perceived as something which is ‘seen’ by the intellect by means of direct apprehension, a function by which intellect can attain an essential grasp of things. But as immaterial as they are, Anaxagoras’ logoi are grasped subsequently to their tangible results upon matter, since, as both Porphyry and Simplicius assured, they exist differently in different ontological realities.¹⁸² This means that the logoi

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1060.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072b3 4. However, this idea involves problems in the Aristotelian context: if all things ‘desire’ the supreme principle/Mover, and they exist for the sake of this Good, this should mean that the object of ‘good’ is one. But this is an idea Aristotle banned: “To say that all things desire a certain one good is not true; for each thing desires its own par ticular good, the eye sight, …” etc. Ethica Eudemia, 1218a30 33. Also, Ethica Nicomachea, 1094a1 3; 1097a5; 1114a31; 1172b9 15; 1172b34 35; 1173a5; et passim; Physica, 192a. But cf. ‘good’ which is desired and chosen ‘by everyone’ (Rhetorica, 1365a1: οὗ πάντες ἐφίενται), or ‘by everything’ (op. cit. 1362a23: ἀγαθὸν … οὗ ἐφίεται πάντα. 1363b13 14: ἀγαθὸν λέγομεν τό τε αὐτὸ αὑτοῦ ἕνεκα καὶ μὴ ἄλλου αἱρετόν, καὶ οὗ πάντ’ ἐφίεται). Magna Moralia, 2.7.20: διὰ τοῦτο ἂν δόξειεν ἀγαθὸν εἶναι, ὅτι πάντα τούτου ἐφίεται. Topica, 116a: τοῦ γὰρ ἀγαθοῦ πάντα πέφυκεν ἐφίεσθαι.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 55: δείκνυσιν οὖν ὅτι οὐδεὶς τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ λόγον ἐποιήσατο περὶ τῆς τελικῆς αἰτίας. τρόπον μὲν γάρ τινα λέγουσι τὸ ἀγαθὸν αἴτιον, οὐ μὴν ὡς τέλος καὶ ὡς τούτου χάριν γινομένων τῶν ἄλλων, ὡς πέφυκεν εἶναι τὸ ἀγαθὸν αἴτιον, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ποιητικῷ αὐτῷ χρῶνται. ᾿Aναξαγόρας γὰρ τὸν νοῦν εἰσαγαγὼν καὶ Παρμενίδης τὸν ἔρωτα ἀγαθὰ μὲν καὶ ἀγα θοποιὰ αἴτια τίθενται ταῦτα, οὐ μὴν τούτων χάριν τὰ γινόμενα γίνεσθαί φασιν, ἀλλὰ αὐτὰ ταῦτα ποιητικὰ ἀγαθὰ αὐτοῖς ἐστι.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34 5. Damascius, Princ, p. 243. See quotations supra, p. 497, note 43; infra, p. 809.

Aristotle

567

can make a mark of themselves by means of the perceptible reality, and this is how the ‘concealed’ principles emerge out of concealment into unconcealment.¹⁸³ Therefore, comprehension of them in an Anaxagorean context means to grip something firmly, as if with the fist. Not accidentally, this was precisely the imagery of knowledge expressed by the Stoic theory of knowledge, by such terms as κατάληψις. To Platonists, true knowledge was seeing, but to the Stoics it was a tight hold by hands, that is, a firm grasp. In the sixth century, pupils of Ammonius the son of Hermias, such as Asclepius of Tralles, projected views of Anaxagoras and of Porphyry into Aristotle. For instance, he mentions Aristotle who ostensibly praised Anaxagoras, and adds that he read the notion of the Mind being the King of All in Aristotle: Whereas all others were sleeping, Anaxagoras alone (as if he woke up from deep sleep) posited the Mind as the king of the universe. Furthermore, he says that the first principles are not the Ideas, as certain people assume, but the logoi.¹⁸⁴

This is only partially true: never did Aristotle posit logoi as ontological principles. In his writings, logos has the usual sundry senses it has in Greek, but normally it means ‘definition’ of a certain concept,¹⁸⁵ and, frequently, definition of the ‘form’ of a certain thing,¹⁸⁶ or of its ‘essence’,¹⁸⁷ or knowledge of the causes,¹⁸⁸ or the intrinsic logic of a certain art.¹⁸⁹ Asclepius’ statement was anachronistic, since it was only with the Stoics, and then with Origen and Porphyry, that Anaxagoras’ principles posited as the intruments of generation were styled logoi. In Aristotle, there is the ‘form’ being called either εἶδος or μορφή, but how exactly form is imposed upon matter is not as clear as the activity of Anaxagorean (and then Stoic) active logoi is. Besides, his understanding of essence of things falls too short of being scientific. For science is worthy of its name only if it can describe and anticipate situations on the basis of certain data, only if it posits as

 See chapter 6, pp. 326; 366; chapter 9, pp. 685 6.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 4: τῶν γὰρ ἄλλων, φησί, καθευδόντων ὥσπερ ἀπὸ κάρου ἀναστὰς ᾿Aναξαγόρας μόνος ἐπέστησε νοῦν βασιλεύειν τοῦ παντός. οὔτε δὲ τὰς ἰδέας φησὶν εἶναι τὰς πρώτας ἀρχάς, καθώς τινες ἐκλαμβάνουσιν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς λόγους.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1013a; 1016a b; 1017a; 1026a; 1035b. Topica, 121a: ὅρος δὲ τοῦ με τέχειν τὸ ἐπιδέχεσθαι τὸν τοῦ μετεχομένου λόγον.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 996b: τὸ δ᾿ εἶδος ὁ λόγος. Physica, 209a: ὡς εἶδος καὶ λόγος τῶν πραγμάτων.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 335b: ὁ λόγος ὁ τῆς ἑκάστου οὐσίας.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 981b: τὸ λόγον ἔχειν αὐτοὺς καὶ τὰς αἰτίας γνωρίζειν.  Normally, he refers to the logos of building a house: De Anima, 403b; De Partibus Animal ium, 646b; Topica, 150a.

568

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

simple exegeses as possible, and as few laws as possible. This is a principle that Aristotle himself acknowledged while criticizing Anaxagoras for allegedly having made the principles infinite, and praising Empedocles for having posited finite ones. It is clear that it would be better to make the principles finite (πεπερασμένας ποιεῖν τὰς ἀρχάς), and indeed as few as possible (ὡς ἐλαχίστας), provided that they can demonstrate all future situations, which mathematicians posit it as an axiom: for always they posit prin ciples that are finite, either in kind or in quantity.¹⁹⁰

One can guess how Aristotle would have felt at Anaxagoras being able to explain all motions by positing only one kind of it, instead of Aristotle’s six, and his criticism is understandable, though not valid, since Anaxagoras simply explained the real nature and function of his principles. Besides, Aristotle never made up his mind as to what essence proper really is, and proposed three alternatives, which are far too different from each other: essence is either the matter of perceptible objects, or their form, or both of them (τὸ συναμφότερον). This is strange, since matter proper was posited as being potentially everything and actually nothing, whereas form is incorporeal and Aristotle banned self-existent incorporeal entities apart from the First Mover, which is sheer actuality. At any rate, to propose such contrary entities (while positing them non self-subsistent, such as form proper and matter proper) as alternatives for defining substance was scarcely ‘scientific’. Moreover, long before Asclepius, his master’s teacher, namely Proclus, put things in their place: he mentioned Aristotle and the Peripatetics who ‘posited both form and matter as principles of objects’ (εἰς ὕλην καὶ εἶδος ἀνάγοντες τὰς τῶν σωμάτων ἀρχάς); but whenever they cared to make explicit reference to the poietic cause (καὶ γὰρ εἴ που καὶ τῆς ποιητικῆς αἰτίας διαμνημονεύουσιν) and they said that ‘nature is the principle of motion’ (ὥσπερ ὅταν φύσιν ἀρχὴν κινήσεως λέγωσιν),¹⁹¹ they deprive this cause from main characteristics of it, such as activity (ἀλλ᾿ ἀφαιροῦσιν αὐτῆς τὸ δραστήριον) and creativity (καὶ τὸ

 Aristotle, De Caelo, 302b. Cf. a playful punning made in the De Partibus Animalium, 665b14 16: “It is always better to posit one principle rather than many, whenever it is possible to do so.” The term for ‘principle’ is ἀρχή, and at that point it means ‘source’ (the heart is the source of all blood vessels); but Aristotle, who explained that the term ἀρχὴ has many significations (Meta physica, 1012b34 1013a23), parenthetically made the foregoing remark entertaining the meaning of ‘principle’ for ἀρχή.  This is a plain reference to Aristotle. Cf. De Caelo, 268b16: τὴν γὰρ φύσιν κινήσεως ἀρχὴν εἶναι φαμὲν αὐτοῖς. Op. cit. 268b28; 301b17 19; Metaphysica, 1015a13 19; 1064a30 32; 1069b36 38; Physica, 193b3 5; 200b12: ἡ φύσις μέν ἐστιν ἀρχὴ κινήσεως καὶ μεταβολῆς. Op. cit. 253b5 9.

Aristotle

569

κυρίως ποιητικόν). For they do not allow that this cause has in itself the logoi of the creatures it produces (λόγους ἐν αὐτῇ μὴ συγχωροῦντες εἶναι τῶν παρ᾿ αὐτῆς ποιουμένων); instead, they postulate that everything is generated by means of an automatic process (ἀλλὰ πολλὰ καὶ αὐτομάτως γίγνεσθαι διδόντες). The reason why they do so is that they do not accept that there is a universal poietic cause which exists prior to all aspects of natural reality (πρὸς τῷ μηδὲ πάντων ἁπλῶς τῶν φυσικῶν ποιητικὴν αἰτίαν ὁμολογεῖν προϋφεστάναι): they only care to explain mere instances of natural generation (μόνων δὲ τῶν ἐν γενέσει φερομένων), simply because their general assumption is that none of the everliving eternal beings can be a generative one (ἐπεὶ τῶν γε ἀϊδίων οὐδὲν ποιητικὸν εἶναι φασὶ διαρρήδην).¹⁹² In other words, Aristotle could have never posited the logoi as creative principles acting on their own; for these logoi are incorporeal whereas Aristotle never allowed self-substantial existence of any incorporeal. He had critical liabilities to Anaxagoras, such as the notion of potentiality, that of the First Immovable Mover, the idea that the Mind/God is incorporeal,¹⁹³ simple (ἁπλοῦν), unmixed (ἀμιγής), and ‘separate’ (χωριστός) from the things it produces,¹⁹⁴ although ‘separate’ does not suggest sheer hiatus from the world and utter transcendent indifference for it, but only ontological difference which though does not prevent the Mind from caring for the world and ruling all over it. Although Aristotle himself acknowledged most of these debts, his commentators were anxious to make him rather than Anaxagoras the father of cardinal doctrines. Nevertheless, the gist of Aristotle’s philosophy (notably, his criticism of Plato’s theory of Ideas) did not allow him to employ also the Anaxagorean notion of substantive incorporeal active logoi, which function as generative, cohesive, and dissolving causes of perceptible objects.

 Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 2.  Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 429b26: εἰ ὁ νοῦς ἁπλοῦν ἐστὶ καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ μηθενὶ μηθὲν ἔχει κοι νόν, ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, … ἔτι δ᾿ εἰ νοητὸς καὶ αὐτός; Alexander of Aphrodisias, comm Metaph, pp. 694 5 (comm. on Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a30 31): ἀσώματον καὶ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ ὂν καὶ ἄϋλον, τοῦτο ἐστὶν ἐνεργείᾳ νοητὸν τῇ τε ἑαυτοῦ φύσει, καὶ ἐξ αὑτοῦ τὸ εἶναι ἐνεργείᾳ νοη τὸν ἔχει, καὶ οὐ παρὰ τοῦ χωρίζοντος αὐτὸ τῆς ὕλης νοῦ (ἄϋλον γὰρ νοῦς καὶ νοητόν ἐστιν), ἀλλ᾿ ἔστιν ἐνεργείᾳ νοῦς καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ νοητόν, ὡς μετ᾿ ὀλίγον ἐρεῖ. De Anima, p. 89: τοιοῦτον δὲ ὂν δέδεικται ὑπ᾿ ᾿Aριστοτέλους τὸ πρῶτον αἴτιον, ὃ καὶ κυρίως ἐστὶ νοῦς. τὸ γὰρ ἄϋλον εἶδος ὁ κυ ρίως νοῦς. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 82: καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας μετὰ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν τὸν νοῦν· ἀσώματον γάρ φησιν αὐτὸν εἶναι. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 63: ὁ γοῦν ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἰ καὶ εἶπε νοῦν ἀσώματον, ἀλλ᾿ οὖν γε περὶ τῶν κατὰ μέρος ἀσωμάτων οὐ διαλέγεται.  Aristotle, De Anima, 430a: Καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια. ἀεὶ γὰρ τιμιώτερον τὸ ποιοῦν τοῦ πάσχοντος καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς ὕλης.

570

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

Who is to blame for obscurity? Aristotle blamed Anaxagoras for not clarifying the difference between Mind and soul,¹⁹⁵ and at several points he scorns him, claiming that he spoke clumsily, inconsistently, and inarticulately.¹⁹⁶ Moreover, he complained that such thinkers are like untrained soldiers in a battle, who rush about and often strike good blows, but without science; in the same way, people like Anaxagoras do not seem to understand their own statements, since it is clear that they seldom or never apply them upon the whole and consistently. Hence, he claimed that Anaxagoras availed himself of the Mind as an artificial device for producing order, and dragged it in whenever he was at a loss to explain some necessary result; but otherwise he made anything rather than the Mind the cause of what happens.¹⁹⁷ One should have thought that neither Aristotle himself is always alert to the distinction between mind and soul. For instance, in the beginning of the Metaphysics, when he expounds the Pythagorean theory of numbers as first principles, he says that, according to them, ‘a certain property of numbers is soul and mind’ (τὸ δὲ τοιονδὶ ψυχὴ καὶ νοῦς).¹⁹⁸ The always attentive (and sometimes critical) Alexander of Aphrodisias remarked that Aristotle spoke of soul and mind as if they were the same thing (τὴν γὰρ ψυχὴν ὡς τὸν νοῦν εἶπε).¹⁹⁹ It is characteristic of the fifth to sixth-century spirit of Ammonius and of his pupils towards Aristotle, that Asclepius of Tralles, who copied this section from Alexander of Aphrodisias verbatim, changed only one letter (instead of [Aristotle] εἶπε, he wrote [the Pythagoreans] εἶπον), and represented Aristotle as saying that the Pythagoreans treated soul and mind as if this were the same thing (τὴν γὰρ ψυχὴν ὡς τὸν νοῦν εἶπον).²⁰⁰

 Aristotle, op. cit. 404b: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δ᾿ ἧττον διασαφεῖ περὶ αὐτῶν· πολλαχοῦ μὲν γὰρ τὸ αἴ τιον τοῦ καλῶς καὶ ὀρθῶς τὸν νοῦν λέγει, ἑτέρωθι δὲ τὸν νοῦν εἶναι ταὐτὸν τῇ ψυχή. … ᾿Aνα ξαγόρας δ᾿ ἔοικε μὲν ἕτερον λέγειν ψυχήν τε καὶ νοῦν, ὥσπερ εἴπομεν καὶ πρότερον, χρῆται δ᾿ ἀμφοῖν ὡς μιᾷ φύσει. Metaphysica, 985a: ἀμυδρῶς μέντοι καὶ οὐθὲν σαφῶς.  His commentators by and large took it for granted that the obloquy pointed to a matter of fact.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 985a. Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 97b 98c; Leges, 967b d.  Aristotle, op. cit. 985b30.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 39. In op. cit. p. 663, he excoriates Aristotle’s exposition of Metaphysica, 1064b23 86: ἔστι δὲ ἀκατάλληλος καὶ πάνυ ἀσαφὴς ἡ λέξις.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 36. Aristotle argued that Democtitus identified soul and mind, while claiming that Anaxagoras’ statements about this issue were dubious. Metaphysica, 404a.

Aristotle

571

However, this was not simply a question of interpretation: Aristotle did not care to quote a single word from Anaxagoras’ book, and all of his allegations are based on what Aristotle himself claimed that Anaxagoras said. As it happened with all of his references to his predecessors, Aristotle’s hard-nosed puspose was relentless self-extolment, without any encumberance of offering a consistent doxographic exposition being felt at all. Unlike Aristotle himself, all of his commentators practiced the noble tradition of quoting portions of his works first, and then commenting on them. It was only Simplicius who cared to quote extensively also from Anaxagoras in order to expound his own interpretation of that philosophy, which means that history of philosophy had to wait for almost a thousand years in order for Anaxagoras’ real words to be made known to all those interested in them. Aristotle deliberately eschewed any information as to how he had obtained access to Anaxagoras’ philosophy, let alone the titles of works he used. He took it for granted that his readers ought to rely on his allegedly Anaxagorean exposition,²⁰¹ on which he commented abundantly according to his own purposes. When intellectuals such as Ammonius Saccas, and then those of the late fifth and sixth century, set out to discover (or instil) harmony between Plato and Aristotle, their job was not that difficult, as indeed neither is it today, when modern scholars pursue the same cause: for it was not only Plato, but also Aristotle who expressed himself dubiously, which has always allowed ample room for wishful thinking and fanciful extrapolation. Aristotle blamed Anaxagoras for being unclear concerning the doctrine of the soul. But when Hippolytus read Aristotle’s own account of the same topic, he wrote that this is ambiguous: once one reads three tracts of Aristotle from start to finish, one cannot say for sure what he actually believes about the soul.²⁰² Likewise, the Aristotelian commentator Sophonias (fl. c. 1300) took it as a commonplace sustained by everyone that Aristotle is at points so obscure, that he proclaims oracles rather than philosophy, which calls for a mantis rather than a commentator.²⁰³ Sophonias is particularly harsh in his criticism and castigates almost every aspect of the Aristotelian text, even in terms of grammatical

 In Aristotle’s extant work, there are seventy seven references to Anaxagoras by name, and several oblique ones.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 7.19.4: Ὁ δὲ Περὶ ψυχῆς αὐτῷ λόγος ἐστὶν ἀσαφής· ἐν τρισὶ γὰρ συγγράμμασιν ὅλοις οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν σαφῶς ὅ τι φρονεῖ περὶ ψυχῆς ᾿Aριστοτέλης.  Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 1 (proem): τίς γὰρ οὐκ οἶδεν ὥσπερ εἰ χρησμούς τινας πολλα χοῦ τὴν ᾿Aριστοτελικὴν οὖσαν φράσιν καὶ μαντείας δεῖσθαι; Likewise, p. 31: ὥσπερ γὰρ εἴπομεν πρότερον, οὐδὲ μαντεύσασθαι ῥᾴδιον ἐξ αὐτῶν.

572

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

usage of terms and unscrupulous composition of sentences. What is more, he uses the rare word μεταξυλογία, which means interpolation of irrelevant remarks between the beginning and end of a certain exposition, so that, when one reaches the end of a sentence, they are already confused and have forgotten what Aristotle actually meant to say.²⁰⁴ Later still, the Greek erudite scholar George Gemistus (Plethon) remarked that Aristotle wrote about the immortality of the soul in an ambiguous manner (ἐνδοιαστῶς γοῦν ἁπανταχοῦ καὶ οὐδαμοῦ βεβαίως οὐδ᾿ ἰσχυριζόμενος ἅπτεται αὐτοῦ), and made no definitive statements about the issue while opting for deficiently short, hence unclear, statements (διὰ βραχυλογίαν οὐ πάνυ τοι σαφῶς). In his view, ‘Plato was much better than Aristotle’ (Πλάτων ᾿Aριστοτέλους πολὺ ἀμείνων) for another reason, which was more serious and more general: Plato was consistent with himself throughout (διὰ πάντων συμφώνως αὐτὸς αὑτῷ τῷ λόγῳ ἐπεξέρχεται), which is this, not obscurity, that befits a really wise man (σοφῷ πρέπον τὸ τοιοῦτο πολὺ μᾶλλον ἢ ἣν σὺ φῇς λέξεως ἀσάφειαν); on the other hand, Aristotle is caught also at many points of his work to be inconsistent with his own doctrines (᾿Aριστοτέλης ἄλλοθί τε πολλαχοῦ καὶ δὴ καὶ ἐνταῦθα αὐτὸς τοῖς αὑτοῦ ἁλίσκεται δόγμασιν ἀσύμφωνος).²⁰⁵ One would argue that Hippolytus was a Christian, therefore, hostility was an impediment to reading Aristotle without prejudice so as to understand him. But Sophonias actually admired Aristotle and endeavoured to render his text by composing a paraphrasis of it. As for Plethon, he was not really a Christian, but a Neoplatonist and a passionate lover of Greek tradition and wisdom, who lectured on the difference between Plato and Aristotle. Let us then see what Late Antiquity had to say about Aristotle, who blamed others of obscurity. Alexander of Aphrodisias was a devout student of his and headed the Peripatetic school in the beginning of the third century. For all his admiration, however, he could not help pointing out that there was something wrong with the way Aristotle treated Plato’s philosophy. The observation is significant, since it shows that the points of deliberate silence of Aristotle about other philosophers were meant to distort them and exalt his own ideas, which is not a problem of scholarship after all (in which Aristotle was all but wanting) but a telling indication of a certain personal ethos. Alexander then wonders how was it possible for Aristotle not to say a single word about Plato’s mention of the poietic cause, since in fact Plato had made a clear statement about it in the Ti-

 Sophonias, loc. cit. ἀλλὰ κινδυνεύειν ἐπιλελῆσθαι τῇ μεταξυλογίᾳ καὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ τοῖς ἑξῆς συγκεχυμένως προσφέρεσθαι.  George Gemistus, Contra Scholarii pro Aristotele Obiectiones, 25.

Aristotle

573

maeus. ²⁰⁶ Likewise, why did Aristotle not mention that also Plato had posited a final cause?²⁰⁷ One should enquire why did Aristotle not mention either of these causes when he expound ed the philosophy of Plato, even though Plato did posit such causes (ζητήσαι δ᾿ ἄν τις πῶς λέγοντος Πλάτωνος … οὐδετέρου τούτων τῶν αἰτίων ἐμνημόνευσεν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἐν τῇ δόξῃ τῇ Πλάτωνος;)²⁰⁸

Late Antiquity treated Aristotle with respect, but his commentators could not afford not to make mention of the obscurities they were faced with while reading his works. As gentle as they were to him, they opted for describing their predicament following an excuse granted by Ammonius of Alexandria: Aristotle made himself deliberately obscure (which reminds me of my first school lady-teacher when I was nearly ten: whenever she made a mistake, her answer was that she did so deliberately in order to check whether her students were really following her). In his introductory lessons on Aristotle’s Categories, Ammonius listed the ten topics he was going to teach; the eighth of them was, ‘why does the Philosopher [i. e. Aristotle] seem to practice obscurity deliberately’ (ὄγδοον διὰ τί φαίνεται ὁ φιλόσοφος ἀσάφειαν ἐπιτηδεύσας).²⁰⁹ When he came to explaining the reason, his exegesis was the solemn one used by both pagans and Christians alike: Aristotle deliberately obnubilated his exposition as a sort of veil, so that excellent readers should be provided with a cause to train their souls and minds, whereas unhallowed, lazy and foolish ones should be driven away. This was reminiscent of the ambiguous oracles given by Pythia on behalf of Apollo at Delphi. Indeed, Ammonius conveniently argued that Aristotle entertained the same practice in respect of his readers,²¹⁰ which extended as far as

 Alexander quotes Timaeus, 28c3 4: “Now, to discover the Maker and Father of this universe is hard indeed; and once one has dicovered Him, to declare Him to all men is impossible.” He argues that this phrase is a proof that Plato did introduce a poietic cause (καὶ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον ἐν οἷς λέγει).  Alexander quotes from Plato’s Second Epistle, 312e: “Related to the King of All are all things, and because of Him they exist (περὶ τὸν πάντων βασιλέα πάντα ἐστὶ κἀκείνου ἕνεκα πάντα)”. Alexander remarks that this is a proof that Plato introduced also a final cause (ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ οὗ ἕνεκεν καὶ τέλος δι᾿ ὧν πάλιν λέγει). It should be recalled that Plato’s phrase (which Alexander did not quote further) goes on with speaking of this ‘King’ as a ‘cause’: “and He is the cause of all good things (καὶ ἐκεῖνο αἴτιον ἁπάντων τῶν καλῶν)”.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 59.  Ammonius of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 1.  Ammonius of Alexandria, op. cit. p. 7: Ὄγδοον ζητήσωμεν τί δή ποτε τοιαύτην ἀσαφῆ δι δασκαλίαν ἠγάπησεν ὁ φιλόσοφος. καὶ λέγομεν ὅτι καθάπερ ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς κέχρηνται παραπετά σμασί τισιν ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ πάντας ἤδη καὶ τοὺς βεβήλους ἐντυγχάνειν τοῖς ὧν οὐκ εἰσὶν ἄξιοι τυ

574

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

using inaccurate terms, or different (inaccurate) words,²¹¹ even riddles (δι᾿ αἰνιγμάτων).²¹² But it would have been easier simply to say that Plato’s texts are impeccably elegant because they were composed and proofed in the convenience of a comfortable life, whereas from Aristotle we only have lecture-notes from his lessons, which would have been revised many times had they been intended for publication, not to mention unlearned editors of his text during the Roman era.²¹³ Perhaps, the ancient distinction of his works in ‘esoteric’ and ‘exoteric’ ones should have been mentioned in this context, too: the former were intended for use within the Lyceum, not for publication, the latter were intended for the public, no doubt written with elegance, and included no technicalities or abstruse exposition. However, all the texts we have are ‘esoteric’. This could be an excuse, but no commentator appealed to it. The reason can be found in Clement of Alexandria, who wrote that the esoteric/exoteric distinction involves a deliberate practice by Aristotle, who reserved obscurity for the outsiders. However, were that the case, it should have been the exoteric rather than the esoteric writings which were meant to be cryptic.²¹⁴ Ammonius was not the first who pointed out how unclear Aristotle’s exposition was. Long before him, Alexander of Aphrodisias had a great deal of difficulty in order to render what Aristotle meant to say. He pointed out abstruse and hardly intelligible points at scores of instances.²¹⁵ Although at two points he remarks that the reason for Aristotle’s obscurity was his ‘cut-short style of writing’

χεῖν, οὕτω καὶ ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης προκαλύμματι τῆς αὑτοῦ φιλοσοφίας κέχρηται τῇ ἀσαφείᾳ, ἵνα οἱ μὲν σπουδαῖοι δι᾿ αὐτὸ τοῦτο ἔτι μᾶλλον τὰς ἑαυτῶν συντείνωσι ψυχάς, οἱ δὲ κατερρᾳθυμημένοι τε καὶ χαῦνοι τοῖς τοιούτοις προσιόντες λόγοις ὑπὸ τῆς ἀσαφείας διώκωνται.  Ammonius of Alexandria, op. cit. p. 25: ἑτέροις δὲ ὀνόμασιν ἐκέχρητο διὰ τὸ τὴν ἀσάφειαν αὐτὸν ἐπιτηδεύειν, ὡς εἴρηται.  Ammonius of Alexandria, CommDeInterpr, pp. 160 1: ἐπισκεψώμεθα ἑξῆς τὰ διὰ τῆς ἐκτε θείσης ῥήσεως ὑπὸ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους λεγόμενα, ἐνταῦθα μὲν πάνυ ἀσαφῶς καὶ δι᾿ αἰνιγμάτων ῥηθέντα.  See Introduction, p. 76, note 193.  Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.9.58.3. He adds that other philosophers practiced de liberate obscurity, too; he names the Pythagoreans, Plato, Epicurus, and the Stoic Zeno of Citi um.  Alexander of Aphrodisias wrote at several points that Aristotle’s exposition is either un clear or wanting. commMetaph, pp. 19; 21; 153; 214; 222; 240; 253; 276; 281; 339; 446; 462; 468; 474; 519; 550; 552; 579; 596; 643; 644; 653; 655; 663; 669; 677; 730; 736; 753; 758; 772; 774; 776; 805; 810; commAnalPr, pp. 21; 23; 121; 167; 195; 200; 210; 223; 225; 280; 299; 362; 364; 368; 373; 385; 398; 411; commTop, pp. 55; 56; 84; 185; 239; 349; 575; commDeSensu, pp. 25; 149; 152; comm Meteor, pp. 100; 131; 146.

Aristotle

575

(διὰ τὴν βραχυλογίαν ἀσαφέστερον εἴρηται),²¹⁶ hardly did Alexander conceal his vexation at that quality of exposition: he remarked in indignation that Aristotle wrote so obscurely, that, in order to say what he means, one should have the power of divination’ (ἀσαφῶς δὲ ὄντως ἐπήγγελται καὶ μαντείας δεόμενον).²¹⁷ It was only at one point that Alexander conceded that Aristotle practiced obscurity deliberately: although he made the hardly flattering remark that Aristotle wrote ‘in a manner which is very troubled, utterly confused, and disorderly, as much as is it inconsistent with previous statements in the same book’, he added that this was owing to the fact that Aristotle ‘deliberately employed obscurity right from the beginning’ of his Metaphysics. ²¹⁸ It was precisely this passing expression of Alexander that Ammonius picked up and made it a standard explanation in his own lessons. This is an absolutely stunning approach, once two facts are considered: one, the Greeks tolerated vagueness and ambiguity only in respect of the oracular pronouncements; secondly, the invective by Greeks against the Christians was largely based on contempt for attempted interpolation of sublime exegeses from stories of the scriptures which were simply literal, indeed sometimes obscene ones.²¹⁹ Aristotle came to be treated as a prophet and hierophant, and inherent weaknesses of his philosophy and plain shortcomings of exposition were ostensibly explained as some sort of ‘priestly obscurity’. As a result, we come upon real Greeks who saw defect as a virtue, fault as strength, and flaw as the highest stage of perfection. There is a remarkable difference as to how this verdict was received by the first generation of Ammonius’ pupils, and then by the second one. Speaking of Aristotle, Simplicius used his teacher’s (as well as Alexander’s) verb ἐπετήδευσεν, which suggests that he saw Aristotle’s obscurity as a practice that was applied deliberately and carefully.²²⁰ However, at several other points, he is not as

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 466; likewise, on p. 596: ἀσαφῶς καὶ αἰνιγμα τωδῶς τὸ παράδειγμα ἐπῆκται διὰ τὴν συνήθη βραχυλογίαν.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 594. This is what Sophonias wrote, too. paraphrAnim, Proem, p. 1: τίς γὰρ οὐκ οἶδεν ὥσπερ εἰ χρησμούς τινας πολλαχοῦ τὴν ᾿Aριστοτέλους οὖσαν φράσιν καὶ μαντείας δεῖσθαι;  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 673 (commenting on Aristotle’s Metaphysica 1069b26): Πάνυ τεταραγμένως καὶ φύρδην καὶ οὐ τεταγμένως οὐδ᾿ ἀκολούθως ἐπάγει τὰ ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τούτῳ λεγόμενα, δι᾿ οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἢ δι᾿ ἣν ἀρχῆθεν ἐπετήδευσεν ἀσάφειαν.  Cf. for example, Porhyry, Contra Christianos, fr. 39, apud Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, 6.19.8.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 6: οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ μύθοις οὐδὲ συμβολικοῖς αἰνίγμασιν, ὡς τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ τινες, ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἐχρήσατο, ἀλλ᾿ ἀντὶ παντὸς ἄλλου παραπετάσματος τὴν ἀσάφειαν προετίμησεν. Op. cit. p. 7: ᾿Aριστοτέλης δὲ τὴν ἀσάφειαν προετίμησεν.

576

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

gentle and indulgent: he plainly remarks that the exposition of Aristotle is simply uncertain, dubious, and indeed inarticulate.²²¹ Fed up as he was with such instances, he remarked that ‘it is all too evident that if we were to delete points where Aristotle’s text is dim, there could be a lot of phrases [of Aristotle] that should be deleted’.²²² Philoponus also took notice of the expression of his teacher Ammonius about Aristotle practicing obscurity deliberately. To the pen of Philoponus, the expression ἀσάφειαν ἐπιτηδεύειν (‘to practice obscurity by design’), which Ammonius used as praise, is conceded only with reference to the terminology Aristotle used in the Categories. ²²³ Beyond this specific allowance, his approach was neither as complimentary as that of Ammonius, nor as gently lenient as that of Simplicius. Actually, it was rather brutal: “By concealing the weakness of his exposition with the use of obscurity, Aristotle made it possible for all those who wished so to misrepresent his theories at their liking.”²²⁴ Accordingly, he either complains about unclear exposition of arguments,²²⁵ or he points out that a systematic explanation of them was offered not by Aristotle himself, but by his ‘exegetes’.²²⁶ Nevertheless, at a certain point, he accuses Alexander of Aphrodisias of contributing to confusion rather than to clarity of the text: “Whereas Aristotle’s exposition was already vague, he [sc. Alexander]

 Simplicius, commCael, p. 349: ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης καὶ πανταχοῦ τὰ δύο προτιθεὶς τό τε ἀγένη τον μὲν φθαρτὸν δὲ καὶ τὸ γενητὸν ἄφθαρτον ἀσάφειαν ἐνεποίησεν. commCateg, p. 3: ἕβδομον, διὰ τί τὴν ἀσάφειαν ἐπετήδευσεν ὁ φιλόσοφος. Op. cit. p. 400: εἰπόντος δὲ ᾿Aριστοτέλους, … δοκεῖ τισιν ἀσάφειαν ἐμποιεῖν. commPhys, p. 620: Ὁ δέ γε τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους λόγος … ἐστι μὲν ἀσαφὴς ἱκανῶς. Op. cit. p. 955: ἀλλ᾿ ὁ μὲν ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἐπὶ τάδε ἀμφοῖν εἰπών, καὶ τοῦ πέρατος καὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἀσαφῆ τὸν λόγον ἐποίησεν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 428: ὅτι δέ, εἰ τὰ ἀσαφῆ διαγράψαιμεν, πολλὰ ἂν τῶν ᾿Aριστοτέ λους διαγραφείη, καὶ τοῦτο προδηλότερον. Simplicius comments on Alexander of Aphrodisias writing that Aristotle’s phrase in the Physica, 201b14 (ἀλλὰ μὴν ὁ αὐτὸς ἐφαρμόσει λόγος καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων κινήσεων) is probably an interpolation that should be deleted, since this is too vague. Simplicius rejects this, saying that both Porphyry and Themistius commented on the phrase, which means that, no matter how ambiguous, this is genuine.  John Philoponus, commCateg, p. 29: ἀλλ᾿ εἰ μὲν ταύταις ταῖς φωναῖς ἐχρήσατο ὁ ᾿Aριστο τέλης, σαφὲς ἂν ἦν τὸ λεγόμενον, ὁ δὲ τὴν ἀσάφειαν ἐπιτηδεύων διὰ τὴν εἰρημένην αἰτίαν ἑτέ ροις ἐχρήσατο ὀνόμασιν.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 565: ὁ μὲν γὰρ ᾿Aριστοτέλης τὸ ἀσθενὲς τοῦ λόγου τῇ ἀσα φείᾳ περικαλύψας δέδωκε τοῖς βουλομένοις, ὡς ἂν ἐθέλωσι, μεταστρέφειν τοὺς λόγους.  John Philoponus, commAnalPr, p. 173: ἴδωμεν δὲ καὶ τῆς ᾿Aριστοτελικῆς δείξεως τὴν ἀκο λουθίαν· ἔχει γάρ τι καὶ ἀσαφέστερον.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 209: ἀλλ᾿ οἱ ἐξηγηταὶ διαιροῦσι τὰ ἐπιχειρήματα, καίτοι οὐδ᾿ αὐτὸς ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης φαίνεται σαφῶς διαιρῶν ταῦτα, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἓν προάγων.

Aristotle

577

made it more obscure (ἀσαφῆ δὲ οὖσαν τὴν ᾿Aριστοτέλους λέξιν ἀσαφεστέραν ἐποίησε)”.²²⁷ Unlike such irreverent attitudes, the younger generation of Ammonius’ pupils embraced his approach while putting Aristotle on the pedestal of infallible authority, in terms not only of ideas, but also of quality of exposition. In his introduction to philosophy, Olympiodorus of Alexandria argues in the same spirit as Ammonius: Aristotle’s obscurity was deliberate in order to put his readers to the test as to both their willingness to learn real philosophy and their caliber to achieve it, as well as to train them by means of their struggle to interpret the text. After all, it was Plato who did so, too, which suggests that beclouded style was in fact a noble practice of the great masters.²²⁸ Moreover, abstruseness was to Greeks an august tradition and the want of clearness which appears in Aristotle is only another form of a similar practice of old: Apollo’s oracles were ambiguous, priests used curtains, poets employed myths, Pythagoras dreams, and Plato allowed himself to sink into divine drunkenness.²²⁹ Likewise, Elias added his own enthusiasm to Ammonius’ argument, urging that Aristotle ‘was not ambiguous by nature’ (οὐ γὰρ φύσει ἦν ἀσαφὴς … ἀλλὰ φύσει ὢν σαφής), nor was this a weakness of his exposition’ (καί τι δι᾿ ἀσθένειαν ἀπαγγελτικὴν τοῦτο ἐποίει), since he is clear in such works as the Meteorologica, the Topica, and the Sophisticos Elenchos. He just practiced obscurity deliberately (ἀσάφειαν ἐπετήδευσεν … ἐπετήδευσε τὴν ἀσάφειαν) for three possible reasons: either in order to maintain his doctrine secret (κρύψεως χάριν), or to test his readers (δοκιμασίας χάριν), or to train them (γυμνασίας χάριν). For that which to poets was use of myths and to priests curtains, to Aristotle was obscurity.²³⁰

 John Philoponus, commMeteor, p. 79.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, Prolegomena, p. 1: ὄγδοον, τίνος χάριν ἀσάφειαν ἐπετήδευσεν ὁ φιλόσοφος. Op. cit. p. 2: ἔνατον, διὰ τί ἀσάφειαν ἐπετήδευσεν. Op. cit. p. 11: Ἔνατον κε φάλαιον, ἐν ᾧ ζητοῦμεν διὰ τί ἀσάφειαν ἐπετήδευσεν ὁ φιλόσοφος· ὅτι γὰρ οὐκ οἴκοθεν ἔχει τοῦτο, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτὸς ἐπετήδευσεν, δηλοῖ πολλαχοῦ σαφῶς ἑρμηνεύσας, … ἀσάφειαν τοίνυν ἐπετή δευσεν πεῖραν καὶ δοκιμασίαν λαβεῖν βουλόμενος τῶν τε προθυμοτάτων νέων καὶ τῶν ῥᾳθύμων· ἀσαφεῖ γὰρ ἐντυγχάνων ὁ σπουδαῖος, συγγράμματι συντείνει ἑαυτὸν καὶ προθυμότερος γίγνεται πρὸς τὴν τοῦ συγγράμματος κατάληψιν, ὁ δὲ ῥᾴθυμος ἐντυγχάνων τούτῳ φεύγει τὴν ἔντευξιν ὑπὸ τῆς ἀσαφείας ἀπελαυνόμενος. τοῦτο δὲ οὐ μόνον ᾿Aριστοτέλης πεποίηκεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Πλάτων πρὸ αὐτοῦ.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, op. cit. p. 12 ὅπερ οὖν ᾿Aπόλλωνι μὲν τὸ λοξόν, ἱερεῦσι δὲ τὰ παραπετάσματα, ποιηταῖς δὲ οἱ μῦθοι, Πυθαγόρᾳ δὲ τὰ ὀνείρατα, Πλάτωνι δὲ αἱ μέθαι, τοῦτο ᾿Aριστοτέλει πέφυκεν ἡ ἀσάφεια. καὶ ἐν τούτοις τὸ ἔνατον κεφάλαιον.  Elias of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 124; likewise, p. 126: καὶ συνελόντι φάναι, ὃ τοῖς ποιη ταῖς οἱ μῦθοι καὶ τοῖς ἱερεῦσι τὰ παραπετάσματα, τοῦτο τῷ ᾿Aριστοτέλει ἡ κατὰ λέξιν ἀσάφεια, κρύψεως χάριν. Op. cit. p. 127: πάλιν ὃ τοῖς ἀετοῖς ὁ ἥλιος καὶ τοῖς Κελτοῖς ὁ Ῥῆνος, τοῖς Πυ

578

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

David saw similar things, adding that, although both Plato and Aristotle are obscure in style, their difference is this: Aristotle’s notions are easy to comprehend, but his language is difficult to grasp (τὰ μὲν γὰρ ᾿Aριστοτελικὰ θεωρήματα εὐχερῆ εἰσιν, ἡ δὲ φράσις δύσκολος). By contrast, Plato’s theories are very difficult and abstruse, but his articulation is smooth and easy to understand; ‘quite simply, this is Platonic’ (τὰ δὲ Πλατωνικὰ θεωρήματα πάνυ τι δύσκολά εἰσι καὶ δυσχερῆ, … ἡ δὲ φράσις εὐχερὴς καὶ ὁμαλὴ καὶ ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν Πλατωνική). Then, David makes the crucial remark, which was the basis of seeking harmony between Plato, Aristotle and other Greek philosophers: owing to obscurity, ‘the theories of Plato are in effect compatible with every philosophical system’ (τὰ δὲ Πλατωνικὰ θεωρήματα … πάσῃ δόξῃ σχεδὸν ἑπόμενα), which makes it easy for every interpreter to make them compatible with whatever he wants (ἑκάστην ἐξήγησιν ἁρμόζειν αὐτὰ πρὸς ἃ βούλεται).²³¹ Arethas of Caesarea, who also wrote a commentary on Porphyry’s Introduction, employed this statement. Whereas he quotes extensively from Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, he did so also from David’s commentary on the same work of Porphyry.²³² We know too little about David’s biography: Armenian sources²³³ present him as a theologian, as well as ‘a pious and devout philosopher’ of the fifth century, but he is currently believed to be a pupil of Olympiodorus in the late sixth century. Clearing up this issue is beyond my scope, but I should note that Arethas mentions neither David nor Elias (frequently confused with David) nor Olympiodorus. Instead, he makes mention of ‘the great Ammonius’ (᾿Aμμώνιος μὲν οὖν ὁ μέγας)’,²³⁴ which makes it highly likely that, no matter who David was, he was an offspring of the Ammonian tradition, he followed Philoponus rather than Simplicius, and, for that reason, David would have been a Christian, too. For indeed it was Philoponus who explicated

θαγορείοις τὰ ὀνείρατα, τῷ Πλάτωνι ἡ χαλεπότης τῶν δογμάτων, ἡ μέθη, τοῦτο τῷ ᾿Aριστοτέλει ἡ κατὰ λέξιν ἀσάφεια, δοκιμασίας χάριν.  David of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, pp. 105 7. See David reporting the dissent among Platonists as to what Plato really meant by his theories, op. cit. p. 115.  Arethas’ editor pointed out several quotations from Simplicius, but he did not notice that Arethas’ scholion 22 is in effect a paraphrasis from this work by David of Alexandria, p. 105. Cf. M. Share, Arethas of Caesarea’s Scholia on Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Categories (Corpus philosophorum Medii Aevi. Commentaria in Aristotelem Byzantina 1), Athens, Paris, Brussels, 1994.  Cf. S.S. Arefshatian (ed.), David the Invincible, The Definitions of Philosophy, Armenian text with Russian translation, Erevan, 1960 (this is David’s introductory text to Porphyry’s Isagoge). S.S. Arefshatian (ed.), Commentary on Aristotle’s Analytics, Armenian text with Russian transla tion, Erevan, 1967; Id. Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge, Erevan, 1976.  Arethas of Caesarea, Scholia in Porphyrii Isagogen, 165.

Aristotle

579

the idea that the proposition about harmony between Plato and Aristotle was an extrapolation which was possible for anyone to carry out. By concealing the weakness of his exposition with the use of obscurity, Aristotle made it possible for all those who wished so to misrepresent his theories to do so at their liking.²³⁵

Whereas earlier commentators saw Plato’s vagueness in his theories, and Aristotle’s one in his exposition, Arethas (unlike his source, namely, David) saw Plato’s ambiguousness in both his theories and exposition, while arguing that Aristotle alone was to blame for the quality of his exposition. In any event, this made Plato’s philosophy susceptible of any interpretation, including the allegation of essential compatibility with Aristotelism.²³⁶ For their part, David, and then Arethas, regarded the obscurity of old authors as a noble tradition, and saw this as a deliberate practice as old as that by Homer and Orpheus, who used ambiguous myths in order to prevent the hoi polloi from access to secret truths. Both David and Arethas quoted a maxim by Apollonius of Tyana, which is not attested by any other source: “Homer was the one who said everything, and yet he kept everything secret” (ὁ πάντα εἰπὼν καὶ πάντα σιγήσας).²³⁷

The notion of essence Aristotle claimed originality by essaying to downgrade and ridicule ideas that he received from Anaxagoras and Empedocles. His allegation was that they expressed themselves in a manner that was vague.²³⁸ But we just saw that obscurity was the blame that Aristotle’s commentators laid at his own door. The fact of the matter is that he appropriated from Anaxagoras the very notion of (and nearly the expression) τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι in order to bespeak ‘essence’, while caring to add that Empedocles and Democritus touched only a little upon the notions of ‘form’ and ‘essence’ (ἐπὶ μικρὸν γάρ τι μέρος Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Δημόκριτος τοῦ εἴ-

 John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 565: ὁ μὲν γὰρ ᾿Aριστοτέλης τὸ ἀσθενὲς τοῦ λόγου τῇ ἀσα φείᾳ περικαλύψας δέδωκε τοῖς βουλομένοις, ὡς ἂν ἐθέλωσι, μεταστρέφειν τοὺς λόγους.  Arethas of Caesarea, op. cit. 22: Ἰστέον δὲ ὅτι τῶν παλαιῶν πάντες ἀσάφειαν ἐπετήδευον ἐν τοῖς οἰκείοις πόνοις· ὃ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ναοῖς τὸ καταπέτασμα, τοῦτο ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ἡ ἀσάφεια· οὐ γὰρ ἑτοίμην τὴν διδασκαλίαν αὐτῶν ἠβούλοντο παραδοῦναι, καλὸν δ᾿ ἐνόμισαν δι᾿ ἀσαφείας διὰ τοὺς βεβήλους. διττῆς δὲ τῆς ἐν λόγοις ἀσαφείας οὔσης, παρὰ τὴν λέξιν φημὶ καὶ τὰ θεωρήματα, τὴν μὲν διὰ τῶν θεωρημάτων Πλάτων ἐπετήδευσεν, ὅθεν καὶ διαφόροις ἁρμόττει ἐξηγήσεσιν, ᾿Aρι στοτέλης δὲ διὰ τῆς λέξεως.  David of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 106 & Arethas of Caesarea, op. cit. 22.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 993a11 ff.

580

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

δους καὶ τοῦ τί ἦν εἶναι ἥψαντο²³⁹). However, Simplicius disputed that those physicists said only ‘a little’ about it.²⁴⁰ Whereas in the context of Aristotle’s exposition τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι has always been a bizarre expression, it fits neatly within the Anaxagorean context, even in the fragmentary, yet entirely consistent, form we have it from Simplicius. Aristotle’s usual excuse while appropriating the philosophy of his predecessors was that, although they had some inkling of the notions that he himself expounded clearly, they did not apply them articulately or consistently or proficiently. This is why Aristotle employed the relevant criticism of Plato against Anaxagoras (allegedly, having ‘made nothing of the Nous’), even though he evidently knew that this was unfair, since Aristotle employed thoroughly Anaxagoras’ notion and germane vocabulary about the Nous, while pointing out that this Nous is active. This he did also about Empedocles concerning the cardinal notion of essence. In fact, Aristotle clearly implies that he appropriated the ideas of Empedocles and Anaxagoras, and made up the expression τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι in order to bespeak ‘essence’: Thus, it is obvious also from the statements of earlier thinkers, that all inquiry is apparently directed towards the causes described in the Physics, ²⁴¹ and that we cannot suggest any other cause apart from these. They were, however, only vaguely (ἁμυδρῶς) conceived; and although, in one sense, all of them have been stated before,²⁴² in another, they have not been stated at all (καὶ τρόπον μέν τινα πᾶσαι πρότερον εἴρηνται τρόπον δέ τινα οὐδα μῶς). For the early philosophy speaks falteringly, as it were, on all subjects (ψελλιζομένῃ γὰρ ἔοικεν ἡ πρώτη φιλοσοφία περὶ πάντων), being new and in its infancy. Empedocles also says that bone can exist by virtue of its logos (ὀστοῦν τῷ λόγῳ φησὶν εἶναι),²⁴³ which is the definition of essence of a thing (τοῦτο δ᾿ ἐστὶ τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι καὶ ἡ οὐσία τοῦ πράγματος). But, by parity of reason, both flesh²⁴⁴ and every other thing (or, otherwise, no other thing at all) must be the ratio (ἕκαστον εἶναι τὸν λόγον).²⁴⁵ For flesh and bone,

 Aristotle, Physica, 194a.  See supra, chapter 4, p. 286.  Physica, II. iii & vii.  Italics are mine: the word all (πᾶσαι) is a plain confession that Aristotle himself said noth ing knew and simply he repeated what he had read in (or about) Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and other Presocratics.  Aristotle uses λόγος in the sense of ratio, in a Pythagorean sense.  Aristotle uses the example of flesh, bone, and the like, just as he did treating Anaxagoras’ philosophy.  This is a distortion. Like Anaxagoras, Empedocles did not say that every single thing is a logos: Empedocles said that a bone is generated by means of a logos (τῷ λόγῳ), that is, a bone is a result of certain acting generative causes. In this specific context (to the extent Aristotle’s text can be trusted), Empedocles spoke of logos in its Pythagorean sense of arithmetical ‘analogy’ of

Aristotle

581

and every other thing, must exist not as a result of matter, which (according to him) is fire, earth, water, and air. If anyone had stated this, he [Empedocles] would have agreed of ne cessity; however, he did not say this clearly (συνέφησεν ἂν ἐξ ἀνάγκης, σαφῶς δὲ οὐκ εἴρηκεν).²⁴⁶

In other words, Aristotle alleges that Empedocles was aware of notions which are currently celebrated as Aristotle’s ingenious inventions; at the same time though, he claims that his predecessors did not expound them clearly (οὐ σαφῶς). But this abstruseness was the blame against Aristotle by his own commentators, which is only the surface of the fact that Aristotle appropriated ideas of Anaxagoras and of Empedocles, using the allegation of ‘obscurity’, or lack of refinement, as smoke screen to becloud this fact.²⁴⁷ It is certainly not mere oversight that he avoided any direct quotation from those predecessors and opted for supplying posterity with his own (deliberately distorted) understanding of Presocratic ideas that had preceded the paragon of his own philosophy. Although he admitted this half-heartedly, at the same time he was all too eager to berate such a precession of his ideas. This was a typical way for Aristotle to discredit two eminent predecessors, from whom he appropriated his most famous ideas. In the Metaphysics, 989b31‒34, he says that ‘if one were to infer that Anaxagoras posited two elements,²⁴⁸ this inference would stand in agreement with the words (or, with the theory, κατὰ λόγον), which he did not articulate clearly and systematically (οὐ διήρθρωσεν), but he would have followed of necessity what follows from this (ἠκολούθησε μέντ᾿ ἂν ἐξ ἀνάγκης τοῖς ἐπάγουσι αὐτόν)’. Then (989b3‒6), he ostensibly ‘helps’ Anaxagoras to articulate more clearly his doctrine: “If we were to follow his doctrine carefully and interpret its meaning, perhaps he would appear to have said a novel doctrine” (ὅμως εἴ τις ἀκολουθήσειε συνδιαρθρῶν ἃ βούλεται λέγειν, ἴσως ἂν φανείη καινοπρεπεστέρως λέγων). The similarity of expression he uses speaking of Empedocles or Anaxagoras is stunningly the same: Empedocles would have agreed of necessity (συνέφησεν ἂν ἐξ ἀνάγκης); Anaxagoras ‘would have followed of necessity’ (ἠκολούθησε ἂν ἐξ ἀνάγκης). His allegation is that Empedocles and Anaxagoras had cardinal notions in their minds, but they expressed them ‘unclearly’, and History had to wait numbers resulting in appearance of a certain thing, in like a manner he took up other Pythagor ean tenets such as transmigration of souls. See infra, pp. 585 6.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 993a.  We should recall Aristotle claiming that he ‘helped Anaxagoras’ make himself clear. See chapter 2, pp. 163 4 (συνδιαρθρῶν). Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989b4 6 & 1069b19 23 (quoted on p. 348, note 105).  That is, the Mind and the principles out of the primal mixture.

582

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

for Aristotle to come in order for these ideas to be articulated clearly, and, as a result, these (by that time, deceased) Presocratics were bound to agree ‘of necessity’ retrospectively. Why is it then that Aristotle did not quote a single passage from the original on these crucial issues? And why was it that the ‘obscurity’ that Aristotle leveled on his predecesors, was after all a blame laid at his own door by his commentators?²⁴⁹ The reason is quite plain: he appropriated the ideas of his predecessors, and veiled his liabilities under the disguise of a caricatured representation of their ideas. However, he could not afford not to state that the original fusion of Anaxagoras was a certain ‘oneness’ which contained all the principles indistinctly, and it was necessary for the Mind to come over and produce actual principles from the confusum of the primordial chaos. And since Being is twofold (διττὸν τὸ ὄν),²⁵⁰ everything changes from that which is poten tially to that which is actually (μεταβάλλει πᾶν ἐκ τοῦ δυνάμει ὄντος εἰς τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ ὄν) … Hence, not only may generation obtain accidentally from that which is not (ὥστε οὐ μόνον κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς ἐνδέχεται γίγνεσθαι ἐκ μὴ ὄντος), but also everything is generated from that which is, but it is potentially, not actually (ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐξ ὄντος γίγνεται πάντα, δυνάμει μέντοι ὄντος, ἐκ μὴ ὄντος δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ). And this is the one of Anaxagoras (καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι τὸ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἕν); for his [proposition] all things were together, as well as the mixture of Em pedocles and Anaximander, and indeed the doctrine of Democritus, would be better ex pressed as all things were together potentially, but not actually (ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα δυνάμει, ἐνεργείᾳ δ᾿ οὔ).²⁵¹ … For Mind is one; so that, if matter is also one, only that would have come to be in actuality whose matter existed potentially (ἐκεῖνο ἐγένετο ἐνεργείᾳ, οὗ ἡ ὕλη ἦν δυνάμει).²⁵²

He says that generation does not have to arise ex nihilo: it can only result from something which is potentially, not actually. What is this ‘something’? Quite clearly, this is the principles/logoi which were ‘distinguished’ (i. e. created) out of the primeval confusum. Subsequently, the totality of those principles is the realm of all potentialities.²⁵³ He was bound to acknowledge that Anaxagoras,  See supra, p. 575, Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 673, commenting on Aristo tle’s Metaphysica 1069b26, and denouncing Aristotle’s ‘confused, unorganized, and disorderly’ exposition’ (τεταραγμένως καὶ φύρδην καὶ οὐ τεταγμένως), which was only ‘a deliberate practice of vagueness’ by Aristotle (δι᾿ οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἢ δι᾿ ἣν ἀρχῆθεν ἐπετήδευσεν ἀσάφειαν).  Meaning, ‘being potentially’ (δυνάμει ὄν) and ‘being actually’ (ἐνεργείᾳ ὄν).  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1069b.  The Mind decided to create, thus the Creative Mind came up in order to do this. See discus sion of Mind and Creative Mind on pp. 176; 226; 245; 251; 266; 276 7; 768 71; 785 9; 1000 8; 1054 9. See also infra, pp. 600 6, discussion the notion of potentialities (προειλημμένα) existing ‘sper matically’ (σπερματικῶς).

Aristotle

583

Empedocles, and Democritus expounded the idea of potential being which develops into actual being, but he appears to be haunted by the shadows of those predecessors. Anaxagoras explicated that the cause which developed potentiality to actuality was the Mind. As a matter of fact, Aristotle is very nervous at this point, because he knows that what he means to expound as his own theory was in fact that of Anaxagoras. This is why he is so obscure, which was pointed out by Alexander of Aphrodisias. The idea is simple: actual being is produced from potential being, which is an idea of Anaxagoras, not of Aristotle, as discussed in chapter 6. Alexander put things in order: first, he remarked that Aristotle expressed himself in a manner which is very troubled, utterly confused, and disorderly, as much as is it inconsistent with previous statements in the same book; then, he adds that this was owing to the fact that Aristotle ‘deliberately practiced obscurity right from the beginning’ of his Metaphysics. ²⁵⁴ Moreover, the argument goes on, Aristotle means that generation arises not out of nothing (τὸ μηδαμῇ μηδαμῶς ὄν), but from potential being (τὸ δυνάμει ὄν). Alexander magnanimously remarked that this was expressed in a wanting manner (ἐλλιπῶς δὲ τοῦτο ἀπηγγέλθη), only ‘because, I believe, previously he said this clearly’.²⁵⁵ Alexander was as kind as to state that Aristotle was embarrassed because he knew (and relunctantly admitted openly) that his cardinal idea of potentiality was present in his predecessors, and, above all, in Anaxagoras. Aristotle had real difficulty in accepting his debts to Anaxagoras because he was himself unable, or unwilling, to disown his Platonic education altogether. This is evident only shortly after that point, where he argues allegedly against ‘the Pythagoreans and Speusippus’, but in fact against Anaxagoras once again. This time the object of his invective is the idea that ‘perfect beauty and goodness do not exist in the beginning, on the ground that, whereas the [first] principles of plants and animals are causes (τὰς ἀρχὰς αἴτια μὲν εἶναι), it is in the products of these [causes] that beauty and perfection are found’. Why is this opinion wrong according to Aristotle? Because, he argues, that which is prime and foremost is not the seed, but the perfect creature (καὶ τὸ πρῶτον οὐ σπέρμα ἐστὶν ἀλλὰ τὸ τέλειον); therefore, what is prior is not the seed, but the perfect creature. Likewise, one might say that a man is prior to the seed; it is not man who is produced from the seed: instead, a man is produced from another man, from whom the seed is generated (ἀλλ᾿ ἕτερον ἐξ οὗ τὸ σπέρμα).²⁵⁶

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 673 (commenting on Metaphysica 1069b26).  Alexander of Aphrodisias, loc. cit.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072b 1073a.

584

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

One wonders whether this is actually Aristotle speaking, or it is in fact Plato. For Aristotle reproduces Platonism in its purest form, although inaccurately he associates the notion of ‘seed’ with ‘the Pythagoreans and Speusippus’. For the criticism is in fact levelled against Anaxagoras, who was the sole philosopher who spoke of ‘seed’, and the one who saw the principles as seeds. Aristotle speaks as an orthodox Platonist also a little later, arguing that the Pythagoreans constituted the One ‘either of planes or superficies or seed (εἴτ᾿ ἐκ σπέρματος), or of something that they could not explain’.²⁵⁷ Then (allegedly having in mind ‘the Pythagoreans and Speusippus’ once again), he criticizes ‘some contemporary theologians, who deny that the Good and the Most Perfect itself are first principles, and that they are later than the elements in terms of generation’. Who are those who deny this? They are ‘those who hold that unity is a first principle’ (τὸ ἓν ἀρχήν), and he names Pherecydes, the Magi, ‘and later philosophers, such as Empedocles and Anaxagoras’.²⁵⁸ Therefore, Aristotle appears as a staunch Platonist who was anxious to defend the precedency of the Good,²⁵⁹ and, once again (like Plato), he saw Anaxagoras as an enemy. He was far from being correct, however: for in fact Anaxagoras made the Mind a supreme principle, and it was the universe that he produced from ‘seeds’.²⁶⁰ To sum up, Aristotle alleged that Anaxagoras and Empedocles were aware of notions that have been accclaimed as outstanding Aristotelian contribution to philosophy. At the same time though, he conceded that his predecessors entertained those ideas, but ‘they did not expound them clearly’ (οὐ σαφῶς). Ironically though haziness and inept exposition was the blame against Aristotle himself by his own commentators. According to Simplicius drawing on Theophrastus, Empedocles was fascinated by Parmenides and tried to stand close to him, and even more was he cap-

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1091a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1091a b.  However, Plotinus took up this point in the Enneades, V.1.9 (which I canvass below) and showed that, at this point, Aristotle cannot speak even as a Platonist. In effect, Plotinus shows that, since Aristotle plagiarized from such philosophers as Anaxagoras and Empedocles, it is impossible for the product of looting to be accommodated within the Aristotelian premisses. See chapter 12, discussion of the scandalous notion of multiple ‘immovable movers’, which Ar istotle introduced alongside the First Immovable Mover.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075a37: “The others do not regard Good and Evil as principles (οἱ δ᾿ ἄλλοι οὐδ᾿ ἀρχὰς τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ τὸ κακόν).” Then, he says that ‘Anaxagoras made the Good a principle that caused (and always causes) motion; but although the Mind moves, it moves for some end; therefore, there must be some other Good, unless he meant it in the same way as we do.’ However, this is an inaccurate report: Anaxagoras did not presuppose a final cause for motion to emerge in the first place, other that the divine goodness. Supra, pp. 322; 564 5.

Aristotle

585

tivated by the Pythagoreans.²⁶¹ Aristotle represents Empedocles as maintaining that the term λόγος indicating ‘essence’ means ratio in a mixture (τὸν λόγον τῆς μίξεως).²⁶² This would be true, if it were assumed that Empedocles employed the term λόγος from the Pythagoreans in order to indicate what his posterity saw as essence of things. However, we should not disregard the fact the Empedocles was also taught by Anaxagoras, to whom a logos bespeaks the concurring principles which make up a perceptible thing, and, in that context, λόγος is not simply a number produced as a ratio of numbers: it is the inherent cause that gives rise to a perceptible thing, and thus it is equivalent to the form of a thing. This is why λόγος is tantamount to a thing’s substance. Whereas Aristotle wavered as to how ‘essence’ should be defined (i. e. either matter, or form, or both), Anaxagoras (and probably Empedocles, too) could have had no doubts: essence of a thing is the specific combination of the concurring logoi which make it up. Aristotle of course knew that the ‘substance’ of a thing (which he alternatively styles ‘nature’ of it) is the logos of it,²⁶³ and he reverts to the enquiry of what ‘soul’ is, although Anaxagoras did not see ‘soul’ as an individual independent existence, but only as the collective manifestation of life,²⁶⁴ indeed as a synonym to it. His demanding questions (ἀπαιτήσειε δ᾿ ἄν τις τοῦτο γε καὶ παρ᾿ Ἐμπεδοκλέους) are then merely sophistic, indeed pointless. He wonders if Empedocles determined

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 25 (apud Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones): Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ ᾿Aκραγαντῖνος οὐ πολὺ κατόπιν τοῦ ᾿Aναξαγόρου γεγονώς, Παρμενίδου δὲ ζηλωτὴς καὶ πλη σιαστὴς καὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον τῶν Πυθαγορείων.  Aristotle, De Anima, 408a13. Since Empedocles defined the soul as λόγον τῆς μίξεως, the term λόγος might suggest usage of it not only by the Pythagoreans but also by Anaxagoras him self, since to him, the soul (like everything else) is a concurrence of logoi. Cf. Empedocles using λόγος in a purely Anaxagorean sense: apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 372 (ὅσα γὰρ μὴ κατὰ τὸν οἰκεῖον συνῆλθε λόγον, ἐφθάρη), and apud Cornutus, De Natura Deorum, p. 30 (ὑπὸ τῶν πα λαιῶν Ἰαπετὸς μὲν ὠνομάσθη ὁ λόγος καθ᾿ ὃν φωνητικὰ ζῷα ἐγένετο). Aristotle makes Empedo cles’ Anaxagorism all too clear (though inadvertently) in the De Generatione et Corruptione, 333b12 16 (‘substance = λόγος = μίξις τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων = mingling and separation of things mingled’). Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163: any thing becomes and unbecomes because it συμμίσγεταί τε καὶ διακρίνεται. … τό τε γίνεσθαι συμμίσγεσθαι καὶ τὸ ἀπόλλυσθαι διακρίνεσθαι.  Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium, 642a17: ἀρχὴ γὰρ ἡ φύσις μᾶλλον τῆς ὕλης, ἐνιαχοῦ δέ που αὐτῇ καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς περιπίπτει, ἀγόμενος ὑπ᾿ αὐτῆς τῆς ἀληθείας, καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τὴν φύσιν ἀναγκάζεται φάναι τὸν λόγον εἶναι, οἷον ὀστοῦν ἀποδιδοὺς τί ἐστιν· οὔτε γὰρ ἕν τι τῶν στοιχείων λέγει αὐτὸ οὔτε δύο ἢ τρία οὔτε πάντα, ἀλλὰ λόγον τῆς μίξεως αὐτῶν.  Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156 & 177: καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ μείζω καὶ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ. See infra, pp. 1184 90; 1222 45.

586

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

whether the soul is a logos/ratio (πότερον οὖν ὁ λόγος ἐστὶν ἡ ψυχή),²⁶⁵ or an independent entity which associates itself with the physical parts of a body (ἢ μᾶλλον ἕτερόν τι οὖσα ἐγγίνεται τοῖς μέλεσι), and whether Love causes a soul to exist stems either by means of random mixture or according to a mixture in the right ratio (πότερον ἡ Φιλία τῆς τυχούσης αἰτία μίξεως ἢ τῆς κατὰ τὸν λόγον), as well as, whether Love itself is a logos/ratio or it is something other than it (καὶ αὕτη πότερον ὁ λόγος ἐστὶν ἢ παρὰ τὸν λόγον ἕτερόν τι;).²⁶⁶ All these were only ostensible questions which stuck to the Pythagorean meaning of logos as ratio, and disregarding that Empedocles was no less a pupil of Anaxagoras, and in that context logos had a meaning which was very different from the Pythagorean one: it meant dynamic creative and cohesive causes. Aristotle appropriated the Anaxagorean notion of principle/logos and used it along with εἶδος, although he never appears to be conscious of their difference. For indeed he never determined the actual difference between λόγος and εἶδος, which is why he used them as synonyms. In fact, he saw λόγος as something which is ‘said’ (λέγεται). This fundamental connection of λόγος with λέγειν shows that Aristotle mainly meant something spoken or uttered, and more specifically a rational or systematic explanation or exposition to the purpose of describing the nature or the plan of a thing, therefore, the essence of a thing, or at least its essential characteristics, which adumbrate its structure, character, or function. In other words, λόγος indicates substance only in so far as this is a λόγος (= definition) of a substance.²⁶⁷ At best, when form (μορφὴ or

 Later philosophy posited that the soul is a logos that contains all the logoi, in attenuated analogy to the Anaxagorean Mind which some understood as containing all the principles, in accordance with the assumption that the soul comprises all the principles. See infra, chapter 13, pp. 1424 33.  Aristotle, De Anima, 408a13. In this passage (408a10 25), by deliberately sticking to ‘logos’ meaning ‘ratio’, Aristotle swifts Empedocles’ proposition ‘a soul is consisted of logoi’, to ‘there are many souls distributed all over the body’ (συμβήσεται οὖν πολλάς τε ψυχὰς ἔχειν καὶ κατὰ πᾶν τὸ σῶμα, εἴπερ πάντα μὲν ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων μεμιγμένων, ὁ δὲ τῆς μίξεως λόγος ἁρμονία καὶ ψυχή). Cf. Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 25. Simplicius, commAnim, p. 68. Sophonias, paraphrA nim, 26.  Cf. for example, Aristotle, Analytica Priora, 47b; 93b: Ὁρισμὸς δ᾿ ἐπειδὴ λέγεται εἶναι λόγος τοῦ τί ἐστι, φανερὸν ὅτι ὁ μέν τις ἔσται λόγος τοῦ τί σημαίνει τὸ ὄνομα ἢ λόγος ἕτερος ὀνομα τώδης, οἷον τί σημαίνει τρίγωνον. Categoriae, 1a: συνώνυμα δὲ λέγεται ὧν τό τε ὄνομα κοινὸν καὶ ὁ κατὰ τοὔνομα λόγος τῆς οὐσίας ὁ αὐτός. Op. cit. 3a: ὁ λόγος τῆς διαφορᾶς. Metaphysica, 1017b: ἔτι τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, οὗ ὁ λόγος ὁρισμός, καὶ τοῦτο οὐσία λέγεται ἑκάστου. Op. cit. 1018a: ὁ λόγος τῆς οὐσίας. Op. cit. 1028a: ἡ οὐσία πρῶτον, καὶ λόγῳ καὶ γνώσει καὶ χρόνῳ. Op. cit. 1045b: κατὰ γὰρ τὸν τῆς οὐσίας λόγον λέγεται τἆλλα. Op. cit. 1052b: ποῖα τε ἓν λέγεται, καὶ τί ἐστι τὸ ἑνὶ εἶναι καὶ τίς αὐτοῦ λόγος. De Generatione Animalium, 715a: ὑπόκεινται γὰρ αἰτίαι τέτταρες, τό τε

Aristotle

587

εἶδος) is not used as a virtually synonym with logos, it means a form being realized ‘according to reason’ (κατὰ τὸν λόγον), in the same sense that a builder or an artist creates things formed according to the rules of his art.²⁶⁸ Use of the term logos in order to indicate the first principles being the object of creation by the Creative Mind, as well as in order to suggest the way to creation of the perceptible world, flourished during the Late Antiquity, actually this was initiated (or, revived) by Origen entertaining the Anaxagorean philosophy. This was the decisive step beyond the impasse of Plato’s theory of Ideas, and beyond Aristotle’s both criticism of this theory and his ambivalent undecidendness concerning definition of essence proper, a question which he left moot and inconclusive. The loose and dubious sense in which Aristotle used the term λόγος seems also from the fact that he associated it with the term δύναμις. Setting out to define what ‘sensation’ (αἴσθησις) is, he makes the plausible distinction between the perceptible objects which are sensed and the action of the respective sense organ, that is, the impression formed by an eye, an ear, and the like. In this context, he states that a sense organ is one thing, but perception of it is quite another. It is the latter that he terms ‘a certain logos and power’ (λόγος τις καὶ δύναμις) of the sensory receptor.²⁶⁹ Likewise, at the outset of the second book of the Generation of Animals, he says that ‘male and female are principles of generation’ (εἰσιν ἀρχαὶ γενέσεως), reminding that he already considered also ‘their potential and the nature of their essence’ (καὶ τίς ἡ δύναμις καὶ ὁ λόγος τῆς οὐσίας αὐτῶν). Although there is but little difficulty about rendering this terminology in English, there is some room for disambiguation.²⁷⁰ In both cases, δύναμις means the potential, either of a sense organ or of the male and female na-

οὗ ἕνεκα ὡς τέλος καὶ ὁ λόγος τῆς οὐσίας (ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὡς ἕν τι σχεδὸν ὑπολαβεῖν δεῖ), τρίτον δὲ καὶ τέταρτον ἡ ὕλη καὶ ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως.  Aristotle, Physica, 193a: οὕτως ἡ φύσις λέγεται, ἡ πρώτη ἑκάστῳ ὑποκειμένη ὕλη τῶν ἐχόντων ἐν αὑτοῖς ἀρχὴν κινήσεως καὶ μεταβολῆς, ἄλλον δὲ τρόπον ἡ μορφὴ καὶ τὸ εἶδος τὸ κατὰ τὸν λόγον.  Aristotle, De Anima, 424a.  A.L. Peck discussed some characteristic Aristotelian terms in his Introduction to the trans lation of Aristotle’s Generation of Animals, Loeb, n. 366, 1942 (repr. 1990), pp. xliv xlv; lii lv. His exposition is learned, and it was wise of him at certain points of his translation to use the trans literated word logos (for λόγος) and dynamis (for δύναμις) instead of ‘representing them by an inadequate or misleading word’ (p. xliv). To his apt remarks, I should add that there is a distinc tion that should be made in Aristotle (as in other authors, too): at some specific points, δύναμις may suggest ‘potentiality’ (although Aristotle normally prefers his technical term δυνάμει). How ever, more frequently, δύναμις suggests the potential of something or someone. Therefore, the important distinction between δύναμις and δυνάμει should be made.

588

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

tures.²⁷¹ In such a context, the accompanying term λόγος simply means ‘the definition of their essence’. By the same token, in the foregoing portion from the De Anima, the expression λόγος τις καὶ δύναμις of the sense organ means the specific nature and potential of it.²⁷² Simplicius definitely knew that the cause of ‘harmony’, which his teacher Ammonius sought to secure, could be established not by reverting to the Middle Platonism, yet by means of the philosophy of Anaxagoras. For it was this Presocratic who said that nothing else is like anything else (ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί), but each one is and was (ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν) a set of attributes that are most manifestly (ἐνδηλότατα) present in it; that is, the identity of each thing is determined by those principles (manifested as specific characteristics of a thing) which prevail in it (ἀλλ᾿ ὅτῳ πλεῖστα ἔνι).²⁷³ Since all principles are incorporeal, they are everywhere; therefore, no spatial dimensions contain any of them. Nevertheless, in each material thing or phenomenon, there are only certain principles that are predominantly present: they are those that make a thing to be what it is and determine its distinctive character. However, this expression, Anaxagoras suggests, in not complete: this is why he also said that the prevailing principles, which concur, are those that make a thing to be what it is and was. ²⁷⁴ This is why Simplicius disputed Aristotle’s claim that the notion of τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι had not been grasped before him.²⁷⁵ Aristotle knew that Anaxagoras had preceded him on pivotal ideas, which he inexorably resented. He knew that, unless seen as a Platonic ‘essence’, the technical expression τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι²⁷⁶ was a rather weird one in Aristotle’s own context, but this was all too clear and unambiguous within the Anaxagorean realm of ubiquitous and everlasting principles,

 Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 731b. Peck aptly rendered ἡ δύναμις καὶ ὁ λόγος as ‘their dymanis and the logos’.  Certainly not ‘a kind of ratio and potentiality’ as in Aristotle On the Soul, Parva Naturalia, On Breath, tr. W.S. Hett, Loeb, n. 288, 1936 (repr. 1986), p. 137.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 157; 165; 172.  Thus, only certain principles unconceal themselves in each thing. See discussion of it on pp. 366; 796; 1353 4.  Cf. Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 27. Simplicius makes his own opinion plain in commPhys, p. 157: what Aristotle saw as ‘essence’, or τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, can be explained and understood in the context of Anaxagoras’ notion of a twofold cre ation, which I canvassed in chapter 4.  In this pivotal notion Simplicius saw the ‘definition’ of a thing. commPhys, p. 314: λόγον δὲ τοῦ τί ἦν εἶναι τὸν ὁρισμὸν εἶπεν. ὁ δὲ ὁρισμὸς τοῦ εἴδους δηλωτικός ἐστιν. Cf. Aristotle, Meta physica, 988a34. Alexander of Aphrodisias knew that Anaxagoras haunted Aristotle on this, too: commMetaph, pp. 61 2.

Aristotle

589

or logoi. This technical expression is only a mere echo of Anaxagoras’ thought, which was intolerable to Aristotle. Hence, he reported that Anaxagoras posited the Mind as being ‘simple, unmixed and pure’ (ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ τε καὶ καθαρόν),²⁷⁷ and then he appropriated this expression (and similar ones) as a statement of his own (καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής),²⁷⁸ while he acknowledged that Anaxagoras had anticipated the notion of potentiality but he had expressed it inarticulately.²⁷⁹ In the eleventh century, a man whose knowledge of the Chaldean thought was perhaps second only to that of such natives as Porphyry and Iamblichus, gave his own account: Michael Psellus²⁸⁰ reported that the Chaldeans were the actual source of the Middle-Platonic notion of the logoi being thoughts of God the Father, which became the paragon of the enterprise to establish harmony between the leading Greek philosophers. He advised his addressee²⁸¹ that the notion of ‘the unfathomable One’ was the Chaldean supreme ontological principle²⁸² and those which the Greeks called Ideas corresponded to three alternative Chaldean notions: One, they are the thoughts of the Father (ἰδέας δὲ νομίζουσι νῦν μὲν τὰς τοῦ πατρὸς ἐννοίας). Second, the Ideas identified as logoi, either natural, or psychic, or intelligible ones (νῦν δὲ τοὺς καθόλου λόγους, φυσικοὺς καὶ ψυχικοὺς καὶ νοητούς). Third, the Ideas were the elevated correspondents of the perceptible existence of things (νῦν δὲ τὰς ἐξῃρημένας τῶν ὄντων ὑπάρξεις), which was the orthodox Platonic doctrine positing the Ideas as archetypes. The tenor of Psellus’ comment is both sarcastic and contemptuous: Aristotle, Plato, the followers of Plotinus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, and Proclus, emulated most of these doctrines, and unthoughtfully embraced them as divine utterances (ὡς θείας φωνὰς ἀσυλλογίστως ταῦτα ἐδέξαντο).²⁸³

 Aristotle, De Anima, 405a18; 429a17; Metaphysica, 989b15; Physica, 256b25.  Aristotle, De Anima, 430a17 18.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b20 23.  Michael Psellus boasted, probably with good reason, that he had a very good command of the Chaldean wisdom, even though he declared that, sometimes, in the best interests of his au dience, he deliberately refrained from full exposition of it.  This section is entitled, ‘A brief general exposition of the Chaldean doctrines’ (ἔκθεσις κε φαλαιώδης καὶ σύντομος τῶν παρὰ Χαλδαίοις δογμάτων).  Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 148: ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀρρήτου κατ᾿ ἐκείνους ἑνὸς τίθεμαι καὶ αὐτὸς τὴν ἀρχήν.  Michael Psellus, loc. cit. & Theologica, 23a.

590

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

In this case, the second alternative loosely approximates Anaxagoras, as well as Origen.²⁸⁴ At any rate, Anaxagoras was reported as one of the Greeks that had visited Egypt, which might suggests that some information about Chaldean doctrines would have been retailed to him.²⁸⁵

Aristotle’s commentators Syrianus was surprised at Aristotle being unable to see how was it possible for immaterial numbers to produce material objects. He defends the Pythagorean tenet, arguing for the obvious, namely, that those philosophers do not treat only the question of the corporeal realm, but ‘they teach also about intelligible and psychic and natural orderly arrangements’ (ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ νοερῶν καὶ ψυχικῶν καὶ φυσικῶν διακόσμων ἀναδιδάσκουσιν). Subsequent to this broader consideration, the Pythagoreans ‘posit the world as being made from immaterial logoi, [that is] from anterior active causes’ (καὶ τὸν αἰσθητὸν κόσμον ἐκ τῶν ἀΰλων λόγων καὶ δραστικῶν καὶ πρεσβυτέρων αἰτίων ὑφιστᾶσιν). Of course, Syrianus was aware of the motive of this criticism, but he put it in terms of general reference out of gentleness to Aristotle: he refers to ‘those who do not make allowance for Nature to act by means of logoi, so that they should not make things twofold (ὅσοι δὲ οὐδὲ τῇ φύσει λόγους διδόασιν, ἵνα μὴ διπλᾶ ποιήσωσι τὰ πράγματα); they are those who cannot understand how is it possible for a certain [material] magnitude, which has weight, to be consisted of [things²⁸⁶] that have neither weight nor any magnitude whatsoever’ (οὗτοι θαυμάζουσι πῶς ἐξ ἀβαρῶν καὶ ἀμεγεθῶν βάρος ἀποτελεῖται καὶ μέγεθος).²⁸⁷

 See infra, p. 885 8; 908 9; 958; 1057, Origen’s concept of θεωρήματα meaning those making up ‘the decoration of the Body of the Logos’, which includes any object of intelligible cognition, as well as all kinds of generative, cohesive, and functional causes of the world.  See Appendix I.  Actually, principles. Cf. Anaxagoras’ χρήματα and σπέρματα.  Aristotle referred to the Pythagoreans only a short while after he had criticized Anaxagoras. This is a point suggesting that he realized the similarity of both schools having postulated im material logoi, and chose to represent Anaxagoras’ principles as material particles along with the Pythagorean numbers as both of them being untenable theories. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 178: ἀπορεῖ μὲν πρὸς τοὺς μὲν Πυθαγορείους, πῶς ἐξ ἀβαρῶν καὶ ἀμεγεθῶν, τῶν ἀριθμῶν, τὰ αἰσθητὰ συνίστασθαι σώματα. He comments on Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1080b6 ff. However, the text of the Metaphysics from 1080a12 ff is one of the most deficient ones: unless the received text is inaccurate, Aristotle appears confused about the nature of number in general, and his classification is arbitrary, incomplete, and wanting. In fairness to him, however, we should al

Aristotle

591

This is an important point made by the perceptive Syrianus, since it shows clearly that attribution of the notion of logoi to Aristotle by commentators²⁸⁸ of the sixth century, and later ones, was only a concoction: the theory of Anaxagoras was attributed to his most violent critic, namely Aristotle, only for the purpose of establishing the desired ‘harmony’ between all Greek philosophers. Syrianus (died c. 437) was head of the Academy after Plutarch of Athens, and he was also the teacher of Proclus and Hermias. Therefore, he lived a century before Simplicius, and the harmony that Hermias’ son Ammonius sought was not part of his agenda: rather, he cherished the form of Neoplatonism which originated with Iamblichus rather than Plotinus himself. He then opposes the argument of Aristotle while defending the Pythagoreans: it is certainly possible for immaterial logoi to give rise to matter, because the principles/logoi pertain also to ‘intelligible and psychic and natural orderly arrangements’ (ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ νοερῶν και ψυχικῶν καὶ φυσικῶν διακόσμων). He said so not having in mind Anaxagoras, since Aristotle had cared to engineer a wall between that philosopher and the Late Antiquity; besides, it is quite evident that Syrianus was not aware of Anaxagoras’ work, and relied on Aristotle’s fake ‘doxography’ about this.²⁸⁹ However, long before Syrianus, Porphyry had made clear that the causative relation between these logoi was an Anaxagorean notion, and long after Syrianus, Simplicius and Damascius made this clear, too.²⁹⁰ This discussion would go a very long way, but it is not necessary to pursue it further. Suffice it to provide a measure to assess Aristotle’s reliability as an exponent of Anaxagoras’ philosophy: he essayed to degrade this by means of a deliberately distorted exposition, and presented his readers with a caricature while he himself appropriated Anaxagoras’ fundamental theories in order to couch his views of the First Mover and of potentiality. Anaxagoras’ terminology about the Mind being posited as simple (ἁπλοῦς), unmixed (ἀμιγής), impassible (ἀπαθής), pure (καθαρός), and separate (χωριστός) was taken up by posterity to such a degree that later scholars came to treat this

ways bear in mind that the texts we have are only hardly organized class notes, which underwent a lot of mistreatment by Aristotle’s ancient editors and scribes. See supra, p. 76, note 195.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 75; see supra, p. 546.  Cf. Syrianus, commMetaph, pp. 71; 75; 78; 117.  Cf. Porphyry, Sententiae, 10. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34 5. Damascius, Princ, p. 243; cf. op. cit. pp. 228; 232 3; In Phaedonem (versio 1), 534; In Parmenidem, p. 195; In Philebum, 130 (re porting the views of Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus on this). Also, cf. Proclus, Institutio The ologica, 103; commTim, v. 2, pp. 26; 44; 150.

592

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

locution as Aristotelian²⁹¹ only because Aristotle was the first to take this up while belittling his predecessor. Alexander of Aphrodisias acknowledged the Anaxagorean originality only at points where Aristotle did so.²⁹² Nevertheless, whereas he treated the Mind in an entirely Anaxagorean spirit and terminology, he attributed all of his relevant accounts to Aristotle.²⁹³ The practice of Themistius was exactly the same, which was natural for him to do, since Aristotle had taught so first and Themistius relied on earlier commentators.²⁹⁴ Likewise, the characteristic terminology of Anaxagoras was put to use in order to expound other philosophies, while those who reported it cared little about accuracy, and less still so about making a fair attribution to the real father of it. Consequently, the Pythagorean Monad was termed Nous²⁹⁵ while Anaxagoras’ language was conveniently applied in order to render what allegedly ‘Socrates and Plato believed’ (Σωκράτης καὶ Πλάτων ἐδόξαζον).²⁹⁶ Later still, Ammonius of Alexandria did the same, describing the Mind as impassible, unmixed, and separate from any body, and treating the human mind likewise, while maintaining that all of this was the philosophy of Aristotle.²⁹⁷ Since Ammonius (434/ 45 ‒ 517/26) was a spiritual offspring of Proclus (c. 411 ‒ 485), it is scarcely strange that, in his texts, occasional Anaxagorean echoes are traced back to Proclus,  Aristotle acknowledged that this vocabulary was distinctly Anaxagorean: De Anima, 405a & 430a (νοῦς χωριστὸς ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής); 429a (νοῦς ἀμιγής); Metaphysica, 989b (νοῦς ἀμιγής, καθαρός, ἁπλοῦς); Physica, 256b (Mind is the First Mover, κινήσεως δ᾿ ἀρχή, mentioning Anax agoras’ νοῦν ἀπαθῆ ἀμιγῆ). Nevertheless, Aristotle used this terminology as if it were his own: De Anima, 430a (νοῦς χωριστὸς ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής).  Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 69.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 699; De Anima, p. 89: ὁ τοιοῦτος νοῦς τὸ πρῶτον αἴ τιον, ὃ αἰτία καὶ ἀρχὴ τοῦ εἶναι πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις, εἴη ἂν καὶ ταύτῃ ποιητικός, … καὶ ἔστιν ὁ τοιοῦ τος νοῦς χωριστός τε καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς ἄλλῳ … τοιοῦτον δὲ ὂν δέδεικται ὑπ᾿ ᾿Aριστοτέλους τὸ πρῶτον αἴτιον, ὃ καὶ κυρίως ἐστὶ νοῦς. Likewise, Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 109.  Themistius (acknowledging Anaxagoras), paraphrAnim, pp. 13; 14; 97; but then he attributes the philosophy of the Mind to Aristotle, although couching his account in Anaxagorean terms (νοῦς ἀμιγὴς καὶ ἁπλοῦς); op. cit. p. 98 (ὁ νοῦς χωριστός τε καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής); op. cit. p. 99 (ὁ νοῦς … χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής); op. cit. p. 106 (καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής, τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια).  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.7, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881E; then, Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.29b: Πυθαγόρας τῶν ἀρχῶν τὴν μονάδα θεὸν καὶ τὸ ἀγα θόν, ἥτις ἐστὶν ἡ τοῦ ἑνὸς φύσις, αὐτὸς ὁ νοῦς.  Eusebius, op. cit. 14.16.7, apud Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 881E; then, Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.29b. Plato’s Good is described thus: νοῦς οὖν ὁ θεὸς χωριστὸν εἶδος, τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι τὸ ἀμιγὲς πάσης ὕλης καὶ μηδενὶ παθητῷ συμπεπλεγμένον.  Ammonius of Alexandria, CommDeInterpr, p. 7: ὥσπερ ἀπαθῆ καὶ ἀμιγῆ καὶ χωριστὸν παν τὸς σώματος εἶναι. τοῦτον ἡμῶν τὸν νοῦν ἀποφαίνεται.

Aristotle

593

who applied an Anaxagorean language while claiming that he rendered Plato’s theology.²⁹⁸ There is no need to conduct this kind of research in Simplicius, since he is the one that revealed Aristotle’s distortions, although he was too polite to emphasize Aristotle’s appropriation of Anaxagorean ideas. Like Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius, John Philoponus and Asclepius of Tralles²⁹⁹ moved along exactly the same line: they acknowledged liabilities to Anaxagoras only at points where Aristotle himself did so,³⁰⁰ while remaining silent about this whenever they commented on points where Aristotle himself employed the Anaxagorean tenets and language tacitly (which they considereded as exposition of Aristotle’s own philosophy).³⁰¹ Nevertheless, Philoponus has the merit of pointing out that ‘Aristotle says the same things about the Mind as Anaxagoras’ (ὅθεν καὶ ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ αὐτὸς περὶ τοῦ νοῦ ἀποφαίνεται), since Aristotle declared that he was going to avail himself of his predecessors,³⁰² although actually he said this only with reference to his own doctrine of the soul. In the eleventh century, Michael Psellus employed the Anaxagorean language in his own exposition, arguing that, unlike the soul, the mind does not use the body as an instrument, because it is unmixed with everything.³⁰³ He did not fail to point out that Aristotle’s notion of First Mover is a debt to Anaxagoras, but he said so only because he came upon this acknowledgement by Aristotle himself.³⁰⁴ Nevertheless, he maintained that God should be identified not as Mind, but as One who is beyond the Mind, and somehow he sees the latter as a kind of Idea which grants substance to other Ideas.³⁰⁵

 Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 92: ὁ νοῦς ἄτρεπτος καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς πρὸς τὰ δεύτερα.  However, the general tendency of Asclepius of Tralles was to employ Aristotle’s criticism against Anaxagoras rather than his acknowledgement.  John Philoponus, commAnim, pp. 86; 91; 522; 540; commPhys p. 833.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 11.  Philoponus implies Aristotle, De Anima, 403b24: ὅπως τὰ μὲν καλῶς εἰρημένα λάβωμεν, εἰ δέ τι μὴ καλῶς, τοῦτ᾿ εὐλαβηθῶμεν.  Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 70: Ὁ νοῦς ἐν γενέσει ὢν πῶς γινώσκει τὰ ἄϋλα; ὅτε οὐ κέχρηται ὀργάνῳ τῷ σώματι, ἀλλὰ πάντων ἐστὶν ἀμιγής. Likewise, Theologica, 62: ὁ νοῦς … ἀμι γῶς ἔχει πρὸς τὸ ἀντίθετον.  Michael Psellus, commPhys, 8.20, having in mind Aristotle, Physica, 256b.  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 62: ὁ γὰρ θεὸς κυρίως μὲν ἕν, οὐ κυρίως δὲ νοῦς· ὁ γὰρ νοῦς εἰδῶν ἐστιν ὑποστάτης, εἶδος αὐτὸς τυγχάνων τὸ ἀμιγές, οὐ μὴν δὲ καὶ τῶν στερήσεων. εἰ δὲ νοῦς κυρίως ὁ θεός, αἱ στερήσεις πόθεν;

594

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

In the turn of the thirteenth to fourteenth century, Sophonias did not care to mention Anaxagoras’s philosophy. His references to him are mere quotations from Aristotle,³⁰⁶ and he had no inkling of the fact that the Anaxagorean accounts and terminology of Aristotle in reality were only a debts to Aristotle, although Sophonias thought that they were fathered by Aristotle.³⁰⁷ Later still, well into the fifteenth century and in polemical works, Gennadius Scholarius accused his opponent Plethon of ignorance of Aristotle, while being himself unsuspicious of the fact that the arguments he attributed to Aristotle in order to shun his opponent in reality were the Anaxagorean arsenal.³⁰⁸ Only later, when Gennadius read the commentary of Thomas Aquinas on Aristotle’s On the Soul, and came upon points at which Aristotle acknowledged some of his debts to Anaxagoras, did he learn about this philosopher and mentioned him following Aristotle’s references.³⁰⁹

The mind that comes from outside The soul in Anaxagoras does not contain all the logoi, nor does it have any analogy to a cosmic soul, which is a notion alien to his philosophy. This was a theory of Platonists essaying to maintain that everything a human being creates or knows is already in the soul (the cognizant agent); therefore, this is a ‘recollection’ (ἀνάμνησις) coming from the soul’s earlier abode in the higher realm. Man can know only because knowledge is already in his soul. However, to Anaxagoras, such recollection made no sense: the source of all functions of living beings is sundry concurrences of logoi, which give rise to life, and sustain it. ‘Soul’ sim-

 Sophonias, paraphrAnim, pp. 11; 12; 15; 17; 124; 133.  Cf. Sophonias, op. cit. p. 125: ὁ νοῦς ἀμιγής ἐστιν, ὡς εἴρηται, καὶ ἀπαθής. Likewise, op. cit. p. 134.  Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 33: νοῦς ἐστιν ὄντως ἀμιγής τε καὶ ἀπαθὴς παντὸς χρήματος, ὅσα πρόσεστι τοῖς δι᾿ αὐτοῦ τὴν ὕπαρξιν εἰληφόσι· καὶ οὐδέν ἐστιν ἄλλο, τῷ γε πράγματι, ἢ αὐτὸς ὁ πρῶτος καὶ ἀναίτιος νοῦς. Op. cit. p. 77: ᾿Aλλ᾿ ὁ Φιλόσοφος [i. e. Aristotle] ἐκείνως τε διαιρεῖ καὶ ἑκάτερον νοῦν χωριστόν τε εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ καὶ ἀπαθῆ λέγει. Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 2.59: τῷ ᾿Aριστοτέλῃ ἐρειδό μενος, ὅς φησι τὸν τοιοῦτον νοῦν χωριστὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ σώματι, καὶ ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀπαθῆ. Op. cit. 2.67: ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἐν τρίτῳ περὶ ψυχῆς δείκνυσι τὸν δυνάμει νοῦν ἀμιγῆ εἶναι σώματι. Op. cit. 2.68: Οὔτε τὸ ᾿Aριστοτελικὸν ἐκεῖνο προσίσταται, ὅτι ὁ νοῦς ἀπαθής ἐστι καὶ ἀμιγὴς καὶ χωριστός. Op. cit. 2.78: οὗτος ὁ ἐνεργείᾳ νοῦς χωριστός ἐστι καὶ ἀμιγής, καὶ ἀπαθής, καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ οὐσία.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.7; 3.10.

Aristotle

595

ply means ‘life’ produced by various active logoi,³¹⁰ and this life/soul obviously betokens a different function in each animate being, that is, in a plant, an animal, or in a human being. It is beyond my scope to treat this point in more detail, but I should note this: Philoponus argued that, according to Aristotle, cognizance is a property of the mind, not of the soul; but causing motion to animate beings is a function of the soul, not of the mind (νοῦ γὰρ ἰδίωμα τὸ γινώσκειν μόνον, οὐ κινεῖν), since the ability to move is one thing, whereas the faculty of cognizance is quite another. This is so, because motion stems from ‘appetite’ (τὸ ὀρεκτικόν), and it is involved with mere vital force, not with the higher intellectual activity.³¹¹ If a human being happens to be capable of superior mental functions, this happens only because there are certain additional logoi which make those functions possible. Knowledge (that is, logoi as objects of cognition) are not already there: instead, they are produced by means of these logoi interacting with each other. In other words, knowledge is produced by the individual mind which receives this ability from certain concurring logoi, and, ultimately, from the cosmic Mind. This is not exactly a corollary from the old principle ‘like is known by the like’: actually, the individual human mind is made capable (to a certain extent) of functioning like the universal Mind, so far as this is possible for man to attain. Therefore, the case is that like functions like the like, which is bestowed upon man by the cosmic Mind, since ‘the mind, both the greater and the lesser one, is the same’.³¹² A human being does not have all the logoi within its ‘soul’, since there is no such a self-subsisting thing, a quid, as ‘soul’ whatsoever: human capability to cognize means only existence and concurrence of certain logoi, and human intellect (cognition or human creativity) can obtain (even produce) some more logoi from the universal Mind. Therefore, the logoi come to a human being from without, and they become constitutive agents of its existence and operation, on account of likeness between the individual intellect and the universal Mind. Aristotle somehow grasped this focal Anaxagorean notion, which is why he spoke of ‘mind which comes from outside’ (ὁ θύραθεν νοῦς)’. What he really meant by this became one more point of controversy stemming from Aristotle’s notorious obscurity, but some commentators agreed on this: whereas a human being has a ‘potential mind’

 See discussion in chapter 13, pp. 1343 8.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 572 (commenting on Aristotle, De Anima, 432a15 17): ᾿Aριστοτέλει δὲ δοκεῖ τὸ κινοῦν κατὰ τόπον μὴ εἶναι γνωστικὸν ἰδίωμα, ἀλλὰ ζωτικόν· βούλεται γὰρ τὸ ὀρεκτικὸν εἶναι τὸ κινοῦν· οἰκεῖον γὰρ λέγει τὸ κινοῦν μᾶλλον ζωῇ ἤπερ γνώσει.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157: νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων.

596

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

by natural construction (from its ‘seed’ or ‘nature’), the mind which comes from outside is that which makes man assume the capacities of a reflecting intellect. Philoponus remarked that Plutarch and Alexander of Aphrodisias had diametrical views concerning this notion, while they attributed to ‘mind’ three different imports.³¹³ He adds that Ammonius of Alexandria reprimanded them both (ἀμφοτέρους ἐκάκισεν) as having perpetrated the same mistake despite their views being opposite (ἀμφότεροι ἥμαρτον καὶ ἰδίαν καὶ κοινὴν ἁμαρτίαν). Ammonius dismissed their common interpretation of θύραθεν νοῦς as denoting God. Instead, he opted for a Platonic explanation of his own: the ‘mind in us can know everything out of its own’. This is a proposition in which he simply substituted ‘mind’ for the Platonic ‘soul’. The difference was plain: the mind is only part (μόριον) of the soul, therefore, it cannot come from outside.³¹⁴ But this was also what Chrysippus believed, if on different grounds: ‘rationality’ is not the same thing as ‘soul’: instead, rationality is only one of the parts of the soul (and Chrysippus called those ‘parts’ μόρια, too).³¹⁵ Aristotle himself said that ‘this mind alone is the divine one’.³¹⁶ Nevertheless, those commentators who were diligent enough as to pay attention to his account noticed that this mind is ‘separate (χωριστός)’³¹⁷ ‘unmixed (ἀμιγής)’,³¹⁸ and ‘simple (ἁπλοῦς).³¹⁹  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 518. Plurtarch argued that the Aristotelian ‘mind’ is either (1) καθ᾿ ἕξιν (as it happens in children), or (2) καθ᾿ ἕξιν ἅμα καὶ ἐνέργειαν (the mind of ‘perfect men’ which involves rational activity), or (3) the mind which exists only in actuality, it comes from without, and it is the perfect one (ὁ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν μόνως νοῦς, οἷος ἐστὶν ὁ θύραθεν νοῦς ὁ τέλειος). In contrast, Alexander classified the Aristotelian ‘mind’ differently: (1) the po tential mind (of children) (τὸν δυνάμει νοῦν); (2) the well established mind of mature men out of trained habit (ὁ καθ’ ἕξιν νοῦς); (3) the actual mind, ‘which comes from outside, the all too per fect one (ὁ θύραθεν, ὁ παντέλειος), which is neither potential nor is it owing to trained habit’; indeed, this is ‘the simple one, which is always sheer actuality and governs the entire universe (ἵνα καὶ ἁπλοῦς ᾖ ἀεὶ ἐνεργείᾳ ὤν, ὁ κυβερνῶν τὸ πᾶν)’. In short, Alexander identified Aristotle’s ‘mind which comes from outside’ with the Universal Mind, and adumbrated it in characteristic Anaxagorean terms.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 519: ἀρχόμενος γοῦν φησι περὶ τοῦ μορίου τῆς ψυχῆς ᾧ νοεῖ καὶ γινώσκει· εἰ οὖν περὶ νοῦ λέγει νῦν τοῦ ὄντος μορίου τῆς ψυχῆς, πῶς οὗτος τὸν θύραθεν ση μαίνει νοῦν; ὁ γὰρ θύραθεν οὐκ ἔστι μέρος τῆς ψυχῆς.  Chrysippus (in his treatise On the Logos), SVF, II.228, fr. 841, apud Galen, De Placitis Hippo cratis et Platonis, 5.3.3: οὐ γὰρ δήπου ταὐτόν ἐστι ψυχὴ καὶ λόγος· ἄλλως τε καὶ διὰ τῆς προγε γραμμένης ῥήσεως ἐνεδείξω τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ συνισταμένων ὡς ἕν τι καὶ ὁ λόγος ἐστίν. οὐ ταὐτὸν δὲ ψυχή ἐστι καὶ τὸ ἐν αὐτῇ συνιστάμενον.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 736b26 27: λείπεται δὴ τὸν νοῦν μόνον θύραθεν ἐπει σιέναι καὶ θεῖον εἶναι μόνον. Cf. op. cit. 744b; De Respiratione, 472a.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima, p. 90: καὶ ἔστιν οὗτος ὁ νοῦς ὁ θύραθέν τε ἐν ἡμῖν γινόμενος καὶ ἄφθαρτος. … ὅτι χωριστός τε ἐν ἡμῖν καὶ ἄφθαρτος νοῦς, ὃν καὶ θύραθεν ᾿Aριστο τέλης λέγει, νοῦς ὁ ἔξωθεν γινόμενος ἐν ἡμῖν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ἡ δύναμις τῆς ἐν ἡμῖν ψυχῆς, οὐδὲ ἡ ἕξις.

Aristotle

597

In short, they adumbrated it in the Anaxagorean terms which are proper to the Mind.³²⁰ A learned Anaxagorean as he was, Origen saw the concept of ‘mind from outside’ as meaning no other than ‘the sole part of’ a human being which ‘is immortal and this alone will survive after death’, and clearly implies that he is at one with the Greeks who shared the same belief on this.³²¹ Gregory of Nazianzus rightly used the ‘mind from outside’ (θύραθεν νοῦν) as a name exchangeable with ‘Mind of the universe’ (νοῦν τοῦ παντός).³²² He did so while considering pagan and Christian views of the Holy Spirit, and noted that some pagans identified this with the universal Mind. Only one author commented on this exposition of Gregory: he was Michael Psellus, who considered how pagan theologians saw a universal function which was analogous to that which Christianity saw in that of the Holy Spirit. His statement is interesting, especially at the point where it is plain wrong: he claims that ‘Plato was the first who introduced the Mind of the Universe’ (τὸν γοῦν τοῦ παντὸς νοῦν αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ πρῶτος εἰσηγησάμενος), even though Plato himself acknowledged that the first who did so was Anaxagoras, but presumably Psellus had in mind the phrase in the Philebus, 30d8. Then Psellus identifies this universal Mind with the ‘mind from the outside’, noting that Socrates ‘said a few things about it’, by which Psellus meant the ‘daemon’

Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 108: θύραθέν ἐστι λεγόμενος νοῦς ὁ ποιητικός, οὐκ ὢν μόριον καὶ δύναμίς τις τῆς ἡμετέρας ψυχῆς, ἀλλ᾿ ἔξωθεν γινόμενος ἐν ἡμῖν … χωριστὸς δέ ἐστιν ἡμῶν τοιοῦτος ὢν εἰκότως. Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 52: Χωριστὸς δὲ λέγεται ὁ θύραθεν νοῦς. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.48.8: καὶ χωριστὸν καὶ θύραθεν ἐπικαλούμενον ἕτερον παραγίγνεσθαι λέγουσιν ὀψιαίτατα.  Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 13: οὕτω γάρ που καὶ ὑλικὸς νοῦς λέ γεται καίπερ ὢν ἀμιγὴς σωματικὴ ὕλη, ὅτι τοῦ θύραθεν καὶ ἐπαναβεβηκότος νοῦ ἐν χρείᾳ τῆς οἰκείας ἐνεργείας ὡς ὕλη ἐτύγχανεν.  Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 110. Alexander of Aphrodi sias, apud John Philoponus, p. 518: ὁ ἐνεργείᾳ νοῦς, ὅ ἐστιν ὁ θύραθεν, ὁ παντέλειος, ὁ μὴ ὢν καθ᾿ ἕξιν ἢ κατὰ τὸ δυνάμει, ἵνα καὶ ἁπλοῦς ᾖ ἀεὶ ἐνεργείᾳ ὤν, ὁ κυβερνῶν τὸ πᾶν.  John Philoponus, commGenAnim, p. 84; commAnim, p. 163. Alexander of Aphrodisias, apud John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 535: ᾿Aλέξανδρος μὲν γὰρ ἐνεργείᾳ νοῦν ἐκάλεσε τὴν μίαν τῶν πάντων ἀρχὴν ἤτοι τὸν θύραθεν νοῦν. Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 37. John Laurentius Lydus, De Mensibus, 2.8.  Origen, Contra Celsum, III.80: Τάχα δὲ καὶ οἱ πεισθέντες περὶ τοῦ θύραθεν νοῦ ὡς ἀθανάτου καὶ μόνου διεξαγωγὴν ἕξοντος. This is one more point showing Origen having read Alexander of Aphrodisias and having been influenced by those writings.  Gregory of Nazianzus, De Spiritu Sancto, 5. Following Origen, and ultimately, Alexander of Aphrodisias, without being aware of this.

598

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

who spoke to Socrates.³²³ It is important that he mentions not only Plato and Socrates, but also he reports that ‘Plotinus admitted this Mind, and Iamblichus made use of this at many points of his writings’.³²⁴ A couple of other Christians also saw the universal Mind as the ‘mind from outside’, ‘who alone is immortal’.³²⁵ Little wonder then that doxographic testimony attributed to Anaxagoras the idea that the mind comes into a human being from outside,³²⁶ even though Theodoret made the same reference mentioning only the names of Pythagoras and Plato, while forgetting the rest of the others.³²⁷ But this was the normal case with Late Antiquity: authors used to take up Anaxagoras’ ideas and attribute them to those stars of Greek philosophy that availed themselves of Anaxagoras’ original breakthroughs. This was the common fate of both this philosopher and Origen, after all: both of them initiated inspired concepts, which became the spoils in the hands of those who anathematized them as heretics that allegedly dissented from the religious orthodoxy of their day.

The idea of potentiality Normally, the vocabulary of Anaxagoras³²⁸ attested by Simplicius is misread, and modern scholars engage in speculation rather than circumspection concerning context. To this purpose, it would have been simple to read Simplicius’ text in

 Plato, Euthyphro, 3b; Apologia Socratis, 31d; Theaetetus, 151a; Phaedrus, 242b; Euthydemus, 272e; Respublica, 496c. Cf. ‘the Mind of the universe’, Philebus, 30d8.  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 106: καὶ Πλωτῖνος δὲ ὁ φιλόσοφος τοῦτον δὴ τὸν θύραθεν ὑπεδέχετο νοῦν. ἀλλὰ καὶ Ἰάμβλιχος τῷ θείῳ τούτῳ νῷ ἐς τὰ πολλὰ χρώμενος συνεγράψατο. Cf. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, pp. 23; 66.  Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, 1.1. Aeneas of Gaza, Theophrastus, p. 7: ᾿Aριστοτέλης … τὸν θύραθεν νοῦν, οὕτω γὰρ ὀνομάζει, μόνον ἀθάνατον εἶναι, καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἔξωθεν. Photius, Epistulae et Amphilochia, 315.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.48.7: Πυθαγόρας, ᾿Aναξαγόρας, Πλάτων, Ξενοκράτης, Κλεάνθης θύραθεν εἰσκρίνεσθαι τὸν νοῦν. In this reference, it is plain that Pythagoras and Anaxagoras were the predecessors, and the rest of those who are mentioned followed. But since Pythagoras posited the soul (not the mind) as the vital agent of human being, it follows that the notion should be ascribed to Anaxagoras.  Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 5.28: Ἄντικρυς δὲ τούτων ἐναντία τὰ Πυθαγόρᾳ καὶ Πλάτωνι δόξαντα· θείαν γὰρ δὴ μοῖραν τὸν νοῦν ἔφασαν εἶναι. … Καὶ οἱ περὶ Πλάτωνα δὲ καὶ Πυθαγόραν θύραθεν τοῦτον εἰσκρίνεσθαι λέγουσιν.  Against Simplicius’ extensive quotations, we have only a few words of Anaxagoras himself quoted by Athenaeus, Sextus Empiricus, Plutarch, and by two anonymous scholiasts on Homer and Gregory of Nazianzus.

Aristotle

599

accordance with how he himself used Greek terms. The method was described by the Greeks who essayed to understand the language of Homer: specific points of his nomenclature must be interpreted by examining how Homer used the same words at other points of his epic poems, which is what Porphyry proposed: “Homer must be construed by means of how Homer explains himself.”³²⁹ Galen put it in the clearest terms possible: the authors of old expounded their theories without providing any strict definitions of terminology in advance. If clarification of a specific term is necessary, one should study how this is used at other points of the work of the same author: it is only then that the meaning of this term arises in clarity. This is the way to interpret Homer, and this was the norm for subsequent grammarians to compose glossaries of Homer’s vocabulary.³³⁰ Simplicius explained that the order brought about by the Anaxagorean Mind was twofold. First, the intelligible one, where all things were together, and each and every one of them was all the others (καὶ ἕκαστον πάντα ἦν τὰ ἄλλα). Secondly, the perceptible reality of distinct things, which was produced ‘from that union’ (τὴν δὲ αἰσθητὴν καὶ διακεκριμένην ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνης τῆς ἑνώσεως); its creator was the Creative Mind (ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργικοῦ νοῦ), who also sprang himself from that intelligible union (ὃν καὶ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ νοητοῦ προελθόντα διακοσμῆσαι πάντα).³³¹ At the same time, how the principles exist should be understood in a threefold sense: one, the state before the Mind set out to reflect and bring about distinction out of his own will; two, the state of the principles existing intelligibly (that is, as incorporeal ones), being both distinct and united, each one having its own identity and assigned function; three, the state of the principles being involved in generation, maintenance, and dissolution of perceptible things. My present point is considering how the perceptible creation is related to its generative causes, namely, to the intelligible order comprising united as well as distinct principles. In order to adumbrate this, Simplicius uses a very careful and nuanced vocabulary: the intelligible creation (νοητὴν ἐνδείκνυταί τινα διακό-

 ᾿Aξιῶν δὲ ἐγὼ Ὁμηρον ἐξ Ὀμήρου σαφηνίζειν αὐτὸν ἐξηγούμενον ἑαυτόν. Porphyry, Zete mata Codicis Vaticani, p. 297; Quaestionum Homericarum (recensio V), 56; Quaestionum Homer icarum, (recensio C), 56.  Galen, De Differentia Pulsuum, p. 715: αὐτοὶ μὲν γὰρ οἱ παλαιοὶ χωρὶς ὅρων ἐποιοῦντο τὰς διδασκαλίας, ἐνδεικνύμενοι τὰ σημαινόμενα τῶν ὀνομάτων ὧν ἔλεγον αὐτῇ τῇ κατὰ τὴν ἑρμη νείαν ἰδέᾳ, καθ᾿ ἣν δηλονότι καὶ τὰς παρ᾿ Ὁμήρῳ λέξεις ἅπασί τε τοῖς ἄλλοις παλαιοῖς οἱ γραμ ματικοὶ σαφηνίζουσι.  Simplicius, commCael, pp. 608 9. The same text of Anaxagoras, also in the commPhys, pp. 35; 156; 157.

600

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

σμησιν πρὸ ταύτης τῆς αἰσθητῆς) preceded and anticipated the present perceptible one in seminal mode: the Mind knew and knows in advance what the causes it (or, he) created, subsequent to their own creation, were themselves capable of creating everything. Therefore, those principles were only the causes/logoi: “The prior intelligible creation anticipated the perceptible one causally and spermatically” (κατ᾿ αἰτίαν καὶ σπερματικῶς ταύτην προειληφυῖαν).³³² These causes were neither ‘qualities’, nor ‘latencies’: they were the logoi, namely, the logoi that Origen made a main theme of his own philosophy, seeing them as the object of creation, and Porphyry described them as the way to creation, as Proclus put it. In reference to these principles, Simplicius takes no chance with this subtle idea and he is quick to quote from Anaxagoras’ own words: whereas they were all together and then distinguished, ‘the Mind knew both [the principles] that concurred and those which were disjointed from each other. He also knew what they were and what they were going to be’ (καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν).³³³ This is an omniscient Mind who created the causes, laws, and principles of all kinds, and knew in advance what and how subsequent things were going to be,³³⁴ but the Mind did not preform the evolution of things and events in advance: it only supplied the realm of potentialities, indeed the causes, which would act ceaselessly in order to form a universe, according to an evolutionary and dynamic theory. Preformationism would mean a prefixed ‘plan’, which in turn would involve a fixed inexorable determinism destined to unfold over time. But there is no such idea in Anaxagoras, and this was exactly the theory of the Anaxagorean Origen: God is omniscient, yet He does not coerce human freedom.³³⁵ This is all about creating the setting and laws for the universe to appear and function, as well as about knowledge, indeed foreknowledge, not any sort of determinism. However, there is more to it: if there is knowledge, the object

 See discussion of this, infra, pp. 601 6; 1070; 1392.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156; 165; 174; 177.  Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 156: καὶ γνώμην γε περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἴσχει καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον, καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ μείζω καὶ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ.  Origen, Fragmenta ex Commentariis in Genesim, PG.12.64.16 24: ἐπιβάλλων ὁ Θεὸς τῇ ἀρχῇ τῆς κοσμοποιίας, οὐδενὸς ἀναιτίως γινομένου, ἐπιπορεύεται τῷ νῷ ἕκαστον τῶν ἐσομένων, ὁρῶν, ὅτι, ἐπεὶ τόδε γέγονε, τόδε ἕπεται· ἐὰν δὲ γένηται τόδε τὸ ἑπόμενον, τόδε ἀκολουθεῖ, οὗ ὑποστάντος, τόδε ἔσται· καὶ οὕτω μέχρι τέλους τῶν πραγμάτων ἐπιπορευθείς, οἶδεν ἃ ἔσται, οὐ πάντως ἑκάστῳ τῶν γινωσκομένων αἴτιος τοῦ αὐτὸ συμβῆναι τυγχάνων. Notice the similarity of vocabulary of Anaxagoras: ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι. Origen: ἕκαστον τῶν ἐσομένων. Anaxagoras: καὶ γνώμην γε περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἴσχει. Origen: οἶδεν ἃ ἔσται.

Aristotle

601

of it should have been also somehow there. This object of knowledge is the potentialities of all beings that would come to pass in due course. The crucial terms that Simplicius uses derive from the verb προλαμβάνω, which, in this context, means ‘anticipate’ or ‘grasp in advance’. He says that the perceptible creation was anticipated (προειληφυῖαν) by the intelligible one in a way which is causal and spermatic (κατ᾿ αἰτίαν καὶ σπερματικῶς). Then, he makes one more extensive quotation from Anaxagoras explaining that which ‘one should assume’ (χρὴ δοκεῖν) to be the content of ‘all the concurring’ principles (ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς συγκρινομένοις): these are ‘seeds of all things (σπέρματα πάντων χρημάτων) of all kinds of existence (καὶ ἰδέας παντοίας ἔχοντα),³³⁶ and all kinds of tendencies and appearances (καὶ ἡδονάς καὶ χροιάς)’.³³⁷ When Anaxagoras goes on with saying that this multitude contained also ‘humans and all kinds of animate things, and towns, and a sun and a moon’ and the rest of things, Simplicius explains that the philosopher meant that all of them existed as potentialities (προειλημμένα) ‘spermatically’ (σπερματικῶς) being ordered in different kinds of character (κατ᾿ ἰδέας).³³⁸ Simplicius used various forms of the verb προλαμβάνω (προειλημμένα, προειληφυῖαν, προείληπται), in order to explain that all of the different species and kinds of existence (whether animate or inanimate or natural phenomena) were created in the Mind as potentialities; it was by virtue of this engendered potentiality that everything was both known to the Mind and going to come to pass. In other words, ‘distinction’ of the principles by the Mind means that the primeval confusum became a set of principles which was ordered, that is, rational. This is why Simplicius explained that, in Anaxagoras, the proposition ‘everything becomes from everything’ should not be un Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 609; commPhys, pp. 35; 156; 157. Cf. ἰδέα, mean ing ‘kind’, ‘sort’, ‘class’, ‘kind of existence’. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.11.2 (quoting Hermes Tris megistus on creation of material things): Τὸ σπέρμα οὖν τῆς γενέσεως λαμβάνουσα γέγονε καὶ τρεπτὴ ἐγένετο καὶ ἰδέας ἔσχε μορφοποιουμένη· ἐφέστηκε γὰρ αὐτῇ τρεπομένῃ ἡ τεχνιτεύουσα τὰς τῆς τροπῆς ἰδέας. ᾿Aγενησία οὖν τῆς ὕλης ἀμορφία ἦν, ἡ δὲ γένεσις τὸ ἐνεργεῖσθαι. Meaning ‘countenance’, Chronicon Paschale, p. 299: τὴν ἰδέαν ὡραῖος.  Cf. Aristotle following Anaxagoras’ usage of ἡδονὴ along with χροιά. Poetica, p. 1448b: οὐχ ᾗ μίμημα ποιήσει τὴν ἡδονὴν ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν ἀπεργασίαν ἢ τὴν χροιάν. Also, Diogenes of Apollo nia, Fragmenta, fr. 5: πολλαὶ ἑτεροιώσεις ἔνεισι καὶ ἡδονῆς καὶ χροιῆς ἄπειροι, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 153.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 609 (quoting Anaxagoras). The expression κατ᾿ ἰδέας (in plural) is exclusive to Simplicius alone using it at one more point, and its meaning (‘different forms of existence’) is made clear from the second instance referring to Porphyry ‘who spoke of the one and the monad and the mathematical point, not in the sense of them being different forms of existence, but in the sense of them being grasped either empirically or intellectually’ (τοῦ τε ἑνὸς καὶ τῆς μονάδος καὶ τῆς στιγμῆς, οὐ τῶν κατ᾿ ἰδέας λεγομένων, ἀλλὰ τῶν κατ᾿ αἴσθησιν ἢ διάνοιαν ἐναργῶν). commCateg, p. 154.

602

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

derstood in the preposterous way Aristotle represented it as meaning a blind universal possibility of everything commingling with anything else: for it is not possible to produce a line from white colour, from which only black or grey colour can be brought forth; nor is it possible to say that ‘soul’ can be mixed with ‘science’.³³⁹ Now, as it happened with the explanation of Homer,³⁴⁰ Simplicius’ use of the verb προλαμβάνω must be construed by means of the writings by the same author. Explaining Porphyry, as well as himself, Simplicius uses the participle προειλημμένα in order to suggest the different kinds of categories Aristotle perused: first, those which can be grasped by means of man’s innate conceptions (κατὰ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας, which is more or less another name for Descartes’ ideae innatae), adding that Aristotle expounded abstruse categories in order to analyze them subsequently in more detail.³⁴¹ A category (say, space) obviously cannot to be identified with any particular occurrence in space; nevertheless, space proper is a prerequisite making it possible to grasp what happens and is going to happen in space. The human capacity to grasp what space is (or, is thought to be) does not mean that anything that happens in space is ‘preformed’ in the human mind only because it has an ingrained (προειλημμένον) grasp of space. By the same token, the soul has the capacity to transform the images it creates within itself into action; however, this does not mean that anything that a soul produces (either mentally or in real deed) pre-exists within it and awaits its particular manifestation. The soul has in itself the embedded (προειλημμένον) capacity to create or transform the external world (or one’s own self).³⁴² Better still is the example of human senses which serve the cognitive part of the soul: man has within his soul, as προειλημμένον, the inbuilt capacity to use a certain sense, say, sight: this is only a logos which can make it possible for the soul to discern what is, say, white. However, this does not mean that there is any prefiguration of all the white things that a soul is going to see throughout a lifetime. It is not a white thing that acts upon the soul, as a seal does upon wax, but the other way around: a προειλημμένη capacity of the soul (the  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 175, considering the views of Eudemus of Rhodes, which eventu ally turn in favour of Anaxagoras’ real thought once Simplicius pointed out the rationality and intrinsic cohenrence of that philosophy.  See supra, pp. 598 9.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 379: ὅσα μὲν οὐκ ἦν κατὰ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας προειλημμένα [= grasped in advance by means of common sense] ταῦτα ἐν ἀρχῇ προὔλαβεν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης καὶ διήρθρωσεν, … ὅσα δὲ ἦν μὲν ἐν ταῖς κοιναῖς ἐννοίαις προειλημμένα. …  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 13: οὕτως οὖν τὰ ἡνωμένως ἐν τῷ νῷ προειλημμένα ἐμέρισεν ἡ ψυχή. commAnim, p. 86: ἀμέριστον γὰρ ἅπαν εἶδος· ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ λόγος τις περὶ τὸ εἶδος τὸ ζωτικόν, ἀνε λίττων τὸ ἡνωμένως προειλημμένον ἐν τῷ εἴδει πλῆθος.

Aristotle

603

logos that allows recognizing what is white) acts upon the thing which is subsequently identified as a white one: therefore, this logos is ‘activity and judgment’ (καὶ ἐνέργειά ἐστι κρίσις οὖσα) acting upon a certain perceptible thing (ἐν τῷ νῦν ἅμα ὅλη ἑστῶσα κατὰ τὸ εἶδος τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ).³⁴³ Accordingly, Simplicius explains that Aristotle himself entertained the idea of Anaxagoras: if there is a supreme Mind (πρῶτον νοῦν) which is both ‘the cause of everything’ (αἴτιον ἐκεῖνο πάντων) and ‘prior to everything’ (πρὸ πάντων), ‘it is quite evident that, in this [Mind], everything is present in advance (δῆλον ὅτι προείληπται ἐν αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα), as knowledge and potentiality, and it is contained therein in absolute unity (κατὰ μίαν ἕνωσιν περιεχόμενα τὴν τοῦ ἑνὸς ὄντος). Because of this unity everything becomes individually what it is by virtue of the fundamental indivisible distinction (δι᾿ ἣν ἀμερίστως διακριθέντα ἕκαστον τὰ πάντα ἐστί). The expression ‘having been distinguished indivisibly’ (ἀμερίστως διακριθέντα) suggests that, although actual things appear as distinct and individual ones, the unity of the causes which proceed from the Mind is always there. This is why Simplicius goes on with paraphrasing Aristotle’s idea about a ‘double order’ (in the general and in his troops), of which the order in the general’s mind is superior and prior to the order of the troops.³⁴⁴ This, at least, Aristotle got right, if partially: he maintained that the idea of potentiality was present not only in Anaxagoras, but also in Empedocles, Anaximander, and Democritus, even though he imposed on all of them his own notion of this potentiality being nothing different than formless matter. With respect to Anaxagoras, he understood the proposition ‘all things were together’ as meaning ‘all things were together potentially, but not actually’.³⁴⁵ For his part, Simplicius arguably added Parmenides to those philosophers, and, once again, he argued for this by using the present perfect προείληπται,³⁴⁶ which re-

 Simplicius, commAnim, p. 126: οὐκ ἔξωθεν ἐντιθέμενον ὡς ἡ σφραγὶς ἐν τῷ κηρῷ … ἀλλ᾿ ἔνδοθεν προβαλλόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ προειλημμένου τῶν αἰσθητῶν λόγου … καὶ ἀμε ρίστως ἐνεργῇ καὶ γνωστικὴ ᾖ τῶν αἰσθητῶν … τῷ γὰρ ἑνὶ τοῦ λευκοῦ λόγῳ τῶν κατὰ μέρος πάντων λευκῶν αἰσθανομένης τῆς ψυχῆς … ὁμοιοῦται τοίνυν τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς ἡ ψυχὴ οὐ τῷ δέχεσθαί τι ἀπ᾿ αὐτῶν, ἀλλὰ τῷ κατὰ τὸν οἰκεῖον αὐτοῖς λόγον ἐνεργεῖν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 88, ref. to Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075a11 15.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b18 23: ὥστε οὐ μόνον κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς ἐνδέχεται γίγνεσθαι ἐκ μὴ ὄντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐξ ὄντος γίγνεται πάντα, δυνάμει μέντοι ὄντος, ἐκ μὴ ὄντος δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ. καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι τὸ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἕν· βέλτιον γὰρ ἢ ὁμοῦ πάντα καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους τὸ μῖγμα καὶ ᾿Aνα ξιμάνδρου, καὶ ὡς Δημόκριτος φησίν, ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα δυνάμει, ἐνεργείᾳ δ᾿ οὔ· ὥστε τῆς ὕλης ἂν εἶεν ἡμμένοι.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 144: λείπεται οὖν τὸ νοητὸν πάντων αἴτιον, δι᾿ ὃ καὶ ὁ νοῦς ἐστι καὶ τὸ νοεῖν, ἐν ᾧ πάντα κατὰ μίαν ἕνωσιν συνῃρημένως προείληπται καὶ ἡνωμένως, τοῦτο εἶναι τὸ Παρμενίδειον ἓν ὄν, ἐν ᾧ μία φύσις καὶ τοῦ ἑνὸς καὶ ὄντος ἐστί. Likewise, op. cit. p. 147: δῆλον

604

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

mained always the verb he used in order to denote the primal making of all potentialities.³⁴⁷ Were it for Aristotle to be believed, this is one more case of Presocratics sharing common ideas. However, there is something which is characteristic of Anaxagoras, since he was the only Presocratic who expressed his idea by means of the notion of primal ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα). The idea of an original creation which is able to generate potentialities was taken up by posterior authors, and almost all of them expressed this by means of the notion of ‘seeds’ which were created once God ‘premeditated’ things and gave rise to the possibility of potential existence. The Gnostic system of Basilides posited creation out of a ‘seed’ that God created ex nihilo: it contained a ‘seed-aggregate’ (πανσπερμία), in which everything was ‘premeditated’ (προβεβουλευμένα) by God and existed potentially, in like a manner the seed of a peacock contains the rich variety of colours of its feathers.³⁴⁸ Whereas Simplicius spoke of those potentialities as προειλημμένα, now they are styled προβεβουλευμένα.³⁴⁹ Numenius expressed the same idea in even more characteristic terms, speaking not only of ‘seeds’ but also of χρήματα (the characteristic term of Anaxagoras). Those which previously were styled προειλημμένα and προβεβουλευμένα, now they are designated προκαταβεβλημένα (‘seeds sown in advance’).³⁵⁰ Then came Gregory of Nyssa, who followed faithfully Anaxagoras’ evolutionary conception of cosmogony,³⁵¹ which no doubt he took up from Origen,³⁵² and

δὲ ὅτι ὅσα ὑπάρχειν ἐκείνῳ λέγεται ἡνωμένως μὲν ἐν αὐτῷ προείληπται, διακεκριμένως δὲ καὶ ὡς κατὰ τὸν λόγον ἐμφαίνεται ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ μετ᾿ αὐτὸ προελήλυθε. καὶ δοκεῖ μὲν ὡς πρῶτον αἴτιον ὑπὸ τοῦ Παρμενίδου παραδίδοσθαι, εἴπερ ἕν ἐστι ὁμοῦ τὸ πᾶν καὶ πεῖρας πύματον.  Simplicius, commEpict, p. 100: αἴτιον τῶν πολλῶν ὑπάρχον, προείληφεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὰ πολλὰ κατὰ μίαν ἕνωσιν, πάντα ὂν πρὸ πάντων, αἰτία αἰτιῶν ὑπάρχον, καὶ ἀρχὴ ἀρχῶν, καὶ θεὸς θεῶν, ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πάντων αὐτοφυῶς ἀνευφημεῖται.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 7.21.2 5: ἀλλὰ γὰρ σπέρμα κόσμου. τὸ δὲ σπέρμα τοῦ κόσμου πάντα εἶχεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ. … καὶ ὑποστήσας σπέρμα τι ἕν, ἔχον πᾶσαν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν τοῦ κόσμου πανσπερμίαν. Op. cit. 7.224: πᾶς γὰρ ὁ κόσμος λαμβάνει τὰς ἀρχὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ σπέρματος ἐκείνου καὶ φωτίζεται.  Hippolytus, op. cit. 7.22.6; likewise, 7.23.6: ταῦτα δὲ ἦν πάντα προβεβουλευμένος ὁ οὐκ ὢν θεός, ὅτε τὴν πανσπερμίαν κατεβάλε. Op. cit. 10.14.1 2: καὶ τοῦτο εἶναι φησὶ τὸ τοῦ κόσμου σπέρ μα, ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα γέγονεν· εἶχεν γὰρ ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὰ πάντα τεθησαυρισμένα καὶ κατακείμενα οἷον οὐκ ὄντα, ὑπὸ τοῦ οὐκ ὄντος θεοῦ γενέσθαι προβεβουλευμένα.  Numenius, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.18.14: Ὁ μέν γε ὢν σπέρμα πάσης ψυχῆς σπείρει εἰς τὰ μεταλαγχάνοντα αὐτοῦ χρήματα σύμπαντα· ὁ νομοθέτης δὲ φυτεύει καὶ δι ανέμει καὶ μεταφυτεύει εἰς ἡμᾶς ἑκάστους τὰ ἐκεῖθεν προκαταβεβλημένα.  Gregory of Nyssa, In Christi Resurrectionem (oratio i), p. 286; Apologia in Hexaemeron, pp. 72; 113; 132; 204. See infra, p. 860, note 157; pp. 896 9.

Aristotle

605

used the same term, namely, προκαταβεβλημένα: God created all the causes of the universe all at once (ἐν ἀκαρεῖ, or ἀθρόως), whereas the individual emergence of each thing and phenomenon would occur in due course of time, according to the laws of nature, since ‘temporal order and sequence’ (τὰ χρονικὰ διαστήματα) was part of the divine creative act, too.³⁵³ The Plural (whether προειλημμένα, or προβεβουλευμένα, or προκαταβεβλημένα) should not deter us: for the state upon distinction (i. e. creation) of the principles is oneness as much as is it manyness. This is why Philoponus correctly observed that this is the condition of ‘one vast homoiomery which contains everything in itself’, as much as is it many ones being present in different combination in each and every being or phenomenon,³⁵⁴ and ‘God implanted the spermatic logoi of future things into the elements right from the beginning’.³⁵⁵ Likewise, an anonymous scientist remarked that ‘the creative and spermatic logoi of things’ are prior to things themselves, but this is so only in the sense genera (as universals) are prior to the multitude of individual things contained in genera. This means that the creative logoi suggest both what things are going to be like and that all of them are known to God in advance. The association of ‘what things are going to be like’ with ‘genera’ clearly suggests that the creative logoi provide only the setting for thing to become what they will eventully become as realiza-

 See, PHE, p. 381; RCR, pp. 339; 341.  Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 120: εἰ πάντων κατὰ τὸ ἀθρόον παρὰ τῆς τοῦ Δημιουργοῦ δυνάμεως ὑλικῶς προκαταβεβλημένων, πρὸς τὴν τῶν ὄντων σύστασιν, ἡ μερικὴ τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ τεθεωρημένων ἀνάδειξις, τάξει τινὶ φυσικῇ καὶ ἀκολουθίᾳ ἐν ῥητῷ διαστήματι ἐτελειώθη.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 396 (italics are mine): ὁ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, φησίν, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ κατὰ ἀρχὰς πάντα μεμῖχθαι ἔλεγε, καὶ εἶναι οἷον μίαν ὁμοιομέρειαν μεγάλην ἔχουσαν πάντα ἐν ἑαυτῇ, οὕτω καὶ ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν κατὰ μέρος πάντα ἐνυπάρχειν ἔλεγεν. See infra (pp. 879 81) Origen, who spoke of the one Logos being ‘one’ as much as is he ‘many’. commJohn, V.5.1 (Philocalia, 5.4): Ὁ πᾶς δὴ τοῦ θεοῦ λόγος ὁ ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν οὐ πολυλογία ἐστίν· οὐ γὰρ λόγοι· λόγος γὰρ εἷς συνεστὼς ἐκ πλείονων θεωρημάτων, ὧν ἕκαστον θεώρημα μέρος ἐστὶ τοῦ ὅλου λόγου. Also, Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1007b: “And the result is the dictum of Anaxago ras, all things were together; so that nothing truly exists. It seems, then, that they are speaking of the Indeterminate; and while they think that they are speaking of what exists, they are really speaking of what does not exist (τὸ ἀόριστον οὖν ἐοίκασι λέγειν, καὶ οἰόμενοι τὸ ὂν λέγειν περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος λέγουσιν); for the Indeterminate is what exists potentially not actually (τὸ δυ νάμει ὄν καὶ μὴ ἐντελεχείᾳ τὸ ἀόριστόν ἐστιν).” This allegedly is about the Indeterminate Dyad, which Aristotle assured he had read in Plato. Plotinus saw the Indeterminate Dyad as the Mind giving rise to the principles. Enneades, V.1.5; likewise, op. cit. V.4.2: Διὸ καὶ εἴρηται· ἐκ τῆς ἀο ρίστου δυάδος καὶ τοῦ ἑνὸς τὰ εἴδη καὶ οἱ ἀριθμοί· τοῦτο γὰρ ὁ νοῦς.  John Philoponus, De Opificio Mundi, p. 216: τοὺς σπερματικοὺς ἄρα τῶν ἐσομένων λόγους ἐν τοῖς στοιχείοις ὁ θεὸς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐναπέθετο.

606

Chapter 8 – Plato and Aristotle

tions of sundry potentialities, and no notion of preformation of fixed plan existing in advance is implied whatsoever.³⁵⁶ Therefore, when Anaxagoras understood the provisional activity of the principles as προειλημμένα, he posited them as ones which enable things to become fully what they are and what they are going to be (ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν)³⁵⁷ in accordance with their potentialities, which though does not suggest any prefiguration or preformation of the entire world throughout all time. This is all about potentialities being realized in accordance with the nature of each and every thing or phenomenon. This is also about sundry aspects of reality being produced out of those spermatic causes by means of a rational causal process (κατ᾿ αἰτίαν), according to the cosmic laws.³⁵⁸ Unlike the idle and transcendent Platonic Ideas which are only susceptible of being participated in, the logoi are involved with the things themselves that they either produce, or keep together as cohesive forces, or alter, or dissolve. In order for this notion to be grasped, the prerequisite is to comprehend the ‘different’ ways in which Anaxagoras’ principles exist, either as causes (noetic or productive ones, or even as objects of congnition), or as ones involved with material objects and perceptible phenomena.³⁵⁹ Spermatic potential existence of a certain thing or phenomenon does not suggest pre-existence as a preformed reality. This is all about the omniscient Creative Mind having provided the universe with the setting to operate in. As discussed earlier, even if the Mind is considered as not timeless, but temporal, the time pertaining to it is another time, not the one of this universe. Therefore, the notion of Mind ‘knowing in advance everything that is going to come to be’³⁶⁰ does not suggest prior knowledge in terms of flux of this time of the present universe. Therefore, even if this is about not timelessnesss, but only about another sort of temporality, it is simply impossible to tell what this prior knowledge can possibly mean: whether the Mind knows all the occurences of this universe in advance as present ones, or otherwise, is simply impossible to tell. Human reflection can only adumbrate such notions only in relation to the time of this universe; it is unable to consider them from the viewpoint of either atemporality or of a time of another ontology.

 Anonymous, Astronomica (in appendice cod. Scorialensis S III 3), 4: τὰ γένη ἢ πρὸ τῶν πολ λῶν, οἷον οἱ δημιουργικοὶ καὶ σπερματικοὶ τῶν ὄντων λόγοι, ἤγουν οἱ προορισμοὶ καὶ αἱ προ γνώσεις τοῦ θεοῦ τῶν ὄντων.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 608; commPhys, pp. 156; 165; 174; 177.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 148: ἐν τῇ γενέσει τῆς διαιρέσεως ταύτης ἀναφαινομένης καὶ εἴπερ ἄρα κατ᾿ αἰτίαν ἐν τῇ νοερᾷ διακρίσει προειλημμένης.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 156.

Chapter 9 The Stoics Generation and existence The Stoic physics received fundamental ideas from Anaxagoras, while employing Empedocles’ and Heraclitus’ doctrine of periodic cosmic destruction and regeneration. Although the idea of a universal Logos was a term of Heraclitian provenance,¹ the import concerning function of the Logos stands closer to the Anaxagorean Mind, and seeming differences are only modifications of the original perception: many ancient testimonies assure that the Stoic Logos is material,² indeed it is intelligent aether or primordial fire, which acts upon matter by being inherent in all things; also, it pervades and animates the universe, and contains within itself all the logoi, which Cornutus termed spermatic logoi as argued presently. The universe is an all-permeating divine existence embracing all things.³ To Marcus Aurelius, this is a living being and all things are dependent on the Logos (εἰς αἴσθησιν μίαν τὴν τούτου πάντα ἀναδίδοται). By virtue of this universal intelligence, ‘all things function at a single impulse’ (ὁρμῇ μιᾷ πάντα πράσσει), and ‘all things are the cooperating causes of all existing things’ (πάντα πάντων τῶν γινομένων συναίτια),⁴ which is no different from the Anaxagorean proposition about the principles being ‘all in all’. Since this intelligence is the foundation of the entire universe, including humanity, it follows that the goal of life is to operate in harmony the Logos, that is, ‘according to nature’ (κατὰ φύσιν), because humans share the rationality which is inherent in nature. Con-

 See infra. Modern scholarship has gone through different stages. Initially, the influence of Heraclitus on Stoicism was acknowledged almost universally, then, the trend was to downplay it. A.A. Long argued for such an influence; see particularly, his Stoic Thought, London/Los Angeles, 1996, chapter 2, “Heraclitus and Stoicism” (a lecture given at the Centre for the Re search of Greek Philosophy at the Academy of Athens, on 30 March 1976).  See discussion of this point later this chapter, pp. 651; 681 90.  Cf. aspects of Stoicism being discussued in COT, passim (see Index, for Stoicism and Stoics); in respect of the present topic, see especially, on Stoic God, pp. 29; 167 9; 293; materialism, pp. 87; 116; corporeality and reality, pp. 197 8; 217; 222; 293; the four incorporeals, p. 198; degrees of re ality, pp. 198; 307; 308. Also, P. Tzamalikos, “The Autonomy of the Stoic View of Time”, Yearbook Philosophia of the Centre for the Research of Greek Philosophy at the Academy of Athens, 19 20, 1989 90, pp. 351 69. Also, Id. “Origen and the Stoic View of Time”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 52, n. 4 (Oct. Dec., 1991), pp. 535 61.  Marcus Aurelius, Τὰ εἰς Ἑαυτόν, 4.40.

608

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

sequently, reflection can be rational (therefore, morally sound) only if mental activity stands in harmony with the universal Logos. Human reason is productive in the same sense the universal Logos is: it is able to generate ‘seeds’, which are the concepts by means of which human intellect constructs perception of the entire world, including proper conduct of human life. The universal Logos encompasses the spermatic logoi (σπερματικοὶ λόγοι) and all of them are the natural active agents for all beings to exist and function. Observing regularities occurring in nature, we can form generalizations and grasp of cosmic laws concerning phenomena, plants, animals, and humans. This mental accomplishment effects harmony of the individual mind with the cosmic Logos, who is inherent in all things. Development of a plant starts from a seed, and the principles that enable its growth are there right from the start. This growth is made possible by virtue of the presence and action of the principles/logoi, not because a plant ‘participates’ in eternal models: each and every logos implies activity that gives rise to things and phenomena, which pass away by being dissolved into the logoi that generated them in the first place. Simplicius explained that, to Anaxagoras, it was a fundamental doctrine that all things are dissolved into their constitutive agents.⁵ This was a universal Greek doctrine based on the axiom that nothing which is not composite can suffer dissolution, and this was the basis for Neoplatonist and Christian authors to criticize the Stoics for making the logoi destructible during cosmic conflagration – or so it appeared to those critics. Marcus Aurelius followed suit: following death, all souls persist for a certain period of time, then, they are dissolved into the spermatic logoi that gave rise to them in the first place.⁶ No matter whether they are souls of important men, or not, all of them are generated from the same principles and they are destined to be dissolved into those principles anew. This is why Marcus adds that the souls of both Alexander of Macedonia and that of his muleteer were dissolved and ‘re-

 Simplicius (referring to Anaxagoras), commPhys, p. 35: ἄλλως μὲν πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι φησὶ κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν, ἄλλως δὲ κατὰ τὴν νοερὰν συνουσίωσιν καὶ ἄλλως κατὰ τὴν αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν. Likewise, Stobaeus (referring to Pythagoras), Anthologium, 1.Prologue.10: ἀδιαίρετον γὰρ ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ στοιχεῖον εἰς ἕτερα· τοῖς δὲ ἄλλοις εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ πᾶσιν αἱ διαλύσεις. John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 359. Isaac Comnenus, De Providentia et Fato, p. 17. Anonymous, Fragmentum grammaticum (P. Oslo 2.13), lines 38 45: κατὰ τὸν δὴ λόγον καὶ τοῦ σύμπαντος κόσμου στοιχεῖα ἀπέφηναν οἱ σοφοὶ τὰ πρῶτα καὶ τὰ ἀσύνθετα ἐξ ὧν τὰ ὅλα δοκεῖ συνεστάναι καὶ εἰς αὐτὰ τὴν ἀνάλυσιν ἀναλαμβάνειν.  Marcus Aurelius, Τὰ εἰς Ἑαυτόν, 4.21.1: οὕτως αἱ εἰς τὸν ἀέρα μεθιστάμεναι ψυχαί, ἐπὶ ποσὸν συμμείνασαι, μεταβάλλουσι καὶ χέονται καὶ ἐξάπτονται εἰς τὸν τῶν ὅλων σπερματικὸν λόγον ἀναλαμβανόμεναι καὶ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον χώραν ταῖς προσσυνοικιζομέναις παρέχουσι.

Generation and existence

609

ceived back’ into the same spermatic logoi, that is, the principles that give rise to everything in the universe.⁷ He notes with some melancholy that each man comes to be ‘as a particular’ existence, but he is destined to be extinguished ‘into that which generated him by means of alteration’, namely, into the universal Spermatic Logos.⁸ Certainly, the idea that any compound is destined to dissolve into its consituents (atoms, or elements, or principles – depending on each philosopher’s axioms) was not exclusive to Anaxagoras; but that those consituents were posited as active principles/logoi stemming from (and dependent upon) a universal Mind/Logos was distinctly Anaxagorean and it had only some bearing on Pythagoreanism. The Logos pervades and animates the universe, it is active upon inanimate matter by means of specific principles cooperating with each other, which generate the universe as a whole, as much as do they give rise to particular things and phenomena. Augustine spoke of rationes spermatices in order to explain the problem of appearance of new forms in nature after God had finished the work of creation. He used the idea of eternal or spermatic logoi also to explain how creation can occur in the same breath and yet unfold and reveal itself over a span of time. He calls them primordial causes (primordiales causae), arguing that they exist in the Logos. However, he never actually solved the problem: if these causes are always in God in some eternal way, it follows that they are not creatures and it was not God that created them. Subsequently, Augustine had recourse to distinction of four kinds of spermatic logoi (in the Logos, in the elements of the world, in the first individuals of every class, in the seeds), which is out of my scope to consider.⁹ The Stoics saw in Anaxagoras’ Mind the Logos of the universe, which they accorded several different names, such as Heimarmene (Fate, εἱμαρμένη),¹⁰

 Marcus Aurelius, op. cit. 6.24.1: ᾿Aλέξανδρος ὁ Μακεδὼν καὶ ὁ ὀρεωκόμος αὐτοῦ ἀποθανόντες εἰς ταὐτὸ κατέστησαν· ἤτοι γὰρ ἀνελήφθησαν εἰς τοὺς αὐτοὺς τοῦ κόσμου σπερματικοὺς λόγους ἢ διεσκεδάσθησαν ὁμοίως εἰς τὰς ἀτόμους.  Marcus Aurelius, op. cit. 4.14.1: Ἐνυπέστης ὡς μέρος. ἐναφανισθήσῃ τῷ γεννήσαντι· μᾶλλον δὲ ἀναληφθήσῃ εἰς τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ τὸν σπερματικὸν κατὰ μεταβολήν.  Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, VI.10.17; PL.34.406: Super hunc autem motum cursumque rerum naturalem, potestas Creatoris habet apud se posse de his omnibus facere aliud, quam eorum quasi spermatices rationes habent, non tamen id quod non in eis posuit ut de his fieri vel ab ipso possit. In op. cit. VII.22.32, Augustine distinguishes the causales rationes of a thing from its nature or substance.  This was identified with the Logos of Heraclitus, as well as with ‘Necessity’. John Laurentius Lydus, De Mensibus, 4.81: τὴν δ᾿ εἱμαρμένην Ἡράκλειτος τὴν αὐτὴν καὶ ἀνάγκην εἶναι βούλεται. It should be recalled that ‘Necessity’ makes a mark in Democritus. See pp. 153; 155; 243 4; 260; 609; 694 5; 1060; 1069 73; 1082; 1478.

610

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

Zeus, Nature, and others, which I discuss presently. They opted for using ‘Logos’ instead of ‘Mind’, which they probably took up from Heraclitus, all the more so since they associated the notion with ‘fire’¹¹ and employed the doctrine of periodic destructions. As I argue later, there is no need to trace influence upon a single Presocratic source alone: after all, Pythagoras, as the Stoics dod of Logos, styled his Number ‘a great designer’, as well as ‘mind’ and ‘steadfast rule’, (καὶ λόγον τεχνικόν νοῦν τε καὶ στάθμαν ἀκλινεστάταν τὸν ἀριθμόν), which ‘generated and gave subsistence to everything’ (ὑπεῖμεν συστάσιός τε καὶ γενέσιος τῶν πάντων).¹² In Pythagoreanism, a logos was always a mathematical correlation between numbers, which produced harmonious realities, such as the soul. Anaxagoras augmented the notion: everything is produced by means of concurring principles, and the different combinations of their relations give rise to sundry aspects of reality. However, no longer did he see these relations as only mathematical ones. Thus, the Stoic tenet had it that ‘the things which in the first place occur according to Nature (πρῶτα κατὰ φύσιν) are motion or relation (κίνησις ἢ σχέσις) and they come to pass in accordance with the spermatic logoi (κατὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους γινομένη)’.¹³ Likewise, Philo wrote that the harmonious collaboration between soul and body (whether a corporeal shape, or mutual relations, or motions, or sundry expressions of will, or actions) stem from the spermatic logoi.¹⁴ Nevertheless, there is a point in Aristotle which suggests that we are upon Anaxagorean influence once again. All inquiry is apparently directed towards the causes described in the Physics, and we can not suggest any other cause apart from them. They were, however, only vaguely conceived [by the physicists]; and although in one sense they all have been stated before, in another, they have not been stated at all (ἀλλ᾿ ἀμυδρῶς ταύτας, καὶ τρόπον μέν τινα ἁπάσας, ὡς καὶ

 Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881F, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.9 quoted infra, p. 617, note 44.  Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 123, quoting from Pythagoras’ Holy Discourse (Ἱερὸς Λόγος).  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 2.7.7d (quoting ‘from the epitome by Arius Didymus, on the moral philosophy of the Stoics’). Suda, letter phi, entry 864. SVF, Chrysippus, Fragmenta Moralia, fr. 141. The same text was used by the anonymous author of the Scholia in Lucianum, 29.22. There is no need to assume that Stobaeus wrote his anthology (sometimes called Ecloguae) by copying from any of previous doxographers literatim. I will be arguing (infra, pp. 660 5) that the designation ‘spermatic’ attached to the multiple logoi generated by the one Spermatic Logos appeared only with and after Cornutus (first century AD), whereas Arius Didymus was ear lier by almost one century. But Stobaeus spoke of Didymus (citing his Epitome, see 2.1.17; 2.7.1; 4.39.28), not of Arius Didymus, which only Eusebius did (Praeparatio Evangelica, [Epitome] 15.15.1&9; [Epitome] 15.20.8).  Philo, Legatio ad Gaium, 55: ὡς γὰρ αἱ τοῦ σώματος καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς ὁμοιότητες κατά τε τὴν μορφὴν καὶ σχέσεις καὶ κινήσεις βουλάς τε καὶ πράξεις ἐν τοῖς σπερματικοῖς σῴζονται λόγοις.

Generation and existence

611

πρότερον εἴρηται, τρόπον δέ τινα οὐδαμῶς). For the earlier philosophy speaks on all sub jects inarticulately, as it were (ψελλιζομένῃ γὰρ ἔοικεν ἡ πρώτη φιλοσοφία περὶ πάντων), being new and in its infancy. Even Empedocles says that a bone exists by virtue of its logos (τῷ λόγῳ φησὶν εἶναι), which is the definition or essence of a thing (τοῦτο δ᾿ ἐστὶ τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι καὶ ἡ οὐσία τοῦ πράγματος).¹⁵

Apparently he says that the ‘essence’ (οὐσία) of a certain thing is its ‘logos’ (λόγος, which now he uses as a synonym with his own notion τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) and cites Empedocles as being the one who thought likewise. However, a few lines later, he virtually withdraws this attribution by adding that Empedocles did not use the term logos for essence out of his own, ‘but he said so out of necessity, because someone else had said so, too; yet he did not express this clearly’ (ἀλλὰ ταῦτα ἄλλου μὲν λέγοντος συνέφησεν ἂν ἐξ ἀνάγκης, σαφῶς δὲ οὐκ εἴρηκεν). Who was this ‘someone else’? Testimonies assure that Empedocles was slightly younger than Anaxagoras,¹⁶ probably his pupil, and that Empedocles’ own work appeared after that of Anaxagoras. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commenting on this testimony of Aristotle¹⁷ had it that Anaxagoras’ philosophy appeared before that of Empedocles, but Aristotle decided that the work of Empedocles was superior and fuller, whereas that of Anaxagoras was inferior and of less value. Besides, he pointed out that, by ὕστερος Aristotle meant inferior, not posterior, ‘but there are some other points at which Aristotle, between those two, opts for the philosophy of Anaxagoras’.¹⁸ Anyway, for some time at least, Empedocles cared to attend the lessons of Anaxagoras, who presumably was the unnamed ‘another one, who said so’, and whose teaching Empedocles reproduced by styling the essence of a thing ‘its logos’. This possibility becomes all the more stronger once the testimony of Porphyry known from the Arabic sources is considered.¹⁹  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 993a; italics are mine. Alexander of Aphrodisias employed the re mark. commMetaph, p. 63 & 135.  Aristotle, op. cit. 984a: Anaxagoras, ‘although older than Empedocles, in terms of quality of work he was inferior’. See supra, pp. 175; 270, note 29. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 25: “Empedocles appeared not long after Anaxagoras” (Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ ᾿Aκραγαντῖνος οὐ πολὺ κατόπιν τοῦ ᾿Aνα ξαγόρου γεγονώς).  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 984a11.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 27 8: ᾿Aναξαγόραν Ἐμπεδοκλέους πρότερον γε νόμενον τοῖς ἔργοις φησὶ καὶ τῇ περὶ τῶν φυσικῶν δόξῃ ὕστερον εἶναι, οὐ προκρίνων αὐτοῦ πάν τως τὴν δόξαν τῆς Ἐμπεδοκλέους ὡς συνετωτέραν καὶ πλέον τι ἔχουσαν, ἀλλ᾿ ὑστέραν καὶ εὐ τελεστέραν ἡγούμενος. … ἔστι μέντοι ἐν οἷς καὶ τὴν ᾿Aναξαγόρου δόξαν τῆς Ἐμπεδοκλέους δόξης προκρίνει.  See supra, pp. 378 81.

612

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

Then, Diogenes Laertius recorded a testimony by Alcidamas,²⁰ who wrote that Zeno of Elea and Empedocles attended courses of Parmenides, and then they left. Of them, Zeno retreated in private study of philosophy, whereas Empedocles became a pupil of Anaxagoras and of Pythagoras. Zeno was also an ardent admirer of both Pythagoras’ dignified way of life and personal demeanor, and of Anaxagoras’ physics. Considering that Pythagoras was no longer alive by that time, the name ‘Pythagoras’ in Laertius should not be taken literally. Perhaps the manuscript had it ‘Pythagoreans’, since, at that point, Laertius records also the testimony of Hermippus of Smyrna, who wrote that Empedocles followed courses of ‘the Pythagoreans’ (Πυθαγορικοῖς ἐντυχεῖν).²¹ Besides, Theophrastus provides the same information: Empedocles made himself a student of the Pythagoreans.²² There is always a problem of credibility concerning the references by an informed scholar, who had an enormous library at his disposal, namely, Eusebius: he wrote confidently that Anaxagoras and Pythagoras were contemporary, which though is unlikely, but this is not the place to pursue this question further.²³ No doubt, Anaxagoras was aware of the Pythagorean theory of generation, but evidently he was not content with it, hence he took some steps beyond that. The main problem was this: if an original unity were to be posited (as indeed it was by Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras, at least) how was it that this unity unfolded to multiplicity? That is, how numbers, and, ultimately, quantity, come to pass out of the Monad? On this, Iamblichus reports as solution that, to Pythagoras, ‘quantity, that is number’ (τὸ δὲ ποσόν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ τὸν ἀριθμόν) is ‘expansion and actualization of the spermatic logoi existing in the Monad’ (ἔκτασιν καὶ ἐνέργειαν τῶν ἐν μονάδι σπερματικῶν λόγων), to which he adds the alternative: number or quantity is ‘that which subsisted in the divine mind prior to everything, from which all things have been set in order together, and they remain so in indissoluble order’.²⁴ Moreover, he provides other alternatives

 Alcidamas of Elea (in Aeolis) was a sophist and rhetorician, who flourished in the fourth century BC, a pupil and successor of Gorgias. He taught at Athens contemporaneously with Iso crates, of whom he was rival and opponent.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 8.56.  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 3, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 25: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ ᾿Aκραγαντῖνος οὐ πολὺ κατόπιν τοῦ ᾿Aναξαγόρου γεγονώς, Παρμενίδου δὲ ζηλωτὴς καὶ πλη σιαστὴς καὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον τῶν Πυθαγορείων.  Cf. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 10.14.14; 14.15.11; 14.17.10.  Iamblichus, In Nicomachi Arithmeticam Introductionem, p. 10: ἢ ἑτέρως τὸ πρὸ πάντων ὑπο στὰν ἐν θείῳ νῷ ἀφ᾿ οὗ καὶ ἐξ οὗ πάντα συντέτακται καὶ μένει τάξιν ἄλυτον διηριθμημένα. The last word (διηριθμημένα) is probably an editorial mistake: Syrianus, who also used this defini tion, wrote διηρθρωμένα, which does indeed make sense. See infra, p. 792, note 394.

Generation and existence

613

to this definition by other Pythagoreans, such as Eudoxus of Cnidus (408 – 355 BC, the pupil of Archytas), Philolaus (c. 470 – c. 385 BC), Hippasus of Metapontium (fl. fifth century BC), Thymaridas of Paros (c. 400 – c. 350 BC), and ‘certain other Pythagoreans’. This only means that, among the followers of the school, the question of how or why does unity and simplicity turn to diversity and multiplicity remained a moot question open to different debatable solutions, but it never really received a definite answer.²⁵ Over against this, Anaxagoras came up with a clear-minded resolution: the original unity turns to multiplicity without ceasing to be unity, because a personal hypostasis, namely, the Nous, decided and willed so; he created distinct ‘seeds’ which are active agents, by means of which the universe came to be under the supervision and guidance of the Nous himself. Given the fact that σπέρμα is a term uniquely characteristic of Anaxagoras, and it plays an integral part in his thought, the term σπερματικοὶ λόγοι instead of merely λόγοι (in purely mathematical sense) used by Iamblichus, was probably an anachronistic paraphrase and projection into Pythagoras’ locution, since the logoi being styled σπερματικοὶ (though not σπερματικὸς λόγος, in singular, referring to the Logos) was an expression not earlier than Cornutus, who in fact introduced this terminology for the first time, as I argue in a moment. In the fifth century, Syrianus was aware of the ongoing debate as to whether ‘the Pythagoreans knew of separate numbers’, the prevailing argument being that they did not (ὅτι οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι χωριστοὺς ἀριθμοὺς οὐκ ᾔδεσαν). This claim Syrianus rejected scornfully, styling it ‘laughable’ (τίς γὰρ οὐκ ἂν γελάσειεν;), and arguing that ‘Pythagoras used to define numbers in a twofold manner’ (Πυθαγόρου διχῶς εἰωθότος ὁρίζεσθαι τοὺς ἀριθμούς): on the one hand, he saw them as ‘separate and immaculate ones’; on the other, they are ‘self-generated ones that sprang from their source, being moved by their own inherent power (i. e. without the aid of external impulse), they are self-established and have ordered themselves in different kinds’. Besides (and now Syrianus quotes from Iamblichus), Pythagoras taught that quantity is ‘that which subsisted in the divine Nous before all things, from which all things have been set in order together, and they keep being so in indissoluble order’ (τὸ πρὸ πάντων ὑποστὰν ἐν θείῳ νῷ, ἀφ᾿ οὗ καὶ ἐξ οὗ πάντα συντέτακται καὶ μένει τάξιν ἄλυτον διηρθρωμένα). To Syrianus, this suggests ‘the Number, which is the Creator and Father of all gods and daemons and mortals, and served as a pattern’ (τὸν παραδειγματικὸν καὶ ποιητὴν καὶ πατέρα θεῶν τε καὶ δαιμόνων καὶ τῶν θνητῶν πάντων

 See discussion about the Indeterminate Dyad (ἀόριστος δυάς) also on pp. 71; 136; 138; 196; 225; 403; 603; 709; 1052.

614

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

ἀριθμόν). The anachronistic extrapolation of Syrianus is all too evident, as indeed his (and Iamblichus’) terminology making ‘the monad’ containing all ‘spermatic logoi’ (τῶν ἐν μονάδι σπερματικῶν λόγων) is. Nevertheless, what matters is that he employs the same language which his predecessors used about the Anaxagorean Mind, claiming that it is the Number, not the Nous, who is ‘creative, providing for, and guardian of everything’ (τὸ δημιουργικὸν αὐτῶν καὶ προνοητικόν τε καὶ φρουρητικὸν τῶν ὅλων ἀναδιδάσκοντος).²⁶ However, we have already seen that, ever since Plato, all philosophers used this phraseology in reference to Anaxagoras alone, and little wonder that no one paid attention to this extravagant train of thought of Syrianus. We should always bear in mind that, no matter how different, the theories of Presocratics had many and essential points in common. While considering them, Aristotle normally (though not always) groups Anaxagoras and Empedocles on the one side, and all the other Physicists on the other. Nevertheless, there are also points where he classifies his predecessors differently, in accordance with his own purposes. Since ‘logos’ was also a Pythagorean as well as Heraclitean term, it cannot be sustained that Anaxagoras alone would have influenced him on this. In any event, even if Anaxagoras parted ways from the Pythagorean teaching, still there are ideas in common, which are mentioned by Aristotle, and more so by Simplicius. Whether logos in Heraclitus is a technical term indicating a ‘principle’²⁷ has been a point of dispute.²⁸ I will return to him later, but what matters at present is how ancient commentators received his thought. Clement of Alexandria read in Heraclitus that ‘the Logos and God governs all of the universe’ (ὑπὸ τοῦ διοικοῦντος λόγου καὶ θεοῦ τὰ σύμπαντα) and transforms ‘fire’ (πῦρ), ‘the seed of decoration, as it were’ (τὸ ὡς σπέρμα τῆς διακοσμήσεως), into liquid’ (ὑγρόν), which Heraclitus called ‘sea’ (θάλασσαν).²⁹ There is a similar statement by Stobaeus, which comes from old,³⁰ but Clement’s context and extensive quotations show that he had a first-hand knowledge of Heraclitus. The fact is that Anaxagoras’ Mind was incorporeal, he was ‘God the Creator’,³¹ not any sort of ‘number or

 Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 142.  To style this ‘metaphysical’ could be only a detriment to the Presocratic mindset.  See Introduction, p. 86.  Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.14.104.4.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 885A & Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 42 & Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.5.15: Ἡράκλειτος οὐσίαν εἱμαρμένης ἀπεφαίνετο λόγον τὸν διὰ οὐσίας τοῦ παντὸς διήκοντα· αὕτη δ᾿ ἐστὶ τὸ αἰθέριον σῶμα, σπέρμα τῆς τοῦ παντὸς γενέσεως καὶ πε ριόδου μέτρον τεταγμένης.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b: ᾿Aναξαγόρας νοῦν κοσμοποιὸν τὸν θεόν.

Generation and existence

615

fire’. Since Anaxagoras was a substantial predecessor of Plato,³² it is hardly a surprise that Stobaeus described Plato’s philosophy in Anaxagorean terms that Plato himself never really used: Stobaeus adumbrated the supreme principle by means of different names (τὸ ἕν, τὸ μονοφυές, τὸ μοναδικόν, τὸ ὄντως ὄν, τἀγαθόν),³³ adding that all of them actually suggest one principle, namely, the Mind (πάντα δὲ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν ὀνομάτων εἰς τὸν νοῦν σπεύδει). Therefore, Plato’s God is the Mind (Νοῦς οὖν ὁ θεός), which is a species separate from all other ones (χωριστὸν εἶδος), by ‘separate’ meaning ‘unmixed with any matter’ whatsoever (τὸ ἀμιγὲς πάσης ὕλης).³⁴ The term ἀμιγὲς in this context is of course the epithet Anaxagoras alone used about the Mind. Besides, Stobaeus saw in Plato not only the ‘intelligible world and Ideas, which are archetypes of the visible world’, but also ‘incorporeal logoi’ (λόγοι δ᾿ εἰσὶν ἀσώματοι), which produce ‘the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, and the world that contains everything’ (καὶ ὁ περιέχων πάντα κόσμος). This is certainly a step beyond Plato, who did not manage to explain how do the archetypes produce the world, and only spoke of ‘participation’ (μέθεξις) in them. Therefore, Stobaeus attributes to Plato the ‘theory of logoi’, indeed the ‘way to creation’,³⁵ which was the Anaxagorean theory later revived by Origen, whom Porphyry met personally during his youth,³⁶ and it was the same Porphyry who expounded Anaxagoras’ theory according to the Arabic sources we discussed earlier. Beyond such marginal issues, the important point is that the Stoics described their pivotal notion in Anaxagorean terms: the Universal Logos is analogous to a seed which is inherent in its progeny. Put in physiological terms, this is like the semen included in the spermatic fluid,³⁷ and the function of the world is un Cf. Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 104: ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ, τῷ προγόνῳ τῶν Πλάτωνος δογμάτων.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.1.29b.  Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 301: ὅτι τὸν νοῦν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὐκ ἔλεγεν εἶδος ἔνυλον, οἷον ἦν τὸ νῦν ζητούμενον, ἀλλὰ διακριτικὸν καὶ κοσμητικὸν αἴτιον χωριστὸν ἀπὸ τῶν κοσμουμένων καὶ ἄλλης ὂν ὑποστάσεως παρὰ τὰ κοσμούμενα.  See Proclus expounding Porphyry’s theory; commTim, v. 1, p. 395.  Porphyry, apud Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, 6.19.5: ᾧ κἀγὼ κομιδῇ νέος ὢν ἔτι ἐντετύ χηκα. This is confirmed by Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium Primum, PL.50.663; see infra, p. 771.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.11.5a (Zeno, fr. 87): τὸν τοῦ παντὸς λόγον, ὃν ἔνιοι εἱμαρμένην καλοῦσιν, οἷον περ καὶ ἐν τῇ γονῇ τὸ σπέρμα. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.136 (Zeno, fr. 102): ἕν τε εἶναι θεὸν καὶ νοῦν καὶ εἱμαρμένην καὶ Δία πολλαῖς τε ἑτέραις ὀνομασίαις προσονομάζεσθαι. κατ᾿ ἀρχὰς μὲν οὖν καθ᾿ αὑτὸν ὄντα τρέπειν τὴν πᾶσαν οὐσίαν δι᾿ ἀέρος εἰς ὕδωρ· καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ γονῇ τὸ σπέρ μα περιέχεται, οὕτω καὶ τοῦτον σπερματικὸν λόγον ὄντα τοῦ κόσμου, τοιόνδε ὑπολείπεσθαι ἐν τῷ ὑγρῷ, εὐεργὸν αὑτῷ ποιοῦντα τὴν ὕλην πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἑξῆς γένεσιν· εἶτα ἀπογεννᾶν πρῶτον τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα πῦρ, ὕδωρ, ἀέρα, γῆν. Pseudo Galen, An Animal Sit Quod Est in Utero, p. 161: [the world] καὶ τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἔχουσαν λόγον δύναμιν ἐκέκτητο, διακριθεὶς δὲ καὶ τοῦ

616

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

derstood as interaction between the primal causes or logoi. Unlike Heraclitus who identified Necessity and Fate, the Stoics maintained that Necessity is a combination of different established causes (τὴν δὲ εἱμαρμένην φασὶ συμπλοκὴν εἶναι αἰτιῶν τεταγμένων), and this also determines human affairs (ἐν ᾗ συμπλοκῇ καὶ τὰ παρ᾿ ἡμᾶς).³⁸ In essence, the idea is no different from Anaxagoras’ concurrence of principles, but, again, there is no need to pursue exclusive influence: as discussed later, the idea of Necessity is also characteristic of Democritus.³⁹ Porphyry grasped that ‘certainly everything is in everything, yet in a manner befitting the essence of each reality’,⁴⁰ which means that the Anaxagorean principles exist and operate differently in different existential levels. I am aware that there is a wide audience which would be quick to dismiss this as a ‘Neoplatonic’ reception of what Anaxagoras really said. Actually, ‘Neoplatonism’ has become a designation used to brand propositions as different as Christian and Presocratic ones. I should then introduce a caveat at this point: Porphyry’s explanation is a genuine rendering of Anaxagoras’ philosophy, which was a legacy not only to the Neoplatonists, but also to the Stoics. For they were not less of heirs of that philosophy than Neoplatonists were. The Anaxagorean Mind became the Stoic Logos without substantial difference, since the Stoic ‘materiality’ (with the qualifications discussed below) is not a substantial difference, nor was it so once Anaxagoras’ principles became the Stoic logoi. The Stoics did grasp the different function of the principles/logoi, depending on the manifest level of their operation. Thus, ‘Zeno and all of his followers were unanimous in believing that God is present throughout all beings’, but ‘here he is present as Mind, whereas there [he is present] as soul, [elsewhere, he is present] as nature, and [elsewhere he is

σκότους προελθὼν τὴν οἰκείαν τῶν σπερμάτων ἀρετὴν ἔδειξεν, ἔνθα μὲν γῆ φαινόμενος, ἔνθα δ᾿ ὕδωρ, ὅπου δὲ πῦρ.  John Laurentius Lydus, De Mensibus, 4.81.  See infra, pp. 692 3; 1067 8.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10: Πάντα μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ οἰκείως τῇ ἑκάστου οὐσίᾳ· ἐν νῷ μὲν γὰρ νοερῶς, ἐν ψυχῇ δὲ λογικῶς, ἐν δὲ τοῖς φυτοῖς σπερματικῶς, ἐν δὲ σώμασιν εἰδωλικῶς, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐπέκεινα ἀνεννοήτως τε καὶ ὑπερουσίως. Likewise, Damascius, Princ, p. 243 (quoting Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 44): πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστοις, ὅπου μὲν ἀδιάκριτα, ὅπου δὲ διακρινόμενα, ὅπου δὲ διακεκριμένα. These statements constitute legacy of Anaxagoras to Neoplatonism. Cf. Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 103; commTim, v. 2, pp. 26; 44; 150. Damas cius, Princ, pp. 228; 232 3; In Phaedonem (versio 1), 534; In Parmenidem, p. 195; In Philebum, 130 (reporting the views of Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus on this). Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35. Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.8 (13 24). See chapter 13, pp. 1298 1307.

Generation and existence

617

present] as coherence [of inanimate objects]’.⁴¹ For the same reason, the Stoics⁴² posited that Heimarmene, Nature, and the Logos who governs the universe, are no other than God being present in everything, either as Being or as Becoming, who functions in accordance with the specific nature of each being, so that the comprehensive dispensation of All is carried out.⁴³ This Stoic proposition is in no way different from those of Porphyry and Simplicius rendering the philosophy of Anaxagoras. Whereas Aristotle employed the Anaxagorean Mind as his First Immovable Mover, the Stoics did so with their Logos and the logoi which he produces and administers. The fundamental technical term σπερματικὸς λόγος is simply a combination of the principles that Anaxagoras styled σπέρματα with the Pythagorean principles/numbers, out of which they made their own λόγοι, too. All the Stoics did was to dismiss the immateriality of principles (only because they focused on their function in the perceptible reality), but otherwise this was an idea inherent in both the Anaxagorean and the Pythagorean schools. However, their physics and cosmology is both in effect and in essence Anaxagorean, where the notion of one single world of Anaxagoras was replaced by the recurrence of worlds espoused by Empedocles and Heraclitus. Although it appears that Logos is a name that, after Heraclitus, became characteristic of the Stoic supreme principle, the fact is that the Stoics, especially Zeno (who was influenced by Anaxagoras most of all his successors) attributed also the name Nous to it, along many other appellations⁴⁴ depending on the kind

 Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 35 (Zeno, Fragmenta Physica, fr. 158, SVF, I.42.11 4): τάχα δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ Ζήνωνος σύμφωνος ἡ δόξα, διὰ πάσης οὐσίας πεφοιτηκέναι τὸν θεὸν τιθεμένοις, καὶ ποῦ μὲν εἶναι νοῦν, ποῦ δὲ ψυχήν, ποῦ δὲ φύσιν, ποῦ δὲ ἕξιν.  J. von Arnim attributed this to Chrysippus. However, not even once in his De Fato does Alexander of Aphrodisias mention the name of Chrysippus at all. Instead, he spoke either of ‘the Stoics’ in general, or he did not mention them at all while writing of their philosophy. He mentions Chrysippus by name only at nine points of three other works of his (De Mixtione, six times; commAnalPr, twice; and in commTop, once). Several attributions to renowned Stoics by von Arnim can be at points misleading, concidering that, normally, the present tense used by witnesses of Late Antiquity would have pointed to their contemporary Stoics, not those of old.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Fato, p. 192 (Chrysippus, Fragmenta Physica, fr. 945, SVF, II.273.25 28): τὴν δὲ εἱμαρμένην αὐτὴν καὶ τὴν φύσιν καὶ τὸν λόγον, καθ᾿ ὃν διοικεῖται τὸ πᾶν, θεὸν εἶναι φασίν, οὖσαν ἐν τοῖς οὖσιν τε καὶ γινομένοις ἅπασιν καὶ οὕτως χρωμένην ἁπάν των τῶν ὄντων τῇ οἰκείᾳ φύσει πρὸς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς οἰκονομίαν. See infra, p. 683.  Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 113: τὸν νοῦν καὶ ἐν τοῖς φαυλοτάτοις εἶναι θεῖον ὄντα, ὡς τοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς ἔδοξεν. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.138 (Chrysippus, Posidonius), 7.138: Τὸν δὴ κόσμον διοικεῖσθαι κατὰ νοῦν καὶ πρόνοιαν. Pseudo Plu tarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881F 882A, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.9:

618

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

of divine activity.⁴⁵ Thus, Stobaeus reporting how different philosophers understood God to be, lists Heraclitus along with Zeno: the former adumbrated Deity as ‘eternal periodic fire’ (περιοδικὸν πῦρ ἀΐδιον) and ‘Heimarmene’ as the ‘logos stemming from function of contraries, out of which all beings are created’ (εἱμαρμένην δὲ λόγον ἐκ τῆς ἐναντιοδρομίας δημιουργὸν τῶν ὄντων); the later maintained that God is ‘the fiery Nous of the world’ (νοῦν κόσμου πύρινον).⁴⁶ After all, styling the supreme God Nous was not too rare: Thales⁴⁷ and Xenophanes⁴⁸ thought in similar terms, too. Even Pythagoras was attested as the philosopher who posited an active principle, which was God the Mind, and a passive material one.⁴⁹ However, Anaxagoras did not use this designation alone, but he described the divine action and ontotology of this supreme principle in more detail. Posterity saw this idea as a characteristic one of Anaxagoras alone because he was the only one who adumbrated the Mind/Nous in a manner that was taken up by both Plato and Aristotle, each of them in his own way.⁵⁰ Becoming takes place by concurrence or divergence of different logoi, and Simplicius rightly saw the essential debt of the Stoics to the Presocratic thought, while he spurned Aristotle’s objection that ‘geneation cannot take place by means of concurrernce’ of principles:⁵¹ generation and perishing of things θεὸν δὲ καὶ τὸν κόσμον καὶ τοὺς ἀστέρας καὶ τὴν γῆν, τόν τ᾿ ἀνωτάτω πάντων νοῦν ἐν αἰθέρι (Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.29b: ἀνωτάτω δὲ πάντων νοῦν ἐναιθέριον εἶναι θεόν). Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 3, p. 508 (Zeno): ἔχειν τὸ θεῖον ἐν μόνῳ τῷ νῷ, μᾶλλον δὲ θεὸν ἡγεῖσθαι τὸν νοῦν· ἔστι γὰρ ἀθάνατος.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.135 6 (Zeno, Chrysippus, Archedemus): Ἕν τ᾿ εἶναι θεὸν καὶ νοῦν καὶ εἱμαρμένην καὶ Δία· πολλαῖς τ᾿ ἑτέραις ὀνομασίαις προσονομάζεσθαι. See supra, Zeno being quoted, note 41, and infra, p. 626, note 90, and quotation from Heraclitus, p. 679, note 371.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 35: Θαλῆς δὲ νοῦν τοῦ κόσμου τὸν θεὸν ἡγήσατο. Sto baeus, Anthologium, 1.1.26b: Θαλῆς δὲ νοῦν τοῦ κόσμου τὸν θεόν. Athenagoras of Athens, Apol ogist, Legatio, 23.4: Θαλῆς … θεὸν μὲν τὸν νοῦν τοῦ κόσμου ἄγει.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 9.13 (ref. to Xenophanes): [θεόν] σύμπαντά τε εἶναι νοῦν καὶ φρόνησιν καὶ ἀΐδιον. Likewise, Hesychius of Miletus (historian, sixth century AD), Fragmenta, fr. 7.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876F & Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.12: σπεύδει δ᾿ αὐτῷ τῶν ἀρχῶν ἡ μὲν ἐπὶ τὸ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον καὶ εἰδικόν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ νοῦς ὁ θεός, ἡ δ᾿ ἐπὶ τὸ παθητικόν τε καὶ ὑλικόν, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ὁ ὁρατὸς κόσμος.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 878B (Socrates and Plato): Σωκράτης … ἔστι δὲ ὁ θεὸς ὁ νοῦς τοῦ κόσμου. … ὁ δὲ θεὸς νοῦς ἐστι τοῦ κόσμου. Cf. Plato, Philebus, 30d (ref. to Pre socratics holding the idea). Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 3 (ref. to Orphics), apud Eusebius, Prae paratio Evangelica, 3.9.1: Τὸν γὰρ Δία τὸν νοῦν τοῦ κόσμου ὑπολαμβάνοντες. Proclus (ref. to a non extant passage from Aristotle’s spurious De Mundo), commTim, v. 3, p. 272: οὔτε ὁ νοῦς τοῦ παντός, ὥς πού φησι πάλιν ᾿Aριστοτέλης, εἴπερ ἐκείνου τὸ Περὶ κόσμου βιβλίον.  Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 317a30.

Generation and existence

619

does take place by concurrence and disjunction of logoi.⁵² This is mutation itself, which was a doctrine sustained by the Physicists of old, as well by recent philosophers, namely the Stoics.⁵³ Accordingly, Anaxagoras and the Stoics alike maintained one kind of motion, in contrast to Aristotle who argued for six. To those thinkers, Democritus should be added, too: Stobaeus reported that he accepted also only one kind of motion, which he called ‘vibration’ (παλμός),⁵⁴ of which I argue later that it was not in essence anything different from Cleanthes’ ‘tension’ (τόνος).⁵⁵ The problem to all philosophies was how to explain the generation and existence of the material world, especially since Plato had composed a grandiose theory of Ideas that fell short of explaining how exactly do they produce the perceptible reality, which is why Aristotle styled his teacher’s theory ‘empty words and poetic metaphors’⁵⁶ and ‘twitterings’,⁵⁷ while acknowledging that Anaxagoras and Empedocles were those who introduced abstract principles in their ontologies,⁵⁸ and, unlike all other Presocratics, they cared to posit a Creative Cause of the universe. In this process, Plato alone separated these principles from the concrete material objects, but his theory was a failure, which he saw himself during his lifetime. Consequently, abstract principles had to be inherently involved with material objects. This is what Aristotle did by positing that the form (εἶδος) can never exist independently and apart from the object it forms. The way for the Stoics to keep aloof from the dispute between the Academy and the Peripatetics was to avail themselves of Anaxagoras. The spermatic logoi are not Plato’s Ideas and, in fact, there is no counterpart of the Platonic Ideas in Stoicism. These logoi are in effect the principles of Anaxagoras. The variation (which is no difference) is that the former posited them as corporeal ones functioning according to the universal Logos, which is their source, whereas to Anaxagoras they were incorporeal and operated under the supervision of the Mind, which is also their creator. Likewise, the Stoic idea of providence is no dif-

 See supra, Galen on ‘conjunction and disjunction’, p. 449.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 420: καὶ δῆλον ὅτι ταύτης εἰσὶ τῆς δόξης τῶν τε παλαιῶν φυσιολόγων ὅσοι σωματικὴν ἢ μίαν ἢ πλείους ὑπέθεντο τὴν ἀρχήν, καὶ τῶν νέων οἱ Στωικοί, κατὰ γὰρ τὴν τῶν ἀρχῶν διάκρισιν ἢ σύγκρισιν ἢ ἀλλοίωσιν ἔλεγον οἱ πάλαι γίνεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.19.1: Δημόκριτος ἓν γένος κινήσεως τὸ κατὰ παλμὸν ἀπεφαίνετο.  See infra, pp. 696; 1072.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 993a: τὸ δὲ λέγειν παραδείγματα αὐτὰ εἶναι καὶ μετέχειν αὐτῶν τἆλλα κενολογεῖν ἐστὶ καὶ μεταφορὰς λέγειν ποιητικάς.  Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, 83a33.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a; 1091b; Physica, 187a. See discussion of the relation between Empedocles and Anaxagoras in chapter 11, pp. 1051 2; 1064 6.

620

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

ferent from Anaxagoras’ theory positing the Mind as ‘the guardian’ (φρουρός)⁵⁹ of everything that exists and happens as a result of the interaction of the logoi, and everything ‘moves according to his mastery and absolute rule’ (κατὰ τὴν ἐπικράτειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν δεσποτείαν).⁶⁰

God permeating the entire universe (διὰ πάντων ἰών) As discussed about Plato having been influenced by Anaxagoras, there is an evolution in the way Plato treated Anaxagoras. In the Phaedo, 97b‒98e, he criticized him vehemently for making nothing of the Mind; but in the Cratylus, 413c, things are different: Anaxagoras ‘says that Mind is ruled only by itself (αὐτοκράτορα), he is mixed with nothing, he orders all things and permeates them all (διὰ πάντων ἰόντα).’⁶¹ This expression should be regarded as genuinely Anaxagorean, since the ‘Platonic’ Socrates states that he had read the book of Anaxagoras,⁶² and we know that the real Socrates was a pupil of Archelaus, the teacher of whom Socrates speaks in the Phaedo. ⁶³ As for the idea itself, it is evident that Anaxagoras meant the action of the Mind, who was nevertheless accorded sheer ontological otherness. Besides, we have the same idea by the ‘scenic philosopher’ (σκηνικὸς φιλόσοφος)⁶⁴ and authoritative exponent of the Anaxagorean philosophy from stage, namely, Euripides: he made it clear that, according to Anaxagoras, ‘our mind, in each one of us, is God’ (ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός). In

 Harpocration, Lexicon in Decem Oratores Atticos, p. 33. Photius, Lexicon, letter alpha, entry 1573. Suda, letter alpha, entry 1981. George Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, p. 278.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.7. See quotation infra, p. 750, note 223. Cf. Plato, Cratylus, 413c: δὲ τούτων μὲν πάντων καταγελᾶν φησιν, εἶναι δὲ τὸ δίκαιον ὃ λέγει ᾿Aναξαγόρας, νοῦν εἶναι τοῦτο· αὐτοκράτορα γὰρ αὐτὸν ὄντα καὶ οὐδενὶ μεμειγμένον πάντα φησὶν αὐτὸν κοσμεῖν τὰ πράγματα διὰ πάντων ἰόντα. Her mias, the Christian apologist and philosopher, Irrisio Gentilium Philosophorum, 6: ὅταν μὲν ᾿Aνα ξαγόρας παραλάβῃ με, ταῦτα παιδεύει· ἀρχὴ πάντων ὁ νοῦς καὶ οὗτος αἴτιος καὶ κύριος τῶν ὅλων. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 4: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μόνος ἐπέστησε νοῦν βασιλεύειν τοῦ παντός. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem Commentarii, 137 8: παρὰ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρου ὠφελήθη τὸ ἄρχειν, πρῶτος γὰρ οὗτος τὸν νοῦν εἰσήγαγε τοῖς πράγμασιν, ἐξ ῃρημένως ἄρχοντα τῶν μετ᾿ αὐτόν, μὴ ἐγκατατεταγμένον αὐτοῖς ὄντα.  Plato, Cratylus, 413c, quoted in the preceding note.  Plato, Phaedo, 97b c.  Plato, op. cit. 97b 98e.  Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 4.48; 13.11; Deipnosophistae (epitome), p. 51. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos et Grammaticos, 288. Origen, Cels, IV.77. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangel ica, 10.14.13. See infra, p. 845, note 94.

God permeating the entire universe (διὰ πάντων ἰών)

621

The Trojan Women, queen Hecuba prays to Zeus, addressing him as one ‘who is the vehicle of earth, and rests upon it’ (ὦ γῆς ὄχημα κἀπὶ γῆς ἔχων ἕδραν).⁶⁵ Commentators explained that, by Zeus, Euripides meant ‘the Mind that permeates everything’ (ὁ διήκων διὰ πάντων νοῦς), since this poet (in a lost play) ‘being inspired by the words of Anaxagoras (ὁρμᾶται δὲ ἐκ τῶν ᾿Aναξαγορείων λόγων), wrote that the our mind is God (ὁ νοῦς ἡμῶν ὁ θεός)’,⁶⁶ which was only another version of Anaxagoras’ proposition, ‘the Mind, both the greater and the lesser one, is the same’ (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων). Moreover, when Plutarch quoted the ensuing verse of Euripides (‘Zeus, whether you are natural necessity, or the intellect of mortal men’, Ζεὺς εἴτ᾿ ἀνάγκη φύσεος εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν),⁶⁷ he remarked that Euripides ought to have used the copulative conjunction ‘and’, instead of the disjunctive ‘or’ (εἴτε), because ‘the power that permeates everything is both Necessity and Mind’ (καὶ γὰρ ἀνάγκη καὶ νοῦς ἐστιν ἡ διήκουσα διὰ πάντων δύναμις).⁶⁸ It is characteristic that, at

 Cf. Euripides, Troiades, verses 884 7: “O you, who are the vehicle of the earth and rest there upon, whoever you are, a riddle past our knowledge! Zeus, whether you are natural necessity, or man’s intellect, to you I pray.”  Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 1018, apud Anonymous, Scholia in Euripidem (scholia vetera), scho lion in Troiades, verse 884; also, Anonymous, Scholia in Euripidis Troiades, verse 884. Plutarch thought that Menander the comic wrote a similar verse. Cf. Menander, Sententiae, 1, line 434: Ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός, apud Plutarch, Platonicae Quaestiones, 999D. Later, how ever, Iamblichus quoted and endorsed the maxim, ‘whether it was either Anaxagoras or Hermo timus that said this’. Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 48: Ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός, εἴθ᾿ Ἑρμότιμος εἴτ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἶπε τοῦτο. The same phrase is attributed to Aristotle, who always struggled to qual ify Anaxagoras’ originality by saying that the latter had been inspired by Hermotimus. Aristotle, Protrepticus, fr. 110; Fragmenta Varia, from the same lost work, fr. 125. This only means that Ar istotle sought to belittle Anaxagoras’ contribution by reference to the a semi mythical figure of Hermotimus (see chapter 1, note 139). Metaphysica, 984b18 20: φανερῶς μὲν οὖν ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἴσμεν ἁψάμενον τούτων τῶν λόγων, αἰτίαν δ᾿ ἔχει πρότερον Ἑρμότιμος ὁ Κλαζομένιος εἰπεῖν. Cf. Aristotle’s other references to Hermotimus mentioned by commentators. Alexander of Aph rodisias, commMetaph, p. 32. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 1361; 1362. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. pp. 29; 31; 43.  This is from Euripides, Troiades, verse 886; quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathema ticos et Grammaticos, 288; Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 128. Pseudo Justin, De Monarchia, p. 109C (not in the Hecuba, as the author notes: instead, this is from the Troiades, and these are words placed on the mouth of Hecuba). The relation of these verses of Euripides with Anaxagoras was recognized by Satyrus of Gallatis (a Peripatetic, third second century BC), in his Life of Euripides. The Oxyrhynchus papyrus 9.1176 (edited by J. von Arnim) is corrupt, but this point is fairly clear: τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόρειον διάκοσμον ἔπεσι τρισὶν περιιών· … Ζεὺς εἴτ᾿ ἀνάγκη φύσεος εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν. Satyrus, Vita Euripidis, fr. 37.3.  Plutarch, De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1026B C.

622

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

the same point, Plutarch describes the principles postulated by some philosophers (Empedocles, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Zoroaster, then adding Euripides to them) who argued that the life of the universe is rational and harmonious, and it is intermingled with [natural] Necessity, which some call Heimarmene, thus making it clear that Heimarmene is no different from the ideas of those earlier philosophers.⁶⁹ For, in Stoicism, ‘necessity’ does not really mean anything imposed by violence: it only means the outcome of sequence of certain causes stemming from universal laws.⁷⁰ This is why Zeno wrote that Heimarmene is no different from Providence and Nature: either of them indicates ‘a force which causes matter to move’.⁷¹ It appears, therefore, that the notion of the Mind permeating all of the universe, which was adduced as a testimony to the philosophy of Anaxagoras, comes from his vehement critic, namely Socrates/Plato assuring that this criticism stems from a first-hand reading of Anaxagoras’ own book. The Stoics took up the idea and entertained it conveniently, speaking of ‘spirit’,⁷² or ‘God’, or ‘part of God’ receiving various names, each time in accordance with his specific activity,⁷³ or ‘divine providence’,⁷⁴ which ‘permeates every-

 Plutarch, op. cit. 1026B C: ἔμφρων καὶ ἁρμονία καὶ λόγος ἄγων πειθοῖ μεμιγμένην ἀνάγκην, ἣν εἱμαρμένην οἱ πολλοὶ καλοῦσιν.  Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, ᾿Aπορίαι καὶ Λύσεις, p. 10: τοῖς πάντα γίνεσθαι καθ᾿ εἱμαρ μένην λέγουσιν τὸ δυνατὸν εἶναι μόνον τὸ γινόμενον ἐξ ἀνάγκης, τοῦ ἐξ ἀνάγκης μὴ τοῦ ὡς βιαίου. … τὰ καθ᾿ εἱμαρμένην γινόμενα καθ᾿ εἱρμὸν αἰτίων γίνεται καὶ κατὰ τάξιν θείαν τινά, οὐδὲν δὲ τῶν κατὰ τάξιν γινομένων τοιαύτην βίᾳ γίνεται, οὐδὲν ἂν τῶν καθ᾿ εἱμαρμένην γινομέ νων βίᾳ γίνοιτο.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.5.15: Ζήνων δὲ ὁ Κιτιεὺς δύναμιν κέκληκε τὴν εἱμαρμένην κινητικὴν τῆς ὕλης, τὴν δὲ αὐτὴν καὶ Πρόνοιαν καὶ Φύσιν ὠνόμασεν. The same, in Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 6.14. Likewise, George Monachus, Chronicon, p. 81; Chronicon Breve, PG.110.125.34 36. Suda, letter epsilon iota, entry 144. George Cedrenus, Compendium Historia rum, p. 56. However, the Middle Stoa of Posidonius thought somewhat differently: he classified Zeus first, Nature second, and accorded Heimarmene the third place. But shortly before him, An tipater of Tarsus maintained the legacy of the Old Stoa and cherished the doctrine of Zeno: Anti pater identified God with Heimarmene. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.5.15.  Pseudo Galen, Introductio, p. 698 (ref. to Athenaeus) (Arnim: Chrysippus, fr. 416, but the tes timony is only to the ‘Stoics’, not to Chrysippus): καὶ πέμπτον παρεισάγει κατὰ τοὺς Στωϊκοὺς τὸ διῆκον διὰ πάντων πνεῦμα, ὑφ᾿ οὗ τὰ πάντα συνέχεσθαι καὶ διοικεῖσθαι. Athenagoras of Athens, Apologist, Legatio, 6.4 (ref. to Stoics): τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα αὐτοῦ [i. e. the spirit of God] διήκει δι᾿ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 882A, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.9 (Arnim, Chrysippus, fr. 1027, but this is only a general reference to the ‘Stoics’, not to Chrysippus): πνεῦμα μὲν διῆκον δι᾿ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου, τὰς δὲ προσηγορίας μεταλαμβάνον κατὰ τὰς τῆς ὕλης, δι᾿ ἧς κεχώρηκε, παραλλάξεις. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.147, then copied by the Suda, letter theta, entry 178 (Arnim, Chrysippus, fr. 1021, but the testimony is only to the ‘Sto

God permeating the entire universe (διὰ πάντων ἰών)

623

thing in the universe’, or ‘a certain spirit that keeps all universal substance together by permeating it’,⁷⁵ not only humans and animals,⁷⁶ but also all of matter,⁷⁷ even the most ugly and dishonoured things.⁷⁸ Porphyry had it that god Hermes stood for the ‘spermatic logos’ who ‘permeates all things’ thus creating all things and granting knowledge.⁷⁹ Well into the fifteenth century, Bessarion spoke of the Nous who is the Ruler of the universe and permeates all of it (ὁ διήκων διὰ πάντων κυβερνήτης νοῦς), but his vocabulary has no Stoic tenor

ics’, not to Chrysippus, and, anyway, this appears in the Life of Zeno): εἶναι δὲ τὸν μὲν δημιουρ γὸν τῶν ὅλων καὶ ὥσπερ πατέρα πάντων κοινῶς τε καὶ τὸ μέρος αὐτοῦ τὸ διῆκον διὰ πάντων, ὃ πολλαῖς προσηγορίαις προσονομάζεται κατὰ τὰς δυνάμεις.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.21.1 (ref. to Zeno, fr. 153, and Chrysippus, fr. 1029): διὰ πάντων δὲ διήκειν τὴν πρόνοιαν αὐτοῦ. Origen argued that the Christian theory is dif ferent, Cels, VI.71: Διήκει μὲν γὰρ ἡ ἐπισκοπὴ καὶ ἡ πρόνοια τοῦ θεοῦ διὰ πάντων ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ὡς τὸ τῶν Στωϊκῶν πνεῦμα. Cf. selDeut (ref. to Son the Logos), PG.12.808.48 49: ὁ λόγος … λεπτόν ἐστι τῇ αὐτοῦ φύσει … διῆκον διὰ πάντων πνευμάτων νοερῶν, καθαρῶν, λεπτοτάτων. This is why Christian authors used the Stoic terminology while speaking only of the providence. Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 2.11.441 (quoting Eunomius). Eusebius, De Ecclesiastica Theologia, 2.17.7. Oecumenius, Commentarius in Apocalypsin, p. 73. Nicolas of Methone, Orationes, 1, p. 221; 3, p. 264; 5, p. 317. Likewise, Proclus (ref. to divine providence), Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 146; In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 53; In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 921; commTim, v. 1, pp. 190; 215; 303.  Chrysippus, fr. 473, apud Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 216: ἡνῶσθαι μὲν ὑποτί θεται τὴν σύμπασαν οὐσίαν, πνεύματός τινος διὰ πάσης αὐτῆς διήκοντος, ὑφ᾿ οὗ συνέχεταί τε καὶ συμμένει καὶ συμπαθές ἐστιν αὑτῷ τὸ πᾶν. The same, in op. cit. p. 223.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 130 (attr. to the ‘Stoics’, not specifically to Chrysippus as Arnim took it, fr. 370): ἔστι τι διῆκον δι᾿ ἡμῶν τε καὶ ἐκείνων πνεῦμα (spirit permeating men and animals).  Stobaeus Anthologium, 1.11.5a (Zeno, fr. 87): διὰ ταύτης [sc. τῆς ὕλης] δὲ διαθεῖν τὸν τοῦ παν τὸς λόγον, ὃν ἔνιοι εἱμαρμένην καλοῦσιν, οἷονπερ καὶ ἐν τῇ γονῇ τὸ σπέρμα. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 8.134 (Zeno, fr. 85): δοκεῖ δ᾿ αὐτοῖς ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὅλων δύο, τὸ ποιοῦν καὶ τὸ πάσχον. τὸ μὲν οὖν πάσχον εἶναι τὴν ἄποιον οὐσίαν τὴν ὕλην· τὸ δὲ ποιοῦν τὸν ἐν αὐτῇ λόγον τὸν θεόν. τοῦτον γὰρ ἀΐδιον ὄντα διὰ πάσης αὐτῆς δημιουργεῖν ἕκαστα. Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mix tione, p. 225, (ref. to Chrysippus, fr. 310); p. 226 (Chrysippus, fr. 475). Pseudo Justin, De Resurrec tione, p. 591D (ref. to the ‘Stoics’, not to Chrysippus as Arnim took it, fr. 414). Cf. Proclus (ref. to Chrysippus), commTim, v. 1, p. 414 (Chrysippus, fr. 1042): γὰρ αὐτὸς θεὸς παρ᾿ αὐτῷ πρῶτος ὢν διήκει διὰ τοῦ κόσμου καὶ διὰ τῆς ὕλης καὶ ψυχή ἐστι καὶ φύσις ἀχώριστος τῶν διοικουμένων. Likewise, op. cit. v. 1, p. 179; v. 2, p. 65; In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 921.  Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.218 (attr. to the ‘Stoics’, not specifically to Zeno, as Arnim, fr. 159): τὸν θεὸν … Στωικοὶ δὲ πνεῦμα διῆκον καὶ διὰ τῶν εἰδεχθῶν. Clement of Alex andria, Protrepticus, 5.66.3 (attr. to the ‘Stoics’, not particularly to Zeno, as Arnim took it, fr. 159): Οὐδὲ μὴν τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς παρελεύσομαι διὰ πάσης ὕλης καὶ διὰ τῆς ἀτιμοτάτης τὸ θεῖον διή κειν λέγοντας.  Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 8: Ὁ δὲ Ἑρμῆς … δείκνυσι δὲ καὶ τὸν σπερματικὸν λόγον τὸν διή κοντα διὰ πάντων.

624

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

whatsoever: instead, this is entirely the Platonic vocabulary of Cratylus referring to Anaxagoras alone.⁸⁰ The legacy of Anaxagoras was modified according to specific philosophical predilections and purposes, but the fundamental inspiration can hardly be overlooked. Thus, oftentimes was the ‘mind’ confused with ‘soul’,⁸¹ and Plato was the first to indulge in such an extrapolation, to be followed by Aristotle accusing Anaxagoras of not making any distinction bettwen mind and soul.⁸² Atticus attested that Plato sustained that ‘it is the soul that sets everything in order, by permeating all things’ (τὴν ψυχὴν διακοσμεῖν τὰ πάντα, διήκουσαν διὰ πάντων), and ‘nature is no other than a soul’ (μηδὲν ἄλλο εἶναι τὴν φύσιν ἢ ψυχήν), from which he inferred that ‘everything takes place in accordance with the divine providence, if also in accordance with the nature’. Atticus adds that none of these ideas was maintained by Aristotle, since he did not hold either that nature itself is a soul, or that earthly things are ruled by a certain [divine] nature, but he argued that each thing and phenomenon stems from causes that are particularly pertinent to it.⁸³ It is then surprising that Themistius, commenting on Aristotle, builds on this Platonic miscomprehension of Anaxagoras, and argues that ‘the nature of the [cosmic] soul permeates all beings’ (διὰ πάντων διήκει τῶν ὄντων ἡ τῆς ψυχῆς φύσις), from the lowest one (in plants) up to the highest, by this meaning the human mind (μέχρι τῆς πρώτης, λέγω δὲ τοῦ νοῦ).⁸⁴ Now, in what sense is ‘the soul’ superior to the mind, so as to permeate all of it, is a paradox that only Themistius could have been able to explain. The question is, why was it that Atticus attributed this idea to Plato? To this, the answer is not only simple, it is also illuminating: this was the starting point of a distortion of Anaxagoras’ thought, which made its mark throughout the Late Antiquity, as discussed in the ensuing sections.⁸⁵ We saw that in the Cratylus, Plato in effect qualifies (indeed tacitly withdraws) his earlier criticism (in the Phaedo) that Anaxagoras spoke of the Mind but he made nothing of it in his philosophy, and puts the following words on Socrates’ mouth:

 Bessarion, De Natura et Arte, 3.5: then, a couple of lines after this, ‘the mind that permeates everything and stands by everything’ (τὸν διήκοντα διὰ πάντων νοῦν καὶ ἐφεστῶτα τοῖς πᾶσιν); again, a few lines further, ὁ διήκων διὰ πάντων οὗτος νοῦς.  See pp. 178; 182; 570; 1229.  Aristotle, DeAnima, 404a 405b.  Atticus, Fragmenta, fr. 12.1, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.12.1.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 1.  See infra, p. 851.

God permeating the entire universe (διὰ πάντων ἰών)

625

What then? Do you not believe the doctrine of Anaxagoras, that it is the Mind and soul which orders and holds the nature of all things?⁸⁶

However, Anaxagoras never spoke of ‘mind and soul’ (νοῦν καὶ ψυχήν) in order to indicate the agent that set all things in order; to him, the soul meant only ‘life’, and it was not a self-subsistent entity, as Plato decided later. Perhaps the most accurate remark about the clandestine influence of Anaxagoras on all of Antiquity appears in the anonymous author who signed ‘Galen’, explaining that ‘the sons of philosophers’ (παῖδες φιλοσόφων) used different terms in order to expound the same idea: there is a ‘leading primary spirit’ (ἀρχηγὸν καὶ πρωτόγονον πνεῦμα)⁸⁷ ‘permeating all of the universe’ (διῆκον διὰ πάντων), which ‘they call either soul, or monad, or fire, or primary spirit’ (ἢ ψυχὴν ἢ μονάδα ἢ πῦρ ἢ ὁμωνύμως τῷ γένει πνεῦμα τὸ πρῶτον).⁸⁸ This was simply the original idea of Anaxagoras, which different philosophers took up and adapted to their own understanding and purposes, Plato being the first of them all. The Stoics are in fact the second school that made this specific idea of Anaxagoras a cardinal point of their own system. Little wonder that Cicero maintained that a Nous (mens mundi) permeates the universe through his action, indeed through his providence.⁸⁹ In respect of this, it should be observed that the founder of the Stoic school, namely, Zeno of Citium (c. 334 ‒ c. 262 BC), stands closer to the vocabulary and ideas of Anaxagoras than the much younger Chrysippus of Soli (c. 279 ‒ c. 206 BC), which we have seen already. This suggests that, while groping for his own way, Zeno sought inspiration in Anaxagoras, which is why the notion of

 Plato, Cratylus, 400a: Τί δέ; καὶ τὴν τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων φύσιν οὐ πιστεύεις ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ νοῦν καὶ ψυχὴν εἶναι τὴν διακοσμοῦσαν καὶ ἔχουσαν; To this question, Socrates’ interlocutor replied that he believed in the doctrine of Anaxagoras.  The expression πρωτόγονον πνεῦμα appears only in the anonymous De Astrologia (perhaps fifth or sixth century AD), p. 36.  Pseudo Galen, An Animal Sit Quod Est in Utero, p. 160. Why Arnim attributed this fragment to Chryssipus (fr. 638) is a mystery to me. Not at a single point does the author mention either ‘Chrysippus’ or the ‘Stoics’ in this work. Just before that point, he only uses a widespread def inition of the world being ‘a system consisted of heaven and earth, and of the natures between these’, which was attributed to Chrysippus by Stobaeus (Anthologium, 1.21) quoting from Arius Didymus. However, this was supposedly given by Pseudo Aristotle, De Mundo, 391b9 10 (Sto baeus attributes this definition also to Aristotle, in the Anthologium, 1.40), and only subsequent ly was it ascribed to authors such as Chrysippus, Posidonius, and Diodore of Tyre.  Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.28 (mentioning Zeno; SVF, I.44, fr. 172).

626

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

‘Mind’ (νοῦς) appears frequently in him.⁹⁰ This could well mean that, when Zeno set out to found his own school, the immediate influence upon him was Anaxagorean, hence his supreme principle was named and understood as Mind,⁹¹ and then it received its numerous names in accordance with the Stoic mindset. Nevertheless, beyond terms, what matters is ideas. Zeno posited a ‘primal fire’ (πρῶτον πῦρ) as the essential element of things, which sounded Heraclitian (καθάπερ Ἡράκλειτος). However, this fire was ‘like a seed’ (καθαπερεί τι σπέρμα) which contained ‘the logoi of everything and the causes of all occurrences, past, present, and future’ (τῶν ἁπάντων ἔχον τοὺς λόγους καὶ τὰς αἰτίας τῶν γεγονότων καὶ τῶν γιγνομένων καὶ τῶν ἐσομένων). The interaction and sequence between these logoi (τὴν δὲ τούτων ἐπιπλοκὴν καὶ ἀκολουθίαν) produces all reality, including natural laws, objects of knowledge, science, in a way that is inescapable and inevitable (εἱμαρμένην καὶ ἐπιστήμην καὶ ἀλήθειαν καὶ νόμον εἶναι τῶν ὄντων ἀδιάδραστόν τινα καὶ ἄφυκτον). In other words, this ‘seed’ contains in itself all the laws of the universe in latent form.⁹² Scarcely is anything in this proposition not Anaxagorean. Differences are there, of course: there is no ‘unmixed’ Mind which acts upon the seed; instead, this seed alone is itself what to Anaxagoras is the Mind and the distinguished principles. The logicality of the seed is that of the Logos himself, and this contains ‘the logoi of everything and the causes of all occurrences, past, present, and future ones’, but Zeno did not feel it necessary to say, as Anaxagoras did, that the Mind knew all occurrences, whether past, present, or future ones. Nevertheless, it was the Anaxagorean tenet about an ominscient Mind that impelled the Stoics grant value and honour upon divination (μαντική).⁹³ In any event, the Stoic idea about providential action by God aiming at the good of the entire universe could hardly make sense apart from that doctrine of Anaxagoras.

 Beyond the foregoing instance in Cicero, see Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b (Zeno, fr. 157): Ζήνων ὁ Στωικὸς νοῦν κόσμου πύρινον (sc. θεὸν ἀπεφήνατο). Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.135 (Zeno, fr. 102): ἕν τε εἶναι θεὸν καὶ νοῦν καὶ εἱμαρμένην καὶ Δία πολλαῖς τε ἑτέραις ὀνομασίαις προσονομάζεσθαι. Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 3, p. 508 (Zeno, fr. 146): Κιτιεὺς ὁ Στωικὸς ἔφη μὴ δεῖν θεοῖς οἰκοδομεῖν ἱερά, ἀλλ᾿ ἔχειν τὸ θεῖον ἐν μόνῳ τῷ νῷ, μᾶλλον δὲ θεὸν ἡγεῖσθαι τὸν νοῦν. See infra, pp. 700 1, ‘Zeno going to theatre’.  Cf. Pseudo Epiphanius of Salamis, Anacephalaeosis, p. 166, & John of Damascus, De Haer esibus, 7: Στωϊκοὶ σῶμα τὸ πᾶν δογματίζοντες καὶ αἰσθητὸν τοῦτον τὸν κόσμον θεὸν νομίζοντες. Τινὲς δὲ ἐκ τῆς τοῦ πυρὸς οὐσίας τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν αὐτὸν ἀπεφήναντο. Καὶ τὸν μὲν θεὸν νοῦν ὁρίζουσι, ὡς καὶ ψυχὴν παντὸς τοῦ ὄντος κύτους οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς.  Zeno, fr. 98, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.14.2, quoting from Aristocles of Mes sene.  SVF, II.270.28; II.271.12; II.304.33; II.342.13&24; II.346.5&10; III.164.20; III.228.11.

God permeating the entire universe (διὰ πάντων ἰών)

627

Zeno did not wish to posit a Logos standing in sheer ontological otherness in relation to the ‘seed’. The Logos is pregnant with seeds (which is why he is called spermatic), he is in them, and bestows them rationality of function, it maintains possession of matter and makes it fit to produce things according to his purposes’.⁹⁴ When the Stoics spoke of ‘matter’ as ‘formless substance’ (ἄποιον οὐσίαν τὴν ὕλην),⁹⁵ or ‘formless body’ (ἄποιον σῶμα),⁹⁶ they did not actually mean that this matter is bereft of all qualities: they meant that ‘it has all qualities in itself’,⁹⁷ which is no different from the explanation of Simplicius about the Anaxagorean principles retaining their unity even within the realm of perceptible diversity. This ‘spermatic logos of the world’ is like ‘a seed which is contained in any offspring’.⁹⁸ Therefore, the Logos is not different from the seed; he is the inherent generative force of it and the rationality proper of the seed.⁹⁹ Therefore, while parting ways with Anaxagoras, Zeno introduced an axiom which runs contrary to common experience. Anaxagoras alone posited the notion of ‘seed’, which is easy to comprehend: everyone has a grasp of a seed developing to a plant, or to an animal, or to a human being. But there is no empirical experience of such natural process as a fully developed, say, animal being reduced to seed. An animal produces seeds so as to generate other animals; but it is not possible for a specific animal, which was produced from a seed, to become itself a seed anew.¹⁰⁰ Ultimately, this is what happens with the universal Logos himself upon conflagration: although everything is subject to destruction, the Logos can regenerate the entire realm of the logoi out of himself. Therefore, the supreme active agent is certainly other than matter, but he is not other than the seed: he is inherent in it and eventually this is the seed. In this respect,

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.135.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.134 & 137.  Plotinus, Enneades, II.4.1.  Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1086A B: ὃν δέ τινες αὐτῶν προβάλλον ται λόγον, ὡς ἄποιον τὴν οὐσίαν ὀνομάζοντες οὐχ ὅτι πάσης ἐστέρηται ποιότητος ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι πάσας ἔχει τὰς ποιότητας.  Zeno, fr. 102, apud Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.136.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 101: Ζήνων δὲ ὁ Κιτιεύς, ἀπὸ Ξενοφῶντος τὴν ἀφορμὴν λαβών, οὑτωσὶ συνερωτᾷ· τὸ προϊέμενον σπέρμα λογικοῦ καὶ αὐτὸ λογικόν ἐστιν· ὁ δὲ κόσμος προΐεται σπέρμα λογικοῦ· λογικὸν ἄρ᾿ ἐστὶν ὁ κόσμος. ᾧ συνει σάγεται καὶ ἡ τούτου ὕπαρξις.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.20.1e, apud Arius Didymus, Physica (fragmenta), fr. 36, col 2: Ζή νωνι καὶ Κλεάνθει καὶ Χρυσίππῳ ἀρέσκει τὴν οὐσίαν μεταβάλλειν οἷον εἰς σπέρμα τὸ πῦρ, καὶ πάλιν ἐκ τούτου τοιαύτην ἀποτελεῖσθαι τὴν διακόσμησιν οἵα πρότερον ἦν. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.18.3: ἀρέσκει γὰρ τοῖς Στωικοῖς φιλοσόφοις τὴν ὅλην οὐσίαν εἰς πῦρ μεταβάλλειν οἷον εἰς σπέρμα, καὶ πάλιν ἐκ τούτου αὐτὴν ἀποτελεῖσθαι τὴν διακόσμησιν, οἵα τὸ πρότερον ἦν.

628

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

the Logos, Zeus, Fate, et cetera is virtually like any Anaxagorean principle, not like the Mind proper, even though (following a cosmic conflagration) the Stoic Logos is the rational force that regenerates the logoi. Zeno was indebted to Anaxagoras, yet he paved his own way. My suggestion is that he would have never been able to do so unless Anaxagoras had preceded him. As said earlier, there were many ideas that Presocratics shared (Atomists, as well as Xenophanes, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles). However, along with his novel notion of a single Poietic Cause, Anaxagoras was the only philosopher who spoke of ‘seeds’ having been produced out of a primeval confusum, and made them the agents of all generation. By contrast, to Zeno there was not such primeval reality, since a ‘seed’ has been always there, oscillating periodically and endlessly between potentiality and actuality. Why is it then that the Stoic logoi came to be called spermatic logoi (in my view, not earlier than Cornutus)? Now it becomes evident that this is so because they stem from one spermatic Logos, which was the initial Stoic conception of the universal Mind. Seeds stem from this Logos who is pregnant with logoi, but (according to some testimonies, though not all of them)¹⁰¹ these logoi are subject to destruction upon universal conflagration. What endures and lives on is the Logos, who produces active logoi out of himself all over again. Therefore, the Logos himself is reduced to a seed, and this is what the entire universe becomes upon the end of each cosmic period, as the above text of Zeno indicates.¹⁰² The original inspiration is plainly Anaxagorean, but the recurrent cosmic process is not, indeed it is Heraclitian and Empedoclean. The universe becomes periodically a seed, in which the logoi/principles are reduced to latencies, or indeed, potentialities. Upon the end of a period, the world becomes a seed, yet one in which the logoi are there in a latent form, but this sperm is not a confusum needing a cause to distinguish it anew. For even in that state, the Logos himself shelters and knows them as distinct ones. Since this process is eternal (meaning, both beginningless and endless), it turns out that the idea of a Creative Cause is not really there. Zeno started his own system from the point at which the Anaxagorean Mind had already posited

 See infra, pp. 933; 1326; 1453.  Plutarch reports Chrysippus saying that the Stoic God/Zeus is ‘the sole one who is inde structible’. God is identified with the world, and his providence is his soul. Upon conflagration, ‘Zeus withdraws to his own soul’ so that ‘both of them become aether’. Plutarch, De Communi bus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1077D E (SVF, II.312, Chrysippus, fr. 1064): λέγει γοῦν Χρύσιππος ἐοικέναι τῷ μὲν ἀνθρώπῳ τὸν Δία καὶ τὸν κόσμον τῇ δὲ ψυχῇ τὴν πρόνοιαν· ὅταν οὖν ἡ ἐκπύ ρωσις γένηται, μόνον ἄφθαρτον ὄντα τὸν Δία τῶν θεῶν ἀναχωρεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν πρόνοιαν, εἶθ᾿ ὁμοῦ γενομένους ἐπὶ μιᾶς τῆς τοῦ αἰθέρος οὐσίας διατελεῖν ἀμφοτέρους.

Philo using Anaxagoras: clandestine influence

629

the principles as distinct ones out of the primal mixture. In other words, Zeno employed as beginning not the primal undifferentiated mixture and the Creative Cause, but an already differentiated mixture in the Logos who contains all of the logoi, which bring about actualities from potentialities in due course and order (ὁδῷ καὶ τάξει). The Stoic seed, from which the universe emerges anew, contains already the rationality which is necessary for the process to go on eternally. This is the rationality of the Logos. To Anaxagoras, this Logos makes sense once the distinction of the primal mixture takes place. The Mind appears as Logos once distinction (that is, rationality) is instilled within the primal undifferentiated mixture.¹⁰³ However, the Mind becoming Logos does not suggest anything which is ontologically different from the Mind, nor is there any factor external to the Mind that causes it to become Logos, nor indeed did the Mind become anything that it was not already. The notion is pretty much the same as the Christian one, which has it that the Father begat his Logos, but there was no state in which the Father was bereft of his Logos: creation was only the product of untrammelled divine free will. The Father did not become what he was not always (that is, ‘Father of a Son’),¹⁰⁴ no matter whether his decision to create was there, or not. Zeno took up the fundamental Anaxagorean notion of a Mind existing along with the principles and dominating over them, but he did not feel it necessary to go along with Anaxagoras all the way through, that is, as far as to make every cosmic period start with a primal confusum: it only started with a Spermatic Logos containing in himself all of the logoi in a latent form. The universe could be (re)created in due course by the logoi under the providential care of the Logos.

Philo using Anaxagoras: clandestine influence Had Aristotle (384‒322 BC) lived for fifty more years, he would have realized that his own ‘materialistic’ exposition of Anaxagoras fitted more the thought of Stoic Zeno of Citium (c. 334 ‒ c. 262 BC)¹⁰⁵ rather than that of his Presocratic predecessor himself, except for the notion of the Mind being both ‘unmixed’ with everything and the First Mover. For Zeno drew heavily on Anaxagoras, and, given the distorted analyses of Aristotle, it was easy for subsequent writers to be misled

 See infra, pp. 732 3.  Cf. Origen, commJohn, X.37.246; frLuc, 162. See infra, pp. 719; pp. 843; 968 9; 1585.  Once Zeno founded the Stoic school of philosophy, he taught in Athens from about 300 BC onwards.

630

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

and mistake Anaxagorean references as Stoic ones. I should then give only one example of this, which is instructive. It is widely known that Philo’s writings are influenced not only by Platonism, but also by Stoicism. However, sometimes this assumption goes too far, and wrong conclusions are drawn. I will make reference only to his pragmaty On Creation and concede that there is some Stoic tenor in this relatively short treatise, mainly terminological one (such as ἡγεμονικόν, διοίκησις τοῦ κόσμου, etc.), as indeed there are references reminiscent of Plato’s Timaeus. Distinction between either Platonic or Stoic influence is not difficult to make; what appears to have eluded scholars is the distinction between what is Stoic and what is in fact Anaxagorean.¹⁰⁶ I have remarked that J. von Arnim picked up portions from authors and branded them ‘Stoic’, whenever it appeared to him that he was upon such references. Although in many cases such references are general remarks with no specific reference to ‘Stoic’ thought (far less, to names of Stoic philosophers), the anthologer’s normal practice was to attribute all of such references to Chrysippus. He did not consider whether the case would have been that such references referred to later Stoics (which was beyond his scope). This is the only reason why the volume of the collection referring to Chrysippus is hefty compared to the other two. It is not really the case that ancient (doxographic, or other) references to the name of Chrysippus are more numerous: this is so only because the editor attributed them to that name, normally without evident or good reason, even though in those references the name of Chrysippus does not appear at all, nor do always parallel texts or ideas exist to justify attribution. In the beginning of Philo’s work treating Moses’ exposition of the creation of the world, the author seems to make use of a couple of Stoic ideas, such as ‘living in accordance with nature’ and being ‘a citizen of the world’, although the term κοσμοπολίτης¹⁰⁷ originated with Diogenes the Cynic, not with the Stoics,¹⁰⁸ and I should have thought that this was probably a term of Philo’s own making, which remained almost exclusive to him.¹⁰⁹ Now, to the point. Right from the start, Philo denounces those who posited an everlasting and beginningless world, and then he praises ‘Moses, who at-

 Philo mentions Anaxagoras by name respectfully: De Vita Contemplativa, 14; De Aeternitate Mundi, 4.  Cf. the Stoic idea that ‘the wolrd is like a city’. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.15.4, apud Arius Didymus, Physica (fragmenta). fr. 29. Dio Chrysostom, Orationes, 36.29.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 6.63.  Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 3; 142; 143. Also, De Gigantibus, 61; De Confusione Linguarum, 106; De Migratione Abrahami, 59; De Somniis, 1.243; De Vita Mosis, 1.157.

Philo using Anaxagoras: clandestine influence

631

tained the highest summit of philosophy’. Why was that so? Because ‘Moses grasped that it is most necessary for Being to consist of an active cause, and something which is passive’ (ὅτι ἀναγκαιότατόν ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς οὖσι τὸ μὲν εἶναι δραστήριον αἴτιον, τὸ δὲ παθητόν). Moreover, Moses realized that ‘the active Cause is the perfectly unmixed and utterly pure Mind of the universe’ (καὶ ὅτι τὸ μὲν δραστήριον ὁ τῶν ὅλων νοῦς ἐστιν εἰλικρινέστατος καὶ ἀκραιφνέστατος), who is superior to virtue, superior to science, and superior to both the Good and to Beauty itself.’¹¹⁰ Against this utterly transcendent Mind, ‘the passive [element] is lifeless and motionless [i. e. inactive]; but when the Mind set it in motion, and shaped it and made it alive, this was transformed into this most perfect piece of work, namely, this world.’¹¹¹ I hardly need to point out that this is sheer Anaxagorean philosophy: Philo stresses the absolute ontological otherness of the Mind (νοῦς) over its creature; besides, he determines how the Mind created the world, notably, that this took place once the Mind set this in motion (κινηθέν). It this Stoicism? But the Stoics posited the ‘first cause’ as eternally ‘moving’,¹¹² not immovable; and when Zeno determined that ‘Heimarmene (which is the same as Providence and Nature) is a force that moves matter’,¹¹³ he did not suggest that this takes place as of a certain beginning, that is, as transition from a state of immobility to a state of motion.¹¹⁴ Following the preceding analyses, there is no way for this exposition of Philo to be classified as Stoic: quite simply, this is a distinctly Anaxagorean one.¹¹⁵

 Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 8. He uses two synonymous epithets for the Mind, both of them in a superlative tenor, in order to adumbrate the Mind’s utter transcendence: ἀκραιφνὴς is derived from ἀκεραιοφανής, and means unmixed, pure, or untouched, whereas εἰλικρινὴς means un mixed, pure, simple, absolute. See infra, p. 902, note 345, and pp. 1048; 1338 9.  Philo, op. cit. 9. Eusebius quoted from this work of Philo, starting from section 7.5. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 8.13.2 ff.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.11.5a (Zeno, fr. 87): Διὰ ταύτης [sc. ὕλης] δὲ διαθεῖν [= run about, run to and fro] τὸν τοῦ παντὸς λόγον, ὃν ἔνιοι εἱμαρμένην καλοῦσιν, οἷονπερ καὶ ἐν τῇ γονῇ τὸ σπέρμα.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.5.15: Ζήνων ὁ Στωικὸς ἐν τῷ Περὶ φύσεως, δύναμιν κινητικὴν τῆς ὕλης κατὰ ταὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως, ἥντινα μὴ διαφέρειν πρόνοιαν καὶ φύσιν καλεῖν.  See infra, p. 687, quotations in note 407: the Stoics posited a moving first principle (Sto baeus, Anthologium, 1.13.1d; Simplicius, commPhys, p. 420) as against those (such as Anaxago ras) who ‘began cosmogony from immovable things’ (Aristotle, De Caelo, 301a).  It is worth studying further this work of Philo, especially chapters 42 44: terms which are apparently Stoic are in fact used to expound Anaxagorean thought. Chapter 42 describes the Anaxagorean twofold creation (whereas no such thing exists in Stoicism). Cf. chapter 43: ἔτι δὲ καρπῶν ἀμυθήτους ἰδέας. … τὰς σπερματικὰς οὐσίας περιέχοντες, ἐν αἷς ἄδηλοι καὶ ἀφανεῖς οἱ λόγοι τῶν ὅλων εἰσί. Anaxagoras apud, Simplicius, commCael, p. 609; commPhys, pp. 35; 156;

632

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

Philo emphasizes strongly, indeed in superlative terms, the absolute otherness of the active agent (Mind) in relation to the passive one (matter). Diogenes Laertius reported that there are two Stoic principles, namely ‘the active and the passive’ one (τὸ ποιοῦν καὶ τὸ πάσχον),¹¹⁶ which was not a Stoic invention anyway, and by all accounts the Stoic God acted not by being alienated to matter proper, but by being entirely related to it, indeed inherent in matter. This stood of course in harmony with Aristotle’s logic arguing that ‘the passive and the active’ (τὸ πάσχον καὶ τὸ ποιοῦν) are identical in terms of genus: they are unlike one another only in terms of species, which is the characteristic of all contraries.¹¹⁷ In the case of Stoicism, the common genus is ‘principles’,¹¹⁸ the world comes to pass by collaboration of two principles (active and passive), and this is how the four elements are produced in the first place.¹¹⁹ On the other hand, to Anaxagoras, these have nothing in common, since the Mind is entirely ‘unmixed’ with anything else, indeed it is sheer otherness. This is precisely how Philo describes the Mind in this passage. And yet, J. von Arnim decided that this is Stoic, and, according to his normal practice, he defiantly attributed the portion to Chrysippus himself, as if Philo described a God who created the world by being himself within matter.¹²⁰ This is not to say that Philo had a clear grasp of Anaxagoras’ real philosophy: it means only that he wrote having read Anaxagoras as his thought was rendered up to that time, notably, misunderstood. For Aristotle had decided that Anaxagoras posited two principles, one active, which was the ‘unmixed’ Mind,

157: καὶ σπέρματα πάντων χρημάτων καὶ ἰδέας παντοίας ἔχοντα. Also, Anaxagoras, apud Simpli cius, commPhys, p. 35: σπέρματα δὲ πάντων χρημάτων καὶ ἰδέας ἐκάλεσε τὰ ἐκεῖ.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.134: Δοκεῖ δ᾿ αὐτοῖς ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὅλων δύο, τὸ ποιοῦν καὶ τὸ πάσχον. τὸ μὲν οὖν πάσχον εἶναι τὴν ἄποιον οὐσίαν τὴν ὕλην, τὸ δὲ ποιοῦν τὸν ἐν αὐτῇ λόγον τὸν θεόν· τοῦτον γὰρ ἀΐδιον ὄντα διὰ πάσης αὐτῆς δημιουργεῖν ἕκαστα.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 324a4 5: Ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὸ πάσχον καὶ τὸ ποιοῦν τῷ μὲν γένει ταὐτὰ καὶ ὅμοια τῷ δ᾿ εἴδει ἀνόμοια, τοιαῦτα δὲ τἀναντία.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 9.11: οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς δύο λέγοντες ἀρχάς, θεὸν καὶ ἄποιον ὕλην, τὸν μὲν θεὸν ποιεῖν ὑπειλήφασι, τὴν δὲ ὕλην πάσχειν τε καὶ τρέπεσθαι.  Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. 10.312 3 (copied by Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 10.6.4): ἀρχὴ γὰρ τῶν ὄντων κατ᾿ αὐτούς ἐστιν ἡ ἄποιος ὕλη καὶ δι᾿ ὅλων τρεπτή, μεταβαλλούσης τε ταύτης γίνεται τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα, πῦρ καὶ ἀήρ, ὕδωρ καὶ γῆ. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.134: διαφέρειν δέ φασιν ἀρχὰς καὶ στοιχεῖα· τὰς μὲν γὰρ εἶναι ἀγενήτους καὶ ἀφθάρτους, τὰ δὲ στοιχεῖα κατὰ τὴν ἐκπύρωσιν φθείρεσθαι. ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀσωμάτους εἶναι τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ ἀμόρφους, τὰ δὲ μεμορφῶσθαι.  Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 178 & Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 146: καὶ ὡς τοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς ἔδοξεν ὁ θεὸς καὶ τὸ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ εἶναι. Likewise, Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 266. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 8.

Philo using Anaxagoras: clandestine influence

633

and one passive, which was the originally confused material homoiomeries,¹²¹ only because it suited Aristotle’s own philosophy and his need to show himself as the perfect exponent of ideas that had been articulated only vaguely. It turned out that his shadow over the Anaxagorean philosophy was too heavy for posterity to escape it. Nevertheless, Aristotle could not anticipate that, at a later time, this would be a description for the Stoic thought. Even Sextus Empiricus, more than five centuries later, described Anaxagoras’ thought in the same way. It is remarkable that, whereas Philo used the expression ‘active cause’ (δραστήριον αἴτιον), which was his own making and remained exclusive to him, Sextus made up the technical expression ‘active principle’ (δραστήριος ἀρχή, which remained exclusive to him, too), while expounding the same idea (two principles: one active, one passive), yet speaking not of the Stoics, but of Anaxagoras, whom he regarded as ‘the leader of this doctrine’ (τῆς δόξης ἀρχηγός), indeed a leader that was second only to Homer.¹²² This was not accurate, of course, since we saw earlier that the logoi are not external to things, nor do they come from outside as ‘forms’ acting upon formless matter: instead, they are inherent in the objects and phenomena that they generate, and yet they exist therein as if they were detached from them (οὕτως οἱ λόγοι ὥσπερ ἀφεστῶτες ἐνυπάρχουσιν οἱ λόγοι); they act not as external forces, neither do they shape or give any certain form to an underlying material all at once (οὐδέπω ῥυθμίζοντες τὸ ὑποκείμενον καὶ σχηματίζοντες); instead, [they act] like the logoi which exist in a seed (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς οἱ ἐν τῷ σπέρματι λόγοι): they are there accidentally, as it were, whereas they are inherently present and uncontrolled (κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς οἱονεὶ ἐνυπάρχουσιν ἀκρατήτως ἐνόντες).¹²³ The analysis about the logoi acting upon matter by being inherent in it, and yet outside it at the same time, is an Anaxagorean one that I have already canvassed: they are both here and everywhere, as much as are they themselves nowhere specifically. Philoponus elaborated on this, reporting that, to the Anaxagoreans, there is no distinction between form and substratum whatsoever: there are only the principles (which naturally he calls ‘homoiomeries’, being himself swayed by Aristotle), and there is nothing which acts upon any object or phenomenon from outside. In other words, there is no matter existing independently as a passive principle, let alone uncreated or eternal one: matter is simply the

 Aristotle, Physica, 187a: καὶ ὅσοι δ᾿ ἓν καὶ πολλά φασιν εἶναι, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aνα ξαγόρας. Cf. op. cit. 256b; 265b; De Anima, 404a 405b; 429b; Metaphysica, 1072a; 1075b; 1091b.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 9.4 6.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 210; ‘accidentally’ (κατὰ συμβεβηκός) means only an ad hoc par ticular activity of the omnipresent principles.

634

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

product of specific concurring principles, in like a manner any perceptible thing or phenomenon is. Despite the calamitous influence by Aristotle, Philoponus was accurate on this, perhaps because he had opportunities to discuss such matters with those of his era ‘who maintained the Anaxagorean fundamental propositions’.¹²⁴ It was impossible for Aristotle to postulate such a train of thought in order to explain generation, not only because he could not allow self-substistence of incorporeal principles, but also because the notions of an active and a passive agent (a ‘form’ acting upon ‘formless matter’) were indispensable to his arguments. Therefore, the question is not whether what Aristotle wrote about Anaxagoras was right or wrong: it was definitely wrong; but the fact of the matter is that he was the exponent of a philosophy which Zeno took up and adapted to his own purposes, yet posterity did not account for this modification. As a result, it appeared as though Anaxagoras’ philosophy and Stoicism were essentially different, although they were not. Even the immateriality of principles would have been an idea that Zeno noticed in Anaxagoras: for, in Stoicism, the ‘two principles’ (the active and the passive one) are sometimes tacitly connoted as immaterial, since even Aristotle posited that formless matter itself (which is potentially everything, and actually nothing) is not material, although Plotinus could not understand how could it be possible for something to be called ‘matter’ and yet not to be a material body, whereupon he argued staunchly against the Stoic assumptions.¹²⁵ Plotinus did so with good reason, since immateriality seemingly was allowed no place in Stoicism, the question of immateriality remained always a baffling and tantalizing one to them, and contradictory testimonies are always there.¹²⁶ The prevailing view (which I assess later in this chapter)

 John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 103: ἀλλ᾿ οὗτος ὁ λόγος οὐ σῳζόντων ἐστὶ τὰς ᾿Aναξαγορεί ους ὑποθέσεις, ὃς ἔλεγεν οὐδὲν ἕτερον εἶναι τὸ σύνθετον καὶ τὸ ὅλον ἢ τὴν συνδρομὴν τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν. ἡμῖν μὲν γὰρ τοῖς λέγουσιν ὅτι τῇ τοιᾷδε τῶν στοιχείων συνθέσει καὶ κράσει ἔξω θεν ἐπιγίνονται τὰ εἴδη ἕτερα ὄντα παρὰ τὰ ὑποκείμενα, εὐλόγως τοῦτο ἕπεται (οὐ γὰρ ὁπωσοῦν ἐχουσῶν τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν πέφυκε τὸ εἶδος ἐπιγίνεσθαι), ᾿Aναξαγόρᾳ δὲ μηδὲν ἕτερον ἐπιγί νεσθαι ἔξωθεν λέγοντι παρὰ τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ.  Plotinus, Enneades, VI.1.26.  The Stoics posited four incorporeals, namely, an expression, void, place, time. Sextus Em piricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (= Adversus Physicos 2), 218: τῶν δὲ ἀσωμάτων τέσσαρα εἴδη κα ταριθμοῦνται ὡς λεκτὸν καὶ κενὸν καὶ τόπον καὶ χρόνον. However, they posited also an ‘axiom’ as being ‘incorporeal’ (ἀσώματον ἀξίωμα), op. cit. 8.10. To Stoics the idea of incorporeality was tortuous, indeed a mystifying one, but their arguments were at points vigorous and reasonable; for instance, they argued that an incorporeal cannot be limited to a certain space, hence it is ‘infinite’ for that reason. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.18.4d, apud Arius Didymus, Physica (fragmen ta), fr. 25. Likewise, ‘whereas truth is a body, what is true is incorporeal’ (Sextus Empiricus, op.

Philo using Anaxagoras: clandestine influence

635

is that not only both the Logos and the logoi are material, but also somehow it was an axiom that ‘anything that moves others it is itself moved’ (πᾶν τὸ κινοῦν κινεῖσθαι),¹²⁷ and ‘an incorporeal can be neither an active nor a passive factor’;¹²⁸ furthermore, ‘anything that moves is a body’ (πᾶν τὸ κινούμενον σῶμα ἐστί),¹²⁹ which stands close to Aristotle’s doctrine positing that whatever changes has to be material.¹³⁰ Although Plotinus’ work ‘was covertly full of Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines, and the Metaphysics of Aristotle was there densely’,¹³¹ there is a point in Aristotle’s vocabulary which he probably did not notice: the term ἀσώματον in his texts does not necessarily mean ‘incorporeal’: it may mean a rarefied material body, which is not ἀντίτυπον, i. e. one resisting pressure, thus, resisting change of its shape. He speaks of fire which is ‘the most rarefied and incorporeal of all bodies’ (λεπτομερέστατόν τε καὶ μάλιστα τῶν στοιχείων ἀσώματον), which, to some philosophers appeared as that ‘which moves all bodies’.¹³² The distinction is paradoxical, no doubt:¹³³ for it is hardly possible to speak of something ‘less corporeal’, in like manner one cannot speak of a woman being ‘less married’ or ‘less pregnant’. Anyway, the meaning is ‘finer’, ‘thinner’, or more rarefied. Only a few authors found the distinction plausible to follow. In fact, long after Aristotle, Proclus was the author who used the comparative ἀσωματότερον (‘more incorporeal’)¹³⁴ in this sense.¹³⁵ Far less was the superlative

cit. 7.38). However, the views determining what is either incorporeal or not were not unanimous. Sextus Empiricus (op. cit. 8.258) reports that ‘the Stoic followers of Basilides’ allowed for no in corporeal at all (μηδὲν εἶναι ἀσώματον). I have discussed this in COT, p. 200.  Simplicius says that this axiom was maintained by materialist Physicists, and ‘by more re cent philosophers, namely, the Stoics’. Aristotle criticized the doctrine in the Physica, 201a. See Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 420; 1229; also, John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 66; likewise, other Aristotelian commentators (Psellus, Sophonias, Gennadius Scholarius).  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 2 (= Adversus Logicos 2), 263.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 903A.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b24: πάντα δ᾿ ὕλην ἔχει ὅσα μεταβάλλει.  Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 14: Ἐμμέμικται δ᾿ ἐν τοῖς συγγράμμασι καὶ τὰ Στωικὰ λανθάνοντα δόγ ματα καὶ τὰ Περιπατητικά· καταπεπύκνωται δὲ καὶ ἡ Μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ τοῦ ᾿Aριστοτέλους πραγματεία.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405a. Cf. loc. cit.: fire is ἀσωματώτατόν τε καὶ ῥέον ἀεί. Op. cit. 409b, reference to those who posited soul as corporeal, thought of it as σῶμα τὸ λεπτομερέστατον ἢ τὸ ἀσωματώτατον τῶν ἄλλων. Physica, 212a: ‘air appears to be incorporeal’ (ὁ ἀὴρ δοκῶν ἀσώμα τος εἶναι).  This is why, naturally, the Liddell and Scott Lexicon has no inkling of this meaning.  Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 215b: fire is ἀσωματώτερον than water.  Proclus, commRep, v. 2, pp. 214; 299; Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 13; commTim, v. 2, p. 8: ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀϋλοτέρου καὶ καθαρωτέρου καὶ ἀσωματωτέρου μέχρι τῶν ἐνυλοτάτων καὶ παχυτάτων σω

636

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

ἀσωματότατον used, which Aristotle had coined.¹³⁶ Nevertheless, authors who wished to stress the incorporeality meaning immateriality used expressions that would appear redundant only if the distinction introduced by Aristotle were ignored. The apparently tautological expression ‘incorporeal and immaterial’ (ἀσώματον καὶ ἄϋλον) appeared only with Philo,¹³⁷ but the list of authors that felt it necessary to apply this pleonasm is incredibly long, and it comprises both Greek¹³⁸ and Christian intellectuals.¹³⁹ By the same token, Aristotle’s expression μάτων. In doing so, Simplicius simply quoted Aristotle’s formulations. commPhys, pp. 612; 615; 673; commAnim, pp. 31; 66. So did John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 653. Only Gennadius Schol arius (perhaps, Aquinas) used this in his own text: Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 3.53; Tractatus De Processu Spiritus Sancti I, part 6, p. 235.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405a; 409b. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 32. John Philoponus, commA nim, p. 83. Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 32. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Tho mae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, Book 1, chs. 6; 12. However, once again, Scholarius indulged in this usage out of his own: Epistulae Contra Unionem Florentinam, Epistle 1, p. 129.  Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 1.82.  Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1085C: ὁ θεὸς δή, εἴπερ οὐκ ἔστιν ἀσώ ματος οὐδ᾿ ἄϋλος. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 563: ἐν τοῖς ἀσωμάτοις καὶ ὅλως ἀΰλοις. Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 115: εἶδος ἄϋλον καὶ ἀσώματον. Plotinus, Enneades, IV.7.8a: πῶς οὐ δῆλον ποιεῖ τὰ προσγενόμενα λόγους ἀΰλους καὶ ἀσωμάτους εἶναι; Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 14: τοῦ εἴδους ἀσωμά του καὶ ἀΰλου ὑπάρχοντος. … ἀναληφθὲν τῇ ψυχῇ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ γίνεται ἄϋλόν τε καὶ ἀσώματον. Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 118: τῶν ἀσωμάτων καὶ νοητῶν ἀΰλων τε καὶ ἀΐδίων. De Communi Mathematica Scientia, 50: τῇ ἀσωμάτῳ καὶ ἀΰλῳ φύσει. De Mysteriis, 1.19: ἡ ἄϋλος οὐσία καὶ ἀσώματος. Op. cit. 5.17: ἄϋλος παντελῶς καὶ ἀσώματος. Op. cit. 7.2: θεός, ἅτε δὴ ὑπερέχων τού των ἄϋλος καὶ ἀσώματος. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 1. Ammonius of Alexandria, commDeIn terpr, p. 132. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 6, p. 77; In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 256; In Platonis Par menidem, p. 1205; commTim, v. 1, pp. 32; 431; v. 2, p. 254; commEucl, p. 137. Simplicius, commCateg, p. 271; commPhys, p. 286; commAnim, p. 59. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 35; commPhys, pp. 559; 687. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Gorgiam Commentaria, 47.5. Eu stratius of Nicaea, In Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea vi Commentaria, pp. 301; 345. Sophonias, par aphrAnim, pp. 3; 135.  Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus Adversus Apollinarium, p. 159; De Mortuis Non Esse Dolen dum, pp. 48; 57; De Beneficentia, p. 94; In Illud: Quatenus Uni ex His Fecistis Mihi Fecistis, p. 115; In Inscriptiones Psalmorum, p. 159; Contra Eunomium, 2.1.107&210; 3.1.128 (Eunomius’ words); 3.6.29; Refutatio Confessionis Eunomii, 90; Dialogus De Anima et Resurrectione, PG.46.29.9. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.10.16; 7.15.15; Demonstratio Evangelica, 4.13.1; 4.13.6; 4.13.9; 5.1.14; 5.1.21; Commentarius in Isaiam, 2.36. Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistulae, 6.3; In Laudem Athanasii, PG.35.1093.2; In Theophania, PG.36.320.45; In Sanctum Pascha, PG.36.629.16. Athanasius, De Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, 10.5. Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 9.22; Epistulae, 8.12. Cyril of Alexandria, Responsiones ad Tiberium Diaconum Sociosque Suos, p. 599. Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, De Divinis Nominibus, pp. 132; 144. Pseudo Caesarius (= Cassian the Sabaite), Quaestiones et Responsiones, 175. Anastasius of Sinai, Viae Dux, 20.1. Maximus Confessor, Capita De Caritate, 3.30. John of Damascus, Dialectica, 3; 66; Fragmenta

Philo using Anaxagoras: clandestine influence

637

‘incorporeal and unextended’ (i. e. without magnitude: ἀσώματον καὶ ἀμέγεθες)¹⁴⁰ swayed a vast number of authors, too.¹⁴¹ The fact that Christian literature followed once again is telling of how much Greek thought influenced the religion that exorcized Greek thought as a daemon.¹⁴² Origen of course would have never made use of such pleonastic expressions, and the fact that the formal accusations brought against him contained it is one more indication that they were fanciful forgeries.¹⁴³ Why did so many authors feel it necessary to emphasize that ‘incorporeal’ is also ‘immaterial’, although everyone knew that the apposition was but a truism?¹⁴⁴ I myself have to admit that I cannot find a reason for this. Therefore, the Stoics spoke of active and passive factors as ‘principles’, not ‘elements’: in fact, they saw the four elements as being produced from the two fundamental principles, which they posited as uncreated and incorruptible (ἀγενήτους καὶ ἀφθάρτους), as well as incorporeal and formless (ἀσωμάτους

Philosophica, 8; Expositio Fidei, 26; Orationes De Imaginibus Tres, 2.10; 3.9a; De Duabus in Christo Voluntatibus, 9; Oratio In Nativitatem Sanctae Dei Genitricis Mariae, 3. Meletius of Tiberiopolis, De Natura Hominis, p. 21. Michael Psellus, Orationes Hagiographicae, 3.a (bis); Opuscula ii, pp. 101; 105; 128; 140; Theologica, 13; 51; 699; De Omnifaria Doctrina, 15. Michael Glycas, Annales, p. 138; Quaestiones in Sacram Scripturam, chapter 21, p. 254. Gennadius Scholarius, Orationes et Panegyrici, 15.9; Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 4.84; Translatio Commen tarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.5; 2.12; 3.11; Tractatus De Uno Deo et Contra Quos Qui Deum Esse Negant et Multos Deos Colunt, p. 183; Distinctio Essentiae Divinae et Operationum Sua rum, p. 235; Quaestiones et Responsiones De Divinitate Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, p. 472.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 320a.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 767 (mathematical monad). Plotinus, Enneades, VI.4.1 (the soul). Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 171 (any mind/nous); commEucl, p. 49 (the crea tive logoi); p. 54 (any cause). Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 286 (formless matter). Simplicius, commPhys, p. 150 (formless matter per se); p. 1243 (the first mover); p. 1321 (the first mover). John Philoponus, commCateg, p. 65 (formless matter); commGenCorr, p. 72 (formless matter); op. cit. p. 73 (qualities); op. cit. p. 76 (formless matter); op. cit. p. 104 (any ‘form’); commAnim, p. 14 & 22 (any geometrical form); op. cit. p.p. 124 & 132 7 138 (the soul); op. cit. p. 438 (the soul); commPhys, p. 401 (formless matter per se and any ‘form’); De Aeternitate Mundi, pp. 430 2 & 436 & 439 (formless matter per se); De Opificio Mundi, p. 37 (angels).  Cf. ἀσώματον καὶ ἀμέγεθες in Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarii in Joannem, v. 1, p. 39; v. 2, p. 699; Solutiones, p. 549; De Sancta Trinitate Dialogi, p. 391 (all references to the divine nature). Zacharias of Mytilene, Ammonius, 2 (divine nature). Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 21 (any ‘mind’).  ACO, Canones xv (contra Origenem et Origenistas), v. 4.1, p. 248: Εἴ τις λέγει πάντων τῶν λογικῶν τὴν παραγωγὴν νόας ἀσωμάτους καὶ ἀΰλους γεγονέναι δίχα παντὸς ἀριθμοῦ καὶ ὀνόματος.  Cf. Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, letter alpha, entry 8311 (explaining that ‘immaterial’ and ‘incorporeal’ are synonymous): ἀΰλους· ἀσωμάτους.

638

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

εἶναι τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ ἀμόρφους), in contrast to the elements, which have a shape, they are corruptible, and they are produced from formless matter being acted upon by the Mind.¹⁴⁵ It was only Simplicius who saw that those philosophies were different, but, at the same time, he was aware that Anaxagoras’ philosophy served as an ideal pattern and starting-point for Stoicism to break its own way. This is only one example of the phenomenon which at several points I call clandestine influence of Anaxagoras upon the Classical and Late Antiquity.

Universal interrelation (συμπάθεια) The Stoic tenet of συμπάθεια (consensus naturae), denoting the cohesion and interrelation of all things with one another under the superintendence of the Logos, is a corollary from the philosophy of Anaxagoras explained by Simplicius. There is unity between all the principles as much as distinction is there, too. The Arab doxographer al-Shahrastani quoted Porphyry reporting the teaching of Anaxagoras holding that the root of things is one single body. He added that he was the first to advance the theory of hiding-and-appearing insofar as he supposed that all things are hidden in the first body and their coming into existence is only their emergence into appearance out of that body as a species, a genus, a mass, a shape, and a certain denseness or a rareness, just as the ear of corn emerges into appearance out of a single grain, a stately palm out of small date-stone, a man, perfectly shaped, out of a paltry drop of sperm, and a bird out of an egg. All these are instances of the emergence of appearance out of hiding, of actuality out of potentiality, of form out of the disposition of matter. However, creation (al-ibdda‘) is only of one process, and it applies to no other thing except to that first body.¹⁴⁶ The coherence of the one single world is secured by the fact that Mind dominates all of it, it holds together all the principles, and the interaction between them is only a necessary consequence, as it happens with any body: once a certain part of it suffers, all of the body suffers, too. Sextus Empiricus explains this notion of unity thus: It is evident that the universe is a unified body (ἡνωμένον τι σῶμα καθέστηκεν ὁ κόσμος). In the case of bodies formed from conjoined or separate elements, the parts do not ‘sym pathize’ with one another, since if all the soldiers, say, in an army have perished save one,

 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (= Adversus Physicos 2), 312 3. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.134.  This ‘one process’ is the one single kind of motion posited by Anaxagoras.

Different modes of existence

639

the one who survives is not seen to suffer at all through transmission; but in the case of unified bodies (ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ἡνωμένων), there exists a certain sympathy (συμπάθειά τις ἔστιν), since, when the finger is cut, the whole body shares in its condition. So then, the universe also is a unified body (ἡνωμένον τοίνυν ἐστὶ σῶμα καὶ ὁ κόσμος).¹⁴⁷

The idea of universal interrelatedness, or ‘sympathy’ of all things with one another, is a direct consequence of the idea that God permeates all of the universe. Alexander of Aphrodisias pointed out that, to the Stoics, there is unity and sympathy of all things with one another because the Stoic God permeates all the material universe.”¹⁴⁸ Iamblichus was certainly aware of Anaxagoras’ philosophy, and at a certain point, he quotes the maxim ‘our mind is God’,¹⁴⁹ which was simply Euripides’ version of the Anaxagorean doctrine positing that ‘the Mind, whether the greater or the lessr one, is the same’. It is then remarkable that he mentions the idea of coherence of the universe and ‘sympathy’ of all its parts with one another, in like a manner all parts of an animal sympathize with any part of it,¹⁵⁰ without associating it with the Stoics. Likewise, the astronomer Cleomedes argued for the universal interrelation of everything (ἐκ τῆς συμπαθείας τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ μερῶν πρὸς ἄλληλα), which, to him, is a proof that there is ‘a nature which administers’ the world.¹⁵¹

Different modes of existence We have seen that Porphyry commented on Anaxagoras’ principles being ‘everything in everything’, and pointed out that their mode of existence and activity obtains ‘in accordance with the essence of each thing’: in the Mind, the logoi

 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 79 80. Different editors made different attributions of this. J. Arnim, to Chrysippus (fr. 1013); W. Theiler to Posidonius (fr. 354). Cf. 1Cor, 12:12 8. Sextus mentions no names, indeed not even ‘the Stoics’.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 227: ἔτι τε τὸ περὶ ἀρχῶν τε καὶ θεοῦ καὶ ἡ τοῦ παντὸς ἕνωσίς τε καὶ συμπάθεια πρὸς αὐτό. πάντα γὰρ αὐτοῖς ταῦτ᾿ ἐστὶν ὁ διὰ τῆς ὕλης διήκων θεός. This is SVF, Chrysippus, fr. 475, but Alexander does not cite any Stoic names at this point.  Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 48; see discussion, supra, pp. 621, and note 66.  Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 3.16: Καὶ ἡ ἕνωσις δὲ καὶ ἡ συμπάθεια τοῦ παντὸς καὶ ἡ ὡς ἐφ᾿ ἑνὸς ζῴου συγκίνησις τῶν πορρωτάτω μερῶν ὡς ἐγγὺς ὄντων.  Cleomedes, Caelestia, 1.1. Chrysippus, fr. 534. Posidonius, fr. 276. The attribution to Posido nius by W. Theiler is more plausible, since Cleomedes draws extensively on that author. Like wise, Cleomedes, loc. cit. 1.1: εἰ γὰρ μὴ δι᾿ ὅλου συμφυὴς ὑπῆρχεν ἡ τῶν ὅλων οὐσία, οὔτ᾿ ἂν ὑπὸ φύσεως οἷον τ᾿ ἦν συνέχεσθαι καὶ διοικεῖσθαι τὸν κόσμον, οὔτε τῶν μερῶν αὐτοῦ συμπάθειά τις ἂν ἦν πρὸς ἄλληλα (Chrysippus, fr. 546; Posidonius, fr. 278). Likewise, Sextus Empiricus, Ad versus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 78.

640

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

exist intellectually; in the soul logically; in plants as generative ones; in bodies, as virtual realities, whereas in the Beyond they exist in a manner which is both above being and inconceivable’.¹⁵² Simplicius and Damascius understood the notion in like terms,¹⁵³ and this was also the view of Zeno. The fact that Zeno moved along this Anaxagorean line is one more proof that it was not the case that Simplicius essayed to mislead us about Anaxagoras by making him a ‘Neoplatonist’. Thus, Themistius advises that ‘to the pupils of Zeno, it was a unanimous doctrine that God permeates all of [material] substance, and in different circumstances he appears either as Mind or as soul or as nature or as natural cohesive force’.¹⁵⁴ Things come to be by means of interaction between logoi, not by participation in Platonic Ideas, which were dismissed as nonexistent (ἀνυπάρκτους) and as mere ‘conceptions’ (i. e. abstractions) formed by the human mind.¹⁵⁵ Similar testimonies to Stoic thought confirm that the Stoics took up Anaxagorean ideas. Pseudo-Alexander of Aphrodisias attests that this permeation takes place differently: in human body, it is soul; in plants, it is nature; in inanimate bodies, it is natural cohesive force. All of these statements are made on the assumption that both the universal Logos and the spermatic logoi act on material grounds,¹⁵⁶ and it is possible for bodies to interpenetrate, or imbue, other bodies. The standard Stoic example was fire embracing and passing through a fiery piece of iron.¹⁵⁷ By the same token, the Peripatetic Critolaus of Phaselis (c. 200 ‒ c. 118 BC) made a succinct reference to the Stoics, and pointed out the universal unity that they maintained, as well as the different modes in which the logoi exist in different modes and procedures of the perceptible reality: in wood

 Porphyry, Sententiae, 10, supra, p. 614, note 40.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 35: ἄλλως μὲν πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι φησὶ κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνω σιν, ἄλλως δὲ κατὰ τὴν νοερὰν συνουσίωσιν καὶ ἄλλως κατὰ τὴν αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν. Damascius, Princ, p. 243: πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστοις, ὅπου μὲν ἀδιάκριτα, ὅπου δὲ διακρινόμενα, ὅπου δὲ διακεκριμένα.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 35: τάχα δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ Ζήνωνος σύμφωνος ἡ δόξα, διὰ πάσης οὐσίας πεφοιτηκέναι τὸν θεὸν τιθεμένοις καὶ ποῦ μὲν εἶναι νοῦν, ποῦ δὲ ψυχήν, ποῦ δὲ φύσιν, ποῦ δὲ ἕξιν.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.12.3 (apud Arius Didymus, Physica [fragmenta], fr. 40). Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.61.  See this discussed infra, pp. 650 ff .  Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 140 (Chrysippus, fr. 477): ἔτι τε οὐδὲν μᾶλλον τὸ πῦρ διὰ τοῦ σιδήρου δίεισιν, ἢ ὁ σίδηρος διὰ τοῦ πυρός· καὶ γὰρ καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ διὰ τοῦ σώματος καὶ ἡ φύσις διὰ τῶν φυτῶν καὶ ἡ ἕξις διὰ τῶν ἄλλων σωμάτων, καὶ ἀνάπαλιν ταῦτα δι᾿ ἐκείνων.

Voice is a blow on the air

641

and stones, they appear and function as natural cohesive force; in plants and trees, as nature; in animals, as soul; and in humans, as mind and rationality.

Voice is a blow on the air The definition of the world as ‘a system comprising heaven and earth and the natures between these’ was widely held to be one of Stoic provenance, but probably this was an Aristotelian one, as we saw earlier.¹⁵⁸ There is one more example of this kind: it was widely believed that the definition of voice as ‘a blow of air’ (φωνή ἐστιν ἀὴρ πεπληγμένος) was a celebrated proposition attributed to Zeno.¹⁵⁹ Pagans and Christians alike used it with confidence, and perhaps pride, since this was a characteristically scientific statement. Plato tried a rather clumsy definition,¹⁶⁰ and authors of note, such as Porphyry,¹⁶¹ cared to attribute the celebrated definition to him, especially after it was refined through monographs ‘On Voice’ written by Stoic authors, such as Chrysippus, Diogenes of Babylon, Archedemus of Tarsus, as well as intellectuals of different orientations, such as Galen, Julius Pollux, Pseudo-Plutarch, and others. However, things are slightly different. Plato proposed his own definition in the Timaeus. This dialogue was written after the Republic, which belongs to his middle period, along with the Phaedo and the Symposium. We should revisit a point we came upon earlier, namely, the criticism against Anaxagoras by Socrates saying that he was frustrated at Anaxagoras, because, as he went on with reading his book, he saw that the man made no use of the Mind, he did not assign any real causes for the ordering of things, and mentioned as causes only air and ether and water and many other absurdities.¹⁶² But there were also other ‘absurdities’ to go, which claimed to be scientific explanations of natural order: a short while later, Socrates says that Anaxagoras’ priorities were to expound how a body is composed of bones and sinews: bones are hard and have joints which divide them, sinews can be either contracted or relaxed, and, with the flesh and the skin which contains them all, they are laid about the bones;

 See supra, p. 625, note 88.  Cf. Zeno, fr. 74; Chrysippus, fr. 138; Diogenes of Babylon, fr. 17; Cornutus, De Natura Deo rum, p. 74; et al.  Plato, Timaeus, 67b: “Sound is a stroke transmitted through the ears, by the action of the air upon the brain and the blood, and reaching to the soul; and the motion caused thereby, which begins in the head and ends about the seat of the liver, is ‘hearing’.”  Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, pp. 46 8.  Plato, Phaedo, 98b c.

642

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

hence, as the bones are hung loose in their ligaments, the sinews, by relaxing and contracting, make one able to bend his limbs, and that is the cause of one sitting here with his legs bent. Or, as if in the same way he should give voice and air and hearing and countless other things of the sort (καὶ αὖ περὶ τοῦ διαλέγεσθαι ὑμῖν ἑτέρας τοιαύτας αἰτίας λέγοι, φωνάς τε καὶ ἀέρας καὶ ἀκοὰς καὶ ἄλλα μυρία) as causes for our talking with each other, and should fail to mention the real causes.¹⁶³ Therefore, Socrates blamed Anaxagoras not only for dealing with explainations of how flesh and the skin and bones and limbs and sinews function in human body, but also he set forth explanations about ‘voice and air and hearing’, that is, what voice and hearing is. This simply means that it was Anaxagoras who explained voice and hearing in natural terms; and we should recall that it was also Anaxagoras who demonstrated that air is a body by means of his proverbial experiments.¹⁶⁴ Consequently, to deal with ‘voice and hearing’ in relation to his celebrated discovery was all too natural, but this is what Plato blamed him for. Nevertheless, as if Plato wished to emend those ‘absurdities’ (ἄτοπα) that he laid at the door of Anaxagoras, in the Timaeus he gave his foregoing definition of what ‘voice and hearing’ is. He essayed to associate them with sublime entities, such as the soul, so as to avoid making his explanation as aridly ‘naturalistic’ as that of Anaxagoras. Nevertheless, posterity opted for the definition which the Stoic writers came up with following Anaxagoras’ resolutions. Origen was fully aware of this tradition, and entertained the definition in its natural, that is, Anaxagorean sense, not in the Platonic one.¹⁶⁵ It is plain that the Stoics employed Anaxagoras’ theory, but the question is why J. von Arnim ascribed to Chrysippus a reference made by Galen about ‘medical doctors and philosophers’ who sustained that ‘air is a body, indeed a homogenous continuum’ (ἓν ὑπάρχειν σῶμα συνεχὲς ἑαυτῷ πάντῃ).¹⁶⁶ The vast majority of attributions to Chrysippus that this excerptor made occur in authors who do not mention Chrysippus by name, but they either speak of ‘Stoics’ in general, or they do not even do that, while citing a doctrine which otherwise is currently thought to be Stoic. In this case, Galen mentions earlier ‘doctors and philosophers’ who dealt with explaining what air is. There is no testimony that Chrysippus did so, whereas both Galen himself and Athenaeus wrote on this specific

 Plato, op. cit. 98d e; italics are mine.  See Aristotle, Physica, 213a; Problemata, 914b; De Respiratione, 470b; De Melisso, 976b. The mistius, paraphrPhys, p. 123. Simplicius, commCael, p. 634; commPhys, pp. 647; 652; 655 6. Mi chael Psellus, commPhys, 4.20; In Parva Naturalia Commentaria, p. 112.  Origen, Cels, II.72; VI.62.  Galen, De Differentia Pulsuum, p. 672. See SVF, II.139.42 (Chrysippus, fr. 424).

Arabic sources

643

topic. We know, however, that Anaxagoras was somewhat obsessed with demonstrating what air is, and there is also a testimony in a spurious Platonic text recounting that Anaxagoras and Empedocles cared to explore the nature of air.¹⁶⁷ Therefore, Galen’s testimony cannot be one to Chrysippus, but it would fit perfectly well with Anaxagoras, who qualifies for being one of ‘the philosophers’ Galen had in mind.

Arabic sources The part of Stoic philosophy that arguably could claim originality was their ethics, not their physics. This was the result of the changing world in which they lived, mainly, the death of the city-state as the fundamental political entity. Like all other philosophers in Athens, Anaxagoras could not develop ideas that touched upon religion without escaping notice by the political and social establishment. However, he was not a man of the ‘city’: he was a citizen of the world, and his thought was developed on the premiss that first and foremost any man is a citizen of the universe. There are several testimonies to this, and Diogenes Laertius relates some stories attesting to how Anaxagoras saw himself: he withdrew in the study of physics, while not caring about politics; and when one asked him, ‘Don’t you care about the affairs of your homeland?’, he replied, ‘Do avoid words of opprobrium! For I do care about my homeland, indeed exceedingly so’; and he pointed up to the heaven.¹⁶⁸ When he was once asked to what purpose he was born, he replied, ‘In order to contemplate the sun, the moon, and the heaven’.¹⁶⁹ This, however, did not deter him from seeing the heaven as a purely natural reality that was produced simply out of revolution and made of stones.¹⁷⁰ The Athenians did not like such replies, since they held the withdrawn ‘idiots’ (ἰδιῶται, those who did not care for the affairs of the city) in contempt, and they were afraid of the blasphemers. But the people of Lampsacus engraved on Anaxagoras’ tomb that the man who ‘is laid to rest, scaled the  Pseudo Plato, Sisyphus, 389a: Οὐκοῦν καὶ περὶ τοῦ ἀέρος ᾿Aναξαγόραν τε καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέα καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους τοὺς μεταρσιολέσχας ἅπαντας οἶσθα ζητοῦντας πότερον ἄπειρός ἐστιν ἢ πέρας ἔχων;  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.7. The suggestion that Anaxagoras was apolitical appears in (Pseudo ?) Plato’s Hippias Major, 281c. However, Eusebius argued that his philosophy had a crit ical bearing on the affairs of the state. Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.2.3. Plutarch styled Anaxagoras a mentor of Pericles and ‘advisor to the state’ (τῆς πολιτείας σύμβουλον). Pericles, 16.9; Maxime cum Principibus Philosopho esse Disserendum, 777A.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.10. Likewise, Aristotle, Ethica Eudemia, 1216a.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.12. Also, Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.8.2.

644

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

heaven itself in his quest of truth’,¹⁷¹ and Philostratus wrote that ‘Anaxagoras visited the things of heaven’.¹⁷² To the Athenian establishment, that attitude of life was intolerable, and he escaped death at the very last moment. When the Stoics came to considering things in the same terms, this was no longer dangerous to do. The city, as a political unit of influence upon philosophical ideas, was gone. Their philosophy was developed in the absence of this decisive political reality, and their concern was only about the commanding presence and function of the universal Logos, which in effect was no other than the Anaxagorean Mind. Nevertheless, the Stoic ethics is to a certain extent derived from their ontology, since the Ruling Principle of the universe goes side by side with an ethical one, namely, the idea that it provides for everything in the universe to turn out good, and everyone has to harmonize oneself with the universal order, therefore, to think and act in harmony with Nature. This holds all the more so, once the notion that everything is inherently interrelated with everything else (συμπάθεια) means that a single individual action affects the entire universe. Origen (an affluent source of Stoic thought) put it thus: every single individual act makes an impact of the Body of the Logos; and we should recall that Arabic sources advise that, to Anaxagoras, all the logoi derive from a single body.¹⁷³ It appears that the term ὁμοιομέρειαι, which Aristotle coined for the Anaxagorean principles, fits perfectly with their idea of the principles/logoi acting as instruments of the Logos: the parts which proceed from the Mind/Logos should have the same name as the whole; therefore, the Logos gives rise to the logoi, and this was the idea that Origen fully employed, too. By the same token, the notion of ‘minds’ (νόες) which proceed from the Mind (Νοῦς) enjoyed some currency in Antiquity, and the logic of this terminology can be no other than an Anaxagorean one (i. e. parts are named after the whole). Moreover, his idea that the Mind is the ‘king’, ‘guardian’, ‘master’, ‘ruler’, and ‘lord’ of the function of the principles/logoi throughout the universe, and indeed the Mind has full knowledge of past, present, and future alike, is the source of the Stoic notion of providence: the Mind is ‘the guardian’ of everything that exists and happens as a result of the interaction of the logoi, and he cares for goodness to be the final cause of the world as a whole. Speaking of Origen, in his expression, ‘the first men must have come into existence not through sexual intercourse, but from the earth, once spermatic

 Aelian, Varia Historia, 8.19. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.15.  Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, 2.5.  See supra, p. 366. Cf. the notion of ‘re crucifixion’ of the Body of the Logos, infra, p. 1371.

Arabic sources

645

logoi obtained in the soil’ (ἀπὸ γῆς, σπερματικῶν λόγων συστάντων ἐν τῇ γῇ),¹⁷⁴ the term σπερματικῶν λόγων may suggest that some Stoics (not necessarily of the Old Stoa) embraced this doctrine, although σπερματικοὶ λόγοι might well have been Origen’s own expression following his confirmned reading of Cornutus attested by Porphyry. Anyway, there is no evidence that specifically Chrysippus sustained this, as von Arnim decided.¹⁷⁵ On the other hand, there are credible testimonies that Anaxagoras taught that all living creatures were produced from the earth, which was a theory sustained by Diogenes of Apollonia (fl. 425 BC), whose physics was influenced by his contemporary Anaxagoras.¹⁷⁶ In this section, I need to make reference to the work of Harry Wolfson once again, since some of his insightful remarks should be considered in the light of what we have seen so far. Al-Nazzam’s theory of latency (kumun) interpreted the ‘six days’ of the Biblical story of creation, by arguing that it took place ‘all at one time.’ This interpretation of the ‘six days’ was in no way required by his desire to harmonize it with the Aristotelian theory of potentiality / actuality. For even by retaining the original meaning of this expression, he could have said that the things created during the six days were hidden, meaning that all the things that were ever to appear in the future existed potentially. In Wolfson’s view, the reason for this interpretation is to be found in external influence. It happened that, by the time of al-Nazzam, the interpretation of the scriptural story of the six days of creation meaning simultaneous creation was current both in Judaism and in Christianity. In Judaism, Philo said that the six days should be taken as implying not a sequence of time, but that the world was created according to a certain perfect order, and it is to follow that perfect order. He argued that all things took shape ‘simultaneously’ (ἅμα), or ‘straight away’ (ὁμοῦ).¹⁷⁷ There is something similar in a statement by the rabbis, according to which all the things that are said to have been created in six days were really created on the first day along with the creation of the heaven and earth, but they remained hidden until each of them appeared on each one of the six days. In Christianity, following Philo, the interpretation of the six days of creation as meaning simultaneous cre Origen, Cels, I.37.  SVF, II.211.3 7 (fr. 739).  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 887E, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.39.1: Διογένης καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἔφησαν μετὰ τὸ συστῆναι τὸν κόσμον καὶ τὰ ζῷα ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἐξαγαγεῖν ἐγκλιθῆναί πως τὸν κόσμον ἐκ τοῦ αὐτομάτου εἰς τὸ μεσημβρινὸν αὑτοῦ μέρος (ἴσως ὑπὸ προνοίας, ἵνα ἃ μὲν ἀοίκητα γένηται ἃ δὲ οἰκητὰ μέρη τοῦ κόσμου κατὰ ψῡξιν καὶ ἐκ πύρωσιν καὶ εὐκρασίαν). The same by Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.15.6c. Besides, we have already seen that Anaxagoras maintained a theory which is reminiscent of Darwin, namely, that all an imals were produced from one another. See supra, pp. 515.  Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 13 14; 67.

646

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

ation was maintained by Origen and by followers of his such as Eusebius and Gregory of Nyssa.¹⁷⁸ It would have been from all these sources that the conception of simultaneous creation had reached al-Nazzam. However, there are other interpretations of al-Nazzam’s theory of latency, and I have opted for mentioning briefly them in this section, because (1) I have now discussed the idea that the theory of potentiality is in effect Anaxagorean, and (2) it will appear that there is a strong connection between Anaxagoras and the Stoics. Let me then cite three other interpretations of al-Nazzam’s theory of latency. First, in H. Steiner’s interpretation, al-Nazzam’s theory of latency is based upon Aristotle’s theory of potentiality and actuality.¹⁷⁹ This is exactly what Harry Wolfson essayed to prove, too, but it is now evident that he did not take into account the Anaxagorean commanding influence upon Aristotle. Secondly, an interpretation by Saul Horovitz¹⁸⁰ draws its argument from the same texts that Wolfson used (which also support my interpretation), such as Philo, the rabbinic tradition, and Greek fathers. According to Horovitz, al-Nazzam’s theory of simultaneous creation was taken from the rabbinic statement mentioned above, and al-Nazzam’s theory of latency is derived from the Stoic theory of the ‘spermatic Logos’, which is a kind of hidden generative power. In support of the Stoic origin of latency, he reasons on the basis of what he thought to be an analogy between al-Nazzam’s statement that ‘the creation of Adam did not precede the creation of his children’ and the Stoic doctrine that the primary fire is the seed of all the individual human beings, such as Socrates and Xanthippe and Anytus and Meletus, who are to reappear in all the future cosmic cycles. In further support of the Stoic origin of the theory of latency, Horovitz refers to a statement by al-Shahrastani, where, in his critical comment on al-Nazzam’s theory of latency, he says that al-Nazzam was more inclined to the view of the ‘naturalists’ than to that of the theologians. Horovitz took the term ‘naturalists’ as referring to the Stoics, hence he inferred that, according to al-Shahrastani, alNazzam’s theory of latency was derived from Stoicism. Nevertheless, al-Shahrastani reported explicitly that Anaxagoras was the first to introduce the theory of latency, but Horovitz dismissed this as an error on the part of al-Shahrastani.

 Origen, selGen, PG.12.97.25 33 (implicitly referring to Philo). Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangel ica, 13.12.12. Gregory of Nyssa, (ἐν ἀκαρεῖ): Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 72; In Christi Resurrectio nem (oratio i), p. 286; (ἀθρόως): Apologia in Hexaemeron, pp. 72; 113; 132; 189; 204. See also, PHE, p. 100.  Heinrich Steiner, Die Mu’taziliten oder die Freidenker im Islam, Leipzig, 1865, pp. 66 68.  Saul Horovitz, Ueber den Einfluss der griechischen Philosophie auf die Entwicklung des Kalam, Breslau, 1909, pp. 21 24.

Arabic sources

647

However, the grounds on which Horovitz rejected the idea was erroneous: he argued that al-Shahrastani confused the term ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα) of Anaxagoras with the term ‘seed’ (σπέρμα) of the Stoics, and that the two have no connection with each other. However, they do have connection with other and al-Shahrastani was right: for the way in which the principles/logoi emerge from the primal confusum at the behest of the Mind, which give rise to potentiality (which al-Nazzam saw as ‘latency’), and the way in which the logoi emerge from the universal Stoic Logos, are not substantially different processes, because the Stoics entertained and reproduced the Anaxagorean theory. The third interpretation belongs to Max Horten,¹⁸¹ who draws its support from the same foregoing sources, namely Philo, the rabbinic tradition, and Greek fathers: he makes Anaxagoras the direct source of al-Nazzam’s theory of latency. He admits, nevertheless, that this theory is to be found also in such Presocratic philosophers as Leucippus, Democritus, and Empedocles, and that certain Stoic elements are also to be found in the reports of al-Nazzam’s theory. He was aware of al-Shahrastani’s allusive application of the theory of latency to Aristotle’s theory of potentiality / actuality, and of matter / form, but he thought that al-Shahrastani imposed an erroneous thesis upon Aristotle which in fact was foreign to him. In support of his explanation, Horten quoted the passage in which al-Shahrastani himself characterizes Anaxagoras as the first who advanced the theory of latency, thus trying to show how the entire philosophy of al-Nazzam, which Horovitz explained as Stoic, was based upon Anaxagoras.¹⁸² Therefore, the commanding shadow of Anaxagoras was cast upon those ideas of potentiality which might appear to be Aristotle’s ones. When such perceptive scholars as the above ones wrote about the subject, hardly had the commentaries of Simplicius casting light on Anaxagoras appeared.¹⁸³ I should remind that my proposition about the notion of potentiality belonging to Anaxagoras largely draws on those commentaries. This notwithstanding, one can see that the presence of Anaxagoras in relation to both Aristotle’s theory of potentiality and to the Stoic theory of spermatic logoi was noticed already by Arabic sources upon the beginning of the second millennium. Sometimes, the discussion about potentiality and latency is conducted on the implication that their difference is only verbial: whether one says that a

 M. Horten, “Die Lehre vom Kumun bei Nazzam”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndi schen Gesellschaft, 1, 63, Leipzig, 1909, pp. 774 92.  Op. cit. pp. 780 ff, apud Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam, pp. 511 14.  Cf. dates of publications: H. Steiner (1865), Saul Horovitz (1909), Max Horten (1909). The commentary of Simplicius on Aristotle’s On Heaven appeared in 1894, his two volumes on Aris totle’s Physics were published in 1882 and 1895.

648

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

bud is potentially a rose, or a bud is a rose in latent form, it supposedly makes no difference whatsoever and that the way in which a seed develops to its full reality is analogous to the one in which the universe was produced from the primeval confusum. ‘All things were together’ means that the confusum needed something or someone initially to cause motion and produce potentialities which could bring everything to existence in due course and order. The principles were the means for the Mind to effect this process whereby the Mind is the first mover. Thereafter, all particular potentialities could be actualized by means of the principles deriving their existence and force from the Mind itself, and this is the sense in which the ‘unmixed’ (ἀμιγής) Mind is present in the entire world. However, there is difference between the univerese having been produced from one ‘seed’ and the way in which a seed of common experience develops to a full flower. For the cosmic ‘seed’ was produced from the confusum: the ‘seed’ assumed the capability of containing potentialities, which were not present (not even latent) in the primeral confusum. Let me also note that Constantine Porphyrogenitus saw analogies in the philosophies of Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, and the Stoics,¹⁸⁴ which was plausible for him to assume: for the supreme principle of them all seems to be different only in name; especially the Stoic Logos was in effect no different from Anaxagoras’ Mind, notwithstanding the alleged Stoic tenet of universal corporeality, which calls for some reconsideration, which I expound at the end of this chapter. We should recall also a unique reference by Galen reporting that ‘there are some philosophers, who believe that the qualities themselves exist in formless matter’ and ‘they are unchangeable and immutable’ ‘from one cosmic period to another’. The visible qualities occurring in matter are simply ‘mutations, by means of conjunction and disjunction’ (ἀλλοιώσεις τῇ διακρίσει τε καὶ συγκρίσει). I have shown that the editorial addition [ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας]¹⁸⁵ is an erroneous emendation, since Anaxagoras did not maintain any ‘cosmic periods’, he did not believe in beginningless formless matter, and he did not believe that qualities themselves exist in formless matter.¹⁸⁶ The fact that cosmic periods and underlying matter are involved indicates that it was not Anaxagoras that Galen had in mind; rather, it was Chrysippus, since the testimony to him comes also from

 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Virtutibus et Vitiis, p. 114: καὶ γὰρ Πυθαγόρας καὶ ᾿Aναξα γόρας καὶ Πλάτων καὶ οἱ μετ᾿ ἐκείνους τῆς Στοᾶς φιλόσοφοι μικροῦ δεῖν ἅπαντες οὕτω φαίνονται περὶ τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ φύσεως πεφρονηκότες.  Galen, De Naturalibus Facultatibus, p. 4. See supra, p. 447.  See chapter 7, . 448 9, where parallels by Zeno and Cleanthes are discussed.

Anaxagorean principles and Stoic logoi

649

the same author, namely, Galen,¹⁸⁷ who uses the idea more than once.¹⁸⁸ Galen’s reference to ‘some philosophers’ definitely implies the Stoics having taken up also the idea of conjunction and disjunction’ (ἀλλοιώσεις τῇ διακρίσει τε καὶ συγκρίσει). Therefore, this is in fact a testimony to Stoic philosophy, which is important, since Galen advises that, along with all other debts to Anaxagoras, the Stoics also made use of the notion that things come to be and perish by means of ‘conjunction and disjunction’ (σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις). It would have been all too natural for them to do so, considering how extensively and essentially they relied on Anaxagoras. This point can be confirmed from a passage of Cleanthes that we considered in chapter 6: using Anaxagorean language, he argued that in like manner that all parts of a certain thing are produced from seeds in due course and time, likewise, the parts of the Whole (which include also animals and plants) are generated at the appropriate times. Also, in like manner that certain logoi of parts concur so as to form a seed (τινὲς λόγοι τῶν μερῶν εἰς σπέρμα συνιόντες), and then they are separated off anew once the parts are formed (μίγνυνται καὶ αὖθις διακρίνονται γενομένων τῶν μερῶν), likewise, everything is generated from One, and then [all things] mingle [anew] into One (ἐξ ἑνός τε πάντα γίνεσθαι καὶ ἐκ πάντων εἰς ἓν συγκρίνεσθαι), in an orderly manner and in accordance with the [duration of a cosmic] period.”¹⁸⁹ This analysis of Cleanthes is corroboration that Galen’s reference to ‘some philosophers’, meant certain Stoics such as Cleanthes, who reflected in terms of Anaxagorean rationale and language.

Anaxagorean principles and Stoic logoi Anaxagoras posited incorporeal principles which are ‘infinite’ in terms of both multitude and smallness¹⁹⁰ (ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ σμικρότητα),¹⁹¹ which means that the notions of quantity (i. e. countability, thus, separate individual existence) and of size were inapplicable to them. In this sense, ‘all things were

 Chrysippus, fr. 494 (SVF, II.161.4), apud Galen, De Methodo Medendi, p. 46.  Galen, De Semine, p. 563. Plotinus argued against this conception. Enneades, VI.3.25. Sim plicius attributed this idea to Plato (commCateg, p. 429) and to Aristotle none the less (comm Phys, p. 1098; cf. p. 1265). Also, John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 239.  Cleanthes, Testimonia et Fragmenta, fr. 497 (SVF, II.137.6) apud Stobaeus (drawing on Arius Didymus), Anthologium, 1.17.3; see quotation of this in chapter 6, p. 396.  His text has it ‘infinite’, but Simplicius explained that they are infinite to human mind, not literally so. commPhys, p. 174.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 608; commPhys, pp. 34; 155; 164; 172.

650

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

together’ entails that ‘they are unlimited in both amount and smallness’, and ‘there is neither a smallest nor a largest among the first principles’ (οὔτε τὸ ἐλάχιστόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς οὔτε τὸ μέγιστον): of a small, there is always a smaller, and of a large there is always a larger.¹⁹² This was so because the principles were infinite (not numerically), and once again the Stoics, being the true heirs to Anaxagoras’ philosophy, realized that when one speaks ‘of infinite things, one cannot speak of them as being either more or less’ (τῶν δ᾿ ἀπείρων οὐθέν ἐστι πλέον οὐδ᾿ ἔλαττον), and there is no ‘multitude exceeding them’ (οὐδ᾿ ὅλως ὑπερβάλλον πλῆθος), ‘nor is it possible to sever them so as to acquire any kind multitude out of such division of them’.¹⁹³ Aristotle’s comment on this was that ‘it is impossible for either flesh or bone or anything else to be whatever size you please, large or small’.¹⁹⁴ Although Anaxagoras’ propositions appeared weird to Aristotle and Theophrastus,¹⁹⁵ the Stoics not only grasped them, but also embraced them, arguing likewise: “That which is infinite has neither beginning nor middle nor end” (τὸ δ᾿ ἄπειρον οὔτ᾿ ἀρχὴν οὔτε μέσον οὔτε τελευτὴν ἔχει), and “it has neither up nor down.”¹⁹⁶ In fact, it was not the Stoics that invented this simple truth, not even Anaxagoras: it was Anaxagoras’ teacher Parmenides that described what an incorporeal principle is.¹⁹⁷ Perhaps a difference of Anaxagoras from the Stoics is this: the former posits the Mind as ‘unmixed’ with its product, whereas the latter did not care to make this a principal doctrine; actually, there are testimonies allowing that the Logos may be immanent in matter and forming it directly, as discussed above. Whether such testimonies did justice to the Stoics, or not, is not easy to determine and it is not within my scope, but there is some discussion of it by the end of this chapter. Michael Psellus made a perceptive remark while reviewing all of Greek philosophy: Greek philosophers were not apt to make either God or Nature the proximate creator; therefore, sense-perception was not posited as stemming immedi-

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 164; 166. On the real meaning of this ‘smallness’ see infra, pp. 1063 4.  Plutarch (speaking of the Stoics, once again), De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1079B.  Aristotle, Physica, 187b13 21.  Supra, chapter 7, p. 423.  Plutarch (expounding Stoicism), De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1054B.  Albinus, Epitome Doctrinae Platonicae, 6.6: μάλιστα δ᾿ ἐν τῷ Παρμενίδῃ τοιούτους εὕροιμεν ἂν λόγους· εἰ μὴ ἔχει μέρη τὸ ἕν, οὔτε ἀρχὴν οὔτε μέσον οὔτε τελευτὴν ἔχει· εἰ μήτε ἀρχὴν μήτε μέσον μήτε τελευτὴν ἔχει, οὐδὲ πέρας ἔχει· εἰ μὴ ἔχει πέρας, οὐδὲ σχήματος μετέχει· εἰ ἄρα μὴ ἔχει μέρη τὸ ἕν, οὐδὲ σχήματος μετέχει. Cf. Proclus embracing this Parmenidian analysis: In Pla tonis Parmenidem, p. 1132; Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 9.

Anaxagorean principles and Stoic logoi

651

ately from the mind; instead, first they introduced the ‘divine-like mind’ (τὸν θεοειδῆ νοῦν), the ‘particular mind which does not participate in the divine one’, then ‘the rational soul’, then ‘nature’, and then ‘sense-perception’.¹⁹⁸ However, Psellus said this because he had mainly the Neoplatonists in mind. Anaxagoras did not make the Mind an absolutely proximate creator of perceptible reality, which is why, to him, creation took and still takes place by means of the principles/logoi acting at the behest of the Mind. The Stoics probably went a step further, and made their God present in matter and receiving different names, such as God, Mind/Nous, Zeus, Logos, Spermatic Logos, Aether, Cosmos, Pneuma (breath), Heimarmene, Nature, Necessity, Providence, Cause, Seed, Law, Soul of the Universe, etc.¹⁹⁹ in accordance with the specific divine function upon a certain material system. The traditional assertion has been that the Stoic God is material,²⁰⁰ but it seems that some scholars, possibly taking their cue from A.A. Long, assumed that this is a naïve misperception, although I am all but sure that this was what Long really meant.²⁰¹ Others ignored the novel approach and went on with the traditional interpretation, which apparently happens to be strongly supported by serious ancient testimonies. The opinion of Long was not only that ‘God and matter are the fundamental Stoic archai, active and passive principles’, but also that ‘they are never found in dissociation from one another’.²⁰² The proposition is arguable in view of some ancient testimonies, but the question is whether this allows for envisaging the Stoic Logos per se as bereft of self-existence apart from matter. I should point out the language of Aristotelian commentators confirming the tenet that matter is never found without a form. The tenor and implication of such testimonies is evident: the Stoics said nothing new, since Aristotle already propounded form and formless matter as never really existing apart from one another. However, there was one commentator, namely John Philoponus, who was very critical of Aristotle (which was one of the reasons why Simplicius upbraided him several times).²⁰³ A very extensive analysis in Phipolonus’ criticism of Aris-

 Michael Psellus, Theologica, 90, lines 66 71.  See discussion infra, pp. 654 6; 611.  The doxographic references attesting to this are numerous. See for example, Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 16: Πλάτων μὲν οὖν καὶ Ζήνων ὁ Στωικὸς περὶ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ θεοῦ διε ληλυθότες οὐχ ὁμοίως περὶ ταύτης διενοήθησαν, ἀλλ᾿ ὁ μὲν Πλάτων θεὸν ἀσώματον, Ζήνων δὲ σῶμα. However, see infra, pp. 681 90.  A.A. Long, Stoic Studies, Berkeley, 1996, pp. 228 9.  Op. cit. p. 228.  See supra, pp. 309; 410 12.

652

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

tole concerning the eternity of the world, is about rebutting the doctrine of ‘formless matter’.²⁰⁴ This was not about formless matter not really existing in itself apart from any form, or of it being actually nothing and potentially everything, which Aristotle maintained: Philoponus’ criticism was that positing this notion as a principle or premiss was absurd and untenable. Any axiom serving as basis of a certain system has to be ‘true’ in terms of reality; no philosophical reflection can build on non-existent entities, not even theoretically; and formless matter is ‘nonexistent’ even as a notion (τῆς ἀνειδέου ὕλης καὶ ὡς ἀληθῶς οὐδὲν οὔσης τῶν ὄντων). Consequently, once this unsound premiss is false (ὑπόθεσις ψευδὴς καὶ ἀνυπόστατος), then all of the propositions of any system that are based on it are groundless and flawn, too (νόθων τῷ ὄντι καὶ ἀνυποστάτων τῶν περὶ αὐτῆς λογισμῶν). This criticism Philoponus applied not only to Aristotle, but also to ‘Plato, and to the rest of the list of ancient’ intellectuals; he argued that this hypothesis is absurd, ‘even if ten thousand Platos proposed it’ (κἂν μυρίοι Πλάτωνες καὶ ὁ λοιπὸς τῶν ἀρχαίων κατάλογος τὴν περὶ αὐτῆς εἰσηγήσαντο δόξαν).²⁰⁵ Philoponus demanded sound argument, which he believed he did not find in the philosophers of old that were venerated as great ones. Nevertheless, he saw real difference between the Aristotelian and Stoic concepts of formless matter, and opted for the Stoic one. Symeon Seth, a later commentator who had read Philoponus’ analyses carefully, pointed out that, on this question, Philoponus rebutted the Peripatetics and took sides with the Stoics, who posited formless matter as berefeft from all qualities, yet as a body undelying all qualities.²⁰⁶ In this context, he quotes a phrase from Alcibiades i, a work that all intellectuals of the Late Antiquity rergarded as a genuine Platonic one: “If you do not hear yourself saying” that something is right, “you should never put your trust in the words of anyone” who says that this is so.²⁰⁷ In this case,

 John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 405 45. Long before Philoponus, Sextus Empir icus styled the notion of ‘formless matter’ a ‘weird tale’ (τῆς τερατολογουμένης ἀποίου παρά τισιν ὕλης) which ‘is incomprehensible even to those who propound it’ (ἣν οὐδὲ αὐτοὶ καταλαμ βάνειν διαβεβαιοῦνται). Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.36.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 445.  Symeon Seth, Conspectus Rerum Naturalium, 4.57: οἱ δὲ Στωϊκοὶ ἀνείδεον μὲν ταύτην δοξά ζουσι καὶ ποιότητος πάσης ἄμοιρον, οὐ μὴν ἀσώματον, ἀλλά τι σῶμα ἄποιον πάσαις ὑποκείμενον ταῖς ποιότησιν. ὧν τῇ δόξῃ συνηγορεῖ καὶ ὁ Φιλόπονος Ἰωάννης πρὸς τοὺς Περιπατητικοὺς ἀν τιτεινόμενος. Symeon Seth was a contemporary of Michael Psellus, and an Antiochene Jewish Byzantine doctor and scholar of the eleventh century, the grand Chamberlain (πρωτοβεστιάριος) under Emperor Michael VII Doukas.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 445. He quotes from Pseudo Plato, Alcibiades i, 114e: εἰ μὴ σὺ γὰρ σαυτοῦ λέγοντος ἀκούσῃς, φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων, ἄλλῳ λέγοντι μηδέποτε πιστεύσῃς.

Anaxagorean principles and Stoic logoi

653

Philoponus urges that he relied on his own analyses which proved the notion of ‘formless matter’ absurd, not on those of Aristotle and Plato. However, Philoponus cared to exempt specifically the Stoics from those who held this theory: to him, whenever ‘most of the Stoics’ spoke of matter (τῶν δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς οἱ πλεῖστοι), they meant ‘formless’ yet a three-dimensional material body (πρὸς τῇ ὕλῃ τὸ τριχῇ διαστατὸν εἶναι ὑπέθεντο),²⁰⁸ not the Aristotelian non-body. He classifies three states of ‘matter’: 1. Formless and incorporeal matter. 2. Formless, but material body (three-dimensional). 3. The four elements, which are not mere matter, but matter designated to form other bodies (οὐ γὰρ ἁπλῶς ὕλη ταῦτα, ἀλλὰ πρός τι).²⁰⁹ This means that ‘most of the Stoics’ maintained ‘matter’ of class (2), not the Aristotelian one of class (1). Diogenes Laertius²¹⁰ cites titles of works by Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Archedemus, and Posidonius speaking about ‘formless matter’ as the passive element being acted upon by the Logos God. But then he says that this formless matter is consisted of the four elements.²¹¹ This is different from Sextus Empiricus saying that the four elements are produced from formless matter following alteration of it,²¹² whereas Plutarch assured that he knew of cetain Stoics who posited that formless matter is not bereft from all qualities, but it contains all of them instead, which he criticized as being a self-defeating notion.²¹³ Plotinus knew that the Stoics thought of ‘formless matter’ as being a ‘body’ and they attributed also ‘magnitude’ to it,²¹⁴ not to mention that Plutarch also attested that formless matter is created by the one Logos and the one Providence.²¹⁵ No matter how contradictory such testimonies may appear, it can be gathered that, on the whole, the Stoics did not sustain the same idea about primal matter as Aristotle did. Besides, Aristotle had posited also the First Mover, which is sheer actuality, and it does not have itself to be involved with matter since the forms do the job, not to mention ‘Nature’, as discussed earlier. In view of this, were it for ‘Stoicism’ to be assumed as positing that God himself is always associated with matter, then this Stoic God turns out merely an Aristotelian ‘form’ and no more than that. However, the Stoics did not care about either  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 410. He had promised to speak about this in op. cit. p. 405: πῶς δὲ οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς περὶ τῆς ὕλης ἐδόξαζον. His discussion starts with the Py thagoreans and Plato; op. cit. pp. 407 ff.  Op. cit. p. 409.  Op. cit. 7.134.  Op. cit. 7.137.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (= Adversus Physicos 2), 31.  Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1086B.  Plotinus, Enneades, II.4.1.  Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 369A; see quotation, infra, p. 656, note 239.

654

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

Platonic ideas or Aristotelian forms, which they considered only mere mental constructions of the human mind.²¹⁶ Hence, when a Stoic considered a natural phenomenon, say, a flower growing from a seed, he did not reflect in a dualist manner granting separate self-existence to the seprmatic logos and the matter of the flower; instead, a monist as he was, he saw all of this phenomenon as a single material process, indeed an active logos. This, I believe, is why it was widely maintained (probably by several Stoics, too) that a logos is material. Alexander of Aphrodisias did argue on that ground: on the one hand, he confirmed Aristotle’s view that ‘essence’ and ‘form’ is the selfsame thing (which though was only one of the three alternative views of Aristotle about essence), adding that they are never found in dissociation from one another;²¹⁷ on the other, while discussing the same question (i. e. can a form exist apart from matter?) he attributed to the Stoics the theory that the active agent (τὸ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον) is no other than God (ὁ θεός), and that he is always involved with matter.²¹⁸ In other words, the Stoic God is simply an Aristotelian form; as for the Stoic forms, they are simply the formed bodies themselves:²¹⁹ there are not forms in the Aristotelian sophisticated sense; they exist only because material bodies do, they are noticed subsequently to real perceptible bodies,²²⁰ and the real active agent is not a form, but God himself by being present within matter. By means of this analysis, Alexander meant to show how inferior to Aristotle the Stoic theory was. Anyway, this perception of Stoicism enjoyed wide currency throughout the Late Antiquity,²²¹ and several testimonies had it that the primal matter of the Stoics was material ²²² and liable to any change and transformation.²²³  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 25: ᾿Aριστοτέλης δὲ εἴδη μὲν καὶ ἰδέας ἀπέλιπεν, οὐ μὴν κεχωρισμένας τῆς ὕλης· οἱ δὲ Στωικοὶ ἐννοήματα ἡμέτερα τὰς ἰδέας εἶναι νομίζουσιν.  Alexander of Aphrodisias (comm. on Metaphysica, 1037b8 26), commMetaph, p. 519: τί ἦν εἶναι καὶ τὸ εἶδος ταὐτόν ἐστι … καὶ οὐδέποτε χωρὶς αὐτῶν ἐστιν, ἢ ὅλως χωρὶς ὕλης.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 178.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima, p. 17.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, loc. cit.: εἰ γὰρ οὕτως λέγοιεν τὸ εἶδος ἐξ ὕλης τε καὶ εἴδους, οὐχ ὡς ἐξ ἄλλου τινὸς εἴδους, ἀλλ᾿ ὡς αὐτοῦ σὺν ὕλῃ τὸ εἶναι ἔχοντος, οὐδ᾿ ἂν ἡ ὕλη κατ᾿ αὐτοὺς ἄποιος εἴη κατὰ τὸν αὑτῆς λόγον.  Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, 5.66.3 4; Stromateis, 1.11.51.2. Pseudo Justin, De Resurrectione, p. 591D. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 8. Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 266; v. 3, p. 196. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 146.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (= Adversus Physicos 2), 312. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.150. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.11.5b. However, Simplicius saw no difference between Ar istotle and the Stoics on this. commPhys, p. 227.  Origen, Cels, VI.77; commJohn, XIII.21.127. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 882C, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.44.2. The same by Stobaeus, Anthologium,

Anaxagorean principles and Stoic logoi

655

It is possible for the proposition, ‘never can God be found apart from matter’, to find some support by testimonies attesting that ‘God permeates the elements’,²²⁴ or ‘permeates matter’,²²⁵ or ‘he is mixed with matter’²²⁶ ‘even the most insignificant one’,²²⁷ or that God does so with ‘any substance’,²²⁸ even with ‘the entire world’.²²⁹ This would be supported also by the testimony that this God is analogous to what soul is to a body,²³⁰ and it ‘dwels in matter’,²³¹ indeed in matter of any kind.²³² The Aristotelian tenor of such propositions is all too plain and hardly does the homology need to be pointed out: the Stoic God is taken as analogous to the Aristotelian ‘form’. Quite evidently, this was the ground for Long’s proposition, since he went with arguing that ‘God and matter are never found in dissociation from one another’, thus taking the Aristotelism of the foregoing testimonies to their extreme. However, things may be different, indeed not as simplistic as some testimonies present them. As it happened with dissenting philosophers within the same schools (Platonists, Peripatetics), not all those who venerated Stoicism held exactly the same ideas, and different views were set forth during the centuries that this school survived. Origen, who studied several (now non-extant) Stoic treatises first-hand, wrote that ‘Chrysippus spent a long time as a pupil of Cleanthes’ and yet ‘at many points of his works, he appears to attack Cleanthes, expounding novel ideas which were contrary to the latter’s doctrines’.²³³ If the proposition, ‘God can never be found apart from matter’, is taken to mean that the Stoic God can be described only be means of his incessant activity in the universe, this could be granted, and I discuss it later in this chapter. But if the same proposition is interpreted as unyieldingly banning any ontology of the Stoic God per se, this would be open to question, even if exposition of such an ontology was not a Stoic priority given the ever-moving nature of their God.²³⁴

1.11 3, and by Arsenius of Monembasia (paroemiographer), Apophthegmata, 17.53b. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 4.13.  Pseudo Justin, De Resurrectione, p. 591D.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 227.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 225.  Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, 5.66.3.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 35. Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 3, p. 508.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 414.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 226.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 178.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 226.  Origen, Cels, II.12.  See infra, p. 687, note 407.

656

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

Although not all of the Stoics spoke with one voice, they were monists, and they are represented as dualists only once they are considered in Aristotelian terms. To them, matter could not be really an arche: this is only the πρῶτον ὑποκείμενον, or πρώτη ὕλη,²³⁵ which is subject to destruction. Long’s proposition, ‘God and matter are the fundamental Stoich archai’, has only relative value. In the Stoic notion of ‘first substratum’ (πρῶτον ὑποκείμενον) Dexippus saw simply Aristotle’s ‘formless matter’ (ἡ ἄποιος ὕλη), which though to Aristotle was only ‘potential body’, not an actual one.²³⁶ Besides, Aristotle posited that the ‘first substratum’²³⁷ is uncreated and indestructible, indeed ‘eternal’ (ἀΐδιον).²³⁸ Against testimonies that speak of two Stoic principles (Logos and formless matter), Plutarch comes up with a different view: the ‘Stoics’ maintained that ‘formless matter is created by one Logos and by one Providence, which is above everything and rules over all things.’²³⁹ It has to be admitted that such a testimony appears to do more justice to a school, the monism of which would be hard to dispute. Moreover, the erudite Galen, citing specific writings by Chrysippus that he had read first-hand, makes a crucial distinction: the Stoics maintain that the Artificer is the seed; some of them believe that he is the entire seed, others hold that the artificer is the pneuma (breath, spirit) which is contained in the seed.²⁴⁰ It should be remarked that when Stoics spoke about πῦρ τεχνικὸν in tune with Heraclitus, they suggested the artificer in terms of fire endowed with rationality, which is what in essence τεχνικόν means. By the same token, Proclus mentions (indeed he rebukes) the Stoics who assigned all creation to corporeal spermatic logoi (πολλοὶ γὰρ δὴ σωματικοῖς λόγοις ἀνέθεσαν τὴν δημιουργίαν).²⁴¹ Nevertheless, the statement itself reveals that the proximate agents of creation are the logoi, it is not the Logos himself,

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.150.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1042b9 10. Dexippus, commCateg pp. 23 4. Cf. Simplicius, comm Categ, pp. 48; 51; 94; 249; commPhys, pp. 228; 253 4; 257; 274 5. Cf. Symeon Seth (eleventh cen tury), Conspectus Rerum Naturalium, 4.57: οἱ δὲ Στωϊκοὶ ἀνείδεον μὲν ταύτην δοξάζουσι καὶ ποιό τητος πάσης ἄμοιρον, οὐ μὴν ἀσώματον, ἀλλά τι σῶμα ἄποιον πάσαις ὑποκείμενον ταῖς ποιότησιν.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 329a; Metaphysica, 1019a; 1022a; 1024b; 1029a.  Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 158 (τὸ πρῶτον ὑποκείμενον ἀΐδιον εἶναι); likewise, pp. 159; 213 4; 288; 364; 377; 429 30; 688; commMeteor, p. 224.  Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 369A: ἀποίου δημιουργὸν ὕλης ἕνα λόγον καὶ μίαν πρόνοιαν, ὡς οἱ Στωϊκοί, περιγιγνομένην ἁπάντων καὶ κρατοῦσαν.  Galen, De Foetuum Formatione Libellus, p. 699: δοκεῖ γὰρ αὐτοῖς ὁ τεχνίτης αὐτὸς εἶναι τὸ σπέρμα, τισὶ μὲν ὅλον, ἐνίοις δὲ τὸ περιεχόμενον ἐν αὐτῷ πνεῦμα. Galen then says that he wrote extensively about this in another book of his perusing Chrysippus’ treatise On the Soul.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 883.

Anaxagorean principles and Stoic logoi

657

even though the latter is present throughout. Proclus adds that these logoi are material, but it is remarkable that, only four pages after that point, he also says that ‘certain ones, such as the Stoics, posited that the spermatic logoi are incorruptible’.²⁴² It is plain that Proclus treated the spermatic logoi by lumping the Anaxagorean and Stoic theory together, while being oblivious of just having stated that the Stoic logoi are material. Nevertheless, in another work, he argued that God is the cause of the logoi, whether one wishes to call them ‘natural or spermatic ones’: for God forms and moves Nature, and uses it as ‘an instrument’ (ὀργάνῳ χρώμενος) for his activity.²⁴³ The claim that the Stoics posited God himself as being present in everything is a pantheistic presumption which eventually disputes existence proper of the Stoic Logos. Against this, we learn that, whether as πῦρ ἔντεχνον or as πνεῦμα, this rational ‘God contains in himself all the spermatic logoi, according to which everything comes to be’.²⁴⁴ God and spermatic logoi are two different things, God acts by means of his logoi, and this is exactly a legacy of Anaxagoras to Stoicism.²⁴⁵ This is not to say that the Stoic God is not present throughout the universe. He certainly is, yet he is so through his ceaseless diversified activity, and it is in accordance with this activity that he received the different names stated above. In respect of this, we need to turn to an affluent source and credible witness to Stoic thought, namely, Origen, who received several ideas from the Stoics, as much as did he criticize other aspects of their philosophy. But in doing so, he was aware that the ultimate source for both the Stoics and himself was Anaxagoras, no matter how modified by either of them. He had a lot of respect for Chrysippus, whose works he had read and cited them at several points of his analyses. Thus, ‘Chrysippus, in his writings’ mentions the ‘spermatic logoi of God that matter receives within itself’, out of which ‘universal order’ is effected.²⁴⁶ The Stoics always spoke of the activity of God, not of God himself, and the names they accorded him were only indicant of the sundry aspects of  Proclus, op. cit. p. 887: οἱ μὲν τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους εἶναι τοιούτους οἰηθέντες ἀφθάρτους αὐτοὺς ἐποίησαν, ὡς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 143.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 35. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.9, quoted infra, note 251.  Pseudo Galen, Definitiones Medicae, 355 (definition of the ‘soul’): κατὰ δὲ τοὺς Στωϊκοὺς σῶμα λεπτομερὲς ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ κινούμενον κατὰ σπερματικοὺς λόγους. John Philoponus, De Opifi cio Mundi, p. 216: τοὺς σπερματικοὺς ἄρα τῶν ἐσομένων λόγους ἐν τοῖς στοιχείοις ὁ θεὸς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐναπέθετο. See chapter 13, ‘Theory of the Soul’, pp. 1404 6.  Origen, Cels, IV.48: Λέγει γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ συγγράμμασιν ὁ σεμνὸς φιλόσοφος, ὅτι τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ ὕλη παραδεξαμένη ἔχει ἐν ἑαυτῇ εἰς κατακόσμησιν τῶν ὅλων.

658

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

divine action.²⁴⁷ Origen confirms that the Stoic ‘Logos, who descends down to humans and to the most minor things’, has always manifested himself as a ‘material spirit’ (πνεῦμα σωματικόν). His difference from Anaxagoras (but not from the Stoics) was that ‘God the Logos, through whom everything was made, extends not to men only but even to things supposed to be most insignificant and are governed by nature (ὑπὸ φύσεως διοικουμένων),²⁴⁸ so that all things should be made by the Logos’.²⁴⁹ Origen disputes the Stoic idea of corporeality, not the tenet of the Logos being present in every manifestation or process of nature. On this there was nothing Stoic to dispute, but this did not mean that he made the Logos himself exclusively inherent in every natural being.²⁵⁰ He knew perfectly well that the Stoics, just like himself, spoke of divine presence meaning divine activity throughout all nature, which is why none of his numerous assaults of the Stoics involved this point. Therefore, the Stoic God is a ‘fiery artificer permeating the entire world’, but this rational principle acts within it by containing all the spermatic logoi. ²⁵¹ This God makes a mark only as unremitting activity, but the immediate agents carrying out the benevolent divine providential care, as well as any other natural function in the universe, are the spermatic logoi, which are simply a Stoic designation of the Anaxagorean principles.

 See supra, pp. 607; 615; 620; 629; 649.  Cf. Origen, op. cit. IV.54; V.38; VI.60; V.38; (quoting Numenius). I have argued several times that Origen was profoundly educated by such Greek predecessors as Galen and Alexander of Aphrodisias. Presumably, he took up this expression from Galen. Cf. Galen, De Naturalibus Fac ultatibus, pp. 60; 167; Thrasybulus, p. 835; De Sanitate Tuenda, p. 300; De Marcore, p. 669; De Methodo Medendi, p. 772; In Hippocratis Aphorismos, p. 421 (quoting Diocles of Carystus). Pseu do Galen, Ad Gaurum Quomodo Animetur Fetus, 4.2; An Animal Sit Quod Est In Utero, p. 166. Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Fato, p. 191. Marcus Aurelius, Τὰ εἰς Ἑαυτόν, 2.6.1. After Origen, use of this was scarce and it faded with Simplicius. Porphyry, De Abstinentia, 4.20. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 5.19. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 260. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 206. The idea certainly comes from Chrysippus, who, as far as extant testimonies go, spoke of things governed in accordance with nature, not by nature. Otherwise, the Stoics spoke of the world being ‘gov erned’ by Heimarmene (Zeno, apud Epiphanius, Panarion, v. 1, p. 184; Chrysippus, apud Pseu do Plutarch, De Fato, p. 754E), or by Zeus (Chrysippus, apud Diogenes Laertius, 7.87), etc. There fore, the Stoic provenance of this expression is beyond doubt.  Origen, Cels, VI.71.  See COT, pp. 165 72: ‘The Place of the Logos’.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 35 & Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881F (quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.9, save the last word, i. e. παραλλάξεις) & Sto baeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b: Οἱ Στωικοὶ δὲ τὸν θεὸν πῦρ ἔντεχνον ἢ πνεῦμα νομίζουσιν, ὁδῷ βα δίζον ἐπὶ κόσμου γένεσιν, ἐμπεριειληφὸς πάντας τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους, καθ᾿ οὓς ἕκαστα καθ᾿ εἱμαρμένην γίνεσθαι.

Anaxagorean principles and Stoic logoi

659

Granted, Diogenes Laertius reported that, to Cleanthes, Zeno, and Archedemus, ‘there are two principles, an active and a passive one’.²⁵² At the same point, however, he pointed out that the Stoics maintained the old doctrine that a ‘first principle’ (unlike an ‘element’) means ‘uncreated and incorruptible’, therefore ‘incorporeal’, taking it that, during universal conflagration, only the elements perish, since incorporeal principles are indestructible.²⁵³ In respect of this, Galen urged that the principles do not have to be of the same genus as the things they give rise to.²⁵⁴ One could go along with Peripatetic interpretations (which tended to show that Stoic thought was not that much original, after all), but one could not go far enough. For one thing, Plutarch reported that, to the Stoics, ‘formless matter’ is not uncreated, but it is only the creature of the Logos and his Providence.²⁵⁵ For another, once formless matter were assumed to be a product of the Logos, Aristotle would have been the first to reject its being a ‘principle’, because there could not be ‘a principle of a principle’: if the Logos caused formelss matter to be, then the principle of matter is the Logos himself.²⁵⁶ More importantly, Simplicius put to use this rationale about a first principle in his commentary on Epictetus, stating that this has to be ‘prior to everything, indeed a cause of all causes, a principle of all principles, a God of Gods, and self-existent’ in his own right.²⁵⁷ Perhaps this was the reason why Chrysippus later decided to posit form-

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.134; 7.139; cf. 9.11. So did Achilles Tatius of Alexandria (astron omer, third century AD), Isagoga Excerpta, 3 (about this author, see supra, p. 513, note 112). He attributed the idea to Zeno, but he did so also about Socrates and Plato on exactly the same terms, as if no difference between the schools were there. So thought the Christian apol ogist Hermias referring to Cleanthes. Irrisio Gentilium Philosophorum, 14. Likewise, Alexander of Aphrodisias, referring to the Stoics in general, but he did so in order to show that this doctrine of ‘two principles’, as transmitted to him, was merely Aristotelian philosophy.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.134.  Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 470: ἐν τούτῳ γὰρ δὴ καὶ διήνεγκε στοιχεῖον ἀρχῆς, ἐν τῷ τὰς μὲν ἀρχὰς οὐκ ἐξ ἀνάγκης εἶναι τοῖς πράγμασιν ὁμογενεῖς, ὧν ὑπάρχουσιν ἀρχαί, τὰ δὲ στοιχεῖα πάντως ὁμογενῆ.  Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 369a: ἀποίου δημιουργὸν ὕλης ἕνα λόγον καὶ μίαν πρόνοιαν, ὡς οἱ Στωϊκοί.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 200, commenting on Aristotle, Physica, 189a: ἡ ἀρχὴ ἀρχὴν οὐκ ἔχει. … ἀρχὴ ἀρχῆς οὐκ ἔστιν.  Simplicius, commEpict, p. 100: αἴτιον τῶν πολλῶν ὑπάρχον, προείληφεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὰ πολλὰ κατὰ μίαν ἕνωσιν, πάντα ὂν πρὸ πάντων, αἰτία αἰτιῶν ὑπάρχον, καὶ ἀρχὴ ἀρχῶν, καὶ θεὸς θεῶν, ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πάντων αὐτοφυῶς ἀνευφημεῖται. Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 432a3: “the mind is a form which employs forms” (νοῦς εἶδος εἰδῶν). Alexander of Aphrodisias, Fragmenta, 3b; 3c. Plotinus, Enneades, VI.7.17 (34 36). Simplicius, commAnim, p. 282; John Philopmus, commAnim, p. 567.

660

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

less matter as ‘eternal’ (ἀΐδιον),²⁵⁸ but this reasoning was seriously challenged by Galen²⁵⁹ and others, such as Philoponus,²⁶⁰ who questioned the Aristotelian idea in the first place. Therefore, one is bound to reflect on Stoic assumptions which might appear to be paradoxical: they took up the notion of formless matter, which to Aristotle is not a body (not even a being proper), and they posited that only whatever is a body is a real being in the proper sense,²⁶¹ a proposition that Aristotle would have endorsed, on the face of it, at least. Little wonder then that posterity assumed that, since the Stoic principles could only be real beings, they had to be corporeal, which allegedly included the Stoic God, too.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic Following J. von Arnim’s normal practice of attributing all unattributed Stoic doctrines to Chrysippus although that name is not mentioned at all (sometimes, not even the name ‘Stoic’ or ‘Stoa’ itself), the widespread assumption has been that the term σπερματικὸς λόγος is one of the Old Stoa. Against this, however, we have a unique testimony by Simplicius informing us that the technical gloss σπερματικὸς was introduced for the first time by Cornutus.²⁶² Simplicius made

 Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.11.5a, quoting from Arius Didymus.  Galen, Quod Qualitates Incorporeae Sint, pp. 476; 478.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 405; et passim.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commTop, p. 301: τὸ ὂν κατὰ σωμάτων μόνων λέγεσθαι. Ploti nus, Enneades, VI.1.28: τοῦτο ᾠήθησαν τὸ ὂν εἶναι, ὥσπερ ἂν εἴ τις μᾶλλον τὸν τόπον ἢ τὰ σώ ματα νομίσειεν εἶναι τὸ ὄν. Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1073E: ὄντα γὰρ μόνα τὰ σώματα καλοῦσιν. Dexippus, commCateg, p. 50: ἀσώματα γὰρ μὴ παραδεχόμενοι καθ᾿ ἑαυτὰ [sc. the Stoics]. David of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 111: τῶν δὲ Στωϊκῶν πάντα τὰ ὄντα σώματα εἶναι λεγόντων, δῆλον ὅτι καὶ τὰ γένη καὶ τὰ εἴδη. Elias of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 47: οἱ γὰρ Στωϊκοὶ σώματα εἶναι ἔλεγον τὰ καθόλου, οὐ ταῦτα δὲ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντα τὰ ὄντα. Proclus saw this idea in the ancient ‘physicists’, which testifies to Pre socratic influence upon Stoicism. In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1214: [οἱ φυσιολόγοι] σώματα οἰό μενοι πάντα ὑπάρχειν, ἀσώματον δὲ μηδέν. Michael Psellus, Orationes Forenses et Acta, oration 1, lines 809 10: καὶ τὴν μὲν Στοὰν διασείομεν, ὅτι μηδὲν ἀσώματον παρεδέξατο. Anonymus, Pro legomena Philosophiae Platonicae, 9: τῶν μὲν Στωϊκῶν κρείττων ἐφάνη διὰ τὸ ἐκείνους μὲν πάντα τὰ ὄντα σώματα λέγειν.  Lucius Annaeus Cornutus (᾿Aνναῖος Κορνοῦτος) was a Stoic philosopher who flourished in the reign of Nero (c. 60 AD). He was a native of Leptis Magna in Libya, but he lived in Rome for the most part of his life. Cassius Dio, Historiae Romanae, 62.29. John of Antioch (historian, sev enth century AD), Fragmenta ex Historia Chronica, fr. 172. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Vir tutibus et Vitiis, p. 183. Suda, letter kappa, entry 2098.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

661

mention of the Stoic ‘natural logoi’ (φυσικοῖς λόγοις), ‘which Cornutus, at a later period, styled spermatic logoi’ (καὶ εἰ οὕτω τις βούλοιτο καλεῖν ἐν τοῖς σπερματικοῖς, ὥς ποτε καὶ Κορνοῦτος ὀψὲ τοῦτο ὑπώπτευσεν). Then Simplicius corrected the Stoics: “Speaking accurately, the logoi of the [entire cosmic] nature (τοῖς τῆς φύσεως λόγοις) are prior to the spermatic logoi (κατὰ προτέρους λόγους καὶ τῶν σπερματικῶν λόγων), and the soul is included in them, too”.²⁶³ Simplicius suggested that the term ‘spermatic’ glossing ‘logos’ could not be applied to the Pythagoreans, as Syrianus following Iamblichus did.²⁶⁴ In the second century AD, Theon of Smyrna argued that numbers inherently contain spermatic logoi in themselves potentially (λόγους ἔχουσι δυνάμει οἱ ἀριθμοί); sundry geometrical forms are only products of those spermatic logoi (κατὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους ἐμφανιζομένους τοῖς ἀριθμοῖς). Nevertheless, the supreme spermatic logos is the ruling Monad (κατὰ τὸν ἀνωτάτω καὶ σπερματικὸν λόγον ἡ μονὰς ἄρχει).²⁶⁵ The Pythagoreans spoke simply and plainly of ‘logoi’, which had a mathematical tenor anyway and suggested relations. This is why, considering the Stoic definition of time proper as ‘extension’ (διάστημα),²⁶⁶ Simplicius pointed out that ‘certain Stoics’ thought along this line (ὥς τινες τῶν Στωϊκῶν ἔλεγον)²⁶⁷ while they distorted the Pythagorean concept of space by assuming this to be the natural one, which the Stoics associated with natural movement.²⁶⁸ The earliest reference to σπερματικὸς λόγος does indeed appear in Cornutus,²⁶⁹ as well as in Philo (c. 25 BC‒c. 50 AD), who was nearly contemporaneous with Cornutus. Origen also used the expression in the third century, and it is in him alone that this appears in relation to the name of Chrysippus. However, in that passage, Origen rendered a paraphrased view of Chrysippus, he did

 Simplicius, commCateg, p. 351: ἢ ὡς ἀκριβέστερον ἄν τις εἴποι κατὰ προτέρους λόγους καὶ τῶν σπερματικῶν λόγων τοὺς τῆς ὅλης κοσμικῆς φύσεως, ἐν ᾗ καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ περιλαμβάνεται.  See infra, p. 668, note 313.  Theon of Alexandria De Utilitate Mathematicae, p. 43.  See a detailed discussion of this in COT, pp. 179 232.  Simplicius does not name Chrysippus, as von Arnim determined and made this passage a testimony to Chrysippus’ view of time. Cf. SVF, Chrysippus, fr. 516, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 700. Instead, Simplicius clearly suggests that he had in mind Cornutus, whom he cites at this point.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 351; see further, op. cit. pp. 352 6; commPhys, pp. 700 4; 786 8. Also, Anonymous, Paraphrasis Categoriarum, p. 55.  Cornutus, De Natura Deorum, 49: διὰ τὸ πλῆθος ὧνπερ εἴληφε σπερματικῶν λόγων καὶ τῶν κατὰ σύμμιξιν ἐξ αὐτῶν γινομένων. Op. cit. p. 50: τὴν πλεονάζουσαν ἐν τῷ θεῷ σπερματικὴν δύναμιν.

662

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

not really quote from him.²⁷⁰ As a matter of fact, the Stoicism of Origen was the one that had reached him with Cornutus (whom, according to Porphyry, he read continuously, along with the Stoic Chaeremon),²⁷¹ although certainly he had read works of Chrysippus first-hand, and cited some of them.²⁷² However, he knew that Stoicism underwent evolution, and subsequent Stoic masters felt at liberty to refute aspects of doctrines of their predecessors: he notes that, at several points of his works, Chrysippus was critical of his teacher Cleanthes, with whom he had spent a long time in discipleship during his youth.²⁷³ Besides, sometimes Origen’s criticism of Stoicism refers to ‘the followers’ of Zeno and Chrysippus, not to those philosophers themselves, which presumably suggests his favourite authors Cornutus and Chaeremon.²⁷⁴ Thus, massive attribution of Stoic doctrines to Chrysippus, although his name is mentioned in less than a tenth of the extant references, has resulted in ‘spermatic’ logoi being believed to be an expression of the Old Stoa. This calls for a brief consideration of extant testimonies, from which interesting conclusions flow. The Old Stoa spoke of the one ‘Spermatic Logos’ (in singular),²⁷⁵ which they identified as God, not of ‘spermatic logoi’ in plural. It is characteristic that Diogenes Laertius expounding Stoic doctrines cites several names of Stoics both before and after the point where he describes the Stoic theory about Nature being

 Origen, Cels, IV.48: Λέγει γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ συγγράμμασιν ὁ σεμνὸς φιλόσοφος ὅτι τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ ὕλη παραδεξαμένη ἔχει ἐν ἑαυτῇ εἰς κατακόσμησιν τῶν ὅλων.  Porphyry, Contra Christianos (fragmenta), fr. 39, apud Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, 6.19.7.  Origen, op. cit. I.40; I.64; IV.63; V.57; VIII.51.  Origen, op. cit. II.12.  Origen, op. cit. VIII.49 (ref. to later Stoics) : ἵνα μὴ περιπέσωμεν οἷς περιπίπτουσιν ἀτόποις οἱ τὰ Ζήνωνος καὶ Χρυσίππου φιλοσοφοῦντες.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.135 6 (Zeno, fr. 102 & Chrysippus, fr. 580): καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ γονῇ τὸ σπέρμα περιέχεται, οὕτω καὶ τοῦτον σπερματικὸν λόγον ὄντα τοῦ κόσμου, τοιόνδε ὑπολεί πεσθαι ἐν τῷ ὑγρῷ, εὐεργὸν αὑτῷ ποιοῦντα τὴν ὕλην πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἑξῆς γένεσιν· εἶτα ἀπογεν νᾶν πρῶτον τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα πῦρ, ὕδωρ, ἀέρα, γῆν. λέγει δὲ περὶ αὐτῶν Ζήνων ἐν τῷ Περὶ τοῦ ὅλου. Justin, Apologia Secunda, 8.3 (citing Heraclitus, and Musonius Rufus, the Stoic philos opher of the first century AD): οὐ κατὰ σπερματικοῦ λόγου μέρος, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ παντὸς λόγου, ὅ ἐστι Χριστοῦ. 13.2: ἕκαστος γάρ τις ἀπὸ μέρους τοῦ σπερματικοῦ θείου λόγου τὸ συγ γενὲς ὁρῶν καλῶς ἐφθέγξατο. Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 7, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.11.15: τοῦ εἰς αὐτὴν κατιόντος σπερματικοῦ λόγου εἰς τὸν Πρίαπον ἐκτετυπωμένου. Likewise, Porphyry, op. cit. 8, quoted by Eusebius, op. cit. 3.11.42: Τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦ πάντων ποιη τικοῦ τε καὶ ἑρμηνευτικοῦ ὁ Ἑρμῆς παραστατικός. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.16c (Chrysippus, fr. 413): καὶ ὁ σπερματικὸς λόγος καὶ ἡ ἀΐδιος δύναμις φύσιν ἔχουσα τοιαύτην, ὥστε αὑτήν τε κινεῖν κάτω πρὸς γῆν.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

663

moved in accordance with spermatic logoi. However, at that specific point he cites no Stoic name at all, and he just writes, ‘they aver’ (ἀποφαίνονται).²⁷⁶ Anyhow, in either of these expressions (Spermatic Logos and spermatic logoi), the term ‘spermatic’ has a different meaning. Spermatic Logos (in singular) is the universal Logos who contains in himself the logoi of nature and acts through them. This means that the Logos is pregnant with these logoi, which are his instruments (Origen put it differently: God belches out the logoi).²⁷⁷ The Logos is called ‘spermatic’ because he produces and contains σπέρματα (whether potentially, during conflagration, or actually, throughout a cosmic period). This is why he is also called ‘Creative Logos’ (Δημιουργικὸς Λόγος).²⁷⁸ On the other hand, the spermatic logoi (in plural) are so called because they are themselves σπέρματα. Therefore, the logoi receive their name because they are homoiomerous with their source, namely, the Logos. But this means that the only way for the Stoics to produce a consistent theory was having recourse to the philosophy of Anaxagoras, as discussed in a moment. Plotinus reported the monism of the Stoics by referring to ‘those who posit one principle, out of which all things come about by means of spermatic logoi’.²⁷⁹ He does not mention the Stoics by name (he never did, anyway) and it would be a question as to what he had in mind by ‘one principle’ (ἀρχὴν μίαν): is it the Logos or the Physis? The fact is that both of them were among the synonymous terms referring to God, although the expression ‘by means of spermatic logoi’ (or, ‘in accordance with spermatic logoi’) was usually attached to the Physis.²⁸⁰ At any rate, Plotinus is not consistent throughout, but I postpone this discussion until the last chapter.²⁸¹ The term σπερματικὸς attached to the logoi by Cornutus could have been derived only from Anaxagoras’ σπέρματα, which was a term exclusive to him, notwithstanding other ideas that he shared with philosophers of his era. Both the expression and the notion of spermatic logoi after Cornutus were frequently em-

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.149. Before that point (7.54), he cites names and books (Posido nius, Antipater, Boethius). After that, he does so, too (citing Chrysippus, Posidonius, Zeno, Boe thus, then, once again Chrysippus and Zeno, along with Athenodorus, and Panaetius). Likewise, op. cit. 7.157.  See infra, pp. 888 8; 968; 1056. On ‘instruments’, supra, p. 657.  See discussion of this notion in chapter 11, pp. 978 98.  Plotinus, Enneades, II.1.7: ἀρχὴν τιθεμένην μίαν, ἀφ᾿ ἧς πάντα κατὰ λόγους σπερματικοὺς περαίνεται.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.148. Suda, letter phi, entry 864.  See infra, p. 1263: οὔσης δὲ καὶ ὕλης τῆς τὸν λόγον τὸν σπερματικὸν δεξαμένης.

664

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

ployed in the Stoic sense,²⁸² but mostly this came to be used by authors at points which did not involve exposition of Stoic doctrines. For instance, Iamblichus saw these logoi in the ‘middle’ (or, ‘mean’, ἡ μεσότης) which contains in itself the spermatic logoi of harmony (σπερματικῶς τοὺς ἐν ἁρμονίᾳ λόγους ἔστιν ἐνιδεῖν αὐτῇ).²⁸³ Also, physis means motion towards generation produced by a spermatic logos, which undergoes ‘expansion’ (ἔκτασις) exactly like that of the monad which is expanded to dyad in accordance with the spermatic logoi that the monad contains in itself, thus functioning like the universal Monad/God.²⁸⁴ Cyril of Alexandria argued conveniently that the earth is full of spermatic logoi, out of which plants grow,²⁸⁵ even though Basil of Caesarea thought differently, urging that not all plants are reproduced by means of seeds, and adduced several kinds of them as examples.²⁸⁶ The Christian Philoponus thought that God implanted spermatic logoi into the elements, whereupon all causes of future events were already present.²⁸⁷ The expression ‘natural logoi’ (φυσικοὶ λόγοι),²⁸⁸ also being styled ‘spermatic’ in reference to natural functions (of plants or animals), appears with such

 Cf. Origen, commJohn, XX.2.5; XX.3.13; XX.5.37; commMatt, 13.26; selPs, PG.12.1097.25 35. Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 3, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.9.5; 3.10.14 (also, Eu sebius himself, op. cit. 3.11.15). commCateg, p. 64; Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 7; 8; Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτο λεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 12. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 97.  Iamblichus, In Nicomachi Arithmeticam Introductionem, p. 108.  Iamblichus, Theologoumena Arithmeticae, p. 13 (quoting from his teacher Anatolius of Lao dicea’s tract On the Dyad): καὶ φύσιν δὲ αὐτὴν καλοῦσι· κίνησις γὰρ εἰς τὸ εἶναι ἐστὶν αὕτη καὶ οἷον γένεσίς τις ἀπὸ λόγου σπερματικοῦ καὶ ἔκτασις, τετευχυῖα παρὰ τὸ τοιοῦτον τῆς ὀνομασίας, παρ᾿ ὅσον ἐστὶ κίνησίς τις ἀφ᾿ ἑτέρου εἰς ἕτερον κατ᾿ εἰκόνα τῆς δυάδος. Cf. Manuel Bryennius (Constantinople, fl. c. 1300, he taught astronomy, mathematics, and musical theory), Harmonica, 3.7, p. 330: Ἡ μονὰς ἐν ἑαυτῇ δυνάμει ἤτοι συνεσπειραμένως τοὺς ἁρμονικοὺς ἅπαντας ἔχουσα λόγους καὶ τούτους προαγαγεῖν εἰς ἐνέργειαν βουληθεῖσα εἰς πληθυσμὸν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀπένευσε καὶ μέχρι δεκάδος ὡς εἰς ἔσχατον ὅρον κατὰ σύνθεσιν προοδεύσασα τοὺς ἀριθμοὺς ἀπεγέννησε.  Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum, 2.28: χλοηφοροῦσαν τὴν γῆν, καὶ σπερματικοὺς αὐ τοῖς ἐνυπάρχοντας λόγους.  Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae in Hexaemeron, 5.2.  John Philoponus, De Opificio Mundi, p. 216: τοὺς σπερματικοὺς ἄρα τῶν ἐσομένων λόγους ἐν τοῖς στοιχείοις ὁ θεὸς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐναπέθετο. Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, infra, pp. 896 9.  Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 173. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 66; commTim, v. 1, p. 143; In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 627; 672; 879; 893; 922; commTim, v. 1, pp. 19; 49; 51; 295; v. 2, p. 51. Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, De Divinis Nominibus, p. 173 (quoted also by Isaac Comnenus, De Malorum Subsistentia, 11.1). Simplicius, commCael, p. 67; commCateg, p. 351; commPhys, pp. 251; 784; commEpict, p. 132; commAnim, pp. 86; 167; 312. Damascius, Princ, p. 213. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 13. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 227. David of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 109. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, pp. 33; 73 (the

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

665

later non-Stoic authors as Porphyry and Iamblichus;²⁸⁹ so it went with Proclus,²⁹⁰ Simplicius,²⁹¹ and with later Aristotelian commentators, who were at pains to stress that these logoi are incorporeal.²⁹² Later still, Michael of Ephesus was quick to point out that the ‘natural and spermatic logoi’ are ‘incorporeal’, thus distancing himself from any possible Stoic tenor.²⁹³ Stobaeus²⁹⁴ refers to the Stoic Arius Didymus who lived almost a century before Cornutus, but we should be alert to later terminology being projected to earlier Stoic authors, as it happened with Origen paraphrasing Chrysippus,²⁹⁵ or with Sextus Empiricus rendering Zeno’s argument in Sextus’ own rephrasing, about the world being a rational animal.²⁹⁶

same text appearing in the anonymous Miscellanea Philosophica, chapter 25, p. 80, is in fact a text of Psellus).  Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 12: πολλαχῶς δὲ τοῦ λόγου λεγομένου λέγεται οὐχ ἧττον λόγος καὶ ὁ φυσικός, ὅ τε τῆς σπερματικῆς δυνάμεως καὶ ὁ κατὰ τὴν σύνταξιν τῶν αὐτῆς τῆς φύσεως ἐνεργειῶν. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 3.28.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 886: μήτε τοῖς σπερματικοῖς λόγοις ὂν ταὐτόν, μήτε τοῖς φυσικοῖς ὅλως, οἵ εἰσιν ὁμοταγεῖς τοῖς ὑλικοῖς. commTim, v. 1, p. 143: εἴτε οὖν φυσικούς τινες ἐν τῷ παντὶ λέγοιεν λόγους εἴτε σπερματικούς, τὴν πάντων τούτων αἰτίαν εἰς τὸν θεὸν τοῦτον ἀνενεκτέον. ὃ γὰρ ἡ φύσις ποιεῖ δύνουσα κατὰ τῶν σωμάτων, τοῦτο θείως καὶ ἐξῃρημέ νως ὁ θεὸς οὗτος διαπλάττει τὴν φύσιν κινῶν καὶ ὀργάνῳ χρώμενος αὐτῇ πρὸς τὴν σφετέραν δημιουργίαν. Op. cit. v. 3, p. 188: καὶ τὸν μὲν Φόρκυν ἁπάσης τῆς σπερματικῆς οὐσίας καὶ τῶν λόγων τῶν φυσικῶν καὶ οἷον σπερματικῶν ἔφορον εἶναι φήσομεν. Op. cit. v. 3, p. 193: λόγοις δὲ σπερματικοῖς ὁ Φόρκυς διακοσμεῖ.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 351: καὶ ἐν φυσικοῖς λόγοις καὶ εἰ οὕτω τις βούλοιτο καλεῖν ἐν τοῖς σπερματικοῖς, ὥς ποτε καὶ Κορνοῦτος ὀψὲ τοῦτο ὑπώπτευσεν.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 13; De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 12. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 33: καὶ οἱ φυσικοὶ λόγοι ἀμερεῖς καὶ ἀσώματοι· ἐν ἑκάστῳ γὰρ μορίῳ οἱ αὐτοὶ λόγοι καὶ ἐν τῷ παντὶ σπέρματι, οἱ θρεπτικοὶ καὶ διαπλαστικοί. De Omnifaria Doctrina, 47: τῶν φυσικῶν λόγων καὶ τῶν σπερματικῶν.  Michael of Ephesus, In Aristotelis Sophisticos Elenchos Commentarius, p. 197: οἱ φυσικοὶ καὶ σπερματικοὶ ἐν αὐτῇ λόγοι ἀσώματοί εἰσιν (meaning the logoi which function in order for a plant to gow fully). Nearly the same text, in Anonymous, Scholia in Aristotelis Sophisticos Elenchos (scholia recentiora) (e cod. Vat. Urb. gr. 35), p. 34, comm. on 183b23 24. I should point out that this anonymous text is the same as the one by the thirteenth century philosopher and Met ropolitan of Mytilene, Leo Magentinus, Commentarium in Aristotelis Sophisticos Elenchos (ex cerpta praecipue e cod. Vat. gr. 244), scholion 529.  Cf. Stobaeus (drawing on Arius Didymus), Anthologium, 2.7.3c: κατὰ τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ σπερματικοὺς λόγους.  Origen, Cels, IV.48; see supra, p. 662, and note 270.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 103: ὥστε εἶναι τοιοῦτο τὸ λεγόμενον (= ‘therefore what he [Zeno] said is somehow this’) ·ὁ δέ γε κόσμος περιέχει σπερ ματικοὺς λόγους λογικῶν ζῴων· λογικὸς ἄρα ἐστὶν ὁ κόσμος.

666

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

Gennadius Scholarius took it for granted that everything has been produced from ‘a spermatic and primary logos’ (λόγου σπερματικοῦ τε καὶ ἀρχικοῦ τῶν ἐξ ἐκείνου γεννωμένων),²⁹⁷ and Bessarion assured that ‘Avicenna, as well as all doctors of Christian theology, both Greek and Latin’ maintained that physis is a power inherent in things, which produces like from the like, and its tool is called spermatic logoi’ (λόγους αὐτὴν σπερματικοὺς ὀνομάζουσιν).²⁹⁸ Any association with Stoicism is now entirely forgotten, which was the case already four centuries earlier, when Michael Psellus spoke of ‘natural and spermatic logoi’ (τῶν φυσικῶν λόγων καὶ τῶν σπερματικῶν) functioning in the universe, yet without any mention of Stoicism being made.²⁹⁹ Likewise, the anonymous commentator of Aratus of Soli’s poem Phenomena determined that ‘the creative and spermatic logoi of all things’ are no other than the ‘early determinations and foreknowledge of all things by God’.³⁰⁰ Again, any association with Stoicism was long past. Taking distances from Stoicism was only natural to do, especially once authors employed the notion of logoi being acting agents of generation, but they rejected any implication of them being corporeal. However, in doing so, they built the Anaxagorean rationale, no matter whether consciously or not. The reasoning was pretty simple: if the Stoics posited the spermatic logoi as material, it follows that these logoi are visible (or nearly so) and they should be identified with seeds themselves. However, any seed is not a complete being: it is only one that seeks to become a complete being, such as the seed of a rose which is only an incomplete flower, and an embryo which is an incomplete human being. As early as the second century AD, Plutarch determined that ‘a spermatic logos is only an offspring which is both in need of genesis (γόνον ἐνδεᾶ γενέσεως) and deficient in terms of being properly what it is destined to be by nature (ἐνδεᾶ τοῦ οἰκείου); this is why it is in the nature of a seed to long for producing a seed in turn, in like a manner this was itself produced from a seed (διὸ καὶ βούλεσθαι ποιεῖν πέφυκεν ἄλλο τοιοῦτον, οἷον ἦν ἐξ οὗ ἀπεκρίθη).³⁰¹

 Gennadius Scholarius, Quaestiones Theologicae De Praedestinatione Divina et De Anima, 2.1.11.  Bessarion, De Natura et Arte, 9.4. Likewise, op. cit. 9.6: τοῦ γὰρ ὁμοίου ἐστὶν ἡ φύσις γεν νητική. αὕτη δ᾿ ἂν εἴη τά τε ὑπεραναβεβηκότα καὶ ἔμμεσα αἴτια, ἥ τε τούτων προσεχεστέρα καὶ τῶν γεννώντων φύσις, ὡς εἴρηται, ἐνεργείᾳ οὖσα. ἐξ ἧς οἱ σπερματικοὶ ἀποκρίνονται λόγοι κι νοῦντες τὸ γινόμενον μέχρις αὐτῆς τῆς τοῦ εἴδους ἀπολήψεως.  Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina, 47.  Anonymous, Astronomica (in appendice cod. Scorialensis S III 3), 4: τὰ γένη ἢ πρὸ τῶν πολ λῶν, οἷον οἱ δημιουργικοὶ καὶ σπερματικοὶ τῶν ὄντων λόγοι, ἤγουν οἱ προορισμοὶ καὶ αἱ προ γνώσεις τοῦ θεοῦ τῶν ὄντων.  Plutarch, Quaestiones Convivales, 637A.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

667

This view was expounded decisively by Proclus, who argued that these (i. e. the Stoic)³⁰² spermatic logoi are ‘incomplete’ or ‘imperfect’ (ἀτελεῖς), and certainly ‘divisible’ ones, because they are ‘material’.³⁰³ These logoi themselves exist only potentially and they are unable to act as cohesive causes, by virtue of the fact that they are ‘imperfect’ hypostases (ἀτελεῖς).³⁰⁴ When Proclus made these remarks, he was probably irritated at what he saw as arid Stoic commitment to corporeality, which is why he took views that were rather extreme: he argued that Plato had preceded the wanting theories of both Aristotle (who spoke of ‘immovable objects of desire’, ἀκίνητα ὀρεκτά)³⁰⁵ and the Stoics, since he said that ‘the Ideas are intelligible logoi, and made all creation dependent upon them’.³⁰⁶ In contrast, the Stoic spermatic logoi were not only ‘imperfect’ hypostases, but also they were not immovable objects of desire, as the those of the Peripatetics were (πάντως οὖν οὔτε τὰ ἀκίνητα ὀρεκτά, μόνως ὀρεκτὰ ὄντα), because the spermatic logoi are not immovable.³⁰⁷ However, the question which Proclus did not care to resolve is this: if the Ideas are identified with logoi, why did he not treat the issue of generation in terms of Ideas alone, but recurrently he spoke of logoi? Moreover, if both of them are the selfsame thing, why was it that, at the same time, he argued that

 Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem. p. 887: Ταύτης γὰρ ἐφιέμενοι πάντες τῆς αἰτίας, οἱ μὲν τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους εἶναι τοιούτους οἰηθέντες ἀφθάρτους αὐτοὺς ἐποίησαν, ὡς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς. Cf. op. cit. p. 883: πολλοὶ γὰρ δὴ σωματικοῖς λόγοις ἀνέθεσαν τὴν δημιουργίαν.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 883: οὔτε τοῖς σπερματικοῖς λόγοις τὴν αὐτὴν ἔχειν οὐ σίαν δοτέον· πάντα γὰρ ταῦτα σωματοειδῆ καὶ ἀτελῆ καὶ μεριστὴν αὐτῶν ἀποφαίνει τὴν ὑπό στασιν. Cf. op. cit. p. 889: ᾿Aπὸ μὲν τῶν ἐνύλων εἰς τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους ἀνιόντες, εὑρίσκο μέν τι κοινὸν αὐτοῖς, τὸ ἀτελές. Op. cit. p. 731: οὔτε τοὺς τοῖς σπερματικοῖς αὐτὰς λόγοις συνάπτοντας· οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασιν ἀτελεῖς εἰσιν. Op. cit. p. 1055: περὶ τῶν ἐνύλων εἰδῶν καὶ πάντων τῶν σπερματικῶν λόγων.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 887: Οὔτε γὰρ οἱ σπερματικοὶ λόγοι σώζειν ἦσαν ἱκανοὶ τὰ γιγνόμενα, πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς οὐ δυνάμενοι συννεύειν καὶ ἑαυτοὺς συνέχειν οὐδ᾿ ὅλως τελειοῦν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀτελεῖς ὄντες· δυνάμει γάρ εἰσι καὶ ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ.  Aristotle, De Anima, 433b11; Metaphysica, 1072a26. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMe taph, p. 693; De Anima, p. 781. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 781; 1191; commAnim, p. 301. John Phil oponus, commGenCorr, p. 150; commAnim, p. 66; commAnim, p. 96; commAnim, pp. 587; 590 1. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 105. Suda, letter kappa, entry 1640. Michael of Ephesus, In Libros De Animalium Motione Commentarium, p. 127. Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 16. Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 76. Also, Albinus, Epitome Doctrinae Platonicae, 10.2.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 888: Πλάτων δέ, συναγαγὼν εἰς ἓν ἀμφότερα, νοεροὺς λόγους εἶναι τὰς ἰδέας ὑποθέμενος τούτων ἀνῆψε τὴν πᾶσαν δημιουργίαν.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 887 8; cf. op. cit. p. 793.

668

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

‘the logoi, whether spermatic or natural ones, are not the same as the Ideas’,³⁰⁸ but they are dependent upon the Ideas?³⁰⁹ Proclus argued that Plato introduced ‘natural logoi’ as ‘causes’ which stand ‘midway’ and they are the proximate agents of generation.³¹⁰ As usual, he sought to attribute to Plato theories which were in fact both prior and posterior to him, and they had nothing to do with Plato himself. For one thing, Proclus made the Ideas generative causes, which were not so to Plato. For another, once he employed the Anaxagorean logoi in order to excoriate the Stoic ones, he decided that those logoi operated by means of them being participated in by the things they give rise to,³¹¹ and that the steadfastness and coherence of natural reality (in terms of both its existence and operation) is owing not to the dynamic logoi but to the immovable Ideas.³¹² Thus, he introduced a classification: ‘from perceptible material things, one is elevated to the spermatic logoi, which have in common their being imperfect’ (τὸ ἀτελές); above them stand the natural logoi (ἀπὸ δὲ τούτων εἰς τοὺς φυσικοὺς λόγους);³¹³ higher still, there are the logoi of the soul, which mark transition from timelessness to temporality. It is only when one leaves all of them behind, that the Ideas can be reached in their own proper immaterial and immovable being.³¹⁴ The Ideas are superior to both the spermatic and the natural logoi, which is why ‘the spermatic logoi are inferior to Nature proper’,³¹⁵ and they are supervised by sundry classes of gods and daemons’.³¹⁶

 Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem. p. 886: καθάπερ εἴπομεν, τῆς ἰδέας τὸ ἰδίωμα, μήτε τοῖς σπερματικοῖς λόγοις ὂν ταὐτόν, μήτε τοῖς φυσικοῖς ὅλως, οἵ εἰσιν ὁμοταγεῖς τοῖς ὑλικοῖς, ἀλλ᾿ ἕτερόν τι πρὸ τούτων ἀσύντακτον πρὸς πᾶν τὸ μερισθὲν περὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς.  So Simplicius, commEpict, p. 132: Εἰδῶν δὲ ἀσωμάτων, καὶ ἀμερίστων, καὶ ἀεὶ κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως ἐχόντων, ἐφίενται οἱ λόγοι.  Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 51: καὶ ὡς εἰκότως ὁ Πλάτων ἀπὸ τῶν μαθημάτων ἐπάγει τὴν πίστιν τοῖς φυσικοῖς λόγοις· αἴτια γάρ ἐστιν ἐκεῖνα, καὶ ἡ δημιουργικὴ πρόοδος διὰ ψυχῆς ἐπιτε λεῖται, καὶ ἡ ἀπογέννησις οἰκείως πρόεισι διὰ τῶν μέσων.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 886 7.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 887: ὁ φυσικὸς λόγος ἔχει χώραν προσεχὴς ὢν τοῖς πολλοῖς δεσμοῖς· ἵνα δὲ μένῃ τὰ μετέχοντα τῆς ἰδέας ἀεὶ καὶ μηδέποτε ἐκλείπῃ, δεῖ τινος ἄλλης αἰτίας, οὐκ ἐν αὐτοῖς οὔσης ἢ κινουμένης, ἀλλ᾿ ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτῆς ἱδρυμένης, πρὸ τῶν κινουμένων ἀκινήτου, καὶ διὰ τὴν οἰ κείαν σταθερότητα προξενούσης καὶ τοῖς κινουμένοις τὴν ἀνέκλειπτον μετοχήν.  Simplicius agreed on that the natural logoi are prior to the spermatic ones. commCateg, p. 351: καὶ ἐν φυσικοῖς λόγοις καὶ εἰ οὕτω τις βούλοιτο καλεῖν ἐν τοῖς σπερματικοῖς, ὥς ποτε καὶ Κορνοῦτος ὀψὲ τοῦτο ὑπώπτευσεν, ἢ ὡς ἀκριβέστερον ἄν τις εἴποι κατὰ προτέρους λόγους καὶ τῶν σπερματικῶν λόγων τοὺς τῆς ὅλης κοσμικῆς φύσεως, ἐν ᾗ καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ περιλαμβάνεται.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 889: ἀπὸ δὲ τούτων εἰς τοὺς ψυχικούς, τὸ ἔγχρονον τῆς ποιήσεως· ἐὰν δὲ εἰς τὰ εἴδη τὰ ὡς ἀληθῶς ἀναδράμωμεν, οὐδὲν εὑρήσομεν τοῖσδε καὶ ἐκείνοις κοινόν.  Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 191: ὑπὸ τὴν φύσιν γὰρ οἱ σπερματικοὶ λόγοι πάντες.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

669

He attributes transition from absolute unity to multiplicity to Cronus; then, Rhea gives life; and then, ‘Phorkys decorates everything by means of spermatic logoi’. It is only through them that ‘Zeus brings into light what is unseen’ (φανερὰ δὲ ἐξ ἀφανῶν ὁ Ζεὺς ἀποτελεῖ).³¹⁷ But all of this is not what Plato meant in his Timaeus: it is only Proclus essaying to establish that ‘whether natural logoi or spermatic ones, the cause of them all in no other than God; no matter what Nature does, everything is actually done by God moving Nature and using this as his tool.’³¹⁸ As for Zeus bringing into light what is unseen or hidden, we only need to recall al-Shahrastani quoting Porphyry, who wrote that, to Anaxagoras, the root of things is one single body and that Anaxagoras was the first to advance the theory of hiding-and-appearing insofar as he supposed that all things are hidden in the first body and their coming into existence is only their emergence into appearance out of that body, appearance out of hiding, of actuality out of potentiality. The fact that Proclus despised the Stoic spermatic logoi and argued that they are inferior ones because of their materiality was a misperception, whereas his own classification of logoi (which was merely misunderstood Anaxagorean theory) is peculiar to Proclus alone. To say that the logoi exist (i. e. function) differently either in plants or things of natural phenomena or in human beings, does not mean that the logoi are different in essence. Quite simply, they carry out different functions in order for sundry aspects of reality either to come to pass or fade away. Whether being objects of the highest speculative cognition, or simply natural laws active as cohesive forces upon the humblest of objects, the logoi are ontologically the same, although none of them is the same as any other. When the Stoics spoke of spermatic logoi, they did not necessarily mean that this was only about logoi acting exclusively in seeds: they meant all aspects of reality, and, at least on this, they were heirs of Anaxagoras. Proclus chose to ignore this fact, but other Neoplatonists realized that the logoi which act upon matter are not different in essence: they are simply another ‘genus’ of them once they are considered as a whole. Iamblichus, expressing himself in his own Neoplatonic theological language, pointed out that, ‘given the fact that there are infinite powers in respect of the heavenly gods, there is a genus of them which is the lowest of all, namely, the natural one’; this genus is the cause that appears through the spermatic logoi and carries out all aspects of generation.³¹⁹

 Proclus, op. cit. p. 188.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 3, p. 192. See infra, p. 685.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 1, p. 143.  Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 3.28: Οὐσῶν γὰρ περὶ τοὺς οὐρανίους θεοὺς ἀπείρων δή τινων δυ νάμεων, ἓν γένος τῶν ἐν αὐταῖς πάντων ἔσχατόν ἐστι, τὸ φυσικόν. Τούτου δὲ αὖθις τὸ μὲν ἐν

670

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

This idea was set forth by Origen³²⁰ and Plotinus³²¹ alike (both of whom ‘shared the same education’ under Ammonius Saccas),³²² and Proclus couched it in his own terms, repeating that Nature is divine, though not by itself but because it is granted deification by gods, and it is ‘full of logoi and powers’; in any event, Nature is a ‘cause’ which is ‘the last of those’ which mark transition from incorporeality to the sensible reality.³²³ Simplicius (or whoever the author) put it less ambiguously than Proclus did: the logoi which give rise to life and to natural reality (in short, to ‘perceptible life’) are the same ones as those which are derived from the indivisible essence and give rise to the soul. No question of classifying the logoi whatsoever.³²⁴ Proclus took pride in styling himself a devout pupil of Plato, and certainly he did not consider himself an Anaxagorean. He despised what he saw as arid universal materiality of the Stoics, because this meant to him that the incorporeal characteristics of perceptible things (such as their form) are produced by corporeal logoi (οὔτ᾿ ἄρα γεννήματα τῆς ὕλης ὑποθετέον εἶναι τὰ εἴδη καὶ βλαστήματα),³²⁵ all the more so since corporeal logoi cannot be participated in.³²⁶ Nevertheless, he made abundant use of the notion of ‘spermatic logoi’, yet in order to aver that they are ‘imperfect’ on account of their being material. He confined the import of ‘spermatic’ to seeds alone, but since the universe includes also other natural phenomena, he spoke of ‘natural logoi’, which include the spermatic reproduction of plants, yet they apply to the wider reality. Thus, instead of disputing the materiality of spermatic logoi, he opted for his own ‘natural’ ones, which had to be incorporeal. But those were inexorably no other than the Anaxagorean principles. λόγοις σπερματικοῖς τε καὶ πρὸ τῶν σπερματικῶν τοῖς ἀκινήτοις ἱδρυμένον προηγεῖται καθ᾿ ἑαυτὸ πρὸ τῆς γενέσεως.  Origen, Libri x in Canticum Canticorum, 230 3 & Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17.265.4 11; frJohn, 63. See quotations in chapter 10, p. 789.  Plotinus, Enneades, IV.6.3: Λόγος γάρ ἐστι πάντων, καὶ λόγος ἔσχατος μὲν τῶν νοητῶν καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ νοητῷ ἡ ψυχῆς φύσις, πρῶτος δὲ τῶν ἐν τῷ αἰσθητῷ παντί.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 11: ἡ τοίνυν φύσις ἐσχάτη μέν ἐστι τῶν τὸ σωματοειδὲς τοῦτο καὶ αἰσθητὸν δημιουργούντων αἰτίων καὶ τὸ πέρας τοῦ τῶν ἀσωμάτων οὐσιῶν πλάτους, πλήρης δὲ λόγων καὶ δυνάμεων, δι᾿ ὧν κατευθύνει τὰ ἐγκόσμια, καὶ θεὸς μέν, τῷ δὲ ἐκθεοῦσθαι καὶ οὐκ αὐτόθεν ἔχουσα τὸ εἶναι θεός.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 167: τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀμέριστον, ἡ δὲ ἀνειλιγμένη ἐστὶν οὐσία· τοιαύτη δὲ ἡ ψυχικὴ ζωή. ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ ζωτικοὶ καὶ φυσικοί εἰσι λόγοι, εἰκότως λόγος τις ἡ αἰσθητικὴ εἴρηται ζωή. Likewise, commCateg, p. 266; commPhys, p. 289.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 883.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 883: πολλοὶ γὰρ δὴ σωματικοῖς λόγοις ἀνέθεσαν τὴν δημιουργίαν, καίτοι δέδεικται ὅτι τὰ εἴδη σωματικά τε εἶναι καὶ μετέχεσθαι σωματοειδῶς ἀδύνατον.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

671

In respect of this matter, this perception gave rise to a widespread terminology which is characteristic of the Late Antiquity. Whereas Proclus despised the Stoic spermatic logoi because of their materiality (hence, of their divisibility),³²⁷ he determined that the natural logoi (φυσικοὶ λόγοι) are immaterial and indivisible (ἀμερεῖς).³²⁸ However, this was not Platonism: it was only a novelty introduced by his teacher Syrianus commenting not on Plato, but on Aristotle, while declaring that this was his own interpretation, not Aristotle’s.³²⁹ It is not difficult to trace the line along which this concept and locution were transmitted: Syrianus bequeathed this teaching to Proclus, who succeeded him as head of the Academy; in turn, Proclus’ pupil Ammonius of Alexandria taught the theory to his own pupils, namely, John Philoponus³³⁰ and Olympiodorus of Alexandria (the Younger).³³¹ The closure of the Academy in 529 AD did not allow for the

 Proclus, loc. cit.: πάντα γὰρ ταῦτα σωματοειδῆ καὶ ἀτελῆ καὶ μεριστὴν αὐτῶν ἀποφαίνει τὴν ὑπόστασιν.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 89: τὸ δὲ αὖ τῆς ἀπάτης οἰκεῖον τοῖς ἐγκοσμίοις εἴδεσιν ἐξιστα μένοις ἀπὸ τῶν ἀμερῶν καὶ ἀΰλων λόγων, καὶ φαινομένοις ἀντὶ τῶν ὄντως ὄντων γινομένοις. In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 902: ᾿Aναδράμωμεν οὖν ἀπὸ τῶν μεριστῶν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀμερεῖς λόγους τῆς φύσεως. Theologia Platonica, v. 5, pp. 65 6: Καὶ γὰρ οἱ λόγοι τῶν νοήσεών εἰσιν εἰκόνες, διότι τὸ μὲν συνεσπειραμένον τῶν νοητῶν ἀνελίττουσι, τὸ δὲ ἀμερὲς εἰς τὴν μεριστὴν προάγουσιν ὑπόστασιν. commEucl, p. 18: τοὺς δὲ ἀμερεῖς αὐτῆς λόγους ἐξαπλοῦσα. Op. cit. p. 50: ἐν ἀμερέσι λόγοις … τῶν ἐν διανοίᾳ λόγων ἀμερῶν ὄντων καὶ ἀδιαστάτων κατὰ τὴν ἰδιότητα τὴν ψυχικὴν ὑφεστηκότων. Op. cit. p. 56: τῶν ἀμερῶν λόγων.  Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 91: τοὺς ἀμερεῖς λόγους τῆς ψυχῆς. Op. cit. p. 92: οἱ μὲν ἀμερεῖς λόγοι τῶν μεγεθῶν κρείττους … τῆς ἑαυτῶν αἰτίας τῆς ἀμεροῦς ἐξηρτημένα. Op. cit. p. 94: Αὐτὸς μὲν ὡς ἐπὶ δεδειγμένοις τούτῳ χρῆται τῷ συμπεράσματι. ἡμεῖς δέ, ὅτι οἱ μὲν λόγοι αὐτῶν οὐσίαι ἀμερεῖς καὶ αἰτίαι τῶν φανταστῶν καὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν διαστάσεων, εἰς δύναμιν ἡμετέραν ἐπεδείξαμεν. Op. cit. p. 124 (ref. to Pythagoreans): αὐτοὺς δὲ [sc. πάντας ἀριθμούς] ἀμερεῖς εἶναι ὑπετίθεντο τούς τε τῶν σωμάτων ποιητικοὺς τούς τε τῶν φυσικῶν λόγων ἐξῃρημένους.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 13: καὶ αὐτοὶ οἱ φυσικοὶ λόγοι δείκνυνται ἐναργῶς ἀμερεῖς ὄντες καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἀσώματοι. ἐν γὰρ ἑκάστῳ μορίῳ τοῦ σπέρματος οἱ αὐτοὶ φυσικοὶ λόγοι ἀμε ρίστως εἰσίν, οἵπερ καὶ ἐν τῷ παντὶ σπέρματι, οἱ θρεπτικοί, οἱ αὐξητικοί, οἱ διαπλαστικοί· … ἀμερίστως ἄρα ἐνυπάρχουσι πάντες ἐν ἑκάστῳ μορίῳ· ἀσώματοι ἄρα εἰσίν· τὸ γὰρ ἀμερὲς καὶ ἀσώματον. Op. cit. p. 14: ἀμερεῖς οἱ λόγοι καθ᾿ ἑαυτούς, … αἱ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ δένδρῳ δυνάμεις πᾶσαι ἀνελλιπῶς καὶ ἐν τοῖς μέρεσι, δῆλον ὅτι δι᾿ οὐδεμίαν ἄλλην αἰτίαν ἢ διὰ τὸ ἀμερεῖς εἶναι αὐτὰς καθ᾿ αὑτάς. Op. cit. p. 58: τῶν γὰρ εἰδῶν τῶν ἐνύλων εἰσὶ καὶ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ λόγοι, εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ ἐξῃρημένοι ἐν τῷ δημιουργικῷ νῷ. καὶ τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ οἱ μέν εἰσι διαστατοὶ οἱ ἐν τῇ φαντασίᾳ, οἱ δὲ ἀμερεῖς καὶ ἀδιάστατοι οἱ ἐν τῷ λογικῷ μέρει τῆς ψυχῆς. commPhys, p. 475: ἀμερεῖς γὰρ ὄντας τοὺς λόγους τῶν εἰδῶν καθ᾿ αὑτοὺς [sc. ἡ ὕλη] δεξαμένη διίστησι.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem Commentarii, 109 10: τὸ δὲ εἶδος πρὸς τῷ νῷ ἐστὶν ἐπιστρεπτικῷ ὄντι· καὶ τοῦτο γὰρ ὡς ἀμερὲς ἐπιστρεπτικόν ἐστι, διὰ γὰρ τὴν ὕλην μερίζεται· ἐπεὶ πάντες οἱ λόγοι ἐν τῷ σπέρματί εἰσιν ὡς ἀμερεῖς.

672

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

theory to flourish, but in the eleventh century Michael Psellus reproduced Philoponus’ analyses on this.³³² On the question whether the spermatic logoi are subject to destruction or not, we have at least four different reports, which are apparently conflicting and incompatible with each other, but they can be reconciled only once Anaxagoras’ philosophy as a predecessor of Stoicism is taken into account. 1. Both the Universal Logos and the spermatic logoi are corruptible, but the Logos is never destroyed only because there is no cause external to it, which could carry this destruction out.³³³ 2. The Stoic spermatic logoi are incorruptible, according to Proclus.³³⁴ 3. The Universal Logos is incorruptible, and the spermatic logoi are corruptible; in that case, the Logos becomes inactive for lack of means, since the seminal logoi are consummated by fire upon conflagration. Philo argued so in order to show that rebirth of the world is impossible if universal destruction occurs.³³⁵ 4. According to Basil of Caesarea (who studied philosophy at Athens), the Stoic doctrine went thus: the entire world is put to conflagration, and it is revived anew out of the spermatic logoi which remain in the remnants of conflagration. This means that universal destruction results in obliteration of some spermatic

 Michael Psellus (in effect, copying from Philoponus), Opuscula ii, p. 33: καὶ οἱ φυσικοὶ λόγοι ἀμερεῖς καὶ ἀσώματοι· ἐν ἑκάστῳ γὰρ μορίῳ οἱ αὐτοὶ λόγοι καὶ ἐν τῷ παντὶ σπέρματι, οἱ θρεπτικοὶ καὶ διαπλαστικοί. … ἀμερίστως ἄρα ἐν ἑκάστῳ μορίω καὶ ἀσωμάτως. καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ δένδρῳ ἡ φυτικὴ δύναμις, οὕτω καὶ ἐν τῷ κλάδῳ. Op. cit. p. 38: οἱ λόγοι τῶν εἰδῶν τῶν ἐν ὕλῃ εἰσὶ καὶ ἐν τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ ψυχῇ καὶ ἐν τῷ νῷ τῷ δημιουργικῷ. καὶ τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ οἱ μὲν διαστατοί, οἱ ἐν τῇ φαντασίᾳ, οἱ δὲ ἀμερεῖς καὶ ἀδιάστατοι.  Origen, Cels, I.21; VI.71. On the Stoic God being material, see testimonies by Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 16 (Zeno). Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedonem Commen taria, 6.2 (ref. to ‘Stoics’, not to Chrysippus as in SVF, II.306, fr. 1030). Theodoret, Graecarum Af fectionum Curatio, 2.113 (ref. to ‘Stoics’, not to Chrysippus as in SVF, II.306, fr. 1028). Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 225 (ref. to ‘the Stoa’, not to Chrysippus as in SVF, II.112, fr. 310). Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 879C & Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum, 2.22 & Sto baeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b (ref. to ‘Stoics’, not to Chrysippus as in SVF, II.299, fr. 1009). Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881F & Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.9 & Cyril of Alex andria, Contra Julianum, 1.39 & Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b (ref. to ‘Stoics’, not to Chrysippus, as in SVF, II.306, fr. 1027). However, see infra, pp. 681 90.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 887: Ταύτης γὰρ ἐφιέμενοι πάντες τῆς αἰτίας, οἱ μὲν τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους εἶναι τοιούτους οἰηθέντες ἀφθάρτους αὐτοὺς ἐποίησαν, ὡς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς (ref. to ‘the Stoa’, not to Chrysippus as in SVF, II.205, fr. 717).  Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 94: ὥστ᾿ ἀμήχανον παλιγγενεσίαν τὸν κόσμον λαβεῖν, μηδενὸς ἐντυφομένου σπερματικοῦ λόγου, πάντων δὲ δαπανηθέντων, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ὑπὸ πυρός, αὐτοῦ δ᾿ ὑπ᾿ ἐνδείας.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

673

logoi, yet not of all of them, which is what allows ‘infinite destructions and revivals of the world’.³³⁶ Such considerations of the Stoic thought seem to be at odds with each other, since the spermatic logoi should be either corruptible or incorruptible. My own suggestion is that the way to square them is only by considering the philosophy of Anaxagoras: the Logos is not destroyed upon conflagration: both Origen and Philo, although arguing for different cases, set forth this possibility as a theoretical one in order to show that the Stoic premisses were untenable. How could it be possible for the spermatic logoi to be both corruptible and incorruptible? To this, the answer is that, since destruction means universal conflagration and annihilation of Nature, the logoi which are destroyed are those which exist spermatically and physically, that is, in inanimate things (as cohesive forces), plants, animals, and in the physis in general. However, Zeno, Porphyry, Proclus, Damascius, and Simplicius explained that these are not the only ways of the existence of logoi, since they exist also intellectually and incorporeally.³³⁷ I have left out of the present discussion the ‘four incorporeals’ (time, space, void, an expression) that the Stoics conceded, since I have discussed them in the past,³³⁸ but we should bear in mind that the Stoic Basilides banned existence of incorporeals altogether.³³⁹ There is nothing strange about this anyway, since all schools had their heretics: Ecfantus of Syracuse, though a Pythagorean he was, posited that the numbers are material;³⁴⁰ and in Gennadius Scholarius rendering Thomas Aquinas we read that some followers of Plato (‘Platonists’) posited material principles, too.³⁴¹ I should only note that the Stoics regarded not only time as an incorporeal which ‘exists in thought’ (ἀσώματον, ἐννοούμενον),³⁴² but also, in general, they

 Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae in Hexaemeron, 3.8: οἱ τὸ πᾶν ἐκπυροῦσθαι λέγοντες, καὶ ἀνα βιώσκεσθαι πάλιν ἐκ τῶν σπερματικῶν λόγων τῶν ἐναπομενόντων τοῖς ἐκπυρωθεῖσιν· ὅθεν καὶ ἀπείρους φθορὰς κόσμου καὶ παλιγγενεσίας εἰσάγουσιν. This testimony is not included in J. von Arnim’s SVF.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34 5. About Zeno, see supra, p. 617.  COT, pp. 200 1.  See supra, p. 634, note 126, apud Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 2 (Adversus Log icos 2), 6.258.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.16a.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.5: τινὲς δὲ ἄϋλα καὶ ἀσώματα, ὥσπερ οἱ τιθέντες τοὺς ἀριθμοὺς καὶ τὰς ἰδέας· τινὲς δὲ μιγνύοντες ἑκάτερα, ὥσπερ οἱ Πλατωνικοί, οἵτινες ἔθεντο ἀρχὰς καὶ αἰσθητὰς καὶ χωριστάς.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (= Adversus Physicos 2), 218.

674

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

saw the Ideas as mere constructions of the human mind (ἐννοήματα ἡμέτερα).³⁴³ Stobaeus (drawing on Arius Didymus) reports that, to ‘Zeno and to his followers’, these are only certain ‘somethings’ (τινά) and ‘imaginary constructions of the soul’ (φαντάσματα ψυχῆς), indeed generalizations formed following experience of concrete material beings, and those universals which his predecessors called ‘ideas’ are ‘nonexistent’ (ἀνυπάρκτους).³⁴⁴ Sextus must be given credit since his texts show that had grasped crucial points of the Old Stoa, particularly its dialectics. An incisive distinction he made in this context should be recalled: to speak of ‘truth’ (ἀλήθειαν) is one thing, but to speak of ‘what is true’ (τὸ ἀληθές) is another. These are two different things ‘in three ways, namely, in essence, in constitution, and in force of meaning’. It is significant to follow him pointing out the difference ‘in essence’ (οὐσίᾳ) between the two terms: ‘truth is a body’, but ‘what is true (τὸ ἀληθές) is incorporeal’.³⁴⁵ The former means the actuality of a perceptible occurrence taking place. By contrast, to say that a body is real, is an expression, and this is a ‘truth’, indeed an ‘impression’ (φαντασία),³⁴⁶ which is not a body, since ‘an expression’ (τὸ λεκτόν) is one of the four Stoic incorporeals. Consequently, there are two different existential statuses, which are different not simply ‘in force of meaning’, but also ‘in essence’ and ‘in constitution’: one, the reality of a body, which is ‘truth’ (ἀλήθεια); two, the expression of this reality, which is something ‘true’ (ἀληθές), it is incorporeal, and it is not ‘truth’ proper, but only an actual manifestation of the truth: it is a certain ‘something’ (τί), yet this is not endowed with the ontological authority that a body is. This was Alexander of Aphrodisias’ blame against the Stoics: by pointing out their inability to determine clearly what is ‘being’ (ὄν) and what is only ‘something’ (τί), he argued that the Stoics used a logical subterfuge in order to ‘escape the question which they themselves were asked, and to which they should have answered’ (διαφεύγοιεν τὸ ἠπορημένον).³⁴⁷ If then Plutarch, as well as Proclus, could be regarded as hostile witnesses to the Stoics, Sextus Empiricus appears rather apathetic, reporting indifferently that the Stoics really sustained the ontological difference between corporeals and incorporeals: the contrast was sheer difference

 Οἱ ἀπὸ Ζήνωνος Στωϊκοὶ ἐννοήματα ἡμέτερα τὰς ἰδέας ἔφασαν. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 882E, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.45.4. Also, Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 25. Arsenius (paroemiographer, fifteenth sixteenth century), Apophtheg mata, 8.100.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.12.3.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 38; SVF, II.42.8 39.  Cf. Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. 7.242; SVF, II.25.5 ff.  SVF, II.117. (fr. 329).

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

675

of essence, since they ascribed to bodies primary ontological authority. In view of this, I see no reason why credit should not be given to Dexippus, who reported that ‘the Stoics did not grant incorporeals themselves real existence’ (ἀσώματα γὰρ μὴ παραδεχόμενοι καθ᾿ ἑαυτά).³⁴⁸ Beyond this, in order to say what the Logos was to them, it would be instructive to recall some of their fundamental ideas which would cast some light upon this question. 1. A body can permeate another body (σῶμα διὰ σώματος χωρεῖ).³⁴⁹ This became a famous catchphrase with reference to Stoic thought, but it is a proposition that almost all of the witnesses, and certainly all Aristotelian commentators, censured.³⁵⁰ 2. Bodies cannot affect non-bodies, or non-bodies bodies. Sextus Empiricus reports that those who maintained an incorporeal world and an incorporeal God dominating over it, argued that the cause of any corporeal being is incorporeal (ἀσώματον σώματος λέγουσιν ὑπάρχειν τὸ αἴτιον). Opposite them (which most of all included the Academy), the Stoics urged that the cause of any incorporeal is always corporeal.³⁵¹ 3. The causes of incorporeals are incorporeal, those of corporeals are corporeal.³⁵² This does not really contradict the previous proposition: for ‘causes of incorporeals’ suggest mental representation of functions of reality by means of universal terms (of which Sextus gives some examples in the previous passage), which are not granted reality of their own. It was Nemesius of Emesa who reported that, to Stoics, ‘bodies cannot affect non-bodies, or non-bodies bodies’, which

 SVF, II.150.3 45.  SVF, II.142.41 (fr. 432); SVF, II.151 158 (frs. 463; 465 469; 475; 476); also, SVF, II, frs. 735; 798.  Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1007E. Galen, Quod Qualitates Incorpo reae Sint, p. 474. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 256 7. Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, pp. 218 20; 227; 233 6; commTop, p. 173; In Librum De Sensu Commentarium, p. 29; De Anima, p. 14; et passim. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresi um, 1.21.5. Themistius, In Aristotelis Physica Paraphrasis, pp. 104; 126 7; 133; paraphrPhys, p. 60. Ammonius of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 110. Simplicius, commCael, pp. 269; 510; 629; commPhys; pp. 42; 530; 610; 612 3; 616; 649; 651; et passim. Also, other Aristotelian commmen tators (such as the Alexandrians John Philoponus, Olympiodorus, Elias, David), Michael Psellus, Sophonias, and Gennadius Scholarius.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 9. 210 12. It would be in accurate to translate ‘the cause of any incorporeal being’. The passage goes thus: Στωικοὶ μὲν πᾶν αἴτιον σῶμα φασὶ σώματι ἀσωμάτου τινὸς αἴτιον γίνεσθαι.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 209: οἱ δὲ τῶν μὲν ἀσωμάτων ἀσωμάτους, τῶν δὲ σωμάτων σω ματικάς, ὥσπερ οἱ Στωικοί. Pseudo David of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, 29.67: οὐ δύναται γὰρ ἀσώματον εἶναι αἴτιον, εἰ σῶμα τὸ αἰτιατόν. ταῦτα ἔλεγον οἱ Στωϊκοί. Likewise, Sextus Em piricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 211.

676

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

is why they posited the soul as a body.³⁵³ This should bear to their God, too, which Alexander of Aphrodisias pointed out long before Nemesius, and turned the Stoic argument againt their theory, arguing that they failed to distinguish form and matter, and they conflated the roles of them both in their doctrine of pneuma; but if there is a ‘spirit which permeates everything and holds all bodies together’ (τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ πνεύματος συνοχὴν γινομένην ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι τοῖς σώμασιν),³⁵⁴ the only way for ‘universal sympathy’ to be realized would be ‘a certain communion between bodies and the divine body’ (τὴν δὲ συμπάθειαν αὐτῶν σώζεσθαι τὴν πρὸς ἄλληλα διά τε τὴν τῆς ὕλης κοινωνίαν καὶ τὴν τοῦ περικειμένου θείου σώματος αὐτῷ φύσιν). Therefore, so Alexander has it, to the Stoics, both God and matter are material principles, the former being totally mingled with the latter, and structuring it. 4. All causes are material, on the grounds that any cause is a ‘breath’ (πνεῦμα).³⁵⁵ 5. Both the subject and the object of any action have to be material.³⁵⁶ Following these presuppositions, it should not be surprising that the Late Antiquity overwhelmingly reported that the Stoic God was material: some authors described this as a ‘body’,³⁵⁷ others as ‘pneuma’ (breath), which made no difference as to its material nature; and others described it in both terms.³⁵⁸

 Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, pp. 20 1: σώματος δὲ τὸ ὅμοιον καὶ τὸ ἀνόμοιον, οὐχὶ δὲ ἀσωμάτου· σῶμα ἄρα ἡ ψυχή. … οὐδὲν ἀσώματον συμπάσχει σώματι οὐδὲ ἀσωμάτῳ σῶμα, συμπάσχει δὲ ἡ ψυχὴ τῷ σώματι νοσοῦντι καὶ τεμνομένῳ καὶ τὸ σῶμα τῇ ψυχῇ.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 224.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 882F: Οἱ Στωϊκοὶ πάντα τὰ αἴτια σωματικά· πνεύ ματα γάρ. Likewise, Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 211: Στωϊ κοὶ μὲν πᾶν αἴτιον σῶμα φασί.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Librum De Sensu Commentarium, p. 73: οὔτε γὰρ τὰ σώματα αὐτῷ δοκεῖ ποιεῖν τε καὶ πάσχειν, ὡς ἀρέσκει τοῖς ἀπὸ Στοᾶς.  Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1085B C: καὶ μὴν οὗτοι τὸν θεὸν ἀρχὴν ὄντα σῶμα νοερὸν καὶ νοῦν ἐν ὕλῃ ποιοῦντες, οὐ καθαρὸν οὐδ᾿ ἁπλοῦν οὐδ᾿ ἀσύνθετον ἀλλ᾿ ἐξ ἑτέρου καὶ δι᾿ ἑτέρου ἀποφαίνουσιν. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 16: περὶ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ θεοῦ διεληλυθότες … Ζήνων δὲ σῶμα. Origen, commJohn, XIII.21.128: Καὶ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν οὐκ αἰ δοῦνται λέγειν ὅτι καὶ φθαρτός ἐστιν σῶμα ὤν, σῶμα δὲ πνευματικὸν καὶ αἰθερῶδες, μάλιστα κατὰ τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν αὐτοῦ· φθαρτὸν δὲ ὄντα μὴ φθείρεσθαι τῷ μὴ εἶναι τὸν φθείροντα αὐτὸν λέγουσιν. Cels, I.21: ἢ ἀρχὴν φθαρτὴν εἰσάγοντος τὴν σωματικήν, καθ᾿ ἣν καὶ ὁ θεὸς τοῖς Στωϊ κοῖς ἐστι σῶμα, οὐκ αἰδουμένοις λέγειν αὐτὸν τρεπτὸν καὶ δι᾿ ὅλων ἀλλοιωτὸν καὶ μεταβλητὸν καὶ ἁπαξαπλῶς δυνάμενον φθαρῆναι, εἰ ἔχει τὸν φθείροντα, εὐτυχοῦντα δὲ μὴ φθαρῆναι παρὰ τὸ μηδὲν εἶναι τὸ φθεῖρον αὐτόν. Op. cit. III.75: ᾿Aλλὰ καὶ ἄλλους δεδόσθω ἡμᾶς ἀποτρέπειν ἀπὸ ἰα τρῶν στωϊκῶν θεὸν φθαρτὸν εἰσαγόντων καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ λεγόντων σῶμα τρεπτὸν δι᾿ ὅλων καὶ ἀλλοιωτὸν καὶ μεταβλητόν, καί ποτε πάντα φθειρόντων καὶ μόνον τὸν θεὸν καταλει πόντων. Plotinus, Enneades, II.4.1: Καὶ δὴ καὶ τολμῶσι καὶ μέχρι θεῶν αὐτὴν [sc. τὴν ὕλην] ἄγειν

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

677

I am not suggesting that all testimonies should be given equal credit. After all, there are some contradictions on particular issues, however marginal: Sextus Empiricus assures that the Stoics held ‘voice’ to be not a body (which is hard to believe),³⁵⁹ whereas Pseudo-Galen attested to the opposite.³⁶⁰ But there are authors such as Origen, who did not need to rely on doxography, since, at numerous points, he refers not only to what the Stoics believed, but also to persons, especially to Chrysippus, stating not only views, but also citing confidently specific titles of his treatises, which he had read first-hand.³⁶¹ Moreover, there are some points that should be reconsidered, in relation to how the Stoics understood the difference between ‘elements’ and ‘principles’. Two witnesses report quite similar things: according to Diogenes Laertius, a criterion of distinguishing ‘elements’ from ‘principles’ is that the latter are uncreated and incorruptible (ἀγενήτους καὶ ἀφθάρτους), as well as incorporeal and

καὶ τέλος δὴ καὶ αὐτὸν αὐτῶν τὸν θεὸν ὕλην ταύτην πως ἔχουσαν εἶναι. Cf. op. cit. IV.1.26. In op. cit. VI.1.27, Plotinus argues extensively against material principles, too: to the Stoics, ‘God has his being from matter, and he is composite and posterior, or rather, he is matter in a certain state.’ Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.9.9: κατὰ τοὺς Στωϊκοὺς … τὸν θεὸν εἶναι σῶμα. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, 1214: φιλοσοφεῖσθαι περὶ τοῦ ἑνός, ὃ δὴ πρῶτον θέμενοί φασιν οὔτε σῶμα εἶναι, ὡς ἔλεγον οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς. Pseudo David of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, 29.67: καὶ αὐτὸ δὲ τὸ θεῖον σῶμα ἔλεγον, ἀλλὰ λεπτομερὲς φύσει καὶ ἀέριον. οὕτω μὲν οὖν οἱ Στωϊκοὶ ἔλεγον σώματα αὐτὰς εἶναι. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 6.2: καὶ ὁ φιλόσοφος χορὸς ὁ τῶν Στωϊκῶν διὰ τὸ κατὰ φαντασίαν ἐνεργεῖν σῶμα τὸν θεὸν ὑπέλαβον. Anonymus, Prolegomena Philosophiae Platonicae, 12: [Plato posited the supreme prin ciple τῶν πάντων ἀρχήν], οὐ σῶμα ὡς οἱ Στωϊκοί, ἀλλὰ ἀσώματον.  Theophilus, Ad Autolycum, 1.4: ἄλλοι δ᾿ αὖ τὸ δι᾿ ὅλου κεχωρηκὸς πνεῦμα θεὸν δογματίζου σιν. Origen, Cels, VI.71: ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ μέχρι ἀνθρώπων καὶ τῶν ἐλαχίστων καταβαίνων οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἐστὶν ἢ πνεῦμα σωματικόν. Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 3.218: ὡς ᾿Aριστοτέλης μὲν ἀσώματον εἶπεν εἶναι τὸν θεὸν καὶ πέρας τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, Στωϊκοὶ δὲ πνεῦμα διῆ κον καὶ διὰ τῶν εἰδεχθῶν. Elias of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 47: οἱ γὰρ Στωϊκοὶ σώ ματα εἶναι ἔλεγον τὰ καθόλου, οὐ ταῦτα δὲ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντα τὰ ὄντα καὶ τὸ θεῖον αὐτὸ σῶμα ἔχειν, ἀλλὰ λεπτομερές (τοῦτο δῆθεν τὸ ὅσιον αὐτῶν), ἵνα διὰ πάντων δῆθεν τῶν ὄντων διέλθη.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Musicos, 54 5: καὶ γὰρ ἄλλως, εἰ ἔστι φωνή, ἤτοι σῶμα ἐστὶν ἢ ἀσώματον· οὔτε δὲ σῶμα ἐστίν, ὡς οἱ Περιπατητικοὶ διὰ πολλῶν διδάσκουσιν, οὔτε ἀσώματος, ὡς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς· οὐκ ἄρα ἔστι φωνή.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 101: Οἱ δὲ Στωικοὶ σῶμα εἶναι τὴν φωνήν. πᾶν γὰρ τὸ δρῶν ἢ ποιοῦν σῶμα εἶναι· καὶ γὰρ ἡ φωνὴ καὶ δρᾷ καὶ ποιεῖ, ἀκούομεν γὰρ αὐτῆς καὶ αἰσθανόμεθα προσπιπτούσης.  Origen, Cels, I.40; I.64; II.12; IV.48; IV.63; V.57; VIII.49 (‘to the Stoics, God is a body’); VIII.51. This did not deter Origen from explicating that he held Chrysippus in very high regard. He men tions his first hand reading of Zeno of Citium in Cels, I.5; IV.54; VII.63; VIII.35; VIII.49, and of Cleanthes, in op. cit. II.12.

678

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

formless (ἀσωμάτους εἶναι τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ ἀμόρφους).³⁶² On the other hand, according to Galen, another difference is that, unlike elements, principles are not necessarily of the same nature as the things they give rise to. He does not really dissent from the idea that the original ‘matter’ is a principle; but, reflecting in the same terms as Laertius (matter is ἀγέννητός τε καὶ ἄφθαρτος), he confirmed the general rule as above.³⁶³ However, this invites the question, ‘if a principles does not have to be of the same nature as its product’, then the Stoic axiom, ‘both the subject and the object of any action have to be material’ does not hold any longer: quite simply, it is possible for either of them to be of a different nature. Besides, although Hippolytus joins in attesting that the Stoic God is a body, he says that it is the divine providence that permeates the entire world.³⁶⁴ Perhaps this should not be taken to the letter, since this God, who was identified with so many of his manifestations, would also have been identified with Providence.³⁶⁵ Nevertheless, Athenagoras of Athens made a similar distinction between God and the spirit of God, and reported that it is the latter that permeates the universe.³⁶⁶ Anyhow, there are testimonies identifying the Stoic God with his providence.³⁶⁷ The point I mean to make is different and, to this purpose, Sextus Empiricus should be cited once again. He explains that the Stoics held that ‘every cause is a body, which in turn, being a body, is the cause of something incorporeal’. For example, a lancet is a body and flesh is a body, but the expression ‘the flesh is cut’ is incorporeal; likewise, fire is a body and so is wood, but

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.134. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (Adversus Physicos 2), 10.312 3.  Galen, De Elementis Ex Hippocrate, p. 470: τὰς μὲν ἀρχὰς οὐκ ἐξ ἀνάγκης εἶναι τοῖς πράγ μασιν ὁμογενεῖς, ὧν ὑπάρχουσιν ἀρχαί.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.21.1: Χρύσιππος καὶ Ζήνων, οἳ ὑπέθεντο καὶ αὐτοὶ ἀρχὴν μὲν θεὸν τῶν πάντων, σῶμα ὄντα τὸ καθαρώτατον, διὰ πάντων δὲ διήκειν τὴν πρό νοιαν αὐτοῦ. See supra, pp. 620 9.  Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, ᾿Aπορίαι καὶ Λύσεις, p. 69: ἐν τῷ προνοεῖν τὸ εἶναι θεῷ.  See infra, p. 688, note 413.  Cf. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 369Α· οὔτ’ ἀποίου δημιουργὸν ὕλης ἕνα λόγον καὶ μίαν πρόνοιαν, ὡς οἱ Στωικοί περιγινομένην ἁπάντων καὶ κρατοῦσαν. SVF, II.322, Chrysippus, fr. 1108 (but Plutarch mentions only ‘the Stoics’, not Chrysippus). Also, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1077D E (SVF, II.312, Chrysippus, fr. 1064), quoted supra, p. 628, note 102. Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 227: ἥ τε πολυθρύλλητος αὐτοῖς εἱμαρμένη καὶ ἡ τῶν πάντων πρόνοια δὲ τὴν πίστιν λαμβάνουσιν· πάντα γὰρ αὐτοῖς ταῦτ’ ἐστὶν ὁ διὰ τῆς ὕλης διήκων θεός. SVF, II.156, Chrysippus, fr. 1108 (but Alexander mentions only ‘those who contra dict Aristotle’, not ‘the Stoics’, and certainly not Chrysippus). Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.5.15 (SVF, I.44, Zeno, fr. 176): Ζήνων ὁ Στωικὸς ἐν τῷ Περὶ φύσεως δύναμιν κινητικὴν τῆς ὕλης κατὰ ταὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως, ἥντινα μὴ διαφέρειν πρόνοιαν καὶ φύσιν καλεῖν.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

679

the expression ‘the wood is burnt’ is incorporeal.³⁶⁸ This is the sense in which τὸ λεκτὸν is incorporeal.³⁶⁹ In other words, any incorporeal is but a description of a certain activity taking place by and upon certain bodies.³⁷⁰ This, I believe, is exactly the case with the Stoic God. This school did not care to draw a distinction between what God is himself and what God does. Hence, God was attributed such different names as God, Mind/Nous, Zeus, Logos, Spermatic Logos, Aether, Cosmos, Pneuma (breath), Heimarmene, Nature, Necessity, Providence, Cause, Seed, Law, Soul of the Universe, etc. The proposition of Heraclitus attested by Hippolytus is illuminating in this respect: “God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger”; that is, Hippolytus adds, ‘all the contraries’, and then he goes on with Heraclitus’ own words: But he [i. e. God] alters himself, just like fire, which, whenever is mixed with a certain in cense, it is named in accordance with the pleasure caused by each [incense].³⁷¹

Nevertheless, this God is the Creator of everything, of whom Zeno said that he is ‘one’³⁷² and ‘an immortal, rational, perfect animal’.³⁷³ Moreover, he is ‘an intelligible spirit, which is formless, but he assumes any form in accordance with his will’ (πνεῦμα νοητὸν οὐκ ἔχον μὲν μορφήν, μεταβάλλον δ᾿ εἰς ὃ βούλεται).³⁷⁴ Therefore, this spirit is intelligible and it has a will of its own. Who else other than Anaxagoras made the divine will a theme of his philosophy, which, we saw in chapter 5, a notion that became pivotal only with Christian thought? This is not just a doxographic casual reference. To style God πνεῦμα which is πῦρ τεχνικὸν identified with Nature,³⁷⁵ means that this ‘spirit’ and ‘fire’ has in-

 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 2 (= Adversus Logicos 2), 9.210 12.  See Sextus attesting to the Stoic doctrine of ‘an expression’ (λεκτόν) being ‘incorporeal’. Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 7.38; 8.70; Adversus Dogmaticos 2 (= Adversus Log icos 2), 8.77 8; 8.80; 10.218; 10.237; Adversus Mathematicos et Grammaticos, Proem.28; 155 8.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 9.211 12.  Heraclitus, apud Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 9.10.8. See infra, similar testi monies by Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 35 & Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 882A (quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.9, save the last word, i. e. παραλλάξεις) & Stobaeus, Anthologium, and Athenagoras of Athens, see infra, p. 688.  Philodemus, De Pietate, p. 84: ἕνα θεὸν λέγουσιν εἶναι. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.135. Also, SVF, I.43.8 9. So Athenagoras of Athens, infra, p. 688, note 413.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.147.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 24.  Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio, 6.4. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881F, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.9. Pseudo Galen, Definitiones Medicae, p. 371. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.156. Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum, 1.39. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b. John Italus, Quaestiones Quodlibetales, 91; 93.

680

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

telligence and will, and it created everything towards a purpose, which was good, and divine providence cares ceaselessly for maintaining this goodness throughout the universe. This God is a rational being, who judges everything, punishes wickedness, and arranges everything to a good purpose, as Plutarch informs us quoting extensively from books of Chrysippus.³⁷⁶ Despite obvious influence by Empedocles and Heraclitus upon the Stoics, in principle this is the God of Anaxagoras. This is why Zeno maintained that this God considered as ‘fire’ was analogous to a ‘seed’ (σπέρμα), using the distinctly Anaxagorean term.³⁷⁷ Therefore, it should be hardly a surprise that we learn from different sources that, upon universal conflagration, this God/fire actually becomes a God/seed, because this is the only way for a new universal order to emerge anew.³⁷⁸ Likewise, Philo, expounding views he had read in Chrysippus, wrote that any ordered cosmic period, whether past or future one, stems from a seed, which Chrysippus identified with his artificer-fire, that is, his God.³⁷⁹ Finally, it would be hard not to notice Zeno’s debts to Anaxagoras, when he also described his God as ‘fiery Nous of the world’.³⁸⁰ It is not my purpose to make two different philosophies look like one: Anaxagoras’ philosophy and Stoicism were two different schools in many respects. Besides, Stoicism has indisputable debts to Heraclitus and Empedocles. My claim is simply that the extent to which the Stoics availed themselves of Anaxagoras has not been recognized hitherto. Nevertheless, the point I intend to

 Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1050E: ᾿Aλλὰ μὴν τὸν θεὸν κολάζειν φησὶ τὴν κακίαν καὶ πολλὰ ποιεῖν ἐπὶ κολάσει τῶν πονηρῶν. … ταῦτ᾿ ἀπονέμεται κατὰ τὸν τοῦ Διὸς λόγον ἤτοι ἐπὶ κολάσει ἢ κατ᾿ ἄλλην ἔχουσάν πως πρὸς τὰ ὅλα οἰκονομίαν.  Aristocles of Messene (second century AD), apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.14.2: Τὸ μέντοι πρῶτον πῦρ εἶναι, καθάπερεί τι σπέρμα, τῶν ἁπάντων ἔχον τοὺς λόγους καὶ τὰς αἰτίας τῶν γεγονότων καὶ τῶν γιγνομένων καὶ τῶν ἐσομένων.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.18.3 (quoting from Porphyry): ἀρέσκει γὰρ τοῖς Στωι κοῖς φιλοσόφοις τὴν ὅλην οὐσίαν εἰς πῦρ μεταβάλλειν οἷον εἰς σπέρμα, καὶ πάλιν ἐκ τούτου αὐτὴν ἀποτελεῖσθαι τὴν διακόσμησιν, οἵα τὸ πρότερον ἦν. καὶ τοῦτο τὸ δόγμα τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς αἱ ρέσεως οἱ πρῶτοι καὶ πρεσβύτατοι προσήκαντο Ζήνων τε καὶ Κλεάνθης καὶ Χρύσιππος. Sto baeus, Anthologium, 1.20.1e: Ζήνωνι καὶ Κλεάνθει καὶ Χρυσίππῳ ἀρέσκει τὴν οὐσίαν μεταβάλλειν οἷον εἰς σπέρμα τὸ πῦρ, καὶ πάλιν ἐκ τούτου τοιαύτην ἀποτελεῖσθαι τὴν διακόσμησιν οἵα πρότερ ον ἦν. The quotation by Eusebius shows that Stobaeus would have quoted from Porphyry’s His tory of Philosophy rather than from Arius Didymus, as Diels took it.  Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 94: Φέρε δ᾿ οὖν, ὥς φησιν ὁ Χρύσιππος, τὸ ἀναστοιχειῶσαν τὴν διακόσμησιν εἰς αὑτὸ πῦρ τοῦ μέλλοντος ἀποτελεῖσθαι κόσμου σπέρμα εἶναι καὶ ὧν ἐπ᾿ αὐτῷ πε φιλοσόφηκε μηδὲν ἐψεῦσθαι, πρῶτον μὲν ὅτι καὶ ἐκ σπέρματος ἡ γένεσις καὶ εἰς σπέρμα ἡ ἀνάλυσις.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b: Ζήνων ὁ Στωικὸς νοῦν κόσμου πύρινον. Loc. cit. ᾿Aναξαγό ρας νοῦν κοσμοποιὸν τὸν θεόν.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

681

make goes beyond this. Of the several names that the Stoics accorded their God, not all of them can be assumed to denote a corporeal being. Perhaps, it could be claimed that Spermatic Logos, Aether, Cosmos, Pneuma (breath), Seed, Nature, Soul of the Universe (aether) suggest something of the kind. Perhaps this could be claimed also of the appellations Zeus and Logos. However, and in accordance with the analysis of Sextus Empiricus about the meaning of the Stoic incorporeals, it would be extremely difficult to attribute corporeality to a God who is called Mind/Nous, Heimarmene, Necessity, Cause, Providence, Law.³⁸¹ What then are we to make of the Stoic God? Was he corporeal or incorporeal, in view of modern scholarship being tantalised over a dilemma which was not a dilemma to ancient commentators, as we just saw? In my view, if we reflect along a dilemmatic line, we can face only incolclusive quandary. I should then propose a different way of considering this question. The different appellations that Stoics attributed God show that these stem from what God does. There is no concern about rendering accounts of what God himself is, except perhaps that of πῦρ τεχνικόν, which nevertheless bespeaks also divine action. In fact, all of the names describe different functions of the same God,³⁸² simply because this God is ever-moving and ever-acting. However, as Sextus intimated concidering the Stoic λεκτά, some of the divine names suggest corporeal function and others incorporeal one. Since any incorporeal is but a description of a certain activity taking place by and upon certain bodies,³⁸³ once this does not refer to a concrete reality (such as Aether, Cosmos, Pneuma, Seed, Nature) but to an abstract one (such as Cause, Necessity, Law), it has to be assumed incorporeal. Since God is ‘an intelligible spirit, which is formless, but he assumes any form in accordance with his will’ (πνεῦμα νοητὸν οὐκ ἔχον μὲν μορφήν, μεταβάλλον δ᾿ εἰς ὃ βούλεται),³⁸⁴ the divine activity can be grasped (and described) in either corporeal or incorporeal terms. The same doxographer says that the Stoics held that their God does not have a permanent form of his own, but he is fiery spirit, which can easily adapt itself to the things toward which it flows.³⁸⁵

 Chrysippus styled ‘law’ ‘the king of all, that is, of things human and divine’. Also, the legal texts Basilica libri lx, 2.1.14 (quoting from Chrysippus): ὁ νόμος πάντων ἐστὶ βασιλεὺς θείων τε καὶ ἀνθρωπίνων πραγμάτων. Likewise, Chrysippus, SVF, II.315.23. Zeno identified Law with God, too. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.88.  See infra, Athenagoras of Athens, pp. 684 ff.  Sextus Empiricus, : Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 211 12.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 24.  Op. cit. 16: Οἱ Στωικοὶ δὲ ἰδίαν μὲν ἰδέαν οὐκ ἔχειν διηνεκῶς, πνεῦμα δὲ πυρῶδες ὁμοιούμε νον πᾶσι ῥᾳδίως, οἷς ἂν προσρυῇ.

682

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

Once the Stoic God is described in accordance with what he does, to engage in dilemmas about what he is, could be simply meaningless. God acts by assuming different forms in accordance with different kinds of his activity, and this Zeno saw and enunciated in distinctly Anaxagorean terms: according to Themistius, ‘to the followers of Zeno, God permeates every kind of substance; in some of them, he does so as Nous, in others as soul, in others as nature, and in others as cohesive power’.³⁸⁶ God is in everything, yet in everything he is in different forms resulting in different functions. Plutarch expounded the Stoics views likewise: to them, all beings are administered either by means of mere coherence (ἕξει), others by means of nature (φύσει), others through irrational soul (ἀλόγῳ ψυχῇ), whereas the higher beings are administered by means of Logos and Intelligence.³⁸⁷ Once again, this is about the Logos who ‘assumes any form in accordance with his will’. Hardly could a notion be more Anaxagorean, and we should recall Porphyry who explained that those principles exist and function everywhere and in everything, yet in different forms: in the mind, they do so intelligibly; in the soul, rationally; in plants, spermatically; in bodies, by representing themselves as reflections of the real principles, whereas in the transcendent reality, the principles exist inconceivably and above being.³⁸⁸ By the same token, he explained that Heimarmene is present in everything that either is or becomes, and it acts upon everything according to both its nature and the administration of the entire world.³⁸⁹ In light of this, it is now possible to understand better what Simplicius meant when he explained that, according to the Stoics, the qualities of corporeal things are corporeal, and those of incorporeal things are incorporeal.³⁹⁰ Quite simply, it was an ontological prerogative of the Stoic God to make his function

 Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 35: τάχα δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ Ζήνωνος σύμφωνος ἡ δόξα, διὰ πάσης οὐσίας πεφοιτηκέναι τὸν θεὸν τιθεμένοις, καὶ ποῦ μὲν εἶναι νοῦν, ποῦ δὲ ψυχήν, ποῦ δὲ φύσιν, ποῦ δὲ ἕξιν. The list starts with higher mental functions (νοῦν), and goes on with all kinds of animals (ψυχήν), then, plants and natural phenomena (φύσιν), and then, inanimate objects (ἕξιν).  Plutarch, De Virtute Morali, 451B: καθόλου δὲ τῶν ὄντων αὐτοί τέ φασι (sc. the Stoics of old) καὶ δῆλον ἐστίν, ὅτι τὰ μὲν ἕξει διοικεῖται, τὰ δὲ φύσει, τὰ δ᾿ ἀλόγῳ ψυχῇ, τὰ δὲ καὶ λόγον ἐχούσῃ καὶ διάνοιαν.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10. See quotations, supra, p. 360, note 151.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Fato, p. 192: τὴν δὲ εἱμαρμένην αὐτὴν καὶ τὴν φύσιν καὶ τὸν λόγον, καθ᾿ ὃν διοικεῖται τὸ πᾶν, θεὸν εἶναι φασίν, οὖσαν ἐν τοῖς οὖσιν τε καὶ γινομένοις ἅπασιν καὶ οὕτως χρωμένην ἁπάντων τῶν ὄντων τῇ οἰκείᾳ φύσει πρὸς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς οἰκονομίαν.  Simplicius, commCateg, pp. 209 & 217: Οἱ δὲ Στωϊκοὶ τῶν μὲν σωμάτων σωματικάς, τῶν δὲ ἀσωμάτων ἀσωμάτους εἶναι λέγουσι τὰς ποιότητας.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

683

appear in either corporeal or incorporeal form, in accordance with the nature of different circumstances. Since the main Stoic preoccupation was what God does, not what he is himself in absolute terms, and indeed God is adumbrated after what he does, the dilemma whether this God was either corporeal or incorporeal is of no significance, and it hardly makes sense at all. For his part, Plotinus argued that ‘whatever bodies are able to do, they can do it by means of incorporeal powers’ acting upon them; and that which matter ‘acquires’ upon its different functions are ‘immaterial and incorporeal logoi’ (τὰ προσγενόμενα λόγους ἀΰλους καὶ ἀσωμάτους εἶναι).³⁹¹ But in this analysis, in which Plotinus considers function in the world by means of logoi while being altogether oblivious of the Platonic Ideas, the case is only Anaxagorean influence. The Stoic God/Logos becomes everything, and ‘assumes any form in accordance with his will’. I should have thought that to the Stoic God applies an expression that Hippolytus reported about the Egyptian Deity: “I am what I am, and I become whatever I want to” (γίνομαι ὃ θέλω καὶ εἰμὶ ὃ εἰμί); for ‘he keeps being what he is, he makes everything, but he becomes nothing of what he makes’.³⁹² By the same token, no matter what the Stoic God is, it is impossible to say what he is in himself, since he becomes everything he does, and divine action, not divine being proper, was what Stoicism cared to pronounce. Now, one might wonder, ‘what has Egyptian religion to do with the Stoics?’, to which a testimony about what Posidonius thought the Stoic God to be would be a reply, since the statement is the same as the foregoing one: Posidonius [holds God to be] an intelligible and fiery spirit; although it is formless, it trans forms itself into whatever it wants and makes itself similar to everything.³⁹³

At the end of this chapter, I discuss the playful irony by Zeno when he went to theatre, which in fact suggests his respect for the Anaxagorean philosophy, de Plotinus, Enneades, IV.7.8a.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 5.7.25 26. See this in reference to the Anaxagor ean Mind, supra, pp. 357 and 358, note 143.  Posidonius, apud Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b: Ποσειδώνιος πνεῦμα νοερὸν καὶ πυρῶ δες, οὐκ ἔχον μὲν μορφήν, μεταβάλλον δὲ εἰς ὃ βούλεται καὶ συνεξομοιούμενον πᾶσιν. The same, in reference to ‘the Stoics’, quoted by Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 879C and Cyril of Alexandria (citing and quoting from [Pseudo ?] Plutarch), Contra Julianum, 2.22. Also, SVF, Chrysippus, fr. 1009, but the reference was made to ‘the Stoics’, not to Chrysippus. See the brilliant discussion by Themistius (supra, p. 358) so speaking of the Mind (νοῦς). See also infra, p. 854, quotation in note 129: Bessarion wrote of ‘Mind the delibarating Ruler, who permeates everything’, and he believed that this was Aristotle’s idea. Actually, he had no inkling of this being an Anaxagorean one. More importantly, he argued that this Mind, which is a ‘super intendent Nous’, receives his names in accordance with the different kinds of his activity.

684

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

spite the pretentiously facetious tone of his comment. In this context, we should visit Euripides once again, following some revealing remarks by a remarkable intellectual, who signed ‘Athenagoras, the Athenian, Philosopher, and Christian’, that is, the second-century apologist was was converted to Christianity. This will show once again that, in respect of this matter, one more continuous line from Anaxagoras to the Stoics was indeed there. Athenagoras’ philosophical knowledgeability is all too evident throughout his extant writings, but, of them, I will make only the following point. Against the usual obloquy against Euripides about atheism, Athenagoras argued that the poet had a sublime perception of God that ran contrary to the arid idea about the Deity maintained by the multitude. He maintains that Euripides contradicted only the ‘common unlearned preconception about the so-called gods’ (ἐπὶ μὲν τῶν κατὰ κοινὴν πρόληψιν ἀνεπιστημόνως ὀνομαζομένων θεῶν διαπορῶν), arguing, ‘if Zeus were in the heaven, he should not have been unhappy’.³⁹⁴ By contrast, Euripides ‘set forth the doctrine that God is the intelligible [being] which is perceived learnedly’.³⁹⁵ This is the point at which Euripides identifies God as Zeus and Aether,³⁹⁶ which I discuss in chapter 11, but what matters now is Athenagoras’ outstanding philosophical analysis making the critical point: if this is about the gods of the hoi polloi, Euripides did not care about how they should be named, simply because those gods were non-existent; for a name qualifies and describes a substantial being; therefore, what would be the point in caring about names of non-existent gods? The point of Euripides explained by Athenagoras was that, no matter what the names of the traditional gods, these were pointless, since names stand for real beings and they are predications of their essence (τῶν μὲν γὰρ οὔτε τὰς οὐσίας, αἷς ἐπικατηγορεῖσθαι τὸ ὄνομα συμβέβηκεν, ὑποκειμένας ἑώρα). This is why Euripides wrote the verse, ‘as

 Euripides, apud Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio, 5.1: ὤφειλε δ᾿, εἴπερ ἔστ᾿ ἐν οὐρανῷ, Ζεὺς μὴ τὸν αὐτὸν δυστυχῆ καθιστάναι. The title of the play in which this verse occured is not cited.  Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio, 5.1: ἐπὶ δὲ τοῦ κατ᾿ ἐπιστήμην νοητοῦ ὡς ἔστιν θεὸς δογματίζων.  Euripides, “Can you see this high and infinite aether, who embraces all of the earth in his supple bosom? This is the one you should regard as Zeus; this is the one whom you should be lieve to be God.” See infra, p. 1082. These verses were proverbially quoted not only by Athena goras, but also by several others. Cf. Heraclitus (Homeric exegete, perhaps first century AD), Al legoriae, 23.7. Lucian of Samosata, Juppiter Tragoedus, 41. Plutarch, De Exilio, 601A; Ad Principem Ineruditum, 780D; Aetia Physica, 919B. Porphyry, Quaestionum Homericarum ad Iliadem Pertinen tium Reliquiae, comm. on Ilias, XIV.200. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.2. Anonymous, Scholia in Aratum (scholia vetera), scholion 1. Of Christians after Athenagoras: Clement of Alexandria, Stro mateis, 5.14.114.1. Eusebius (copying from Clement), Praeparatio Evangelica, 13.13.41. Arsenius (Bishop of Monembasia, paroemiographer, fifteen sixteenth century), Apophthegmata, 13.2a.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

685

for Zeus, it is only intellectually that I know who Zeus is’ (Ζῆνα γὰρ ὅστις ἐστὶ Ζεύς, οὐκ οἶδα πλὴν λόγω).³⁹⁷ On the other hand, with respect to the real God who is perceived only intellectually, as above, what mattered to Euripides was not what this God is himself, but his activity (τὸν δὲ [i. e. God who is κατ᾿ ἐπιστήμην νοητός] ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων). Accordingly, Euripides maintains that the ‘phenomena are only the appearance of those which are concealed’’ (ὄψις γὰρ τῶν ἀδήλων τὰ φαινόμενα). This is characteristically redolent of our previous analyses according to which coming to presence is understood in terms of emerging out of concealment into unconcealment, and, in effect, this is all about a relationship between concealment and unconcealment. Little wonder that the thesis was endorsed by different schools.³⁹⁸ However, the source of it was Anaxagoras.³⁹⁹ Sextus Empiricus quoted the foregoing proposition about the phenomena being only manifestations of concealed things adding that Democritus praised Anaxagoras for having said so.⁴⁰⁰ This means that, when he attributed the idea also to the Stoics, he had made it clear that the origin of it was Anaxagoras.⁴⁰¹ Nevertheless, we now see that Athenagoras attributed this to Euripides, which is natural, since quoting from, or paraphrasing, Anaxagoras was a normal practice of the poet.

 This is unique fragment of Euripides, and we owe this specific phrasing to Athernagoras alone. A variation of it was, Ζεύς γὰρ ὅστις ἐστὶ Ζεύς, οὐκ οἶδα πλὴν λόγῳ. This was quoted by Plutarch, Amatorius, 756B, who said that this was the opening of Euripides’ lost play Mela nippe. Lucian of Samosata quoted this, but he did not mention any title: he remarked respect fully that Euripides used to make such philosophical statements, ‘even though these were not called for by the context of his dramas’ (μηδὲν ἐπειγούσης τῆς χρείας τῶν δραμάτων). Lucian of Samosata, Juppiter Tragoedus, 41. Pseudo Justin quoted the same verses citing Euripides’ He cuba. This is not correct, but probably the author simply meant that Euripides put those words on the mouth of Hecuba in one of his plays. Pseudo Justin, De Monarchia, p. 109C. A. Nauck ex cerpted this as ‘fr. 480’ from someone of the foregoing authors. However, the version by Athena goras (in which Ζῆνα is used, instead of Ζεύς) eluden him.  Cf. Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 192: “Zeus brings into light what is hidden” (φανερὰ δὲ ἐξ ἀφανῶν ὁ Ζεὺς ἀποτελεῖ).  In each phenomenon, only some principles are ‘manifest’ (ἐνδηλότατα). Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 155 and commCael, p. 608: καὶ πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲν ἔν δηλον ἦν ὑπὸ σμικρότητος· … πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲ χροιὴ ἔνδηλος ἦν οὐδεμία. Also, Anax agoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 27; 157; 165: ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτων πλεῖστα ἔνι, ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 7.140: ὄψις γὰρ τῶν ἀδή λων τὰ φαινόμενα, ὥς φησιν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ὃν ἐπὶ τούτῳ Δημόκριτος ἐπαινεῖ. Cf. Adversus Geo metras, 3.23; 3.58; Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 1.138.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 7.374. This was made Chrysippus, fr. 56, yet Sextus actually speaks of ‘the followers of Chrysippus’.

686

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

Consequently, in respect of who or what God is, this proposition means that God manifests himself only by means of his activity (ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων), which is the only ‘appearance’ (ὄψιν) of those which are ‘concealed’ (τῶν ἀδήλων) – and al-Shahrastani quoting Porphyry explained that those that are ‘concealed’ and come to light out of concealment are the Anaxagorean principles. Therefore, Euripides did not care to say what God is; he was just satisfied that God is the one who makes everything, and everything is governed by God’s spirit (οὗ οὖν τὰ ποιήματα καὶ ὑφ᾿ οὗ τῷ πνεύματι ἡνιοχεῖται, τοῦτον κατελαμβάνετο εἶναι θεόν).⁴⁰² The value of Athenagoras’ report lies in his explanation of an idea set forth by Anaxagoras, which Chrysippus took up. The gist of this is that the quest was not for determining what God himself is, but it was deemed sufficient to realize his existence by observing his multi-faced activity with all the phenomena of the universe and of human life. What mattered was that (1) there is God, and (2) God is one. ⁴⁰³ Chrysippus and Posidonius wrote about a Nous which pervades everything, in like a manner the soul pervades all of the body. However, they distinguished existential states of this Nous in accordance with its different functions in the world: through some parts of it, ‘it passes as a cohesive force (ὡς ἕξις), as it is the case with bones and sinews, while through others it passes as intelligence (ὡς νοῦς)’, as it happens with ‘the ruling part’ of the soul. This is all about Nous acting as this or that, not about Nous himself; and the tenet has it that different manifestations of the all-permeating rationality only suggest that ‘in some parts, there is more of it; in others, less’ (ἀλλ᾿ ἤδη δι᾿ ὧν μὲν μᾶλλον δι᾿ ὧν δὲ ἧττον).⁴⁰⁴ The sophisticated reference by Diogenes Laertius should not be passed over lightheartedly: Chrysippus saw ‘the purest part of aether’ as being ‘the supreme [or, first] God’ (πρῶτον θεόν), who permeates all animals and plants as if materially (αἰσθητικῶς ὥσπερ κεχωρηκέναι), whereas the same

 Athenagoras, op. cit. 5.2 3. See this also in Apollonius of Tyana, Epistulae, 58, which I have discussed supra, pp. 520 3.  Then, Athenagoras quoted two verses from an unknown tragedy of Sophocles (‘in reality, there is one God, who made heaven and earth’), in order to make this point. He is the earliest source attesting to those verses, to be followed by Clement of Alexandria citing Hecataeus of Abdrera as his source. Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, 7.74.2; Stromateis, 5.14.113.2 (copied by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 13.13.40). Pseudo Justin, De Monarchia, p. 104C. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 7.46. Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum, 1.44. John Malalas, Chronographia, 2.14. Eustathius of Thessaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, v. 4, pp. 220; 221.  Chrysippus, SVF, II.192, fr. 634 & Posidonius, Fragmenta (Theiler), fr. 345, apud Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.138 9.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

687

God acts as cohesive force sustaining the earth itself (διὰ δὲ τῆς γῆς αὐτῆς καθ᾿ ἕξιν).⁴⁰⁵ There is a remarkable parallel reflection by Plotinus, which shows how he drew on the Stoics while distancing himself from them: he speaks likewise of logoi being present throughout the world, which give life to it; however, although every manifestation of life is effected by logoi, a certain life/thought/logos is dimmer than another in terms of clarity and strength (ἄλλη ἄλλης ἀμυδροτέρα), because some logoi pertain to plants, others to sense-perception, others to the soul. Nevertheless, there is ‘a supreme life and a supreme mind’ (πρώτη ζωὴ καὶ πρῶτος νοῦς εἷς), by which he means the Intellect, who lives in its own right, that is, an absolute and unqualified life (δεῖ αὐτοζωὴν εἶναι).⁴⁰⁶ Plotinus does not stop at describing the multiplicity of manifestations of reality by means of the logoi, but he avers that there is an objective reality of the Intellect per se, which he goes on with adumbrating, both at that point and at several others. By contrast, never did the Stoics care to provide an account of what their divine Logos himself is. Perhaps, nothing could be said about what this Stoic God is, since, unlike Aristotle, to the Stoics the supreme God is moving, not immovable,⁴⁰⁷ for which Simplicius criticized them severely.⁴⁰⁸ The reason why he was critical of the Stoics is plain, and it had to do with them having made too much of materiality, in Simplicius’ view at least. Nevertheless, as critical as he was, he reports that the Stoics maintained also incorporeal qualities, notably, that the qualities of the incorporeals are immaterial, whereas those of bodies are material.⁴⁰⁹ Besides, they held that, if something which is produced by a cause is a body, the cause itself cannot be immaterial.⁴¹⁰ In that case, one could wonder about

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.139.  Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.8.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.13.1d: Οἱ Στωικοὶ τὸ πρῶτον αἴτιον ὡρίσαντο κινητόν. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 420: ὅτι τισὶ δοκεῖ μὴ εἶναι τι κινοῦν ἀκίνητον, ἀλλὰ πᾶν τὸ κινοῦν κινεῖσθαι, … καὶ τῶν νέων οἱ Στωικοί. By contrast, Aristotle praised Anaxagoras for positing creation from im movable first principles. De Caelo, 301a: Ἔοικε δὲ τοῦτο γε αὐτὸ καλῶς ᾿Aναξαγόρας λαβεῖν· ἐξ ἀκινήτων γὰρ ἄρχεται κοσμοποιεῖν.  See chapter 7, p. 487. Simplicius criticized the Stoics for deviating from correct description of the natural process of a plant growing out of its seed in accordance with the spermatic logoi. To him, they ‘confused active and passive agents during that kind of movement’ (τὴν ποίησιν οὐ τηροῦσιν καθαρὰν ἀπηλλαγμένην τοῦ πάθους), while they failed to confirm that ‘the source of motion is immovable’ (τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς κινήσεως οὐ τηροῦσιν ἀκίνητον), as ‘Aristotle main tained’. Simplicius, commCateg, p. 306.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 209, quoted supra, p. 675, note 352.  Pseudo David of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, 29.67, quoted supra, p. 677.

688

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

what they really believed if the result effected by a cause was itself immaterial (such as an expression, λεκτόν, which was one of the Stoic incorporeals). This is why God is ‘multi-titled’ (πολυώνυμος), as Cleanthes put it in his hymn, which I discuss below: this God, who permeates the entire universe, ‘receives his names in accordance with the various mutations it causes upon matter, through which he moves’.⁴¹¹ This statement is certainly older than the second century AD, which is why (like others) it has been assumed to come from Aetius. The source confirming its date is Athenagoras of Athens, the philosopher and a convert to Christianity, whose paraphrase of it is illuminating: the Stoics accord their God multiple names (πληθύνωσι τὸ θεῖον τοῖς ὀνόμασι), in accordance with different mutations of matter, because they believe that the spirit of God permeates it (δι᾿ ἧς φασι τὸ πνεῦμα χωρεῖν τοῦ θεοῦ). Nevertheless, all actions upon matter stem from a God whom, in a proper sense, they hold to be one (τῷ γοῦν ἔργῳ ἕνα νομίζουσι τὸν θεόν).⁴¹² Therefore, what permeates matter, and causes mutations and motions upon it, is the ‘spirit of God’, not the supreme God himself.⁴¹³ This ‘spirit’ is what survives periodic universal conflagrations (μόνου μένοντος τοῦ πνεύματος τοῦ θεοῦ), because, once ‘the elements are destroyed’ and there is no longer matter, there can be no functions upon matter, therefore, there can be no different names of God accordingly.⁴¹⁴ The Stoic idea of God was inspired from Heraclitus in so far as he is called ‘fire’ or Logos which is ever-moving, but this God is Anaxagorean as regards the rest of it, namely, God acting by means of active logoi created by him, and God being there as a supreme principle which is not affected by what happens in the universe. This is the only sense in which it is possible to speak of Stoic monism.

 Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 35 & Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881F, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.9 & Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio, 6.4. Sto baeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b. Chrysippus, SVF, II.306, fr. 1027 (but this is a reference to ‘the Sto ics’, not to Chrysippus): Οἱ Στωϊκοὶ νοερὸν θεὸν ἀποφαίνονται, πῦρ τεχνικόν, ὁδῷ βαδίζον ἐπὶ γένεσιν κόσμου, ἐμπεριειληφὸς πάντας τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους, καθ᾿ οὓς ἕκαστα καθ᾿ εἱμαρ μένην γίνεται· καὶ πνεῦμα μὲν διῆκον δι᾿ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου, τὰς δὲ προσηγορίας μεταλαμβάνον κατὰ τὰς τῆς ὕλης, δι᾿ ἧς κεχώρηκε, παραλλάξεις. Likewise, Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.156. Pseudo Galen, Definitiones Medicae, p. 371 (Chrysippus, SVF, II.328, fr. 1133, but this is a refer ence to ‘the Stoics’, not to Chrysippus). Eusebius, op. cit. 14.16.9. Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Ju lianum, 1.39. John Italus, Quaestiones Quodlibetales, 91; 93.  Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio, 6.4.  Athenagoras of Athens, op. cit. 22.5: εἰ ἕνα τὸν ἀνωτάτω θεὸν ἀγένητόν τε καὶ ἀΐδιον νομί ζετε, συγκρίματα δὲ εἰς ἃ ἡ τῆς ὕλης ἀλλαγή, καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ θεοῦ διὰ τῆς ὕλης κεχωρηκὸς κατὰ τὰς παραλλάξεις αὐτῆς ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο ὄνομα μεταλαγχάνειν φατέ.  Loc. cit.

The Stoic logoi styled spermatic

689

For, otherwise, the numerous ancient testimonies about two principles (Logos, formless matter) hardly did justice to them, no doubt partly because of the later Peripatetic and Platonic origin of those testimonies. Quite evidently, the notion of ‘two principles’ and ‘monism’ are mutually exclusive. In reality though, the Stoics maintained the spermatic logoi which stem from God, who is above these logoi, and this one God and his superiority over both matter and spermatic logoi is that which lends meaning to the notion of monism, which is in essence Anaxagorean. The Stoics did not care to expound what their God is in a strict ontological sense, because they were always preoccupied with the activity of the Deity, not the ontology of it. In respect of this, I should have thought that a Stoic would have understood fully the answer that the Biblical God gave to Moses when the latter asked what God’s name is: “I am the One who is”.⁴¹⁵ This reference to the Biblical thought should not be seen as a sudden turn. For there is good reason for recalling this, mainly because of two facts. One, as we saw above, Arab intellectuals considered the philosophy of Anaxagoras in relation to the Bible, as much as did they so in order to explore its relation to Stoicism. Their views varied, but the like-mindedness between Anaxagorean thought and Stoicism did not pass unnoticed, unlike what Greek doxographers and commentators did. Secondly, at various points of the present book, I have pointed out affinities between the Supreme Principle of Pythagoras, of Plato, and of Anaxagoras. Now, it is time to add the Stoics to this list. Actually, I am not the first one to do so. A long time ago, an outsider, namely, Josephus, pointed out the inherent correspondence between those four schools: ‘Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, and, after them, the Stoic philosophers’ thought of God in similar fashion’.⁴¹⁶ Besides, Aristotle praised some of his predecessors who ‘apprehended the source of motion’. Normally, he mentioned no names, but he did so with their principles, thus making evident whom he had in mind: they were those who posited ‘as first principle’ either ‘Love and Strife’ (i. e. Empedocles), or ‘Mind’ (i. e. Anaxagoras), or Eros (‘desire’, i. e. Parmenides).⁴¹⁷ Nevertheless, Ar-

 Exodus, 3.14. Cf. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.139: The ‘supreme God permeates all animals and plants as if materially’ (αἰσθητικῶς ὥσπερ κεχωρηκέναι).  Josephus, Contra Apionem (De Judaeorum Vetustate), 2.168 9, quoted by Eusebius, Praepar atio Evangelica, 8.8.5, then, by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Virtutibus et Vitiis, v. 1, p. 114: καὶ γὰρ Πυθαγόρας καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Πλάτων οἵ τε μετ᾿ ἐκεῖνον ἀπὸ τῆς στοᾶς φιλόσοφοι καὶ μικροῦ δεῖν ἅπαντες οὕτως φαίνονται περὶ τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ φύσεως πεφρονηκότες.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 988a33 35. About Eros being attributed to Parmenides, see op. cit. 984b24 26. Likewise, Plutarch, Amatorius, 756D E; De Facie In Orbe Lunae, 926E 927A. Simpli cius, commPhys, p. 39.

690

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

istotle explicated that it was Anaxagoras who had posited the Nous as a principle which causes motion (Metaphysica, 1075b8). Alexander of Aphrodisias commenting on this apostrophe of Aristotle made things more clear: “Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, and Plato” were those who posited also an immaterial principle.⁴¹⁸ Perhaps, up to Plato, this was owing to common sources from the East, as I discuss in Appendix I. Theodoret argued that those three philosophers ‘picked up some dark sayings from the Egyptians and the Hebrews’,⁴¹⁹ in fact, all three of them received their springboards ‘from Moses, the ocean of theology’.⁴²⁰ Later, George Monachus mentioned the same three philosophers, adding Pherecydes to them, and reported that, ‘according to testimonies by Greeks’, they went to Egypt, ‘hoping to learn theology and physics from them’.⁴²¹ Later still, Gennadius Scholarius wrote that Pythagoras and Anaxagoras received ‘the sacred seeds of truth’ from the Egyptians and the Hebrews, whereas Plato did so from the Egyptians only; Gennadius cites as sources Jerome, Plutarch, and Xenophon, as well Plato himself. At the same time, he states that Plato received ‘certain indications of higher truths from Anaxagoras and Pythagoras’ and ‘many seeds of the divine truth’ from the Egyptians.⁴²² An erudite Jew as he was, Josephus would have recognized such loans easily, but the importance of his testimony lies in adding the Stoics holding doctrines that were similar to those of Pythagoras, Plato, and Anaxagoras.

Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus The Hymn to Zeus by Cleanthes⁴²³ has been considered in relation to Heraclitus since quite some time ago,⁴²⁴ and Diels included part of it in his Presocratic col-

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 61: ἐπεὶ οἵ γε πρὸ τούτων οὐ τὴν ὑλικὴν μόνον ἔθεντο αἰτίαν· οὔτε γὰρ ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὔτε οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι οὔτε Πλάτων.  Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.26: Οὐκοῦν καὶ Πυθαγόρας καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Πλάτων αἰνίγματά τινα περὶ τοῦ ὄντος παρ᾿ Αἰγυπτίων καὶ Ἑβραίων ξυνέλεξαν.  Theodoret, op. cit. 2.51: Καὶ γὰρ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Πυθαγόρας καὶ Πλάτων ὕστερον ἐκεῖθεν εἵλκυσαν σμικρὰ ἄττα τῆς ἀληθείας ἐναύσματα.  George Monachus, Chronicon, p. 198: Φερεκύδης ὁ Σύριος καὶ Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάμιος καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὁ Κλαζομένιος καὶ Πλάτων ὁ ᾿Aθηναῖος πρὸς τούτους ἐξεδήμησαν θεολογίαν καὶ φυσιολογίαν ἀκριβεστέραν μαθήσεσθαι παρ᾿ αὐτῶν ἐλπίσαντες. The same in Chronicon Breve, PG.110.249.8 13, and George Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, p. 165.  Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 12.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.12.  J.D. Meerwaldt, “Cleanthea I”, Mnemosyne, 4, pp. 38 66, 1951, p. 46. “Cleanthea II”, Mne mosyne, 5, 1952, pp. 1 12. G. Zuntz, “Zum Kleanthes Hymnus”, Harvard Studies of Classical Phi

Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus

691

lection as a Heraclitian echo. However, I know of no one who saw anything of Anaxagoras in that poem. The hymn is composed in the style and language of the archaic poetic tradition (Orphic hymns, Pindar, Hesiod), and of the choric parts of the great tragedians none the less. My aim in this section is to consider some of the ideas that are implicitly present in it, and to argue that the Anaxagorean influence on this text is no less important than that of Heraclitus as advanced by some scholars, and more recently by A.A. Long. It is not my intention to deny some influence of Heraclitus upon the hymn of Cleanthes; rather, my point is that Anaxagoras’ presence therein is too prominent to be ignored. In any event, Stoicism was a different philosophy which paved its own way, notwithstanding influences upon it. The effect upon its leaders is a complex phenomenon, which can be categorized only to some extent: beyond discipleship to Plato and Aristotle, Zeno and his followers received the theories of Heraclitus and Empedocles about recurring cosmic periods; they took up the Mind of Anaxagoras and the Mind’s function by means of the principles, but they accorded it the Heraclitian name ‘Logos’. However, whereas the fiery Heraclitian Logos does everything by himself, both the Anaxagorean Mind and the Stoic Logos act by means of the principles/spermatic logoi, that is, by means of surrogates. Yet again, it is not always possible to draw a line between the presence and activity of the Stoic Logos and the acting spermatic logoi. All too often was it stated that the Logos is present in matter and united with it, but I have suggested that testimonies representing the Stoic theory virtually as mere analogy to the Aristotelian form acting upon formless matter could fall short of doing justice to this philosophy. For in effect the Logos himself and the spermatic logoi are not mutually detached. No one saw and applied this better and more explicitly that Origen, who spoke of the logoi being on the Body of the Logos, as explained in the ensuing chapter. Moreover, the Logos of Heraclitus is a principle that brings contraries together into one unity, perhaps his God as Mind is himself all of the contraries, if we are to believe Hippolytus.⁴²⁵ Unlike this, the Stoic Logos is the universal Rationality that holds together, administers, and provides for the universe, both as a whole and in its particulars, right down to the minutest detail. But this is the Mind of Anaxagoras, not the Logos of Her-

lology, 63, 1958, pp. 290 8. M. Marcovich (ed.), Heraclitus, Merida, 1967, p. 637. A.A. Long, “Early Greek Philosophy”, in P. E. Easterling, B.M.W. Knox (eds.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, Cambridge, 1985, p. 253. Id. Long, Stoic Thought, pp. 46 53. But Max Pohlenz paid no attention to, and showed no interest in such a connection: Die Stoa, Geschichte eine geistiger Bewegung, second ed., 2 vols. Göttingen, 1959. G. Verbeke, Kleanthes van Assos, Brussels, 1949.  Heraclitus, apud Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 9.10.8: “God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger”, that is, Hippolytus adds, ‘all of the contraries’.

692

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

aclitus. The Stoics went some steps further by considering the moral influence of that ontological principle on human affairs, no doubt following some of Heraclitus’ extant propositions. This is what I mean by ‘complex’ influence of the Presocratic thought on the Stoic one, while also pointing out that Simplicius preserved only Anaxagoras’ propositions on Physics: in them, the presence of the Mind in the universe is pointed out (although ‘unmixed with everything’), but we have nothing about the ethical impact and implications of the Mind’s presence upon human affairs, except perhaps Anaxagoras’ attenuated and rather cryptic statement, ‘the Mind rules over all those who have soul’. Therefore, when discussion comes to such matters, we are able to consider the Heraclitian association of the divine law with the human one, but we are hardly able to propose any considerations in respect of Anaxagoras in the absence of surviving evidence from the rest of his work. Coming to Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus, A.A. Long sought to associate this hymn with Heraclitus on the following grounds. 1. When Cleanthes says that ‘the entire universe obeys Zeus willingly’, Long took it that this is an influence by Heraclitus because the philosopher said that ‘the wise, one thing alone is wiling and not willing, to be called by the name Zeus’ (ἓν τὸ σοφὸν μοῦνον λέγεσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει Ζηνὸς ὄνομα).⁴²⁶ However, it is barely necessary to point out that this is entirely irrelevant, and seeking a general notion of ‘willingness’ in Heraclitus is far from sufficient in order to establish the desired relationship. Moreover, Long thought that the epithet for Zeus ‘having many names’ (πολυώνυμε) has a specific philological value to his purpose only because he did not see that this was an exemplar that Cleanthes took up from Orphic hymns.⁴²⁷ 2. Affinity of Cleanthes with Heraclitus is assumed also because the latter wrote that ‘the thunderbolt steers all things’ (τὰ δὲ πάντα οἰακίζει κεραυνός),⁴²⁸ while forgetting that ‘the thunderbolt’ associated with ‘fire’ and ‘light’ was par excellence the characteristic of Zeus, indeed a truism throughout

 Heraclitus, apud Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.14.115.1.  Cf. Artemis so being addressed, in Orphica, Hymni, Hymn 36: Διὸς πολυώνυμε κούρη. Like wise, op. cit. 10; 11; 16; 27; 36; 40; 41; 45; 50; 52; 56. See also other poems and plays so addressing various gods. Pindar, Isthmia, Ode 5, verse 1: πολυώνυμε Θεία (Theia being the mother of Helios/ Sun). Cf. Anonymous, Scholia in Pindarum (scholia vetera), Ode I5, scholion 1a & 2c. Sophocles, Antigone, verse 1115; cf. Anonymous, Scholia in Sophoclem (scholia vetera), on verse 1115. Bacchy lides, Epigrammata, 1. Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae, verse 320. Theocritus, Idyllia, 15. Also, Proclus, Hymni, 2 (Aphrodite); 6 (Hecate).  Heraclitus, apud Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 9.10.7.

Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus

693

all Greek mythology and literature.⁴²⁹ To this, I should add that Cleanthes’ poetic term αἰειζώοντα (‘everliving’) was used by his contemporary poet Theocritus of Syracuse.⁴³⁰ It was all too plausible for Hippolytus speaking of Heraclitus to identify ‘the thunderbolt’ with ‘the eternal fire’,⁴³¹ since Pindar had said so a long time ago using similar terms as Cleanthes did (παγκρατὴς κεραυνός).⁴³² The sophist Apollonius (first-second century AD) remarked that, when Homer wrote about Zeus thundering and hurling his bolt, he meant ‘divine fire’.⁴³³ Likewise, Plutarch reported that the fire of thunderbolt was considered ‘divine’,⁴³⁴ and Iamblichus definitely saw this as a tool used by the gods in order to cut matter asunder.⁴³⁵ Therefore, there is nothing special about the idea of Zeus governing the entire world by means of his thunderbolt, and there is nothing impelling association of this commonplace specifically with Heraclitus, who saw the instrument of thunderbolt in the same manner as all Antiquity did. Nevertheless, I do not dispute some association of the present passage with Heraclitus. Having pointed out the Orphic style and tenor of the poem, it would be instructive to take this precedent into account: for not only is the idea of Zeus administering thunderbolt as his instrument there,⁴³⁶ but, interestingly, it is stated that the Cyclops supplied the young Zeus with thunderbolt, thunder, and lightning, all of  Cf. Homer, Ilias, XIV.417; XV.117; XXI.198; Odyssea, XIV.306. Hesiod, Theogonia, verse 708; Scutum, verse 422. Pindar, Nemea, Ode 10, verse 8. Aeschylus, Prometheus Vinctus, verse 667. Euripides, Supplices, verse 640: Ζεὺς κεραυνῷ πυρπόλῳ καταιθαλοῖ. Supplices, verses 1009 10: καὶ μὴν ὁρᾷς τήνδ᾿ ἧς ἐφέστηκας πέλας πυράν, Διὸς θησαυρόν (Behold that pyre, which you are overlooking, near by, Zeus’ treasure!); Alcestis, verses 128 9: διόβολον πλῆκτρον πυρὸς κεραυνίου (thunderbolt fire smitten by Zeus); Troiades, verse 80; Fragmenta Phaethontis, fr. 781; Hercules, verse 177; Phoenissae, verse 182; Bacchae, verses 243; 599; 288 9: ἥρπασ᾿ ἐκ πυρὸς κεραυνίου Ζεύς. Sophocles, Electra, verse 823; Oedipus Coloneus, verse 1502. Aristophanes, Aves, verses 1538; 1714; 1745 6; Plutus, verses 124 5; and, thereafter, all of the Late Antiquity men tioned Zeus along with his instructive weapon, the thunderbolt.  Anonymous, Scholia in Theocritum (scholia vetera), τάων δ᾿ ἀείζῳον· τὰ τῶν Μουσῶν, φησί, καὶ τῶν Χαρίτων ἔνευσεν ὁ Ζεὺς ἄφθαρτα εἶναι. This is from the lost poem entitled ‘The altar of Besantinus’, verses 16 17.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 9.10.7.  Pindar, Fragmenta, fr. 70b: ὁ παγκρατὴς κεραυνὸς ἀμπνέων πῦρ. Pythia, Ode 1: κεραυνὸν αἰενάου πυρός.  Apollonius, sophist, Lexicon Homericum, p. 86 (ref. to Odyssea, XII.415 7: ἐν δὲ θείου πλῆτο, πέσον δ᾿ ἐκ νηὸς ἑταῖροι)· θεείου τοῦ κεραυνίου πυρὸς λέγει· θεοῦ δὲ τοῦτο, ὥστε κατὰ παρεκ δοχὴν εἰρῆσθαι· προσυπακουστέον δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρός. The term θεῖον is the same for ‘divine’ and ‘sulphur / sulphurous’. Apollonius puns with the term.  Plutarch, Quaestiones Convivales, 685C: ὁρᾷς δ᾿ ὅτι καὶ τὸ κεραύνιον πῦρ ἱερὸν ἡγούμεθα καὶ θεῖον.  Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 5.12: οἱ θεοὶ τῷ κεραυνίῳ πυρὶ τέμνουσι τὴν ὕλην.  Orphica, Hymni, Hymn 15, verse 9; Hymn 19, title & verses 5; 15; 17.

694

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

which are a source of glory for Zeus (τὰ γὰρ Διὶ κῦδος ὀπάζει):⁴³⁷ the terms κεραυνῷ and κῦδος, which are used in this Orphic passage, run parallel to those used by Cleanthes (κύδιστε and κεραυνόν). Moreover, in another Orphic fragment, all the ideas entertained by Cleanthes are present: Zeus is the King (Cl. ὕπατος βασιλεύς, Orph. Ζεὺς βασιλεύς); he has the supreme power though his thunderbolt (Cl. αἰειζώοντα κεραυνόν, then, Ζεῦ ἀργικέραυνε, Orph. ἀρχὸς ἁπάντων ἀργικέραυνος); Zeus possesses the power that rules over everything and all things are made by him (Cl. οὐδέ τι γίγνεται ἔργον ἐπὶ χθονὶ σοῦ δίχα, Orph. μία ἀρχὴ κρατεῖ καὶ πάντα τελεῖ).⁴³⁸ There is more to it, however: Cleanthes was a philosopher who, in the specific piece, expressed himself poetically, in an instance that had to do with his religiousness rather than his philosophical ideas in a strict sense. True, as a poem, the text is near the language of Heraclitus, which is symbolical anyway. However, in terms of the ideas involved (which is what we are considering now) these verses bear no less on Democritus, too. Cleanthes writes about Zeus having the thunderbolt in his ‘invincible hands’, and adds that ‘everything in nature has come to be as a result of the stroke’ (τοῦ γὰρ ὑπὸ πληγῆς φύσεως πάντ᾿ ἔργα τελεῖται)⁴³⁹ of this ‘everliving servant’ (αἰειζώοντα ὑποεργόν). Poetically, this ‘stroke’ (πληγή) is caused by the ‘thunderbolt’ of Zeus. A. Long saw relation with Heraclitus’ ‘the thunderbolt steers all things’ (τὰ δὲ πάντα οἰακίζει κεραυνός)⁴⁴⁰ and ‘every crawling reptile is driven to pasture by means of a stroke’ (πᾶν γὰρ ἑρπετὸν πληγῇ νέμεται),⁴⁴¹ which is the sole known instance of Heraclitus using the term πληγή. However, the term is in fact philosophical, and it is characteristic of Democritus: as explained in the Conclusion, Democritus spoke of the ‘Necessity’, which is ‘stronger’ than the cohesive force that makes things what they are, and ‘it is imposed upon things, it shakes them violently and separates them out’. What is that which generates this ‘Necessity’? It is the ‘encompassing’.⁴⁴² It does not suffice for matter to consist of atoms: for atoms need a force that causes them to  Orphica, Fragmenta (Diels & Kranz), fr. 16.  Orphica, Fragmenta (P. Derveni), Column col15.  Different editors read and emended the codices’ πάντ᾿ εριγγα differently. Cf. Cleanthes, Fragmenta, ed. J.U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina, Oxford, 1925 (repr. 1970): 227 231: πάντ᾿ ἔργα βέβηκεν. J. von Arnim, SVF, I, fr. 537: πάντ᾿ ἔργα τελεῖται. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.12: πάντ᾿ ἐρρίγασιν.  Heraclitus, apud Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 9.10.7.  Heraclitus, apud Pseudo Aristotle, De Mundo, 401a (fr. 11).  Democritus, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 295: ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον οὖν χρόνον σφῶν αὐτῶν ἀν τέχεσθαι νομίζει καὶ συμμένειν, ἕως ἰσχυροτέρα τις ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἀνάγκη παραγενομένη διασείσῃ καὶ χωρὶς αὐτὰς διασπείρῃ.

Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus

695

move, and, by moving them, to give rise to various manifestations of reality. This force Democritus called ‘Necessity’, as Simplicius informed us. But he had also another name for this, which was ‘stroke’ (πληγή), and our source is Simplicius once again: Whereas Democritus posits that atoms themselves are by nature motionless, he says that they are moved by a stroke.⁴⁴³

This is the same information that was available to Cicero, too: He said that an atom changes its trajectory; but what is that which causes such a deflec tion? This happens because the stimulative force which they received from Democritus is different: this is an impulse which he calls stroke.⁴⁴⁴

Stobaeus reported that Democritus had one more name for this, which was ‘vibration’ (παλμός), and this was the sole kind of motion he accepted.⁴⁴⁵ We should recall that Anaxagoras also posited one kind of motion (σύγκρισις / διάκρισις, in other words, ἀλλοίωσις), unlike Aristotle who held six. It would turn out that the one kind of motion that Democritus and Anaxagoras posited might not be too different from each other, despite their philosophies being different. Moreover, doxography reports that Democritus (expounding the nature of Necessity) explained that matter has the following attributes: it resists pressure and change of shape; it tends to motion; and it can deal blows (Δημόκριτος τὴν ἀντιτυπίαν καὶ φορὰν καὶ πληγὴν τῆς ὕλης).⁴⁴⁶ In view of this analysis, when Aristotle remarked that ‘having left aside the final cause [of creation of things], Democritus refers to all the means that Nature employs Necessity’,⁴⁴⁷ and Cleanthes wrote in his hymn that Zeus holds the thunderbolt in his ‘invincible hands’ and ‘everything in nature has come to be as a result of the stroke’, both philosophers said the same thing. Nature employs Necessity, whereas Zeus employs the stroke. Cleanthes was anyway all too happy to identify Zeus with Nature, which was one among the many appellations he accorded the ‘multi-titled’ Zeus.

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 42: καὶ Δημόκριτος φύσει ἀκίνητα λέγων τὰ ἄτομα πληγῇ κινεῖ σθαί φησιν.  Cicero, De Fato, 20.46: declinat, inquit, atomus. primum cur? aliam enim quandam vim motus habebant a Democrito impulsionis quam plagam ille appellat.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.19.1: Δημόκριτος ἓν γένος κινήσεως τὸ κατὰ παλμὸν ἀπεφαίνετο.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 884F & Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 41.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 789b, quoted infra, p. 1070, note 1111.

696

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

It should be also recalled that Cleanthes was the man who invented the Stoic term τόνος (‘tension’), which is no different from the ‘stroke’ mentioned above. Plutarch, quoting from Cleanthes’ Physics, saved the definition for us: “Tension is a stroke of fire” (πληγὴ πυρὸς ὁ τόνος ἐστί).⁴⁴⁸ Nemesius of Emesa likewise grasped Cleanthes’ ‘tension’ and its function and impact on any body: “There is a certain movement resulting from τόνος, which is directed both inwards and outwards: when it is directed outwards, it produces different sizes and qualities; when directed inwards, it produces coherence and substance” of bodies.⁴⁴⁹ The imagery of the Hymn to Zeus is only a poetic expression of Cleanthes’ proposition, ‘tension is a stroke of fire’. Quite simply, he wrote the hymn the way he did, not because he had in mind Heraclitus, but because he expressed his own theory while writing as a poet. There is nothing strange about this: Proclus wrote his own hymns as a poet, too.⁴⁵⁰ Although history tells us that Cleanthes remained always a hard-working man, it seems that he was a man of ‘priestly’ nature, which is why he wrote this hymn. The same happened with Proclus, as Damascius remarked: whereas ‘Porphyry, Plotinus, and many other philosophers prefer philosophy, others opt for the priestly function, such as Iamblichus, Syrianus, Proclus, and all the hieratic men’.⁴⁵¹ It is highly likely that Cleanthes belonged to the second category, hence the sacerdotal character of his hymn. 3. Cleanthes speaks of Zeus who, by means of his thunderbolt, administers ‘the common Logos, which permeates everything’ (ᾧ σὺ κατευθύνεις κοινὸν λόγον, ὃς διὰ πάντων φοιτᾷ). A. Long thought that this should be considered in relation to Heraclitus, because Cleanthes ‘speaks of a logos which is common and a single divine law which fosters all human laws (fr. 114)’. The point is arguable, although the fragment of Heraclitus that Long cited (but did not quote) is about a common nous, not logos.⁴⁵² Nevertheless, since this is about the ‘common divine law’, the Heraclitian tenor of Cleanthes’ words should be conceded.  Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1034D.  Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, 2.18: οἱ Στωικοί, τονικήν τινα εἶναι κίνησιν περὶ τὰ σώματα εἰς τὸ εἴσω ἅμα καὶ εἰς τὸ ἔξω κινουμένην, καὶ τὴν μὲν εἰς τὸ ἔξω μεγεθῶν καὶ ποιοτή των ἀποτελεστικὴν εἶναι, τὴν δὲ εἰς τὸ εἴσω ἑνώσεως καὶ οὐσίας.  Cf. E. Vogt, Procli Hymni, Wiesbaden, 1957, pp. 27 33.  Damascius, In Phaedonem, 172: Ὅτι οἱ μὲν τὴν φιλοσοφίαν προτιμῶσιν, ὡς Πορφύριος καὶ Πλωτῖνος καὶ ἄλλοι πολλοὶ φιλόσοφοι· οἱ δὲ τὴν ἱερατικήν, ὡς Ἰάμβλιχος καὶ Συριανὸς καὶ Πρό κλος καὶ οἱ ἱερατικοὶ πάντες.  Heraclitus, apud Stobaeus, Anthologium, 3.1.179: ξὺν νόῳ λέγοντας ἰσχυρίζεσθαι χρὴ τῷ ξυνῷ πάντων, ὅκωσπερ νόμῳ πόλις. Also, quoted as a proverb by Arsenius the paroemiogra pher, Apophthegmata, Centuria 12.26a.

Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus

697

On the other hand, is should be recalled that it was Anaxagoras who said that the Nous is present in all things that are animate; it was also Anaxagoras who was widely acknowledged as the sole one who posited the Nous as an administering King of the universe.⁴⁵³ Plato recalled this in the Cratylus, stating that Anaxagoras’ Nous is a self-subsistent universal Ruler, who permeates the entire universe; at that point, this Nous is also identified as Justice (δίκαιον). In the same dialogue, the discussion is about ‘justice’ (δίκαιον), and when Plato considers the possibility of identifying this with a universal principle called ‘fire’ (πῦρ), he determined that this could be laughable (καταγελᾶν), whereas he treats Anaxagoras’ Mind being Justice with respect.⁴⁵⁴ This point shows that the Mind/Justice he spoke about was seen as a universal law, which is not at all different from the idea that Cleanthes’ passage suggests. Therefore, also on this point, the hymn falls closer to Anaxagoras than to Heraclitus, even though the latter’s implicit presence cannot be disputed. All I am suggesting is that Cleanthes wrote under the influence of more than one Presocratics, and, in doing so, his influence by Anaxagoras was not less decisive than that by Heraclitus: as discussed in the present chapter, the idea of the permeating Mind is Anaxagorean, and Cleanthes repeats it characteristically. Moreover, when he emphasizes the obedience of nature to Zeus, and writes of ‘the divine common law’ (θεοῦ κοινὸν νόμον), and says to Zeus, ‘nothing takes place upon the earth apart from you’ (οὐδέ τι γίγνεται ἔργον ἐπὶ χθονὶ σοῦ δίχα), we should recall that Anaxagoras wrote that the Mind ‘is the finest of all things, and the purest, and indeed it maintains judgement about everything and has the greatest might [over them all]’ (ἔστι γὰρ λεπτότατόν τε πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον, καὶ γνώμην γε περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἴσχει καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον); also, the Mind ‘rules over all things that have soul, both the larger and the smaller ones’ (καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ τὰ μείζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ); all things that came to be ‘the Mind knew them all’ (πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς); and ‘all of the Nous is the same, both the greater and the smaller’ (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων).⁴⁵⁵ In any event, the Pythagoreans had a great respect for the divine law that should be observed in everyday life.⁴⁵⁶ Besides, a century before Cleanthes

 See supra, pp. 179 83.  Plato, Cratylus, 413a c.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156 7. Against this overwhelmingly parallel evidence, to adduce Heraclitus’ fr. 41, as Long did, is only an extrapolation, or at best, a petitio principii.  Cf. reference to Pythagoreous by Aristotle, Oeconomica, 1344a: Τοῦθ᾿ ὑφηγεῖται δὲ ὁ καὶ ὁ κοινὸς νόμος· καθάπερ οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι λέγουσιν.

698

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

wrote his hymn, Gorgias or Demosthenes (in an oration praising those Athenians who fell in battlefield) had praised obedience ‘to the divine and most universal law’ (θειότατον καὶ κοινότατον νόμον).⁴⁵⁷ At the same point where Cleanthes says that ‘nothing takes place upon the earth apart from’ Zeus, he adds that this holds also for the ‘aetheral heaven’ (οὔτε κατ᾿ αἰθέριον θεῖον πόλον). The term πόλος literally means ‘pole’, and it was so used by several authors, but in poetry this was a synecdoche meaning simply ‘heaven’.⁴⁵⁸ During the classical times, this poetic figure of speech was used once by Aeschylus referring to the mythical Atlas groaning while holding the world on his shoulders.⁴⁵⁹ Then, Euripides did so, too, in the prayer of Hecuba in the Troiades that I mentioned above:⁴⁶⁰ he also speaks of ‘the pole of heaven’ (εἰς οὐράνιον πάλιν ἦλθε πόλον), expounding the Anaxagorean idea that nothing really dies, but everything is dissolved into its constitutive principles, which Euripides expressed poetically, writing that it returns to the heavenly sphere. Then came Cleanthes using it in his own prayer, in order to extol the dominance of Zeus not only upon earth, but also upon the heaven. During the times of Euripides, this usage was not common, not even usual; therefore, the influence of this upon Cleanthes should be noticed. Besides, Diels picked up the passage of Euripides and classified it as a ‘testimony’ to Anaxagoras (fr. 112), and rightly so, given the comments by Satyrus, as discussed earlier. In that passage of Euripides, Zeus is identified with either ‘necessity of Nature’ or ‘the mind of mortals’ (Ζεὺς εἴτ᾿ ἀνάγκη φύσεος εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν), which means that these identifications that became a commonplace with Stoicism were familiar to Anaxagoras. For, in fact, Euripides’ verse ‘Our mind, in each one of us, is God’ (ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός) is but Anaxagoras phi-

 H. Diels attributed this to Gorgias, fr. 6: τοῦτον νομίζοντες θειότατον καὶ κοινότατον νόμον, τὸ δέον ἐν τῷ δέοντι καὶ λέγειν καὶ σιγᾶν καὶ ποιεῖν. He excerpted it from a commentary by Max imus Planudes on the book of Hermogenes of Tarsus’ Περὶ Ιδεῶν, as in Rhetores Graeci (ed. C. Walz), v. 5. However, this text belongs to an extant passage by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (whom Planudes mentions by name) in which he attributes the phrase to Demosthenes. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Demosthenis Dictione, section 1.  Cf. Etymologicum Gudianum, entry pi, pp. 474 & 488: Πόλος, ὁ οὐρανός. Anonymous, Scho lia in Aeschylum (scholia recentiora), comm. on Prometheus Vinctus, verse 429: οὐράνιον πόλον· τὴν οὐρανίαν σφαῖραν. Lexica Segueriana, Collectio Verborum Utilium e Differentibus Rhetoribus et Sapientibus Multis (recensio aucta e cod. Coislin. 345), entry pi, p. 345: πόλου· οὐρανοῦ. κόσμου.  Aeschylus, Prometheus Vinctus, verse 429: Ἄτλανθ᾿ ὃς αἰὲν ὑπέροχον σθένος κραταιὸν οὐ ράνιόν τε πόλον νώτοις ὑποστενάζει.  See supra, p. 621, note 67, Euripides, Troiades, verse 886.

Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus

699

losophy positing that ‘the Mind, whether the greater opr the lesser one, is the same’. Furthermore, Cleanthes says to Zeus, ‘you have welded all things, good and bad, into one’ (εἰς ἓν πάντα συνήρμοκας ἐσθλὰ κακοῖσιν) so that they all become a single everlasting logos of everything’ (ὥσθ᾿ ἕνα γίγνεσθαι πάντων λόγον αἰὲν ἐόντα). Anaxagoras wrote that ‘everything has a share in everything’ (ἐν παντὶ γὰρ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστιν); besides, ‘Mind, which always exists, certainly exists also now, so that all the other things also should exist’ (ὁ δὲ νοῦς, ὃς ἀεί ἐστι, τὸ κάρτα καὶ νῦν ἐστιν ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα); also, ‘nothing is dissociated or separated off from another, because everything is in everything; then, ‘the things in the one cosmos have not been separated from one another, nor hacked apart with an axe’ (οὐ κεχώρισται ἀλλήλων τὰ ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ κόσμῳ οὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκει); and ‘nothing is entirely separated off or dissociated from one another except the Mind’ (παντάπασι δὲ οὐδὲν ἀποκρίνεται οὐδὲ διακρίνεται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου πλὴν νοῦ). On the face of it, the hymn of Cleanthes presents some similarities with Heraclitus, especially in regard of some reference to contraries being harmonized by Zeus. Beyond this, however, in essence Cleanthes entertains a Stoic notion of Logos, and the specific characteristics of it happen to be Anaxagorean, too. Cleanthes says that the world is maintained to being by Zeus (σοὶ δὴ πᾶς ὅδε κόσμος, ἑλισσόμενος περὶ γαῖαν, πείθεται, ᾗ κεν ἄγῃς, καὶ ἑκὼν ὑπὸ σεῖο κρατεῖται). Anaxagoras said that ‘the Mind exists always’ and it is because of him that the rest of things exist (ὁ δὲ νοῦς, ὃς ἀεί ἐστι, τὸ κάρτα καὶ νῦν ἐστιν ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα). Cleanthes says that we are from the race of Zeus (ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ γένος ἐσμέν). Anaxagoras said that ‘in everything there is a share of everything except the Mind, but there are those in which the Mind, too, is present’, by which human race should be understood, at least. He does not specify who are ‘those, in whom the Mind is present’, but, shortly after that point, he adds that the Mind rules over all those that have soul (καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ τὰ μείζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ), which suggests that the Mind is present therein. Cleanthes says that Zeus administers the ‘common logos, which permeates everything’ (σὺ κατευθύνεις κοινὸν λόγον, ὃς διὰ πάντων φοιτᾷ). That this is a plain Anaxagorean doctrine has been discussed in the present chapter. So is Cleanthes’ expression about Zeus as ‘the supreme king’ (ὕπατος βασιλεύς): it has been shown that, notwithstanding misperceptions, all of Antiquity saw Anaxagoras as the one who posited the Mind as guardian, ruler, king, and superintended of everything.

700

Chapter 9 – The Stoics

The association of Cleanthes with Anaxagoras made some mark in the doxographic tradition: Stobaeus reported that the idea of ‘the mind that comes from without’ (θύραθεν εἰσκρίνεσθαι τὸν νοῦν) was shared by ‘Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, Xenocrates, and Cleanthes’.⁴⁶¹ Concerning the theory about stars moving from east to west, three physicists, namely, ‘Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Cleanthes’, shared the idea.⁴⁶² Likewise, ‘Thales, Anaxagoras, Plato, and the Stoics agreed with mathematicians’ on the issue of the process by which an eclipse takes place.⁴⁶³ Moreover, ‘Anaxagoras and the Stoics’ shared a common views as to what ‘chance’ (τύχη) is.⁴⁶⁴ Finally, a point made in chapter 6 should be recalled: the idea of coming to actuality from the state of potentiality, in the same way a ‘seed’ grows following the function of the logoi within it, was expressed by Cleanthes in strikingly Anaxagorean terms, which have been discussed above.⁴⁶⁵

Zeno going to theatre Zeno knew that his idea about the logoi forming matter were only alternatives to Anaxagoras’ principles and to the Pythagorean numbers: in all three cases, the concept was that active formative principles give rise to all aspects of material reality. An anecdote that Plutarch narrates is characteristic in this respect: one day Zeno and his pupils went to the theatre where the famous lyre-player Amoebeus⁴⁶⁶ was giving a performance. Zeno then said to his pupils: “Lets us go there, so that we should learn how bowels and sinews and wood and bones produce harmonious music and voice, once they participate in logos and in number and in order.”⁴⁶⁷

 Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.48.7.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 58.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.26.3.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.7.9a. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 885C. Pseudo Galen, His toria Philosophica, 43.  See supra, chapter 6, p. 396.  Amoebeus was the most famous lyre player of Antiquity. He was paid the enormous sum of one Attic talent for just one day’s performance (τάλαντον ᾿Aττικὸν τῆς ἡμέρας λαμβάνειν). He was married to a woman who was renowned for her beauty, but he was neglectful of his sexual duties to her because he was too busy with his job. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 14.17; Deipno sophistae (epitome), p. 129. Aelian, De Natura Animalium, 6.1; Varia Historia, 3.30. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 3.6.50.4. Polyaenus, Strategemata, 4.6.1.  Zeno, fr. 229, apud Plutarch, De Virtute Morali, 443A: καίτοι καὶ Ζήνωνά φασιν εἰς θέατρον ἀνιόντα κιθαρῳδοῦντος ᾿Aμοιβέως πρὸς τοὺς μαθητάς ἴωμεν, εἰπεῖν, ὅπως καταμάθωμεν οἵαν ἔν

Zeno going to theatre

701

The meaning was all too evident, of course: ‘bowels and sinews and wood and bones’ was the imagery for the physical presence of Amoebeus himself and his lyre: he could exist only because some principles were at work, thus having generated and sustaining that musician himself and his instrument. Nevertheless, the playful irony is telling: for one thing, Zeno acknowledges the debts of his theory to the predecessors that made active principles inherent in things, namely, Anaxagoras and the Pythagoreans. For another, the slight irony was directed against the notion of ‘participation’ in number, which had been criticized on the grounds that a number cannot be an active principle. Thirdly, he implied clearly the criticism against Anaxagoras by Plato and Aristotle. For, as we saw earlier, in the criticism against Anaxagoras in the Phaedo, Plato blamed him of dealing with such ‘absurd’ things as explaining how flesh and the skin, and bones and limbs and sinews function in human body; body is composed of bones and sinews, and bones are hard and have joints which divide them and the sinews can be contracted and relaxed and, with the flesh and the skin which contains them all, are laid about the bones; and so, as the bones are hung loose in their ligaments, the sinews, by relaxing and contracting, make a man able to bend my limbs. Besides, Aristotle frequently spoke of ‘bowels and sinews and wood and bones’ as examples of ‘homoiomeries’.⁴⁶⁸ It seems then that, on the one hand, Zeno, employed an understatement inspired by Aristotle’s criticism of Anaxagoras, while, on the other, being in the mood of enjoying some nice time at theatre, he also indulged in some lampooning of the idea of Anaxagoras’ logoi being posited as immaterial, with that sort of sarcasm which was as conveniently Greek as the naked statues which decorated the idyllic theatre of Dionysus under the mid-day shining sun of Attica.

τερα καὶ νεῦρα καὶ ξύλα καὶ ὀστᾶ λόγου καὶ ἀριθμοῦ μετασχόντα καὶ τάξεως ἐμμέλειαν καὶ φωνὴν ἀφίησιν. Cf. De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1029F.  Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 722a16 17; Historia Animalium, 486a; 487a; 511b; Meteorologica, 385a; 388a; 389a; 390b; De Generatione Animalium, 722a; De Partibus Animalium, 646b; 647b; et passim.

Chapter 10 The Neoplatonists Plotinus Plotinus would have never admitted that he was a ‘Neoplatonist’; actually, no such term did ever exist in Greek language. He was simply satisfied that he was a genuine Platonist, and assured that his ‘doctrines are neither novelties nor inventions of today; they were stated, though not elaborated, long ago’; Plotinus’ own teaching was ‘simply an exposition of them’, and he was confident that he could prove ‘the antiquity of those doctrines by means of Plato’s own testimony’.¹ To Proclus, ‘all’ of the followers of Plotinus were ‘Platonists’ (τῶν δὲ νεωτέρων οἱ ἀπὸ Πλωτίνου πάντες Πλατωνικοί),² and to Simplicius, Plato’s exegetes after Iamblichus were only ‘the younger generation of Platonists’ (οἱ δὲ νεώτεροι τῶν Πλατωνικῶν φιλοσόφων).³ To go beyond Plato only meant unpardonable dissent, and, already since Plato, the term ‘novelty’ (καινοτομία) was censure tantamount to deviation from orthodoxy.⁴ When Proclus accused Origen of dissent from Plato because he did not recognize any principle higher than the Mind, he wrote that denial of the transcendent One was only a symptom of the ‘Aristotelian novelty’.⁵ But Proclus had no inkling of the fact that Aristotle had taken up the notion of Mind from Anaxagoras, although Aristotle himself did not try to conceal his debt. Likewise, Origen used the same term καινοτομία describing Aristotle’s dissent from his teacher Plato,⁶ and, of course, by making the Mind the supreme principle, he followed Anaxagoras, not Aristotle. To him, Aristotle was on the black list of philosophers, along with the Sophists and the Epicureans.⁷ Cardinal ideas of the Late Antiquity were new (within the Greek mindset, at least), but everyone sought to sanctify them as mere revisitation of the ‘authentic’ Plato. Antiochus of Ascalon embraced Stoic ideas representing them as return to the  Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.8.10.  Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 88.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 564.  Cf. Plato, Leges, 656e.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31: τὸ τοιοῦτον δόγμα τῆς τοῦ Πλάτωνος φιλοσοφίας ἐστέρηται καὶ τῆς Περιπατητικῆς ἀναπέπλησται καινοτομίας.  Origen, Cels, III.13 (Philocalia, 16.2): ᾿Aριστοτέλην, ἀποφοιτήσαντα τῆς διατριβῆς αὐτοῦ ἐν καινοτομίαις.  Origen, op. cit. I.21; II.12&27. Cf. censorious use of the term ‘novelty’ (καινοτομία): op. cit. I.31; Dialogus cum Heraclide, 12.

Plotinus

703

real Platonism,⁸ and Numenius felt no less so when he amalgamated Platonism, Pythagoreanism, and Gnosticism: while pointing out the dissent among those who claimed themselves to be Plato’s followers, he believed that he was himself the orthodox exponent of this philosophy.⁹ Unlike modern times, when ‘novelty’ is considered a token of ingeniousness and inventiveness, in those times, to Greeks and Christians alike, ‘novelty’ was liable to distrustful rebuff. No Christian did ever argue that he said anything novel or original out of his own; instead, they argued that their expositions were merely the ideas included in the divine writings that they commented upon, and to them all καινοτομία was a synonym to heresy and distortion of the doctrine.¹⁰ Although Plotinus proudly declared himself only an exegete of Plato, at best he was a ‘revisionist’, and the golden key to paving his own ways was appeal to the widely known obscurity of Plato at certain points,¹¹ although this reconditeness was taken to be intentional. The argument went that only ostensibly did Platonic teaching appear to be incongruous; Plato spoke through ‘riddles’ (ᾐνιγμένως),¹² only because his aim was to impel his readers pursue and discover the truth (εἴασε ζητεῖν καὶ ἀνευρίσκειν),¹³ which he had found for himself.¹⁴

 See supra, p. 203.  The title of Numenius’ treatise was Περὶ τῆς τῶν ᾿Aκαδημαϊκῶν πρὸς Πλάτωνα διαστάσεως. Cf. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.4.16; 15.5.1. Numenius, Fragmenta, 3, fr. 24.  Cf. Athanasius, Epistula Encyclica, 2.3; 3.2. Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 27.68; Epis tulae, 52.4; 226.3. Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistulae Theologicae, 101.2; Funebris Oratio in Laudem Basilii Magni Caesareae, 58.5. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 1.1.99. Synods caveated against ‘novelty’ in the most emphatic terms. ACO, Synodus Constantinopolitana et Hierosolymi tana anno 536, v. 3, p. 75: ταύτην τοίνυν τὴν πίστιν ἀσάλευτον κρατοῦντες … πᾶσαν καινοτομίαν καὶ πᾶσαν λεπτολογίαν ἀπωθούμενοι ἑνὶ στόματι τὴν ἁγίαν καὶ ὁμοούσιον τριάδα δοξάσωμεν. Op. cit. v. 3, pp. 9 & 227: ὅτι οἶδας τοὺς ἀποστόλους μὴ καθηγησαμένους ἐν καινοτομίαις, ἀλλ᾿ ἰχνηλατήσαντας τὸν μόνον καθηγητὴν καὶ νομοθέτην Χριστόν. Concilium Universale Chalcedo nense anno 451, v. 2.1.1, p. 143: Οὐχ ἡμεῖς καινοτομοῦμεν, ἀλλ᾿ οἱ πατέρες ἐξέθεντο καὶ … οὕτως πιστεύοντες τούτοις ἐμμεῖναι ἅπαντας βουλόμεθα καὶ μηδένα καινοτομεῖν. Op. cit. 2.1.1, p. 126: οὔτε δὲ νῦν καινοτομία τις κατὰ τῆς αὐτῆς ἐπενοήθη πίστεως, ἀλλὰ τὰ τῶν ἁγίων πατέρ ων τῶν ἐπὶ ὀρθοδοξίαι λαμψάντων ἐκυρώθη παραγγέλματα. Concilium Lateranense anno 649 cel ebratum, Act 2, p. 42: ἡ γὰρ εὐσεβὴς τῶν πατέρων πίστις, ὡς ἴστε, μακαριώτατοι, καινοτομίαις οὐδαμῶς ἀμβλύνεσθαι καταδέχεται. Act 3, p. 118: Φέρε σὺν ἐπικουρίᾳ θεοῦ τὴν ἑκάστου τῶν ἐπὶ ταῖς καινοτομίαις ἡμῖν αἰτιαθέντων προσώπων κατίδωμεν συγγραφήν.  See discussion of this on pp. 578.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.2.22.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.8.4.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.4.22: Ὥστε συμβαίνει καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα ὅπως ἔχει ἐξευρεῖν δύσκολον, καὶ μείζω ἀπορίαν ἢ οὐκ ἐλάττω ἐξ ὧν εἴρηκεν ὁ Πλάτων γίνεσθαι. Op. cit. IV.8.1: εἰκάζειν ἔδωκεν ἀμελήσας σαφῆ ἡμῖν ποιῆσαι τὸν λόγον, ὡς δέον ἴσως παρ᾿ αὐτῷ ζητεῖν, ὥσπερ καὶ αὐτὸς ζητή σας εὗρεν. On Greek Chadean debts, see Appendix I, p. 1547.

704

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

Whether Plotinus sincerely believed that his own analyses were merely exegeses of Plato is hard to determine. Anyway, later students of Neoplatonism exalted Plotinus, not Plato, as the source of those ideas, which could have been not too different had Plato never written his works.¹⁵ Plato is appealed to in order to supply proof-text along with real or imagined argument, yet the notion of the transcendent One was an old Chaldean one; Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines in the Enneades could have made conveniently their way into them all the same, whether ‘mixed’ with Plotinus’ own ideas ‘covertly’ (as Porphyry put it) or not so. When Longinus hailed Plotinus (along with Amelius) as an assiduous thinker, he believed that Plotinus in essence expounded Platonic and Pythagorean doctrines in his own way (τρόπῳ θεωρίας ἰδίῳ),¹⁶ not original ideas of his own. In considerations of this tenor, the name of Anaxagoras is absent. However, when Plotinus saw all reality as ‘a complex field of forces’ and used the term ‘logoi’ as a synonym for these forces, in fact he followed the pattern of Anaxagoras. Besides, he entertained the distinction of potentiality developing to actuality as an Aristotelian one, although this was a notion fathered by Anaxagoras, and he used the term πρόοδος and ἐπιστροφή. Plotinus made the Mind a ‘second God’ (θεὸς δεύτερος) and identified it with Being and ‘the totality of beings’ (νοῦς, τὰ ὄντα πάντα).¹⁷ However, in effect and in essence, πρόοδος and ἐπιστροφή¹⁸ is nothing different from the Anaxagorean σύγκρισις and διάκρισις. To see potentiality developing to actuality as ‘progress’ (or, development, πρόοδον)¹⁹ is no different from the Anaxagorean concurrence of principles resulting in the same effect. As he did with Plato, it would have been fair for Plotinus to declare that introducing an individual ‘divisible’ soul stemming from the ‘indivisible’ universal soul,²⁰ was only an Anaxagorean way of expressing the same fundamental process.²¹ For clearly the Mind is made the cause of his uni-

 Aeneas of Gaza remarked that Plato ‘disagreed with himself’ (διαφωνεῖ Πλάτων αὐτὸς ἑαυτῷ) and his interpreters deciphered his inconsistencies as ‘oracles’ (ὥ σπερ οἱ τοὺς χρησμούς) ‘according to their own aims’; in Plato ‘each one of them read whatever they wanted to read’, but ‘it eluded them that Plato’ simply ‘brought to Greece’ the philosophy of Chaldeans and Egyptians, while copying from Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Empedocles. Theophrastus, p. 8.  Porphyry, op. cit. 20. This is from the Proem (quoted by Porphyry) of Longinus’ treatise On the End to Plotinus and Gentilianus Amelius. Porphyry highlights the expression τρόπῳ θεωρίας ἰδίῳ, quoting this in op. cit. 21.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.5.3.  Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. I.2.4; II.2.4; IV.3.4; IV.8.4; IV.8.7; V.1.7; V.3.6; V.8.11.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.3.22.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.2.1.  Likewise, cf. op. cit. IV.8.6: VI.3.12; VI.3.22; VI.6.11.

Plotinus

705

versal process and the difference is only terminological.²² It is not difficult to point out slight differences from Anaxagoras, but these are by far more attenuated than Plotinus’ essential differences from Plato.²³ Hence, there is no difference from Anaxagoras when Plotinus describes ‘the Whole’ as comprising ‘a wonderful variety of forces’ (θαυμαστὴν ποικιλίαν εἶναι δυνάμεων), and as ‘a manifold [reality] in which all the logoi and infinite and various forces are present’ (ποικιλώτατον γὰρ τὸ πᾶν καὶ λόγοι πάντες ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ δυνάμεις ἄπειροι καὶ ποικίλαι). His example should leave no doubt about his source of inspiration: it is like a human body, in which each of the bones has its own distinctive powers, the bones of the hand one power, the toe-bone another, and there is no part which has not a power, yet any of them is different from another (καὶ οὐδὲν μέρος εἶναι ὃ μὴ ἔχει καὶ οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν δὲ ἔχει). The Whole is like this, yet much more so; actually, the parts of our bodies with their powers are only traces of the parts and powers of the universe (μᾶλλον δὲ ἴχνος ταῦτα ἐκείνων).²⁴ This is not Platonism: this is Anaxagoras’ mode of thinking, even though Plato had attempted clumsily to make use of it²⁵ while declaring his contempt for such arguments, explicitly referring to Anaxagoras and using the same example about bones, and the like.²⁶ Plotinus would have liked to take a similar attitude to such examples, which he actually suggests, ‘but we know nothing about it, unless one of us has studied this sort of subject’.²⁷ To depict the universe as a place full of ‘infinite’ interactive forces,²⁸ where there is no part that has not a certain concomitant force,²⁹ and each and every force is different from all the others,³⁰ as well as describing a universe containing

 Plotinus, op. cit. V.5.3.  See reversal of the causative relation between Praxis and Knowledge, and the precedence he accords ‘virtue’ for attainment of knowledge: it is not knowledge that procures virtue, but the other way around. See PHE, pp. 23 4; 168 71; 173; 208; 279; 427. Also, infra, pp. 718 9; 837.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.4.36.  Cf. Plato, Sophista, 247d e; 248c.  Plato, Phaedo, 98b7 99b6.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.4.36.  Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 608; commPhys, pp. 34; 155; 164; 172: ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν, ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ σμικρότητα. … τούτων δὲ οὕτως ἐχόντων ἐν τῷ σύμ παντι χρὴ δοκεῖν ἐνεῖναι πάντα χρήματα.  Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 164: οὕτως ἂν εἴη ἐν παντὶ πάντα· οὐδὲ χωρὶς ἔστιν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ πάντα παντὸς μοῖραν μετέχει.  Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 157: ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί.

706

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

all the logoi in analogy with the human body,³¹ are statements inspired by Anaxagoras. It is after him, not Plato, that Plotinus wrote at such points. Everything we see in the universe, Plotinus has it, ‘is a trace’ (ἴχνος ταῦτα ἐκείνων) of the infinite logoi and forces (λόγοι πάντες ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ δυνάμεις ἄπειροι). A good Platonist would have said that everything is a trace of Ideas, not one of forces and logoi. Therefore, E. Bréhier was wrong in asserting that, to Plotinus, the intelligible world is the sensible world minus its materiality, which includes its spatiality and its temporality.³² This proposition could be right to attribute to Plato, but Plotinus’ statement (if perhaps inadvertently) suggests that the world is a totality of interacting forces existing in their own right. The result of this coordinated compound of relations is the material spatio-temporal reality, which is not a distorted reality per se: it is human perception that forms a distorted mental representation of it, only because human physiology is what it is. Nevertheless, human defective perception does not make the world less real, for its truth is not dependent on human perceptive capabilities, but it is there because the principles themselves are real. The difference from Plato is all too evident: the world is not a distorted flawed image, indeed a deceptive shadow; rather, it is the milieu for the Mind and its principles/tools to make themselves present in it, by coming to light from concealment to uncocealment. What else could the following description of the intelligible beauty by Plotinus possibly be other than an Anaxagorean one? Each there [i. e. in the intelligible realm] has everything in itself (ἔχει πᾶς πάντα ἐν αὑτῷ) and sees all things in every other, so that all are everywhere, and everything is everything, and each and every one is all (πανταχοῦ πάντα καὶ πᾶν πᾶν καὶ ἕκαστον πᾶν) and the glory is unbounded; for each of them is great, because even the small is great (ἕκαστον γὰρ αὐτῶν μέγα, ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ μικρὸν μέγα); the sun there is all the stars, and each star is the sun and all the others. A different kind of being stands out in each thing, which though indicates all [the principles] (ἐξέχει δ᾿ ἐν ἑκάστῳ ἄλλο, ἐμφαίνει δὲ καὶ πάντα).³³

Perhaps one fancifully would be apt to read Plato in this, notably a description of the ‘true heaven and earth’ of Phaedo 109d. Others would like to see it as only a contemplative personal experience of Plotinus himself.³⁴ But this would call for explanation of why was it that so many Anaxagorean ideas abound in such a short passage. Plotinus’ expression πανταχοῦ πάντα is simply Anaxagoras’ prop-

 Anaxagoras, apud Theophrastus, De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 28: πάντα γὰρ ἐνυπάρχειν φησὶν ἐν ἡμῖν.  E. Bréhier, La Philosophie de Plotin, p. 91.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.8.4.  Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. VI.7.12 13.

Plotinus

707

osition ‘everything is in everything’³⁵ and ‘all things were together’, which I discussed earlier. Besides, Plotinus’ πᾶν πᾶν καὶ ἕκαστον πᾶν is simply Anaxagoras’ axiom ‘nothing is dissociated or separated of from one another’³⁶ and ‘even though these things have been dissociated in this way, it is necessary to know that all things are in no way less or more, because it is impossible that they be more than all, but all things are always equal’.³⁷ Should any one doubt about whom Plotinus actually had in mind while writing this, it would be instructive to read his passage further at that very point: in that realm, ‘each of them is great, because even the small is great (ἕκαστον γὰρ αὐτῶν μέγα, ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ μικρὸν μέγα); the sun there is all the stars, and each star is the sun and all the others’ (καὶ ἥλιος ἐκεῖ πάντα ἄστρα, καὶ ἕκαστον ἥλιος αὖ καὶ πάντα, then, οὐκ ἐπ᾿ ἀλλοτρίας οἷον γῆς). Was it not Anaxagoras who spoke of another realm in which ‘there is also a sun and a moon and other heavenly bodies, just as with us’ (καὶ ἠέλιόν τε αὐτοῖσιν εἶναι καὶ σελήνην καὶ τὰ ἄλλα, ὥσπερ παρ᾿ ἡμῖν)?³⁸ But Plotinus goes on as if he meant to make his Anaxagorean readings plain: in that realm, everything is a different kind of being, yet this is so because ‘a different kind of being stands out in each, but in each all are manifest’ (ἐξέχει δ᾿ ἐν ἑκάστῳ ἄλλο, ἐμφαίνει δὲ καὶ πάντα). What were Anaxagoras’ own words? They were, “Everything is in everything, but each being is characterized by that which predominates” (καὶ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι, κατὰ δὲ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν χαρακτηρίζεσθαι).³⁹ Plotinus saw each thing’s specific identity in that which ἐξέχει, whereas Anaxagoras wrote ἐπικρατεῖ along with the expression ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν in order to say exactly the same thing. Therefore, whereas Plotinus has it that ‘all things are everywhere and each and every one is all’ (πανταχοῦ πάντα καὶ πᾶν πᾶν καὶ ἕκαστον πᾶν), Anaxagoras had written that ‘everything is in everything, and there is not a single thing which exists apart from all others’ (οὕτως ἂν εἴη ἐν παντὶ πάντα· οὐδὲ χωρὶς

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 166 (quoting Throphrastus, who quoted Anaxagoras while not un derstanding the proposition): ἔπειτα τὸ διὰ τοῦτο λέγειν εἶναι πάντα ἐν παντί. Cf. Simplicius ex plaining this in op. cit. p. 170, and then, op. cit. p. 460: καὶ ἑκάστην ὁμοιομέρειαν ὁμοίως τῷ ὅλῳ πάντα ἔχουσαν ἐνυπάρχοντα. Also, pp. 162; 169 75; 461. commCael, p. 608: [Anaxagoras] πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἔλεγε μεμῖχθαι. Likewise, op. cit. p. 632.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 157 & 175 & 176 (quoting Anaxagoras): οὐδὲ διακρίνεται οὐδὲ ἀποκρίνεται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 156 (quoting Anaxagoras): τούτων δὲ οὕτω διακεκριμένων γινώ σκειν χρή, ὅτι πάντα οὐδὲν ἐλάσσω ἐστὶν οὐδὲ πλείω· οὐ γὰρ ἀνυστὸν πάντων πλείω εἶναι, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἴσα ἀεί.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 35 (quoting Anaxagoras).  Simplicius, commCael, p. 632 and commPhys, pp. 27; 155; 173 (quoting Anaxagoras).

708

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

ἔστιν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ πάντα παντὸς μοῖραν μετέχει).⁴⁰ Also, ‘it is right to think that all things are present in the whole’ (ἐν τῷ σύμπαντι χρὴ δοκεῖν ἐνεῖναι πάντα χρήματα).⁴¹ Likewise, ‘everything is in everything, and there is not a single thing which exists apart from all others’ (οὕτως ἂν εἴη ἐν παντὶ πάντα· οὐδὲ χωρὶς ἔστιν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ πάντα παντὸς μοῖραν μετέχει).⁴² To Plotinus, ‘a different kind of being stands out in each thing, yet in each thing all are manifest’ (ἐξέχει δ᾿ ἐν ἑκάστῳ ἄλλο, ἐμφαίνει δὲ καὶ πάντα). Anaxagoras had written that ‘nothing else is like anything else, but each one is and was most manifestly those things which are most in’ (ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτῳ πλεῖστα ἔνι, ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν).⁴³ Plotinus says that ‘each of those things is great, because even the small is great’ (ἕκαστον γὰρ αὐτῶν μέγα, ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ μικρὸν μέγα) and ‘the sun there is all the stars, and each star is the sun and all the others’ (καὶ ἥλιος ἐκεῖ πάντα ἄστρα, καὶ ἕκαστον ἥλιος αὖ καὶ πάντα). Anaxagoras had written that ‘the large is equal to the small in extent, but in relation to itself each thing is both large and small, and thus all things are in everything’ (καὶ ἴσον ἐστὶ τῷ σμικρῷ πλῆθος, πρὸς ἑαυτὸ δὲ ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ μέγα καὶ σμικρόν and ἴσαι μοῖραι εἰσὶ τοῦ τε μεγάλου καὶ τοῦ σμικροῦ πλῆθος, καὶ οὕτως ἂν εἴη ἐν παντὶ πάντα).⁴⁴ Likewise, ‘all things are in no way less or more, for it is impossible that they be more than all, but all things are always equal’ (πάντα οὐδὲν ἐλάσσω ἐστὶν οὐδὲ πλείω, οὐ γὰρ ἀνυστὸν πάντων πλείω εἶναι, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἴσα ἀεί).⁴⁵ By the same token, ‘just as in the beginning, now, too, all things are together; and in all things there are many things present, equal in number, both in the greater and in the lesser of the things being separated off’ (ὅπωσπερ ἀρχὴν εἶναι καὶ νῦν πάντα ὁμοῦ. ἐν πᾶσι δὲ πολλὰ ἔνεστι καὶ τῶν ἀποκρινομένων ἴσα πλῆθος ἐν τοῖς μείζοσί τε καὶ ἐλάσσοσι).⁴⁶ Also, ‘the other things have a share of everything … for there is a share of everything in everything (τὰ μὲν ἄλλα παντὸς μοῖραν μετέχει … ἐν παντὶ γὰρ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστιν) and ‘the other things have a share of everything … there are many shares of many things, nothing is completely separated off or dissociated one from another except the Mind’ (μοῖραι

      

Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 164. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 608; commPhys, pp. 34; 35. Plotinus, Enneades, V.8.3. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 164. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 27; 157; 165. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 164. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 156. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 164.

Plotinus

709

δὲ πολλαὶ πολλῶν εἰσι. παντάπασι δὲ οὐδὲν ἀποκρίνεται οὐδὲ διακρίνεται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου πλὴν νοῦ).⁴⁷ In view of this, when Anaxagoras spoke of a sun shining in another earth (καὶ ἠέλιόν τε αὐτοῖσιν εἶναι),⁴⁸ and Simplicius interpreted it as denoting the realm of the principles/logoi, all scholars were quick to dismiss this as an attempt by Simplicius to represent Anaxagoras as a Neoplatonist. But the fact is that it was Plotinus who entertained an idea of Anaxagoras. This means that the Whole is implicitly present in all of its parts, and each part is potentially the Whole,⁴⁹ while any part is distinctly what it is, and does not lose its own specific identity because of everything being in everything. Therefore, the Whole is a functioning totality, in which every part implicates the Whole, and the Whole allots to every part its specific activity. However, there is more to go in this amazing adumbration of the intelligible realm by Plotinus, which continues through that section (i. e. V.8.4). Although ostensibly it gives the impression of a visionary experience of Plotinus himself, this is a reproduction from Anaxagoras, in fact in not too different terms. The ensuing text is astounding indeed, because Plotinus speaks of motion in the realm of the Intellect, that is, in a world of sheer rest. But it was Anaxagoras who made motion coeval with the distinction itself of his principles. Once again, there is no way for Plotinus’ proposition to make sense, unless in an Anaxagorean context, which Plotinus makes no effort to obscure: he speaks of ‘pure motion’ (κίνησις καθαρά) existing in that realm, while adding that the Mover who causes this motion is sheer different from what is moved (οὐ γὰρ συγχεῖ αὐτὴν ἰοῦσαν ὃ κινεῖ ἕτερον αὐτῆς ὑπάρχον), only to remind us of the Anaxagorean ‘unmixed’ Mind. Actually, he speaks of Νοῦς (καὶ γὰρ τὸ ὑποκείμενον νοῦς καὶ αὐτὸς νοῦς), which is currently rendered either Mind or Intellect, depending on whether discussion is about Anaxagoras or Plotinus. In that realm, Plotinus sees both rest and motion, adding that these two conditions are not mixed with one another (καὶ ἡ στάσις οὐ παρακινουμένη, ὅτι μὴ μέμικται τῷ μὴ στασίμῳ). There is also another stunning point, which shows that Plotinus’ debts were not only Peripatetic and Stoic, as Porphyry wrote, but also Anaxagorean. As discussed in chapter 1, the notion of Indeterminate Dyad (ἀόριστος δυάς) was Pythagorean,⁵⁰ and we learn only from Aristotle that Plato had taken it up. Plotinus considered this for his part, too; however, once again, he adumbrated the Intel-

 Anaxagoras, loc. cit.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 609; commPhys, pp. 35; 157.  Cf. Origen applying this to the Logos who is present in all individual rational creatures, as much as is he present both in transcendence and in the entire universe. COT, pp. 165 72.  See pp. 701; 138; 196; 225; 403; 605; 708 10; 1052; 1383; 1413.

710

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

lect/Mind not only as a totality of ‘forms’, but also as one of logoi. He uses the characteristic Anaxagorean example of ‘seed’, arguing that, in ‘seeds’, it is the unseen (τὸ μὴ ὁρώμενον), not moisture, which is the honourable one (τὸ τίμιον), and this ‘unseen’ is ‘number and logos’ (ἀριθμὸς καὶ λόγος). Furthermore, he adumbrates the timeless formation of the dyad from oneness (of the Intellect from the One) by means of the Pythagorean notion of Indeterminate Dyad (ἀόριστος δυάς) along with the Anaxagorean notion of principles and Mind. Thus, the Dyad which comes out of the oneness, gives rise to ‘number’ (i. e. to multiplicity and quantity) and comprises ‘logoi and Nous’ (ὁ οὖν ἐκεῖ λεγόμενος ἀριθμὸς καὶ ἡ δυὰς λόγοι καὶ νοῦς). Nevertheless, ‘the dyad is indefinite only once it is envisaged as a sort of substratum’ (ἀλλὰ ἀόριστος μὲν ἡ δυὰς τῷ οἷον ὑποκειμένῳ λαμβανομένη).⁵¹ In other words, only if the Nous and the logoi are envisioned as being two, although they are not two, but (to put it in Anaxagorean terms, as Aristotle also did) there is only the Mind and the potentialities which are to develop to actualities. Plotinus realized that when Anaxagoras wrote that the Mind is unmixed with everything and yet present in the perceptible reality (e. g. in animate beings), this was not a contradiction: for this Nous is ontologically prior to everything (πρὸ πάντων ἓν εἶναι) from which it follows that he ‘fills everything’ (πάντα πληροῖ), he is present both everywhere and nowhere (πανταχοῦ καὶ οὐδαμοῦ), which means that the Mind is in all things, yet he is not himself all things: the Mind is not the things which he creates and fills (οὐκ εἶναι τὰ πάντα, ἃ ποιεῖ).⁵² Porphyry endorsed the proposition of ‘God’ being both ‘everywhere and nowhere’ and ‘becoming everything’; actually, he argued that ‘God and Mind’ is everywhere because he is nowhere.⁵³ Besides, he recognized that philosophers ‘of old’ (οἱ παλαιοί)⁵⁴ had formed the notion of a single God who is incorporeal, who becomes everything and he is everywhere and yet he is nowhere, and he is himself nothing of the things he gives rise to.⁵⁵ We know for sure that Plotinus explicitly read the idea of a single incorporeal God in Anaxagoras, whom he mentions by name.⁵⁶ Athenaeus informs us that it was ‘a very ancient’ axiom  Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.5. Likewise, op. cit. V.4.2: Διὸ καὶ εἴρηται· ἐκ τῆς ἀορίστου δυάδος καὶ τοῦ ἑνὸς τὰ εἴδη καὶ οἱ ἀριθμοί· τοῦτο γὰρ ὁ νοῦς.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.9.4; cf. VI.4.11. Nevertheless, following Aristotle (De Anima, 431b15 17, and ultimately Parmenides), normally he identified Nous with its objects of thought: I.8.2; III.3.3; III.3.5; III.8.8; V.1.4; et passim. See infra, pp. 359; 710.  Porphyry, Sentantiae, 31: Ὁ θεὸς πανταχοῦ ὅτι οὐδαμοῦ, καὶ ὁ νοῦς πανταχοῦ ὅτι οὐδαμοῦ.  Porphyry, op. cit. 38.  Porphyry, op. cit. 40: τοῦ ὄντος παρόντος πανταχοῦ καὶ πάλιν ὄντος οὐδαμοῦ. Cf. πανταχοῦ καὶ οὐδαμοῦ in reference to God, used by Philo, De Confusione Linguarum, 136; 138.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9, discussed infra, p. 741.

Plotinus

711

that ‘everywhere and nowhere is the same’ (ταὐτὸν οὐδαμοῦ καὶ πανταχοῦ).⁵⁷ However, Porphyry went a step further and attributed this proprerty not only to God, but also to any incorporeal entity, such as the creative (Anaxagorean) logoi.⁵⁸ Hence, whereas Plotinus made an Anaxagorean analysis by reference to Nous/Mind/Intellect, Porphyry went two steps further: one, to be ‘everywhere, hence nowhere’ applies not only to Deity proper (no matter how this is described at different points), but also to the principles/logoi by means of which God generates things and administers all of the universe; secondly, these logoi exist everywhere in the universe (not in the divine realm alone), but their existential status is different, according to their specific function and manifestation. We have seen that Porphyry set forth this fundamental proposition by elaborating on Anaxagoras’ ‘everything is in everything’,⁵⁹ and this was indeed both a step beyond Plotinus and a faithful revisitation of Anaxagoras. The point was this: as sublime as Plotinus’ description of the intelligible realm was, those which he refers to through the term ‘everything’ (πάντα) do not exist only there, namely, in the Intellect: instead, they exist in every tier of being down to the lowest material manifestation of reality. Plotinus’ expression πανταχοῦ πάντα is equivalent with Anaxagoras’ τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι, and Porphyry uses either of these in order to make the same analyses, but the important point is that to say, ‘everything is everywhere’ (πανταχοῦ μὲν πάντα λέγοντες) was not enough; one should add that to exist everywhere means that different modes of existence prevail (ἐπικρατεῖν δὲ ἄλλο ἐν ἄλλοις ἰδίωμα), namely, they appear as ‘either essence, or as mind, or as life’, which means that the activity of anyone of the sundry incorporeal forces (or, ‘gods’) is different and it takes place through different means (καὶ τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἄλλων εἶναι ἄλλην καὶ δι᾿ ἄλλων μέσων).⁶⁰ Proclus read this in ‘Porphyry and Theodore, who proposed it out of their own’ (οἰκείας ὑποθέσεις περαίνοντες).⁶¹ This was exactly what Porphyry meant when he wrote that ‘cer-

 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 10.78, and Deipnosophistae (epitome), p. 46.  Porphyry, op. cit. 27: οὐδὲ τοπικῶς διέρχεται τὸ ἀσώματον ὅπου βούλεται … τόπῳ ὂν παντα χοῦ καὶ οὐδαμοῦ. Likewise, commTim, Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 396: οἱ γὰρ λόγοι ταῦτα γεννῶσιν, οὗτοι δὲ ἄογκοι πανταχοῦ ὄντες.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10.  Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 79, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 65.  Porphyry, loc. cit. apud Proclus, loc. cit. Damascius wrote that this was an idea expounded by Porphyry and Iamblichus, and points out partial dissent by Proclus. Damascius, In Philebum, 130: Ἄρα οὖν ὅσα ἐν τοῖς ὅλοις καὶ ἐν ἡμῖν ἢ ὅσα ἐν ἡμῖν καὶ ἐν τοῖς ὅλοις; πῶς οὖν τὰ μὲν ὅλα, τὰ δὲ μέρη; ὁ μὲν οὖν Πορφύριος καὶ Ἰάμβλιχος ὁμόσε τῷ λόγῳ χωροῦσιν πάντα εἶναι παν ταχοῦ λέγοντες, ἄλλως μέντοι καὶ ἄλλως· ὁ δὲ Πρόκλος τὰ μὲν ὅσα συμπληροῖ τὸ εἶδος, οἷον τὰς

712

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

tainly everything is in everything, but in a manner befitting the essence of each reality: in the mind [they exist] intellectually; in the soul, rationally; in plants, spermatically; in [inanimate] bodies, as reproduced images; but in the Beyond, [they exist] in a manner which is both indescribable by means of concepts, and above being’.⁶² Therefore, it was Porphyry writing after Anaxagoras, not after Plotinus, that later masters such as Damascius and Simplicius reproduced this critical point: while endorsing the proposition everything is in everything, or everything is everywhere, Damascius emphasized that ‘they do not exist everywhere in the same way’.⁶³ Furthermore, he explained that the logoi exist either as objects of cognition or as fully active agents.⁶⁴ More importantly, Anaxagoras’ proposition was that all principles/logoi are equal (ἀλλὰ πάντα ἴσα ἀεί),⁶⁵ and Damascius repeats this as one of his own almost to the letter: “they are all equal of necessity” (ἴσα δὲ ἐξ ἀνάγκης τὰ πάντα τοῖς πᾶσιν).⁶⁶ Simplicius likewise attributed these ideas to Porphyry,⁶⁷ and identified Anaxagoras as the source of them: following quotations from the book of Anaxagoras, he concludes that the principles exist differently in different tiers of being.⁶⁸ Certainly, the Plotinian Intellect is not the Anaxagorean Mind, since, to Plotinus, the Nous is identified with its ‘content’, it is not a principle standing apart

ἰδιότητας, ἄνωθεν ἥκειν, τὰ δὲ τῇ ὑφέσει συνεισιόντα ἢ παρυφιστάμενα μόνων εἶναι τῶν μερικῶν.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10: Πάντα μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ οἰκείως τῇ ἑκάστου οὐσίᾳ· ἐν νῷ μὲν γὰρ νοερῶς, ἐν ψυχῇ δὲ λογικῶς, ἐν δὲ τοῖς φυτοῖς σπερματικῶς, ἐν δὲ σώμασιν εἰδωλικῶς, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐπέκεινα ἀνεννοήτως τε καὶ ὑπερουσίως. Cf. Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.8 (13 24), and infra, chap ter 13, pp. 1298 1307.  Damascius, Princ, p. 235: Πῶς δὲ πάντα φαμὲν πανταχοῦ, εἰ καὶ ἄλλως καὶ ἄλλως; … Πῶς οὖν ἄλλα ἀλλαχοῦ λέγομεν ἐκφαίνεσθαι κατὰ τὴν ὕπαρξιν; ὅπου γὰρ ἕκαστον παρέχεται πᾶσιν εὔ καιρον τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἐνέργειαν, ἐνταῦθά που τὴν οἰκείαν φύσιν διακρίνει ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων· … οὐ γὰρ πανταχοῦ πάντα ὡσαύτως, ἀλλ᾿ ὅπου μὲν ἡνωμένα, ὅπου δὲ διακρινόμενα, πάντα δὲ ὅμως ἐν παντὶ κόσμῳ, τῷ τε νοητῷ (πάντα ἐστὶ γάρ, ἀλλὰ νοητῶς, φησὶ τὸ λόγιον), καὶ ἐν τῷ αἰσθητῷ, καὶ δῆλον ὅτι ὃ ἐν τοῖς μέσοις. The term τὸ λόγιον means that Porphyry’s proposition originated in the Chaldean mindset.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 159: Ἔτι δὲ πέμπτον καὶ ὧδε ῥητέον ὅτι ὡς ἐν τῷ νῷ, οὕτω καὶ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ πάντα εἰδητικῶς ὑφέστηκεν· εἰ γὰρ καὶ πάντα πανταχοῦ, ἀλλ᾿ οἰκείως ἐν ἑκάστοις, ὅπου μὲν οὐσιωδῶς, ὅπου δὲ πάντα εἰδητικῶς.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 156.  Damascius, Princ, p. 235.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 11.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 35: ἄλλως μὲν πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι φησὶ κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν, ἄλλως δὲ κατὰ τὴν νοερὰν συνουσίωσιν καὶ ἄλλως κατὰ τὴν αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν.

Plotinus

713

from this content.⁶⁹ Nevertheless, once the ‘content’ of the Mind is considered, it is hard to see any substantial difference from the ontology and function of the Anaxagorean principles, which though are ‘unmixed’ with the Mind. Nevertheless, the analysis of Plotinus runs in Anaxagorean logic: he explains that it is also possible to understand what the Intellect is like (εἰδέναι οἷον ἐστὶ νοῦς) by taking examples from the intellectual realm, which evince that the Intellect’s diversity should be understood in terms of this being a monad (ὡς οὐκ ἀνέχεται οἷον κατὰ μονάδα μὴ ἄλλος εἶναι). Taking as example a plant or an animal, he describes their existence and growth by means of the term logos being understood as a generative, forming, and cohesive force (λόγον εἴτε φυτοῦ εἴτε ζῴου), not merely scientific description, as Aristotle could have had it. His point is that, although the Intellect is oneness, it becomes also multiplicity by means of its functioning presence in many things, such as plants and animals. The Intellect as λόγος becomes many λόγοι, thus producing the variety and multiplicity of things and phenomena in the material universe (τοῦ λόγου πάντα γενομένου εἰς τὸ πανταχοῦ τῆς ὕλης ἐμπεσόντα μηδὲν αὐτῆς ἐᾶσαι τὸ αὐτὸ εἶναι). A face is not one mass; there are nose and eyes; and in turn, the nose is not a unity, but it has specific characteristics that conspire to make it a nose. The Intellect/Mind is oneness, but considering the manifestations of its function, it is not one. This is how ‘infinity’ in the Intellect should be understood (καὶ τὸ ἄπειρον οὕτως ἐν νῷ), namely, as one/many, as a multiple unity, and yet not as one lump (οὐχ ὡς ὄγκος εἷς), as a house is, but as a rational forming principle: this is a Logos which is multiple in itself (ὡς λόγος πολὺς ἐν αὐτῷ); it includes within itself one intellectual design, it contains in outline all outlines, all patterns. Everything is within it, all the powers and intellections are there; the division is not determined by a boundary, but it goes ever inward; this content is adumbrated as the living universe which holds the natural forms of the living creatures in itself, from the greatest to the least, down to the minutest powers where there is a halt at the individual form. Division is not confusion of items, even though this is oneness in unity (ἡ δὲ διαίρεσις ἔγκειται οὐ συγκεχυμένων, καίτοι εἰς ἓν ὄντων); this is what is known as Love, certainly not the love known here, which is only a copy, and it prevails among things in separation; that authentic Love consists in all things being a unity and never essentially discriminate.⁷⁰

 Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. IV.8.3 4; V.1.4. See supra, p. 70, note 52.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.7.14 (the same he says about Beauty in V.8.4). There is no need to point out the similarities with Origen’s notion of the Logos. Mere reading of his analyses canvassed in chapter 11 makes it all too evident that Plotinus and Origen ‘shared the same education’ under Ammonius Saccas, as Proclus put it.

714

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

The echo of Empedoclean function is plain, but the source of this interplay of two processes (Progress and Return) is one source of dynamic function. To Anaxagoras, this dynamic source of action is the Mind acting through the principles (which Plotinus calls also logoi, as above). Plotinus, for his part, speaks of ‘forms being present everywhere’ (παρῆν μέν τι παντί);⁷¹ but when he comes to explaining ‘how’ is a form ‘present’ (πάρεστιν οὖν πῶς;), he explains that it is endowed with a ‘power which is always the same and infinitely endless in depth’ (ἀεὶ ἔχει δύναμιν τὴν αὐτὴν βυσσόθεν ἄπειρον). This makes it ‘of a nature’ which is inexhaustible, indeed ‘unresting and unwearied and in no way wanting in any respect’ (ἀένναον ἐν αὐτῇ ἀπειρίαν, φύσιν ἀκάματον καὶ ἄτρυτον καὶ οὐδαμῇ ἐλλείπουσαν ἐν αὐτῇ).⁷² This is not a Platonic pattern, even though Plotinus struggled to show that the Platonic Ideas are not simply static archetypes, as Aristotle argued,⁷³ but these ‘Ideas’ are poietic causes, and this is the essence of their being (ὥστε καὶ μετὰ τῆς οὐσίας ἑκάστης ἡ δύναμις): for there can be neither substances without activity, nor activity without substance (καίτοι οὐχ οἷον τε, ὥσπερ οὐσίαν ἄνευ δυνάμεως, οὕτως οὐδὲ δύναμιν ἄνευ οὐσίας).⁷⁴ But this is a description of the Anaxagorean principles, which could apply neither to Plato nor to Aristotle: for Plato’s Ideas are transcendent self-subsistent beings, but not generative causes; and Aristotle’s ‘forms’ are active forces but not self-subsistent ones, and yet standing apart from the matter which they act upon. Plotinus speaks about an one/many Intellect/Logos ‘containing an outline of outlines within itself, as well as figurations and powers and processes of thought’ (περιγραφὰς καὶ σχηματισμοὺς αὖ ἐντὸς καὶ δυνάμεις καὶ νοήσεις),⁷⁵ which is precisely what Origen called ‘various objects of contemplation’ (ποικίλα θεωρήματα)⁷⁶ and typoi (τύποι) and logoi (λόγοι),⁷⁷ also pointing out that the

 Plotinus, op. cit. VI.5.11.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.5.12.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 991b4.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.4.9.  Plotinus, loc. cit. For νοήσεις, see also, op. cit. VI.7.9.  Origen, commJohn, I.34.244: Εἰ δέ τις οἷος τέ ἐστιν ἀσώματον ὑπόστασιν ποικίλων θεωρημάτων περιεχόντων τοὺς τῶν ὅλων λόγους ζῶσαν καὶ οἱονεὶ ἔμψυχον ἐπινοεῖν, εἴσεται τὴν ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν κτίσιν σοφίαν τοῦ θεοῦ. Likewise, frJohn, 87 & 139: πρὸς τὴν σχολὴν τῶν θεωρημάτων τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου. De Oratione, 25.2; selPs, PG.12.1109.6; Scholia in Canticum Cantico rum, PG.17.269.33.  Origen, commJohn, I.19.15.

Plotinus

715

Logos is ‘one’ while containing a multiplicity in his Body.⁷⁸ Despite substantial differences from Plotinus, it is all too evident that such statements were made upon the time when Origen had began to write his commentary on John, and his ‘common education’ with Plotinus was put to use.⁷⁹ Certainly, eventually they formed two different philosophies, but this was so because Origen remained a faithful student of Anaxagoras to the end, whereas Plotinus struggled as much as possible to project his own ideas to Plato and convince that he drew his arguments from his alleged kindred spirit. However, adumbration of the intelligible realm as above shows that Origen did not rest content with making this a set of idle Ideas to be participated in, but he saw it as a totality of dynamic poietic and interactive logoi, and this notion is not Platonic: it is Anaxagorean, and, for that matter, he dismissed any notion of any obscure ‘One’ ontologically standing above the Mind. Although Proclus censured Origen severely on this, and branded him an anti-Platonist,⁸⁰ Origen maintained staunchly that Plotinus’ ontological classification of One and Nous was untenable, and it appears that this came to be evident to Damascius who expressed severe reservations about this classification.⁸¹ The oneness of which Plotinus speaks is not Plato’s ‘communion of genera’,⁸² since Plotinus plainly states that the oneness/multiplicity is about ‘forces and intelligences’ (δυνάμεις καὶ νοήσεις) owing their existence to the Mind and its Logos. Neither is this about the Stoic notion of the organic unity of the entire world. In fact, it is Anaxagoras’ ideas that both Plato and the Stoics employed, each school accommodating them to its own peculiar premisses. It is not easy to determine Porphyry’s attitude on this. If a certain interpretation (but only an interpretation) by his commentator Arethas of Caesarea were to be taken seriously, it would seem that Porphyry did not dispute the Platonic proposition.⁸³ The tacit transformation of Plato on this appears with Iamblichus, who spoke of ‘communion of logoi’: although he saw that the Platonic notion of ‘participation’ (μέθεξις) was untenable and granted communion of the incorporeal ‘divine substances and forces’ (θείων οὐσιῶν καὶ δυνάμεων), he did not de Origen, op. cit. V.5.1 (& Philocalia, 5.4): Ὁ πᾶς δὴ τοῦ θεοῦ λόγος ὁ ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν οὐ πολυλογία ἐστίν· οὐ γὰρ λόγοι· λόγος γὰρ εἷς συνεστὼς ἐκ πλείονων θεωρημάτων, ὧν ἕκαστον θεώρημα μέρος ἐστὶ τοῦ ὅλου λόγου.  Cf. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31: Ὠριγένην τὸν τῷ Πλωτίνῳ τῆς αὐτῆς μετασχόντα παιδείας.  Proclus, loc. cit.  See this discussed infra, pp. 820 3.  Plato, Sophista, 257a: ἔχει κοινωνίαν ἀλλήλοις ἡ τῶν γενῶν φύσις.  Arethas of Caesarea believed he saw the notion in Porphyry’s Isagoge, p. 5. Scholia in Por phyrii Isagogen, 71: καὶ γὰρ νῦν διδάσκει ὅτι τὰ γένη τὰ γενικώτατα καὶ τὰ εἴδη τὰ εἰδικώτατα κοινωνίαν ἔχει πρὸς ἑαυτά.

716

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

termine precisely how an incorporeal substance gives rise to a corporeal being; actually, he proposed different alternatives, without opting for anyone of them.⁸⁴ Nevertheless, he was convinced that there must be a logos which constitutes the bond between incorporeal substances and the material objects they produce.⁸⁵ His point of departure was not actually Anaxagoras: the Pythagoreans had determined a logos in mathematical terms and posited ‘communion’ between them all, but they associated the notion not only with mathematics, but also with ‘nature’ and ‘moral teaching’.⁸⁶ Again, however, Iamblichus appears as not having a clear grasp of how exactly did the Pythagoreans conceive of the relation between incorporeal cause and corporeal effect.⁸⁷ This was probably the reason why he proceeded with seeing the logoi not simply in the pure mathematical sense of a harmonious relation or analogy, but in the wider one which was introduced by Anaxagoras. Thus, he moved from the ‘communion of [the Pythagorean mathematical] logoi’ to the ‘communion of natural logoi’, which we learn from Proclus reporting the views of Iamblichus, who described formation of the human body as ‘a creative coherence and union of logoi communicating with each other’.⁸⁸ Iamblichus did not seek to refute Plato’s ‘communion of genera’ explicitly; instead, he opted for either making reference to the Pythagoreans as above (which is what the Academy normally did with and after Xenocrates), or taking the view that all genera contribute to the appearance of a certain reality (ἀπὸ πάντων ὅσα ποτέ ἐστιν ἐν τῷ ὄντως ὄντι καὶ τῷ νῷ γένη), and that genera cause ‘communion of perceptible reality with each other’ (κοινωνίαν αὐτῶν πρὸς ἄλληλα ἀπεργάζεται).⁸⁹ This makes the universe a harmonious whole, in which lower realities proceed

 Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 5.19. Hence, he wavers between different solutions: κοινωνίαν αὐ ταῖς παρέχουσι πρὸς ἀλλήλας, ἢ κατὰ σύνδεσμον ἕνα ἀδιαίρετον, ἢ κατὰ μετάδοσιν τῶν μειζό νων ἄφθονον, ἢ κατὰ ὑποδοχὴν τῶν ἐλαττόνων ἀκώλυτον, ἢ κατὰ σύνδετον ἀμφοῖν ὁμόνοιαν.  Iamblichus, op. cit. 1.9: εἰ γὰρ οὐδείς ἐστι λόγος οὐδὲ σχέσις συμμετρίας οὐδὲ οὐσίας τις κοι νωνία οὐδὲ κατὰ δύναμιν ἤ τινα ἐνέργειαν συμπλοκὴ πρὸς τὸ διακοσμοῦν τοῦ διακοσμουμένου.  Iamblichus, De Communi Mathematica Scientia, 88: οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ οἵ γε Πυθαγόρειοι ἔτι μᾶλ λον τὴν κοινωνίαν ταύτην συνάπτουσιν ἀδιαίρετον, πολλὰ μὲν περὶ τῶν νοητῶν εἰδῶν διὰ τῶν μαθημάτων παραδιδόντες, πολλὰ δὲ περὶ τῆς φύσεως, πολλὰ δὲ καὶ περὶ τῶν ἠθῶν μαθηματικῶς ἀναδιδάσκοντες.  Iamblichus, op. cit. 61: τὰς δὲ ἀναφορὰς ἐποιοῦντο τῶν μαθημάτων ἐπὶ τὰ ὄντα ἢ κατὰ κοι νωνίαν τῶν αὐτῶν λόγων, ἢ κατὰ ἔμφασίν τινα ἀμυδράν, ἢ κατὰ ὁμοιότητα ἐγγὺς πλησιάζουσαν ἢ πόρρωθεν ἀφεστηκυῖαν, ἢ κατὰ εἰδώλων τινὰ ἀπεικασίαν, ἢ κατ᾿ αἰτίαν προηγουμένην ὡς ἐν παραδείγματι, ἢ κατ᾿ ἄλλον τρόπον.  Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 323: ὁ δὲ Ἰάμβλιχος τὴν τῶν φυσικῶν λόγων κοινωνίαν, ὥσπερ τὴν σύντηξιν αὐτῶν τὴν δημιουργικὴν συνοχὴν καὶ ἕνωσιν.  Iamblichus, De Communi Mathematica Scientia, 11.

Plotinus

717

from higher ones and ‘genera contribute to making an indivisible communion of everything with everything complete’ (καὶ ποιεῖ τῶν ὅλων τὴν κοινωνίαν εἶναι ἀδιαίρετον).⁹⁰ For all this, the fact remains that nowhere did Iamblichus employ Plato’s notion of ‘communion of genera’ themselves. Proclus entertained Plato’s notion of ‘communion of genera’ (κοινωνία γενῶν) sparingly.⁹¹ Perhaps it was admiration for Iamblichus that impelled him move along the latter’s line and dare speak of ‘communion of logoi’ (κοινωνία τῶν λόγων), although he restricted such a usage either to mathematics in a Pythagorean sense, or to the ‘logoi of the soul’.⁹² Nevertheless, during the same period, Proclus’ fellow-student Hermias of Alexandria took the decisive step and spoke of ‘communion of seeds and of natural logoi’.⁹³ This is neither Pyrhagorean nor Platonic (although, at that point, Hermias commented on Plato’s Phaedrus): it is plainly the Anaxagorean notion of all principles being both everywhere and all in all. Strange though it may appear, clear endorsement of Plato’s notion appears with an Aristotelian commentator, namely, Alexander of Aphrodisias, who believed that he saw this idea in Aristotle.⁹⁴ Naturally, then, Neoplatonist commentators of Aristotle in the sixth century, who had been instructed by Ammonius of Alexandria that there is harmony between the two great predecessors of the Classical age, comfortably spoke of ‘communion of genera’ (κοινωνία γενῶν) while commenting on Aristotle. Actually, Asclepius of Tralles did so by paraphrasing the foregoing analysis by Alexander of Aphrodisias.⁹⁵ Anaxagoras taught that reality is not severed into physical and divine one, since the Mind, ‘whether the greater or the smaller, is the same’ (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς  Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 1.5.  Proclus, commRep, v. 1, p. 220; Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 55.  Cf. Proclus, commRep, v. 2, p. 25; commEucl, pp. 7; 130; commTim, v. 1, p. 25: φυσικὰ δὲ τὸ τὴν ἀντίδοσιν τῶν λόγων εἰκόνα φέρειν τῆς ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς ἔργοις κοινωνίας τῶν δυνάμεων καὶ ἀμοιβῆς. Op. cit. v. 2, p. 194 (communion of logoi in the soul): ὁμοῦ δὲ τὴν εἰς ταὐτὸ συνιοῦσαν κοινωνίαν τῶν λόγων παράγων. Also, v. 2, pp. 194; 203 (ἡ κοινωνία δείκνυται τῶν ψυχικῶν λόγων) and p. 207.  Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 96: τῶν σπερμάτων καὶ τῶν φυσικῶν λόγων γίνεταί τις κοινωνία.  Aristotle’s commentators saw this idea in his philosophy, too. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias (comm. on Aristotle, Metaphysica, 992a10), commMetaph, p. 119: ταῦτα γὰρ τῶν διαφερόντων γενῶν κοινωνίαν ἔχει πρὸς ἄλληλα ὅσα ἐστὶν ὑπ᾿ ἄλληλα.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 75: τὴν αὐτὴν κοινωνίαν καὶ συνέχειαν τῶν γενῶν διατείνει, πάντα τοῖς ἀλύτοις δεσμοῖς τῆς ὁμοιότητος τὰ ὅλα συμπεραίνουσα. Op. cit. p. 290: ἕκαστον γὰρ τῶν γενῶν ἰδίαν ἔχει τῆς κοινωνίας τὴν φύσιν, καὶ τὰ μὲν κατ᾿ οὐσίαν κοινωνοῦντα ταὐτό τητι συνδέδεται, διότι τὸ αὐτὸ γίνεται. Asclepius of Tralles (by and large, copying from Alexand er), commMetaph, p. 102: ταῦτα γὰρ τῶν διαφερόντων γενῶν ἃ κοινωνίαν ἔχει πρὸς ἄλληλα.

718

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων)⁹⁶ and he gives rise to everything alike, no matter how small or great. A human being is part of this reality; there is no distinction between a part which is natural and another which is divine and comes from outside, as it happened with Aristotle’s ‘mind coming from without’ (θύραθεν νοῦς): intellectual activity is simply a function stemming from a specific concurrence of principles and no distinction between human mind and soul makes sense, since such a distinction is not necessary. In Plotinus, there is no sharp line being drawn between soul and mind.⁹⁷ When he spoke of a totality of dynamic generative and interactive logoi, this was no different from the Anaxagorean co-existence of all things. Plotinus went further with considering the consequences of this notion to the human condition: since the totality of all things exists everywhere, it also exists within us; if then one wishes to know reality, one should primarily look and ponder within oneself. A truly good and wise man is already orientated to that which is one, and to that kind of quietness which is consisted not only of the things that are outside him, but also it stems from peace existing within himself (ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς αὑτόν, καὶ πάντα εἴσω).⁹⁸ There is a radical approach to this, which is common to both Origen and Plotinus, and there is good reason to assume that the source of it was their common teacher Ammonius. The quest for virtue was as old as Greek philosophy itself, and more so since Plato and Aristotle. To Plato, virtue stems from knowledge: to be evil means to be ignorant, because the soul is entrapped in the material body, which is its ‘grave’ (καὶ τὸ μὲν σῶμα ἔστιν ἡμῖν σῆμα).⁹⁹ Hence, ‘no one is purposely wicked’ (κακὸς μὲν γὰρ ἑκὼν οὐδείς), ‘but the wicked man becomes wicked by reason of some evil condition of body and unskilled nurture’.¹⁰⁰ Therefore, the way to virtue is knowledge. Origen turned this model upside down: it is not knowledge that leads to virtue, but virtue procures knowledge. An evil person is blind because of wickedness, and the only way to be enlightened is to pursue a virtuous life; then, knowledge will arise as a result. I have maintained that this is one of the several points of Origen’s anti-Platonism,¹⁰¹ no matter how my theory, which I have been advancing since 1986, is embarrassing to the Platonism-mongers in relation to what Origen really believed.

 Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157.  See infra, p. 726, and note 132.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.8.6.  Plato, Gorgias, 493a.  Plato, Timaeus, 86d e; cf. Protagoras, 345d; Leges, 731c.  See PHE, pp. 23 4; 168 71; 173; 208; 279; 427.

Plotinus

719

However, Origen was not alone on this, nor is this a distinctly Christian approach. The man who ‘shared the same education’ under Ammonius, namely Plotinus, had exactly the same anti-Platonic approach. He stressed that without virtue it is impossible to contemplate God, let alone unite with Him. In an attack against the Epicureans and Gnostics alike, he argued that ‘those who have no share of virtue (οἷς δὲ ἀρετῆς μὴ μέτεστιν) cannot be moved towards the higher world’; and ‘it does no good at all to say “look to God”, unless one teaches how one is to look’. To believe that it is possible to do so while not refraining either from material pleasures or from having no control over one’s emotions, or while being in the grip of all sorts of passions and making no attempt to get rid of them, is absurd. ‘In reality, it is virtue which goes before us to the goal (ἀρετὴ μὲν οὖν εἰς τέλος προϊοῦσα); and, when it comes to exist in the soul along with wisdom, it shows God; but God, when you talk about him without true virtue, is only a name (ἄνευ δὲ ἀρετῆς ἀληθινῆς θεὸς λεγόμενος ὄνομά ἐστιν).’¹⁰² This is the inexorable presupposition in order to experience unification with the highest principle, which is to experience the highest of all forms of life (ζωὴν ἀρίστην ἐνεργεῖν).¹⁰³ In both cases, this is about meeting with God within oneself as an internal experience following external practice of virtue. The springboard for Plotinus to recommend this process of pursuing knowledge was not Plato: it was antithesis to Plato. He warns his readers that he is going ‘to express his own view more clearly, contradicting the opinion of others’ (παρὰ δόξαν τῶν ἄλλων τολμῆσαι τὸ φαινόμενον λέγειν σαφέστερον).¹⁰⁴ His point is that, in each one of us, there is an ‘inner man’¹⁰⁵ who is timelessly akin to the intelligible realm. In other words, the soul does not altogether come down, but there is always something of its intelligible ‘ancient fatherland’ in it. If then one’s personal identity is the soul (as every good Platonist could have argued), it follows that a man is not one, but two men, because there are two souls: one in the world of sense-perception, under the control of it, thrown into confusion by the body and preventing from perceiving the things that the higher part of the soul contemplates, that is, the part that always remains in the intelligible realm. The lower part of the soul is restrained by spatio-temporal restrictions and temptations, but it can, by an effort of will, identify itself with

 Plotinus, op. cit. II.9.15. Iamblichus argued in the same vein: “There is no communion of the pure with its contrary”. De Mysteriis, 6.3: οὐδεμία γὰρ γίγνεται κοινωνία τῷ καθαρῷ πρὸς τὸ ἐναντίον.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.8.1.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.8.8.  Plotinus, op. cit. I.1.10 (15). Cf. the ‘inner man’ (ὁ ἐντὸς ἄνθρωπος) in Plato, Respublica, 589b1.

720

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

this inner man, and thus see things sub specie aeternitatis, while not losing its own identity. Plotinus returns to this theory later, arguing likewise: in order for us to attain conscious apprehension, we must turn our power of apprehension inwards; it is as if one were expecting to hear a voice which he wanted to hear and withdrew from other sounds and roused his power of hearing to catch what, when it comes, is the best of all sounds which can be heard; in like a manner, we must also let perceptible sounds go (except in so far as we must listen to them) and keep the soul’s power of apprehension pure and ready to hear the voices from on high (τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς εἰς τὸ ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι δύναμιν φυλάττειν καθαρὰν καὶ ἕτοιμον ἀκούειν φθόγγων τῶν ἄνω). Plotinus reiterates also his antiPlatonic view that knowledge and apprehension are subsequent to personal virtue, not prior to it.¹⁰⁶ This doctrine does not belong to the tradition of Platonic school; it is identical with that of Origen, and its common source should have been Ammonius Saccas. Since in Anaxagorean terms ‘everything is in everything’, in theory, the human ‘inner man’ is capable of attaining a grasp of all the principles. In line with the foregoing conception of the soul being able to exist in many levels and to operate in different ways, while any sharp distinction and separation of it from the intelligible realm is eschewed, Plotinus put his doctrine thus: the soul is many things, indeed all things, both the things above and the those below, down to the limits of all life, and each one of us is an intelligible world (ἐσμὲν ἕκαστος κόσμος νοητός); we contact this lower world by the powers of the soul below, but with the intelligible world by its powers above and the powers of the universe; and we remain with all the rest of our intelligible part above, but by its ultimate fringe we are tied to the world below, giving a kind of outflow from it to what is below, or rather an activity, by which that intelligible part is not itself lessened.¹⁰⁷ Since the hidden centre from which that structure springs coincides with the Centre of all things, at rare moments, the ego may hope to achieve total unification, that is, ‘to become God, indeed to be God’ (θεὸν γενόμενον, μᾶλλον δὲ ὄντα).¹⁰⁸ But this is not Platonism, and little wonder that later Platonists criticized Plotinus for not maintaining the sharp distinction between the superior and the lower realms, and not placing man along with his soul clearly in the lowest manifestation of reality.¹⁰⁹

 Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.12.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.4.3.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.9.9.  Cf. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 948. He does not mention Plotinus by name (τοιαῦ τα γάρ τινες ἠναγκάσθησαν θέσθαι δόγματα), but his description of the theory is clear, and he

Plotinus

721

On the other hand, the affinities with Origen are all too clear; they appear right from the start of his Christian production right through the last work of his, although naturally Origen appeals to scripture: once a man attains perfection, Christ lives in him.¹¹⁰ Since everything is in everything, the Logos who is the totality of logoi within us, acts as an instructor. It is incumbent upon us to discover the pure form and existence of all universal principles, and Origen stresses the active character of this quest, instead of one being lost in ecstatic contemplation (which though he does not ban explicitly). However, whereas to Plotinus ecstasy is but the momentary revelation of an eternal cosmic order in the purest and clearest grasp of it, to Origen, the same revelation can be procured and attained mainly by means of Praxis; if contemplation (even ecstasy) involves such a revelation, this is only a rewarding by-product of virtuous conduct of life. As different as sundry views were, the consensus was that material objects should be dependent on something else acting upon matter proper. Anaxagoras was the first who determined that matter has not to be beginningless, and that it receives existence from immaterial principles. The man who saw the essential dependence of the Stoics on Anaxagoras was Plotinus. He seems to have grasped that, in contrast to the material Stoic principles, those of Anaxagoras were immaterial. It is telling that he considers invariably Stoic and Anaxagorean tenets within the same argument, taking their essential kinship for granted. Plotinus writes of the Stoic Nous which possesses the immaterial principles within itself ‘not as if they were in a place (οὐχ ὡς ἐν τόπῳ ἔχων), but as possessing itself and being one with them’ (ὡς αὑτὸν ἔχων καὶ ἓν ὢν αὐτοῖς)’; therefore, ‘all things are together there, and yet they are separate none the less’ (πάντα δὲ ὁμοῦ ἐκεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν ἧττον διακεκριμένα).¹¹¹ To Plotinus, the Intellect is all things together and yet not together, because each of them is a specific power; but the entire Intellect encompasses them all, in like a manner a genus contains species and a whole its parts expresses strongly his objection to the theory that it is possible to live in the present state of fall (τῆς πτώσεως) and yet attain to knowledge of the divine things while remaining in this condition of ours (μένοντας ἡμᾶς ἐν τῇ οἰκείᾳ τάξει).  Gal. 2:20. Cf. Origen, commJohn, I.4.23; XX.12.93; commMatt, 12.25. A man can be ‘deified’: commJohn, II.2.17; De Oratione, 25.2; Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 25. The following are striking anal ogies to the notion of Plotinus. Origen, commJohn, XXXII.27.338: ἐπεὶ ὁ κεκαθαρμένος καὶ ὑπερ αναβὰς πάντα ὑλικὰ νοῦς, ἵνα ἀκριβώσῃ τὴν θεωρίαν τοῦ θεοῦ, ἐν οἷς θεωρεῖ θεοποιεῖται. Op. cit. XXXII.27.339 340: ὡς τοῦτο εἶναι τροπικῶς τὸ δεδοξασμένον πρόσωπον Μωϋσέως, θεοποιηθέντος αὐτῷ τοῦ νοῦ.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.6: Οὕτως οὖν καὶ πολὺ μᾶλλον ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν ὁμοῦ πάντα καὶ αὖ οὐχ ὁμοῦ, ὅτι ἕκαστον δύναμις ἰδία.

722

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

(ὁ δὲ πᾶς νοῦς περιέχει ὥσπερ γένος εἴδη καὶ ὥσπερ ὅλον μέρη).¹¹² The powers of seeds (τῶν σπερμάτων δὲ δυνάμεις) exhibit a likeness of this notion: all of their parts are undistinguished in the whole and their logoi are as if in one central point (ἐν γὰρ τῷ ὅλῳ ἀδιάκριτα πάντα, καὶ οἱ λόγοι ὥσπερ ἐν ἑνὶ κέντρῳ).¹¹³ Nevertheless, there is one logos of the eye and another of the hand. As for the powers of seeds (αἱ μὲν οὖν ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασι δυνάμεις ἑκάστη αὐτῶν λόγος εἷς ὅλος μετὰ τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ ἐμπεριεχομένων μερῶν … αὐτὸς δὲ εἶδός ἐστι τὸ ὅλον καὶ λόγος), each of them is one logos, with all of its parts being included in it.¹¹⁴ It is remarkable that Plotinus writes while having in mind Anaxagoras and the Stoics, and entertaining the vocabulary of them both. He presumably knew that the former was the source of the latter, and rejects the materiality of Stoic logoi, while struggling to determine whether the Mind is unmixed with the logoi (as Anaxagoras maintained), or the Mind itself is the logoi (as some Stoics maintained), and finally opting for both, but seeing the logoi as ‘forms’ which are ‘offspring’ of the human soul and ‘like’ it (εἶδος ἐστὶ τὸ ὅλον καὶ λόγος ὁ αὐτὸς ὢν ψυχῆς εἴδει τῷ γεννῶντι), which in turn is a certain likeness of the cosmic soul. The fact of the matter is that Plotinus appears to be aware of an inherent relation between Anaxagoras and the Stoic thought, and he develops his exposition based of this assumption. Plotinus was dismissive of the Stoics about the affinity, interrelatedness, and interaction of all things with each other (συμπάθεια),¹¹⁵ since he saw this idea as abolition of human freedom. It was the soul rather than the ‘seeds’ that he preferred to postulate as ‘prime cause’ (οὐκ ἐκ σπερμάτων, ἀλλὰ πρωτουργοῦ αἰτίας οὔσης).¹¹⁶ Hence, he opted for positing that ‘this universe has a share in higher realities’; therefore, ‘everything in the universe takes place not according to spermatic logoi, but according to logoi that include powers which are prior to the logoi in the seeds’ (οὐ κατὰ σπερματικούς, ἀλλὰ κατὰ λόγους περιληπτικοὺς καὶ τῶν προτέρων ἢ κατὰ τοὺς τῶν σπερμάτων λόγους); ‘for, in the spermatic logoi, there is nothing of what happens outside these spermatic logoi themselves’ (οὐ γὰρ ἐν σπερματικοῖς λόγοις ἔνι τι τῶν γινομένων παρὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς αὐτοὺς λόγους), or ‘of the contributions which come from matter to the whole, or of the interactions between the things on each other from the things

 Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.6. See a striking parallel in Origen, infra, p. 813, note 493.  Cf. description of logoi being ‘coiled up’ (συνεσπειραμένοι), pp. 458 9; 796; 802 3.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.6.  SVF, II: 154.9; 302.34; 156.15; 170.32 39; 264.8; 302.25; 347.12. But see next note.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.1.7. However, in IV.4.40 and IV.9.3, he grants ‘sympathy’ on account of the Universal Soul.

Plotinus

723

which have been generated’; rather, it is ‘the rational formative principle of the Whole’ (ὁ λόγος τοῦ παντός) that establishes order in everything.¹¹⁷ However, Plotinus was not always consistent throughout, and I am going to argue that Anaxagoras considerably and characteristically swayed him, even if that resulted in Plotinus contradicting himself. At a certain point, he sets out to consider ‘the things existing in the one Nous / Mind / Intellect’ (τίνα οὖν ἐστι τὰ ἐν ἑνὶ νῷ), which we classify by means of intellection. Naturally, his view is that these things are a totality of archetypes that ‘decorate’ all material objects and make them what they are. This results in an immaterial ‘dispersed species’ (εἶδος μεμερισμένον), by which he meant that, in the perceptible reality, different forms correspond to different things standing in spatial distance from each other (e. g. sun, man, etc.), whereas, in the intelligible realm, all species are united and without parts.¹¹⁸ That aside, Plotinus essays to make himself clear by an example entirely dependent on Anaxagoras: the origin of the universe ‘is tracked back to the Nous, which is itself an intelligible universe’ (καὶ κόσμον νοητὸν τοῦτον τὸν νοῦν εἶναι), and, according to Plato, this is ‘the absolute living creature’ (τῷ ὃ ἔστιν ζῷον).¹¹⁹ For ‘just as there is a rational forming principle of a certain animal, and there is also matter that receives the spermatic logos within itself (οὔσης δὲ καὶ ὕλης τῆς τὸν λόγον τὸν σπερματικὸν δεξαμένης), and then the offspring becomes a [similar] animal’, in the same way there is also an intelligent and all-powerful nature which is a forming power acting upon the natural world’.¹²⁰ Plotinus did not come up with a convincing account as to exactly how the intelligible Intellect acts upon matter, even though he introduced the third level of the Soul as a generative cause, which was in turn divided into a universal one and that which gives rise to material things. Although he took some distances from the Platonic notion of ‘participation’ of things in the Forms (μέθεξις) and assigned a more active function to the ‘soul’, he fell short of the convincing accounts of Anaxagoras, and of the Stoics who followed him on this. Porphyry went a step beyond, which is why Proclus spoke in admiration of him, as we shall see presently; but this step was simply mere employment of Anaxagoras’ theory, which Plotinus was reluctant to admit openly. And if one asked, ‘why should it be assumed that Plotinus follows the Stoics instead of Anaxagoras

 Plotinus, op. cit. IV.4.39.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.9. Cf. the notion in Damascius, Princ, pp. 55; 215; In Parmenidem, pp. 188; 203. Pseudo David, In Porphyrii Isagogen, Praxis 50, p. 133. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 114. Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 13.  Plato, Timaeus, 39e8.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.9.

724

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

on this?’, the answer would be, (1) because the Stoic tenet of the spermatic logoi as active principles was a mere echo of Anaxagoras (indeed the term spermatic was introduced not earlier than Cornutus, as discussed already); and (2) because Plotinus criticized the Stoics, who ‘postulated corporeal principles’ (οἱ μὲν τὰς ἀρχὰς σωματικὰς θέμενοι). This was a point that invited criticism by Origen¹²¹ and Neoplatonists¹²² alike, who reprimanded the Stoics for having accorded these sublime principles materiality. Therefore, once Plotinus saw it fit to reflect in terms of incorporeal logoi acting upon matter, he did so by following the sole philosopher who had introduced the selfsame reasoning, namely, Anaxagoras. There is a second point on which similar debts of Plotinus are evident, which is more important, since it touches upon the cardinal doctrine of the Mind, and shows vividly Plotinus’ contradictions. In the previous pages,¹²³ I discussed alShahrastani’s testimony about a report by Porphyry about Anaxagoras being the first who advanced the theory of hiding-and-appearing insofar as he supposed that all things are hidden in the first body, that their coming into existence is only their emergence into appearance out of that body as a species, a genus, a mass, a shape, and a denseness or a rareness, just as the ear of corn emerges into appearance out of a single grain, a stately palm out of small date-stone, a man, perfectly shaped, out of a paltry drop of sperm, and a bird out of an egg. All these are instances of the emergence of appearance out of hiding, of actuality out of potentiality, of form out of the disposition of matter. However, creation (al-

 Origen, Cels, VI.71: Κατὰ μὲν οὖν τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, σωματικὰς λέγοντας εἶναι τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πάντα φθείροντας. So in op. cit. I.21: καὶ οἱ σῶμα εἰπόντες τὸν θεὸν Στωϊκοὶ τοῦ λόγου τούτου ἤκουσαν· ἵνα μὴ πληρωθῇ ὁ κόσμος λόγου ἀθετοῦντος πρόνοιαν ἢ διακόπτοντος αὐτὴν ἢ ἀρχὴν φθαρτὴν εἰσάγοντος τὴν σωματικήν, καθ᾿ ἣν καὶ ὁ θεὸς τοῖς Στωϊκοῖς ἐστι σῶμα.  Plotinus criticized the Stoics on the same grounds, and in exactly the same terms as Origen did: the Stoics were those who ‘postulated corporeal principles’ (οἱ μὲν τὰς ἀρχὰς σωματικὰς θέμενοι. Enneades, III.1.2). Proclus also castigated those who postulated ‘material principles’, which applied to Presocratics as much as did it so to the Stoics. Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 19: σωματικὴν μὲν εἶναι τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀδύνατον. Op. cit. v. 4, p. 55: τοῖς τὰς ἀρχὰς σωματικὰς ποιοῦσιν. None of them was right: for during conflagration, ‘Zeus, the father of everything’ shel ters all spermatic logoi in himself, preventing them from destruction. How else could a next cos mic period possibly come to pass? Besides, Diogenes Laertius reports that Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Archedemus (of Tarsus), and Posidonius, made the distinction between ‘elements’ and ‘principles’ (διαφέρειν δέ φασιν ἀρχὰς καὶ στοιχεῖα): ‘elements’ (evidently, meaning the four elements) have ‘form’, and they are destroyed during conflagration, whereas ‘the principles are ‘incorporeal and formless’ (ἀσωμάτους εἶναι τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ ἀμόρφους). Laertius cites titles of works of the foregoing philosophers. Vitae, 7.134.  See chapter 6, pp. 365 6.

Plotinus

725

ibdda‘) is only of one thing and it applies to no other thing except to that first body.¹²⁴ Saul Horovitz argued that Shahrastani’s statement that Anaxagoras was the first to introduce the theory of latency was an error on the part of al-Shahrastani, due to his confusion of the term seeds (σπέρματα) of Anaxagoras and the term ‘seed’ (σπέρμα) of the Stoics, even though (in his view) the two have no connection with each other. The interpretation of Horovitz draws its support from the same texts that I have used in support of my own interpretation. According to Horovitz, al-Nazzam’s theory of simultaneous creation was taken from the rabbinic statement quoted above, and al-Nazzam’s theory of latency is derived from the Stoic theory of the ‘spermatic Logos’, which is a sort of hidden generative power. In support of the Stoic origin of latency, he points to what he thought to be an analogy between al-Nazzam’s statement that ‘the creation of Adam did not precede the creation of his children’ and the Stoic doctrine that the primary fire is the seed of all the individual human beings, such as Socrates and Xanthippe and Anytus and Meletus, who are to reappear in all future cycles of the world. In further support of the Stoic origin of the theory of latency, he refers to al-Shahrastani’s statement quoted above, where, in his critical comment on al-Nazzam’s theory of latency, he said that al-Nazzam was more inclined to the view of the ‘naturalists’ than to that of the theologians, in which, taking the term ‘naturalists’ to refer to the Stoics, he inferred that, according to al-Shahrastani, al-Nazzam’s theory of latency was derived from the Stoics.¹²⁵ However, I have argued that this was only part of the debts of the Stoics to Anaxagoras, and, in order to explain Anaxagoras, latency could be only an inaccurate name for potentiality. Harry Wolfson remarked that, in fact, in the passage quoted from Porphyry, upon which al-Shahrastani makes his observation about Anaxagoras being the first who advanced the theory of ‘hiding-and-appearing,’ there is no mention of the terms ‘hiding’ and ‘appearing.’¹²⁶ However, study of Plotinus will show that his devout pupil Porphyry actually reproduced Plotinus’ accounts, yet with one stunning difference: Porphyry explicitly said that these were ideas of Anaxagoras, whereas Plotinus composed an account entirely based on Anaxagoras (as testified by Porphyry in Arabic sources), but he presented this as one of his own. The problem with Plotinus was his attitude towards his predecessor: on the face of the first of his two references to Anaxagoras by name, he appears as  H. Wolfson, op. cit. p. 508.  Saul Horovitz, Ueber den Einfluss der griechischen Philosophie auf die Entwicklung des Kalam, Breslau, 1909.  H. Wolfson, loc. cit.

726

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

having no personal knowledge of that philosophy, and as being dependent entirely on Aristotle’s criticism (materiality of principles, impossibility of ‘all’ being ‘in all’).¹²⁷ However, in view of his references above, the case might well be the usual one, as it happened throughout the centuries, and even more so today: Plotinus made this entirely and crudely Peripatetic reference to Anaxagoras in order to conceal his dues to him. For we already saw some of his considerations about the Mind being entirely and correctly Anaxagorean, which lends support to the hypothesis that he drew on Anaxagoras while eschewing that name altogether.¹²⁸ What happened to Plotinus concerning Anaxagoras was exactly the same as the case of Plato and Aristotle: they were prepared to praise him, but only as far as they could conclude that their own philosophy was superior to that of their predecessor. Thus, Plotinus praised Anaxagoras in the fifth Ennead, while adding magnanimously that he was a primitive thinker who did not express himself clearly because of his antiquity, but now, here is Plotinus articulating things scientifically.¹²⁹ This is what Aristotle also said, while obliging and ‘helping’ Anaxagoras to express himself more clearly. However, in the same section, the second reference to Anaxagoras by name occurs, but in that case Plotinus draws on him confidently: when Anaxagoras wrote that the Mind is pure, unmixed, and simple, he actually posited one supreme principle, although he was too ancient a philosopher to express it more accurately.¹³⁰ At critical points, Plotinus wrote while having in mind Anaxagoras, which was a way for anyone having no comprehensive knowledge of that philosophy to contradict oneself. Otherwise, the question of who the creator ultimately is could have received a consistent answer. To a Neoplatonist, it could appear that this is the soul, which would fit with their general ontological pattern. As a matter of fact, he decided that the Soul of All (τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ψυχήν) is ‘the lowermost Maker’ (ποιητὴς οὖν ἔσχατος οὗτος) who receives the logoi from the Creative Intellect (νοῦς δημιουργός).¹³¹ Consequently, this did not deter Plotinus from speaking conveniently of the Intellect as being ‘the True  Plotinus, op. cit. II.4.7.  See supra, Plotinus writing of the Mind which possesses the immaterial principles within the Mind itself, ‘not as if they were in a place’ (οὐχ ὡς ἐν τόπῳ ἔχων), but he considers the Mind ‘as possessing itself and being one with them’ (ὡς αὑτὸν ἔχων καὶ ἓν ὢν αὐτοῖς). Therefore, in that state, ‘all things are together, yet they are separate none the less’ (πάντα δὲ ὁμοῦ ἐκεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν ἧττον διακεκριμένα)’. Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.6.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9.  Plotinus, loc. cit.: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ νοῦν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ λέγων ἁπλοῦν καὶ αὐτὸς τίθεται τὸ πρῶτον καὶ χωριστὸν τὸ ἕν, τὸ δ᾿ ἀκριβὲς δι᾿ ἀρχαιότητα παρῆκε.  Plotinus, op. cit. II.3.18; cf. V.1.8; V.9.3.

Plotinus

727

Maker and Craftsman’ (ἐπὶ νοῦν ποιητὴν ὄντως καὶ δημιουργόν).¹³² In fact, he was prone to identifying Plato’s craftsman with his own Intellect, and it could be argued that he saw the Soul as a subordinate instrument making the perceptible universe. Earlier in the same Ennead, he had set out to demonstrate his doctrine of the Three Hypostases by adducing his favourite passage from Plato’s second letter,¹³³ so as to make Plato the father of Plotinus’ own doctrine. This could be perfectly all right, had he not already styled the soul ‘the lowermost Maker’.¹³⁴ One would either accept or not accept my suggestion. This would mean that more evidence is needed, but this evidence is indeed there, and it is not mere speculation: between the point where he praised Anaxagoras’ notion of the Mind (V.1.9) and the one where he draws on Anaxagoras quoting from him without mentioning his name (V.9.6), there is an extensive account purporting to explain a peculiar characteristic of the Mind/Intellect, namely ‘hiding-and-appearing’ (V.5.7‒10). Let me then consider this section, but there are two remarks which are called for in advance: 1. This is the part containing the idea that al-Shahrastani reported to be one written by Porphyry explaining the teaching of Anaxagoras. It is then quite evident that the teaching of Anaxagoras was part of the discussions between Plotinus and his pupils. This is barely unexpected: once the Mind (or, Intellect, νοῦς)¹³⁵ was a cardinal notion of Plotinus’ system, it would be utterly extravagant to assume that he and his pupils did not care to study Anaxagoras’ philosophy. 2. This passage of the Enneades is impossible to reconcile with the confident and imposing descriptions about the immutable eternity of the Mind/Intellect, which Plotinus expounded in the first six chapters of the treatise On Time and Eternity (III.7). Whereas his Intellect (νοῦς) is a sublime reality second only to the One, indeed an ‘intelligible world’ (κόσμος νοητός) containing all the archetypes which make generation of sensible objects possible and meaningful, at

 Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.3; but in II.9.6, the classified pattern is ‘Being, Intellect, Creator, Soul’, explaining that the Creator is different from the Intellect, but Plotinus does not identify the Cre ator with neither the Intellect nor the Soul. This passage refers to those ‘who introduce new ideas in order to establish a philosophy of their own’ (ὅσα καινοτομοῦσιν, ἵνα ἰδίαν φιλοσοφίαν θῶνται), but Plotinus assures that all of those ideas were taken from Plato’s Timaeus none the less. It should be reminded (see infra, p. 776) that Plotinus does not dignify the Soul with a world of its own.  Cf. Plato, Epistulae, 2, 312e1 4. Plotinus cites this also in op. cit. I.8.2 and VI.7.42; he refers to it implicitly in III.5.8.  See further Plotinus’ debts to Anaxagoras in chapter 13, ‘The Stoic concept of the soul’, p. 1222; 1264 5; 1321; 1444.  See infra, p. 737, note 172.

728

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

this point we have analyses suggesting that Anaxagoras’ Mind (νοῦς) is itself present everywhere, yet not always so: as explained in chapter 6 discussing the notion of potentiality, the Mind seems to appear and disappear, depending on the different manifestations during the flux of things. Quite simply, at this point Plotinus is supposed to expound his own notion of Intellect (νοῦς), which though is in fact what Anaxagoras had said about his Mind (νοῦς), and this analysis flagrantly contradicts Plotinus’ exposition that preceded that point. In the fifth Ennead, he describes the way in which one would grasp the higher principles, and expresses this experience in terms of them ‘hiding-and-appearing’. There are certain peculiarities in this section: although this is entitled, ‘That the Intelligibles are not outside the Intellect, and On the Good’ (ὅτι οὐκ ἔξω τοῦ Νοῦ τὰ νοητά, καὶ περὶ τἀγαθοῦ), it is not always clear whether he refers to the Intellect or to the One. However, this does not really matter: although his analyses mostly fit the notion of the One, in effect he echoes the philosophy of Anaxagoras about the Mind, as this was reported by Porphyry according to the Arabic sources, namely, al-Shahrastani. After all, Plotinus himself explicitly conceded that when Anaxagoras spoke of ‘pure and unmixed Mind’, he actually posited a ‘simple and sundered (meaning: transcendent) One, albeit he did not express himself accurately because of his ancientness’.¹³⁶ This was also the opinion of Asclepius of Tralles, who saw the same statement of Anaxagoras about the Mind as denoting the One.¹³⁷ Plotinus’ account is about perception of the supreme principle, particularly how can the One by envisioned by the Mind / Intellect. He uses the analogy of aesthesis through the eyes, remarking that light is the cause for things to be seen, but light itself is not visible unless there an object to be illuminated: actual vision calls for some solid basis receiving light, and this is the act of vision by the Intellect (ἡ τοῦ νοῦ ὄψις). By means of another light, this kind of vision sees the objects illuminated by the First Principle: setting itself among them, it sees veritably; once it lapses into the lower nature, then that upon which the light from above rests has less vision of the One. Passing over the visible and looking to the medium by which it sees, it holds both the light and the source of light, but it sees this light as something not external (μὴ ὡς ἔξω ὂν δεῖ τὸν νοῦν τοῦτο τὸ φῶς βλέπειν). Certainly, this is the way Intellect hiding itself from anything external (καὶ νοῦς αὑτὸν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων καλύψας, withdrawing to the inmost, seeing nothing) must enjoy a vision not of some other light in

 Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9.  Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 62: ἔστι κατ᾿ αὐτὸν ἀρχὴ νοῦς ἁπλοῦς ὢν κατ᾿ αὐτὸν καὶ ἀμιγής· καὶ εἴη ἂν ἀνάλογον τῷ ἑνί.

Plotinus

729

some other thing, but of the light within itself, which is unmingled, pure, suddenly gleaming. Consequently, we are left wondering whence it came: was that from within or from without? And when it has gone, we say, ‘It was here. Yet, no; it was beyond!’ (ὥστε ἀπορεῖν ὅθεν ἐφάνη, ἔξωθεν ἢ ἔνδον, καὶ ἀπελθόντος εἰπεῖν ἔνδον ἄρα ἦν καὶ οὐκ ἔνδον αὖ). But we ought not to question whence it came from, Plotinus goes on; for there is no whence, there is no spatial coming or going; now it is seen and now not seen. We must not run after it, but make ourselves fit for the vision to appear, and then wait tranquilly for its appearance, as the eye waits for the rising of the sun, which, as the poets say, appears in its own time above the horizon out of the ocean, and bestows itself to our sight (ἔδωκεν ἑαυτὸν θεάσασθαι τοῖς ὄμμασιν). Therefore, the higher principle appears and disappears, and then re-appears again, in the same way the sun rises and sets. It is not the mind that sees the higher principle by means of an act or an initiative of its own: it is the principles that act in the manner of appearing and hiding, so that they can be noticed. Whence is it that this Principle, of which the sun is an image, has it its dawning? What is the horizon that it surmounts in order for this to appear? It stands immediately above the contemplating Intellect (αὐτὸν ὑπερσχὼν τὸν νοῦν τὸν θεώμενον), which has held itself at rest towards the vision, viewing no other than the good and beautiful, setting its entire being to that in a perfect surrender, and now tranquilly filled with power and taking a new beauty to itself, gleaming in the light of that presence. However, this advent does no occur as response to some expectation: it is coming without approach (ὁ δὲ οὐκ ᾔει, ὥς τις προσεδόκα, ἀλλ᾿ ἦλθεν ὡς οὐκ ἐλθών); the vision is not of something that must enter, but of something present before all else, even before the Intellect itself made any movement (ὤφθη γὰρ ὡς οὐκ ἐλθών, ἀλλὰ πρὸ ἁπάντων παρών, πρὶν καὶ τὸν νοῦν ἐλθεῖν). For it is the Intellect that must move, to come and go, because it does not know where it should stand, and where that presence stands, since in fact it stands nowhere (εἶναι δὲ τὸν νοῦν τὸν ἐλθόντα καὶ τοῦτον εἶναι καὶ τὸν ἀπιόντα, ὅτι μὴ οἶδε ποῦ δεῖ μένειν καὶ ποῦ ἐκεῖνος μένει, ὅτι ἐν οὐδενί). It is then absolutely wonderful that the supreme principle should thus be present without any coming taking place, and, wondrously, while it is nowhere, there is nowhere that is it not (θαῦμα δή, πῶς οὐκ ἐλθὼν πάρεστι, καὶ πῶς οὐκ ὢν οὐδαμοῦ οὐδαμοῦ οὐκ ἔστιν ὅπου μὴ ἔστιν). To Plotinus, it is an inexorable law that those that are ontologically inferior should be contained by those which are proximately lowest in the higher order, and so it happens in all levels of being, up to the very pinnacle of existential fountain. Concerning the highest one, evidently there is no other source prior to that; therefore, this is not contained by anything else: it possesses, but it is not itself being possessed. It is omnipresent, it embraces everything, but is is

730

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

not itself embraced by anything. For should its presence failed to be somewhere, then something would elude its hold. Nevertheless, since it is nowhere, as much as is it everywhere, it is not present either: thus it is both present and not present (ὥστε ἔστι καὶ οὐκ ἔστι); not present, because it cannot be circumscribed by anything; it is utterly unattached, and not trammelled by being present at any point. Any restriction could only mean that the First is determined by some other being; in that case, limits would be imposed on God, who, consequently, would be no longer self-governed, but mastered by inferiors. That which is contained must be where its container is; but that which is uncontained by (or, in) place, it is not debarred from any place (τὰ μὲν οὖν ἔν τινι ἐκεῖ ἐστιν, οὗ ἐστιν· ὅσα δὲ μὴ ποῦ, οὐκ ἔστιν ὅπου μή). Therefore, the notion of hiding-and-appearing stems from the fact that the higher principle makes itself evident intermittently; it is not the lower nature that acts in order to see the higher one, in the manner a physical eye acts in order to grasp a visual perception. The First is neither remote from things nor proximately within them; there is nothing containing it; instead, it contains everything (οὔτε ἄρα ἀφέστηκε τῶν ἄλλων οὔτε αὐτὸς ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐστιν οὐδὲ ἔστιν οὐδὲν ἔχον αὐτό, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτὸ ἔχει τὰ πάντα).¹³⁸ This analysis of Plotinus shows that the testimony of Porphyry about Anaxagoras being the first who advanced the theory of ‘hiding-and-appearing’, as transmitted by al-Shahrastani, was accurate. The theory fits perfectly with the Anaxagorean Mind, and it was taken up by Plotinus, as above. This is why Porphyry himself wrote accordingly that ‘the Nous is everywhere because he is nowhere’ (ὁ νοῦς πανταχοῦ ὅτι οὐδαμοῦ).¹³⁹ Plotinus saw in Anaxagoras’ Mind the One but he felt at liberty to understand this also in terms of his own Intellect, and sometimes of the soul, as dicussed later. It is not difficult to see how he perceived this: the Mind per se is considered as both ‘simplex and sundered’. Anaxagoras’ Mind is the source that makes it possible for the ‘seeds’, or principles, to act, which is also the function of Plotinus’ Intellect. In fact, the Anaxagorean Mind was described in a somehow twofold way: in the primal fusion, there was the Mind that had not yet ‘distinguished’ (meaning: created) the principles; then,¹⁴⁰ the Mind distinguished the principles by means of its own contemplation and will. Therefore, there is an envisagement of the Mind in two different states, albeit there is no

 Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.7 9. Italics are mine and underscore the notion of appearing and hid ing. See a parallel in Origen about ‘unexpectedly seeing God’. frJohn, 14.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 31.  Simplicius qualified the statement with a caveat against understanding this in terms of temporal succession. See infra, p. 755.

Plotinus

731

temporal extension separating one from another. To speak of Mind evidently involves a notion of ability for intellectual function, indeed rationality. But the contemplating Mind appears on stage upon an act that was assumed willfully by the primal Mind. This is why Michael Psellus wrote that, to Anaxagoras, ‘the supreme principle was the Mind and his intelligence’ (καὶ ἦν ἀρχὴ ὁ νοῦς καὶ ἡ ἐκείνου νόησις),¹⁴¹ since the actual creation of the principles was made possible by virtue of this ‘intelligence’.¹⁴² In Christian terms, this would be put as the notion of the Father who created through his Logos. Origen writing as an incipient Christian yet as an experienced Greek philosopher, wrote that neither God’s Wisdom/Son nor his Logos (which is the same) were ever made, since never was God bereft of his Wisdom/Logos. The divine creative act started as of a certain beginning, but this was an act of will by a God who was beginninglessly wise and rational.¹⁴³ It turns out that Plotinus availed himself of Anaxagoras once more: he saw the primal Mind of the undifferentiated fusion as the One, whereas he postulated also an Intellect, which in fact was the Anaxagorean Mind that gave rise to the rational principles, hence, to the totality of potentialities, out of which the world was made. Let us then follow his exposition On Providence, in the third Ennead. From that true universe, which is one, this universe subsists, which is not truly one. For the latter is multiple, indeed divided into a multiplicity, where things stand apart from another, and they are alien to each other. Separation entails that there is not only love, but also hostility (οὐκέτι φιλία μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἔχθρα), and one thing is at war with another.¹⁴⁴ This universe is understood as having come into existence not according to a reasoning that it ought to exist on its own merits, but because it was necessary that there should be a second nature, since the true All was not of the kind as to be the last (i. e. the most inferior) of all realities. Therefore, the Intellect brought the universe into being by imparting something of itself to Matter (Νοῦς τοίνυν δούς τι ἑαυτοῦ εἰς ὕλην), and it made all things in unperturbed quietness (ἀτρεμὴς καὶ ἥσυχος τὰ πάντα εἰργάζετο). This ‘something of itself’ was the Logos who flows from the Intellect (οὗτος δὲ ὁ λόγος ἐκ νοῦ ῥυείς). That which flows out from the Intellect is the Logos (τὸ γὰρ ἀπορρέον ἐκ νοῦ λόγος), and it flows out always (καὶ ἀεὶ ἀπορρεῖ)

 Michael Psellus, commPhys, 3.12.  Michael Psellus, loc. cit.: Ἐτίθει δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ ἀρχὴν ποιητικὴν τὸν νοῦν καὶ πάντα μὲν χρήματα ἐτίθει ὁμοῦ, ἀρχὴν δὲ ἐτίθει καὶ τῷ νοῒ τῆς νοήσεως εἰς τὸ διακρῖναι αὐτά.  Origen, commJohn, II.19.130: οὐκ ἦν γάρ, ὅτε ἡ ἀρχὴ ἄλογος ἦν, διὸ λέγεται (by ἀρχὴ mean ing the Wisdom/Son).  It is hard not to notice concurrent influence by both Empedocles and Heraclitus at this point.

732

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

as long as the Mind is present in existing things (ἕως ἂν ᾖ παρὼν ἐν τοῖς οὖσι νοῦς).¹⁴⁵ Once again, Plotinus relies on the philosophy of Anaxagoras, namely, on the imagery of the ‘seed’; what is more, he shows that the Anaxagorean tenet about ‘all things being together’ bespeaks the incorporeal logoi (efficient causes) that exist within the ‘seed’. The doctrine of Plotinus is that once the Mind became a creative principle, its Logos was produced,¹⁴⁶ whereby the principles are rational ones, which the Stoics saw, too. Therefore, rationality is associated with the Mind in as much as the latter is related to the world by being its poietic cause and source of the functioning principles: rationality flows from the Mind, and this is the way in which the Mind is present in perceptible things. Conclusion: this existing All arose from one Intellect and from the Logos which proceeds from it (ἐξ ἑνὸς νοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ λόγου ἀνέστη τόδε τὸ πᾶν καὶ διέστη)¹⁴⁷ and the All is separated into parts. Theodoret quoted this passage, in order to show the dependence of Plotinus on Christian sources, notably on the opening of John’s gospel.¹⁴⁸ However, the most likely source was Origen,¹⁴⁹ who took up Anaxagoras’ philosophy: in the pattern of a twofold creation by the Mind (the original intelligible, and then a perceptible one), the creator of the universe was the Mind having become Creative Mind (ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργικοῦ νοῦ), which also sprang from that intelligible union (ὃν καὶ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ νοητοῦ προελθόντα διακοσμῆσαι πάντα).¹⁵⁰ After both Plotinus and Origen left the school of Ammonius Saccas, they constructed two different philosophies, but they retained several common ideas none the less.

 Plotinus, op. cit. III.2.2. To Origen, the supreme Mind/Father and the Creative Mind/Son/ Logos stand on an ontological par. The retrospective ‘Arianism’ laid at his door is sheer non sense, and has been argued only by bigotry hardly informed about about Neoplatonism, except for vague encyclopaedic information about a certain Plotinian classified pattern One/Intellect/ Soul. Beyond Plotinus’ own statements about ‘the Logos of the Intellect/Mind’, Damascius in effect demolished the Plotinian classified Triad (because this was untenable, and Origen knew this since the third century), and Simplicius was entirely at one with him on the idea that the Supreme Mind and the Creative Mind that proceeded thereof are ontologically the same. See chapter 10, pp. 817 23; chapter 11, pp. 996 7; 1093 4. Also, Origen’s newly discovered text, now published in Appendix II.  This is a glaring difference from Plotinus’ classmate, Origen: as we just saw, to the latter, the Logos was always there; he was not created simply as an instrument towards, or the sake of, the creative act.  Plotinus, loc. cit.  Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 6.58 61.  Cf. COT, pp. 39 64.  Simplicius, commCael, pp. 608 9.

Plotinus

733

At all events, the main point is not Plotinus’ locution: rather, it is the rationale that results in this proposition, whose main core is definitely Anaxagorean, and it runs as follows: The Mind [Intellect / Nous], then, in its unperturbed serenity has brought the universe into being, by bestowing something from its own store to matter (δούς τι ἑαυτοῦ εἰς ὕλην): and this gift is the Logos which flowed from the Mind (ὁ λόγος ἐκ νοῦ ῥυείς). For that which flows off from the Mind is the Logos (τὸ γὰρ ἀπορρέον ἐκ νοῦ λόγος); and this emanation is continuous as long as the Mind is present in beings. The case is like the logos existing in a seed (ὥσπερ δὲ ἐν λόγῳ τῷ ἐν σπέρματι), in which all [the logoi] are together and united into a single entity (ὁμοῦ πάντων¹⁵¹ καὶ ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ), and there is neither conflict among them, nor divergence, nor [mutual] hindering. Then, the seed develops to something that has bulk (γίνεταί τι ἤδη ἐν ὄγκῳ), and part rises in distinction with part, and certainly now the members [of the organism] stand in each other’s way, and will begin to wear each other down. Thus, from this one Mind/Intellect, and from the Logos emanating from it, this universe arose and [its parts were] distinguished (οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς νοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ λόγου ἀνέστη τόδε τὸ πᾶν καὶ διέστη). And of necessity (ἐξ ἀνάγκης), some parts of it became friendly and congenial to each other, whereas others became mu tually hostile and inimical and adverse (τὰ μὲν ἐγένετο φίλα καὶ προσηνῆ, τὰ δὲ ἐχθρὰ καὶ πολέμια). Sometimes purposely and sometimes constrainedly, the parts maltreat each other, thus engendering processes of destruction, out of which other beings came to exis tence (θάτερα γένεσιν ἄλλοις εἰργάσατο). Nevertheless, amid all that beings either do [each other] or suffer [by each other], and notwithstanding each one uttering its own voice, [the Nous / Mind / Intellect] has instituted harmony (ἁρμονίαν ἐνεστήσατο), since the Logos brings upon all things harmony and a single [balanced] arrangement (τὴν ἁρμονίαν καὶ μίαν τὴν σύνταξιν εἰς τὰ ὅλα ποιουμένου).¹⁵²

In just a short passage, one can see not only the fundamentals of the Anaxagorean philosophy, but also the Empedoclean Love and Strife, the Heraclitean inceassant ‘war’, the Democritian ‘necessity’,¹⁵³ and the Stoic universal sympathy imposed by the Logos, the source of which was Anaxagoras, too.¹⁵⁴ Definitely, when Porphyry wrote that Plotinus’ work is full of Peripatetic and Stoic doctrines, his aim was not just to point out only those schools at the exclusion of others, but to inform that Plotinus availed himself of the ancient lore. To him, the Nous became a creative one by generating a Logos, which was the way for the universe to come to pass as a rational one. In other words, the Nous started to reflect as to how to produce the universe by its own thoughtful will alone. This Reflecting Nous is the Creative Mind. The cause and source of this development

   

Cf. the Anaxagorean, ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα. Plotinus, Enneades, III.2.2; translation of this abstruse passage is mine. See pp. 153; 155; 243 4; 1069 73; 1082. See pp. 638 9; 644; 678; 722; 738; 790; 1476.

734

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

is adumbrated not simply by reference to Intellect / Nous, but by appeal to ‘Intellect and Logos’: This All is not Intellect and Logos, like the All there, but participates in Intellect and Logos (ἔστι γὰρ τὸ πᾶν τόδε οὐχ ὥσπερ ἐκεῖ νοῦς καὶ λόγος, ἀλλὰ μετέχον νοῦ καὶ λόγου).¹⁵⁵

How did the Logos come to be? Once again, Plotinus couches his resolution in Anaxagorean terms, namely, ‘the Logos unfolded itself as if from a quiet seed’ (ὥσπερ δ᾿ ἐκ σπέρματος ἡσύχου), which is how, as as the Logos reflects, he advances to multiplicity: although he does not become multiplicity by being himself divided, he breaks down this multiplicity outside himself, and squanders this unity outside himself as he goes forward to extension, which is a weaker condition (τὸ ἓν δαπανῶν εἰς μῆκος ἀσθενέστερον πρόεισιν)’.¹⁵⁶ Therefore, multiplicity is given rise to as if from a seed, which is not just a casual reference, but a sustained theory: the Mind created a comprehensive and all-inclusive concept of the world (the ‘All’, τὸ πᾶν), which Plotinus calls ‘the logos of the world’ (λόγος τοῦ κόσμου, meaning the all-inclusive formative principle of it, which comprises all the particular formative principles) precisely because it was through the Mind’s Logos that Mind himself effected generation of the universe. Certainly, ‘although this universe is one, it is less of a unity than its logos’ (καὶ ἧττον ἓν ὁ κόσμος ὁ αἰσθητὸς ἢ ὁ λόγος αὐτοῦ),¹⁵⁷ simply because the all-inclusive Logos is incorporeal whereas his product is material. The notion of ‘the logos of this world’ (ὁ τοῦ κόσμου λόγος) is very rare, and it appears also in Origen.¹⁵⁸ In the beginning of this treatise (On Providence, it

 Plotinus, op. cit. III.2.2.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.7.11. This is one more idea shared by Plotinus and Origen alike: the orig inal state of unity, simplicity, concentration, and rest, is superior to multitude, division, and multiplicity of action. Cf. Origen, frLuc, 186: μηδεμίαν ἔχοντι διπλόην καὶ δόλον καὶ σχίσιν καὶ διάστασιν καὶ μερισμὸν ἐν αὐτῷ. selEz, PG.13.781.23 24: διὰ τὴν δυάδα καὶ σχίσιν περιέχειν ἀκα θάρτων ἐστὶ συγγενής. selGen, PG.12.112.9 13: Καὶ οὕτω τηρῶν τὴν Γραφὴν εὑρήσεις, ὅτι ὅπου πλῆθος ἀριθμοῦ, ὅπου σχίσμα, ὅπου διαίρεσις, καὶ διαφωνία, καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα, κακίας ἐστὶ γνω ρίσματα· ὅπου δὲ ἑνότης, καὶ ὁμόνοια, καὶ πολλὴ δύναμις ἐν λόγοις, ἀρετῆς γνωρίσματα. This is sheer Empedocles, but Origen appealed to Paul, 1 Cor. 12:25: ἵνα μὴ ᾖ σχίσμα ἐν τῷ σώματι. Cf. V.5.1 (Philocalia, 5.4); commJohn, X.36.238.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.2.17.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.22.147: τοῦ ὅλου κόσμου λόγος. Op. cit. 63: ὁ τοῦ κυρίου σίελος σύμ βολον ἦν λόγου ὡς ἐν λόγοις ἐσχάτου, οὗ μείζονα χωρῆσαι ἀνθρωπίνη οὐ δύναται φύσις. … ὁ τοιοῦτος λόγος οὐ γυμνὸς ὕλης καὶ σωματικῶν παραδειγμάτων εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἔρχεται. Libri x in Canticum Canticorum, p. 233 & Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17.265.25 27: τὸν περὶ τοῦ κόσμου λόγον νομίζω, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐχόμενα τοῦ προτειχίσματος, ὃς λόγος μέν ἐστι τελευταῖος τῶν σωματικῶν, ἀρχὴ δὲ τῶν ἀσωμάτων. See pp. 1404 ff.

Plotinus

735

should be recalled), Plotinus wrote that this notion was not his own: rejecting the idea that the universe is the product of accident or mere chance, he adds that ‘prior to the present treatise, many accomplished accounts have been expounded, which demonstrate it’ (καὶ πρὸ λόγου καὶ πολλοὶ καὶ ἱκανοὶ καταβέβληνται δεικνύντες τοῦτο λόγοι).¹⁵⁹ Stobaeus wrote that ‘the logos of this world’ was the Stoic Logos, which received various explanations: it was identified with either Fate (εἱμαρμένη), or ‘the rationality that governs the world according to providence’, or ‘the logos according to which past occurrences happened, present things happen, and future ones will happen’ (ἢ λόγος, καθ᾿ ὃν τὰ μὲν γεγονότα γέγονε, τὰ δὲ γινόμενα γίνεται, τὰ δὲ γενησόμενα γενήσεται). In this context, Chrysippus used the term λόγος instead of ‘truth, or cause, or nature, or necessity; he used also other names, which denote the same reality considered from different points of view’.¹⁶⁰ This is precisely the ‘one huge homoiomery which contains everything in itself’ (μίαν ὁμοιομέρειαν μεγάλην ἔχουσαν πάντα ἐν ἑαυτῇ) which John Philoponus assumed, if ambiguously, in reference to Anaxagoras: in like a manner all principles ‘were together in the beginning’, all of them exist also in each particular thing or phenomenon, notwithstanding only some of them prevailing and according the specific character or nature of each one of them.¹⁶¹ Aristotle was aware of the idea of this philosopher, but he struggled to deform and ridicule it: Anaxagoras ‘held that any part whatsoever was a mixture as same as the whole’ (ὁ μὲν ὁτιοῦν τῶν μορίων εἶναι μίγμα ὁμοίως τῷ παντί), which is correct; but he added a distortion, as usual: “because he saw that any one thing comes into being out of any other thing” (διὰ τὸ ὁρᾶν ὁτιοῦν ἐξ ὁτουοῦν γιγνόμενον).¹⁶² However, as gentle as commentators were to Aristotle, they could not afford going along with this: Simplicius demonstrated that, in reality, never did Anaxagoras maintain that anything comes from anything; things do not come from one another haphazardly, since never did Anaxagoras mean that flesh or brain can be extracted from water (ὥστε οὐ τὰ τυχόντα ἀπὸ τῶν τυχόντων, οὐδὲ ἐξ ὕδατος σὰρξ ἢ ἐγκέφαλος).¹⁶³ Likewise, John Philoponus reject Plotinus, op. cit. III.2.1.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.5.15. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 885B: Μεταλαμβά νει δ᾿ ἀντὶ τοῦ λόγου τὴν ἀλήθειαν, τὴν αἰτίαν, τὴν φύσιν, τὴν ἀνάγκην, προστιθεὶς καὶ ἑτέρας ὀνομασίας, ὡς ἐπὶ τῆς αὐτῆς οὐσίας τασσομένας καθ᾿ ἑτέρας καὶ ἑτέρας ἐπιβολάς.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 396: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, φησίν, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ κατὰ ἀρχὰς πάντα μεμῖχθαι ἔλεγε, καὶ εἶναι οἷον μίαν ὁμοιομέρειαν μεγάλην ἔχουσαν πάντα ἐν ἑαυτῇ, οὕτω καὶ ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν κατὰ μέρος πάντα ἐνυπάρχειν ἔλεγεν.  Aristotle, Physica, 203a23 25. Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 460. John Philoponus, comm Phys, p. 396.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 174. See supra, chapter 6, p. 396 and chapter 7, p. 443.

736

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

ed the allegation: all things are produced from specific concurrences of homoiomeries, and any composite thing, even the universe itself, is no other than such a concurrence; however, this does not mean that a certain form of a thing is produced from a haphazard conjunction of homoiomeries (οὐ γὰρ ὁπωσοῦν ἐχουσῶν τῶν ὁμοιομερειῶν πέφυκε τὸ εἶδος ἐπιγίνεσθαι).¹⁶⁴ Notwithstanding his predisposition to accept Aristotle’s analyses, Themistius was judicious enough as not to follow him all the way through those implausible analyses: homoiomeries cannot be mere masses so that different kinds of animals are produces on account of the volume of such masses being larger or smaller, as in effect Aristotle suggested.¹⁶⁵ Instead, Themistius saw that either ‘flesh or blood or a bone’ cannot be itself a homoiomery, which Aristotle passionately argued for and built all of his criticism of Anaxagoras on this: the flesh of a certain animal can only be understood as consisted of ‘principles and elements’ which are designated to produce different kinds of flesh.¹⁶⁶ It is certainly no coincidence that Simplicius sought to rebut such atrocious allegations of Aristotle by copying this part of Themistius’ analyses to the letter,¹⁶⁷ and so did John Philoponus, who not only copied from Themistius, but also went some steps further elaborating on this point.¹⁶⁸ Whether called ὁ τοῦ κόσμου λόγος or μία ὁμοιομέρεια, either way it points to the all-inclusive Logos. The only difference is that, in Plotinus, this is identified with the Intellect itself, whereas, to Anaxagoras and Origen, the Mind is not identified with its content (the principles or logoi), but the Mind dominates over and uses them as instruments. Normally, Plotinus would have been expected to describe generation of things by means of his One/Intellect/Soul pattern. However, his proposition is that the Mind/Intellect is the progenitor of the Logos. Although this is expressed in terms that do not actually betray his fundamental ontological model, the fact is that the Anaxagorean philosophy decisively underlies his account.

 John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 103. Only Gennadius Scholarius did not notice the percep tive remarks of the two commentators and took Aristotle’s words to the letter unquestionably. commPhys, 41 42, quoted in chapter 7, pp. 443 4, note 47.  Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 187b 188a.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 15: τὴν γὰρ ἐν τῷ ζῴῳ σάρκα ἐκ πλειόνων σαρκῶν εἶναι τῶν ὡς ἀρχῶν καὶ στοιχείων.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 166 8, commenting on Aristotle’s Physica, 187b13.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 104, commenting on the same remarks of Aristotle.

Plotinus

737

Intellect,¹⁶⁹ by giving something of itself to matter, made all things in unperturbed quiet ness. This ‘something of itself’ is the Logos that flowed from the Mind. For that which flows from the Mind is Logos, and it is flowing out always so long as the Mind is present in all beings. But just as in the logos in a seed all the parts are together (ὥσπερ δὲ ἐν λόγῳ τῷ ἐν σπέρματι ὁμοῦ πάντων)¹⁷⁰ and in the same place, and none of them fights with the other or is at odds with it or gets in its way … so all that exists has arisen from one Mind and from the Logos which proceeds from it (καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς νοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ λόγου ἀνέστη τόδε τὸ πᾶν καὶ διέστη), and the All is separated into parts, and of necessity some became friendly and gentle, others hostile and at war.¹⁷¹

Furthermore: Since this Logos comes from a single Intellect and a single life, both of which are complete, it is not itself either a single life or any kind of single intellect, and it is not at every point complete, nor does it at every point give its whole and entire self to the things to which it does give itself.¹⁷²

Like all Neoplatonists, Plotinus saw the function of the soul as analogous to that of the Anaxagorean Mind: a soul produces logoi in the same manner the Mind produced the logoi that are incorruptible and everlasting. Plotinus expresses his idea in terms of the Mind generating logoi, too. It is noteworthy that he styles the logoi also ‘minds’ (νόες), which is a term that Origen would have used in the De Principiis at a time when he was an incipient Christian: since the state in the Mind is unity, what it generated would be called ‘minds’, too, and, strictly speak-

 It should be recalled that the same cardinal term, namely, Νοῦς, is translated in English as either Mind in reference to Anaxagoras, or Intellect in expositions of Plotinus’ philosophy, and in Neoplatonic context in general. This is somewhat misleading. Plotinus was not an Anaxagorean philosopher, and certainly he took pride in calling himself a Platonist. Nevertheless, it cannot be overlooked that the term Νοῦς was fathered by Anaxagoras, notwithstanding the import that Ne oplatonism accorded it.  Cf. the opening of Anaxagoras’ book: ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν … καὶ πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.2.2.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.2.16: Ἥκων τοίνυν οὗτος ὁ λόγος ἐκ νοῦ ἑνὸς καὶ ζωῆς μιᾶς πλήρους ὄντος ἑκατέρου οὐκ ἔστιν οὔτε ζωὴ μία οὔτε νοῦς τις εἷς οὔτε ἑκασταχοῦ πλήρης οὐδὲ διδοὺς ἑαυτὸν οἷς δίδωσιν ὅλον τε καὶ πάντα. This is the Anaxagorean idea of the Mind being the crea tive source of everything, and yet remaining unmixed with everything. Nowadays, it is custom ary to dismiss the idea that this Mind was, among others, a creative principle; however, as al ready discussed, Simplicius explaind that in fact it was, and the ancient intellectuals who made mention of Anaxagoras in effect did not deny this.

738

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

ing, the term ‘homoiomeries’ means that the parts of a whole have the same name as the whole itself.¹⁷³ No real being does ever cease to be. For the minds (or, intellects, οἱ νόες) that exist there will not perish, because they are not distinguished in a corporeal mode, but each one of them remains distinct in otherness having the same essential being. The same happens with the souls: standing in their own order, they depend on particular minds, and they are logoi of minds (λόγοι νῶν) being further unfolded than those minds; they are, as it were, multiplicity produced from brevity. They are linked to the brevity of the mind by means of that which is least divided in them. … the souls spring from one, and souls spring ing from one are many in the same way as the Intellect / Mind, being both divided and not divided; and a standing soul is a single logos of the Mind (καὶ λόγος εἷς τοῦ νοῦ) and from it spring partial logoi which are also immaterial (λόγοι μερικοί καὶ ἄϋλοι), as it happens with those in the Mind.¹⁷⁴

The model of Plotinus is different only in words, since the essential idea is one of old: the Stoics reproduced all the logoi from the one Logos upon the beginning of each cosmic period. Their Logos contained all the logoi spermatically (which is why the Old Stoa styled it spermatic Logos), and permeated them all. But this was only modification of an Anaxagorean theory, which knew of no recurrent worlds: upon ‘distinction’ (i. e. creation), the unified totality of the dissimilar logoi came to be, while their creator remained unmixed with them. This totality of logoi ambiguously was styled later ‘one huge homoiomery’,¹⁷⁵ but names do not matter much; what matters is the ideas being involved. The ‘one huge homoiomery’ of Anaxagoras, which contains all the homoiomeries is no other than the Stoic ‘logos of the world’ which contains all the logoi. That the Stoics made the Logos inherent in matter is only a detail designated to maintain the Stoic monism and their wish to eschew the notion of the supreme principle being entirely different in terms of ontology. It is the idea of totality of logoi, or one huge homoiomery, which became ‘the logos of the world’, that constitutes the basis of universal sympathy (συμπάθεια, which the Latins read as consensus naturae), that is, the interrelation of all things

 Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 314a17 20: Ὁ μὲν γὰρ ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὰ ὁμοιομερῆ στοιχεῖα τίθησιν, οἷον ὀστοῦν καὶ σάρκα καὶ μυελόν, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὧν ἑκάστῳ συνώνυμον τὸ μέρος ἐστίν. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876D: ἀπὸ τοῦ οὖν ὅμοια τὰ μέρη εἶναι ἐν τῇ τροφῇ τοῖς γεννωμένοις ὁμοιομερείας αὐτὰς ἐκάλεσε καὶ ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων ἀπε φήνατο. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 24: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων ὑπετίθετο, ὁμοιομέρεια δέ ἐστιν ἧς τὸ μέρος τῷ ὅλῳ ὅμοιον. commGenCorr, p. 11: τί δέ ἐστιν ὁμοιομερές, αὐτὸς [sc. Aristotle] προσέθηκεν εἰπὼν ὧν ἑκάστου συνώνυμον τὸ μέρος ἐστί.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.3.5.  See infra, p. 740, note 181, quotation from John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 396.

Plotinus

739

of the universe. Therefore, when Plotinus speaks of ‘a single logos of the Mind’, he goes back to the Stoics, but his fundamental premisses force him effectually to draw on the original source, namely, Anaxagoras. The fact that Plotinus introduced the notion of ‘soul’ in this context is not essential. For he could say that ‘souls are divided and not divided’ only because Anaxagoras was there in the first place: despite the original distinction of the principles, each one of them is like the entire universe, since (as Philoponus noted about Anaxagoras above) the primal unity of all principles does not cease to exist even when some of them come to light and produce specific things or phenomena. Nevertheless, the fundamental idea was there for subsequent philosophers to avail themselves of it, and so they did: the universe is a coherent whole.¹⁷⁶ But whereas the Stoics posited universal ‘sympathy’ as a doctrine dogmatically, or, at best, they sought to found this by means of the notion that the universal Logos comprises all the logoi (whether destructible, or not), Anaxagoras would have been able to explain coherently why is that so: the reason for universal interrelatedness is that each mixture is like all universe, and the primal unity of principles does not cease to exist in each and every particular thing or phenomenon. Even though in each particular instance only some logoi appear to act, there is the unbreakable unity of all the incorporeal logoi which make it possible for all of them to be present everywhere. This is why Anaxagoras said that the character of each thing is determined from the principles that preponderate in it most (ἐκ τοῦ μάλιστα ἐπικρατοῦντος),¹⁷⁷ which means that the essential unity of all principles is always there, as much as their dectructive and dissolving presence and action is. Every single thing or phenomenon is a universe, even though the prevailing principles acting upon it make it what it specifically is ad hoc and for a certain period of time. This is what makes every thing or phenomenon relevant to, and interrelated with, the entire universe. It was not only the Stoics and Neoplatonists (Porphyry, Simplicius, Damascius) who said so: it was also Philoponus, who, following consultation with the ‘followers of Anaxa-

 See infra, pp. 896; 1154.  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 4, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 27. Cf. Simplicius, op. cit. p. 163: φαίνεται δὲ καὶ προσαγορεύεται ἕκαστον ἐκ τοῦ μάλιστα ἐπικρατοῦντος. comm Cael, pp. 605 6: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ καὶ ταῦτα σύνθετα ἐξ ὁμοιομερῶν, ὥσπερ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα τὰ αἰσθητὰ σύνθετα ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν ποιεῖ κατ᾿ ἐπικράτειαν ἑνὸς τῶν ἐν αὐτοῖς χαρακτηριζόμενα. Op. cit. p. 632: τὰς ὁμοιομερείας στοιχεῖα λέγων καὶ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι, κατὰ δὲ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν χαρακτηρίζεσθαι. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 13: φαίνεσθαι δὲ καὶ λέγεσθαι ἕκαστον κατὰ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 86: οὗτοι πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ὑπετίθεντο εἶναι καὶ ἔλεγον ἐκ τοῦ ἐπικρατοῦντος ὀνομάζεσθαι σάρκα ἢ λευκὸν ἤ τι τοιοῦ τον ἄλλο.

740

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

goras’,¹⁷⁸ treated ‘the logos of this world’ as a fundamental Anaxagorean doctrine. This is what Aristotle did not realize while reporting that ‘to Anaxagoras, any part whatsoever is as much a mixture as the whole’ (ὁτιοῦν τῶν μορίων εἶναι μίγμα ὁμοίως τῷ παντί) which is why ‘any one thing comes into being out of any other thing’ (ὁτιοῦν ἐξ ὁτουοῦν γιγνόμενον).¹⁷⁹ He took it that any material exists within any other material; consequently, any material can be produced from any material, which is a preposterous idea to urge, and, naturally Porphyry, Simplicius, and Damascius banned it.¹⁸⁰ John Philoponus also rejected this Aristotelian proposition, and he argued in his own terms, which vividly makes things clear: To Anaxagoras, in like a manner that all the principles were mixed in the beginning, and thus this was a huge homoiomery that contained everything within itself, so do all of them exist within each and every particular thing.¹⁸¹

Anyway, following ‘the one homoiomery, which was infinite in terms of magnitude’, Anaxagoras ‘distinguishes the particular ones, which are not entirely separated from one another, but each one of them contains everything within itself, and when [each particular homoiomery] makes its mark it is named after the preponderant one.’¹⁸² When the Stoics posited that the universal Logos comprises all the logoi, they departed from Anaxagorean propositions and simply modified it. When Plotinus said that the Intellect is the logoi (νοῦς … ἔστιν ἄρα τὰ ὄντα), which are ‘the essence of the intellect’ (νοῦ οὐσίαν),¹⁸³ he was aware of both Anaxagoras and the Stoics. However, things were slightly different. To Stoics, the Logos/Mind is inherent in the logoi and vice versa. To Plotinus, the Intellect/Mind is the logoi. To Origen, the logoi are in the Mind, indeed in the Body of the Logos,

 John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 103; but this rendering is ambiguous and falls short of ac curacy.  Aristotle, Physica, 203a23 24.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 174. See supra, chapter 7, p. 443 and note 47. Likewise, Simplicius, op. cit. p. 35. Porphyry, Sententiae, 10 (quoted supra, p. 712, note 62). Damascius, Princ, p. 243; In Parmenidem, p. 144.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 396: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, φησίν, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ κατὰ ἀρχὰς πάντα μεμῖχθαι ἔλεγε, καὶ εἶναι οἷον μίαν ὁμοιομέρειαν μεγάλην ἔχουσαν πάντα ἐν ἑαυτῇ, οὕτω καὶ ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν κατὰ μέρος πάντα ἐνυπάρχειν ἔλεγεν. εἰς ταύτην δέ, φησί, τὴν δόξαν ἠνέχθη διὰ τὸ ὁρᾶν πάντα ἐκ πάντων γινόμενα.  John Philoponus op. cit. p. 397: τὴν μίαν καὶ ἄπειρον τῷ μεγέθει ὁμοιομέρειαν, ἐν ᾗ πάντα ἦν τὰ ὄντα, δι᾿ ἣν καὶ ἔλεγε τὸ ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, διακρίνει εἰς μερικὰς ὁμοιομερείας, οὐκ εἰλικρινεῖς, ἀλλὰ πάντα καὶ αὐτὰς ἐχούσας, φαινομένην δὲ καὶ ὀνομαζομένην ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐπικρα τοῦντος. Cf. op. cit. p. 103.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.5 (11 12 & 23).

Plotinus

741

yet they do not comprise the Hypostasis proper of Logos himself; they were created, therefore, they are ontologically different, and simply they decorate the Body of the Logos; besides, although they appeared out of nothing, they will never cease to exist. I shall argue that, it is Origen’s thought that stands closest to Anaxagoras, who maintained that the Mind is ontologically sheer different, since the principles are creatures, and the Mind is ‘unmixed’ with them, yet superintends them, being a ‘guardian’, ‘king’, and ‘ruler’ of their action. I have pointed out that the Presocratic mindset did not require intellectual accounts or notions that appeared only with Socrates and Plato, such as corporeal/incorporeal, immanent/transcendent, essence, and the like. To project such distinctions in those philosophers would be a mistake, but it is possible to treat their ideas in such terms, provided that we bear in mind that these intellectual tools are posterior to their era. Plotinus was entitled to considering Anaxagoras’ thought by means of later terms, and adding that Anaxagoras did not elaborate ‘because of his ancientness’. However, ‘ancientness’ does not have to mean deficiency. On the other hand, we should bear in mind that later accounts which were couched in classical terms were not always consistent. A case in point is a striking contradiction that is inherent in Plotinus’ philosophical exposition, which I am going to discuss next. On the one hand, Plotinus posited the One as absolutely transcendent to, and unmixed’ with, everything that stands below it.¹⁸⁴ This was not exactly Plato’s proposition, who had spoken of the inability to describe, or adumbrate, or even know anything about the Good.¹⁸⁵ There can be neither name nor account nor knowledge of the One, which, therefore, is altogether outside any discursive thought or proposition. This was not simply about the ability of human intellect to approach the One: it was about the ontology proper of it, which in reality was an Anaxagorean, not a Platonic, postulation, and it was this that Plotinus actually employed: the Supreme Principle is ‘unmixed’ with everything. Not only did Plotinus use Anaxagoras’ terminology about this, but also he admitted that his own idea of the One was the same as that which Anaxagoras maintained

 Cf. transcendence, ineffability, and incognoscibility: Enneades, III.8.10; V.5.14 & 17; VI.7.36; also, VI.9 (‘On the Good or the One’), throughout.  Cf. Plato, Parmenides, 141e 142a: Οὐδ᾿ ἄρα ὄνομα ἔστιν αὐτῷ οὐδὲ λόγος οὐδέ τις ἐπιστήμη οὐδὲ αἴσθησις οὐδὲ δόξα. … Οὐδ᾿ ὀνομάζεται ἄρα οὐδὲ λέγεται οὐδὲ δοξάζεται οὐδὲ γιγνώσκεται, οὐδέ τι τῶν ὄντων αὐτοῦ αἰσθάνεται. Timaeus, 28c: τὸν μὲν οὖν ποιητὴν καὶ πατέρα τοῦδε τοῦ παντὸς εὑρεῖν τε ἔργον καὶ εὑρόντα εἰς πάντας ἀδύνατον λέγειν. Respublica, 506d 509b. Epis tulae, 7, 341c 344b.

742

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

about the Nous.¹⁸⁶ Moreover, he entertained Anaxagoras’ epithet ἀμιγὴς about the Mind and applied this to the One,¹⁸⁷ which is the source of all being, since everything, from the Intellect down to Matter, owes its existence to it.¹⁸⁸ However, there was an important difference: Anaxagoras was able to sustain this idea within the context of his own philosophy: the ‘unmixed and simple’ Mind acts within the universe by means of its surrogates, namely, the principles. With Plotinus happened exactly the same that Aristotle incurred: while they availed themselves of Anaxagoras, they could not follow him all the way through because of the rest of their fundamental premisses. Plotinus’ antithesis to his Platonist predecessors was his denial of the supreme principle being any sort of intellect, and his own positing this as superior to all intellection.¹⁸⁹ This ran contrary to Pythagorean Platonists such as Numenius, who had spoken of a First God who is an ‘intellect at rest’, as opposed to a secondary and poietic intellect, which is ‘in motion’.¹⁹⁰ Plotinus never accepted such distinctions, but the problem was there, and it remained after Plotinus for his successors to face. My assumption is that he could not solve this problem because, like Aristotle, he drew on Anaxagoras only partially: he was fascinated by the Clazomenian, he went some way with him, but his fundamental axioms did not allow him to go far enough as to hurdle the difficulties of his own theory. In this re Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.9: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ νοῦν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ λέγων ἁπλοῦν καὶ αὐτὸς τίθεται τὸ πρῶτον καὶ χωριστὸν τὸ ἕν, τὸ δ᾿ ἀκριβὲς δι᾿ ἀρχαιότητα παρῆκε.  Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. II.6.1: the ‘being’ (τὸ ὄν) of the intelligible realm is not only ‘more au thentic’ (κυριώτερον), it is also ‘more unmixed’ (ἀμιγέστερον). Op. cit. III.6.15: the immaterial re alities are ‘of difference essence’ (τῇ ἑτερότητι τῆς οὐσίας), which is explained not only as hav ing ‘no kinship’ with the lower (material) realitiy, but also as being ‘unmixed’ with it (τὸ ἀμιγὲς ἔχουσα). At the end of V.5.13 (‘On the Good’), he says that this supreme ‘king’ both ‘is and is not good’ (καὶ τἀγαθὸν αὐτὸν ὄντα καὶ μὴ ἀγαθόν), and concludes this treatise in strikingly Anaxa gorean terms: the Good is ‘simple’ (ἁπλοῦν) and ‘it has nothing in itself, but it is unmixed with all things and above all things and cause of all things’ (οὐδὲν ἔχον ἐν ἑαυτῷ, ἀλλὰ ἀμιγὲς πάν των καὶ ὑπὲρ πάντα καὶ αἴτιον τῶν πάντων). Likewise (op. cit. VI.8.14), the One is ‘unmixed’ (ἀμιγές) with everything pertaining to generation of perceptible things, and ‘it is the cause of its own self, from its own self, and for its own self: for he is the foremost One and the transcen dentally One’ (αἴτιον ἑαυτοῦ καὶ παρ᾿ αὐτοῦ καὶ δι᾿ αὐτὸν αὐτός· καὶ γὰρ πρώτως αὐτὸς καὶ ὑπ ερόντως αὐτός). Cf. Anaxagoras (supra, p. 189, note 121): the Nous μόνον αὐτὸ ἐπ ̓ ἐωυτοῦ ἐστι.  Op. cit. V.3.15; VI.7.8; VI.8.18.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.3.11: δεῖ τὸ πάντη ἁπλοῦν καὶ πρῶτον ἁπάντων ἐπέκεινα νοῦ εἶναι. Καὶ γὰρ εἰ νοήσει, οὐκ ἐπέκεινα νοῦ, ἀλλὰ νοῦς ἔσται· ἀλλὰ εἰ νοῦς ἔσται, καὶ αὐτὸ πλῆθος ἔσται.  Numenius adumbrated the First God as an intellect who is ‘at rest’, whereas the Second God is an intellect ‘in motion’. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.18.14: ὁ μὲν πρῶτος θεὸς ἔσται ἑστώς, ὁ δὲ δεύτερος ἔμπαλίν ἐστι κινούμενος. Numenius portrayed the relation of those two Gods in characteristic Anaxagorean terms, such as σπέρμα and χρήματα. Cf. Eusebius, loc. cit.: Ὁ μέν γε ὢν σπέρμα πάσης ψυχῆς σπείρει εἰς τὰ μεταλαγχάνοντα αὐτοῦ χρήματα σύμπαντα.

Plotinus

743

spect, some important things should be remarked, which reveal that, upon making certain points in his work, it was Anaxagoras that Plotinus had in mind. It is generally assumed that Plotinus does not apply any notion of will to the One. However, this is not altogether absent from the Platonic texts. For example, in Plato’s Timaeus, the Demiurge is repeatedly represented as deliberating, that is, thinking out how to achieve his aims.¹⁹¹ Although Plotinus did not follow Plato all along, he presumably felt he could dismiss the idea of volition in connection with lower tiers of reality. Thus, although notions of will are found in the Enneads (βούλησις, θέλησις, ἔφεσις),¹⁹² they give the impression that they are used in order to dismiss the idea that secondary beings exist through the will of the One (οὐ προσνεύσαντος οὐδὲ βουληθέντος οὐδὲ ὅλως κινηθέντος ὑποστῆναι αὐτό).¹⁹³ At any rate, he allowed that the lower levels of reality create by will (θέλησις), but he regarded the creation of lower levels of reality as necessary. ¹⁹⁴ However, what happened to Aristotle happened to Plotinus, too: whenever they were swayed by Anaxagoras, they appeared oblivious of their own cardinal premisses and fell into self-contradiction. Let me then make myself clear. Despite his references arguing for the ineffability of the One, in Enneads V. I.8, Plotinus conveniently speaks of the inner life and activity of this One in discursive terms, which is important, all the more so, once we consider that this treatise is not an early one. His fundamental thesis, like that of all Neoplatonists, was that their exposition was nothing really new: everything had been said ‘long ago’ (πάλαι μὲν εἰρῆσθαι) by Plato himself, if ‘not explicitly’ (μὴ ἀναπεπταμένως); what Plotinus wrote was simply ‘an exegesis of them (λόγους ἐξηγητάς),¹⁹⁵ relying on Plato’s own writings for evidence that these views are ancient’.¹⁹⁶ Thus, Plotinus argued that ‘at many points, Plato says that Being and Intellect is no other than the Idea’, and that ‘although the Intellect is a

 Plato, Timeaus, 29e 30a; 41b. Later Platonists also attributed a notion of will to the Demi urge’s creative act. Cf. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis 3.28. Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum Commentarii, 1.362; 1.371 4.  Enneads, VI.8.9 (44 8); VI.8.13; VI.8.15 (1 10); VI.8.18 (35 52); VI.8.21 (8 19). Plotinus, never theless, dismisses many of these references as being inaccurate; op. cit. VI.8.13 (1 5 & 47 50); VI.8.18 (52 3).  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.6 (25 7).  Plotinus, op. cit. II.9.3 (1 18); II.9.8 (21 7); III.2.2; 3.2.3 (3 5); IV.8.6 (12 13); V.1.6; V.1.7 (37); V.3.16 (1).  As mentioned earlier (pp. 702 3), unlike what happened in modern times, the authors of Late Antiquity, both Greeks and Christians alike, saw themselves as mere ‘exegetes’ of the an cient lore. Cf. Origen, De Principiis, I.3.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.8.

744

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

cause’, there is a ‘Father of it, who is beyond the Intellect and beyond essence’.¹⁹⁷ Then, Plotinus posited that the Good itself is no different from its own ‘will’; in fact, the ‘will’ and ‘essence’ and ‘choosing’ of the Good is one and the same, because the Good is one, therefore, these attributes of its existence cannot exist as multitude.¹⁹⁸ Thus, the will of the Good is not any kind of activity, but it is the same as its own hypostasis; and when it is said that the Good owes its own hypostasis to no other than itself, this means that the Good made itself not a random hypostasis, but what he willed to be (ἀλλ᾿ ὅπερ ἐβουλήθη αὐτός).¹⁹⁹ It would appear striking that not only does Plotinus speak of will of the Supreme Principle, but also he considers it as a personal hypostasis. The Good is stated by means of the masculine he (αὐτός), not it. This is not the only point where he does so: in the same section, he does describe that which at other points he posits as ineffable and beyond any possibility of depiction or discursive thought: the Good ‘is the outside, the encompassment and measure of all things’; anything that could touch upon this external encompassing is ‘logos and intellect’ (λόγος καὶ νοῦς), and it is dependent on, and derivative from, this Good; in so far as logos and intellect touches upon him, and in the way it depends on him, it has its being from the One. Once again, the One is he (αὐτόν), not it, ²⁰⁰ and the language in which Plotinus described not only this, but also the will of the Good, is revealing:

 Plotinus, loc. cit. Plato did in fact write so in the Respublica, 509b9, but this was forgotten until Origen recalled it from oblivion (Cels, VI.64). However, the one who actually alluded to it was Celsus (quoted by Origen, op. cit. VII.45), and when Origen himself quoted the Platonic prop osition, he did so in terms that do not suggest endorsement. Then, his fellow student under Am monius Saccas did the same. Plotinus, op. cit. I.7.1; I.8.6; V.1.8 (quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.17.10); V.4.2; V.4.13; V.6.6; VI.8.16 & 19; VI.9.11. See Plato quoted by Porphyry, In Pla tonis Parmenidem commentaria (fragmenta), 12. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 1.5. Eusebius, Praepar atio Evangelica, 11.21.5 & 6; Demonstratio Evangelica, 5.1.25. Alexander of Lycopolis (theologian, fourth century), Tractatus de Placitis Manichaeorum, 26. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 16; v. 2, pp. 32; 73; commCrat, 130. Implicitly availed of by Maximus Confessor, Quaestiones ad Tha lassium, 63. John of Damascus, Oratio in Nativitatem Sanctae Dei Genitricis Mariae, 3. Isaac Com nenus, De Malorum Subsistentia, 29.2.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.8.13: Εἰ οὖν ὑφέστηκε τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ συνυφίστησιν αὐτὸ ἡ αἵρεσις καὶ ἡ βούλησις· ἄνευ γὰρ τούτων οὐκ ἔσται· δεῖ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ πολλὰ εἶναι, συνακτέον ὡς ἓν τὴν βού λησιν καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τὸ θέλειν.  Plotinus, loc. cit. Εἰ γὰρ ἡ βούλησις παρ᾿ αὐτοῦ καὶ οἷον ἔργον αὐτοῦ, αὕτη δὲ ταὐτὸν τῇ ὑποστάσει αὐτοῦ, αὐτὸς ἂν οὕτως ὑποστήσας ἂν εἴη αὐτόν· ὥστε οὐχ ὅπερ ἔτυχέν ἐστιν, ἀλλ᾿ ὅπερ ἐβουλήθη αὐτός. Italics are mine, accentuating the One being stated as he, not it. Likewise, op. cit. VI.8.14: αἴτιον ἑαυτοῦ καὶ παρ᾿ αὐτοῦ καὶ δι᾿ αὐτὸν αὐτός· καὶ γὰρ πρώτως αὐτὸς καὶ ὑπερόντως αὐτός.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.8.18(2): τὰ μετ᾿ αὐτόν.

Plotinus

745

The dispersed image [of the Good], i. e. the Intellect, is not of alien form;²⁰¹ it is not a hap hazard being; but each and every part of it is logos and cause (λόγος καὶ αἰτία), and that [One] is the cause of the cause (αἴτιον δὲ ἐκεῖνο τοῦ αἰτίου). Therefore, [the One] is, so to speak, a cause in a more profound and truer sense (μειζόνως ἄρα οἷον αἰτιώτατον καὶ ἀλη θέστερον αἰτία), because it possesses all the intellectual causes which are going to be from him, and he is generative not of anything which is desultory, but [it is] as he himself willed [it it be] (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἠθέλησεν αὐτός). And his will was neither irrational, nor was it random, nor was it just as it occurred to him (ἡ δὲ θέλησις οὐκ ἄλογος ἦν οὐδὲ τοῦ εἰκῇ οὐδ᾿ ὡς ἐπῆλθεν αὐτῷ), but it was as it ought to be (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἔδει), since nothing therein exists hap hazard is random (ὡς οὐδενὸς ὄντος ἐκεῖ εἰκῇ). … But if this is what ought to be, it is not so irrationally; and if everything happens at its appropriate time (εἰ καιρός),²⁰² [the One] has the supreme mastery upon those which are inferior to it, and has priority par excellence [over everything]; this is not so in a random manner, but it is exactly what he willed (ἀλλὰ τοῦτο ἐστίν, ὅπερ οἷον ἐβουλήθη αὐτός), since he wills what is befitting (εἴπερ τὰ δέοντα βούλεται); and both what ought to be and the active actuality of what ought to be are one (καὶ ἓν τὸ δέον καὶ ἡ τοῦ δέοντος ἐνέργεια). Moreover, that which ought to be is not a substrate (καὶ ἔστι δέον οὐχ ὡς ὑποκείμενον), but it is that which the first active actuality reveals itself to be, which is what it ought to be (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἐνέργεια πρώτη τοῦτο ἑαυτὴν ἐκφήνασα, ὅπερ ἔδει).²⁰³

To speak of will of the supreme principle is not Platonism in the first place: it is the philosophy of Anaxagoras, as canvassed in chapter 5. To speak of the supreme principle while clearly suggesting that this is a personal hyspostasis, and to adumbrate an Intellect/Mind as the one who masters over ‘logoi and causes’, is Anaxagorean, too. To describe the Mind’s activity as purposeful is also Anaxagorean. To express the activity stemming from ‘logoi and causes’ (λόγος καὶ αἰτία), as realization of potentiality originating in the Intellect/Mind, is an idea that Aristotle himself read in Anaxagoras.²⁰⁴ Indeed, the One ‘is the potentiality of all things’ (δύναμις τῶν πάντων), and it is because the One exists that ‘the Intellect and the primal life, and every kind of life’ can exist, too.²⁰⁵ This is why the Intellect is a potentiality which has come to actuality.²⁰⁶

 For the interpretation of the rare adjective ἀλλοειδής, see Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, letter alpha, entry 3174: ἀλλοειδής· ἀλλοφανής. Suda, letter alpha, entry 1319: ᾿Aλλοειδής· ὁ ξένον ἔχων εἶδος. The term is Homeric: Odyssea, XIII.194 (ἀλλοειδέα, meaning ‘appearing as strange’).  There is a remarkable similarity with Origen’s notion of kairos. See PHE, chapter 4, pp. 130 44.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.8.18; once again, italics are mine, pointing out Plotinus’ speaking of the One as he, not it.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.8.10.  Plotinus, loc. cit.: ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν … δύναμις ἔσται εἰς ἐνέργειαν ἐλθοῦσα. Cf. the One styled δύναμις, in IV.4.1 (δύναμις ἡ πρώτη, then, ἡ πάντων δύναμις); IV.8.6 (11); VI.9.5 (36). This should

746

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

However, there is no way to take such references in the Aristotelian sense; after all, never did Aristotle say that his supreme principle itself is the potentiality of everything. Quite simply, it moves things, and, as I discuss at another point,²⁰⁷ whether his First Mover was also a creative principle remained a disputed question during all Late Antiquity, indeed right through the Renaissance. Nevertheless, Plotinus expresses himself in indisputably Aristotelian terms (namely, δύναμις/ἐνέργεια). My view is that he entertains Anaxagorean ideas using Aristotle’s vocabulary. This is all too plain in V.3.15. The real question at that point is how oneness turns to dyad, and then to multiplicity, which was the old Pythagorean problem, and he uses the expression ἓν πολλὰ of Plato’s Parmenides, 144e5, in order to refer to the Intellect (the second Hypostasis). He did so having in mind the primal reality that Anaxagoras had spoken of, although his Intellect as the world of Forms is not the Anaxagorean ‘all things’. However, we saw above that Plotinus did express the second Hypostasis not as a world of forms, but as a totality ‘logoi and causes’, and this is Anaxagorean. That he recalled the widely known Anaxagorean maxim, ‘all things are together’ at the following point could be hardly a coincidence. That which comes immediately after it [i. e. the One] shows clearly that it is immediately after it, because its multiplicity is a one everywhere (ἓν πανταχοῦ). For although it is a mul tiplicity, it is at the same time identical with itself, and there is no way in which you could divide it, because all things are together (ὅτι ὁμοῦ πάντα). For each of the things which also come from it, is one many (ἓν πολλά), as long as it participates in life, because it cannot reveal itself as a one all (ἓν πάντα). But [the Intellect] is itself a one all (ἓν πάντα), because it comes after the origin: for the origin is the One, which is really and truly one (ἀρχὴ γὰρ ἓν ὄντως καὶ ἀληθῶς ἕν). … What then are all things? [All things are those] of which that [One] is the principle. But how is it that [the One] is the principle of all things? Is it so because it maintains them in being, making each of them to be what it is? Yes [ᾗ not ἢ see note], and because it brought them into existence. But how did it do so? By possessing them before hand (ἦ²⁰⁸ τῷ πρότερον ἔχειν αὐτά). But it has been said that in this way it will be a multi plicity (πλῆθος οὕτως ἔσται). However, it had them is such a way as not to be distinct: they had been distinguished in a state which could be intellectually said to be subsequent (τὰ δ᾿ ἐν

be understood as a generative ‘power’, which contains potentialities within itself. Likewise, V.1.7 (9): τὸ ἓν δύναμις πάντων. V.4.2 (38 40): Καὶ ἐκεῖνο μὲν δύναμις πάντων, τὸ δὲ ἤδη τὰ πάντα. At this point, he treats the Intellect/Nous as equivalent to the Anaxagorean totality of distinguished principles. However, in the passage which I quote next, he speaks so of the One.  See supra, pp. 554 69.  In V.3.15, P. Henry and H. R. Schwyzer wrote, ἢ τὸ μὴ ἕν (10); ἢ ὧν ἀρχὴ ἐκεῖνο (25 26); ἢ καὶ ὅτι ὑπέστησεν αὐτά (29). So did A.H. Armstrong. This is plain wrong, and it should be ἦ, that is, an adverb confirming an assertion, which is exactly what Plotinus does. It means, ‘in truth’, or ‘surely’, or ‘indeed’. The disjunctive conjunction ἢ of the editors (used instead of ἦ, at hun dreds of points) is a fatal detriment to the text and renders it meaningless.

Plotinus

747

τῷ δευτέρῳ διεκέκριτο τῷ λόγω).²⁰⁹ For this is already actuality, whereas the One is the potentiality of all things (ἐνέργεια γὰρ ἤδη· τὸ δὲ δύναμις πάντων). But in what way is it a potentiality? Certainly, not in the way in which matter is said to be potentially, because matter is passive. But this [material] way of being a potentiality is at the opposite extreme to making. How then does [the One] make what it does not have? It does not do it haphaz ardly, nor reflecting on what it will make, but it will make it none the less.²¹⁰

When Porphyry wrote that the Enneades were full of Peripatetic doctrines, perhaps he had in mind also the heavily recurrent Aristotelian terminology. However, Plotinus makes it clear that his theory is antipodal to the Aristotelian formless matter, which is potentially everything and actually nothing. The One is potentiality not as passive formlessness on which forms act, but as an active agent which gives rise to forms by means of distinction. This is the Anaxagorean Mind which produced the principles out of the primal confusum by means of distinction, hence, all of the creative and cohesive causes (or, logoi) came to be, and thereafter they keep acting at the behest of the Mind. This is why Plotinus himself, at a certain point (quoted just above), wrote not of the Intellect being a world of forms, but (in the same tenor and context as here) he put it that ‘the Intellect is not a haphazard being; but each and every part of it is logos and cause (λόγος καὶ αἰτία), and that [One] is the cause of the cause (αἴτιον δὲ ἐκεῖνο τοῦ αἰτίου).’²¹¹ He explained the relation of the Intellect to its content (namely, the particular minds, or logoi and causes) by means of an illuminating analysis in VI.2.20‒21. There is a certain peculiarity in the way Plotinus avails himself of Anaxagoras while building his own system, as he essayed to make two principles out of Anaxagoras’ single one: whenever he thought of the Nous as the supreme ontological principle, he identified it with the One; but when he saw the same Nous as the master of the principles/logoi (or, causes, etc.) acting at his behest, he identified it with the Intellect. In either case, all of Plato’s books were wide open on his desk, and he left no chance of quoting from Plato in order to serve his own purposes. In doing so, it is quite evident that his cardinal notion of making the One and Intellect two hypostases belonging to different, and classified, ontological levels was a difficulty. Besides, as explained above, he never managed to solve the problem, indeed the contradiction, which he bequeathed to his successors: how is it possible for the One to be at the same time the source

 The term τῷ δευτέρῳ should not be pressed too far. In VI.8.13 (47 ff), Plotinus warns that ‘one should go along with terms, if, speaking of that Good, in order to indicate it of necessity one uses expressions which strictly speaking we do not allow to be used.’  Plotinus, op. cit. V.3.15.  See supra, p. 744, op. cit. VI.8.18.

748

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

of being of all things while being utterly transcendent and without correlation with everything below it? This contradiction stemmed simply from his Anaxagorean inspiration which posited the Nous as Creator, who ‘rules over everything’, who ‘knows everything’, ‘he is the same, whether the greater or the lesser one’, who initially ‘he set everything in motion’, and yet he is ‘unmixed’ with all things. It appears that the source of Plotinus’ contradiction was the sheer ontological classification between the two higher Hypostases, which he wished to maintain by all means. The final answer to this came from Damascius who in effect showed that this classification was untenable, as discussed later in this chapter.²¹² A salient characteristic of philosophy after Anaxagoras was confusion between ‘mind’ and ‘soul’, and indiscriminate usage of these terms.²¹³ The same or similar propositions were used in order to describe functions being attributed to the mind in one case, or to the soul in another. To Anaxagoras, ‘soul’ meant simply life; it was not a self-subsistent being, and he did not care for saying anything in particular about this, any more than he would have done so about any other composite thing or phenomenon. Hence, following his idea which Philoponus ambiguously understood as a huge homoiomery which contains all the principles,²¹⁴ Plotinus made the Nous a huge being which not only contains, but also it is all of the ‘first and foremost archetypes, as well as the essence of the Intellect’ (ἀρχέτυπα καὶ πρῶτα καὶ νοῦ οὐσίαν).²¹⁵ However, long before Plotinus, Aristotle had posited that ‘the soul is in a sense all [existing] things’, making himself clear that, by ‘existing things’, he had in mind ‘those which exist, whether sensible or intelligible ones’.²¹⁶ When he depicted the soul as ‘hand’, he explained that this is an ‘instrument which employs instruments, in the same way the mind is a form which employs forms, and, in a sense, this is a form which employs the forms of sensible objects’. Aristotle then (who never disowned his Platonic nourishment completely) in effect makes the soul a ‘intermediate’ between the mind and sensible things, which was a theory that became a leitmotif of the Late Antiquity.²¹⁷ The idea or-

 See infra, pp. 816 23.  See pp. 570; 596; 684; 985; 1182 3; 1185; 1502.  See supra, p. 739, note 178, and p. 356, note 139.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.5.21 22.  Aristotle, De Anima, 431b21 22.  Heron of Alexandria, Definitiones, 136.56. Plutarch, Platonicae Quaestiones, 1008D; De Ani mae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1025B. Plotinus, op. cit. IV.2.1. Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 4; Sententiae, 5; commTim, Book 2, fr. 61, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 105. Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 10. Sallustius Secundus (see infra, p. 1245, note 324), De Deis et Mundo, 18.1. Hermias of Alexandria,

Plotinus

749

iginated with Plato,²¹⁸ and when authors claimed that they read it in Aristotle endorsing his teacher’s tenet, this was hardly an extrapolation.²¹⁹ In view of this, Simplicius (or whoever the author of that commentary was) points out the contradiction: Aristotle posited the soul as standing midway between intelligible forms and sensible things (ἀλλ᾿ ἡ ψυχὴ μέση εἴρηται τῶν εἰδῶν καὶ εἶδος εἰδῶν καὶ εἶδος αἰσθητῶν);²²⁰ ‘but if, according to him, the soul is all beings, in a certain way’ (ἀλλ᾿ εἰ καὶ κατ᾿ αὐτὸν ἡ ψυχὴ πάντα ἐστὶ τὰ ὄντα τρόπον τινά), what is the difference between him and Empedocles’ hypothesis (τίνι διοίσει τῆς Ἐμπεδοκλέους ὑποθέσεως) positing the soul as comprising all the elements and all beings, so that ‘like should be known through the like’ (ἵνα τῷ ὁμοίῳ τὸ ὅμοιον γινώσκῃ), which is an idea that Aristotle excoriated severely in the first book [of De Anima]?’.²²¹ This was not the only contradiction of Aristotle, as I discuss in chapter 12. But it is characteristic of his difficulty to explain the real nature of the interaction between forms and formless matter, and, above all, to explain the agent that causes this interaction, since hardly did he describe his First Immovable Mover as creator. In other words, what Anaxagoras posited as action by the principles under the supervision of the Mind granting this action, Aristotle sought to explain by having recourse to the idea of the soul being a certain ‘intermediate’ between incorporeal and corporeal nature, as well as being ‘all things’. This did not deter him from criticizing what he presented as Empedocles’ theory, arguing that his predecessor made the soul consisting of all the elements. The notion of associating either the Mind/Intellect or the soul with ‘all of …’ (the elements, the principles, the logoi, all beings, the Ideas, or whatever) apIn Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 123. Hierocles of Alexandria, In Aureum Carmen, 20.2. Ammo nius of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 37. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 85, et passim, at scores of points. Damascius, Princ, pp. 144; 230; et passim. Simplicius, commCateg, p. 356; commPhys, p. 779. John Philoponus, commAnalPr, p. 66; commAnim, pp. 2; 70; 121; et passim. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, pp. 47; 98. Also, Christians: Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 145. Eusebius, Commentaria in Psalmos, PG.23.1261.44 46. Maximus Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium, 49.  Plato, Timaeus, 35a.  Aristotle, Fragmenta Varia, apud Simplicius (or, whoever the author), commAnim, p. 221: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aριστοτέλης … τὴν δὲ λογικὴν ψυχὴν ὡς μὴ μόνον ὁριζομένην ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅρον οὖσαν· μεταξὺ γὰρ ὡς τοῦ ἀμερίστου καὶ μεριστοῦ ἄμφω πως οὖσα, οὕτω καὶ τοῦ ὅρου καὶ τοῦ ὁριζομένου ἀμφότερον ἐμφαίνουσα. Cf. op. cit. pp. 11; 312. See the same testimony by Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 404 and Simplicius commAnim, p. 3. John Philoponus saw this in like a manner: commA nim, p. 122; 124.  The author has in mind Aristotle’s De Anima, 432a, and then 431b.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 282. He implies Aristotle’s De Anima, 404b; 405b; 409b; 410a b, which contradicts his reference in De Anima, 432a and 431b.

750

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

pears common to Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus, and it made its way well into the Late Antiquity. This notion was not part of the legacy of Anaxagoras. Unlike Plotinus who was inspired by Plato and then he resolved to make the Intellect ‘all beings’, and unlike the Stoics who made their Logos comprising all the logoi, Anaxagoras’ Mind was ‘simple, unmixed, and had nothing to do with corporeal things’ (᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ εἶπεν ἁπλοῦν τὸν νοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἄμικτον καὶ μηδενὶ τῶν σωματικῶν πραγμάτων ἔχειν τι κοινόν). Thomas Aquinas reviewing all the ancient tenets on this, points out that ‘ancient philosophers considered the Mind in two different ways: some of them posited it as composite made of all the principles, so that it should know everything, and this was the doctrine of Empedocles [according to Aristotle]’.²²² The other stream of thought ‘did not make the Mind composite of material elements, as Empedocles had it; rather, they posited it as unmixed, as Anaxagoras maintained.’ Aquinas then concludes that ‘as a matter of fact, this is what Anaxagoras held, since he departed from the following argument, namely, that the Mind is the first principle of the universe, and it moves all things, according to its own mastery and absolute rule’.²²³ Unlike schools that were influenced by him, Anaxagoras himself did not make the principles the Mind’s own self, and the Mind never was posited as made of them. The only real followers of Anaxagoras on this were two eminent figures of Late Antiquity, namely Porphyry and Origen, which I examine next.

Porphyry The Theory of Logoi Porphyry did not feel bound to interpret Plato; rather, he was interested in grasping Plotinus’ thought, or, at any rate, the Plotinian ‘Plato’. In his History of Philosophy, he quoted a passage in which supposedly Plato wrote about the Good: an ineffable Nous proceeded from the Good; it was self-subsistent, and contained all real beings and all the essence of beings within it. Then, the passage describes this Nous, which is in fact the Plotinian Intellect, allegedly so described by Plato, whereas Plato’s own analyses fit the Anaxagorean Mind, as we

 Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.7. He refers to Aristotle, De Anima, 404b, 410a b.  Gennadius Scholarius, loc. cit: Καὶ ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας τῷ ὄντι τοῦτ᾿ ἔλεγεν τούτῳ τῷ λόγῳ κε κινημένος, διότι τὸν νοῦν ἔθετο πρώτην ἀρχὴν εἶναι τοῦ παντός, ὑφ᾿ οὗ πάντα κινοῦνται κατὰ τὴν ἐπικράτειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν δεσποτείαν.

Porphyry

751

have seen.²²⁴ Of course, Porphyry’s views involved many shifts during his lifetime, and he always felt at liberty to break his own ground whenever necessary. He had as much respect for the Greeks as had he contempt for their failures: and Plato’s theory of Ideas was a plain failure. Porphyry saw that the solution to inexorable impasses of theory would come neither from Plato nor from Aristotle: he should go back to the Presocratic thought. Once again, Simplicius comes as a great witness to the Presocratic patrimony, which otherwise had been transmitted to the Late Antiquity mainly by means of fragmentary (and normally biased) references by Plato and Aristotle. Here is how the latter formulated the problem upon setting out to examine how many constituents of things are there according to previous thinkers (are they a few elements or principles, or infinity of atoms: The principles in question must be either (a) one or (b) more than one. If (a) one, it must be either (i) motionless, as Parmenides and Melissus assert, or (ii) in motion, as the Physicists hold, some declaring air to be the first principle, others water. If (b) more than one, they should be either (i) a finite or (ii) an infinite plurality. If (i) they are finite (but more than one), they should be either two or three or four or some other number. If (ii) they are infinite, then either (as Democritus maintained) they are of one kind, but differing in shape or form, or they are different in kind, or even contrary [to each other] (ἢ οὕτως ὥσπερ Δημόκριτος τὸ γένος ἓν σχήματι δὲ ἢ εἴδει διαφερούσας ἢ καὶ ἐναντίας). A similar research has been done by those who inquire into the number of real beings: for they ex amine whether these are one or many, and if many, whether a finite or an infinite plurality. So they too inquire whether the principle or element is one or many.²²⁵

To this Simplicius’ comment is that ‘all exegetes agree that Aristotle sustained that Democritus’ principles are homogenous (ὁμογενεῖς ὑποθέσθαι τὰς ἀρχάς, meaning that they are made of the same substance), and they differ only in shape and form’.²²⁶ However, he goes on, there was dissent among exegetes as to what, or whom, Aristotle had in mind upon writing the expression ‘or even contrary [to each other]’ (ἢ καὶ ἐναντίας): Porphyry²²⁷ and Themistius believed  Cf. Porphyry, Historia Philosophiae (fragmenta), fr. 18, apud Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Ju lianum, 1.45 (quoted infra, p. 923, note 449). See also supra, pp. 530 2.  Aristotle, Physica, 184b. Notice his expression the principle or element, which is symptomat ic of little care for making the distinction. But whereas Democritus’ atoms were ‘elements’, Anaxagoras’ σπέρματα were ‘principles’, even though he did not use the term itself (but John Philoponus did: commPhys, p. 24: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν τὰς ὁμοιομερείας ἀρχὰς τῶν ὄντων ὑπετί θετο). Cf. infra, Simplicius, οἱ δὲ περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν … ἀρχὰς κατ᾿ αὐτοὺς οὔσας φασί. commPhys, p. 44. See discussion of this in chapter 1.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 43.  He was the only one beside Origen that had clear grasp of Anaxagoras’ philosophy before Simplicius appeared as an authority on this.

752

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

that Aristotle meant a contrasting alternative (ἀνταπόδοσιν) to his statement ‘as Democritus held’ (οὕτως ὥσπερ Δημόκριτος). Consequently, Simplicius resolves that ‘this was said about Anaxagoras’ (περὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρου λεγομένην). For ‘the followers of Democritus’ maintained that ‘all atoms are of the same substance’ (ὁμοουσίους τὰς ἀτόμους), and they differ only in shape and form’.²²⁸ In contrast, ‘the followers of Anaxagoras’ averred that ‘the principles are contrary to each other’ (καὶ ταῖς οὐσίαις ἐναντίας τίθενται … ἀρχὰς κατ᾿ αὐτοὺς οὔσας). For ‘into their ὁμοιομέρειαι’ they posited ‘oppositions that are different in quality’ (κατὰ ποιότητα ἐναντιότητας ἐν ταῖς ὁμοιομερείαις ὑποτίθενται), such as ‘hot, cool, dry, humid, denseness, rareness’. Therefore, Anaxagoras saw the difference of the ‘principles’ in terms of different ‘qualities’,²²⁹ whereas Democritus considered the difference of his ‘elements’ in terms of different ‘shape’ (κυρίως τῆς ἐναντιότητος ἐν ταῖς ποιότησι θεωρουμένης ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἐν τοῖς σχήμασιν). Nevertheless, Simplicius goes on, Alexander of Aphrodisias took the foregoing expression of Aristotle ‘or even contrary’ [to each other] (ἢ καὶ ἐναντίας) as one pointing to Democritus also – but Alexander’s entire argument which Simplicius expounds is not of concern to us at this point. Christian writers advertised Porphyry’s disrespect for Socrates (and by analogy, for Plato) for obvious reasons: his tract against the Christians had made him a formidable foe that should be discredited, and, if possible, altogether demolished. Hence, they sought to disparage pagan philosophy by bringing to light pagan vituperation aimed at pagans. However, Porphyry’s dissent from Plato is one thing, whereas total dismissal of Plato is quite another – and this never actually happened. After all, Plotinus took pride in presenting himself as a true disciple of Plato, and Porphyry himself had a lot of respect for his teacher Plotinus. To Porphyry, the real problem was not about persons: it was to hurdle the failure of Plato’s theory of Ideas, especially in respect of the relation of incorporeal patterns to real things, and, more specifically, the issue of how material reality comes to be out of incorporeal causes. Certainly, to any real or alleged student of Plato, the most august doctrine was belief in existence of incorporeal entities, no matter how one chose to style them. This meant belief not only in existence, but also in ontological supremacy of the incorporeal, which was the most noble axiom that had to be enshrined in the gist of any solution to Plato’s impasses. The deadlock needed to be surmounted, while at the same time incorporeality should not for a single mo-

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 43.  However, Simplicius argued staunchly that the Anaxagorean principles are prior to quali ties. See supra, pp. 450; 463 7.

Porphyry

753

ment be impugned. On the other hand, Aristotle posited a threefold definition of ‘essence’: it was either matter, or form, or (which presumably was his favourite) ‘both of them’ (τὸ συναμφότερον), that is, a perceptible object as a whole. The problem with this philosophy was that, on the one hand, matter proper (i. e. formless one) was posited as a potential being (and, in a sense, non-being, which though could become ‘everything’), and, on the other, form proper can never exist in its own right, that is, apart from a material substratum which is acted upon by a form. How then could either of them be ‘essence’, that is, a real being, once both formless matter and form were posited as incorporeal? Besides, how could Platonic Ideas be ‘causes’ effecting generation of perceptible things once they were arguably mere human abstractions? Alexander of Aphrodisias recapitulated Aristotle’s view: once the Ideas are non-existent, how could it be possible for them to be principles of existent things? (ὅλως ἀνύπαρκτοι οὖσαι πῶς ἂν εἶεν ἀρχαὶ τῶν ὄντων;). For that which is non-existent can be a principle of nothing’ (τὸ γὰρ ἁπλῶς μὴ ὂν οὐδενός ἐστιν ἀρχή).²³⁰ Xenocrates (who took over as scholarch of the Academy after Speusippus, Plato’s immediate successor) posited an Idea as a ‘paradigmatic cause’ (αἰτία παραδειγματική) in an attempt to rescue the theory.²³¹ This designation became fashionable during the last period of Late Antiquity,²³² but the fact is that never did Plato himself advance such a notion: at best, the Ideas are ‘patterns’ or ‘models’ to be contemplated or ‘seen’; they are not active, and they are not causes whatsoever.²³³ Little wonder then that the Stoic Zeno saw the Ideas as mere conceptions formed by human mind: they are non-existent, since those that ‘the ancient philosophers called Ideas’ (ταῦτα δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρχαίων ἰδέας προσαγορεύεσθαι) are mere ‘phantoms of the soul’ (φαντάσματα ψυχῆς); wherefore, the Stoics argued that the Ideas are non-existent (ταύτας δὲ οἱ Στωικοὶ φιλόσοφοί φασιν ἀνυπάρκτους εἶναι).²³⁴

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 724.  Xenocrates, Testimonia, Doctrina et Fragmenta, fr. 94, apud Proclus, In Platonis Parmeni dem, p. 888.  Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, pp. 106; 107. Syrianus (reporting Ar istotle’s dismissal of the notion), commMetaph, p. 10; referring to ‘the most ancient philoso phers’, p. 26; cf. pp. 98; 106; 109; et passim. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 4, p. 40; v. 5, p. 42; et passim. Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 2), 117. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 3; 7; 245; et passim. John Philoponus, commCateg, p. 17; commPhys, p. 5; et passim. Olympiodorus of Alex andria, In Platonis Gorgiam Commentaria, 46.7. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 2.10; Theologica, 6 & 113.  Cf. Plato, Euthyphro, 6e; Respublica, 409c; 484c; 500e; 540a; Timaeus, 31a; 37c; 38b c; 39e; 48e; 49a.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.12.3, apud Arius Didymus, Physica (fragmenta), fr. 40.

754

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

The dawn of Late Antiquity found thinkers not only faced with the question of what real being is, but more importantly, with the problem of how perceptible reality is produced from the real being, no matter what the latter was supposed to be. The solution to this problem was found in Anaxagoras, and the man who saw this first was Origen, to be immediately followed by his lifelong younger friend Porphyry. We should recall al-Shahrastani’s testimony to a report by Porphyry, who wrote that Anaxagoras ‘was the first who advanced the theory of hiding-and-appearing insofar as he supposed that all things are hidden in the first body and their coming into existence is only their emergence into appearance out of that body as a species, a genus, a mass, a shape, and a denseness or a rareness, just as the ear of corn emerges into appearance out of a single grain, a stately palm out of small date-stone, a man, perfectly shaped, out of a paltry drop of sperm, and a bird out of an egg. All these are instances of the emergence of appearance out of hiding, of actuality out of potentiality, of form out of the disposition of matter. However, creation (al-ibdda‘) is only of one thing, and it applies to no other thing except to that first body’.²³⁵ Moreover, it has been shown that there is good reason to accept Porphyry’s statement that Anaxagoras was the first to advance this theory. Al-Shahrastani himself wrote that Thales and Anaxagoras were at one in the assumption of a prime matter and imaginable forms within it, or of a primary body and existences hidden in it. Harry Wolfson showed that, in the Arabic version of the Enneads of Plotinus (the so-called Theology of Aristotle), ²³⁶ the author tries to show that nothing in nature stands still. He proves this by the analogy of the grain of seed (badhr) which, when planted in the ground, never ceases to grow, to change, and to become something else. For, he says, ‘in the seed lie high creative logoi which are inseparably joined to it, yet they are hidden (hafiyyah) and do not fall under our eyes; but when it performs its tasks and falls under our eyes its great and wonderful powers become apparent (banat). Here is then the common philosophic conception, according to which what seems to be a new creation is but the unfolding of something that is

 H. Wolfson, op. cit. p. 508.  Early sources of Platonism accessible to the Muslims were Porphyry’s Isagoge, which was translated before 763; an abridgment of Plotinus’ Enneads, known as the Theology of Aristotle, which was translated in 840; Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which was translated before 911, probably together with Alexander’s commentary on it; and Pseudo Plutarch’s De Placitis Philosophorum, which was translated earlier. H. Wolfson, op. cit. p. 579.

Porphyry

755

already in existence, described as the becoming ‘apparent’ of that which was ‘hidden’.²³⁷ A fundamental doctrine of Porphyry is that creation took (and still takes) place by means of logoi used by the Nous. We have an account of his considerations preserved by Proclus. It is interesting to follow this since Porphyry appears to entertain the philosophy of Anaxagoras, while at points his arguments presumably converse with Origen – indeed the one of both his pagan and Christian period. Proclus set out to expound the ‘sacred conceptions’ (ἱεροπρεπῆ νοήματα) of Porphyry, which Proclus himself treasured as a cherished patrimony. The exposition contains four chapters from Porphyry’s work, which would have been a commentary on the Timaeus, although this is not actually clear. In the first chapter, Porphyry opposes Atticus and his followers, who maintained that there are many principles conjoining the Demiurge and the Ideas to each other.²³⁸ In this section, he considers ‘principles’, not elements, and reflects in Anaxagorean terms, namely, that things either come-to-be or perish by virtue of concurrences or disjunctions of principles that are appropriate to each particular case: For if there will be no cause of difference to things that differ, so as to render the one pres ervative, but the other corruptive (τὸ μὲν εἶναι σωστικόν, τὸ δὲ φθαρτικόν), the casual will have dominion over the principles (τὸ τυχαῖον ἐπικρατήσει τῶν ἀρχῶν); for once a cause is abolished (αἰτίας γὰρ ἀνῃρημένης), the concurrence of such principles (ἡ συνδρομὴ τῶν τοιῶνδε ἀρχῶν) will be irrational, and without a cause.²³⁹

 H. Wolfson, op. cit. 510. The Gnostic system of Basilides posited creation out of a ‘seed’ that God created ex nihilo: it contained a ‘seed aggregate’ (πανσπερμία), in which everything was ‘premeditated’ (προβεβουλευμένα) by God and existed potentially, in like a manner that the seed of a peacock contains the rich variety of colours of its feathers. Hippolytus, Refutatio Om nium Haeresium, 7.22. The fundamental conception (though not its further development) is Anax agorean. Aristotle used the term πανσπερμία whenever he mentioned Presocratic theories with implicit yet clear contempt. De Generatione Animalium, 769a. On various occasions, he attributed this either to Democritus and Leucippus (De Anima, 404a), or to Democritus alone (Physica, 203a), or to Empedocles (De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 441a), or to Anaxagoras (De Generatione et Corruptione, 314b). In the De Caelo, 303a, Aristotle lumps Democritus and Leucippus together with the Pythagorean number Atomists, attributing to them the notion of ‘seed aggregate’ of ei ther elements or number units.  What follows is from Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, pp. 391 6.  Porphyry, op. cit. Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, op. cit. v. 1, p. 391.

756

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

Proclus then reports Porphyry’s²⁴⁰ theory that evil cannot be everlasting, which is an idea that both he and Origen²⁴¹ shared alike. Besides, different principles, which concur in order to produce certain orderly realities, cannot be severed from each other: if one of the principles is suitable (ἐπιτήδειον) for being adorned, and another serves to adorning, where is it that such aptitudes of them are derived from? It is then necessary that there should be something which conjuncts them both, and makes them commensurate to each other (δεῖ γὰρ εἶναί τι τὸ συνάπτον ἄμφω καὶ ποιοῦν σύμμετρα ἀλλήλοις). For these principles render themselves apt to concurrence because of interrelation between themselves, yet neither by being entirely severed from each other nor by being sheer contrary to each other (οὐ γάρ που ταῦτα ἀπεσπασμένα ἀλλήλων καὶ ἐναντίως ἔχοντα ἑαυτὰ ἐπιτήδεια πρὸς τὴν σύνοδον ἀπεργάζεται). These are words of Porphyry quoted by Proclus, but it should be recalled that Anaxagoras had already said that the principles are both distinct from each other as much as are they all united with one another, and they cannot be severed from each other through an axe.²⁴² The second chapter of Porphyry’s views supposedly draws on Plato once again, yet the result is confirmation of Anaxagoras’ influence. Proclus writes that (according to Porphyry) all things are referred to one principle, which is ‘the King of all according to Plato’s epistle’. However, it is also true that there are many principles which are subject to one principle (ὡς καὶ μίαν ἀρχὴν εἶναι καὶ πλείους, ἀλλὰ ταύτας ὑπὸ τὴν μίαν τελεῖν). The third chapter confirms Proclus’ idea that positing the Creator as the Supreme Principle is not a doctrine of Plato ‘nor is the Demiurge the supreme God (οὔτε ὁ δημιουργὸς ὁ πρώτιστός ἐστι θεός),²⁴³ as some people think of him’. He has in mind Origen, as he explicates this at another point repudiating him as an anti-Platonist, because he had made the Mind the supreme principle.²⁴⁴ At this point, there is an obvious effort to move closer to Aristotle, but this (as the next chapter of Porphyry shows) is made not for the sake of Aristotle, but in order to make it possible for the philosophy of Anaxagoras to be implicitly adapt Porphyry, loc. cit.: “Making evil eternal in the same manner as the Good, is absurd” (ἔτι δὲ τὸ τὸ κακὸν διαιώνιον ποιεῖν ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν, ἄτοπον).  See PHE, pp. 237 50.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 175; 176.  Proclus accused Origen of making the Creator a supreme principle, and mentions Origen’s work ‘That the King is the Sole Maker’; see next note.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31: θαυμάζω δὲ ἔγωγε τούς τε ἄλλους ἅπαντας τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐξηγητάς, ὅσοι τὴν νοερὰν βασιλείαν ἐν τοῖς οὖσι προσήκαντο, τὴν δὲ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἄρ ρητον ὑπεροχὴν καὶ τῶν ὅλων ἐκβεβηκυῖαν ὕπαρξιν οὐκ ἐσέφθησαν, καὶ δὴ διαφερόντως Ὠρι γένην τὸν τῷ Πλωτίνῳ τῆς αὐτῆς μετασχόντα παιδείας.

Porphyry

757

ed to the entire theory. Porphyry argues that Aristotle reprimanded Plato for positing that disorder preceded the order imposed by the Demiurge. But this was not really so, Porphyry argues: in like a manner that Aristotle posited that form imposes itself upon formless matter but never does formless matter exist alone, likewise, Plato described the demiurgic act while he did not allow that there was any actual prior situation in which there was only sheer disorder. Since God is good, order was always there. Why is it then that Plato posited that disorder preceded order? Because he wished to show that the order of things is owing to another cause (namely, a divine one), and primeval disorder is only an abstraction aiming to show how things would be in the absence of action by the divine cause. Therefore, primeval disorder did not really exist prior to order (ἔτι δὲ ἀδιάρθρωτον εἴληπται πρὸ τῆς τάξεως, εἰ καὶ μηδέποτε πρὸ τάξεως ἦν, ἀλλ᾿ ὁμοῦ τῇ τάξει συνυφεστός), which should remind us of Simplicius explaining that Anaxagoras’ statements about an initial order being imposed by means of ‘distinction’ should be understood not in terms of temporal succession: such references as ‘beginning of creation’ and the like are only expressions employed only for the sake of didactic purposes (φαίνονται δὲ καὶ οὗτοι τάξεως ἕνεκα διδασκαλικῆς ἀρχὴν τῆς κοσμοποιίας ὑποθέμενοι).²⁴⁵ This takes us to the fourth and last chapter of Porphyry expounded by Proclus. In that, Porphyry ‘demonstrates the way to creation’ of perceptible things (ἐν ᾧ τὸν τρόπον ἐπιδεικνύει τῆς δημιουργίας). This process is realized by the divine Mind by being what he is (αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι τὸν θεῖον νοῦν ἐπιτελούμενον), which Porphyry ‘demonstrates by means of many arguments’ (καὶ κατασκευάζει διὰ πλειόνων). His point is that ‘the Logos himself’ (αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ λόγος, indentified with ‘the divine Mind’, τὸν θεῖον νοῦν) is not in need of ‘instruments, as it happens with the various artificers’ who need to elaborate a piece or an amount of matter; instead, the Logos ‘timelessly comes upon a certain substratum’ and acts upon it ‘outpowering all obstacles’ to this purpose. The foregoing expression αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι (i. e. Mind creates by being what he is) is in all probability Proclus’ addition reporting Porphyry’s views. It means that Deity creates by being what it is, and the suggestion is that there is no divine will being involved. To argue for this, the normal examples were the sun or fire emitting light and warmth by being what they are, not by an act of volition. The expression was brought into play by Hermias as a casual reference,²⁴⁶ because his teacher Syrianus had done so at a few instances.²⁴⁷ But Syrianus’ other

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1131. See supra, chapter 4, pp. 296 7, and note 132.  Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 143.  Syrianus, commMetaph, 108; 109; 115; 117; 163.

758

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

pupil, namely Proclus, became obsessed with this, and used the formula bountifully.²⁴⁸ Although the notion became popular with Neoplatonists, in fact it had some bearing on Aristotle’s philosophy, since God is the First Mover by being what he is, and Nature also creates by being what it is.²⁴⁹ Porphyry was not really keen on the expression Proclus put on his lips. Instead, he opted for the Plotinian ‘progress’, even though certainly this was not progress in time. Michael Psellus censured Porphyry and Iamblichus precisely because they had a predilection for positing different kinds of ‘progress’ in order to explain generation.²⁵⁰ Anyway, Porphyry argued that artists are in want of instruments, because they have not dominion over every kind of matter; this is evident from the instruments they use in order to render matter pliant, boring, or polishing, or elaborating it with a wheel; all of these operations do not insert form (οὐ τὸ εἶδος ἐντίθησιν): they only take away the inaptitude of the recipient of form. However, the logos makes itself present in the artefact instantaneously, once all impediments are removed (αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ λόγος ἀχρόνως ἀπὸ τῆς τέχνης παραγίνεται τῷ ὑποκειμένῳ). This is the sense in which Porphyry argued that the forms never exist apart from matter, by ‘forms’ meaning ‘logoi’, as he already did and does in the next sentence. Consequently, should no impediment were there in the first place, form would be immediately intermingled with matter, and no need of instruments would be there’ (καὶ εἰ μηδὲν ἦν καὶ τούτοις ἐμπόδιον, τό τε εἶδος ἀθρόως ἂν τῇ ὕλῃ προσῆγον καὶ ὀργάνων οὐδὲν ἂν ὅλως ἐδεήθησαν). Following this, Porphyry calls ‘logos’ (λόγος) the ‘form’ (εἶδος) that ‘makes itself present’ in any operation upon matter. This is the gentle step beyond Plato that Porphyry took. Ostensibly, the way to do so was the Aristotelian theory (represented as Platonic) about indispensable inherent coherence of form with underlying matter. But we saw²⁵¹ that Aristotle never resolved conclusively the active character of forms with respect to the other obscure active agent which he called Nature (and, at a couple of points,

 He attributed this also to Xenocrates (once) and to Porphyry (three points, all of which are related to the present one).  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 23 (comm. on Metaphysica, 983a 984a); 441. Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Eudemia, 1248a22 27; Physica, 250b23 25; 256b24 26; 265b22 23; De Anima, 405a18 19.  Michael Psellus, Opuscula i, 36: ἐκ μιᾶς γὰρ ἀρχῆς πάντα γεγέννηται, ὡς τὰ ἱερά φασι λόγια, καὶ οὐχ ἕτερον ἀφ᾿ ἑτέρου, ὡς τὰ Πορφυρίου καὶ Ἰαμβλίχου ληροῦσι περὶ τῶν προόδων συντάγ ματα. Cf. Porphyry, Sententiae, 24 (τῶν ζωῶν τῶν ἀσωμάτων αἱ πρόοδοι); 31 (ἡ πρόοδος τοῦ παντός); commTim, Book 2 fr. 70; Historia Philosophiae (fragmenta), fr. 18  See discussion supra, chapter 8, pp. 542 3, and notes 75, 76.

Porphyry

759

also ‘God’). Moreover,²⁵² due to one more contradiction of his, in his philosophy it is hard to accommodate the notion of an incorporeal form co-existing (or, being essentially ‘mingled’) with matter. Therefore, in reality, Porphyry’s propositions mean that he revisited Anaxagoras. For the latter’s principles (σπέρματα) were unequivocally active, cohesive, transformative, and evolutionary forces being present throughout all perceptible reality, which was far more comprehensive a notion than Aristotle’s forms and his ambivalent statements about their character and function, both in themselves and in their relation to formless matter.²⁵³ Thus, by irony of History, whereas Aristotle looted the philosophy of Anaxagoras in order to compose his own philosophy by creating a smokescreen of flagrant caricatures upon his predecessor, Late Antiquity in effect bid farewell to Plato by appropriating an Aristotelian tenet, which was not Aristotelian in reality – always of course paying their respects to Plato, while building a new philosophy aiming at overcoming the impasses of both Plato and Aristotle. It has to be noted that when Proclus (expounding Porphyry’s theory) argues that the Logos does not need ‘instruments’ in order to produce things from formless matter, it might appear that this is not Anaxagorean, since the latter’s Mind acts by means of the principles, which are somehow the Mind’s tools. However, Proclus forthwith conveniently skirts this axiom (which was august to orthodox Neoplatonists) and appears prepared to endorse the theory of certain unnamed ‘theologians’ (τοὺς θεολόγους), who posited ‘certain powers that are superior to us’ (εἶναι τινὰς καὶ κρείττους ἡμῶν δυνάμεις): these powers make use of their active mental representations (χρωμένας δραστηρίοις φαντασίαις), which results in them ‘immediately becoming creative agents’ (καὶ ἅμα τῷ γενέσθαι ποιητικαῖς), simply by acting according to these mental representations of theirs. This is indeed Anaxagorean, as canvassed presently in chapter 12. For in that case, the notion of Nous/Logos (both are terms that Proclus uses, attributing them to Porphyry) does not create immediately by being what he is, but he

 Cf. discussion supra, p. 541: the form cannot be essentially ‘mingled’ with matter, since ‘it is impossible for that which is incorporeal to be commingled with a corporeal body’ (ἀδύνατον γὰρ τὸ ἀσώματον σώματι μεμεῖχθαι). Aristotle, Topica, 149b2.  Asclepius of Tralles went a step further writing about Aristotle: “He said that the first prin ciples are not the Ideas, but the logoi’ (οὔτε δὲ τὰς ἰδέας φησὶν εἶναι τὰς πρώτας ἀρχάς, καθώς τινες ἐκλαμβάνουσιν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς λόγους). Op. cit. p. 4. I canvassed this point earlier, and it is evident that Asclepius applied an Anaxagorean notion to Aristotle. Never did Aristotle urge that the logoi are ‘principles’; instead, it was universaly known that, beyond the First Mover, to him, the principles were the ‘forms’ and ‘formless matter’.

760

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

makes use of those ‘superior powers’, which act at the behest of the Mind.²⁵⁴ Little wonder then that Proclus’ exposition of Porphyry’s theory immediately turns to a genuinely Anaxagorean one, in terms of both content and locution. Let us then return to Porphyry through the narrative of Proclus, which now unfolds entirely in Anaxagorean terms. Why is it strange that the Demiurge could give subsistence to the sensible nature by means of intellection of the universe (τῷ νοεῖν τὸ πᾶν), and generate immaterially that which is material and that which is tangible without contact, and extend impartibly that which ex tends in space? For indeed, one should not be astonished if that which generates the uni verse is incorporeal and dimensionless.²⁵⁵

There is hardly need to remark that, despite their differences, Origen (as indeed any Christian) could have promptly endorsed this statement of Porphyry. The Maker now is not any Aristotelian ‘physis’ being imposed upon matter by means of forms: it is the Anaxagorean Nous acting dynamically and producing matter, being an incorporeal Creator using his immaterial principles, to which he gave birth in the first place. Once this turning point was behind Porphyry, he concluded his exposition unreservedly by means of the philosophy and terminology of Anaxagoras: human seed (τὸ σπέρμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου) produces man, who is much bigger than the seed, and he has all the logoi within himself (καὶ πάντας ἐν ἑαυτῷ τοὺς λόγους). The seed alone gives rise to the numerous differences between solid parts, as it happens for instance with the bones: some of them are compact, and some are hollow; there are the soft parts, such as the lungs and the liver; and the dry parts, such as nails and the hair; there are the moist parts, such as the blood and phlegm; and the fatty parts, such as the marrow and fat; likewise, the bitter parts, such as the bile; and parts without quality, such as the saliva; there are also the thick-set parts, such as the nerves; and the expanded parts, such as membranes. All these homoiomerous substances (πάντα τά ὁμοιομερῆ), and those that composed of them in one way or another, derive their subsistence from a small magnitude (ἐξ ὀλίγου ὄγκου), or rather from that which is without magnitude (μᾶλλον δὲ ἐκ τοῦ ἀόγκου). For it is the logoi that generate these, and they are everywhere, existing without magnitude whatsoever (οὗτοι δὲ ἄογκοι πανταχοῦ ὄντες). No matter how small a magnitude of the seed you may take, you will find all things in it (ὅ,τι γὰρ ἂν λάβῃς τοῦ σπέρματος, ἐν

 Proclus, commTim, pp. 395 6, reporting Porphyry’s theory of ‘the way to creation’. Porphy ry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 51.  Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 396.

Porphyry

761

αὐτῷ πάντα εὑρήσεις). Much more, therefore, is the Demiurgic Logos (ὁ δημιουργικὸς λόγος) able to produce all things (τὰ πάντα παράγειν δύναται), since he is not at all in want of matter in order to produce their existence (μηδὲν εἰς τὸ εἶναι τῆς ὕλης δεηθείς), which is what happens with the logos of the seed (ὥσπερ ὁ τοῦ σπέρματος). But whereas the logos within the seed of a plant is not outside matter (οὐκ ἔξω ὕλης), the Logos who gave subsistence to the entire universe (ὁ δὲ τῶν πάντων ὑποστάτης) since all eternity has abided in himself (ἐν ἑαυτῷ διαιωνίως ἕστηκε) and, by being self-sufficient and self-subsistent (καὶ ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ μένοντος),²⁵⁶ he brought everything to being (τὰ πάντα παρήγαγε).²⁵⁷ Simplicius explained that there are two notions that should be envisaged: one, the Mind before it decided to engage in creative action; two, the Creative Mind (ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς),²⁵⁸ who gave rise to the incorporeal principles ‘as of a certain beginning’ (ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος).²⁵⁹ For it was necessary for the Mind whose substance was ‘fused’ (αὐτὸ συνῃρημένην ἔχον τὴν οὐσίαν) to give rise to distinction within himself so that he would subsequently bring about an orderly distinction to the principles.²⁶⁰ Generation was produced from that total fusion, ‘although not all of that took place in the same breath’ (ἀπὸ τοῦ πάντων μίγματος ἡ πάντων γένεσις ἐξεκρίθη, εἰ καὶ μὴ ἅμα): material objects came to be in due course, by virtue of the principles, and yet all things owe their existence to ‘a certain superior principle and cause (ἀρχῆς καὶ αἰτίας ἐδεῖτό τινος κρείττονος), which Anaxagoras calls Nous’.²⁶¹ Consequently, there is the notion of Mind (νοῦς) which became Creative Mind (δημιουργικὸς νοῦς) ‘as a of a certain beginning’, but this does not introduce any ontological distinction between Mind and Creative Mind, nor does it suggest that there are two Minds,²⁶² even

 Cf. Damascius using these expressions referring to the Nous. Princ, p. 175: νοῦς ἐστιν ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ μένων. In Parmenidem, p. 162: ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἕστηκεν.  Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 396.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 609: ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργικοῦ νοῦ (see full quotation infra, note 263). Cf. John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 183: μόνον δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ὥσπερ ἐξ ὕπνου ἀναστάντα, καθὼς ὁ Πλάτων φησὶν αὐτός, νοῦν ἐπιστῆσαι τῷ παντὶ καὶ τούτῳ τὴν δημι ουργικὴν αἰτίαν ἀναθεῖναι. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 8.1: Ἦν ὁμοῦ χρήματα πάντα, ᾿Aναξαγό ρας ἔλεγεν. Ὅτε γοῦν ἦσαν χρήματα πάντα ὁμοῦ, ἠρέμουν πάντως τὸν ἄπειρον ἐκεῖνον χρόνον, ὁ δέ γε νοῦς ὁ δημιουργικὸς … κίνησιν ἐνεποίησεν αὐτῶν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461: τοιοῦτος δὲ ὁ νοῦς, ὃν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐνόησεν ἐργαζόμενον, ἐν οἷς λέγει ἄρξασθαι τὸν νοῦν διακρίνειν.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 461: ἔδει γὰρ τὸ τὰ συνῃρημένα διακρῖνον καὶ προάγον ἐν τάξει τὴν διάκρισιν ἀπὸ τῆς συναιρέσεως αὐτὸ συνῃρημένην ἔχον τὴν οὐσίαν πρώτως ἀναφαίνειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν διάκρισιν.  Simplicius, loc. cit.  See discussion about the notion of ‘two minds’, infra, pp. 994 ff.

762

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

though the Creative Mind ‘sprang’ from the Mind proper.²⁶³ There is only the abstraction of a Mind which started to reflect on generation: Creative Mind means only reflecting Mind, but it is the same one, even though some expressions about Anaxagoras’ supreme principle being ‘the Mind and his intelligence’ (καὶ ἦν ἀρχὴ ὁ νοῦς καὶ ἡ ἐκείνου νόησις)²⁶⁴ might give a false impression about a twofold supreme reality. Plotinus entertained the same idea in the Enneads, III.2.2, speaking of ‘the Intellect and his Logos’, as discussed above. As regards the incorporeal unity within the Mind, ‘there is nothing strange about contraries being in total union with each other, on account of their common ontological status, whereas they can conflict with each other once they are considered as separate ones’.²⁶⁵ It might appear that the expression Creative Mind (δημιουργικὸς νοῦς) was a commonplace in Antiquity. However, in fact this was introduced by Porphyry and Origen (of his early Christian period) when he wrote his De Principiis. The source of inspiration was certainly Anaxagoras, albeit some later commentators (such as Syrianus and Proclus) took it up and anachronistically applied it to Plato, as they normally did.²⁶⁶ It seems that Origen used the term at a time when was groping for forming his Christian doctrine. The conviction against Origen contains some telling Anaxagorean notions: the world was made by the Creative Mind, which existed prior to it, and produced the world by granting its own being upon it. That which existed before the world was dryness, wetness, hotness, coolness, and the ‘form’ of it, according to which it was produced.²⁶⁷

 Simplicius, commCael, p. 608 9: ἔοικε δὲ διττὴν ἐνδείκνυσθαι διακόσμησιν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, τὴν μὲν νοητὴν καὶ ἡνωμένην, ἐν ᾗ ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν καὶ ἕκαστον πάντα ἦν τὰ ἄλλα διὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν, τὴν δὲ αἰσθητὴν καὶ διακεκριμένην ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνης τῆς ἑνώσεως ὑπὸ τοῦ δημι ουργικοῦ νοῦ, ὃν καὶ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ νοητοῦ προελθόντα διακοσμῆσαι πάντα φησίν.  Michael Psellus, commPhys, 3.12.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 385: οὐδὲν θαυμαστόν, εἰ κατὰ μὲν τὴν κοινὴν καὶ μίαν ἰδιότητα ἱστάμενα συνυπάρχει ἀλλήλοις τὰ ἐναντία, κατὰ δὲ τὴν χωριστικὴν καὶ μαχητικὴν μάχεσθαι ποιεῖ τὰ μετέχοντα.  Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 3; De Mysteriis, 8.3. Julian, emperor, Εἰς τὴν Μητέρα τῶν Θεῶν, 3. Eusebius (who took it up from Porphyry and frequently quoted this from him), Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.6.6; 3.9.5; 3.9.13; 3.10.2; 3.10.23; 3.10.26. Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 171. Hierocles of Alexandria, In Aureum Carmen, 1.10. Syrianus, commMetaph, pp. 4; 110. Proclus, commRep, v. 1, pp. 107; 165; Theologia Platonica, v. 1, pp. 96; 117; et passim (more than seventy times throughout his works). Simplicius, as already cited. Damascius, Princ, pp. 149; 228; In Parmenidem, p. 191. John Philoponus, In Aristotelis Analytica Posteriora Commenta ria, p. 243; De Aeternitate Mundi, pp. 575; 577. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, pp. 11; 113; Theologica, 64, line 138; 89, line 20; De Omnifaria Doctrina, 49.  ACO, Canones xv (contra Origenem et Origenistas), tome 4.1, p. 248: καὶ ὅτι ὁ κόσμος πρε σβύτερα τῆς ὑπάρξεως αὐτοῦ στοιχεῖα ἔχων ἐνυπόστατα, ξηρόν, ὑγρόν, θερμόν, ψυχρόν, καὶ

Porphyry

763

Long before Simplicius explained Anaxagoras’ philosophy, Porphyry made ample use ot that. The only further step perhaps he took was to style the ‘seeds’ λόγοι, although we have far too little of Anaxagoras’ own words as to be sure that he did not use the term logos himself.²⁶⁸ The idea of ‘everything being in everything’ since the principles are incorporeal, the analogy to the ‘seed’, the term σπέρμα itself, and the principles being everywhere – all of these are distinctive Anaxagorean notions. Porphyry took up the term ὁμοιομερῆ that Aristotle used to describe Anaxagoras’ principles, but he used the term as a mere name in its literal sense, free from all the Aristotelian distortions. To this purpose, he made himself clear by using the extremely rare term ἄογκον (‘without magnitude’) speaking of the principles or logoi. The term ἄογκος seems to have been used for the first time by Plotinus seeking to emphasize the incorporeality of principles that produce material things.²⁶⁹ Then, it was naturally taken up by Porphyry, who coined its opposite, namely, ἔνογκον (a material thing that has a certain bulk) in order to delineate the substantial difference between immaterial and material realities.²⁷⁰ He saw what was obvious and common sense, which he applied to Anaxagoras’ immaterial principles: all of them are everywhere, which means that there is nothing strange about the proposition ‘everything is in everything’, or ‘all is in all’, or ‘everything is mixed with everything’ while at the same time each and everyone is distinct from one another.²⁷¹ It would appear astonishing that, as late as his own times, Porphyry felt it necessary to teach such a truism, which Anaxagoras naturally took for granted, and Aristotle pretended to ignore: any incorporeal reality is free of magnitude, it is an ‘otherness’ (ἑτερότης), it cannot be described by

τὴν ἰδέαν, πρὸς ἣν ἀπετυπώθη, οὕτως γέγονε· καὶ ὅτι οὐχ ἡ παναγία καὶ ὁμοούσιος τριὰς ἐδη μιούργησε τὸν κόσμον καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἐστὶ γενητός, ἀλλ᾿ ὁ νοῦς, ὅν φασι, δημιουργικὸς προϋ πάρχων τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τὸ εἶναι αὐτῷ τῷ κόσμῳ παρέχων γενητὸν ἀνέδειξεν, ἀνάθεμα ἔστω. This is the distorted text by Origen’s detractors, and I have discussed the relevant story, in RCR, pp. 258 60; 267; 324 5. In fact, Origen wrote not of ἰδέαν τοῦ κόσμου, as above, but of λόγος τοῦ κόσμου (see infra, pp. 1401 10).  On this possibility, see supra, pp. 585; 611.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI: 1.26; 4.5; 6.8.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 27; see this being quoted infra, p. 764, notes 279, 280.  Porphyry, op. cit. 33: Σώματι μὲν οὖν ἐν ὕλῃ καὶ ὄγκῳ ὑφεστῶτι τὸ εἶναι πού ἐστι τὸ ἐν τόπῳ εἶναι· διὸ καὶ τῷ σώματι τοῦ κόσμου ἐνύλῳ καὶ ἐνόγκῳ ὄντι τὸ πανταχοῦ εἶναι ὑπῆρξεν ἐν διαστάσει τε καὶ τόπῳ διαστάσεως. τῷ δὲ νοητῷ κόσμῳ καὶ ὅλως τῷ ἀΰλῳ καὶ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ ἀσω μάτῳ, ἀόγκῳ ὄντι καὶ ἀδιαστάτῳ, οὐδ᾿ ὅλως τὸ ἐν τόπῳ πρόσεστιν, ὥστε τὸ εἶναι πανταχοῦ τῷ ἀσωμάτῳ οὐκ ἦν τοπικόν. Op. cit. 35: ὥστε πανταχοῦ ὢν ὁ κόσμος πανταχοῦ ὄντι τῷ ὄντι, ὡς λέγεται πανταχοῦ εἶναι, ἐντυγχάνων περιλαβεῖν τὸ μέγεθος τῆς δυνάμεως οὐ δύναται, ἐν τυγχάνει δὲ οὐ μεριστῶς συνόντι, ἀλλ᾿ ἀμεγέθως καὶ ἀόγκως.

764

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

means of dividing it into parts, it is not confined in any place, which is why it is both ‘one and many’ (ἓν πολλά), and this ‘otherness’ can be conveniently grasped as both ‘divided and united’ (ἡ ἑτερότης αὐτοῦ διῄρηται καὶ ἥνωται).²⁷² The term ἄογκος was then employed by Iamblichus in order to make a similar point,²⁷³ but use of it faded and subsequently it scarcely appeared in philosophical locution.²⁷⁴ When Nemesius of Emesa used it within his own philosophical context²⁷⁵ in order to explain in what sense is a soul without magnitude,²⁷⁶ he used also a unique expression, which attests to the close relation between Porphyry and Origen. For indeed Porphyry noticed Origen’s scrupulousness about treating entities which are incorporeal,²⁷⁷ and picked up a phrase in order to make it a maxim duly adapted to his pagan context: “Volume [i. e. size and mass] coexists with space” (ὄγκῳ γὰρ συνυφίσταται τόπος),²⁷⁸ which he made a succinct sententia of his own.²⁷⁹ Usage of the opposite adjective ἔνογκος was still scarcer, and it appears exclusive to Porphyry and Iamblichus.²⁸⁰ Porphyry described the creation and function of the universe in sheer Anaxagorean terms. We have seen²⁸¹ that, although potentiality stands at

 Porphyry, op. cit. 36: Τὸ ὄντως ὂν πολλὰ λέγεται οὐ τόποις διαφόροις οὐδὲ ὄγκου μέτροις, οὐ σωρείᾳ, οὐ μερῶν μερισταῖς περιγραφαῖς ἢ διαλήψεσιν, ἀλλ᾿ ἑτερότητι ἀΰλῳ καὶ ἀόγκῳ καὶ ἀπληθύντῳ κατὰ πλῆθος διῃρημένον. διὸ καὶ ἕν· καὶ οὐκ ὡς ἓν σῶμα οὐδ᾿ ὡς ἓν τόπῳ οὐδ᾿ ὡς εἷς ὄγκος, ἀλλὰ ἓν πολλά, ὅτι καθ᾿ ὃ ἓν ἕτερον. καὶ ἡ ἑτερότης αὐτοῦ διῄρηται καὶ ἥνωται.  Iamblichus, De Communi Mathematica Scientia, 8, copied by Sophonias (thirteenth four teenth century), paraphrAnim, p. 130.  Only in Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 223 (καὶ τὸ ἀμερέστερον εἰ νοοῖμεν ὡς ἀογκότερον) and Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 143: immaterial entities are the causes for material thing to be generated, while co existing with them inseparably: ταῦτα καίπερ ἄογκα καὶ ἀσώματα ὄντα ὅμως τῆς σωματικῆς ἐπισυστάσεως αἴτια τρόπον τινὰ συνόντα τοῖς σώμασι.  Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, 3: τὸ γὰρ μὴ ἔχον μέρος ποίῳ δύναται τόπῳ περι γράφεσθαι; ὄγκῳ γὰρ τόπος συνυφίσταται. τόπος γάρ ἐστι πέρας τοῦ περιέχοντος καθ᾿ ὃ περιέχει τὸ περιεχόμενον.  Nemesius of Emesa, loc. cit: the soul is ἀμέγεθες καὶ ἄογκον καὶ ἀμερές, and impervious to spatial description.  Cf. Origen, commJohn, XX.18.158.  Origen, frPs, 41:10 11; selPs, PG.12.1420.25 27; excPs, PG.17.136.54 56: Τῆς γὰρ ἐσχάτης ἀνοίας τὸ ἐν τόπῳ νομίζειν εἶναι τὸν Θεόν· ὄγκῳ γὰρ συνυφίσταται τόπος· ὄγκου δὲ τὸ Θεῖον ἐλεύθερον.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 27: οὐδὲ τοπικῶς διέρχεται τὸ ἀσώματον ὅπου βούλεται· ὄγκῳ γὰρ συνιφίστατο τόπος.  Porphyry, loc. cit.: ὡς γὰρ τῷ σώματι τὸ ἄογκον ἄληπτον καὶ οὐδὲν πρὸς αὐτό, οὕτω τῷ ἀσωμάτῳ τὸ ἔνογκον. Op. cit. 33: διὸ καὶ τῷ σώματι τοῦ κόσμου ἐνύλῳ καὶ ἐνόγκῳ ὄντι τὸ παν ταχοῦ εἶναι ὑπῆρξεν ἐν διαστάσει τε καὶ τόπῳ διαστάσεως. Iamblichus, De Communi Mathema tica Scientia, 8; quoted also by Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 130: τὸ ἔνογκον καὶ διαστατόν.  See chapter 6, pp. 377 9.

Porphyry

765

the heart of the Anaxagorean philosophy and Porphyry saw the principles as ‘the way to creation’ (τρόπος τῆς δημιουργίας), the principles themselves are neither potentialities nor latencies: they are the means through which the Mind creates and effectuates potentialities, in order for things to develop to their full reality, which Aristotle later called ἐντελέχεια. Quite simply, the principles exist and make their mark differently, depending on the realm that is considered: in the perceptible universe, they are active by giving rise to matter and acting upon it. Since the principles were produced by the Mind, and they operate as the Mind’s tools, they are unfailingly, universally, and fully real in their initial (i. e. incorporeal) mode of existence. It is only in the realm of Becoming that they ostensibly either appear or hide, although they are omnitemporal and ubiquitous. What is actually either present or absent is a material system upon which the principles act inherently. Once again, it was Porphyry who saw and made this clear, using distinctly Anaxagorean terms, and leaving no doubt about the real import of the philosophy he set out to interpret: Certainly everything is in everything, but in a manner befitting the essence of each reality. For in the [human] mind, they [i. e. the principles or logoi]²⁸² exist intelligibly; in the soul, they exist as reason; in plants, they exist spermatically; in bodies, they exist as repro duced images;²⁸³ but in the Beyond the exist inconceivably and above all substance.²⁸⁴

Simplicius gave the same exegesis about Anaxagoras’ χρήματα, which became σπέρματα, namely, the principles or logoi. Porphyry grasped the gist of that philosophy a good four centuries before Simplicius explicated the Anaxagorean notion about the principles existing in different modes: on the one hand, he describes how the principles caused the primal rotation out of which the universe was produced, but, on the other, he is quick to note that this action

 In what follows, Porphyry once again designates the ‘principles’ as logoi.  The adverb εἰδωλικῶς means an object being seen through its reflection by a mirror, which is why perception of this object is vague. Once involved with perceptible things, the principles/ logoi are grasped indirectly, that is, following their action upon matter. Using modern language, I would have translated this as ‘virtual reality’. See Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 113, interpreting Porphyry and Iamblichus: ἡ δὲ ἔμφασις καὶ τὸ εἰδωλικῶς εἶναι παρὰ τοῦ κατόπτρου ἔχει καὶ αὐτοῦ χάριν ὅπως ποτέ ἐστι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἂν εἴη ἀμυδροτέρα. Likewise, Proclus, commRep, v. 1, p. 77: ἑπομένως τῇ τε φύσει καὶ τῇ προόδῳ τῶν φαινομένως ὄντων καὶ εἰδωλικῶς, εἰκόνας καὶ αὐτοὶ πλάττοντες. commCrat, 182. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 76, line 29: ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τρόπον τινὰ ὁρατόν ἐστιν, εἰδωλικῶς ἡμῖν φανταζόμενον, τουτέστιν ἀμυ δρῶς καὶ λεπτῶς.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10, quoted supra, p. 712, note 62.

766

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

by the principles does not describe what they are ontologically. Simplicius explained the notion of different modes of existence being involved in the axiom everything is in everything in exactly the same way as Porphyry did a long time ago. For the expression everything is in everything has a different meaning when it refers to the intelligible union, yet another meaning when it refers to their perceptible concurrence, which produces either generation of perceptible things or dissolution of [these things] into these [principles which produced these things].²⁸⁵

The impact of Anaxagoras’ proposition about everything being in everything (τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι) upon Late Antiquity was enormous, but no one except Simplicius credited Anaxagoras with it by name. Instead, the idea was smuggled into other philosophies, especially Neoplatonic ones. Modern scholars are quick to dismiss his rendering of Anaxagoras, although we have no other author indisputably having read Anaxagoras’ writings first-hand, and quoting from them extensively, so that posterity could assess his words. Thus, Stobaeus reports some Neoplatonic theories about the soul (Numenius, Plotinus, Amelius, Porphyry), but he adds a statement which, on the face of it, is completely irrelevant: They say that everything is in everything in the same way, yet [they are in each thing] in accordance with its own essence (καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν ὡσαύτως πάντα εἶναι ἀποφαίνονται, οἰκείως μέντοι κατὰ τὴν αὐτῶν οὐσίαν ἐν ἑκάστοις).²⁸⁶

The phrase makes no sense within the specific account about theories of soul, but Stobaeus received his text from Iamblichus’ treatise on the soul, who in turn had taken it up from Porphyry commenting on Anaxagoras.²⁸⁷ Iamblichus did not comment on Anaxagoras by name (as neither Porphyry actually did in

 Simplicius, loc. cit.: καὶ εἴπερ ταύτην ἔσχε τὴν ἔννοιαν, ἄλλως μὲν πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι φησὶ κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν, ἄλλως δὲ κατὰ τὴν νοερὰν συνουσίωσιν καὶ ἄλλως κατὰ τὴν αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν. Likewise, Damas cius, Princ, p. 243: πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστοις, ὅπου μὲν ἀδιάκριτα, ὅπου δὲ διακρινόμενα, ὅπου δὲ διακεκριμένα. In Parmenidem, p. 144: Ἔτι δὲ ἐκεῖνα ὡς ὅλα ἐν μέρεσίν ἐστι τοῖς οἰκείοις ἐν πᾶσι τὸ ὅλον, καὶ ἐν ἑκάστῳ διὰ τὴν ὁμοιομέρειαν.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.49.32. Perhaps something is missing in this text. The author means that, in the soul, all of its functions (natural, cognitive, and other ones) are all together (‘all in all’) and yet separate from one another. Cf. Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 197, lines 1 4.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10, quoted supra, p. 712, note 62. Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 295: τὰ δὲ ὀνόματα μεταφέροντες ἐντεῦθεν ἐκεῖ, εἰ μὲν ὡς αἰτίας τούτων ἀφωρισμένας καὶ τοῦτον ἐχούσας ἐκεῖ τὸν λόγον, ὃν ἐνταῦθα ἔχει τὰ ἀποτελούμενα τοῖς αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασι καλοῦμεν, οὐδὲν οἶμαι ἄτοπον.

Porphyry

767

his extant Greek writings, but there are the Arabic sources, too). Nevertheless, his admiration for him is all to plain: he speaks with some contempt about the hoi polloi, who are like a flock (ἡ πολλὴ μὲν ἀγέλη τῶν ἀνθρώπων) uncritically positing Nature as a generative source, adding only Fate to this as a commanding principle. Then, he secernates the ignorant multitude from ‘certain few ones’ (ὀλίγοι δέ τινες, that is, Anaxagoras and his followers), who saw the enormous power of the Mind (ὑπερφυεῖ δή τινι δυνάμει τοῦ νοῦ χρώμενοι) that stands above Nature and apart from it. These ‘few ones’ elevated their reflection far above Nature, and thus they grasped the Mind, which is ‘unmixed and separate’ (πρὸς δὲ τὸν χωριστὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ νοῦν περιάγονται).²⁸⁸ In other words, to Iamblichus, Anaxagoras and his pupils were the élite of philosophy, and this was the lesson he had learned from Porphyry notwithstanding his loyalty (though not absolute and unqualified one) to Plotinus. Porphyry’s exegesis of the Anaxagorean ‘everything is in everything’ went right through the Late Antiquity, since Proclus embraced and made it an integral part both of his own theology²⁸⁹ and of his exegesis of Plato. Thus, we have the apparent paradox of Plato (who criticized Anaxagoras) being interpreted by means of pivotal notions of Anaxagoras, but this is not really a paradox once the disregarded impact of Anaxagoras upon Classical and Late Antiquity is studied. Anaxagoras himself named his principles ‘seeds of all things’ (σπέρματα πάντων χρημάτων), as we learn for the first time from Simplicius’ quotations.²⁹⁰ However, the Platonic use of the term ‘ideas’ and the failure of the theory made it difficult to associate the principles of Anaxagoras with Plato. For the Anaxagorean principles were not merely atemporal archetypes to be ‘participated in’ by perceptible things: they were active forces and causes ceaselessly acting and reacting within the universe. They do not stand in any remote Beyond: they are inherent in sensible things which they give rise to as much as are they detached

 Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 5.18.  Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 103: Πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστῳ· καὶ γὰρ ἐν τῷ ὄντι καὶ ἡ ζωὴ καὶ ὁ νοῦς, καὶ ἐν τῇ ζωῇ τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ νοεῖν, καὶ ἐν τῷ νῷ τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ ζῇν, ἀλλ᾿ ὅπου μὲν νοερῶς, ὅπου δὲ ζωτικῶς, ὅπου δὲ ὄντως ὄντα πάντα. Cf. op. cit. 197; In Pla tonis Parmenidem, p. 753: εἰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι, οὕτω καὶ πάντα ἐστὶ πάντα καὶ οὐδέν ἐστι ἐν οὐδενί. Op. cit. p. 929: πάντα ἐν πᾶσι οἰκείως ἐστί. Cf. commCrat, 139; commTim, v. 1, p. 8: πάντα δὲ ἐν πᾶσιν ἔστι θεωρεῖν οἰκείως. Op. cit. v. 2, p. 26: ἔστι γὰρ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι καὶ μετέχει τῆς ἀλλήλων φύσεως· μιμεῖται γὰρ καὶ ταύτῃ τὸν νοητὸν κόσμον ὁ αἰσθητός, καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν ἐκείνῳ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, ἀλλ᾿ οἰκείως ἐν ἑκάστῳ, νοητῶς μὲν ἐν τῷ νοητῷ, νοερῶς δὲ ἐν τῷ νῷ, καὶ ὁλικῶς μὲν ἐν τοῖς ὅλοις, μερικῶς δὲ ἐν τοῖς μερικοῖς. Op. cit. v. 2, p. 44: ἵνα πάντα μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν ᾗ, οἰ κείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστοις. Cf. Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.8 (13 24), and see infra, chapter 13, p. 1260 1.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 609 & commPhys, pp. 35; 156.

768

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

from them.²⁹¹ These two terms of Anaxagoras (namely, ‘seeds’ and ‘ideas’) were taken up by the Stoics and Plato respectively. Therefore, Porphyry opted for calling them λόγοι, which maintained the active character of them as advertised by the Stoics, although Porphyry himself rejected the material character that the Stoics accorded them. The essential point is that Porphyry grasped the universe following Anaxagoras: there is a supreme principle (the Mind) which produces the logoi, the instruments for reality to come to pass, as Proclus explained above. Porphyry was perfectly aware of the multiple significations of the term λόγος,²⁹² and paid particular attention to the specific one, which is endowed with spermatic forces unfolding themselves gradually and rationally, as well to the meaning of logoi as manifestation of the rationality according to which Nature generates things.²⁹³ There is an extensive quotation from Porphyry’s work On Statues recounting how Orpheus understood creation: Zeus created the entire world within himself (ἐν αὐτῷ ἐδημιούργησεν ἔχων τὸν κόσμον) and he was the Nous (Ζεὺς δὲ καθὸ νοῦς) who developed himself to a Creative Nous, who is the King of the world (βασιλεὺς γὰρ τοῦ κόσμου ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς).²⁹⁴ In reference to a sculptured figure of Zeus, Porphyry’s exegesis of both the Orphic poem (which he quoted in length) and of the statue was that this was all about ‘the Nous, who created all things and made them complete by means of spermatic logoi’ (ὅτι νοῦς ἦν καθ᾿ ὃν ἐδημιούργει καὶ λόγοις σπερματικοῖς ἀπετέλει τὰ πάντα).²⁹⁵ This is a confirmation of Proclus’ rendering of Porphyry’s theory about the ‘way to creation’ expounded in the latter’s lost commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. Porphyry knew of course that ‘Spermatic Logos’ was a technical Stoic term. However, since he dis-

 See supra, pp. 446 51: Simplicius, commCateg, p. 210.  Porphyry, commCateg, pp. 64 5: Ὅτι τοῦ λόγου πλεοναχῶς λεγομένου: (1) λόγος καὶ ψηφιστικός (= mathematical); (2) λόγος προφορικός (oral speech); (3) λόγος ἐνδιάθετος (inher ent rationality); (4) λόγος σπερματικός (spermatic logos); (5) ‘several other meanings’; (6) defi nition of essence (λόγος ὁ ὁριστικός τῆς οὐσίας).  Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 12: πολλαχῶς δὲ τοῦ λόγου λεγομένου λέγεται οὐχ ἧττον λόγος καὶ ὁ φυσικός, ὅ τε τῆς σπερματικῆς δυνάμεως καὶ ὁ κατὰ τὴν σύνταξιν τῶν αὐτῆς τῆς φύσεως ἐνεργειῶν.  The idea of the Mind being the ‘Ruler of the universe’ belongs to Anaxagoras (πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ). Plato’s statement in the Philebus, 28c7 8, styling the Mind ‘our king, as well as [king] of heaven and earth’ (νοῦς ἐστι βασιλεὺς ἡμῖν οὐρανοῦ τε καὶ γῆς) is only a liability to Anaxagoras. But Plato preferred to obscure his debt, and spoke only of ‘sages’ who said so. Asclepius of Tralles got it right: Aristotle believed that ‘it was Anaxagoras alone who posited the Mind as King of the universe’. Op. cit. p. 4: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μόνος ἐπέστησε νοῦν βασιλεύειν τοῦ παντός. See supra, p. 620, and note 60.  Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 3, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.9.1 5.

Porphyry

769

missed its corporeality, he cared to take distances from the Stoics and stick to Anaxagoras. This is why he called the universal principle Nous, not Logos. Nevertheless, once he made it clear, later in the same work he used also the term ‘spermatic logos’, both in the individual sense of it, that is, the rational principle of an individual person,²⁹⁶ and in that of the cosmic principle which permeates all of the universe, which was represented by god Hermes. This universal Spermatic Logos both creates everything and illuminates the minds of people making possible for them to decipher the divine signs (λόγου τοῦ πάντων ποιητικοῦ τε καὶ ἑρμηνευτικοῦ).²⁹⁷ This is the God of Anaxagoras,²⁹⁸ and we should bear in mind that Porphyry knew that philosophy first-hand: Simplicius appeals to Porphyry and cites him as a witness assuring that the phrase ‘all things were together’ (ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα) belonged to Anaxagoras himself, whereas some of his other propositions were shared by other Presocratics, too.²⁹⁹ When Porphyry wrote that God creates by means of spermatic logoi, he knew that Plotinus maintained different views about it, since the latter had opted for making the logoi an instrument of Nature rather than of God. The principles, or ‘seeds’, of Anaxagoras was the solution to how the primal incorporeal creation produced the perceptible reality. Late Antiquity understood this Nous as ‘the Creative Mind’ (δημιουργικὸς νοῦς), while those who took the notion up were quick to emphasize, against the Stoics, that the logoi are incorporeal. Once Porphyry wrote that ‘the Creative Mind is the King of the universe’ (βασιλεὺς γὰρ τοῦ κό-

 Cf. the spermatic logos which descends upon goddess Themis, so that she should foresee the future (τοῦ εἰς αὐτὴν κατιόντος σπερματικοῦ λόγου) in the person of Priapus, the minor rus tic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. Porphyry, op. cit. 7.  Porphyry, op. cit. 8; further: δείκνυσι δὲ καὶ τὸν σπερματικὸν λόγον τὸν διήκοντα διὰ πάντων. … Κατὰ πάντων γὰρ ὁ ποιητικὸς καὶ σπερματικός. Porphyry probably received the alle gory of Hermes denoting the ‘illuminative logos’ from the hardly known Homeric exegete Hera clitus (perhaps first century AD), Allegoriae (= Quaestiones Homericae), 28.2: Καὶ τὴν ἀποστελ λομένην Ἶριν ἄγγελον τοῦ Διὸς τὸν εἴροντα λόγον ὑφίσταται, ὥσπερ Ἑρμῆν τὸν ἑρμηνεύοντα· δύο γὰρ ἄγγελοι θεῶν, οὐδενὸς ἄλλου πλὴν ἐπώνυμοι τῆς κατὰ τὸν λόγον ἑρμηνείας. Cf. op. cit. 72.4: Ἑρμῆς ἐφίσταται, τουτέστιν ὁ ἔμφρων λόγος. Also, Proclus (reporting Porphyry’s views), commTim, v. 1, p. 148: Ἑρμαϊκοὶ δὲ οἱ λόγοι πάντες, καὶ ἔστι καὶ τῶν φυσικῶν λόγων ἔφορος ὁ ἐντετακὼς Ἑρμῆς.  Aristotle, Fragmenta Varia, Category 1 (on the Physica), fr. 125, apud Iamblichus, Protrepti cus, p. 48: ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός, εἴτε Ἑρμότιμος εἴτε ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἶπε τοῦτο, καὶ ὅτι ὁ θνητὸς αἰὼν μέρος ἔχει θεοῦ τινός.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163: Πορφύριος δὲ τὸ μὲν ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα εἰς ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἀναπέμπει, τὸ δὲ τὸ γίνεσθαι εἶναι τὸ ἀλλοιοῦσθαι εἰς ᾿Aναξιμένην, τὴν δὲ σύγκρισίν τε καὶ τὴν διάκρισιν εἰς Δημόκριτόν τε καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέα. Simplicius argues that Anaxagoras maintained and expounded all three of those propositions.

770

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

σμου ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς),³⁰⁰ Iamblichus followed suit, asserting that ‘the Creative Mind causes generation and brings the hidden power of the logoi to light’.³⁰¹ Once again, the ‘concealed power of the logoi’ is the Anaxagorean notion of the Nous ‘hiding-and-appearing’, which Porphyry expounded, according to the Arabic source discussed above. This also suggests the different modes of existence of the logoi either in the Nous or in the Nature: once they are understood as being dependent on the Mind, they are ‘hidden’ and exist ‘intelligibly’ (according to Porphyry’s words); but once they become active in the natural world, they come into sight, they ‘appear’ and exist ‘spermatically’. Despite occasional differences on minor points, the subsequent reception of the idea was that the Creative Mind created the logoi within himself, and then he uses them as the instruments towards generation of things: these logoi are not only creative and cohesive, but also cognitive ones.³⁰² Emperor Julian saw the creative logoi as being held in by a ‘third demiurge’, but the essential idea was there none the less.³⁰³ Eusebius took up the notion from Porphyry (from whom he quoted extensively at that point) and wrote about the ‘Creative Mind’ (δημιουργικὸς νοῦς) and the ‘creative logos’ (δημιουργικὸς λόγος), since both expressions were used by Porphyry.³⁰⁴ A little further, he identified the ‘Creative Mind’ with the Son/Logos in a distinctly Anaxagorean and Porphyrian language, adding that this Creative Mind ‘supervises gently’ and rules over the entire universe by means of ‘the logoi’ of his ineffable wisdom (ἀνεπαισθήτως ἐπιστατοῦσαν καὶ λόγοις ἀνεκφράστου σοφίας τὸν σύμπαντα κόσμον διακυβερνῶσαν). The idea is certainly Origen’s, but the vocabulary not much so.³⁰⁵ It is

 Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 3.  Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 8.3: Ὁ γὰρ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς καὶ τῆς ἀληθείας προστάτης καὶ σοφίας, ἐρχόμενος μὲν ἐπὶ γένεσιν, καὶ τὴν ἀφανῆ τῶν κεκρυμμένων λόγων δύναμιν εἰς φῶς ἄγων.  Porphyry noted also that god Hermes was a personification of ‘the Universal Logos, both the creative and the interpretative one’. Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 8, apud Eusebius, Praepar atio Evangelica, 3.11.42: Τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦ πάντων ποιητικοῦ τε καὶ ἑρμηνευτικοῦ ὁ Ἑρμῆς παραστατικός.  Julian, emperor, Εἰς τὴν Μητέρα τῶν Θεῶν, 3: τοῦ γονίμου καὶ δημιουργικοῦ νοῦ, τὴν ἄχρι τῆς ἐσχάτης ὕλης ἅπαντα γεννῶσαν, οὐσίαν εἶναι, ἔχουσάν τε ἐν ἑαυτῇ πάντας τοὺς λόγους καὶ τὰς αἰτίας τῶν ἐνύλων εἰδῶν· … τοῦ τρίτου δημιουργοῦ, ὃς τῶν ἐνύλων εἰδῶν τοὺς λόγους ἐξῃρημένους ἔχει καὶ συνεχεῖς τὰς αἰτίας.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.4.5: ‘The Egyptians did not believe in any incorporeal Mind or Creative Logos (νοῦν ἀσώματον οὐδὲ λόγον δημιουργικόν), neither did they believe in any god, or gods, or powers, that were incorporeal and intelligible’. Then, he writes about νοῦν καὶ λόγον δημιουργικὸν τῶν ὅλων in the same context. See next note.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.4.5: τὸν δ᾿ ἐν τούτοις ἅπασιν ἀόρατον καὶ τῶν καθόλου τε καὶ κατὰ μέρος δημιουργικὸν νοῦν μόνον ἀποθαυμάζει καὶ θεολογεῖν μίαν μόνην ἐκείνην τὴν

Porphyry

771

possible that, during the first period of his Christian life, the newly converted Origen shared the same vocabulary with Porphyry, which he did in so many other instances,³⁰⁶ but their considerable difference of age impels us to assume that it was Porphyry who took up Origen’s vocabulary, not the other way around. There is a testimony from a work attributed to Vincent of Lérins, though probably it was another Vincent of the same monastery who wrote this about Origen.³⁰⁷ As to his incredible learning, if any one is unwilling to receive the testimony of Christians at our hands, let him at least accept that of heathens at the hands of philosophers. For that impious Porphyry says that when he was little more than a boy, incited by his fame, he went to Alexandria, and there saw him, then an old man, but a man evidently of so great attainments, that he had reached the summit of universal knowledge.³⁰⁸

The text of Origen’s condemnation in the sixth century (which was composed at the Laura of Sabas by abbot Gelasius and his band) attributes to him the notion of ‘a creative mind, which existed before the world, and granted to this world his own being, thus producing the generated universe’.³⁰⁹ The prevailing tendency of major Late Antiquity commentators was to project this terminology (and the notion, if possible) back to Plato and Aristotle. Not

διήκουσαν καὶ διακοσμοῦσαν τὰ πάντα θείαν δύναμιν, ἀσώματον οὖσαν καὶ νοερὰν τὴν φύσιν, μᾶλλον δὲ ἄρρητον εἰπεῖν καὶ ἀκατάληπτον, διὰ πάντων, δι᾿ ὧν καὶ ἐνεργεῖ, παραφαινομένην διήκουσάν τε ἀσωμάτως καὶ ἀσυμπλόκως τὰ πάντα ἐπιπορευομένην.  I canvass this in a forthcoming biography of Origen.  Very little is known of the author of this treatise, who appears under the assumed name of Peregrinus. Gennadius of Marseilles, who flourished in c. 495 AD, some sixty years after its date, ascribed it to Vincentius, an inmate of the famous monastery of Lérins, in the island of that name.  Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium Primum, PL.50.663: De cujus incredibili quadam scientia si quis referentibus nobis Christianum non accepit testimonium, saltem testificantibus philoso phis gentilem recipiat confessionem. Ait namque impius ille Porphyrius mexcitum se fama ip sius Alexandriam puerum fere perrexisse, ibique eum vidisse jam senem, sed plane talem tan tumque qui arcem totius scientiae condidisset. Vincent was so enthusiastic about Origen that he paraphrased the maxim which Cicero had said about Plato, and declared that he ‘would rather be wrong with Origen, than be right with others’ (se qum Origene errare malle, quam cum allis vera sentire). Porphyry confirmed that, when he was young, he met Origen personally; apud Eu sebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, 6.19.5.  ACO, Canones xv Contra Origenem, tome 4.1, p. 248: καὶ ὅτι οὐχ ἡ παναγία καὶ ὁμοούσιος τριὰς ἐδημιούργησε τὸν κόσμον καὶ διὰ τοῦτό ἐστι γενητός, ἀλλ᾿ ὁ νοῦς, ὅν φασι, δημιουργικὸς προϋπάρχων τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τὸ εἶναι αὐτῷ τῷ κόσμῳ παρέχων γενητὸν ἀνέδειξεν, ἀνάθεμα ἔστω.

772

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

strangely then, Syrianus calls the Demiurge of Timaeus ‘Creative Mind’ (ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς).³¹⁰ Proclus wished to read in the same Platonic dialogue (Timaeus, 41‒42) that the Mind gave rise to ‘creative logoi’ (οἱ ἀπὸ νοῦ προϊόντες δημιουργικοὶ λόγοι) by uttering them to the new gods, and thereafter he creates the ‘creative logoi’ (τοὺς μὲν δημιουργικοὺς λόγους ὁ δημιουργὸς ὑφίστησιν).³¹¹ Shortly after that, the ‘creative Mind’ is made the supreme God, indeed the Good.³¹² Once again, he adds some bizarre statements: he refers to the Stoics who made the spermatic logoi incorruptible (τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους οἰηθέντες ἀφθάρτους),³¹³ and then to ‘the Peripatetics’, who posited ‘the immovable things which are longed for’ (τὰ ἀκίνητα ὀρεκτά) as being superior to the things that are always moved by the former ones.³¹⁴ Then, Proclus goes on, ‘Plato came and combined both theories into one, by positing that the Ideas are intelligible logoi, and made all creation dependent on them’ (νοεροὺς λόγους εἶναι τὰς ἰδέας ὑποθέμενος). ‘For the spermatic logoi could not explain the things that happen’.³¹⁵ The question is, of course, how could Plato possibly combine two theories that were posterior to him, namely, the Peripatetic and the Stoic ones. But this can be allowed as only a philosophical manner and figure of speeh meaning to indicate the Neoplatonic orthodoxy, namely, that Plato had said everything and had anticipated every theory that followed his own one. More importantly though, never did Plato posit the Ideas as causes of creation whatsoever, as discussed above. Had this ever happened, the Academy after him could have never fallen into the deep scepticism, which lasted for centuries. The idea of making the universe dependent on the logoi was revived only by Origen, to be taken up by his younger contemporary Porphyry. Proclus learned all about this from Porphyry, and essayed to entertain the idea himself, though not very successfully: in the commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, he sees the logoi as forces acting upon ‘formless matter receiving the logoi within itself’, which is how sensible things are produced. He adds that, ‘all natures, both universal and particular, receive in themselves the intelligible logoi

 Syrianus, commMetaph, pp. 4; cf. pp. 109; 117.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 218.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 364: καὶ ὁ δημιουργικὸς ἄρα νοῦς καθὸ θεός ἐστιν ἐν τῷ θεὸς εἶναι πρώ τως ἐστὶ καὶ οὐ κατὰ μέθεξιν θεός· τοῦτο δὲ ταὐτὸν τῷ ἀγαθός.  Cf. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.134 & 156. Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 470. Pseudo Justin, De Resurrectione, p. 592A. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 887.  Possibly Proclus wrote this having in mind Aristotle’s De Anima, 433b; but see also infra, chapter 12, pp. 1096 7, and note 1.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 887.

Porphyry

773

that eternally create and hold together all sensible things’. Then, he decided that this doctrine ‘is analogous to that of the natural philosophers who are the heirs of the philosophy of Anaxagoras’.³¹⁶ How Proclus treated the traditional misleading criticism against Anaxagoras is characteristic, as much as is it contradictory, which betokens only partial acquaintance with that philosophy. Upon beginning his commentary on the Timaeus, he employs the criticism by Plato;³¹⁷ so does he later, arguing that Socrates demanded that all Physics should be ‘Pythagorean’, that is, dependent on Theology, unlike that of Anaxagoras, ‘which blinds the eye of the soul’ and ‘explains everything by means of airs and aethers’.³¹⁸ However, Proclus’ knowledge was confused: whereas Plato accused Anaxagoras of leaving the Mind inert after the initial distinction of things, Proclus (at a point which is between his two foregoing references to Plato’s criticism) makes an unexpected remark: Certain people say that, before Anaxagoras, it was Solon who posited that the Mind super intends upon all things; from all these it is plain that [Solon] had a share in wisdom.³¹⁹

This is an astounding statement on account of its self-defeating character: how is it possible for Proclus to employ Plato’s criticism that Anaxagoras made the Mind utterly detached from the world, indeed altogether inactive (pp. 2 and 204 of his treatise), and yet between these two similar references (p. 81) to state that the Mind is ceaselessly acting in the world, and to style all of this ‘wis-

 Proclus, op. cit. p. 626: καὶ τὸ ὑποδεχόμενον τοὺς αἰσθητοὺς λόγους ἀόριστόν ἐστι καὶ ἄγνωστον καὶ ἀνείδεον· ἡ δὲ πρὸ αὐτῆς, τὴν ἐν ταῖς φυσικαῖς οὐσίαις τῶν εἰδῶν ὑπόστασιν· πρὸ γὰρ τῶν αἰσθητῶν αἱ φύσεις τε ὅλαι καὶ αἱ μερικαὶ τοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν νοητῶν παρεδέξαντο λόγ ους, καθ᾿ οὓς καὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ ποδηγετοῦσι καὶ γεννῶσιν ἀϊδίως καὶ ζωοποιοῦσι καὶ συνέχουσι, αἷς ἀνάλογόν εἰσι οἱ φυσικοὶ φιλόσοφοι ἐκεῖνοι, οἱ τῆς ᾿Aναξαγόρου διάδοχοι φιλοσοφίας.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 2: καὶ γὰρ αὖ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ὃς δὴ δοκεῖ καθευδόντων τῶν ἄλλων τὸν νοῦν αἴτιον ὄντα τῶν γιγνομένων ἰδεῖν, οὐδὲν ἐν ταῖς ἀποδόσεσι προσχρῆται τῷ νῷ, μᾶλλον δὲ ἀέρας τινὰς αἰτιᾶται καὶ αἰθέρας τῶν γινομένων, ὡς ὁ ἐν Φαίδωνι Σωκράτης φησίν.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 204: ἅμα δὲ ἐνδείκνυται διὰ τούτων ὁ Σωκράτης καὶ ὅτι Πυθαγόρειον ἀπαιτεῖ γενέσθαι τὴν φυσιολογίαν, ἀπὸ τῆς θείας αἰτίας ἀρχομένην, ἀλλὰ μὴ τοιαύτην, ὁποίαν αὐτὸς ἀπεδοκίμασεν ἐν Φαίδωνι, τὴν ἀποτυφλοῦσαν τὸ ὄμμα τῆς ψυχῆς, ἀέρας καὶ αἰθέρας αἰ τιωμένην κατὰ τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν. δεῖ γὰρ τὴν ἀληθινὴν φυσιολογίαν ἐξάπτειν τῆς θεολογίας, ὥσπερ καὶ ἡ φύσις ἐξήρτηται τῶν θεῶν καὶ διῄρηται κατὰ τὰς ὅλας τάξεις αὐτῶν, ἵνα καὶ οἱ λόγοι μιμηταὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ὦσιν, ὧν εἰσι σημαντικοί. Proclus refers to Plato’s comment about Anaxagoras, as in Phaedo, 98b c.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 81: φασὶ δέ τινες, ὅτι καὶ νοῦν ἐπιστατεῖν τοῖς ὅλοις πρὸ ᾿Aνα ξαγόρου Σόλων ἀπεφήνατο· ἐξ ὧν ἁπάντων ὅτι μετῆν αὐτῷ σοφίας τινὸς ἐναργές ἐστιν.

774

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

dom’? The same goes with his commentary on the Parmenides: he reproduces the Platonic criticism once again, although refraining from endorsing it explicitly,³²⁰ whereas only three pages before that point he had made the foregoing accurate reference to Anaxagoras being the one who fathered the theory of creative logoi. There is no way to explain this chain of hardly informed references succeeded by accurate remarks, and then again followed by uniformed comments. By nearly the end of this commentary, Proclus claims that Anaxagoras thought of the One as ‘an incorporeal soul’, which certainly had nothing to do with Anaxagoras’ thought.³²¹ It was indeed noticed since Antiquity that Anaxagoras did not care to offer any particular account about the soul, which was consistent with his entire philosophy, as I am going to explain later.³²² I am myself sure that, behind all of this, it was the figure of Anaxagoras that stood silent and yet commanding. To style the Mind ‘Wisdom’ was a propostion of Plato in the Philebus, 30c-d: to him, ‘there is in the universe … a noble Cause, which orders and arranges years and seasons and months, and may most justly be called Wisdom and Mind.’ It was this Cause / Wisdom / Nous / Mind, which, ‘through its own power implanted a kingly mind in Zeus’ (the Demiurge) and ‘other noble qualities in other deities’. According to Plato at that point, ‘this confirms the utterances of those [i. e. Anaxagoras] who declared of old that mind always rules the universe’. In short, the entire Platonic proposition is sheer Anaxagorean philosophy. Perhaps this is not the point to emphasize that Origen accorded the Son several ‘conceptions’, of which the first and foremost was Wisdom (to be followed by those of Logos, Life, et cetera), since I have done so in my book treating Origen’s Cosmology. But it is the place to point out that Proclus’ reference to the Mind as ‘Wisdom’ is a tacit employment of Plato’s proposition paying tribute to Anaxagoras. Proclus refers explicitly to this in the fifth book of his Platonic Theology (p. 85), indeed he quotes this Platonic passage, but he does so in a way which aimed at maintaining the Plotinian pattern intact, taking his cue from the Platonic text which assured that this Mind should have also a soul, which means, this Nous is an animate personal God. However, Proclus’ ar-

 Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 629: Οὕτως ὁ Σωκράτης ἐν Φαίδωνι μὲν αἰτιᾶται τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν, ὡς μηδαμοῦ τῷ νῷ χρώμενον, ἀέρας δὲ καὶ διαθέσεις καὶ τοιαῦτα ἄττα τῆς τῶν πραγμάτων φύσεως αἰτιώμενον.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 1214: Ταῦτα δὴ τοῖς πολλοῖς τῶν ἐξηγητῶν εἰωθότα φιλοσοφεῖσθαι περὶ τοῦ ἑνός, ὃ δὴ πρῶτον θέμενοί φασιν οὔτε σῶμα εἶναι, ὡς ἔλεγον οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, οὔτε ψυχὴν ἀσώματον, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἔλεγεν, οὔτε νοῦν ἀκίνητον, ὡς ᾿Aριστοτέλης ὕστερον· οἷς καὶ διαφέρειν τὴν τοῦ Πλάτωνος φιλοσοφίαν τῶν ἄλλων ἐπ᾿ αὐτὸ τὸ ὑπὲρ νοῦν αἴτιον ἀναδραμοῦσαν.  See chapter 13, pp. 1187 ff.

Porphyry

775

gument took a different shift: granted, this is a Nous who administers everything, but this ‘paricipated Nous’ should have a soul, which ‘is the proximate governor of the universe’, although it does so by being governed itself by the Nous / Intellect. Quite simply then, Proclus used Plato’s proposition, but he eschewed the clear Platonic implication that all of this was the philosophy of Anaxagoras, because Proclus had a different agenda to pursue, namely, the Plotinian one. Simplicius saw Plato’s ‘creative Mind’ as the immediate cause of the universe (τὸ κυρίως ποιητικόν); he remarks that ‘Aristotle added to this the Nature, which to Plato was only a functional cause (ὀργανικὸν αἴτιον)’, adding that Aristotle saw also ‘accidents (τὰ κατὰ συμβεβηκός), such as fate and automatous function (ἥ τε τύχη καὶ τὸ αὐτόματον)’³²³ as productive causes, too. But when Simplicius advanced well into his analysis, he wrote that he saw no difference between the ‘creative Mind’ of Plato and the Nature of Aristotle. His argument is mathematical-like and pushed too far: since Aristotle says that there is nothing which Nature does in vain, and that it acts by means of logoi to a certain purpose (ὅτι κατὰ λόγους ἡ φύσις καὶ ἕνεκά του ποιεῖ), and he says the same of God, it follows that, by ‘Nature’, one should understand that Aristotle meant ‘the Creative Mind which permeates all of the universe’ (τὸν διὰ πάντων διήκοντα δημιουργικὸν νοῦν).³²⁴ However, the fact is that Simplicius knew all too well that the name which Aristotle used in order to indicate the ‘separate causes’ was εἶδος.³²⁵ Following this analysis, the gist of Anaxagoras’ concept of creation was that the Mind created the generative seeds, by means of which the universe came into being, and thereafter it is being sustained and functions. Asclepius of Tralles saw the logoi as ‘productive’ ones (λόγοι παρακτικοί): once again, he attributed an Anaxagorean idea to Aristotle, using terminology and notions which would have caused Aristotle’s eyebrows to raise, at least.³²⁶ Furthermore, he claimed that Aristotle saw Nature as an incorporeal force including all the logoi in itself (καὶ γὰρ ἡ φύσις μία καὶ ἡ αὐτὴ οὖσα ἔχει τοὺς λόγους ἐν ἑαυτῇ), indeed ‘contrary logoi that are both productive and intelligible’ (οὐκ ἄτοπον οὖν καὶ τὴν ἰδέαν μίαν καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν οὖσαν ἔχειν τοὺς ἐναντίους λόγους ἐν ἑαυτῇ παρακτικοὺς καὶ νοητικούς). In other words, Asclepius rendered Anaxagoras’ philosophy replacing the Mind for ‘Nature’ while claiming that this was the philosophy of

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 223: ἐπὶ τοῦ ποιητικοῦ αἰτίου ὁ μὲν Πλάτων τὸ κυρίως ποιητικὸν παραδίδωσι τὸν δημιουργικὸν νοῦν.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1218. See supra, pp. 542 3, and notes 75, 76, discussion about Aristo tle’s confused views of this point.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 297: καλεῖ δὲ καὶ ᾿Aριστοτέλης τὰς χωριστὰς αἰτίας εἴδη.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 166: οἱ γὰρ λόγοι οἱ δημιουργικοὶ παρακτικοὶ ὑπάρχουσι τῶν τῇδε καὶ οὐσίαι οὖσαι ἐν τῷ δημιουργῷ.

776

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

Aristotle, which would have surprised any Peripatetic. But this was the spirit of the sixth-century extrapolations, and the specific point can be explained: Elias of Alexandria used the selfsame words as Asclepius of Tralles, in order to point out the objections that Plotinus and Porphyry would have adduced against such accounts. Elias was a pupil of Olympiodorus in Alexandria (c. 495 ‒ 570) in the late sixth century, he remained loyal to the spirit of Ammonius’ school, and he belonged to the next generation after Asclepius, who died in c. 560 ‒ 570. The (nearly) quotation of Asclepius’ text by Elias, who associated it with the blame that it would have received by the Neoplatonists of old, only means that he saw the flaws in Asclepius’ account. Hence Elias wrote, ‘these are the accusations by the Platonists; let us then bring the philosophers [i. e. Plato and Aristotle] to agreement with each other’.³²⁷ Beyond such skirmishes, the fact is that all of this was about the philosophy of Anaxagoras, which we can see in Asclepius’ text, once we pay attention to the notion of ‘first and foremost genera’ (πρώτιστα γένη), which was old wine in new bottles, introduced by Iamblichus discussing old issues. The expression means simply the most abstract notions and universals, which was reached during the study of mathematics by ‘the Pythagorean education’ (ἡ Πυθαγόρειος ἀγωγή).³²⁸ There was nothing new about the idea that scientific knowledge is attained by means of gradual abstraction. However, Proclus was fascinated by Iamblichus’ expression, and applied this to various notions, such as the highest species of gods,³²⁹ the highest notions (e. g. ‘substance’) involved in the Neoplatonic sets of triads,³³⁰ certainly to the noblest (that is, most comprehensive) of forms (ὁλικώτατα τῶν εἰδῶν), and he acknowledged his debt to Iamblichus on this.³³¹ It was once again Asclepius of Tralles who rendered the idea in Anaxagorean terms, while supposedly he interpreted Aristotle: the foremost genera are the creative logoi, which exist within the Creator, and they produce all the things that exist’ (τὰ μέντοι γε γένη τὰ πρώτιστα οἱ λόγοι οἱ παρὰ τῷ δημιουργῷ ποιητικοὶ ὑπάρχουσι καὶ παρακτικοὶ πάντων τῶν ὄντων).³³² In reality, this was not Aristotle’s philosophy: it was Asclepius’ own one, which was the legacy of Porphyry to

 Elias of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 85: ταῦτα μὲν τὰ ἐγκλήματα τῶν Πλατωνικῶν. φέρε δὲ ἡμεῖς εἰς συμφωνίαν τοὺς φιλοσόφους ἀγάγωμεν.  Iamblichus, De Communi Mathematica Scientia, 65.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 3, p. 98; commCrat, 71.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 5, p. 110; v. 6, p. 74.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 112. Cf. πρώτιστα γένη used in this sense by Simplicius once, commCateg, p. 211, and Michael Psellus, Theologica, 79.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 173.

Porphyry

777

the later Neoplatonists, namely, Ammonius, the teacher of Asclepius, and to Philoponus. For indeed, a few pages before that point, Asclepius wrote this: In addition to these, we say that there are the logoi, which are intelligible beings existing with the Creator; it is according to these logoi that he both creates and develops everything. For he does nothing without reason (ἀλόγως).³³³

By that time, namely, the sixth century, to maintain that the logoi are incorporeal and utterly simple, that is, not consisted of parts, was a truism. Alongside Asclepius, both Philoponus³³⁴ and Olympiodorus³³⁵ alike saw all kinds of creation as taking place by means of incorporeal ‘natural logoi’ (φυσικοὶ λόγοι), which are ‘indivisible’ (ἀμερεῖς), contained in a ‘seed’, and developed out of it. It is then hardly strange that an anonymous author of that century saw the emperor as an image of the Creator: the royal providence contains all the principles and first causes of the political affairs, in like a manner the Creator has in himself the logoi of the entire universe, and the ‘decoration’ and ‘stability’ of the state arise in the same manner as a tree grows from its own seed.³³⁶ The imagery of seed was a vivid representation of what actually Anaxagoras meant when he

 Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. pp. 165 6: πρὸς τούτοις δέ φαμεν ὅτι καὶ νοηταὶ οὐσίαι ὑπάρχουσιν οἱ λόγοι οἱ παρὰ τῷ δημιουργῷ, καθ᾿ οὓς λόγους ποιεῖ τε πάντα καὶ προάγει· οὔτε γὰρ ἀλόγως ποιεῖ· πάντων γὰρ τῶν ὄντων ἔχει λόγους ἐν ἑαυτῷ.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 13: καὶ αὐτοὶ οἱ φυσικοὶ λόγοι δείκνυνται ἐναργῶς ἀμερεῖς ὄντες καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἀσώματοι. ἐν γὰρ ἑκάστῳ μορίῳ τοῦ σπέρματος οἱ αὐτοὶ φυσικοὶ λόγοι ἀμε ρίστως εἰσίν, οἵπερ καὶ ἐν τῷ παντὶ σπέρματι, οἱ θρεπτικοί, οἱ αὐξητικοί, οἱ διαπλαστικοί. Copied by Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 33. John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 268: ὥσπερ ὁ ἀποτμηθεὶς κλά δος ἔχει ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἀμερῶς τὰς φυσικὰς πάσας δυνάμεις, καὶ ὥσπερ τὰ μόρια τῶν ἐντόμων καὶ τῶν ὅλων ἀποτμηθέντα ἔχει ἐν ἑαυτοῖς τήν τε αἰσθητικὴν δύναμιν καὶ τὴν κατὰ τόπον κίνησιν, οὕτω καὶ ἐν τῷ σπέρματι τῷ ἐκ τῶν ζῴων ἀμερῶς ἐνυπάρχουσιν οἱ λόγοι τῶν ψυχικῶν δυνάμεων. Op. cit. v. 16, pp. 92 3: ἴσμεν δὲ ὅτι Πυθαγόρειος ὁ Πλάτων, συμβολικῶς δὲ πάντα οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι ἔλεγον, ἐπεὶ κἀκεῖνοι τὴν ἀόριστον δυάδα τὴν ὕλην καλοῦσιν. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ὁρι στικὸν μὲν καὶ ἑνοποιοῦν τὸ εἶδος, ἀόριστος δὲ ἡ ὕλη καὶ σκεδασμοῦ τοῖς εἴδεσιν αἰτία· ἀδιάσ τατα γὰρ ὄντα φύσει δεξαμένη διίστησι· τὸν γὰρ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου λόγον ἀμερῆ καὶ ἀδιάστατον ὄντα καθ᾿ αὑτὸν δεξαμένη διίστησιν εἰς διάφορα κατατέμνουσα μόρια· τὸ τυχὸν γοῦν τοῦ σπέρ ματος μεῖναν τὸν ὅλον ἄνθρωπον γεννᾷ, ὡς ἅτε δὴ ἀμερίστως ἐν παντὶ τῷ σπέρματι καὶ τῷ τυ χόντι αὐτοῦ μορίῳ τῶν λόγων τοῦ ζῴου ἐνόντων.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem, 109 10: πάντες οἱ λόγοι ἐν τῷ σπέρ ματί εἰσιν ὡς ἀμερεῖς, ὅθεν καὶ μέρους ἐκριπτομένου τὸ λοιπὸν τὴν χρείαν ἀποπληροῖ. Likewise, In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 13.2.  Anonymus, De Scientia Politica Dialogus, p. 26: ἡ γάρ τοι βασιλικὴ προμήθεια μόνας τὰς συ νεκτικὰς ἀρχάς τε καὶ πρώτας αἰτίας τῶν πολιτικῶν πραγμάτων ἐκ τῶν ἐνόντων αὐτῇ βασιλικῶν λόγων μορφουμένας τῇ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ, ὡς οἷον τε, μιμήσει ἔχοντος ἐν ἑαυτῷ τοὺς τοῦ παντὸς λόγους, εὖ τιθεῖσα καὶ κοσμοῦσα διατελείτω ἀεί.

778

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

said that ‘all things were together’ and ‘everything was in everything’ and then the Mind distinguished (meaning: created) the principles, which were all different from one another (καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλῆθος οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις· οὐδὲ γὰρ τῶν ἄλλων οὐδὲν ἔοικε τὸ ἕτερον τῷ ἑτέρῳ).³³⁷ When Porphyry spoke of the logoi effecting the ‘way to creation’, he knew what he was talking about, because he had studied Anaxagoras, as Arabic sources reveal. By contrast, when his teacher Plotinus used similar language, he applied this to the soul, not to the mind, and his exposition was doomed to remain obscure. When Plotinus treated the question of the kinds of Being (at that point, speaking of the soul), his effort to escape from the influence of Anaxagoras, by according the soul functions of the Mind and of the principles, is evident. He wonders whether the soul itself is a plurality of logoi, indeed ‘the recapitulation of all the logoi’ (τὸ κεφάλαιον τῶν λόγων), or the logoi are different from it, or the soul contains all the logoi which are themselves the activity of the soul being active according to its substance, ‘but the substance is the potentiality of the logoi’.³³⁸ As a matter of fact, in the theory of Plotinus the soul has not a world of its own; it is only something, standing midway³³⁹ between the immaterial and material realm, between indivisible and divisible nature, it partakes of both, but what this is in itself remained open to personal option by subsequent philosophers. The normal case was that what Anaxagoras clearly attributed to the mind (either the universal or the individual one) now was waveringly and not consistently attributed to the soul, although occasionally the mind was also accorded similar attributes and functions. To Plotinus, the mind is ‘indiscernible and indivisible’,³⁴⁰ but this did not deter Iamblichus from speaking of ‘the divisible mind’.³⁴¹ As it happened always, Proclus was the enthusiast who was eager to claim that Plato himself had already spoken out, or at least intimated, each and every Neoplatonic doctrine; thus, he argued that it was Plato in the Timaeus

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34; 156.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.2.5.  Appealing to Plato, Timaeus, 35a; 36d. Plotinus, op. cit. IV.1.1; IV. 2.1 & 2. Porphyry, Vita Plo tini, 4; Sententiae, 5. Iamblichus, De Communi Mathematica Scientia, 10. Plutarch, De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1025B. Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 123. Pro clus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, pp. 98; 111; et passim, at scores of points. Simplicius, commCateg, p. 356; commPhys, p. 779. John Philoponus, commAnim, pp. 116; 121 4. This idea was qualified by Damascius, Princ, p. 145; In Parmenidem, pp. 248; 251; 264; In Phaedonem (versio 1), 78.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV. 1.1: Νοῦς μὲν οὖν ἀεὶ ἀδιάκριτος καὶ οὐ μεριστός, ψυχὴ δὲ ἐκεῖ ἀδιά κριτος καὶ ἀμέριστος.  Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 1.8: καὶ ὁ νοῦς ὅ τε μεριστός.

Porphyry

779

who posited the mind as ‘indivisible’,³⁴² although he did not care to specify the point, so that we should learn where Plato said such a thing. By contrast, several centuries later, Thomas Aquinas rebuked Plato for having made the mind divisible, which he styled an ‘absurd’ idea.³⁴³ In between (or, nearly so) stood the always moderate and sober Damascius,³⁴⁴ who allowed that human mind is in essence indivisible (κατ᾿ οὐσίαν ἀμέριστος), but he meant only the intellectual function resulting in sound knowledge: in this sense, also the ‘rational soul’ can be styled ‘indivisible’ (ἀμέριστος), whereas, by parity of argument, mere appearances (φαντασία) correspond to wanting knowledge, hence, to a mind which is ‘susceptible to passion and divisible’ (διὸ καὶ νοῦς ἐστι παθητὸς καὶ μεριστός).³⁴⁵ Therefore, my own suggestion in chapter 13 is that the itinerary of such disputed notions as ‘soul’ or ‘mind’ through the centuries went through not only trenchant dispute, but also nebulous shades and variations of dubiousness. According to Plotinus, real essence dwells in the intelligible world and, although it contains also souls, the Intellect/Mind is the noblest being. In this world, the Intellect is a concentrated unity and there is nothing distinguished or divided about it (ὁμοῦ μὲν νοῦς πᾶς καὶ οὐ διακεκριμένον οὐδὲ μεμερισμένον). The Intellect is eternally impervious to distinction and to division (νοῦς μὲν οὖν ἀεὶ ἀδιάκριτος καὶ οὐ μεριστός, ψυχὴ δὲ ἐκεῖ ἀδιάκριτος καὶ ἀμέριστος), whereas the soul is exempt from distinction and partition, and yet it has a nature lending itself to fractional existence: its division is secession and entry into a body.³⁴⁶ Since the time when Plotinus made this categorical statement about the Mind, a lot of water had flew under the bridges if river Ilissos, hence, when Damascius set out to systematize the Neoplatonic principles, he had slightly different things to say. The Intellect produces itself by being self-substantial, being both united and distinguished (ὡς ἡνωμένον ἅμα καὶ διακεκριμένον, κατὰ τὸ

 Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 745: ἅμα γὰρ ἡ ψυχὴ ἀρίστη τῶν γεννητῶν ἐστι καὶ τῶν ἀεὶ μὴ ὄντων, ὥς φησιν ὁ Τίμαιος, μεριστή τε ἅμα καὶ ἀμέριστος· ὁ δὲ νοῦς, ἀμέριστος μόνον. Also, op. cit. pp. 771; 963 4; Theologia Platonica, v. 4, p. 60: ἀμέριστος ὁ νοῦς. commTim, v. 2, p. 143; et passim.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.8: ᾿Aλλ᾿ ἐὰν ὁ νοῦς τεθῇ μεριστός, καθὼς ὁ Πλάτων ἠβούλετο, ἀδύνατον ἐστὶν εὑρεῖν λόγον πῶς ἂν νοήσειε τὸ ἀμέριστον· καὶ οὕτω φαίνεται, ὅτι ἀτόπως ὁ Πλάτων τίθησι τὸν νοῦν εἶναι μέγεθος ἢ μεριστόν.  Cf. Damascius criticizing Iamblichus as an over enthusiast who claimed that, according to Plato, the soul is eternally immortal. In Damascius’ view, Plato sustained a different doctrine about this. Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 207. See infra, pp. 1219 22.  Damascius, op. cit. 78.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.1.

780

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

συναμφότερον).³⁴⁷ Gone is Plotinus’ categorical axiom about the Intellect being ‘eternally impervious to distinction’; for as we saw above, to him, the Intellect is oneness, and it could be said to be not one only by considering the manifestations of its function; it is one/many, and one could even speak of ‘division’ as ‘oneness in unity’, but this is a unity which is never essentially discriminate and there is no room for distinction proper to be applied to it.³⁴⁸ Damascius knew of course that to posit something as being both united and involving distinction (τὸ μὲν ἡνωμένον εἶναι τιθέμεθα, τὸ δὲ διακεκριμένον) would sound as a paradoxology to traditional Neoplatonists, indeed as a contradiction (ἀντιφάσει γὰρ ἔοικε τὸ λεγόμενον).³⁴⁹ However, this was a point that he had already made in the same work³⁵⁰ explaining that it has to do with a certain relation, not with a description of the essence of the Intellect / Mind (ἡ γὰρ τοιαύτη σύζευξις ἐν σχέσει τινὶ θεωρεῖται, ἀλλ᾿ οὐ συντάξει τῇ κατ᾿ οὐσίαν). His aim was to show that the Mind can be understood as both (τὸ συναμφότερον) unity and distinction (τὸ ἡνωμένον αὐτοῦ καὶ διακεκριμένον), and yet it is one Mind, described in ostensibly antithetical terms (ἐξ ἀμφοῖν ὁ εἷς νοῦς). This ‘both’ means simply that the Mind/Intellect is ‘a certain intermediate’ (μέσον γάρ τι ἔοικεν εἶναι τὸ τοιοῦτον ἀμφοῖν), since it is related to both its prior and posterior realities (τοῦ τε ὡς ἐκ στοιχείων συναμφοτέρου πρὸ τῶν στοιχείων ὄντος, καὶ τοῦ ἐξ αἰτίου καὶ τοῦ ἐξ αἰτιατοῦ). These realities actually have nothing in common, but there is a relation between them by means of this ‘intermediate’ (σχέσεως δὲ μόνης ἐν μέσῳ οὔσης).³⁵¹ Therefore, the Mind is a kind of ‘limit’ (ἐν ὅρῳ τῷ ἑαυτοῦ ἑστηκὼς ὁ νοῦς) standing between the realities that are either prior or posterior to it.³⁵² We have seen already that other commentators made such a description about the soul, not the mind. Plotinus was content with quoting Plato’s statement about something which stands ‘midway between the Being which is indivisible and remains always the same, and the Being which is transient and divisible in bodies’,³⁵³ and then describing the soul, as above, while being categorical about the nature of the Intellect. Now, it is not only the soul that marks a ‘limit’: it is also the ‘Intellect/Mind’,  Damascius, Princ, p. 36; cf. p. 230: ὁ μὲν γὰρ νοῦς ἡνωμένον ἅμα καὶ διακεκριμένον. Op. cit. p. 270: ὁ νοῦς διακεκριμένον τί ἐστι καὶ περιγεγραμμένον αὐτός τε καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ. Cf. op. cit. pp. 195; 296; 314.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.7.14.  Damascius, op. cit. p. 160.  This is the only work in which Damascius set out to expound and explain that the Mind is both unity and distinction.  Damascius, op. cit. p. 116.  Damascius, op. cit. p. 188.  Plato, Timaeus, 35a.

Porphyry

781

since it marks transition from unity (which is also a contracted multiplicity) to actual multiplicity.³⁵⁴ I am going to assess Damascius’ analyses further at the end of this chapter.

The First Body We have seen already that Porphyry was an important witness to Anaxagoras and doxographer al-Shahrastani used Porphyry’s testimony expanding this philosophy. This report fits perfectly with our analysis of this philosophy. According to Porphyry, Anaxagoras was ‘the first who advanced the theory of hiding-andappearing’, adding that ‘all things are hidden in the first body and their coming into existence is only their emergence into appearance out of that body as a species, a genus, a mass, a shape, and a denseness or a rareness, just as the ear of corn emerges into appearance out of a single grain, a stately palm out of small date-stone, a man, perfectly shaped, out of a paltry drop of sperm, and a bird out of an egg. All these are instances of the emergence of appearance out of hiding, of actuality out of potentiality, of form out of the disposition of matter. Creation (al-ibdda‘), however, is only of one thing, and it applies to no other thing except to that first body.’³⁵⁵ Moreover, there is something which is more important: Porphyry is quoted as saying is that ‘the root of things is one single body’ and ‘from it proceed all bodies and bodily forces and species and genera.’³⁵⁶ As peculiar as it appears, the idea of Anaxagoras about the roots of all things made its way into Christianity only through two authors, namely, Bardaisan and Origen. In this section, I will deal with the former and, in the next, I am going to consider Origen’s debt to Anaxagoras, namely, the notion of the ‘Body of the Logos’.³⁵⁷ Over the last three decades, I have maintained that Origen was an anti-Platonist in many respects. The specific notion will show why was that so, and it will turn  Proclus maintained that the Soul gives existence to individual souls, and so does the Intel lect to individual minds ‘which are participated in by the souls’ (τὸν δὲ ἕνα νοῦν ταῖς πολλαῖς ψυχαῖς τοὺς μετεχομένους νόας). However, he preferred to express this transition to multiplicity not in terms of ‘divisibility’ of the mind, but as ‘participation’ in it (πᾶν τὸ ἀμέθεκτον καὶ πρω τουργὸν αἴτιον, ὑφιστάνον ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ τὰ μετεχόμενα). Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 3, pp. 10 11.  H. Wolfson, op. cit. pp. 508.  This is precisely what Origen held about the Body of the Logos, which, in his theology, is the precise parallel to the Body of principles created by Anaxagoras’ Mind. See COT, 47 8; 51; 53; 57; 65; 71; 140 1; PHE, pp. 68; 85; 186 7; 211; 258 9.  See also COT, pp. 49 58.

782

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

out that Origen was an anti-Platonist because he was an Anaxagorean philosopher during both the pagan and the Christian periods of his life. There is telling portion of Bardaisan’s De India preserved by Stobaeus quoting from Porphyry’s De Styge. The witness to the sweeping influence of Anaxagoras upon early Christian thought is once again Porphyry, and his testimony fits perfectly with the foregoing one adduced by al-Shahrastani. Porphyry mentions Bardaisan with respect, as ‘a Babylonian man, who lived during the times of our ancestors’ (Βαρδησάνης ἀνὴρ Βαβυλώνιος ἐπὶ τῶν πατέρων ἡμῶν γεγονώς). To Porphyry himself, who was a man of the East, Bardaisan was not an exotic figure: he was an important part of his own patrimony, who ‘met with the Indians who escorted Dandamis, when they were sent to the emperor,³⁵⁸ and wrote to Caesar about them’ (καὶ ἐντυχὼν τοῖς περὶ Δάνδαμιν πεπεμμένοις Ἰνδοῖς πρὸς τὸν Καίσαρα ἀνέγραψεν).³⁵⁹ I am now going to consider the testimony of Bardaisan about the Brahmans, which was recorded by Porphyry in his De Styge, and Stobaeus preserved the text of it. According to my analysis, this testimony involves: 1. The lifelong friendship of Porphyry with Origen, after they met in Alexandria during the former’s youth, which lasted until the end of Origen’s life, and it was not interrupted after Porphyry ceased to be a Christian.³⁶⁰ 2. My claim that all of this is the legacy be-

 This emperor was probably the same one who is mentioned in Porphyry’s De Styge (Sto baeus, Anthologium, 1.3.56), that is, ‘Antoninus from Emesa’, namely, Elagabalus.  Porphyry, De Abstinentia, 4.17. Dandamis (Δάνδαμις) was the name of a Brahman master, who met Alexander of Macedonia, according to several testimonies. Plutarch, Alexander, 8.5; 65.3&4. Arrian, Alexandri Anabasis, 7.2.2. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.24. He is mentioned in all redactions of the text of Pseudo Callisthenes; for instance, Historia Alexandri Magni, Recensio b, 3.6 (several times), et passim. Also, Pseudo Palladius, De Gentibus Indiae et Bragmanibus, 2.1 (Δάνδαμις, ὁ τῶν Βραγμάνων διδάσκαλος); 2.12 14; 2.18 21; 2.30 32; 2.36; 2.39 40. George Syncellus, Ecloga Chronographica, p. 31: Alexander ‘passed over river Bernaoba of India’ and then πρὸς Δάνδαμιν διέβη Βραχμανόν. The context of Porphyry’s quotation of Bar daisan’s testimony in Stobaeus (which I discuss in a moment) shows that Δάνδαμις would have been the same person as Σανδάλης, since Bardaisan (quoted by Porphyry) speaks of the narra tive by ‘those who escorted Sandales’ (τοὺς περὶ τὸν Σανδάλην) and by Sandales himself (καὶ διεβεβαιοῦτο ὁ Σανδάλης). Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.3.56. This is not necessary, however. Σαν δάλης would well have been the name of someone of Damdamis’ entourage.  It was claimed that, in a quarrel with some Christians at Caesarea of Palestine, Porphyry was beaten and, as a result of this, he abandoned his Christian faith in resentment. Theodore Anagnostes (fifth sixth century), Epitome Historiae Tripartitae, 3.153. Theophanes Confessor (eighth ninth century), Chronographia, p. 52 (drawing on Theodore Anagnostes). George Mona chus (ninth century), Chronicon, p. 539 (drawing on Theodore Anagnostes) & Chronicon Breve, PG.110.664.34 39. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, PL.41.306. Socrates Scholasticus (fifth sixth centu ry), Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.23. Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopulus (thirteenth fourteenth centu

Porphyry

783

queathed by Anaxagoras. 3. Consideration of Porphyry’s testimony about Anaxagoras in Arabic sources: they involve the notion of ‘cosmic body’ of all creation, which appears only in Anaxagoras, Bardaisan, and Origen, and it was presumably espoused by Porphyry himself, for some time, at least. The testimony of Porphyry about Bardaisan (that is, Bardaisan attesting to the Brahmans sustaining the Anaxagorean – then, Origenian – Body of the Logos) is important: Porphyry wrote the De Styge only a few decades after Bardaisan had written the De India, his source of information about the Brahmans. This happened during the reign of Elagabalus (218 ‒ 222), that is, during the last years of Bardaisan’s life. Therefore, Porphyry drew on Bardaisan’s maturity, and he did so during his own maturity, when he had formed a solution to the Platonic impasses (that is, on the issue of the precise relation of the immaterial principles to perceptible things) by composing his Theory of Logoi, which was attested by Proclus. It was certainly during his period of maturity that he also commented on Anaxagoras’ proposition ‘all things were together’, giving the same explanation of different modes of being of the Anaxagorean principles, which Simplicius grasped and expounded in exactly the same way four centuries later, and this is also how philosophers as different as Damascius and Philoponus put it.³⁶¹ Let me then turn to Porphyry’s text itself. He reports that, during the reign of ‘Antoninus from Emesa’ (that is, Elagabalus), some Indians came to Syria in order to discuss with Bardaisan, who was from Mesopotamia, and then Bardaisan himself wrote an account of the things he learned from them. The first part of the narrative is about a lake, ‘which still exists’ (i. e. in Porphyry’s times) that served as ‘a place of trial’ (δοκιμαστήριον) in order to test sinful conduct. If an Indian accused of sin denied the charge, he was made to enter into the water, and this is how the Brahmans put him to the test: they asked him if he was prepared to be tried by entering into the lake; if he refused, they let him go considering him as a guilty man who should pay duly for his sins in the future; if he accepted trial, he was taken into the lake along with those who accused him (μετὰ τῶν κατηγόρων), so that they also should be tried as to whether their accusation was a slander, or not. Normally, the water of the lake was as deep as to reach one’s knees, and so it turned out to be in case the defendant was innocent. However, if one was guilty, he was submerged head over heals by the water only after he had walked only a few steps into the lake. In that case, the Brahmans took him out of the water and handed him alive over to

ry), Historia Ecclesiastica, 10.36. Anonymous (fifth sixth century), Textus Theosophiae Tubingen sis, 85. Anonymous, Scholia in Lucianum (commenting on Lucian’s De Morte Peregrini), 11.  See supra, pp. 711 12.

784

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

those who accused him, asking them to instruct him, without a death penalty being imposed. This, however, was a rare case, since no one dared to plead innocent pending that kind of trial. Bardaisan highlighted the pedagogical character of this procedure, since the Brahmans opted for instruction rather than punishment. This mentality was also typical of Origen, especially of his doctrine of universal restoration: all evil will be totally abolished at the time when when all people will have been persuaded by the Logos not to commit sin any longer.³⁶² This trial was about sins which were wilful and, in general, these pertained to the right conduct of life. However, in respect of voluntary and involuntary sins, there was another way of trial, and now Porphyry stresses that he is going to quote from Bardaisan literally (θήσω γὰρ τἀκείνου κατὰ λέξιν). This takes the narrative to the most important point to our topic: the Indians recounted to Bardaisan that there is an enormous natural cave, in a very high mountain located almost at the centre of the earth. In that cave, there was a statue, which was standing and it was reckoned ten or twelve cubits high. It had its arms spread out, so that the statue formed a cross (ἔχων τὰς χεῖρας ἡπλωμένας ἐν τύπῳ σταυροῦ). The appearance of this statue was androgynous: the right side of its countenance was male, the left female.³⁶³ Likewise, all of its right side (arm, foot, and everything) was male, and the left part was female. All of those who saw this statue were astonished at the fusion (σύγκρασιν)³⁶⁴ of male and female fabric, which indivisibly (ἀδιαιρέτως)³⁶⁵ made up one body (ἐν ἑνὶ σώματι), despite dissimilarity (ἀνομοιότητα)³⁶⁶ of the two sides. The Indians also narrated to Bardaisan that the sun was engraved on the right breast of this statue, the moon on the left; moreover, on the two arms of it³⁶⁷ all the things of the world were artfully engraved, too: there were several angels (ἀγγέλων ἀριθμόν), and everything that exists in the world, that is, the heaven, mountains, the sea, rivers,

 See PHE, pp. 237 50.  According to a report by Philodemus of Gadara (first century BC), De Pietate, 15, the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon (second century BC) wrote that ‘Zeus is both male and female’ (Ζεὺς ἄρρην Ζεὺς θῆλυς). SVF, III.217, fr. 33.  Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 609; commPhys, pp. 35 & 156 & 157: τούτων δὲ οὕτως ἐχόντων χρὴ δοκεῖν ἐνεῖναι πολλά τε καὶ παντοῖα ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς συγκρινομένοις καὶ σπέρματα πάντων χρημάτων καὶ ἰδέας παντοίας ἔχοντα καὶ χροιὰς καὶ ἡδονάς.  Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 176: οὐ κεχώρισται ἀλλήλων τὰ ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ κόσμῳ οὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκει οὔτε τὸ θερμὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ οὔτε τὸ ψυχρὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ θερμοῦ. Op. cit. p. 157: παντάπασι δὲ οὐδὲν ἀποκρίνεται οὐδὲ διακρίνεται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου πλὴν νοῦ.  Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 157 & 165 & 172: ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί.  There is a lacuna in the Greek text at this point.

Porphyry

785

oceans, plants, and, in general, all things that exist were engraved therein, too.³⁶⁸ Of this statue, the Indians said to Bardaisan that God gave it to the Son when the Son created the world, so that he should have a visible exemplar.³⁶⁹ In Anaxagoras, the intelligible creation of the principles was given by the Mind to the Creative Mind (which was of the same ontological rank as the Mind himself) in order for the latter to create the perceptible world. In Origen, the Father, who gave birth to the Son, created the ‘decorated’ body of the Wisdom/Son, and placed the created wisdom/logoi on this. Now, Porphyry reports Bardaisan having the same notion for his part. There is no question about recognizing the Christian sentiment underlying the narrative of Bardaisan, which is implied by both the ‘cross’, which is placed at the ‘centre of the earth’, and its peculiar material, which is a sort of semi–incorporeal ‘wood’: he says that he asked the Indians what material that cross was made of, and ‘Sandales assured’ him (while ‘the others confirmed’ the testimony) that no one knew of what kind of material that statue was actually made. It was neither gold nor silver nor copper not stone nor any other known kind of matter; rather, it was ‘close to wood, which was extremely hard and utterly incorruptible’ (παραπλήσιός ἐστι ξύλῳ στερροτάτῳ καὶ ἀσηπτοτάτω). It was not wood none the less (μὴ εἶναι δὲ ξύλον). They added that a certain king wished to remove one hair of those around the neck of the statue, and that blood gushed out. As a result, that king was so scared, that he recovered with difficulty following the prayers of the Brahmans. Furthermore, it was reported to Bardaisan that, above the head of the statue, there was an image of God sitting on a certain kind of throne (ἐπὶ δὲ τῇ κεφαλῇ τούτου λέγουσι θεοῦ ἄγαλμα εἶναι ὡς ἐπὶ θρόνου

 Bardaisan, quoted by Porphyry in De Styge, quoted by Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.3.56: Ἐν τούτῳ τῷ ἀνδριάντι λέγουσι γεγλύφθαι περὶ τὸν μαζὸν τὸν δεξιὸν ἥλιον καὶ περὶ τὸν ἀριστερὸν σελήνην καὶ κατὰ τῶν δύο βραχιόνων … τέχνῃ γεγλύφθαι ἀγγέλων ἀριθμὸν καὶ ὅσα ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, τουτέστιν οὐρανὸν καὶ ὄρη καὶ θάλασσαν καὶ ποταμοὺς καὶ ὠκεανὸν καὶ φυτὰ καὶ ζῷα καὶ ἁπλῶς ὅσα ἔστι. Cf. Anaxagoras (on the intelligible union of all distinct and yet united prin ciples, which contain everything in the form of seed (σπερματικῶς), apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 609: τούτων δὲ οὕτως ἐχόντων χρὴ δοκεῖν ἐνεῖναι πολλά τε καὶ παντοῖα ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς συγκρι νομένοις καὶ σπέρματα πάντων χρημάτων καὶ ἰδέας παντοίας ἔχοντα καὶ ἡδονὰς καὶ χροιάς, καὶ ἀνθρώπους συμπαγῆναι καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ζῷα, ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει, καὶ τοῖς γε ἀνθρώποισιν εἶναι καὶ πόλεις συνῳκημένας καὶ ἔργα κατεσκευασμένα ὥσπερ παρ᾿ ἡμῖν καὶ ἥλιον καὶ σελήνην καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ὥσπερ παρ᾿ ἡμῖν. So in Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35, adding, καὶ τὴν γῆν αὐτοῖσι φύειν πολλά τε καὶ παντοῖα, ὧν ἐκεῖνοι τὰ ὀνήιστα συνενεγκάμενοι εἰς τὴν οἴκησιν χρῶνται.  Bardaisan, loc. cit.: Τοῦτον τὸν ἀνδριάντα φασὶ δεδωκέναι τὸν θεὸν τῷ υἱῷ, ὁπηνίκα τὸν κόσμον ἔκτιζεν, ἵνα θεατὸν ἔχῃ παράδειγμα.

786

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

τινὸς καθήμενον).³⁷⁰ They also said that, during the periods of intense sun-heat, this statue sweated, and that the sweat stopped only after the Brahmans exhaled air on it, and, unless they did so, the statue would produce as much sweat as to soak the soil around it. The actual trial of ‘voluntary and involuntary sins’, which is supposedly the main theme of the narrative, takes only a few words, and, quite evidently, Bardaisan (and Porphyry) seem eager to return to the main issue, which is the statue. At the interior part of the cave, and after long walking, there was a door, from which water sprang and filled that innermost part of the cave. The place was entirely dark and it was possible to approach it only with the aid of light supplied by torches. The righteous were able to pass unobstructed through that door, whereas the wicked could not, because the door became too narrow for them to pass through. This was the trial. The sinful ones confessed their sins and asked the others to pray for them, while they were practicing fast for quite sometime. Then, the narrative swiftly turns to the main issue. At that place (according to Bardaisan so having been told by the companions of Sandales) they used to congregate on a certain fixed day; there were also some men who lived there permanently, whereas others used to come during the summer or early autumn, in order to observe the statue and to meet with one another, as well as to test themselves as to whether they were able to pass through the door mentioned above. More importantly (so Bardaisan was told), exploratory discussions used to take place regarding the carving on the body of the statue (περὶ τῆς ἐν τῷ σώματι ἐκείνῳ γλυφῆς). For it was not easy to decipher everything that was carved thereon,³⁷¹ since the graven images were many, and not all the animals and plants could be found in every land (διά τε τὸ πολλὰ εἶναι καὶ διὰ τὸ μὴ πάντα τὰ ζῷα καὶ φυτὰ ἐν πάσῃ χώρᾳ ὑπάρχειν). Now Porphyry’s concern reporting Bardaisan’s story of the Brahmans was not the Indian practices of catharsis for sinners, since (unlike Iamblichus) he was manifestly indifferent to such theurgic practices. Porphyry was in fact interested in philosophical knowledge rather than ritualistic purification. Quite characteristically, he concludes his report of what ‘the Indians say about their (παρ᾿

 Origen used this idea, appealing to 1 Cor. 11: 3: ‘the head of Christ is God’. See commJohn, I.34.249; Homilies on Leviticus (Latin), 12.3.4.  Cf. Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 19: διότι γε μὴν ἐνετυπώσατο ἐν αὐτῷ τὸ θεῖον τὸ τοῦ παν τὸς λόγου σύστημα, ἐν ᾧ καὶ τὰ εἴδη πάντα τῶν ὄντων καὶ αἱ σημασίαι ἐνυπάρχουσι τῶν ὀνο μάτων τε καὶ ῥημάτων.

Porphyry

787

αὐτοῖς)³⁷² purifying water (δοκιμαστηρίου ὕδατος)’, with a phrase that Apollonius of Tyana wrote to the Brahmans: he took a solemn oath in the name of this water ‘by means of which he was initiated into the mysteries’ (οὐ μὰ τὸ Ταντάλειον ὕδωρ, οὗ με ἐμυήσατε). The implication is plain: desire for initiation into secret august doctrines prevailed over anxiety for personal moral purification. This was also Porphyry’s own priority, and he found the body of the Indian statue intriguing enough and strikingly parallel to Anaxagoras as to make this long quotation from Bardaisan’s report. In the passage quoted from Porphyry, upon which al-Shahrastani made his observation about Anaxagoras being the first who advanced the theory of ‘hiding-and-appearing’, Porphyry is quoted as saying that ‘the root of things is one single body’, and that ‘from it proceed all bodies and bodily forces and species and genera’. This is precisely what Origen maintained about the Body of the Logos, which, in his theology, is the precise parallel to the body of all the principles created by Anaxagoras’ Mind. This is also what the Indian statue betokens: it is androgynous, which means, it is neither male nor female, but it is both. In other words, it denotes that natures rather than individuals were represented on that statue. Origen did in fact stress that the name ‘Adam’ bespeaks not any individual, but human nature proper.³⁷³ The statue had incised on it the sun, moon, and all kinds of plants and animals, including creatures of other ranks of life, such as angels. Several of those species were unknown to the locals, since they were all the species of the world, not only those of the locality. Porphyry (according to al-Shahrastani) reported that Anaxagoras was ‘the first’ to advocate a theory of a primary body and existences hidden in it, by ‘hidden’ meaning ‘spermatic’ as Anaxagoras himself wrote and Simplicius reported. The entire statue, with everything existing in the world being curved on it, is the intelligible union of all principles on the ‘Single Body’ of the Mind’s principles/ logoi (Anaxagoras), or of the Logos (Origen). Porphyry explained that, according to Anaxagoras, things exist differently either in their elevated state, or in the Body of the Mind, or in the soul, or in the plants, or in perceptible bodies.³⁷⁴ In the Body of the Logos, Origen saw the ‘created wisdom’, which ‘decorates’

 But παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς may well mean, ‘according to their belief’ as much as ‘the water in their country’. About Apollonius, see Apollonii Epistulae, 78 (perhaps a genuine one).  Origen, Cels, IV.40: καθ᾿ ἑλλάδα φωνὴν ὁ ᾿Aδὰμ ἄνθρωπός ἐστι, καὶ ἐν τοῖς δοκοῦσι περὶ τοῦ ᾿Aδὰμ εἶναι φυσιολογεῖ Μωϋσῆς τὰ περὶ τῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως. … ᾿Aδάμ, οὐχ οὕτως περὶ ἑνός τινος ὡς περὶ ὅλου τοῦ γένους ταῦτα φάσκοντος τοῦ θείου λόγου. Likewise, commJohn, XX.25.224: ‘killing Adam’ means ‘killing the entire human race’, that is, human nature. See COT, pp. 41; 50; 78 81.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10; see this quoted supra, p. 497, note 43.

788

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

it.³⁷⁵ It was out of this created wisdom that everything was made. The Indian statue, the First Body of Anaxagoras reported by Porphyry, and Origen’s Body of the Logos, they all bespeak the selfsame notion. The statue represents the Creative Mind that proceeded from the Mind,³⁷⁶ which is represented through the image of God above the head of the statue. Simplicius called the former, ‘Mind that came forth’ (προελθὼν νοῦς) from the ‘Standing Mind’ (μένων νοῦς). This is not ontologically different from the primal one,³⁷⁷ even though it is somewhat incomplete in the sense that the Creative Mind has to look at the Standing Mind in order to carry out his creative work.³⁷⁸ God gave this statue to the Son, when the latter created the world, so that the latter should have a visible paradigm.³⁷⁹ These terms, along with those describing the statue extending hands so as to form a cross (ἔχων τὰς χεῖρας ἡπλωμένας ἐν τύπῳ σταυροῦ) seemingly made of wood, are conspicuously Christian, which may suggest not only the fact that Bardaisan was a Christian, but also that Porphyry wrote De Styge during his own Christian period seeking to reconcile his new faith with his pagan background. These are also exactly the same terms in which Origen put his own notion, as explained in a moment. The description about the stuff of the statue is particularly telling: this was made of a material unknown to this world. It appears to be closest to wood, but it is extremely hard and utterly incorruptible. What would possibly be more Christian an idea than a wood-made cross? Furthermore, this wood was incorruptible on account of its cosmic connotations, since the instrument which was normally used for putting someone to humiliating death turned out a symbol of triumph over corruption and death. Wood is neither gold nor silver: it is a material easy to grave. But the cross which the statue formed defied all corruption: what appeared as ‘wood’ was in fact a material resisting corruption above all materials,

 See COT, p. 54; PHE, pp. 187; 212.  Simplicius, commCael, pp. 608 9: ἔοικε δὲ διττὴν ἐνδείκνυσθαι διακόσμησιν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, τὴν μὲν νοητὴν καὶ ἡνωμένην, ἐν ᾗ ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν καὶ ἕκαστον πάντα ἦν τὰ ἄλλα διὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν, τὴν δὲ αἰσθητὴν καὶ διακεκριμένην ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνης τῆς ἑνώσεως ὑπὸ τοῦ δημι ουργικοῦ νοῦ, ὃν καὶ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ νοητοῦ προελθόντα διακοσμῆσαι πάντα φησίν.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 225: οὐ γὰρ ἕτερος μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁ αὐτὸς ὁ ῥυεὶς τῷ μένοντι νῷ. Likewise, op. cit. p. 312. Whether this is actually a work by Simplicius is a moot question, but Simplicius himself suggests a similar distinction in the commCael, p. 288 (lines 23 26).  Simplicius, loc. cit. Δῆλον ὅτι καὶ ταῦτα περὶ τοῦ νῦν προκειμένου λέγεται νοῦ τοῦ καὶ προ ελθόντος καὶ ἔτι ἀτελοῦς. καὶ οὗτος οὐδέν ἐστι τῶν νοητῶν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς πάντα ὑπάρχει ἀμιγής, ἵνα πάντα κατὰ μέθεξιν νοῇ καὶ οὐ δι᾿ αὑτοῦ, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν ἑτέρωθεν τελειότητα. See discussion infra, pp. 1041 67.  See quotation supra, p. 785, note 369.

Porphyry

789

in like a manner that a humiliating death on the cross turned out a victory over decay. However, this is not simply about the symbolism of the material: it is the alien character of it, which is telling, too. The Body of the Logos stands in both the visible and invisible world. It is not only the notion of this world being reconciled with its creator through the Cross; a philosophical idea is inherently involved therein, too: the Created Wisdom, which decorated the Body of the Logos, delimits the demarcation between corporeal and incorporeal reality, that is, ‘the logos of this world’ (ὁ τοῦ κόσμου λόγος), which Plotinus and Origen maintained alike, as discussed in chapter 13. At any rate, the Body of the Logos is alive, indeed it is as alive as the continuous rational activity of the Logos in the universe, as well as the perpetual salvational operation of the wooden Cross. The idea of a logos which is involved with both the incorporeal principles themselves and the material reality of the universe exists in both Origen³⁸⁰ and Porphyry’s teacher, namely Plotinus,³⁸¹ alike: this is the logos of the world, which contains all the logoi of the universe in it.³⁸² The created logoi that make up the decoration of the Body of the Logos exist also in this world, but their origin is in the Mind, which is what Porphyry saw in Anaxagoras. This statue represents the Logos that proceeded from the Mind, according to the notion held also by Plotinus, who spoke about ‘the one Mind and the Logos that proceeded from it, out of which the entire universe was created and separated into individual entities’.³⁸³ However, the idea of the logoi of the world having

 Origen, Libri x in Canticum Canticorum (fragmenta), p. 233 & Scholia in Canticum Cantico rum, PG.17.265.5 10: βούλεται τοίνυν τῶν σωματικῶν ἐξελθοῦσαν, οὐ μόνον ἐν τῷ τείχει γε νέσθαι, ὅπερ εἶναι τὸν περὶ τοῦ κόσμου λόγον νομίζω, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐχόμενα τοῦ προτειχίσματος· ὃς λόγος μέν ἐστι τελευταῖος τῶν σωματικῶν, ἀρχὴ δὲ τῶν ἀσωμάτων. Cels, V.39 (the Logos em braces all the logoi of the world in himself): καὶ τὸν περιεκτικὸν παντὸς οὑτινοσοῦν λόγου τῶν κατὰ φύσιν καὶ προηγουμένως γεγενημένων καὶ εἰς χρήσιμον τοῦ παντὸς λόγον. commJohn, XIX.22.148 (the logos of the whole universe): ὁ τοῦ ὅλου κόσμου λόγος. Cf. frJohn, 63: ὁ τοῦ κυ ρίου σίελος σύμβολον ἦν λόγου ὡς ἐν λόγοις ἐσχάτου, οὗ μείζονα χωρῆσαι ἀνθρωπίνη οὐ δύνα ται φύσις. … ὁ τοιοῦτος λόγος οὐ γυμνὸς ὕλης καὶ σωματικῶν παραδειγμάτων εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἔρχεται.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV. 6.3: Λόγος γάρ ἐστι πάντων, καὶ λόγος ἔσχατος μὲν τῶν νοητῶν καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ νοητῷ ἡ ψυχῆς φύσις, πρῶτος δὲ τῶν ἐν τῷ αἰσθητῷ παντί. Cf. Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 11: ἡ τοίνυν φύσις ἐσχάτη μέν ἐστι τῶν τὸ σωματοειδὲς τοῦτο καὶ αἰσθητὸν δημιουργούντων αἰτίων καὶ τὸ πέρας τοῦ τῶν ἀσωμάτων οὐσιῶν πλάτους, πλήρης δὲ λόγων καὶ δυνάμεων, δι᾿ ὧν κατευθύνει τὰ ἐγκόσμια. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 3.28 (see this quoted infra, p. 790, note 386). However, unlike Neoplatonists, when Origen spoke of ‘first’ and ‘last’, he had in mind the ‘logoi’, not the ‘soul’ nor the ‘nature’.  Origen, commJohn, I.34.244. See supra, p. 714, note 76.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.2.2: ἐξ ἑνὸς νοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ λόγου ἀνέστη τόδε τὸ πᾶν καὶ διέστη.

790

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

been implanted (or, carved) on the Body of the Logos who was born from the Mind, presumably was shared by Porphyry himself. In any case, arguably it appears exclusive to Bardaisan and Origen, and the latter’s doctrine I am going to examine in chapter 11, in order to argue that Origen is a commanding figure that demands our attention, and rightfully claims back his place in the history of philosophy, which he deserves, but this has been persistently denied to him ever since his death.

Iamblichus Iamblichus was fairly aware of Anaxagoras’ philosophy, and, at a certain point, he quotes the maxim ‘Our mind is God’.³⁸⁴ We saw also that he mentioned the idea of coherence the universe and of ‘sympathy’ of all its parts with one another, in like a manner all parts of an animal sympathize with any part of it.³⁸⁵ It should be remarked that Pythagoreans (notably, Nicomachus) also spoke of ‘spermatic logoi’, but the testimony comes from Iamblichus alone, who saw the Monad as containing all of the logoi. His description is in essence identical with the relevant ideas of Origen and Porphyry.³⁸⁶ The fact is that Iamblichus saw no difference between a ‘Monad that contains spermatically all the logoi in fusion’ (ἡ μονὰς … σπερματικῶς ἀδιακρίτους τοὺς ἐν ἀριθμῷ λόγους περιέχει) and Anaxagoras’ propositions. For Iamblichus acknowledged that he read the

 Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 48: Ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός, εἴθ᾿ Ἑρμότιμος εἴτ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἶπε τοῦτο.  Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 3.16: Καὶ ἡ ἕνωσις δὲ καὶ ἡ συμπάθεια τοῦ παντὸς καὶ ἡ ὡς ἐφ᾿ ἑνὸς ζῴου συγκίνησις τῶν πορρωτάτω μερῶν ὡς ἐγγὺς ὄντων. See supra, p. 639.  Iamblichus, In Nicomachi Arithmeticam Introductionem, p. 10 (definition of ‘quantity’, ποσόν): Πυθαγόρας δὲ ἔκτασιν καὶ ἐνέργειαν τῶν ἐν μονάδι σπερματικῶν λόγων, ἢ ἑτέρως τὸ πρὸ πάντων ὑποστὰν ἐν θείῳ νῷ ἀφ᾿ οὗ καὶ ἐξ οὗ πάντα συντέτακται καὶ μένει τάξιν ἄλυτον διηριθμημένα. Theologoumena Arithmeticae, p. 3: καὶ ὅτι τὸν θεόν φησιν ὁ Νικόμαχος, τῇ μονάδι ἐφαρμόζειν, σπερματικῶς ὑπάρχοντα πάντα τὰ ἐν τῇ φύσει ὄντα ὡς αὐτὴν ἐν ἀριθμῷ, ἐμπεριέ χεταί τε δυνάμει τὰ δοκοῦντα ἐναντιώτατα κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν εἶναι πᾶσιν ἁπλῶς ἐναντιότητος τρόποις. Op. cit. p. 13 (about the Monad): καὶ φύσιν δὲ αὐτὴν καλοῦσι· κίνησις γὰρ εἰς τὸ εἶναι ἐστὶν αὕτη καὶ οἷον γένεσίς τις ἀπὸ λόγου σπερματικοῦ ἔκτασις. Op. cit. pp. 79 81 (about the Decad): πάντα μὲν σπερματικῶς ἐντὸς αὑτῆς περιειληφυῖα … διόπερ καὶ ἐπωνόμαζον αὐτὴν θεολογοῦντες οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ πότε μὲν … εἱμαρμένην δὲ πάλιν ἔλεγον, παρ᾿ ὅσον οὐδεμία ἰδιότης οὔτε ἐν ἀριθμοῖς οὔτε ἐν τοῖς οὖσι κατ᾿ ἀριθμοῦ σύστασίν ἐστιν, ἣ οὐκ ἐν δεκάδι καὶ τοῖς ἐντὸς αὐτῆς σπερματικῶς καταβέβληται. De Mysteriis, 3.28: Οὐσῶν γὰρ περὶ τοὺς οὐρανίους θεοὺς ἀπείρων δή τινων δυνάμεων, ἓν γένος τῶν ἐν αὐταῖς πάντων ἔσχατόν ἐστι, τὸ φυσικόν. Τούτου δὲ αὖθις τὸ μὲν ἐν λόγοις σπερματικοῖς τε καὶ πρὸ τῶν σπερματικῶν τοῖς ἀκινήτοις ἱδρυ μένον προηγεῖται καθ᾿ ἑαυτὸ πρὸ τῆς γενέσεως. Cf. Origen, commJohn, V.5.1.

Iamblichus

791

idea ‘in the Physicists’, and then he expounded the philosophy of Anaxagoras: ‘the seeds’ are ‘the logoi’ of those which are generated, and, in respect of the things that will come to be, these logoi are causes of potentialities.³⁸⁷ As noted in the section about Porphyry, the idea was always the same, however differently put in terms of language: the object of creation is the logoi, and they exist differently so as to make up various manifestations of reality. This was not only a Neoplatonic proposition: earlier, Zeno of Citium had posited that ‘God’ (that is, his universal Logos) who permeates everything (διὰ πάσης οὐσίας πεφοιτηκέναι) appears either as mind, or as soul, or a nature, or as natural cohesive force (καὶ ποῦ μὲν εἶναι νοῦν, ποῦ δὲ ψυχήν, ποῦ δὲ φύσιν, ποῦ δὲ ἕξιν).³⁸⁸ The logoi concur in one way in order to make up a natural phenomenon (say, a thunder), but they react differently with each other in order to produce a plant, differently in order to generate a human being, and differently still when they make the universe function according to, say, the Theory of Relativity or to the Quantum Theory. These are always the logoi of Anaxagoras; what varies is their manifestation in accordance to their particular function. Philosophers accorded the logoi different designations, but, in essence, all of them reflected based on the notion of the logoi existing and acting in different modes. Origen spoke of ‘logoi of corporeal and incorporeal things’ (λόγοι σωμάτων καὶ ἀσωμάτων)³⁸⁹ having in mind the distinction just described above. Actually, he classified them when he spoke of ‘the logos of this world’ which is ‘the last of the corporeal and the first of incorporeal ones’,³⁹⁰ meaning that, beyond the generative and cohesive principles which concur in order to produce this universe, there are also the cognitive theoretical ones which are grasped by means of abstract reflection and pertain to sheer theory, even theology. This is the idea of Damascius, who maintained that the logoi exist either as objects of cognition or as fully active agents.³⁹¹

 Iamblichus, In Nicomachi Arithmeticam Introductionem, p. 81: καὶ ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς δ᾿ ἂν εὕ ροιμεν τὰ σπέρματα πάντα τοὺς λόγους τῶν ἀποτελεσθησομένων ἐξ αὐτῶν ἀδιακρίτους καὶ συγ κεχυμένους ἔχοντα, ὡς ἂν δυνάμει ὄντα ἐκεῖνα ἃ ἐξ αὐτῶν γενήσεται.  Zeno, fr. 158, apud Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 35 (see this quoted on p. 617, note 41).  Origen, selGen, PG.12.125.5 6: αἱ τρεῖς θεωρίαι τῶν σωμάτων, τῶν ἀσωμάτων, τῆς ἁγίας Τριάδος. selPs, PG.12.1108.40 43: Ἔστι δὲ ἡ κληρονομία τῆς λογικῆς φύσεως θεωρία τῶν σωμα τικῶν καὶ τῶν ἀσωμάτων, καὶ τούτων ἁπάντων αἰτίου Θεοῦ. Expositio in Proverbia, PG.17.249.47: τὴν περὶ σωμάτων καὶ ἀσωμάτων θεωρίαν.  Origen, Libri x in Canticum Canticorum, p. 233 & Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17.265.5 10. Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. IV.6.3. Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 11. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 3.28, discussed infra, chapter 13, pp. 1401 10.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 159 (see this quoted on p. 712, note 64).

792

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

Iamblichus spoke of logoi which are either ‘animate or natural’ ones (λόγους ἐμψύχους ἤ φυσικούς).³⁹² He had in mind not only the Anaxagorean pattern, but also the Pythagorean one which he adumbrated in the same terms: the Monad contains within itself all the spermatic logoi,³⁹³ and everything is produced from and by them. However, although reflecting in mathematical terms (since his topic was Nicomachus’ Introduction to Arithmetic), Iamblichus could not help entertaining the Anaxagorean fundamentals: everything came to be from the ‘Divine Mind’, which granted the spermatic logoi existence; it was out of these logoi that ‘all things have been put in order together, and they exist as an orderly whole, while they are reckoned up one by one’.³⁹⁴ Iamblichus was a Neoplatonist, and he considered himself an enthusiastic Platonist, as Damascius described him.³⁹⁵ Therefore, we are not to expect a professed Anaxagorean or Pythagorean philosopher. Nevertheless, he reflected in such terms as those he used when he posited a certain ‘genus of powers related to gods’ as a ‘natural’ one. Of course, he meant the natural laws of the universe, but here is how he described it: this ‘genus’ exists partially in the spermatic logoi (ἐν λόγοις σπερματικοῖς) and partially it derives its existence from ‘immovable things which are prior to the spermatic logoi, and they are prior to generation’  Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 3.1.  Cf. the idea of the Monad containing potentially all the ‘spermatic logoi’. Iamblichus, The ologoumena Arithmeticae, p. 1: ἡ μονὰς … εἰ μήπω ἐνεργείᾳ ἀλλ᾿ οὖν σπερματικῶς πάντας τοὺς ἐν πᾶσιν ἀριθμοῖς καὶ δὴ καὶ τοὺς ἐν δυάδι λόγους ἔχει. Op. cit. p. 3: τὸν θεόν φησιν ὁ Νικόμαχος τῇ μονάδι ἐφαρμόζειν, σπερματικῶς ὑπάρχοντα πάντα τὰ ἐν τῇ φύσει ὄντα ὡς αὐτὴν ἐν ἀριθμῷ, ἐμπεριέχεταί τε δυνάμει τὰ δοκοῦντα ἐναντιώτατα κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν εἶναι. Op. cit. p. 13, defining Nature: κίνησις γὰρ εἰς τὸ εἶναι ἐστὶν αὕτη καὶ οἷον γένεσίς τις ἀπὸ λόγου σπερματικοῦ. Op. cit. p. 81: ἡ μονὰς … σπερματικῶς ἀδιακρίτους τοὺς ἐν ἀριθμῷ λόγους περιέχει.  Iamblichus, In Nicomachi Arithmeticam Introductionem, p. 10: Πυθαγόρας δὲ [defines ‘quantity, ποσόν, as] ἔκτασιν καὶ ἐνέργειαν τῶν ἐν μονάδι σπερματικῶν λόγων, ἢ ἑτέρως τὸ πρὸ πάντων ὑποστὰν ἐν θείῳ νῷ ἀφ᾿ οὗ καὶ ἐξ οὗ πάντα συντέτακται καὶ μένει τάξιν ἄλυτον δι ηριθμημένα. See this passage adduced as testimony to the Pythagoreanism of the Hellenistic pe riod (H. Thesleff, The Pythagorean texts of the Hellenistic period, p. 165); but the editor of this collection should have used not διηριθμημένα, which Iamblichus’ editors (U. Klein, post H. Pis telli) also did, but διηρθρωμένα, which makes more sense. For we have this passage quoted also by Syrianus commenting on Aristotle (Metaphysica, 1083b) criticizing this Pythagorean theory, and arguing that it is impossible for things to consist of numbers. See Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 142. The context makes it clear that Syrianus relies on the text of Iamblichus, which means that, although the term διηριθμημένα in the latter’s text appears as ostensibly more ‘Pythagor ean’, in fact this is a scribal error. See Aristotle’s own criticism of the theories of Speusippus (only the objects of mathematics exist besides sensible things) and of Xenocrates (Ideas are identified with numbers). Metaphysica, 1086a; then (criticizing then Pythagoreans) op. cit. 1090a; (criticizing Speusippus, op. cit. 1090a 1091a).  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 207. See infra, pp. 1219 20.

Proclus

793

(καὶ πρὸ τῶν σπερματικῶν τοῖς ἀκινήτοις ἱδρυμένον προηγεῖται καθ᾿ ἑαυτὸ πρὸ τῆς γενέσεως).’ This genus of natural logoi dominates over the entire visible universe (ἐνδυναστεύει παρὰ πᾶσαν τὴν φανερὰν διακόσμησιν), but that which ‘rules over all visible generation upon earth’ is only ‘the endings’ of this genus of logoi (ἧς πᾶσι τὸ τελευταῖον ἐν τοῖς περὶ γῆν τόποις ἐπάρχει τῆς περιγείου φανερᾶς γενέσεως).³⁹⁶ In other words, the logoi that make up the universe are only the last manifestation of their existence and operation, in like a manner Plotinus and Origen spoke of ‘the logos of this world’ which is ‘the last of the incorporeal nature and the first of corporeal one.’ Iamblichus was prone to sublime expressions, but in reality this classification of logoi, as Porphyry and Simplicius described it, was the Anaxagorean one. Besides, he could hardly conceal his admiration for Anaxagoras’ lofty formulations. Whereas he spoke in contempt about the multitude, ‘the herd of people who are governed by Nature’, having in mind the Stoic doctrine that subjected everything to natural forces and to Heimarmene, he reserved a very different approach to Anaxagoras: “There are only a few people, who, by using a certain marvelous power of mind, on the one hand renounce Nature [as a supreme principle] and, on the other, they turn their attention to the unmixed Mind which exists separately (πρὸς δὲ τὸν χωριστὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ νοῦν περιάγονται); in this way, they elevate themselves above the natural forces.”³⁹⁷

Proclus The heir of Syrianus as head of the Academy, who flattered himself with the epithet ‘Successor’ (Διάδοχος) meaning a real follower and interpreter of Plato, endorsed Porphyry’s view about the Anaxagorean principles existing differently in different ontological levels: ‘everything is in everything, yet in a manner befitting each particular case’ (πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστῳ); it is true that ‘life and mind exist in the real Being (καὶ γὰρ ἐν τῷ ὄντι καὶ ἡ ζωὴ καὶ ὁ νοῦς); being and intellection exist in life (καὶ ἐν τῇ ζωῇ τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ νοεῖν), and both existence and life stem from the mind and they exist because of it (καὶ ἐν τῷ νῷ τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ ζῆν)’. However, and despite apparent homonymy, all these exist in different modes: ‘in one reality, they exist intellectually (ἀλλ᾿ ὅπου μὲν νοερῶς), in another, they exist as natural life (ὅπου δὲ ζωτικῶς), and in yet an-

 Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 3.28.  Iamblichus, op. cit. 5.18. Quite evidently, his vocabulary describing Νοῦς as χωριστὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ is distinctly Anaxagorean.

794

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

other mode they exist as beings that are real par excellence (ὅπου δὲ ὄντως ὄντα πάντα)’.³⁹⁸ Certainly, Proclus was not an Anaxagorean, at least as far as he struggled not to be one. Hence, he introduces his favourite mythology into an Anaxagorean context which in fact was only natural theory: although he could not deny the reality of ‘spermatic logoi’ which are manifestly present in plants and animals at least, he added that each one of these logoi is ruled by superintending ‘sundry classes of gods and daemons’.³⁹⁹ Besides, in the same sense that a seed contains all the immaterial logoi which cause it to develop into a full plant, ‘the logos of the world’ contains all the particular logoi that produced the universe, which Proclus sees as forms, that is, Ideas, thus essaying to rescue Plato’s theory by making the Ideas and logoi the selfsame principles. In fact, all the natural logoi⁴⁰⁰ are contained within the Nature, which is god, if only a secondary one that received its divinity from on high and above. Thus, Nature is ‘full of logoi and forces’ (πλήρης λόγων καὶ δυνάμεων); it is ‘the last of the causes which produce corporeality and perceptible things’ (ἐσχάτη μέν ἐστι τῶν τὸ σωματοειδὲς τοῦτο καὶ αἰσθητὸν δημιουργούντων αἰτίων), which means ‘the last one in the scale of incorporeal beings (τὸ πέρας τοῦ τῶν ἀσωμάτων οὐσιῶν πλάτους)’.⁴⁰¹ Proclus despised the materialistic theories of the Stoics, and argued that those (i. e. the Stoic)⁴⁰² spermatic logoi are ‘incomplete’ or ‘imperfect’ (ἀτελεῖς),⁴⁰³ and certainly ‘divisible’, because they are ‘material’.⁴⁰⁴ However,

 Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 103. Cf. In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 929: Διεσπασμένα δὲ ἀλ λήλων ἀναφαίνεται τά τε δεύτερα καὶ τὰ πρῶτα, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄμοιρα τῶν πρώτων, τὰ δὲ ἄγονα τῶν δευτέρων· τὸ δὲ ἀληθὲς ὅτι πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν οἰκείως ἐστί. commTim, v. 2, p. 26: ἔστι γὰρ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι καὶ μετέχει τῆς ἀλλήλων φύσεως· μιμεῖται γὰρ καὶ ταύτῃ τὸν νοητὸν κόσμον ὁ αἰσθητός, καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν ἐκείνῳ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, ἀλλ᾿ οἰκείως ἐν ἑκάστῳ, νοητῶς μὲν ἐν τῷ νοητῷ, νοερῶς δὲ ἐν τῷ νῷ, καὶ ὁλικῶς μὲν ἐν τοῖς ὅλοις, μερικῶς δὲ ἐν τοῖς μερικοῖς. Op. cit. v. 2, p. 44: ἵνα πάντα μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν ᾖ, οἰκείως δ᾿ ἐν ἑκάστοις. Op. cit. v. 2, p. 150: ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι καὶ ἄμφω [sc. ἡ ψυχή] ἐστί, τὰ μὲν ἀμέριστα εἰκονικῶς, τὰ δὲ μεριστὰ παραδειγματικῶς· ἔχει γὰρ τοὺς ἀμφοτέρων λόγους· πάντα γοῦν ἐστιν ἐν αὐτῇ συστοίχως.  Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 188.  See φυσικοὶ λόγοι, on pp. 123; 216; 664 5; 671 2; 777; 795 8; 1261.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 1, p. 11.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem. p. 887: Ταύτης γὰρ ἐφιέμενοι πάντες τῆς αἰτίας, οἱ μὲν τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους εἶναι τοιούτους οἰηθέντες ἀφθάρτους αὐτοὺς ἐποίησαν, ὡς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς. Cf. op. cit. p. 883: πολλοὶ γὰρ δὴ σωματικοῖς λόγοις ἀνέθεσαν τὴν δημιουργίαν.  See discussion of this, supra, chapter 9, pp. 667 72.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 883: οὔτε τοῖς σπερματικοῖς λόγοις τὴν αὐτὴν ἔχειν οὐ σίαν δοτέον· πάντα γὰρ ταῦτα σωματοειδῆ καὶ ἀτελῆ καὶ μεριστὴν αὐτῶν ἀποφαίνει τὴν ὑπό στασιν. Cf. op. cit. p. 889: ᾿Aπὸ μὲν τῶν ἐνύλων εἰς τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους ἀνιόντες, εὑρίσκο μέν τι κοινὸν αὐτοῖς, τὸ ἀτελές. Op. cit. p. 731: οὔτε τοὺς τοῖς σπερματικοῖς αὐτὰς λόγοις

Proclus

795

this did not mean that he was prepared to abandon a dynamic model of reality that Porphyry had revived following Anaxagoras: these logoi exist only potentially, and they are unable to act as cohesive causes, since they are ‘imperfect’ (ἀτελεῖς).⁴⁰⁵ When Proclus made these remarks, he was irritated at what he saw as arid Stoic commitment to corporeality, which is probably why he took views that were rather extreme: he argued that Plato had preceded the wanting theories of both Aristotle (who spoke of ‘immovable objects of desire’, ἀκίνητα ὀρεκτά)⁴⁰⁶ and the Stoics, and he urged that ‘the Ideas are intelligible logoi, and made all creation dependent upon them’.⁴⁰⁷ For the Stoic spermatic logoi were not only ‘imperfect’, but also not immovable objects of desire, as the Peripatetic ones were (πάντως οὖν οὔτε τὰ ἀκίνητα ὀρεκτά, μόνως ὀρεκτὰ ὄντα).⁴⁰⁸ However, the question on which Proclus did not care to resolve is this: if the Ideas are identified with logoi, why did he not himself treat the issue of generation in terms of Ideas alone, but he recurrently spoke of logoi? Moreover, if both of them are the selfsame thing, why was it that, at the same time, he argued that ‘the logoi, whether spermatic or natural ones, are not the same as the Ideas’,⁴⁰⁹ but they are dependent upon the Ideas’?⁴¹⁰ Proclus argued that Plato introduced ‘natural logoi’ as ‘causes’ which stand ‘midway’ and they are the proximate agents of generation.⁴¹¹ As usual, he sought συνάπτοντας· οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασιν ἀτελεῖς εἰσιν. Op. cit. p. 1055: περὶ τῶν ἐνύλων εἰδῶν καὶ πάντων τῶν σπερματικῶν λόγων.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 887: : Οὔτε γὰρ οἱ σπερματικοὶ λόγοι σώζειν ἦσαν ἱκανοὶ τὰ γιγνόμενα, πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς οὐ δυνάμενοι συννεύειν καὶ ἑαυτοὺς συνέχειν οὐδ᾿ ὅλως τελειοῦν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀτελεῖς ὄντες· δυνάμει γάρ εἰσι καὶ ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ.  Aristotle, De Anima, 433b11; Metaphysica, 1072a26. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMe taph, p. 693; De Anima, p. 781. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 781; 1191; commAnim, p. 301. John Phil oponus, commGenCorr, p. 150; commAnim, p. 66; commAnim, p. 96; commAnim, pp. 587; 590 1, Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 105. Suda, letter kappa, entry 1640. Michael of Ephesus, In Libros De Animalium Motione Commentarium, p. 127. Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 16. Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 76. Also, Albinus, Epitome Doctrinae Platonicae, 10.2.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 888: Πλάτων δέ, συναγαγὼν εἰς ἓν ἀμφότερα, νοεροὺς λόγους εἶναι τὰς ἰδέας ὑποθέμενος τούτων ἀνῆψε τὴν πᾶσαν δημιουργίαν.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 887 8; cf. op. cit. p. 793.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 886: καθάπερ εἴπομεν, τῆς ἰδέας τὸ ἰδίωμα, μήτε τοῖς σπερματικοῖς λό γοις ὂν ταὐτόν, μήτε τοῖς φυσικοῖς ὅλως, οἵ εἰσιν ὁμοταγεῖς τοῖς ὑλικοῖς, ἀλλ᾿ ἕτερόν τι πρὸ τού των ἀσύντακτον πρὸς πᾶν τὸ μερισθὲν περὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς.  So Simplicius, commEpict, p. 132: Εἰδῶν δὲ ἀσωμάτων, καὶ ἀμερίστων, καὶ ἀεὶ κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως ἐχόντων, ἐφίενται οἱ λόγοι.  Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 51: καὶ ὡς εἰκότως ὁ Πλάτων ἀπὸ τῶν μαθημάτων ἐπάγει τὴν πίστιν τοῖς φυσικοῖς λόγοις· αἴτια γάρ ἐστιν ἐκεῖνα, καὶ ἡ δημιουργικὴ πρόοδος διὰ ψυχῆς ἐπιτε λεῖται, καὶ ἡ ἀπογέννησις οἰκείως πρόεισι διὰ τῶν μέσων.

796

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

to attribute to Plato theories which were in fact both prior and posterior to him and they had nothing to do with Plato himself. For one thing, Proclus made the Ideas poietic causes, which in fact they were not. For another, once he employed the Anaxagorean logoi in order to excoriate the Stoic ones, he decided that those logoi operated by means of them being participated in by the things they give rise to,⁴¹² and that the steadfast order and operation of natural reality is owing not to the dynamic logoi but to the immovable Ideas.⁴¹³ Thus, he introduced a classification: ‘from perceptible material things, one proceeds to the spermatic logoi, both of which have in common their being imperfect’ (τὸ ἀτελές); above them, stand the natural logoi (ἀπὸ δὲ τούτων εἰς τοὺς φυσικοὺς λόγους);⁴¹⁴ higher still, there are the logoi of the soul, which mark transition from timelessness to temporality. It is only when one leaves all of them behind, that the Ideas can be reached in their own self-subsistent noble and immovable being.⁴¹⁵ They are superior to both the spermatic and the natural logoi, which is why ‘the spermatic logoi are inferior to Nature proper’,⁴¹⁶ and ‘they are supervised by sundry classes of gods and daemons’.⁴¹⁷ He attributes transition from absolute unity to multiplicity to Cronus; then, Rhea gives life; and then, ‘Phorkys decorates everything by means of spermatic logoi’. It is only after them that ‘Zeus brings into light those which are hidden’ (φανερὰ δὲ ἐξ ἀφανῶν ὁ Ζεὺς ἀποτελεῖ).⁴¹⁸ However, all of this is not what Plato meant in his Timaeus: it is only the philosophy of Proclus essaying to establish that ‘whether natural

 Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 886 7.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 887: ὁ φυσικὸς λόγος ἔχει χώραν προσεχὴς ὢν τοῖς πολλοῖς δεσμοῖς· ἵνα δὲ μένῃ τὰ μετέχοντα τῆς ἰδέας ἀεὶ καὶ μηδέποτε ἐκλείπῃ, δεῖ τινος ἄλλης αἰτίας, οὐκ ἐν αὐτοῖς οὔσης ἢ κινουμένης, ἀλλ᾿ ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτῆς ἱδρυμένης, πρὸ τῶν κινουμένων ἀκινήτου, καὶ διὰ τὴν οἰ κείαν σταθερότητα προξενούσης καὶ τοῖς κινουμένοις τὴν ἀνέκλειπτον μετοχήν.  Simplicius agreed that the natural logoi are prior to the spermatic ones. commCateg, p. 351: καὶ ἐν φυσικοῖς λόγοις καὶ εἰ οὕτω τις βούλοιτο καλεῖν ἐν τοῖς σπερματικοῖς, ὥς ποτε καὶ Κορ νοῦτος ὀψὲ τοῦτο ὑπώπτευσεν, ἢ ὡς ἀκριβέστερον ἄν τις εἴποι κατὰ προτέρους λόγους καὶ τῶν σπερματικῶν λόγων τοὺς τῆς ὅλης κοσμικῆς φύσεως, ἐν ᾗ καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ περιλαμβάνεται.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 889: ἀπὸ δὲ τούτων εἰς τοὺς ψυχικούς, τὸ ἔγχρονον τῆς ποιήσεως· ἐὰν δὲ εἰς τὰ εἴδη τὰ ὡς ἀληθῶς ἀναδράμωμεν, οὐδὲν εὑρήσομεν τοῖσδε καὶ ἐκείνοις κοινόν.  Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 191: ὑπὸ τὴν φύσιν γὰρ οἱ σπερματικοὶ λόγοι πάντες.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 188.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 192. Cronus, Rhea, and Phorkys were the children of Oceanus and Tethys, and grandchildren of Uranus and Gaia. Then, ‘of Cronus and Rhea were born Zeus and Hera, and all those who are called their brethren.’ Plato, Timaeus, 40e. Proclus uses an expression of Aristotle (Physica, 193a5: φανερὰ διὰ τῶν ἀφανῶν) in order to show the opposite of what Ar istotle meant (‘to set about proving the obvious from the unobvious betrays confusion of mind’). To Proclus, generation is unconcealment out of concealment, and this is indeed a profoundly Anaxagorean thesis, as Porphyry reported. See supra, p. 258, note 240.

Proclus

797

logoi or spermatic ones, the cause of them all in no other than God; no matter what Nature does, it is actually made by God moving Nature and using it as his tool.’⁴¹⁹ Proclus took pride in styling himself a devout pupil of Plato, and certainly, he did not mean to be himself an Anaxagorean. Besides, he spurned what he saw as arid universal materiality of the Stoics, because this meant to him that the incorporeal characteristics of perceptible things (such as their form) are produced by corporeal logoi (οὔτ᾿ ἄρα γεννήματα τῆς ὕλης ὑποθετέον εἶναι τὰ εἴδη καὶ βλαστήματα),⁴²⁰ which was a blasphemy, all the more so since corporeal logoi cannot be participated in.⁴²¹ On the other hand, he made abundant use of the notion of ‘spermatic logoi’, yet in order to say that, if they are patently material, they are ‘imperfect’ for that reason. He confined the import of ‘spermatic’ to seeds alone. However, since the universe involves also other natural phenomena, he spoke of ‘natural logoi’, which include the spermatic reproduction of plants and seeds, but they carry over the wider reality of the world. Thus, instead of disputing the materiality of spermatic logoi, he opted for the ‘natural’ ones, and it was them that he saw as being incorporeal. But those were exactly the Anaxagorean logoi. This gave rise to a widespread terminology which is characteristic of the Late Antiquity. Whereas Proclus loathed the Stoic spermatic logoi because of their materiality, hence, their divisibility,⁴²² he determined that the natural logoi (φυσικοὶ λόγοι) are immaterial and indivisible (ἀμερεῖς).⁴²³ However, this was not Platonism: it was only a novelty introduced by his teacher Syrianus commenting not on Plato, but on Aristotle, while explicating that the exegesis

 Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 143.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 883.  Proclus, loc. cit.: πολλοὶ γὰρ δὴ σωματικοῖς λόγοις ἀνέθεσαν τὴν δημιουργίαν, καίτοι δέ δεικται ὅτι τὰ εἴδη σωματικά τε εἶναι καὶ μετέχεσθαι σωματοειδῶς ἀδύνατον.  Proclus, loc. cit.: πάντα γὰρ ταῦτα σωματοειδῆ καὶ ἀτελῆ καὶ μεριστὴν αὐτῶν ἀποφαίνει τὴν ὑπόστασιν.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 89: τὸ δὲ αὖ τῆς ἀπάτης οἰκεῖον τοῖς ἐγκοσμίοις εἴδεσιν ἐξιστα μένοις ἀπὸ τῶν ἀμερῶν καὶ ἀΰλων λόγων, καὶ φαινομένοις ἀντὶ τῶν ὄντως ὄντων γινομένοις. In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 902: ᾿Aναδράμωμεν οὖν ἀπὸ τῶν μεριστῶν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀμερεῖς λόγους τῆς φύσεως. Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 65: Καὶ γὰρ οἱ λόγοι τῶν νοήσεών εἰσιν εἰκόνες, διότι τὸ μὲν συνεσπειραμένον τῶν νοητῶν ἀνελίττουσι, τὸ δὲ ἀμερὲς εἰς τὴν μεριστὴν προάγουσιν ὑπόστασιν. commEucl, p. 18: τοὺς δὲ ἀμερεῖς αὐτῆς λόγους ἐξαπλοῦσα. Op. cit. p. 50: ἐν ἀμερέσι λόγοις … τῶν ἐν διανοίᾳ λόγων ἀμερῶν ὄντων καὶ ἀδιαστάτων κατὰ τὴν ἰδιότητα τὴν ψυχικὴν ὑφεστηκότων. Op. cit. p. 56: τῶν ἀμερῶν λόγων.

798

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

along that line was his own, not Aristotle’s.⁴²⁴ It is not difficult to trace the line along which this concept and locution were transmitted: Syrianus bequeathed this teaching to Proclus, who succeeded him as head of the Academy; in turn, Proclus’ pupil Ammonius of Alexandria taught the theory to his own pupils, namely, John Philoponus⁴²⁵ and Olympiodorus of Alexandria (the Younger).⁴²⁶ The closure of the Academy did not allow for the theory to flourish, but in the eleventh century Michael Psellus reproduced the analyses of Philoponus on this.⁴²⁷ In accordance with the incorporeality and indivisibility of the logoi, Proclus taught that they produce things by causing the powers that are ‘coiled up’ (συνεσπειραμένοι) to develop to corporeal entities which have a certain magnitude and shape.⁴²⁸ Again, he assured that he read this in Plato’s Timaeus, but in reality this was a lesson he had read in Porphyry, who reported that he had himself learned this from Thrasyllus of Alexandria, as discussed later in this chapter. As

 Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 91: τοὺς ἀμερεῖς λόγους τῆς ψυχῆς. Op. cit. p. 92: οἱ μὲν ἀμερεῖς λόγοι τῶν μεγεθῶν κρείττους … τῆς ἑαυτῶν αἰτίας τῆς ἀμεροῦς ἐξηρτημένα. Op. cit. p. 94: Αὐτὸς μὲν ὡς ἐπὶ δεδειγμένοις τούτῳ χρῆται τῷ συμπεράσματι. ἡμεῖς δέ, ὅτι οἱ μὲν λόγοι αὐτῶν οὐσίαι ἀμερεῖς καὶ αἰτίαι τῶν φανταστῶν καὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν διαστάσεων, εἰς δύναμιν ἡμετέραν ἐπεδείξαμεν. Op. cit. p. 124 (ref. to Pythagoreans): αὐτοὺς δὲ [sc. πάντας ἀριθμούς] ἀμερεῖς εἶναι ὑπετίθεντο τούς τε τῶν σωμάτων ποιητικοὺς τούς τε τῶν φυσικῶν λόγων ἐξῃρημένους.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 13: καὶ αὐτοὶ οἱ φυσικοὶ λόγοι δείκνυνται ἐναργῶς ἀμερεῖς ὄντες καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἀσώματοι. ἐν γὰρ ἑκάστῳ μορίῳ τοῦ σπέρματος οἱ αὐτοὶ φυσικοὶ λόγοι ἀμε ρίστως εἰσίν, οἵπερ καὶ ἐν τῷ παντὶ σπέρματι, οἱ θρεπτικοί, οἱ αὐξητικοί, οἱ διαπλαστικοί· … ἀμε ρίστως ἄρα ἐνυπάρχουσι πάντες ἐν ἑκάστῳ μορίῳ· ἀσώματοι ἄρα εἰσίν· τὸ γὰρ ἀμερὲς καὶ ἀσώματον. Op. cit. p. 14: ἀμερεῖς οἱ λόγοι καθ᾿ ἑαυτούς, … αἱ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ δένδρῳ δυνάμεις πᾶσαι ἀνελλιπῶς καὶ ἐν τοῖς μέρεσι, δῆλον ὅτι δι᾿ οὐδεμίαν ἄλλην αἰτίαν ἢ διὰ τὸ ἀμερεῖς εἶναι αὐτὰς καθ᾿ αὑτάς. Op. cit. p. 58: τῶν γὰρ εἰδῶν τῶν ἐνύλων εἰσὶ καὶ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ λόγοι, εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ ἐξῃρημένοι ἐν τῷ δημιουργικῷ νῷ. καὶ τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ οἱ μέν εἰσι διαστατοὶ οἱ ἐν τῇ φαντασίᾳ, οἱ δὲ ἀμερεῖς καὶ ἀδιάστατοι οἱ ἐν τῷ λογικῷ μέρει τῆς ψυχῆς. commPhys, p. 475: ἀμερεῖς γὰρ ὄντας τοὺς λόγους τῶν εἰδῶν καθ᾿ αὑτοὺς [sc. ἡ ὕλη] δεξαμένη διίστησι.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem Commentarii, 109 10: τὸ δὲ εἶδος πρὸς τῷ νῷ ἐστὶν ἐπιστρεπτικῷ ὄντι· καὶ τοῦτο γὰρ ὡς ἀμερὲς ἐπιστρεπτικόν ἐστι, διὰ γὰρ τὴν ὕλην μερίζεται· ἐπεὶ πάντες οἱ λόγοι ἐν τῷ σπέρματί εἰσιν ὡς ἀμερεῖς.  Michael Psellus (in effect, copying from Philoponus), Opuscula ii, p. 33: καὶ οἱ φυσικοὶ λόγοι ἀμερεῖς καὶ ἀσώματοι· ἐν ἑκάστῳ γὰρ μορίῳ οἱ αὐτοὶ λόγοι καὶ ἐν τῷ παντὶ σπέρματι, οἱ θρεπτικοὶ καὶ διαπλαστικοί. … ἀμερίστως ἄρα ἐν ἑκάστῳ μορίω καὶ ἀσωμάτως. καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ δένδρῳ ἡ φυτικὴ δύναμις, οὕτω καὶ ἐν τῷ κλάδῳ. Op. cit. p. 38: οἱ λόγοι τῶν εἰδῶν τῶν ἐν ὕλῃ εἰσὶ καὶ ἐν τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ ψυχῇ καὶ ἐν τῷ νῷ τῷ δημιουργικῷ. καὶ τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ οἱ μὲν διαστατοί, οἱ ἐν τῇ φαντασίᾳ, οἱ δὲ ἀμερεῖς καὶ ἀδιάστατοι.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 65 6: Καὶ γὰρ οἱ λόγοι τῶν νοήσεών εἰσιν εἰκόνες, διότι τὸ μὲν συνεσπειραμένον τῶν νοητῶν ἀνελίττουσι, τὸ δὲ ἀμερὲς εἰς τὴν μεριστὴν προάγουσιν ὑπόστασιν.

Proclus

799

it happened with many other terms that Proclus’ predecessors used sparingly and then Proclus himself took them up and used them profusely, so it went with the idea of the logoi being coiled-up and then unfolding themselves in order to generate different aspects of reality: the natural logoi produce nature, the psychic ones give rise to life, those of the Intellect produce the realm of the soul, the creative logoi are transferred upon the ‘second gods’ so as to be possible for them to create reality and become ‘second demiurges’, and so on.⁴²⁹ Proclus knew that, once he spoke of ‘spermatic logoi’, this rang some Stoic bells. On the other hand, if he posited them as incorporeal, he could not escape the shadow of Anaxagoras, which had been identified and described by Porphyry. It goes without saying that Proclus was always anxious to emphasize that Ideas are different from either the Stoic ‘spermatic’ logoi, or the ‘natural’ ones, by which he meant ‘those involved with material generation’.⁴³⁰ All these logoi are contained in the ‘Nature’, which in turn is an ‘instrument’ used by God to the purpose of creation.⁴³¹ Nevertheless, the fact that Proclus essayed to introduce a difference, by positing that the ‘natural logoi’ stand ‘under Nature’, bespeaks his anxiety to extol the sublimity of Plato’s theory by making all the logoi dependent on Nature.⁴³² He knew, however, that his attempt was hardly convincing, which is why he essayed to argue for this also at other points of his work. Of them, the one in his commentary on Plato’s Parmenides is indicative of his concern. He praises Plato for having ‘elevated us from the natural logoi to the psychic ones’ (ἀνήγαγεν ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ τοὺς ψυχικοὺς λόγους ἀπὸ τῶν φυσικῶν), so that, eventually, we should reach the supreme simplicity, that is, the One (ἑνὰς μία τῶν ἰδεῶν … ζητεῖν τὴν τῶν ἰδεῶν μονάδα μίαν). Consequently, he con-

 Proclus, loc. cit.: v. 5, p. 65 6: οἱ μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς φύσεως ὡρμημένοι λόγοι φυσικοί τινές εἰσι καὶ τὸ δεχόμενον αὐτοὺς φυσικὸν ἀποτελοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπογεννώμενοι ζωοποιοὶ … οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ νοῦ τοῖς δευτέροις μετ᾿ αὐτὸν ἐλλαμπόμενοι … καὶ οἱ δημιουργικοὶ λόγοι προάγουσιν εἰς τοὺς νέους θεοὺς τὰ ὅλα καὶ ἀμέριστα καὶ ἡνωμένα μέτρα τῆς ἐξῃρημένης δημιουργίας. Like wise, Institutio Theologica, 93; commCrat, 104; commTim, v. 1, pp. 29; 180; v. 3, pp. 92; 105; 220; commEucl, pp. 4; 87; 95.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 886; 899. Whereas Porphyry made Hermes the super intendent of the ‘natural logoi’ which bring about generation and change, Proclus assigned this task to Artemis, Apollo’s twin sister. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 6, p. 98; commTim, v. 2, p. 146. Nevertheless, cf. Proclus (reporting Porphyry’s views), commTim, v. 1 p. 148: Ἑρμαϊκοὶ δὲ οἱ λόγοι πάντες, καὶ ἔστι καὶ τῶν φυσικῶν λόγων ἔφορος ὁ ἐντετακὼς Ἑρμῆς.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 627; 793; 835; 879; 893; commTim, v. 1, pp. 2; 49; 143; 301; v. 2, pp. 51; 139; 146; commRep, v. 2, pp. 159; 362; Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 66; commEucl, p. 54.  Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 191: ὑπὸ τὴν φύσιν γὰρ οἱ σπερματικοὶ λόγοι πάντες. Cf. In Pla tonis Parmenidem, pp. 731; 883; 886 9; 1055; commTim, v. 1, pp. 99; 143; v. 2, p. 193; v. 3, p. 192.

800

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

siders briefly both the Stoic spermatic logoi and Aristotle’s forms, only to reach the stunning conclusion mentioned earlier, namely, that ‘Plato brought together both’ the Stoic and the Peripatetic theories into one ‘by positing that the Ideas are intelligible logoi, and made the entire Creation dependent on those logoi (Πλάτων δέ, συναγαγὼν εἰς ἓν ἀμφότερα, νοεροὺς λόγους εἶναι τὰς ἰδέας ὑποθέμενος τούτων ἀνῆψε τὴν πᾶσαν δημιουργίαν)’. For ‘neither the spermatic logoi’ nor ‘the immovable objects of desire could save the phenomena’, since the Stoic logoi are imperfect and the Peripatetic objects of desire cannot cause change of form.⁴³³ Any reader of this argument, who would have been unaware of dates of birth of philosophers, would assume that Plato came after the Stoics and Aristotle (put in this chronological order) in order to hurdle the difficulties of both schools by introducing his theory of forms, which solved all their problems, deficiencies, and impasses. This is a characteristic method, anyway: instead of saying that they availed themselves of previous philosophies in order to produce their own theories, it was argued that their theories were Plato’s. This specific formulation of Proclus takes this attitude to the extreme, in his effort to argue that Plato had preceded the Theory of Logoi, both in its Anaxagorean and in the Stoic sense, and that the exertions of Late Antiquity were not actually a step beyond Plato’s impasses and indeed revisitation of Anaxagoras.⁴³⁴ However, on the one hand, Proclus declared openly that he believed this to be Platonic allegiance, while, on the other, his exposition is full of points of reflection in Anaxagorean terms and rationale. This happens especially in his commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, that is, in the dialogue where some of the chief difficulties of the theory of Ideas were distressingly set forth.⁴³⁵ Proclus knew of course Aristotle’s criticism of the theory, especially that of the notion of ‘participation’ (μέθεξις), which the latter deemed a nonsensical poetical metaphor. It is certainly no coincidence that Proclus implicitly confronts this by stating (almost upon the beginning of his commentary) that this participation is only the fact of formless matter receiving the perceptible logoi in itself (τὸ ὑποδεχόμενον τοὺς  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 887 8: Οὔτε γὰρ οἱ σπερματικοὶ λόγοι σώζειν ἦσαν ἱκανοὶ τὰ γιγνόμενα, πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς οὐ δυνάμενοι συννεύειν καὶ ἑαυτοὺς συνέχειν οὐδ᾿ ὅλως τελειοῦν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀτελεῖς ὄντες· δυνάμει γάρ εἰσι καὶ ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ· πάντως οὖν οὔτε τὰ ἀκίνητα ὀρεκτά, μόνως ὀρεκτὰ ὄντα, τῆς κατ᾿ εἶδος ἦν αἴτια τῶν γιγνομένων ἐξαλλαγῆς.  There are several points in Proclus which show this practice, but this calls for an ad hoc study. For instance, he employed the three characteristic epithets that Anaxagoras used in order to depict the Mind (namely, ‘unmixed’ / ἀμιγής, ‘simple’ / ἁπλοῦς, ‘pure’ / καθαρός), but he applied them to the Forms. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 730: δεικνύει γὰρ τὸ ἀμι γὲς καὶ τὸ ἁπλοῦν καὶ τὸ καθαρὸν τῶν εἰδῶν.  See Plato, Parmenides, 130b 137b.

Proclus

801

αἰσθητοὺς λόγους): these logoi follow those of the intelligible things (τῶν νοητῶν λόγους),⁴³⁶ which eternally ‘guide and generate and make alive and hold together perceptible things’. This is all very well, and Proclus later credits Plato with all of this, but, at this early stage of the commentary, he feels it necessary to confess implicitly the source of this theory, stating that both the overall approach and particular ideas ‘are analogous to those of the philosophers of physis, who carried on with the philosophy of Anaxagoras’.⁴³⁷ Little wonder then that, when Proclus comments on Parmenides, 126b8, he says that it was natural for Plato ‘to style the Clazomenian philosophers philosophers par excellence (μάλα φιλόσοφοι), since it was his habit so to call those who were able to perceive the divine things (τοὺς θεωρητικοὺς τῶν θείων)’.⁴³⁸ Despite Anaxagorean influence, Proclus was alert to not indulging too much in the theory which maintained that the universe is an interaction of logoi. To this purpose, he drew a line between considering the universe as a concurrence of logoi and reflecting on the higher realities in theological terms. Proclus was a man of ‘priestly’ nature, as Damascius described him,⁴³⁹ which means that he would allow only little room for explanations which today one would style ‘scientific’. This Proclus himself stated plainly upon describing his dissent from Aristotle: whereas Plato posited time as a moving image of eternity, Aristotle came up with a definition postulating time as number,⁴⁴⁰ which made Aristotle too much of a physicist in Proclus’ eyes. As a mater of fact, he complains that ‘Aristotle used to do this on other issues, too’, and goes on with outlining some of those issues. All the qualities that Plato accorded the One, Aristotle attributed to the Mind, such as standing apart from plurality, being desirable, and thinking of none of those that are ontologically inferior. All the qualities that Plato attributed to the Creative Mind, Aristotle assigned to the heaven and the heavenly gods, such as carrying out creation and providence. Everything Plato saw in the essence of the heaven, Aristotle ascribed it to the circular motion, thus breaking up with theological principles while dealing excessively with natural ac By contrast, to Philoponus, the ‘natural logos’ of a thing is its ‘form and essence’; converse ly, ‘any form, which contributes to a certain thing assuming fully its essence, is a natural logos’. John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 427: ὁ γὰρ φυσικὸς ἑκάστου λόγος, καθ᾿ ὃν ἔστιν, εἶδος ἐστὶν ἑκάστου καὶ οὐσία καὶ ἔμπαλιν τὸ ἑκάστου συμπληρωτικὸν τῆς οὐσίας εἶδος λόγος τις ἐστιν φυσικός, καθ᾿ ὃν τὸ εἶναι ἔχει.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 626: αἷς ἀνάλογόν εἰσι οἱ φυσικοὶ φιλόσοφοι ἐκεῖνοι, οἱ τῆς ᾿Aναξαγόρου διάδοχοι φιλοσοφίας.  Proclus, op. cit. pp. 671 2.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 172.  Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 37d. Aristotle, Physica, 219b; 220a; 221b; 223a b; 251b. See a detailed dis cussion of these theories in COT, pp. 179 232.

802

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

counts (τοῖς δὲ φυσικοῖς λόγοις πέρα τοῦ δέοντος ἐνδιατρίβων).⁴⁴¹ Consequently, Proclus attributed to Aristotle a scientific spirit, which in fact was an Anaxagorean one, and Aristotle just followed suit. Therefore, he concentrates his dissent from Aristotle on two major points. The Mind is not the supreme ontological principle. Explanation of reality by means of the notion of logoi should not go too far; instead, ample room should be made for theological speculation (or mythology, one would have thought). In respect of this, it should be remarked that Proclus castigated Origen as ‘exegete of Plato’ on similar grounds: Origen dismissed the notion of One altogether, and posited the Mind as supreme ontological principle, which is why Plato would have never accepted these ideas, nor would have he included Origen among his own pupils.⁴⁴² The gravamen of Proclus’ remark was that those theories of Origen ‘were full of the Peripatetic novelty’ (τῆς Περιπατητικῆς ἀναπέπλησται καινοτομίας). However, Origen was not an Aristotelian philosopher: he was an Anaxagorean one, whose black list of philosophy comprised ‘the Sophists, the Epicureans, and the Peripatetics’.⁴⁴³ Origen was the intellectual who made the most of the Anaxagorean logoi, not only in respect of Nature, but also in composing his most sublime theological formulations. Moreover, he was probably the one who identified the Anaxagorean ‘logoi’ with ‘angels’⁴⁴⁴ (the equivalent of Proclus’ ‘heavenly gods’, οὐράνιοι θεοί), and assigned them with carrying out providential functions, as Proclus accused Aristotle of having made, too. All of this spirit was not Aristotelian: it was Anaxagorean. Aristotle, and, later, Origen, simply moved along the legacy of the ingenious Clazomenian. The language of Plotinus is interesting at points where he appears to reflect by means of the logoi, which probably denotes part of his common education with Origen⁴⁴⁵ that no doubt involved Anaxagoras, too. To Plotinus, ‘the soul contains generative logoi and knows the results of its own action’ (τῆς ψυχῆς τῆς τοὺς λόγους τοὺς γεννητικοὺς ἐχούσης εἰδυίας τὰ ἐκ τῶν ἔργων συμβαίνοντα αὐτῆς ἁπάντων).⁴⁴⁶ Hermias of Alexandria remarked that, ‘since the human soul is a logos, naturally it wishes to generate [new] logoi’,⁴⁴⁷ although normally  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 295.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31.  Origen, Cels, II.27.  See infra, pp. 1127 8; 1343 8.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31: Ὠριγένην τὸν τῷ Πλωτίνῳ τῆς αὐτῆς μετασχόντα παιδείας.  Plotinus, op. cit. II.3.16. Likewise, op. cit. III.3.1: Ψυχῆς γάρ τινος πάσης ἐνέργεια οἱ λόγοι.  Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 212: Ἐπειδὴ γὰρ οὐσίωται ἡμῶν ἡ λογικὴ ψυχὴ κατὰ τὸ νοερὸν τὸ ἐν αὐτῇ (ἡ γὰρ ψυχὴ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου λόγος ἐστίν) εἰκότως γεννᾶν βούλεται λόγους.

Proclus

803

a Neoplatonist would be prone to attributing this function to the cosmic soul that generates logoi, which in effect is an analogy to the Anaxagorean Mind that produced the principles. Although the notion that the soul generates logoi became a common Neoplatonic motif, hardly all of Neoplatonists were at one on such matters. Proclus notes that Iamblichus held that the cosmic soul was the container of the logoi, whereas Proclus himself allowed that the cosmic soul was given birth from the logoi.⁴⁴⁸ By the same token, Proclus reports that his teacher understood ‘creation’ as ‘sowing’ seeds. But who else other than Anaxagoras introduced the notion of ‘seed’ (σπέρμα) as the means to generation of the universe? At the same point, Proclus adds that ‘the soul is a logos comprising logoi, and it proceeds from the Father and Creator of all’. This set of logoi (which he calls ‘soul’) is the ‘first sowing, whereas the new gods is the second, and creation [of the universe] is the third [sowing]’.⁴⁴⁹ We should not be deterred by the variant terminology: no matter how ‘Neoplatonic’ Proclus struggles to make his locution, the notion is plain: there is a Creator who created ‘seeds’, also called ‘logoi’, and everything was made by means of them. Hardly could Proclus have used a more characteristic Anaxagorean language. Furthermore, he refers to the logoi which are ‘born’ by the soul, and rightly he discerns the different kinds of them: some of them produce other living beings (that is, offspring); others are directed towards matter, and produce logoi that are either scientific, or technical. These are only some examples of the activity of the soul producing new logoi.⁴⁵⁰ It is impressive that another Byzantine intellectual used the same ideas of Proclus that appear in this passage, while reflecting in Anaxagorean terms: he was Isaac Comnenus (c. 1050‒1102/1104), the older brother of Emperor Alexios I Comnenus (r. 1081‒1118): the logoi are incorporeal, but sometimes they generate immaterial things and sometime material ones; and the soul (now he reproduces Proclus) generates other living beings (that is, offspring); others

 Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 143: ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἰάμβλιχος καὶ μετὰ τούτου Θεόδωρος εἰς τὴν ὑπερκόσμιον ψυχὴν ἀνάγουσι τούτους τοὺς λόγους· ἡμεῖς δὲ ἡγούμεθα μὲν τὸν Τίμαιον τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ψυχὴν γεννᾶν διὰ τούτων.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 3, p. 233: βέλτιον οὖν, ὡς ὁ διδάσκαλος ἡμῶν ἐπέκρινε, σπορὰν τὴν γέ νεσιν ἀκούειν, ἐπεὶ καὶ προσήκει τῷ πατρὶ τὸ σπείρειν καὶ τὸ λόγους γεννᾶν, ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ λόγος ἐκ λόγων ἐστὶ καὶ ὡς ἀπὸ πατρὸς πρόεισι τοῦ δημιουργοῦ τῶν ὅλων· καὶ γὰρ αὕτη μέν ἐστιν ἡ πρώτη σπορά, δευτέρα δὲ ἡ περὶ τοὺς νέους θεούς, τρίτη δὲ ἡ περὶ τὴν γένεσιν.  Proclus, De Decem Dubitationibus Circa Providentiam, 13: καὶ ψυχὴ γεννᾷ λόγους τινὰς μὲν ἐν ἄλλαις ψυχαῖς ζῶντας καὶ κινουμένους, τινὰς δὲ εἰς ὕλην ἐκπίπτοντας, ἐπιστημονικοὺς μὲν ἐκείνους, τεχνικοὺς δὲ τούτους, καὶ πάντας μὲν ζωτικῶς· ἀλλὰ τοὺς μὲν διὰ ζωῆς εἰς ζωὴν προϊόντας, τοὺς δὲ διὰ ζωῆς εἰς ἄζωον.

804

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

are directed towards matter, and produce logoi that are either scientific, or technical.⁴⁵¹ These references during Late Antiquity, and later, are illuminating in the sense that they are not typical of Neoplatonism: rather, they show the influence of Anaxagoras, notwithstanding casual (but not profound) modification of terminology. Such parallels reveal that not only was Origen not a Platonist (which Proclus acknowledged, if as opprobium), but also that uncharacteristic Neoplatonic usage of terms is in fact an Anaxagorean influence.⁴⁵² An example in this context would be telling: speaking of production of ‘logoi that are either scientific, or technical’, is a statement that Proclus did not invent himself: he would have found this in Porphyry, who quoted a brilliant definition by Thrasyllus of Alexandria, the exceptionally erudite grammarian, philosopher, astrologer, and theorist of music, who flourished in Rhodes in the beginning of the first century AD, and his close friendship with Emperor Tiberius became a proverbial example of harmonious companionship between a philosopher and a politician. He died a few months after Tiberius, in 37 AD. Porphyry described Thrasyllus as a Platonist, who also studied Pythagorean mysticism. Now, how much of a Platonist he was, I cannot say. The fact is that he described the forms and becoming of things not as coming from Above, indeed from the Beyond and the transcendent Ideas, but from the logos of a thing, which is ‘coiled up’ in ‘seeds’ (συνεσπειραμένος μὲν ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασι), as if hidden therein (καὶ ὥσπερ ἐγκεκρυμμένος): the logos ‘spreads out’ (ἐξαπλούμενος), and ‘unfolds itself’ (ἀνελιττόμενος) in accordance with the natural action of each thing (κατὰ τὰς ἑκάστης φύσεως ἐνεργείας). Subsequently, ‘an imitation of the logos (κατὰ μίμησιν) appears in technical theories, as well as in the results of such theories, and in any kind of contemplation, speculation, such as the theory about prudence or that about wisdom’. It is significant that Thrasyllus saw the logos of a thing (or, of a theory) not simply as the definition of it: he saw it as a creative force, indeed a creator that gradually unfolds its inherent powers and causes things to come to pass. Subsequently, once this logos is grasped and described

 Isaac Comnenus, Περὶ τῶν δέκα πρὸς τὴν πρόνοιαν ἀπορημάτων, Question 3: ὁ μὲν οὖν τοῦ ἀσωμάτου λόγος … οὐ μόνον ἀσώματος ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀσωμάτων αἴτιος, πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐξομοιῶν τὰ παραγόμενα, ὁ δὲ τοῦ σώματος ἀσώματος μέν, σωμάτων δὲ αἴτιος. ψυχὴ γεννᾷ λόγους τινὰς μὲν ἐν ἄλλαις ψυχαῖς, ζῶντας καὶ κινουμένους, τινὰς δὲ εἰς ὕλην ἐκπίπτοντας, ἐπιστημονικοὺς μὲν ἐκείνους, τεχνικοὺς δὲ τούτους. Influence by Proclus is all too evident.  See references to Origen’s and Simplicius’ parallel texts couched in terms of logoi being ac tive and cohesive causes, in chapter 7, pp. 486.

Proclus

805

theoretically, the definition, or ‘essence’ (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι), of a certain thing or phenomenon may be rendered theoretically.⁴⁵³ It would be hardly necessary to argue that these logoi are not the same as the Aristotelian forms, which is what some intellectuals essayed to do during the Late Antiquity, while unconsciously applying the characteristic Anaxagorean terminology. For Aristotle’s ‘form’ is not an active principle moving things by being ‘coiled up in the seeds’ (συνεσπειραμένος μὲν ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασι), nor does it ‘spread out’ (ἐξαπλούμενος) by ‘unfolding itself’ (ἀνελιττόμενος). To Aristotle, the source of motion is quite plain: the supreme principle ‘causes motion by being the object of love, whereas all other things cause motion because they are themselves in motion’.⁴⁵⁴ This Mover is not an active force, since it moves things by being what it is, namely, an object of desire (ὀρεκτόν).⁴⁵⁵ It was then natural for intellectuals of Late Antiquity to see this Mover as a ‘final cause’, not as a creative one.⁴⁵⁶ In other words, the cause for things to exist does not come from Above: it is here, it is the logos of a thing – and this logos comprises many logoi, which are no other than the Anaxagorean principles. The description of Thrasyllus started with Anaxagorean language and consideration, and ended up with informing that the Anaxagorean principles/logoi have a bearing on that which Aristotle described as ‘essence’ of a thing by means of the expression τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι.⁴⁵⁷

 Porphyry (quoting Thrasyllus), Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 12.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072b3 4: κινεῖ δὴ ὡς ἐρώμενον, κινούμενα δὲ τἆλλα κινεῖ.  Aristotle, De Anima, 433a 18: τὸ ὀρεκτὸν γὰρ κινεῖ. Op. cit. 433a27 29: διὸ ἀεὶ κινεῖ μὲν τὸ ὀρεκτόν, ἀλλὰ τοῦτ᾿ ἐστὶν ἢ τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἢ τὸ φαινόμενον ἀγαθόν. Op. cit. 433b11: πρῶτον δὲ πάν των τὸ ὀρεκτόν. Metaphysica, 1072a26 27: κινεῖ δὲ ὧδε τὸ ὀρεκτὸν καὶ τὸ νοητόν· κινεῖ οὐ κινούμενα.  The debate on whether Aristotle’s First Mover was also a Creator, or not, remained always hot. In the sixth century, Simplicius argued against those who thought that Aristotle’s supreme principle was a final cause, but not also a creative one. commPhys, p. 258 (contradicting, and quoting from, Alexander of Aphrodisias); p. 1360. As late as the fifteenth century, Gennadius Scholarius argued that the First Mover is also Creator: Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristo tele, p. 31. Instead, George Gemistus (or Plethon) argued against Scholarius that Aristotle did not posit the First Mover as poietic cause: Contra Scholarii pro Aristotele Obiectiones, 14.  Porphyry (quoting from Thrasyllus), Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 12: Καὶ οὗτος ἐστὶν ὁ τῶν εἰδῶν λόγος, ὥς φησιν ὁ Θράσυλλος, συνεσπειραμένος μὲν ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασι καὶ ὥσπερ ἐγκεκρυμμένος, ἐξαπλούμενος δὲ καὶ ἀνελιττόμενος κατὰ τὰς ἑκάστης φύσεως ἐνερ γείας, ἐγγινόμενος δὲ κατὰ μίμησιν κἄν τοῖς τεχνικοῖς θεωρήμασιν, ὡς κἀν τοῖς τεχνικοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀποτελέσμασι καὶ τῷ τῆς διανοητικῇς φρονήσεως καὶ σοφίας λογισμῷ, καθ᾿ ὃν ὅ τι ποτ᾿ ἐστὶν ὁ νοῦς ἐπισφραγίζεται καὶ τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι ἑκάστῳ καθορίζεταί τε καὶ πιστοῦται, οὗ καὶ ὁ ὁριστικὸς καὶ ὁ ἀποδεικτικὸς λόγος ἐστὶ δηλωτικός.

806

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

It is remarkable that Porphyry chose to explain this theory of a logos being ‘coiled up’ and then unfolding its powers,⁴⁵⁸ by appealing to Thrasyllus,⁴⁵⁹ not to Plotinus, who wrote that ‘the Logos unfolded itself as from a quiet seed’ (ὥσπερ δ᾿ ἐκ σπέρματος ἡσύχου) so as to give rise to multiplicity.⁴⁶⁰ For indeed Plotinus considered the Intellect/Mind in association with its own rationality (λόγος) which the Intellect itself gave rise to. The notion of being ‘coiled up’ (or contracted) is reserved for the concentrated unity of the Intellect contrasted with the Soul (or, with the logos of the Soul) which is difused. The personage of Porus in the Enneads stands for the original ‘Plenty, which is beloved, craved for, perfect, and self-sufficient’,⁴⁶¹ and Plotinus explains that ‘this is a logos (λόγος ὤν) in the intelligible realm and in the Intellect itself’; actually, ‘Porus is a collective name for all logoi being together’ (ὁμοῦ δὲ οἱ λόγοι ὁ Πόρος). He explains, ‘that which is in the Intellect is coiled-up (ἐν νῷ συνεσπειραμένον),⁴⁶² and nothing comes to it from anything else; but when Porus was drunk, his state of being as a filled one was brought upon and in himself’, and that which Porus was filled with was no other than ‘a logos (λόγος) which fell from a higher state to a lesser one’, meaning that this logos was imported to the soul and came from the Intellect.⁴⁶³ As noted at several points of this book, Anaxagoras’ influence was frequently not acknowledged through explicit citations of his name. Nevertheless, his legacy was there, no matter whether authors drew on him consciously or not, openly or clandestinely. Once Proclus posited the Anaxagorean Mind not as the supreme principle, but as second to the One (and identified it with Cronus), his subsequent analyses of the Nous were entirely Anaxagorean, which is oftentimes obscured by the fact that English translations render Νοῦς ‘Intellect’ in reference to Neoplatonism, and ‘Mind’ in reference to Anaxagoras, although in both cases the Greek word is one and the same.

 Plotinus, op. cit. III.7.11, discussed supra, pp. 733 4.  See supra, Porphyry (quoting Thrasyllus), loc. cit.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.7.11.  See Plutarch explaining this in De Iside et Osiride, 374D. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 203b.  The idea of an original potential being ‘coiled up’ within a supreme principle was consid ered in relation to different contexts. Hermias of Alexandria wrote that the Monad contains in itself ‘the forms of all numbers’ in a manner which is ‘coiled up and unitary’ (συνεσπειραμένως καὶ ἑνιαίως), and produces multiplicity by being unfolded (πεπληθυσμένως καὶ ἀνειλιγμένως). In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 141. Orion of Alexandria explained that συνεσπειραμένως means ‘something having in itself the perfection of its own power being coiled up’ (συνεσπειραμένην ἔχειν ἐν αὐτῷ τὴν τῆς δυνάμεως τελειότητα). Etymologicum, letter sigma, p. 142. Quite evidently, he saw this as a gloss to ‘potentiality’.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.5.9.

Proclus

807

Proclus says that ‘law is the administration by the Mind’ (νοῦ διανομή),⁴⁶⁴ but hereafter all of his analysis is in fact Anaxagorean philosophy; he simply goes throughout Plato’s usage of that philosophy in different dialogues and brings all Anaxagorean terminology together out of this truffle-hunting: Mind is the foremost God (πρώτιστος θεός),⁴⁶⁵ and ‘most pure’ (καθαρώτατον);⁴⁶⁶ ‘he is prior to any intelligible distinction and superintends all of it’ (καὶ διαιρέσεως οὗτος προηγεῖται πάσης καὶ διακρίσεως ἐξάρχει νοεράς); ‘he distinguishes all classes of beings’ (τὸν διακρίνοντα μὲν τὰς τάξεις τῶν ὄντων) ‘according to a well-ordered progress’ (καὶ τὰ εἴδη πάντα χωρίζοντα κατὰ τὴν εὔτακτον πρόοδον), and it is the Mind who grants coherence on everything that exists, according to the rules that he has set (συνέχοντα τὴν ἐν αὐτοῖς τάξιν καὶ τοὺς ὅρους τῆς θείας διανομῆς). This orderly setting of all universal laws is what Plato personified as nymph Adrasteia,⁴⁶⁷ and others did so with goddess Heimarmene.⁴⁶⁸ Proclus adumbrates this as universal superintendence of the Mind also by means of the Anaxagorean notion of a ‘guard’, indeed an ‘immutable guard’ (ἄτρεπτος φρουρά), adding the fundamental idea of his real source, namely, that the ‘guardian’ ‘stands above any distinction’, in the same sense that the Mind is ‘unmixed’ with the beings it produces. This law of Destiny is established by the Mind, ‘it produces all kinds of beings from one Mind’ (ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς νοῦ προάγων τὰ διάφορα μέτρα τῶν ὄντων), and the subsequent inescapable setting of the universal laws ‘which is one, guards and maintains steadfastly all universal order, while standing beyond any distinction’ (πάντα φρουρεῖ μονοειδῶς ἐν τῷ

 Cf. Plato, Leges, 714a (cf. Gorgias, 523a). Then, Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 98. Julian, em peror, Θεμιστίῳ Φιλοσόφῳ, 5. Proclus, commRep, v. 1, pp. 238; 239; Theologia Platonica, v. 5, pp. 30; 32; In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 220; commTim, v. 1, p. 150; v. 3, p. 301. Olympiodorus of Alex andria, In Platonis Gorgiam Commentaria, 47.4: τί δέ ἐστι τὸ ἀπὸ Κρόνου λαβεῖν τὸν νόμον; νόμος ἐστὶν ἡ τοῦ νοῦ διανομή, εἴρηται δὲ ὅτι ὁ Κρόνος σημαίνει τὸν νοῦν· διὰ τοῦτο οὖν ἐκεῖθεν ὁ νόμος.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 32; cf. op. cit. v. 1, p. 115; v. 2, pp. 2; 65; 72; v. 3, pp. 32; 37; 45; 82; v. 4, pp. 16; 93; v. 5, pp. 21; 29; 69; 125; v. 6, p. 38; In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 71; 79; Institutio Theologica, 115; In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 962; 1051; 1053; 1061; commTim, v. 1 p. 394; but in Institutio Theologica, 133, and in Excerpta e Platonica Procli Theologia, p. 1245, it is the One that he styles the ‘foremost God’. See discussion about Plotinus’ pattern being untenable, infra, pp. 816 23.  Cf. Plato, Cratylus, 396b7 (but Plato wrote καθαρόν, and the superlative καθαρώτατον about the Mind, which Proclus uses, is an Anaxagorean word). In fact, Proclus had in mind Anaxago ras, later quoted by Simplicius, commPhys, p. 155 & 177: ἔστι γὰρ λεπτότατόν τε πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον.  Plato, Phaedrus, 248c2; Respublica, 451a5. Also, Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 32.  Heimarmene simply ‘exists in accordance with the Mind’ (κατὰ νοῦν ζῆν). Proclus, comm Tim, v. 3, p. 18.

808

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

νοητῷ μένουσα καὶ τὴν ὅλην τάξιν ἀκλινῶς διατηρεῖ πάσης διαιρέσεως ἐξῃρημένη).⁴⁶⁹ Therefore, when Proclus adumbrates the Intellect / Mind as ‘guardian’ of the universal order, which he does repeatedly,⁴⁷⁰ he actually draws on Anaxagoras alone. Likewise, he used a characteristically Anaxagorean language and mixed it with that of Plato when he styled Nous ‘God himself, who is the foremost and purest and unblemished Mind’ (νοῦς δὲ ὁ πρώτιστος καὶ καθαρώτατος καὶ ἀκήρατος οὗτος ἐστὶν ὁ θεός).⁴⁷¹ The question then is this: was Proclus aware of the Anaxagorean provenance in the echoes of Porphyry’s theories that he promptly embraced and praised? I doubt this, since none of Proclus’ references to Anaxagoras by name⁴⁷² indicates that he had read his writings first-hand, which is strange, considering that the rich library of the Academy was available to its scholarch. Proclus embraced the proposition about ‘everything being in everything’ (πάντα ἐν πᾶσι), which was associated with Anaxagoras alone throughout all antiquity: it was frequently quoted along his own name,⁴⁷³ but the statement alone was quoted in far more cases, all the more so since it seems that Numenius had embraced it, and so did Neoplatonism in its own way. Stobaeus reported that Plotinus refrained from endorsing this principle (which is accurate), whereas

 Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 32.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 125: καὶ γὰρ ὡς νοῦς πάντας ὑφίστησι καὶ ὡς καθαρὸς νοῦς φρουρεῖ τὰς ὅλας αὐτῶν διακοσμήσεις. Cf. op. cit. v. 5, p. 146; commCrat, 113 (τοῦ φρουρητικοῦ νοῦ). In the following, it is the Logos that proceeds from the Mind who acts as guardian; op. cit. 185: τὸν δὲ λόγον τὸν ἀπὸ νοῦ προϊόντα φρουρεῖ καὶ κρατοῦντα τῆς ὕλης δι’ αὐτήν. This is one more point showing that the Mind and the Logos belong to the same ontological order.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 32. The νοῦς καθαρώτατος is Anaxagoras’ own expres sion; that this is the God, is also Anaxagoras’ statement ‘God is our mind, in each one of us’ (ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός). Plato’s expression in Cratylus 396b, τὸ καθαρὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀκήρατον τοῦ νοῦ, is only an Anaxagorean proposition to which Plato added the epithet ἀκήρατον.  Proclus, In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 147; In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 625; 626; 629; 1214; comm Tim, v. 1, pp. 2; 81; 204; v. 3, p. 63; commEucl, pp. 65; 66.  See attributions to Anaxagoras by name. Pseudo Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ars Rhetorica, 9.11. Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 228; commMetaph, pp. 291; 303; 340; 658; comm DeSensu, p. 68. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 16. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 71. Simplicius, comm Cael, pp. 608; 632; commPhys, pp. 34; 163; 165; 169; 172; 173; 175; 461. John Philoponus, commGen Corr, pp. 29; 191; commPhys, pp. 89; 94; 95; De Opificio Mundi, p. 81. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, pp. 61; 86; 275; 292; 298. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem Com mentarii, 214. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 61. Nicetas of Heraclea, Fragmenta Commentariorum xvi orationum Gregorii Nazianzeni, fr. 109.

Proclus

809

Porphyry wavered, and Amelius was at loss about it.⁴⁷⁴ However, Porphyry did not really waver on this, indeed he knew what he was talking about: he explained the Anaxagorean proposition as meaning that the incorporeal and indivisible principles/logoi are ‘all in all’, yet they are so in different existential modes befitting their specific functions and the sundry natures of things they generate and hold together. What he actually did was adding an explanatory clause to Anaxagoras’ proposition: “Certainly everything is in everything, yet in a manner befitting the essence of each reality.”⁴⁷⁵ This means that there is no need to classify the logoi in higher and lower ones, as Proclus did: all of them are ontologically the same; they are all unlike each other only on account of their varying operation, depending on the kind of generation, such as growth of a plant, or that of an animal or of a human embryo, or psychic functions, or mental ones, or natural phenomena throughout the earth and the entire universe. The impact of this qualification was far-reaching, and the proposition of Porphyry became an almost catchphrase,⁴⁷⁶ which in effect was a sort of legacy of Anaxagoras to Neoplatonism, echoed by Proclus,⁴⁷⁷ Damascius,⁴⁷⁸ Simplicius,⁴⁷⁹

 Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.49.32. Iamblichus notes that ‘all numbers are in all’ (πάντας τοὺς ἐν πᾶσιν ἀριθμούς). Theologoumena Arithmeticae, p. 1. I have remarked that Anaxagoras’ princi ples are somehow analogous to Pythagorean numbers, but they have a far wider import and function, which marks Anaxagoras’ step beyond Pythagoreanism.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10 (see this quoted supra, p. 712, note 62).  Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 178: ἵνα πάντα ᾖ ἐν πᾶσιν, οἰκείως δ᾿ ἐν ἑκάστοις.  Cf. Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 103: Πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστῳ· καὶ γὰρ ἐν τῷ ὄντι καὶ ἡ ζωὴ καὶ ὁ νοῦς, καὶ ἐν τῇ ζωῇ τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ νοεῖν, καὶ ἐν τῷ νῷ τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ ζῆν, ἀλλ᾿ ὅπου μὲν νοερῶς, ὅπου δὲ ζωτικῶς, ὅπου δὲ ὄντως ὄντα πάντα. Likewise, In Platonis Par menidem, p. 929: τὸ δὲ ἀληθὲς ὅτι πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν οἰκείως ἐστί. commTim, v. 1, p. 8: πάντα δὲ ἐν πᾶσιν ἔστι θεωρεῖν οἰκείως. Op. cit. v. 2, p. 26: πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, ἀλλ᾿ οἰκείως ἐν ἑκάστῳ, νοητῶς μὲν ἐν τῷ νοητῷ, νοερῶς δὲ ἐν τῷ νῷ, καὶ ὁλικῶς μὲν ἐν τοῖς ὅλοις, μερικῶς δὲ ἐν τοῖς μερικοῖς. Op. cit. v. 2, p. 44: ἵνα πάντα μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν ᾖ, οἰκείως δ᾿ ἐν ἑκάστοις. commEucl, p. 145: καὶ τὴν ὅλην ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν καθ᾿ ἕκαστον οἰκείως προτείνει πάντα τε ταῦτα ἐν πᾶσιν. Also, Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1151: καὶ τοῦτο μὲν οὐσιωδῶς, νοερῶς δὲ τὸ τρίτον ἀπὸ τούτου, ζωτικῶς δὲ τὸ μέσον ἀμφοῖν. commCrat, 150: καίτοι ζωῆς πάντων αἴτιοι πάντες, ἀλλ᾿ ὁ μὲν οὐσιωδῶς ὁ δὲ ζωτικῶς ὁ δὲ νοερῶς. Michael Psellus (comm. on Proclus), Opuscula ii, p. 119: Τὸ δὲ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστῳ … ἀποδέχομαι. Likewise, op. cit. p. 142. Cf. Nicolas of Methone, Refutatio Institutionis Theologicae Procli, 103.  Damascius, Princ, pp. 228; 232 3; 243 (quoting from Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 44): πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστοις, ὅπου μὲν ἀδιάκριτα, ὅπου δὲ διακρινόμενα, ὅπου δὲ διακεκριμένα. In Phaedonem (versio 1), 534: πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν οἰκείως. In Parmenidem, p. 195; In Philebum, 130 (reporting the views of Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus on this).

810

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

and later, by Michael Psellus after his readings of Proclus,⁴⁸⁰ as much as it became part of the Stoic theory.⁴⁸¹ An explanation by Damascius is in fact the best one ever given about the nature and function of the logoi, and no doubt Simplicius in his own exegeses availed himself of Damascius, given his admiration and respect for his teacher.⁴⁸² Proclus did not dipute the notion of spermatic logoi, but he thought that this Stoic notion suggested an inferior kind of logoi, which are ‘imperfect’ and ‘material’, therefore, they fall short of the quality of ‘the pure essence of the immaterial logoi’ that give rise to the soul and its functions. Although he spoke in Anaxagorean language about ‘everything being in everything’ (τὴν ἐν πᾶσι πάντων παρουσίαν),⁴⁸³ in fact his proposition was not Anaxagorean. In this respect, he missed the point that Porphyry made concerning the nature of the Anaxagorean logoi, which are agents acting differently in accordance with different things, animals, or phenomena. This point that Porphyry made brilliantly, was explained with exceptional insightfulness by Damascius, who did not really dismiss the analyses of Proclus altogether, but at points he wrote pace him, such as the one that I discuss next.

Damascius The last scholarch of the School of Athens pointed out that the logoi give rise to the variety of functions of the soul, as well as to the multifarious nature. Even human body itself is a manifold entity, given the various aspects of its physiol-

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35: καὶ εἴπερ ταύτην ἔσχε τὴν ἔννοιαν, ἄλλως μὲν πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι φησὶ κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν, ἄλλως δὲ κατὰ τὴν νοερὰν συνουσίωσιν καὶ ἄλλως κατὰ τὴν αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν.  Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina, 64: καὶ πάντα μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν· ἀλλ᾿ ὁ μὲν νοῦς νοερῶς ἔχει πάντα, ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ λογικῶς, τὸ δὲ φυτὸν σπερματικῶς, τὸ δὲ σῶμα τὰ εἴδωλα ἔχει τῶν ὄντων, ὁ δὲ θεὸς ἀνεννοήτως καὶ ὑπερουσίως. Strangely, at one point, Michael Psellus (Theolog ica [Gautier], 7, line 46) attributes the principle ‘everything is in everything’ to Proclus’ Institution of Theology, having in mind chapter 103 (see quotation above, note 477), although Psellus was definitely aware of Anaxagoras being the source of it, whom he cites by name at other points, namely, in the Theologica [Gautier], 61, lines 8 12 & 73 75.  Zeno, fr. 158, apud Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 35 (see this quoted on p. 640, note 154).  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 601; 624; 630; 642; 644; 774; 775; 778; 779; 781; 787; 791; 795 7; 800.  Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 193: μηδὲ παραβαλλέτω τοῖς σπερματικοῖς λόγοις τὴν ἐν πᾶσι πάντων παρουσίαν· ἀτελεῖς γάρ εἰσιν ἐκεῖνοι καὶ σωματοειδεῖς καὶ ἔνυλοι καὶ παντάπασιν ἀπο λείπονται τῆς ἀΰλου καὶ καθαρᾶς τῶν ψυχικῶν λόγων οὐσίας.

Damascius

811

ogy, its soul, and its mind (τῷ πολυειδεῖ τῆς φύσεως καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τοῦ νοῦ). He saw all of these particular manifestations as the result of logoi conspiring to generate and sustain a human being; they are all as unlike each other as physiological functions are different from the psychic ones, and then both of them are different from mental operation. Therefore, these logoi are not homoiomerous with the human body itself (εἶναι μέρη ἀνομοιομερῆ). The logoi themselves are not the body, nor anyone of them is the soul or the mind (ὅτι δὲ φυσικοί τε οἱ λόγοι καὶ ψυχικοὶ οὐ μὴν ἕκαστος λόγος ψυχὴ οὐδὲ φύσις, οὐδὲ ἄνθρωπος, οὐδὲ ἵππος, οἷον κεφαλὴ καὶ χεὶρ ἢ ποῦς): they are just named after the specific forms of parts that they generate (παρονομαζόμενα μὲν τῷ ὅλῳ εἴδει), since they only conduce to formation and animation of the human body, both as whole and in its parts (τελοῦντα δὲ ὅμως εἰς τὸν ὅλον ἄνθρωπον καὶ τὸ ὅλον ἕκαστον). Therefore, the whole (i. e. the body) is neither the same as the part (i. e. the constitutive logoi of the body) nor is it different from it (ὡς μήτε ταὐτὸν εἶναι τῷ ὅλῳ τὸ μέρος, μήτε ἕτερον), because the latter determine the way in which a body as a whole will come to pass (ἀλλὰ πῆ καὶ πῶς). Consequently, any logos (whether one of the soul, or of the nature) is superior to a specific human being, which is only the product of logoi (ὁ γοῦν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ λόγος, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ὁ ἐν τῇ φύσει κρείττων ἐστὶ τοῦδε τοῦ φαινομένου ἀνθρώπου).⁴⁸⁴ The idea that the Anaxagorean principles exist differently in different ontological levels was handed down to Damascius, who felt it necessary to elaborate further on the legacy of Porphyry and Proclus,⁴⁸⁵ while using characteristic Anaxagorean language. Although he cared to explain his thought as elaboration of the Neoplatonic patrimony, his analyses reveal some of the extent to which Neoplatonism was indebted to Anaxagoras. His opinion was that the tenet ‘everything is in everything’ was received differently by Porphyry and Iamblichus, on the one hand, and by Proclus, on the other. An astute intellectual as he was, Damascius did not rest content with traditional propositions and he was always alert to exploring their consistency, as we shall see below when he considers the ontological classification of the two higher Plotinian hypostases. At this point, the question he ponders upon is the proposition ‘all are in all’ and its ultimate consequances: if everything is in everything, then, everything existing in the perceptible reality exists universally as well; but if that is so, how is it possible to say that our reality is a part of a whole? In short, how could it be possible to con-

 Damascius, De Principiis, pp. 213 4.  Cf. Proclus commTim, v. 2, p. 44 (quoted supra, note 477). Also, a quotation by Michael Psel lus from Proclus’ Elements of Theology, not actually found in Proclus’ text, which means that Psellus paraphrased. Theologica, 7: ὅτι καὶ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι κατὰ τὴν Θεολογικὴν τοῦ Πρόκλου Στοιχείωσιν, ἀλλ᾿ ὅπου μὲν παραδειγματικῶς, ὅπου δὲ εἰκονικῶς, ὅπου δὲ καθ᾿ ὕπαρξιν.

812

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

sider the perceptible reality as part (indeed a lower one) of a sublime whole, such as, say, the realm of Ideas? This is the question to which Porphyry and Iamblichus came up with an answer which was different from that by Proclus: the former, who were two men of the east (a Tyrian and a Syrian), argued for the solution we saw above, namely, everything is in everything, yet each one of them exists differently upon different functions; by contrast, Proclus (an aristocrat of Lycia and Constantinople) essayed to escape the Anaxagorean solution and opted for sticking to Plato as much as possible: the distinction between ‘whole’ and ‘part’ does make sense, since the properties that make up a certain species come from above (therefore, they belong to the ‘whole’), whereas concomitant attributes, or those arising in consequence, pertain only to this ignoble reality (therefore, they belong to the ‘part’).⁴⁸⁶ It looks as though Proclus sought to solve the impasses of the Theory of Ideas described in Plato’s Parmenides, but a main reason for Damascius to write his De Principiis (which is largely a commentary on Parmenides) was to rebut Proclus’ commentary on that work. Whereas Porphyry explained the theory of a logos being ‘coiled up’ and gradually unfolding its powers by appealing to Thrasyllus,⁴⁸⁷ not to Plotinus, Damascius did so (again, speaking of unity of the One being συνεσπειραμένον) by appealing to Iamblichus – of course, always maintaining that this was what Plato believed.⁴⁸⁸ Nevertheless, posterity attributed this idea to Porphyry.⁴⁸⁹

 Damascius, In Philebum, 130: Ἆρα οὖν ὅσα ἐν τοῖς ὅλοις καὶ ἐν ἡμῖν ἢ ὅσα ἐν ἡμῖν καὶ ἐν τοῖς ὅλοις; πῶς οὖν τὰ μὲν ὅλα, τὰ δὲ μέρη; ὁ μὲν οὖν Πορφύριος καὶ Ἰάμβλιχος ὁμόσε τῷ λόγῳ χωροῦσιν πάντα εἶναι πανταχοῦ λέγοντες, ἄλλως μέντοι καὶ ἄλλως· ὁ δὲ Πρόκλος τὰ μὲν ὅσα συμπληροῖ τὸ εἶδος, οἷον τὰς ἰδιότητας, ἄνωθεν ἥκειν, τὰ δὲ τῇ ὑφέσει συνεισιόντα ἢ παρυ φιστάμενα μόνων εἶναι τῶν μερικῶν. Damascius does not quote nor cite any specific point of Proclus’ work. I believe he had in mind Proclus’ In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 117, in which he descri bed how the most sublime ideas (in this case: Eros) suffer abasement in this material reality: τίς οὖν αἰτία τῆς τῶν ἐρώτων τούτων ἀντιθέσεως; ἡ τῶν πραγμάτων ὕφεσις. ἄνωθεν γὰρ ἡ πρόοδος ἀρχομένη καταλήγει μέχρι τούτων ἃ καὶ μεταβάλλειν δύναται καὶ παρυφιστάνειν τινὰ παρατρο πὴν ἑαυτοῖς.  See supra, p. 805, note 457, Porphyry (quoting Thrasyllus), Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 12.  Damascius, Princ, p. 151: τῷ τε Πλάτωνι σύμφωνα λέγειν ἐδόξαμεν καὶ τῷ νοητῷ καὶ πάντη ἡνωμένῳ καὶ περὶ τἀγαθὸν συνεσπειραμένῳ, κατὰ τὸν Ἰάμβλιχον τὰ σεμνότατα τῶν νοημάτων ἀνατεθείκαμεν. Op. cit. p. 219: ὅθεν καὶ τῶν προϊόντων ἕκαστον, κατὰ τὸ εἴσω συνεσπειραμένον πλῆθος ἑαυτοῦ, γεννᾷ τὸ ἔξω ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ. In Parmenidem, p. 17: Διὸ καὶ πᾶν αἰώνιον ὅλον ὁμοῦ καὶ ἐν ἑαυτῷ συνεσπειραμένον. Ὁ δὲ νοῦς πρῶτος ἐν τῷ μετ᾿ αὐτόν πως, ὅτι πρῶτος βασιλεὺς ὁ νοῦς. Op. cit. p. 48: Ἐπειδὴ δὲ καὶ τὸ ὅλον νοητὸν ἡνωμένον ἦν, καὶ εἰς ἑαυτὸ συνεστραμμένον καὶ συνεσπειραμένον. Op. cit. p. 142: Τοῦτο δὴ οὖν τὸ ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἓν συνεσπειραμένον οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν ἑνὶ μέρει, οὐδὲ ἐν πλείοσιν, οὐδὲ ἐν πᾶσιν. Accordingly, he endorsed the Pythagorean tradition

Damascius

813

Damascius’ analyses on the notion of potentiality are valuable, since they fit perfectly with Anaxagoras’ conception of it, which I canvassed in chapter 6. One might find it strange that Damascius apparently uses Aristotelian vocabulary in an exposition that Aristotle himself would have never endorsed. This is not strange, however. For Damascius would have known that Anaxagoras, not Aristotle, actually fathered the notion of potentiality, and, once his analyses are read in that light, everything therein is consistent. Following his grasp of Porphyry’s explanation of Anaxagoras’ proposition, ‘everything is in everything, yet in a manner befitting each existential reality’ (πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστοις, and, πάντα ἐν πᾶσι οἰκείως), he also got full hold of the idea (seemingly abstruse, but not really so) that ‘everything is in everything actually, and yet nothing exists in actuality anywhere, since in a certain manner it is nothing, while in another manner it is everything’ (ἐνεργείᾳ μὲν γὰρ ἐν πᾶσι πάντα, καὶ αὖ ἐνεργείᾳ οὐδὲν οὐδαμοῦ, ὡδὶ μὲν οὐδέν, ὡδὶ δὲ πάντα).⁴⁹⁰ This is the Anaxagorean concept of ‘hiding-and-appearing’, which Porphyry explained, as we learn from Arabic sources.⁴⁹¹ Damascius explains that, in the ontological level of the Mind, everything is actual and nothing is potential (οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐκεῖ δυνάμει); the fact that it might appear that the principles are non-existent (that is, absent) because we do not realize them always, should not be surprising. For the mode of their being there is different (ὅτι ἕτερος ὁ τρόπος τῆς ὑποστάσεως): in a certain way, they appear as non-existent, since, by their nature, one comes from another, yet, in another way, they appear as potentialities (ταύτῃ μὴ ὄν, καὶ ὅτι πέφυκε γεννᾶσθαι ἕτερα ἐξ ἑτέρων, ταύτῃ δυνάμει).⁴⁹² Everything is accorded a certain character of its own, still everything is in everything, although in a manner befitting each existential operation (πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστοις); in one case, they are undistinguishable, in another, distinct; and

which posited that the supreme principle (the Monad) is convoluted and pregnant with the num bers. In Parmenidem, p. 92: καὶ ἡ μονὰς γὰρ συνεσπειράμενος ἀριθμός.  Cf. Arethas of Caesarea, Scholia in Porphyrii Isagogen, scholion 96: Τὰ ἄτομα πολλὰ καλεῖ ὡς τοῦ τῆς ὕλης ἀστάτου πληθύοντος τὰ ἑνιαῖα καὶ τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς σκεδάζοντος τὸ συνεσπει ραμένον τῆς νοερᾶς οὐσίας.  See chapter 6, pp. 360 1.  Supra, p. 366.  Damascius, Princ, pp. 232 3: Ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ πάντα ἐν τῷ ἡνωμένῳ καὶ πάντα ἐν τῷ διακε κριμένῳ, καὶ ταῦτα ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνων πρόεισιν, ὄντα ἀπὸ ὄντων ὡδὶ ἑκάτερα καὶ μὴ ὄντα, ὡδὶ πάλιν ἑκάτερα καὶ παρηλλαγμένα, εἰ βούλει λέγειν, ὄντα ἀπὸ μὴ ὄντων, καὶ μὴ ὄντα ἀπὸ ὄντων· ἐνερ γείᾳ μὲν γὰρ ἐν πᾶσι πάντα, καὶ αὖ ἐνεργείᾳ οὐδὲν οὐδαμοῦ, ὡδὶ μὲν οὐδέν, ὡδὶ δὲ πάντα. Καὶ οὐκ ἔχει χώραν ἡ ἀπορία ἡ τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ ἀπὸ τοῦ μὴ δυνάμει παράγουσα, ἢ τὸ ὂν ἀπὸ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐκεῖ δυνάμει, οὐδὲ μὴ ὂν οὕτως ὡς λέγομεν ἀποροῦντες, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι ἕτερος ὁ τρό πος τῆς ὑποστάσεως, ταύτῃ μὴ ὄν, καὶ ὅτι πέφυκε γεννᾶσθαι ἕτερα ἐξ ἑτέρων, ταύτῃ δυνάμει.

814

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

when they are distinct, they appear either as an entity composed of elements (ὡς στοιχεῖα ἐν τῷ στοιχειωτῷ), or as parts of a whole (ὡς μέρη ἐν ὅλῳ),⁴⁹³ or as different forms and species of a certain united entity (ὅπου δὲ ὡς εἴδη καὶ ἀριθμὸς εἰδῶν ἐν μονάδι). In the same manner that the principles exist along with the one Principle, it appears that ‘many minds proceed from the one Mind’ (οἱ πολλοὶ νόες ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς νοῦ), many numbers come from the Monad (ὡς ἀριθμὸς ἀπὸ μονάδος), many lives from one Life (πολλαὶ ζωαὶ ἀπὸ τῆς μιᾶς), many elements from one entity consisted of elements (ὡς στοιχεῖα ἀπὸ τοῦ στοιχειωτοῦ), and many substances from one substance (ἀπὸ μιᾶς οὐσίας αἱ πολλαὶ οὐσίαι) as parts of a Whole (ὡς μέρη ἀφ᾿ ὅλου). All of these are somehow indistinguishably united (ἡνωμέναι εἰς τρόπον τινὰ ἀδιάκριτον), and yet distinct entities are produced out of them as if, in respect of each other, they were parts of a whole (καὶ ὡς μέρη ὅλου πρὸς ἀλλήλας εἰσίν), be they individual numbers or minds.⁴⁹⁴ Damascius was perhaps one of the very few thinkers who saw that the notion of potentiality was actually fathered not by Aristotle, but by Anaxagoras. Like Proclus, he used Anaxagoras’ resolutions not only in his commentaries, but also in his own philosophy. To an Aristotelist, one of his propositions might appear paradoxical but, in fact, it was not: Everything is in everything in actuality, and yet nothing is anywhere in actuality; for in a certain way something is nothing, whereas in another way this is everything (ἐνεργείᾳ μὲν πᾶσι πάντα, καὶ αὖ ἐνεργείᾳ οὐδὲν οὐδαμοῦ, ὡδὶ μὲν οὐδέν, ὡδὶ δὲ πάντα).⁴⁹⁵

In view of my previous analyses,⁴⁹⁶ I hardly need to say that such propositions can only be understood within the Anaxagorean context. For any attempt to associate this with Aristotle only because there is reference to ‘actuality’ (ἐνεργείᾳ) would be absurd: the notion of something being potentially everything but actually nothing pertains only to Aristotle’s formless matter; but this is irrelevant to this point, which is about explanation of ‘everything being in everything’, and certainly any implication of formless matter would be impertinent. Damascius argues that the essence of a certain thing is a concurrence of logoi, which is

 Cf. Origen, Cels, V.22 (comm. on Matt. 24:35; Mark, 13.31; Luke, 21:33): “For we know that even if heaven and earth, and the things in them, pass away, yet the logoi about each thing, being like parts in a whole, or forms in a species (οἱ περὶ ἑκάστου λόγοι ὄντες ὡς ἐν ὅλῳ μέρη ἢ ὡς ἐν γένει εἴδη τοῦ ἐν ἀρχῇ λόγου) of the Logos who was in the beginning with God, namely, of God the Logos, will in no wise pass away.” Italics indicate Origen’s use of scriptural language. Also, cf. Plotinus, Enneades, V.9.6 (see supra, pp. 721 2).  Damascius, Princ, p. 243.  Damascius, op. cit. p. 232.  Supra, chapter 6, p. 372.

Damascius

815

why the logos of a thing is both one and many. The principles are both one and many (ἓν καὶ πολλά),⁴⁹⁷ both united and distinct from each other, both here and everywhere, both now and ever; they are incorruptible, since neither do they come to be nor perish; they are always what they are, they do not change, and they are not subject to destruction (οὐδὲ γίνεται οὐδὲ φθείρεταί τι τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀεὶ τὰ αὐτά ἐστι). Since every principle is both one and many, there is no notion of either ‘less’ or ‘more’ that could be applied to them (πάντα οὐδὲν ἐλάσσω ἐστὶν οὐδὲ πλείω); it is impossible for any of them to be more than all, since they are all equal (οὐ γὰρ ἀνυστὸν πάντων πλείω εἶναι, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἴσα ἀεί).⁴⁹⁸ Therefore, ‘the smallest is equal with the entire multitude’ (καὶ ἴσον ἐστὶ τῷ σμικρῷ πλῆθος, πρὸς ἑαυτὸ δὲ ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ μέγα καὶ σμικρόν),⁴⁹⁹ which is why ‘it is impossible to determine anything which is either the biggest or the smallest’ (καὶ οὔτε τὸ ἐλάχιστον οὔτε τὸ μέγιστόν ἐστι λαβεῖν).⁵⁰⁰ These principles, along with the various species which they produce in the world (καὶ τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ εἴδη), ‘are mixed with each other’ (μέμικται ἀλλήλοις) ‘because of both their primal incorporeal nature and their mutual fusion during the stage of creation’ (διά τε τὴν ἀρχέγονον αὐτῶν φύσιν καὶ διὰ τὴν ἐν τῇ γενέσει σύγχυσιν).⁵⁰¹ Accordingly, Damascius saw ‘everything’ as ‘having been divided into the appropriate classes and kinds of existence’ (πάντα μεμέρισται εἰς τὰς οἰκείας τάξεις καὶ ὑπάρξεις), and he used the same expression as Porphyry and then Proclus did: Everything is in everything, yet [they are in everything] in accordance with the mode of existence [of things, in which they are]: in one [kind of existence], they are indistinguishable; in another, distinguishable; and in yet another one, they are distinct (πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστοις, ὅπου μὲν ἀδιάκριτα, ὅπου δὲ διακρινόμενα, ὅπου δὲ διακεκριμένα).⁵⁰² His interpretation went a step further: each principle tends to be everything because it imitates the universal original principle, which ‘was ev-

 Aristotle, Physica, 187a20: οἱ δ᾿ ἐκ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἐνούσας τὰς ἐναντιότητας ἐκκρίνεσθαι, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξίμανδρός φησι καὶ ὅσοι δ᾿ ἓν καὶ πολλά φασιν εἶναι, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ἐκ τοῦ μείγματος γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι ἐκκρίνουσι τἆλλα.  See chapter 7, p. 478.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 164.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius op. cit. p. 166, apud Theophrastus, De Anaxagora, Book 2.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 177.  Damascius, Princ, p. 243 (quoting Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 44). I have argued that this is a legacy to Neoplatonism by Anaxagoras as much as was it so to the Stoics; see supra, chapter 9, pp. 616 7. See relevant quotations in this chapter concerning Porphyry and the Theory of the Logoi: Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 103; commTim, v. 2, p. 26; op. cit. v. 2, pp. 44; 150. Damas cius, Princ, pp. 232 3; In Phaedonem (versio 1), 534; Princ, p. 228; In Parmenidem, p. 195; In Phil ebum, 130 (reporting the views of Porphyry, of Iamblichus, and of Proclus on this).

816

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

erything in the beginning’ (the ‘one huge homoiomery’ of Anaxagoras ambiguously explained by Philoponus should be recalled).⁵⁰³ Therefore, everything that proceeded from this ‘desires to be everything’ too, while, at the same time, its individual features prevail (κατ᾿ ἐπικράτειαν τῆς οἰκείας ἰδιότητος).⁵⁰⁴ Damascius’ expressions are simply Anaxagoras’ own words,⁵⁰⁵ but probably he procured this knowledge not only from his teacher Ammonius, but also from Porphyry.⁵⁰⁶ Once all of those philosophers did not mention their actual source, it was not a surprise that Michael Psellus took the notion of everything being in everything as one initiated by Proclus. Even Porphyry was forgotten, and ironically Psellus took this as a dictum from Proclus’ theology.⁵⁰⁷ Damascius recapitulated the patrimony that had reached him, while building on that in an inspired manner. Pythagorean echoes are of course all too evident in his analysis. However, the point I am making is not only that the notion of everything being in everything (τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν) is distinctly Anaxagorean,⁵⁰⁸

 Supra, p. 738, but Simplicius dismissed that as absurd (supra, p. 418, note 368).  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 72: Ἔτι δὲ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν, ἐπειδὴ μιμεῖται τὴν οἰκείαν ἀρχήν, πάντα δὲ ἦν ἡ ἀρχή. καὶ τὸ ἀπ᾿ αὐτῆς ἕκαστον ἄρα θέλει εἶναι, πλὴν ὅτι κατ᾿ ἐπικράτειαν τῆς οἰκείας ἰδιότητος, καὶ ἔτι γε τρίτον ὁ μερισμὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀμερίστου.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 155: ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐξ ἑνὸς μίγματος ἄπειρα τῷ πλήθει ὁμοιομερῆ ἀποκρίνεσθαί φησιν πάντων μὲν ἐν παντὶ ἐνόντων, ἑκάστου δὲ κατὰ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν χαρακτηριζομένου.  Damascius, In Phaedonem, 534: εἰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ οἰκείως, which is Porphyry’s Sen tentia 10.  Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 99, quoting from Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 103 (supra, p. 767, note 289); also, in his Theologica, Psellus quotes from Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 195, about something existing either after a ‘pattern’ (παραδειγματικῶς) or as an ‘image’ of something else (εἰκονικῶς). Cf. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 57; commTim, v. 1, pp. 5; 8; 13; 227; v. 2, p. 150; commEucl, pp. 16; 140.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 228; commMetaph, pp. 68; 291; 303; 310; 311; 340; commTop, p. 66; commDeSensu, p. 68. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 16. Simplicius, commCael, pp. 256; 608; 632; commPhys, pp. 11; 35; 162; 164; 169; 170; 172; et passim. John Philoponus, commGen Corr, pp. 29; 191; 228; commAnim, p. 249; commPhys, p. 89; et passim; Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. pp. 61; 86; 275; 292. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem, 214; In Platonis Gorgiam Commentaria, 14.12. Pseudo Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ars Rhetorica, 9.11. Moreover, Gregory of Nazianzus mentioned the notion (and rejected it) in his Epitaphius to Basil of Caesarea (20.2) without making mention of Anaxagoras; but Michael Psellus quoted Gregory and noted that this was a reference to Anaxagoras indeed: Theologica, 61. Aristotle himself did not actually use the expression τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν, but a paraphrased equivalent one, which he attributed to Anaxagoras. Metaphysica, 1063b27: ἐν παντὶ φῇ παντὸς εἶναι μοῖραν. Simplicius commented also on this while quoting Anaxagoras accurately: ἐν παντὶ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστι πλὴν νοῦ. Like wise, commPhys, pp. 27; 156; 164; 172.

Damascius

817

but also that this means that the principles exist in a different manner depending on the existential level they are considered to be, or to act. Anyway, the reference to Anaxagoras’ saying ‘everything is in everything’ (τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν), which appeared enigmatic to some, came to light no earlier than Alexander of Aphrodisias. I should conclude this section with the question of how Damascius⁵⁰⁹ saw Plotinus’ Three Hypostases, since it is assumed that this pattern was treated as solid as rock, and it was taken as an august and infallible doctrine in considerations by any Neoplatonist. Plotinus never managed to solve a problem, indeed a contradiction, which he bequeathed to his successors: how is it possible for the One to be both the source of being of all things (from the Intellect right down to the lowest material reality) and utterly transcendent, without correlation with anything below it? It appears that the source of Plotinus’ problem was the sheer ontological classification between the First and Second Hypostases, which by all means he wished to maintain. However, the final answer to this came from Damascius. Although he used Proclus’ expressions (which nevertheless ultimately went back to Porphyry),⁵¹⁰ his views were close to those of Iamblichus, of whom he thought very highly, and oftentimes he styled him ‘the great Iamblichus’ (ὁ μέγας Ἰάμβλιχος),⁵¹¹ or the ‘divine Iamblichus’ (ὁ θεῖος Ἰάμβλιχος),⁵¹² whereas he mentioned Proclus merely by his name. Damascius had a lot of respect for Iamblichus’ exposition of the Chaldean theology,⁵¹³ and a main reason for this was that Iamblichus posited the Supreme Principle not as head of any triad (not even ‘the Father’ of the main triad), but as an utterly transcendent ineffable one. This alone could suffice for Damascius to keep his distance from Plotinus, but there was more to it.

 Damascius has not enjoyed as much attention as his Neoplatonist predecessors did, on the account that editions of his works were not available to scholarship. Cf. Richard Wallis, Neopla tonism, London, 1972, p. 158: “A full account of Damascius’ thought will have to await a reliable edition of his work.”  Damascius, Princ, p. 243: πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐστίν, οἰκείως δὲ ἐν ἑκάστοις. This is an expres sion of Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 44 (quoted supra, p. 809, note 477). Likewise, Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 534: πάντα ἐν πᾶσι οἰκείως. Princ, p. 228: τί γὰρ διαφέρει τὸν δημιουργικὸν νοῦν, πάντα ἐν ἑαυτῷ προειληφότα παραδειγματικῶς, παράγειν ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ πάντα εἰκονικῶς; In Parmenidem, p. 195: ὃ γὰρ ἐκεῖνο παραδειγματικῶς, τοῦτο τὰ ἄλλα εἰκονικῶς· ταὐτὸν ἄρα κατὰ τὴν ὡς ἀφ᾿ ἑνὸς καὶ πρὸς ἓν ὁμωνυμίαν.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, pp. 31; 54; 112; 142; 147; 149; 181; 200; 216; 247; 259; 286; Princ, pp. 86; 151; 310.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 256; Princ, p. 291.  Damascius cites this in Princ, pp. 86; 154.

818

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

In the treatise expounding the ‘Problems and solutions concerning the first principles’ (better known as De Principiis), Damascius considers the Chaldean and Iamblichean language concerning the cause of differentiation from the One: indeed he cared to discuss the Chaldean thought seriously, because he was aware of the origin of the Neoplatonic fundamentals. He assessed critically also the views of Iamblichus, who never allowed himself to become a fully ‘Greek’ at the expense of his oriental provenance and nurture. Damascius warned that, especially in the case of struggling to consider the utterly transcendent supreme principle, language can be no more than mere ‘indication’ (πρὸς ἔνδειξιν ταύτης) and the differentiation expressed in terms of discursive exposition is one ‘lacking clarity’ and it can only offer ‘the least clear definition’ (διωρίσθω τινὰ τρόπον ἀσυμφανέστατον καὶ ἥκιστά γε τρανῆ προσδιορισμόν).⁵¹⁴ Having said this, he comes to the crucial, as well as illuminative, point: although we consider this definition as the ‘foremost’ one (τὸν πρώτιστον λέγω πάντων προσδιορισμῶν), in reality, this is almost swallowed up by the undifferentiated’ (καὶ σχεδὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀδιορίστου καταπινόμενον). How and why is that so? Because, in this account, ‘the second might appear to be a power of the first’ (δύναμιν τοῦ πρώτου τὸ δεύτερον εἶναι δοκεῖν), but, in fact, this power is co-constituent with the subsistence of which this is an explication (δύναμιν τῇ ὑπάρξει συμπεπηγυῖαν),⁵¹⁵ and the Chaldean lore has already suggested this (ὡς ἤδη τινὲς ἱερολόγοι τοῦτο αἰνίττονται).⁵¹⁶ Damascius had a clear grasp of what he meant to say, which is why he was able to push his exposition to some extreme: he even allowed for the theoretical possibility of someone wishing to reflect on a state preceding the highest principles, the entire triad ‘subsistence, power, act’, that is, ‘that which arises along with that which is prior to all subsistence and to all power’, even though he styles such a kind of reflection ‘extreme hyperboles’ (καὶ ὅσας ἄν τις εὑρίσκοι τοιαύτας ὑπερβολάς). Even so, he goes ahead with it, and makes himself clear, stating that, in such a case, ‘although we can say that the second is after the One (καὶ λεγέσθω μετ᾿ ἐκεῖνο μὲν τὸ δεύτερον), the truth is that the sec Proclus Theologia Platonica, v. 6, p. 78.  This means that the first member of the triad (i. e. ὕπαρξις) is congenital with the second one (i. e. δύναμις).  Damascius, Princ, p. 78. Presumably, he had in mind a Chaldean oracle quoted by Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 6, p. 42 & In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 84: Ἡ μὲν γὰρ δύναμις σὺν ἐκείνῳ, νοῦς δ᾿ ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνου, κατὰ τὸ λόγιον (‘the power is with him, but the mind [or, intellect] is from him’). The pronoun ‘him’ refers to the ‘Father’ of the Chaldean triad. Damascius used this in order to refer to the Chaldean triad as ‘subsistence, power, act’, ὕπαρξις, δύναμις, ἐνέργεια, op. cit. pp. 80; 131 (ἐν τοῖς λογίοις); 132 43; 187; 309 12; 384; In Parmenidem, pp. 96; 101; 170; In Philebum, 70.

Damascius

819

ond is the One rather than after the One (ἐκεῖνο δὲ μᾶλλον ἢ μετ᾿ ἐκεῖνο), and the second is more the One itself rather than from the One (καὶ αὐτὸ μᾶλλον ἢ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ)’.⁵¹⁷ Consequently, Damascius takes the monad and the dyad as aspects of the One, not as distinct principles, which it seems Iamblichus also did, as we learn from Damascius himself.⁵¹⁸ Damascius’ dissent from Proclus was all too plain: whereas the former postulated a ‘totally ineffable’ (πάντη ἄρρητον) supreme principle,⁵¹⁹ as Iamblichus also did,⁵²⁰ Proclus thought somewhat differently: although he allowed that the One is ineffable,⁵²¹ he tended to see this as the head of the supreme triad.⁵²² This is why Damascius gently disapproved Porphyry for making the ineffable principle ‘father of the first triad’.⁵²³ Neoplatonists argued that this discussion went back to Plato’s Parmenides, 137b ff, namely, to the two opposite hypotheses concerning being and existence, or not, of the One. We do not need to point out linguistic propositions in order to brand them contrary to what ‘Neoplatonism’ is normally believed to be: it is Damascius himself who said that such a reflection is a philosophical and theological ‘exaggeration’ (ὑπερβολάς), which though he entertained for the sake of his audience in order to make clear one important point: if we say that the ‘second’ is the One itself, strictly speaking this is inaccurate. However this is less inaccurate than saying either that the ‘second’ is after the One or that it is from the One, in the sense that discursive thought is accustomed to perceiving such propositions. This point of Damascius’ text is not about setting forth a statement

 Damascius, Princ, p. 78.  Damascius, op. cit. pp. 86 7.  Damascius, op. cit. pp. 4; 7; 11; 38; 57; 87; 93; 99; In Parmenidem, pp. 312; 1106.  Damascius, op. cit. pp. 86 7.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 3, p. 12; v. 5, p. 104; commCrat, 71.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 104.  Damascius, Princ, p. 86; he cites Iamblichus’ Chaldean Theology, in which he argued that there are two first principles prior to the first triad, of which the first is utterly ineffable: δύο εἰσὶν αἱ πρῶται ἀρχαὶ πρὸ τῆς νοητῆς πρώτης τριάδος, ἥτε πάντη ἄρρητος καὶ ἡ ἀσύντακτος πρὸς τὴν τριάδα. Then, he says that, after Iamblichus, ‘most of philosophers’ posited one first ineffable principle instead of Iamblichus’ two; but then Porphyry came up with the theory that the su preme principle is no other than ‘the Father of the Intelligible Triad’. However, later in the same work (p. 288) Damascius has it that, according to the Chaldean lore, to Porphyry and to Iamblichus, triads appear after the first principle (καὶ τὰς τριάδας οὐκέτι μετὰ τὴν μίαν ἀρχὴν τάξομεν, ὡς καὶ αὐτοὶ βούλονται λέγειν, καὶ τὰ λόγια μαρτύρονται, οὐχ οἱ νεώτεροι μόνοι, ἀλλὰ καὶ Ἰάμβλιχος καὶ Πορφύριος). It is not certain that both texts that Damascius read belong to Porphyry, since possibly one of them was written by an anonymous author. Otherwise, in the Commentary on Parmenides by Porphyry (or by an Anoymous), the author appears to postulate that the father is as transcendent as is he a member of the triad.

820

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

claiming absolute accuracy; rather, it is about demonstrating which of the two alternatives is less inaccurate, and the lesson he teaches is that the notion of ‘subordination’ or ‘inferiority’ of the second principle to the first is not quite like that which the incipient Neoplatonism of the third century had taught. Damascius revisits the Chaldean wisdom in order to teach that, in the context of that cradle of the concept of the One, the Power and the Mind of the Father⁵²⁴ may be discursively stated as second and third respectively, but they are not secondary or thirdly. Damascius brought to the fore the fact that the Chaldean theology played a major role in the Neoplatonic discussion, which is why by and large he follows Iamblichus rather than Syrianus and Proclus. However, this point is beyond my present scope. I should only endorse an insightful remark by Richard Wallis, who wrote that, whereas ‘Damascius follows Iamblichus in placing an Ineffable principle above the One’⁵²⁵ and ‘he was doing no more than bring out some of the traditional teaching’s implications, yet with him […] the consequences were little less than annihilation of the whole Neoplatonic hierarchy.’ Perhaps, the reason for ‘such centrifugal tendencies’ being impossible ‘to resist’, as the author put it, was the fact that ‘for the Athenian School was no more time’.⁵²⁶ However, perhaps the reason was that it was impossible to cope with Plotinus’ contradictions, once he had availed himself of Anaxagoras so heavily. I styled this remark ‘insightful’ because the author wrote it all of a sudden, as an obiter dictum at the end of his review of Neoplatonism, but he did not elaborate nor did he care to substantiate it, nor did he cite or quote anything from Damascius. I myself should have thought that this was the way for Damascius to eschew the contradiction that Plotinus had bequeathed to his successors. Plotinus (as opposed to his Platonist predecessors) dismissed the idea that the First Principle is an intellect of some sort.⁵²⁷ However, before Plotinus, Numenius had seen the problem stemming from the First Hypothesis of Plato’s Parmenides (141e‒142a), and had opted for styling the First God ‘intellect at rest’ as opposed to the Second (creative) God who is ‘in motion’. Quite simply, the Plotinian  I should remind that in Christian context, the Son is also the ‘power’ and ‘wisdom’ of the Father (1 Cor. 1:24).  The author cites simply ‘Damascius, De Principiis, 1.4.6 ff.’ I should draw attention to Dam ascius’ op. cit. pp. 4 9; 12 14; 38; 46; 57; 86 7; 91 101; 222; 317 9. Although Damascius appeals to such apparently pertinent Platonic passages as Sophista, 238c8 10; 238e5 6; 239a5 6, or Re spublica, 509b6 10, he makes it all too clear that he is concerned with ontology proper, not with linguistic ability to express the inexpressible, nor with treating Parmenidian perplexities concerning non being or the paradoxical solutions coined by Gorgias in response to them.  Richard Wallis, op. cit. pp. 158 9.  Plotinus, Enneades, V.3.11, see quotation supra, p. 742, note 189.

Damascius

821

pattern (Three Hypostases being classified ontologically) was untenable, and the first who realized this was his classmate Origen.⁵²⁸ I should have thought that one of the reasons why Plotinus and Origen parted ways was this one, even though they remained in good terms for a lifetime, and Plotinus had the utmost respect for him. This is why Plotinus blushed when Origen entered his class, and he wanted to stop lecturing, because ‘damps one’s enthusiasm for speaking when one sees that one’s audience knows already what one is going to say’, and after talking for a short while, Plotinus brought the session to an end.⁵²⁹ The difference between Origen and Plotinus was that the former made the Mind the supreme principle and regarded the One as a fanciful notion, which is why Proclus mourned the loss of Origen, the renowned ‘exegete of Plato’. Longinus, in the prologue of his treatise On the End, declared proudly that he had been a pupil of Ammonius Saccas and of Origen, both of whom he styled most prudent men and ‘exegetes of Plato’.⁵³⁰ Porphyry reported that Origen wrote the treatise Ὅτι Μόνος Ποιητὴς ὁ Βασιλεύς, ⁵³¹ which literally means, ‘That the King is the Sole Maker’, and this he did during the reign of Gallienus, that is, at a time when he was a Christian.⁵³² This title implies that he meant to argue for the supreme God and the Creator being the selfsame one, for which Proclus accused him of ‘Peripatetic novelty’, although in fact this was an Anaxagorean one. Presumably, Origen was inspired by Philo, who used the same words in order to argue that God, who is ‘truly Creator and King by nature, brought everything to being out of non-being, and no one could rule over them all more justly other than their creator’.⁵³³ The theme God/Creator/King was taken up by eminent theologians who took pains to emphasize in regard to the Son the points that Philo made of the Jewish God, that is, (1) He is God by nature; (2) He is the Lord of everything; (3) He is the Maker of everything;

 See chapter 11, ‘Second God’.  Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 14. If current datings of Plotnius’ life are correct, he should have ar rived in Rome in summer 244. This means that a visit to Plotinus’ class took place by Origen as a Christian. I shall return to this point in the forthcoming biography of Origen. I should note as of now that the modern view that Christians and pagans were proof to each other, and to personal relations, and common backgrounds and exchange of ideas did not take place, is nonsense. In chapter 11, I argue that Origen had received from Plotinus copies of critical parts of the Enneads long before those were published by Porphyry, and he was the only one to comment on a critical point of that text in the Contra Celsum at least twenty five years before Porphyry’s edition. See infra, pp. 1032 40.  Porphyry, op. cit. 2.  Porphyry, op. cit. 3.  Gallienus reigned during 253 260 with Valerian, 260 with Saloninus, 260 268 alone.  Philo, De Vita Mosis, 2.99 101.

822

Chapter 10 – The Neoplatonists

(4) He is the King of the universe and governs upon it.⁵³⁴ Athanasius, Epiphanius, and Theodoret cared to make the attributions ‘creator’ and ‘king’ to both the Father and the Son.⁵³⁵ Origen’s point was that the Creator of the universe could not be different from the highest ontological principle. Plato had indeed styled his Demiurge ‘Maker and Father of this universe’, but he did not style him ‘King’ at that point;⁵³⁶ and when he spoke of ‘the Nous, who is to us king of heaven and earth’,⁵³⁷ Origen was not prepared to identify this ‘king’ with any principle which is sub par with respect the supreme one. This is why Eusebius and Theodoret extensively quoted this passage of Plato, which they explained as suggesting God and his providence.⁵³⁸ Origen knew of course that Plato’s statements mostly conduced to suggesting that Nous points to the Demiurge rather than to the Good,⁵³⁹ but he knew also that Plato was all but consistent on this, as some references in the Philebus show, which I mentioned earlier in this section. In fact Origen would have been thrilled at seeing Plato according the supreme Nous the name Wisdom (αἰτία … σοφία καὶ νοῦς λεγομένη), which is clearly placed above the Demiurge,⁵⁴⁰ and Origen himself was obviously happy to accord this name to the Son / Logos, considering this as the first and foremost of all ‘conceptions’ (ἐπίνοιαι) of the Son.⁵⁴¹ This only could suggest that the Biblical / Christian Creator was also a Nous who did not stand sub par in terms of ontology with respect to the Father. While finding inspiration at that point of the

 Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus Adversus Apollinarium, p. 221. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evan gelica, 4.21.3; op. cit. 7.11.4. De Laudibus Constantini, 13.5.  Athanasius, Contra Gentes, 27. Epiphanius, Panarion, v. 3, p. 238. Theodoret, Interpretatio in xiv Epistulas Sancti Pauli, PG.82.793.50 52. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentarius in xii Proph etas Minores, Prophet Zachariach, 14.8b.  Plato, Timaeus, 28c 29a.  Plato, Philebus, 28c.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 12.51.35. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 6.32.  Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 97a7; 97b c, referring to Anaxagoras’ Mind, and then seeing this as the Demiurge. Leges, 966e3 4; 967b5 6; 30c5 7; 30d8 e2; Timaeus, 39e7 9; 47e4; 48a1 (the world was made by both Nous and Necessity, but Nous can prevail over Necessity by means of persua sion). In the Cratylus, 396a1 c2, considering the pedigree Uranus / Cronus / Zeus, he calls Cronus ‘the logos of Uranus’. Therefore, the Nous (of whose nature Anaxagoras taught Pericles, Phaed rus, 270a) appears to be not the Good, but he is superior to the Demiurge. However, as it hap pened, Plato’s statements were vague enough as to leave ample room for controversy during the Late Antiquity.  Plato, Philebus, 30c d; cf. op. cit. 28c. Eusebius quoted extensively this text of Plato, in order to show ‘How Plato constructs his theology’ (which he made the title of that section in the Praeparatio Evangelica, 12.51.1 48).  COT, pp. 56 62.

Damascius

823

Philebus, Origen deviated from Plato’s thought by making the Supreme Principle and the Creator ‘Minds’ while banning ontological classification between them. His ‘Wisdom’ is not the one of Plato’s which is a ‘cause’ bestowing ‘a kingly mind’ upon the Creator (βασιλικὸν δὲ νοῦν ἐγγίγνεσθαι διὰ τὴν τῆς αἰτίας δύναμιν): Origen’s ‘Wisdom’ is the Creator himself. The Supreme Principle and the Creator is the selfsame God –which is exactly the idea that Proclus excoriated while criticizing Origen.⁵⁴² This is why the title of Origen’s treatise indicated that he saw the Demiurge as no other than the rationality of the Supreme Principle, wherefore he maintained that, effectively, the Supreme Principle is the ultimate Creator of the world. This was unacceptable to Proclus as much as was it so to Plotinus, but this was exactly the Anaxagorean identity of Origen which made it all too easy for him to maintain this view both as a pagan and then as a Christian who allowed for no ontological distinction between God the Father and the Son the Logos. The irony is that Origen’s detractors were anxious to discover the Plotinian Triad in his theology, even though he had formed this on grounds that were immune to the difficulties that both Numenius and Plotinus faced. It will appear that Proclus criticized Origen as being an anti-Platonist who dismissed the Plotinian pattern, while the guardians of the imperial orthodoxy accused him of making the Christian Trinity a Plotinian Triad. Obviously, he could not have committed both aberrations at the same time, which takes me to the next chapter.

 Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31.

Part III Origen

Chapter 11 Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy In reality, Plotinus received the notion of ‘the logos of this world’ (λόγος τοῦ κόσμου) from Origen, the sole Christian (and formerly pagan) philosopher who saw the ‘logos of the world’ as exactly the point at which the incorporeal logoi produce the material universe. This ‘logos’ marks transition from incorporeality to materiality, whereby the principles ‘unconceal themselves’. This is the theory that Origen took up from Anaxagoras and he was the first to revive it in Late Antiquity. He used the expression ‘the logos of this world’ (λόγος τοῦ κόσμου) in the context of his fundamental idea of Providential Creation, which was made in the Logos/Son and constituted his Body, and turned to Actual Creation.¹ The former is no other than the state of the Anaxagorean principles that were distinguished (i. e. created) by the Mind, thus giving rise to the realm of all potentialities. Origen left no doubt about his discipleship with Anaxagoras on this matter, as well as on other ones: in the LXX-text of the Proverbs, there is the statement, ‘to a faithful belongs all the world of χρήματα, but not a single obol goes to an unfaithful’.² As noted earlier, the term χρήματα literally, and in a narrow sense, means ‘money’; but in a wider sense, it means ‘things’ in the most abstract implication of it. He used the term abundantly in both senses. However, in this case, he employed a language which is characteristically Anaxagorean: his point is that the author of the Proverbs used a metaphor, and χρήματα τοῦ νοῦ (‘things of the mind’)³ suggests the ‘logoi of this world’, namely, all wisdom, which the righteous will see.⁴

 I have canvassed this in COT, pp. 39 118.  Prov. 17:6 (Septuaginta): τοῦ πιστοῦ ὅλος ὁ κόσμος τῶν χρημάτων, τοῦ δὲ ἀπίστου οὐδὲ ὀβολός.  Cf. the fundamental opening phrase of Anaxagoras: ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ αὐτὰ διακρίνας διεκόσμησεν.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.197.35 37. As it happened frequently, this text was subsequently taken up by Didymus, frProv, PG.39.1637.50 52, and Evagrius, Expositio in Proverbia Salomonis, p. 95 & Scholia in Proverbia, 155. However, there is no doubt that Origen was the source, since he enter tains the same idea in expProv, PG.17.200.40 45: Χρήματα ἐνταῦθα τὴν σοφίαν καὶ τὴν γνῶσιν φησίν· ἄφρονι δέ, ἵνα τί ὑπῆρξεν ἡ τῆς σοφίας καὶ γνώσεως μάθησις; ὡς γὰρ ἄμπελον ἀδύνατον ἐν θαλάσσῃ γενέσθαι, οὕτως ἐν ἄφροσιν ἡ σοφία ἀρετὴν καρπώσασθαι· χρήματα γὰρ ἄφρονός ἐστιν, αἱ περὶ καθ᾿ ἕκαστα αὐτοῦ πράγματα ἀφροσύναι.

828

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

This was not the only instance where he implicitly availed himself of Anaxagoras: in his commentary on the Romans, he interprets the expression ‘pure gold’ (χρυσίον δὲ καθαρόν) of Rev. 21:18&21, as meaning ‘the mind which is pure and unmixed with matter’ (τὸν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ πρὸς ὕλην νοῦν),⁵ and this mind is no other than God the Logos, ‘or rather, the soul of Jesus’.⁶ Quite clearly, this is an entirely Anaxagorean language adumbrating the Mind.⁷ His expression identifying χρήματα τοῦ νοῦ with the ‘logoi of the world’ is only one indication of how subsequent philosophers developed Anaxagoras’ principles to logoi. For all his misunderstanding, John Philoponus noticed, if ambiguously, that Anaxagoras posited one huge homoiomery which contains all the principles in itself, as indeed every principle has in itself all the others.⁸ Long before Simplicius brought Anaxagoras’ own words to the fore (which no one else did before the sixth century), Origen knew that those principles were immaterial and they should be understood as logoi, that is, creative and cohesive causes of the world, as well as cognitive ones. They are both incorporeal causes that effect generation of all aspects of material reality and objects of contemplation. Therefore, there is a point of transition from incorporeality to corporeality: this marks the function of logoi causing the universe to come to pass, and we saw that the Stoics attributed several names to this cause. Therefore, there is ‘the logos of the world’ which contains in itself several logoi, according to which the world came to be, it is being sustained, it functions, and it is known. This is the real meaning of the ‘huge homoiomery’ reported by John Philoponus.

 Cf. the Anaxagorean νοῦς being styled ἀμιγὴς καὶ καθαρός. Aristotle, De Anima, 405a13 17; Metaphysica, 989b15 16. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 69. John Philoponus, com mAnim, pp. 86 & 91. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 62. Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9. This lan guage about the Mind was employed by authors who hardly realized that this was a clandestine Anaxagorean influence. Cf. Julian, emperor, Περὶ Βασιλείας, 16: ὑπὲρ τοῦ καθαροῦ καὶ ἀμιγοῦς γηίνῳ σώματι διανοηθῆναι νοῦ. Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 222, p. 187b: τῶν ἀγγέλων ἐστὶ σύμ βολον λαμπρότητος, τὸ καθαρὸν ἐκείνοις τοῦ νοῦ καὶ ἀμιγὲς τῆς ὕλης καὶ τῶν παθῶν.  Origen, Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V. 7), p. 158: χρυσίον δὲ καθαρὸν πολλαχοῦ τηρήσας συμβολικῶς λέγεσθαι τὸν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ πρὸς ὕλην νοῦν· τοιοῦτον δέ ἐστιν ἡμῶν τὸ ἱλα στήριον τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν Θεὸς Λόγος ἢ τάχα μᾶλλον ἡ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ψυχή. About this association of the Anaxagorean Mind with the soul of Jesus, see Cels, V.39.  Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 405a: ἀρχήν γε τὸν νοῦν τίθεται μάλιστα πάντων· μόνον γοῦν φησιν αὐτὸν τῶν ὄντων ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ τε καὶ καθαρόν. Metaphysica, 989b: φησὶ δ᾿ εἶναι με μιγμένα πάντα πλὴν τοῦ νοῦ, τοῦτον δὲ ἀμιγῆ μόνον καὶ καθαρόν. Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9: ᾿Aναξ αγόρας δὲ νοῦν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ λέγων ἁπλοῦν καὶ αὐτὸς τίθεται.  John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 396, quoted supra, p. 738. However, since Philoponus did not reject the Aristotelian distortion of those principles being material, Simplicius showed that such an attribution to Anaxagoras by Philoponus was not accurate. See commPhys, pp. 168 9.

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

829

Origen grasped this point of transition, which in fact was the only consistent answer to the old question of how incorporeal principles (no matter what they are held to be) could produce perceptible reality. He noticed that the ‘logos of the world’⁹ is the ‘last of incorporeal things and the first of the corporeal ones’.¹⁰ Plotinus, who ‘shared the same education’ as Origen under Ammonius Saccas,¹¹ said exactly the same, to be followed by the most eminent Neoplatonists.¹² By the same token, Origen saw the expression ἐχόμενα τοῦ προτειχίσματος¹³ of Solomon’s Song, 2:14, as indicating the corporeal things, and allegorized προτείχισμα as the demarcation between corporeality and incorporeality.¹⁴ The idea of the ‘walls of the city’ being allegorized as a boundary between of the intelligible and material reality was entertained in the fifth century, allegedly being an interpretation of Plato, of which Plato himself had neither intention nor any inkling whatsoever. At the opening of the Phaedrus, Socrates asks Phaedrus where he comes from, to which the answer was that he was ‘going for a walk outside the wall’ (ἔξω τείχους) of the city.¹⁵ This was nothing more than a mere literal

 Origen, frLuc, 257: καὶ κατὰ τοῦτο ἔλεγε Παῦλος· ἐγὼ κόσμῳ ἐσταύρωμαι κἀμοὶ κόσμος, τοῦτ᾿ ἔστιν· νενόηταί μοι ὁ λόγος ὁ περὶ κόσμου καὶ ἐπῆρται καὶ οὐκέτι κεῖται κάτω.  Origen, Libri x in Canticum Canticorum, 230 233 & Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17.265. 4 11: ὡσεὶ πόλεως δὲ τεῖχος καὶ προτείχισμα τὸν αἰσθητὸν κόσμον καλεῖ. Δεῖ οὖν τὴν τῷ λόγῳ κοινωνήσουσαν ψυχὴν ἐν σκέπῃ τῆς πέτρας, οὐ μόνον ἔξω τοῦ τείχους τῆς πόλεως, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ προτειχίσματος γενέσθαι· … Προτείχισμα δέ ἐστιν, ὅπερ ῍Hσαΐας περίτειχος ὀνομάζει λέγων· θήσει τεῖχος καὶ περίτειχος. Βούλεται τοίνυν τῶν σωματικῶν ἐξελθοῦσαν οὐ μόνον ἐν τῷ τείχει γενέσθαι ὅπερ εἶναι τὸν περὶ τοῦ κόσμου λόγον νομίζω, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐχόμενα τοῦ προτειχίσματος, ὃς λόγος μέν ἐστι τελευταῖος τῶν σωματικῶν, ἀρχὴ δὲ τῶν ἀσωμάτων. frJohn, 63: ἀλλ᾿ ἐπεὶ ὁ τοιοῦ τος λόγος οὐ γυμνὸς ὕλης καὶ σωματικῶν παραδειγμάτων εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἔρχεται. Cf. Cels, V.39 (the Logos embraces all the logoi of the world): καὶ τὸν περιεκτικὸν παντὸς οὑτινοσοῦν λόγου τῶν κατὰ φύσιν καὶ προηγουμένως γεγενημένων καὶ εἰς χρήσιμον τοῦ παντὸς λόγον. commJohn, XIX.22.148 (the logos of the entire universe): ὁ τοῦ ὅλου κόσμου λόγος.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31.  Plotinus, Enneades, IV.6.3: Λόγος γάρ ἐστι πάντων, καὶ λόγος ἔσχατος μὲν τῶν νοητῶν καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ νοητῷ ἡ ψυχῆς φύσις, πρῶτος δὲ τῶν ἐν τῷ αἰσθητῷ παντί. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 3.28. Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 11. Simplicius, commAnim, p. 16 ; commCateg, p. 266. Damascius, In Parmenidem, pp. 19; 157 60; 262.  προτείχισμα means a minor fortification constructed beyond a main defensive position or fortification. The expression ἐχόμενα τοῦ προτειχίσματος means those things which are located in the interior side of it, in contrast to those outside and beyond it.  See infra, pp. 1394 5. Origen, as well as Porphyry, did not allow for any common genus which could include both the incorporeal and the incorporeal creatures. Instead, he insisted on the threefold distinction: corporeal things, incorporeal logoi, and the Holy Trinity. See fur ther, ‘Three classes of being’, pp. 1389 1401.  Plato, Phaedrus, 227a.

830

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

statement, but, like all Neoplatonists who were always eager to discover in Plato whatever they wanted to, Hermias of Alexandria saw the expression ‘outside the wall’ as bespeaking ‘the superior life’ which the soul is to live in the incorporeal realm¹⁶ once it is set free from ‘the deception by perceptible things’,¹⁷ in like manner Phaedrus was to be elevated to the higher realm by listening to Socrates in the dialogue that was about to begin. Proclus, who had seen a similar expression in the Parmenides as indication of ‘the exalted and unfathomable life of gods’, presumably overwhelmed Hermias,¹⁸ or perhaps things went the other way round, since they were contemporary, they knew each other, and Hermias got married to Proclus’ former fiancée Aedesia (a relative of Syrianus) after Proclus broke the engagement off, following a divine warning which he believed he received.¹⁹ Plotinus wrote likewise, in the context of the soul marking transition from incorporeal to corporeal nature: For this is the rational logos of all things, and the nature of soul is the last and lowest ra tional principle of the intelligibles and of the beings in the intelligible world, but first of those in the sensible universe.²⁰

Later, Proclus pointed out that it is Nature itself that marks transition from incorporeality to corporeality, and styled it a ‘cause’ (αἴτιον) which is ‘full of logoi and powers, by means of which it guides the affairs of the world’.²¹ The idea of the soul standing ‘midway’ (or, being an ‘intermediate’) between corporeal and incorporeal nature was traced back to Plato, as already discussed,

 Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 14: Τὸ δέ πορεύομαι ἔξω τείχους πρὸς περίπατον δηλοῖ ὅτι πρὸς κρείττονά τινα καὶ ὑπερτέραν ζωὴν μέλλει ἰέναι καὶ οἷον παρὰ τοὺς πολλούς.  Hermias of Alexandria, op. cit. p. 20: καὶ ὅτι ἔξω τείχους τῆς περὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ ἀπάτης πορεύεται.  Cf. Plato, Parmenides, 127b c: καταλύειν δὲ αὐτοὺς ἔφη παρὰ τῷ Πυθοδώρῳ ἐκτὸς τείχους ἐν Κεραμεικῷ. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 685: τὸ δὲ ἔξω τείχους τὸ ἐξῃρημένον ἐμφαίνει καὶ ἀπερίληπτον τῶν θεῶν.  Damascius, Vita Isidori, fr. 124, apud Suda, letter alpha iota, entry 79.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV. 6.3: Λόγος γάρ ἐστι πάντων, καὶ λόγος ἔσχατος μὲν τῶν νοητῶν καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ νοητῷ ἡ ψυχῆς φύσις, πρῶτος δὲ τῶν ἐν τῷ αἰσθητῷ παντί. Porphyry, Vita Pythagorae, 47: [Pythagoras] μαθήμασι τοίνυν καὶ τοῖς ἐν μεταιχμίῳ σωματικῶν τε καὶ ἀσωμάτων θεωρήμασι προεγύμναζεν.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 11: ἡ τοίνυν φύσις ἐσχάτη μέν ἐστι τῶν τὸ σωματοειδὲς τοῦτο καὶ αἰσθητὸν δημιουργούντων αἰτίων καὶ τὸ πέρας τοῦ τῶν ἀσωμάτων οὐσιῶν πλάτους, πλήρης δὲ λόγων καὶ δυνάμεων, δι᾿ ὧν κατευθύνει τὰ ἐγκόσμια. Also, John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 25: ἔσχατον γὰρ τῶν νοητῶν τε καὶ θείων ἡ ψυχή.

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

831

and Proclus was glad to read in Plato’s Timaeus 35a that the soul is somehow a mixture made of ‘the indivisible essence’ which becomes ‘divisible’ once it is involved with corporeal nature. Proclus reports that this was the opinion of previous commentators (mathematicians, physicists, philosophers), although there were differences among them; he classified them in four groups, but he was rather dismissive of them all. He adds a fifth theory, ‘by Theodore of Asine, who came upon this doctrine in Porphyry maintaining that it originated in Persia’, adding that ‘at least, this is what Antoninus, the pupil of Ammonius, relates’. According to this, there are two Minds prior to the soul: one contains the forms of universal concepts, the other, those of individuals; the soul is median between them, since it derives its existence from both of them. Proclus rejected that theory, too.²² However, this only means that he rejected the idea of two Minds, not the notion of something standing ‘midway’ between indivisible and divisible nature, which he actually admitted, including the soul,²³ as Porphyry himself maintained, too.²⁴ Pagan²⁵ and Christian²⁶ authors alike advanced the tenet. In fact, this notion was attributed to Aristotle by the author of a commentary on his treatise on the

 Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 153: ἡμεῖς μὲν οὖν ἀπ᾿ αὐτῶν ὁρμηθέντες τῶν Πλάτωνος τὴν ἀμέ ριστον οὐσίαν καὶ τὴν μεριστὴν ἐξηγησάμεθα, τῶν δὲ πρὸ ἡμῶν … etc. Then, Proclus classifies his ‘predecessors’ in four groups: 1. Aristander and Numenius; 2. Severus; 3. Plutarch and At ticus; 4. Plotinus.  Proclus, commCrat, 101; commTim, v. 1, p. 402; v. 2, pp. 137; 140 53; 162; 209; 216; 246; 271; 275; 299; 301 2; v. 3, pp. 31; 205; 268 9; commRep, v. 2, p. 212; Theologia Platonica, v. 3, p. 37; v. 5, p. 98; v. 6, p. 31; In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 4.  Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 4 (the soul is a certain ‘intermediate’ standing between indivisible and divisible substance); commTim (fragmenta), Book 2, fr. 61, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 105. Damascius also attributes the tenet to Porphyry. In Phaedonem (versio 2), 59: Πῶς ἔλεγον οἱ Πυ θαγόρειοι ἁρμονίαν τὴν ψυχήν; Ἢ ὡς τὴν μέσην κατὰ Πορφύριον.  Heron of Alexandria, Definitiones, 136.56. Plutarch, Platonicae Quaestiones, 1008D. Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 123. Ammonius of Alexandria, commCateg, p. 37. Simplicius is absent; there is only an oblique reference in the commEpict, p. 77; but the idea ap pears abundantly in the dubious work under his name: commAnim, pp. 3; 11; 30; 40; 238; 282; on p. 240, the author reports that Iamblichus maintained not only that the soul stands midway be tween indivisible and divisible substance, but also that this median is both created and uncre ated, as much as is it both corruptible and incorruptible. Also, Asclepius of Tralles, commMe taph, pp. 47; 98.  Christian authors took up the notion of soul standing ‘midway’ between the incorporeal and intelligible realm and they expressed it in terms of the soul standing midway between the spirit and the body, following the usual tripartite division of the human being. Eusebius, Commentaria in Psalmos, PG.23.1261.44 46. Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 145. Pseudo Macarius, Sermones 64 (collectio B), 6.2.3; the same in Pseudo Macarius, Homiliae Spirituales (collectio H), 26. Pseudo John Chrysostom, In Psalmos 101 107, PG. 55.641.18 20. Maximus Confessor,

832

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

soul, which was ascribed to Simplicius (it might well have been Simplicius himself).²⁷ However, Aristotle’s commentator Syrianus rejected the notion of anything actually existing between indivisible and divisible nature.²⁸ The philosopher who probably introduced the tenet that the soul is ‘intermediate’ between ‘indivisible’ and ‘divisible’ nature was Porphyry,²⁹ and Proclus employed it without reservation,³⁰ although it is hard to see how did this idea square with Plato positing the soul as a downright incorporeal substance. However, Damascius endorsed the idea that the soul is intermediay (both between God and matter, and between human mind and body), indeed he believed he had read this in the Parmenides, ³¹ but he cites Porphyry who wrote that the idea was Pythagorean,³² yet not in this sense: they taught that the soul is ‘harmony’ of logoi, and, in that context, the mathematical implication was always there, which Xenocrates made clear.³³ This was also the theory of Empedocles,³⁴ and the notion was one of the most discussed ones throughtout all antiquity. It would be then more plausible to assume that the doctrine of ‘last logos’, which occurs in Plotinus, Origen, and Porphyry, was part of the teaching of Ammonius Saccas. Plotinus himself was clear in his statements that the soul per se is incorporeal while also maintaining that this marks transition from incorporeal to corporeal nature, which is perfectly accordant with his philosophy: the soul is ‘a certain image of the Intellect’ (εἰκών τις ἐστι νοῦ); since the Intellect is the ‘father’ of the soul,³⁵ it makes soul more divine by being present in it (θειοτέραν ποιεῖ καὶ τῷ πατὴρ εἶναι καὶ τῷ παρεῖναι). Although the Intellect is different from the soul, ‘there is nothing standing between’ them (οὐδὲν γὰρ μεταξὺ ἤ

Quaestiones ad Thalassium, 49. John Philoponus, commAnalPr, p. 66; commAnim, pp. 2; 70; 121; 134; 504.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 221; cf. p. 11; he ascribed this also to Plato (op. cit. pp. 260; 312). Cf. Plutarch, De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1025B.  Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 5.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 5: Ἡ μὲν ψυχὴ τῆς ἀμερίστου καὶ τῆς περὶ τὰ σώματα μεριστῆς οὐσίας μέσον τι, ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἀμέριστος οὐσία μόνον, τὰ δὲ σώματα μεριστὰ μόνον, αἱ δὲ ποιότητες καὶ τὰ ἔνυλα εἴδη περὶ τὰ σώματα μεριστά.  Proclus, commRep, v. 2, p. 212; Theologia Platonica, v. 5, pp. 80; 113; cf. v. 2, pp. 140; 299; 216; commEucl, pp. 5; 15. Philoponus saw this as only a ‘symbolism’ applied to the soul, which should not be taken literally. commAnim, pp. 122; 124.  Damascius, Princ, pp. 144; 145; 230; In Parmenidem, pp. 246; 248; 255; 261; 262; 264; 266; 267; 270; In Phaedonem (versio 1), 340; 382; 428; 495; In Philebum, 244.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 2), 59.  Xenocrates, fr. 262, apud Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 3.  Aristotle, De Anima, 407b 408a, objected the theory. In the Politica, 1340b, he remarks that, to some, the soul is harmony, to others, it has harmony. Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 86c; 88d; 91c 94e.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.3.

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

833

τὸ ἑτέροις εἶναι).³⁶ Once again, Plotinus expresses his theory in Stoic terms, namely, distinction between λόγος προφορικὸς (a logos expressed as an utterance through the mouth) and λόγος ἐνδιάθετος (a logos existing as thought in the mind): the soul ‘is an image of the Intellect, in like a manner an oral expression of it is an image of the thought itself (λόγος ὁ ἐν προφορᾷ λόγου); hence, the soul is the expressed thought of Intellect and of its activity, and of the life which it sends out to establish another reality”.³⁷ The question which is invited at this point is about the correspondence of Anaxagoras’ Mind to Origen’s philosophy. The reply should take into account the fact that, once the Anaxagorean Mind assumed the function of creator, it acted rationally itself, and instilled rationality into the original undifferentiated mixture. Therefore, to this purpose, the Mind acted as Logos. In Christian terms, this is tantamount to the Father generating his Logos, which, to Origen, is the Son/Wisdom/Logos: the Wisdom is ‘the logoi of everything’ (εἶναι παντὸς οὑτινοσοῦν τοὺς λόγους, καθ᾿ οὓς γεγένηται πάντα τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν σοφίᾳ πεποιημένα),³⁸ although the existence proper of the Son is not merely the totality of logoi, as Plotinus would have had it. The world was made by means of a command given to the Son/Logos by the Father, which means that the Son was the proximate Maker (αὐτουργὸν τοῦ κόσμου), whereas the Father was Creator none the less.³⁹ The Logos did not become out of nonexistence, since he is co-eternal with the Father, and, certainly, he is senior to any creature (πρεσβύτερος ὁ λόγος τῶν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς γενομένων ἦν).⁴⁰ This means that the beginningless Logos became creator, which is why it is proper to say that ‘everything was made by the Creator through the Logos’, not ‘everything was made by the Logos through the Creator’. In simple terms, it means that the concept of Creator should be understood as posterior to that of the beginningless Logos, and the very act of creation is a contingent one, stemming from the untrammelled divine free will.⁴¹ The logoi themselves were created by the Son/Logos and placed on his own Body: this is the

 Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.3; cf. V.8.7: οὐδενὸς δὲ μεταξὺ ὄντος (meaning, there is nothing between the intelligible and perceptible universe).  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.3.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.22.147: ἐν αὐτῷ, εἴη ἂν καὶ αὐτὸς κόσμος, τοσούτῳ ποικιλώτερος τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ κόσμου καὶ διαφέρων, ὅσῳ διαφέρει γυμνὸς πάσης ὕλης τοῦ ὅλου κόσμου λόγος τοῦ ἐνύλου κόσμου, οὐκ ἀπὸ τῆς ὕλης ἀλλὰ ἀπὸ τῆς μετοχῆς τοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς σοφίας τῶν κο σμούντων τὴν ὕλην κεκοσμημένων.  Origen, Cels, VI.60: τὸν μὲν προσεχῶς δημιουργὸν εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ λόγον καὶ ὡσπερεὶ αὐτουργὸν τοῦ κόσμου, τὸν δὲ πατέρα τοῦ λόγου τῷ προστεταχέναι τῷ υἱῷ ἑαυτοῦ λόγῳ ποιῆ σαι τὸν κόσμον εἶναι πρώτως δημιουργόν.  Origen, commJohn, II.4.36.  Origen, op. cit. II.14.102.

834

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

‘embroidered wisdom’ (πολυποίκιλος σοφία),⁴² namely, the created one, which was placed on the Body of the Logos/Son. Quite evidently, in no way does the created wisdom pertain to the ontology of the Logos: it has only to do with what the Creator did, not with what the Son is. During his early Christian life, when Origen was groping for a Trinitarian doctrine and determined only certain crucial aspects of it, he posed the following question, but he did not go ahead with any answer: since the scripture represents God saying, ‘Is it not Myself that fill both heaven and earth?’,⁴³ the question is how should this be understood, given that the Father and the Son are ‘one’?⁴⁴ For one thing, it would be assumed that the Son/Wisdom/Logos permeates all Nature, and the Father is in him. For another, He who first girded Himself with all creation⁴⁵ (since the Son was in him), granted it to the Saviour, since he Son was a second God, namely, he was God the Logos. This is why God the Logos pervades all creation (ὡς μετ᾿ αὐτὸν δευτέρῳ καὶ θεῷ λόγῳ τυγχάνοντι, δι᾿ ὅλης ἐφθακέναι τῆς κτίσεως)’. Seeing the grandeur of the heavenly movement and order, Origen sought to determine, ‘what is the immanent power, which is of such great a magnitude and power as to exist throughout the entire universe’ (τίς ἡ ἐνυπάρχουσα δύναμις τοσαύτη καὶ τηλικαύτη τῷ παντὶ κόσμῳ). No matter what the answer, his view was that to assume that this power could be anything other than that of the Father and the Son could be impious.⁴⁶ This expression about ‘second God’ gave rise to hasty allegations that Origen sustained Subordinationism, which is plain wrong, as discussed later. This is probably why, at the sunset of his living in Tyre,⁴⁷ he felt it necessary to say this: Although we speak about ‘second God’, [those who accuse us of Subordinationism] should know (ἴστωσαν) that we do not mean anything other except the virtue that embraces all virtues, and the Logos who embraces every logos of the beings which have been made ac cording to nature, both those which are primary and those that exist for the benefit of the Whole.⁴⁸ We aver that this Logos dwelt in the soul of Jesus and was united with it in a closer union than that of any other soul, because he alone has been able perfectly to receive the

 Eph. 3:5.  Jeremiah, 23:24.  John, 10:30.  Meaning that the Father through the Son made the (non beginningless) ‘embroidered wis dom’ (= the logoi of this world) and placed it on the Body of the Logos.  Origen, commJohn, IV.39.202 3.  Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, pp. 405 6; De Mensuris et Ponderibus, lines 507 8.  Origen, Cels, V.39: Κἂν δεύτερον οὖν λέγωμεν θεόν, ἴστωσαν ὅτι τὸν δεύτερον θεὸν οὐκ ἄλλο τι λέγομεν ἢ τὴν περιεκτικὴν πασῶν ἀρετῶν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὸν περιεκτικὸν παντὸς οὑτινοσοῦν λόγου τῶν κατὰ φύσιν καὶ προηγουμένως γεγενημένων καὶ εἰς χρήσιμον τοῦ παντὸς λόγον.

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

835

highest participation in him who is himself the very Logos and the very Wisdom and the very Righteousness.⁴⁹

What Origen styled ‘second God’ was not a secondary one, but only God acting as Logos, who created the ‘adorned wisdom’ in his own Body in order for the world to be able to come to be. All of this has nothing to do with Trinitarian ontology. It is certainly not accidental that he made this analysis in order to explain Paul’s statement about ‘Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption’,⁵⁰ that is, with reference to the Incarnation and the redemptive relation of the Logos to the world, not to the ontology of the Son. Whereas Anaxagoras’s Nous acted as Logos creating the principles, Origen’s Trinitarian God created the logoi, which he placed on the Body of his eternal Logos. This is not the Neoplatonic case urging that all the concepts that were generated from the One make up the second hypostasis. The Christian Son has in himself the logoi of the world; he is not Himself the aggregate of these logoi, since he is a personal hypostasis, not simply a cosmic principle.⁵¹ Nevertheless, there is a striking similarity between pertinent propositions by Plotinus and Origen, which somehow betoken their common educational background under Ammonius Saccas. However, while they wrote things seemingly similar, in fact they had parted ways. Plotinus wrote, that ‘the entire Intellect contains the forms like a genus contains species, and as a whole contains parts’ (ὁ δὲ πᾶς νοῦς περιέχει ὥσπερ γένος εἴδη καὶ ὥσπερ ὅλον μέρη).⁵² But whereas he was at pains to assure that he spoke of Platonic ‘forms’ (εἴδη), Origen used the same formulation, urging that the Anaxagorean ‘logoi of each individual’ thing are ‘logoi of the Logos, who was in the beginning’⁵³, and these logoi ‘are like parts in a whole, or as species in a genus’ (οἱ περὶ ἑκάστου λόγοι ὄντες ὡς ἐν ὅλῳ μέρη ἢ ὡς ἐν γένει εἴδη τοῦ ἐν ἀρχῇ λόγου πρὸς τὸν θεὸν θεοῦ λόγου).⁵⁴ These logoi are the primal and proximate object of creation, and they determine everything that exists and happens  Loc. cit. ὅντινα τῇ Ἰησοῦ μάλιστα παρὰ πᾶσαν ψυχὴν ψυχῇ ᾠκειῶσθαι καὶ ἡνῶσθαι φαμέν, μόνου τελείως χωρῆσαι δεδυνημένου τὴν ἄκραν μετοχὴν τοῦ αὐτολόγου καὶ τῆς αὐτοσοφίας καὶ τῆς αὐτοδικαιοσύνης.  1 Cor. 1:30.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.22.147: τῷ γὰρ εἶναι παντὸς οὑτινοσοῦν τοὺς λόγους … ἐν αὐτῶ. The logoi (= the object of creation) are in the Son/Logos; in a strict ontological sense, they are not the Son/Logos himself.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.6.10 11.  Using the language of John, 1:1.  Origen, Cels, V.22.

836

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

in the universe; ‘although the logoi are many’, they are ‘parts of the entire world’ (ἑνὸς τοῦ σύμπαντος κόσμου μερῶν τυγχανόντων) and they ‘collaborate and cooparate’ with each other ‘towards producing one result’ (συμπνεόντων καὶ συννευόντων εἰς ἓν ἀποτέλεσμα), namely, the coherence and operation of the universe. Once again, he makes the point that not only does each and every logos exist in the Body of the Logos and in the personal Wisdom of God (οἱ καθ᾿ ἕνα λόγοι τῶν διοικουμένων εἰσὶν ἐν τῷ τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγῳ καὶ τῇ Σοφίᾳ αὐτοῦ), but also the totality (‘recapitulation’) of them all exists therein, too (ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡ ἀνακεφαλαίωσις καί, ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις, συγκεφαλαίωσις πάντων);⁵⁵ and yet, although the logoi make themselves ‘parts of the world’, the fact that they exist on the Body of the Logos does not make God himself part of the world.⁵⁶ The similarity of the two expressions is striking, but, in essence, they are fundamentally different. Plotinus’ statement should be considered in their context, which is about the Intellect, the Forms, and Being. In the specific section, he identifies Intellect itself with all real beings existing in the Intellect, which possesses them and it is one with them. Intellect is the real beings (Νοῦς μὲν δὴ ἔστω τὰ ὄντα), and ‘it is one with them’ (ἓν ὢν αὐτοῖς). Once again, Plotinus reflects in Anaxagorean terms, which is why he writes that ‘all things are together there’ (πάντα δὲ ὁμοῦ ἐκεῖ) (i. e. in the Intellect), ‘yet they are separate none the less’. Besides, ‘Intellect is all things together as much are they not together, because each of them is a singular power’. This is the context in which Plotinus goes on with saying that the entire Intellect contains the forms like a genus contains species, or a whole contains parts, and immediately he goes on with employing the Anaxagorean locution entirely: he speaks of ‘seeds’ and of ‘forces’ which exist in a seed, so that these forces are understood as both united and distinct, and he ends up with styling these forces ‘logoi’.⁵⁷ Origen’s language is not different. However, he does not identify the being of the Logos per se with these parts (whether one should like to call them forces, or causes, or logoi, or whatever). His logoi are the means for the universe to come to pass. In Anaxagoras, there is the notion of the Nous that willed to give rise to the principles as distinct ones, while, in that incorporeal unity, they were also one, and so still they are. To, Simplicius there is nothing strange about this notion: the Nous is the cause of all the (incorporeal) principles; they pre-exist in union in the Nous prior to the entire universe. It was that union that caused

 Origen, commEph, 6 (comm. on Eph. 1:10).  Origen, Cels, I.23: πάντα γὰρ μέρη κόσμου, οὐδὲν δὲ μέρος ὅλου θεός.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.6.

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

837

them to be ‘indivisibly distinguished’ and everything to be in everything.⁵⁸ By the same token, Origen saw the logoi (that is, the object of the divine creative act) as placed on the Body of the Logos, where they stood in absolute unity both with the Logos himself (i. e. with their creative source) and with each other.⁵⁹ These logoi are not the Logos himself: they are only ‘ornaments’ of his Body, styled also ‘precious stones’ (λίθοι τίμιοι) after Paul’s expression in Eph. 3:10, or ‘living stones’, after 1 Peter, 2:5. The totality of them is ‘wisdom’, yet this is the created wisdom, not the Wisdom/Logos/Son himself. Therefore, wisdom is no other than knowledge of the logoi themselves being not only causes, but also objects of contemplation, no matter whether they pertain to what God himself is, or what various incorporeal notions are, or how divine judgement and providence work.⁶⁰ The biblical 4 Macc. 1:16 defines wisdom as ‘knowledge of divine and human things, and of their causes’ (γνῶσις θείων καὶ ἀνθρωπίνων πραγμάτων καὶ τῶν τούτων αἰτιῶν), and the phrase became almost proverbial.⁶¹ But Eustathius of Thessaloniki referring not to ‘wisdom’, but to ‘philosophy’ (i. e. ‘love of wisdom’), attributed this idea to Homer.⁶² In any event, knowledge is always knowledge of

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 88: εἰ γὰρ αἴτιον ἐκεῖνο πάντων καὶ ἔστι πάντα πρὸ πάντων, δῆλον ὅτι προείληπται ἐν αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα κατὰ μίαν ἕνωσιν περιεχόμενα τὴν τοῦ ἑνὸς ὄντος, δι᾿ ἣν ἀμερίστως διακριθέντα ἕκαστον τὰ πάντα ἐστί.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.22.147, quoted supra, note 38. It would be worth mentioning a defi nition bearing on ‘the logos of this world’ as above, which Stobaeus attributed to Perictione, and Iamblichus to Archytas both of them Pythagorean: “Wisdom is comprehension of the logos of the nature of all things (θεωρῆσαι τὸν λόγον τᾶς τῶ ὅλω φύσιος), and this is the pur pose for man to have been made’. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 3.1.120. Iamblichus, Protrepticus, p. 20. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that ‘the wisdom which exists in nature is a logos, if not an articulate one’ (λόγος ἐστί, κἂν μὴ ἔναρθρος ᾗ). Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 73.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.161.24 26: ἡ σοφία ἐστὶ γνῶσις πνευματική, τοὺς περὶ Θεοῦ, καὶ ἀσωμ άτων καὶ κρίσεως καὶ προνοίας περιέχουσα λόγους, ἡ τὴν περὶ ἠθικῆς καὶ φυσικῆς καὶ θεολογικῆς ἀποκαλύπτουσα θεωρίαν. Ἢ ἡ σοφία ἐστὶ γνῶσις σωμάτων καὶ ἀσωμάτων, καὶ τῆς ἐν τούτῳ θεωρουμένης κρίσεως καὶ προνοίας. Op. cit. PG.17.220.50 52: Ὁ πλατύνας διὰ τῆς καθαρότητος τὴν καρδίαν αὑτοῦ, νοήσει τοὺς τοῦ Θεοῦ λόγους, τούς τε πρακτικοὺς καὶ τοὺς σοφιστικοὺς καὶ τοὺς θεολογικούς.  Cf. Olympiodorus, the deacon of Alexandria, Commentarii in Ecclesiasten, PG.93.492.54 56. Meletius of Tiberiopolis, De Natura Hominis, p. 26. Leo of Constantinople (medical doctor, phi losopher, ninth century), De Natura Hominum Synopsis, 11. Likewise, Origen, expProv, PG.17: 161.22 28; 181.56 60: Ἡ ἡ σοφία ἐστὶ γνῶσις σωμάτων καὶ ἀσωμάτων. So his follower, Evagrius of Pontus, Practicus, 89; Expositio in Proverbia Salomonis, pp. 77; 87, the same in the Scholia in Proverbia, 3. Also, Anonymous, Epitome Artis Rhetoricae, p. 666: σοφίας δὲ τὸ θεωρεῖν λόγους σωμάτων καὶ ἀσωμάτων. See also, chapter 13, ‘The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity’, p. 1318, and note 678.  Eustathius of Thessaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam, v. 1, p. 64 (appealing to Odys sea, I.337). Also, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, v. 2, p. 38 (referring to Ilias, V.121 8). Likewise,

838

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

logoi, whether practical, or scientific, or theological ones, and his anti-Platonic rationale⁶³ is plain once again: it is not Knowledge which leads to Virtue, but the other way around: only by means of praxis could one clean oneself from all filth, and then reach knowledge as a result of attaining ‘pure heart’.⁶⁴ If we are to put the difference between Plotinus and Origen schematically, we should say this: to Plotinus, the Intellect is the totality of logoi, which are both united and distinct. This is a Whole, namely, Intellect itself containing all the logoi both united and differentiated from one another. Characteristically, this Intellect Plotinus depicts metaphorically as seed. To Origen, the Mind/Logos is described in like terms, but with one essential difference: it cannot be said that the Mind is a seed, but that it has created a seed, which contains all the seeds/ logoi for the world to come to be and operate. These logoi were created out of nothing, once the untrammelled divine free will set out to create. Plotinus describes what the impersonal Intellect is of necessity and beginninglessly. Origen portrays what the personal Mind has in itself out of his own free will as of a certain beginning, which was caused by no necessity whatsoever. These logoi are the adorned (or ‘embroidered’, πολυποίκιλος) Body of the Logos, but not the personal Logos himself, who is beginningless and he can be envisaged even in the absence of this ‘embroiderment’ which is only the result of an act of will, that is, of a free decision which is of a contingent character.⁶⁵ These differences notwithstanding, the fact is that both Plotinus and Origen conveniently used a distinctively Anaxagorean language. Origen took some distances from his earlier pagan convictions, and, to this purpose, his point of departure was the Anaxagorean Nous, not the flawed theory of Plato’s Ideas, which he never sustained, not even during the period when he was a pagan philosopher. His doctrine of creation was in essence Anaxagorean, with some necessary modifications added to it. God created the logoi of the world, which were placed on the Body of the Logos; they are both causes and objects of cognition, and everything was created by means of them, according to an evolutionary theory of creation. Whereas God is omniscient and knows how things will evolve, He imposes no necessity upon this evolution. There is neither predestination nor any prefixed plan for creation: there are only the logoi, which are the means for evolution to be realized in due course.

an anonymous commentator, Scholia in Iliadem, (scholia vetera et recentiora e cod. Genevensi gr. 44), who saw the notion in Ilias, XV.412.  See discussion of this in PHE, pp. 23 4; 168 73; 208; 279.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.220.50 56: Ὁ πλατύνας διὰ τῆς καθαρότητος τὴν καρδίαν αὑτοῦ, νοή σει τοὺς τοῦ Θεοῦ λόγους, τούς τε πρακτικοὺς καὶ τοὺς σοφιστικοὺς καὶ τοὺς θεολογικούς.  See COT, pp. 120; 129; 135; 148; 150; PHE, p. 417.

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

839

Plotinus sought to overcome Plato’s tantalizing stalemate (i. e. how sensible things can be produced from immaterial ones?), which is why he concentrated on the relationship of the intelligible and sensible universes. In theory, Plotinus posited the Soul as an intermediary between the Intellect and sensible things. However, the Soul in Plotinus, although a go-between the intelligible and sensible worlds, has not a world of its own: it belongs to both worlds, normally it is thought of as linking them, and sometimes Plotinus feels that it is hardly necessary to make use of the soul as a link at all.⁶⁶ Besides, he found the Anaxagorean (and then, Stoic) idea of seed too attractive to ignore: to him, the concentrated unity and power of the seed is considered as superior to the fully-grown plant. All of this places Origen in line with Stoicism, not Platonism, and ultimately with Anaxagoras, the common source of them all, notwithstanding particular differences of doctrine. Only a couple of authors employed the Anaxagorean formula of Origen and spoke of ‘logoi of the world’ in order to denote the constructive, cohesive, providential, and cognizable principles of the world. During the first Christian millennium, it was probably only one author, whom I have recently identified, namely, Cassian the Sabaite, a moderate Origenist of the sixth century, some of whose writings (otherwise currently known as pseudepigrapha, or spuria) are in the process of being identified, edited, and published.⁶⁷

 Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. V.8.7: Plotinus rejected preformationism, arguing that ‘planning of this sort is unthinkable’ (οὔτε ἡ ἐπίνοια δυνατή), since there is no solution to the question of ‘where the ideas of all these things came from’. Instead, ‘all things exist in something else’ (εἶναι πάντα ἐν ἄλλῳ) and ‘there is nothing in between’ (οὐδενὸς δὲ μεταξὺ ὄντος). Besides, al though he concedes that a soul might serve to generation of things (ψυχῆς διακονησαμένης), he urges that this should happen by means of ‘direct action’ (αὐτόθεν) from the realm of real being. The soul is hardly necessary as a link, since ‘this universe is held fast by forms from beginning to end: matter first of all by the forms of the elements’ (τοῖς τῶν στοιχείων εἴδεσιν), and then by other forms upon these (ἐπὶ εἴδεσιν εἴδη ἄλλα), and then others still. This is characteristic of the rather eccentric position that the soul has in his system: it is a Hypostasis, yet it has not a world of its own.  See NDGF, RCR, and Scholia. Cf. Pseudo Basil of Caesarea (= Cassian the Sabaite), Enarratio in Prophetam Isaiam, 5.162: ὁ τοῖς λόγοις τῆς τοῦ κόσμου συστάσεως ἐγγυμνασάμενος καὶ γνω ρίσας ἁπάντων τῶν κατ᾿ οὐρανὸν τὴν διάθεσιν. Op. cit. 16.305: Τῆς οὖν ἀληθείας ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου νοεῖσθαι δυναμένης τοῖς συνετῶς τοῖς λόγοις τῆς κτίσεως ἐπιβάλλουσιν. Pseudo Cyril of Alexandria, Collectio Dictorum Veteris Testamenti, PG.77.1272.39 43: Οἱ μὲν θειότεροι τῆς κτί σεως λόγοι φαίνονται ἐν τῇ προνοίᾳ καὶ συνοχῇ τῆς τοῦ καθ᾿ ἕκαστον εἴδους μονιμότητος, οἱ δὲ φυσικοὶ νόμοι ταύτης, ἐν τῇ ταυτότητι τῆς τοῦ καθ᾿ ἕκαστον εἴδους φυσικῆς ἐνεργείας. Much later, reference to the ‘logoi of creation’ (λόγοι τῆς κτίσεως) was made by Symeon Neotheologus (tenth eleventh century), Orationes Theologicae, 1, line 198. Nicetas Stethatus (eleventh century), Vita Simeonis Novi Theologici, 59, line 20. Manuel II Palaeologus (1350 1425, emperor), Dialogi cum Mahometano, 2, p. 16.

840

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Galen recounts an interesting dissent of Posidonius from Chrysippus in relation to the issue of grief. Chrysippus (reporting Zeno’s work On Passions) defined grief as the reaction of the soul to an infliction upon it, which occurs suddenly and it is a newly appearing event (πρόσφατον). Posidonius rejected this definition, arguing that such an event has always existed as a somehow predetermined and predestined one: this is why, by the passage of time (grief: χρονισθεῖσα, then the feeling: χρονίσαν), it ceases to be an acute feeling, and, eventually, it is no longer a passion, or hardly is it one. Posidonius’ explanation is that the specific events which resulted in grief, as well as the feeling itself, have always existed in a latent foreordained form, even though the actual occurrences had not yet come to pass. In reality, grief ‘exists in advance’ (προενδημεῖν τοῖς πράγμασι). Galen then points out a peculiar verb which was introduced by Posidonius himself, namely, προενδημεῖν, and explains its meaning: it suggests that something has been formed beforehand (προαναπλάττειν τε καὶ προτυποῦν τὸ πρᾶγμα) within one’s mind, so that, when it actually comes to pass, one is already somewhat familiar with this occurrence (ἐθισμόν τινα ποιεῖσθαι κατὰ βραχύ) and with the concomitant feeling; this is why the feeling fades with time.⁶⁸ However, this proposition actually suggests that events are preformed into one’s mind as naturally expected ones, such as death, for instance. It does not mean that a cosmic or ontological prefiguration is already there. A Stoic though he was, and like Panaetius and other Stoics of the middle period, Posidonius was an eclectic polymath, too. But what matters here is his argument: he believed that pre-existence of all events in one’s mind was the reason why Anaxagoras was able to bear the pain of his son’s death,⁶⁹ which otherwise would have been unbearable. Of course, Posidonius pushed Anaxagoras’ phrase, ‘I knew that I gave birth to a mortal son’, just too far, but the importance of the testimony by Galen lies in the controversy about preformationism, which in fact was alien to both Anaxagoras and Origen. For what would latency possibly mean in those two thinkers? It would mean that the plays of a certain writer, say those of Shakespeare, were already existent as latent ones ever since

 Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 4.7.8. Chrysippus, Fragmenta Moralia, fr. 482. Pos idonius, Fragmenta, fr. 410: διὸ καὶ προενδημεῖν φησι τοῖς πράγμασι μήπω τε παροῦσιν οἷον πα ροῦσι χρῆσθαι. On this, he appealed to Anaxagoras.  See this testimony about Anaxagoras in the following authors: Plutarch, De Tranquillitate Animi, 474D. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.13. Procopius of Gaza, Epistulae, 125. Simplicius, commE pict, p. 54. Nicephorus Gregoras, Epistulae, 110. Galen adds a passage by Euripides, who is rep resented as arguing for a similar theory; Euripides said that he had learned this theory ‘from a certain wise man’ (ἐγὼ δὲ παρὰ σοφοῦ τινος μαθών). Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 964. There should be no doubt that this was one of his numerous implicit references to Anaxagoras.

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

841

his birth, indeed before Shakespeare himself was born. However, Anaxagoras and Origen maintained an evolutionary conception of generation of things (which Gregory of Nyssa distinctly took up⁷⁰). Therefore, in that context, Shakespeare wrote his works subsequent to the concurrence of certain experiences; in other words, he did so only after certain logoi (or, effective causes) formed his life, indeed his personality, henceforth giving rise to his action and reaction as a result. This is why Origen saw the ‘six days’ of Genesis as indicating a certain ‘order’, in the sense that, whereas all the logoi were created instantaneously, this does not necessarily entail that all perceptible creation, indeed all History, was preformed upon that moment. He refers implicitly to Philo’s idea about the ‘days’ betokening ‘order’,⁷¹ but he does not develop his argument based on a pre-existent pattern of the entire History. The idea of latency in this context can be considered only in the sense that the principles/logoi of the universe give rise to certain potentialities that can be realized in accordance with cosmic laws. There is indeed pre-existence of logoi, but not any ‘latent’ existence of the entire universe throughout all History right from the start. Instead, both Anaxagoras and Origen refer to the actual creation as ‘future beings’,⁷² and expound a clearly evolutionary conception of History, which is realized by means of the incorporeal logoi – the real object of the divine creative act. When Anaxagoras said that the Mind ‘decorated those which will exist in the future’, it is quite clear that ‘decoration’ means distinction of the principles, which were made so as to be capable of performing their specific function throughout all time.⁷³ I have shown that the ‘Antiochene’ Theodoret was a devout student of the exegeses by the ‘Alexandrian’ Origen, and he availed himself of them regularly.

 See infra, pp. 860; 896 907.  Origen, selGen, PG.12.97.25 32: Ἤδη τινὲς ἄτοπον ὑπολαμβάνοντες τὸν Θεὸν δίκην οἰκοδό μου μὴ διαρκέσαντος χωρὶς ἡμερῶν πλειόνων πληρῶσαι τὴν οἰκοδομήν, ἐν πλείοσιν ἡμέραις τε τελεκέναι τὸν κόσμον, φασὶν ὑφ᾿ ἓν πάντα γεγονέναι, καὶ ἐντεῦθεν τοῦτο κατασκευάζουσιν· ἕνεκεν δὲ τάξεως οἴονται τὸν κατάλογον τῶν ἡμερῶν εἰρῆσθαι καὶ τῶν ἐν αὐταῖς γενομένων. This is an implicit reference to Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 13: Ἓξ δὲ ἡμέραις δημιουργηθῆναι φησὶ τὸν κόσμον, οὐκ ἐπειδὴ προσεδεῖτο χρόνων μήκους ὁ ποιῶν ἅμα γὰρ πάντα δρᾶν εἰκὸς θεόν, οὐ προστάττοντα μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ διανοούμενον, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπειδὴ τοῖς γινομένοις ἔδει τάξεως. τάξει δὲ ἀριθμὸς οἰκεῖον, ἀριθμῶν δὲ φύσεως νόμοις γεννητικώτατος ὁ ἕξ. Cf. Legum Allegoria rum, 1.2; De Decalogo, 101.  τὰ ἐσόμενα (‘the future creatures’). God has foreknowledge of future occurrences, but he does not coerce the course of History. Infra, p. 902, note 346, and COT, pp. 48; 50; 120; 129; 136; 150.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 177: καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν, ἅσσα νῦν μὴ ἔστι, καὶ ὅσα νῦν ἐστι καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς. Likewise, op. cit. pp. 156; 166; 175; commCael, p. 590.

842

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Certainly, he was the most genuine follower of the Alexandrian, indeed his real heir in respect of the latter’s scriptural textual and editorial concerns.⁷⁴ Theodoret actually follows Origen’s lesson, and argues that ‘although God’s nature is immutable, still He knows the things which are not yet created as already having been created’ (ὁ δὲ τῶν ὅλων Θεὸς ἄτρεπτον μὲν ἔχει τὴν φύσιν, οἶδε δὲ ὡς ἤδη γεγενημένα τὰ μήπω γεγενημένα).⁷⁵ During the Hellenistic era, this idea of orderly development of all aspects of reality by means of logoi was attributed also to the Pythagoreans. An anonymous author quoting Cornelius Alexander (first half of the first century BC) reported that the Pythagoreans believed that a ‘seed’ (σπέρμα) contains in itself all ‘the logoi of life’ (ἔχειν δὲ ἐν αὑτῷ πάντας τοὺς λόγους τῆς ζωῆς), which ‘are held together according to harmonious logoi’ (συνέχεσθαι κατὰ τοὺς τῆς ἁρμονίας λόγους), and they produce each of their results ‘at fixed times’ (ἐν τεταγμένοις καιροῖς ἐπιγινομένων).⁷⁶ Later still, Hierocles of Alexandria, commenting on the Pythagorean Golden Verses, and reflecting along Origen-like lines,⁷⁷ argued that ‘the Creative Mind and the Divine Will’ (ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς καὶ ἡ θεία βούλησις) eternally create and sustain everything in the universe (ἡ ἀϊδίως παράγουσα τὰ πάντα καὶ εἰς ἀεὶ διασῴζουσα), but this creative act is not instantaneous: even the lower deities, which were created and classified in different ranks, came to being and were distinguished from each other not haphazard but in a certain order (οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἔτυχεν ὑποστάντες ὕστερον διεκρίθησαν, ἀλλὰ τεταγμένοι προῆλθον εἰς τὸ εἶναι).⁷⁸ There is nothing strange about Anaxagoras’ doctrine (especially that of the creative logoi) overlapping with the Pythagorean one: as Proclus summarised the story, Pythagoras ‘transformed freely his knowledge of geometry’ to ontology, and ‘after him, Anaxagoras engaged in the study of many problems of geometry’.⁷⁹ To sum up, there are two notions shared by both Anaxagoras and Origen alike. The former envisages the state of the Mind being at rest and then deciding⁸⁰ to give rise to the principles that function as the generative and cohesive causes for to universe to be produced and operate. The latter contemplates the  Scholia, pp. 28; 31 4; 40; 44; 50; 54; 66.  Theodoret, Quaestiones in Octateuchum, p. 38.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 8.29.  I canvass Hierocles’ testimonies about Origen in a forthcoming biography of Origen.  Hierocles of Alexandria, In Aureum Carmen, 1.11 12.  Proclus, commEucl, pp. 65 6: Πυθαγόρας τὴν περὶ αὐτὴν φιλοσοφίαν εἰς σχῆμα παιδείας ἐλευθέρου μετέστησεν, ἄνωθεν τὰς ἀρχὰς αὐτῆς ἐπισκοπούμενος καὶ ἀΰλως καὶ νοερῶς τὰ θεωρήματα διερευνώμενος. … μετὰ δὲ τοῦτον ᾿Aναξαγόρας ὁ Κλαζομένιος πολλῶν ἐφήψατο τῶν κατὰ γεωμετρίαν.  See supra, chapter 5, the notion of will being attributed to the Anaxagorean Mind.

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

843

Trinitarian God in Himself,⁸¹ who decided to become Creator: to this purpose, he produced the ‘created wisdom’, which was placed on the Body of his Wisdom/ Son/Logos. Nevertheless, Anaxagoras’ himself attributed a notion of will to the Mind,⁸² which is probably why, at a very early stage of his Christian life, Origen wrote this: The Son does all the things the Father does,⁸³ the Father’s image is reproduced in the Son, whose birth from the Father is, as it were, an act of his will proceeding from the mind. And, on this account, my own opinion is that an act of the Father’s will ought to be sufficient to ensure the existence of what he wills. For in willing he uses no other means than that which is produced by the deliberations of his will. It is in this way, then, that the existence of the Son also is begotten by him.⁸⁴

One only needs to study carefully in order to see that this has nothing to do with Arianism, as the fashionable obloquy had it long after his death: it only means that God willed to become Creator, which is not a characteristic of his essence, but of his action. In fact, Origen was the one who introduced the catchphrase of Nicaea, οὐκ ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν about the Son in relation to the Father, which he took up from Alexander of Aphrodisias, the Aristotelian commentator who, along with Galen, exerted a remarkable philological influence upon Origen.⁸⁵ Thus, the entire universe was produced according to the logoi that were created and placed on the Body of the Logos. These logoi sustain all things, persons, and phenomena throughout all time and make it possible for them to function. Neither Anaxagoras nor Origen did ever assume the Supreme Principle to be two ones: it was one, which assumed a creative function out of untrammelled free will.

 See the notion of God in Himself distinguished from that of God as Creator, in COT, pp. 25 30; 51 52; 60; 133 7; 144 8; 152 7; 170 4; 357; 365.  See supra, p. 314.  Cf. John, 5:19.  Origen, Princ, I.2.6.  Origen, op. cit. I.2.9 (speaking of the ‘self subsistent’ power of God, that is, the Son himself: propria subsistentia effectus): ‘and there is no time when he did not exist’ (non est autem quan do non fuerit); commJohn, II.19.130: οὐκ ἦν γάρ, ὅτε ἡ ἀρχὴ ἄλογος ἦν. Cf. Origen quoted by Athanasius, De Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, 27.2: [the Son] ὁμοιότης τυγχάνων τοῦ πατρὸς οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν. See infra, p. 992. He took up the characteristic expression οὐκ ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν (which became a catchphrase of Nicaea and thereafter) from Alexander of Aphrodisias, quot ed infra, p. 992, note 757. Arius used Origen’s expression without negation, intending to claim the opposite of what Origen maintained: ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν, meaning that there was a state in which the Son was not yet. Later uninformed fanatics attributed Arius’ expression to Origen.

844

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Although beyond my scope at this point, it is important to notice the notion of ‘two Minds’, which appeared tantalizing to some, and goes back to Aristotle reflecting on Anaxagoras, then to Theophrastus, and it can be traced back to Chaldean thought reported by Porphyry.⁸⁶ Proclus argued that, in the Politicus, Plato ‘extolled two intelligible Kings: of them, one was the cause that produced the invisible life; the other created the visible cosmos, and the present cosmic period’.⁸⁷ John Dillon remarked that there is evidence for the existence within the Chaldean hierarchy of two entities which can be termed νοῦς, with a tendency for one (the outward- and downward-turning νοῦς) to be ranked below the other, but both being essentially on the same ontological level. The ‘lower’ νοῦς performs in relation to the world a demiurgic function.⁸⁸ The reference to the Chaldean Oracles is interesting: the Supreme Principle is described as ‘Paternal Mind’ (πατρικὸς νοῦς); the Father is the first cause of all creation, and he implants within Intellect the archetypal Ideas; these the First Intellect contemplates, while the Second Intellect uses them as patterns to create the sensible universe.⁸⁹ Apparent analogies to Origen’s doctrine are evident, but no matter what his loans from the Oracles (as well as from Theophrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias), he was cautious enough as to make the necessary adjustments in line with the Bible, which is why Athanasius assured that his Trinitarian doctrine was impeccable, whereas Gregory of Nyssa’ evolutionaty theory of creation leaves no doubt that his source was Origen.⁹⁰ I have remarked that the Christian Origen refrained from quoting from his pagan armour, except in his discourse against Celsus. The latter’s fragments (ex-

 Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 154. The notion of two Minds has been discussed by John Dillon, “The Concept of Two Intellects: A Footnote to the History of Platonism”, Phronesis, 18, n. 2 (1973), pp. 176 85. However, see a different discussion, infra, pp. 987 96.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 6, p. 38: Διὰ ταῦτα τοίνυν ὁ μὲν Ἐλεάτης ξένος ἐν τῷ Πολ ιτικῷ δύο τούτους ἀνυμνεῖ βασιλέας νοερούς, τὸν μὲν τῆς ἀφανοῦς αἴτιον ζωῆς τοῖς ὅλοις καὶ τῆς ἑτέρας ἀνακυκλήσεως, τὸν δὲ τῆς ἐμφανοῦς διακοσμήσεως ὑποστάτην καὶ τῆς παρούσης πε ριόδου. Cf. commCrat, 148; commRep, v. 1, pp. 96 7.  John Dillon, op. cit. pp. 178 9.  John Dillon, op. cit. p. 180. Cf. Numenius’ First God, who is an intellect being at rest (i. e. mo tionless and inactive), and the Second God who is an intellect in motion, apud Eusebius, Prae paratio Evangelica, 11.18.14. Notice Numenius’ characteristic Anaxagorean terms, such as σπέρμα and χρήματα. See supra, chapter 10, p. 742 and note 190. In the same chapter, see also the dis tinction drawn by Simplicius between the ‘Standing Mind’ (μένων νοῦς) and the ‘Mind that came forth’ from that (προελθὼν νοῦς) (see pp. 787 8; 997), which he believed was an idea maintained by Aristotle. Those who would be quick to see in this one more ‘Neoplatonic extrapolation’ by Simplicius, they should read Themistius considering a testimony by Theophrastus concerning Aristotle (infra, pp. 987 98).  See infra, pp. 896 907.

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

845

cerpted from Origen’s polemic treatise) reveal that Celsus had done his homework with Christian sources, especially the scripture, hence Origen felt he should exhibit his equal, indeed superior, knowledge of pagan sources in order to discredit what he saw as impertinent attempt of derogation. Consequently, he sought not so much to refute as to overwhelm. Little wonder then that he quoted from several pagan sources in order to show Celsus’ inconsistencies, his gullibility, and none the less his stupidity – in other words, to disgrace his adversary while bolstering up his own image both as a scholar and as a learned faithful. Not only did he refute Celsus’ invective, but also cared to show that he was superior to his adversary on this score. Once Origen’s references in Contra Celsum are studied, one can see his Anaxagorean predilection expressed in either explicit or implicit manner. Anaxagoras is stated with respect, even though Origen was not prepared to endorse the view that the sun, moon, and the stars, are ‘masses of hot metal’ (μύδρον διάπυρον).⁹¹ Nevertheless, he mentions Euripides with high regard, on account of the tragic poet having been a pupil of Anaxagoras, and deemed him a ‘wise man’.⁹² He says that ‘some styled him philosopher of the stage’ (σκηνικὸς φιλόσοφος),⁹³ adding that Euripides also heard Anaxagoras’ physics (καὶ φυσιολογίας τῆς ᾿Aναξαγόρου γενόμενος ἀκροατής).⁹⁴ Origen shows his ample knowledge of Greek literature, noting in manifest disapprobation that Aristophanes ridiculed Euripides for having written verses which were lengthy, illtimed, and idle loquacious talking (that is, irrelevant to the play’s context), only because Euripides allegedly wanted to interpolate philosophical views of Anaxagoras.⁹⁵ Quite evidently, Origen had in mind Aristophanes’ satire:⁹⁶ to  Origen, Cels, V.11.  Origen, op. cit. VII.36: Εὐριπίδης δὲ ὑπὸ ᾿Aριστοφάνους κωμῳδεῖται ὡς ἀκαιρορρήμων διὰ τὸ πολλάκις περιτεθεικέναι λόγους δογμάτων, ὧν ἀπὸ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἤ τινος ἔμαθε τῶν σοφῶν, βαρ βάροις γυναιξὶν ἢ οἰκέταις.  See supra, p. 620, and note 64.  Origen, op. cit. IV.77. Euripides was widely known as a pupil of Anaxagoras, which is attested by numerous authors. However, only a few of them styled him ‘philosopher of the stage’ (σκη νικὸς φιλόσοφος). The first of whom we know is Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.11.70.1: ὁ ἐπὶ τῆς σκηνῆς φιλόσοφος Εὐριπίδης. Then Athenaeus, who was younger than Clement by one or two decades; Deipnosophistae, 4.48 (ὁ σκηνικὸς οὗτος φιλόσοφος); 13.11 & Deipnosophistae (epit ome), p. 51 (τοῦ σκηνικοῦ φιλοσόφου Εὐριπίδου). Then, Eusebius used the same expression as Origen (‘some people styled him philosopher of the stage’). Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 10.14.13: Εὐριπίδης δὲ ἐπὶ ποιητικὴν μεταβὰς ὑπό τινων σκηνικὸς φιλόσοφος ἐκλήθη. Later still, Sextus Empiricus did so, too: Adversus Mathematicos et Grammaticos, 288. His expression (καὶ ὁ μὲν σκηνικὸς ἀναγορευθεὶς φιλόσοφος) shows that he received the expression from Athe naeus.  Origen, op. cit. IV.77.

846

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

the question ‘is Euripides inside his house?’ (ἔνδον ἔστ᾿ Εὐριπίδης;), the lampooning reply was that ‘he is inside outside’ (οὐκ ἔνδον ἔνδον ἐστίν), since ‘his mind is outside collecting quotations from others (ξυλλέγων ἐπύλλια), while physically he is inside, lying down and composing a tragedy’. However, the real insinuation pointed to Anaxagoras, who reportedly opposed the principle of contradiction, urging that two opposite propositions are not mutually exclusive, but there is something in between them (εἶναι τι μεταξὺ τῆς ἀντιφάσεως), whereas he identified one’s impression of phenomena with the manifest reality of them.⁹⁷

 Aristophanes, Acharnenses, 393 ff. He satirized also Euripides by styling him ‘one who was nourished by Anaxagoras’ (᾿Aναξαγόρου τρόφιμος), and represented him as a man that never smiled or joked, even when he was under the influence of wine. Aristophanes, Fragmenta, fr. 676b. The testimony comes from Gellius (Aulus Gellius, c. 125 after 180 AD), Noctes Atticae, XV.20 (Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, II.231, Diehl), quoting this from a fourth to third century BC tragic and lyric poet: “Alexander Aetolus wrote about Euripides these verses: “I think that we should style the pupil of the noble Anaxagoras austere and laugh hating; he did not know how to joke even under the influence of wine. But everything he wrote was like honey and [the song] of the Sirens.’” Likewise, in the anonymous Vita Euripidis, Vita 2: σκυθρωπὸς δὲ καὶ σύννους καὶ αὐστηρὸς ἐφαίνετο καὶ μισόγελως καὶ μισογύνης, καθὰ καὶ ᾿Aριστοφάνης αὐτὸν αἰτιᾶται, στρυφνὸς ἔμοιγε προσειπεῖν Εὐριπίδης. Aristophanes’ charge that Euripides was a ‘woman hater’ (μισογύνης) runs sheer contrary to the criticism against that poet for ‘im plausibly’ representing women as reflecting philosophically. Theon of Alexandria (rhetor, first/ second cent. AD), reprimanded Euripides for inopportunely representing Hecuba as philoso phizing (Progymnasmata, p. 60: τὸν δὲ Εὐριπίδην καταμεμφόμεθα, ὅτι παρὰ καιρὸν αὐτῷ Ἑκάβη φιλοσοφεῖ). He did not elaborate, but, presumably, he had in mind Euripides’ Hecuba, verses 599 604 (‘Is then the difference due to birth or bringing up?’ etc.). So did others, accusing Euripides of staging such troublesome instances (Theon: παρὰ καιρόν) on stage. Cf. Eustathius of Thessaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, v. 3, p. 467 (ἀκαιρίαν τῆς τοιαύτης φιλοσοφίας). Anonymous, Scholia in Aelium Aristidem (scholia vetera), 133.4: Εὐριπίδης ἐποίει, ἀφαιρῶν τοῦ βάρους καὶ τῶν καιρῶν … οὐκ ἀξίοις προσώποις λόγους σεμνοὺς καὶ φιλοσόφους προσάπτων, ὡς τῇ Ἑκάβῃ. Likewise, op. cit. 133.6, adding, διασύρεται ὁ Εὐριπίδης, ὡς ἀγνοήσας πῶς δεῖ οἰ κονομῆσαι πρόσωπα, ὅτι καὶ βαρβάρῳ καὶ δυστυχεῖ φιλοσοφίαν ἐνέθηκεν. Anonymous, Scholia in Lycophronem, scholion 14: καθάπερ ὁ Εὐριπίδης φιλοσοφούσας ἐπάγων ἐνίοτε βαρβάρους γυ ναῖκας. See Origen’s own words, supra, note 92.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009b26: τοιαῦτ᾿ αὐτοῖς ἔσται τὰ ὄντα οἷα ἂν ὑπολάβωσιν. Likewise, op. cit. 1012a26. Heraclitus is also represented as one who ‘made everything both true and false’ by saying that everything both is and is not’ (πάντα εἶναι καὶ μὴ εἶναι), which fits with Aristo phanes’ satiric verse. Aristotle levelled a similar criticism on both Anaxagoras and Heraclitus in the Metaphysica, 1063b. Later, Syrianus, commenting on Aristotle, attributes a similar view (mentioning Protagoras) attenuatedly and slightly to Anaxagoras, but also to Democritus, to Em pedocles, and to Parmenides, but he did not mention Heraclitus, evidently because he para phrased Alexander of Aphrodisias who did so. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 75; cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 307. The catalogue of those who belied the human senses became

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

847

Aristophanes’ mockery of Euripides’ philosophical tendencies became famous throughout all Antiquity. The author of the Suda noted that the foregoing one (‘is Euripides inside his house?’), along with similar ones which involve antithetical propositions, means that the comic ‘mocks Euripides for being a dialectician’ (σκώπτει τὸν Εὐριπίδην ὡς συλλογιστικόν).⁹⁸ However, there is another side of this story, which is little-known: Aristophanes himself was mocked by others for lampooning Euripides while imitating him: the comic Cratinus (fifth century BC) concocted the neologism εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζων, meaning Aristophanes plagiarizing opinions of Euripides, and imitating his vocabulary and structures of language.⁹⁹ It is certainly no coincidence that several lemmas of an-

much longer with Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.50.17: Πυθαγόρας Ἐμπεδοκλῆς Ξενοφάνης Παρμε νίδης Ζήνων Μέλισσος ᾿Aναξαγόρας Δημόκριτος Μητρόδωρος Πρωταγόρας Πλάτων ψευδεῖς εἶναι τὰς αἰσθήσεις. Cf. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 277. Damascius mentioned Parme nides, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras as being those who believed that ‘the senses provide the truth, against Protagoras and Epicurus who altogether dismissed sensible impression as false, while he placed Plato in between. Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 80. Later still, Aristo phanes’ attitude appears in Nicephorus Gregoras (thirteenth fourteenth century), who attributed the idea of subjective impression representing truth to Anaxagoras and Protagoras. Epistulae, 30: οὕτω τε καὶ οὐχ οὕτως ἔχειν ἀπεφήναντο τὰ πράγματα καὶ τοιαῦτ᾿ εἶναι ἑκάστῳ, οἷα ἑκάστῳ καὶ φαίνεται. See discussion supra, pp. 496 9.  Suda, letter alpha, entry 1796; the same text, in letter delta, entry 752. Cf. other instances of Aristophanes speaking of Euripides in jest on various grounds. Suda, letter delta, entry 752 & letter sigma, entry 534. Anonymous, Scholia in Equites (scholia vetera et recentiora Triclinii), verse 19b (because Euripides’ mother was a greengrocer; cf. Aristophanes, Acharnenses, lines 478 480; Equites, line 19). Suda, letter kappa, entries 981; 1738; likewise, letter omicron, entry 983; letter lambda, entry 658; letter mu, entry 291; letter omicron, entry 76. Etymologicum Mag num, p. 153. Anonymous, Scholia in Euripidem, section 612 (cf. Aristophanes, Ranae, 102). Plu tarch, Quomodo Adolescens Poetas Audire Debeat, 30D. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 4.18. The verse of Aristophanes, Ranae, verse 1400, mocking Euripides by quoting a verse from his Tele phus, was noticed by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, Περὶ τῶν παρ᾿ Ἕλλησι παιδιῶν, 1, and by Eu stathius of Thessaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam, v. 1, p. 28. Also, the verses of Ranae, 89 91 (representing Euripides as talkative) received comments by a vast number of authors. Cf. Herodian of Alexandria, Περὶ Παθῶν, p. 328. Aelius Aristides, Πρὸς Πλάτωνα ὑπὲρ τῶν τεττάρων, p. 133. George Choeroboscus, Prolegomena et Scholia in Theodosii Alexandrini Canones Isagogicos De Flexione Nominum, pp. 172; 378. Suda, letter pi, entry 1732. Eustathius of Thessaloniki, Com mentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, v. 4, p. 467. Pseudo Zonaras, Lexicon, letter delta, p. 497. Further more, comments on Ranae, verse 1305, see in Phrynichus of Bithynia (or Phrynichus Arabius, second century AD), Praeparatio Sophistica (epitome), p. 79.  Anonymous, Vita Aristophanis, lines 1 7: ὑπολεπτόλογος, γνωμοδιώκτης, εὐριπιδαριστο φανίζων. See this in Cratinus, Fragmenta (Kock: Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, v. 1), fr. 307, and Anonymous, Scholia in Platonem (scholia recentiora Arethae), p. 19c. All three of these ad jectives were coined by the comic Cratinus. Naturally, they were never included in any ancient lexicon of Greek.

848

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

cient lexica of Greek language quote the same words and structures being used by Euripides and Aristophanes only, which lends further support to this testimony.¹⁰⁰ Isidore of Pelusium wrote that Aristophanes ridiculed Socrates because the latter urged him to study philosophy, but the comic declined because he preferred to enjoy the bodies of young women.¹⁰¹ The sophist Claudius Aelian recounted that Socrates used to go to theatre very rarely; but he did attend whenever Euripides participated in the contests of playwriting (meaning in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens that took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and of the Dionysia). For Socrates took pleasure in both the wisdom of Euripides and the high quality of his verses (διά τε τὴν σοφίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ἐν τοῖς μέτροις ἀρετήν).¹⁰² Phrynichus Arabius included the name of Euripides in the list of authors who could provide ‘the best examples, and rules and measure of pure and clear Attic language’. Furthermore, while styling Aeschylus ‘most grandiloquent’ (μεγαλοφωνότατον) and Sophocles ‘sweet’ (γλυκύν), he reserves the epithet ‘all too wise’ (πάνσοφον) for Euripides.¹⁰³ Euripides was mentioned in praise by early Christian authors, who quoted from him in order to support their Christian ideas.¹⁰⁴ Although a poet, he was

 Julius Pollux, Onomasticon, 10.111. Trichas (grammarian, seventh century AD), Libellus De Novem Metris, chapter 1, p. 367. Anonymus (eighth ninth century AD), Συναγωγὴ Λέξεων Χρησίμων (versio antiqua), letter chi, lemma 152. Anonymus (eighth ninth century AD), Συνα γωγὴ λέξεων χρησίμων ἐκ διαφόρων σοφῶν τε καὶ ῥητόρων πολλῶν (versio codicis B), letter alpha, lemmata 630 & 2116. Photius, Lexicon, letter alpha, entries 618 & 2825; letter beta, entry 81. Etymologicum Genuinum, letter beta, entry 51. Suda, letter alpha, entry 3959; letter pi, entry 715. Etymologicum Magnum, pp. 153; 190. Lexicon Vindobonense, letter alpha, entry 126; letter epsilon, entry 121; letter phi, entry 12. Lexica Segueriana, Collectio Verborum Utilium e Differentibus Rhetoribus et Sapientibus Multis (recensio aucta e cod. Coislin. 345), entry alpha, pp. 51 & 143. Anonymus, Scholia in Aeschylum (comm. on the play Septem contra Thebas), scholion 101e. Anonymus, Scholia in Platonem (comm. on Respublica, 583b).  Isidore of Pelusium, Epistulae, p. 1667.  Aelian, Varia Historia, 2.13. He also reports that Aristophanes was bribed in order to con tribute to the case that Anytus and Meletus raised against Socrates, who did not like to attend comedies, although Alcibiades and Critias used to urge him to do so.  Photius (reviewing the book Praeparatio Sophistica by Phrynichus Arabius), Bibliotheca, Cod. 158, p. 101b. Phrynichus Arabius was a Greek grammarian who flourished in second cen tury Bithynia.  One of the first to do so was the apologist Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum, 2.8; 2.37. Also, the apologist Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio, 5.1. Then, Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.14.137.2; et passim (no less than forty six references by name). Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 10.7.2. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 5.32; 5.33; 6.7.29; et passim (no less than twenty references by name). Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmina Moralia, columns 704 5 (Εὐριπίδῃ

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

849

cited as a philosopher, and his discipleship with Anaxagoras was a serious reason for Origen to quote from him,¹⁰⁵ as well as to adduce an unknown introductory part from a known oracle from Delphi given to Chaerephon, then a loyal friend and follower of Socrates, in which Socrates was stated as ‘the most wise of all men’ (ἀνδρῶν ἁπάντων Σωκράτης σοφώτατος). The oracle was well-known so far as it mentioned Socrates,¹⁰⁶ but the phrase that preceded it has been preserved only by Origen, who wrote that the oracle started with the statement, ‘Sophocles is wise, but Euripides is wiser’ (σοφὸς Σοφοκλῆς, σοφώτερος δ᾿ Εὐριπίδης),¹⁰⁷ and then it concluded with the foregoing phrase about Socrates being ‘the most wise of all men’. One more important indication of the high regard in which Euripides was held is the Christian drama entitled Christ Suffering (Χριστὸς Πάσχων). One of the manuscripts which attributes this to Gregory of Nazianzus (the great admirer and anthologer of Origen’s work) styles this work ‘tragedy’ (τραγωδία), and it is entitled Γρηγορίου τοῦ Θεολόγου τραγωδία εἰς τὸ σωτήριον πάθος τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. The other manuscript has the title, Τοῦ ἐν ἁγίοις πατρὸς ἡμῶν Γρηγορίου τοῦ θεολόγου ὑπόθεσις δραματικὴ κατ᾿ Εὐριπίδην περιέχουσα τὴν δι᾿ ἡμᾶς γενομένην σάρκωσιν τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ κοσμοσωτήριον πάθος. The editor of the former abbreviated the title, makτῷ σοφωτάτῳ); Epistulae, 11.3. Basil of Caesarea, De Legendis Gentilium Libris, 6. John of Dam ascus, Passio Magni Martyris Artemii, 62.  Cf. Origen, Cels, II.20, quoting Euripides, Phoenissae, verses 18 20; op. cit. II.34, quoting Euripides, Bacchae, verse 498.  Anthologiae Graecae Appendix, Oracula, Epigram 70. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.37. Galen, Adhortatio ad Artes Addiscendas, 9. Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 22. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem Commentarii, 53. Pseudo Lucian of Samosata, Amores, 48. Anonymous, Scholia In Lucianum, 70.15. Also, in Christian writings: Pseudo Clement of Rome, Homiliae, 5.18.1. Pseudo Justin, Cohortatio ad Gentiles, p. 33C. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.19. I have suggested that certain Pseudo Clementine writings should be attributed to Cassian the Sabaite, who is the same author as Pseudo Justin, Pseudo Caesarius, and the author of Pseu do Didymus’ De Trinitate. See NDGF, Appendices I, II.  Origen, Cels, VII.6: Εἰ γὰρ καὶ ἀνδρῶν ἁπάντων Σωκράτην εἶπε σοφώτατον εἶναι, ἤμβλυνε τὸν ἔπαινον αὐτοῦ τὸ πρὸς τούτου λεγόμενον περὶ Εὐριπίδου καὶ Σοφοκλέους ἐν τῷ· Σοφὸς Σοφοκλῆς, σοφώτερος δ᾿ Εὐριπίδης. This quotation is valuable because it is the most ancient one, and it was not until the sixth century that it re appeared obliquely in literature. Choricius of Gaza, Opera, 32.2.135: Εὐριπίδης μὲν γὰρ ὁ Σοφοκλέους τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ κρίσει σοφώτερος. Suda, letter sigma, entry 820: Σοφὸς Σοφοκλῆς, σοφώτερος δ᾿ Εὐριπίδης, ἀνδρῶν δὲ πάντων Σωκράτης σοφώτερος. Anonymous, Scholia in Aristophanem, Scholia in Nubes (scholia vetera), verse 144c: σοφὸς Σοφοκλῆς, σοφώτερος δ᾿ Εὐριπίδης, ἀνδρῶν δὲ πάντων Σωκράτης σοφώτερος. Anony mous, Scholia in Platonem (comm. on Timaeus, 21a): χρησμὸς περὶ Σωκράτους δοθεὶς Χαιρεφῶντι τῷ Σφηττίῳ· σοφὸς Σοφοκλῆς, σοφώτερος Εὐριπίδης, ἀνδρῶν δ᾿ ἁπάντων Σωκράτης σοφώτατος.

850

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

ing it Χριστὸς Πάσχων. ¹⁰⁸ This work is a κέντρων, meaning a piece of patchwork, hence, a work in metre, made up of scraps of verses from other poets. In the present case, the poet is only one, namely Euripides, which the second title makes clear. In fact, this work preserves and reproduces an older tradition of Euripides’ words, which is why it contributes to restoration of that tragic poet’s text, although it has its own character, notwithstanding its loans from Euripides. The authenticity of this work was disputed since the sixteenth century (in the beginning, an unsupported attribution was made to Apollinaris of Laodicea), then, it was thought that this was an ecclesiastical composition (called ‘mystery’) of either the eleventh or sixth century. However, recent critical consideration concluded that this is a genuine work.¹⁰⁹ In any case, the influence of the ancient drama upon Orthodox liturgy is plain and it has been explained by learned scholars, one of whom argued that this liturgy ‘follows the dramatic style and structure of the ancient tragedy. It does not copy, but it is inspired by that in terms of structure. Ancient Greece provided the garment. The Church supplied the life-giving spirit’.¹¹⁰ In his commentary on the epistle to the Romans, Origen applies his allegorical exegesis by reading the term ἱλαστήριον (‘propitiatory offering’) of Romans, 3:25 (‘God set forth his Son to be an atoning sacrifice’) in relation with the same term ἱλαστήριον occurring in Exodus, 25:17 (‘and you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold’, ἱλαστήριον ἐπίθεμα χρυσίου καθαροῦ).¹¹¹ His comment is that ‘pure gold’ is an allegorical expression betokening ‘a mind which is pure and unmixed with matter’ (τὸν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ πρὸς ὕλην νοῦν).¹¹² The expression is entirely Anaxagorean,¹¹³ and only an author who knew this philosophy could have  PG.38.133 340.  An argument is that this kind of κέντρων was not used in the eleventh century, whereas it flourished in the fourth one. Besides, verses 354 465 of it have been used by Romanus Melodus (fl. sixth century) in the liturgical original strophe of the contakion of the Holy Thursday. Be sides, Gregory of Nazianzus’ poetry is a witness to the authenticity of this drama. See P.K. Chris tou, Ἑλληνικὴ Πατρολογία, v. 4, pp. 136 7.  See C. Kalokyris, “Ἡ ἐπίδραση τοῦ θεάτρου στὴν Ὀρθόδοξη λατρευτικὴ παράδοση”, in the volume, Μελετήματα Χριστιανικῆς Ὀρθοδόξου Θεολογίας καὶ Τέχνης, Θεσσαλονίκη, 1980, pp. 477 ff; 480 ff.  Covering of the ark in the Holy of Holies.  Origen, Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V. 7), p. 158. Only one Christian author used this vo cabulary. As one would have expected, this was Origen’s devout follower Didymus, Commentarii in Psalmos 29 34, Cod. p. 139: ὁ νοῦς αὐτῆς ὁ θεῖος, ὁ ἀμιγῶς ἔχων καὶ πρὸς ὕλην καὶ πρὸς κακίαν.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405a: ᾿Aναξαγόρας … ἀρχήν γε τὸν νοῦν τίθεται μάλιστα πάντων· μόνον γοῦν φησὶν αὐτὸν τῶν ὄντων ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ τε καὶ καθαρόν. Cf. John Philoponus, com mAnim, pp. 86; 91. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 989b: φησὶ δ᾿ εἶναι μεμιγμένα πάντα πλὴν τοῦ νοῦ,

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

851

used it, as it happened with his unique Christian usage of the Anaxagorean expression χρήματα τοῦ νοῦ, which we saw earlier. Origen though went a step further in order to accommodate this philosophy to his Christian context: he spoke not of any mind, but about the Cosmic Mind, which he identified with the Son/ Logos, and, for the sake of context he spoke of the the soul of Jesus, in order to suggest the incarnated form of the Logos.¹¹⁴ He saw the Mind of Anaxagoras as anticipation of the Christian Trinitarian God. Even during his pagan period, he did not accept the Neoplatonic notion of a certain obscure One (to which not even being proper could apply) as being ontologically prior to the Mind. To him, the supreme ontological principle and the Creator of the universe were one and the selfsame God, which is why he wrote the (pagan) treatise entitled ‘That the King is the Sole Maker’(Ὅτι μόνος ποιητὴς ὁ βασιλεύς).¹¹⁵ It was all too natural for any pagan that was converted to Christianity (as indeed for anyone at any time being converted from one faith to another) to reflect as to whether, and to what extent, was his previous belief accordant with the new one. Although constantly Origen bore this in mind, he always essayed to vindicate such tenets by means of proof texts occurring in the Bible, not in pagan sources (which though were present in the back of his mind). This was also the case with the fundamental description of the Mind by Anaxagoras, who styled it ‘the finest and purest of all things’ (λεπτότατόν πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον).¹¹⁶ Origen identified this Mind with the Christian God who begat his Logos, and then, he had no difficulty with seeing also God’s Son/Wisdom/Logos as the equivalent to the Anaxagorean Mind. While he was still a τοῦτον δὲ ἀμιγῆ μόνον καὶ καθαρόν. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 69; 699. Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ νοῦν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ λέγων ἁπλοῦν καὶ αὐτὸς τίθεται τὸ πρῶτον καὶ χωριστὸν τὸ ἕν, τὸ δ᾿ ἀκριβὲς δι᾿ ἀρχαιότητα παρῆκε. The only other Christian par allel to this Anaxagorean language is attested by Photius reviewing the book of an otherwise unknown monk called Jobius, who spoke of the ‘pure mind of the angels’. Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 222, p. 187b: Τὸ μέντοι λαμπροφορεῖν, φησι, τοὺς βαπτιζομένους τῆς τῶν ἀγγέλων ἐστὶ σύμ βολον λαμπρότητος, τὸ καθαρὸν ἐκείνοις τοῦ νοῦ καὶ ἀμιγὲς τῆς ὕλης καὶ τῶν παθῶν διατυπού σης. Cf. the expression ‘unmixed Mind’ (styled also ‘separate’ and ‘impassible’) without the epi thet καθαρός (‘pure’). Themistius, paraphrAnim, pp. 13; 14; 94; 97; 106. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 62. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1227.  Origen, Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V. 7), pp. 157 8: καὶ ἔοικέν γε τὸ ἐν Ἐξόδῳ ἱλαστή ριον ἀναφέρειν οὐκ ἐπ᾿ ἄλλον τινὰ ἢ τὸν Σωτῆρα· τοῦτον γὰρ προέθετο ὁ Θεὸς ἱλαστήριον *** χρυσίον δὲ καθαρὸν πολλαχοῦ τηρήσας συμβολικῶς λέγεσθαι τὸν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ πρὸς ὕλην νοῦν· τοιοῦτον δέ ἐστιν ἡμῶν τὸ ἱλαστήριον τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν Θεὸς Λόγος ἢ τάχα μᾶλ λον ἡ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ψυχή. Cf. Origen, commJohn, XX.20.162; Cels, VI.47.  Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 3.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156; 176.

852

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

pagan, he refused to see the Creator/Mind as different from the supreme God, for which Proclus castigated him and styled him an anti-Platonist.¹¹⁷ However, he felt that he did not need to appeal to Anaxagoras in order to establish his Christian doctrine, which he could have never done, anyway. The expedient was the text of the Wisdom of Solomon, and the eo ipso Anaxagorean tenor of it: In the wisdom, there is a spirit, which is incorporeal, holy, only begotten, manifold, fine (λεπτόν), lively, agile, plain, distinct, undefiled, clear, not subject to hurt, loving the things that are good, sharp, unhindered, beneficent, loving men, steadfast, sure, sound, free from care, almighty, overseeing all things, and permeating all intelligible, pure and finest spirits (διὰ πάντων χωροῦν πνευμάτων νοερῶν καθαρῶν λεπτοτάτων). For wisdom is more mobile than any motion, and it permeates all things (διήκει καὶ χωρεῖ διὰ πάντων) because of its pureness (διὰ τὴν καθαρότητα).¹¹⁸

Hardly could Origen have found a description more expressive of the Anaxagorean Mind. Why then should he appeal to Anaxagoras rather than to this Hellenistic text, which had also the merit of claiming Solomon as its author? Plato had said that, whereas all other Presocratic accounts of the supreme principle ‘were laughable’, the only serious one was that of Anaxagoras, who postulated the Mind as ‘self-ruled and mixed with nothing, which orders all things, and permeates them all’ (διὰ πάντων ἰόντα).¹¹⁹ This fits perfectly with the scriptural expression in the Wisdom of Solomon, διήκει δὲ καὶ χωρεῖ διὰ πάντων (7:24: ‘that which permeates all things’; also 7:23: διὰ πάντων χωροῦν πνευμάτων). Anaxagoras styled the Mind ‘the finest of all things and the purest’ (λεπτότατόν τε πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον), the Wisdom of Solomon calls it fine (λεπτόν), and extols its ‘purity’ (διὰ τὴν καθαρότητα). Little wonder then that Origen identified the Son/Logos with this Mind, in like a manner he felt at liberty to do so with the Father, or with the Trinitarian God. The Logos contains in himself all the logoi,¹²⁰ Anaxagoras’ Mind contains all the principles/logoi within himself as much as is he ‘unmixed’ with them, which is why he styles it τὸ περιέχον (that which contains or embraces; the receptacle).¹²¹

 Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31.  Wisdom of Solomon, 7:22 24.  Plato, Cratylus, 413c: ὃ λέγει ᾿Aναξαγόρας, νοῦν εἶναι τοῦτο· αὐτοκράτορα γὰρ αὐτὸν ὄντα καὶ οὐδενὶ μεμειγμένον πάντα φησὶν αὐτὸν κοσμεῖν τὰ πράγματα διὰ πάντων ἰόντα. See also, chapter 9, pp. 620 9.  Cf. Origen, commJohn, XIX.22.147: τῷ γὰρ εἶναι παντὸς οὐτινοσοῦν τοὺς λόγους … ἐν αὐτῷ.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 155: καὶ γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ ἀποκρίνονται ἀπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ τοῦ περιέχοντος, καὶ τό γε περιέχον ἄπειρόν ἐστι τὸ πλῆθος. Op. cit. p. 157: δὲ νοῦς,

Origen and the Anaxagorean legacy

853

Commenting on Exodus, 16:15‒16,¹²² there is a punning with the term ‘word’ (λόγος, meaning ‘commandment’ given by Lord) and God the Logos, who came down to the Jews from heaven in the form of ‘bread’ (notably, ‘manna’). He sees the Anaxagorean epithet λεπτὸν (‘fine’) designating this food in the previous sentence (Exodus, 16:14) as a serependitious opportunity, which he seized in order to recall and put his own erudition to use. The manna that was sent down to the desert from heaven was ‘fine’, it was a ‘logos’ (λόγος, word, commandment), and it is a symbol of the Logos (Λόγος), that is, of the Son/Wisdom, which is ‘fine in its own nature, and permeates all of the intelligible, pure, and finest spirits (διῆκον διὰ πάντων πνευμάτων). For this wisdom is a spirit which is holy, only-begotten, manifold, fine, and the rest’.¹²³ Is it really mere chance that quotation of this scriptural portion by subsequent writers has been always extremely rare?¹²⁴ Origen was satisfied that, although the book of Exodus says that the manna was bread, in fact this was a ‘logos’ given by God (τὸ μάννα λόγος ἦν). Consequently, he infers that this was the Logos who permeates the entire universe and is present also in every individual man.¹²⁵ This is why it was written that the manna is ‘like the κόριον’:¹²⁶ for κόριον is reputed to be ‘a plant that functions as a seed, no matter which part of it is planted; hence, even when it is cut into pieces, it does not lose its power.’ He adds then, ‘this is precisely what the Logos who permeates everything is’ (τοιοῦτος δὲ δι᾿ ὅλου ὁ λόγος).¹²⁷ However, appealing to the Wisdom of Solomon was only an expedient, since in reality Origen entertained the Anaxagorean notion, which became a legacy to the Stoics, too. Origen’s expression διῆκον διὰ πάντων πνευμάτων is not only

ὃς ἀεί ἐστι, τὸ κάρτα καὶ νῦν ἐστιν ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα, ἐν τῷ πολλῷ περιέχοντι καὶ ἐν τοῖς προσκριθεῖσι καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀποκεκριμένοις.  Exodus, 16:15 16: “This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat. This is the word which the Lord has commanded” (Οὗτος ὁ ἄρτος ὃν ἔδωκε Κύριος ὑμῖν φαγεῖν. Τοῦτο τὸ ῥῆμα ὃ συνέταξε Κύριος). Cf. John, 6:41 & 6:51, which Origen quoted and considered at several points of his work.  Origen, selDeut, PG.12.808.40 56; quoting Wisdom of Solomon, 7:23. Origen used the book of Wisdom of Solomon as canonical and appealed to that conveniently. See Cels, III.45; V.29 (& Philocalia, 22.7); commJohn, XX.4.26; De Oratione, 31.1; frPs, Psalm 77:45; selPs, PG.12.1113.20 24.  Only Methodius of Olympus, Symposium, 7.1. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 7.12.6; 11.14.10.  See COT, ‘The Place of the Logos’, pp. 165 72.  κόριον is a kind of plant, namely, the adiantum capillus veneris.  Origen, selDeut, PG.12.808.51 57.

854

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

close to that of Plato’s διὰ πάντων ἰόντα speaking of Anaxagoras’ Mind:¹²⁸ it became also a characteristic part of the technical Stoic terminology,¹²⁹ and he used it himself in the Contra Celsum, too.¹³⁰ In any event, the origin of it is Anaxagoras.¹³¹

 Atticus used this terminology speaking of the universal soul permeating everything, and attributed the notion to Plato. Atticus, Fragmenta, fr. 12.1, apud, Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangel ica, 15.12.1: Ἔτι τοῦ Πλάτωνος λέγοντος τὴν ψυχὴν διακοσμεῖν τὰ πάντα, διήκουσαν διὰ πάντων. Proclus used the expression διὰ πάντων διήκειν abundantly, in relation either to providence (Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 146; In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 53; commTim, v. 1, pp. 190; 215), or to a universal cause in general (In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 734; 856), or to the forms (In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 921), or to the divine power (In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 953), or to the universal soul (commCrat, 71; commTim, v. 2, pp. 108; 286), or to the life giving Deity (commTim, v. 1, p. 386), or to the cosmic order (commTim, v. 2, p. 52), and to universal principles in general (com mEucl, pp. 5; 7; 10; 91).  Cf. Pseudo Galen attributing this to the Stoics; Introductio, p. 698: κατὰ τοὺς Στωϊκοὺς τὸ διῆκον διὰ πάντων πνεῦμα, ὑφ᾿ οὗ τὰ πάντα συνέχεσθαι καὶ διοικεῖσθαι. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.147: According to the Stoics, the Demiurge is ‘the father of everything’ and his act which per meates the entire universe (τὸ διῆκον διὰ πάντων) is accorded different names, depending on his function. The Suda attributed these ideas to ‘the Greeks’; letter theta, entry 178. Also, Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 8, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.11.42: Ὁ δὲ ἐντεταμένος Ἑρμῆς δηλοῖ τὴν εὐτονίαν· δείκνυσι δὲ καὶ τὸν σπερματικὸν λόγον τὸν διήκοντα διὰ πάντων. Bessarion, De Natura et Arte, 3.5: ὁ διήκων διὰ πάντων κυβερνήτης νοῦς βουλεύεται … ἀναγκαῖον γὰρ ἔστι σοι λέγειν τὸν διήκοντα διὰ πάντων νοῦν καὶ ἐφεστῶτα τοῖς πᾶσιν ἢ ἕνα εἶναι πολλοῖς ἴσως ὀνό μασι ταῖς διαφόροις ἐνεργείαις ὀνομαζόμενον. Supra, p. 683, note 393.  Cf. Origen, Cels, VI.71: οἰόμενος ἡμᾶς λέγοντας πνεῦμα εἶναι τὸν θεὸν μηδὲν ἐν τούτῳ διαφέρειν τῶν παρ᾿ Ἕλλησι Στωϊκῶν, φασκόντων ὅτι ὁ θεὸς πνεῦμα ἐστὶ διὰ πάντων διεληλυθὸς καὶ πάντ᾿ ἐν ἑαυτῷ περιέχον. Διήκει μὲν γὰρ ἡ ἐπισκοπὴ καὶ ἡ πρόνοια τοῦ θεοῦ διὰ πάντων ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ὡς τὸ τῶν Στωϊκῶν πνεῦμα. … οὐκ ἂν σῶμα εἴη ὁ θεὸς λόγος, δι᾿ οὗ τὰ πάντ᾿ ἐγένετο, ὁ φθάνων, ἵνα πάντα διὰ λόγου γίνηται, οὐχ ἕως ἀνθρώπων μόνων ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἐλαχίστων εἶναι νομιζομένων καὶ ὑπὸ φύσεως διοικουμένων.  The anonymous scholiast of Euripides (Scholia in Euripidem, 884, ref. to Anaxagoras) has it that ‘some say that Zeus is the Mind which permeates everything (ὁ διήκων διὰ πάντων νοῦς); but others maintain that the ‘Mind which permeates everything is our God’ (ὁ διήκων διὰ πάν των νοῦς … ὁ νοῦς ἡμῶν ὁ θεός, apud Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 1018: ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός); and they say this departing from the teaching of Anaxagoras (ὁρμῶνται δὲ ἐκ τῶν ᾿Aναξαγορείων λόγων)’. Plutarch, De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1026B (with reference to Anaxagoras and Euripides): καὶ γὰρ ἀνάγκη καὶ νοῦς ἐστιν ἡ διήκουσα διὰ πάντων δύναμις.

De Principiis

855

De Principiis In the beginning of this early work, Origen speaks of God in such terms as μονάς and ἑνάς, which seems to be a Pythagorean resonance.¹³² To later Pythagoreans, these terms were not synonymous, since the Monad indicated the primal unity out of which multiplicity emerged, whereas the bare One suggested the Absolute, which was unrelated to anything. However, Origen added a third designation about God, which is ‘a Mind, and fount, from which all intellectual existence or mind proceeds’ (mens et fons, ex quo initium totius intellectualis naturae vel mentis est). This Mind is ‘purely simple mental existence’ (‘propter natura simplex et tota mens’, then, ‘divinae naturae simplicitas’). It is hard not to recall that Anaxagoras had already posited the Mind as being ‘simple, unmixed and pure’ (ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ τε καὶ καθαρόν).¹³³ Origen’s statements run in this vein, and his conclusion makes it plain: “Only the species of the Deity, if I may so call it, has the privilege of existing apart from all material intermixture” (totius corporae admixtionis alienum una sola), and it is prior to the ‘elements’.¹³⁴ In the first place, he identified the Anaxagorean Mind with the Christian God while realizing that he had to develop this notion to a Trinitarian God. In the first book of De Principiis, the term ‘mind’ bespeaking God is used more frequently than the term God itself. The enterprise was not easy for a newly converted pagan, however erudite. Since Anaxagoras’ Mind was beginningless, whereas the creation of the logoi had a beginning, it appeared that a certain state of the Mind should be envisaged in which this Mind was idle (or, at any rate, not ‘reflecting’ this universe). However, the sense that this notion of idle Mind could possibly make was not clear, and it was tantalizing to Aristotle and Theophrastus, as discussed later. To this problem, two different solutions were proposed. In the hardly trustworthy Latin translation of this early work, Origen is represented as making contradictory statements: on the one hand, the Mind would have never been idle since his goodness over creatures would have never been

 Origen, Princ, I.1.6. Anatolius of Laodicea (the teacher of Iamblichus) wrote that the Pytha goreans used to style the Monad ‘Nous’ and identified this with the supreme God. See chapter 1, pp. 121 2, and note 70.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405a18; 429a17; Metaphysica, 989b15; Physica, 256b25. Simplicius, commCael, p. 279; commPhys, p. 1227; Simplicius (or, whoever the author), commAnim, pp. 33; 226; 235.  Origen, Princ, I.1.6.

856

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

inactive either;¹³⁵ on the other, creatures were not co-eternal with God and they had a beginning of existence.¹³⁶ If indeed this was what Origen actually wrote (which was not), the theory was untenable, since it was impossible for two contradictory notions to be reconciled. Against this dead end, there was some way for the Christian Origen to go in order to make fuller use of the notion of divine will, which was Anaxagorean, too. God is not Creator by essence: he assumed this function out of his goodness and untrammelled freedom. Therefore, the act of creation has a contingent character, that is, it is not the result of any necessity whatsoever.¹³⁷ In short, this is about a personal God, not about a cosmic principle. I have argued that the Latin translation of what is allegedly Origen’s De Principiis cannot provide definite conclusions about what Origen really maintained, not even during the early stage of his Christian life. Rather, the seemingly erratic statements of that work should be interpreted in the light of Greek texts that can be trusted as expounding his real ideas, while bearing in mind that certain (nonpivotal) views underwent minor evolution, hence they should be considered only in relation to the different stages of his life, during which each one of them was written. At the same time, eisegeses, allegations, adulteration, and the unscrupulous interpolative translation by Rufinus, should always be taken into account. One thing is for sure: never did Origen maintain that individual things, persons, or phenomena were the proximate object of creation. Therefore, any notion of ‘prefiguration’ applied to his thought is as much of nonsense as when it is attributed to Anaxagoras. If there are points in the De Principiis which might give such an impression, this is only a clumsy rendering by Rufinus who fell far short from being able to grasp and assess the Anaxagorean background, which was put to ample use in that work by Origen. Unless this fact is recognized, one should have to conclude that Origen was a schizophrenic. For whereas elaboration and marginal development of his thought with the passage of time is indeed there as a real recognizable process, which is natural after all, it would have been impossible for him to express diametrically conflicting views during the same period of his life, indeed in the same work. Such is the case with De Principiis, I.4.4, where he is represented as positing (though not clearly) such a notion. In this Wisdom, therefore, who ever existed with the Father, the creation was always present in form and outline, and there was never a time when the prefiguration of those things

 Origen, op. cit. I.2.9 10.  Origen, op. cit. II.9.2.  COT, pp. 120; 129; 135; 148; 150. Cf. supra, pp. 833; 838.

De Principiis

857

which hereafter were to be did not exist in Wisdom. … And certainly if all things have been made in wisdom, ¹³⁸ then, since Wisdom has always existed, they have always existed in wis dom in a state of form (ac formata conditio), and there was never a moment at which the prefiguration of those things which afterwards came to be was not in the Wisdom (et num quam erat quando eorum, quae futura erant, preafiguratio apud sapientiam non erat).¹³⁹

However, before that point, he had already said that ‘in wisdom there was implicit every capacity and form of the creation that was to be, both of those things that exist in a primary sense and of those which happen in consequence of them’.¹⁴⁰ He made it clear that this is all about ‘foreknowledge’ of ‘the very created things that had been as it were outlined and prefigured in’ Wisdom (virtute praescientiae praeformata atque disposita), which ‘contains within herself the principles or logoi or species of the whole creation (continens scilicet in semet ipsa universae creaturae vel initia vel rationes vel species)’. However, never did Origen himself couch fundamental propositions in such ambivalent terms as ‘this or that or that’. This was characteristic of Aristotle, who could not determine what essence proper is, and spoke of this as being ‘either formless matter or form or both’, but he never made up his mind,¹⁴¹ which is one of the reasons why some of his eminent commentators made devastating comments concerning his confounded statements. On this, Origen was the counterpoint of Aristotle, since he could not rest content unless he had made everything absolutely clear (μηδὲν τῶν θείων γραφῶν ἐᾶσαι ἀνερμήνευτον),¹⁴² which is why some of his propositions were tragically misunderstood. In short, such expressions in De Principiis are either ‘interpretations’ by Rufinus or interpolations by third parties. It should be recalled that Porphyry (quoted by Arabic sources) testified that, according to Anaxagoras, ‘the root of things is one single body’ and ‘from this proceed all bodies and bodily forces and species and genera.’¹⁴³ Origen’s foregoing expression, ‘in wisdom’, evidently suggests the Body of the Logos, which I canvass later in this chapter, and ‘things that exist in a primary sense’ are simply

 Psalms, 103:24.  Origen, Princ, I.4.4 5.  Origen, op. cit. I.2.2.  Aristotle, De Anima, 41414 16: τριχῶς γὰρ λεγομένης τῆς οὐσίας, καθάπερ εἴπομεν, ὧν τὸ μὲν εἶδος, τὸ δὲ ὕλη, τὸ δὲ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν. Cf. De Generatione Animalium, 724b5 6. Metaphysica, 1029a5 6 & 28 30; 1033a2 3; 1084b10 12.  Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, p. 409. This pithy remark epitomizes Origen’s philo sophical mentality, which is why it was quoted by later authors. See George Monachus, Chron icon, p. 456; Chronicon Breve, PG.110.537.21 22. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Virtutibus et Vi tiis, p. 139. Suda, letter epsilon, entry 1921; letter omega, entry 183.  This is a precise parallel to the Body of Anaxagoras’ Mind. See supra, p. 366.

858

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

the logoi, which Rufinus did not understand and modern students of Origen have no inkling of this notion: normally, those who come upon the expression ‘logoi’, speak of them indifferently, calling them ‘logoi or Ideas’ (although, to Origen, ‘Ideas’ was a repulsive term, and he mentioned it scornfully,¹⁴⁴ because he knew that Plato’s Theory of Ideas was a failure), and defiantly they attribute to Origen ‘Platonism’; others, considering themselves more ‘lenient’, essay to mitigate the obloquy of ‘Platonism’, and go as far as to concede only ‘moderate Platonism’, or ‘Christian Platonism’ (which is preposterous and self-defeating), but this happens usually at points where, in reality, Origen reflects in either Aristotelian or Stoic terms. Almost simultaneously with those points of De Principiis, indeed only a little later (if at all¹⁴⁵), Origen wrote that all things have come to be according to the logoi (λόγους) concerning the things which subsequently were to come to be (τῶν ἐσομένων); in the first place, those logoi were created by God’s utterance to his Wisdom (οὕτω τὰ σύμπαντα γεγονέναι κατὰ τοὺς ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ προτρανωθέντας ὑπὸ θεοῦ τῶν ἐσομένων λόγους). He adds that, once God created a living wisdom, so to speak, (κτίσας, ἵν᾿ οὕτως εἴπω, ἔμψυχον σοφίαν ὁ θεός), he allowed from the forms which were in her (ἐπέτρεψεν ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν αὐτῇ τύπων) to present to the things which exist, and to matter, [both] their actual creation (πλάσιν)¹⁴⁶ and the species, whereas the misleading expression ‘and I focus my reflection on whether this holds true also for individual existence’ is a serious editorial mistake of fact and of reading a damaged manuscript.¹⁴⁷ Even in the flawed Latin translation, ‘the Wisdom is a beginning of the ways ¹⁴⁸ of God’, in the sense that ‘she contains within herself the beginnings or causes or species of the whole creation (continens scilicet in semet ipsa universae creaturae vel initia¹⁴⁹ vel rationes¹⁵⁰ vel species) – not the individual perceptible things. Not-

 Origen, Princ, II.3.6. See quotation, infra, pp. 1349 50.  See discussion infra, pp. 877 ff.  The term πλάσις suggesting ‘actual creation’ is a central theme in Origen’s theology; he con trasted this with ποίησις, which points to providential creation. See infra, pp. 909 11, juxtapo sition of the terms ποίησις (as in Genesis 1:26) and πλάσις (Genesis 2:7). Also, see Origen, homJer, 1.10, and COT, pp. 84 6.  Origen, commJohn, I.19.113 5. See discussion infra, pp. 876 7.  Prov. 8:22.  initia vel rationes vel species. We have therefore, initia for ἀρχαί, rationes for λόγοι, and species for εἴδη. Quite simply, this is all about Anaxagoras’ ‘first body’. Supra, pp. 781 9.  Certain codices read formes (Mac), or formas (GAbMpc), or forma (S), instead of rationes. This is perfectly acceptable, since the term is a translation of τύπος, which Origen uses in this specific sense in the Greek text of commJohn, I.8.46; II.6.52; XIII.53.352; XX.24.209 10.

De Principiis

859

withstanding the quality of the Latin translation, his Anaxagorean mode of reflection is evident once again. ‘Prefiguration’ and ‘preformation’ suggests that in Wisdom there were all individual substances ‘in form’. However, Origen spoke only about the setting, indeed about the constructive and cohesive causes according to which the universe was to come to pass and to be held together as a cohesive entity. This was a view that he sustained until the end of his life. Had he maintained that creation involved individual corporeal entities, he would not have written that the narration of Moses does not refer to ‘any individual’ (οὐχ οὕτως περὶ ἑνός τινος), but simply it suggests creation of ‘the human nature’ (περὶ τῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως).¹⁵¹ That which was ‘created’ out of the Providential Creation was not a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’: it was ‘male and female’; it was ‘human nature’ proper anticipating and making possible for real interplay between the logoi to came into being out of non-being. This is the sense in which ‘the beginning of human being was in the Paradise’,¹⁵² and the ‘rational creature, which was placed in the Paradise’ was ‘perfect’, since the created logoi, which anticipated the subsequent emergence of human nature ‘in the image’ of God, were perfect, too.¹⁵³ This is also the sense in which ‘there are certain creatures which are invisible’,¹⁵⁴ namely, incorporeal: they are the ‘logoi’ that were created by and in the Wisdom/ Logos, and they are themselves called ‘wisdom’, too. These logoi ‘decorate the ‘body’ of the personal Wisdom and make up a set which is like a ‘book’. Consequently, the content of this wisdom is styled ‘the logoi of providence and judgement.’¹⁵⁵ This means that all human beings that were to appear in due course should be built according to the specifics of male and female nature in terms of anatomy, DNA, and the like, but this does not mean that specific human beings such as John, Robert, or Mary, who were born in the twentieth century, were individually ‘prefigured’ right from the start. This is like a man who constructs a computer and endows it with certain applications: anything that will be worked on that computer will be constructed according to the system and applications of

 Cels, IV.40; the same in VII.50.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.37.244.  loc. cit.  Origen, Cels, VII.37. Since he always sought to buttress ‘precarious’ Greek notions on scrip tural authority, he considers this conception in relation to the saying, ‘The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made’ (Rom. 1:20). See Origen’s cardinal and critical distinction between things ‘not seen’ and ‘invisible’ ones, in COT, pp. 110 12.  Origen, frPs, Psalm 138:14 6; selPs, 138, PG.12.1660.

860

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

this machinery, but this does not mean that everything that will appear on the screen as a particular project has been ‘prefigured’ or ‘preformed’ in advance in this machine. But, of course, man is not God, and God is not a human being, far less is an information-processing system ‘creation’. This is why both Anaxagoras and Origen sustained that God has foreknowledge of everything that will come to pass in the future. Moreover, Origen pointed out that this does not suggest pre-determination of what is going to happen by means of the logoi that were created in the beginning. Put in somewhat unpolished terms, foreknowledge indicates a passive condition (as Aristotle would have put it),¹⁵⁶ whereas prefiguration suggests an active, indeed creative, one. In other words, the theory of Origen is an Anaxagorean one, and it is an evolutionary concept of creation, which Gregory of Nyssa promptly took up.¹⁵⁷ De Principiis is an early work that should be put to rest, since it is impossible to reconstruct the text that Origen actually wrote at an early stage of his Christian life; it has been heavily distorted and interpolated, and, no doubt, Rufinus’ Latin translation was not the least of detriment to it. It is certainly no chance that when Origen’s alleged views, as they were rendered by Antipater of Bostra, were read within the church of the Monastery of Sabas, Origen’s followers (who happened to be the most erudite of monks) were outraged, and a tremen Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 429b22 31, criticizing Anaxagoras, only because he reflected on the Anaxagorean Mind as if this were simply the human one perceiving sensible things. Cf. De Me moria et Reminiscentia, 450a10 14.  Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 72 (God created ‘the means’, the ‘causes’, and the ‘forces’ see italics): Οὐκοῦν τοῦτο νοεῖν, ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κοσμογονίας ὑποτίθεται, ὅτι πάντων τῶν ὄντων τὰς ἀφορμὰς καὶ τὰς αἰτίας, καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις, συλλήβδην ὁ Θεὸς ἐν ἀκαρεῖ κατεβάλ λετο, καὶ ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ τοῦ θελήματος ὁρμῇ, ἡ ἑκάστου τῶν ὄντων οὐσία συνέδραμεν, οὐρανός, αἰθήρ, ἀστέρες, πῦρ, ἀήρ, θάλασσα, γῆ, ζῶον, φυτά· ἃ τῷ μὲν θείῳ ὀφθαλμῷ πάντα καθεωρᾶτο, τῷ τῆς δυνάμεως λόγῳ δεικνύμενα, τῷ, καθώς φησιν ἡ προφητεία, εἰδότι πάντα πρὸ τῆς γενέ σεως αὐτῶν. Cf. Susanna [translatio Graeca], 35a; [Theodotionis versio], 42). This portion, which bears on the specific theory of creation (‘God knew all things before they were made’) was quot ed once by Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 4.4.14.2, and then abundantly by Origen, Princ, III.1.17 (& Philocalia, 21.16); commJohn, XIII.61.433; homJer, 4.3; commGen, PG.12.57.13 19 57 (& Philocalia, 23.4); Cels, VI.76 (& Philocalia, 15.13); Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos, 1 & Phil ocalia, 25.2 & Catena in Epistulam ad Romanos (typus Monacensis) (e cod. Monac. gr. 412), p. 277). Also, by Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 2.1.431, and Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 72, as above; In Basilium Fratrem, 3; De Opificio Hominis, pp. 185; 204. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 6.11.20; Commentaria in Psalmos, PG.23.520. 28 29 & 525.5 6. Athanasius, Oratio i Contra Arianos, 13.4. Cassian the Sabaite (= Pseudo Didymus, De Trinitate, PG.39.917.38. Julian the Arian, Commentarius in Job, pp.148; 219. Didymus, Commentarii in Ecclesiasten (7 8.8), Cod. p. 204; Commentarii in Psalmos 40 44.4, p. 322. Moreover, by John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, John of Damascus, Photius, Nicetas Stethatus, Michael Glycas, Gennadius Scholar ius, Bessarion, and others.

De Principiis

861

dous uproar erupted, which resulted in the indignat Origenists stepping out of the church in rage, and shortly after that, leaving the monastery. The text against Origen, which Justinian signed, was composed in the sixth century by the leaders of that monastery, especially abbot Gelasius, and Justinian made it an official imperial edict condemning what uninformed monks alleged to be Origenism. It is from such deplorable texts that modern editors such as P. Koetschau quoted and smuggled sixth-century allegations into edition of that work, branding such passages ‘Origen’s views from De Principiis’. What such editors did not take into account, or did not know, was the meaning ‘Origenism’ actually had in the sixth century, which in fact had nothing to do with Origen’s real views.¹⁵⁸ It would be absurd to urge that Origen wrote different things about his theory in two treatises that were written almost simultaneously in Alexandria shortly after his conversion (that is, the De Principiis and the commentary on the First Psalm), whereas he worked on the commentary on John once he finished the De Principiis or he was nearly through with it. What are the doctrines that would have been the first priority for any newly converted Greek to study and consider in relation to possible coincidence with his pagan tenets? Presumably, these were, (1) the Christian/Biblical cosmology; (2) the doctrine of resurrection, which to pagan ears appeared weird; (3) the allegation that David, in his Psalms, spoke about the advent of the Logos in incarnated form, and of his passion, crucifixion, and resurrection. All of these were questions that Origen considered simultaneously once he joined Christianity. Hence, he wrote the De Principiis while studying these questions at the same time.¹⁵⁹ The fact of the matter is that those who cared to disfigure the De Principiis did not manage to extinguish the Anaxagorean influence which makes a distinctive mark therein, because they did not recognize them. Such is the point at which creation is depicted as one of ‘seeds and causes’.

 See RCR, “The sixth century Origenism”, pp. 259 321.  In Princ, II.3.6, Origen says that he has already written a commentary on the beginning of Genesis (1:1); but in the same work, I.2.6, he says that he had not reached Genesis 1:26 yet, name ly, the point about the creation of man (which he treated in his Homiliae in Genesim, 1.13). In I.3.3, he says that he has already written a commentary on Genesis, 1:2. In II.4.4, he says that he has written a commentary on the Second Psalm, which does not mean that he had not written commentaries on more Psalms, too. In II.10.1, he says that he has already written a commentary on Resurrection. In I.2.13, he says that he has not yet written commJohn, I.20 24, where he ex amines the ‘conceptions of the Son’ (canvassed in COT, pp. 35 7; 52 62; 214; 170; 249; 271), but Princ II.9.3 is a parallel to commJohn, II.13 (the notion of the ‘world’). All of this makes it certain that commJohn was written when he was through with Princ, or shortly after it was finished.

862

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Rational beings were made while before they did not exist. What they are, therefore, is something neither their own nor eternal (quod sunt, ergo, non est proprium nec sempiter num), but given by God. For it did not always exist (non enim semper fuit), and everything that is given, it can be withdrawn and taken away. … From all this source, it appears that the Creator of all things obtained certain seeds and causes (semina et causas) of variety and diversity, in order that, according to the diversity of minds, that is, of rational beings (which diversity they must be supposed to have produced from the causes we have stated above) he might create a world that was various and diverse.¹⁶⁰

Likewise, his Theory of Logoi is present shortly after that point, where he speaks of ‘logoi’ and ‘seeds’ once again: So must we suppose that our bodies, like a grain falls into the earth (Ita namque etiam nos tra corpora velut granum cadere in terram putanda sunt); but there a certain logos (ratio ea) which holds together¹⁶¹ the substance of the body (quae substantiam continet corporalem); and although the bodies die and are corrupted or scattered, nevertheless, this logos (ratio) itself, which is always intact within the substance of the body (quae semper in substantia corporis salua est) by the action of the Logos of God (Verbo Dei) raises them [i. e. the bod ies] from the earth (erigat ea de terra) and reconstructs and restores them (et restituat ac reparet), in like a manner the power which exists in a grain of wheat (sicut ea virtus, quae inest in grano frumenti) reconstructs and restores the grain after its corruption and death, into a body which stalk and ear. And so in the case of those who shall be deemed worthy of obtaining the inheritance in the kingdom of the heavens, this logos (ratio illa), of which we spoke above, by which the body is restored, at the command of God refashions out of the earthly and natural body a spiritual body, which can dwell in the heavens.¹⁶²

 Origen, Princ, II.9.2. Cf. supra, note 157, Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 72.  That is, a logos is described as a cohesive cause, which holds the body together.  Origen, Princ, II.10.3. The Anaxagorean notion of incorporeal seeds being the principles giv ing rise to everything, determines the core of Origen’s doctrine. Man is created not only out of the natural seed of the parents, but also out of ‘higher and more divine seeds’, which is bespoken by 1 Cor. 15:38 (Cels, I.37; V.18; cf. commJohn, XX.2.3 6; XX.5.34; comm1Cor, 84; 87; commEph, 17). This is the meaning of God saying, ‘all of the souls are mine’ (Ezekiel 18:4; see infra, pp. 1317 8; 1351). The earthly physical body is itself a ‘seed’, which will give rise to one’s future body at the time of resurrection, which will be of a quality correspondent to one’s quality of con duct during this life (comm1Cor, 31; 84). Scriptural passages such as 1 Cor. 15:38, 1 Cor. 15:42 44, and Ecclesiasticus 10:19, served to Origen as the authority supporting his theory of rational crea tures assuming bodies of different qualities from one cosmic period to another, in accordance with their free moral action during any past aeon. However, in effect, this was a brilliant com bination of the Anaxagorean and Empedoclean philosophies duly adapted to Biblical context. See COT, pp. 272 376, and PHE, pp. 43 64; 147 222.

De Principiis

863

Origen wrote this work simultaneously with his commentary on the First Psalm,¹⁶³ and maintained this doctrine throughout his life, since it occurs also in his Contra Celsum. ¹⁶⁴ The entire rationale is evidently Anaxagorean. The main argument is based on the idea that the vital logoi which make up a human being, and hold it together as cohesive principles, are incorruptible (as indeed all of the logoi are): they can either concur (in which case a man lives) or cease to concur (and then a man dies). His doctrine of resurrection is that the logoi that made up a certain human being, and then ceased to concur, may concur once again at God the Logos’ command. He stated that the proximate object of creation is the incorruptible logoi, which was plainly an Anaxagorean doctrine. The logoi are the ‘essence’ of the things that they give rise to: things come to be and then they perish in terms of matter or quality, but the logoi themselves are indestructible; once they were created, they are always¹⁶⁵ and always will be on the Body of the Logos. This Logos ‘is everywhere and runs through all things’ (Ipse tamen ubique est et universa percurrit), which is only the Anaxagorean doctrine about the Mind that ‘permeates everything’ (διὰ πάντων διήκει).¹⁶⁶ This is the context for some crucial propositions made by Origen by the end of his life to be considered. On the face of it, the reply was to Celsus arguing that ‘God made nothing mortal, and only immortal beings; and mortal beings are the work of others’. In effect, however, he had in mind Plotinus,¹⁶⁷ who assigned creation to a superior hypostasis, namely the soul. Celsus argued that, whereas God is the creator of the soul, material things are made by (unidentified) inferior powers. Against this, Origen argued that even the most unimportant material things are made by the Supreme Mind (πρῶτος νοῦς).¹⁶⁸ His retort is that such

 Origen, selPs, PG.12.1097.25 35 (apud Epiphanius, Panarion, v. 2, p. 426, quoting from Meth odius of Olympus). See Origen’s text quoted infra, p. 950.  Cf. Origen, Cels, V.18 19; V.23; VII.32 (also, III.42; IV.56 57; IV.60). See in the same text ‘mat ter’ being treated as the Stoic τὸ πρῶτον ὑποκείμενον. Origen, selPs, PG.12.1093 97.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.156.5 8: ᾿Aπολοῦνται οἱ οὐρανοὶ οὐ κατ᾿ οὐσίαν, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸ σχῆμα. Op. cit. PG.12.1240.46 51: Οὐκ ἄρα οἱ οὐρανοὶ ἀπολοῦνται· ἀλλ᾿ οἱ μὲν διηγούμενοι οὐρανοὶ τὴν δόξαν τοῦ Θεοῦ τῆς νοερᾶς εἰσι φύσεως, οὐρανοὶ λεγόμενοι διὰ τὸ ἔχειν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς τὸν τῆς δικαιοσύνης ἥλιον [i. e. the Logos]· οἱ δὲ ἀπολλύμενοι οὐρανοὶ τῆς σωματικῆς εἰσιν οὐσίας. Likewise, frPs, Psalm 67:3.  See chapter 9, pp. 618 27. Cf. Princ, II.1.3: “The universe is, as it were, an immense mon strous animal being held together by the Power and Logos of God, as by one soul; … We ‘live and move and have our being in God’ [1 Cor. 12:12] through the fact that He binds and holds to gether the universe by his power; God the parent of all things fills and holds together the entire universe with the fulness of his power.”  Origen was aware of the Enneads, and of Plotinus’ view anyway. See infra, pp. 1032 40.  Origen, Cels, IV.51. I canvass this notion infra, pp. 978 98.

864

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

views contradict not only Origen’s own ones, but also those of ‘the not undistinguished sect who are disciples of Zeno of Citium’,¹⁶⁹ since it is a ‘a certain supreme and perfect Mind (τέλειός τις νοῦς) who created the qualities in the matter of which plants are made’.¹⁷⁰ He makes mention of the Stoic doctrine about formless matter being a substrate which receives any quality upon itself,¹⁷¹ and emphasizes that ‘to all of us who have accepted the [divine] providence’ (i. e. to Anaxagoras, to Stoics, and to Origen himself) any quality assumed by matter is a direct result of direct divine will (καὶ βουλομένου μὲν θεοῦ ποιότης τοιαδὶ νῦν ἐστι περὶ τήνδε τὴν ὕλην ἑξῆς δὲ τοιαδί), indeed the will of the divine Logos (θείου τινὸς λόγου ἔργον εἶναι).¹⁷² He is certainly prepared to endorse Celsus’ claim that ‘a snake is formed out of a dead man, and a bee from an ox, and a wasp from a horse, and a beetle from an ass, and, in general, worms from most animals’, because this was a particular manifestation of the Anaxagorean principle, ‘everything comes from everything’. Pseudo-Plutarch reported that ‘the Epicureans believe that animals are generated by alteration of one into another; for these, too, are part of the world, as Anaxagoras and Euripides say’.¹⁷³ At any rate, Anaxagoras declared that animals were produced from moisture, heat, and an earthly substance; later, the species were propagated by generation from one another.¹⁷⁴ Origen’s reference to formless matter being a substrate is obviously an echo coming from both Aristotle and the Stoics. But since at this point Aristotle is rebutted by name (concerning his idea of aether being indestructible), the references have a certain Stoic tenor. However, despite appearances, things are different: Origen writes after Anaxagoras, because he does not endorse the fundamental Stoic axiom about formless matter being uncreated. Origen had a lot of respect for the Stoics, but this does not men that he followed them all the way through; in fact, he did so only in so far as they were heirs to Anaxagor-

 Once again, this is an indication that Origen had in mind followers of Zeno, namely, such later Stoics as Cornutus. J. von Arnim attributed this to Chrysippus, fr. 1155, although not such a name is mentioned at this point, unlike other ones, where Origen mentions Chrysippus and cites some of his works that he had read himself.  Origen, Cels, IV.54.  Origen, Cels, IV.56.  Origen, Cels, IV.57.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 908D. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 123. These authors attribute the idea to both Anaxagoras and Euripides. See Conclusion of Part I, p. 506.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.9: ζῷα γίγνεσθαι ἐξ ὑγροῦ καὶ θερμοῦ καὶ γεώδους, ὕστερον δὲ ἐξ ἀλλήλων. Hippolytus, op. cit. 1.8.10: ζῷα δὲ τὴν μὲν ἀρχὴν ἐν ὑγρῷ γενέσθαι, μετὰ ταῦτα δὲ ἐξ ἀλλήλων.

De Principiis

865

ean legacy, while also respecting their ethics. Otherwise, he rebutted them on such cardinal issues as that (1) God and Matter are two supreme principles,¹⁷⁵ and (2) Matter is uncreated.¹⁷⁶ While admitting what is obvious to common experience, namely, that although ‘matter persists though the process of change’, this does not mean that it is itself indestructible or uncreated (as Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics maintained alike), which is why, at that same point of Contra Celsum, he wrote this: Matter, the substance which underlies the perishable quality, remains constant in the opin ion of those who hold that it is uncreated. If, however, any argument could show that it is not uncreated but was brought into existence for a certain purpose, obviously it will not have the same constant nature as it would have on the assumption that it is uncreated.¹⁷⁷

This was a lifetime opinion of his. He had a lot of respect for the Stoics, but he clearly dismissed their doctrine on matter. This is why, when he speaks of matter receiving in itself qualities, this can in no way associate Origen with either Plato nor Aristotle,¹⁷⁸ nor indeed with the Stoics. I cannot understand how so many distinguished men have supposed it [i. e. matter proper] to be uncreated, that is, not made by God himself the Creator of all things, but in its nature and power the result of chance. They believe that this matter was at his [i. e. God’s] hands by chance, and not by his own provision, and they think that this thing which was discov ered by chance was able to suffice him for so immense a work and for the exercise of his mighty power, so as to subserve the plan of his wisdom and be separated and formed into a

 Zeno, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 878B C & Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.14: Ζήνων Μνασέου Κιτιεὺς ἀρχὰς μὲν τὸν θεὸν καὶ τὴν ὕλην. Theodoret, Graecarum Affec tionum Curatio, 4.12: Ζήνων δὲ ὁ Κιτιεὺς ὁ Μνασέου, ὁ Κράτητος φοιτητής, ὁ τῆς Στωϊκῆς ἄρξας αἱρέσεως, τὸν θεὸν καὶ τὴν ὕλην ἀρχὰς ἔφησεν εἶναι. Cleanthes, apud Hermias (Christian philos opher and apologist, perhaps second third century), Irrisio Gentilium Philosophorum, 14. Chrys ippus, apud Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 224.  Chrysippus, apud Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 470. Philo, De Providentia, I (ma teria mundus ingenitus … materia mundus ingenitus supponatur). Zeno, apud Stobaeus, An thologium, 1.11.5a: Ζήνωνος. Οὐσίαν δὲ εἶναι τὴν τῶν ὄντων πάντων πρώτην ὕλην, ταύτην δὲ πᾶσαν ἀΐδιον καὶ οὔτε πλείω γιγνομένην οὔτε ἐλάττω. Op. cit. 1.11.5a: Χρυσίππου Στωικοῦ. Τῶν κατὰ ποιότητα ὑφισταμένων πρώτην ὕλην· ταύτην δὲ ἀΐδιον, οὔτε αὔξησιν οὔτε μείωσιν ὑπομένουσαν. Galen, Quod Qualitates Incorporeae Sint, p. 478 (SVF, II.116, Chrysippus fr. 323a, but no mention of Chrysippus is made): μόνην λέγουσι τὴν πρώτην ὕλην ἀΐδιον τὴν ἄποιον, οὐχὶ δὲ καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ποιότητας καὶ πάντα τὰ συμβαίνοντα.  Origen, op. cit. IV.60.  Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 51a: “The mother and receprive basis of the visible and sensible world is neither earth, not air, nor fire, nor water, nor anything derived from these, nor anything from which they are derived, but an invisible and formless substance, capable of receiving it.” Aris totle followed suit his teacher on this.

866

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

world. This seems to me to be very absurd and characteristic of men who are ignorant of the power and the intelligence of an uncreated being.¹⁷⁹

If this is not a direct attack on the aforementioned philosophers, what could it possibly be? Only an Anaxagorean would have written these words, as indeed only a follower of that school such as Origen could have written the following passage, making it clear that the object of creation are the logoi, whereas qualities are only subsequent to them. It should be recalled that, later, Simplicius averred that ‘the logoi are not qualities, but they are prior to qualities’, which is why qualities are destructible whereas the logoi are not.¹⁸⁰ Therefore, matter is but the product of incorporeal principles. In fact, he took a step beyond Anaxagoras towards making himself clear: although it was only with Simplicius that we are told that ‘distinction’ of principles meant ‘creation’ of them, Origen felt that he should make this point crustal-clear arguing for creation of everything ex nihilo. Perhaps also that passage which occurs in the Psalms refers to this doctrine: He spoke and they were made; he commanded and they were created. ¹⁸¹ For the statement, ‘He spoke and they were made’ seems to point to the substance of things that exist (uidetur ostendere sub stantiam dici eorum, quae sunt); the rest, ‘he commanded and they were created’, seems to be spoken of the qualities by which the substance itself moulded into form (de qualitatibus dictum uidetur, quibus substantia ipsa formata est)’.¹⁸²

I have discussed that the post-Anaxagorean notion ‘substance’ of a thing is no other than the principles/logoi themselves of it: substance of a thing is simply the logoi that make it up and sustain it. Qualities are given rise to subsequent to the principles: they are not principles themselves.¹⁸³ In terms of Origen’s cosmology, creation of the logoi pertains to the Providential Creation, whereas that of qualities is concomitant with the Actual Creation, that is, the perceptible universe. His exegesis of Psalm 32:10 (which he also quoted above) is consistent with his theory: the expression ‘He spoke and they were made’ bespeaks creation of substance of rational creatures, whereas ‘he commanded and they were created’ suggests ‘alteration from a better to a worse state’.¹⁸⁴ Likewise, he explains

 Origen, Princ, II.1.4. In the Philocalia, 24.5, the notion of formless matter is rejected, too.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 218, quoted in chapter 7, p. 465, note 123.  Psalms 32:9 & 148:5.  Origen, op. cit. II.1.5. He is also clear in positing qualities as corruptible, in Cels, IV.56.  See supra, chapter 7, p. 463. Qualities were primary principles to Strato of Lampsacus.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1305.25 28: Ἡ μὲν γένεσις τὴν τῶν λογικῶν οὐσίωσιν δηλοῖ· ἡ δὲ κτίσις τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ κρείττονος ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον μεταβολήν.

The Body of the Logos

867

that the ‘days’ of Genesis betoken only a certain ‘order’, not time, and certainly not measure of time,¹⁸⁵ which is a theory that Origen took up from Philo. Significantly, he adds that this theory could be argued also by means of the verses of Psalms 32:10 and 148:5. In short, he associated the appearance of qualities not with the initial creation, but only with the actual (subsequent) one.¹⁸⁶ Matter is never found without qualities (numquam subsistere extra qualitates),¹⁸⁷ but both matter and qualities are produced by means of the creative logoi and they are subsequent to the latter. Along with the Anaxagorean rationale of this analyses, Origen, is the sole philosopher who gave us to understand that the principles/logoi are ontologically prior to qualities, against some modern assumptions based on peremptory Delphic decipherment of ‘D-K fragments’, which identified Anaxagoras’ principles with qualities in the teeth of evidence banning such a hypothesis.

The Body of the Logos A ‘good’ creature The most spectacular and stunning influence of Anaxagoras upon Late Antiquity was the Theory of Logoi, which was taken up and revived by Origen, during a period when the Academy was virtually dead.¹⁸⁸ As we saw, it seems that this was also the theory of Bardaisan. If Origen stood far from Platonism, for which I have argued over many years,¹⁸⁹ this was so because Anaxagoras in-

 Origen, selGen, PG.12.97.25 31: Ἤδη τινὲς … ἐντεῦθεν τοῦτο κατασκευάζουσιν· ἕνεκεν δὲ τάξεως οἴονται τὸν κατάλογον τῶν ἡμερῶν εἰρῆσθαι καὶ τῶν ἐν αὐταῖς γενομένων. By ‘certain ones’ (τινές) Origen meant Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 13: Ἕξ δὲ ἡμέραις δημιουργηθῆναι φησὶ τὸν κόσμον, οὐκ ἐπειδὴ προσεδεῖτο χρόνων μήκους ὁ ποιῶν (ἅμα γὰρ πάντα δρᾶν εἰκὸς θεόν, οὐ προστάττοντα μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ διανοούμενον), ἀλλ᾿ ἐπειδὴ τοῖς γινομένοις ἔδει τάξεως.  Origen, op. cit. PG.12.97.32 34: Πιθανῶς δ᾿ ἂν πρὸς τοῦτο κατασκευαζομένῳ χρήσαιντο ῥητῷ, τῷ· Αὐτὸς εἶπε, καὶ ἐγενήθησαν· αὐτὸς ἐνετείλατο, καὶ ἐκτίσθησαν.  Origen, Princ, II.1.5.  See supra, pp. 196 ; 202 3 ; infra, p. 1216.  During the last thirty years, I have been advancing the thesis that Origen was an anti Pla tonist: first, through my PhD dissertation The Concept of Time in Origen, University of Glasgow, 1986, which was published under the same title in 1991, by Peter Lang Verlag, Bern/Frankfurt. Then, I pursued this thesis further: Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of Time, Brill, 2006, and Ori gen: Philosophy of History and Eschatology, Brill, 2007. More recently, in the The Real Cassian Re visited, Brill, 2012, chapters 5 (“Hellenism in the Sixth Century”) and 6 (“Doctrinal Decorum and Imperial Power” / The sixth century Origenism) further light has been cast upon this issue,

868

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

spired him. The ‘object’ that the Father created in the Logos/Wisdom was not any Platonic Ideas: it was the logoi. Origen’s notion of the Body of the Logos was Anaxagorean, as Porphyry’s testimony through Arabic sources confirms. Porphyry was well acquainted with Origen,¹⁹⁰ and Proclus attested that he incorporated and presumably endorsed ‘the sacrosanct accounts that Porphyry bequeathed in respect to these questions’,¹⁹¹ to a certain extent at least. However, Proclus did not care to consider them in relation to Anaxagoras, whereas evidently he had no interest in what Origen wrote as a converted Christian. It is then necessary to recall Origen’s conception of creation and to show his debts to Anaxagoras. The object of creation is the causative, cohesive, cognitive, and constitutive principles, by means of which everything was (and is being) generated. It is according to them that this world and everything in it, from start to finish, exist, act, and react with each other, whether animate or inanimate, whether objects or phenomena or animals. Before any perceptible reality appeared, God created the setting for this to emerge, to make sense, and to develop, be they planets, things, persons, phenomena, or abstract theories. The organizing principles, the sustainability and workability of the setting – this was the primal object of creation. In a pithy passage from his Homilies on Genesis referring to Genesis, 1:21‒23, Origen explains why was it that ‘God saw’ that the product of his creative act ‘was good’.¹⁹² But someone asks how the great whales and creeping creatures are interpreted as evil and the birds as good when Scripture said about them all, And God saw that they were good. ¹⁹³ Those things that are opposed to the saints are good for them, because they can defeat them and, when they have overpowered them, they become more glorious with God. Indeed when the devil requested that power be given to him against Job, the adversary, by attack ing him, was the cause of double glory for Job after his victory. What is shown from the fact that he received double those things that he lost in the first place is that he will no doubt also receive similarly in the heavenly realm. And the apostle says that No one is crowned

which modern scholars (with a few exceptions) are loath to endorse, because of religious alle giances prevailing over study of philosophy and historical testimonies.  See supra, the testimony by Vincent of Lérins in chapter 10, p. 771. I canvass this in a forth coming biography of Origen, in which I discuss also the relation of Origen’s work with those of Plotinus and Porphyry.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 391: Φέρε δὴ οὖν καὶ ὅσα ὁ φιλόσοφος Πορφύριος ἐν τούτοις ἱεροπρεπῆ νοήματα παραδέδωκε, συντόμως περιλάβωμεν.  Gen. 1:21.  Loc. cit.

The Body of the Logos

869

except for the one who has striven lawfully. ¹⁹⁴ For indeed, how will be there a struggle if there not be one who resists? Unless the darkness of night intervenes, no one would realize how great the beauty and brightness of light is. Why are some praised for purity unless be cause others are condemned for arrogance? Why are strong men magnified unless weak and coward men exist? If you use what is bitter then what is sweet is rendered more praise worthy; once you consider what is dark, the things that are bright will appear more delight ful to you.¹⁹⁵ And, in short, from the consideration of evil things the glory of good things is indicated more brilliantly. For this reason, therefore, the Scripture says this about every thing: And God saw that they were good. ¹⁹⁶ Why, nevertheless, is it not written, ‘And God said that they were good’, instead of, God saw that they were good? That is, God saw the usefulness of those things and that way by which, although in themselves they are as they are, nevertheless, they could make good men perfect. For this reason, therefore, he said, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds be multiplied upon the earth, ¹⁹⁷ that is, that the great whales and the creeping creatures be in the sea, as we explained above, and the birds upon the earth.¹⁹⁸

That ‘God saw that it was good’¹⁹⁹ means that He observed deeply (ἐνεῖδεν) in the logoi of each creature (τοῖς λόγοις ἑκάστου) and saw (καὶ εἶδεν) how each of the creatures is good in accordance with the logoi it had come to be (πῶς καθ᾿ οὓς γέγονεν ἕκαστον τῶν κτισμάτων λόγους ἐστὶν καλόν), which appears in the following. If anyone does not take the saying, God saw that it was good ²⁰⁰ in this way, let him explain how the statement God saw that it was good holds true in the verse, Let the waters bring forth the creeping creatures having life, and birds flying above the earth under the firmament of heaven, ²⁰¹ and even more to the point, God made the great sea monsters. ²⁰² But it is the

 2 Tim. 2:5.  Origen describes ‘creation’ also in terms of ‘the contraries’, as Anaxagoras did. Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 763b: φασὶ γὰρ οἱ μὲν ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασιν εἶναι ταύτην τὴν ἐναντίωσιν εὐθύς, οἷον ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ ἕτεροι τῶν φυσιολόγων. Cf. Physica, 189a. Theophrastus, De Sensu et Sensibilibus, 1; 27; Physicorum Opiniones, 2: ἀποκρινομένων τῶν ἐναντίων διὰ τῆς ἀϊδίου κινήσεως, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 24. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 303; 658. Themistius, ParaphrPhys, pp. 3; 17. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 27; 44 5; 174; 180 1. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 91; commPhys, pp. 26; 89; 95; 110. Asclepius of Tralles, comm Metaph, p. 61. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 1.15. Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, 1 (comm. on Physica); commPhys, pp. 2; 7; Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii In Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, p. 179.  Gen. 1:21.  Gen. 1:22.  Origen, Homilies on Genesis (Latin), I.10.  Gen. 1:10.  Loc. cit.  Gen. 1:20.  Gen. 1:21.

870

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

logos of each of these (ὁ λόγος ὁ περὶ ἑκάστου), which God saw that is good. We must say the same things also about the words, Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to the kind, four footed creatures, and creeping creatures, and beasts of the earth according to their kind, ²⁰³ to which also is added, God saw that it was good. ²⁰⁴ For how are beasts and creeping creatures good, unless the logos concerning them (ὁ λόγος ὁ περὶ αὐτῶν) is good? ²⁰⁵

This means that ‘God saw the usefulness of those things, as well as the way by which, although they are what they are, they could make good men perfect’.²⁰⁶ Consequently, the goodness of the object of creation is to be found in the relations that come to pass, which ultimately conspire to do good. This is the old Stoic tenet sustaining that all occurrences in Nature conspire towards a purpose, which is always good as far as the Whole is concerned; no matter what circumstantial maladies may occur, Nature has arranged everything to the good, even though man cannot grasp the universal interrelation in particular instances. What matters is the good purpose involved in the wider scope of the function of Nature. As Stoic as this theory is known to be, the fundamental inspiration originated with Anaxagoras, who made the Mind the Administrator of the universe. There is neither determinism nor predestination being involved here:²⁰⁷ there are only interacting logoi and contingent outcomes. What the eventuality of the interaction between principles will be, is foreknown by God alone as a divine foresight, not as fixed predestination of future occurrences. This is presumably why Origen made this point: it is not written that God said that this object was good; instead, God saw that the object of creation was good. The juxtaposition is telling: ‘God saw’ means God had foreknowledge of what was to come to pass in due historical course.²⁰⁸

 Gen. 1:24.  Gen. 1:25.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.42.280 286.  Origen, Homilies on Genesis (Latin), I.10.  Origen, commGen, PG.12.67.30 32 (Philocalia, 23.11): μετρίως μὲν οὖν ὡς ἐν ἐπιτομῇ οἶμαι ἀποδεδεῖχθαι τὸ τὴν πρόγνωσιν τοῦ θεοῦ μὴ εἶναι καταναγκαστικὴν τῶν προεγνωσμένων πάν τως. Cf. Origen arguing for free will and against predestination in the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, (Latin), 7.7.7 7.8.6, actually treating Paul’s statement, ‘those whom he forknew he also presdestined’ (Rom. 8:28 29).  This is what Gregory of Nyssa wrote, following Origen: God saw all creatures (‘the means’, the ‘causes’, and the ‘forces’) upon creation. Supra, p. 860, note 157, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 72: ἃ τῷ μὲν θείῳ ὀφθαλμῷ πάντα καθεωρᾶτο.

The Body of the Logos

871

This is the philosophy of Anaxagoras who posited the Mind’s omniscience,²⁰⁹ in the sense of foreknowledge,²¹⁰ not of predetermination, far less, of predestination. When Origen speaks of the ‘incorporeal’ that came into being out of non-being, he actually refers the ‘logoi’, meaning (both in its literal sense and essential import) ‘utterances’ of God as well as ‘principles’. Likewise, when the Genesis says that ‘Adam’ was made, this only betokens human nature itself (περὶ τῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως),²¹¹ not any specific individual (οὐχ οὕτως περὶ ἑνός τινος). For ‘in Greek, Adam means man’; in fact, at that point, ‘Moses treats natural knowledge about the nature of man’.²¹²

 Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156 & 177: καὶ γνώμην γε περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἴσχει καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 608: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν. commPhys, p. 156: καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὅσα νῦν ἐστι καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς. Op. cit. p. 165: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ τὰ ἀποκρινόμενα καὶ διακρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὁπόσα νῦν ἔστι καὶ ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς. Op. cit. p. 174: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ διακρινόμενα καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλον ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν, ὅσα νῦν μὴ ἔστι, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς. Op. cit. p. 177: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ διακρινόμενα καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα, πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς. καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλον ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν, ἅσσα νῦν μὴ ἔστι, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς.  Origen, Cels, IV, 40; the same in VII.50.  Origen, Cels, IV.40: οὕτω δὲ καὶ περὶ τοῦ ᾿Aδὰμ καὶ περὶ τῆς ἁμαρτίας αὐτοῦ φιλοσοφήσουσιν οἱ ἐγνωκότες ὅτι καθ᾿ ἑλλάδα φωνὴν ὁ ᾿Aδὰμ ἄνθρωπός ἐστι, καὶ ἐν τοῖς δοκοῦ σι περὶ τοῦ ᾿Aδὰμ εἶναι φυσιολογεῖ Μωϋσῆς τὰ περὶ τῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως. Καὶ γὰρ ἐν τῷ ᾿Aδάμ, ὥς φησιν ὁ λόγος, πάντες ἀποθνῄσκουσι [1 Cor. 15:22] καὶ κατεδικάσθησαν ἐν τῷ ὁμοιώματι τῆς παραβάσεως ᾿Aδάμ, οὐχ οὕτως περὶ ἑνός τινος ὡς περὶ ὅλου τοῦ γένους ταῦτα φάσκοντος τοῦ θείου λόγου. Cf. op. cit. VII.50; commJohn, I.18.108: Καὶ τάχα διὰ τοῦτο οὐ μόνον πρωτότοκός ἐστιν πάσης κτίσεως, ἀλλὰ καὶ ᾿Aδάμ, ὃ ἑρμηνεύεται ἄνθρωπος. frLuc, 168: Διαγρά ψωμεν τοίνυν ὡς ἐν βραχεῖ λόγῳ τὴν ἔννοιαν τῆς παραβολῆς· ἀνάγεται ὁ ἄνθρωπος εἰς τὸν ᾿Aδὰμ ἤτοι εἰς τὸν περὶ ἀνθρώπου καὶ τῆς προηγουμένης αὐτοῦ ζωῆς καὶ τῆς διὰ παρακοῆς καθόδου λόγον. Didymus, Commentarii in Psalmos 29 34, Cod. p. 152: οὕτω καὶ οὗτος υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου ἐστίν· τοῦ οὕτω ἀγομένου ἀνθρώπου υἱός ἐστιν. καὶ ἄλλο δέ· τρόπον τινὰ τὰ καθ᾿ ἕκαστα γεν νήματά εἰσιν τοῦ καθόλου. ὁ καθόλου δὲ ἄνθρωπος κατ᾿ εἰκόνα καὶ ὁμοίωσιν θεοῦ γέγονεν· οὐδὲ γὰρ πάντως περὶ τοῦ ᾿Aδὰμ τοῦτο μόνου εἴρηται, ἀλλὰ ἡ φύσις τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἡ καθόλου, τὸ εἶδος κατ᾿ εἰκόνα καὶ ὁμοίωσιν θεοῦ γέγονεν. ὁ φυλάττων οὖν τὸ πρωτότυπον, τὸ ὡσανεὶ κα θόλου, ἐκεῖνος υἱός ἐστιν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. In Genesim, Cod. p. 112: καὶ γὰρ τὸ τοῦ ᾿Aδὰμ ὄνομα ἄνθρωπον σημαίνει, ὅπερ βεβαιοῖ τὸ λόγιον οὕτως ἔχον· Καὶ ἔπλασεν γάρ φησιν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἄρρεν καὶ θῆλυ καὶ ἐκάλεσεν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτῶν ᾿Aδάμ, ὅ ἐστιν ἐκάλεσεν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτῶν ἄνθρωπον. Op. cit. Cod. p. 146: Εἰ δὲ καὶ τὸ Ἐνὼς καὶ ᾿Aδὰμ τὸν ἄνθρωπον σημαίνει, οὐ ξενιστέον· παρ᾿ Ἑβραίοις γὰρ πολυώνυμος ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ὥσπερ καὶ παρὰ τοῖς ἑλληνιστὶ λαλοῦσιν ἄνθρωπον, μέροπα, βροτόν, φῶτα· ἐτυμολογίαις δὲ ταῦτα ὑποπίπτοντα φύσει καὶ οὐ θέσει εἰσίν, ὡς καὶ πρότερον εἴρηται. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarius in xii Prophetas Minores, p. 137: ἥρ πασε μὲν γὰρ ἐν ἀρχαῖς τὴν ἀνθρώπου φύσιν ὁ ᾿Aδάμ. Op. cit. p. 142: Αὐτοὶ δέ εἰσιν ὡς ἄνθρωπος

872

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Following this conception of creation operating according to principles created in the beginning, he sustains a similar theory about the creation of man: human nature came forth in like a manner an individual man comes from the human sperm. An embryo has in itself the potential to be developed to a human being; this potential is latent in early stages, but it is not dormant. The principles that cause an embryo to develop are inherently there, and they function to this purpose which is realized in due course determined by natural laws. These laws are a specific species of principles operating within the seeds and determining human nature, they do not come ‘from outside’.²¹³ This dynamic and evolutionary notion applies as much to human being as does it so to the entire world. In general, what precedes any perceptible being or phenomenon is the existence of logoi, which cause potentialities to develop to actual perceptible realities. The basis of this theory is that the sin of Adam was imputed to all mankind, since all those who are born from him were in Adam’s loins, and they were expelled along with him. In the commentary on Matthew, it is pointed out that the first of these portions of Genesis refers to ‘male and female’, not to ‘man and woman’. The difference is deemed substantial: for ‘male and female’ indicates that which was created ‘in the image of God’, whereas either ‘man’ or ‘woman’ can never pertain to what is perceived as ‘in the image’ of God (οὐδέποτε γὰρ γυνὴ κατ᾿ εἰκόνα, οὐδὲ ἀνήρ).²¹⁴ Again, Origen reiterates his fundamental opinion that the incorporeal creation does not refer to creation of any individual persons, but only to the creation of the logoi that determine what human nature is and how it functions. The custodians of the doctrine shunned Origen’s proposition that ‘Adam’ does not indicate any specific person, but it suggests the universal human nature. However, his most devout pupils did employ this, although in a rather shy manner. Quite expectedly, these pupils were Didymus and Gregory of Nyssa. Nevertheless, the idea made its way into the orthodox doctrine through John of Damascus, in a rather surreptitious manner. In tune with Origen, Didymus urged that the object of creation was the universals, namely, genera and species, not individual creatures, which only pro-

παραβαίνων διαθήκην [Osee, 6:7]. Πανταχόθεν ἡμᾶς πολυπραγμονεῖν εὖ μάλα τὸ ἀληθὲς σπουδά ζοντας, καὶ νῦν εἰπεῖν ἀναγκαῖον, ὡς ἡ καθ᾿ Ἑβραίους ἔκδοσις ἀντὶ τοῦ ὡς ἄνθρωπος, ὡς ᾿Aδὰμ εἴρηκε παραβαίνων διαθήκην, ἵνα νοοῖτο τοιάδε τις τῶν ἐξ Ἰσραὴλ ἡ παράβασις, ὁποία γέγονεν ἐν ᾿Aδάμ. Responsiones ad Tiberium Diaconum Sociosque Suos, p. 590: ἀποδέδοται μὲν γὰρ τῇ ἀνθρώπου φύσει τὸ ἐν ᾿Aδὰμ ἐν ἀρχῇ.  Origen, comm1Cor, 84.  Origen, commMatt, 14.16.

The Body of the Logos

873

ceed from universals. Hence, what was made ‘in image and likeness of God’ was a universal, namely, human nature, or ‘human species’.²¹⁵ Gregory of Nyssa was more cautious while advancing the same theory. He pointed out that, in Genesis 1:27, it is stated that ‘God made man’, not ‘God made Adam’, which means that ‘the image of God’,²¹⁶ was bestowed collectively upon all human nature (ἡ μὲν οὖν εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἡ ἐν πάσῃ τῇ ἀνθρωπίνῃ φύσει θεωρουμένη, τὸ τέλος ἔσχεν), whereas ‘Adam was not made yet’ (ὁ δὲ ᾿Aδὰμ οὔπω ἐγένετο). For ‘according to those who know well the etymology of Hebrew language’, Adam means ‘the earthly creature’ (τὸ γὰρ γήϊνον πλάσμα κατά τινα ἐτυμολογικὴν ὀνομασίαν λέγεται ᾿Aδάμ, καθώς φασιν οἱ τῆς Ἑβραίων φωνῆς ἐπιίστορες). This is why Paul the apostle, ‘who was excellently educated in his ancestral Hebrew language, somehow rendering it in Greek, styles the man who comes from the earth, earthly’ ²¹⁷ (τὸν ἐκ γῆς ἄνθρωπον χοϊκὸν ὀνομάζει). Therefore, ‘the man according to the image’ of God is ‘the universal human nature, which is a godlike thing (γέγονεν οὖν κατ᾿ εἰκόνα ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἡ καθόλου φύσις, τὸ θεοείκελον χρῆμα); what was made by the omnipotent Wisdom was not part of the whole (γέγονε δὲ τῇ παντοδυνάμῳ σοφίᾳ οὐχὶ μέρος τοῦ ὅλου): it was the entire full and perfect human nature that was made all at once (ἀλλ᾿ ἅπαν ἀθρόως τὸ τῆς φύσεως πλήρωμα)’.²¹⁸ This was an ingenious way for Gregory to eschew Origen’s statement identifying ‘Adam’ with the universal human nature, while fully reproducing and advancing Origen’s doctrine, namely, that this is all about creation of the universal human nature, not about any individual.²¹⁹ Although both Origen and Gregory say that they translated ‘Adam’ from the Hebrew, to Origen, the term means the universal genus ‘man’, whereas to the circumspect Gregory it means a concrete human being: and yet, despite this critically diametrical translation, they both advance the same doctrine.

 Didymus, Commentarii in Psalmos 29 34, Cod. pp. 152 3: τρόπον τινὰ τὰ καθέκαστα γεννή ματά εἰσιν τοῦ καθόλου. ὁ καθόλου δὲ ἄνθρωπος κατ᾿ εἰκόνα καὶ ὁμοίωσιν θεοῦ γέγονεν· οὐδὲ γὰρ πάντως περὶ τοῦ ᾿Aδὰμ τοῦτο μόνου εἴρηται, ἀλλὰ ἡ φύσις ἡ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἡ καθόλου, τὸ εἶδος κατ᾿ εἰκόνα καὶ ὁμοίωσιν θεοῦ γέγονεν. ὁ φυλάττων οὖν τὸ πρωτότυπον, τὸ ὡσανεὶ κα θόλου, ἐκεῖνος υἱός ἐστιν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.  Gen. 1:26.  Cf. 1 Cor. 15:47 49.  Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 204.  Origen, Cels, IV.40: καὶ ἐν τοῖς δοκοῦσι περὶ τοῦ ᾿Aδὰμ εἶναι φυσιολογεῖ Μωϋσῆς τὰ περὶ τῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως. … οὐχ οὕτως περὶ ἑνός τινος ὡς περὶ ὅλου τοῦ γένους ταῦτα φάσκοντος τοῦ θείου λόγου.

874

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

John of Damascus somehow followed Gregory of Nyssa: although he takes it that ‘Adam is translated earthborn’ (γηγενής), he goes on with pointing out that this means ‘the human nature’ which ‘was made out of soil’.²²⁰ Apart from those authors who dared to deal doctrinally with this precarious issue, the only other one to do so was Maximus Confessor. As the case normally was with his theology, he applied Origen’s views while escaping the attention of the inquisitors of the imperial orthodoxy: to him, ‘Adam’ plainly means the universal human nature, and this is the sole clear and unequivocal reproduction of Origen’s view in Christian literature.²²¹ In fact, Maximus was one of the very few (and probably the only other Christian intellectual beside Gregory of Nyssa)²²² that had understood Origen’s Theory of Logoi and employed it for himself. In the sixth-century fashionable literary style of ‘Questions and Answers’, the question put to Maximus by his pupil was this: since creation was completed in six days, why is it that Jesus said “My Father is still working, so I am working, too”? ²²³ What kind of ‘work’ is this? Would the case be perhaps that this statement refers to ‘maintenance of the forms that were made once and for all?’ (Μή τι ἆρα τὴν τῶν ἅπαξ γεγονότων εἰδῶν συντήρησιν λέγει;). It is noteworthy how Maximus tacitly takes distances from this reference to forms (εἰδῶν) and puts the object of creation on the right basis, calling it logoi: he speaks of the first logoi that were made in the beginning (πρώτους τῶν γεγονότων λόγους), and then he explains that God ‘is still working’, since ‘not only does he maintain the first logoi in existence (ἔτι ἐργάζεται οὐ μόνον τὴν τούτων αὐτῶν πρὸς τὸ εἶναι συντήρησιν), but also secures the actual emergence and substantification of what exists potentially through these logoi’ (ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν τῶν ἐν αὐτοῖς δυνάμει μερῶν δημιουργίαν πρόοδόν τε καὶ σύστασιν). This ceaseless divine action consists in the Providence caring to secure the interrelation of all self-moving things.²²⁴ This text is remarkable because it maintains the Anaxagorean tenor of Origen’s theory, namely, Anaxagoras’ idea that the Mind is present in all animate beings. Like Origen, Maximus explained that, in the process of the interaction between the logoi, God is present providentially, not in terms of his actual being (κατὰ δὲ τὴν προνοητικὴν πρόοδον ὑπὸ πολλῶν μετεχόμενος,

 John of Damascus, Expositio Fidei, 56: ᾿Aδὰμ μὲν γὰρ ἑρμηνεύεται γηγενής· γηγενὴς δὲ δῆλον, ὡς ἔστιν ἡ ἀνθρώπου φύσις ἡ ἐκ χοὸς πλασθεῖσα.  Maximus Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium, 64: Σημαίνει γοῦν τὸν ᾿Aδὰμ ὁ προφήτης, ἤτουν τὴν κοινὴν φύσιν τῶν ἀνθρώπων.  Other admirers of Origen, such as Gregory of Nyssa and Didymus, followed him on other facets of thought; but, unlike Origen himself, they moved along various Platonic directions.  John, 5:17.  Maximus Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium, 2.

The Body of the Logos

875

ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν καὶ πληροῦται).²²⁵ This idea of ‘providence’, which had been advanced already by the Stoics, is in fact the means to reconcile two fundamental ideas: God is ‘unmixed’ with the world (i. e. he is sheer different in terms of ontology), and yet he is an omnipresent ruler within it. In the commentary on John, Origen focuses once again on the saying, ‘and God saw that it was good’,²²⁶ arguing that this suggests only the ‘logoi’ of all those which were to come into existence, not the actual perceptible things themselves. How could have it been possible for actual ‘sea beasts’²²⁷ and ‘cattle, and creeping things, and beasts’²²⁸ to appear as ‘good’ in God’s eyes? Are these beasts ‘good’ themselves? Certainly not, Origen avers. Therefore, it was not these creatures themselves, but the logoi of them,²²⁹ that God saw as ‘good’. The theory that the object of creation is the logoi (λόγοι), not any individual beings, entails that there is no primordial creation of such individual incorporeal beings as ‘souls’.²³⁰ There is only creation of logoi, that is, one of relations, possibilities, principles, of laws and causalities of all kinds, of constructive and constitutive causes, and of cohesive forces. In short, this is creation of the Anaxagorean ‘single body’, that gave rise to potentialities, according to which the actual world came to being, it is being maintained, and keeps on functioning. This was the framework that made the emergence of the perceptible world possible, as Gregory of Nyssa put it. Although this is an evolutionary conception of creation, the world is not regarded as an automaton, or a self-regulated system in respect of its own evolution, far less is any notion of determinism involved. All of creation is constantly dependent on the Logos, because all principles, or logoi,

 Maximus Confessor, Quaestiones et Dubia, 173 (explaining Eph. 1:23: “Which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all”): God Himself is beyond all beings (πάντων ὑφεξῄρηται τῶν ὄντων), and it is impossible for any being either to fathom him, or to grasp him, or to participate in him. Each logos of each thing or event of phenomenon is a logos existing in God (Ἕκαστον γὰρ τῶν γεγονότων κατὰ τὸν ἑαυτοῦ λόγον, τὸν ἐν τῷ θεῷ ὄντα, μέλος θεοῦ λέγεται εἶναι καὶ τόπον ἐν τῷ θεῷ ἔχειν).  Gen. 1:10.  Gen. 1: 20.  Gen. 1:24.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.42. Maximus Confessor reflected on similar grounds, too: he made use of biblical reference to reptiles, beasts, and birds; to him, this only bespeaks not those ani mals themselves, but ‘the sundry logoi of the created beings’ (οἱ διάφοροι λόγοι τῶν γεγονότων εἰσίν): although some of those animals are flthy once they are considered by means of the senses, the logoi of them are clean, since they all play a part in the cycle of life. Quaestiones ad Thalassium, 27.  See chapter 13, ‘Theory of the soul’. Also, COT, chapter 3, pp. 65 175.

876

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

are being in the Logos, who is a Person none the less.²³¹ In other words, the world is being sustained only because the Logos wills to maintain it in existence, and acts ceaselessly within it.²³² The logoi, namely, the generative, formative and operating causes, make it possible for this universe to evolve and to be transformed ceaselessly, because the universal presence and activity of the Logos is the source of incessant creation. In the first book of the commentary on John, Origen wrote with the boldness of a pagan philosophical celebrity who had just been converted to Christianity, hence, he made use of his intellectualism with little inhibition. Referring to the creation of the perceptible world, he portrays this as follows: Accordingly, just as life came to be in the Logos, so the Logos was in the beginning. And consider if it is possible also to take the statement, In the beginning was the Logos, in ac cordance with this meaning, so that all things be created [not were created = evolutionary conception] in accordance with the wisdom and the forms of the system of concepts which exist in him [i. e. the Logos] (ἵνα κατὰ τὴν σοφίαν καὶ τοὺς τύπους τοῦ συστήματος τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ νοημάτων τὰ πάντα γίνηται). For I think that, just as a house and a ship are built or devised according to the architectonic plans (κατὰ τοὺς ἀρχιτεκτονικοὺς τύπους), which have the forms and logoi (τύπους καὶ λόγους) of the house and of the ship in the craftsman as their beginning, in like manner have all things come to be according to the logoi (λό γους) concerning the things which subsequently were to come to be (τῶν ἐσομένων), which logoi were in the first place created by God’s utterance in [his] Wisdom (οὕτω τὰ σύμπαντα γεγονέναι κατὰ τοὺς ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ προτρανωθέντας ὑπὸ θεοῦ τῶν ἐσομένων λόγ ους); for he made all things in wisdom. ²³³ And it should be said that, once, so to speak, God created a living wisdom (κτίσας, ἵν᾿ οὕτως εἴπω, ἔμψυχον σοφίαν ὁ θεός), he allowed from the forms which were in her (ἐπέτρεψεν ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν αὐτῇ τύπων) to present to the things which exist and to matter [both] their actual creation (πλάσιν)²³⁴ and the species, and I focus my reflection on whether this holds true also for individual existence. ²³⁵

There are critical points to be considered here.

 Origen, commJohn, V.5.1: Ὁ πᾶς δὴ τοῦ θεοῦ λόγος ὁ ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν οὐ πολυλογία ἐστίν· οὐ γὰρ λόγοι· λόγος γὰρ εἷς συνεστὼς ἐκ πλείονων θεωρημάτων, ὧν ἕκαστον θεώρημα μέρος ἐστὶ τοῦ ὅλου λόγου. Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17.260.38 40: σύσκιον δέ φησι τὸν νυμφίον διὰ τὴν πυκνότητα τῶν ἐν τῷ λόγῳ καὶ τῇ σοφίᾳ θεωρημάτων. frJohn, 87 & 139: πρὸς τὴν σχολὴν τῶν θεωρημάτων τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου.  Origen, Cels, VI.65.  Psalm 103:24.  See infra, pp. 911 13.  Origen, commJohn, I.19.112 115. However, the last phrase, ‘and I focus my reflection on whether this holds true also for individual existence’, is an error of fact, indeed a misreading of codices by P. Koetschau, as explained in a moment. See a parallel in Princ, discussed on pp. 892 4.

The Body of the Logos

877

1. The point of the commentary that contains these views (which easily may lend themselves to misunderstanding, as it currently happens) is destroyed and hardly readable, therefore, is has to be reconstructed from different manuscripts. Some of its parts can be restored without doubt.²³⁶ Thus, Migne reads the last sentence, παρασχεῖν τὴν ὕπαρξιν καὶ τὴν πλάσιν καὶ τὰ εἴδη. This was an addition on the margin of the folio, preceded by οἶμαι (‘I think’), which indicates a tentative conjecture (by a scribe?). Erwin Preuchen emended παρασχεῖν καὶ τὴν πλάσιν καὶ τὰ εἴδη, and then he added, ἐγὼ δὲ ἐφίστημι εἰ καὶ τὰς οὐσίας, whereas Migne (which I endorse without reservation) puts a full-stop to εἴδη, and goes on with a new paragraph, which reads, Ἐγὼ δὲ ἐφίστημι εἰ καὶ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ἀρχὴν τῶν ὄντων εἶναι τὸν υἱόν, which is missing from the edition of Huetius, and it is written after the codices Bodleianus and Barberinus. However, Preuschen filled gaps, such as τῇ ὕλη … καὶ τά εἴδη (about 9 letters missing) and then ἐγὼ δὲ ἐφίστημι εἰ καὶ … εἰπεῖν, ἀρχὴν τῶν ὄντων … etc. The text makes it abundantly clear that, by εἴδη Origen does not mean any universals: actually, he speaks of the different material kinds of things, animals, and phenomena. The use of πλάσιν leaves no doubt about this, since he cared to make an ad hoc analysis of its meaning.²³⁷ 2. The expression τὴν πλάσιν καὶ τὰ εἴδη is telling: it points to actual material things, and the statement indicates that they are produced directly from the logoi, not from universals (genera) serving as ‘models’ for specific things to be produced. The rationale is Stoic, and ultimately Anaxagorean.²³⁸ Zeno taught that abstract notions (or concepts, or ‘ideas’) are ‘non-existent’ (ἰδέας … ἀνυπάρκτους εἶναι), and they are ‘figments of the soul’ (φαντάσματα ψυχῆς).²³⁹ Origen followed suit by producing perceptible things not from abstract universals, but from various specific recurrences of incorporeal logoi: And as certain Greeks say that the genus and species (τὰ γένη καὶ τὰ εἴδη), such as living being and man, belong to the category of ‘no things’ (τῶν οὔ τινων), so they have supposed that ‘nothing’ (οὐδέν) is everything that has received its apparent constitution neither from

 Cf. Migne, PG.14.56 57: κτίσας, ἵν᾿ οὕτως εἴπω, [ita recte codd. Barberinus et Regius; male autem Bodleanus: κτήσας, ἵν᾿ οὕτως εἴπερ].  See πλάσις denoting creation of actual material things, contrsasted with ποίησις, COT, pp. 84 6; 92, and infra, pp. 909 11.  Cf. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.1: “The only real beings that the natural philosophers [i. e. the Presocratic physicists] accepted were the natural [= empirical] ones, whereas they argued that universals are not natural reali ties.” To some extent, this is a misperception.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.12.3. Cf. SVF, II.117, fr. 330.

878

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

God nor through the Logos. Let us see then if we can prove these things incontrovertibly from the scriptures.²⁴⁰

The Anaxagorean principles are universally present as active causes under the supervision of the Mind: but they are not universals in the sense of being mere inactive ‘models’ to be participated in, and certainly they are not transcendent idle Ideas. If there is something between the Creative Mind and sensible things, this is the logoi, and it is they that Origen identifies with the ‘forms’ (τύποι) he speaks about. In view of this, the theory stands closer to that of Aristotle – but Aristotle received his main inspiration about acting ‘forms’²⁴¹ from Anaxagoras, yet he modified it desperately, since (1) the ‘forms’ are not self-existent, (2) the Supreme Principle is not posited as creator of them, (3) he endorsed the Platonic notion about a beginningless ‘formless matter’ to be acted upon, (4) the activity of the forms is not supervised by the First Mover, which simply moved things in the first place, and (5) Aristotle consigned the Anaxagorean rational activity of the Mind (which uses the principles/logoi as ‘instruments’ to creation) to an abstract process called ‘Nature’, even this he did not do consistently.²⁴² It should be recalled that, in the passage quoted from Porphyry, upon which al-Shahrastani made his observation about Anaxagoras being the first who advanced the theory of ‘hiding-and-appearing,’ Porphyry is quoted as saying that ‘the root of things is one single body’ and that ‘from it proceed all bodies and bodily forces and species and genera.’ This is precisely what Origen maintained about the Body of the Logos, which is the parallel to the Body of Anaxagoras’ principles and Mind. He took up the idea of sheer ontological difference between the created logoi and the uncreated Logos, who created these logoi, and made them ‘ornament’ on his own body, the Body of the Logos.

 Origen, commJohn, II.13.93: καὶ ὥσπερ Ἑλλήνων τινές φασιν, εἶναι τῶν οὔ τινων τὰ γένη καὶ τὰ εἴδη, οἷον τὸ ζῷον καὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον, οὕτως ὑπέλαβον οὐδὲν τυγχάνειν πᾶν τὸ οὐχ ὑπὸ θεοῦ οὐδὲ διὰ τοῦ λόγου τὴν δοκοῦσαν σύστασιν εἰληφός. commMatt, 17.24: εἰς ἓν γένος ἢ εἶδος ἀνα φέρων. Therefore, the statement of the anti Origenists of the sixth century, arguing that ‘all gen era and species have always existed without beginning’, which Justinian promptly endorsed, was a fanciful obloquy. Cf. Fragmenta De Principiis, fr. 10 (from Justinian’s epistle to Menas): Ἐκ τοῦ αὐτοῦ [sc. πρώτου] λόγου. Πάντα τὰ γένη καὶ τὰ εἴδη ἀεὶ ἦν, ἄλλος δέ τις ἐρεῖ καὶ τὸ καθ᾿ ἓν ἀριθμῷ. Moreover, Origen styled the Platonic Ideas ‘imaginary forms’; Princ, II.3.6. See infra, p. 1349 50.  To the extent he did so. See his ambivalence, which results in according active role to Na ture, at the expense of the activity of forms; supra, pp. 201; 460; 463.  See supra, chapter 8, pp. 542 3, and notes 75, 76.

The Body of the Logos

879

3. The expression προτρανωθέντας ὑπὸ θεοῦ τῶν ἐσομένων λόγους is characteristic of Origen’s concept of creation: God created by means of a loud and clear utterance (meaning the recurring γεννηθήτω of the Genesis). No author other than Origen did ever use the verb προτρανόω. This is actually a verb of his own making, and he coined it in order to explain how the Providential Creation came to be by means of a creative act described as ‘utterance’, that is, a λόγος. This act (which is no other than the ‘distinguished’ Anaxagorean principles, i. e. the created realm of all potentialities) preceded the Actual Creation of perceptible things, and made it possible for the latter to appear, and it still does. In effect, Origen used ‘logos’ in the sense of ‘utterance’ in order to place his doctrine within the spirit of the Biblical tenor and to present his theory as explanation of it. G.W.H. Lampe was wrong in rendering this unique instance of προτρανόομαι as ‘be prefigured’. The term means not prefiguration whatsoever; it means pre-utterance: it bespeaks creation of the logoi (which were uttered by God – a plain double punning with the meaning of λόγος), according to which everything has come into being. For Origen used Present tense: “So that all things are created” (ἵνα τὰ πάντα γίνηται),²⁴³ not were created (which underscores his evolutionary concept of creation) “in accordance with the wisdom and the forms of the system of concepts.” He used the Present subjunctive γίνηται, not the Past tense γένηται. 4. Attention should be paid to the term σύστημα used by Origen speaking of ‘system of concepts which exist in him’ (that is, in the Logos), and then, ‘all things are created’ in accordance with the forms of this ‘system’. Are these forms ‘Ideas’? We only need to read a few lines further in order to see that definitely they are not: all things were (and still they are being) created according to the logoi (κατὰ τοὺς ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ προτρανωθέντας ὑπὸ θεοῦ τῶν ἐσομένων λόγους), which are identified as ‘forms’ (τύποι). This is why he says that a house or a ship is constructed according to the ‘architectonic τύποι’,²⁴⁴ whereas, a little further, he expresses the same notion, this time by couching it by means of λόγοι which is used as a synonym with τύποι: a house is built according to the architectonic λόγος relevant to it, and a ship is constructed according to a λόγος that is proper to shipbuilding.²⁴⁵

 Cf. Anaxagoras, supra, pp. 284 5: the Mind exists eternally, so that all other things may exist, too (notice use of Present tense in exactly the same tenor).  Origen, commJohn, I.19.114: κατὰ τοὺς ἀρχιτεκτονικοὺς τύπους οἰκοδομεῖται ἢ τεκταίνεται οἰκία καὶ ναῦς.  Origen, op. cit. I.39.288: ὡς εἰ λέγοιμεν λόγῳ ἀρχιτεκτονικῷ τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ λόγῳ ναυπηγικῷ τὴν ναῦν γεγονέναι.

880

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Therefore, here is Anaxagoras’ ‘first body’, and here is Porphyry, according to the preceding analysis: God created the logoi on the Body of the Logos as ‘ornaments’ of it. Those logoi were the means for the material creation to come to pass, or (as Proclus put it describing Porphyry’s tenet) for ‘the way to creation’. What does Origen mean by σύστημα? We can see this easily from his writings, where the term means a certain whole comprising several parts or members. The Father created on the Body of his beginningless and timeless Logos the ‘decoration’ that comprised the logoi of the world. Once these logoi are seen as objects of contemplation, that is, of cognition, they are called theoremata (θεωρήματα), which I discuss in a moment. Hence, it is possible to say either that the Logos comprises many theoremata, ²⁴⁶ or indeed a ‘system’ of them,²⁴⁷ or to say that the created logoi are ‘parts’ of the Logos, in a sense similar to these logoi being ‘species’ of an all-encompassing genus (ὡς ἐν ὅλῳ μέρη ἢ ὡς ἐν γένει εἴδη),²⁴⁸ as discussed earlier. Since the real object of creation is the logoi, God rules over the universe by means of them.²⁴⁹ The logoi are parts of the one and single world, and ‘they concur and converge towards one result’ (συμπνεόντων καὶ συννευόντων εἰς ἓν ἀποτέλεσμα), that is, to harmonious function of the universe as a whole. Nevertheless, in God the Logos/Wisdom, the logoi exist not only as individual ones, but also as a whole, which is a faithful reproduction of the philosophy of Anaxagoras concerning the principles understood as being both one and many,²⁵⁰ as well as

 Origen, op. cit. V.5.1: Ὁ πᾶς δὴ τοῦ θεοῦ λόγος ὁ ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν οὐ πολυλογία ἐστίν· οὐ γὰρ λόγοι· λόγος γὰρ εἷς συνεστὼς ἐκ πλείονων θεωρημάτων, ὧν ἕκαστον θεώρημα μέρος ἐστὶ τοῦ ὅλου λόγου.  Origen, op. cit. II.18.126: Ζητητέον δὲ εἰ συστήματος θεωρημάτων ὄντος ἐν αὐτῷ, καθ᾿ ὃ σοφία ἐστίν, ἐστί τινα θεωρήματα ἀχώρητα τῇ λοιπῇ παρ᾿ αὐτὸν γεννητῇ φύσει, ἅτινα οἶδεν ἑαυτῷ. commMatt, 17.21: καὶ τοὺς κεκλημένους εἰς τοὺς γάμους, οὕτως καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν μυστικῶν πραγμάτων οἱ μέν τινές εἰσιν ἀναλαμβανόμενοι εἰς τὸ σύστημα τῆς νύμφης. … ἐπὶ τὸ σύστημα τῆς νύμφης ἀναλαμβάνεσθαι. Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17.280.53 55: ἡ μία γὰρ νύμφη πλῆθος ἐν ἑαυτῇ ἔχει παρεμβολῶν· τὰ γὰρ μέλη τῆς νύμφης συστήματα τυγχάνοντα πλεί ονα, χοροὶ μέν εἰσι, τῷ τὸ θεῖον ὑμνεῖν συμφώνως θεολογοῦντες αὐτῷ. … (PG.17.281.10 11) καὶ κατὰ διάφορα συστήματα χορευόντων, καὶ ἐπινικίους ᾀδόντων.  Origen, Cels, V.22: κἂν οὐρανὸς καὶ γῆ παρέλθῃ καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτοῖς, ἀλλ᾿ οἱ περὶ ἑκάστου λόγοι ὄντες ὡς ἐν ὅλῳ μέρη ἢ ὡς ἐν γένει εἴδη τοῦ ἐν ἀρχῇ λόγου πρὸς τὸν θεὸν θεοῦ λόγου οὐδαμῶς παρελεύσονται. Cf. Plotinus, Enneades, V.9.6 (see quotation, supra, pp. 721 2) and Damascius, Princ, pp. 232 3 (quoted supra, p. 814).  Origen, Homiliae in Job (fragmenta in catenis, typus I&II), p. 363: ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι πάντα ἐν μέτρῳ διοικεῖ τὰ καθ᾿ ἡμᾶς ὁ Θεὸς τοῖς τῆς αὐτοῦ προνοίας λόγοις.  Origen, commEph, 6: οὐ μόνον γὰρ οἱ κατακερματισμοὶ τῶν οἰκονομουμένων καὶ οἱ καθ᾿ ἕνα λόγοι τῶν διοικουμένων εἰσὶν ἐν τῷ τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγῳ καὶ τῇ Σοφίᾳ αὐτοῦ, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡ ἀνακε φαλαίωσις καὶ (ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις) συγκεφαλαίωσις πάντων.

The Body of the Logos

881

producing the world by means of their ‘concurrence’ (σύγκρισις), which Origen illustrates by the participles συμπνεόντων (present participle of the verb συμπνέω) and συννευόντων (present participle of the verb συννεύω). Thus, he speaks of σύμπνευσις (concurrence) and σύνευσις (convergence), in order to express the Anaxagorean σύγκρισις / διάκρισις, or (notwithstanding slight nuances) πρόσκρισις / ἀπόκρισις, which other authors expressed also as σύνωσις / δίωσις (Alexander of Aphrodisias, John Philoponus, Simplicius – although, concerning interpretation of Aristotle, Philoponus wrote pace Alexander on this). In any event, this is a token of how Origen understood ‘the way to creation’,²⁵¹ and how he embraced the Anaxagorean philosophy, adapting it to his own Christian purposes. In this context, what he understood as ‘restoration’²⁵² was one of the logoi of the universe in their pure state, which will restore from the perverted action that resulted in the Fall. It is characteristic that he couches pertinent expressions by means of this notion: the logoi (also called ‘precious stones’²⁵³) should eventually come to total harmony with each other, and this is the meaning of the eschatological ‘resurrection’, which he saw as an ‘ineffable’ mystery, obviously because he did not wish to divulge his Anaxagorean traits, and a certain Empedoclean tenor reminiscent of the theory about the Sphaerus (an analogy of the Body of the Logos) periodically suffering distinction because of Strife, but its unity is restored (also periodically) by means of Love. In Origen, simply there is no periodicity of this kind whatsoever.²⁵⁴ Moreover, when the divine words, which aim at teaching about the resurrection in a mys terious vesting those who are capable of hearing God’s words with a divine power of hear ing, say that [the temple] will be rebuilt with living and precious stones (λίθοις ζῶσι καὶ τι μιωτάτοις). [By this] they say obscurely that each one of those who concur (ἕκαστος τῶν συμπνεόντων) in the piety which is in accord with his teaching, is a precious stone of the entire temple of God (λίθος ἐστὶ τίμιος τοῦ παντὸς ναοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ).²⁵⁵

As always, he cared to express himself by means of scriptural imagery and language, under which his rich Greek philosophical erudition was covertly put to use. Nevertheless, the degree of concealing his philosophical ideas varied, since he expressed himself more openly at other points. Thus, the participle συμπνεόντων of the verb συμπνέω appears in a more explicit manner at the

    

See Proclus reporting the theory of Porphyry. Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 395. See this theory canvassed in PHE, pp. 287 91. COT, p. 54; PHE, p. 187. PHE, pp. 348 58: there will be no new Fall. Origen, Cels, VIII.19. He quotes accordingly, 1 Peter 2:5, Eph. 2:20, and Isaiah 54:11 14.

882

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

point we just saw: this is about the ‘recapitulation’ (that is, universal restoration), but this time he expressed himself in an entirely philosophical, notably Anaxagorean, manner: There is recapitulation in Christ, ²⁵⁶ because there are many logoi (πολλῶν γὰρ ὄντων λόγων) of the oikonomia of both the heavenly things and those concerning the administration of the earth; they are all parts of the entire world (πάντων ἅτε ἑνὸς τοῦ σύμπαντος κόσμου μερῶν τυγχανόντων) and they concur and converge towards one result (συμπνεόντων καὶ συννευόντων εἰς ἓν ἀποτέλεσμα). For in the Logos and Wisdom of God there are not only the fragmentized things that are the object of [divine] dispensation and each and ev eryone of the logoi (οἱ καθ᾿ ἕνα λόγοι) which are governed by the [divine] administration, but also [there is] the recapitulation (ἀνακεφαλαίωσις) and (as one might say) the assem blage (συγκεφαλαίωσις) of them all.²⁵⁷

This statement is in no wise different from what Porphyry and Simplicius used about the Anaxagorean principles: these are both one and many, here and there, now and ever, they are distinct as much as are they united as a whole. Not only according to those Neoplatonists, but also according to the Stoics,²⁵⁸ the logoi exist differently on the Body of the Logos, differently as incorporeal ones within the universe, and differently in their causative and cohesive association and involvement with various animate or inanimate objects. Despite the fragmentary character of the perceptible reality, in which these logoi act ceaselessly, the same logoi exist in different ontological levels at the same time: they are united in the Mind, as much as do they exist in universal union which allows for them to be distinct none the less. Just for one moment, Origen took the religious veil partially away, and revealed his real philosophical ideas, which underlied and formed his theological exposition. Although the Logos is certainly one, indeed a personal hypostasis, he also becomes ‘many’ (πολλὰ γίνεται) for the sake of engaging in the creative and sustaining act concerning the universe.²⁵⁹

 Origen comments on Eph. 1:10.  Origen, commEph, 6. This is only the Anaxagorean notion of the logoi being ‘all in all’. See further, discussion in chapter 13, ‘From Anaxagoras to the Classical Age’, pp. 1181 ff. Those quo tations can be understood on the basis of Origen’s notion of ‘logoi’ sometimes being identified with ‘angels’, which is discuss in chapter 12, pp. 1127 8.  Zeno, fr. 158, apud Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 35: τάχα δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ Ζήνωνος σύμφωνος ἡ δόξα, διὰ πάσης οὐσίας πεφοιτηκέναι τὸν θεὸν τιθεμένοις, καὶ ποῦ μὲν εἶναι νοῦν, ποῦ δὲ ψυχήν, ποῦ δὲ φύσιν, ποῦ δὲ ἕξιν. Chrysippus, SVF, II.192, fr. 634 & Posidonius, Fragmenta (Theiler), fr. 345, apud Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.139: [God] δι᾿ ὧν μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἕξις κεχώρηκεν, ὡς διὰ τῶν ὀστῶν καὶ τῶν νεύρων, δι᾿ ὧν δὲ ὡς νοῦς.  Origen, commJohn, I.10.60: πλῆθος ἀγαθῶν ἐστιν Ἰησοῦς. Op. cit. I.19.112: Καὶ οὐ θαυμαστὸν εἰ, ὡς προειρήκαμεν, πολλὰ ὢν ἀγαθὰ ὁ σωτὴρ ἐνεπινοούμενα ἔχει ἐν αὑτῷ πρῶτα καὶ δεύτερα

The Body of the Logos

883

As noted later in this section, Porphyry (a student of Plotinus as he was) saw the Mind not as becoming ‘many’, but as ontologically being a ‘multitude’ of patterns, which proceeds from the One.²⁶⁰ There is clearly a difference concerning the ontological conception of the Mind on this: Porphyry essayed to abide by the Neoplatonic orthodoxy, whereas Origen parted ways with that and paved his own Christian way. To him, the Logos is not simply the aggregate of logoi or of the theoremata (as the Plotinian Intellect is), which are only the ‘decoration’ of this Body, and they are the ‘created wisdom’. Therefore, the logoi are in the Logos (ἐν αὐτῷ), indeed on his Body, being an ‘ornament’ of this: they are not the constitutive elements of the Personal Hypostasis of the Logos, whose being proper is not consisted of these created parts.²⁶¹ Although they are in the Logos, they are not the hypostasis of Logos himself. The difference between Logos and logoi is radical, since the Logos as a Hypostasis is uncreated, whereas the logoi/theoremata are created. Hardly could any Platonism-monger call this a ‘world of Ideas’ sustained by Origen. The logoi are only the tools, the effective and cohesive causes for the world to come to pass and to function: in effect and in fact, they are Anaxagoras’ principles. For when he posited the Mind as radically different from the principles in terms of ontology, which he adumbrated by the epithet ‘unmixed’ (ἀμιγής), he suggested the later philosophical notion of an ontological hiatus between the uncreated Mind and the created principles once the Mind assumed the function of Creative Mind out of his free will. Why Origen dissented from Plotinus on this, and opted for Anaxagoras instead, is not difficult to guess: Plotinus’ Intellect creates by being what it is; it is only a cosmic principle acting of necessity, not out of free will. By contrast, Origen’s Logos is not Creator by essence, but he assumed this function out of his untrammelled free will. Therefore, the logoi are not the Logos, they are in the Logos, and these logoi are not beginningless as the Logos himself is. But all of this is Anax-

καὶ τρίτα. Op. cit. I.20.119: Ὁ θεὸς μὲν οὖν πάντη ἕν ἐστι καὶ ἁπλοῦν· ὁ δὲ σωτὴρ ἡμῶν διὰ τὰ πολλά, ἐπεὶ προέθετο αὐτὸν ὁ θεὸς ἱλαστήριον [Rom. 3:25] καὶ ἀπαρχὴν πάσης τῆς κτίσεως [Rev. 3:14], πολλὰ γίνεται ἢ καὶ τάχα πάντα ταῦτα, καθὰ χρῄζει αὐτοῦ ἡ ἐλευθεροῦσθαι δυναμένη πᾶσα κτίσις. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [Latin], 7.7.7: “Christ is indeed one in es sence, but may be disignated in many ways according to his virtues and operations; for example, he is understood to be Grace itself, as well as Righteousness, Peace, Life, Truth, the Logos. Like wise, Cels, II.64; Princ, I.2.1; I.2.13; IV.4.1.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 43: Ὁ νοῦς οὐκ ἔστιν ἀρχὴ πάντων· πολλὰ γάρ ἐστιν ὁ νοῦς, πρὸ δὲ τῶν πολλῶν ἀνάγκη εἶναι τὸ ἕν. ὅτι δὲ πολλὰ ὁ νοῦς δῆλον· νοεῖ γὰρ ἀεὶ τὰ νοήματα οὐχ ἓν ὄντα, ἀλλὰ πολλὰ καὶ οὐκ ἄλλα ὄντα παρ᾿ ἐκεῖνον.  Origen, commJohn, II.18.126: συστήματος θεωρημάτων ὄντος ἐν αὐτῷ, καθ᾿ ὃ σοφία ἐστίν (which means, in as much as he is Wisdom, there is a system of objects of contemplation within him).

884

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

agorean philosophy, which posited that the Nous began to create (or distinguish, which is virtually the same) as of a certain beginning. ²⁶² 5. The notion of ‘adorned Wisdom’ makes it clear that Origen’s theory is in effect the same as the one described (and presumably maintained) by Bardaisan. This figurative expression suggests that the logoi were impressed on the Body of the Logos, just as they were ‘engraved’ on the body of the Indian statue, which presumably adumbrated Bardaisan’s own doctrine of creation. However, unlike Bardaisan, Origen consciously and diligently did not call this παράδειγμα. He said that everything was made κατὰ τοὺς τύπους, and then he uses the expression κατὰ τοὺς λόγους as a synonymous one. It is all too clear that τύπος is used in exactly the same sense as the term λόγος, which is why these terms are used as equivalent alternatives.²⁶³ It should be recalled that, literally, τύπος means the effect of a blow or of pressure; this was befitting for Origen to use, since God created by an utterance of his mouth, which is how the creative act is described in the context of the first book of the commentary on John, as discussed above. Besides, since the created logoi were placed on the Body of the Logos, we are impelled to recall that τύπος means also engraved mark, which takes us to the engraved statue of Bardaisan that was given from the Father to the Son, when the latter created the world – but Origen does not say that this was given or made in order to serve as a ‘pattern’ (παράδειγμα), as Bardaisan said. Of course, there are numerous different senses in which τύπος can be used, including ‘pattern’, ‘model’ and the like; but the present context allows for no ambiguity, since Origen uses τύπος as a synonym for λόγος, which, throughout his work, is also used in the sense of creative and cohesive causes, as well as objects of contemplation. I should have thought that Origen used also the vocabulary of Philo, who saw τύπος as something which is engraved,²⁶⁴ and sometimes he used it along

 Aristotle, Physica, 203a31 32: ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐργάζεται νοήσας. The creative act by the Mind is identified with the reflecting Mind: everything comes to pass and is sustained in being because the supreme Nous reflects it. Cf. pp. 984 1001; 1170.  Origen, op. cit. I.19.113: κατὰ τὴν σοφίαν καὶ τοὺς τύπους τοῦ συστήματος τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ νοημάτων. Op. cit. I.19.114: κατὰ τοὺς ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ προτρανωθέντας ὑπὸ θεοῦ τῶν ἐσομένων λόγους. Op. cit. I.19.115. ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν αὐτῇ τύπων.  Philo, De Somniis, 1.129: μεταχαραχθέντα καινὸν τύπον Ἰσραήλ. De Decalogo, 101: ἐναργεῖς εἰκόνας καὶ τύπους ταῖς ἑαυτῶν διανοίαις ἐγχαράττωμεν. De Specialibus Legibus, 1.30: ἐνσφραγίζεται βαθεῖς τύπους ταῖς διανοίαις ἐγχαράττων ὁσιότητος. De Posteritate Caini, 99: ὑπὲρ ἀρετῆς ὥρισαν ἕκαστον αὐτῆς εἶδος οἰκείῳ τύπῳ χαράξαντες. Quaestiones in Genesim, Book 2, fr. 62, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 7.13.2: τὸν λογικὸν ἐν ἀνθρώπου ψυχῇ τύπον ὑπὸ θείου λόγου χαραχθῆναι. Nevertheless, cf. Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, 8.31: οἱ δ᾿ ἐσπούδαζον γεωμετρικοὺς ἐπιχαράττοντες τύπους τῇ γῇ. Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 1.40.1: ἀνε ξαλείπτοις ἐγχαράξας τύποις. 4.73.1: Ἤδη δὲ καὶ νομίσμασιν ἐνεχαράττοντο τύποι. Ephraem

The Body of the Logos

885

with the adjective τρανός, which may have been the inspiration for Origen to coin the participle προτρανωθέντας,²⁶⁵ a word that has remained exclusive to him. 6. No matter how Origen really wrote this passage which has been preserved in a desperately corrupt form, one thing is for sure: all genera and species were created by means of the logoi and they appeared subsequently to them, as indeed ‘qualities’ were created, too.²⁶⁶ All of these were written in the first book of the commentary on John, in the First Principles, ²⁶⁷ and in the early chapters of the commentary on Genesis; that is, during the very early stage of Origen’s Christian life. If his genius was able to adapt to the Christian spirit, this he managed to do only because he was a pupil of Anaxagoras, which is why Proclus renounced Origen as an anti-Platonist. This evolutionary conception of creation suggests that, in the first place, the object that emerged out of nothing were dynamic, constructive, cohesive, and cognitive principles. Once they are considered as objects of cognition, they are called θεωρήματα (‘objects of contemplation’). They indicate everything that can be perceived or cognized, whether it is about science, or art, or any sort of contemplation,²⁶⁸ or any rules of practical activity.²⁶⁹ These aspects of percepti-

Syrus, Consilium De Vita Spiritali, Ad Monachum Novitium (capita xcvi), 75: ἵνα μὴ τύπους τινὰς ἀπρεπεῖς ἐγχαράξῃς τῇ σεαυτοῦ διανοίᾳ. Nonnus of Panopolis (fifth century AD), Dionysiaca, Book 14, line 239: τύπον κεχαραγμένον ἄστρων. Procopius of Gaza, Commentarii in Isaiam, p. 2476: τοὺς τύπους τῆς κατὰ Θεὸν πολιτείας ἐγχαράττουσαι ταῖς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ψυχαῖς. Pho tius, Commentarii in Matthaeum, fr. 13: τοὺς ἐν αὐτῇ προχαραχθέντας τύπους. Basilius Minimus (archbishop of Caesarea, tenth century AD), Commentarii in Gregorii Nazianzeni Orationem xxxviii, 3.174: τύποι καὶ προχαράγματα. Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, entry 186: χαράξαι· κόψαι. κοιλᾶναι. τυπῶσαι. Etymologicum Magnum, pp. 79; 145: ἁρματροχιὰ δέ ἐστιν ὁ τύπος καὶ ἡ ἐγχάραξις τοῦ τροχοῦ ἡ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. About τύπος being used by Origen in a context of ty pology, see PHE, pp. 35 5.  Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 3.16 17: αἱ γὰρ συνεχεῖς ὑπομνήσεις τύπους ἐγχαράττουσαι τρα νοὺς βλάπτουσι τὴν διάνοιαν. καὶ ἄκουσαν αὐτὴν πολλάκις περιτρέπουσιν. This portion was in effect copied by Nilus of Ancyra, Epistulae, 3.288: αἱ γὰρ συνεχέστεραι ὑπομνήσεις τύπους βαθεῖς ἐγχαράττουσαι, λυμαίνονται τὴν ψυχήν, ἄκουσαν αὐτὴν τρέπουσι πρὸς τὸ μύσος. Likewise, Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 71: ἀκριβοῦς ἐκμαγείου τρανὸν τύπον ἔχοντος. De Specialibus Legibus, 1.106: καθάπερ τινὰ λελειασμένον κηρὸν εἰς τρανότητα τῶν ἐγγραφησομένων δογμάτων, ἀλλὰ τραχεῖαν ὑπὸ τῶν προεγχαραχθέντων τύπων, οἳ δυσεξάλειπτοι παραμένοντες ἢ οὐ παραδέχονται σφραγῖδας ἑτέρας. Cf. Origen, commJohn, XIII.53.352: τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν εὑρίσκον τρανότατα τοὺς τῆς ἀληθείας τύπους.  Origen, Cels, III.41; IV.54; IV.57; VI.77; commJohn, XIII.21.127; Philocalia, 24: 2; 3; 5; 6. See Con clusion, pp. 1486 7. About logoi being ontologically prior to ‘qualities’, see pp. 450; 463 6; 486 7; 866 7; 1490 1.  See infra, the relevant points of this work being discussed on pp. 891 4.  Origen, commMatt, 12.6: οὐ γὰρ διαρκῆ καὶ συμπαρεκτεινομένην μνήμην ἀναλαβεῖν δυνάμεθα τῷ πλήθει τῆς φύσεως τῶν θεωρημάτων. Cels, IV.9: παρακολουθεῖν τοῖς ποικιλωτάτοις

886

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

ble reality are produced by the logoi, which constitute the ‘decoration’ on the body of the Son/Wisdom/Logos.²⁷⁰ This wisdom, however, cannot be regarded in analogy to human mind, which is pervious to being, so to speak, ‘enriched’ out of a creative plan formed into this. The divine Wisdom is a personal hypostasis, namely, the Son of God. Nevertheless, Providential Creation is the indispensable prerequisite for the Actual Creation to come to pass. The latter came to existence because the former was already made. If one is able to visualize (ἐπινοεῖν) an incorporeal existence of various notions, which [no tions] include the logoi of everything (ἀσώματον ὑπόστασιν ποικίλων θεωρημάτων περιε χόντων τοὺς τῶν ὅλων λόγους), [an existence] which is living and animate, as it were (ζῶσαν καὶ οἱονεὶ ἔμψυχον),²⁷¹ one will comprehend the wisdom of God who is superior

τῆς σοφίας τοῦ θεοῦ θεωρήμασιν. Op. cit. VI.19: τοῦ πλήθους τῶν ἐν τοῖς ὑπεραναβεβηκόσι τὰ αἰσθητὰ ὑπαρχόντων περὶ θεοῦ θεωρημάτων. Op. cit. VI.20: ποταμούς τε χωρήσαντες τῶν θεωρημάτων. Op. cit. VI.22: μουσικῶν θεωρημάτων. Op. cit. VI.23: Ὄψεται γὰρ θεωρήματα οὐκ εὐκαταφρόνητα ἐν τοῖς τόποις. Op. cit. VI.57: τὰ τῆς ῥητορικῆς θεωρήματα. commJohn, I.30.208: ἀπόρρητα καὶ μυστικὰ θεωρήματα. Op. cit. II. 28.172: τὸ πλῆθος τῶν περὶ θεοῦ θεωρημάτων. Op. cit. VI. 1.2: τῶν τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρημάτων. Op. cit. X.17.102: τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρημάτων. Op. cit. XIII.46.302: τῆς ἐκ πλειόνων θεωρημάτων τέχνης καὶ ἐπιστήμης. Op. cit. XXXII.15.172: σοφίας θεωρήματα. Op. cit. XXXII.15.181: θεωρημάτων σοφίας. De Oratione, 13.3: θεωρημάτων ἀληθείας. Op. cit. 30.3: τῶν τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρημάτων. homJer, 8.9: θεωρημάτων βαθυτέρων. frLam, 7: τὸν πλοῦτον τῶν θεωρημάτων. Op. cit. fr. 20: τὰ ἐν τῇ ἐπιστημονικῇ ψυχῇ θεωρήματα. commEph, 9: τῶν θεωρημάτων τῆς σοφίας. Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V.7) (P. Cair. 88748 & cod. Vat. gr. 762), p. 226: θεωρήμασιν μαθητεύεσθαι. frPs, Psalm 4:4: τῶν ἀποῤῥήτων μυστηρίων καὶ τῶν ἁγίων θεωρημάτων. selDeut, PG.12.812.17: τὰ κεκρυμμένα τῶν θεωρημάτων. selPs, PG.12.1109.6: τῶν θεωρημάτων τοῦ λόγου. Op. cit. PG.12.1128.52: τοῖς περὶ ἀληθείας θεωρήμασι. excPs, PG.17.121.20: τοῖς τῆς σοφίας θεωρήμασιν. expProv, PG.17.169.7: τοῖς τῆς σοφίας θεωρήμασιν. Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17.269.33: τῶν τοῦ λόγου θεωρημάτων. Op. cit. PG.17.272.9 10: καὶ ἡ νύμφη ἐν τῷ βάθει κρύπτει τὰ θεωρήματα. Libri x in Canticum Canticorum, p. 175: διὰ τὴν πυκνότητα τῶν ἐν τῷ λόγῳ καὶ τῇ σοφίᾳ θεωρημάτων. Cf. Princ, I.2.8: “Wisdom outlines first in herself the things which she wishes to reveal to others”.  Origen, homLuc, 1, p. 8: ὅτι τινῶν μὲν θεωρημάτων τὸ τέλος ἡ θεωρία ἐστίν, τινῶν δὲ θεωρημάτων τὸ τέλος ἡ πρᾶξις. The same, in commLuc, PG.17.313.29 30.  Cf. commJohn, II.18.126: συστήματος θεωρημάτων ὄντος ἐν αὐτῷ, καθ᾿ ὃ σοφία ἐστίν (‘In as much as he is Wisdom, there is a system of objects of contemplation within him’).  Cf. Origen (the living Logos and Sophia), Cels, III.81: δι᾿ ἐμψύχου καὶ ζῶντος λόγου, ὅς ἐστι καὶ σοφία ζῶσα καὶ υἱὸς θεοῦ, τῷ ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεῷ. Op. cit. VI.17: ὁ ἔμψυχος λόγος καὶ σοφία αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀλήθεια. commJohn, I.19.115: κτίσας, ἵν᾿ οὕτως εἴπω, ἔμψυχον σοφίαν ὁ θεός. Op. cit. XIII.25.152: ἔμψυχος γάρ ἐστι λόγος καὶ σοφίᾳ, οὐ συγκρίνεται κατ οὐδὲν τῷ πατρί. Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 47: τὸν αὐτὸν ὅλον δι᾿ ὅλων ἔμψυχον λόγον θεωροῦντες. Reference to the living Logos, Cels, II.9: ἔμψυχος λόγος καὶ ἀλήθεια τυγχάνων. op. cit. V.4: τοῦ ἐμψύχου λόγου καὶ θεοῦ. commJohn, II.8.60: οὗτος γὰρ ὁ ἔμψυχος λόγος ἐπίσταταί τινα μόνος. Op. cit. XIX.8.45: ὁ ἔμψυχος

The Body of the Logos

887

to all creation and she befittingly says of herself, God created me the beginning of his way towards his works. ²⁷² It is because of this creation that it has been possible for the entire creation to subsist (δι᾿ ἣν κτίσιν δεδύνηται καὶ πᾶσα κτίσις ὑφεστάναι), since the latter a share of participation in the divine wisdom (οὐκ ἀνένδοχος²⁷³ οὖσα θείας σοφίας) according to which it has been created, for, as reported by prophet David, ‘God made all things in wisdom’.²⁷⁴

This definition of wisdom points to both the Son of God and the created wisdom (the ‘ornaments’ of his ‘Body’, or ‘precious stones’, λίθοι τίμιοι, or theoremata, θεωρήματα). The Son of God lives the same life that God lives, and he is an individual hypostasis, that is, a subsistent personal being. The Logos contains all the logoi as ‘decoration’ on his Body,²⁷⁵ but he is himself senior to them. The ‘objects of contemplation’ (θεωρήματα) were created and placed in the divine Wisdom out of an act of the Father, who did not want to withhold and keep them from dispersing (οὐ συνέχων ὁ πατήρ); instead, the Father ‘belched them out’ (ἐρεύγεται) (an allusion to God’s creative utterance γεννηθήτω), and imprinted them on his Logos, which is why the Logos is called ‘image of the invisible God’.²⁷⁶ Whereas Anaxagoras (so far as we know from his extant text) did not explicate why was it that the Mind set out to create, Origen went on with representing this as an act of love by the Father. It is remarkable that he feels it necessary to ponder upon the use of the scriptural expression ‘belch out’ (ἐρεύγεται), which metaphorically means ‘utter a voice’.²⁷⁷

τούτου λόγος. Op. cit. XXXII.11.127: ὁ κύριος, ἡ πᾶσα ἔμψυχος καὶ ζῶσα ἀρετή. commMatt, 10.14: διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ ἐμψύχου λόγου. frLam, 8: τὸν προστάτην ἔμψυχον λόγον.  Prov. 8:22.  This is one more word which only Origen used: ἀνένδοχος means ‘one who is impervious to being either a receptacle or recipient of something else’. Therefore, when he says about creation, οὐκ ἀνένδοχος οὖσα θείας σοφίας, he means that, although the world is ontologically sheer dif ferent from the Wisdom of God (= the Logos = the Son), it is none the less capable of having a certain share in the divine wisdom, which is the Maker of it.  Origen, commJohn, I.34.244. See COT, pp. 39 175.  Origen, op. cit. XIX.22.147: τῷ γὰρ εἶναι παντὸς οὑτινοσοῦν τοὺς λόγους, καθ᾿ οὓς γεγένηται πάντα τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν σοφίᾳ πεποιημένα (ὥς φησιν ὁ προφήτης· Πάντα ἐν σοφίᾳ ἐποίησας), ἐν αὐτῷ, εἴη ἂν καὶ αὐτὸς κόσμος, τοσούτῳ ποικιλώτερος τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ κόσμου καὶ διαφέρων, ὅσῳ διαφέρει γυμνὸς πάσης ὕλης τοῦ ὅλου κόσμου λόγος τοῦ ἐνύλου κόσμου.  Cf. Col. 1:15. commJohn, I.38.283: οὕτω τὰ τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρήματα οὐ συνέχων ὁ πατὴρ ἐρεύγεται καὶ ποιεῖ τὸν τύπον αὐτῶν ἐν τῷ λόγῳ, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο εἰκόνι καλουμένῳ τοῦ ἀοράτου θεοῦ. See discussion of τύπος, supra, pp. 884 5.  Quoting Psalm, 44:2: ‘My heart belched out (ἐξηρεύξατο) a good utterance’. Unlike most of Christian authors, Origen explained this as denoting the creation of logoi, not the generation of the Logos/Son. See discussion infra, pp. 1056 8.

888

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Who other than the Saviour announces the will of the Father to the creatures that are wor thy, and who was brought to existence in a different manner than them (καὶ παρ᾿ αὐτοὺς γεγενημένος)? For probably the term ‘belched out’ was used not fortuitously, since scores of other expressions would have been used instead of ‘belched out’, [as, for example,] ‘My heart cast forth (προέβαλεν) a good word’, [or] ‘My heart spoke (ἐλάλησεν) a good word’.²⁷⁸ But perhaps as a belch is the emergence of hidden amount of air into the open (πνεύματός τινος ἀποκρύπτου εἰς φανερὸν πρόοδος), as though he who belches exhales in this way, so the Father, who does not want to withhold and keep the visions of the truth from dispersing (τὰ τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρήματα οὐ συνέχων ὁ πατήρ), belches them forth and produces their typos in the Logos (καὶ ποιεῖ τὸν τύπον αὐτῶν ἐν τῷ λόγω), who, for this reason, is called the image of the invisible God.²⁷⁹

Of all propositions of this theory of creation, this is a statement standing closest to Anaxagoras, since Origen somehow reproduces the latter’s statement ‘all things were together’. He adds that he opts for the explanation of Psalm 44:2 (‘My heart has uttered a good word’, arguing that it is the Father who says so), ‘in order to comply with the exegesis of the majority of interpreters’ (συμπεριφερόμενοι τῇ τῶν πολλῶν ἐκδοχῇ). In fact, however, he applies the philosophy of Anaxagoras: the notion of the Mind which produced the Creative Mind from within himself, in other words, the Mind that decided and willed to become a creative one.²⁸⁰ To this purpose, Origen made use of the notion of ‘created wisdom’ which was placed on the Body of the Logos and ‘adorned’ it: the ‘objects of contemplation’ (that is, the logoi) were created by an act of God and placed on the body of his Son in order for the world to come to be. This is why, at some points, the Son is stated as ‘creature’²⁸¹ although it is abundantly enunciated that the Son is not a creature. The objects of contemplation/wisdom constitute the ‘decoration’ of the Wisdom/Son, and this is often predicated by the scriptural adjective ‘multi-adorned’ (πολυποίκιλος).²⁸² In these objects of contemplation (θεωρήματα)²⁸³ and in the ‘logoi’ (λόγοι),²⁸⁴ the explanation of everything can be found. Nevertheless, the expression ‘the Father, who does not want to withhold and keep the visions of the truth from dispersing’ means that God himself did not change whatsoever once he assumed the function of Creator. For creation

 Psalm 44:2.  Cf. Col. 1:15. commJohn, I.38.283.  See, chapter 5, the notion of will.  Origen, Cels, V.7.  Cf. Eph. 3:10.  Strictly speaking, the θεωρήματα, being objects of cognition, comprise more than one logoi. See supra, p. 886, quotation of Origen, commJohn, I.34.244, describing θεωρήματα as περιε χόντων τοὺς τῶν ὅλων λόγους.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.22.147.

The Body of the Logos

889

appeared as something sheer new and without precedent, but this was not new to the Father, who timelessly withheld the logoi in himself. If the logoi mean also ‘knowledge’, this is knowledge to be obtained by creatures, not by the Father himself. This is the sense in which the name ‘wisdom’ is applied not only the Son of God, as a person, but also to knowledge of the ‘logoi’, according to which everything can be explained and clearly known, and this is what Origen saw as the multi-adorned wisdom’ (σοφία ἡ πολυποίκιλος) of Eph. 3:10. And you should inquire if, in some sense, the First Born of all creation can be a world (κό σμος), especially in so far as he is the multi adorned wisdom (σοφία ἡ πολυποίκιλος). For by being the logoi of absolutely everything (τῷ γὰρ εἶναι παντὸς οὑτινοσοῦν τοὺς λόγους), ac cording to which all things made by God in wisdom have come to be in himself (as the prophet says, you made all things in wisdom),²⁸⁵ he would himself also be a ‘world’ that sur passes the perceptible world in diversity, and excels it as much as the λόγος of the entire world regarded as stripped of all matter (γυμνὸς πάσης ὕλης τοῦ ὅλου κόσμου λόγος)²⁸⁶ surpasses the material world, since [this ‘world’] is adorned not by matter, but the things which set matter in order have themselves been set in order by participation in the Logos and Wisdom (ἀπὸ τῆς μετοχῆς τοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς σοφίας).²⁸⁷

The notion of Logos being envisaged as a ‘bare’ one (γυμνός) is a recurring motif in Origen: it suggests the Logos in his incorporeal form, not being involved with, or engaging in, generating the material reality.²⁸⁸ This is plain influence by Philo.²⁸⁹ Two of the most faithful followers of Origen took up and used this figure  Psalm 103:24.  Cf. ὁ κόσμου λόγος. Origen, Libri x in Canticum Canticorum (fragmenta), p. 233 & Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17.265.7. Also, Cels, V.39: ὁ τοῦ παντὸς λόγος. commJohn, XIX.22.148 (the logos of the whole universe): ὁ τοῦ ὅλου κόσμου λόγος. Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. IV.6.3: Λόγος γάρ ἐστι πάντων, καὶ λόγος ἔσχατος μὲν τῶν νοητῶν καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ νοητῷ ἡ ψυχῆς φύσις, πρῶτος δὲ τῶν ἐν τῷ αἰσθητῷ παντί. Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 11: ἡ τοίνυν φύσις ἐσχάτη μέν ἐστι τῶν τὸ σωματοειδὲς τοῦτο καὶ αἰσθητὸν δημιουργούντων αἰτίων καὶ τὸ πέρας τοῦ τῶν ἀσωμάτων οὐ σιῶν πλάτους, πλήρης δὲ λόγων καὶ δυνάμεων, δι᾿ ὧν κατευθύνει τὰ ἐγκόσμια. Iamblichus styled the soul ‘the very last genus of the higher being’ (τοῦ ἐσχάτου γένους τῶν κρειττόνων), De Mys teriis, 1.10. See infra, pp. 1401 10.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.22.147.  Cf. Origen, commJohn, II.8.61: Οὐ γυμνὸς δὲ τῷ Ἰωάννῃ ὁρᾶται τῷ ἵππῳ ὀχούμενος ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ λόγος. Op. cit. VI.35.179: ἵνα ταῦτά τις λύσας τὸν χωρὶς τῶν ὑποδημάτων ἴδῃ λόγον γυμνὸν τῶν ὑποδεεστέρων καθ᾿ αὐτόν. Op. cit. XIX.22.147: ὅσῳ διαφέρει γυμνὸς πάσης ὕλης τοῦ ὅλου κόσμου λόγος τοῦ ἐνύλου κόσμου. frJohn, 63: ἀλλ᾿ ἐπεὶ ὁ τοιοῦτος λόγος οὐ γυμνὸς ὕλης καὶ σω ματικῶν παραδειγμάτων εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἔρχεται.  Philo, De Opificio Mundi, 24: εἰ δέ τις ἐθελήσειε γυμνοτέροις χρήσασθαι τοῖς ὀνόμασιν, οὐδὲν ἂν ἕτερον εἴποι τὸν νοητὸν κόσμον εἶναι ἢ θεοῦ λόγον ἤδη κοσμοποιοῦντος. Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis, 83: οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ὁ λόγος αὐτῷ γεγονὼς ἀέρος πλῆξις ἀναμιγνύμενος ἄλλῳ τὸ παράπαν οὐδενί, ἀλλὰ ἀσώματός τε καὶ γυμνός.

890

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

of speech moderately,²⁹⁰ but Cyril of Alexandria was obsessed with the metaphor and could not have enough of it.²⁹¹ Then, Maximus Confessor (who knew what Origen’s theory of logoi was about)²⁹² spoke not only of the ‘bare Logos’, but also of the ‘bare logoi’.²⁹³ The participants of the council of Ephesus employed the expression because Cyril had used the notion, while they had no inkling of the fact that the Christian source of it was Origen.²⁹⁴ So did those who took part in a sixth-century synod,²⁹⁵ and the irony was that both assemblies treated Origen as a damned heretic, while unconsciously using Origen’s legacy. Although creation started to exist as of a certain beginning, God cannot be envisaged without his Logos: for God was never bereft of his Logos.²⁹⁶ This was also the theory of Anaxagoras explained by Simplicius: there are two notions being involved, even though no span of time is allowed between them: one, the Mind before he decided to engage in creative action (which tantalized Aris-

 Gregory Thaumaturgus, In Origenem Oratio Panegyrica, 15: γυμνὸς καὶ ἀσκεπὴς ὁ θεῖος εἰσίῃ λόγος. Gregory of Nyssa, De Deitate Filii et Spiritus Sancti, PG.46.564.50 53 (quoted also by The odoret, Eranistes, p. 105): Κατέβη τοίνυν καὶ ἐφάνη οὐ γυμνὸς ὁ Λόγος, ἀλλὰ σὰρξ γενόμενος. Much later, Anastasius of Sinai, Sermo II in Constitutionem Hominis Secundum Imaginem Dei, 3; 8; In Hexaemeron, Books 9, lines 44 & 225 and 10, line 263. John of Damascus, De Fide Contra Nestorianos, 19.  Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarii in Joannem, v. 1, pp. 257; 277; 283; 489; Responsiones ad Tiberium Diaconum Sociosque Suos, pp. 591 2; De Sancta Trinitate Dialogi, p. 516; De Incarnatione Unigeniti, 705; Quod Unus Sit Christus, pp. 748; 755; 764; 772; Epistulae Paschales, PG.77.568.38 39; Expositio in Psalmos, PG.69.1040.28; Commentarius in Isaiam Prophetam, PG.70.1045.1; Commen tarii in Lucam, PG.72.509.41 42; Thesaurus De Sancta Consubstantiali Trinitate, PG.75.429.33 34.  Maximus was aware of, and inspired by, Origen’s theory of creation as much as Gregory of Nyssa was (discussed infra, pp. 894 7). The difference was that Gregory elaborated on Origen’s theory and expanded it by using philosophical exposition which we do not see in Origen’s ex tant works, although Gregory said nothing new nor different. On the other hand, Maximus ap plied the terminology of Origen; see supra, pp. 874 5.  Maximus Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium, 25; 27: γυμνοὺς θεάσασθαι τοὺς λόγους τῶν αἰσθητῶν.  ACO, Concilium Universale Ephesenum anno 431, v. 1.1.1, pp. 64; 66; v. 1.1.4, p. 56; v. 1.1.5, pp. 52; 59; 70; 85; v. 1.1.6, pp. 47; 63; v. 1.1.7, p. 58.  ACO, Synodus Constantinopolitana et Hierosolymitana anno 536, v. 3, pp. 7; 217.  Origen, commJohn, II.19.130: ᾿Aλλὰ λόγος μὲν ἐν ἀρχῇ οὐκ ἐγένετο· οὐκ ἦν γάρ, ὅτε ἡ ἀρχὴ ἄλογος ἦν. διὸ λέγεται· Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος· ζωὴ δὲ ἐν τῷ λόγῳ οὐκ ἦν· ἀλλὰ ζωὴ ἐγένετο. This was somehow a reply to Aristotle, who argued that, prior to creating, the Anaxagorean Nous was only a ‘potential’ one, whereas it was ‘nothing, before it came to think’, that is, to create. Aris totle, De Anima, 429b 430a. At other points, too, Aristotle suggested that the Anaxagorean Nous was ‘irrational’. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1007b; Physica, 188a4 13. Themistius, ParaphrPhys, p. 17. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 396; commAnim, p. 85; 101; 106. Asclepius of Tralles, commMe taph, pp. 26; 61; 101; 267 8; 292.

The Body of the Logos

891

totle, as discussed later in this chapter); two, the Creative Mind (ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς),²⁹⁷ who gave rise to the incorporeal principles ‘as of a certain beginning’ (ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος).²⁹⁸ This decoration of the Body of the Logos is the same notion as the one recounted by Bardaisan: the decorated body of the Indian statue was handed over from the Father to the Son,²⁹⁹ so that the latter should have an exemplar upon creating the world. There is an important difference, however: whereas Porphyry (reporting Bardaisan, who in turn reported information he had received from an Indian delegation) said that the decorated body was intended as ‘a pattern’ (παράδειγμα) to be used by the Son in order to create the world, Origen eschewed this Platonic term, since, to him, those efficient causes were creative logoi, not any sort of ‘Ideas’. The logoi are not detached (transcendent) models, in which perceptible things ‘participate’, according to the Platonic vague notion, which Aristotle styled ‘poetical metaphor’: they are dynamic active forces, which are here, they are inherently involved with generated objects, they give rise to matter and act upon it, and likewise they act upon all kinds of phenomena and make them what they are. For all the evolution of some aspects of Origen’s Christian doctrine, his Theory of Logoi remained the same until the end of his life. To God, the logoi are the means to create, but God the Logos is ‘above every logos’.³⁰⁰ For he contains in himself all the created logoi, being himself the Universal Logos (analogous to the Stoic one, but only to a certain extent),³⁰¹ who is both transcendent and immanent in the world,³⁰² as well as present within each individual rational creature.³⁰³

 See infra, p. 980, quotations from Simplicius, commCael, p. 609. John Philoponus, De Ae ternitate Mundi, p. 183. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 8.1.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461: τοιοῦτος δὲ ὁ νοῦς, ὃν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐνόησεν ἐργαζόμενον, ἐν οἷς λέγει ἄρξασθαι τὸν νοῦν διακρίνειν. Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 203a28 32: αὕτη δ᾿ ἐστὶν μία, οἷον ἐκεῖνος καλεῖ νοῦν, ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐργάζεται νοήσας· ὥστε ἀνάγκη ὁμοῦ ποτε πάντα εἶναι καὶ ἄρξασθαί ποτε κινούμενα.  See infra, p. 922. Michael Psellus described this as a Chaldean idea. Opuscula ii, p. 139: Χαλδαϊκὸν λόγιον. πάντα γὰρ ἐξετέλεσσε πατὴρ καὶ νῷ παρέδωκε δευτέρῳ, ὃν πρῶτον κληΐζετε πᾶν γένος ἀνδρῶν. George Gemistus, Oracula Chaldaica, 2.6: ᾿Aλλ᾿ οὐκ εἰσδέχεται κείνης. Ὁ πατρι κὸς νοῦς, ὁ δεύτερος δηλαδὴ θεός, καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς προσεχὴς δημιουργός.  Origen, Cels, V.33: τὸν ὑπεράνω παντὸς λόγου λόγον.  Origen, op. cit. V.39: καὶ τὸν περιεκτικὸν παντὸς οὑτινοσοῦν λόγου τῶν κατὰ φύσιν καὶ προ ηγουμένως γεγενημένων καὶ εἰς χρήσιμον τοῦ παντὸς λόγον. Cf. Philo, De Cherubim, 36: ὁ δίοπος καὶ κυβερνήτης τοῦ παντὸς λόγος θεῖος. Justin, Apologia Secunda, 8.3: οὐδὲν δὲ θαυμαστόν, εἰ τοὺς οὐ κατὰ σπερματικοῦ λόγου μέρος, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ παντὸς λόγου, ὅ ἐστι Χριστοῦ.  COT, chapter 5: ‘The Place of the Logos’, pp. 165 72.

892

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

He maintained this theory since his pagan period, and presumably, to a certain extent, Porphyry was at one with him on Anaxagorean grounds. It is then possible to trace this in his early De Principiis. At the time when he was converted to Christianity, he was already a Greek philosopher of note who interpreted Plato in Anaxagorean terms, for which later Proclus castigated him. De Principiis was one of his early Christian works, which he began to write simultaneously with commentaries on two fundamental scriptural books: the Genesis and the Psalms. It was the time when he sought to determine which of his pagan tenets might fit in the context of his new religion, which was all too natural for any erudite convert to do. To this purpose, the first thing he did was identifying Anaxagoras’ Mind both with the Trinitarian God and the Second Person, namely the Son/Wisdom/Logos, that is, the proximate Creator of the universe, although the Father was a Nous none the less. This apparent paradox of identification was possible because of the unity of the Trinitarian Being. It is then hardly a surprise that, in that first systematic treatise of Christian doctrine, characteristic Anaxagorean echoes are traced. He wrote the first book of the commentary on John a short while after the De Principiis, which is why the passage of the commentary on John, I.19.114, which we just perused on pages 876‒8, has a parallel there, too. And can anyone who has learned to regard God with feelings of reverence suppose or be lieve that God the Father ever existed, even for a single moment, without begetting this wis dom? … God was always the Father of the only begotten Son, who was born indeed of him and draws his being from him, but is without any beginning. … Wisdom must be believed to have been begotten beyond the limits of any beginning that we can speak of or under stand.³⁰⁴

In the very subsistence of wisdom there was every capacity and form (omnis virtus ac deformatio) of the future creation (cf. τὰ ἐσόμενα), both of those things that exist in the first place (vel eorum quae principaliter exsistuunt)³⁰⁵ and of those which come to pass in consequence of them (vel eorum quae accidunt consequenter) are the whole which is fashioned and arranged beforehand by the

 Origen, commJohn, II.35.215: Καὶ ἐπίσκεψαι, εἰ διὰ τὸ ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ παντὸς εἶναι σώματος τὴν καρδίαν, ἐν δὲ τῇ καρδίᾳ τὸ ἡγεμονικόν, κατὰ τὸν ἐν ἑκάστῳ λόγον δύναται νοεῖσθαι τὸ μέσος ὑμῶν ἕστηκεν ὃν ὑμεῖς οὐκ οἴδατε.  Origen, Princ, I.2.2.  Cf. Origen, Cels, V.39: “The Logos whο includes every logos of the beings which have been made according to nature and as a primary action [by God] for the benefit of the whole (τὸν περι εκτικὸν παντὸς οὑτινοσοῦν λόγου τῶν κατὰ φύσιν καὶ προηγουμένως γεγενημένων καὶ εἰς χρήσιμον τοῦ παντὸς λόγον).” No notion of preformationism is implied whatsoever.

The Body of the Logos

893

power of foreknowledge (virtute praescientiae praeformata atque disposita). Thus, wisdom, speaking through Solomon in regard to those created things that had been, as it were, outlined and prefigured in herself (quae in ipsa sapientia velut descriptae ac prefiguratae fuerant), says that she was created as a beginning of the ways ³⁰⁶ of God. In the clumsy Latin rendering, this means that she contains within herself the principles or causes or species of the entire creation (continens scilicet in semet ipsa universae creaturae vel initia³⁰⁷ vel rationes³⁰⁸ vel species).³⁰⁹ Now just as we have learned in what sense is wisdom the beginning of the ways of God and is said to have been created (creata esse), namely, in a sense that she fashions beforehand and contains within herself the species and causes of the entire creation (species scilicet in se et rationes³¹⁰ totius praeformans et continens creaturae), in the same manner also must Wisdom be understood to be the Logos of God.³¹¹

This is an awkward translation by Rufinus, who had not grasped Origen’s doctrine and always essayed to ‘emend’ it, nor did he have any inkling of Origen’s Anaxagorean allegiances. Nevertheless, this valuable passage casts light on crucial aspects of Origen’s thought and deserves special consideration. We read that the Wisdom contains within herself initia (for ἀρχαί), or rationes (for λόγοι), or species (for εἴδη). The repeated ‘either … or … or…’ (vel … vel … vel …) alone shows that Rufinus had no idea of what that text was about, and he rendered a text in which ἀρχαί, λόγοι, and εἴδη are treated as almost synonymous, certainly interchangeable, and the translator cannot determine which one of those Origen was actually treating, although it is easy to determine this from his Greek works, both early (the commentary on John) and mature ones (the discourse against Celsus).³¹² Little wonder that the text which the anti-Ori-

 Prov. 8:22.  initia vel rationes vel species. We have therefore, initia for ἀρχαί, rationes for λόγοι, and species for εἴδη.  Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 72.  Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 295: δεῖ πάντως προϋπάρχειν ἐν τῷ δημιουργικῷ νῷ τὰς τῶν γινομένων κατ᾿ εἶδος διακεκριμένας αἰτίας, ὡς καὶ ἐν τῷ οἰκοδόμῳ ἄλλον μὲν τοίχου τεχνικὸν λόγον, ἄλλον δὲ ὀροφῆς.  Codex g reads initia instead of rationes. Once again, there is a perfect correspondence with the Greek texts, since initia (ἀρχαί) and rationes (λόγοι) indicate the same creative principles.  Origen, Princ, I.2.2 3.  In Princ, II.3.6, Origen wrote that he rejected any notion that could ‘give the impression that’ he ‘affirmed the existence of certain imaginary forms which the Greeks call ideas’ (quas Graeci ἰδέας nominant in the Latin text, the term is in Greek). In the commentary on John (I.18.113

894

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

genist Sabaite leaders sent to Justinian (who made it an official condemnation of Origen without even caring to emende its colloquialisms, and outraged the erudite Origenists of the same monastery) alleged that Origen wrote, ‘all genera and species have existed beginninglessly, and some would say even individual things; but either way it is clear that God did not begin to create after spending a period of idleness’.³¹³ However, as stated in a similar passage from the commentary on John, Origen did not include individual things or persons in this (which could be οὐσίαι). This alone suffices to exclude any notion of ‘preformationism’: since this notion means a detailed fashion (or, plan) of the entire world from start to finish, what kind of ‘preformationism’ would that be, once individual things were excluded? It is not difficult to see that, by ‘creation’ of the logoi in the Wisdom/Logos/ Son, Origen meant creation of the setting for the world to come to be and to evolve according to certain principles and laws. It is then not fortuitous that we come upon the same terms: rationes stands for λόγοι, which are explicitly described as the actual objects of creation in the commentary on John, as already discussed. Species (εἴδη) is also discussed in the same passage, whereas initia (for ἀρχαί) is hardly unexpected a term, since this is the fundamental concept of Anaxagoras’ philosophy, indeed of any philosophy. What Origen described both at that point of De Principiis and in the parallel portion of the commentary on John, is creation of the logoi out of (and according to) which the universe appeared, and it keeps on functioning. This is a description of the principles that were created and placed on the Body of the Logos as ‘ornament’ of it, and of the world which consequently was made in accordance with, and by means of, them. As discussed earlier, the principles that hold together a certain thing and make it what it is, are fully present therein. However, in the first place, the perceptible entity thing/principles is produced because these principles act as causes. It is not the same to envisage the principles either being in the Mind or Logos/Wisdom, who set them in order, or them being actively present in a certain thing or phenomenon and acting as productive and cohesive causes. The name of any relevant principle is the same of course, but the realities are different in terms of ontology. The order in the Mind (τῇ ἐν τῷ νῷ

114), he speaks only of τύποι and λόγοι. In the commentary on the Ephesians (p. 241), he speaks of λόγοι, and so he does in Cels, V.22; V.39.  This is from Justinian, Edictum contra Origenem, pp. 70 & 110, which was sanctioned by the synod of 451. See ACO, Synodus Constantinopolitana et Hierosolymitana anno 536, tome 3, p. 210: Πάντα τὰ γένη καὶ τὰ εἴδη ἀεὶ ἦν, ἄλλος δέ τις ἐρεῖ καὶ τὸ καθ᾿ ἓν ἀριθμῷ. These allegations were copied from a polemic work by Antipater of Bostra against Origen.

The Body of the Logos

895

τάξει) is Ontology; but generation of things through the principles is Physics, on which Simplicius made an apt comment: The topic of a physicist is the things that move, in like a manner immovable things are the subject of a mathematician and a theologian.³¹⁴

While discussing the question of the perceptible universe being produced out (and by means of) the logoi, Simplicius argued that ‘it is not absurd to use the same name’ when reference to the principles is made, notwithstanding their different modes of existence.³¹⁵ However, to think that each individual thing corresponds to a certain principle (in the same sense that some people believe that such a correspondence with the Ideas exists) would be absurd. Everything that comes to be stems from certain causes, which act not only as universal ones, but also ad hoc in order to produce individual things (τὸ δὲ γενόμενον ὑπ᾿ αἰτίας ἀνάγκη γενέσθαι καὶ οὐχὶ κοινῆς μόνον, ἀλλ᾿ ἀφωρισμένης καὶ τοῦδέ τινος οἰστικῆς). These causes pre-exist in the Mind as distinct ones, in like a manner an architect has in his mind certain principles according to which he can produce either a wall or a roof.³¹⁶ If one applied a certain definition to the worldly order, qua worldly, neither this definition nor the terms that are used apply to the order that exists in the Mind.³¹⁷

Although this would appear to ring a Platonic bell, in fact Simplicius appealed to Aristotle, that is, to the most vehement critic of Plato’s theory of Ideas. He did so writing in the spirit of his master Ammonius who sought to reconcile the two philosophies. In other words, creation of principles does not pre-determine the reality that is going to come to pass. This is why, to both Anaxagoras and Origen,

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 520: περὶ τὰ κινούμενα ὁ φυσικὸς τὴν πραγματείαν ἔχει, ὥσπερ περὶ τὰ ἀκίνητα ὅ τε μαθηματικὸς καὶ ὁ θεολόγος.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 295: τὰ δὲ ὀνόματα μεταφέροντες ἐντεῦθεν ἐκεῖ, εἰ μὲν ὡς αἰτίας τού των ἀφωρισμένας καὶ τοῦτον ἐχούσας ἐκεῖ τὸν λόγον, ὃν ἐνταῦθα ἔχει τὰ ἀποτελούμενα τοῖς αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασι καλοῦμεν, οὐδὲν οἶμαι ἄτοπον.  Loc. cit.: δεῖ πάντως προϋπάρχειν ἐν τῷ δημιουργικῷ νῷ τὰς τῶν γινομένων κατ᾿ εἶδος δι ακεκριμένας αἰτίας, ὡς καὶ ἐν τῷ οἰκοδόμῳ ἄλλον μὲν τοίχου τεχνικὸν λόγον, ἄλλον δὲ ὀροφῆς. Cf. Origen, commJohn, I.19.114: Οἶμαι γάρ, ὥσπερ κατὰ τοὺς ἀρχιτεκτονικοὺς τύπους οἰκοδομεῖται ἢ τεκταίνεται οἰκία καὶ ναῦς, ἀρχὴν τῆς οἰκίας καὶ τῆς νεὼς ἐχόντων τοὺς ἐν τῷ τεχνίτῃ τύπους καὶ λόγους, οὕτω τὰ σύμπαντα γεγονέναι κατὰ τοὺς ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ προτρανωθέντας ὑπὸ θεοῦ τῶν ἐσομένων λόγους.  Loc. cit.: καίτοι εἴ τις τὴν ἐνταῦθα τάξιν ὡς ἐνταῦθα οὖσαν ὁρίζοιτο, οὐκ ἂν ὁ ὁρισμὸς ἐφαρμόσῃ τῇ ἐν τῷ νῷ τάξει, ὥστε οὐδὲ τὸ ὄνομα. Simplicius implicitly refers to Aristotle’s Met aphysica, 1075a11 15.

896

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

what was going to emerge out of the principles/logoi was future realities, which were not predetermined, but only foreknown.³¹⁸ The world is maintained as a functioning coherent whole only because the Logos wills so.³¹⁹ By the same token, the universal presence and activity of the Logos is the source of incessant creation. The logoi, being active causes, effect evolution of this universe and transform it ceaselessly. Once a certain phenomenon comes to pass, two factors are noticed: (1) the existence of matter; (2) a specific concurrence of principles. Aristotle (following Plato in his own way) as well as the Stoics made both of these components principles only because their premisses compelled them to deviate from Anaxagoras. However, matter itself is in fact a concurrence of logoi stemming from immaterial principles. Once certain principles concur, act, and react with each other, they cause a thing, or a phenomenon (say, a human being) to appear and to be maintained to existence for a certain period of time. Were it for those principles either to cease to concur, and to run off, or for their specific concurrent combination to alter, the particular material entity would cease to exist, which means its dissolution into the principles that caused it to emerge in the first place. To Origen, the Actual material creation exists on account of the Providential one.³²⁰ The latter is the ‘cause’ for the existence of the former. “It is because of this creation that the entire world has been able to have come to existence” (δι᾿ ἣν κτίσιν δεδύνηται καὶ πᾶσα κτίσις ὑφεστάναι),³²¹ yet this causal dependence is not understood in terms of temporal succession: the Providential creation is both present and incessantly working; it is because of this continuous action that the material world is maintained in existence. Matter is created and ruled by this totality of logoi, laws, possibilities, and causes, according to which the world exists and moves forward. With the exception of Maximus Confessor (who stuck to Origen’s technical vocabulary), no one grasped Origen’s doctrine of creation better than the best of his students, namely, Gregory of Nyssa (who elaborated on that locution).  This idea is present in early as well as mature works alike. Origen, commGen, PG.12.68 69 (Philocalia, 23.10; 25.2 3); Princ, III.1.4 5; De Oratione, 6.3; Cels, II.20; III.25; Commentarii in Epis tulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21), 1.  Origen, Cels, VI.65.  Origen, Homilies on Genesis (Latin, comm. on Gen. 1, 6 7), I.2: “Although God already had previously made the heaven, now he makes the firmament. For he made the heaven first, about which he says, ‘heaven is my throne’ (Isaiah, 66:1); but after that, he makes the firmament, that is, the corporeal heaven”; pp. 82 3: “rational creation does not subsist from itself, but it has de scended from the Trinity and has received the length of its life, that is, the grace of immortality, from the Father through the Son and the Holy Spirit.”  Origen, commJohn, I.34.244. See COT, pp. 39 175. Cf. Anaxagoras, supra, pp. 266 98; 334 5.

The Body of the Logos

897

He styled the object of creation ‘the means’, ‘causes’, and ‘forces’, which came to existence instantaneously in accordance with the divine will. Also, the created incorporeal nature (contrasted with the uncreated one), that is, the logoi of the world, is ‘always being created’ (πάντοτε κτίζεται); creation is constantly orientated towards its ‘first cause’ (πρῶτον αἴτιον) and it is maintained in existence by ‘participating in this’ (μετουσίᾳ).³²² What God made ‘in the beginning’ (ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κοσμογονίας) was establishing ‘collectively’ (συλλήβδην) the ‘starting points, causes, and powers’ (τὰς ἀφορμὰς καὶ τὰς αἰτίας καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις) ‘for all creatures’ to come to be (πάντων τῶν ὄντων). This occurred all at once (ἀθρόα καταβολή), and took no duration of time (ἐν ἀκαρεῖ).³²³ Nevertheless, although the ‘causes’ and ‘logoi’ were created instantly, and ‘upon first creation’ (ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ καταβολῇ) the sun and moon received only their ‘generative causes’ (τὰς ἀφορμὰς ἔσχεν), it was necessary for those causes to concur with each other (τὴν τῶν μορίων πρὸς ἄλληλα συνδρομή),³²⁴ which is why time was necessary as the milieu for the Actual Creation³²⁵ to come to pass. In order for this momentary act to produce the actual material reality in its ‘particular’ manifestations, a certain ‘natural order and sequence’ was necessary, which is indeed inherent in the cosmic process.³²⁶ Gregory did not stop at this: he went all the way through following Origen, thus establishing a continuous succession from Anaxagoras right down to Gregory himself, a train of thought that had been beclouded and deviated (though

 Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum Canticorum, p. 174. Incorporeal nature is classified into two categories, namely, uncreated and created one: πάλιν δὲ καὶ τῆς νοητῆς φύσεως διχῇ διῃρημένης ἡ μὲν ἄκτιστός ἐστι καὶ ποιητικὴ τῶν ὄντων, ἀεὶ οὖσα ὅπερ ἐστὶ καὶ πάντοτε ὡσαύτως ἔχουσα, κρείττων τε προσθήκης ἁπάσης καὶ τῆς ἐλαττώσεως τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀνεπίδεκτος, ἡ δὲ διὰ κτίσεως παραχθεῖσα εἰς γένεσιν πρὸς τὸ πρῶτον αἴτιον ἀεὶ βλέπει τῶν ὄντων καὶ τῇ μετουσίᾳ τοῦ ὑπερέ χοντος διὰ παντὸς ἐν τῷ ἀγαθῷ συντηρεῖται καὶ τρόπον τινὰ πάντοτε κτίζεται διὰ τῆς ἐν τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἐπαυξήσεως πρὸς τὸ μεῖζον ἀλλοιουμένη. This is Origen’s doctrine of creation itself, and of three classes of being (see infra, pp. 1389 1401).  Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 72; see quotation supra, p. 860, note 157.  For further comprehension of how Gregory of Nyssa means συνδρομή, see how he enter tains the notion in his Antirrheticus Adversus Apollinarium, p. 140, lines 15 17; Contra Eunomium, 1.1.232, lines 6 8; 3.10.48, lines 2 4; De Virginitate, 11.1, lines 12 16; Oratio Catechetica, chapter 1, lines 50 53.  See the notion of Providential Creation contrasted to the Actual one, discussed in COT, pp. 39 175.  Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 120: εἰ πάντων κατὰ τὸ ἀθρόον παρὰ τῆς τοῦ Δημιουργοῦ δυνάμεως ὑλικῶς προκαταβεβλημένων, πρὸς τὴν τῶν ὄντων σύστασιν, ἡ μερικὴ τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ τεθεωρημένων ἀνάδειξις, τάξει τινὶ φυσικῇ καὶ ἀκολουθίᾳ ἐν ῥητῷ διαστήματι ἐτελειώθη. Compare Gregory’s προκαταβεβλημένων with Origen’s προτρανωθέντας λόγους. This is the selfsame notion.

898

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

not really broken) once the Stoics made materiality a premiss bearing on several aspects of their philosophy. The Anaxagorean and Origenian tenor of Gregory’s exposition is all too plain; in addition, it has the merit of being more explicit. He makes it clear that all the properties of bodies (such as shape, colour, weight, extension, measurement), as well as whatever is considered as ‘quality’ of a body, is not itself a body: instead, ‘each of them is a logos’ (ἀλλὰ τούτων ἕκαστον λόγος ἐστίν). That which gives rise to a body is a certain concurrence and specific union of logoi (ἡ δὲ πρὸς ἄλληλα συνδρομὴ τούτων καὶ ἕνωσις σῶμα γίνεται). Thus, although we distinguish beings in corporeal and incorporeal ones, these two facets of being stand near at hand each other (ἐκ τοῦ σύνεγγυς). This means that the ‘impalpable’ gives rise to bodies of solid form (ἐκ τοῦ ἀναφοῦς τὸ στεῤῥὸν καὶ ἀντίτυπον); the ‘limitless’ produces bodies that have limits (ἐκ τοῦ ἀορίστου τὸ ὡρισμένον); that which is beyond quantity and magnitude (ἐκ τοῦ ἀπόσου τε καὶ ἀμεγέθους) gives rise to things encompassed by measure and quantity. Each of those ‘impalpable’ and ‘limitless’ and ‘beyond quantity and magnitude’ is an incorporeal logos. And in order that no doubt should remain as to Gregory’s real creative flare and inspiration, he goes on with explaining that his theory should be understood in terms of a ‘seed’ growing to ‘wheat’ that develops into a perfect plant (ἐμφαίνων ἑαυτὸν καὶ τελειοῦν). This is how every corporeal being comes to be (ἐπὶ τῶν φυομένων σπερμάτων κατὰ λόγον ἡ αὔξησις ἐπὶ τὸ τέλος πρόεισι), which includes also human constitution (καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης συστάσεως).³²⁷ The theory that the incorporeal logoi give rise to and determine material existence recurs invariably throughout Gregory’s works. Any corporeal being (whether animate or not, rational or irrational) can be understood only in terms of the incorporeal nature having provided the logoi, or ‘incorporeal origins, for bodies to be generated’ (ἐκ τῆς ἀσωμάτου φύσεως τὰς νοερὰς ταύτας ἀφορμὰς πρὸς τὴν τῶν σωμάτων γένεσιν ὑποστῆναι): it is from the ‘mutual concurrence’ of those logoi (πρὸς ἄλληλα συνδρομῆς) that it has been possible for the human ‘material nature’ (τὴν ὑλώδη φύσιν) to come to pass.³²⁸ This means that the human constitution is a combination of components of different natures (τῶν ἑτεροφυῶν στοιχείων πρὸς ἄλληλα συνδρομή), which co-exist as ‘a certain composition accommodated by means of dissimilar’ constituents (σύνθεσίς τίς ἐστι διὰ πλειόνων ἀνομοίων ἁρμοζομένη).³²⁹

 Gregory of Nyssa, Dialogus De Anima et Resurrectione, PG.46.124.22 128.1.  Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 213.  Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 3.4.27.

The Body of the Logos

899

The association of the incorporeal logoi with material nature is not cooperation, nor is it any kind of participation, or partnership, or entanglement, or collaboration, or attachment: quite simply, the incorporeal logoi produce material reality, and they remain therein as constituent, cohesive, and operative causes. Were it for those logoi to be absent, matter could not exist at all. Gregory uses the terms of Anaxagoras in order to adumbrate the appearance and existence of matter: this is a process of σύγκρισις and διάκρισις,³³⁰ in which ‘the dimensionless [= incorporeal] nature attaches itself to those that are distinguished spatially’ (ἡ ἀδιάστατος φύσις τοῖς τοπικῶς διεστηκόσι συναπτομένη). In this process, σύγκρισις entails appearance of material bodies, and διάκρισις results in their dissolution and transformation into other forms of existence.³³¹ This is the sense in which incorporeal nature does indeed prevail over the material one.³³² However, it is obvious that this dominance has nothing to do with Platonism: instead, it is expounded in plain Anaxagorean and Origenian terms. When Origen refers to the opening of Genesis, ‘the earth was invisible and unformed’, he suggests that the logoi (or natural laws, et cetera) were already a constitutive element of the world, but their interaction had not yet brought about what is called (perceptible) ‘earth’.³³³ The question is, what did he actually mean when he referred to those created ‘in the beginning’, including the earth, stating that this was ‘invisible and unformed’ (ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος)?³³⁴ He meant that the logoi were already there, and they gave rise to a specific potentiality: the actual ‘earth’ should come into existence at the appropriate time. The material earth could not come to pass until some billions of years following the commencement of formation of this universe. However, the laws were already there, and they determined that, if certain natural circumstances concurred for this planet to appear, then a planet called ‘earth’ should come to pass; and if the appropriate circumstances for life in general, and human life in par-

 Gregory of Nyssa, Dialogus De Anima et Resurrectione, PG.46.45.38 40: τῇ τε συγκρίσει τῶν στοιχείων περὶ τὸ σῶμα καὶ τῇ διακρίσει πάρεστιν, συνεσφιγμένων ἐν τῷ συγκρίματι τῶν στοιχείων.  Gregory of Nyssa, op. cit. PG.46.48.3 14.  Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus Adversus Apollinarium, p. 206: τῆς τῶν ἀσωμάτων φύσεως προτερευούσης παρὰ τὴν αἰσθητήν τε καὶ σωματώδη κατάστασιν.  Origen, Cels, VI.49; commGen, PG.12.49.30 31, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 7.20.9. He has it that this portion of Genesis 1:1 suggests that ‘the earth became perceptible, ac cording to a certain form created by God’ (τὴν κατὰ προϋπάρχον εἶδος ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ γενομένην αἰσθητήν). Pseudo Justin, Cohortatio ad Gentiles, p. 29; the author is probably the newly discov ered Cassian the Sabaite: RCR, pp. 20; 38; 39; 216; 283; 341; 376; NDGF, 69; 295; 306; 308; 355; 366; 393; 426; 452; 486; 487; 572; 596.  Origen, Cels, VI.49, quoting Gen. 1:2.

900

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

ticular, obtained, then individual human beings should appear on the surface of this planet. The earth itself, as well as sundry forms of life, and then humans, were not there right from the start; but the laws which determined under what circumstances the could appear, were there in the beginning. This is the sense in which Origen spoke of creation of ‘human nature’, not of ‘any individual’ person. Consequently, the theory is about creation of ‘logoi’ which made up the Providential Creation, or, as Anaxagoras would have put it, the original ‘seed’ which contained all the logoi that the Mind ‘distinguished’, i. e. created. If anyone wants to see the reasons that persuaded us to believe the Mosaic story of the cre ation of the world, which are supported by the arguments that seemed right to us, let him take our studies in Genesis from the beginning of the book down to the words, This is the book of the generation of men. ³³⁵ In them, we have tried to argue from the divine scriptures themselves what was the heaven that was made in the beginning, and the earth, and the notion of the invisibility and shapelessness of the earth, and what was the abyss, and the darkness upon it, and what was the water, and the Spirit of God that was borne upon it, and what was the light which was created, and what was the firmament as distinct from the heaven made in the beginning, and so on.³³⁶

This is the sense in which human being was made ‘incorporeal’ in ‘the first place’ (πρότερον)³³⁷, whereas what is known as ‘man and woman’ was created ‘at some later stage’ (ὕστερόν γάρ ποτε).³³⁸ The saying, ‘Let us make man in our image after our likeness’,³³⁹ pertains to all men; and that which hoi polloi understand by the expression ‘in image’ is ‘older’ (πρεσβύτερον) than that which Adam became when he assumed ‘the image of the earthy’ ‘because of sin’.³⁴⁰ Consequently, the statement in a homily on Luke, ‘As it is written in the Genesis, in the beginning, man was made in the image of God, then he assumed an earthy image also’,³⁴¹ epitomizes the doctrine of creation of man. This ‘first’ creation of God is only the ‘clear utterances’ of God, which were ‘uttered first’, or ‘uttered in advance’ (προτρανωθέντας). The actual material creation came into existence according to these ‘clearly pre-uttered words (or, logoi) which were in the wisdom’ (κατὰ τοὺς ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ προτρανωθέντας ὑπὸ θεοῦ τῶν ἐσομένων λόγους). This is why Origen uses future tense upon treating this issue.³⁴² It is        

Gen. 5:1. Origen, Cels, VI.49. Origen, Dialogus cum Heraclide, 15. Origen, commMatt, 14.16. Gen. 1:26. 1 Cor. 15:49. Origen, homJer, 2.1. Origen, Homilies on Luke, 39. Origen, commJohn, I.19.114: τῶν ἐσομένων. frJohn, 1: τὰ ἐσόμενα.

The Body of the Logos

901

characteristic that he refers to the actual beings as ‘those which will exist’ (τὰ ἐσόμενα).³⁴³ It is not difficult to see the sense in which he used such an expression: in the primal state of a universe, which had a long way of evolution to go, there was no actual human being. However, the principles, the logoi, according to which a human being could appear at a certain future moment of time, on a certain planet called earth, were already there right from the start. Besides, it is stated that it is possible to ‘see’ this wisdom and to comprehend these ‘logoi’. This happens when a rational creature attains to eternal life. There is a crucial notion involved here, which should be emphasized: even when this ‘wisdom’ is seen and clearly comprehended, this does not mean that it is God Himself who is seen and comprehended. Through this wisdom, God may be seen ‘as creator and wise and provident and judge’.³⁴⁴ However, God in Himself is prior to the notion of God as Creator: His being is more than what his creative or providential act suggests him to be; hence, there are things about him which do not stem from observation of Nature. This marks a sharp distinction between divine Ontology (or, Theology), on the one hand, and Cosmology, on the other, which Neoplatonism was not interested in making too much of. Gregory of Nyssa’s προκαταβεβλημένα is simply another word adumbrating Origen’s Providential Creation, which, in turn, is no other than the state of Anaxagoras’ principles having been distinguished and each of them having assumed a certain identity which is unlike all others. This is the state of the undifferentiated χρήματα of having been σπέρματα. In other words, this is the realm of potentialities. The only difference is that, whereas Anaxagoras’ mentioned a primeval confusum, to Origen this realm of potentialities was created ex nihilo, which is an idea on which Origen followed Philo rather than Anaxagoras, but it should be noticed that Origen was nonetheless attracted by Philo who used a characteristic Anaxagorean language speaking of God upon couching his own view, actually styling God ‘unmixed’ (ἀμιγής). To Philo, God is ‘a simple nature (φύσις ἁπλῆ), not ‘a compound’ (οὐ σύγκριμα), precisely because he is unmixed with anything else (ἀμιγὴς ἄλλῳ) and ‘anterior to the world and crerator of this (πρεσβύτερος κόσμου καὶ δημιουργός). Prior to creation there was nothing alongside God, nor after creation is anything created placed in the same ontological class as God himself (οὔτε πρὸ γενέσεως ἦν τι σὺν τῷ θεῷ οὔτε κόσμου γε-

 Cf. Origen, frJohn, 1: and the Logos/Wisdom ‘willed to establish a creative relation to future beings’ (ἠθέλησεν οὖν ἀναλαβεῖν αὕτη ἡ σοφία σχέσιν δημιουργικὴν πρὸς τὰ ἐσόμενα). Likewise, Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 156: καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὅσα νῦν ἐστι καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς.  Origen, selPs (comm. on Psalm 138:14 16), PG.1661.44 48; frPs, Psalm 138:14 16.

902

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

νομένου συντάττεταί τι αὐτῷ).³⁴⁵ There is not a single idea involved in these propositions which does not express Origen’s thought. However, Origen went far beyond Philo and met with Anaxagoras, and it was exactly this inspired combination that Gregory of Nyssa took up and advanced. The best way to understand Origen’s ideas of creation is to study Gregory of Nyssa, who expounded this theory in length while following Origen suit and explaining more openly in philosophical terms what Origen was reluctant to explicate. His statements are simply an expanded exposition of what Origen said succinctly and elliptically while and refraining from using heathen philosophical language. The world was made through the Son/Logos when God willed and decided to do so (τότε ἐβουλήθη καὶ τότε ἐποίησεν). Nevertheless, this creation means this involved also time proper and creatures would come to be in due course³⁴⁶ in the ‘extension’ of time, which was made in advance (προκαταβεβλημένου).³⁴⁷ God instilled potentiality (δύναμιν) into the interaction of occurrences, which though means neither automatous process nor haphazard one.³⁴⁸ How exactly did this happen? Now Gregory comes to the statement of the Genesis, ‘the earth was invisible and unformed’,³⁴⁹ and explains that which Origen refrained from explaining too much: upon the proximate divine act of creation, everything existed potentially (τῇ μὲν δυνάμει τὰ πάντα ἦν ἐν πρώτῃ τοῦ Θεοῦ περὶ τὴν κτίσιν ὁρμῇ). Unlike Origen, Gregory is evidently not coy about entertaining Aristotelian technical language, while mixing this with the Anaxagorean fundamentals: this creative act was in fact a certain spermatic force which

 Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 2.1 4. See references to the ‘unmixed’ applied to God and his properties. Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis, 56 (ἀπροσδεᾶ καὶ ἁπλῆν φύσιν ἰδεῖν ἀμιγῆ καὶ ἀσύγκρι τον); 77; Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis, 81; De Ebrietate, 44; De Confusione Linguarum, 73 (ἀμιγοῦς καὶ ἀκράτου); De Migratione Abrahami, 52 (τὸ δὲ θεῖον ἀκρατοῦς καὶ ἀμιγοῦς ἐστι λόγου, φθάνοντος μὲν ἀκοὴν διὰ λεπτότητα); Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 183 (τὸ μὲν θεῖον ἀμιγὲς καὶ ἄκρατον); Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 236 (τὸ γὰρ θεῖον ἀμιγές, ἄκρατον, ἀμερέστατον ὑπάρχον ἅπαντι τῷ κόσμῳ γέγονεν αἴτιον μίξεως, κράσεως, διαιρέσεως, πολυμερείας); De Con gressu Eruditionis Gratia, 36 (φύσεως ἁπλῆς καὶ ἀμιγοῦς καὶ ἀκράτου); De Somniis, 1.163; De Abrahamo, 122 (of the Monad/God: ἀμιγῆ καὶ ἀσύμπλοκον καὶ καθ’ αὑτὴν οὐδενὸς ἐπιδεᾶ); De Vita Mosis, 2.204; De Specialibus Legibus, 2.55 (ἀμιγὴς καὶ ἀκραιφνεστάτη).  Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 76: πάντα προκατανενοῆσθαι τῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ σοφίᾳ, τὰ διά τινος ἀναγκαίας τάξεως κατὰ τὸ ἀκόλουθον ἐκβησόμενα. Supra, p. 839.  Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 3.7.6: τοῦ γὰρ διαστήματος τῶν αἰώνων προκαταβε βλημένου τῶν ὄντων. Cf. Origen’s theory of time positing this as ‘extension’, in COT, pp. 269 71.  Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 76: Τοῦτο τοίνυν τὸ ἀκολούθως γενόμενον, ὡς ἂν μή τις ἀνάγοι πρὸς αὐτόματόν τινα συντυχίαν, Θεοῦ φησιν ἔργον ὁ Μωϋσῆς, τοῦ τὴν δύ ναμιν ταύτην ἐναποθεμένου τοῖς γενομένοις.  See Origen, supra, p. 900.

The Body of the Logos

903

was implanted as the starting point for the entire universe to come to pass (οἱονεὶ σπερματικῆς τινος δυνάμεως πρὸς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς γένεσιν καταβληθείσης). However, no individual things was there yet in actuality (ἐνεργεία δὲ τὰ καθ᾿ ἕκαστον οὔπω ἦν), ‘because the earth was invisible and unformed’.³⁵⁰ This means, Gregory explains, that ‘this is the same as saying that the earth both was and was not’ (ἴσον ἐστὶ τῷ λέγειν, ὅτι ἦν, καὶ οὐκ ἦν), ‘because the qualities’ that could be attached to each thing so as to make the the earth what it is in actuality ‘had not yet concurred with each other’ (οὐ γάρ που συνδεδραμήκεισαν περὶ αὐτὴν αἱ ποιότητες), and this can be proven by the fact that the scripture says that the earth was invisible (ἀπόδειξις δὲ τῆς διανοίας ταύτης, ὅτι ἀόρατον αὐτὴν ὁ λόγος εἶναι φησίν), since ‘whatever is invisible can have no colour, because colour presupposes existence of a surface of a certain shape, and a shape cannot exist apart from a body; therefore, since the earth was invisible, definitely it had no colour either, therefore, it had no shape, from which follows that the earth was incorporeal’. This means that ‘upon the sudden’ and momentary act ‘of creation of the world’ (ἐν τῷ ἀθρόῳ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου καταβολῆς), ‘like everything else, the earth was included in those that were made’ (ἦν μὲν ἐν τοῖς οὖσιν ἡ γῆ, ὡς καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα), ‘yet it kept waiting for its own [actual] construction by means of qualities –which is in fact what is the meaning of it actual making’ (ἀνέμεινε δὲ τὸ διὰ τῆς τῶν ποιοτήτων κατασκευῆς· ὅπερ ἐστὶ γενέσθαι). When the scripture speak of ‘invisible, it suggests that the earth had no other quality whatsoever’ (διὰ γὰρ τοῦ ἀόρατον αὐτὴν εἰπεῖν εἶναι, τὸ μηδὲ ἄλλην τινὰ ποιότητα θεωρεῖσθαι περὶ αὐτὴν ὁ λόγος ἐνδείκνυται); and by the term ‘unformed, it gives us to understand that this was not yet a dense body having the peculiar properties corpoeral being’ (διὰ τοῦ ἀκατασκεύαστον ὀνομάσαι, νοεῖν δίδωσι τὸ μήπω αὐτὴν πεπυκνῶσθαι ταῖς σωματικαῖς ἰδιότησιν). This becomes more evident from the rendering of the Genesis by the other translators: of them, Symmachus wrote ‘the earth was idle and without distinction’ (ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀργὸν καὶ ἀδιάκριτον); Thedotion rendered, ‘no space was there’ (κένωμα καὶ οὐθέν); and Akylas translated, ‘none whatever’ (οὐθὲν καὶ οὐθέν). All of them indicate that the actual ‘earth’ was made upon creation only potentially, whereas it did exist in actuality yet (ἐνεργείᾳ μὲν οὔπω ἦν· ἐν μόνῃ δὲ τῇ δυνάμει τὸ εἶναι εἶχε).³⁵¹

 Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 80.  Gregory of Nyssa, loc. cit. See further, Gregory explaining the terms one by one, such as ‘idle earth’ (meaning earth existing only potentially), ‘undistinguished’ (ἀδιάκριτον), which is Anaxagorean, is explained in that context, confirming that qualities are not ‘principles’. The term κένωμα at this point clearly means ‘space’ (the void space as a receptacle of bodies), which is unknown to modern lexica of ancient Greek. It means the void which receives qualities

904

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Therefore, everything that ‘is being seen as bodies having a certain magnitude’ (ἐν μείζονι ὄγκῳ περὶ τὰ λοιπὰ καθορώμενοι) such as ‘the sun and the moon’, upon the creative act, they were ‘made’ only in the sense that ‘they received their starting points’ i. e. the causes (τὰς ἀφορμὰς ἔσχεν) for them to be really constructed in due course.³⁵² These ‘starting points’ is what ‘invisible earth’ or ‘Adam being not an individual man, but a universal human nature’ means. The object oft he divine creative act was only ‘the principles and causes that were made in advance’, in the same manner the soil produces fruits only some time after it has received seeds within itself.³⁵³ It was then all too natural for God in the beginning to create the universal human nature (ἡ καθόλου φύσις … ἅπαν ἀθρόως τὸ τῆς φύσεως πλήρωμα), not ‘male and female’ which is characteristic of the alienated earthly man (γεγενημένον ἀπ᾿ ἀλλοιώσεως), it is not the initially created ‘image’ of God.³⁵⁴ God created the impeccable universal ‘human nature’, not any individual. This is why he bid men, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ when he created ‘male and female’, not when he made man ‘in the image’ of God in the beginning. All of this means that, unlike Origen himself, Gregory had no inhibitions about stating plainly that Origen’s Providential creation is no different from

in itself, thus giving rise to various bodies (Τὴν γὰρ χωρητικὴν τῶν ποιοτήτων δύναμιν, τῇ τοῦ κενώματος φωνῇ παρεδήλωσεν). See further: ὥστε διὰ τούτου μαθεῖν, ὅτι δεκτικὴν δύναμιν τῶν ποιοτήτων ὁ τοῦ παντὸς κτίστης προκατεβάλλετο· κενὴ δέ τις ἦν αὕτη καὶ ἐν ἑαυτῇ εἶχεν οὐθέν, πρὶν συμπληρωθῆναι αὐτὴν ταῖς ποιότησι.  Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 120: ἡ δὲ σύστασις ἑκάστου (ἐπειδὴ πάντως ἐν χρόνῳ κινεῖται πᾶν τὸ κινούμενον, καὶ δεῖ τὴν τῶν μορίων πρὸς ἄλληλα συνδρομήν, καὶ χρονικοῦ τινος διαστήματος) ἐν ταῖς τρισὶν ἡμέραις ἐτελειώθη· … εἰ πάντων κατὰ τὸ ἀθρόον παρὰ τῆς τοῦ Δημιουργοῦ δυνάμεως ὑλικῶς προκαταβεβλημένων, πρὸς τὴν τῶν ὄντων σύστα σιν, ἡ μερικὴ τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ τεθεωρημένων ἀνάδειξις, τάξει τινὶ φυσικῇ καὶ ἀκολουθίᾳ ἐν ῥητῷ διαστήματι ἐτελειώθη· τότε μὲν ἀθρόου τοῦ φωτὸς ἐκφανέντος, νῦν δὲ πάσης τῆς φωτιστικῆς φύσεως ἰδικῶς διαφανείσης, ὧν ἐστι καὶ ὁ ἥλιος, καὶ ἡ σελήνη.  Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio Catechetica, 26: τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ τὰς αἰτίας προκατεβάλετο, ὥσπερ ἡ γῆ κατὰ τὰ γένη τῶν καταβληθέντων σπερμάτων καὶ τοὺς καρποὺς ἀντιδίδωσι.  Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 185: ἐπιτεχνᾶται τῇ εἰκόνι τὴν περὶ τὸ ἄῤῥεν καὶ θῆλυν διαφορὰν, ἥτις οὐκέτι πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἀρχέτυπον βλέπει, ἀλλὰ καθὼς εἴρηται, τῇ ἀλογω τέρᾳ προσῳκείωται φύσει. Op. cit. Hominis, p. 205: Οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἐν τῇ θείᾳ τε καὶ μακαρίᾳ φύσει ἡ κατὰ τὸ ἄῤῥεν καὶ θῆλυ διαφορά· ἀλλὰ τῆς ἀλόγου κατασκευῆς ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον με τενεγκὼν τὸ ἰδίωμα, οὐ κατὰ τὸ ὑψηλὸν τῆς κτίσεως ἡμῶν τὸν πλεονασμὸν τῷ γένει χαρίζεται. Οὐ γὰρ ὅτε τὸ κατ’ εἰκόνα ἐποίησε, τότε τὴν τοῦ αὐξάνεσθαι καὶ πληθύνεσθαι δύναμιν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ προσέθηκεν, ἀλλ’ ὅτε διέκρινε τῇ κατὰ τὸ ἄῤῥεν καὶ θῆλυ διαφορᾷ, τότε φησίν· Αὐξάνεσθε καὶ πληθύνεσθε, καὶ πληρώσατε τὴν γῆν. Τὸ γὰρ τοιοῦτον οὐ τῆς θείας φύσεως ἴδιον, ἀλλὰ τῆς ἀλόγου ἐστί.

The Body of the Logos

905

the realm of potentialities: when Origen explained the scriptural portion of Genesis which stated that initially ‘the earth was invisible’, or he argued that ‘Adam does not refer to any individual’ whatsoever, he did not have in mind any ‘models’ or ‘patterns’ or ‘Ideas’, but all of this was simply about creation of potentialities. ³⁵⁵ Gregory initiated the expression ‘he who takes hold and embraces everything’, and similar ones, by means of the participle περιδεδραγμένος (Present Perfect participle oft he verb περιδράσσομαι),³⁵⁶ thus explaining Psalm 94:4. Nevertheless, he always cared to emphasize that mainly he had in mind divine foreknowledge, and used more or less synonymous expressions (προκατανοήσας, ἐμπεριλαβὼν τῇ γνώσει, προκατανοηθέντος, προκατενόησεν, and the like).³⁵⁷ If there is no automatous process, this is so only because there is divine Providence which embraces all things, hence it knows the limits of everything since nothing is neither beginningless nor endless. Antipater of Bostra was elected bishop nearly sixty years after Gregory of Nyssa died and probably he was older by two generations than the Cappadocian. Were it for things to have been different, and Gregory to have lived to read Antipater’s vituperative work against Origen, he would probably have refuted those absurd allegations one by one. However, history went on differently. The book of Antipater became the guide for monks of the Great Laura of Sabas to compose a

 See supra, p. 903, Gregory of Nyssa, Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 80: δυνάμει τὰ πάντα ἦν … ἐν μόνῃ δὲ τῇ δυνάμει τὸ εἶναι εἶχε, since God instilled potentiality (δύναμιν) into the interaction of occurrences (op. cit. p. 76).  Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 204: ὁ πάντων τῶν περάτων περιδεδραγμένος. Contra Eunomium, 2.1.365: κατὰ τὸν σοφὸν θεολόγον [= David] ὁ τῶν αἰώνων ποιητὴς καὶ πάσης περιδεδραγμένος τῆς τῶν ὄντων φύσεως. Refutatio Confessionis Eunomii, 162: ὁ περιδε δραγμένος πάντων τῶν ὄντων. Epistulae, 4.4: ὁ τοῦ παντὸς περιδεδραγμένος καὶ κρατῶν ἐν τῇ ἰδίᾳ δυνάμει τὸ πᾶν. Orationes viii De Beatitudinibus, PG.44.1201.31 32: ὁ τοῦ παντὸς περιδε δραγμένος (quoted by ACO, Concilium Universale Ephesenum anno 431, v. 1.1.2 pp. 44 & 64 & 94); et passim. He was followed just once by his brother Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 5.7, which was quoted by the Catena in Epistulam ad Romanos (typus Monacensis) (e cod. Monac. gr. 412), p. 428, and by Suda, letter sigma entry 941. Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica, 4.2.1. Then, Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, De Caelesti Hierarchia, p. 32. John of Damascus, Oratio in Sabbatum Sanctum, 29. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 72; 75; 92.  Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 185: τοῦτο ὁ εἰδὼς τὰ πάντα πρὶν γενέσεως αὐτῶν, καθώς φησιν ἡ προφητεία, ἐπακολουθήσας, μᾶλλον δὲ προκατανοήσας τῇ προγνωστικῇ δυνάμει. Op. cit. p. 204 5: ἐμπεριλαβὼν τῇ γνώσει (God who encompassed things by his knowl edge). Op. cit. p. 205: προκατανοηθέντος διὰ τῆς προγνωστικῆς ἐνεργείας. Loc. cit. τὸν σύμμε τρον τῇ κατασκευῇ τῶν ἀνθρώπων χρόνον προκατενόησεν. Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 76: πάντα προκατανενοῆσθαι τῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ σοφίᾳ, τὰ διά τινος ἀναγκαίας τάξεως κατὰ τὸ ἀκόλουθον ἐκβησόμενα.

906

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

list of alleged heretical doctrines by Origen. This document was sent to Ephremius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, then it was embraced by Justinian as both a letter to Patriarch Menas of Constantinople and a formal imperial edict, eventually to become a synodical condemnation of Origen.³⁵⁸ One of the points that Antipater alleged was about Origen’s idea of creation: the sophistic gravamen was that Origen believed that God created only a limited number of ‘intelligible substances’ (νοερῶν οὐσιῶν), because the divine power is limited; for were it for this power to be unlimited, then God would be unable to comprehend himself, since the infinite is unknowable. God, therefore, created as many rational creatures as he was able to afford to manage through his providence, as indeed he created as much of matter as he was able to decorate. This did not deter detractors from arguing at the same point that ‘all genera and species are co-eternal with God’ (πάντα τὰ γένη καὶ τὰ εἴδη συναΐδιά ἐστι τῷ θεῷ), although God made them.³⁵⁹ However, although modern editors were quick to consider this nonsense as ‘fragments from De Principiis’ so as to ‘contribute’ to restoration of that lost work, things are quite different. Origen did in fact speak of a ‘fixed number of souls’ (τοῦ ὡρισμένου τῶν ψυχῶν ἀριθμοῦ) when he argued against the old doctrine of transmigration; indeed he wrote this phrase by the end of his life, that is, in two of the most mature works of his.³⁶⁰ Unlike modern editors who are all ears to every possible and impossible obloquy against Origen and they are eager to make them ‘part of Origen’s writings’, the last who would have been prepared to accept such allegations was Gregory of Nyssa and he would have rejected this absurdity out of hand. For it was himself who wrote in the spirit of Origen what Origen himself actually maintained:

 Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Sabae, pp. 189 91. I have discussed those events in RCR, pp. 27 77; 259; 325.  Justinian, Edictum contra Origenem, p. 70: Ἐν τῷ Περὶ ἀρχῶν αὐτοῦ λόγῳ ἐπ’ αὐτῆς λέξεως εἰπὼν οὕτως ἐν τῆ ἐπινοουμένῃ ἀρχῇ τοσοῦτον ἀριθμὸν τῷ βουλήματι αὐτοῦ ὑποστῆσαι τὸν θεὸν νοερῶν οὐσιῶν ὅσον ἠδύνατο διαρκέσαι· πεπερασμένην γὰρ εἶναι καὶ τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ θεοῦ λεκτέον καὶ μὴ προφάσει εὐφημίας τὴν περιγραφὴν αὐτῆς περιαιρετέον. ἐὰν γὰρ ἄπειρος ἡ θεία δύναμις, ἀνάγκη αὐτὴν μηδὲ ἑαυτὴν νοεῖν· τῇ γὰρ φύσει τὸ ἄπειρον ἀπερίληπτον. πε ποίηκε τοίνυν τοσαῦτα ὧν ἠδύνατο περιδράξασθαι καὶ ἔχειν αὐτὰ ὑπὸ χεῖρας καὶ συγκροτεῖν ὑπὸ τὴν αὐτοῦ πρόνοιαν, ὥσπερ καὶ τοσαύτην ὕλην κατεσκεύασεν ὅσην ἠδύνατο κατακοσμῆσαι. The same in ACO, Synodus Constantinopolitana et Hierosolymitana anno 536, tome 3, p. 190.  Origen, commMatt, 13.1 & Fragmenta in evangelium Matthaei, p. 6. During the same period he wrote the Contra Celsum, in which he spoke of ‘the folly of transmigration’ of souls (τὴν περὶ μετενσωματώσεως ἄνοιαν). Cels, III.75.

The Body of the Logos

907

God, who takes hold and embraces (περιδεδραγμένος) all [sorts of] limits, knew everything according to the scripture which says, All the limits of the earth are in his hands. ³⁶¹ He Who knows all things before they were made, ³⁶² created by having embraced (ἐμπεριλαβὼν τῇ γνώσει) by his knowledge the exact number of each and every man that was to be made.³⁶³ When God created human nature itself (not any individual) he already knew how many men were to be born throughout all the time that human race would be on the earth. For since God ‘sees the future as present’ (τῷ ἐνεστῶτι τὸ μέλλον βλέπων), he already knew though his prescient act the whole amount of individuals that were to make up mankind (προκατανοηθέντος διὰ τῆς προγνωστικῆς ἐνεργείας πληρώματος τῶν ἀνθρώπων), therefore, he knew in advance (προκατενόησεν) the required totality of time which was necessary for all men that were ever to be made to live in (τὸν σύμμετρον τῇ κατασκευῇ τῶν ἀνθρώπων χρόνον), so that the whole amount of time should be commensurate with the aggregate of human beings that were to live in it (ὥστε τῇ παρόδῳ τῶν περιορισθεισῶν ψυχῶν συναπαρτισθῆναι τὴν τοῦ χρόνου παράτασιν).³⁶⁴ Therefore, yes, God knew right from the start that there was going to be a definite number of human beings throughout all of the time that the race was to live. However, on no account does this impugn God’s omnipotence: on the contrary, this omnipotence is stressed at this very point where the argument is expounded, indeed this is inherently involved with this argument, since omniscience and omnipotence are understood as standing side by side. As explained above, in this section Gregory says absolutely nothing different from Origen’s ideas. The irony about his detractors is that Gregory uses the participle περιδεδραγμένος denoting God’s omnipotence and omniscience, whereas Origen’s detractors reported that the word he used himself about the same idea was the infinitive form περιδράξασθαι –that is, both Origen and Gregory expressed the divine knowledge and power by means of the same verb περιδράττομαι. And yet, the text that Justinian received from the leaders of the Great Laura and made it a doctrinal censure against Origen used this very same verb (περιδράττεται) in order to claim that, to Origen, ‘the power of God the Father is limited’.³⁶⁵ However, against those allegations by Origen’s disparagers, we have his

 Psalm 94:4.  Sussana, 42.  Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, pp. 204 5.  Gregory of Nyssa, loc. cit.  Justinian, Edictum contra Origenem, p. 108: Ὅτι πεπερασμένη ἐστὶν ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ πατρὸς δύναμις, ἐκ τοῦ δευτέρου λόγου τοῦ αὐτοῦ βιβλίου. Then, both here and in ACO, Synodus Con

908

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

own words using the same verb (περιδράξασθαι) arguing that ‘it is impious to believe that God does not embrace everything by his knowledge’, and when the scripture represents God as saying ‘I do not know this or that’ it only means evil things that are unworthy of being known by God.³⁶⁶ Let these remarks suffice in order to show that Origen’s extant texts can indeed confirm that Gregory of Nyssa was but a faithful pupil of the great Alexandrian. Once Origen portrayed God as Creator, he made a further step and set forth his notion of ‘conceptions’ (ἐπίνοιαι) of the (personal) Wisdom. By this term, he meant certain predicates attributed to the Son, such as Logos, Light, Truth, Christ, King, Real Vineyard, First and Last, Beginning and End, Paraclete, Propitiatory, Consecration, Good, Great Arch-Priest, etc. All of these appellations are called ‘conceptions’ which are ‘in’ the Wisdom; they are also called ‘names of the Son’.³⁶⁷ However, with the exception of Wisdom and Logos, by no means do the rest of them pertain to the ontology of the Son; they only signify the economic function of the Logos within the world. Although our Lord Jesus Christ is one in his substance, and he is no other that the Son of God, nevertheless, he is represented as being various and diverse in the figures and images of the Scripture. … Therefore, the Lord himself accommodates his form in correspondence to the place and time and certain individual conditions.³⁶⁸

This is the sense in which he refers to the ‘objects of contemplation of the Logos’ (τῶν τοῦ λόγου θεωρημάτων).³⁶⁹ What came into being out of non-being was a ‘multitude’ of ‘wisdom’ (σοφίαν), ‘logoi’ (λόγους), ‘forms’ (τύπων), a ‘system of conceptions’ (συστήματος νοημάτων),³⁷⁰ and ‘objects of contemplation’

stantinopolitana et Hierosolymitana anno 536, tome 3, p. 209 (allegedly Origen’s words): Μηδεὶς προσκοπτέτω τῷ λόγῳ, εἰ μέτρα ἐπιτίθεμεν καὶ τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ δυνάμει. ἄπειρα γὰρ περιλαβεῖν τῇ φύσει ἀδύνατον τυγχάνει. ἅπαξ δὲ πεπερασμένων ὄντων ὧν περιδράττεται αὐτὸς ὁ θεός, ἀνάγκη ὅρον εἶναι μέχρι πόσων πεπερασμένων διαρκεῖ.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1100.10 14: ᾿Aγνοεῖ δὲ καὶ οὐ γινώσκει τὰ κακά, οὐ τῷ δύνασθαι αὐτὸν περιδράξασθαι πάντων, καὶ περιλαβεῖν τῇ διανοίᾳ αὐτοῦ (τοῦτο γὰρ ἀθέμιτον καὶ λογίζεσθαι περὶ Θεοῦ)· ἀλλὰ τῷ ἀνάξια εἶναι τῆς γνώσεως αὐτοῦ.  About the notion of ‘in’ Wisdom, see commJohn, I.19.111; about the ‘names of the Son’, commJohn, I.20.123; II.18.125 19.131. See COT, pp. 35 7; 58 62; 82; 170; 271.  Origen, Homilies on Genesis (Latin), XIV.1. Cf. this notion in Homilies on Exodus, VII.8, and the same one fully discussed in commJohn, I.9 10.  Origen, Libri x in Canticum Canticorum (fragmenta), 3. It is not accidental that the term the oremata (visions, θεωρήματα) is used in this passage, in which an exegesis of the mystical com munion of the soul with Christ is expounded. Origen regarded the Song of Songs as the book that contains the most profound divine mysteries in a mystical way; see expProv, PG.17.220.50 56.  Origen, commJohn, I.19.113.

The Body of the Logos

909

(θεωρήματα), which were made ‘in Wisdom’, and they were called ‘wisdom’, too; they were placed, as it were, in the Wisdom of God, on the Body of the Son, and ‘adorned’ this Body. It is according to the latter conception that, in the Proverbs (8:22: κύριος ἔκτισέν με ἀρχὴν ὁδῶν αὐτοῦ εἰς ἔργα αὐτοῦ), Wisdom is styled ‘created’. This conception of ‘coming into being out of non-being’ pertains to the Providential creation, which is in the divine life, and ‘adorns’ the Body of the Logos; it suggests the logoi of the cosmos that concur in order to generate the perceptible reality in due course. Those logoi came into being out of nonbeing, and only in light of this can we understand the meaning of portions such as the following: The Son of God is also called Wisdom, made as a beginning of his ways towards his works, according to the Proverbs.³⁷¹ This means that [the personal] Wisdom [Logos/Son] existed only in relation to Him of Whom she was wisdom, having no relation to anyone else at all (ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ σοφία, πρὸς τὸν οὗ ἐστι σοφία ὑπάρχουσα, οὐδεμίαν σχέσιν πρὸς ἕτερόν τινα εἶχεν); but once the Son of God himself became God’s benevolent decision (εὐδοκία θεοῦ γενόμενος) and willed (ἠβουλήθη) to bring creatures into being, he willed (ἠθέλησεν) to establish a creative relation (σχέσιν δημιουργικήν) to future creatures (πρὸς τὰ ἐσόμενα); this is precisely the meaning of the saying that she was made the beginning of God’s ways.³⁷²

The wisdom of God ‘contains the logoi of everything that has been created’,³⁷³ and ‘each and everyone of the logoi of those which are under his rule exist in God the Logos and in his Wisdom’ (οἱ καθ᾿ ἕνα λόγοι τῶν διοικουμένων εἰσὶν ἐν τῷ τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγῳ καὶ τῇ σοφίᾳ αὐτοῦ).³⁷⁴ This is how the distinction between two different states is made: first, there are the ‘concepts of God’ (τὰ ἐννοήματα τοῦ Θεοῦ); then, they ‘are somehow substansified and came into actuality’ (οὐσιωμένων πως καὶ εἰς ἔργον ἐρχομένων).³⁷⁵ Could one possibly see any difference between the different modes of existence of the Anaxagorean logoi, as they were described by Zeno, Chrysippus, Porphyry, Damascius, Simplicius, and Philoponus? We saw that the principles/logoi themselves are both one and many. Accordingly, in the present context, Wisdom is the Son of God, and, alongside this oneness, there is also a notion of multitude attributed to it: ‘in’ Wisdom there are the ‘logoi, according to which everything was made’ by God

    

Prov. 8:22. Origen, frJohn, 1; italics are mine. Origen, Cels, V.39. Origen, commEph, 6, p. 241. Origen, op. cit. pp. 240 1.

910

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

‘in wisdom.’³⁷⁶ The original creative act of God (the Providential Creation) is not one of individual beings, whether persons or things or phenomena: it is one of causes, forces of various kinds, and all sorts of logoi; in short, it is the realm of potentialities. This is the crucial point of Origen’s perception of God as Creator. Moreover, the outcome of the divine creative act is adumbrated as existing in God, despite the indispensable ontological difference between creator and creature. The logoi are in the divine life, namely, in the Son/Wisdom/Logos, but they are not divine by essence. This is why Origen, although regarding Wisdom as a personal living hypostasis, also maintains a notion of ‘plurality’ in her: the ‘logoi’ and the ‘system of objects of contemplation’ that ‘adorned the body’ of Wisdom (the Son) were placed in the divine Wisdom, and they will always be both oneness and manyness. This idea is no different from the Anaxagorean principles, which were made as both oneness and distinct ones as of a certain beginning, and, once they were made, they will be there forever. This is the sense in which the Son is a ‘creature’, although most certainly Origen’s teaching is the outstanding counter-point of what later was known as Arianism.³⁷⁷ On that account, he refers to ‘the firstborn of all creation’,³⁷⁸ who ‘is the oldest of all created beings and … it was to him that God said of the creation of man: ‘Let us make man in our image and likeness’;³⁷⁹ for ‘wisdom’ was ‘created’ in the ‘body’ of Christ. Consequently, he speaks of the ‘logos’ of this world (τὸν περὶ τοῦ κόσμου λόγον), which he considers from a worldly point of view, and says that this is the ‘last of the corporeals and the beginning of the incorporeals’ (ὃς λόγος μέν ἐστι τελευταῖος τῶν σωματικῶν, ἀρχὴ δὲ τῶν ἀσωμάτων).³⁸⁰ This ‘logos’, according to which the world came into existence following the Fall, is itself a creature, by virtue of which the providential incorporeal creation comes into the closest relation to the actual creation that emerged as a spatio-temporal reality. The transitional point from incorporeality to corporeality is visualized through contemplation of this particular ‘logos’, which is the all-inclusive one of all the logoi of the universe.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.22.147, quoting Psalm 103:24.  Origen was the first Christian who used the phrase οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν (‘there is no when he was not’) (Athanasius, De Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, PG.25.465) which afterwards became the catch phrase of the defenders of Christian orthodoxy against the Arians. As mentioned earlier, Origen took the formula from Alexander of Aphrodisias and adapted it to the context of his own purposes. See infra, pp. 991 2.  Col. 1:15.  Gen. 1:26. Cels, V.37.  Origen, Libri x in Canticum Canticorum, p. 233 & Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17.265.5 10. See infra, pp. 1401 10.

The Body of the Logos

911

Whereas God’s former creative act was ‘utterance’ to his Wisdom that ‘adorned’ the Body his Wisdom/Logos, the actual world came into existence after God allowed his Logos to bring the material creation, and indeed matter itself, into existence. This creation was realized according to ‘the ‘pre-uttered logoi, which were distinctly articulated by God in wisdom’ (προτρανωθέντας λόγους). Thus, a distinction is drawn between the ‘former’, namely providential creation, and the latter, which is the actual world as a spatio-temporal reality. In the same vein, he distinguishes between ποίησις and πλάσις. The former is from Genesis 1:26, where God says, ‘Let us make (ποιήσωμεν) man in our image and likeness’. The latter is from Genesis 2:7 stating that God ‘made (ἔπλασεν) man’.³⁸¹ This is why, in the foregoing passage, reference to the actual creation’s coming into existence is made through the term πλάσις. Particular attention should be paid to an expression used in a mature portion of the commentary on John: the fallen adversary is described as being ‘neither created, nor image’, but one ‘moulded by the Lord, who made it to be mocked by his angels.’³⁸² It is noticeable that this adversary is excluded from both the terms κτίσις and πλάσις, which suggests Origen’s fundamental tenet that the devil, as such, is not a creature made by God (in accordance with the old Greek tenet holding that God is not the author of evil).³⁸³ This is not part of the providential creation; it is only negation of creation and tendency to annihilation. This adversary is the unceasing effort to force being into non-being, it is the persistent denial of the creative act of God, it is subversive activity aiming at nothingness: this denial has its origin in the primeval Fall, and this is how any Manichean point of view is explicitly rejected, indeed by name,³⁸⁴ although fanaticism during and after the sixth century went as far as to identify Origen with Manichaeism, following Justinian’s ill-advised texts which were written at the Laura of Sabas.³⁸⁵

 Origen, homJer, 1.10. See COT, pp. 84 6; 92.  Job, 40:19. Origen, commJohn, XX.22.182. Cf. I.17.95; I.17.97&98; De Oratione, 26.5.  I have discussed this in NDGF, p. 593; also, PHE, pp. 249 50.  See repudiation of the ‘paranoia of Manichaens’ by Origen: frLuc, 78; 226; comm1Cor, 81; frJohn, 28.  Justinian, Edictum contra Origenem, pp. 68; 70; 72; Epistula Ad Synodum De Origene, p. 122; then, the same text, ACO, Synodus Constantinopolitana et Hierosolymitana anno 536, tome 3, pp. 189; 190 1. Evagrius Scholasticus, Historia Ecclesiastica, pp. 188 9. Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Sabae, p. 124; Vita Euthymii, p. 39. Nicephorus I of Constantinople, De Magnete, 52. George Mon achus, Chronicon, p. 630; Chronicon Breve, PG.110.780.43 48. George Cedrenus, Compendium His toriarum, pp. 660 1. Michael Glycas, Quaestiones in Sacram Scripturam, 48.49; 91.413. Nicepho rus Callistus Xanthopulus, Historia Ecclesiastica, 17.27. Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 2.83; Tractatus de Processu Spiritus Sancti iii, p. 484; De Verbis

912

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Likewise, distinction was drawn between γένεσις (‘creation’) and γέννησις (‘generation’). The former pertains to the initial creation; the latter suggests fallen existence.³⁸⁶ A similar one was made between γένεσις and κτίσις, the latter denoting the creation of space-time.³⁸⁷ In all three cases, Origen suggests that the initial creative act of God pertains to a reality, which, although a creature, exists on the Body of the Logos, therefore, in the divine realm. Since there is not yet corporeality and time, there can be no notion of independent life applied to creatures. The first (providential) creation means ‘making of the substance’ (οὐσίωσιν)³⁸⁸ of ‘rational creatures’ (i. e. the logos of them), and this ‘making’ was ‘in Wisdom’.³⁸⁹ This is the sense in which God ‘created wisdom as a beginning’ towards his works.³⁹⁰ What was actually created in the former creation was the ‘wisdom’ meaning ‘system of objects of contemplation … and forms and logoi’, according to which ‘future beings’³⁹¹ could come into actual being. This is the parallel to the Anaxagorean Mind having ‘distinguished’ the principlies, thus creating the realm of potentialities.

Patrum Latinorum De Processu Spiritus Sancti, p. 54. Pseudo Athanasius, Quaestiones ad Antio chum Ducem, PG.28.608.11 13.  Origen, frMatt, 11.  Origen, selPs, 32. The distinct senses attached to each of these are not identical throughout Origen’s work. These terms are involved and contrasted just because they are found in specific scriptural passages being commented upon. At another point (frJohn, 13), he uses the term γέ νεσις in the sense of the spatio temporal natural reality. However, what matters is the distinction itself between the two creations, namely the providential one of logoi and the actual one. In chapter 4, we saw Simplicius arguing staunchly that this is a distinctly Anaxagorean theory.  Origen, commJohn, XX.24.202; frJohn, 1; commEph, 1; Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V.7) (P. Cair. 88748 + cod. Vat. gr. 762), p. 204; frPs, Psalm 80:10 & selPs, PG.12.1544.43; selPs, PG.12.1305.27.  Psalm 103:24. commJohn, I.19.114. This point should not be misunderstood: this ‘substance’ suggests the ‘nature’ of rational creatures, such as the human one, not any individual existence. Origen maintained that individual substances appeared only with the actual (material) creation. Hardly could this thesis be more ‘Greek’: Anaxagoras taught that material individuality started once the principles gave rise to material reality, which happened by means of ‘rotation’ (περιχώ ρησις). Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156; 174; 176; 179; commPhys, p. 301. By the same token, Aristotle realized that spatiality is concomitant with motion (Physica, 212b29: οὐ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ ὂν ἐν τόπῳ, ἀλλὰ τὸ κινητὸν σῶμα, cf. op. cit. 233a19 20). Furthermore, materiality is concurrent with change (Metaphysica, 1069b24: πάντα δ᾿ ὕλην ἔχει ὅσα μεταβάλλει), and with numerical multiplicity (Metaphysica, 1074a33 34: ἀλλ᾿ ὅσα ἀριθμῷ πολλά, ὕλην ἔχει, cf. De Anima, 432a3 7; Physica, 204a8 10) and vice versa. In effect, Origen endorses this thesis.  Prov. 8:22. Origen, commJohn, I: 9; 17; 18; 19; VI.6; XIX.9; XX: 16; 39.  Origen, commJohn, I.19.113 15.

The Body of the Logos

913

Therefore, ποίησις and γένεσις point to the Providential Creation, whereas πλάσις, γέννησις, and κτίσις refer to the Actual Creation of the world. Of them, ποίησις and γένεσις refer to ‘coming into being out of non-being’;³⁹² this is creation of the ‘essence’ of things (i. e. of their logoi), which Origen calls ‘substantification’ (οὐσίωσις)³⁹³ of rational natures (not of individual rational creatures). It was created as the nature of rational beings and things and phenomena, which started to make sense as potentialities; no individual things or persons were made at that stage. This is why the words of Job, as well as of David, ‘your hands have made me and fashioned me’ (αἱ χεῖρες σου ἐποίησάν με καὶ ἔπλασάν με)³⁹⁴ allude to a ‘great and profound doctrine’.³⁹⁵ The core of this doctrine is implied through the notions of ποίησις and πλάσις, yet this is as far as Origen was prepared to go, and he stated explicitly that he did not wish to elaborate any further.³⁹⁶ Nevertheless, this did not prevent him from highlighting the notion of ‘coming into being out of non-being’ throughout his writings. Creatures appeared ‘from non-being’ (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων)³⁹⁷ and from ‘non-existence’ (ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος),³⁹⁸ and they ‘received their being from Him’ (ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ τὸ εἶναι δεξάμενοι).³⁹⁹ Therefore, what God saw as a ‘good’ creature was the ‘created’ wisdom (i. e. the logoi) which was placed on the Body of the Logos. This is a delicate point of this theory of creation: Wisdom of God is called both his beginningless Son and the product of his creative act, which came into being and ‘adorned’ the ‘body’ of the Son. Why (that is, the ‘logoi’/reasons why) the beasts should come into being is known to God alone. For God does nothing haphazard and without good reason: even the falling of a small sparrow does not take place apart from God’s providence.⁴⁰⁰ There is a ‘logos’ (λόγος) for everything; this reason (λόγος) is known to God alone, and it is a ‘logos’ dwelling in his wisdom, actually it is the totality of ‘ornaments’ of (and on) the Body of the Logos/Wisdom.

 Origen, frMatt, 11.  Origen, selPs, 32.  Job 10:8; Psalm 118:73.  Quoting Heb. 5:11. Cf. Origen, Cels, V.9; VII.32; commJohn, XXXII.16.188; commMatt, 17.32.  Origen, Cels, IV.37. Cf. frPs, Psalm 118:73.  Origen, expProv, PG.17: 196.22 & 204.33; commJohn, I.17.103 (Philocalia, 24.2); comm1Cor, 84.  Origen, schMatt, PG.17.289.35; frMatt, 3; commJohn, XXXII.16.188; selPs, PG.12.1577.3 4.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1260.7.  Origen, frMatt, 212; frLuc, 57; Homilies on Luke (Latin), 32.3. Obviously, this is the Aristote lian leitmotif, ‘Nature does nothing haphazardly’, which he made ‘God and Nature do nothing haphazardly’ only in the De Caelo, 271a33. See chapter 8, pp. 542 3, and notes 75, 76. However, Origen uses the language of Matt. 10:29, which expresses the same idea.

914

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

God the Logos himself is not the totality of the logoi: He is more than that, and cannot be comprehended entirely, but only to the extent this is possible for creaturely nature to attain. Even when this ‘wisdom’ is seen and comprehended, this does not mean that it is God Himself who is seen. Through this wisdom, God may be seen only as Creator, indeed only God manifesting something of Himself as Creator through his Logos. God as Creator is related only to what he decided and willed to do. Unless he reveals something of Himself, as in fact he did, he is beyond comprehension. This is one of the substantial differences from Plotinus, who postulated that ‘the archetypes existed before the universe’ and they are ‘not impressions from other things, but primary ones, and they are themselves substance of the Intellect (νοῦ οὐσίαν).’⁴⁰¹ Since the substance of things is no other than the archetypes, he identifies ‘Intellect’ with ‘substance’ proper, and normally the case is that Intellect is (not has) substance proper.⁴⁰² ‘Intellect itself is the really existing things’ (ὁ νοῦς ἄρα τὰ ὄντα ὄντως), and ‘there is no way for it to think of them as if they were somewhere else’ (οὐχ οἷα ἐστὶν ἄλλοθι νοῶν). For the really existing things ‘are neither prior nor posterior’ to Intellect (οὐ γάρ ἐστιν οὔτε πρὸ αὐτοῦ οὔτε μετ᾿ αὐτόν): the really existing things are the Intellect itself. ⁴⁰³ In the Enneads, III.9.1, Plotinus, considering Plato’s Timaeus, 39e7‒9, seems to waver as to whether a subdivision of the Intellect was necessary, or it should be interpreted according to the pattern of a single Intellect and Soul; he argues that the forms (τὸ παράδειγμα) are not outside the Demiurge, unlike Porphyry who, during a certain period of his life, believed that the forms are outside and prior the Demiurge.⁴⁰⁴

 Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.5; cf. V.9.8: Καὶ ὅλος μὲν ὁ νοῦς τὰ πάντα εἴδη, ἕκαστον δὲ εἶδος νοῦς ἕκαστος, ὡς ἡ ὅλη ἐπιστήμη τὰ πάντα θεωρήματα. Op. cit. VI.2.19: ἔφαμεν τὸ ἐκ πάντων τῶν ὄντων νοῦν εἶναι ἕκαστον, πρὸ δὲ πάντων ὡς εἰδῶν καὶ μερῶν τὸ ὂν καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν τιθέμεθα [νοῦν εἶναι]. Op. cit. VI.6.7: Ὁμοῦ δὲ πάντων ὄντων ἕκαστον αὖ χωρίς ἐστιν· ἐνορᾷ δὲ αὐτὰ τὰ ἐν τῷ νῷ καὶ τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὁ νοῦς οὐκ ἐπιβλέπων, ἀλλ᾿ ἔχων.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.6.8: καὶ νοῦς ἐστι καὶ οὐσία ἡ ὄντως. Op. cit. VI.7.16: ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ φύσις αἰτία οὐσίας καὶ νοῦ. Op. cit. VI.7.36: καὶ γενόμενος οὐσία καὶ νοῦς καὶ ζῷον παντελές. Op. cit. VI.7.39: Διὸ καὶ ὀρθῶς ἑτερότητα λαμβάνει, ὅπου νοῦς καὶ οὐσία. Op. cit. VI.8.9: ἀλλ᾿ ἔστιν ὡς ἔστιν ἡ οὐσία, οὖσα ὅπερ ἐστὶν οὐσία καὶ ὅπερ ἐστὶ νοῦς. Op. cit. VI.9.2: νοῦς ἡ οὐσία. Op. cit. VI.9.5: καὶ ἄγει εἰς οὐσίαν νοῦς.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.5.  Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 18: Διὸ καὶ ἀντιγράψας προσήγαγον δεικνύναι πειρώμενος ὅτι ἔξω τοῦ νοῦ ὑφέστηκε τὸ νόημα. Proclus reported this also in his commTim, v. 1, p. 322. He added that Longinus held that not only are forms (τὸ παράδειγμα) outside the Demiurge, but also that they are posterior to him. Subsequently, he was tantalized as to whether he should allow for an additional ontological level between the One and the Demiurge. Section III.9 of the En

The Body of the Logos

915

There is no way to bring these views of Plotinus close to those of Origen’s: for one thing, to Origen, there is no ontological distinction (let alone, classification) between the Mind and the Demiurge (even as a pagan philosopher, he wrote the tract ‘That God is the Sole Maker’, which appalled Proclus); for another, the logoi, which ‘decorate’ the Body of the Logos as ‘precious stones’, are not the substance of the Logos himself, who is a personal hypostasis; thirdly, they are posterior to the Logos, actually, they are his creatures. Those who seek similarities of Origen with Neoplatonism perhaps would think of Longinus, though only in an attenuated sense. Again, however, the differences are too substantial to allow that much of extrapolation. The fact is that Origen’s views were far too different from those of Plotinus, because his thought was Anaxagorean whereas Plotinus was unable to follow all along this line of thought because of his different fundamental axioms, particularly those concerning the ontology of the Intellect, and postulation of the One in a separate and superior ontological order (which though Damascius demonstrated to be an untenable theory).⁴⁰⁵ It is impossible to apprehend God unless through his wisdom, due to the fact that the Father has formed and placed the apprehension of truth therein. This is the meaning of the scriptural saying that it is only through ‘seeing’ the Son that one could ‘see’ the Father,⁴⁰⁶ since the Son is related to the world as the Logos who was present in all the theophaniae recorded in the Old Testament. That contemplation of the incorporeal things means contemplation of God as Creator follows from the fact that God is the creator not only of corporeal nature, but also of the incorporeal one,⁴⁰⁷ namely, of the ‘logoi’ of providence and judgement. This is the ‘system of objects of contemplation’ (τοῦ συστήματος τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ νοημάτων)⁴⁰⁸ which make up the Providential Creation.⁴⁰⁹ The ‘creatures’ are the ‘logoi of providence and judgement’.⁴¹⁰ They constitute the object of ‘moral and natural and theological’ knowledge,⁴¹¹ that is, of all knowledge. This is the sense in which ‘objects of contemplation’ (θεωρήματα) were created and placed into the Wisdom of God, and they are themselves called ‘wisdom’,

neades in fact consists of scattered notes of Plotinus put together by Porphyry seeking to create a ‘ninth’ treatise.  See discussion of this in chapter 10, pp. 817 23.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.6.33 39. Cf. John, 14:9; 12:44.  Origen, selPs, 2, PG.12.1108; Cf. expProv, 1, PG.17: 161; 196; 249.  Origen, commJohn, I.19.113 15.  See discussion of this in COT, chapter 2, pp. 39 64.  Origen, frPs, Psalms 61:13; 100:2; 138:14 16; selPs, PG.12: 1485.54 & 1488.1 & 1557.33; 1661.45; expProv, PG.17: 161.25 & 197.19 & 205.50.  Origen, expProv, PG.17: 161.26 31 & 220.50 56.

916

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

too.⁴¹² As it happened with the Anaxagorean ‘homoiomeries’, since God the Son is called also Wisdom, the parts in his body are named after the name of the whole. Ancient testimonies conspire to show that the Anaxagorean Mind is a personal hypostasis. Despite other influences, neither the Stoics nor Neoplatonists took this up explicitly. However, Origen was happy to entertain the idea which had the benefit of being Biblical, too. Unlike Plotinus, he never maintained that it is possible to attain full experience of the supreme God. This kind of knowledge is infinite and cannot be contained in any way: a human being is like a vessel receiving falling rain; at best, the vessel can be filled full, but it cannot contain all the amount of rain, which is ‘immeasurable’, and it is made only ostensibly ‘measurable’ by the volume of the vessels that receive it.⁴¹³ It is hardly necessary to point out the Anaxagorean character of this rationale, which Origen accommodated by introducing the notion of divine will and of creation ex nihilo. Beside the fact that Origen’s God is the Biblical one, it is widely assumed that the radical difference of the Biblical God from any Greek notion of Deity is that this God is personal. But we have already seen in chapter 5 that the Anaxagorean Mind is personal, too. Even to many Stoics, God was also somehow personal: they identified him with Zeus,⁴¹⁴ who is indestructible and ‘eternal’ (ἀΐδιος),⁴¹⁵ he is ‘both masculine and feminine’,⁴¹⁶ he administers judgement upon human affairs, he is the source of law and providence,⁴¹⁷ of punishment,⁴¹⁸ and nothing can happen unless Zeus commands it to occur.⁴¹⁹ There was a rich tradition of ideas for Origen to draw on, which he did selectively, yet abundantly. To him, every human being, indeed everything, is the

 Origen, excPs, PG.17: 125.33 & 137.30 31; Libri x in Canticum Canticorum (fragmenta), 3; Cels, V.39; commJohn, II.18; II.28.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1213.25 30: Καὶ γὰρ ὁ ὑετὸς αὐτὸς μὲν ἄμετρός ἐστι, μετρεῖται δὲ ἐν τοῖς ὑποδεχομένοις αὐτὸν ἀγγείοις.  See supra, 677; 690.  Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1052A (Chrysippus, fr. 1049). De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1075B (Cleanthes, fr. 536). So Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.134.  SVF, III.217.18 (Diogenes of Babylon, fr. 33).  Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1050D: τούτων οἴεται Χρύσιππος οὔτε μικρὸν οὔτε μέγα παρὰ τὸν τοῦ Διὸς λόγον εἶναι καὶ νόμον καὶ δίκην καὶ πρόνοιαν.  Plutarch, op. cit. 1050E (Chrysippus, fr. 1176): πρῶτον δὲ τῶν κακῶν παραπλησίως ἐστὶν ἀκουστέον τοῖς προειρημένοις· εἶθ᾿ ὅτι ταῦτ᾿ ἀπονέμεται κατὰ τὸν τοῦ Διὸς λόγον ἤτοι ἐπὶ κολά σει ἢ κατ᾿ ἄλλην ἔχουσάν πως πρὸς τὰ ὅλα οἰκονομίαν. ἔστι μὲν οὖν καὶ τοῦτο δεινόν, τὸ καὶ γίνεσθαι τὴν κακίαν καὶ κολάζεσθαι κατὰ τὸν τοῦ Διὸς λόγον.  Plutarch, op. cit. 1056C: τέλος δέ φησι μηδὲν ἴσχεσθαι μηδὲ κινεῖσθαι μηδὲ τοὐλάχιστον ἄλλως ἢ κατὰ τὸν τοῦ Διὸς λόγον, ὃν τῇ εἱμαρμένῃ τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι.

The Body of the Logos

917

result of conjunction or disjunction of certain logoi, be they causal, or constitutive, or cohesive, or dissolving ones. He employed also the theory of recurrent worlds, which went back to Heraclitus and Empedocles, and it was taken up by the Stoics. No matter how substantial his dissent from either of those theories was, he maintained the idea that the world is destroyed upon the end of each cosmic period. This he supposedly read in the scriptural ‘the fashion of this world passes away’.⁴²⁰ Everything (including bodies of all kinds) will be destroyed. However, the logoi of the world, namely, the primal and proximate object of creation, will never perish. This is how he interpreted Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:35, ‘heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away’. Since the scriptural term for both ‘words’ (uttered by God in the beginning of Genesis) and logoi (words of Jesus) is λόγοι, Origen puns on this, speaking of ‘words’ and ‘logoi’ (= principles, causes) using the same term. Once the logoi were created and placed on the Body of the Logos, they will never be destroyed. We know that even if heaven and earth and the things in them pass away, yet the λόγοι about each thing, being like parts in a whole, or forms in a species (οἱ περὶ ἑκάστου λόγοι ὄντες ὡς ἐν ὅλῳ μέρη ἢ ὡς ἐν γένει εἴδη τοῦ ἐν ἀρχῇ λόγου), of the Logos who was in the beginning with God, namely, of God the Logos, will in no wise pass away. For we wish to pay heed to him who said: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words (οἱ δὲ λόγοι μου) shall not pass away. ⁴²¹

Likewise, ‘the λόγοι (both, words and logoi) of the Saviour shall always officiate what is befitting them, since they are perfect and not pervious to becoming better, which means that they could not be superseded. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but his words (λόγοι) shall remain. For they are words (λόγοι) of him through whom everything was made, and the logoi (λόγοι) of events do not pass away, even though events themselves pass away.’⁴²² These are the Anaxagorean indestructible principles, which the Stoics took up, and saw them also as logoi operating as active causes out of which the world is made, it is sustained, and it is functioning.⁴²³ There are testimonies

 1 Cor. 7:31.  Origen, Cels, V.22, quoting Matt. 24:35; Mark, 13:31; Luke 21:33.  Origen, Commentariorum Series in Matthaeum, pp. 123 4.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.16c (Chrysippus, fr. 413): Τριχῶς δὴ λεγομένου κατὰ Χρύσιππον τοῦ στοιχείου … κατὰ τρίτον λόγον λέγεται στοιχεῖον ** εἶναι ὃ πρῶτον συνέστηκεν οὕτως, ὥστε γένεσιν διδόναι ἀφ᾿ αὑτοῦ ὁδῷ μέχρι τέλους καὶ ἐξ ἐκείνου τὴν ἀνάλυσιν δέχεσθαι εἰς ἑαυτὸ τῇ ὁμοίᾳ ὁδῷ. Γεγονέναι δ᾿ ἔφησε καὶ τοιαύτας ἀποδόσεις περὶ στοιχείου, ὡς ἔστι τό τε δι᾿ αὑτοῦ εὐκινητότατον καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ ὁ σπερματικὸς λόγος καὶ ἡ ἀΐδιος δύναμις φύσιν ἔχουσα τοιαύτην, ὥστε αὑτήν τε κινεῖν κάτω πρὸς γῆν τὴν τροπὴν καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς τροπῆς ἄνω πάντῃ

918

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

that the Stoic logoi were supposed to be incorruptible.⁴²⁴ Other witnesses reported that, during conflagration, all kinds of gods are destroyed and only Zeus remains,⁴²⁵ since he is the supreme ruler of the universe, that is, the Logos, who is eternal (ἀΐδιος), imperishable (ἄφθαρτος), and contains all logoi in himself. Origen’s Anaxagorean inspiration is as much evident as his own contribution: God the Logos created the λόγοι, and made them part of his Body; he holds them together, which makes them immune to destruction. That these logoi were created, while they did not exist before, is a Biblical idea. However, punning with the meaning of the term λόγος (meaning either utterance or reason), as well as the idea that these logoi were created upon the divine utterance of them by God, which is what makes them indestructible, was Origen’s own idea.

Origen and Neoplatonists Proclus was aware of Origen having been a pagan philosopher.⁴²⁶ The lapsed ‘exegete of Plato’ under this name mentioned by Proclus is no other than Origen, the converted Christian: he was an older contemporary of Plotinus, with whom they shared the same education.⁴²⁷ He was also a contemporary of Longinus (c. 213 ‒ 273), who also studied under Ammonius Saccas along with Origen and Plotinus.⁴²⁸ He is the same Origen whom the young Porphyry met in Alexan-

κύκλῳ, εἰς αὑτήν τε πάντα καταναλίσκουσα καὶ ἀφ᾿ αὑτῆς πάλιν ἀποκαθιστᾶσα τεταγμένως καὶ ὁδῷ.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 887 (Chrysippus, fr. 717): ἵνα δὲ μένῃ τὰ μετέχοντα τῆς ἰδέας ἀεὶ καὶ μηδέποτε ἐκλείπῃ, δεῖ τινος ἄλλης αἰτίας, οὐκ ἐν αὐτοῖς οὔσης ἢ κινουμένης, ἀλλ᾿ ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτῆς ἱδρυμένης, πρὸ τῶν κινουμένων ἀκινήτου καὶ διὰ τὴν οἰκείαν σταθερότητα προξε νούσης καὶ τοῖς κινουμένοις τὴν ἀνέκλειπτον μετοχήν· ταύτης γὰρ ἐφιέμενοι πάντες τῆς αἰτίας, οἱ μὲν τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους εἶναι τούτους οἰηθέντες, ἀφθάρτους αὐτοὺς ἐποίησαν, ὡς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς· οἱ δὲ … etc.  Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1075A B: ἀλλὰ Χρύσιππος καὶ Κλεάνθης, ἐμπεπληκότες ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν τῷ λόγῳ θεῶν τὸν οὐρανὸν τὴν γῆν τὸν ἀέρα τὴν θάλατταν, οὐ δένα τῶν τοσούτων ἄφθαρτον οὐδ᾿ ἀΐδιον ἀπολελοίπασι πλὴν μόνου τοῦ Διός, εἰς ὃν πάντας κα ταναλίσκουσι τοὺς ἄλλους. Op. cit. 1077D E (Chrysippus, fr. 1064): λέγει γοῦν Χρύσιππος ἐοικέναι τῷ μὲν ἀνθρώπῳ τὸν Δία καὶ τὸν κόσμον τῇ δὲ ψυχῇ τὴν πρόνοιαν· ὅταν οὖν ἡ ἐκπύρωσις γέ νηται, μόνον ἄφθαρτον ὄντα τὸν Δία τῶν θεῶν ἀναχωρεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν πρόνοιαν, εἶθ᾿ ὁμοῦ γενομέ νους ἐπὶ μιᾶς τῆς τοῦ αἰθέρος οὐσίας διατελεῖν ἀμφοτέρους.  I postpone until a forthcoming biography of Origen argument that the ‘pagan Origen’ was no other than the Christian Origen.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31; see quotation infra, note 434.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, pp. 31; 60; 63; 162.

The Body of the Logos

919

dria,⁴²⁹ and whose testimony about Origen Proclus reports.⁴³⁰ This is the same Origen who had an authoritative opinion on matters of interpretation⁴³¹ and of historical assessment;⁴³² he is Origen, as we know him, who advanced the notion of multiple ranks of life, indeed three ones (divine powers, humans, daemons) already during his pagan period.⁴³³ Proclus reports that, unlike Plotinus, Origen posited the Mind as the supreme principle.⁴³⁴ He concedes that some of his propositions would by partially Platonic philosophy: statements such as ‘the One is beyond any possibility of knowledge or grasp’ would have been acceptable to Plato himself, since they ‘would not be erroneous with respect to the nature of things’ (οὔτ᾿ ἂν τῆς τῶν πραγμάτων φύσεως αὐτὸν ἁμαρτάνειν). However, he takes exception to Origen urging either that ‘the One does not exist at all, or that it is non-subsistent’ (εἰ δ᾿ ὅτι παντελῶς ἀνύπαρκτον τὸ ἓν καὶ ἀνυπόστατον), or that ‘the Mind is the most excellent’ of beings (καὶ ὅτι τὸ ἄριστον ὁ νοῦς, meaning, that this is the supreme ontological principle). Moreover, to say that ‘the foremost Being and the foremost One is the selfsame reality’ (καὶ ὡς ταὐτόν ἐστι τὸ πρώτως ὂν καὶ τὸ πρώτως ἕν) are statements that neither Proclus himself could endorse, nor Plato himself would have ever sanctioned: therefore, Plato would have never counted such ideas among his own ones (οὔτ᾿ ἂν ἡμεῖς αὐτῷ ταῦτα συνομολογήσαιμεν οὔτ᾿ ἂν ὁ Πλάτων ἀποδέξαιτο καὶ τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ γνωρίμοις συναριθμήσειε): this doctrine is simply ‘far too alien to Plato, and far too full of the Peripatetic novelty’.⁴³⁵

 See supra, chapter 10, the testimony by Vincent of Lérins, p. 771.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 1, pp. 63 4: ὥστε, φησὶν ὁ Πορφύριος, τριῶν ὅλων ἡμερῶν διατελέσαι τὸν Ὠριγένη βοῶντα καὶ ἐρυθριῶντα καὶ ἱδρῶτι πολλῷ κατεχόμενον.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 68 (interpretation of Plato): Ὠριγένης δὲ ἀπεδέχετο τὸν τύπον τῆς ἑρμηνείας τῶν προκειμένων ῥήσεων ὡς ὄντα συγγραφικόν. Likewise, op. cit. pp. 83 & 86.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 1, p. 93.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 1, pp. 76 7: οἳ δὲ εἰς δαιμόνων τινῶν ἐναντίωσιν, ὡς τῶν μὲν ἀμεινόνων, τῶν δὲ χειρόνων, καὶ τῶν μὲν πλήθει, τῶν δὲ δυνάμει κρειττόνων, καὶ τῶν μὲν κρατούντων, τῶν δὲ κρατουμένων, ὥσπερ Ὠριγένης ὑπέλαβεν. … οἳ δὲ καὶ μίξαντες τὴν Ὠριγένους, ὥσπερ οἴονται, καὶ Νουμηνίου δόξαν ψυχῶν πρὸς δαίμονας ἐναντίωσιν εἶπον, τῶν μὲν δαιμόνων καταγωγῶν ὄντων, τῶν δὲ ψυχῶν ἀναγομένων· παρὰ οἷς ὁ δαίμων τριχῶς· καὶ γὰρ εἶναι φασὶ τὸ μὲν θείων δαιμόνων γένος, τὸ δὲ κατὰ σχέσιν, ὃ μερικαὶ συμπληροῦσι ψυχαὶ δαιμονίας τυχοῦσαι λή ξεως, τὸ δὲ πονηρὸν ἄλλο καὶ λυμαντικὸν τῶν ψυχῶν. τοὺς οὖν ἐσχάτους δαίμονας τὸν πόλεμον τοῦτον συγκροτεῖν καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς ἐν τῇ εἰς τὴν γένεσιν καθόδῳ.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31: θαυμάζω δὲ ἔγωγε τούς τε ἄλλους ἅπαντας τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐξηγητάς, ὅσοι τὴν νοερὰν βασιλείαν ἐν τοῖς οὖσι προσήκαντο, τὴν δὲ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἄρ ρητον ὑπεροχὴν καὶ τῶν ὅλων ἐκβεβηκυῖαν ὕπαρξιν οὐκ ἐσέφθησαν, καὶ δὴ διαφερόντως Ὠρι γένην τὸν τῷ Πλωτίνῳ τῆς αὐτῆς μετασχόντα παιδείας. Καὶ γὰρ αὖ καὶ αὐτὸς εἰς τὸν νοῦν τελευ τᾷ καὶ τὸ πρώτιστον ὄν, τὸ δὲ ἓν τὸ παντὸς νοῦ καὶ παντὸς ἐπέκεινα τοῦ ὄντος ἀφίησι.  Proclus, loc. cit.

920

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Proclus was evidently not aware of Anaxagoras’ philosophy, although he did not escape some unconscious influence by him, if obliquely, as discussed in the previous chapter. This is why he accuses Origen of maintaining a ‘Peripatetic’ doctrine (which in reality was an Anaxagorean one) and of interpreting Plato based of this. To Origen, the Mind is the supreme principle, and the Neoplatonic introduction of the One as standing above the Mind/Intellect appeared to him only a fanciful extrapolation forced on Platonic texts. Certainly, Origen could have not followed Aristotle, whose philosophy he actually knew from Alexander of Aphrodisias, and whom he unyieldingly included in his own black list of philosophy, which comprised ‘the Sophists, Epicureans, Peripatetics, and all those who hold false doctrines’, which suggested also the school of Democritus.⁴³⁶ It is all but coincidence that Origen’s ardent admirer Eusebius quoted the doxographic testimony (which was reported in Anaxagorean language), namely that, ‘those who were younger in age’ than the Presocratics, that is, ‘Socrates and Plato’, maintained that ‘True Being is the Good’, and all the names they used of it actually ‘suggested the Mind, which is unmixed with any matter and has nothing to do with any sort of passion’.⁴³⁷ It seems though that Proclus did not account for Origen’s influence upon Porphyry, nor did he follow the latter’s Christian period, however short this would have been. For Porphyry’s views underwent significant shifts, which Proclus either did not know or he chose to overlook and make Porphyry a consistent pupil of Plotinus’ philosophy. Hence, the criticism against Origen, who saw Anaxagoras’ Mind as the Christian God, could also apply to Porphyry, who wrote propositions that were in essence no different from those of Origen’s as reported by Proclus, notably, ‘the One does not exist at all’, or that ‘it is non-subsistent’. Here is then what Porphyry says: With respect to that which is non being (μὴ ὄν), we either produce it by being ourselves separated from the real Being (τὸ μὲν γεννῶμεν χωρισθέντες τοῦ ὄντος), or we have an in herent inkling of it, since we are ourselves possessed by [this] Being (τὸ δὲ προεννοοῦμεν ἐχόμενοι τοῦ ὄντος). Hence, if we are separated from Being (εἴ γε χωρισθείημεν τοῦ ὄντος), we have no prior conception of non Being which is above Being (οὐ προεννοοῦμεν τὸ ὑπὲρ τὸ ὂν μὴ ὄν), but we only generate a false impression which we mistake as non Being (ἀλλὰ

 Origen, Cels, II.27. Cf. op. cit. VIII.45, implying that those philosophies were the most crude ones. Likewise, referring to those three schools, op. cit. I.43; VIII.66.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.8, quoting from Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philoso phorum, 881E (Eusebius believed that this was a genuine work by Plutarch): Μετὰ δὲ τούτους οἱ νέοι τῷ χρόνῳ πῶς ἐδόξαζον ἄκουε· Σωκράτης καὶ Πλάτων ἓν τὸ μονοφυές, τὸ μοναδικόν, τὸ ὄντως ὂν ἀγαθόν· πάντα δὲ ταῦτα τῶν ὀνομάτων εἰς τὸν νοῦν σπεύδειν· νοῦς οὖν ὁ θεὸς χωριστὸν εἶδος, τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι τὸ ἀμιγὲς πάσης ὕλης καὶ μηδενὶ παθητῷ συμπεπλεγμένον.

The Body of the Logos

921

γεννῶμεν ψευδὲς πάθος τὸ μὴ ὄν). This [false impression] is only an accident, which ob tains in a man who departs from himself (συμβεβηκὸς περὶ τὸν ἐκστάντα ἑαυτοῦ). There fore, each man causes himself (καὶ γὰρ αἴτιος ἕκαστος) either to attain real self elevation to the non Being which is above Being (ᾧπερ ὄντως καὶ δι᾿ ἑαυτοῦ ἐνῆν ἀναχθῆναι ἐπὶ τὸ ὑπὲρ τὸ ὂν μὴ ὂν), or to produce for oneself [an illusory impression of] non Being which is [in fact formed] by deprivation of Being (καὶ παραχθῆναι ἐπὶ τὸ κατάπτωμα τοῦ ὄντος μὴ ὄν).⁴³⁸

No doubt, this is an extremely abstruse passage to translate; but its meaning is clear, especially if we recall Porphyry’s statement about two kinds of incorporeality: first, incorporeality which is applied to things by intellectually stripping perceptible objects off their matter; two, incorporeality proper, which could in no way be grasped by means of imposing this intellectual abstraction upon matter. By more or less the same token, in the present passage, Porphyry speaks about two kinds of non-Being: one, non-Being which is above Being (τὸ ὑπὲρ τὸ ὂν μὴ ὄν); two, non-Being which is actually an illusion: we ideate this only intellectually by mere deprivation of being from the real Being; this is a wretched self-deception which has nothing to do with ontology; therefore, it is a fallacy produced by our own selves (γεννῶμεν ψευδὲς πάθος τὸ μὴ ὄν); for, in reality, such a false conception presupposes Being (by which we are possessed), hence, the notion of non-Being is ontologically not authoritative, since this is dependent on the notion of Being, and simply it applies the illusion of ‘deprivation of being’ to it. To trace the shifts that Porphyry’s thought underwent throughout his life is out of my scope. Nevertheless, I need to point out that the difference of Origen from eminent Neoplatonists was real and substantial, even during his pagan life. Likewise, as a Christian philosopher, he never allowed for any ontological classification between the persons of the Trinity, which is why Athanasius assured that Origen’s Trinitarian theology was impeccable.⁴³⁹ Even during his pagan period, Origen banned classification between the primal Anaxagorean Mind and the Reflecting Mind that engaged in creation of the principles or logoi. Later in this chapter, I explain that this distinction was implied by Aristotle, only because he could not allow creation ‘as of a certain beginning’, and that this idea which tantalized Aristotle was explicated by Theophrastus, who grasped the folly of this distinction.⁴⁴⁰ This is what Proclus rejected; he appealed to Plato’s Cratylus 396c (reference to the pedigree, Uranus / Cronus / Zeus) and made mention of the ‘pure mind’  Porphyry, Sententiae, 26.  Athanasius, De Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, 27.1; In illud: Qui Dixerit Verbum In Filium, PG.26: 649.21 652.1 (Epistulae Quattuor ad Serapionem, 4.2.1 & 4.3.1).  See infra, pp. 988 90.

922

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

(καθαρὸς νοῦς) which people procure by seeing the heaven. What Proclus did not say is that hardly did this Platonic reference relate to ontological or cosmological matters.⁴⁴¹ At any rate, his attack on Origen was not limited only to the above point where Origen is mentioned by name: it is repeated at other points, too.⁴⁴² The fact remains that although, until the beginning of sixth century, those who styled themselves ‘Platonist’ (meaning, Neoplatonist) cherished Plotinus’ triadic pattern of three classified Hypostases as a solemn and august doctrine, Damascius saw that this was untenable and, in effect, he demolished it, as we mentioned earlier and canvass presently. My own suggestion is that Origen had realized that which Damascius explicated three centuries later, and this was one of the main reasons for Origen and Plotinus to part ways after their discipleship with Ammonius Saccas. For it was Origen alone who argued that whether speaking of God as being either ‘beyond essence’ (as Plato put it in the Republic, 509c) or ‘beyond mind and essence’ (as Plotinus’ novelty had it in the Enneads, I.7.1, and V.1.8, meaning the Good/Father of the Intellect), this proposition is applicable to the Son/Logos no less that is it so to God the Father.⁴⁴³ The break between Origen and Plotinus was inexorably irreconcilable, and this was exactly the point that Proclus made against Origen. Notwithstanding the respect Damascius had for the Chaldean thought and Plotinus, he realized that ontological distinction between the Mind himself and Reflecting Mind was unsustainable. But this is what Origen had said a long time ago. ‘Neoplatonism’ as a wholesale label may be misleading, since there were differences between those philosophers, which were no less significant than their differences from Christian thought. Making the Creator ontologically inferior

 Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 415: νοῦς γὰρ πρώτιστος οὐχ ὁ νοῶν καὶ δημιουργῶν, ἀλλ᾿ ὁ νοῶν μόνον καὶ διὰ τοῦτο καθαρὸς ὢν νοῦς, ὡς ἐν Κρατύλῳ μεμαθήκαμεν.  Here are some implicit references of Proclus criticizing Origen. Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 98: Καὶ ἔγωγε θαυμάζω μὲν καὶ τῶν Πλατωνικῶν τοὺς πάντων τὴν γνῶσιν ἀποδόντας τῷ νῷ, … καὶ γὰρ ὁ νοῦς δημιούργημα καὶ γέννημα τῶν θεῶν ἐστὶ τὸ πρώτιστον. Op. cit. v. 6, p. 29: Ὅθεν οἶμαι καὶ τοὺς πολλοὺς τῶν ταῦτα πραγματευομένων ἔλαθεν ὡς οὐκ ἄρα ἦν ὁ δημι ουργὸς τοῦ παντὸς Ζεὺς τῶν τριῶν πατέρων ὁ πρώτιστος ἢ ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ τῶν νοερῶν βασι λέων ἡγεμὼν Κρόνος ὁ αὐτὸς τῷ δημιουργικῷ νῷ. Op. cit. v. 6, pp. 32 3: Καὶ οὐ δεῖ ταῦτα ἐν ἀλ λήλοις συγχεῖν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐξαιρεῖν μὲν τὴν μονάδα τῆς τριάδος, ἐξάπτειν δὲ τὴν τριάδα τῆς μονάδος, καὶ μήτε τοὺς τρεῖς πατέρας τῆς ὅλης δημιουργίας ἄρχοντας ποιεῖν μήτε τὸν ἐν αὐτοῖς πρώτι στον εἰς ταὐτὸν ἄγειν τῷ ἑνὶ δημιουργῷ. Porphyry, commTim (fragmenta), Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 394: Τρίτον τοίνυν, ὅτι οὐδὲ ὁ ποιητής, ὃν παραλαμβάνουσιν ἀρχήν, προσήκει τῷ Πλάτωνι· … οὔτε ὁ δημιουργὸς ὁ πρώτιστός ἐστι θεός· κρείττων γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ἁπάσης τῆς νοερᾶς οὐσίας. However, cf. Porphyry, op. cit. Book 2, fr. 56, apud Proclus, op. cit. v. 1, p. 457: εἷς ὁ δημιουργὸς ὁ πρώτιστος.  Origen, Cels, VII.38.

The Body of the Logos

923

did not solve all questions, since how the ‘pattern’ is related to the Creator himself remained a point of dispute. Proclus reports that, according to Plotinus,⁴⁴⁴ the Demiurge has the archetypes/Ideas existing in him, whereas, according to others, an archetype is either prior or posterior to the Demiurge. Porphyry posited this as prior to the Demiurge, whereas Longinus as posterior. This (Proclus goes on) invited the question by his own ‘teacher’ (ὁ δέ γε ἡμέτερος καθηγεμών)⁴⁴⁵ as to whether there are other orders of being between the Demiurge and the One.⁴⁴⁶ Proclus’ own opinion was that the Demiurge is not prior to the archetype, and either these two should be identified with each other or the archetype should be prior to the Demiurge (which was in fact Proclus’ own opinion). For, in general, the intelligible/archetypal cause is superior to the creative one, in like a manner the creator is superior to the creatures he produces.⁴⁴⁷ This would appear as representing the normal pattern, namely, that the archetype is the Mind and the creator is the universal Soul.⁴⁴⁸ However, another testimony attributes the notion of creative cause to the Mind.⁴⁴⁹ Of course, all three Neoplatonic ontological levels can be styled ‘creator’ in one sense or another, and indeed Proclus himself styles the Mind/Intellect both ‘creative’⁴⁵⁰ and ‘god’.⁴⁵¹ That aside, what bears to the present point is that this statement (Non-Being transcends Being) in fact advances the same thesis which Proclus attributed to Origen, and claimed that on no account would Plato have ever included such

 Plotinus, op. cit. III.9.1. He appeals to Plato, Timaeus, 39e7 9.  Meaning Plutarch of Athens.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 322.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 46: ᾿Aνάγκη γὰρ ἢ ταὐτὸν εἶναι τῷ δημιουργῷ τὸ πα ραδειγματικὸν καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ, ἢ πρὸ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ ἱδρῦσθαι, καθάπερ ἡμεῖς φαμεν, ἢ μετὰ τὸν δημιουργόν, ὥς τινες εἵλοντο λέγειν. … πρωτίστην μὲν ἔχοι τάξιν ἐν τοῖς οὖσι τὸ παραδειγ ματικὸν αἴτιον, δευτέραν δὲ τὸ δημιουργικόν, ἐσχάτην δὲ τὸ πᾶν τοῦτο.  Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 41, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 307: Μετὰ δὲ τὸν ᾿Aμέ λιον ὁ Πορφύριος οἰόμενος τῷ Πλωτίνῳ συνᾴδειν, τὴν μὲν ψυχὴν τὴν ὑπερκόσμιον ἀποκαλεῖ δημιουργόν, τὸν δὲ νοῦν αὐτῆς, πρὸς ὃν ἐπέστραπται, τὸ αὐτοζῷον, ὡς εἶναι τὸ παράδειγμα τοῦ δημιουργοῦ κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν νοῦν. So Proclus himself, op. cit. p. 322.  Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum, 1.45: Πορφύριος γάρ φησι, Πλάτωνος ἐκτιθέμενος δόξαν, ἄχρι τριῶν ὑποστάσεων τὴν τοῦ θείου προελθεῖν οὐσίαν, εἶναι δὲ τὸν μὲν ἀνωτάτω θεὸν τἀγαθόν, μετ᾿ αὐτὸν δὲ καὶ δεύτερον τὸν δημιουργόν, τρίτον δὲ καὶ τὴν τοῦ κόσμου ψυχήν· ἄχρι γὰρ ψυχῆς τὴν θειότητα προελθεῖν. The same text was quoted in De Trinitate (PG.39.760), which was long known as Didymus’ work, but I have shown that this is the product of the newly discovered Cassian the Sabaite. See NDGF, Appendix I.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 124: ὁ νοῦς ὁ δημιουργικὸς τῶν ἐν αὑτῷ πρωτίστων εἰδῶν περὶ τὴν ὕλην ἐμφάσεις ὑφίστησι.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 935: καὶ γὰρ ἡ πηγὴ τῶν ἰδεῶν θεός, καὶ ἐν θεῷ περι έχεται τῷ δημιουργικῷ νῷ· καὶ εἰ αὐτή ἐστιν ἰδέα πρωτίστη, ταύτης ἐστὶν ὁ ἀποδιδόμενος ὅρος.

924

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

doctrines among his own ones. It is possible that Porphyry wished to draw a line between the scanty personal experience of the One by his master Plotinus and the notion of non-Being by conventional philosophy. No matter what his motive, this is the idea Proclus condemned as an anti-Platonic one. If Proclus did not lump Porphyry together with Origen on this issue, this is so because Porphyry wrote not only the foregoing Sententia 26, but also another one, numbered 43, where (unlike Origen) he explicitly claims that ‘the Mind is not the principle (or, beginning) of everything’ (ὁ νοῦς οὐκ ἔστιν ἀρχὴ πάντων). For ‘the Mind is obviously many’ (ὅτι δὲ πολλὰ ὁ νοῦς δῆλον), therefore, of necessity, there must be the One which precedes plurality (πρὸ δὲ τῶν πολλῶν ἀνάγκη εἶναι τὸ ἕν).⁴⁵² This was a thesis complying with the normal Neoplatonic orthodoxy of Plotinus, but Psellus argued that, in reality, this was a Chaldean doctrine of old.⁴⁵³ Of course, it might be assumed that Proclus took Porphyry’s foregoing Sententia 26 as meaning that it did not really refute the One, but it only posited the One as transcending being proper. In a paradoxical manner, both Origen and Porphyry agreed and disagreed on this issue. Porphyry said that the Mind itself is not different from this aggregate, which entails that the Mind has to be ontologically many. ⁴⁵⁴ Although sometimes Origen’s statement give the impression that the Logos is the aggregate of the logoi, in fact he draws a clear line between the Uncreated Logos and the created logoi that were placed on his Body, being a ‘decoration’ of it. The logoi and theoremata are not the Logos himself, they are in the Logos, and they are creatures. Besides, although he apparently identifies the Anaxagorean Mind with the Son/ Logos, he actually identifies it with the Trinitarian God. It is this God (through the Logos) that created the logoi, and placed them on the Body of the Logos to the purpose of creation of the world. These logoi are the ‘ornaments’ of the Body, not the Body itself. Origen by and large identifies the Anaxagorean Mind with the Son/Wisdom/Logos, who has a multitude of logoi in himself, as much as he saw the Father, as well as the entire Trinity as Mind, too. However, for one thing, the Logos is not merely the aggregate of these notions and logoi, whereas, for another, the Logos is styled ‘many’ only by mere ‘conception’ (ἐπι-

 Porphyry, Sententiae, 43.  See chapter 8, p. 589.  Porphyry, loc. cit.: ὅτι δὲ πολλὰ ὁ νοῦς δῆλον· νοεῖ γὰρ ἀεὶ τὰ νοήματα οὐχ ἓν ὄντα, ἀλλὰ πολλὰ καὶ οὐκ ἄλλα ὄντα παρ᾿ ἐκεῖνον. εἰ οὖν ὁ αὐτός ἐστιν αὐτοῖς, ἐκεῖνα δὲ πολλά, πολλὰ ἂν εἴη καὶ ὁ νοῦς.

The Body of the Logos

925

νοίᾳ) while actually he remains one Subject (τὸ μὲν ὑποκείμενον ἕν ἐστιν),⁴⁵⁵ a hypostatic Person being on a par with the Father. Although the Logos is certainly one Personal hypostasis, he becomes ‘many’ (πολλὰ γίνεται) for the sake of engaging in the creative and sustaining act of producing the universe out of nothing.⁴⁵⁶ The logoi themselves are not the Mind/Logos himself: they are what the Mind has. The Logos is ontologically ‘unmixed’ with them, since he is the Creator whereas they are creatures. This is the authentic resonance of Anaxagoras’ philosophy in Origen, and this is his conclusive deviation from Neoplatonism, which Proclus rightly pointed out. It is certainly no coincidence that Origen is the sole intellectual who used the most characteristic terms of Anaxagoras, and spoke of χρήματα τοῦ νοῦ, in a context not involving any comment on Anaxagoras. All of the other authors used this expression exclusively in order to quote Anaxagoras’ fundamental proposition.⁴⁵⁷ Only Origen used it in order to comment on a portion of the Prov-

 Origen, homJer, 8.2: ᾿Aλλὰ τὸ μὲν ὑποκείμενον ἕν ἐστιν, ταῖς δὲ ἐπινοίαις τὰ πολλὰ ὀνόματα ἐπὶ διαφόρων ἐστίν, καὶ οὐ ταὐτὸν νοεῖς περὶ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὅτε νοεῖς αὐτὸν σοφίαν, καὶ ὅτε νοεῖς αὐτὸν δικαιοσύνην.  Origen, commJohn, I.19.112: Καὶ οὐ θαυμαστὸν εἰ, ὡς προειρήκαμεν, πολλὰ ὢν ἀγαθὰ ὁ σωτὴρ ἐνεπινοούμενα ἔχει ἐν αὑτῷ πρῶτα καὶ δεύτερα καὶ τρίτα. Op. cit. I.20.119: Ὁ θεὸς μὲν οὖν πάντη ἕν ἐστι καὶ ἁπλοῦν· ὁ δὲ σωτὴρ ἡμῶν διὰ τὰ πολλά … πολλὰ γίνεται ἢ καὶ τάχα πάντα ταῦτα. Op. cit. X.5.21: Καὶ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τοίνυν πολλά ἐστιν ταῖς ἐπινοίαις. commMatt, 17.6: πολ λαὶ ἐπίνοιαι τοῦ θεοῦ κατὰ τὰς θείας γραφάς.  ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ αὐτὰ διακρίνας διεκόσμησεν. Anaxagoras, apud Simpli cius, commCael, p. 590. The phrase became famously characteristic of Anaxagoras, and the fol lowing authors quoted it: Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 6: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας φησίν· ἦν πάντα ὁμοῦ χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ ἐλθὼν αὐτὰ διεκόσμησεν. Pseudo Plu tarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876D: ἄρχεται δ᾿ οὕτως, ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν, νοῦς δ᾿ αὐτὰ διῄρ ηκε καὶ διακεκόσμηκε χρήματα λέγων τὰ πράγματα. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 1.4: ᾿Aναξαγόρας πάντα ἔφη χρήματα γεγονέναι ὁμοῦ, νοῦν δὲ ἐλθόντα αὐτὰ διακοσμῆσαι. Op. cit. 2.6: ᾿Aναξαγόρας … πρῶτος τῇ ὕλῃ νοῦν ἐπέστησεν, ἀρξάμενος οὕτω τοῦ συγγράμματος, ὅ ἐστιν ἡδέως καὶ μεγαλοφρόνως ἡρμηνευμένον πάντα χρήματα ἦν ὁμοῦ· εἶτα νοῦς ἐλθὼν αὐτὰ διεκόσμησε. Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 13: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δέ, … ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ αὐτὰ διέκρινεν ἐπελθών. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 23: μόνος δ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, ὥσπερ τῶν ἄλλων ὑπνούντων καὶ τοῖς ὑλικοῖς αἰτίοις βεβαπτισμένων, ἦν ὁμοῦ φησί πάντα χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ ταῦτα διέκρινεν. commPhys, 3.12: Ἐτίθει δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ ἀρχὴν ποιητικὴν τὸν νοῦν καὶ πάντα μὲν χρήματα ἐτίθει ὁμοῦ, ἀρχὴν δὲ ἐτίθει καὶ τῷ νοῒ τῆς νοήσεως εἰς τὸ διακρῖναι αὐτά. John Galen (grammarian, twelfth century), Allegoriae in Hesiodi Theogoniam, p. 324: ἦν γὰρ ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματά ποτε κατὰ ᾿Aναξαγόραν, νοῦς δὲ διέκρινεν αὐτά. Op. cit. p. 332: ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν. Michael Choniates (twelfth thirteenth century), Orationes, p. 322: ὁ μετεω ρολόγος ᾿Aναξαγόρας Νοῦν ἐπέστησε τῷ παντὶ δι᾿ οὗ τὰ πάνθ᾿ ὁμοῦ κατ᾿ ἐκεῖνον ὄντα χρήματα διακρίνεται. Cf. authors quoting ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, while referring to Anaxagoras: Plato, Phae do, 72c. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1007b; 1056b; 1069b; 1071b; Physica, 203a. Pseudo Dionysius of

926

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

erbs, which is not included in the authorized English version.⁴⁵⁸ As already explained, χρήματα means ‘things’ in the most abstract way, as much as does it mean ‘money’.⁴⁵⁹ Whereas the tenor of this proverb is clearly about ‘money’, he seized the opportunity to apply the vocabulary of his hero Anaxagoras. His explanation is that ‘a faithful man will comprehend the logoi of this world, which Solomon allegorically styled things of the mind (χρήματα τοῦ νοῦ); on the contrary, an unfaithful will understand not even the logos (reason) of the most unimportant thing, because of the filth of his soul.’⁴⁶⁰ During the early stages of his Christian life, Origen put his Anaxagorean inspiration to use more overtly. This is not only about his notion of the Body of the Logos which is the same notion as Anaxagoras’ ‘single body, from which all things stem’, and (as I am going to show in a forthcoming study) Empedocles’ Sphaerus, both Presocratic theories duly modified of course: but also his considerations involved phraseology which is strikingly close to the Anaxagorean mindset. In the first book of the commentary on John, he explains that God is ‘unmixed’ with everything in the world, but he takes the step of considering the divine life in this context. And it is clear that the beginning (ἡ ἀρχή) of the life which is pure and unmixed with anything else (τῆς εἰλικρινοῦς καὶ ἀμιγοῦς πρός τι ἕτερον ζωῆς), properly speaking (κυρίως), is in the first-born of all creation.⁴⁶¹ The participants of Christ truly live because they receive their life from this life, while just as those who are thought to live apart from him do not have the true light, so neither do they live the true life.⁴⁶²

Halicarnassus, Ars Rhetorica, 8.10. Plutarch, Quaestiones Convivales, 644C D; 679A. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 291; 630; 673; 690. Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, ch. 42, p. 124. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 71. Simplicius, commCael, p. 608; commPhys, pp. 34; 155; 156; 163; 164; 172; 301; 460; 462; 1121; 1123; 1153. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 192; commPhys, p. 25; 397. Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 267. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Gorgiam Commentaria, 14.12; In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 10.4. Michael Psellus, comm Phys, 1.14; 3.12; 8.2.  Prov., 17:6a: τοῦ πιστοῦ ὅλος ὁ κόσμος τῶν χρημάτων· τοῦ δὲ ἀπίστου οὐδὲ ὀβολός (‘A faithful has all the money of the world; but an unfaithful has not even an obol’).  See supra, pp. 109 10.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.197.35 38: Ὁ πιστός, φησίν, ὄψεται τοὺς λόγους τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, οὕστινας χρήματα τροπικῶς τοῦ νοῦ προσηγόρευσεν· ὁ δὲ ἄπιστος οὐδὲ τοῦ τυχόντος πράγμα τος γνώσεται λόγον, διὰ τὴν ἀκαθαρσίαν τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ. Two faithful followers of Origen took up this unique exegesis: Didymus, who quoted this as an alternative to his own literal exegesis of the proverb; frProv, PG.39.1637.50 53; and Evagrius of Pontus, Expositio in Proverbia Salomo nis, p. 95 & Scholia in Proverbia, 155.  Cf. Col. 1:15.  Origen, commJohn, I.27.188.

The Body of the Logos

927

In fact, the term ἀρχὴ is used in a double sense (among the several ones Origen considered in this section). It means not only ‘beginning’⁴⁶³ but also ‘principle’, in the sense of creative ‘cause’. The Son is αὐτοζωή, but the ultimate source of this life is the source of Deity, namely the Father, who ‘decorated’ the Body of the Logos in the first place.⁴⁶⁴ Nevertheless, this act, like any other divine act, is always a Trinitarian one, no matter which Person is said to carry it out.⁴⁶⁵ Once again, in his use of αὐτοζωὴ (which is unknown to Liddell and Scott), as well as his entire foregoing consideration, Origen was inspired not by any Platonist, but by his usual source, namely, Alexander of Aphrodisias, who determined the precise meaning of the divine αὐτοζωή as meaning a life which is an essential ontological characteristic, therefore, not susceptible of its opposite, i. e. death.⁴⁶⁶ Plotinus followed Origen and spoke of the life of the Intellect by means of the same innovative terminology, not to mention his surreptitious employment of Anaxagoras’ and Origen’s Theory of Logoi (Πῶς οὖν νοήσεις; Ὅτι λόγοι), which I discuss later in this section (‘The living Body of the Logos’).⁴⁶⁷ In any case, Origen’s foregoing statement fundamentally stems from his Anaxagorean background, while making use of the phraseology that Aristotle

 Origen, op. cit. I.16.91 (‘beginning’): ῍Η μὲν γάρ τις ὡς μεταβάσεως, αὕτη δέ ἐστιν ἡ ὡς ὁδοῦ καὶ μήκους. I.16.94: ἀρχὴ ὡς μεταβάσεώς ἐστι καὶ ὁδοῦ καὶ μήκους. Cf. op. cit. 1.17.101; I.19.109. ‘Life’ has had a ‘beginning’, since the Logos became life; op. cit. II.12.89: Ἆρ’ οὖν, ὡς πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο. Op. cit. II.19.130 1: ζωὴ δὲ ἐν τῷ λόγῳ οὐκ ἦν· ἀλλὰ ζωὴ ἐγένετο … ὃ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ, οὐχὶ ὃ ἦν ἐν αὐτῷ, ζωὴ ἦν.  Origen, commMatt, 12.9: καὶ ζωὴ δὲ ὡς ἀπὸ πηγῆς ζωῆς τοῦ πατρὸς ὁ εἰπών· ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ζωή [John, 11:25; 14:6]. καὶ πρόσχες ἐπιμελῶς εἰ μή, ὥσπερ οὐ ταὐτόν ἐστι πηγὴ ποταμοῦ καὶ ποταμός, οὕτως πηγὴ ζωῆς καὶ ζωή· [= the Father decorated the Body of the Logos] ἐξαίρετον γάρ τι ἐχρῆν παραστῆσαι ἐν τῷ λεγομένῳ περὶ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ πατρὸς τῶν ὅλων [= the Father decorated the Body of the Logos] ὡς ζῶντος παρά τε τὴν αὐτοζωὴν καὶ τὰ μετέχοντα αὐτῆς.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.196.21 29: ζωὴ γάρ ἐστιν ἡ πάντα ζωοῦσα, καὶ ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων εἰς τὸ εἶναι παραγαγοῦσα Τριὰς ἁγία· … Ζωὴ ὁ Θεός ἐστι· τῆς δὲ τρισσοφαοῦς αὐτοζωῆς [Migne’s αὐ τοζωΐας is not a Greek word] ἡ πηγή, ἡ σοφία καὶ ἡ γνῶσις καὶ αἱ ἀρεταί εἰσιν· ἐξ ἧς πηγῆς οἱ πίνοντες, ἀθανασίας μετέχουσι καὶ ἀειζωΐας.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commTop, p. 190: δεικνύοιτ’ ἂν διὰ τοῦ τόπου τούτου καὶ ὅτι ὁ θεὸς οὐκ ἔστι ζωῆς δεκτικός, ὅτι μηδὲ θανάτου· αὐτοζωὴ γὰρ ἀλλ’ οὐ ζωῆς δεκτικός. ἢ διὰ τοῦτο οὐ δεκτικός, ὅτι σύμφυτον αὐτῷ τὸ ζῆν ὡς τῇ χιόνι τὸ λευκόν.  Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.8: Δεῖ οὖν τοῦτο εἶναι ἓν ὄντως ἄμφω· τοῦτο δέ ἐστι θεωρία ζῶσα, οὐ θεώρημα, οἷον τὸ ἐν ἄλλῳ. Τὸ γὰρ ἐν ἄλλῳ ζῶν δι’ ἐκεῖνο, οὐκ αὐτοζῶν. Εἰ οὖν ζήσεταί τι θεώρημα καὶ νόημα, δεῖ αὐτοζωὴν εἶναι οὐ φυτικὴν οὐδὲ αἰσθητικὴν οὐδὲ ψυχικὴν τὴν ἄλλην. Νοήσεις μὲν γάρ πως καὶ ἄλλαι· ἀλλ’ ἡ μὲν φυτικὴ νόησις, ἡ δὲ αἰσθητική, ἡ δὲ ψυχική. Πῶς οὖν νοήσεις… Ὅ τι λόγοι. Καὶ πᾶσα ζωὴ νόησίς τις, ἀλλὰ ἄλλη ἄλλης ἀμυδροτέρα, ὥσπερ καὶ ζωή. ῍Η δὲ ἐναργεστέρα· αὕτη καὶ πρώτη ζωὴ καὶ πρῶτος νοῦς εἷς. Op. cit. VI.6.7: Καὶ γὰρ δὴ καὶ ἄτοπον εἶναι τι ζῷον καλὸν αὐτοζῴου μὴ θαυμαστοῦ τὸ κάλλος καὶ ἀφαύστου ὄντος. Op. cit. VI.6.8: ζῷον πρώτως ἐστὶ καὶ διὰ τοῦτο αὐτοζῷον καὶ νοῦς ἐστι καὶ οὐσία ἡ ὄντως.

928

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

used explaining the ontology of the Anaxagorean Mind, which (as it was always the case with Aristotle’s thought) Origen read in Alexander of Aphrodisias, not in Aristotle’s Metaphysics itself.⁴⁶⁸ It is striking indeed that Origen’s foregoing specific phraseology (i. e. τῆς εἰλικρινοῦς καὶ ἀμιγοῦς πρός τι ἕτερον ζωῆς), which of course could have never made mention of Anaxagoras, has only in one parallel which does make explicit reference to the Clazomenian philosopher. The text is the commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul, particularly on the point (430a18‒19) where Aristotle critically expounds his own understanding of the Anaxagorean Nous (429b23‒430a25) seeking to consider human mind in like terms, which is ‘separate and unmixed and impassible, since this Mind is sheer actuality’. Attribution of this commentary to Simplicius is being doubted, and I myself have left this question moot. Nevertheless, since (in my books about Cassian the Sabaite) I have argued that Simplicius was probably converted to Christianity by the end of his life, it would have been all too natural for him to have read the theology of Origen, in which no doubt he would have immediately recognized Anaxagorean traits. In any case, this point of the commentary uses a phraseology (καὶ ἀμιγὴς … καὶ ὡς ἤδη πρὸς τὰ εἰλικρινῆ τοιαῦτα ἐπειγόμενος … οὐδὲ πρὸς μόνας τὰς σωματοειδεῖς λέγεται ζωάς) which is the same as the foregoing one by Origen, who however spoke of the Anaxagorean Mind as God, not of the human mind by analogy. For indeed neither Aristotle himself nor his commentators cared to consider the ontology of the Mind in terms of the life of the divine Mind.⁴⁶⁹ It was only Origen and Simplicius who considered the Anaxagorean Mind per se (i. e. as God) being ‘separate from and unmixed with’ not simply corporeal life of any kind, but also from ‘the rational lives’ (ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὰς λογικὰς ζωάς) of all kinds.⁴⁷⁰ Once again, Origen found relevant comments of the

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 69: λέγει γὰρ πλὴν τοῦ νοῦ πάντα μεμῖχθαι, τοῦτον δὲ μόνον ἀμιγῆ καὶ καθαρὸν εἶναι. τὸ δὲ ἐξ ἀνάγκης [Metaphysica, 989a33] τοῦ ἤδη εἶναι καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ δηλωτικὸν παρέθετο. Op. cit. p. 699 (the same text, in Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 109): ὁ γὰρ ἁπλοῦς νοῦς ἁπλοῦν τι νοεῖ, οὐδὲν δὲ ἄλλο ἁπλοῦν ἐστι νοητὸν πλὴν αὐτός· ἀμιγὴς γὰρ οὗτος καὶ ἄϋλος καὶ οὐδὲν ἔχων ἐν ἑαυτῷ δυ νάμει· ἑαυτὸν ἄρα μόνον νοήσει. De Anima, p. 89: καὶ ἔστιν ὁ τοιοῦτος νοῦς χωριστός τε καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς ἄλλῳ, ἃ πάντα αὐτῷ διὰ τὸ χωρὶς ὕλης εἶναι ὑπάρχει. χωριστός τε γὰρ καὶ αὐτὸς καθ’ αὑτὸν ὢν διὰ τοῦτο.  Aristotle’s consideration in De Anima, 429b23 430a25, especially 430b22 23, is about human mind.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 243 (comm. on De Anima, 430a18 19): Τὸ χωριστὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ προ κειμένου νῦν εἰς θεωρίαν νοῦ οὐ τὸ ἀεὶ κεχωρισμένον ἀκουστέον (ἐπάξει γοῦν περὶ αὐτοῦ χωρισθεὶς δέ ἐστιν μόνον τοῦτο ὅπερ ἐστίν [De Anima, 430a22 23] ὡς ποτὲ χωριζομένου), ἀλλ’ ὡς ποτὲ μὲν ἤδη κεχωρισμένου πάσης τῆς ἔξω τεινομένης ζωῆς ἢ παρεσκευασμένου πρὸς χωρισμόν· ἑκατέρως γὰρ καὶ χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς καὶ τῇ οὐσίᾳ ἐστὶν ἐνέργεια, καὶ

The Body of the Logos

929

Mind as God in Alexander of Aphrodisias, who however considered this as ‘Mind par excellence’ (κυρίως ἐστὶ νοῦς … ὁ κυρίως νοῦς) but he did not care to say anything about the divine life, since, following Aristotle, by analogy he focused on human rather than the divine mind.⁴⁷¹ Only the commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul by Simplicius (or whoever the author) cared to consider this,⁴⁷² to which the foregoing text of Origen is a unique parallel. Nevertheless, the notion of εἰλικρινὴς explained as ‘unmixed’ or ‘pure’ in a totally Anaxagorean tenor was bequeathed to posterity only because Plato used it just once.⁴⁷³

ὡς ἤδη πρὸς τὰ εἰλικρινῆ τοιαῦτα ἐπειγόμενός πως ἢ κατ’ αὐτὰ ἑστώς. ἀλλὰ χωριστὸς μὲν οὐ πρὸς σῶμα μόνον οὐδὲ πρὸς μόνας τὰς σωματοειδεῖς λέγεται ζωάς, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὰς λογικὰς τάς τε πρακτικὰς καὶ τὰς κατὰ προβολὴν θεωρητικὰς ἐν τῇ τούτων ἀποστάσει.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima, p. 89: καὶ ἔστιν ὁ τοιοῦτος νοῦς χωριστός τε καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς ἄλλῳ, ἃ πάντα αὐτῷ διὰ τὸ χωρὶς ὕλης εἶναι ὑπάρχει. χωριστός τε γὰρ καὶ αὐτὸς καθ’ αὑτὸν ὢν διὰ τοῦτο. … ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀπαθής, ὅτι τὸ πάσχον ἐν πᾶσιν ἡ ὕλη καὶ τὸ ὑπο κείμενον. ἀπαθὴς δὲ ὢν καὶ μὴ μεμιγμένος ὕλῃ τινὶ καὶ ἄφθαρτός ἐστιν, ἐνέργεια ὢν καὶ εἶδος χωρὶς δυνάμεώς τε καὶ ὕλης. τοιοῦτον δὲ ὂν δέδεικται ὑπ’ ᾿Aριστοτέλους τὸ πρῶτον αἴτιον, ὃ καὶ κυρίως ἐστὶ νοῦς. τὸ γὰρ ἄϋλον εἶδος ὁ κυρίως νοῦς. Likewise, Themistius, paraphrAnim, v. 5.3, pp. 98 9; 105. Ammonius of Alexandria, commDeInterpr, p. 7. John Philoponus, commA nim, pp. 18; 521; 540.  Simplicius, commAnim, pp. 225 6; 234; 243 8; 258 (following Aristotle considering human mind in analogy to the Nous; also, op. cit. p. 238). Then, Michael Psellus, Theologica [Gautier], 62, lines 50 4: ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο μέν, αὐτὸ δὴ ὅπερ λέγεται, ἀμιγῶς ἔχει πρὸς τὸ ἀντίθετον· εἰλικρινῶς τε γάρ ἐστιν ἓν καὶ κυρίως ὂν καὶ νοῦς ἀκήρατος καὶ μακάριος, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων εἴ τι οὕτως λέγεται, κατὰ μετοχὴν ἐκείνου ἔστι τε καὶ ὀνομάζεται. It was much later when only Scholarius rendered the analysis by Thomas Aquinas rebutting Averroes that such a care is indeed there and ex pounded it in some detail. Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, Book 2, chapters 59; 68; 78; Book 3, chapter 10. Later still, Scholarius himself in Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 77.  Plato, Menexenus, 245d: διὰ τὸ εἰλικρινῶς εἶναι Ἕλληνας καὶ ἀμιγεῖς βαρβάρων. Perhaps Ar istotle, De Anima, 426b3: εἰλικρινῆ καὶ ἀμιγῆ, although some mss have it ἄμικτα. Philo, De Vita Contemplativa, 82. Plutarch, Aetia Romana et Graeca, 720F; De Iside et Osiride, 373B; De Sollertia Animalium, 964E. Galen, De Usu Partium, p. 289; in the Linguarum Seu Dictionum Exoletarum Hippocratis Explicatio, p. 73, he explains the meaning: πᾶν τὸ ἀμιγὲς ἑτέρου καὶ τὴν αὐτοῦ φύσιν διασωζόμενον εἰλικρινῆ. Albinus, Epitome Doctrinae Platonicae, 10.11: εἰλικρινῶς τε καὶ ἀμιγῶς. Then, Origen as above, followed by his pupils. Gregory Thaumaturgus, In Origenem Ora tio Panegyrica, 3: καθαρώτατον λαμπρότατόν τε καὶ εἰλικρινέστατον καὶ ἀμιγῆ παντὸς χείρονος. Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum Canticorum, p. 390: ὅτι τὸ εἰλικρινῶς καθαρὸν καὶ πάσης ὕλης ῥυ παρᾶς ἀμιγές. Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae in Hexaemeron, 3.4; Asceticon Magnum, PG.31.1261.33 (which though is probably a work written by a sixth century erudite monk). In the sixth century, Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 13.2: εἰλικρινῆ ὄντα καὶ ἀμιγῆ τούτου. During the same period, the newly discovered Cassian the Sabaite who was a moderate Origenist, wrote following Origen himself suit; (Pseudo Basil of Caesarea), Enarratio in Prophet am Isaiam, 13.264: Οὐ μόνον γὰρ κατὰ τὴν θεότητα νοούμενος ὁ Κύριος εὐγενής, τὸ καθαρὸν καὶ

930

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

The Mind is detached from all creation Porphyry argued that the Mind creates indirectly by means of his logoi (οὔτε προσεχῶς ὑφίστησι σώματα), and he does not exist in any particular place or body (οὔτε ἐν τόπῳ οὔτε ἐν σώματι ὑφίσταται), while his action spreads all over the universe in an incomprehensible manner (νοῦ δὲ ἐνέργειαν χωρῆσαι ἀμήχανον).⁴⁷⁴ He emphasized the role of the logoi being active tools of the Mind, but he couched this idea by means of the Aristotelian εἶδος, which is only an adaptation of Anaxagoras’ philosophy. Nevertheless, this is Aristotelian only in name, since, unlike Aristotle, Porphyry posited self-existence of the incorporeal logoi/forms:⁴⁷⁵ they act forcefully upon formless matter under the guidance of the Mind; once a form ‘puts its own seal upon matter’ (here is the robustly active character of it), ‘the incorporeal assumes a body’; then again, when it withdraws from the specific action upon matter, ‘it becomes immaterial and incorporeal anew’.⁴⁷⁶ On this, there is a remarkable coincidence between Porphyry and Simplicius. The idea is that certain incorporeal logoi, which exist both nowhere and everywhere in the universe,⁴⁷⁷ concur in order to generate a specific perceptible object, plant, animal, or phenomenon. This holds out for a certain period of time, and then it passes away because these logoi cease to concur, after which they withdraw from the specific amount of matter upon which they act, and they continue to exist in their proper form, which is incorporeal. Porphyry wrote this as an implicit yet clear comment on Anaxagoras: Everything is in everything, yet in a manner befitting the essence of each reality. For in the [human] mind, the [principles or logoi] exist intelligibly; in the soul, they exist as reason; in plants, they exist spermatically; in bodies, they exist as reflection; but, in the Beyond, they exist inconceivably, and above all substance.⁴⁷⁸

εἰλικρινὲς καὶ ἀμιγὲς τῇ φύσει ἐν ἑαυτῷ κεκτημένος. It was natural then for the explanation to become a lexicon lemma. Photius, Lexicon, letter epsilon, entry 228 & Suda, letter epsilon iota, entry 123: εἰλικρινές· τὸ καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγὲς ἑτέρου. Etymologicum Magnum, p. 298 & Etymolo gicum Symeonis, letter epsilon, entry 14: Εἰλικρινής· Σημαίνει τὸν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ ἑτέρου.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 42.  Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 14: τοῦ εἴδους ἀσωμάτου καὶ ἀΰλου ὑπάρχοντος.  Porphyry, loc. cit.: ἐπειδὰν ἀπομαχθῇ τῇ ὕλῃ τὸ εἶδος, ἐξ ἀσωμάτου σωματοῦται. εἶτ᾿ αὖθις πάλιν ἀναληφθὲν τῇ ψυχῇ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ γίνεται ἄϋλόν τε καὶ ἀσώματον.  Cf. Porphyry, Sententiae, 31; 38; 40.  Porphyry, op. cit. 10: Πάντα μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ οἰκείως τῇ ἑκάστου οὐσίᾳ· ἐν νῷ μὲν γὰρ νοερῶς, ἐν ψυχῇ δὲ λογικῶς, ἐν δὲ τοῖς φυτοῖς σπερματικῶς, ἐν δὲ σώμασιν εἰδωλικῶς, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐπέκεινα ἀνεννοήτως τε καὶ ὑπερουσίως.

The Body of the Logos

931

Simplicius said exactly the same about Anaxagoras’ χρήματα: He [Anaxagoras] says that everything is in everything in a way, which is different in the state of their intelligible union, different in the state of their essential incorporeal union, and different still when they concur upon matter in order either to generate perceptible things or to cause them dissolve into those principles.⁴⁷⁹

This is what Porphyry meant when he wrote that a logos which ceases to act upon a certain entity of matter ‘becomes immaterial and incorporeal anew’.⁴⁸⁰ However, this was an Anaxagorean doctrine that the Stoics could not afford not to take up, which is a point that should be accounted for by those who rest content with the easy explanation that Simplicius was an extrapolator who set out to represent Anaxagoras a ‘Neoplatonist’.⁴⁸¹ Once Origen followed Anaxagoras, there were three possible solutions for him to employ in order to accommodate the ideas that the universe had a beginning whereas the Mind is both beginningless and detached from all beings. First, the notion of all things having been prefigured in God’s Wisdom, that is, in the Mind. The Latin text of De Principiis does indeed have such references,⁴⁸² but even if they are assumed to be genuine, they only betoken Origen’s struggle to accommodate Anaxagorean philosophy into his new faith, while, quite evidently, he was groping for a sustainable Christian theory. In any case, this Latin translation has contradictory statements that are highly unlike Origen, who was a man of sound logic, not a schizophrenic: it would then be wretched scholarship to assess his thought on the ground that, in the first book of De Principiis, he argued that creatures are co-eternal with God, whereas, in the second book of the same work, he urged that they are not co-eternal with God. The least one should do is suspect that something wrong went with Rufinus’ rendering of what he had read in the lost original, not to mention flagrant interpolations by malicious third parties, of which Origen himself complained during his lifetime.

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35: ἄλλως μὲν πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι φησὶ κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνω σιν, ἄλλως δὲ κατὰ τὴν νοερὰν συνουσίωσιν καὶ ἄλλως κατὰ τὴν αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν.  Porphyry, quoted supra, note 476. See also the same idea by Proclus, In Platonis Parmeni dem, p. 929, quoted in chapter 10, p. 793, note 398.  Zeno, fr. 158, apud Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 35: τάχα δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ Ζήνωνος σύμφωνος ἡ δόξα, διὰ πάσης οὐσίας πεφοιτηκέναι τὸν θεὸν τιθεμένοις, καὶ ποῦ μὲν εἶναι νοῦν, ποῦ δὲ ψυχήν, ποῦ δὲ φύσιν, ποῦ δὲ ἕξιν. Chrysippus, SVF, II.192, fr. 634 & Posidonius, Fragmenta (Theiler), fr. 345, apud Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.139: [God] δι᾿ ὧν μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἕξις κεχώρηκεν, ὡς διὰ τῶν ὀστῶν καὶ τῶν νεύρων, δι᾿ ὧν δὲ ὡς νοῦς.  Cf. Origen, Princ, I.4.4 5.

932

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

The second possible solution would use of the Peripatetic notion of ‘Potential Mind’ (δυνάμει νοῦς),⁴⁸³ which was not actually entertained by Aristotle himself, but by Theophrastus. In the first place, this was only an expression of Aristotle referring to the human mind being endowed with the potential of comprehension, and it actually understands once external impressions act upon the soul.⁴⁸⁴ This was as simple as that. However, Aristotle’s followers and commentators believed that they could think in similar terms about the Mind that has the potential of creating things, which was not very Aristotelian actually, considering that Aristotle’s supreme principle is always sheer actuality, not potentiality. Damascius reported that the notion of ‘Potential Mind’ was ‘an invention of the Peripatetics’ (later in this chapter, it turns out that this was Theophrastus), and he set forth arguments showing that this notion could hardly make sense.⁴⁸⁵ Following Theophrastus, the first philosopher who defiantly dealt with this notion was Alexander of Aphrodisias – and it should be pointed out that, to the extent Origen knew Aristotle’s philosophy, he had learned this from Alexander’s commentaries. The third possible solution was to stick to Anaxagoras: whereas the Mind is the Ruler upon the universe, including ‘all those which have soul, whether great or small’,⁴⁸⁶ it is ‘unmixed’ with everything none the less. In terms later to Anaxagoras, it bespeaks a Mind which is ontologically different from the universe, and yet ruling over it. Origen employed the notion of the Mind ‘hiding and appearing’,⁴⁸⁷ and to Neoplatonists, the idea that Deity (and then, the mind, soul, and indeed any incorporeal) is both everywhere and nowhere became a commonplace. However, it was not really Plotinus who introduced this: it was Philo who said that ‘God fills everything, he contains everything, but he is contained by nothing, and he alone is both everywhere and nowhere (πανταχοῦ τε καὶ οὐδαμοῦ)’.⁴⁸⁸ In reality though, the idea was fathered by Anaxagoras, who posited the Mind as both ‘unmixed’ with anything else and yet being present and acting within the world through his principles/logoi. Put it in more simple terms, the ontologically transcendent Mind creates and maintains the universe  See infra, pp. 979; 987 98.  Aristotle, De Anima, 429b.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 280: οἱ μὲν γὰρ Περιπατητικοὶ τὸν δυνάμει νοῦν ἐπενόησαν.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156 & 177: καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ τὰ μείζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ.  See PHE, p. 95: the bridegroom Logos is present/absent, appering/disappearing at the same time. Cf. Heidegger’s idea discussed supra, pp. 96 100, and infra, pp. 1308 9.  Philo, De Confusione Linguarum, 136; 138. Then, Plotinus, op. cit. III.9.4; V.2.2; VI.5.9; VI.8.16. Then, Porphyry, Sententiae, 27; 31; 38; 40; then, Proclus abundantly.

The Body of the Logos

933

by merely reflecting it. This idea was mediated through Porphyry, and Proclus was always ready to augment points made by his predecessor. Thus, to Proclus, the Mind is nowhere, and yet it is everywhere.⁴⁸⁹ What he said about ‘any cause’ (πᾶν αἴτιον) is simply an Anaxagorean proposition about the supreme cause, which imparted this property of ‘being a cause’ to the principles/logoi, too. Any cause is separate and it is both everywhere and nowhere: for it is everywhere by im parting its own power.⁴⁹⁰

This is a proposition that any Christian would have been happy to endorse, and in fact Philoponus did so.⁴⁹¹

The theory of seminal logoi The Stoic tenet about active logoi in essence is not different from Anaxagoras’ philosophy, since they took up the gist of the notion from him. Certainly, the materiality of the former against the immateriality of the latter is not a substantial difference. There are sixty-six references by Origen collected by the erudite and industrious J. von Arnim, which have contributed to our understanding of the Stoic thought. However, only in ten of them does Origen explicitly refer to Chrysippus by name. It is all but certain that the rest of fragments from Origen’s texts are in fact quotations from Chrysippus himself, and not by other Stoics, indeed later ones, such as Cornutus or Chaeremon. After all, Porphyry reported that Origen used to read the books of those two Stoic philosophers, and we saw that Simplicius reported that the term ‘seminal’ attached to the logoi was introduced by Cornutus. In most of those references in Arnim’s collection there is no reference made to Stoics at all, which makes it possible for them to represent Origen’s own understanding of Stoic thought, or indeed theories of his own along a Stoic line and tenor, which he employed to the extent they suited his own theology.

 Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1135: Λέγεται δὲ καὶ ὁ νοῦς εἶναι οὐδαμοῦ· πανταχοῦ γάρ ἐστιν ὁμοίως, καὶ πᾶσι πάρεστιν ἐξ ἴσου· πολλῷ μᾶλλον καὶ διὰ τῆς τοιαύτης παρουσίας ἐν οὐδενὶ κατέχεται τῶν αὐτοῦ μετεχόντων.  Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 98: Πᾶν αἴτιον χωριστὸν πανταχοῦ ἐστιν ἅμα καὶ οὐδαμοῦ. τῇ μὲν γὰρ μεταδόσει τῆς ἑαυτοῦ δυνάμεως ἐστὶ πανταχοῦ. The phraseology is strikingly similar to that of Philo, De Confusione Linguarum, 136: ὑπὸ δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ πεπλήρωται τὰ πάντα, περιέ χοντος, οὐ περιεχομένου, ᾧ πανταχοῦ τε καὶ οὐδαμοῦ συμβέβηκεν εἶναι μόνῳ.  John Philoponus, commMeteor, p. 12: ὡς γὰρ ὁ θεῖος νοῦς … οὐδαμοῦ μέν ἐστι τῇ οὐσίᾳ, πανταχοῦ δὲ ταῖς ἐνεργείαις. Cf. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 49, commenting on similar state ments of Porphyry.

934

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Nevertheless, this did not deter Origen from dismissing the Stoic materialism attributed to the logoi, or their tenet that the universal logos is material, which he styled ‘absurd’, although he actually did not refer personally to Chrysippus, but only ‘to those who philosophize following Chrysippus and Zeno’.⁴⁹² In any event, the Stoic notion of seminal logoi was not a radical breakthrough. Pythagoras had already taught that his God, namely, the Monad,⁴⁹³ contained all the logoi within himself. He defined a number as ‘extension and action of the seminal logoi that exist in the monad’; besides, a number ‘is subsistent in the divine mind prior to anything else, from which, and out of which, everything has been arranged and so it remains, by being numbered in indissoluble order’.⁴⁹⁴ According to the Pythagoreans, the Monad contained in itself multiplicity as potentiality, but how this potentiality could develop to actuality remained a moot question, on which different accounts were proposed. In order to solve the problem of how oneness and unity become multiplicity, Origen had recourse to the Biblical story of the fall of Adam from the Paradise. Anaxagoras, for his part, maintained that multiplicity became a set of potentialities, once the primeval confusum was ‘distinguished’ by the Mind. This means that one could see the Pythagorean Monad as a notion parallel to that reality, which some philosophers considered as an all-inclusive ‘seed’ (σπέρμα). As for the question of how this potentiality turns to actuality, Anaxagoras was not faced with the Pythagorean difficulties, which is one more token that his own philosophy was a step beyond Pythagoras: potentiality became actuality by means of this ‘distinguished’ totality of potentialities starting to rotate, and this rotation (περιχώρησις) was, and still is, an accelerating one (καὶ πρῶτον ἀπό τοῦ σμικροῦ ἤρξατο περιχωρεῖν, ἐπὶ δὲ πλεῖον περιχωρεῖ, καὶ περιχωρήσει ἐπὶ πλέον).⁴⁹⁵ As for later philosophers, Aristotle claimed that Plato maintaind the notion of the Indetrminate Dyad, which we discussed earlier.

 Origen, Cels, VIII.49.  Anatolius of Laodicea (the teacher of Iamblichus) wrote that the Pythagoreans used to style the Monad ‘Nous’ and they identified it with the supreme God. Περὶ δεκάδος καὶ τῶν ἐντὸς αὐτῆς ἀριθμῶν, p. 5. See chapter 1, p. 122.  Iamblichus, In Nicomachi Arithmeticam Introductionem, p. 10: Πυθαγόρας δὲ ἔκτασιν καὶ ἐν έργειαν τῶν ἐν μονάδι σπερματικῶν λόγων, ἢ ἑτέρως τὸ πρὸ πάντων ὑποστὰν ἐν θείῳ νῷ ἀφ᾿ οὗ καὶ ἐξ οὗ πάντα συντέτακται καὶ μένει τάξιν ἄλυτον διηριθμημένα. Cf. op. cit. p. 81: διόπερ αὐτὴν [sc. τὴν μονάδα] ἴσην καὶ δικαίαν οἱ ἀπὸ Πυθαγόρου ἐκ τοῦ συμβαίνοντος ἐκάλουν, καὶ ἐκ τοῦ τοιοῦδε τὸ σπερματικὸν αὐτῆς καὶ ἀρχοειδὲς γνωρίζεται· ὡς γὰρ ἡ μονὰς *** καὶ σπερματικῶς ἀδιακρίτους τοὺς ἐν ἀριθμῷ λόγους περιέχει, οὕτω καὶ ἡ δυὰς συγκεχυμένον καὶ ἀδιάφορον μόνον περιέξει τὸ τῆς ἐγκράσεως καὶ τὸ τῆς παραθέσεως ἰδίωμα.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 156.

The Body of the Logos

935

By employing the theory of logoi, Origen actually drew on the Anaxagorean principles, not on Stoicism. This is why he felt at liberty to be critical of Chrysippus whenever Stoic statements did not conform with his own premisses. For instance, he rejected the Stoic dismissal of any notion of transcendence, and so did he with the idea of identical cosmic periods recurring endlessly. However, he employed the notion of logoi, while endorsing Plotinus’ criticism of the Stoics for making these logoi material. Quite simply, he abode by the real source of the theory, namely Anaxagoras, rather than by the Stoics who transformed it, and he distanced his own theory from the Stoic one whenever he thought it proper to do so. It should be noticed that normally (though not always) he cites ‘the Stoics’ by name at points where he dissents from them. On the contrary, whenever he feels he can put to use an idea which we currently know (or think) to be Stoic, no mention of the ‘Stoics’ is made. Since he definitely had read all of Anaxagoras’ philosophy, which is no longer extant apart from Simplicius’ quotations of it, I would not exclude the possibility that some of the ideas and terms he used were in fact Anaxagorean, and today we assume them to be Stoic. However, in the absence of textual evidence, this conjecture cannot be pushed too far. In any event, Origen was critical of the Stoics, although he did not try to conceal neither his respect for their ethics, nor that he had read many Stoic pragmaties, some of which he cited by title. According to the opinion of the Stoics, who maintain that the first principles are corporeal, and who on this account hold that everything is destructible, and venture even to make God himself destructible⁴⁹⁶ (unless this seemed to them to be utterly outrageous), even the Logos of God that comes down to men and to the most insignificant things is nothing other than material spirit. But in the view of us Christians, who try to show that the rational soul is superior to any material nature and is invisible and incorporeal substance, the di vine Logos is not material. Through him, all things were made, and in order that the Logos may make all things, he extends not to men but even to the things supposed to be insignif icant and controlled by nature. Let the Stoics destroy everything through conflagration. But we know of no incorporeal substance that could be subject to conflagration, neither [do we know of] either the human soul, or the being of angels, or thrones, or dominions, or prin cipalities, or powers, being pervious to suffering this.⁴⁹⁷

He takes exception to the Stoics positing material ‘principles’, and so does he when he says that ‘the Stoics made God a body … and introduced as [supreme] principle one that is corporeal and corruptible’.⁴⁹⁸ Plotinus criticized them on ex Chrysippus, SVF, II, frs. 1049 1056.  Origen, Cels, VI.71.  Origen, op. cit. I.21: οἱ σῶμα εἰπόντες τὸν θεὸν Στωϊκοὶ … ἢ ἀρχὴν φθαρτὴν εἰσάγοντος τὴν σωματικήν.

936

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

actly the same grounds, namely, for ‘postulating material principles’ (οἱ μὲν τὰς ἀρχὰς σωματικὰς θέμενοι).⁴⁹⁹ Neither of them was entirely right:⁵⁰⁰ for ‘Zeus’ who is also called ‘God and Mind’ (θεὸν καὶ νοῦν)⁵⁰¹ contains all the spermatic logoi in himself (ἐμπεριειληφὸς πάντας τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους),⁵⁰² and these logoi, along with God himself, are ‘indestructible’ during conflagration.⁵⁰³ Origen maintained that the seminal logoi are present and at work upon formation of a fetus, following intercourse between a man and a woman,⁵⁰⁴ so that natural laws carry out their operation. Like Plotinus, he had it that the tendencies of a human soul are formed by exercise of free will and action, unlike personal natural characteristics or traits (such as stature, shape of face, etc.) which are not subject to personal choice.⁵⁰⁵ He allowed nevertheless for some mental

 Plotinus, op. cit. III.1.2.  Nevertheless, Origen acknowledged with some irony that, although destructible, the Stoic god was lucky enough as to escape destruction because there was nothing outside him that could destroy him. Cels, I.21. Therefore, his objection to the Stoic tenet was only theoretical.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.136.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881F. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 35. Sto baeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 226: μάλιστα δ᾿ ἐν τῇ ἐκπυρώσει φαίνεται κατ᾿ αὐτοὺς ὁ θεὸς τῆς ὕλης εἶδος ὤν, εἴ γε ἐν τῷ πυρί, ὃ μόνον ἐστὶ κατ᾿ αὐτοὺς τότε, ἡ ὕλη καὶ ὁ θεὸς τῆς ὕλης σώζονται μόνοι. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 887: οἱ μὲν τοὺς σπερματι κοὺς λόγους εἶναι τοιούτους οἰηθέντες ἀφθάρτους αὐτοὺς ἐποίησαν, ὡς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς. Be sides, Diogenes Laertius reports that Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Archedemus (of Tarsus), and Posidonius made a distinction between ‘elements’ and ‘principles’ (διαφέρειν δέ φασιν ἀρχὰς καὶ στοιχεῖα). Of them, ‘elements’ (evidently, meaning the four elements) have ‘form’ and they are destroyed during conflagration, whereas ‘the principles’ are ‘incorporeal and formless’ (ἀσωμά τους εἶναι τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ ἀμόρφους). Laertius cites details about titles of works of the foregoing philosophers. Op. cit. 7.134; see this passage quoted and translated in chapter 1, p. 147.  Origen, Cels, I.37: Τί οὖν παράδοξον, εἰ βουληθεὶς ὁ θεὸς θεῖον τινα διδάσκαλον πέμψαι τῷ γένει τῶν ἀνθρώπων πεποίηκεν, ἀντὶ τοῦ διὰ σπερματικοῦ λόγου τοῦ ἐκ μίξεως τῶν ἀρρένων ταῖς γυναιξὶ ποιῆσαι, ἄλλῳ τρόπῳ γενέσθαι τὸν λόγον τοῦ τεχθησομένου;  Origen, commMatt, 326: δοκεῖ μοι ὅτι ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις σώμασίν ἐστι μεγέθη διάφορα, ὡς τινὰς μὲν αὐτῶν εἶναι μικροὺς ἑτέρους δὲ μεγάλους καὶ ἄλλους τοὺς μεταξύ, καὶ πάλιν εἶναι μικρῶν διαφορὰς ἐπὶ πλεῖον ἢ ἔλαττον ὄντων μικρῶν, ὁμοίως καὶ μεγάλων, καὶ τῶν μεταξύ, οὕτως καὶ ἐν ταῖς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ψυχαῖς ἐστί τινα χαρακτηρίζοντα τὴν μικρότητα αὐτῶν καὶ ἄλλα τὴν (ἵν᾿ οὕτως εἴπω) μεγαλότητα καὶ ἁπαξαπλῶς ἄλλα ἀνάλογον τοῖς σωματικοῖς τὴν μεταξύτητα. ἀλλ᾿ ἐπὶ μὲν τῶν σωμάτων οὐ παρὰ τὴν αἰτίαν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ἀλλὰ παρὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους ὁ μέν τίς ἐστι βραχὺς καὶ μικρός, ὁ δὲ μέγας, ὁ δὲ μεταξύ. ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ψυχῶν καὶ τὸ ἐφ᾿ ἡμῖν καὶ αἱ τοιαίδε πράξεις καὶ τὸ τοιοῦτον ἦθος τὴν αἰτίαν ἔχει καὶ ἁπαξαπλῶς ἄλλα ἀνάλογον τοῖς σωματικοῖς τὴν μεταξύτητα. ἀλλ᾿ ἐπὶ μὲν τῶν σωμάτων οὐ παρὰ τὴν αἰτίαν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ἀλλὰ παρὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους ὁ μέν τίς ἐστι βραχὺς καὶ μικρός, ὁ δὲ μέγας, ὁ δὲ μεταξύ. ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ψυχῶν καὶ τὸ ἐφ᾿ ἡμῖν καὶ αἱ τοιαίδε πράξεις καὶ τὸ τοιοῦτον ἦθος τὴν αἰτίαν ἔχει τοῦ μέγαν τινὰ εἶναι ἢ μικρὸν ἢ ἐν τοῖς μεταξὺ τυγχάνειν.

The Body of the Logos

937

predisposition, which stems from certain seminal logoi, which explains hereditary qualities.⁵⁰⁶ Here is how the idea of matter being subdued to the power of the logoi is expressed: It is clear that the seed of someone has the logoi of the procreator in itself still at rest and laid up in store (τὸ μὲν σπέρμα τινὸς ἔχει τοὺς λόγους τοῦ σπείραντος ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἔτι ἡσυ χάζοντας καὶ ἀποκειμένους). The child comes into existence once he has been formed and prepared for birth, when the seed has been transformed and has converted the matter that surrounds it (μεταβαλόντος τοῦ σπέρματος καὶ ἐργασαμένου τὴν περικειμένην αὐτῷ ὕλην),⁵⁰⁷ which it provided by the woman and the accumulated nutrients.⁵⁰⁸

J. von Arnim took it that Origen quotes Chrysippus.⁵⁰⁹ But nowhere does Origen say so, and there is no evidence that this was Chrysippus’ own idea. As a matter of fact, Chrysippus’ name is associated with the notion of seminal logoi at one point only, which happens to be testified by Origen himself reporting a view of

 Origen, commJohn, XX.2.5 6: ἀπό τινων σπερματικῶν λόγων, συγκαταβαλλομένων τισὶν ὡς οἶμαι ψυχαῖς, δεῖ χαρακτηρίζειν τοὺς ὄντας σπέρμα τοῦ ᾿Aβραάμ … δῆλον ὅτι οὐ πάντες ἄνθρωποι μετὰ πάντη σπερματικῶν λόγων τῶν αὐτῶν ἐγκατασπαρέντων αὐτῶν ταῖς ψυχαῖς τῷ βίῳ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐπιδεδημήκασιν. Op. cit. XX.3.13: τοῦτο νοητέον περὶ τοῦ σπέρματος τοῦ Σὴμ καὶ Νῶε καὶ τῶν ἀνωτέρω δικαίων, ὧν τὰς ἰδιότητας σπερματικῶς δοκοῦσιν κοινῇ ἀνειληφέναι εἰς γένεσιν ἐρχόμενοι ᾿Aβραὰμ καὶ Ναχὼρ καὶ ᾿Aρράμ· ἀλλ᾿ ὁ μὲν ᾿Aβραὰμ γεγεωργηκέναι οὓς εἶχεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ σπερματικοὺς λόγους πάντων τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ δικαίων, καὶ τούτοις προστεθεικέ ναι ἁγίαν ἰδίαν ποιότητα, τὴν κατὰ τὸ ἴδιον αὐτοῦ σπέρμα, οὗ ἐδύναντο μετέχειν οἱ μετ᾿ αὐτὸν καλούμενοι σπέρμα ᾿Aβραάμ. Op. cit. XX.5.36 38: ἔστιν δὲ ἰδεῖν ἐπικρατοῦντα καὶ τὸν λόγον τῆς γυναικὸς ἢ τοῦ πατρὸς τῆς γυναικὸς ἢ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτῆς ἢ τοῦ πάππου αὐτῆς, κατὰ τοὺς ἐν ταῖς μίξεσι βρασμοὺς ἅμα πάντων σειομένων, ἕως ἂν ἐπικρατήσῃ τις τῶν σπερματικῶν λόγων. ταῦτα δὴ μεταγέσθω ἐπὶ τὴν πεπληρωμένην ψυχὴν νοητῶν σπερμάτων, ἐληλυθότων ἀπό τινων ὀνομαζομένων πατέρων αὐτῆς, καὶ τὸ παρὰ τὸ πολυκίνητον ἢ εὐκίνητον τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ καὶ τὴν ἐπὶ τοιάσδε φαντασίας ἐπίστασιν προκυπτέτωσαν οἱονεὶ σπερματικοί τινες τῶν πατέρων λόγοι· ὧν γεωργουμένων ἔσται τις τέκνον ὅδε μὲν τοῦ ᾿Aβραάμ, δῆλον δ᾿ ὅτι ὁ αὐτὸς ὢν καὶ τοῦ Νῶε, ἄλλος δὲ τοῦ Νῶε, οὐχ ὥστε δὲ εἶναι καὶ τοῦ ᾿Aβραάμ, καὶ ἄλλος τοῦ Χαναάν, καὶ ἄλλος τινὸς τῶν δικαίων ἢ τῶν ἀδίκων. Op. cit. XIII.41.273: Ἡμεῖς οὖν θερισμὸν συναγομένου καρποῦ εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἐκλαμβάνομεν κατὰ τὴν τελείωσιν τοῦ σπερματικῶς ἐγκειμένου κατὰ τὰς ἐν νοίας ἡμῖν λόγου ἀπὸ γεωργίας πλείονος τετελειωμένου.  This is the expression attested by Simplicius, commCateg, p. 306 (Chrysippus, fr. 499): κα ταβληθὲν γὰρ τὸ σπέρμα ἀναπληροῖ τοὺς οἰκείους λόγους καὶ ἐπισπᾶται τὴν παρακειμένην ὕλην καὶ διαμορφοῖ τοὺς ἐν ἑαυτῷ λόγους. This is the same language Origen used: selPs, PG.12.1097.25 25, apud Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, p. 426: ὁ σπερματικὸς λόγος ἐν τῷ κόκκῳ τοῦ σίτου δραξάμενος τῆς παρακειμένης ὕλης, καὶ δι’ ὅλης αὐτῆς χωρήσας, περιδρα ξάμενος αὐτῆς τοῦ αὐτοῦ εἴδους, ὧν ἔχει δυνάμεων ἐπιτίθησι τῇ ποτε γῇ, καὶ ὕδατι, καὶ ἀέρι, καὶ πυρί, νικήσας τὰς ἐκείνων ποιότητας, μεταβάλλει ἐπὶ ταύτην ἧς ἐστιν αὐτὸς δημιουργός.  Origen, commJohn, XX.2.3.  Chrysippus, SVF, II.212, fr. 746.

938

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Chrysippus, not quoting it.⁵¹⁰ There should be little doubt that the notion was an integral part of Chrysippus’ theory. All I am suggesting is that there are also other candidates to be attributed this idea, which is in essence Anaxagorean. The Stoics followed suit, but the source of this specific terminology by Origen could be either the first-century Stoic Cornutus, or a second-century one, such as Marcus Aurelius. When Simplicius wrote his commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, he criticized the Stoics for having taken up the Pythagorean concept of time. In his opinion, they modified it slightly, though not aptly. When he came upon the Stoic idea of seminal logoi, the philosopher who crossed his mind was not someone of the glorious old Stoic generation: instead, it was Cornutus.⁵¹¹ He mentions Chrysippus at sixteen points (including those referring to the concept of time), so he does with both Cleanthes (once, and in utter admiration)⁵¹² and Zeno (at more than a hundred points). However, he mentions the crucial notion of seminal logoi only in relation to the name of Cornutus. Marcus Aurelius also mentions the notion in a very characteristic context and manner.⁵¹³ Why should have this idea not been in the first place Origen’s inspiration built on the Anaxagorean legacy, or a debt to Cornutus also building on Anaxagoras? After all, this conforms to Porphyry’s testimony that Origen used to read the books of that Stoic philosopher.⁵¹⁴ And yet, whenever J. von Arnim came upon relevant ideas, he made them a wholesale attribution to Chrysippus.

 Origen, Cels, IV.48 (Chrysippus, fr. 1074).  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 351: τῶν Πυθαγορείων τὸ διάστημα φυσικὸν καὶ ἐν φυσικοῖς λό γοις καὶ εἰ οὕτω τις βούλοιτο καλεῖν ἐν τοῖς σπερματικοῖς, ὥς ποτε καὶ Κορνοῦτος ὀψὲ τοῦτο ὑπώπτευσεν. Simplicius makes a general reference to the ‘seminal logoi ’ only at one more point of the same work (p. 29), yet he mentions Cornutus at some other points, too. Op. cit. pp. 18; 62; 187; 359.  Simplicius, commEpict, p. 137.  Marcus Aurelius did not believe that souls persist after death until consummation; they re main only ‘for a while’, and then they are absorbed into the universal spermatic Logos, thus ‘making room’ for subsequent animate bodies to exist on earth. Τὰ εἰς Ἑαυτόν, 4.14.1: Ἐνυπέστης ὡς μέρος. ἐναφανισθήσῃ τῷ γεννήσαντι· μᾶλλον δὲ ἀναληφθήσῃ εἰς τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ τὸν σπερ ματικὸν κατὰ μεταβολήν. Op. cit. 4.21.1 2: οὕτως αἱ εἰς τὸν ἀέρα μεθιστάμεναι ψυχαί, ἐπὶ ποσὸν συμμείνασαι, μεταβάλλουσι καὶ χέονται καὶ ἐξάπτονται εἰς τὸν τῶν ὅλων σπερματικὸν λόγον ἀναλαμβανόμεναι καὶ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον χώραν ταῖς προσσυνοικιζομέναις παρέχουσι. τοῦτο δ᾿ ἄν τις ἀποκρίναιτο ἐφ᾿ ὑποθέσει τοῦ τὰς ψυχὰς διαμένειν. Even the souls of important people, such as Alexander the Macedonian, shared this fate. Op. cit. 6.24.1: ᾿Aλέξανδρος ὁ Μακεδὼν καὶ ὁ ὀρεωκόμος αὐτοῦ ἀποθανόντες εἰς ταὐτὸ κατέστησαν· ἤτοι γὰρ ἀνελήφθησαν εἰς τοὺς αὐτοὺς τοῦ κόσμου σπερματικοὺς λόγους ἢ διεσκεδάσθησαν ὁμοίως εἰς τὰς ἀτόμους.  Porphyry, Contra Christianos, fr. 39, apud Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, 6.19.7, partially quoted by the Suda, letter omega, entry 182.

The Body of the Logos

939

The Stoics were severely criticized by Neoplatonists for having produced the soul from natural elements. Plutarch reported in repugnance that they produced ‘animate beings from inanimate’ things (ἐξ ἀναισθήτων ποιῶν ἔμψυχα).⁵¹⁵ Anaxagoras introduced an evolutionary concept of creation: everything comes from a certain seed which is appropriate to one’s own nature, and it develops to its full reality in due course determined by its own specific nature. The way in which certain seeds contain the logoi that give gradual rise to everything (including humans) is the same as that in which the entire universe came to be: the result of the initial action by the Mind was ‘seeds’, that is, the logoi/principles. Likewise, each particular seed contains certain logoi (which are not ‘severed through an axe’ from all the other ones),⁵¹⁶ out of which a specific animal, or a thing, or a phenomenon emerges. To any modern scientist, there is nothing strange about it: life was produced from the earth, indeed from water. The Bible also would have agreed with this, the sole difference being that humans were exempt from this process since they were made by God himself. Didymus interpreted the statement of Genesis 1:24 (where God commands that the earth should produce all kinds of animals) as suggesting that ‘the earth has a certain power to produce dumb animals, because somehow there is a certain spermatic logos in it’ (ὑποβαλλούσης τῆς προστάξεως ὡς ἡ γῆ δύναμιν τῶν ἐξ αὐτῆς ἐξελευσομένων ἀλόγων ζῴων ἔχει, λόγου σπερματικοῦ ἐνυπάρχοντος αὐτῇ τρόπον τινά), and more so, ‘in the seeds of animals’ (μᾶλλον δὲ ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασιν τῶν ζῴων). Thus, the ‘souls’ of animals are ‘material’, because their functions are only physiological, not mental ones,⁵¹⁷ and, in fact, in the Bible ‘soul’ is identified as the ‘blood’ of animals.⁵¹⁸ It is remarkable that Origen sets forth a Greek argument, without caring to distance himself from it: the primeval man was produced ‘not through sexual intercourse, but from the earth, once sprematic logoi obtained in the soil’ (μὴ ἐκ συνουσίας γεγονέναι ἀλλ᾿ ἀπὸ γῆς, σπερματικῶν λόγων συστάντων ἐν τῇ

 Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1053C. See quotation infra, p. 1274, note 373. Neverthe less, there are didactic instances teaching us that we should always read ancient doxographic reports with caution: John of Sicily lumps together both Plutarch of Chaeronea and Galen of Per gamon as being those who made the soul posterior to the functions of the body. John of Sicily (rhetor, eleventh century), Commentarium in Hermogenis Librum Περὶ Ἰδεῶν, p. 118: κἄν τινες τῶν φιλοσόφων, ὡς Πλούταρχος ὁ Χαιρωνεὺς καὶ ὁ Περγαμηνὸς Γαληνός, δούλην ποιῶσι τὴν δέσποιναν καθελκομένην ὑπὸ τῶν κράσεων καὶ τῶν τοῦ σώματος ἀναγκῶν. See infra, p. 1434.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 175: οὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκει οὔτε τὸ θερμὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ οὔτε τὸ ψυχρὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ θερμοῦ. Op. cit. p. 176: οὐ κεχώρισται ἀλλήλων τὰ ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ κόσμῳ οὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκει.  Didymus, In Genesim, Cod. p. 48.  Cf. Leviticus, 17:14; Deuteronomium, 12:23; 4 Macc. 3:15; 6:29.

940

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

γῇ).⁵¹⁹ He reports that the argument about the first men having come to existence without sexual intercourse was sustained by ‘many Greeks, notably, those who liked to believe that the world is generated and it had a beginning’. Once again, J. von Arnim excerpted the expression and made it a testimony to Stoicism, only because the expression ‘spermatic logoi’ is used, although, a couple of lines before that point, Origen set it forth as one of his own, speaking about the normal procreation of humans being generated from ‘a spermatic logos which is produced out of intercourse between male and female’ (τοῦ διὰ σπερματικοῦ λόγου τοῦ ἐκ μίξεως τῶν ἀρρένων ταῖς γυναιξί).⁵²⁰ According to his usual practice, the excerptor went further and attributed the former passage to Chrysippus personally (fr. 739), although Origen speaks only of ‘many Greeks who were content with holding the world to be generated’ (εἰ γὰρ γενητός ἐστιν ὁ κόσμος, ὡς καὶ πολλοῖς Ἑλλήνων ἤρεσεν). Now, the Stoics held that there are recurrent cosmic periods of destruction and regeneration of the universe, but it was Anaxagoras who introduced the idea that the world had a beginning. Moreover, it was he who said explicitly that ‘the seeds of all things’ (σπέρματα πάντων χρημάτων) vary in every respect (καὶ ἰδέας παντοίας ἔχοντα καὶ χροιὰς καὶ ἡδονάς),⁵²¹ so that none of them is like another (καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλήθους οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις· οὐδὲ γὰρ τῶν ἄλλων οὐδὲν ἔοικε τὸ ἕτερον τῷ ἑτέρῳ),⁵²² and that it is out of these seeds that ‘men are constructed, as indeed all animals are’ (καὶ ἀνθρώπους τε συμπαγῆναι καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ζῷα ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει).⁵²³ The extent to which the Stoics took up Anaxagoras’ ideas has been already discussed, but it was not the Stoics whom Origen has in mind at that point: quite plainly, it was Anaxagoras. The passage in the Contra Celsum is one of his own, which he propounds being under the influence of that philosopher, and this should be regarded not as part of Stoic philosophy, let alone Chrysippus’ own words, but Origen’s own building on his Presocratic kindred spirit. Anaxagoras was clear in stating that everything, including men, comes from ‘seeds’, which operate as material ones in the visible universe, yet, like everything, they are produced by immaterial principles. Certainly, the Stoics would have endorsed the idea of ‘seeds’ promptly, but this specific instance is only about Anaxagoras inspiring Origen.

    

Origen, Cels, I.37. Loc. cit. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 34; 156. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 35.

The Body of the Logos

941

There is an interesting point showing why Origen treated Aristotle with contempt and included him in his black list of philosophers, along with the Sophists, the Epicureans,⁵²⁴ and Democritus (who inspired Epicurus). Aristotle dismissed the notion that a ‘seed’ is prior to the fully developed being (plants, animals, humans), on the grounds that a seed is ‘imperfect’, and no perfect being can be produced from an imperfect one. He attacked both the Pythagoreans and Speusippus who maintained that perfect beauty and goodness do not exist in the beginning, but they appear in the course of evolution.⁵²⁵ More specifically, he attacked Speusippus for holding that all entities can only be the result of development and for supposing that supreme beauty and goodness are not present in the beginning, because the beginnings of both plants and of animals are causes, whereas beauty and completeness are the effects of these.⁵²⁶ Although the first beginnings of plants and animals are causes, it is in the products of them that beauty and perfection are found. By this, Speusippus wished to suggest that it was from the One, not from the Many, that the Good and Perfect should be derived.⁵²⁷ This was unacceptable to Aristotle, who opted for the view of those who made goodness a first principle.⁵²⁸ This stemmed from his fundamental tenet that actuality is prior to potentiality,⁵²⁹ hence, he urged that a seed comes from prior creatures which are perfect, and that which is prior is not the seed, but the perfect creature: one might say that prior to the seed is the man, not the one who is produced from the seed, but another man from whom the seed comes.⁵³⁰ He argues that, in the natural world, the principles from which these things are derived are perfect and complete; for it is man that begets man; the seed does not come first (ἄνθρωπος γὰρ ἄνθρωπον γεννᾷ, καὶ οὐκ ἔστι τὸ σπέρμα πρῶτον).⁵³¹ Likewise, ‘actuality is prior to potentiality (ἡ ἐνέργεια προτέρα τῆς δυνάμεως) in terms of both generation and time (κατὰ γένεσιν καὶ

 Origen, Cels, II.27.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1091a: “The mythologists and some present day thinkers deny that there is [the Good or the Supreme Principle] and say that it was only after some evolution in the natural order of things that both the Good and the Beautiful appeared.” By ‘present day think ers’, he meant Speusippus and the Pythagoreans. Cf. op. cit. 1075b; 1092a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1072b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1072b; 1075b; 1091a b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1072b; 1075b; 1091b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1049b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1072b 1073a: τὸ γὰρ σπέρμα ἐξ ἑτέρων ἐστὶ προτέρων τελείων, καὶ τὸ πρῶτον οὐ σπέρμα ἐστὶν ἀλλὰ τὸ τέλειον· οἷον πρότερον ἄνθρωπον ἂν φαίη τις εἶναι τοῦ σπέρ ματος, οὐ τὸν ἐκ τούτου γενόμενον ἀλλ᾿ ἕτερον ἐξ οὗ τὸ σπέρμα.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1092a.

942

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

χρόνον)’. What is more, actuality is also prior in substantiality, because those which cause generation are prior in form and substantiality: an adult is prior to his child and a man to seed (καὶ ἄνθρωπος σπέρματος), because the former already possess fully the form, but the latter does not.⁵³² The logic of Aristotle’s argument emanated from the doctrine that actuality should precede potentiality. This is why he strove to interpret other philosophers according to his own context of thought, not theirs. As a result, he was confused, and inevitably contradicted himself once again: when he set out to attack ‘Speusippus and his followers’, as above, he appealed to ‘earlier mythologists and philosophers’, such as Pherecydes, the Magi, as well as ‘later wise men’, such as ‘both Empedocles and Anaxagoras’. This was a rare compliment to Anaxagoras amidst the spate of vitriolic attacks by Aristotle every now and then. The argument was that all of those wise men posited a primary progenitor as the First Supreme Good (τὸ γεννῆσαν πρῶτον ἄριστον τιθέασι).⁵³³ Regarding Anaxagoras, Aristotle saw this in the Mind. However, although he posited all things as actualization of certain potentialities, and whereas only the supreme principle is sheer actuality, his foregoing argument shows that he wished to see everything in nature as preceded by actuality. In short, Aristotle speaks as a Platonist once again, and he stops short of telling us that those which are prior to actualities are the Ideas, only because he envisions a ‘first man’ who started to give birth to offspring and thus human race was produced. Nevertheless, his difficulty is all too obvious: on the one hand, he could not posit an ‘Idea of the Good and the Beautiful’ (τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ τὸ καλόν); on the other, he did not allow that they are ‘later in generation’ (ὑστερογενῆ) and they ‘appeared after some evolution’ (προελθούσης τῆς τῶν ὄντων φύσεως).⁵³⁴ His argument against Speusippus (i. e. the imperfect does not really exist in advance, 1092b16‒18) could only square his point by opting for speaking of, say, ‘beauty of a man’, and thus salvage his axiom that actuality should precede potentiality. However, he cares little about the implications of such a suggestion; for example, this ‘first man’ should be as beginningless as the world itself, but Aristotle did not care to explain how did this first actual human being come to be in the first place. The foregoing argument shows that Aristotle seems to have forgotten his views of potentiality, even though he appeals to that as an august doctrine. In effect, these arguments ban the notion of evolution, which though is inexorably interwoven with the notion of potentiality. Since there is no beginning of the

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1050a; cf. 989a15 17; 1019a; 1051a31; 1077a15 16; 1084b9 13.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1091b.  Loc. cit.

The Body of the Logos

943

world, and no human being can proceed from a human seed, but only a seed proceeds from a human being, it follows of necessity that human race is beginningless and co-eternal with the rest of the world, indeed it is as old as the world itself, which is absurd, but it would be endorsed by those who (unlike Origen) insisted on taking the story of the biblical Genesis literally. This is why Aristotle’s doctrine of everlasting world was criticized: if the world is beginningless and everlasting, so should be all the animals in it, and, above all, the human race, which is superior to all other animals.⁵³⁵ As shown presently, the irony is that Aristotle appeals to Anaxagoras, as if Anaxagoras had ever said that all fully developed beings were made right from the start. The fact of the matter is that Aristotle knew that he was irredeemably trapped in the horns of the dilemma caused by his own fundamental axioms. Postulating a ‘first man’ from whom semen proceeded was just as nonsense as Plato’s ‘participation in Ideas’ was to Aristotle ‘a poetical metaphor’ and ‘twitterings’. An example in this context is particularly instructive. In 1942, the English scholar Arthur Leslie Peck translated Aristotle’s Generation of Animals, and when he reached the point where Aristotle defines what semen is, he was confused: “At this point in the Greek text there follow some unintelligible phrases which I have omitted from the translation”,⁵³⁶ although Aldus Manutius (Venice, 1497) included them in his editio princeps. The phrase that appeared ‘unintelligible’ to Peck is the following, and he put it in brackets, while ignoring it entirely in his translation: οὐ τῷ ἐξ ἐκείνου τι εἶναι τὸ ποιοῦν οἷον τοῦ ἀνθρώπου· γίγνεται γὰρ ἐκ τούτου ὅτι τοῦτο ἐστὶ τὸ σπέρμα. The text of Aristotle reads thus: In this investigation, and those which follow from it, the first thing to do is to understand what semen is, for then it will be easier to inquire into its operations and the phenomena connected with it. Now, the object of semen is to be of such a nature that from it as their origin come into being those things which are formed according to nature, not because the making agent (say, of a human being) originates in it [i. e. the semen]. For the semen itself is produced from the semen and this is [properly speaking] what semen itself is. ⁵³⁷

 Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 130. Different editors have attributed this lengthy exposition by Philo to different authors: Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones (H. Diels), 12; Fragmenta (F. Wimmer), fr. 30.6; Zeno, Testimonia et fragmenta. (J. von Arnim), fr. 106a. Posidonius, Fragmenta (W. Theiler), fr. 310. Although Philo starts his exposition (section 117) with mentioning Theo phrastus, then, he uses plural (‘they say’, φασίν), which is why we have these different editorial resolutions. Nevertheless, it is the argument that matters after all.  Aristotle, Generation of Animals, tr. by A.L. Peck, Loeb, v. 366, p. 72, note a.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 724a14 20; my italics indicate the text which ap peared unintelligible to Peck and was not translated.

944

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

In reality, the ‘unintelligible phrase’ was an annotation by Aristotle himself, once he realized that his definition of semen made it a primary source of ‘generation according to nature’.⁵³⁸ In the beginning of the same work (716a), he wrote that ‘the things that are formed by Nature certainly take their rise out of a semen’ (ἐκ τούτου μὲν γὰρ τὰ φύσει γιγνόμενα συνίσταται); then (721b), he noted that ‘one should consider what is the nature of semen, and how it contributes to generation’; subsequently (724b), he set out to investigate ‘whether semen acts as matter (i. e. as something being acted upon) or as a form (i. e. as something which acts in itself), or perhaps as both.’ He seems to arrive at a view later (765b), when he posits that ‘male’ is that which is able to discharge semen possessing the ‘principle’ of the ‘form’: Male is that which is able to concoct, to cause to take shape, and to discharge semen pos sessing the ‘principle’ of the ‘form’. And by principle, I do not mean that sort of principle out of which, as out of matter, an offspring is formed belonging to the same kind as the parent, but I mean the proximate motive principle, whether it is able to act thus in itself or in something else. ⁵³⁹

Once again, Aristotle was swayed by Anaxagoras: he allows that the ‘proximate motive principle’ (i. e. something acting as cause of movement) may well be able to act either in the semen itself or in something else. What is this ‘acting agent’ other than an Anaxagorean principle? Besides, he uses a phrase that does not fit within his own philosophy, namely, ‘the principle of the form’ (τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ εἴδους), which is a ‘proximate motive principle’ that ‘is able to act thus in itself or in something else’. Once the meaning of ‘form’ is acting agent (whereas matter, which is acted upon, is a passive one), what was possibly the need for such a pleonasm to be used? At best, a ‘form’ itself is a ‘principle’, as Aristotle indicated at a single point;⁵⁴⁰ but ‘the principle of a form’ makes no sense in this philosophy, unless only as an Anaxagorean notion.

 Peck was right in guessing that this was ‘an annotation upon the definition’, but he did not grasp the meaning of it, perhaps because he was not aware of Aristotle’s views of seeds, as dis cussed above.  Aristotle, op. cit. 765b: λέγω δ᾿ ἀρχὴν οὐ τὴν τοιαύτην ἐξ ἧς ὥσπερ ὕλης γίγνεται τοιοῦτον οἷον τὸ γεννῶν, ἀλλὰ τὴν κινοῦσαν πρώτην, ἐάν τ᾿ ἐν αὐτῷ ἐάν τ᾿ ἐν ἄλλῳ τοῦτο δύνηται ποιεῖν.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1032b15 17: “In generations and motions (γενέσεων καὶ κινή σεων) part of the process is called cogitation (νόησις) and part of it production (ποίησις): that which has its starting point in the principle and the form (ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ τοῦ εἴδους) is cog itation, and that which starts from the last stage of cogitation is production.” This is how he in dicates both the starting point for production and the higher motivative agent, which originates with consideration of the ‘form’.

The Body of the Logos

945

Besides, whereas in the Generation of Animals he took heed to square his inconsistencies, in the Physics he was less attentive and argued that ‘any substance, whether natural or artificial, that exists independently, proceeds from something that may be regarded as the subject of that change which results in its coming into being; for, in every case, there is something underlying already there (ἀεὶ γὰρ ἔστι ὃ ὑπόκειται), out of which the resultant thing comes to be (ἐξ οὗ τὸ γιγνόμενον); for instance, the seed of a plant or animal (οἷον τὰ φυτὰ καὶ τὰ ζῷα ἐκ σπέρματος).’⁵⁴¹ Likewise, in the Great Ethics, the ‘seed’ is clearly styled ‘principle’ of plants and animals; in order that no doubt should remain as to the meaning of the term ‘principle’, he goes on with describing this by means of analogies from phytology and geometry.⁵⁴² Following this analysis, when Aristotle argued that the seed does not come first (ἄνθρωπος γὰρ ἄνθρωπον γεννᾷ, καὶ οὐκ ἔστι τὸ σπέρμα πρῶτον),⁵⁴³ he contradicted himself, and spoke as a Platonist. And yet, he attacked both the Pythagoreans and Speusippus, who maintained that perfect beauty and goodness do not exist in the beginning, but they appear in the course of evolution.⁵⁴⁴ The irony is that Aristotle adduced Anaxagoras in support of his own view, but Anaxagoras himself had argued that humans (like all animals) were generated from seeds that were formed in the earth from the immaterial principles. Besides, we saw that, in the Arabic version of the Enneads of Plotinus, the so-called Theology of Aristotle, the author argued that nothing in nature stands still, by using the analogy of the grain of seed (badhr) which, when planted in the ground, never ceases to grow, to change, and to become something else. For, ‘in the seed lie high creative logoi which are inseparably joined to it, yet they are hidden (hafiyyah), and do not fall under our eyes. But when it performs its tasks and falls under our eyes, its great and wonderful powers become apparent (banat).’ Furthermore, according to Porphyry (in the same sources), Anaxagoras was ‘the first who advanced the theory of hiding-and-appearing’ on account of that ‘all things are hidden in the first body and their coming into existence is only their emergence into appearance out of that body as a species, a genus, a mass, a shape, and a denseness or a rareness, just as the ear of corn emerges into appearance out of a single grain, a stately palm out of small date-stone, a man, perfectly shaped, out of a paltry drop of sperm, and a bird out of an egg. All these are instances of the emergence of appearance out of hiding, of ac-

 Aristotle, Physica, 190b3 5.  Aristotle, Magna Moralia, I.10.1: γεννητικὰ δὲ ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν, οἷον τὸ δένδρον ἐκ τοῦ σπέρ ματος· αὕτη γάρ τις ἀρχή.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1092a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1091a.

946

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

tuality out of potentiality, of form out of the disposition of matter. Creation (alibdda‘), however, is only of one thing, and it applies to no other thing except to that first body.’⁵⁴⁵ Likewise, Porphyry spoke under Anaxagorean influence when he argued that that ‘the root of things is one single body’, and that ‘from it proceed all bodies and bodily forces and species and genera.’⁵⁴⁶ As peculiar as it appears, the idea of Anaxagoras about ‘the roots of all things’ made its way into Christianity through two authors only, namely, Bardaisan and Origen. For indeed this is what Origen held about the Body of the Logos, which, in his theology, is the precise parallel to the Body of Anaxagoras’ Mind. This is why he introduced the distinction discussed above: ποίησις and γένεσις suggest creation of potentiality by means of a certain concurrence of logoi which should be realized in due course, not right at once, whereas πλάσις, γέννησις, and κτίσις denote this potentiality developing to actuality. The latter suggests actual creation from logoi, which includes natural emergence of individual human beings by means of natural process: this process (including the higher mental potency, which is akin to human nature) could take place by no other way than by means of logoi operating according to the laws of nature. Consequently, the question invited at this point is this: given that the way to creation is one and the same, what is that which makes a human being different, indeed superior to all other generated things, phenomena, and animals? A full answer to this is given in the next part,⁵⁴⁷ but certain things can be said as of now. When Porphyry, Simplicius, and Damascius, as well as Zeno, Chrysippus, and Posidonius, said that the Anaxagorean principles exist differently in different ontological levels,⁵⁴⁸ the meaning of the proposition was that different things, persons, and phenomena are produced by means of principles existing and collaborating with each other. A cloud is produced by certain logoi, whereas a rose comes to be by the action of different ones, and a human being by different logoi still. To Origen, a human being is not simply body/soul: it is body/soul/ spirit. The latter (which is a human spirit, not the Holy Spirit) is granted by God alone. Therefore, there are different sorts of concurring logoi in order for a human being to exist. Of them, certain ones determine the physiological function

 H. Wofson, p. 508.  See supra, p. 366.  See infra, pp. 1298 1307.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34 5. Damascius, Princ, p. 243. Zeno, fr. 158, apud Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 35. In addition to them, a stunning as well as clear echo of Anaxagoras and Origen appeared in Thomas Aquinas. See Conclusion, p. 1496: Genna dius Scholarius, Epitome Primae Partis Summae Theologicae Thomae Aquinae, 7.115.

The Body of the Logos

947

of the body, others make psychic operations possible, and others give rise to spiritual reflection and free will, to the extent human will is indeed free. Thus, a human being is at the same time both a single entity and a compound one. What is called ‘soul’ is a collective operation resulting in different manifestations, such as physiological functions, sentiments, passions, decision-making, and others. Given the essential unity of all logoi, such actions affect the totality of them, even though only some logoi concur in order to give rise to the collective activity called ‘soul’. The logoi are both separate from one another and united with each other, and ‘they are not severed from one another by an axe’, as Anaxagoras put it. Origen couched the same notion in different terms: individual actions affect the entire Body of the Logos. For that reason, sinning is ‘re-crucifixion of the Logos’,⁵⁴⁹ and this is what makes free human action important. A human being is intellectually supposed to consist of three elements, namely, body, soul, spirit. This classification only betokens different functions which are proper to this specific creature. Formation of the body, qua body, is not too different a function from the process resulting in generation of bodies of other animals, and, to a certain extent, it is not different from the similar process concerning plants. Nevertheless, there are also other logoi acting, which give rise to psychic functions and expressions, which occur in no other animal. Furthermore, only the human spirit comes from God. This means that there are certain logoi of the highest character and activity, which are present and operate for the human being to implement its nature fully. The soul is made of the immaterial logoi which operate within this world; its functions animate the body, but it is susceptible of passions, whereas the spirit (the Anaxagorean principles in more sublime existence) is not, which is what makes the soul inferior to the spirit. In effect, the soul is the collective name for all the functions of an alive creature, and it grows gradually, which is what employment of the Stoic notion of ‘completion of reason’ (συμπλήρωσις τοῦ λόγου) by Origen denotes.⁵⁵⁰ We should be alert to the continuous line from Anaxagoras to the Stoics, and then to Origen. The Stoics grasped the different function of the principles/logoi, depending on the ontological level of their operation.⁵⁵¹ This proposition is the same as the one by Porphyry (then, by Simplicius Damascius, too) pointing out the different levels of existence of the logoi upon his interpretation of the Anaxagorean ‘everything is in everything’. Likewise, the Stoics saw that certain physiological human functions are not too different from those taking place in  Origen, using the language of Heb. 6:6: homJer, 13.2; commJohn, XX.11.81; XX.12.89 90; XXVIII.15.126. See infra, p. 1371.  See chapter 13, pp. 1286; 1325 8; 1343; 1443.  See quotations supra, pp. 616 7, notes 40, 41.

948

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

mere plants (ἐφ᾿ ἡμῶν τινα φυτοειδῶς γίνεται).⁵⁵² This is why they maintained also that, upon birth, the ruling part of a human soul (τὸ ἡγεμονικόν) is like a blank paper which is pervious to being written.⁵⁵³ Therefore, the seminal logoi are forces combined with each other so as to create potentialities that seek to be realized. This is how incorporeal universals result in individual and concrete, that is, material things, persons, and phenomena. It woud appear that these forces are somehow in need of becoming actual existent things and events, which is an idea to which Plutarch took severe exception. The Stoics defined ‘a seminal logos as an offspring which is in need of being procured (γόνον ἐνδεᾶ γενέσεως); but no one is in need of something that is neither born nor does it exist at all’ (ἐνδεὲς δ᾿ οὐδέν ἐστι τοῦ μὴ γενομένου μηδ᾿ ὄντος). ‘Eggs’ which develop to life ‘have a real existence that can be seen by anyone; but no egg has ever been reported to have come out of the earth’.⁵⁵⁴ However, Plutarch was unfair to the Stoics: for not only did they postulate seminal logoi as really existing, but also they made them material (for which both Origen and Plotinus rebuked them alike), and we saw above that testimonies assure that they were also held to be incorruptible. What Plutarch actually reprimanded was the notion that those logoi conspire to produce reality out of potentiality. However, these logoi are not potentialities themselves: rather, it is their concurrence that gives rise to potentialities, and subsequently perceptible things come to be. If I leave an object that I hold in my hand, it will fall down to the floor. This is a potential outcome, depending on whether I will leave the object, or not. I may never leave it, in which case it will never land onto the floor. But this does not make the law of gravity (a logos itself) less real. Plutarch must have received the idea of seminal logoi ‘being in need’ of real being (ἐνδεᾶ) from Philo, who urged that, upon consummation (when no matter exists at all), seminal logoi cannot exist either, because all material substance has been exhausted by fire, therefore, the Univesal Logos cannot sustain itself in the absence of seminal logoi, that is, because of want of means (ὑπ᾿

 Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.86. Chrysippus, Fragmenta Moralia (J. von Arnim), fr. 178. Pos idonius, Fragmenta (W. Theiler), fr. 426. In fact, Laertius reports ‘here is what certain ones say’ (ὃ δὲ λέγουσί τινες), but none of those philosophers is mentoned by name. No matter who actually said this, the source was Anaxagoras.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 92, and Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 900B (to von Arnim, Chrysippus, fr. 83, but those doxographers spoke only of ‘the Stoics’): Οἱ Στωικοί φασιν· ὅταν ἄνθρωπος γένηται, ἔχει τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν μέρος τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ ὥσπερ χάρτην εὐερ γὸν εἰς ἀπογραφήν.  Plutarch, Quaestiones Convivales, 637. J. von Arnim did not include this unique and impor tant definition of seminal logos in his SVF.

The Body of the Logos

949

ἐνδείας).⁵⁵⁵ Both authors were Platonist, although there is abundance of Stoicism in Philo. It is plain that Origen (at whose door ‘Neoplatonism’ was laid) was not shy about employing Stoic tenets, indeed doing so to an extent that is far more wide and profound than currently believed. If one wished to associate Origen with Greek philosophy by all means, the enterprise would be successful to some extent if one cared to explore his Stoicism, not his alleged Platonism. However, prior them both, in order to understand him, study of the real Anaxagoras is an indispensable prerequisite, and this is what this book is largely about. Therefore, not only are the seminal logoi real, but, in addition, they survive universal destruction by being reduced in the universal Logos himself, and taking shelter therein, even when there is no matter at all.⁵⁵⁶ In respect of this, the criticism of Stoics by Origen and Plotinus arguing that they made the logoi perishable is less than one half of the real Stoic doctrine. The crux and paragon of Origen’s thought in relation to the soul, is not the soul itself: it is the notion of seminal logoi. Actually, he maintained that a σπερματικὸς λόγος enacts and vitalizes a body. To many scholars, this idea of seminal logos is associated with the human logos, notably, with the hackneyed distinction between ‘inherent logos’ (or, rationality, λόγος ἐνδιάθετος) and ‘oral logos’ (speech, λόγος προφορικός). If Methodius of Olympus’ invective against Origen had an inadvertent felicitous by-product, this is the preservation of a very illustrative account of Origen’s doctrine of creation, which was recorded by Epiphanius of Salamis.⁵⁵⁷ Let us then see how Methodius recorded that theory. First, Origen reiterates his thesis that there can be no soul without a body, and reminds that he treated this issue upon his discussion concerning ‘form and first underlying substrate’ (περὶ τοῦ εἴδους καὶ τοῦ πρώτου ὑποκειμένου).⁵⁵⁸ The vital force for new generation of anything to take place is

 Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 93: ὥστ᾿ ἀμήχανον παλιγγενεσίαν τὸν κόσμον λαβεῖν, μηδενὸς ἐντυφομένου σπερματικοῦ λόγου, πάντων δὲ δαπανηθέντων, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ὑπὸ πυρός, αὐτοῦ δ᾿ ὑπ᾿ ἐνδείας. “It is impossible for the world to be reborn, because no embers of the seminal principle are alive within it, but all of them have been exhausted, the rest by the fire, the seminal logoi by lack of sustenance”.  Basil of Caesarea appears somehow impressed by the Stoic idea, which he renders accord ing to his own understanding. Homiliae in Hexaemeron, 3.8: οἱ τὸ πᾶν ἐκπυροῦσθαι λέγοντες, καὶ ἀναβιώσκεσθαι πάλιν ἐκ τῶν σπερματικῶν λόγων τῶν ἐναπομενόντων τοῖς ἐκπυρωθεῖσιν.  Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, pp. 422 7.  ‘First subject’ is the formless matter (ἄποιος ὕλη), upon which ‘forms’ impose themselves as acting agents. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1022a19; 1024b10; Physica, 192a31. Alexander of Aphro disias, commMetaph, pp. 158 9; 213 4; 288; et passim. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 878B (attributing the idea to Socrates, adding, ‘the Mind is God of the world’); also, 882C. Pseu

950

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

a ‘seminal logos’ (σπερματικὸς λόγος), which is manifestly postulated as incorporeal. Once the seminal logos (ὁ σπερματικὸς λόγος) seizes the matter which is around, and takes hold of all of it, and compels it to be shaped according to the forces that are inherent in this [logos], it imposes [its power] upon that which was formerly earth, water, air, and fire. Once it has conquered the qualities of these [four elements] (νικήσας τὰς ἐκείνων ποιότητας), it transforms them to that quality, of which this [logos] is the creator. This is how wheat is brought into being, which is by far different (εἰς ὑπερβολὴν διαφέρων) from the initial seed, in terms of size and shape and variety.⁵⁵⁹

This is Stoic reasoning, but nowhere does Origen say that he draws on any Stoic philosopher as he normally did,⁵⁶⁰ and certainly, in reality, this is the philosophy of Anaxagoras. We can infer this also from Simplicius developing a similar argument put in the same terms.⁵⁶¹ J. von Arnim attributed this to Chrysippus, but we should recall that Simplicius associated the function of seminal logoi with Cornutus, not Chrysippus. Despite the Stoic notion of ‘seminal logos’ being there, modern scholarship is persistently eager to discover Platonism everywhere in Origen. However, this is actually Stoicism after Anaxagoras. Proclus followed this doctrine in its salient features. Although the principle comes from Stoicism, the example of seed developing to wheat impelled by the force of seminal logos is Origen’s own, following Anaxagoras. This is also the imagery that Proclus used while making the same point: a seed contains in itself the principles, which produce its next stage of existence by developing potentiality into actuality. Naturally, Proclus emphasizes that these λόγοι are incorporeal, whereas Origen had refrained from saying anything about it, even though he thought the same about them.⁵⁶² Furthermore, Proclus makes use of the lan-

do Justin, Confutatio Dogmatum Quorundam Aristotelicorum, p. 121C. Dexippus attributed the no tion ‘of first underlying substrate’ to Aristotle and to Stoics alike. Dexippus, commCateg, 23 24 (again, Arnim attributed this to Chrysippus, fr. 374, but Dexippus mentioned only ‘the Stoics’).  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1097.25 35, apud Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, p. 426. See Greek text, supra, p. 937, note 507.  J. von Arnim attributed to this Chrysippus (fr. 746).  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 306 (Chrysippus, fr. 499, but Simplicius speaks only of ‘the Sto ics’): καταβληθὲν γὰρ τὸ σπέρμα ἀναπληροῖ τοὺς οἰκείους λόγους καὶ ἐπισπᾶται τὴν παρακειμέ νην ὕλην καὶ διαμορφοῖ τοὺς ἐν ἑαυτῷ λόγους.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 396: καὶ οὐ δεῖ τοῦτο θαυμάζειν, εἴ τι ἀσώματον ὂν καὶ ἀδιάστα τον ὑποστατικὸν εἴη τοῦδε τοῦ παντός· εἴπερ γὰρ τὸ σπέρμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, τοσοῦτον ὄγκον ἔχον καὶ πάντας ἐν ἑαυτῷ τοὺς λόγους, ὑφίστησι τοσαύτας διαφορὰς τῶν μὲν στερεῶν, οἷον ὀστᾶ τὰ μὲν ναστά, τὰ δὲ κοῖλα, τῶν δὲ μαλακῶν, ὡς πνεύμονα καὶ ἧπαρ, τῶν δὲ ξηρῶν, ὡς ὄνυχας καὶ τρίχας, τῶν δὲ ὑγρῶν, ὡς αἷμα καὶ φλέγμα, τῶν δὲ λιπαρῶν, ὡς μυελὸν καὶ πιμελήν,

The Body of the Logos

951

guage of Genesis about ‘skin-tunics’.⁵⁶³ The interpretation of tunics betokening human bodies is certainly Platonic, but the terminology is Biblical. It is then noteworthy that Proclus expresses the idea of the soul dwelling in a body through the term ‘tunic’ (χιτών), that is, a term that the Bible associated with the ‘fall’ of man from the Paradise.⁵⁶⁴ A portion in Origen’s commentary on Matthew eluded von Arnim’s Stoic excerption, but this is a pithy one, couched in characteristic Stoic vocabulary: With regard to bodies, a man is tall, whereas another is small, and a third one is in between stature. This transpires not because a man himself caused it to be so, but because of his seminal logoi (τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους). By contrast, in relation to the soul, it is our free will (τὸ ἐφ᾿ ἡμῖν) and the quality of certain action, or a certain character of them, that make a man great or mean or in between. It is then upon our free will either to progress (προκόπτειν) in [ethical] stature, or not to improve (μὴ προκόπτειν) and to be short.⁵⁶⁵

Likewise: For just as Abraham became Abraham, although he was not of the seed of Abraham, but the seed of those mentioned previously, so it is possible that someone, by cultivating the superior [seeds] which were sown in himself (τὰ κρείττονα τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ ἐγκατασπαρέν

τῶν δὲ πικρῶν, ὡς χολήν, τῶν δὲ ἀποίων, ὡς σίελον, τῶν δὲ πυκνῶν, ὡς νεῦρα, τῶν δὲ ἐξηπλω μένων, ὡς ὑμένας· ταῦτα γὰρ πάντα τά τε ὁμοιομερῆ καὶ τὰ ἐξ αὐτῶν πως ὑφίστησιν ἐξ ὀλίγου ὄγκου, μᾶλλον δὲ ἐκ τοῦ ἀόγκου· οἱ γὰρ λόγοι ταῦτα γεννῶσιν, οὗτοι δὲ ἄογκοι πανταχοῦ ὄντες· ὅ,τι γὰρ ἂν λάβῃς τοῦ σπέρματος, ἐν αὐτῷ πάντα εὑρήσεις· πολλῷ δὴ οὖν μᾶλλον ὁ δημιουργι κὸς λόγος τὰ πάντα παράγειν δύναται μηδὲν εἰς τὸ εἶναι τῆς ὕλης δεηθείς, ὥσπερ ὁ τοῦ σπέρ ματος· ἐκεῖνος μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἔξω ὕλης, ὁ δὲ τῶν πάντων ὑποστάτης ἐν ἑαυτῷ διαιωνίως ἕστηκε καὶ ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ μένοντος τὰ πάντα παρήγαγε.  I have canvassed this notion in RCR, chapter 7, ‘Christian Influence on Neoplatonism’, pp. 333 77.  Proclus, In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 138: ἀνιοῦσιν οὖν ἡμῖν καὶ ἀποδυομένοις τὰ πάθη καὶ τοὺς χιτῶνας οὓς κατιόντες προσειλήφαμεν. Op. cit. pp. 179 80: ταῦτα δέ, ἡ σύνθεσις καὶ ἡ ἀνάλυσις, προσήκει πάντως τῇ φύσει τῆς ψυχῆς, κατιούσῃ μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν τελειοτέρων ἐπὶ τὰ ἀτελέστερα διὰ συνθέσεως λόγων καὶ προσθέσεώς τινων ἀλλοτρίων χιτώνων, ἕως ἂν τὸν παχὺν τοῦτον καὶ ἀν τίτυπον περιστοιχίσηται δεσμόν. Institutio Theologica, 209: Πάσης μερικῆς ψυχῆς τὸ ὄχημα κά τεισι μὲν προσθέσει χιτώνων ἐνυλοτέρων. commTim, v. 1, p. 112: πολλοὺς γὰρ αἱ ψυχαὶ κατιοῦσαι περιβάλλονται χιτῶνας, ἀερίους ἢ ἐνύδρους, αἳ δὲ καὶ ἐμπυρίους. commRep, v. 2, p. 159: ζωῶν τε εἴδη ποικίλα, καὶ τὰ ὀχήματα τὰ ἑαυτῶν ἐνυλώτερα ποιοῦσαι διὰ τῆς προβολῆς καὶ περιαμ πισχόμεναι χιτῶνας παχυτέρους καὶ γενέσει φίλους. Op. cit. v. 2, p. 182: τὸ δὲ ἐκδεῖραι τὸ τῶν χιτώνων τῶν σκοτεινῶν καὶ ἐμβριθῶν τῶν ἐκ τῆς γενέσεως περιελεῖν, ἐκκαθαίροντας αὐτῶν τὴν ὅλην ζωὴν ἀπὸ τῶν προσπεφυκότων κακῶν. Theologia Platonica, v. 3, p. 19: τρίται δέ εἰσιν αἱ προσεχῶς μὲν ἐμπνέουσαι τὸ ζῆν τοῖς αὐγοειδέσιν ὀχήμασιν, ἐφελκόμεναι δὲ κἀκ τῶν ἁπλῶν στοιχείων χιτῶνας ἐνύλους καὶ δευτέραν εἰς τούτους ἀπορρέουσαι ζωήν.  Origen, commMatt, 13.26.

952

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

των), become another Abraham, although not being of Abraham’s seed, but being himself sufficient to sow seed even as Abraham.⁵⁶⁶

Therefore, the seminal logoi that exist in a man have not only a natural meaning and a natural consequence: along with those that produce one’s physical constitution and function, there are also seminal logoi ‘that are sown into human souls’, according to God’s providence and dispensation (σπερματικῶν λόγων ἐγκατασπαρέντων αὐτῶν ταῖς ψυχαῖς).⁵⁶⁷ There was no reason for Origen to have recourse to any transcendent cause, since the Logos is also immanent in the world administering all things according to providence. Moreover, the seminal logoi that make up one’s stature either tall or short also have the Logos as their source, as much as the seminal logoi that provide a man with a starting point to exercise his own freedom: they all exist in the ‘adorned’ Body of the Logos. Therefore, what we said about the seed of Abraham, must be understood also of the seed of Sem, Noah, and of the just men who preceded them, whose distinctive properties Abraham, Nachor, and Aram seem to have taken up in common seminally when we were born (σπερ ματικῶς δοκοῦσιν κοινῇ ἀνειληφέναι εἰς γένεσιν ἐρχόμενοι). However, Abraham must be understood as having cultivated the seminal logoi of all the just men before him that he had in himself (οὓς εἶχεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ σπερματικοὺς λόγους), and as having added these in his own distinctive holy quality so far as his own distinctive seed is concerned, in which those after him who are called ‘seed of Abraham’ could participate.⁵⁶⁸ … Now, we will also say on these matters that, just as with physical procedure one [seed] occasionally pre vails over a large number of seeds because of its capacity for more forceful action,⁵⁶⁹ so too can the same phenomenon be observed among spiritual seeds.⁵⁷⁰

Origen’s point is that a progenitor has in himself both ancestral and kindred logoi (προγονικούς τε καὶ συγγενικοὺς λόγους); when his own logos prevails (ὅτε μὲν κρατεῖ ὁ αὐτοῦ λόγος) the progeny is like the sower; but when other logoi prevail, such as those of a sower’s brother, or father, or uncle, or grandfather, the offspring is like one of thοse. It is also possible to see the logos of a wife, or a wife’s brother, or brother, or grandfather, prevailing in the course of agitation of the mingling, when all seeds are shaken together, until one of the spermatic logoi prevails (ἕως ἂν ἐπικρατήσῃ τις τῶν σπερματικῶν λόγων). By the same token, a soul could be filled with spiritual seeds (that is, logoi existing

    

Origen, commJohn, XX.3.16. Origen, op. cit. XX.2.5. Origen, op. cit. XX..3.13. See further, op. cit. XX.5.14 45. Chrysippus, fr. 747. Origen, op. cit. XX.5.34.

The Body of the Logos

953

and operating differently, as Porphyry put it), which have come from some of those called fathers of the soul; in that case, these spiritual seeds emerge as certain spermatic logoi of those fathers (σπερματικοί τινες τῶν πατέρων λόγοι). If these logoi/seeds are cultivated, one can make oneself a child of Abraham, or of Noah, whereas another could become a child of Chanaan, and another a child of one of either the just or unjust men. Nevertheless, it is certain that, although not all men have come to this life endowed with seeds that are equal and the same, no man is devoid of salvative and holy seeds (οὐδὲ ἐλήλυθέν τις κενὸς σωτηρίων καὶ ἁγίων σπερμάτων).⁵⁷¹ It is evident that he uses the terms ‘seeds’ and ‘logoi’ as interchangeable. Once again, J. von Arnim attributed part of this to Chrysippus,⁵⁷² although nowhere is any mention made of either the Stoics or of this specific philosopher at all. There is a testimony that the Stoics believed that a child would be like either its father or mother, depending on which of the parental sperms prevails.⁵⁷³ However, the overall idea of many sperms commingling with each other and one of them prevailing stands at the core of Anaxagoras’ philosophy.⁵⁷⁴ In the single testimony about the Stoics just mentioned, the idea involved is all too simple: a child should be like either its father or mother, depending on which of the

 Origen, op. cit. XX.5.35 38; see quotation on p. 1287.  Cf. Chrysippus, fr. 747. Nevertheless, see Zeno’s idea rendered by Sextus Empiricus, al though this is relevant only in an attenuated sense: the world contains spermatic logoi of ration al animals, which is why the world as a whole is rational. Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 103: λόγοι σπερματικοὶ λογικῶν ζῴων ἐν αὐτῷ περιέχονται [sc. τῷ κόσμῳ]. ὥστε εἶναι τοιοῦτο τὸ λεγόμενον· ὁ δέ γε κόσμος περιέχει σπερματικοὺς λόγους λογικῶν ζῴων· λο γικὸς ἄρα ἐστὶν ὁ κόσμος.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 906E (Chrysippus, fr. 749).  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius (reporting Theophrastus’ testimony about Anaxagoras), commPhys, p. 27: ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν γὰρ Ἡγησιβούλου Κλαζομένιος, … πάντων μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν ὄντων, ἑκάστου δὲ κατὰ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν ἐν αὐτῷ χαρακτηριζομένου. … ἐν παντὶ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστι … ὅτῳ πλεῖστα ἔνι, ταῦτα ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν. Op. cit. pp. 162 3: πάντα ἐν πᾶσι … φαίνεται δὲ καὶ προσαγορεύεται ἕκαστον ἐκ τοῦ μάλιστα ἐπικρατοῦντος. Op. cit. p. 173: καὶ αἰσθητὰ γένηται, πάντων μὲν πάλιν ἐνόντων ἑκάστῳ τῶν συγκριμάτων, κατὰ δὲ τὴν ἐπικράτειαν ἑκάστου χαρακτηριζομένου. commCael, pp. 605 6: ᾿Aναξαγόρας … πάντα τὰ αἰσθητὰ σύνθετα ἐκ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν ποιεῖ κατ᾿ ἐπικράτειαν ἑνὸς τῶν ἐν αὐτοῖς χαρακτηριζόμενα. Op. cit. p. 632: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ οὐ τὰ τέσσαρα μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα, τὰς ὁμοιομερείας στοιχεῖα λέγων καὶ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι, κατὰ δὲ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν χαρακτηρίζεσθαι. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 13: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ πάντων τὰς ὁμοιομε ρείας ἀρχάς, φαίνεσθαι δὲ καὶ λέγεσθαι ἕκαστον κατὰ τὸ ἐπικρατοῦν, εἴπερ δεῖ ἄρα ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν εἶναι τὰ ἀνομοιομερῆ. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 86: [Anaxagoras and Eu doxus] φησὶν οὖν ὅτι οὗτοι πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ὑπετίθεντο εἶναι καὶ ἔλεγον ἐκ τοῦ ἐπικρατοῦντος ὀνομάζεσθαι σάρκα ἢ λευκὸν ἤ τι τοιοῦτον ἄλλο.

954

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

two seeds prevails.⁵⁷⁵ However, in Origen things are quite different: how offspring should be like depends not only on the parental seeds, but also on those of all ancestors. In other words, this is not about two seeds being commingled, but about many ones.⁵⁷⁶ This is what the Anaxagorean philosophy taught about the formation of identity not only of children, but also of any thing whatsoever. Once again, Origen made use of Stoic terminology, yet the scope of his reflection was wider, notably, Anaxagorean. Origen’s Anaxagorean and then Stoic identity has not been grasped by those modern scholars who appear always quick to brand him a ‘Platonist’. It is surprising that Athanasius, a great admirer of his forerunner in Alexandria, had no idea of what a seminal logos is, and took this to be analogous to a craftsman’s habitual skill concerning his work.⁵⁷⁷ As one might have expected, only a true philosophical mind like his compatriot John Philoponus, who admired Origen’s genius,⁵⁷⁸ could grasp his ideas, which he employed promptly. Actually, he endorsed this part of Origen’s doctrine of creation, arguing that the notion of logoi is entirely compatible with reverence to God as Creator, since God chose to create a world which functions by means of interaction between logoi.⁵⁷⁹

 Cf. resemblance to parents, with no notion of ‘prevailing seed’ being involved. Tertullian, De Anima, 5. Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, ch. 2, p. 20 (Cleanthes, fr. 518). Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1053D (Chrysippus, fr. 806).  Origen, commJohn, XX.5.35. He reflects in terms that had been used also by Philo and Galen making the same point. Both of them were among his favourite authors. Philo, Legatio ad Gaium, 55: αἱ τοῦ σώματος καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς ὁμοιότητες κατά τε τὴν μορφὴν καὶ σχέσεις καὶ κινή σεις βουλάς τε καὶ πράξεις ἐν τοῖς σπερματικοῖς σῴζονται λόγοις. Galen, De Semine, p. 642: καὶ γὰρ ὅτι τοῖς προγόνοις ὁμοιοῦται τινὰ κατὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους, οὐ μόνον τοὺς τοῦ πα τρός, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς τῆς μητρὸς, εὔδηλον ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων ἐστί.  Athanasius, Contra Gentes, 40 & Catena in Epistulam ad Hebraeos (catena Nicetae), p. 459: (᾿Aθανασίου κατὰ εἰδώλων): Λόγον δέ φημι οὐ τὸν ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν γενομένων συμπεπλεγμένον καὶ συμπεφυκότα, ὃν δὴ καὶ σπερματικόν τινες εἰώθασι καλεῖν, ἄψυχον ὄντα καὶ μηδὲν λογιζό μενον μήτε νοοῦντα, ἀλλὰ τῇ ἔξωθεν τέχνῃ μόνον ἐνεργοῦντα κατὰ τὴν τοῦ ἐπιβάλλοντος αὐτὸν ἐπιστήμην.  John Philoponus, De Opificio Mundi, p. 195. It is hardly coincidence that Philoponus men tions Origen exclusively while treating the question of creation of the world. Cf. op. cit. pp. 166; 196; 228; 278 (bis). Origen had advanced staunchly the theory that the world is not beginning less. COT, pp. 119 64.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p.12: τί γὰρ ἦν ἀδύνατον τὸν θεὸν ὑφισταμένων ἀνθρωπίνῃ με θόδῳ τῶν τοιούτων ζῴων αὐτὸν φυσικῶς τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους τῆς διαδοχῆς αὐτῶν καταβαλέσθαι; De Opificio Mundi, p. 216: τοὺς σπερματικοὺς ἄρα τῶν ἐσομένων λόγους ἐν τοῖς στοιχείοις ὁ θεὸς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐναπέθετο.

The Body of the Logos

955

The living Body of the Logos The ‘objects of contemplation’, or ‘logoi’, decorate the ‘body’ of Wisdom and metaphorically they are illustrated as ‘precious stones’ (λίθοι τίμιοι), yet living ones.⁵⁸⁰ Origen would have shared this notion conveniently with Plotinus, in view of the latter’s analyses on Parmenides’ axiom ‘thinking and being are the same’ (τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι).⁵⁸¹ Plotinus’ proposition was, ‘That which is in something else is alive because of that other, not in its own right’ (τὸ γὰρ ἐν ἄλλῳ ζῶν δι᾿ ἐκεῖνο, οὐκ αὐτοζῶν),⁵⁸² and his ensuing analysis⁵⁸³ has a distinctly Anaxagorean tenor. He also argued that the meaning of Parmenides’ proposition was that being and τηινκινγ suggests oneness, not otherness (οὐκέτι ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο) and it is one and the same thing (ἓν ὄντως ἄμφω). Therefore, the objects of contemplation are somehow alive, but this is the life of the Intellect, not an independent one of their own. Like Zeno, he recognized that the universal Mind/Intellect causes different manifestations of reality, indeed of life, such as that of either plants, or sense-perception, or of the soul.⁵⁸⁴ Consequently, there is the supreme life of the Intellect (πρώτη ζωὴ καὶ πρῶτος νοῦς εἷς) and of the logoi that it contains (Πῶς οὖν νοήσεις; Ὅτι λόγοι), as much as is there ‘a second life’ that was produced by intellection of ‘a second degree’ (καὶ ζωὴ δευτέρα νόησις δευτέρα), and a ‘last life’ produced intellection logoi of ‘the last degree’ (καὶ ἡ ἐσχάτη ζωὴ ἐσχάτη νόησις). Owing to different logoi, these are different manifestations of a genus called ‘life’ (πᾶσα οὖν ζωὴ τοῦ γένους τούτου καὶ νόησις). However, although people speak of different kinds of life, they do not do so about different kinds of logoi (or, intellections, νοήσεις), because they do not understand what life is.⁵⁸⁵ In other words, Plotinus says that different kinds of life are produced by different concurrences of logoi (or, different ‘intellections’ – but he identifies ‘logoi’

 Origen, Cels, VI.77. The notion of ‘precious stones’ (λίθοι τίμιοι, or λίθοι πολυτελεῖς, or λίθοι ζῶντες) is scriptural. Cf. the New Testament, 1 Cor, 3:12; Rev. 17:4; 18:12; 16:21, 11:19. In the Old Testament, 2 Kings, 12:30; 3 Kings, 6:1a; 7:46&47; 10:2, etc.; 1 Paralipomenon (Chronicon 1), 20:2; 29:2; 2 Paralipomenon (Chronicon 2), 3:6, etc.; Tobit, 13:17; Psalms, 18:11; 20:4; Prov. 3:15; 8:11; 8:19; 31:10; Daniel, 11:38 (version of Theodotion). Cf. PHE, pp. 152; 1867; 210 12; 347; et pas sim.  Parmenides, apud Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 6.2.23.3. Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.8; V.9.5; cf. III.8.8. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 66; Institutio Theologica, 174.  Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.8.  I considered this in chapter 9; see supra, p. 687, and infra, pp. 992 3.  Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.8. Nevertheless, see chapter 9, p. 687, how different Plotinus’ thought was from the Stoic one on this.  Plotinus, loc. cit.

956

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

and ‘intellections’, as above). Therefore, there are different ontologies of life, but there are not different ontologies of logoi that produce different kinds of life. For things come to pass and they are sustained only because the Mind/Intellect thinks of them. Origen would have agreed with this Anaxagorean proposition, but his difference is that Plotinus identifies the totality of logoi with the Intellect himself, whereas Origen saw them as creatures sharing the divine life, but creatures still, which are in the Logos, created by the Logos, yet the Logos proper is not identified as the totality of the logoi. This is the divine life of the Wisdom herself, that is, the life of the Son of God, as a personal substantial hypostasis. Speaking of ‘stones’ in plural, ‘distinction’ is implied, but no ‘division’ whatsoever, since the incorporeal logoi (as indeed the Anaxagorean principles, too) are both one and many, both distinct and united on the Body of the Logos. Origen availed himself of Anaxagoras once again. We should turn to Simplicius who confirmed the ontological superiority of the logoi over ‘qualities’, as we saw earlier,⁵⁸⁶ and it is all but chance that Origen taught likewise long before Simplicius.⁵⁸⁷ Although the latter saught to establish harmony of mainstream Greek philosophy, sometimes by attributing Anaxagorean notions to Aristotle, things are quite clear: on the one hand, the Mind is the creator and master of the logoi; on the other, the logoi themselves are instruments serving to creation and coherence of the universe. We should recall that the supreme principle described by Simplicius, whether the First Mover, or the Logos, or Mind, ‘has a certain manifestation of life’ (ἔχων τινὰ ζωῆς ἔμφασιν).⁵⁸⁸ Following his analysis of the Anaxagorean Mind, it is clear that this is understood to be a living one. For it (or, he)⁵⁸⁹ knows, wills, cares, and moves things, which are the characteristics that all Antiquity recognized as cardinal ones of the soul. However, authors were not always attentive to the terminology they used. Particularly, during and after the sixth century, anxiety to represent the two stars of Greek philosophy as by and large being harmonious resulted in more or less flagrant misattributions. We should notice how scrupulous Simplicius is in his expression: the Mind has a certain manifestation of life. He could have said simply and plainly, ‘Mind has life’ or ‘is alive’. However, he did not, and in fact introduced a double caveat: the pronoun ‘a certain’ warns against plunging into an arid Platonism, which always remained controversial. For, to the extent that this was urged, the notion of the Ideas being ‘alive’ resulted only in impasse. Besides, ‘manifestation of life’ is not the same as simply speak   

See chapter 7, p. 465 and note 123: Simplicius, commCateg, pp. 218 9. See supra, pp. 866 7; 885; infra, p. 1490. Simplicius, op. cit. p. 219. Supra, chapter 5.

The Body of the Logos

957

ing of ‘life’, or ‘Mind is alive’. This is about the Mind being grasped by human intellect and relating itself to the universe, which proceeded from the universal Mind. Therefore, Simplicius actually says that all the characteristics of the Mind that fall within our grasp fit with those which we see as concomitant with ‘life’ (namely, knowledge, will, and source of motion), not to mention that, in respect of the Mind, this is about not simply knowledge, but omniscience, and about causing motion not to an individual body, but to the entire universe. Subsequent authors were not as accurate as Simplicius was. Hence, notions were attributed to either Plato or Aristotle, which neither of them would have recognized or sanctioned as being his own. At the dawn of the twelfth century, Eustratius of Nicaea described Platonism through the lens of the sixth century, which attributed Anaxagorean ideas to either Plato or Aristotle: to him, the Platonists introduced divine and subsistent intelligible logoi (λόγους τινὰς ἐπεισαγαγόντες ἐνυποστάτους θείους νοερούς); he argued that all perceptible things are produced from these logoi and exist because of them (πρὸς οὓς ἔλεγον πάντα τὰ ἔνυλα εἶναι καὶ γίνεσθαι); they called them ‘forms’ and ‘Ideas’ (εἴδη καὶ ἰδέας) being placed ‘in the mind of God the creator’ (ἐν τῇ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ θεοῦ διανοίᾳ ὄντας), who ‘engraved other things upon matter’ (ἕτερά τινα κατ᾿ αὐτοὺς ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ χαράττοντος, meaning forms imitating these logoi).⁵⁹⁰ In fact, however, this is only a Middle-Platonic faint echo of Anaxagoras’ philosophy as described by Porphyry according to the Arabic sources that we have seen. Specifically, the imagery of God ‘engraving things upon matter’ is what the twelfth century vaguely remembered of Stobaeus’ record of the Indian statue that was described to Bardaisan,⁵⁹¹ along with Porphyry’s report of the actual theory of logoi by Anaxagoras. Furthermore, Origen argued that God is without parts, since he ‘is entirely one and simple’ (ὁ θεὸς μὲν οὖν πάντη ἕν ἐστιν καὶ ἁπλοῦν).⁵⁹² Even the Logos (who exists in timelessness) ‘is one, although he comprises many objects of contemplation, each of them understood as part of the Logos’.⁵⁹³ Once again, we should notice how different Origen’s ways were from those of Neoplatonists (who had their own differences none the less): although the two former classmates used the same terminology, the import of their ideas was sheer different: Plotinus applies the same expression ‘entirely one and simple’ not to his supreme God, but to the soul (ἓν ἁπλοῦν πάντῃ) departing (and quoting) from Plato’s Republic, 611d‒612a, in order to build his own theory of higher    

Eustratius of Nicaea, In Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea i Commentaria, p. 40. Supra, chapter 10, pp. 781 89. Origen, Princ, I.20.119. Origen, op. cit. V.5.1.

958

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

and lower soul by availing himself of Aristotelian and Stoic ideas.⁵⁹⁴ On the other hand, Damascius (writing pace Plotinus once again) applies the expression ‘entirely simple’⁵⁹⁵ to ‘the Ineffable and entirely unknown One’ (πάντη ἄγνωστόν τε καὶ ἄρρητον τὸ ἕν),⁵⁹⁶ only to decide that this ‘entirely simple’ is as simple and ineffable as to be impossible for it to be called ‘one’.⁵⁹⁷ Origen’s term ‘the holy [things]’ (τῶν ἁγίων) points to the divine reality. In the same vein, in the reference about becoming ‘a citizen of the holy [things] of God’, ‘the holy’ is a neuter, not masculine, adjective. This is the sense in which statements about ‘invisible creatures’ (δημιουργήματα ἀόρατα)⁵⁹⁸ should be understood. The ‘invisible things of God’ (τοῖς ἀοράτοις τοῦ θεοῦ) are ‘eternal (αἰωνίοις)’, by virtue of the fact that they are ‘invisible’ (ἀοράτοις),⁵⁹⁹ since these creatures / holy stones / logoi are in the divine reality. In that state, any temporal notion is excluded; therefore, ‘eternal’ suggests a certain quality of being – not any quantity of time: this is timelessness, not everlastingness nor beginningless duration. These ‘eternal things’ are the logoi understood as objects of contemplation (θεωρήματα) and various active causes. Wisdom is a sister of ours; for the Father who created the incorporeal nature, created her, too; however, at this point, by ‘wisdom’ it is not the Son of God who is meant: it is the con templation of the corporeal and incorporeal things, and all [the logoi] of Judgment and Providence that exist in it.⁶⁰⁰

Likewise, he speaks of himself having incurred the wrath of his contemporaries who were unable to grasp the inner presuppositions that determined formulation of his theology: Only few people are able to comprehend those who have expounded more systematically the doctrines about the state prior to creation (τὰ πρὸ γενέσεως) and the deeper meaning

 Plotinus, Enneades, I.1.12: Ὁ μὲν γὰρ τὸ ἀναμάρτητον διδοὺς τῇ ψυχῇ λόγος ἓν ἁπλοῦν πάντη ἐτίθετο τὸ αὐτὸ ψυχὴν καὶ τὸ ψυχῇ εἶναι λέγων.  Damascius, Princ, p. 25: ἁπλοῦν πάντη. Op. cit. p. 37: τὸ ἁπλοῦν καὶ πάντη ἀσύνθετον. Op. cit. p. 59: τὸ ἁπλοῦν πάντη καὶ ὑπὲρ ἅπαν τὸ πλῆθος ἱδρυμένον ὠδίνουσα ἕν, ὅπερ ἄγνωστον ὄν, ὅμως ὠδίνει τὸ γνωστόν.  Damascius, op. cit. p. 7.  Damascius, op. cit. p. 65: ἐκεῖνο δὲ πάντη ἁπλοῦν. Διὸ μηδὲ ἓν ἄξιον κεκλῆσθαι. Op. cit. p. 79: τὸ δέ ἐστιν ἀδιόριστον, οὐ τὸ ἀντικείμενον τῷ διωρισμένῳ, ἀλλὰ πάντη ἁπλοῦν, καὶ πάντα ἀδιακρίτως· πάντα γὰρ κατὰ τὸ ἓν καὶ ἐκεῖνο τὸ ἓν ὃ πάντα ἐστί, καὶ οὐ μόνον ἕν.  Origen, Cels, VII.37.  Origen, op. cit. VII.7; also, commJohn, II.17. Cf. Rom 1:20.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.176.14 17 (comm. on Proverbs, 7:4); the same in op. cit. PG.17.180.56 181.4; frPs, Psalm 127:3 & selPs, PG.12.1645.23 31.

The Body of the Logos

959

of creation (καὶ τὰ ἐν γενέσει) of everything that exists; these doctrines might embarrass one (ταράξαι ἄν τινα τὰ τοιαῦτα) once one hears but does not comprehend them accurately (συνέντα μὲν ταῦτα, μὴ ἀκριβοῦντα δέ); this is why, in relation to these [doctrines], we im peril ourselves; for to speak about and elaborate on them is precarious (ἐπισφαλές) even though the doctrines are true (τὸ λέγειν καὶ ἀναπτύσσειν τὰ τοιαῦτα ἐστὶν ἐπισφαλές, κἂν ἀληθεύηται).⁶⁰¹

Even in case one preaches a true doctrine (λόγος ἀληθής), this could cause undesirable effects to a soul ‘which is sick and does not need this kind of food’. Therefore, ‘it is dangerous to explicate the true doctrines’ (καὶ οὕτως καὶ τὰ ἀληθῆ λέγειν κινδυνῶδες ἐστί).⁶⁰² It is precarious ‘not only to enunciate untrue doctrines, but also to do so with true ones’. There are exegeses that should not be stated explicitly, and ‘it is not necessary to divulge those of them’ (δημοσιεύειν) which are ‘mystical and more profound’.⁶⁰³ Following the reality in which only God Himself is envisioned, and no creative act has taken place yet, there is the ensuing reality, in which incorporeal nature was made. This corresponds to Anaxagoras’ Mind having instilled distinction within the undifferentiated primal confusum. Origen argued that the passage of Genesis about man having been made ‘in image’ of God has nothing to do with ‘matter’: ‘the first man’ who was made ‘in image of God’ was ‘immaterial and superior to any corporeal nature’.⁶⁰⁴ The question then is this: was this creaturely life? The answer to this is definitely negative. For life pertains only to all those which are related to time, since the notion of creaturely life is closely associated with the actual creation of the world.⁶⁰⁵ Considering the Pauline portion, ‘Because all things are from him and through him and in him’,⁶⁰⁶ and applying his usual scrutiny on the meaning of the prepositions that are used, he remarks that ‘from him’ suggests ‘something which denotes origin’.⁶⁰⁷

 Origen, commJohn, XX.2.7. What Origen means by ‘mystery’ is stated in Cels, 5.XIX: he refers to ‘secret truths … which are not appropriate for the simple minded and for the ears of the com mon crowd’. Thus, a ‘mystery’ (1 Cor. 15:51) is a ‘word usually applied to the deeper and more mystical doctrines which are rightly concealed from the multitude’.  Origen, op. cit. XXXII.24.312.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.217.25 28.  Origen, Dialogus cum Heraclide, 16. He meant the ‘causes’ and potentialities that could give rise to human race in due course. But who was able to understand him?  Origen, commJohn, II.19.130 2, appealing to the gospel: the Logos was in the beginning (John, 1:1), but life is among those which became whereas they did not exist before (John, 1:3).  Rom. 11:36.  John, 1:3 4. Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Latin), 3.10.3.

960

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

But Paul is not the only apostle who maintains distinctions in the use of prepositions, since John does so, too. When, for example, he says of the Logos of God that all things were made through him, he testifies that life was not made through him but in him. For he says, What was made is life in him. ⁶⁰⁸

When he speaks of ‘first’ creation, he means a certain ‘act’ of God taking place within his Wisdom/Logos. Speaking of ‘life’ in that reality, only the divine one should be understood, of which the logoi partake, thus becoming ‘living stones’ and ‘ornaments’ of the Body of the Logos. Therefore, there is a state that appears obscure: on the one hand, there is a created reality, and yet, on the other, there is no creaturely life, because, in that state, the notion of ‘life’ pertains only to the Son of God. When, therefore, Origen speaks of ‘first’ creation, which was ‘incorporeal’, he does not refer to any ‘incorporeal world’ whatsoever. For, strictly speaking, there is no world at all. This reality is the ‘body’ of the Logos, which was decorated or ‘adorned’ by the logoi (or ‘precious stones’) that were ‘created’ and God ‘saw’ that they were ‘good’. As if replying in advance to those who ascribe Platonism to him,⁶⁰⁹ he makes a significant distinction: God is incorporeal and what was made was incorporeal, too; however, there is a profound difference between them, since the ‘created’ incorporeal is not consubstantial (ὁμοούσιον) with God.⁶¹⁰ The difference lies in the latter incorporeal nature being created, whereas God himself is uncreated. This conception is essentially different from any Platonic one, since never did Plato make such a distinction. This is in essence Anaxagorean philosophy couched in scriptural terms as much as possible. The Body of the Logos is the totality of the distinct principles, which is tantamount to creation. Anaxagoras emphasized that the Mind ruled over them all, yet he remained unmixed with them. Origen said that the Logos rules over the logoi, and yet he is not consubstantial with them. Whether this state is called a ‘huge homoiomery’ (Philoponus ambiguous expression), or ‘a single Body’ (Porphyry speaking of Anaxagoras, too), or the Body of the Logos (which Origen opted for), or the Indian statue of Bardaisan, this is the same re-

 John, 1:3 4. Origen, op. cit. 3.10.2.  This is what G. Butterworth did in his English translation of the De Principis, p. 253, n. 4: he took it that Origen’s conception that God created two universal natures, namely, the incorporeal and the corporeal one, might be compared with what is stated in Plato’s Phaedo, 79a. However, there is no need to study too hard that point of Plato’s work in order to see that Origen’s theory was entirely irrelevant.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.25.150. The same notion is suggested in Cels, VI.44. It is character istic that Augustine, who was prompt to condemn Origen by name (De Haeresibus, 43) for quite some time espoused the Manichaean view that the soul was of the same substance as God. As he himself stated, he struggled to free himself from this doctrine (De Ordine, 2.46).

The Body of the Logos

961

ality. Actual distinction denotes existence of a material world⁶¹¹ that originated in that primal reality which is both unity and distinction within unity. A question that might be invited is this: since Origen (of both his pagan and Christian periods) was a lifetime Anaxagorean, why did he not rest content with this philosophy and felt that he should be converted to Christianity? I have argued⁶¹² that he lived in a period when radical transformation was under way, and the quest was not for knowledge, but for salvation. People were seeking redemption which appeared to them attainable not through the process of intellectual activity, but by means of revelation offered in one way or another. Even if he were to deem Anaxagoras’ philosophy as a sort of ‘revelation’, this could have not satisfied him. For there was a fact that could not be coped with: the pattern of logoi acting and interacting with each other was scientific, it could meet intellectual needs, it was also compatible with experience, but the causative relations which are established through this pattern appeared largely independent from human will. Granted, any human action makes an impact on the Body of the Logos,⁶¹³ which might be the result of either virtue or wickedness. But how could one possibly be able to change or revert an impact produced by sinful or misguided action? To this Anaxagoras had nothing to say, but this was earnestly needed by Origen’s age and by his personal mentality as a philosopher. The solution was to see God as a Trinitarian one: the Father is the source of Deity; the Son/Logos is the Father’s wisdom and rationality that acts as a Personal Hypostasis within the world while also being transcendent. The Son/Logos is the Lord of all logoi, and he has absolute mastery upon them. This means that the function of the logoi is subject to the will of a Personal Hypostasis and this function can be modified at any time according this will. This is precisely the deeper message stemming from the miracles performed by God the Logos throughout the Biblical history, which are recorded in the scripture, both the Old and the New one. In other words, function of logoi is not a rigid and uncompromising causality, let alone determinism or unyielding automatous process. Yes, an impact is caused on the Body of the Logos by human action, but this impact can be extenuated, even eliminated, only by the will of the Logos, with

 The idea was as old as Aristotle (Physica, Physica, 204a8 10; 212b29; Metaphysica, 1069b24; 1074a33 34; De Anima, 432a3 7. See quotations supra, p. 912, note 389). Gennadius Scholarius remarked that ‘the cause of distinction according to Democritus and to all ancient Physicists was ‘matter alone’ except for Anaxagoras who saw the cause of distinction in both matter and the Creative Mind. Epitome Primae Partis Summae Theologicae Thomae Aquinae, 3.47: ἢ τὴν ὕλην μετὰ τοῦ ποιοῦντος νοῦ, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐτίθει.  COT, pp. 6 7.  See infra, pp 1283; 1309; 1485 6; 1496 7.

962

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

whom a personal relationship and communication is possible to establish. The Incarnation showed that fall can be reversed, the fallen can stand up again, and the world is not a slave to determinism; this is why ‘from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heavens suffers violence, and the violent take it by force’,⁶¹⁴ which is why the Christian message urged all men to become ‘violent’ and ‘seize’ this kingdom.⁶¹⁵ Therefore, a sinner is not doomed, but he can be absolved; indeed anyone can be redeemed, purified, even sanctified. The Logos can grant absolution, but sanctification and illumination is a Trinitatian bestowed by the Third Personal Hypostasis, namely the Holy Spirit.⁶¹⁶ This is the hope that Origen found in Christianity, which fulfilled his earnest desire for salvation. On that account, he cherished the doctrine of the Trinity as the paragon of his entire thought right from the start of his Christian period and developed it to such a perfection as to be employed by the council of Nicaea.⁶¹⁷ Philosophically, the case was not about employing a notion of expansion of the one God into three; rather, he saw the one God’s different functions as being realized by different divine Persons, which though did not impugn the divine oneness: the Father is the source of all Deity, he reserved knowledge of ‘times and kairoi to his own power’ and to no other,⁶¹⁸ yet ‘the Father judges no one, but He cosigned all judgment to the Son’.⁶¹⁹ As discussed in chapter 13, the ‘king-

 Matt. 11:12.  Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, De Instituto Christiano, p. 46 (see the same text in different editions, Pseudo Macarius, Epistula Magna, p. 237; Ephraem Syrus, Institutio ad Monachos, p. 306): Βιάζεσθε· βιασταὶ γὰρ ἁρπάζουσι τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν. Pseudo Basil of Caesarea, Sermo 11, PG.31.645.46 47: Εἰ τοίνυν βούλει ἁρπάσαι τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ Θεοῦ, γενοῦ βιαστής. Ro manus Melodus wrote a verse, according to which God is glad to see men seizing the kingdom by violence: χαίρει γὰρ ὄντως παρὰ βιαστῶν ἁρπάζεσθαι βασιλείαν. Cantica, 54.6.  This is one of the ideas that Origen maintained throughout his Christian life, from the early Princ (I.3.5; I.3.7; II.10.7) to the late Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Latin), 10.12.4: “The Holy Spirit is the fount of sanctification.”  The following are some of Origen’s earliest references to this. Homilies on Exodus (Latin), 5.3: “For when you confess one God and in the same confession assert that the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, how winding, how difficult, how inextricable this appears to be to unbe lievers!”. Op. cit. 9.3: “This is the faith in the Trinity, which the whole Church hangs on to and by which it is sustained.” Op. cit. 9.4: “I perceive the message of the Gospel which, in its fourfold order, sets out to us the truth of the faith and the manifestation of the Trinity, referring all things to the head, that is to say, to the nature of the one God. … If you, therefore, wish to perform the high priesthood properly for God let the message of the Gospel and the faith in the Trinity always be held in your breast.” See the newly discovered text of Origen in Appendix II.  Acts, 1:8.  John, 5:22.

The Body of the Logos

963

dom of heavens’, which is ‘inside’ ourselves⁶²⁰ as much as is it an objective reality, is only another name for the totality of logoi that constitute the ‘decoration of the Body of the Logos’, or (which is the same) the totality of the Anaxagorean logoi. The ‘heavenly Jerusalem’,⁶²¹ which is a ‘mother’⁶²² that ‘gives birth’ to a soul, is no other than the Anaxagorean logoi which Origen adumbrates as ‘decoration of the Body of the Logos’, or ‘multi-adorned wisdom’.⁶²³ In Jesus Origen saw the Logos of the Mind incarnate, and, since the Trinitarian God is one, he saw God incarnate. Jesus was the Son/Logos, and his words coming out from a physical mouth comprised the Body of the Logos, who is also the Wisdom who spoke words of wisdom, that is, a totality of logoi that offered spiritual food to mankind. In the desert, the Logos was the manna that came down from heaven; now, his λόγοι were oral words, which in essence were not different from that manna: now, the food is the Scripture, that is, ‘the one perfect body of the Logos’ (νόει μοι τοίνυν καὶ τὰς γραφὰς τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον πάσας βοτάνας ἢ ἓν τέλειον λόγου σῶμα).⁶²⁴ This is why, by the end of his life, in what was probably the last of his works, Origen wrote that ‘many things would be said about the typical and symbolical Body of the Logos’ (περὶ τοῦ τυπικοῦ καὶ συμβολικοῦ σώματος) who ‘became flesh ⁶²⁵ and real food’ ⁶²⁶ (ὃς γέγονε σὰρξ καὶ ἀληθινὴ βρῶσις), that is, ‘the Logos who became flesh ⁶²⁷ and living bread’ (τὸν γενόμενον σάρκα λόγον, ὄντα καὶ ἄρτον ζῶντα).⁶²⁸ Therefore, moving from Anaxagoras to Christianity, and seeing the Mind as a Trinitarian God, was tantamount to meeting the needs of that period of transition, of anxiety, and of frustration at the failure of philosophy to offer consolation to people, who felt wretched, drifted, and had come to believe that all the glorious philosophical tradition had failed to meet their essential and urgent requirements.

 Luke, 17:21.  Heb. 12:22. Cf. Origen, Princ, IV.3.8; homJer, 5.13; 12.3; Cels, VII.29; VIII.5.  Gal. 4:26. Cf. Origen, Princ, IV.3.8; homJer, 5.13; Cels, IV.44; commMatt, 14.13; 16.15.  Eph. 3:10. Cf. Origen, commJohn, XIX.22.147; frLam, 107; frPs, Psalm 3.4; selPs, PG.12: 1432.17; 1633.33 34.  Origen, Fragmenta in Jeremiam, fr. 2, apud Philocalia, 10.2. Jesus assured that it was he him self who descended from heaven as manna. John, 6:51. Origen, Cels, II.9; VII.16; commJohn, I.21.131; X.17.99; XX.35.313; et passim.  John 1:14.  John 6:55.  Cf. John 1:14.  Origen, commMatt, 11.14. Cf. Cels, II.69: διὰ τοῦ συμβολικοῦ δηλουμένην ἐν τῷ ἀποτεθεῖσθαι αὐτοῦ τὸ σῶμα ἐν μνημείῳ καινῷ ὑφεστῶτι.

964

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God? Against the hagiography of an ex-pagan There is a critical and substantial difference between Origen’s presuppositions while writing his treatises and his modern students. With the exception of Clement’s rich and learned work, the background of Christian literature that was available to Origen was poor, and most of it was presumably heretical by later scores, which is probably why it is largely nonextant. While the imperial orthodoxy after Constantine was anxious to establish its own doctrinal authority allegedly stemming from scripture in unbroken continuity and consistency after the times of apostle Paul, the second century apologetic material right down to Clement is an obscure corpus, which the same orthodoxy would have been eager to suppress. Little wonder then that Origen had to deal with such elementary issues as that God is not corporeal (against Melito of Sardis), which would have been only a platitude had he set out to address only a Greek audience. Things are very different with modern Origen studies. For one thing, it is almost exclusively theologians, not philosophers, to whom some philologists should be added, that study his works. For another, many of his students, though not all of them, take it for granted that Origen was a different person from what they like to style ‘the pagan Origen’, although the references to the latter are never studied, except for the specific reference of Porphyry (quoted by Eusebius) mentioning Origen’s pagan background and education, only to dismiss it. Thirdly, all studies are based upon the deliberately distorted representation of Origen’s biography by Eusebius, which though is only a fanciful hagiography. A pioneer of Christian doctrine, to whom too little scholarship was available except the scripture itself and his rich pagan erudition (which he was unwilling to cite) is supposed to have written in vacuum, as if he had no idea of his philosophical environment and patrimony, especially that of the Late Antiquity, such as the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Galen, the philological influence of which make a strong mark in Origen’s thought. However, Origen cannot be understood without knowledge of philosophy and without knowledge of Greek, and my claim is that these disciplines can supply us not only with regulative principles and conditions of thinking, but also with fundamental constituents of his thought. The present book, along with its forthcoming sibling on Origen’s real biography, argues that the elements of Origen’s thinking were profoundly Anaxagorean, and then Stoic, selectively combined with a couple of Empedoclean tenets because of specific necessities. There is nothing strange about this: despite real or apparent differences, Anaxagoras was a pupil of Parmenides and a teacher of Empedocles.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

965

Once Origen was converted to Christianity, he struggled to accommodate his pagan background to the new faith, while feeling that he could conveniently affirm that there were doctrines outside the faith that had been well said and Christians should not seek to overthrow propositions that were sound.⁶²⁹ My suggestion is that this was reference not only to Stoic ethics,⁶³⁰ or to such Greeks as Thucydides,⁶³¹ but also to other Greek philosophers. However, to Eusebius it was unacceptable (as much as is it so to some modern theologians) that a brilliant expagan paved the way to the doctrine of Nicaea, surpassing all previous Christian thinkers who instilled all kinds of heresy into what was supposedly ‘Christianity’ until 180 AD. Several years ago, I carried out a research on Origen’s Trinitarian theology along with another one on the cardinal presuppositions of his Christian theory of knowledge. However, it turned out that this study could not be completed unless critical details of Origen ’s background and process of thought were made clear. This means that these issues cannot be considered on relatively safe grounds unless a critical question is dealt with, which is, who was Origen? To say that ‘every statement in Origen’s work has its antithesis’ (as it has been uninformedly claimed) is too uncritical to be worthy of consideration – unless one assumed that a man of such a sound logic was a schizophrenic Platonist who excoriated Plato by name at some points of his work. In this section, I am going to consider Origen’s statement about the Logos being ‘second God’, and this exposition will involve all the stages of Greek philosophy, not only before, but also after the Alexandrian.

From Anaxagoras to the Bible There is an unknown excerpt from the acts of the Fifth Oecumenical Council of 553, which condemned Origen at Justinian’s behest. A little-known scholar, named Theodore Agallianus, to whom the acts of the synod were definitely available, made the quotation from that, now lost, document. Agallianus was a highrank dignitary of the Oecumenical Patriarchate at Constantinople, the institution where all such documents were preserved. He was a scholar and member of the clergy, who flourished in the years before and after Constantinople fell to the

 Origen, Cels, VII.46 & Philocalia, 15.5. Cf. Cels, VI.13; VII.60; VIII.21 & 76.  Cf. approbatory references to Chrysippus: Origen, Cels, I.40; I.64; IV.48; IV.60; V.75 (along with Pythagoras, Plutarch of Chaeronea, and Numenius); op. cit. VIII.51. There are also similar references to Zeno: Cels, I.5; IV.54; VII.63; VIII.35.  Origen, op. cit. VIII.81 (not by name).

966

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Turks in 1453, and probably he died before 1459. He was an eyewitness to the sacking of Constantinople, and wrote a chronicle about it. Even before 1453, he was a follower of George Scholarius (Patriarch Gennadius), who strongly opposed the idea of reunion with the Roman Catholics, and spoke out his convictions in the church of Hagia Sophia, during a synod convened by Constantine Palaeologus, the last emperor. Among Agallianus’ books was a refutation of a work by John Argyropoulos (1415‒1487) concerning ‘the faith of the Latins’. Argyropoulos was a Greek lecturer, philosopher, and humanist, one of the émigré scholars who pioneered the revival of Classical learning in Western Europe in the fifteenth century. As a follower of Basil Bessarion⁶³² and defender of the reunion with the Catholics, Argyropoulos was a member of the Byzantine delegation to the Council of Ferrara/Florence and composed some Latin translations, including many of Aristotle’s works. Among his students were Pietro de Medici and Lorenzo de Medici, Angelo Poliziano, and Johann Reuchlin. Leonardo da Vinci probably attended his lectures, too.⁶³³ Therefore, Agallianus and Argyropoulos represented the two antithetical attitudes about whether the Byzantine Empire (or what had remained of it) should seek military aid from the West in order to survive the Turkish attack. The refutation of Argyropoulos by Agallianus should be read against this background. What matters here is that Agallianus had first-hand access to the library and archives of the Patriarchate, which makes his testimony of the condemnation of Origen indisputable. He copied from the acts of the Fifth Oecumenical Council of 553, and quoted from an unidentified work of Origen, in which the latter argued thus:

 Basil Bessarion (1403 1472) (quoted supra, p. 854, note 129) was an illustrious Greek schol ar who contributed to the revival of Greek paideia in the fifteenth century. He was educated by George Plethon (Gemistus) and a fervent supporter of the reunion with the western church. At the Council of Florence, held in Ferrara (1438) and then Florence (1439 1445), Bessarion sup ported the Roman Church and gained the favour of Pope Eugene IV, who ordained him cardinal in 1439. In 1463, his fellow humanist Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, then Pope Pius II, gave him the purely ceremonial title of Latin Patriarch of Constantinople.  Cf. Deno John Geanakoplos, Constantinople and the West: Essays on the Late Byzantine (Pa leologan) and Italian Renaissances and the Byzantine and Roman Churches, Wisconsin 1989, pas sim. Fotis Vassileiou Barbara Saribalidou, “John Argyropoulos teacher of Leonardo Da Vinci”, Philosophy Pathways 117, 2006. Charles Nicholl, Leonardo Da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind, 2005. Fotis Vassileiou Barbara Saribalidou, Short Biographical Lexicon of Byzantine Academics Immi grants to Western Europe (published by the authors), 2007.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

967

If God came to create while previously he did not, definitely [it follows that] He Himself changed to something different from what He was before that (Ὁ θεός, φησὶν ὁ Ὠριγένης, ἀπὸ τοῦ μὴ κτίζειν ἐλθὼν εἰς τὸ κτίζειν, πάντως ἐτράπη ἀφ᾿ ἑτέρου εἰς ἕτερον).⁶³⁴

The passage was taken as suggesting that, to Origen, God’s nature ‘altered’ once he assumed the function of creating the universe. Then, Agallianus quoted further from the same acts, this time recording the rejoinder by the orthodox: But we say that [God] did not alter in nature; rather, it was His action that changed; in fact, however, not even in respect of that [did He change at all]. For He had always the potential to produce and to create, and this kind of power was activated when he [God] willed so.⁶³⁵

The details of dispute between the two latest Byzantine scholars are beyond my scope; but the phrase attributed to Origen certainly is within it. Now, the first question is, when was it that Origen wrote this phrase (which is of distinctly Aristotelian tenor), or something of the like? The answer is that we simply do not know on the basis of this passage alone; but we do know that the condemnation of Origen by that synod was entirely based on allegations about his thought made by the leaders of the Laura of Sabas in Palestine under abbot Gelasius; they produced a document against Origen, which Justinian signed as it was, without changing even its distinctive vernacular and colloquialisms. Justinian sanctioned that document by making it an ‘edict against Origen’. This was the document which was by and large (though not in every detail of it) employed by the synod. In turn, those Palestinian monks wrote their obloquy against Origen based on a book that had been written by Antipater of Bostra (fl. in the fifth century) on Origen’s theology, particularly the De Principiis, which was read in the church of the Great Laura. Upon that event, the educated monks, who were Origenists, were appalled at the distortion of Origen’s thought, pandemonium erupted in the church, which resulted in them abandoning the monastery in indignation.⁶³⁶

 Theodore Agallianus, Refutatio Joannis Argyropuli Libri De Fide Latinorum, p. 253. These acts are not extant, and this excerpt is not included in the minutes edited by E. Schwartz. Never theless, this passage was quoted by Gregory Palamas, Epistulae, 4.6. He also quoted the ensuing rebuttal by the synod (the first thirteen words of the quotation in the next note).  Loc. cit. ἡμεῖς δὲ λέγομεν, ὅτι οὐ κατὰ τὴν φύσιν ἐτράπη, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν, μᾶλλον δὲ οὐδὲ κατ᾿ αὐτήν· εἴχε γὰρ ἀεὶ τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ κτίζειν καὶ τοῦ δημιουργεῖν· ἐνηργήθη γὰρ ἡ τοιαύτη δύναμις ὅτε ἠβουλήθη.  See discussion of this in RCR, pp. 259 321, ‘Origenism in the sixth Century’: Origenism was an obloquy, not any sort of theological exposition or informed refutation.

968

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

All of these mean that Origen’s condemnation was based exclusively on his De Principiis, alleged parts of which are quoted in those synodical acts. Therefore, the phrase attributed to Origen by Agallianus quoting from those acts should be from the De Principiis mangled by Antipater of Bostra. Furthermore, we know this: Aristotle, who sustained a notion of beginningless universe, was never Origen’s favourite.⁶³⁷ If indeed Origen ever wrote the above phrase attributed to him, this could have been part of an argument stated in order to be rebutted. Neither as a pagan Anaxagorean, nor as a Christian, did he ever hold such a view. All of those who pursued a condemnation of the alleged ‘Origenism’ at that time, either quoted from the De Principiis, or they allegedly quoted without citing any specific work of Origen. In the De Principiis, Origen himself wrote exactly the opposite of that the inquisitors of the Council of 553 claimed he did: to him, God is of an unalterable nature and he set out to create once he willed to do so.⁶³⁸ It was not difficult for him to move from Anaxagoras to the Trinitarian conception of God, since Anaxagoras had already spoken of ‘greater and lesser Mind’, positing that they are the same, and we have already seen that a notion of will of the Mind is present in Anaxagoras, too. Moreover, in the first book of the commentary on John, which he wrote alongside the De Principiis, Origen wrote in a distinctly Anaxagorean tenor about the Father who does not withhold the objects of contemplation of the truth (τὰ τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρήματα) by keeping them to himself (οὐ συνέχων ὁ πατήρ), but he belches them forth, and creates a form of them in the Logos (καὶ ποιεῖ τὸν τύπον αὐτῶν ἐν τῷ λόγῳ), which is why the Logos is called the image of the invisible God.⁶³⁹ I discuss this later in this chapter, but at this point I should note that his comment is that the scriptural language made use of the verb ‘belch out’ intentionally. For this is a metaphor intending a doctrine implying the creative act of God, in like a manner belching out is forward motion of hidden air out of the body into the open, as though the one belching exhales in this way. In other words, Origen saw an Anaxagorean God who was always capable of becoming creator, and this God did not withhold the object of creation within himself, but became Creator out of goodness. No notion of God’s nature is involved in those analyses, far less changing of the divine nature upon assuming the creative act. All of this was written at the very early stage of Origen’s Christian life. Therefore, it only remains that the synodical attribution to Origen recorded by Agallianus is one more distortion of his thought.  The Peripatetics were included in Origen’s black list of philosophers; supra, p. 920.  Origen, Princ, Ι.1.6: “The Father’s will ought to be sufficient to ensure the existence of what he wills.” Cf. frJohn, 1: ὅτε δὲ ἠθέλησεν σχέσιν ἀναλαβεῖν δημιουργικήν. See COT, pp. 48; 120 9.  Col. 1:19. Origen, commJohn, I.24.151 52.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

969

To Origen, the attribute of creator is not essential of God, which means that God is not Creator by essence. Instead, God became Creator, that is, he assumed a function which was a contingent one. God did not have to create out of any (existential, or other) necessity, as the Neoplatonists maintained. Therefore, what God is, is not determined by what God does. The critical notion that he introduced to Christian philosophy was that of divine will, which freely assumes the function of creating. When, therefore, Origen’s detractors attributed to him (and Agallianus quoted) the phrase ‘God changed to something different from what He was before that’, it can be (and has been)⁶⁴⁰ shown definitely that Origen only meant that God became Creator out of his free will, and this function does not belong to the divine Being or to the divine nature per se. The passage which Agallianus quotes as a reply of the synod to Origen ironically is Origen’s own theology. An irony though it is, there is nothing strange about it: this was always the case with obloquy levelled against him. The point he tried to make was that, whereas the Trinitarian Being is what it is on account of the divine nature, the universe is the result of divine will. ⁶⁴¹ This is the fundamental doctrine he always maintained, all the more so since he took up Anaxagoras’ notion of the will of Mind. In order to support his view, Agallianus quoted from specific authors: Justin Martyr, Maximus Confessor, John of Damascus, and finally from ‘the fathers of the oecumenical synod’. On the face of it, the author seems to deal with the old anti-Arian thesis of the Nicene orthodoxy, namely that the Son was not ‘born from the will of the Father’,⁶⁴² now adding the Holy Spirit to his considerations. In reality, however, he dealt with questions that had emerged much later, notably, upon and after the second half of the fifth century, as rebuttal to the Neoplatonic notion that a superior principle creates by being what it is, not by an act of volition. The Christian thesis was that the creation is an act of will, but the divine being per se is what it is by nature, and, concerning this nature, there is no volition involved.

 See discussion in COT, pp. 25 30; 51 52; 60; 133 7; 144 8; 152 7; 170 4; 357; 365.  Theodore Agallianus, loc. cit.: Ταύτῃ γὰρ διακρίνουσι τὰ θεῖα πρόσωπα τῶν κτισμάτων, ὅτι τὰ μὲν ἐκ τῆς φύσεως, τὰ δὲ ἐκ τῆς βουλήσεώς εἰσι τοῦ θεοῦ. Καὶ τὰ μὲν προάγει τῷ πεφυκέναι ὁ θεός, τὰ δὲ προάγει τῷ βούλεσθαι.  Cf. Athanasius, Oratio iii Contra Arianos, 66.6; De Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, 41.4. Gregory of Nazianzus, De Filio, 6. Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus De Sancta Consubstantiali Trinitate, PG.75.93.34 45. Gelasius of Cyzicus, Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.1.3. Then, during the second millen nium, John Beccus (theologian, Patriarch John XI of Constantinople, thirteenth century), In An dronici Camateri Animadversiones, p. 581. Gregory Palamas, Capita Physica, Theologica, Moralia et Practica, 98. Philotheus Coccinus (fourteenth century), Antirrhetici Duodecim Contra Gregor am, 4, lines 1105 9. Gennadius Scholarius, De Spiritu Sancto i, part 6, p. 240; De Spiritu Sancto ii, part 2, p. 389; et passim. Theodore Agallianus, op. cit. p. 255.

970

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

The idea that higher principles produce lower ones by their being what they are had Plotinian roots,⁶⁴³ but Plotinus seemed to allow for notions of will (ἔφεσις, θέλησις, βούλησις),⁶⁴⁴ although not much can be made of it. This appeared also casually in Porphyry and Hermias of Alexandria,⁶⁴⁵ but it came to the fore with Proclus’ teacher Syrianus,⁶⁴⁶ and then abundantly with Proclus himself.⁶⁴⁷ During the sixth century, it appeared even in Christian intellectuals, who did not realize the undesirable connotations of the notion.⁶⁴⁸ Only one author explicitly cared to stand up to the Neoplatonic idea, and argue extensively against it: this was the sixth-century Pseudo-Justin, who was in all probability a monk of the community of the Akoimetoi in Constantinople.⁶⁴⁹ All of the sources that Agallianus cites and quotes are spurious. He appeals to ‘Justin’, but in fact this is the just mentioned Pseudo-Justin, a sixth-century figure, of which authors until the end of the Byzantium, believed to be a genuine one and cited ‘Justin’ confidently.⁶⁵⁰ Agallianus cites and quotes also from ‘the commentary by Maximus on saint Dionysius the Areopagite’, but no such text by Maximus exists.⁶⁵¹ Likewise, he quotes from ‘Damascenus’,⁶⁵² having in

 Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. II.1.8; III.4.3; VI.7.22.  See COT, p. 130.  Porphyry, commTim (fragmenta), Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 393. Her mias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 143.  Syrianus, commMetaph, pp. 108 9; 115; 117; 163.  Proclus, commRep, v. 2, p. 206; Theologia Platonica, v. 1, pp. 64; 69; 75; 76; et passim (vols. 1 6); Institutio Theologica, 18; 20; 76; 122; 178; 189; et passim; In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 731; et pas sim. Later, Simplicius, commCael, pp. 99; 137; commCateg, p. 219; commPhys, p. 314. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, pp. 23; 441. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Gorgiam Commenta ria, 49.1.  Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, De Divinis Nominibus, pp. 117; 144 (Theodore Dexius in the fourteenth century appealed to this: Appelatio Adversus Iohannem Cantacuzenum, 54). John Grammaticus (sixth century), Adversus Manichaeos, lines 65 70. John Philoponus, comm Phys, p. 321.  Pseudo Justin, Quaestiones Christianorum ad Gentiles, pp. 179D E; 183B C. See RCR, p. 283.  Theodore Agallianus, op. cit. p. 253, quotes the text of ‘Justin’, Quaestiones Christianorum ad Gentiles, pp. 177C D. Likewise, the following fourteenth century intellectuals appealed to, and quoted from, ‘saint Justin, the martyr and philosopher’, taking the text as genuine: John Cantacuzenus, Refutationes Duae Prochori Cydonii, 2.23. Philotheus Coccinus, Antirrhetici Duo decim Contra Gregoram, 2, lines 246 51; 5, lines 1062 72. David Dishypatus, Ad Nicolaum Caba silam Contra Barlaam et Acindynum, lines 662 91. Joseph Calothetus, Orationes Antirrheticae Contra Acindynum et Barlaam, 4, lines 634 45.  Theodore Agallianus, op. cit. p. 253: Καὶ ὁ θεῖος Μάξιμος ἐν ταῖς εἰς τὸν ἅγιον Διονύσιον ἐξηγήσεσί φησι· Κυρίως τοῦ ἀκινήτου καὶ ὡσαύτως ἔχοντος λέγεται ἡ εἰς τὰ ὄντα βούλησις αὐτοῦ καὶ αἱ πρόοδοι τῆς εἰς πάντα προνοίας αὐτοῦ. Nevertheless, cf. Maximus Confessor, Quaes tiones ad Thalassium, 2.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

971

mind the spurious De Sancta Trinitate, but the excerpted passage does not exist in that text. However, Gregory Palamas quoted the same passage, believing that this was a genuine one by Damascenus,⁶⁵³ and so did others, too.⁶⁵⁴ Therefore, of Agallianus’ references, only the one from the fifth oecumenical council is valuable, but it shows clearly that the ideas attributed to Origen were diametrical to those he really held. The erudite excerptor had access to the official acts of the synod, but he had no inkling of the fact that the evidence he used himself in order to construct his arguments were almost entirely based on spurious texts. Origen’s thesis was different from the Neoplatonic one, such as that of Simplicius, who maintaind that the Mind expanded itself upon creation of the principles, since ‘it was necessary for the one which grants distinction and advances this distinction out of contraction according to a certain order, and which had also its own substance contracted (ἔδει γὰρ τὸ τὰ συνῃρημένα διακρῖνον καὶ προάγον ἐν τάξει τὴν διάκρισιν ἀπὸ τῆς συναιρέσεως αὐτὸ συνῃρημένην ἔχον τὴν οὐσίαν), to produce distinction within its own self in the first place (πρώτως ἀναφαίνειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν διάκρισιν); such was the Mind whom Anaxagoras envisaged as working from the beginning, when he said that the Mind began to distinguish things (τοιοῦτος δὲ ὁ νοῦς, ὃν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐνόησεν ἐργαζόμενον, ἐν οἷς λέγει ἄρξασθαι τὸν νοῦν διακρίνειν).’⁶⁵⁵ In short, those who condemned Origen in the sixth century did so by reading Neoplatonic ideas which they projected into Origen’s works, while not caring about reading what the latter really believed and wrote.⁶⁵⁶ The problem which Origen brings to the fore was a tantalizing one: it is all very well to say that the Mind ‘came’ (ἐλθών) and set the principles in order, which means, created them, as Simplicius explained.⁶⁵⁷ But why did the Mind not do so sooner? Was the Mind before that creation the same Mind, or not? Anaxagoras himself had no problem with this: the Mind is always the same, whether it is the ‘major’ or the ‘minor’ one. On the other hand, this was the

 Theodore Agallianus, loc. cit. Καὶ ὁ Δαμασκηνός, Ἔργον μὲν θείας φύσεως ἡ προαιώνιος καὶ ἀΐδιος γέννησις καὶ ἐκπόρευσις, ἔργον δὲ θείας θελήσεως ἡ κτίσις.  Gregory Palamas, Capita Physica, Theologica, Moralia et Practica, chapter 143. Likewise, De Processione Spiritus Sancti Orationes Duae, 2.60; Refutatio Inscriptionum Vecci, 1.  The following authors also quoted the same text believing that this belonged to John of Damascus. Nilus Cabasilas, Λόγος Σύντομος, 7. John Cantacuzenus, Refutationes Duae Prochori Cydonii, Refutatio 2.6. Philotheus Coccinus, Antirrhetici Duodecim Contra Gregoram, 2, lines 133 6; 4, lines 353 6; 5, lines 1258 62 (quoting the text as written by ‘Damascenus in his Syn odical Tome’); 7, lines 959 63. Gennadius Scholarius, De Spiritu Sancto ii, Part 2, p. 389.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461.  See RCR, chapter 6: ‘Origenism in the sixth century’, pp. 259 321.  Supra, p. 925, note 457.

972

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

kind of questions that Neoplatonists considered in order to construct their own solutions. Although everything was attributed to Plato, the fact is that sundry Neoplatonic classifications (both the Plotinian pattern, as well as the numerous ‘triads’ of Proclus) were formed as implicit answers to Anaxagorean questions, and they came from the Chaldean tradition none the less, which Psellus saw and pointed out. The most learned Greek of this tradition was no doubt Michael Psellus, who actually boasted for his knowledge of the Chaldean wisdom, and sometimes declared that he had to refrain from saying too many things about this, because he feared he could cause harm to his audience. What was the harm that could possibly be caused out of Psellus expositions? No doubt, he had in mind that people would be tempted to see important aspects of the Christian doctrine in Chaldean maxims. Of course, the hackneyed defence was to urge that such Chaldean propositions were made during the early Christian age (which is arguable), but this was not the argument that Psellus himself used. Concerning our topic, he casts light on a Chaldean proposition, which had it that, although the Father created all things and handed them over to the Son, ‘all human race’ takes the Son as being the ‘First’ God.⁶⁵⁸ Psellus’ exegesis is that the maxim means that people call the Son ‘First God’ only because they are ignorant of the paternal superiority. Then, he argues that the Christian doctrine is different, since it was the Son (‘the First Mind, the son of the Great Father’) who created the entire universe. For, ‘in the Bible of Moses’, the Father ‘spells out the form of production of creatures to the Son’ (λέγει παρὰ τῇ Μωσαϊκῇ βίβλῳ πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν τὴν ἰδέαν τῆς παραγωγῆς τῶν κτισμάτων) and the Son becomes the proximate maker of the creature (ὁ δὲ υἱὸς αὐτουργὸς τοῦ ποιήματος γίνεται).⁶⁵⁹ Apart from the precarious expression about the Father giving to the Son ‘the form of creation’, the Chaldean saying is not as far from the Christian doctrine as Psellus wished to believe: for this is the idea of John 3:35 and 13:3 (‘the Father gave all thing into the hands of the Son’), which was a statement venerated by eminent Christian authors.⁶⁶⁰ Cyril of Alexandria explained that this does not mean that the Father did not create proximately: it only means that the Son is the Father’s power, and this is the meaning

 Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 139: Χαλδαϊκὸν λόγιον. πάντα γὰρ ἐξετέλεσσε πατὴρ καὶ νῷ παρέδωκε δευτέρῳ, ὃν πρῶτον κληΐζετε πᾶν γένος ἀνδρῶν. George Gemistus, Oracula Chaldaica, 2.6: ᾿Aλλ᾿ οὐκ εἰσδέχεται κείνης. Ὁ πατρικὸς νοῦς, ὁ δεύτερος δηλαδὴ θεός, καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς προσεχὴς δημιουργός.  Michael Psellus, loc. cit.  Origen, commJohn, XXXII.3.37. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses ad Illuminandos, 11.10. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarii in Joannem, v. 1, pp. 167; 255; 333. Hesychius of Jerusalem, Commentar ius Brevis, Psalm 17:33.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

973

of ‘giving all things’ to the Son.⁶⁶¹ The champion of orthodoxy concerning this issue, namely Athanasius, declared that ‘whatever the Son has, he has it from the Father, whereas the Father did not receive them from anyone else’ (καὶ ὁ μὲν πατὴρ οὐ παρά τινος, ὁ δὲ υἱὸς παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ἔχει).⁶⁶² The fact is that Christian theologians were not shy about styling God the Father ‘Mind’.⁶⁶³ More specifically, Cyril lent himself easily to monistic views, and had no inhibition about identifying the First and Second Persons of the Trinity as ‘minds’. This idea was condemned only when the great inquisitors of Christian doctrine realized that they discovered it in real or alleged heretics, but, of course, no one touched Cyril. This happened when the sixth-century composers of Justinian’s libel against Origen⁶⁶⁴ fancifully attributed to him the idea that God could have never remained idle, hence he had to be Creator beginninglessly.⁶⁶⁵ Cyril of Alexandria, for his part, who saw in Christian Trinity the Anaxagorean

 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarii in Joannem, v. 1, p. 333: Πῶς οὖν ἄρα τὸ δοῦναι νοητέον, ἄκουε λοιπόν. ὥσπερ ἔχων τὸ δύνασθαι δημιουργεῖν ὁ Θεὸς καὶ Πατήρ, δι᾿ Υἱοῦ τὰ πάντα δημι ουργεῖ, ὡς διὰ δυνάμεως καὶ ἰσχύος ἰδίας.  Athanasius, Oratio iii Contra Arianos, 36.6; further: καὶ γὰρ πάντα δέδωκεν ὁ πατὴρ τῷ υἱῷ, πάντα πάλιν ὁ πατὴρ ἐν τῷ υἱῷ ἔχει, καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ δὲ ἔχοντος πάλιν ὁ πατὴρ ταῦτα ἔχει. ἡ γὰρ τοῦ υἱοῦ θεότης τοῦ πατρὸς θεότης ἐστί.  Photius, Epistulae et Amphilochia, 315: ὅτι νοῦς μὲν λέγεται ὁ πατὴρ ὡς γεννήτωρ καὶ προ βολεὺς καὶ τῶν ἐξ αὐτοῦ προϊόντων αἴτιος, νοῦς δὲ καὶ τὸ θεῖον ἁπλῶς πρὸς ἀντιδιαστολὴν τῶν ὑπὸ τὴν κτίσιν. νοῦς τε γὰρ δημιουργεῖ καὶ νοῦς κυβερνᾷ καὶ νοῦς συνέχει. Nicetas Stethatus, Orationes, 5.8: Νοῦς ὢν πρῶτος ὁ Θεὸς ὁ τοῦ παντὸς ποιητής, ἀόρατος, ἀσώματος, ἀναφής, ἀπερίγραπτος, τῷ ἡμετέρῳ νοΐ … τῷ μὲν Λόγῳ αὐτοῦ τῷ συναϊδίῳ … τῷ δὲ Πνεύματι … φωτίζων καὶ ἁγιάζων. Likewise, op. cit. 5.9. Nicolas of Methone, Refutatio Institutionis Theologicae Procli, 20: ἀλλ᾿ ἡμεῖς γε τοσούτου δέομεν τοὺς νόας τῆς αὐτοκινησίας ἀποστερεῖν, ὡς καὶ τὸ θεῖον αὐτό, ὃ καὶ πρῶτον νοῦν καὶ ὑπέρνοον ὀνομάζομεν. Op. cit. 182: πρὸ ἡμῶν δὲ μετέχουσι τῆς τοιαύτης θειότητος οἱ ἀσώματοι καὶ μένοντες ἐν τῷ ἀγαθῷ ἀμεταπτώτως νόες. Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 1.62: ὁ Θεὸς πρῶτος ἐστὶ νοῦς καὶ πρῶτον νοητόν. adnotArist, Book 6, lines 263 4: τὸ δὲ πόρρω καὶ ἀκίνητον καὶ πρῶτον κι νοῦν, ὡς Θεὸς ἢ νοῦς ὁ πρῶτος. Quaestiones Theologicae, Question 4, p. 395: Εἶδος οὖν ἁπλοῦν τε καὶ ἓν ὁ θεῖος Λόγος ὑπάρχει καὶ τῇ πρὸς τὰ κτίσματα ἀποβλέψει· τοὺς γὰρ διαφόρους λόγους τῶν ὄντων ἐν ἑαυτῷ περιέχει δι᾿ ἀπειρίαν φύσεως καὶ δυνάμεως ὑφ᾿ ἑνὶ τῷ ἁπλουστάτῳ τῆς αὐτοῦ θεότητος εἴδει, ὃ πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα νοεῖται σκοπούμενος· καὶ τοῦ μὲν πρώτου νοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρὸς ἐμφαντικός ἐστι μόνον ἐν ἑαυτῷ, ὡς εἰκὼν αὐτοῦ κατὰ φύσιν καὶ εἶδος σύμφυτον, τῶν δὲ δι᾿ αὐτοῦ γενομένων πάντων ἔξω ποιητικός, ὥστ᾿ εἶναι μᾶλλον αὐτὰ τοῦ θείου Λόγου εἰκόνας. See further, infra, p. 1010, note 836.  The libel against Origen was written at the Laura of Sabas by abbot Gelasius and his band. Justinian just signed the document without changing a word of it, not even its peculiar colloqui alisms. See NDGF, pp. 385; 407; RCR, pp. 258 60; 267; 324 5.  I have shown the folly of these allegations in COT, chapter 4, ‘Beginningless world: a myth reconsidered’, pp. 165 75.

974

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Nous (although he often put it inarticulately), declared that ‘the Logos who proceeded from the Father proclaimed that the nature of the Father is ever-moving and ever-acting’, which is assumed from Jesus’ words, ‘My Father works hitherto, and I work’,⁶⁶⁶ and ‘the words which I speak unto you, I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwells in me, he does the works.’⁶⁶⁷ But Cyril was a pillar of the imperial faith, and a powerful lobbyist in the political and religious establishment of his day; hence, he was at liberty to pronounce statements that the administration was quick to anathematize only when they were pronounced by lips that stood outside of the chambers of political power.

Origen and Numenius Now, the question which is invited is the following: once we notice no dissent concerning the Mind being not simply God, but the First God, why was it that Origen’s expressions referring to ‘second God’ came to be controversial? Origen did in fact use the expression ‘second God’. He also spoke of ‘another God’ (ἕτερος θεός), adding that ‘it is no superstition to speak of either one God or two Gods’, and he went on with making it clear that we can speak of either ‘two Gods’ or ‘one God’. Nevertheless, ‘second’ God means another God, not secondary one: this is why he declared that we can speak of ‘two Gods’, who are nevertheless one. The most explicit exposition of this appears in the dialogue with Heraclides, which is an early work that Origen wrote while he was still a layman.⁶⁶⁸ Even as a pagan, Origen never allowed any distinction within the Deity: to him, the sole and supreme God was the Mind, who was also no other than the Creator of the universe. This was exactly the censure of Proclus against him. The idea actually originated with Philo, who wrote that, beside the notion of God considered in general terms, there is also a second one, which is the Logos of God. The context is that one can get a grasp of what God is by starting out with contemplation of God’s Logos, through whom everything was made.⁶⁶⁹ Eusebius reports (actually advertises) a view by Philo: God said, ‘I made man in the image

 John, 5:17.  John, 14:10. Cyril of Alexandria, De Sancta Trinitate Dialogi, p. 524: ἀεικίνητόν τε καὶ ἐνεργῆ τὴν τοῦ Πατρὸς φύσιν ἀνακηρύττων ὁ Λόγος ὁ ἐξ αὐτοῦ πεφηνώς. See God the Father and the Son being styled ‘mind’, infra, p. 1010, note 836.  Origen, Dialogus cum Heraclide, 1.  Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 2.86: τὸ δὲ γενικώτατόν ἐστιν ὁ θεός, καὶ δεύτερος ὁ θεοῦ λόγος.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

975

of God’,⁶⁷⁰ not in my image, since the one who speaks is the Father saying that man was made in the image of the Logos, not of Himself. For man could only be the image of a ‘second God’.⁶⁷¹ By this, Eusebius tacitly argued that his own Arian view of the Son as ‘second God’ was in fact a Hebraic legacy to orthodox Christianity.⁶⁷² Eusebius was also quick to advertise the doctrine of Numenius, who was contemporary with Albinus (second half of the second century AD). Numenius is represented as holding a ‘first God’ who is immovable, unintelligible, and cares only for intelligible things, and a ‘second God’ (a Demiurge) who is moving, graspable, and cares for both intelligible and material reality.⁶⁷³ The second God is good only by participation in the essential goodness of the First God, who is ‘good proper’ (αὐτοάγαθον).⁶⁷⁴ According to Proclus, Numenius posited three gods, namely, the Father as ‘first God’, the Demiurge as ‘second God ’, and the world as ‘third god’, and he attributed the creative act to both the First and second God.⁶⁷⁵ However, Theodoret reported that, according to Numenius, ‘the first God does not have to create, and one should think that the first God is the father of the second God.’⁶⁷⁶ The Anaxagorean language of Numenius is noteworthy, but since his agenda involved discovery of harmony not only between Plato and Pythagoras, but also between other civilizations of the East, it would make little sense to set too great a store by his language, which depicts the first God as a sower of ‘seeds’ for all things of the world to arise, whereas the Demiurge is the administrator of that original sowing.⁶⁷⁷ Besides, as discussed in a moment, Numenius’ treatment of

 Genesis, 9:6.  Philo, Quaestiones in Genesim (fragmenta), Book 2, fr. 62, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evan gelica, 7.13.2: Θνητὸν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀπεικονισθῆναι πρὸς τὸν ἀνωτάτω καὶ πατέρα τῶν ὅλων ἐδύνα το, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸν δεύτερον θεόν, ὅς ἐστιν ἐκείνου λόγος.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.14.1 2: ἐπίσκεψαι δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ τοῦ δευτέρου, ὃν δὴ θεοῦ λόγον καὶ θεὸν ἐκ θεοῦ εἶναι τὰ Ἑβραίων παιδεύει λόγια, καθάπερ καὶ ἡμεῖς αὐτοὶ θεολογεῖν δεδιδάγμεθα.  Eusebius, op. cit. 11.18.13 22.  Eusebius, op. cit. 11.22.10: οὕτως καὶ εἰκότως ὁ δημιουργὸς εἴπερ ἐστὶ μετουσίᾳ τοῦ πρώτου ἀγαθοῦ ἀγαθός, ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα ἂν εἴη ὁ πρῶτος νοῦς, ὢν αὐτοάγαθον.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 304. Origen knew of this theory: Cels, V.7.  Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.81: Καὶ Νουμήνιος δὲ ὁ Πυθαγόρειος, ἐν οἷς τὰ περὶ τἀγαθοῦ γέγραφε, σαφέστερον ταῦτα ἐδίδαξε· φησὶ γάρ· Οὔτε δημιουργεῖν ἐστι χρεὼν τὸν πρῶτον, καὶ τοῦ δημιουργοῦντος θεοῦ χρὴ εἶναι νομίζειν πατέρα τὸν πρῶτον θεόν.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.18.14. Ὥσπερ δὲ πάλιν λόγος ἐστὶ γεωργῷ πρὸς τὸν φυτεύοντα ἀναφερόμενος, τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον μάλιστά ἐστιν ὁ πρῶτος θεὸς πρὸς τὸν δημιουργόν. ὁ μέν γε ὢν σπέρμα πάσης ψυχῆς σπείρει εἰς τὰ μεταλαγχάνοντα αὐτοῦ χρήματα ξύμπαντα· ὁ

976

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

such issues was in fact a belated arrival, since Theophrastus had already set forth considerations which Aristotle purportedly implied in relation to the philosophy of Anaxagoras. Alongside these variations, the teaching attributed to Hermes Trismegistus posited the ‘world’ as ‘second God’, in order to argue that no thing actually perishes: what appears as death is only mutation from one form to another.⁶⁷⁸ This is an Anaxagorean approach par excellence, which maintains that all things are made of principles and they are dissolved into principles – but the principles themselves never perish. Therefore, the world is a ‘second God’ made by ‘God, who is eternal, unborn, creator of all’, and this world ‘was not made just once, but it is being perpetually made’ (οὔποτε δὲ ἐγένετο, ἀλλὰ ἀεὶ γίνεται)’.⁶⁷⁹ In this setting, man is made ‘in the image of the world’ (that is, of the second God) yet he is related not only to the second God, but also to the first one, whom actually man can grasp. What kind of apprehension is this? Whereas the second God (the world) is grasped as a body, the first one is perceived as ‘incorporeal and as Mind and as Good’, in contrast to Numenius who did not allow for grasp of the First God at all.⁶⁸⁰ Origen knew the views of Numenius, which he implies in the Contra Celsum, referring to those who hold that the world is god: the Stoics believe it to be the first God, Plato the second, ‘and some others among them, as third’ – which is an allusion to Numenius.⁶⁸¹ On the other hand, Porphyry had different views about Plato: after the Good, and then after the Demiurge, he attributes to Plato the universal soul as the third god,⁶⁸² which is an account also reported by Epiphanius of Salamis.⁶⁸³ νομοθέτης δὲ φυτεύει καὶ διανέμει καὶ μεταφυτεύει εἰς ἡμᾶς ἑκάστους τὰ ἐκεῖθεν προκαταβεβλημένα. Italics are mine accentuating the Anaxagorean tenor of the language.  Cf. Corpus Hermeticum, Ὅτι οὐδὲν τῶν ὄντων ἀπόλλυται, ἀλλὰ τὰς μεταβολὰς ἀπωλείας καὶ θανάτους πλανώμενοι λέγουσιν, 1: ὁ γὰρ θάνατος ἀπωλείας ἐστίν· οὐδὲν δὲ τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἀπόλλυται. εἰ γὰρ δεύτερος θεὸς ὁ κόσμος καὶ ζῷον ἀθάνατον, ἀδύνατόν ἐστι τοῦ ἀθανάτου ζῴου μέρος τι ἀποθανεῖν· πάντα δὲ τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ μέρη ἐστὶ τοῦ κόσμου, μάλιστα δὲ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, τὸ λογικὸν ζῷον. Cf. Conclusion of Part I, p. 520.  Op. cit. 2.  Op. cit. 5: τὸ δὲ τρίτον ζῷον, ὁ ἄνθρωπος, κατ᾿ εἰκόνα τοῦ κόσμου γενόμενος, νοῦν κατὰ βούλησιν τοῦ πατρὸς ἔχων παρὰ τὰ ἄλλα ἐπίγεια ζῷα, οὐ μόνον πρὸς τὸν δεύτερον θεὸν συμπά θειαν ἔχων, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἔννοιαν τοῦ πρώτου· τοῦ μὲν γὰρ αἴσθεται ὡς σώματος, τοῦ δὲ ἔννοιαν λαμβάνει ὡς ἀσωμάτου καὶ νοῦ, τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ.  Origen, Cels, V.7. See supra, Proclus, note 675.  This passage is from Porphyry’s lost history of philosophy, attested by Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarii in Joannem, v. 1, p. 271 and by Cassian the Sabaite (Pseudo Didymus), De Trinitate, PG.39.760.17 27. John Malalas drew on Cyril’s testimony mentioning him by name. Chronogra phia, 7.15: τῶν δὲ Ἑλλήνων φιλόσοφος παιδευτὴς Πλάτων· ὅστις γράφων πρὸς Τίμαιον περὶ

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

977

Before coming to Origen, reference to Eusebius is necessary, since the idea of a second God appealed to him, as already mentioned. It is one more of those bizarre instances of the history of Christian doctrine that the staunch anti-Arian Marcellus of Ancyra was condemned as a heretic, whereas the Arian Eusebius remained a star of Christian literature. No author other than Eusebius used (indeed abused) the notion of ‘second God’ so much in order to further his cause. He finds the celebrated phrase of Plato’s second epistle about all things (‘first, and second, and third’) related to, and existing because of, the King of All⁶⁸⁴ as a clear analogy of the Christian doctrine of Trinity.⁶⁸⁵ To him, the Logos/ Son is a ‘second God’, or ‘second cause’ (δεύτερον τῶν ὅλων αἴτιον), hence different theologies should apply to the different persons of the Trinity.⁶⁸⁶ Marcellus stood up against the Arianism involved in such statements, but he was condemned as having fallen to the opposite extreme, that is, to a sort of Sabellianism. However, all of this is about politics and struggle for power of the day rather than history of ideas,⁶⁸⁷ so let it remain out of my scope. I only note that, although there is a statement against the notion of ‘second God’ made by Marcellus,⁶⁸⁸ this was attributed also to Amphilochius of Iconium.⁶⁸⁹ John of Damascus

θεοῦ εἶπεν, ὅτι τὸ θεῖον ἐν τρισὶν ὀνόμασιν, μία δὲ δύναμις καὶ θεότης, εἰπὼν εἶναι πρῶτον αἴτιον τὸ ἀγαθὸν τὸ οἰκτεῖρον τὰ πάντα, δεύτερον αἴτιον νοῦς ὁ δημιουργήσας τὰ πάντα, τρίτον αἴτιον ἡ ζωοποιὸς ψυχή, ἥτις ἐζωογόνησε τὰ πάντα. τὰς οὖν τρεῖς δυνάμεις μίαν ὑπάρχειν θεότητα ὡμολόγησεν. ταῦτα Κύριλλος ὁ ὁσιώτατος ἐπίσκοπος ᾿Aλεξανδρείας ἐν τοῖς συγγράμμασιν αὐτοῦ ἐνέταξε τοῖς κατὰ Ἰουλιανοῦ τοῦ βασιλέως τοῦ παραβάτου, λέγων, ὅτι τὴν ἁγίαν τριάδα εἰς μονάδα θεότητος πάντας προειπεῖν ἀγνοοῦντας τὸ μέλλον.  Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 1, p. 185 (referring to ‘Platonists’): εἶναι δὲ πρῶτον αἴ τιον καὶ δεύτερον καὶ τρίτον· καὶ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον αἴτιον θεόν, τὸ δὲ δεύτερον αἴτιον ἐκ θεοῦ γε γενῆσθαι * τινὰς δυνάμεις, δι᾿ αὐτοῦ δὲ καὶ τῶν δυνάμεων γεγενῆσθαι τὴν ὕλην.  See chapter 8, p. 571, note 206. According to Hermias of Alexandria, Plato saw the sun as the visible representation of the supreme principle, that is, the First God. In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 177: Πανταχοῦ ὁ Πλάτων τὸν δεσπότην Ἥλιον ἀναλογεῖν λέγει τῇ πρώτῃ ἀρχῇ· … καὶ τὸ ἀπὸ τοῦ πρώτου θεοῦ προϊὸν φῶς (λέγει δὲ αὐτὸ ἀλήθειαν) συζευγνύει τὸν νοῦν τῷ νοητῷ.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.20.3: Ταῦτα οἱ τὸν Πλάτωνα διασαφεῖν πειρώμενοι ἐπὶ τὸν πρῶτον θεὸν ἀνάγουσιν ἐπί τε τὸ δεύτερον αἴτιον καὶ τρίτον τὴν τοῦ κόσμου ψυχήν, θεὸν τρίτον καὶ αὐτὴν εἶναι ὁριζόμενοι· οἱ δέ γε θεῖοι λόγοι τὴν ἁγίαν καὶ μακαρίαν τριάδα, Πατρὸς καὶ Υἱοῦ καὶ Ἁγίου Πνεύματος, ἐν ἀρχῆς λόγῳ τάττουσι κατὰ τὰ ἀποδεδομένα.  Eusebius, op. cit. 13.14.4; Demonstratio Evangelica, 5.Proem.1&23; 5.1.28; 5.3.9; 5.8.2; 5.30.3; 6.20.2; Commentaria in Psalmos, PG.23.709.18 20; Eclogae Propheticae, pp. 5; 45.  Eusebius, Contra Marcellum, 1.4.49; 1.4.53; De Ecclesiastica Theologia, 1.3.1; 1.7.2; 2.19.8.  Marcellus, De Incarnatione et Contra Arianos, p. 1017: οὐ γάρ ἐστι δεύτερος Θεὸς ὁ Υἱός.  Amphilochius of Iconium, Fragmenta ex tractatu in illud: Dominus creavit me, fr. 4, PG.39.101.21 26.

978

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

also used it in his anthology, but he did not cite the real author of it, probably because he knew that this was Marcellus.⁶⁹⁰

First and Second Mind in Classical and Late Antiquity If one sought clarity among ancient philosophers as to what actually either ‘first’ or ‘second’ God means, one would be rather disappointed. Xenocrates (fl. 350 BC), faced with the impasses of his master Plato’s theory of Ideas, sought to identify them with the Pythagorean numbers, although, at the same time, his ‘first God’ (πρῶτος θεός) became the Mind (νοῦς).⁶⁹¹ Five centuries later, the opinion attributed to Albinus (fl. 150 AD) was not different: the supreme Platonic Good was ‘the First God and the First Mind’.⁶⁹² Shortly after him, Alexander of Aphrodisias saw Aristotle’s Immovable Mover as ‘First God and Mind’, and it should be noticed that this is the same expression Albinus used, if indeed this text was written by that author: God is the Anaxagorean one, namely, the Mind,⁶⁹³ and Alexander’s portrayal of this ‘First Mind’ (ὁ πρῶτος νοῦς) was couched in Anaxagorean terms: he styled this (νοῦς) ‘simple’ (ἁπλοῦς) and ‘unmixed’ (ἀμιγής), adding that this is also ‘immaterial’ (ἄϋλος) and it contains life in it, since the ‘First Mind’ is sheer activity, which is no other than life.⁶⁹⁴ Certainly, Alexander

 John of Damascus, Sacra Parallela, PG.95.1076.38 42.  Xenocrates, Testimonia, Doctrina et Fragmenta, fr. 213, apud Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b.  Albinus, Epitome Doctrinae Platonicae, 27.1.27: ὅπερ θεόν τε καὶ νοῦν τὸν πρῶτον προσα γορεύσαι ἄν τις. However, Plato’s statements suggest that he attributed the name Nous either to to the Demiurge or to the Good caring too little for consistency. In the Phaedo, 97a7; 97b c, he refers to Anaxagoras’ Mind, and then he sees this as the Demiurge. Leges, 966e3 4; 967b5 6; Philebus, 28c7 8; 30c5 7; 30d8 e2; Timaeus, 39e7 9; 47e4; 48a1 (arguing that the world was made by both Nous and Necessity, but Nous can prevail over Necessity by means of persuasion). In the Cratylus, 396a1 c2, considering the pedigree Uranus / Cronus / Zeus, he styles Cronus ‘the logos of Uranus’. Therefore, the Nous (of whose nature Anaxagoras taught Pericles, Phaedrus, 270a) appears to be not the Good, but he is superior to the Demiurge. As it happened, Plato’s statements were vague enough as to leave ample room for controversy dur ing the Late Antiquity. In any event, it appears that, when Proclus accused Origen of anti Pla tonism for having made the Mind the supreme God, he was right.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 171: περὶ γὰρ τοῦ αἰτίου καὶ εἴδους, ὃ πάντῃ ἄϋλός ἐστιν οὐσία κατ᾿ αὐτόν, ἣν καὶ πρῶτον θεὸν καὶ νοῦν καλεῖ.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 699 (on Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072b27 29): ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ ζωὴ ὑπάρχει τῷ πρώτῳ νῷ· ἡ γὰρ νοῦ ἐνέργεια ζωή, ἐκεῖνο δέ ἐστιν ἡ ἐνέργεια, ἐκεῖνο ἄρα ἡ ζωή. This is one more point showing that, in Aristotle’s texts, ἐνέργεια does not always mean simply ‘actuality’, but it betokens also ‘activity’, or indeed the inherent ‘energy’ that makes ac tivity possible. In fact, sometimes there is difference between ἐνέργεια and ἐνεργείᾳ, which is

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

979

wrote being under the impression that he was a faithful exponent of Aristotle, not of Anaxagoras. But Aristotle himself knew who the real source of this was. Likewise, Porphyry, whose Anaxagorean dues have been discussed above, saw the supreme principle as the Mind which is ‘the First and eternally the sole one’.⁶⁹⁵ The Anaxagorean tenor in this passage, which Cyril of Alexandria preserved for posterity, is more striking than what one might have expected, since it adumbrates the Mind as unmixed with, and totally separate from, all the things which it created.⁶⁹⁶ The issue then was this: since the Mind did not create beginninglessly, a distinction had to be introduced, which should envision the Mind either before or after, as it were, its creative act. Anaxagoras is represented as having made this distinction, which appears in Themistius criticizing Alexander of Aphrodisias. He indulged in an analogy between human mind and the divine one, but it seems that, when Aristotle spoke of the ‘potential mind’ (δυνάμει νοῦς), he only meant the human mind and its functions.⁶⁹⁷ For his part, Themistius applied the differentiation to the Anaxagorean Mind, considering this either before it created (potential Mind, δυνάμει νοῦς) or after that (actual or creative Mind, ἐνεργείᾳ νοῦς or ποιητικὸς νοῦς), using characteristically all the Anaxagorean designations of it (such as ἀμιγὴς καὶ ἁπλοῦς,⁶⁹⁸ plus ἀπαθής, ἀθάνατος, ἀΐδιος, χωριστός).⁶⁹⁹ Themistius regarded the First Mover (which he treated as identical with the Creative Mind) as the ‘First God’.⁷⁰⁰ However, as discussed presently, this was an argument which in fact originated with Theophrastus, not Aristotle himself.⁷⁰¹

normally overlooked: whereas ἐνεργείᾳ means ‘in actuality’ (contrasted with δυνάμει), ἐνέργεια may also mean ‘activity’ or indeed the ‘energy’ of any acting agent.  Porphyry, Historia Philosophiae (fragmenta), fr. 18, apud Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julia num, 1.45: ἄχρονος γὰρ ἀεὶ καὶ μόνος αἰώνιος ὁ νοῦς. ὥσπερ δὲ ὁ θεὸς ὁ πρῶτος καὶ μόνος ἀεί.  Loc. cit.: κἂν ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ γένηται τὰ πάντα, τῷ μὴ τούτοις συναριθμεῖσθαι μηδὲ τὴν ἀξίαν συγκατατάττεσθαι δύνασθαι τῇ ἐκείνου ὑπάρξει, οὕτω καὶ ὁ νοῦς αἰώνιος μόνος καὶ ἀχρόνως ὑποστάς, καὶ τὰ ἐν χρόνῳ αὐτὸς χρόνος ἐστίν, ἐν ταυτότητι μένων τῆς ἑαυτοῦ αἰωνίας ὑποστάσεως.  Aristotle, De Anima, 429b; 430b. At least, this was the view of Plotinus, concerning an ob scure point of Aristotle, which became controversial and four different exegeses of it were ad vanced. See infra, p. 980.  Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 97.  Themistius, op. cit. p. 102.  Loc. cit. Sophonias followed the same practice of Themistius. Sophonias, paraphrAnim, pp. 125; 134.  See infra, pp. 988 90.

980

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Aristotle’s commentators in Late Antiquity debated this issue hotly. John Philoponus offers an extensive account of four different views about what Aristotle really meant by ‘actual mind’ (ἐνεργείᾳ νοῦς), and considers all of them critically, one by one. These were the views of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Marinus, Plotinus, and Plutarch. Alexander identified it with the supreme principle. Marinus thought that this was a mind ‘of daemons or angels’, and it was neither the supreme principle nor the human mind, anyway. Plotinus saw this as the human mind. Plutarch (with whom Philoponus agrees) resolved that Aristotle meant the human mind, which ‘is not twofold’ (that is, potential and actual), but it reflects and understands only intermittently.⁷⁰² For his part, Simplicius distinguished two notions: first, the Mind before it decided to engage in creative action; two, the Creative Mind (ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς),⁷⁰³ which gave rise to the incorporeal principles ‘as of a certain beginning’ (ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος).⁷⁰⁴ For it was necessary for the Mind whose ‘substance was fused’ (αὐτὸ συνῃρημένην ἔχον τὴν οὐσίαν) to give rise to distinction within himself, so that he could subsequently bring about an orderly distinction of the principles.⁷⁰⁵ Commenting on Plato’s Parmenides, Damascius has it that Plato averred that Anaxagoras introduced the notion of ‘imparticipable Mind’ (ἀμετάβατος νοῦς),⁷⁰⁶ which means the Mind that is not involved with the universe in any way. This reference by Damascius is strange, since nowhere in that dialogue does Plato mention Anaxagoras, while Damascius himself says that he is not quite sure as to whether Anaxagoras held such a notion. Besides, he adds that, at other points, Plato saw the Anaxagorean Mind as ‘the boundless soul’

 John Philoponus, commAnim, pp. 535 6. See further his detailed consideration of each of these views.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 609: ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργικοῦ νοῦ (see full quotation on p. 997, note 781). Cf. John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 183: μόνον δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ὥσπερ ἐξ ὕπνου ἀναστάντα, καθὼς ὁ Πλάτων φησὶν αὐτός, νοῦν ἐπιστῆσαι τῷ παντὶ καὶ τούτῳ τὴν δημιουργικὴν αἰτίαν ἀναθεῖναι. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 8.1: Ἦν ὁμοῦ χρήματα πάντα, ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἔλεγεν. Ὅτε γοῦν ἦσαν χρήματα πάντα ὁμοῦ, ἠρέμουν πάντως τὸν ἄπειρον ἐκεῖνον χρόνον, ὁ δέ γε νοῦς ὁ δημιουργικὸς … κίνησιν ἐνεποίησεν αὐτῶν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461: τοιοῦτος δὲ ὁ νοῦς, ὃν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐνόησεν ἐργαζόμενον, ἐν οἷς λέγει ἄρξασθαι τὸν νοῦν διακρίνειν.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 461: ἔδει γὰρ τὸ τὰ συνῃρημένα διακρῖνον καὶ προάγον ἐν τάξει τὴν διάκρισιν ἀπὸ τῆς συναιρέσεως αὐτὸ συνῃρημένην ἔχον τὴν οὐσίαν πρώτως ἀναφαίνειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν διάκρισιν.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 13: νῦν ἱστορεῖ τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν εἰσηγεῖσθαι τὸν ἀμετάβατον νοῦν· καίτοι ἄδηλον εἰ οὕτω τίθεται τὸν νοῦν ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ἐν ἄλλοις δὲ αὐτὸς ψυχὴν ἄζωνον ὑποτίθεσθαι τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόρειον νοῦν.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

981

(ψυχὴν ἄζωνον), which in effect means the cosmic soul: this might suggest that Plato appeared to identify Mind with the soul, but this happened in the Cratylus, ⁷⁰⁷ not in the Parmenides. ⁷⁰⁸ Envisaging the Mind per se was a Neoplatonic, not Platonic, preoccupation; ‘per se’ means effort to adumbrate what was the Mind in the state before it came to create – but no Neoplatonist would have ever explicitly posed such a question involving an impious ‘before’. However, this made sense in Anaxagorean context, since he definitely posited a beginning of creation, indeed he appears to be the first who did so.⁷⁰⁹ In Neoplatonic context, this notion meant more or less the Mind whose intellectual action is directed towards itself, and to nothing other than itself. Therefore, no matter how obscure, Damascius’ reference to Anaxagoras is not accidental: for in that philosophy the notion of God in Himself who becomes Creator can indeed be found.⁷¹⁰ Later still, Psellus put it clearly: the Mind is eternal in terms of both its essence and activity; moreover, this essence is ‘imparticipable’, since the Mind has everything in itself, which means that the Mind did not receive its being from anyone else.⁷¹¹

 Plato, Cratylus, 400a. Aristotle, De Anima, 405a. John Philoponus thought that the reason why Aristotle introduced this exception was Aristotle’s own assumption that Anaxagoras iden tified the soul with the mind which is unable to cognize anything. commAnim. p. 91: ᾿Aναξαγόρας … τὸν νοῦν ψυχὴν ἔλεγε. Plato (loc. cit.) also believed that Anaxagoras treated them as synon ymous. To him, Anaxagoras maintained that ‘it is the Mind and the soul which orders and holds the nature of all things’.  Damascius perhaps had in mind Plato’s Parmenides, 146a (ἐν γὰρ ἑνὶ ὂν καὶ ἐκ τούτου μὴ μεταβαῖνον ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ ἂν εἴη, ἐν ἑαυτῷ), and 162c d (esp. οὐδ᾿ ἂν μεθίσταιτό ποθέν ποι … Οὐκ ἄρα τῷ γε μεταβαίνειν κινοῖτ᾿ ἄν).  See, for example, Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 673: ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἤρξατο ἀπὸ ἀρχῆς τινος ταῦτα διαχωρίζειν. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461: τοιοῦτος δὲ ὁ νοῦς, ὃν [᾿Aναξαγ γόρας] ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐνόησεν ἐργαζόμενον. Op. cit. p. 1121: ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς δὲ χρόνου δοκοῦσι λέγειν γεγονέναι τὸν κόσμον ᾿Aναξαγόρας τε καὶ ᾿Aρχέλαος καὶ Μητρόδωρος ὁ Χῖος. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 395: τὸ δὲ τῆς γενέσεως αἴτιον ὁ νοῦς ἀπό τινος ἀρχῆς ἤρξατο διακρίνειν τὰ πράγ ματα. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii in Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, p. 179: ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἅπαξ μόνον γεγενῆσθαι τὸν κόσμον ἔλεγεν οὕτως ὥστε ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς πάντα εἶναι συγκεκριμένα εἰς ἕν, ἀλλὰ τὸν νοῦν ἀρξάμενον διακρίνειν τε καὶ ἐκκρίνειν μηδέποτε παύσεσθαι τοῦτο ποιοῦντα, καὶ οὕτω μηδέποτε πάντα εἰς ἓν συγχυθήσεσθαι.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1188: ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ τὴν μεταβατικὴν νόησιν ἣν οὐκ εἶχεν ὁ νοῦς. commTim, v. 2, p. 290: τίς ἐποίησεν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ μεταβατικὴν κίνησιν καὶ νόησιν μὴ μένου σαν ὡς τὴν τοῦ νοῦ καὶ χρόνον ἀντὶ αἰῶνος. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 422: τὸ τοῦ νοῦ ἀμετάβα τον μέν, εἰς ἐνέργειαν δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ εἶναι διανιστάμενον. Damascius, Princ, p. 256: καὶ πρὸ ψυχῆς νοῦν τὸν ἅμα πάντα γιγνώσκοντα καὶ οὐ μεταβατικῶς.  Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina, 107: Τῶν ὄντων τὰ μὲν καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἔχει αἰώνιον, οἷον ὁ νοῦς· τούτου γὰρ καὶ ἡ οὐσία ἀκίνητος καὶ ἡ ἐνέργεια ἀμετάβα τος, ὁμοῦ γὰρ ἔχει ἐν ἑαυτῷ πάντα.

982

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

The same notion was expressed also by means of the expression ‘intransitive Mind’ (ἀμετάβατος νοῦς).⁷¹² This was also an attempt (mainly by Proclus) to envisage and express the difference between the Mind existing in itself and that which engages in activity producing lower ontological tiers of being. Therefore, ‘imparticipable Mind’ is that which ‘gave birth’ to the ‘participable’ one; the former created the intelligible multitude, the latter is the cohesive cause that sustains it.⁷¹³ It is characteristic that he sees Zeus as ‘first God’, although to Neoplatonists Zeus was actually the third one, below Uranus and Cronus,⁷¹⁴ or, at best, Zeus was second God.⁷¹⁵ Identifying the supreme principle with Zeus, namely the Logos (especially during a comic conflagration) was normally a Stoic imagery.⁷¹⁶ Origen entertained the idea of a ‘First Nous’ (τοῦ πρώτου νοῦ, meaning the supreme one), which he also styled ‘perfect Nous’ (τέλειος νοῦς), in the context of his theory that everything, including ‘qualities’, was created by this.⁷¹⁷ It is certainly not fortuitous that Gregory Thaumaturgus in his farewell panygeric address to his master Origen spoke of of ‘First Nous’ meaning the Father of the Son,⁷¹⁸ just as posterior Christian authors did.⁷¹⁹ Nevertheless, Origen himself made it clear that ‘First Nous’ (πρῶτος νοῦς) was yet another designation that Zeno of Citium had used speaking of the Stoic universal Logos,⁷²⁰ and I cannot see why too many scholars are obsessed with associating Origen with Numenius on this issue. In this book, it is not my intention to contribute to making ‘collections of fragments’ fuller, whether those about Presocratics by H. Diels or about the Stoics by J. von Arnim, because, as explained in the Introduction, I do not believe in studying Greek philosophy by means of ‘fragments’. However, I should note that the practice of von Arnim to ascribe almost everything to Chrysippus (even when

 See discussion infra, pp. 1017 8; 1022 5; 1372.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 707: ἄλλος μὲν ὁ ἀμέθεκτος νοῦς, ἄλλος δὲ ὁ μεθεκτός, ὁ μὲν παράγων τὸ νοερὸν πλῆθος, ὁ δὲ συνέχων. Cf. op. cit. pp. 628; 913 15; 1070; Theologia Pla tonica, v. 4, p. 7; Institutio Theologica, 101; 163; 180; 181; commTim, v. 1, pp. 322; 404 5; v. 2, p. 45; v. 3, p. 101; In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 65. Damascius, Princ, pp. 269; 287. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 21.  Cf. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.10.24; 13.14.11. Proclus, commCrat, 111; Theologia Pla tonica, v. 5, p. 93. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 105.  Cf. Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 304 (referring to Harpocration).  See supra, pp. 608; 619; 649; 677 9.  Origen, Cels, IV.54; cf. op. cit. IV.56 57.  Gregory Thaumaturgus, In Origenem Oratio Panegyrica, 4: λόγος … ὕμνους ὁμολογείσθω, τελειότατος ὢν καὶ ζῶν, καὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ πρώτου νοῦ λόγος ἔμψυχος ὤν.  See infra, pp. 1008 11.  Origen, Cels, IV.54.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

983

this name was not cited in ancient texts, or only ‘the Stoics’ were mentioned) went too far: in this passage, Origen speaks explicitly about ‘the followers of Zeno of Citium’ (by which presumably he means such later Stoics as Cornutus). Therefore, I cannot see why the erudite excerptor made this an attribution to Chrysippus. Were it for Origen to have had Chrysippus in mind, he could have said so, as he normally did; but he mentioned only ‘those of the not undistinguished sect who are disciples of Zeno of Citium’.⁷²¹ There are indeed references to ‘Stoics’ who made ‘Nous’ their supreme God. Of them, Chrysippus (along with Posidonius) is associated with the notion of Nous in a testimony by Diogenes Laertius;⁷²² but fragments attributed to Chrysippus (fr. 1027, SVF, II.306, and fr. 1038, SVF, II.307) actually mention no specific philosopher of the school, certainly not Chrysippus, but they refer to ‘the Stoics’ in general. On the other hand, the idea was explicitly attributed to Zeno.⁷²³ Origen avers that ‘the Mind of God (τοῦ νοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ) contains in himself all of the knowledge which pertains to each and every creature individually’, in such a way that ‘not a single thing, even those thought to be most unimportant, elude his divinity’ (ὥστε μηδὲ τὸ τυχὸν καὶ νομιζόμενον ἐλάχιστον λανθάνειν τὴν θειότητα αὐτοῦ). This is how the unmixed Mind is related to the universe: it is the divine knowledge and providential care which is throughout, that is, the divine activity, not the divine being proper. Then, he goes ahead with unfolding his Anaxagorean thought more openly: his proposition about universal divine care involves the opinion that this Mind contains in himself, as it were, infinite [things] (δόξαν μὲν περιέχει τοῦ οἱονεὶ ἄπειρα ἀριθμῷ οὕτως αὐτὸν ἐμπεριειληφέναι ἐν ἑαυτῷ) – but, just like Anaxagoras,⁷²⁴ Origen does not actually use the term things, but leaves the adjective alone, qualifying no noun at all. This is set forth as an opinion (δόξαν) maintained through faith, it is not a palpable demonstration (οὐ μὴν ἐναργῆ τὴν ἀπόδειξιν, ἀλλὰ πεπιστευμένην), because this is befitting the Uncreated Mind, which stands above any [created] nature (ὡς ἁρμόζουσαν τῷ ἀγενήτῳ⁷²⁵ νῷ καὶ ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν φύσιν τυγχάνοντι).⁷²⁶  Origen, op. cit. IV.54: οὐκ ἀγεννεῖ φιλοσόφων αἱρέσει τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ Κιτιέως Ζήνωνος. SVF, II.333, Chrysippus, Fragmenta Logica et Physica, fr. 1155.  Chrysippus, SVF, II.192, fr. 634 & Posidonius, Fragmenta (Theiler), fr. 345, apud Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.139.  SVF, I.28, fr. 102 (which was made also an attribution to Chrysippus, fr. 580, SVF, II.179, al though the testimony by Diogenes Laertius explicitly has it that this was written by Zeno in his tract On the Whole). Also, see Zeno attested as maintaining that God is Nous: fr. 146, SVF, I.40, and frs. 156 & 158, SVF, I.42.  See chapter 1, pp. 108 10.  Migne (Origen, commGen, PG.12.84.4) has it ἀγεννήτῳ (Unborn) whereas the Philocalia, 23.20, reads ἀγενήτῳ (Uncreated). At this point, Origen expounds the doctrine of the Son con

984

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Therefore, transition from Anaxagoras to Christian doctrine was rather smooth, since God was conveniently styled Nous, and the prefix ‘unborn’ immediately pointed to the Father. Gregory of Nazianzus assured that ‘the Unborn Father is always a Nous, along with his Son who was born’.⁷²⁷ Another author who signed Athanasius, wrote that ‘the Father is an Unborn Mind, and the Son is a Logos that was born’ from him.⁷²⁸ This was also the formulation of Theodoret: the Uncreated Mind begat his Logos, and from this Mind the Holy Spirit proceeded, too.⁷²⁹ Later, Gennadius Scholarius summarized the idea: the Christian God is ‘the First Nous’ (ὁ Θεὸς πρῶτος ἐστὶ νοῦς).⁷³⁰ Likewise, ‘God is a Nous (ὁ Θεὸς νοῦς ἐστιν), and the Three, namely, Nous and Logos and Spirit, are one God’.⁷³¹ It is quite evident then that the Christian notion of ‘First Nous’ is a legacy of Origen. However, the question is, how did this occur to Origen himself? The intellection (though not the idea itself, as argued presently) comes from Aristotle departing from, and reflecting on, Anaxagoras: he set forth two questions using the vocabulary of his predecessor. One, ‘if the Mind is something simple and not liable to being acted upon, and it has nothing in common with anything else, as Anaxagoras says, how will it reflect’, given that reflection suggests thinking upon something else? Two, is the Mind an object of thought? Aristotle allowed for no notion of beginning of creation. Consequently, the problem that

taining in himself all the logoi, therefore, this is about the Uncreated Logos, not the Unborn Fa ther. Consequently, it is the reading of the Philocalia ἀγενήτῳ that should be accepted.  Origen, commGen, PG.12.8.50 84.5 & Philocalia, 23.20.  Gregory of Nazianzus, De Dogmate et Constitutione Episcoporum (orat. 20), PG.35.1077.9 12: ἀλλ᾿ ὁμοῦ τῷ τὸν Πατέρα εἶναι ἀγεννήτως (ἀεὶ δὲ ἦν, οὐχ ὑπερπίπτει γὰρ εἰς τὸ μὴ εἶναι ποτὲ ὁ νοῦς), καὶ ὁ Υἱὸς ἦν γεννητῶς.  Pseudo Athanasius, Sermo in Annuntiationem Deiparae, PG.28.921.39 40: τὸν μὲν Πατέρα ὡς νοῦν ἀγέννητον, τὸν δὲ Υἱὸν ὡς Λόγον γεννητόν. Also, ‘the Son came forth as Logos from a Mind’; Pseudo Athanasius, Syntagma Ad Quendam Politicum, PG.28.1404.15 16: ὁ δὲ Υἱὸς καὶ γέννημα τοῦ Πατρός, ὡς ἐξ ἡλίου φῶς καὶ ἐκ νοῦ λόγος.  Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.107: Εἰ δὲ πιστεύομεν εἶναι τι καὶ ἀγέννητον καὶ ἄναρχον καὶ ἀναίτιον, πιστευτέον ἄρα ὡς ἐκ τούτου νοῦ γε ὄντος ἐγεννήθη ὁ Λόγος καὶ προ ῆλθε τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον. Likewise, op. cit. 2.109: ἐξ ἐκείνου γε τοῦ ἀγεννήτου φῦναι τὸν Λόγον καὶ τὸ πανάγιον Πνεῦμα, τὸν μέν, ὡς λόγον ἐκ τοῦ νοῦ γεννώμενον, τὸ δέ, ὡς πνεῦμα ἐκπορευόμενον.  Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 1.62. Cf. Epistulae Diversae I, Epistle 2, p. 128: ὁ Θεὸς … νοῦς ὤν.  Gennadius Scholarius, Expositio Brevis Fidei Christianae, 3: ἐπεὶ ὁ Θεὸς νοῦς ἐστιν, ὡς προ είρηται· καὶ ταῦτα τὰ τρία, νοῦς καὶ λόγος καὶ πνεῦμα, εἷς θεός ἐστιν. … αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν νοῦν κα λοῦμεν Πατέρα, διότι αὐτός ἐστιν ἀγέννητος καὶ ἀναίτιος, αἴτιος δὲ τοῦ Υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ Πνεύματος. Cf. Quaestiones et Responsiones De Divinitate Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, p. 467: αὐτὸς γὰρ ὁ ἀΐ διος καὶ νοητὸς Λόγος καὶ Υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ἀγεννήτου νοῦ καὶ Πατρός.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

985

tantalized him was this: what kind of Mind is that which is envisioned as existing in a state before it set out to create (or, ‘distinguish’) the principles? Then, he proposes two aspects of this Mind: there is a Mind which becomes all things; “but Mind has another aspect, which is making all things”, and his example is ‘light, which makes potential colours actual ones’ (καὶ ἔστιν ὁ μὲν τοιοῦτος νοῦς τῷ πάντα γίνεσθαι, ὁ δὲ τῷ πάντα ποιεῖν). This is the sense in which the ‘Mind is separate and impassible and unmixed’ (καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής), and ‘in essence, he is active actuality’ (τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια), as well as ‘he alone is immortal and everlasting’ (καὶ τοῦτο μόνον ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀΐδιον). Then, in order to maintain his own premisses, Aristotle avers that ‘the Mind does not reflect intermittently, and, when isolated, he is true self and nothing more, and he alone is immortal and everlasting’.⁷³² Aristotle was not simply confused: in fact, he was embarrassed. Whereas he himself maintained beginningless existence of the world, he happened to draw on Anaxagoras who definitely posited a beginning of it, which Aristotle himself knew perfectly well: not only was the Anaxagorean Nous an ἀρχή,⁷³³ but also this Nous started to create ‘as of a certain beginning’,⁷³⁴ and he was no other than the First Immovable Mover.⁷³⁵ The question is then, why should the reflecting (= creating) Mind be another Mind at all? In fact, there is no reason to assume that the creating Mind is a different one, and this Aristotle posited explicitly: since the elements are material, there should be a ‘unifying principle’ (τὸ συνέχον) upon them all, and this principle is supposed to be the soul. He argues that ‘it is impossible that anything superior to the soul should exist and control it’ and, a fortiori, ‘it would be

 Aristotle, De Anima, 429b 430a: “one can envisage the Mind who becomes all things, but this Mind has another aspect in that he makes all things”. However, this is not about two differ ent Minds. Also, 430b: “the Mind is both sheer actuality and separate” (καὶ ἐνέργειά ἐστι καὶ χωριστόν). De Generatione Animalium, 737a (the Mind is divine): τὸ μὲν χωριστὸν ὂν σώματος ὅσοις ἐμπεριλαμβάνεταί τι θεῖον (τοιοῦτος δ᾿ ἐστὶν ὁ καλούμενος νοῦς). Op. cit. 431b17: the actual [i.e. active] Mind is identified with the things he makes (ὅλως δὲ ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν, ὁ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν, τὰ πράγματα).  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075b8: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὡς κινοῦν τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀρχήν· ὁ γὰρ νοῦς κινεῖ. Op. cit. 1091b11 12: ᾿Aναξαγόρας, … τὸν νοῦν ἀρχὴν ποιήσας. Physica, 252a11: οἱ μίαν ἀρχὴν ποιοῦντες, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξαγόρας.  Aristotle, Physica, 203a31 33: καί τινα ἀρχὴν δεῖ εἶναι τῆς γενέσεως, αὕτη δ᾿ ἐστὶν μία, οἷον ἐκεῖνος καλεῖ νοῦν, ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐργάζεται νοήσας· ὥστε ἀνάγκη ὁμοῦ ποτε πάντα εἶναι καὶ ἄρξασθαί ποτε κινούμενα. Politica, 1334b13 14: ἡ γένεσις ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς ἐστι, καὶ τὸ τέλος ἀπό τινος ἀρχῆς.  Aristotle, Physica, 265b22 23: καὶ τὸν νοῦν δέ φησιν ᾿Aναξαγόρας διακρίνειν τὸν κινήσαντα πρῶτον.

986

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

even more impossible for anything superior to the mind’ to exist in this respect (τῆς δὲ ψυχῆς εἶναι τὶ κρεῖττον καὶ ἄρχον ἀδύνατον· ἀδυνατώτερον δ᾿ ἔτι τοῦ νοῦ). For the Mind ‘is prior to everything and his nature is supreme’ and above anything else (τοῦτον εἶναι προγενέστατον καὶ κύριον κατὰ φύσιν).⁷³⁶ When Aristotle posited the Mind as sheer actuality he explicitly appealed to Anaxagoras as the authority who first said so.⁷³⁷ Moreover, he was happy to appeal to the same philosopher concerning the doctrine that things were produced not from nothingness (καὶ ὁμοῦ πάντων καὶ ἐκ μὴ ὄντος), and that this creation took place by means of actual, not theoretical, rotation (κύκλῳ),⁷³⁸ which is no other than Anaxagoras’ περιχώρησις. Aristotle’s cerebration originated in Anaxagoras’ propositions about the Mind; since he took up the notion, his concern about the implications of the idea was only natural. However, his subsequent dissent from Anaxagoras made things difficult for him to cope with: whereas his predecessor posited that the Nous began to create because he willed so, Aristotle decided that there could be no notion of beginning of the world. Therefore, his question was about the Mind either prior or after its creative act. In this context, his solution was desperate indeed: he decided that ‘the Mind is somehow potentially identical with the objects of reflection’ (δυνάμει πώς ἐστι τὰ νοητὰ ὁ νοῦς); however, in the state ‘prior to reflecting’, this Mind ‘is nonexistent in actuality’ (ἀλλ᾿ ἐντελεχείᾳ οὐδέν, πρὶν ἂν νοῇ).⁷³⁹ In other words, Aristotle granted existence only to the reflecting (i. e. active) Mind, not to primordial (i. e. inactive) one. What does this ‘somehow’ mean in the foregoing proposition, and why was it necessary for Aristotle to use it at all? As a matter of fact, this was only an expression of his embarrassment. To take up the Anaxagorean Nous as his own supreme principle was convenient; but the proposition that this Nous did not reflect beginninglessly was a stumbling block. This bafflement he expressed right after that statement: “We must consider the reason why the Mind does not always reflect” (τοῦ δὲ μὴ ἀεὶ νοεῖν τὸ αἴτιον ἐπισκεπτέον),⁷⁴⁰ but this was only a parenthetical aporia, which could not, and did not, receive any answer within the Aristotelian context.

 Aristotle, De Anima, 410b.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a5: ὅτι δ᾿ ἐνέργεια πρότερον, μαρτυρεῖ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ὁ γὰρ νοῦς ἐνέργεια.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a20 23: καὶ ἔστι τι ἀεὶ κινούμενον κίνησιν ἄπαυστον, αὕτη δ᾿ ἡ κύκλῳ (καὶ τοῦτο οὐ λόγῳ μόνον ἀλλ᾿ ἔργῳ δῆλον).  Aristotle, De Anima, 429b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 430a.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

987

There is nothing suggesting that Aristotle introduced any classification between the Mind prior to reflection or the one after it. Certainly, he did not say anything about any ontological distinction between the Primal Mind and the Reflecting one, which appeared only later. However, the aporetic consideration itself was indeed introduced by Aristotle, who clearly named Anaxagoras’ philosophy as the point of departure for thinking about a problem which was not a problem to Anaxagoras himself. In any case, there is no evidence that Aristotle considered the not-yet-reflecting Mind as either being superior to the reflecting one, or the two of them being different in terms of ontology. This was as far as he went, because he was intrigued by Anaxagoras positing the creative act of the Mind as one having begun ‘as of a certain beginning’ (ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος),⁷⁴¹ since the notion of ‘beginning’ was hindrance to Aristotle’s own mode of thinking. In fact, his solution was unworthy of such an intelligent man as Aristotle: for all he did was to reflect about the Nous in the same schematic way as the one he proposed about matter proper. Formless matter is potentially all things, but it is nothing in actuality. The reflecting Mind is potentially identical with the objects of reflection, but he was nothing in actuality before he set out to reflect. However, this was a dead end, and Aristotle himself could not help being baffled: on the one hand, he appealed to Anaxagoras in order to argue that ‘actual being is prior’ to potential one, since Anaxagoras maintained that ‘Mind is actuality’ (ὅτι δ᾿ ἐνέργεια πρότερον, μαρτυρεῖ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ὁ γὰρ νοῦς ἐνέργεια).⁷⁴² On the other, once he introduced the question ‘what was the Mind itself prior to reflecting?’, he decided that this Mind was ‘nothing in actuality’. This means that Aristotle used the same pattern (potentiality / actuality, δυνάμει / ἐνεργείᾳ) in order to explain two different realities: one speaking about material things; the other, about the incorporeal Mind. But this is poor thinking, indeed one more token supporting my argument that in the Anaxagorean Nous Aristotle saw not only the First Mover, but also a sort of his own ‘forms’, which though was a flaw in many respects. In order to show this, I do not need to add to my own criticism of Aristotle already made throughout this book: for this baffled exposition drawing on Anaxagoras selectively was debunked by his successor Theophrastus (c. 371 BC, Eresos ‒ 287 BC, Athens), struggling to solve for himself the problem that Aristotle implied, but he did not solve, and we owe this information to an extensive quotation by Themistius.

 Aristotle, Physica, 203a32.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a4 6.

988

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Theophrastus considered the problematic character of Aristotle’s exposition, and pointed out some devastating defects of it: (1) once it is argued that the Mind comes upon things from outside (as a Creator who is separated from them none the less), how is it possible to make the same Mind inherent in things themselves? (2) In that case, what is the nature of this Mind?⁷⁴³ (3) To say that this Mind is potentially nothing and actually everything, would appear to be analogous to the same proposition in reference to human senses (τὸ μὲν γὰρ μηδὲν εἶναι κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν δυνάμει δὲ πάντα, καλῶς, ὥσπερ καὶ ἡ αἴσθησις); (4) however, we should not consider the Mind in this manner (i. e. as if it were analogous to human senses), because this would be disputable (οὐ γὰρ οὕτως ληπτέον ὡς οὐδὲ αὐτός· ἐριστικὸν γάρ); (5) hence, we are left with the possibility of seeing the Mind in like a manner we do so about formless matter (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ὑποκειμένην τινὰ δύναμιν καθάπερ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ὑλικῶν); (6) however, if we allowed for this, it would appear that the Mind is not an independent agent who comes and creates, but he is himself part of the primal creation (ἀλλὰ τὸ ἔξωθεν ἄρα οὐχ ὡς ἐπίθετον ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ γενέσει συμπεριλαμβανόμενον θετέον); how then is it possible to say that intelligible things are created, and how are we to understand the proposition that the Mind reflects all things in a passive sense (πῶς δέ ποτε γίνεται τὰ νοητὰ καὶ τί τὸ πάσχειν ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν;)? (7) For, in that case, the Mind should be envisioned in an active, not passive, sense, in like a manner human senses act upon the things they perceive (δεῖ γάρ, εἴπερ εἰς ἐνέργειαν ἥξει καθάπερ ἡ αἴσθησις). (8) Moreover, if the incorporeal Mind gives rise to corporeal things by reflecting them, and reflection is passion, what is the sense in which a certain incorporeal hypostasis is subject to passion, or altered, by any incorporeal being? (ἀσωμάτῳ δὲ ὑπὸ σώματος τί τὸ πάθος ἢ ποία μεταβολή;). (9) What is the real principle that causes passion? Is it the incorporeal Mind, or corporeal things? (καὶ πότερον ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνου ἡ ἀρχὴ ἢ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ;); for it appears that Mind is subject to passion by corporeal things, which though runs contrary to the axiom that Mind is the origin of everything and (as it happens with human senses) thinking originates with Mind itself, not with things. (10) This would appear absurd (τάχα δ᾿ ἂν φανείη καὶ τοῦτο ἄτοπον), once we consider that the nature of the Mind is divined in terms analogous to those about formless matter, i. e. he is in himself nothing, but he is potentially everything (εἰ ὁ νοῦς ὕλης ἔχει φύσιν μηδὲν ὢν ἅπαντα δὲ δυνατός). (11) Anyhow, hardly could the analogy of the Mind to human senses be felicitous, since human senses presup Theophrastus, Fragmenta, fr. 53b.1, apud Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 107: Ὁ δὲ νοῦς πῶς ποτὲ ἔξωθεν ὢν καὶ ὥσπερ ἐπίθετος ὅμως συμφυής, καὶ τίς ἡ φύσις αὐτοῦ; I hardly need to note that this, as well as the following questions, were also those of Themistius himself pointing out Aristotle’s inconsistent account.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

989

pose a corporeal body, whereas the incorporeal Mind is entirely separate from everything (τὰς μὲν αἰσθήσεις οὐκ ἄνευ σώματος, τὸν δὲ νοῦν χωριστόν).⁷⁴⁴ Theophrastus then concludes that ‘these analyses’ of Aristotle ‘involve many perplexities, they give rise to difficulties at many points, and they are open to many different solutions’ (μεστά ἐστι πολλῶν μὲν ἀποριῶν, πολλῶν δὲ ἐπιστάσεων, πολλῶν δὲ λύσεων). He adds that such problematic analyses appear ‘in the fifth book of the Physics and in the second one of On the Soul, all of which invite the same difficulties concerning the notion of Potential Mind, no matter whether this is posited as being by nature the same [as the Actual Mind] or as one that comes from outside, and the effort is to determine in what sense either this comes from outside or [both Minds are] congenital’ (πῶς μὲν ἔξωθεν πῶς δὲ συμφυής). Moreover, ‘once Mind is posited as impassible and unmixed’ with everything, how is it possible for him to be subject to passion? (By ‘passion’, Aristotle meant the stimuli by ‘things’ which cause Mind to cognize those things themselves; this is why he identified the Reflecting Mind with the things themselves⁷⁴⁵ in a Parmenidian tenor). Besides, if we reflect analogously to formless matter being potentially everything and to form acting upon that, which involves also the axiom that the acting agent (form) is superior to the substrate (which is acted upon), how are we to thing about Potential Mind and Actual Mind in that respect? What is the nature of each one of them? (τίνες οὖν αὗται αἱ δύο φύσεις;). Which one of them is the active agent and which is the passive one? (καὶ τί πάλιν τὸ ὑποκείμενον ἢ συνηρτημένον τῷ ποιητικῷ;). For there is no way to treat them as if they were different from each other, since ‘Mind is somehow compound, being consisted of both the Creative and the Potential one (μικτὸν γάρ πως ὁ νοῦς ἔκ τε τοῦ ποιητικοῦ καὶ τοῦ δυνάμει). If then the Moving one [i. e. the First Mover] is congenital with the Potential Mind, it follows that the Moving [i. e. reflecting] Mind should be simultaneous, as well as beginningless, too (εἰ μὲν οὖν σύμφυτος ὁ κινῶν, καὶ εὐθὺς ἐχρῆν καὶ ἀεί). For if the Moving Mind appeared at some later stage (although this is uncreated and incorruptible, ὡς ἀγένητος, εἴπερ καὶ ἄφθαρτος), how did this come to pass, and how was it that generation took place at all? (εἰ δὲ ὕστερον, μετὰ τίνος καὶ πῶς ἡ γένεσις;). Why should the Moving Mind not be always there along with the Potential Mind? (ἐνυπάρχων δ᾿ οὖν διὰ τί οὐκ ἀεί;). There is only one way to square all the difficulties concerning Aristotle’ exposition, Theophrastus concludes. On the one hand, human mind (which involves the ‘passion’ of human senses, and it is subject to corruption) should be posited as dif-

 Theophrastus, op. cit. fr. 53b.1, apud Themistius, paraphrAnim, pp. 107 8.  Aristotle, De Anima, 431b17: ὅλως δὲ ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν, ὁ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν, τὰ πράγματα.

990

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

ferent from the divine one. On the other, there is a Divine Mind, which, as it were, is consisted of both Potentiality and Actuality (ἄλλον δὲ τὸν ὥσπερ συγκείμενον ἐκ τοῦ δυνάμει καὶ ἐνεργεία): this Mind is irrelevant to any sort of corporeality, as much as is it incorruptible and uncreated; in one sense, these Minds are two beings, but in another sense they are one being (καὶ πὼς μὲν δύο φύσεις τούτους τοὺς νοῦς, πὼς δὲ μίαν), in like manner a certain perceptible thing is one, and yet it consists of two, namely, form and matter (ἓν γὰρ τὸ ἐξ ὕλης καὶ εἴδους).⁷⁴⁶ Themistius did not feel that Aristotle’s contradictory statements and their comments by Theophrastus actually solved this intriguing problem. This is why he gave up in desperation any effort to make any sense of them, as indeed Theophrastus himself did, too. He concludes his paraphrasis by saying that ‘to determine what those two philosophers actually maintained about this, calls for a diligent treatise of its own’ (τὸ μὲν ἀποφαίνεσθαι περὶ τοῦ δοκοῦντος τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ἰδίας καὶ σχολῆς ἐστὶ καὶ φροντίδος). Thus, in order to move on, Themistius decided that ‘the Potential Mind assumed the form by which we know him, once creative function was caused to shine upon him’ (οὗτος τοίνυν ὁ δυνάμει νοῦς ὅταν ἀπολάβῃ τὴν οἰκείαν μορφὴν ἐλλάμψαντος αὐτῷ τοῦ ποιητικοῦ).⁷⁴⁷ Much later, during the sixth century, Priscian of Lydia believed that he saw in Theophrastus a ‘first’ and a ‘second’ Mind, the former being the Anaxagorean one, the ‘second’ the potential one. But this turned things upside down, in view of Theophrastus’ foregoing statements, as well Aristotle’s own implications: Priscian saw the ‘First Mind’ as the actual one (καὶ νοῦς πρώτως μὲν ὁ ἐνεργείᾳ χωριστός), whereas he made the Creative Mind a ‘second’ or ‘potential’ one (δευτέρως δὲ ὁ δυνάμει ὢν μετεχόμενος ὑπὸ ψυχῆς καὶ αὐτὴ ἡ λογική).⁷⁴⁸ Beyond the fact that Priscian was a Neoplatonist, this reversal of Theophrastus’ account is indicative of the bafflement surrounding the question. Scholars have been always quick to associate Origen’s references to ‘second God’ with Numenius. Besides, one might be tempted to associate this idea also with Albinus who also spoke of ‘the First Mind’ (ὁ πρῶτος νοῦς).⁷⁴⁹ However, things are quite different: even if it were allowed that this work belongs to Albinus,⁷⁵⁰ it should be noticed that the author reflects in terms of the distinction between Potential Mind (δυνάμει νοῦς) and Actual Mind (ὁ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν νοῦς),

 Loc. cit.  Op. cit. p. 109.  Prician of Lydia, Metaphrasis in Theophrastum, p. 34.  Albinus, Epitome Doctrinae Platonicae, 10.3; 10.5.  This attribution has been disputed by John Whittaker, “Parisinus Graecus 1962 and the Writings of Albinus”, Phoenix 28, (1974), pp. 320 54, 450 56.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

991

which was considered by Theophrastus.⁷⁵¹ Albinus called the former ‘First Nous’ and regarded it as superior to the latter (ὁ πρῶτος νοῦς κάλλιστος).⁷⁵² It seems that Numenius used the similar expression ‘First Nous’ (πρῶτος νοῦς) as an alternative for ‘First God’.⁷⁵³ However, Origen’s thought had nothing to do with that of Numenius, since the source for him to entertain the notion was Aristotelian. This, not only because Theophrastus had introduced it; but because the idea and terminology were discussed abundantly by Alexander of Aphrodisias, the philosopher of whom Origen availed himself abundantly. Alexander of Aphrodisias made the distinction between ‘the First Mind’ and ‘Actual Mind’, and decided that the former ‘comprehends himself more accurately than the latter does’ (μᾶλλον γὰρ καὶ ἀκριβέστατα νοεῖ ἑαυτὸν ὁ πρῶτος νοῦς, ἤπερ ὁ ἐνεργείᾳ νοῦς ἑαυτόν).⁷⁵⁴ By contrast, in texts attributed to Alexander that are regarded as spuria, the view taken is different: both the First and the Actual Mind comprehend themselves in a similar way (καὶ ὁ πρῶτος δὲ νοῦς καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ νοῦς αὑτὸν νοεῖ παραπλησίως καὶ διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν αἰτίαν). The distinction is not between Potential and Actual Mind, but between First and Actual one. Of them, the First Mind is described in Anaxagorean terms (ἀμιγὴς γὰρ οὗτος καὶ ἄϋλος), adding that, in this Mind, there is nothing potential’ (καὶ οὐδὲν ἔχων ἐν αὑτῷ δυνάμει).⁷⁵⁵ In any case, Alexander of Aphrodisias made no ontological distinction between those two Minds whatsoever. There should be no doubt that Origen had read those texts of Alexander: the Nicene formula about the Son, ἦν ὅτε οὐκ

 See supra, pp. 988 90, and note 743. Theophrastus, Fragmenta, fr. 53b.1, apud Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 107.  Albinus, op. cit. 10.2.  Numenius, Fragmenta, section 1, fr. 20, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.22.10.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 698 9 (commenting on Metaphysica, 1072b23: Ὥστε ἐκεῖνο μᾶλλον τούτου ὃ δοκεῖ ὁ νοῦς θεῖον ἔχειν). He saw Aristotles references in that sec tion as ones made to the ‘First Mind’. Likewise, Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 711 (ὁ πρῶ τος νοῦς ἡ ἀρίστη οὐσία), commenting on Metaphysica, 1074b20. Also, op. cit. p. 713 (ὁ δὲ πρῶ τος νοῦς αὐτός ἐστι τὸ νοοῦν, αὐτὸς τὸ νοούμενον … τοῦτο, καὶ τὸ θειότατον καὶ ἄριστον … ἡ νόησις καὶ τὸ νοούμενον αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ πρῶτος νοῦς) commenting on Metaphysica, 1074b35. Also, op. cit. p. 714 (ὁ πρῶτος νοῦς αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν νοεῖ ἀμερῶς καὶ ἀχρόνως … ὁ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν νοῦς τὸ κυρίως νοεῖ νοητόν). Cf. John Philoponus referring to the Aristotelian ‘first mind’ (ὁ πρῶ τος νοῦς) (comm. on De Anima, 407a22, which is a passage analogous to that in Metaphysica, 1072a20 23), commAnim, p. 132. Asclepius of Tralles (commMetaph, p. 200) copied from Alexander of Aphrodisias once again.  Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 109. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphy sica, 107295 6 (Anaxagoras).

992

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

ἦν, had been used by Origen (as Athanasius attested),⁷⁵⁶ who in turn had received it from Alexander.⁷⁵⁷ Likewise, Origen’s fundamental designation of time as συμπαρεκτεινόμενον was also a term introduced by Alexander⁷⁵⁸ discussing Aristotle’s proposition concerning the divine life of ‘the First Mind’.⁷⁵⁹ Plotinus took up the idea from Aristotle and adapted it to his own system: the ‘First Mind’ was naturally identified with the Intellect, but (as if some Stoic – and ultimately Anaxagorean – tenor had to be there, too) he says that this ‘first life and first mind’ comprises ‘logoi’.⁷⁶⁰ Since Plotinus had posited the One as supreme principle, he did not need to waver: the ‘First Mind’ is ac-

 Cf. Origen quoted by Athanasius, De Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, 27.2: [the Son] ὁμοιότης τυγχάνων τοῦ πατρὸς οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν. Origen, commJohn, II.19.130: οὐκ ἦν γάρ, ὅτε ἡ ἀρχὴ ἄλογος ἦν. Op. cit. XX.12.94 5: ἡ κατὰ τὸν Ἰησοῦν πνευματικὴ οἰκονομία οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτε τοῖς ἁγίοις οὐκ ἦν. Op. cit. XX.17.137 8: Παῦλος δὲ ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἠγάπα τὸν Ἰησοῦν, ἦν ἄρα καιρὸς ὅτε ὁ θεὸς Παύλου πατὴρ οὐκ ἦν. Philocalia, 24.8: ἦν ποτὲ καιρὸς ὅτε ἡ ὕλη οὐκ ἦν, τουτέστι πρὶν τὰ ἁπλᾶ [= the Anaxagoras principles] συνελθεῖν· εἰ δὲ ἦν ποτὲ καιρὸς ὅτε ἡ ὕλη οὐκ ἦν, οὐκ ἦν δέ ποτε καιρὸς ὅτε τὸ ἀγένητον οὐκ ἦν, οὐκ ἔσται ἀγένητος ἡ ὕλη. selPs, PG.12.1601.1 2: Ὥσπερ ὁ τυρὸς ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν τυρὸς, οὕτως οἱ δαίμονες ἦσαν ποτέ, ὅτε οὐκ ἦσαν πονηροί. expProv, PG.17.173.33 34: Ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν κακόν, καὶ ἔσται ὅτε οὐκ ἔσται. Also, in texts incriminating Origen (allegedly from Princ); Justinian, Edictum contra Origenem, p. 110 & ACO, Synodus Constantinopolitana et Hierosolymitana anno 536, tome 3, p. 210: οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτε παντοκράτωρ οὐκ ἦν. Justinian, op. cit p. 214 & ACO, op. cit. tome 3, p. 212: ὥσπερ τὸ ἀπο λωλὸς ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἀπολώλει καὶ ἔσται ποτὲ ὅτε οὐκ ἔσται ἀπολωλός, οὕτω καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν ψυχὴ καὶ ἔσται ὅτε οὐκ ἔσται ψυχή.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 449: ἀλλ᾿ ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν. Op. cit. p. 450: εἰ πᾶν ὅπερ ἤδη ἐστίν, ἦν δέ ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν, ἄρα γέγονεν. Op. cit. p. 818: ἀΐδιον γάρ ἐστιν ὃ ἀδύ νατον εἰπεῖν ὡς ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν καὶ ἔσται ὁμοίως ὅτε οὐκ ἔσται, τὸ δὲ γεγονὸς ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν. commTop, p. 80: οὐ γὰρ ἀεὶ ἦν ὁ μουσικὸς γραμματικός, ἀλλ᾿ ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν. commMeteor, p. 78: ἀλλ᾿ ἦν τέ τις χρόνος ὅτε οὐκ ἦν θάλασσα, καὶ ἔσται τις πάλιν ὅτε οὐκ ἔσται.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 699: αἰὼν γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ἑκάστῳ συμπαρεκτεινο μένη ζωή.  Cf. Origen, commEph, 9: ὁ μὲν οὖν τις ἁπλούστερον αἰῶνα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου ἡγήσεται τὸν συμπαρεκτεινόμενον χρόνον τῇ τούτου τοῦ κόσμου ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς μεχρὶ τέλους κατασκευῇ. expProv, PG.17.189.8 9: τὸ γὰρ συμπαρεκτεινόμενον τῇ συστάσει τῆς ζωῆς αὐτοῦ, αἰῶνα ὠνόμασεν. Then, Gregory of Nazianzus followed suit; In Theophania (orat. 38), PG.36.320.14 18 & In Sanctum Pa scha (orat. 45), PG.36.628.30 34: Αἰὼν γάρ, οὔτε χρόνος, οὔτε χρόνου τι μέρος· οὐδὲ γὰρ μετρη τόν· ἀλλ᾿ ὅπερ ἡμῖν ὁ χρόνος, ἡλίου φορᾷ μετρούμενος, τοῦτο τοῖς ἀϊδίοις αἰών, τὸ συμπαρε κτεινόμενον τοῖς οὖσιν, οἷον τι χρονικὸν κίνημα, καὶ διάστημα. I have discussed this in COT, p. 265.  Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.8: Πῶς οὖν νοήσεις; Ὅτι λόγοι. Καὶ πᾶσα ζωὴ νόησίς τις, ἀλλὰ ἄλλη ἄλλης ἀμυδροτέρα, ὥσπερ καὶ ζωή. Ἡ δὲ ἐναργεστέρα· αὕτη καὶ πρώτη ζωὴ καὶ πρῶτος νοῦς εἷς. Op. cit. V.3.5: Ἓν ἄρα οὕτω νοῦς καὶ τὸ νοητὸν καὶ τὸ ὂν καὶ πρῶτον ὂν τοῦτο καὶ δὴ καὶ πρῶτος νοῦς τὰ ὄντα ἔχων, μᾶλλον δὲ ὁ αὐτὸς τοῖς οὖσιν.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

993

tuality, and no potentiality is involved whatsoever⁷⁶¹. The One is ‘the progenitor and father of the First Mind’.⁷⁶² Thereafter, to any good Neoplatonist, the ‘First Mind’ was all but the supreme principle. When Porphyry identified it with Zeus,⁷⁶³ he presumably had in mind a third-rank principle,⁷⁶⁴ which is what Damascius reported about the Chaldean theology holding the ‘first mind’ as the third principle of the triad.⁷⁶⁵ As for Proclus, he maintained the pattern that held the ‘First Mind’ to be a ‘pure one’, but not the same as the Intellect which thinks and creates other things.⁷⁶⁶ Here is then the substantial difference between Origen and Neoplatonists: to him, the First Mind was the supreme God; to Plotinus, it was the second hypostasis (Intellect). Actually, Plotinus goes as far as to consider the generation of this (which he calls πρῶτος νοῦς) as a fall, because of the desire for self-expression on a lower tier: when the Intellect contemplates the One, it does not contemplate it as one, because otherwise it would not become intellect. While beginning as one, it did not stay as it began, but, without noticing it, this ‘First Nous’ became many, as if heavy with drunken sleep and unrolled itself because it wanted to possess everything. To this, Plotinus adds an exclamation: “How much better it would have been for it [i. e. the Intellect] not to want this, for it became the second!”.⁷⁶⁷ Therefore, to Plotinus, the ‘First Mind’ (πρῶτος νοῦς) is actually ‘second’, whereas Origen clearly posited that this was the supreme God, as above. But

 Plotinus, op. cit. V.3.5: καὶ πρώτως νοῦς ἂν εἴη ὁ πρῶτος· οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ νοῦς οὗτος δυνάμει οὐδ᾿ ἕτερος μὲν αὐτός, ἡ δὲ νόησις ἄλλο. Cf. V.5.1: καὶ ὁ πρῶτος νοῦς οὗτος.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.7.29: Εἰ δὴ νοῦς τίμιον καὶ καλὸν καὶ νοῦς ὁ πρῶτος μάλιστα, τί ἂν φαντασθείη τις, εἴ τις δύναιτο, τὸν τούτου γεννητὴν καὶ πατέρα;  Likewise, Anonymous, Exegesis in Hesiodi Theogoniam, p. 404: ὁ δὲ Ζεύς, φησίν, ἤτοι ὁ πρῶτος νοῦς.  Porphyry, Quaestionum Homericarum ad Iliadem Pertinentium Reliquiae, 4.2: ὁ μὲν Ζεὺς ὁ πρῶτος ἐστι νοῦς. Likewise, Anonymous, Scholia in Iliadem (scholia vetera) (= D scholia), comm. on Iliad IV.2 (line of scholion 26): ὁ μὲν Ζεὺς πρῶτος ἐστὶ νοῦς, which means that in fact this is a text by Porphyry.  Damascius, Princ, p. 133: καὶ ὅτι νοῦς ὁ πρῶτος ἡ τρίτη ἀρχὴ κατὰ τὴν χαλδαϊκὴν ὑμνου μένην τριάδα. Op. cit. p. 134: τὸ τρίτον νοῦς πρῶτος.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 415: νοῦς γὰρ πρώτιστος οὐχ ὁ νοῶν καὶ δημιουργῶν, ἀλλ᾿ ὁ νοῶν μόνον καὶ διὰ τοῦτο καθαρὸς ὢν νοῦς, ὡς ἐν Κρατύλῳ [i. e. 396c] μεμαθήκαμεν. Cf. commRep, v. 1, pp. 236; 275; Theologia Platonica, v. 1, pp. 14; 57; 82; 109; 118; v. 2, pp. 33; 35 7; v. 3, pp. 26; 35; et passim; Institutio Theologica, 21; 22; 100 2; 160; 161; 175; 181; In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 71; 247; 274; 330; In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 703 4; 719; 900; 988; 1051; 1109; commTim, v. 1, pp. 306; 363; 428; v. 2, p. 11; et passim.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.8.8 (18 36).

994

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

this was exactly why Proclus saw Origen as an anti-Platonist: at the outset of the second volume of his Platonic Theology, he summarized the chapters he was going to treat; he described the fourth of them as ‘reply to those who maintain that, according to Plato, there is not any first principle above Mind’.⁷⁶⁸ When he came to writing that chapter, he made a general reference to ‘all the other exegetes of Plato’ who sustained that Mind is the supreme principle, but he mentions one name only: “and, above all others, Origen, who shared the same education with Plotinus.”⁷⁶⁹ As a pagan, Origen wrote a treatise entitled ‘That the King is the Sole Maker’, meaning that the supreme God and the Creator is one and the same. We do not have this pragmaty, but his Christian texts show that this is one of the views that he maintained throughout his lifetime, which put its seal not only on his fairly immediate successors such as Cyril of Alexandria (discussed below), but also on far later ones. In the fifteenth century, Gennadius Scholarius assured that Aristotle’s First Mover was synonymous with God and ‘the First Mind’,⁷⁷⁰ which presumably he had read in Thomas Aquinas making use of the same vocabulary.⁷⁷¹ But which Mind was this really? Scholarius leaves not doubt about this: the ‘Aristotelian’ one, of which he spoke following Aquinas, was no other than the Anaxagorean one, and his characteristic vocabulary makes this abundantly clear. This is ‘a first and uncaused Mind’ (πρῶτος καὶ ἀναίτιος νοῦς) which is ‘unmixed with anything else and impassible’ (ἀμιγής τε καὶ ἀπαθὴς παντὸς χρήματος).⁷⁷² This Mind creates things by merely reflecting them (καὶ πρώτου νοῦ ἅμα τε νοοῦντος αὐτὸ καὶ ἐν τῷ πράγματι οὕτω δημιουργοῦντος),⁷⁷³ indeed by doing so through his Logos.⁷⁷⁴ All of Gennadius’ Trinitarian theology is couched in terms of a Supreme Mind begetting his Logos.⁷⁷⁵ What is important

 Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 1: δʹ. ᾿Aπάντησις πρὸς τοὺς λέγοντας μὴ εἶναι τὴν πρώ την ἀρχὴν ὑπὲρ νοῦν κατὰ Πλάτωνα. Cf. Plato, supra, p. 978, note 692.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 31.  Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 6 (marginal comments on Physics, book II), line 264: τὸ δὲ πόρρω καὶ ἀκίνητον καὶ πρῶτον κινοῦν, ὡς Θεὸς ἢ νοῦς ὁ πρῶτος.  Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 1.62, line 11: ὁ Θεὸς πρῶτος ἐστὶ νοῦς καὶ πρῶτον νοητόν. Cf. Commentarium Thomae Aquinae De Ente et Es sentia, chapter 27, line 68: ὁ δὲ πρῶτος καὶ ἄκτιστος νοῦς.  Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem de Aristotele, p. 34.  Gennadius Scholarius, Orationes et Panegyrici, 7.8.  Gennadius Scholarius, op. cit. 15.15: τοῦ πρώτου καὶ μεγίστου νοῦ νοητὲ λόγε. … εἰκὼν δὲ καὶ ἰδέα νοητὴ καὶ σύμφυτε τοῦ γεννήσαντός σε νοητῶς πρώτου νοῦ.  Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem de Aristotele, p. 77: τοῦ ὑψηλοτάτου καὶ θείου καὶ πρώτου ποιοῦντος νοῦ. Tractatus De Uno Deo et Contra Quos Qui Deum Esse Negant et Multos Deos Colunt, p. 185: τριὰς ἰδιοτήτων καὶ ὑποστάσεων, νοερὰ δὲ τριάς, τῷ πρώτῳ νῷ καὶ

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

995

about Scholarius is that his Anaxagorean understanding of the Supreme Mind/ Father is expressed in terms stunningly showing how far-reaching the influence by the ‘condemned’ Origen was. God set out to create by giving rise to logoi within the divine life itself, and he suggested how different this theory was from the Platonic one.⁷⁷⁶ Moreover, we come upon a characteristic doctrine of Origen, namely, the ‘eternal generation of the Son’,⁷⁷⁷ which was treated with suspicion by the later custodians of orthodoxy. It took many centuries for intellectuals to use Origen’s formula, actually no one dared to do so during the first millennium.⁷⁷⁸ But when it came to be used during the sunset of Byzantium, the vocabulary and ideas were strikingly Origen’s, such as the proposition that the Son is eternally born from a supreme Mind,⁷⁷⁹ or that the Logos who was begotten from the Mind ‘contains all the logoi in himself’.⁷⁸⁰

παντὸς αἰτίῳ κτιστοῦ νοῦ πρέπουσα, ὁ θεῖος νοῦς δηλονότι, καὶ ὁ νοητὸς αὐτοῦ λόγος, καρπὸς ἔμφυτος τῆς τοῦ ἀγεννήτου νοήσεως νοῦ, καὶ ὁ νοητὸς ἔρως, καρπὸς τῆς νοερᾶς τοῦ πρώτου νοῦ καὶ ἐνδοτέρας θελήσεως. Νοῦς … ὁ Θεὸς σοφώτατός τε καὶ ἀγαθώτατος. Quaestiones The ologicae, Question 4, p. 395: Ὁ τοίνυν Λόγος καὶ Υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ, πρὸς μὲν τὸν Θεὸν καὶ Πατέρα σκοπούμενος, εἶδος συμφυές ἐστί τε καὶ λέγεται τοῦ γεννῶντος αὐτὸν πρώτου νοῦ καὶ εἰκὼν αὐτοῦ γεννητὴ κατὰ φύσιν.  Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem de Aristotele, pp. 32 3: Διὸ καὶ τῆς τῶν ὄντων διακρίσεως ἡ αἰτία ἐκ τῆς τάξεως ἀνέσχε τῶν λόγων καὶ τῶν εἰδῶν, οὓς ὁ πρῶτος ἐν ἑαυτῷ διετύπωσε νοῦς· οὐκ ἔκ τινος ποικιλίας ἄλλων εἰδῶν, πρὸς ἃ τόδε ξυστῆναι τὸ πᾶν ὑπὸ τῆς πρώτης αἰτίας οἱ περὶ Πλάτωνα ἀξιοῦσιν.  Origen, homJer, 9.4: ὁ σωτὴρ ἀεὶ γεννᾶται … καὶ ἀεὶ γεννᾶται ὁ σωτὴρ ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρός. See COT, p. 138: ‘The Son is always born from the Father’ indicates an ontological relationship be tween them, not a momentary occurrence.  Basilius Minimus (stressing that the Logos is being born from the supreme Mind eternally), Commentarii in Gregorii Nazianzeni Orationem xxxviii [=In Theophania, (orat. 38)], 3.1a: ὁ Υἱὸς καὶ Θεὸς ὡς Λόγος ἐκ Νοῦ ἀνεκφοιτήτως ἀεὶ γεννώμενος, οὐχ ἅπαξ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς προελθών τε καὶ γεννηθεὶς ὡς ἡμεῖς· … εἰκότως ἀντὶ τοῦ ἐγεννήθη τὸ γεννᾶται. Symeon Neotheologus (tenth eleventh century), Hymni, Hymn 21, verses 216 26: υἱὸς ὁ υἱός, ὅτι ἀεὶ γεννᾶται καὶ πρὸ αἰώνων ἐστὶ γεγεννημένος … ὁ μὲν γεννᾷ, ὁ δὲ ἀεὶ γεννᾶται. Joasaph of Ephesus (died 1437, Met ropolitan), Homilia in Hymnum Φῶς ἱλαρόν, lines 122 8: Οὐδὲ γὰρ ἦν ποτὲ ὁ πατήρ, ὅτε οὐκ ἦν ὁ υἱός … Οὐδ᾿ ἅπαξ γεννήσας πέπαυται ὁ πατήρ, οὐδ᾿ ὁ υἱὸς γεννηθείς, οὔτε τὸ πνεῦμα ἐκπορευ θέν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀεί τε γεννᾷ ὁ πατὴρ τὸν υἱὸν καὶ προβάλλει τὸ πνεῦμα. Καὶ ὁ υἱὸς ἀεὶ γεννᾶται καὶ τὸ πανάγιον ἀεὶ ἐκπορεύεται πνεῦμα.  Gennadius Scholarius, Orationes et Panegyrici, 15.14: Καὶ γεγέννηται μὲν ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ πατρὸς τὴν ἀΐδιον γέννησιν, οὐδὲ γεγέννηται μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀεὶ γεννᾶται ὡς λόγος ἀϊδίως καὶ συμφυῶς νοούμενος ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου νοῦ καὶ προϊὼν τῇ νοήσει, γεννᾶται δ᾿ ἅπαξ ἐκ τῆς ἁγνοτάτης παρθένου καὶ χρονικῶς ὡς καὶ ἀληθὴς ἄνθρωπος.  Gennadius Scholarius, Quaestiones Theologicae, Question 4, p. 395: ὁ θεῖος Λόγος … διαφόρους λόγους τῶν ὄντων ἐν ἑαυτῷ περιέχει … καὶ τοῦ μὲν πρώτου νοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρὸς

996

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Therefore, it is plain that there is a cycle which began implicitly with Aristotle (De Anima, 429b31‒430a2) reflecting on the Anaxagorean Mind, and wondering what was this Mind like either before it thought or after he became a reflecting one. However, the real beginning was Theophrastus who believed that he had read the notions of Potential and Actual Minds in Aristotle. Theophrastus ostensibly (though not really) assumed that the Potential Mind is superior to the Actual one, therefore, somehow he wrote pace Aristotle, since the latter believed that, prior to reflecting, Mind was ‘actually nothing’, which hardly squared with the same Aristotle affirming that his own First Mover was in fact the Anaxagorean Mind which Aristotle himself described as sheer actuality. Subsequently, the philosopher who took up Theophrastus’ idea and projected it to Aristotle was Alexander of Aphrodisias arguing that his eminent predecessor maintained that the First (supreme) Mind is no other than the Anaxagorean one. Whereas Theophrastus spoke of Potential / Actual Mind, Alexander used the expression ‘First Mind’. Numenius with his ideas about first and second God came much later, namely, by the end of the second century AD, and we should bear in mind that he was nearly contemporary with Alexander of Aphrodisias. Whereas the aim of Numenius was to explore Plato and attribute many of his ideas back to Pythagoras, Alexander argued that the distinction should be traced in Aristotle explicitly referring to Anaxagoras and taking his cue from him. Given the testimony by Porphyry about Plotinus having drawn heavily on the Peripatetics, one should wonder why could Plotinus not have built on Theophastus rather than Numenius, who is normally hailed as a forerunner of Neoplatonism. Moreover, since Theophrastus did not appear to regard the distinction of two Minds as tenable, why would Plotinus have not reflected on Aristotle’s considerations about the Anaxagorean Nous either before or after this Nous assumed creative function? In any event, the turn of second to third century AD marks a bifurcation of theory: one strand opted for classification of two Minds, which resulted in Neoplatonism. The other school of thought kept on maintaining that there is one single Mind, which is the only and the supreme one, namely, the Anaxagorean Mind; whether envisaged in a state prior or posterior to its creative act, this was the same Mind, which created by its reflection alone. We owe the testimony about this school to Proclus, but he mentions only Origen as the most eminent exponent of that. Eventually, as Proclus reported, this bifurcation came to be

ἐμφαντικός ἐστι μόνον ἐν ἑαυτῷ, ὡς εἰκὼν αὐτοῦ κατὰ φύσιν καὶ εἶδος σύμφυτον, τῶν δὲ δι᾿ αὐτοῦ γενομένων πάντων ἔξω ποιητικός, ὥστ᾿ εἶναι μᾶλλον αὐτὰ τοῦ θείου Λόγου εἰκόνας.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

997

represented by the persons of Plotinus and Origen, although the imperial bigotry of the sixth century decided to identify those two philosophers, who, however, had parted ways well before each one of them expounded different theories, indeed because of those differences of their ideas. Up until Proclus, the clear-cut classified pattern of Plotinus was sustained almost invariably. However, this cycle closed with Damascius, who, in effect, demolished the classified pattern of the Plotinian triad, and showed that such formulations could hardly make sense and the pattern was untenable. Nevertheless, in the course of that cycle, different scholars thought differently as to which of the two Minds was superior – was it the Potential or the Actual one? The ‘logoi’, of which Origen speaks recurrently, are the ‘object’ that God created in the beginning. Considering that the term λόγοι means both ‘words’ and creative agents, he argued that they are the words uttered by God when he spoke to his Son upon creation of the world, according to the narrative of Genesis. The λόγοι of God arise from the creative γεννηθήτω, out of which the notion of ‘coming into being out of non-being’ began to make sense. The act of this ‘creation’ is adumbrated as a certain ‘utterance’ by the Father addressing the Son, and these ‘utterances’ (λόγοι, meaning ‘words’, as well as ‘logoi’) are what actually came into being out of non-being. But this is sheer Anaxagoras, who saw the principles/logoi as having been ‘distinguished’, meaning ‘created’ according to the exegesis by Simplicius, and so the Creative Mind proceeded from the ‘Standing Mind’ (μένων νοῦς),⁷⁸¹ which is not ontologically different from the primal one.⁷⁸² For ‘the entire Mind, both the great and the lesser one, is the same’ (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων).⁷⁸³ Origen did not endorse the pattern of Plotinus, which was obviously one the main reasons for them to part ways. Ironically, the fuller account about Plotinus’ classified triad being impossible to defend came from Damascius, the master of

 Simplicius, commCael, p. 609: ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργικοῦ νοῦ, ὃν καὶ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ νοητοῦ προελθόντα διακοσμῆσαι πάντα φησίν. This creative Mind is ontologically the same. See chapter 13, p. 1265.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 225: οὐ γὰρ ἕτερος μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁ αὐτὸς ὁ ῥυεὶς τῷ μένοντι νῷ. Origen, frJohn, 1: ἀρχὴν οὖν εἶναι τὸν λόγον φασὶν οὐχ ἕτερον ὄντα αὐτῆς κατ᾿ οὐσίαν ἀλλ᾿ ἐπινοίᾳ καὶ σχέσει, ἵν᾿ ᾖ ἡ αὐτὴ ὕπαρξις ἣν νῦν καλοῦσιν κατ᾿ οὐσίαν αἱ γραφαί, ᾗ μὲν ᾠκείω ται τῷ θεῷ σοφία, ᾗ δὲ νένευκεν, ἵν᾿ οὕτως εἴπω, πρὸς τὰ δημιουργήματα ὁ δημιουργικὸς λόγος. selPs, PG.12.1296.37 39: τὸ πρόσωπον τοῦ Θεοῦ οἱ λόγοι εἰσὶ τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς, οἱ χαρακτηρίζοντες τὸν δημιουργικὸν αὐτοῦ λόγον.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157. Origen followed on this, too: he calls the Father ‘Mind’ as much as does he so for the Son/Logos, and for the entire Trinity. Thus, notwith standing the saying of Jesus, ‘the Father is greater than me’ (John, 14:28) (I discuss this infra) there is no ontological classification of the Father and Son: instead, both of them stand on a par.

998

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

the Academy who was supposed to be a Neoplatonist. That which Damascius grasped in the sixth century, Origen already knew since the third one.

Origen’s ‘second God’ Following this analysis, it is clear that the term ‘second god’ was a Late Antique one, and authors attributed to it a different import befitting specific philosophical premisses. Nevertheless, one thing is common in them all: as diverse as the meaning of the expression was, with the exception of Theophrastus, it tended to suggest principles belonging to different ontological statuses. I should then turn to Origen again, in order to see what he meant by this. At the time when he joined Christianity, he was a pagan Anaxagorean, and, on that account, he was a strict monotheist. Had he joined Judaism, this would have caused no problem to him; but New Testament made it incumbent upon him to explain how could the Anaxagorean Mind be the same as the Trinitarian God. Consequently, he had to explain the Mind in terms of a Tripersonal Deity. To this purpose, Anaxagoras could still be of some service. Before the ‘distinction’ (= creation) of principles took place, there was a Mind along with the primeval fusion; this Mind ‘came’ and set the principles in order, that is, ‘distinguished’ them and allotted each of them a special function, which determined its specific unique character, hence, none of them was like any other. Of what this Mind actually was, nothing was said and indeed nothing could be said. The only implication is that this Mind existed beginninglessly in a state where the function creator was not yet assumed. This is a notion that Origen employed fully, and, in the past, I have canvassed two distinct notions of God that he maintained, namely, God in Himself and God as Creator. Were it for the Jewish Yahweh to have appealed to him, things would have been all too simple: he would have identified the Anaxagorean Mind with the God of Moses, which would have been the end of it, since, as argued earlier, the Anaxagorean Mind had all the attributes of a personal hypostasis. But the need was to explain why and how is this Mind a Trinitarian God. In the first place, Anaxagoras himself had treated this problem to a certain extent: the obscure primeval Mind was a God that had the potential of creating, but nothing could be said beyond this. Once he created, this act took place by the sole activity befitting a mind, namely, by reflection. Therefore, this Creator was a reflecting Mind. Nevertheless, once a designation is attached to Mind, be that ‘deliberating’, or ‘reflecting’, or whatever, it is quite evident that this activity by Mind bespeaks something less than what the original Mind is per se: we know that he decided to create, but we do not know what else this Mind can possibly

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

999

do or be. On that account, and on that account alone, is the Creative Mind styled a ‘lesser’ one. What is ‘less’ is not the ontological status, but the fact that engaging in creation does not describe fully the ontology of God. In this sense, human knowledge of the Creator is also ‘less’ than a full grasp of what God also is apart from being Creator. Therefore, what is ‘less’ is human knowledge about what God is, not what the creative God the Logos is himself. Nevertheless, Anaxagoras was quick to add that ‘the entire Mind, whether the major or the minor one, is the same’ (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων).⁷⁸⁴ This means that both the original Mind and the reflecting (Creative) Mind are of the same ontological rank; what is more, to Anaxagoras, this is the same Subject: we can conceive of it as ‘creative’ only because we are ourselves creatures and envision this principle from the sole point of view available to us, that is, the point of view of the universe. The same philosopher took pains also to point out the ontological hiatus which separates the Creator from his creatures: whereas all principles belong to the same ontological order, this order is entirely different from that of Mind (παντάπασι δὲ οὐδὲν ἀποκρίνεται οὐδὲ διακρίνεται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου πλὴν νοῦ).⁷⁸⁵ Simplicius explained that there are two notions that should be ideated: one, Mind before it decided to engage in creative action; two, the Creative Mind (ὁ δημιουργικὸς νοῦς)⁷⁸⁶ that gave rise to the incorporeal principles ‘as of a certain beginning’ (ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος).⁷⁸⁷ For it was necessary for Mind whose substance was ‘fused’ (αὐτὸ συνῃρημένην ἔχον τὴν οὐσίαν) to give rise to distinction within himself so that he would subsequently bring about an orderly distinction to the principles.⁷⁸⁸ This ‘distinction’ within the Deity was one between Mind per se and Creative Mind. Generation was produced out of total fusion, ‘although not all of this took place at the same time’ (ἀπὸ τοῦ πάντων μίγματος ἡ πάντων γένεσις ἐξεκρίθη, εἰ καὶ μὴ ἅμα): material objects came to be by virtue of the principles, and yet all material bodies also owe their existence to ‘a certain superior principle and cause (ἀρχῆς καὶ αἰτίας ἐδεῖτο τινὸς κρείττονος), which Anaxagoras called Nous’.⁷⁸⁹ Consequently, there is the notion of Mind (νοῦς) which became Creative

 Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157.  Anaxagoras, loc. cit.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 609. John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 183. Michael Psel lus, commPhys, 8.1. See quotations supra, p. 980, note 703.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461: τοιοῦτος δὲ ὁ νοῦς, ὃν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐνόησεν ἐργαζόμενον, ἐν οἷς λέγει ἄρξασθαι τὸν νοῦν διακρίνειν. Cf. Aristotle, Physica, 203a28 33.  Simplicius, loc. cit.  Simplicius, loc. cit.

1000

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Mind (δημιουργικὸς νοῦς) ‘as a of a certain beginning’, but this introduces no ontological distinction between Mind and Creative Mind, nor does it suggest that there are two Minds,⁷⁹⁰ even though the Creative Mind ‘sprang’ from Mind proper.⁷⁹¹ There is only the abstraction of a Mind which set out to reflect in itself (or, himself): Creative Mind means only reflecting Mind, still this is the same one, even though some later expressions about Anaxagoras’ supreme principle being ‘Mind and his intelligence’ (καὶ ἦν ἀρχὴ ὁ νοῦς καὶ ἡ ἐκείνου νόησις)⁷⁹² might give a false impression about a twofold supreme reality. Whether engaged in creation, or not, this Mind is ‘simple’, ‘impassible’, and ‘has nothing in common with anything else’.⁷⁹³ The distortion of this idea by Aristotle is characteristic: he argued that thinking is a passive affection (τὸ νοεῖν πάσχειν τί ἐστιν, meaning that there should be something other than the Mind which causes it to reflect, and this other is considered as the active agent causing reflection); therefore, if the Anaxagorean Mind is simple and impassible and has nothing in common with anything else, how can it possibly come to reflect at all, once interaction between two factors is supposed to require a precedent community of nature between them? Again, it might be asked, is Mind itself a possible object of thought? Quite sophistically, Aristotle chose to conceal the fact that Anaxagoras argued that Mind is an absolutely sui generis being, which is an object of thought, yet not in the common empirical sense, since this would place it on the same par as other objects of reflection. Although implicitly he turned to Parmenides identifying Being and Thinking,⁷⁹⁴ it is far from true that ‘Mind is itself thinkable in exactly the same way as its objects are’ (καὶ αὐτὸς δὲ νοητός ἐστιν ὥσπερ τὰ νοητά).⁷⁹⁵ Therefore, neither does ‘Mind belong to ev-

 See discussion about the notion of ‘two minds’, supra, pp. 988 98.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 608 9: ἔοικε δὲ διττὴν ἐνδείκνυσθαι διακόσμησιν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, τὴν μὲν νοητὴν καὶ ἡνωμένην, ἐν ᾗ ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν καὶ ἕκαστον πάντα ἦν τὰ ἄλλα διὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν, τὴν δὲ αἰσθητὴν καὶ διακεκριμένην ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνης τῆς ἑνώσεως ὑπὸ τοῦ δημι ουργικοῦ νοῦ, ὃν καὶ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ νοητοῦ προελθόντα διακοσμῆσαι πάντα φησίν.  Michael Psellus, commPhys, 3.12.  Aristotle, De Anima, 429b: ὁ νοῦς ἁπλοῦν ἐστὶ καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ μηθενὶ μηθὲν ἔχει κοινόν. Plo tinus, op. cit. V.1.9. Simplicius, commAnim, p. 234. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 85. Sopho nias, paraphrAnim, pp. 15; 133. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.5; 3.7; 3.9.  See supra, p. 356. Aristotle argued for priority of sense objects to sense (Categoriae, 8a11; cf. De Anima, 429b23 26), whereas he identified the Nous (Mind, Intellect) with its objects (De Anima, 431b17). Plotinus took up both ideas of Aristotle and applied them to the letter. Enneades, V.4.2 (44 48).  Aristotle, De Anima, 429b.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1001

erything’ nor does it ‘contain some element common to both itself and all other realities, which makes them all thinkable’, as Aristotle put the two alternatives. Aristotle chose to make this Mind a potential Mind that became actual only upon its creative act. This is the sense in which he stated that the Anaxagorean ‘Mind is sheer actuality’, while opting for overlooking that this Mind is beginningless actuality yet not beginningless activity (hence his ambiguous use of the term ἐνέργεια for the Nous in De Anima, 430a18). But this could only mean that, prior to this act, Mind was in effect nonexistent, in the same sense that formless matter, qua potentially everything, is actually nothing. It is far from true that Anaxagoras’ Mind ‘before it came up with reflection, is potentially all intelligible things, yet actually nothing’ (ὅτι δυνάμει πώς ἐστι τὰ νοητὰ ὁ νοῦς, ἀλλ᾿ ἐντελεχείᾳ οὐδέν, πρὶν ἂν νοῇ). In short, against Anaxagoras’ own statements, Aristotle considered Mind in the same terms as he did about the human mind; this is why by ‘potentially’ he meant that Mind was nothing until it started to reflect, and what it thinks must be in it, just as characters may be said to be potentially on a writing tablet on which as yet nothing actually is written: and yet, to him, this is exactly what happens with the mind. Thus, Aristotle’s distorted version of the Anaxagorean Mind was that this is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another Mind which is what it is by virtue of making all things, such as light, which in a sense makes potential colours actual ones. However, Anaxagoras’ Mind does not become all things: it remains eternally unmixed with them.⁷⁹⁶ Fortunately, some posterior authors saw the folly of this, above all Plotinus, who paid no attention to Aristotle’s remarks, and confidently argued that the Anaxagorean Mind was Plotinus’ own One.⁷⁹⁷ However, many centuries later, it appears that Thomas Aquinas accepted the Aristotelian aphoristic assertion (which never became an analysis), which had it that the Creative Mind that emerges from the Potential Mind (that is, Anaxagoras’ Mind before it set out to create the principles) is superior to its source.⁷⁹⁸ Aristotle did not realize that Mind, either before or after it created, can be described only in terms of what it did, not what it is. Hence, he distinguished the Potential Mind (δυνάμει νοῦς) from Actual Mind. Theophrastus demonstrated that this notion is hardly defensible, and, of Aristotle’s commentators, this ap-

 Aristotle, op. cit. 429b 430a.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.10: Ὁ ποιῶν ἄρα νοῦς ἐστὶν εὐγενέστερος καὶ τιμιώτερος τοῦ δυνάμει νοῦ. ᾿Aλλὰ ὁ δυνάμει νοῦς ἐστὶ χωριστὸς καὶ ἀμιγὴς καὶ ἀπαθής, ὡς προείρηται. Πολλῷ ἄρα μᾶλλον ὁ ποιῶν νοῦς τοιοῦτος ἐστίν. Italics are mine pointing out the distinctly Anaxagorean terms.

1002

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

pealed only to Thomas Aquinas,⁷⁹⁹ whereas the author who used the name of Simplicius was unable to determine whether Aristotle suggested that there are two Anaxagorean Minds, an imperfect and a perfect one (ἢ δύο ὄντων, κατὰ τὸ ἀτελὲς καὶ τέλειον διακρινομένων), or one Mind, which was withdrawn and had not displayed its full and perfect essence before it created (πρὸς ἑαυτὸν καὶ πρὸς τὴν οὐσίαν ἀνανεύειν, ἀφ᾿ ἧς τελειοῦται).⁸⁰⁰ Neither of those alternatives was correct, since, whether prior to creation or after that, the case was about what Mind did, not what it is. In this respect, unlike Aristotle who engaged in pointless argument, a Jew (e. g. Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 2.1‒4) would have grasped Anaxagoras’ propositions about Mind forthwith and, in them, he would have recognized his Yahweh. Therefore, reflecting Mind only means that Deity displayed reflection. Considered from this point of view, Mind is the Logos. In other words, Mind produced its own Logos, which, in later terms, was put, ‘the Father generated his Son/Logos/Wisdom’. This is why Plotinus, quite evidently inspired by Anaxagoras, declared that ‘all that exists has arisen from one Mind and from the Logos which proceeds from it, and the All is separated into parts’ (ἐξ ἑνὸς νοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ λόγου ἀνέστη τόδε τὸ πᾶν καὶ διέστη).⁸⁰¹ Little surprise then that Theodoret quoted this passage in order to show the dependence of Plotinus on Christian sources, notably, on the opening of John’s gospel;⁸⁰² but the fact is that Plotinus’ dependence goes back to Anaxagoras, and the possible liaison would have been not Numenius, but Ammonius Saccas. Origen was aware of this, as much as his classmate Plotinus was. Their difference was that Origen stood by the Anaxagorean ontology and allowed no classification within the nature of Mind/God. Whether the primal Mind or the reflecting/creative one, it was the same Mind, as Anaxagoras himself maintained. This was precisely the point on which Proclus criticized Origen for dismissing any ontological stratification within the Deity. God in Himself and God as Creator is the same God. If God as Creator appears to be less than God Himself, this is true only because the notion of God as Creator is not, and cannot be, a comprehensive depiction or grasp of Deity: God willed to assume the function of Creator, but to know Him as Creator does not mean that we know everything about God, as Origen’s foregoing statements make it clear. Therefore, what is ‘less’ is not God as

   

Gennadius Scholarius, op. cit. 3.7. Simplicius (or, whoever the author), commAnim, p. 234. Plotinus, op. cit. III.2.2. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 6.58 61.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1003

Creator, but our knowledge⁸⁰³ of God, once we consider Him as Creator, since the Son is the manifestation of the Father. Whereas the Father is the source of Deity, the Logos is the Logos of God, and the Spirit is the Spirit of God. No matter how well one may know the Son, the Father is other than the Son; knowledge of God takes more than knowledge of the creative act through the Son, and it is possible to know the Father only through the Son. This ‘more’ is the sole notion of ‘greater or lesser’ in relation to the Trinitarian God, and it is definitely a matter of Gnosiology, not Ontology, of God. This is the context making possible for Origen to use such metaphors as to call the Logos ‘soul of God’.⁸⁰⁴ This is also what he meant by stating that the Father is ‘greater’ than the Son,⁸⁰⁵ although he also maintained than ‘nothing in Trinity can be called greater or less (nihil in trinitate maius minusue dicentum est), for there is but one fount of Deity, who upholds’ the universe by his Logos and reason (uerbo ac ratione sua) and sanctifies by the Spirit of his mouth ⁸⁰⁶ all that is worthy of sanctification.⁸⁰⁷ The Father and the Son are equal⁸⁰⁸ because within the Deity it is not possible to speak of either ‘greater’ or ‘lesser’, which is a lesson that Origen had

 Origen, Homilies on Joshua, 5.3 (Latin): “I myself think that he was always exalted and ele vated in the presence of the Father. But it is necessary that God exalt him in our sight. He is ex alted in my sight when the sublimity and loftiness of his divinity is disclosed to me.”  Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 5.8.9 (Latin): “The Father is light (1 John, 1:5) and in this light (Psalm 35:10), which is the Son, we see the light of the Holy Spirit.” Homilies on Leviticus, 16.7.7, commenting on Lev. 26:11, My soul will abhor you: “Nevertheless, let me ask what is the ‘soul of God’. Surely, we will not think that God has a soul as a man. It is absurd to think this about God. But I am bold and say that the soul of God is Christ. For just as Christ is the Logos of God (John, 1:1) and the ‘Wisdom of God and the Power of God’ (1 Cor. 1:24), so also is he the Soul of God. And in this way it is said, My Soul, that is my Son, will abhor you”.  Cf. John, 14:28. Origen, commJohn, II.10.72; II.23.151; XIII.25.151; XXXII.29.363 365; Cels, VIII.14; VIII.15; commMatt, 15.10.  Psalm 32:6; 2 Thess. 2:8.  Origen, Princ, I.3.7. P. Koetschau, who was always apt to employ any allegation against Ori gen and make it part of Origen’s allegedly restored text, promptly branded this an interpolation by Rufinus. But the argument which rejected the notion of ‘degrees’ in Deity can be traced in Neoplatonic accounts treating particular issues beyond the standard Plotinian pattern. See supra, Damascius’ argument, pp. 814 9.  Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 4.10.12 (Latin): “Both the Son and the Holy Spirit are to be understood as springing from the one fountain of paternal Deity.” Op. cit. 5.2.5: “The Son is indeed equal to God and is one with the Father.” Op. cit. 7.5.4: “then the Son himself will be subjected to Him who subjected all things to Him (1 Cor. 15:28). At this point, too, subjection does not imply inferiority. Indeed, how could he who is the Son and is ev erything that the Father is be called inferior? For he says, everything that is yours, Father, is mine (John, 17:10)”. Op. cit. 7.15.13: “For he himself is not later than the Father, but from the Father. And the wisdom of God has granted that the same thing be understood of the Holy Spirit as

1004

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

learned from Anaxagoras, and bequeathed this to his admirers Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Didymus. This was also a lesson shared by Proclus, Damascius, and Simplicius alike, as we shall see in a moment. Quite simply, unless God Himself wishes to reveal more about Himself, knowledge of God as Creator cannot procure knowledge of God in Himself. This, according to Origen, God did by sending his Son/Logos in incarnate form, so that men could learn about God what his function as Creator cannot reveal to us. For instance, the proposition ‘God is love’ took revelation in order to become known, it did not stem from observation of nature. We have seen that the object of creation according to Origen was the ‘decoration of the body’ of Wisdom/Logos, that is, the created logoi. Since these logoi were placed in God, the Logos was not only the eternal one who was always with God, ⁸⁰⁹ but also the one who assumed a relation with those which were to come to be in the future.⁸¹⁰ But he was God the Logos still. This is the ‘Second Mind’, which means one more God, not a ‘secondary’ one. And if we may call him second God, let them know that by this we do not mean anything except the virtue which includes all virtues, and the Logos which includes every logos whatsoever of the beings which have been made according to nature and as a primary ac tion [by God] for the benefit of the whole.⁸¹¹

In other words, the Son/Logos, even with his ‘body’ decorated with the ‘living stones’ or logoi of creation, is no other than God. This Logos, or ‘Second Mind’, Origen styles ‘Logos per se and Wisdom per se and Righteousness per se (τοῦ αὐτολόγου καὶ τῆς αὐτοσοφίας καὶ τῆς αὐτοδικαιοσύνης), and we should recall that Origen was not sparing of attributing the notion ‘per se’ to the Logos – at least in that work of his maturity which was not called in question by his detractors and, not accidentally, it survived in full.⁸¹²

well.” Therefore, “the nature and essence of the Trinity, which is over all things, are shown to be one.” See also extensive analyses in op. cit. 8.13.6 10, and then, op. cit. 1.5.1; 9.41.7; 10.8.5.  John, 1:1.  Cf. frJohn, 1: ἠθέλησεν οὖν αὕτη ἡ σοφία σχέσιν δημιουργικὴν ἀναλαβεῖν πρὸς τὰ ἐσόμενα.  Origen, Cels, V.39: Κἂν δεύτερον οὖν λέγωμεν θεόν, ἴστωσαν ὅτι τὸν δεύτερον θεὸν οὐκ ἄλλο τι λέγομεν ἢ τὴν περιεκτικὴν πασῶν ἀρετῶν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὸν περιεκτικὸν παντὸς οὑτινο σοῦν λόγου τῶν κατὰ φύσιν καὶ προηγουμένως γεγενημένων καὶ εἰς χρήσιμον τοῦ παντὸς λόγον.  The Contra Celsum has been read as an authoritative source throughout the centuries. Cf. Arethas of Caesarea, Scripta Minora (praecipue e cod. Mosq. Hist. Mus. gr. 315), Opus 20, p. 198. Michael Psellus, Orationes Forenses et Acta, Oration 1, line 792. Bessarion, Epistulae, Epis tle 37, p. 489.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1005

Nevertheless, the Logos himself is not a sum total of ideas, or of logoi, or of whatever, be they Platonic or not: it is a self-subsistent (τὸ ὑφεστηκέναι καθ᾿ ἑαυτό) living being (ζῷον), which serves the Father (τὸ ὑπηρετεῖν τῷ πατρί).⁸¹³ What is this ‘service’ to the Father? But of course the manifestation of Deity ad extra, in its creative, administrative, and providential activity. Why this function of Deity should be taken as suggesting that the Logos belongs to a lower ontological level and he is ‘subordinate’ to the Father, is only a weird allegation that was never been explained by the Subordination-mongers. Already during his pagan period, Origen’s thought was alien to inferioristic notions forced into the Mind. This is why, even as an incipient Christian, he wrote that the Father is the source of Deity, in like manner the Logos is the source of the logos (rationality) in each rational being. Had he sustained such ideas as those currently attributed to him, this would entail that the Logos in each man is something inferior to the Logos, which would be only absurd: for the idea that within each man is the Logos Himself is the basis of all of his Christian philosophy, since, otherwise, the instructive and indeed salvative agency of the Logos would be entirely impossible for Origen to sustain. The paragon of his theology is that the agency of the Logos within each rational creature is not vicarious; it does not take place by means of fragmentary logoi, or by some fragmented logos understood as the spermatic one. The entire Logos Himself is fully present in each individual rational being, no matter whether one is able to grasp Him fully or not. For both the Father and the Son are ‘sources’: whereas the Father is the source of Deity, the Logos it the source of rationality.⁸¹⁴ To make the Logos, who is present in each individual, another Logos, indeed an inferior one, could only distort and destroy this theological system. This is an idea that Origen would have never dreamed of. For even when he was a pagan, it was a cardinal axiom to him that Anaxagoras’ principle, ‘both the greater and the lesser Mind is the same’, was the basis of his philosophy. The second instance of Origen applying the expression ‘second God’ appears in the same work, and it is less important: he retorts to Celsus’ jibe that Christians accord the ‘First God’ the role of artisan.⁸¹⁵ But this is only an allusion to the doctrine that the Father created ‘through’ the Son. Nevertheless, this remark

 Origen, homJer, 20.1. Cf. commJohn, II.3.20: διάκονον εἶναι τῆς θεότητος τὸν θεὸν λόγον.  Origen, commJohn, II.3.20: Ὁ γὰρ ἐν ἑκάστῳ λόγος τῶν λογικῶν τοῦτον τὸν λόγον ἔχει πρὸς τὸν ἐν ἀρχῇ λόγον πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ὄντα λόγον θεόν, ὃν ὁ θεὸς λόγος πρὸς τὸν θεόν. … ᾿Aμφότερα γὰρ πηγῆς ἔχει χώραν, ὁ μὲν πατὴρ θεότητος, ὁ δὲ υἱὸς λόγου. Accordingly, the Logos himself ‘stands in the midst of us’ (John, 1:26). Origen, commJohn, II.35.215; VI.30.154 6; VI.38.188 9; frJohn, 18; 118.  Origen, Cels, VI.61. See a new text in Appendix II.

1006

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

is an opportunity to clear up Origen’s relation to Numenius in respect of both references to the second God. Numenius, whom Origen said he had read himself,⁸¹⁶ allowed for the ‘second God’ to be good, yet not by essence but only by participation to the First God’s essential goodness. The obloquy which Justinian signed accusing Origen of holding the same doctrine was interpolated in the first book of De Principiis. ⁸¹⁷ The thesis of Numenius was that the relation of the ‘second God’ to the ‘first’ one is the same as that of any material object or animal to its specific Idea. Therefore, a notion of ‘participation’ is involved,⁸¹⁸ and, on that account, the ‘essence’ of the ‘second God’ is different from that of the ‘first God (ἡ δ᾿ οὐσία μία μὲν ἡ τοῦ πρώτου, ἑτέρα δ᾿ ἡ τοῦ δευτέρου)’.⁸¹⁹ What we know of Origen, however, is that he reserved the notion of ‘participation’ only in things of this world that participate in the Trinity,⁸²⁰ whereas he emphasized that the Son is God in essence, not by participation.⁸²¹ Numenius allowed for the designation ‘good per se’ (or, good proper, αὐτοάγαθον) for the ‘first God’ alone, not for the ‘second God’. This was natural for him to do, since this second God is what he is only by participation in the first God; therefore, there is no way for the notion of this God to be anything per se, that is,  Origen, op. cit. I.15; IV.51; V.38; V.57.  Justinian, Edictum contra Origenem, p. 110: Οὕτω τοίνυν ἡγοῦμαι καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ σωτῆρος καλῶς ἂν λεχθήσεσθαι ὅτι εἰκὼν ἀγαθότητος θεοῦ ἐστιν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ αὐτοαγαθόν. καὶ τάχα καὶ ὁ υἱὸς ἀγαθός, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ὡς ἁπλῶς ἀγαθός. καὶ ὥσπερ εἰκών ἐστι τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου καὶ κατὰ τοῦτο θεός, ἀλλ᾿ οὐ περὶ οὗ λέγει αὐτὸς ὁ Χριστὸς ἵνα γινώσκωσί σε τὸν μόνον ἀληθινὸν θεόν, οὕτως εἰκὼν τῆς ἀγαθότητος, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ὡς ὁ πατὴρ ἀπαραλλάκτως ἀγαθός.  Our only source for this and the next fragment is Eusebius, who would have been all too happy to report a pagan view conforming to his own Arian outlook. Numenius, Fragmenta, fr. 20 apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.22.10: οὕτως καὶ εἰκότως ὁ δημιουργὸς εἴπερ ἐστὶ μετουσίᾳ τοῦ πρώτου ἀγαθοῦ ἀγαθός, ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα ἂν εἴη ὁ πρῶτος νοῦς, ὢν αὐτοάγαθον.  Numenius, fr. 16, apud Eusebius, op. cit. 11.22.4: Εἴπερ δὲ ὁ δημιουργὸς ὁ τῆς γενέσεώς ἐστιν ἀγαθός, ἦ που ἔσται καὶ ὁ τῆς οὐσίας δημιουργὸς αὐτοάγαθον, σύμφυτον τῇ οὐσίᾳ. Ὁ γὰρ δεύτερος διττὸς ὢν αὐτοποιεῖ τήν τε ἰδέαν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τὸν κόσμον, δημιουργὸς ὤν, ἔπειτα θεωρητικὸς ὅλως. Συλλελογισμένων δ᾿ ἡμῶν ὀνόματα τεσσάρων πραγμάτων τέσσαρα ἔστω ταῦτα· ὁ μὲν πρῶτος θεὸς αὐτοάγαθον· ὁ δὲ τούτου μιμητὴς δημιουργὸς ἀγαθός· ἡ δ᾿ οὐσία μία μὲν ἡ τοῦ πρώτου, ἑτέρα δ᾿ ἡ τοῦ δευτέρου· ἧς μίμημα ὁ καλὸς κόσμος, κεκαλλωπισμένος μετουσίᾳ τοῦ καλοῦ.  Origen, frJohn, 2: Ὃ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ, δηλονότι τῷ λόγῳ, ζωὴ ἦν· [John, 1:3 4] ἵν᾿ ὥσπερ θεὸς εἰς ὕπαρξιν ἤγαγεν τὰ πάντα, οὕτω καὶ ζωοποιηθῇ τὰ πεφυκότα ζῆν μετουσίᾳ αὐτοῦ. … αὕτη ἡ ζωὴ τὰ λογικὰ ὠφελῆσαι βουλομένη σχέσιν τὴν πρὸς αὐτὰ ἀνεδέξατο, ἐπὶ τὸ ζῆν αὐτὰ προσλαβόντα αὐτὴν μετουσίας τρόπῳ.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1656.10 13: Φησὶ δὲ καὶ ὁ ᾿Aπόστολος· Εἴπερ εἰσὶ θεοὶ πολλοὶ καὶ κύριοι πολλοὶ ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς· ἀλλὰ τοὺς λεγομένους μετὰ τὴν Τριάδα θεοὺς μετουσίᾳ θεότητος εἶναι τοιούτους· ὁ δὲ Σωτὴρ οὐ κατὰ μετουσίαν, ἀλλὰ κατ᾿ οὐσίαν ἐστὶ Θεός.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1007

in himself and out of himself. By contrast, Origen did apply the notion of per se to his ‘second God’, and styled him ‘Logos per se and Wisdom per se and Righteousness per se (τοῦ αὐτολόγου καὶ τῆς αὐτοσοφίας καὶ τῆς αὐτοδικαιοσύνης). Moreover, to Origen, God is also a Creator and he creates through the Son. However, according to Theodoret’s testimony, Numenius maintained that ‘the First God does not have to create; but one should think that the First God is the Father of the Second Mind.’⁸²² In fact, to Origen the creator is actually the Father: “Everything was made through God, yet everything was made through the Logos, not by the Logos or from ⁸²³ the Logos” (πάντα διὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐγένετο ἀλλὰ Πάντα διὰ τοῦ λόγου καὶ οὐχ ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου οὐδ᾿ ἐκ τοῦ λόγου).⁸²⁴ This was a thesis that he maintained since the very early stages of his Christian life, when he wrote the second book of his commentary on John at Alexandria. To say that everything was made through the Logos (John, 1:2) does not mean that things were made by the Logos: they were made by one who was superior and greater than the Logos; and who else other than the Father would this be?⁸²⁵ Only a superficial knowledge of Origen would lend the expression ‘by one who was superior and greater than the Logos’ to speculation about (nonexistent) subordinationism in this thought: quite simply, his expression ὑπὸ κρείττονος καὶ μείζονος παρὰ τὸν λόγον is nothing different from the axiom of Anaxagoras, who also spoke of νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων, positing that whether ‘the major or the minor’ the ‘Mind is the same’. The rational activity of the God/Mind is carried out through the Logos. This is why, ‘the Father judges no man, but he has committed all judgement unto the Son’.⁸²⁶ The Father acts through the Son, still the Father is the maker of all creation which was made through the Son. This is the sense in which Origen wrote much later (after his decampment from Alexandria) that the Logos cannot be seen as a full representation of the Father, who generated the Logos, but the Father is more than the Logos: although the Logos ‘transcends in essence, seniority, power, and divinity, and wisdom (for he is a living Logos) beings that are so many and so great, nev Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.81, quoted supra, p. 975, note 676.  Origen’s consideration of things having been produced ‘from’ the Logos according to Rom. 11:3, is a different matter (see Cels, VI.65), which I have canvassed in COT, and PHE. It refers to the logoi in the Body of the Logos, out of, and through which the universe was made. See Origen discussing 1 Cor. 8:5, in Cels, IV.29, and 1 Cor. 8:6 in the same work, VIII.4.  Origen, Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V.7), p. 172. More explicitly, Cels, II.9&31.  Origen, commJohn, II.10.72: εἰ πάντα διὰ τοῦ λόγου ἐγένετο, οὐχ ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου ἐγένετο, ἀλλ᾿ ὑπὸ κρείττονος καὶ μείζονος παρὰ τὸν λόγον. Τίς δ᾿ ἂν ἄλλος οὗτος τυγχάνῃ ἢ ὁ πατήρ; Like wise, op. cit. II.12.90.  John, 5:21. Origen, commJohn, XX.38.351 & 362; frMatt, 49:4; selPs, PG.12.1217.7; 12.14.52.9; ex pProv, PG.17.249.35.

1008

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

ertheless he is not comparable with the Father in any way’.⁸²⁷ God the Logos is the most one can grasp of Deity from the point of view of the universe. However, God is not simply his manifest rational activity: God in Himself is more than that. Still He is one with his Logos, and they both stand on the same ontological par, since this is one God. To Origen, the Father was is ‘greater Mind’, the Son ‘the lesser Mind’ – still they are ‘the same’, as Anaxagoras had taught him. This was the simple idea that Theophrastus realized,⁸²⁸ and (as a Neoplatonist as he was) so did Damascius.⁸²⁹ Christ is the Mind, and he is not differentiated from the Father in terms of ontological status, who is also Mind. The Father is the generative source of the Son, but this introduces no ontological distinction. This is why Proclus denounced Origen as ‘anti-Platonist’, of course meaning ‘anti-Neoplatonist’. For Origen did not accept the classification and ontological otherness of the Creative Mind, and posited only hypostatic otherness of the Logos. Even so, Proclus denounced Origen for positing the Mind, not the One, as the highest principle. Otherwise, the shadow of Anaxagoras was cast upon Late Antiquity despite sectarian differences. When Plotinus wrote that ‘everything was produced from the Nous and its Logos’,⁸³⁰ he reflected along this vein, as argued earlier. This means that, when Mind manifests himself as Creative Logos, no ontological difference is introduced whatsoever. Despite Athanasius’ assurance that Origen’s Trinitarian doctrine was impeccable,⁸³¹ ancient and modern detractors represented Origen as a ‘Neoplatonist’ who made the Son inferior to the Father by reproducing the Plotinian pattern. This means that Origen spoke of one God, while making the Three Persons of the Trinity belong to different ontological levels. I should have thought that only a mad would have urged such an idea, but certainly, Origen was saner than his detractors. Besides, the three-level Neoplatonic pattern did not claim that the One, the Intellect, and the Soul comprise oneness. Furthermore, why should the notion of Mind becoming Creative by means of its Logos be associated with the Plotinian pattern? Why should Plotinus’ statement ‘everything was produced from Mind and its Logos’ be associated with his fundamental ontological pattern? And why no one did ever argue that

 Origen, commJohn, XIII.25.152: ᾿Aλλ᾿ ὅμως τῶν τοσούτων καὶ τηλικούτων ὑπερέχων οὐσίᾳ καὶ πρεσβείᾳ καὶ δυνάμει καὶ θειότητι (ἔμψυχος γάρ ἐστι λόγος) καὶ σοφίᾳ, οὐ συγκρίνεται κατ᾿ οὐδὲν τῷ πατρί.  See supra, p. 990: “in one sense, these Minds are two beings, but in another sense they are one being (καὶ πὼς μὲν δύο φύσεις τούτους τοὺς νοῦς, πὼς δὲ μίαν)”.  See supra, chapter 10, pp. 817 20.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.2.2.  Athanasius, De Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, 27.1 3.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1009

Plotinus’ Intellect and the Intellect’s Logos should be accorded different ontological levels? The answer is that there is no reason to assume this whatsoever. Never did Origen imply such an idea, and neither Plotinus himself did. To speak about Mind and its Logos as belonging to different ontological levels is not a Neoplatonic idea. Fortunately, Proclus put it explicitly: granted, the Intellect received its own being from that which is prior to it, and it can participate in that (i. e. in the One: πᾶς νοῦς οὐσίωται κατὰ τὸ εἶναι νοῦς, μεθεκτὸν δὲ αὐτῷ τὸ ὑπὲρ νοῦν); granted, every soul likewise received its own being from the Intellect and can participate in it (καὶ ὡς πᾶσα ψυχὴ κατ᾿ αὐτὸ τὸ εἶναι ψυχή, μεθεκτὸν δὲ αὐτῇ νοῦς). However, the proposition ‘every god, qua god, has indeed received his own being’ (οὕτω δὴ καὶ πᾶς θεὸς ἐν τῷ εἶναι θεὸς οὐσίωται) implies that every god has received his own being in an ineffable manner (μᾶλλον δὲ ὑπερουσίωται).⁸³² Consequently, since the Creative Mind is God (καὶ ὁ δημιουργικὸς ἄρα νοῦς καθὸ θεός ἐστιν), it is prior by virtue of the fact that it is God in the first place (ἐν τῷ θεὸς εἶναι πρώτως ἐστί), and it is God not by participation (καὶ οὐ κατὰ μέθεξιν θεός). It could be said that God/Creative Mind can participate in anything, since gods are absolutely prior to everything (μεθεκτὸν δὲ οὐδὲν αὐτῷ, διότι πάντων εἰσὶν οἱ θεοὶ πρεσβύτατοι). This is the same as saying that God/Creative Mind is good (τοῦτο δὲ ταὐτὸν τῷ ἀγαθός).⁸³³ Any Christian could have employed these statements of Proclus promptly and gratefully, but the only Christian author whom we come upon doing so is Cyril of Alexandria.⁸³⁴ However,

 The form ὑπερουσίωται is present perfect tense of the verb ὑπερουσιόω / ὑπερουσιῶ, in Middle voice (ὑπερουσιοῦμαι). Lexica are not aware of it, since this is the sole case of this verb being used. Proclus uses this extravagant verb in order to suggest that the way in which gods are born is ineffable.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, pp. 363 4. Cf. op. cit. v. 3, p. 100: αὐτὸ δέ ἐστι τὸ πρώτως ὃ οὐ κατὰ μέθεξίν ἐστι τοιοῦτον. Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 91: Λέγεται δὲ αὖ καὶ ὁ νοερὸς κόσμος αὐτάρκης … † αὐτάρκειά ἐστιν ἢ οὕτως †οὐ κατὰ μέθεξιν οὐδὲ κατ᾿ ἔλλαμψιν οὐδὲ καθ᾿ ὁμοιότη τα τὸ αὔταρκες ἔχουσα καὶ τὸ παντελές, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι ὅ ἐστι. … ἑαυτοὺς πεπληρωκότες, μᾶλλον δὲ πληρώματα τῶν ὅλων ἀγαθῶν ὑπάρχοντες. Op. cit. v. 3, p. 55: Εἰ δ᾿ ἔστι τὸ πρώτως ἀθάνατον καὶ οὐ κατὰ μέθεξιν, ἀλλ᾿ αἴτιον ἀθανασίας καὶ ἀϊδιότητος, εἴη ἂν ζωὴ παρ᾿ ἑαυτῆς ἔχουσα τὸ ἀεὶ καὶ ὑπερβλύζουσα τὴν τῆς ἀϊδιότητος δύναμιν καὶ ἐπορέγουσα τοῖς ἄλλοις αὐτὴν καθ᾿ ὅσον ἕκαστον πέφυκε.  Eusebius, Commentaria in Psalmos, PG.24.29.35 37: Αἰτία δὲ τοῦ αἰνεῖν, τὸ ἀγαθὸν οὐ κατὰ μέθεξιν εἶναι, ὡσαύτως δὲ τῷ Πατρί. This attribution to Eusebius should be doubted, given his real views. Cyril of Alexandria, De Sancta Trinitate Dialogi, p. 556: οὐ κατὰ μέθεξιν ἔχουσα τὸ σοφόν, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτόχρημα καὶ σοφία τὸ πᾶν. Op. cit. p. 594: κατὰ φύσιν ἅγιος ὁ Υἱὸς καὶ οὐ κατὰ μέθεξιν ἐκ Πατρός. Fragmenta in Sancti Pauli Epistulam i ad Corinthios, p. 276: ὡς ἐν ἰδίᾳ φύσει ὑπάρχοντός τε καὶ νοουμένου Θεοῦ, οὐ κατὰ μέθεξιν. Glaphyra in Pentateuchum,

1010

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

since Proclus was much younger than Cyril, is appears as though influence upon the latter came from Origen.⁸³⁵ ‘The Father generated the Son’ has been the normal expression for Christian theology to express the Trinitarian formula about the Son having been born from the Father. However, it is hardly common knowledge that the same notion was expressed in equivalent terms that had an Anaxagorean tenor, namely, ‘the Mind generated the Logos’. This proposition (which Plotinus used, as we have seen) was entertained also by celebrated stars of Christian theology expounding the same doctrine. Of them, Cyril of Alexandria is the most characteristic case: to him, to say that the Father gave birth to the Son is the same as saying that Mind generated the Logos.⁸³⁶ It is all too evident that Cyril wrote having in mind his

PG.69.549.38 39: καὶ ἔστιν ἅγιος, οὐ κατὰ μέθεξιν. Gennadius Scholarius, De Spiritus Sancto i, part 1, p. 33 (ref. to Cyril): προσεῖναι Χριστῷ, ὡς οὐ κατὰ μέθεξίν τινα θεότητος ὄντι Θεῷ. Part 2, p. 397. ACO, Concilium Universale Ephesenum anno 431, tome 1.1.6, p. 85: γεγέννηται γὰρ ὡς ἐκ ζωῆς τοῦ πατρός. … οὐ κατὰ μέθεξιν ἔχει τὸ εἶναι λαμπρόν.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1656.12 13: ὁ δὲ Σωτὴρ οὐ κατὰ μετουσίαν, ἀλλὰ κατ᾿ οὐσίαν ἐστὶ Θεός. This inspired later anti Arian argument and terminology. Athanasius, De Synodis Arimini in Italia et Seleuciae in Isauria, 48.3; 48.5; 53.3 4; Epistula ad Afros Episcopos, PG.26.1044.14. Basil of Cae sarea, Adversus Eunomium, PG.29.620.20 23. Likewise, Didymus, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret. Cf. Cassian the Sabaite, Scholia in Apocalypsin, Scholion XX: Ἅγιος, ἀληθινὸς ὁ μὴ μετουσίᾳ, ἀλλ᾿ οὐσίᾳ ὢν τοιοῦτος, αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ θεὸς λόγος. Proclus entertained this formula, too, all the more so since it appeared to descent directly from Platonic accounts about ‘participation’ (μέθεξις), adding of course his own convenient elaboration on that. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 692; 734 5; 756; 860; 1181; commTim, v. 1, pp. 139; 332; 422; v. 2, pp. 116; 303; commRep, v. 2, p. 223; Theologia Platonica, v. 1 pp. 65 6; Institutio Theologica, 203; De Decem Dubitationibus Circa Providentiam, 20.  Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarii in Joannem, v. 1, pp. 69 70: διὰ τὸ λόγον καὶ σοφίαν καὶ ἀπαύγασμα καὶ χαρακτῆρα καὶ δύναμιν τοῦ Πατρὸς ἀποκαλεῖσθαι τὸν Υἱόν· λόγος μὲν γὰρ καὶ σοφία, διὰ τὸ ἐκ νοῦ καὶ ἐν νῷ προσεχῶς καὶ ἀδιαστάτως, καὶ τὴν εἰς ἄλληλα τῶν σημαινομένων, ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις, ἀντεμβολήν· νοῦς γὰρ ἐν λόγῳ καὶ σοφίᾳ, καὶ λόγος εἰς νοῦν ἀμοιβαδὸν ὀφθήσονται, καὶ τὸ μεσολαβοῦν οὐδὲν ἢ χωρίζον τοῦ ἑτέρου τὸ ἕτερον. Op. cit. pp. 604 5: ἀπε στάλη δὲ οὕτως ὡς λόγος ἐκ νοῦ, ὡς ἀπαύγασμα τὸ ἡλιακὸν ἐξ αὐτοῦ. … οὐ γὰρ ἐπειδήπερ ἐξεδόθη λόγος ἐκ νοῦ, καὶ ἀπαύγασμα τυχὸν ἐξ ἡλίου, διὰ τοῦτο χρὴ πάντως οἴεσθαι τῶν ἐκβε βηκότων ὑπάρχειν ἔρημα τὰ γεννήσαντα. De Sancta Trinitate Dialogi, pp. 450 1: Ἔστι γὰρ ἐκ νοῦ καὶ εἰς νοῦν ὁ λόγος ἀεί, καὶ μὴν καὶ ὁ νοῦς ἐν λόγῳ. ‘Η εἰ τοῦτο φαῖεν ἂν ὡς οὐκ ἄριστα ἔχοι, νοῦς μὲν ἄλογος ἔσται, λόγος δὲ ἄνους … Νοῦς μὲν γὰρ ἀεὶ λόγου ῥίζα τε καὶ γένεσις, νοῦ δὲ αὖ λόγος καρπός τε καὶ κύημα. Ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἄλογος οὐδαμῶς, καὶ εἰ λόγον ἐκτέκοι, ὁ δὲ τὴν τοῦ τε κόντος ποιότητα καὶ ἰδέαν φύσιν ὥσπερ ἰδίαν διεκληρώσατο, πρόεισί τε τὸν τεκόντα παρα βλάψας οὐδέν. … νοῦς ὅτι λόγον ἔχει, λόγος δὲ αὖ πάλιν ὅτι μεμέστωται νοῦ, πῶς ἂν νοοῖτο ποτὲ δίχα μὲν λόγου νοῦς, λόγος δὲ νοῦ τητώμενος. Op. cit. p. 452: Ὅτι λόγου μὲν ἡ ἐκ νοῦ πρὸς τὸ ἔξω φορὰ καὶ τὸ ἀπαθὲς τῆς γεννήσεως καὶ μὴν ὅτι τὸ γεννηθὲν οὐ διατετμήσεται, μενεῖ δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτό τε ἐν τῷ γεννήσαντι νῷ καὶ τὸν γεννήσαντα νοῦν ἕξει που πάντως ἐν

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1011

reception of Anaxagoras, since he conveniently entertains into his Trinitarian exposition characteristic expressions associated with the Presocratic philosopher, who regarded Mind as ‘simple’ (ἁπλοῦς), ‘incorporeal’ (ἀσώματος), and ‘most pure’ (καθαρώτατος).⁸³⁷ In view of this, it is hard to attribute the same idea to Athanasius, since a text ascribed to him is also attributed to Cyril, which is more likely.⁸³⁸ On the other hand, the late Byzantine theologian Marcus Eugenicus (1392‒1444, Archbishop of Ephesus) noted that the Council of Nicaea, where Athanasius was a protagonist, used the analogy of human mind producing the logos in Trinitarian accounts.⁸³⁹ Likewise, an anonymous author, who believed that he would convince his readers by signing as Athanasius, applied the same analogy, too.⁸⁴⁰ The tension within Christian doctrinal debate because of this Anaxagorean influence by Cyril can be noticed in one characteristic instance. Photius respectfully reviewed the treatise (which comprised eleven discourses) by Patriarch Eulogius I of Alexandria (579/80 - 607/8), addressing an unnamed pope of Rome (which should have been Gregory I, 590-604) who held Eulogius accountable for doctrinal aberration. It appears that the mistake of Eulogius was that he used the foregoing Anaxagorean language of Cyril. However, in the first discourse of his reply, Eulogius launched an attack against the pope, accusing

ἑαυτῷ. Op. cit. p. 462: ᾿Aποπληξία γάρ, οἶμαι, νοῦ καὶ παρακοπὴ Θεὸν μὲν οὐκ εἶναι λέγειν κατὰ φύσιν καὶ ἀληθινὸν τὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ πεφηνότα Υἱόν, ὡς λόγον ἐκ νοῦ.  Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus De Sancta Consubstantiali Trinitate, PG.75.76.19 26: Ἐπειδὴ δὲ οὔτε σῶμα Θεός, οὔτε μὴν τὴν ἐν τοῖς σώμασιν ἔχει διαφορὰν (ἄρσεν γὰρ καὶ θῆλυ μόνον ἐν τοῖς τῶν σωμάτων ζητεῖται σχήμασιν), ἁπλοῦς δὲ καὶ ἀσώματος, καὶ αὐτὸ δὴ τοῦτο νοῦς ὁ πάντων καθαρώτατος, διὰ ταύτην οἶμαι τὴν αἰτίαν χρῆναι δεῖν τοὺς ὅσοι τὴν ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῦ γέννησιν ἐξετάζειν βούλονται, τὰς ἐκ νοῦ καρποφορίας ζητεῖν, καὶ ταύταις μᾶλλον ἐξομοιοῦν ἐπείγεσθαι τοῦ Λόγου τὴν γέννησιν. Op. cit. PG.75.80.28 31: Ὑποδείγματα μερικῶς σημαίνοντα τὸ πῶς ἀμε ρίστως ἐκ Πατρὸς προῆλθεν ὁ Υἱός. Ὁ λόγος οὗτος ὁ προφορικὸς ᾧ κεχρήμεθα, εἰς νοῦν καὶ ἐκ νοῦ γεννᾶται.  Cyril of Alexandria, Expositio in Psalmos, PG.69.1028.1 5 (comm. on Psalm, 44:2): Ἐνταῦθά μοι νόει τοῦ ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρὸς Θεοῦ Λόγου πρόοδον, ἤτοι γέννησιν, οὐχ ὡς σῶμα ἐκ σώματος, ἀλλὰ ἀσύνθετον, ἄϋλόν τε καὶ νοητήν, ὡς λόγον ἐκ νοῦ, οὐ κατὰ μερισμὸν ἢ διαίρεσιν. In a commentary on Psalms attributed to Athanasius, PG.27.564.40 46, the catenist wrote that this idea and expression belonged to both ‘Athanasius and the great and divine Cyril’: ᾿Aθανάσιος δὲ ὁ πάνυ καὶ ὁ θεῖος Κύριλλος.  Marcus Eugenicus, Testimonia Spiritum Sanctum ex Patre Procedere Probantia, Testimonium 118: Παραδείγματα τῆς πρώτης ἁγίας καὶ οἰκουμενικῆς συνόδου. ᾿Aνάλογον γὰρ λαμβάνουσι τῷ Πατρὶ μὲν τὸν ἐν ἡμῖν νοῦν, τὸ πῦρ, τὴν πηγήν· τῷ Υἱῷ δὲ τὸν λόγον, τὸ ἀπαύγασμα, τὸν ποταμόν.  Pseudo Athanasius, Syntagma ad Quendam Politicum, PG.28.1404.15 16: ὁ δὲ Υἱὸς καὶ γέν νημα τοῦ Πατρός, ὡς ἐξ ἡλίου φῶς, καὶ ἐκ νοῦ λόγος.

1012

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

him of having made no mention of neither the Tome of Leo, nor of such heretics as Eutyches, Dioscorus, and Severus of Antioch; he also accused him of inaccurate use of the Chalcedonian locution, indeed of ignorance of all four oecumenical councils that had settled orthodoxy by that time.⁸⁴¹ Eulogius defended himself by appealing to Athanasius and Cyril, that is, to two Alexandrians. A main point he made was rebutting the accusation of having stated that God is ‘One’ and indeed God is ‘Mind’ – which evidently he had received from Cyril. His argument is characteristic and, in essence, he claims that his language (Anaxagorean, Neoplatonic, as well as Cyrillian) is perfectly orthodox: “To us, God is One and he is also considered as Three” (Θεὸς οὖν ἡμῖν ἐστιν εἷς καὶ Τριὰς θεωρούμενος). This Trinity is ‘the King’, who is ‘simple’, and there is no ‘first and second and third’ in Him. The Trinity is really a Monad, and the Monad is Trinity (Μονὰς γὰρ ἀληθῶς ἡ Τριάς, καὶ Τριὰς ἡ μονάς). Therefore, this is both One and not-One (τοῦτο δὲ ἕν τέ ἐστι καὶ οὐχ ἕν). More importantly, God cannot be called ‘Being’, since He was not produced from any being prior to Him (πῶς γὰρ ἂν εἴη κυρίως ὂν τὸ ἐκ μὴ ὄντων παρηγμένον, καὶ εἰς τὸ μὴ ὂν τῇ γε οἰκείᾳ φύσει ὑπορρέον;), which is the Neoplatonic notion that the One is prior to Being, and the latter is identified with the Intellect.⁸⁴² However, the fact is that Cyril had sanctioned the notion of ‘Mind’ as one expressing God, which though happened to be the gravamen against Eulogius. This is the point on which Photius sought to exonerate not only Eulogius, but also Cyril, but this he did in characteristic Neoplatonic terms. And if the theologians acclaim the Divine Nature styling it One and Mind (ὡς νοῦν οἱ θεολόγοι τὸ ἓν ἐπὶ τῆς θείας ὑμνοῦσι φύσεως), they do so only in reference to the impas sible birth of the Logos [from the Mind] (ἀλλὰ διὰ μόνην τὴν ἀπαθῆ τοῦ Λόγου γέννησιν τοῦτο παραλαμβάνουσιν). For [strictly speaking] the pious perception of Deity is to posit a theological notion of it as being superior to the nature of Mind (ἡ γὰρ εὐσεβὴς ἔννοια καὶ τῆς τοῦ νοῦ φύσεως ὑπεριδρυμένην θεολογεῖ τὴν θεότητα), since in Mind there is both sameness and otherness (ταυτότης καὶ ἑτερότης),⁸⁴³ as well as motion and stillness (κίνησίς τε καὶ στάσις),⁸⁴⁴ and, in general, Mind is not exempt from such twofold notions (καὶ τῆς διπλόης παντελῶς οὐκ ἐξίσταται).⁸⁴⁵

 Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 230, p. 267.  See Porphyry, Sententiae, 26, quoted supra, pp. 920 1, note 438.  Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.4; VI.7.39. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1188; commTim, v. 2, pp. 142; 152; 155; 167; 263; 307. Damascius, In Parmenidem, pp. 100; 153.  Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. III.9.9; V.1.4; VI.2.8; VI.6.3; VI.7.8. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, pp. 24; 36; v. 3, pp. 26 7; In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 776; 1153; commTim, v. 1, p. 174; v. 2, pp. 134 5. Damascius, Princ, p. 176; In Parmenidem, pp. 100 2; 153; 156.  Photius, op. cit. p. 278. See this analysis further, which is Neoplatonic all the way through.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1013

The idea about the Son having been born from the Father, taken as equivalent to the Logos having been born from the Mind, cannot be traced in Gregory of Nazianzus’ extant writings. However, two later learned scholars and great admirers of Gregory implied that this was Gregory’s idea, too.⁸⁴⁶ The same goes for Gregory of Nyssa: he uses the analogy of mind generating its logos in his polemic against Eunomius, but the example pertains to human being;⁸⁴⁷ and although the aim and context of that work is Trinitarian exposition, there is no clear reference of the kind Cyril of Alexandria made. However (as it was the case with Nazianzen), a Byzantine theologian, writing nine centuries after Gregory of Nyssa, quotes from a work by Gregory entitled Περὶ Θεογνωσίας (‘On the Knowledge of God’, a work mentioned also by Gregory Palamas), in which Gregory entertains the idea explicitly.⁸⁴⁸ This was probably what encouraged this commentator to apply the same idea himself.⁸⁴⁹ In any event, it appears that a chain of scholars, from the fourth century onwards, used in Trinitarian accounts the notion of the Mind having generated the Logos. As already discussed,⁸⁵⁰ the source of this was Plotinus writing under the influence of Anaxagoras,⁸⁵¹ but the Christian authors who used it while anathematizing Neoplatonism had no inkling of this.  Nicetas David (philosopher, grammarian, theologian, ninth tenth century), Laudatio in Gre gorium Theologum, 6, lines 66 7: γεννητὸν δὲ τὸν υἱὸν ὡς λόγον ἐκ νοῦ τοῦ πατρὸς γεγεννημέ νον. Basilius Minimus (Βασίλειος ὁ ἐλάχιστος, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, fl. 945 956), Commentarii in Gregorii Nazianzeni Orationem xxxviii [=In Theophania (orat. 38)], 3.1a: Χριστὸς γεννᾶται· γεννᾶται εἶπεν, οὐκ ἐγεννήθη· διὰ τί; διότι τὴν αὐτὴν ἀεὶ σῴζει θείαν πρόοδον ὁ Υἱὸς καὶ Θεὸς ὡς Λόγος ἐκ Νοῦ ἀνεκφοιτήτως ἀεὶ γεννώμενος, οὐχ ἅπαξ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς προ ελθών τε καὶ γεννηθεὶς ὡς ἡμεῖς. Op. cit. 3.128: ὁ τοῦ Πατρὸς ὅρος καὶ λόγος· Εἰκότως οὖν ὅρον τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ λόγον τὸν Υἱὸν εἶπεν οὐ μόνον ἀπαθῶς ὡς Λόγον ἐκ Νοῦ προελθόντα τοῦ Πα τρός, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὡς συμπληρωτικὸν οὐσίας καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ τί ἐστι δηλοῦντα τοῦ Πατρός.  Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 3.6.29: λέγω δὲ τὸν ἐκ τοῦ νοῦ γεννώμενον λόγον.  John Beccus (supra, p. 967, note 642), De Processione Spiritus Sancti, p. 177: He says he quotes from Gregory of Nyssa’s Περὶ Θεογνωσίας, mentioned by Gregory Palamas, too. ὅπερ ὁ ἅγιος ἐφεξῆς τῆς ῥηθείσης ἐπάγει περικοπῆς, λέγων οὕτως· Ἵνα διὰ μὲν τοῦ Λόγου εἰπεῖν τὴν ὡς ἐκ νοῦ, τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρός, ἀπαθεστάτην καὶ ἄῤῥητον τοῦ Υἱοῦ παραδεξώμεθα γέννησιν.  John Beccus, op. cit. p. 228: Ὁ λόγος ὑπάρχων ἐκ νοῦ, προσεχῶς καὶ ἀμέσως ὑπάρχει ἐκ νοῦ, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μόνον τοῦ νοῦ λέγεται λόγος. Epigraphae, 2, p. 636: He quotes from Cyril of Alex andria, Commentarii in Joannem, v. 1, p. 70; see supra, p. 1008, note 836): Λόγος μὲν γὰρ καὶ σοφία ὁ Υἱός, διὰ τὸ ἐκ νοῦ καὶ ἐν νῷ προσεχῶς καὶ ἀδιαστάτως.  See chapter 10, pp. 732 3.  Cassian the Sabaite (Pseudo Didymus) (sixth century), De Trinitate, 15.16: ἐποίησεν ὁ πατὴρ ὡς νοῦς διὰ λόγου. Methodius I of Constantinople (ninth century), Vita Euthymii Sardiani, chap ter 33, lines 695 700: καὶ ὁ δημιουργὸς Θεὸς Λόγος ἐκ νοῦ τοῦ Πατρὸς προβέβληται … ἐν τῷ Υἱῷ καὶ Λόγῳ τόν τε Πατέρα ὡς νοῦν καὶ τὸ ἀναπαυόμενον ἐπὶ τῷ Υἱῷ Πνεῦμα ἑωράκαμεν καὶ ἐλά βομεν. Eustratius of Nicaea, Orationes, 1, pp. 56 7: Μίαν μὲν γὰρ εἶναι τὴν ἀρχὴν … ἀποδοῦναι

1014

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

The Christians who entertained the Anaxagorean idea were satisfied that the notion of the Father/Mind generating the Son/Logos does not involve or imply that either of them stands on different ontological level. On the contrary, when Athanasius was challenged to interpret Jesus’ saying that ‘the Father is greater than I’,⁸⁵² he did not take it as referring to the Incarnation, which has been always the easy solution to have recourse to: instead, he retorted to his opponents that such antonyms as ‘greater and less’ are applicable only to beings of the same kind.⁸⁵³ Likewise, Gregory of Nyssa derided Eunomius for assuming that the very fact of enumerating the Father first, the Son second, and the Holy Spirit third (τὴν τῆς τάξεως ἀκολουθίαν) introduces ‘dissimilarity of nature’ (τῆς τῶν φύσεων ἑτερότητος ἐνδεικτικήν … ὅσα τῷ ἀξιώματι τῆς φύσεως ὑποβέβηκεν εἰς δευτέραν τάξιν ἀποπεμπόμενος), since it appeared to Eunomius that numbers were used to indicate classification of natures instead of ‘quantity of things’ (τῆς τῶν πραγμάτων ποσότητος).⁸⁵⁴ The implication of Gregory of Nyssa was that that only beings of the same nature lend themselves to enumeration. His brother Basil argued likewise: when we count, one, two, three, we count an increasing multitude; we do not classify things as first, second, and third.⁸⁵⁵ Origen does not feature in the foregoing list of authors who employed the formula of Mind generating the Logos, instead of the Father generating the Son. This is hardly an accident since he had more sophisticated ways to couch

λόγον καὶ πνεῦμα, κἀν τῷ τὸν Λόγον ὡς ἐκ νοῦ γεννᾶσθαι τῆς πρώτης ἀρχῆς, ἅμα καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα προϊέναι ἐξ αὐτοῦ, κἀντεῦθεν λέγεσθαι εἶναι διὰ τοῦ Υἱοῦ τὴν ἐκπόρευσιν. Gregory Pardus (grammarian and rhetor, eleventh twelfth century), Exegesis in Canonem Iambicum De Festo Die Spiritus Sancti, 1: Λόγε Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρός, πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων γεννηθεὶς ἀρεύστως καὶ ἀπαθῶς ὡς ὁ ἡμέτερος λόγος ἐκ νοῦ. Theorianus Magister (philosopher, theologian, twelfth century), Disputatio Secunda cum Nersete Patriarcha Generali Armeniorum, p. 216: Ὁ Πατὴρ ἀγέν νητος, οὐ γὰρ ἔκ τινος, ὅτι ἐξ οὐδενός· ὁ Υἱὸς γεννητὸς ἐκ τοῦ Πατρός, ἀσωμάτως ὡς λόγος ἐκ νοῦ. καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα ἐκπορευτὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἀνεξερευνήτως καὶ ἀκατανοήτως. Nicolas Hy druntinus (theologian, twelfth thirteenth century), Disputatio Contra Judaeos, p. 14: ὁ υἱὸς ὡς λόγος ἐκ νοῦ ἀπαθῶς καὶ ἀρρεύστως ἐκ πατρὸς ἐγεννήθη.  John, 14:28.  Athanasius, Orationes Tres Contra Arianos, PG.26.133.27 35: ἑτερογενὴς ἄρα καὶ ἑτερούσιός ἐστιν ὁ Υἱὸς τῶν γενητῶν, καὶ μᾶλλον τῆς τοῦ Πατρὸς οὐσίας ἴδιος καὶ ὁμοφυὴς τυγχάνει. Διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Υἱὸς οὐκ εἴρηκεν, Ὁ Πατήρ μου κρείττων μου ἐστιν, ἵνα μὴ ξένον τις τῆς ἐκείνου φύσεως αὐτὸν ὑπολάβοι· ἀλλὰ μείζων εἶπεν, οὐ μεγέθει τινί, οὐδὲ χρόνῳ, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν ἐξ αὐτοῦ τοῦ Πατρὸς γέννησιν· πλὴν ὅτι καὶ ἐν τῷ εἰπεῖν, μείζων ἐστίν, ἔδειξε πάλιν τὴν τῆς οὐσίας ἰδιότητα.  Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 1.1.200 4.  Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 18.45: Οὐ γὰρ κατὰ σύνθεσιν ἀριθμοῦμεν, ἀφ᾿ ἑνὸς εἰς πλῆθος ποιούμενοι τὴν παραύξησιν, ἓν καὶ δύο καὶ τρία λέγοντες, οὐδὲ πρῶτον καὶ δεύτερον καὶ τρίτον.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1015

his Trinitarian theology, which paved the way to Nicaea. Origen was a pupil of Anaxagoras, not of Numenius. This is why his references to first and second Gods do not suggest different essence, unlike those of Numenius. He did not need to employ the pattern of Father/Mind generating the Son/Logos because he was able to use better weapons. My suggestion then is that, if Gregory of Nyssa was able to retort to Eunomius’ jibe in the manner we just saw, he owed this to Origen couching some of his Anaxagorean ideas. In other words, ironically, the gist of the Nicene claim that the generation of the Logos from the Mind introduces no ontological dissimilarity was in fact Neoplatonic, since never did Plotinus argue for any classification between the Nous/ Mind/Intellect and its Logos. When Plotinus wrote that ‘everything was produced from the Mind and its Logos’, he certainly did not imply that there is any ontological dissimilarity between these two: he only said the obvious, namely, that the generative activity of the Intellect was concomitant with rationality. This is precisely what Origen said, writing only a short time before Plotinus: there is no way for God to be without his Logos, since it is impossible to imagine a state in which the Wisdom of God was ‘irrational’, although certainly ‘life’ was not beginningless, but it became as of a certain beginning.⁸⁵⁶ Once God is posited as ‘one and entirely simple’,⁸⁵⁷ it would be absurd to maintain that God is rational, and yet, at the same time, to argue that God Himself, on the one hand, and his rationality or Logos, on the other, belong to different ontological levels. Origen knew this as much as Plotinus did. His reference to ‘second God’ only means that he wished to expound the Mind of Anaxagoras as a Trinitarian God: God the Father is the source of all Deity; the Son/Logos is his wisdom and rationality that acts as a Personal Hypostasis within the world while being also tran-

 Origen, commJohn, II.19.130. I have canvassed this in COT, pp. 22; 23; 136; 139. This was the idea of Anaxagoras, too. Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 461: τοιοῦτος δὲ ὁ νοῦς, ὃν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐνόησεν ἐργαζόμενον, ἐν οἷς λέγει ἄρξασθαι τὸν νοῦν διακρίνειν. Origen knew the notion of cre ation ex nihilo since the times of Ammonius Saccas. This is why Hierocles is so clear reporting this doctrine. Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 251, p. 460b.  Origen, commJohn, I.20.119: Ὁ θεὸς μὲν οὖν πάντη ἕν ἐστι καὶ ἁπλοῦν. The same adjective ἁπλοῦς was used by Anaxagoras depicting the Mind. Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 429b23 24: ὁ νοῦς ἁπλοῦν ἐστὶ καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ μηθενὶ μηθὲν ἔχει κοινόν, ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας. Cf. Plotinus writing πάντη ἁπλοῦν: I.1.12(7); V.3.11(27); V.3.13(17); V.9.13(17); V.9.14(3). Likewise, John Philopo nus, commAnim, p. 85. Sophonias, paraphrAnim, pp. 15; 133. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.5; 3.7; 3.9. Also, Origen, Homilies on Genesis (Latin), III.2: “For that substance [sc. the divine one] is simple”. Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 14, on Mind being πάντη ἀμιγῆ καὶ ἁπλοῦν.

1016

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

scendent;⁸⁵⁸ and the Holy Spirit is a third Personal Hypostasis, the agent bestowing sanctification to the world.⁸⁵⁹ Nevertheless, God is one and simple, and the Three is One God. The Logos, as a ‘second’ or ‘another’ God (that is, a distinct hypostasis) was not generated from the Father just for the purpose of creating world: He was timelessly with the Father, as John 1:1 informs, since the Father was always with his Reason.⁸⁶⁰ There is indeed otherness, but this is hypostatic, not an ontological one. Origen’s Νοῦς is the Anaxagorean Mind, not the Neoplatonic Intellect. A serious implication of this is that, whereas in Neoplatonism the notion of Being makes sense with the Intellect, not with the One, to Anaxagoras and Origen no such distinction makes sense. To Anaxagoras, Mind, whether the lesser or the greater one, is the same; to Origen, and to the gospel of John, whosoever has seen the Son he has also seen the Father, and the Father cannot be seen unless through the Son, since the Son and the Father are one. In other words, where the Son is and acts, all of the Trinity also is and acts, because she is of one nature, of one essence, it has one will, and one single action. In Neoplatonism, life and being are dependent on the Intellect, and only in an attenuated sense are they so on the One. Whereas Plotinus did not care too much about discovering triadic classifications,⁸⁶¹ Proclus was obsessed with this job,⁸⁶² and posited ‘triads’ every now and then.⁸⁶³ These were not always consistent, which is why (in relation to our

 See COT, chapter 5, ‘The Place of the Logos’, pp. 165 72.  This is one of the ideas that Origen maintained throughout his Christian life, from the early Princ (I.3.5; I.3.7; II.10.7), to the late Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 10.12.4 (Latin): “The Holy Spirit is the fount of sanctification.”  Here is what Origen wrote in Alexandria, while he was an incipient Christian: οὐκ ἦν γάρ, ὅτε ἡ ἀρχὴ ἄλογος ἦν, διὸ λέγεται· Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος. commJohn, II.19.130.  Plotinus did not pursue this kind of trichotomy. Nevertheless, two references of his about number three (‘or a myriad, or any other number’, op. cit. VI.6.10) being ‘one’, are noteworthy, since they evince how he understood a ‘triad’ to be ‘one’. Cf. op. cit. VI.6.16: “And indeed gen erally among the intelligibles, if the living being is itself more than one, a triad for instance, this triad is substantial (αὕτη ἡ τριὰς οὐσιώδης ἡ ἐν τῷ ζῴῳ). However, the triad which does not yet belong to the living being, but is in a general way a triad in real being, is a principle of substance (ἡ δὲ τριάς ἡ μήπω ζῴου, ἀλλ᾿ ὅλως τριὰς ἐν τῷ ὄντι, ἀρχὴ οὐσίας).” This means that it would not have been a problem for Plotinus to understand the Christian doctrine of a Trinitarian God being One. Anyway, his attack against the ‘Christians’ was in fact aimed against the Gnostics.  Probably taking his cue by the Enneades, VI.6.6, referring to ‘intelligible things’, ‘some of which are henads and some of them dyads or triads’.  Proclus posited the triad of ‘the first God (= the Father) and Power and Intellect (πρῶτος θεός, δύναμις, νοῦς), of which he is the Father’ (In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1070); but he clas

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1017

topic) Damascius pointed out that there was a great deal of dissent among his predecessors, hence he had to make up his own mind. He says that, whereas in the first place he followed the opinion of the older Neoplatonists, subsequently he changed his mind and agreed with later ones.⁸⁶⁴ He then allows that the supreme ‘intelligible principle, although imparticipable by nature, gave birth to a substance which is participable’ (ὥστε τὸ μὲν νοητόν, φύσει ὂν ἀμέθεκτον, ἐγέννησεν μεθεκτὴν οὐσίαν). However, the participable substance is united with the imparticipable one (πάντη ἡνῶσθαι τὸ μεθεκτὸν καὶ ἀμέθεκτον … Ἡ μὲν ἄρα μεθεκτὴ οὐσία συνήνωται τῇ ἀμεθέκτῳ). Life, indeed life superintended by providence, appeared once the supreme principle ‘took distances’ (ἀποστάσης γὰρ ἐκείνης [sc. τῆς θεότητος] ἐφάνη ἂν ζωὴ προνοοῦσα) and left this creative action to the participable substance which was born from the imparticipable one. Put in simple words, the Uncreated Being is utterly transcendent to creaturliness and alien to such an activity. Damascius’ view is intriguing to follow, since it has a intricate bearing on Origen’s Anaxagorean thought. On no account should the Intelligible reality be distinguished into a Henad and the Being which is dependent upon that (τὸ μὲν νοητὸν οὐ διαιρετέον εἰς ἑνάδα καὶ ὂν ταύτης ἐξηρ τημένον). For according to Parmenides, all intelligible reality is one and the same (ἓν ὂν γὰρ ὅλον ὁμοῦ τὸ νοητόν) and it is not divided into something that comes first and another that follows (καὶ οὐ διέστη εἰς ἡγούμενον καὶ ἑπόμενον). For in cases that any sort of var iance takes place, this is both the whole and parts of the whole, that is, what was and what is [is the same] (ὅλον ἐγένετο καὶ μέρη τοῦ ὅλου, τὸ ἦν καὶ τὸ ὄν). The one is not the ve hicle, and being is not that which is carried by the vehicle (οὐ τὸ μὲν ὄχημα, τὸ δὲ ὀχούμενον). Therefore, if the intelligible goes forward to any place, it will always come forth as one being (ὥστε εἰ προΐοι τὸ νοητὸν ὅπου, πανταχοῦ ἓν ὂν προελεύσεται), though not as being preceding life and subsequently dependent upon the henad [as something in ferior to it] (ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ὂν πρὸ ζωῆς, καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα τῆς ἑνάδος μιᾶς ἐξημμένον); nor will it exist there at all as something which is either participable or imparticipable (οὐδὲ ὅλως ἐκεῖ τὸ μεθεκτόν, ἢ ἀμέθεκτον). We should then examine that reality as one which is de pendent upon a certain essence (ὡς ὑπὸ οὐσίας ἐξαπτομένης ζητητέον). … For, as Parme nides said, each thing is dependent upon one essence, and there is no way for two essences [i. e. a certain thing and being proper] to be dependent upon one [essence, i. e. the henad befitting it] (μόριον ἕκαστον τῆς οὐσίας οἰκείας ἑνάδος ἐξῆπται· οὐκ ἄρα δύο οὐσίαι μιᾶς). … If then, in such a reality, the governing principle is the one, and all reference is made to the one [alone], it follows that there is neither life nor being, and, as a result, there is neither

sified them thus: the First God (τὸ ἀγαθόν) is transcendent to the Power, which in turn is tran scendent to the Intellect (commRep, v. 1, p. 238).  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 6: τοιούτων δὲ ἀντιφερομένων ἑκατέρωθεν λόγων, πάλαι μὲν ἔγωγε τοῖς προτέροις προσεῖχον τὸν νοῦν· νῦν δὲ μετατίθεμαι πρὸς τοὺς δευτέρους.

1018

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

mind nor life (εἰ ἐν τούτοις πρώτοις τὸ ἡγούμενον καὶ συνηρτημένον δεῖ ἓν εἶναι τῷ ἑνὶ συνηρτημένον, οὐκ ἄρα ζωὴ καὶ ὄν, οὐδ᾿ ἄρα ἑξῆς νοῦς καὶ ζωή).⁸⁶⁵

Damascius then was at one with Proclus who posited that One (ἕν) and Being (ὄν) should not be identified with each other,⁸⁶⁶ and Life and Being should be associated with the Intellect, not with the One. The One is not the vehicle, whereas Being is not that which is carried by the vehicle (οὐ τὸ μὲν ὄχημα, τὸ δὲ ὀχούμενον). This means that the Intellect is not the means conveying (or manifesting genuinely) the One, which is not strange to Damascius: If it appears that the Intellect is interweaved with a vehicle (εἰ δὲ προσυφαίνεται καὶ ὄχημα), this is a vehicle which conveys essence proper (which is inferior to the One), not the One itself, in like a manner the body is said to be a vehicle of the soul, but the body itself is not a manifestation of the essence proper [of the soul] (ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ σῶμα τῆς ψυχῆς ὄχημα, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχὶ τῆς οὐσίας προηγουμένως).⁸⁶⁷

If an ontologically subsequent reality appears as carrying its immediately superior one with it, it does not manifest this superior itself, but only what proceeds from that superior reality: the Intellect is a manifestation of Being and of Life (not of the One itself), the body is a manifestation of the individual soul (not of the soul proper and its essence). In contrast to this, the Christian Trinity has one action, even though it may be carried out by one of the Persons. In the Trinity, there is no notion of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’; therefore, she is impervious to being applied such ideas as ‘subordination’ within herself. If one wishes to read this in Damascius, it should be noticed that he draws a demarcation between the Intellect (which is Being) and the Paternal Mind, which is not Being. Damascius adds that ‘speaking generally, Being is not identified with the Paternal Mind’ (ὅλως δὲ ὁ πατρικὸς νοῦς οὐκ ἔστι τὸ ὄν), which could make Mind ontologically subordinate to the Father (ἵνα καὶ ἐξημμένον ᾖ τοῦ πατρός); instead, this is an oneness creating substance (ἀλλ᾿ ἑνὰς οὐσιοποιός). He is God, too (θεὸν καὶ αὐτόν), and certainly he is a God who is the First Paternal Mind (πάντως ὅτι καὶ ὁ πρῶτος πατρικὸς νοῦς θεός). The Father is an intelligible substance, he has intelligence in himself (λέγεται γὰρ εἶναι νοη-

 Damascius, op. cit. pp. 6 7.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 3, p. 69: Δεῖ τοίνυν τὸ μὲν ἓν προτάττειν τοῦ ἑνὸς ὄντος, τὸ δὲ ἓν ὂν ἐξάπτειν τοῦ μόνως ἑνός. Εἰ γὰρ εἴη ταὐτὸν τό τε ἓν καὶ τὸ ἓν ὂν καὶ μηδὲν διαφέροι λέγειν ἓν καὶ ὄν. In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1180: Ἓν οὖν ἑκάτερον ὂν καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου διαφέρον μετὰ τῆς διαφορᾶς οὐκέτ᾿ ἂν εἴη ἕν· ἓν ἄρα μόνως τὸ ἕν· τὸ οὖν ἕτερον αὑτοῦ ὂν οὐχ ἕν.  Damascius, op. cit. p. 7.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1019

τὸν ὁ πατήρ, ἔχων τὸ νοοῦν ἐν ἑαυτῷ); for God does not exist without intelligible Mind (οὐ γὰρ ἄνευ νοός ἐστι νοητοῦ καὶ τὸ νοητὸν οὐ νοῦ χωρὶς ὑπάρχει).⁸⁶⁸ Therefore, ‘quite evidently, Mind/Intellect is God’ (δῆλον ὡς καὶ ὁ νοῦς θεός), and it is also evident that Mind is united with God, in the manner that God is united with God (δῆλον ὡς θεὸς ἑνοῦται θεῷ ἄρα θεός).⁸⁶⁹ This is only an example betokening the convoluted relations between Origen’s Christian thought and Neoplatonic propositions. All of the foregoing statements of Damascius are from the same work, namely, his commentary on Parmenides. But whereas Origen would have endorsed statements granting the divinity of the Paternal Mind/Son and his oneness with the Father, definitely he could not have endorsed the axiom that One (ἕν) and Being (ὄν) should not be identified with each other: for he did identify them and allowed no room for anything being ontologically superior to the Anaxagorean Mind (that is, he dismissed the notion of the One), for which Proclus determined that Origen was in effect an anti-Platonist, meaning of course that he was also an anti-Neoplatonist by the same token.⁸⁷⁰ To Origen, the Mind is the supreme Trinitarian God himself, and he banned any ontological classifications within the Deity, just as Anaxagoras himself did, and later Damascius in his own terms. Simplicius, for his part, appealed to Parmenides and reminded that both Plato and Aristotle had praised him for his wisdom and insightfulness.⁸⁷¹ He concludes that both philosophers ‘acclaimed the intelligible union, because, in that reality, the mind and the intelligible and power and activity are all the same thing’ (ταὐτὸν ἐκεῖ νοῦς καὶ νοητὸν καὶ οὐσία καὶ δύναμις καὶ ἐνέργεια),⁸⁷² because the activity of the Immovable Mover is thinking, indeed thinking itself, therefore, this activity is pure thought (νόησις νοήσεως).⁸⁷³ However, pure thought as the sole activity can only be the one of a Mind, which in fact is no other than the Anaxagorean one. Besides, Simplicius (or, whoever the author was) made an important statement, which is stunning indeed.

 Cf. supra, p. 1016, and note 860, Origen arguing that there is no way for God to be deprived of his Logos, since it could be impossible for the Wisdom/Son ever to be irrational.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 16.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31; but see Damascius, supra, pp. 816 20.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 148, quoting Plato, Theaetetus, 184a1, and Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1076a4 (also in Politica, 1292a13, both instances being a quotation from Homer, Ilias, II.204).  Simplicius, loc. cit.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1074b. Nevertheless, commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodi sias expanded the idea, and he saw the ‘activity’ of the Mind as ‘life’. commMetaph, p. 699: ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ ζωὴ ὑπάρχει τῷ πρώτῳ νῷ· ἡ γὰρ νοῦ ἐνέργεια ζωή, ἐκεῖνο δέ ἐστιν ἡ ἐνέργεια, ἐκεῖνο ἄρα ἡ ζωή.

1020

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Those who perform the same action, they are also of the same essence (ὧν αἱ ἐνέργειαι αἱ αὐταί, τούτων καὶ αἱ οὐσίαι).⁸⁷⁴

The scholar who taught that the Trinity has not only one action, but also one will, one nature, one power, one presence, was Origen himself, which I canvass in another volume to appear later. I styled Simplicius’ statement stunning, because the selfsame phrase appears in Basil of Caesarea rebutting Eunomius,⁸⁷⁵ and that which appears in the text allegedly written by Simplicius is simply a quotation from Basil, who, I have no doubt, in turn had copied from a non-extant work of Origen. It is all but coincidence that Athanasius wrote that Origen’s Trinitarian doctrine was impeccable,⁸⁷⁶ and Basil of Caesarea wrote the following: Until to day, we have not heard of second God whatsoever (δεύτερον δὲ Θεὸν οὐδέπω καὶ τήμερον ἀκηκόαμεν).⁸⁷⁷

Certainly, Basil never felt that Origen said anything wrong about this issue; he was after all Origen’s excerptor who composed the Philocalia along with Gregory of Nazianzus. But then he did hear about this, since he was advised that Eusebius had used this terminology to a point of abuse. Thus, only two sections following that point in the same chapter, Basil rebukes ‘those who introduced such a folly into Christian theology’.⁸⁷⁸ Not that he had not heard about it earlier, of course: all Basil meant was that Eusebius’ statements were an unacceptable novelty, which would have never been sanctioned by such doctors of old as Origen. Damascius and Simplicius represent the eventide and culmination of Neoplatonism. At points, their foregoing analyses stand very close to Origen’s thought, and I have surmised that the possibility of either of those philosophers, or both of them, having been converted to Christianity at a late stage of their life  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 46.  Basil of Caesarea, Adversus Eunomium, PG.29.676.2: ὧν αἱ αὐταί ἐνέργειαι, τούτων καὶ ἡ οὐσία μία.  Athanasius, De Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, 27.1: Περὶ δὲ τοῦ ἀϊδίως συνεῖναι τὸν λόγον τῷ πατρὶ καὶ μὴ ἑτέρας οὐσίας ἢ ὑποστάσεως, ἀλλὰ τῆς τοῦ πατρὸς ἴδιον γέννημα αὐτὸν εἶναι, ὡς εἰρήκασιν οἱ ἐν τῇ συνόδῳ, ἐξέστω πάλιν ὑμᾶς ἀκοῦσαι καὶ παρὰ τοῦ φιλοπόνου Ὠριγένους.  Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 18.45.  Basil of Caesarea, op. cit. 18.47: Οἱ δὲ τὴν ὑπαρίθμησιν ἐν τῷ πρῶτον καὶ δεύτερον καὶ τρί τον λέγειν τιθέμενοι γνωριζέσθωσαν τὸ πολύθεον τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς πλάνης τῇ ἀχράντῳ θεολογίᾳ τῶν Χριστιανῶν ἐπεισάγοντες. Εἰς οὐδὲν γὰρ ἕτερον φέρει τῆς ὑπαριθμήσεως τὸ κακούργημα, ἢ ὥστε πρῶτον καὶ δεύτερον Θεὸν καὶ τρίτον ὁμολογεῖν. Cf. his remark in the same work, 18.45: Οὐ γὰρ κατὰ σύνθεσιν ἀριθμοῦμεν, ἀφ᾿ ἑνὸς εἰς πλῆθος ποιούμενοι τὴν παραύξησιν, ἓν καὶ δύο καὶ τρία λέγοντες, οὐδὲ πρῶτον καὶ δεύτερον καὶ τρίτον.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1021

cannot be excluded.⁸⁷⁹ Their idea that, respecting Deity, it is not possible to speak of either ‘greater’ or ‘lesser’ appears also in a philosophical analysis which is worthy of the highly erudite Didymus, to whom this was actually ascribed. Considering John 14:28 (‘My Father is greater than I’), he did not rush to having recourse to the hackneyed solution of the passage as meaning the Incarnation, but he did so only after he had embarked on a philosophical analysis of a quality matching the foregoing ones by Damascius and Simplicius. An erudite Aristotelist as he was,⁸⁸⁰ Didymus argued that ‘there is nothing contingent in God’, implying the Aristotelian thesis that God is sheer actuality, and no potentiality could be applicable to him. Nevertheless, he goes on, exclusion of ‘contingency’ means also that there is no room for notions of ‘countability’ or ‘comparison’ within the Deity (οὐδὲν δὲ ἐνδεχόμενον καὶ μεμετρημένον ἐν τῷ θεῷ). Therefore, statements determining what is ‘greater’ or ‘lesser’ cannot apply to the actual substance of either the Father or God the Logos (οὐκ ἄρα τὸ μεῖζον καὶ ἔλαττον ἐπὶ τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου ἢ ἐπὶ τοῦ πατρὸς εἴρηται), since God’s nature is not one that can be either ‘counted’ or ‘sketched’ (θεὸς γὰρ μετρεῖσθαι ἢ διαγράφεσθαι οὐ πέφυκεν). To say that the Father is ‘unbegotten’ and the Son ‘begotten’ does not apply to the divine essence of either of them: these are only designations adumbrating the specific mode of being of each Person, they are hypostatic attributes, not the essence of them (εἰ δὲ φήσεις μείζονα εἶναι τὸν πατέρα, ὅτιπερ ἀγέννητος, ὁ δὲ υἱὸς γεννητός, ἐροῦμεν, ὅτι τῶν οὐσιῶν οἱ τρόποι, οὐ τῶν ὑπάρξεων). In other words, when we refer to divine Persons, which are incorporeal and no notion of ‘quality’ is applicable to them (καὶ μάλιστα ἐπὶ τῶν ἀποίων καὶ ἀσωμάτων), their consubstantiability is in no way impugned by attributing to either of them such notions as ‘greater’ or ‘lesser’ (οὐκ ἐλαττοῦσι τὴν ἀξίαν τῶν ὁμοουσίων τὸ ἔλαττον ἢ τὸ μεῖζον τῷδε ἢ τῷδε παρέχοντες). The Supreme Being is ‘simple’, both in itself, as well in respect of our knowledge of it; therefore, any ‘comparison’ in terms of ‘measure or quantity’ is far too alien to the divine nature (οὐ γὰρ πέφυκε τὸ ὂν οὐσίᾳ καὶ γνώσει ἁπλοῦν μέτρῳ ἢ ποσότητι μεγέθους συγκρίνεσθαι). In the case of God, comparison is made between ‘consubstantial’ hypostases. Besides, since God is ‘simple in terms of both knowledge [of Him] and substance. His being is impervious to such notions as ‘greater and lesser’ (τὰ οὖν συγκρινόμενα ὁμοούσια, τὰ δὲ ἁπλᾶ καὶ γνώσει καὶ οὐσίᾳ οὐκ ἐπιδέχεται τὸ μεῖζον καὶ τὸ ἔλαττον).

 See RCR, pp. 11; 24 6; 205; 244 6; 367 9; 372 6; 403; 495; 513; NDGF, pp. 352; 590.  Didymus, Fragmenta in Joannem, fr. 17 (comm. on John, 14:28): Τὸ μείζων ἐνταῦθα πῶς ἐ ξείληφεν; ἆρα ὡς ἐπὶ μεγέθους σωμάτων; ἢ ὡς μείζων ἐν χρόνῳ; ἢ ὡς ἐν ἀρετῇ πλείονι κεκο σμημένος; ἀλλὰ ταῦτα πάντα ἐντὸς ποσότητός ἐστι καὶ τῶν ἐνδεχομένων καὶ μεμετρημένων.

1022

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Following his demonstration of comparative designations being inapplicable to God, Didymus concludes that the passage of John, 14:28 has to refer to the incarnated Logos. For if the expression ‘the Father who sent me is greater than me’ referred to the divine nature, not to the Incarnation, this would entail that the verb ‘sent’ suggests spatial transition, indeed, that the Son as God was confined to a certain place (περιεχόμενον καὶ συγκλειόμενον) and was thence ‘sent’ to a place in which he did not exist before (i. e. the world), and then he returned to the place which he came from (i. e. the divine life). But all of ‘this is absurd’ (ὅπερ ἄτοπον), since it could suggest that Deity is a circumscribed body (σῶμα περιγραπτόν), not the indescribable one that encompasses everything’ (καὶ οὐ τὴν τὰ πάντα περιέχουσαν αὐτοῦ ἀπερίγραπτον θεότητα).⁸⁸¹ The lesson is plain: there is no way to introduce degrees, or ranks, or any kind of order, within the one Deity. The Son was born from the Father and this very notion of ‘birth’ guarantees that both Persons stand on a par with each other. Beside the Plotinian pattern One/Intellect/Soul, which does indeed classify reality into three ontological levels, there are also other aspects of the Neoplatonic thought. These are ideas that would be disturbingly familiar to any Nicene theologian, or at least to those who are always loath to discover affinities of their faith with Neoplatonism and fancy an abyss standing in between. Thus, Proclus argued that the notion of ‘birth’ in itself entails the same ontological par, not a different one: Prior to creating things which are dissimilar to it, any generative [principle, in the first place] engenders [offspring] which is the same as this [generative principle itself] (πᾶν τὸ γεννητικὸν πρὸ τῶν ἀνομοίων τὰ ὅμοια γεννᾶ); and, no doubt, each cause gives its own form and peculiar nature to its offspring (ἕκαστον δήπου τῶν αἰτίων τὴν ἑαυτοῦ μορφὴν καὶ ἰδιότητα τοῖς οἰκείοις παραδώσει γεννήμασι), which is prior to those which are produced as [ontologically] distinct ones, and they are alien to the nature [of this gen erative cause] (καὶ πρὶν τῶν πόρρω προεληλυθότων καὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ φύσεως κεχωρισμένων).⁸⁸²

In his desire to represent himself as a genuine successor (διάδοχος) of Plato, Proclus attributes all of his theories to him – even though Plato himself would have been stunned at several ideas that Neoplatonists forced into his thought. Proclus makes the distinction between ‘a divine Mind’, which is ‘imparticipable’ (ὁ θεῖος

 Didymus, loc. cit.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 3, p. 8. For instance, reflecting in Pythagorean terms, Pro clus argues that the monad generates other numbers: these other numbers belong to the same ontological order as the monad, but then the things that are produced out of them all are of a lower ontological rank.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1023

καὶ ἀμέθεκτος νοῦς) and another ‘divine Mind’, which is participable (ἔσται ἄρα τις νοῦς θεῖος ἅμα καὶ μετεχόμενος). The former is analogous to the Christian Father, the latter to the Son, and the context would leave little doubt about what Proclus really had in mind.⁸⁸³ The participable Mind (which is Zeus, or the Demiurge) does what it does only because the imparticipable Mind makes it possible for things to be done so. All of the ‘causes’ (or, logoi) of the world were placed by the Father in the Logos/Mind/Son;⁸⁸⁴ and certainly the ‘participable Mind’ was produced from the ‘imparticipable’ one.⁸⁸⁵ Following Plato, Proclus styled the Mind which acts within the world ‘wisdom’, as Origen himself did about the Wisdom/Logos/Son.⁸⁸⁶ There is an intricate rapport with Origen’s ideas – not of the condemned Origen, but of the part of his work that remained the object of admiration throughout all centuries. The description of ‘Particular Mind’ by Proclus has hardly different from Origen’s exposition of the Logos, who permeates both all of the universe and each particular rational being in all ranks of life, resting his exegesis on John, 1:26.⁸⁸⁷ Proclus, of course, would have been at pains to avow that he speaks about Platonic forms, not logoi. Nevertheless, he saw the ‘Particular Mind’ (μερικὸς νοῦς) as present throughout the entire universe, as well as pres Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 181: ἔστιν ἄρα καὶ νοῦς θεῖος καὶ νοῦς τις νοερὸς μόνον, ὁ μὲν κατὰ τὴν ἰδιότητα τὴν νοερὰν ἱστάμενος, ἣν ἀπὸ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ μονάδος ἔχει καὶ τοῦ ἀμεθέκτου· ὁ δὲ κατὰ τὴν ἕνωσιν, ἣν ἀπὸ τῆς μετεχομένης ἑνάδος ὑπεδέξατο. See RCR, chapter 7, about Di dymus having influenced Proclus.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 405: διὰ δὴ ταῦτα πρὸ τοῦ μετεχομένου νοῦ τὸν ἀμέθεκτον ὑπ οστήσας καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ τὰς πάντων αἰτίας ὑποθέμενος ἐκεῖθεν καὶ νοῦς καὶ ψυχὰς καὶ σώματα πα ρήγαγεν, ἀφ᾿ ὧν τὸν αἰσθητὸν συνεπλήρωσε κόσμον. Theologia Platonica, v. 3, p. 86: Οὐκοῦν ἐν μὲν τῇ τοῦ Διὸς ἐρεῖς φύσει βασιλικὴν μὲν ψυχήν, βασιλικὸν δὲ νοῦν ἐγγίνεσθαι διὰ τὴν τῆς αἰ τίας δύναμιν, ἐν δὲ ἄλλοις ἄλλα καλά. Op. cit. v. 5, p. 84: καὶ νοῦν ἐπιστήσας τοῖς ὅλοις τὸν δια κοσμοῦντα τὸ πᾶν καὶ ψυχὴν διὰ τὴν τοῦ νοῦ προμήθειαν (οὐ γὰρ ἄνευ ψυχῆς τῷ κόσμῳ πάρε στιν ὁ νοῦς), ἐπ᾿ αὐτὸν ἀνατρέχει λοιπὸν τὸν ἀμέθεκτον νοῦν καὶ τὸν ὑποστάτην τοῦ τε νοῦ τοῦ μετεχομένου καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τὸν ὅλον κόσμον δημιουργήσαντα· καὶ τοῦτον οὐκ ἄλλον ἐπονο μάζει καὶ ἀνυμνεῖ, τὰς αἰτίας περιέχοντα τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ πληρωμάτων, ἢ τὸν μέγαν βασιλέα καὶ ἄρχοντα τῶν ὅλων Δία. Op. cit. v. 5, p. 111: Ἐν δὴ ταύτῃ τῇ τάξει πρῶτον μὲν ἐκλάμπει τὰ γένη πάντα καὶ τὰ εἴδη, … καὶ ἀπὸ ταύτης ἐπὶ πάντα πρόεισι, τόν τε μετεχόμενον νοῦν καὶ τὰς πολυειδεῖς τῶν ψυχῶν διακοσμήσεις καὶ τὴν σωματικὴν ἅπασαν φύσιν.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 51: Ἐκ γὰρ τοῦ ἀμεθέκτου νοῦ πᾶς ὁ μετεχόμενος πρόεισιν.  Proclus, op. cit. p. 85, quoting from Plato, Philebus, 30c5 7 (italics): Οὐκοῦν νοερᾶς μὲν ἐπιστασίας τῷ κόσμῳ μεταδίδωσιν … καί τις ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῖς αἰτία οὐ φαύλη, κοσμοῦσα τε καὶ συντάτ τουσα ἐνιαυτούς τε καὶ ὥρας καὶ μῆνας, σοφία καὶ νοῦς λεγομένη δικαιότατ᾿ ἄν. See further, infra, note 892.  Origen, commJohn, II.35.215; VI.30.154 156; VI.38.188 189; VI.39.197; frJohn, 18; 118. See COT, ‘The Place of the Logos’, pp. 165 72.

1024

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

ent in all creatures, whether angelic or daemonic ones.⁸⁸⁸ Even the imagery of all forms being in the Wisdom is also Origen’s idea, who is at pains to make it clear that the Mind qua Mind is indivisible, and, whereas all forms are in this, Mind / Son /Logos proper should not be identified with the totality of those forms. For it was Origen who wrote that the Logos qua Logos is timelessly with God before all creation, and the logoi that were subsequently created should not be identified with the Logos himself: they are simply the ‘decoration’ in the Body of the Logos.⁸⁸⁹ This decorated Body of the Logos is that which Origen called ‘second God’.⁸⁹⁰ Considering the standard Neoplatonic ontological pattern, what Proclus attributes to the ‘Particular Mind’ he should normally have done to the Cosmic Soul. However, he entertains this notion being under the influence of Porphyry who sought to come up with an account of how transition from the intelligible causes to the perceptible things takes place. While ostensibly paying his respect to Neoplatonic fundamentals (‘God creates by being what he is’), Porphyry went on with explaining this transition by means of the Theory of Logoi, which was the theory of Origen, and, ultimately, of Anaxagoras. The important point is that Proclus describes how the Mind is related to the perceptible reality, since the rationality of the Mind cannot be as transcendent as the Mind is to the Soul. The ‘Particular Mind’ stands midway,⁸⁹¹ it is the agent that explains the ra-

 Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 244: ὁ γὰρ μερικὸς νοῦς προσεχῶς ὑπερίδρυται τῆς ἡμετέρας οὐ σίας, ἀνάγων αὐτὴν καὶ τελειῶν, πρὸς ὃν ἐπιστρεφόμεθα καθηράμενοι διὰ φιλοσοφίας καὶ τὴν ἑαυτῶν νοερὰν δύναμιν τῇ ἐκείνου νοήσει συνάψαντες. τίς δὲ ὁ μερικὸς νοῦς ἐστιν οὗτος, καὶ ὡς οὐχ εἷς ἐστι κατὰ μίαν ψυχὴν μερικήν, οὐδὲ αὐτόθεν ὑπὸ τῶν μερικῶν μετέχεται ψυχῶν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τῶν ἀγγελικῶν καὶ δαιμονίων ψυχῶν τῶν ἀεὶ κατ᾿ αὐτὸν ἐνεργουσῶν, δι᾿ ἃς καὶ αἱ με ρικαὶ ψυχαί ποτε μετέχουσι τοῦ νοεροῦ φωτός, διήρθρωται διὰ πλειόνων ἐν ἄλλοις. νῦν δὲ εἰλήφθω τοσοῦτον, ὅτι μετέχεται μὲν οὗτος ὑπ᾿ ἄλλων προσεχῶς ψυχῶν δαιμονίων πᾶς, ἐλλάμ πει δὲ εἰς τὰς ἡμετέρας, ὁπόταν ἐπιστρέφωμεν εἰς αὐτὸν καὶ τὸν ἐν ἡμῖν λόγον νοερὸν ἀποτε λέσωμεν. He refers to this statement later, op. cit. v. 1, p. 256: ἔστι μὲν οὖν ἀεὶ μὲν ὂν πᾶν τὸ νοη τὸν γένος, πᾶν τὸ νοερόν, πᾶς ὁ ὑπερκόσμιος νοῦς, πᾶς ὁ μετεχόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν θείων ψυχῶν, πᾶς ὁ μερικὸς καλούμενος καὶ μετεχόμενος ὑπό τε ἀγγέλων καὶ δαιμόνων καὶ τῶν μερικῶν ψυχῶν, διὰ μέσων, ὡς εἴπομεν, ἐκείνων.  Cf. Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 143: τὸν νοῦν ᾗ νοῦς ἐστιν ἀμέριστόν φαμεν εἶναι, τὸ πλῆθος τῶν εἰδῶν ἕτερον αὐτοῦ νοοῦντες, εἰ καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ ἐστι. Op. cit. v. 2, pp. 45 6: ἐπειδὴ τοίνυν τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ δημιουργῷ στοιχεῖα νόες εἰσὶ καὶ νοεραὶ δυνάμεις ἀμέθεκτοι, … ἀπὸ γὰρ τοῦ ἀμεθέκτου νοῦ προσεχῶς ἐπὶ τὸν μεθεκτόν ἐστιν ἡ πρόοδος, καὶ ὅλως ἀπὸ τῶν ἀμεθέκτων αἰτίων ἐπὶ τὰ μετεχόμενα καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ὑπερκοσμίων εἰδῶν ἐπὶ τὰ ἐγκόσμια καλῶς.  Origen, Cels, V.39.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 5, p. 52: Εἴ τις οὖν ἐστιν ἁπλῶς νοῦς καὶ ὁρῶν νοῦς, οὗτος ἐστὶν ὁ νοερός, ὃν δημιουργὸν ὁ Πλάτων ἀποκαλῶν ἐναργεστάτην ἡμῖν τὴν τάξιν ἣν ἔλαχεν ἐν τοῖς νοεροῖς ἀπέ

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1025

tionality of Nature, as well as that of all rational creatures. In fact, what stands as the proximate superior to the soul is ‘Mind which is participable by the soul’ (τὸν μεθεκτὸν ὑπὸ ψυχῆς νοῦν), which is itself an ‘indivisible essence’ (ἀμέριστος οὐσία).⁸⁹² In that case, the question called for is whether the actual pattern for the world to be made was either the Mind itself, or the Intelligible world of the Mind, or the Cosmic Soul (ἀπορεῖ δὴ οὖν ὁ λόγος, τί παράδειγμα τοῦ παντός, πότερον ψυχὴ ἢ νοῦς ἢ νοητόν), since all of them are eternal (ταῦτα γάρ ἐστι τὰ μόνως αἰώνια).⁸⁹³ This question is out of my scope, yet the point is that Proclus posited the ‘Particular Mind’ as one born from the ‘Imparticipable Mind’, and he used the term ‘born’ deliberately in order to secure that both Minds stand on a par in terms of ontology.⁸⁹⁴ Proclus of course did not part ways with the august pattern of Plotinus, and he affirmed that the One is participated in by the Mind/Intellect.⁸⁹⁵ At the same time, however, he could not always afford not to indulge in Anaxagorean imagery, which no doubt was handed down to him through Porphyry’s work: the ‘participation’ of the Mind in the One is portrayed as the One being a kind of ‘seed’ implanted into the Mind.⁸⁹⁶ Proclus’ Intellect/Mind has several attributes of the Anaxagorean Nous. What Proclus did was depict this Mind as having been born

φηνε. Διὰ δὴ τοῦτο καὶ πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων ὑφίστησι τὸν μετεχόμενον νοῦν, ὥς φησιν ὁ Τίμαιος. Νοῦν γὰρ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ, ψυχὴν δὲ ἐν σώματι θεὶς τὸ πᾶν συνετεκταίνετο.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 2, p. 146. Origen called the Son/Logos also Wisdom (Sophia), and regard ed this as a personal hypostasis, too, for which he found abundant evidence in scripture (Prov erbs, 3:19; 7:4; 8:12; 8:22; 9:1; Wisdom of Solomon, 1:4; 1:6; 3:11; 6:12; 7:21; 10:21; 14:2; etc.). Never theless, Plato had spoken of ‘a by no means low in rank Cause’ of the universe, ‘which arranges years and seasons and months, and may most justly be called Wisdom and Nous [Mind]’ (σοφία καὶ νοῦς λεγομένη δικαιότατ’ ἄν). Plato, Philebus, 30c5 7 (Plato’s expression ‘by no means low in rank’ is a superb litotes). This is one more case of Plato availing himself of the Anaxagorean Nous, but it is the only point at which he names this not only Nous, but also Wisdom.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 1, p. 325.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 49: Κατὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ τοίνυν οὐσίαν ἐνεργῶν καὶ αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι παράγων τὸν τοῦ παντὸς ὑπέστησε νοῦν πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων. Ἐκ γὰρ τοῦ ἀμε θέκτου νοῦ πᾶς ὁ μετεχόμενος πρόεισιν. Ὥσπερ οὖν εἰ ἔλεγεν ὅτι τὸ μετεχόμενον ὑφίστησι νοη τόν, τὸ πρώτως ἂν ἦν ὂν ἐκεῖνο τὸ γεννητικὸν αἴτιον, οὕτως ἐπεὶ νοῦν ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ παράγει πρώ τως, νοῦς ἂν ἀμέθεκτος εἴη καὶ νοερός. In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 183: καὶ γὰρ ὥσπερ ἅπασι τοῖς οὖσιν ἀπὸ μιᾶς ἀρχῆς ἐφήκει καὶ ἡ ἕνωσις καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν, οὕτω δὴ καὶ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ὁ αὐτὸς κοινωνίαν τε τοῦ νοῦ καὶ μετάδοσιν προτείνει τῶν ἀγαθῶν· καὶ ὥσπερ τὸ πρῶτον τῶν ἀγαθῶν νοῦ γεννητικόν ἐστιν, οὕτω δὴ καὶ ὁ σύμβουλος φρονήσεώς ἐστι τοῖς βουλευομένοις χορηγός.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 3, p. 84; In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1045.  Proclus, loc. cit.: ἔστι καὶ ἐν τῷ νῷ, καθὸ νοῦς, τὸ ἓν ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ μετεχόμενον, οἷον σπέρμα καταβεβλημένον εἰς αὐτόν.

1026

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

from the One, in the same way one would envisage the Anaxagorean Creative Mind proceeding from the Primal Mind. It might appear somewhat paradoxical, but in fact it is not: as mentioned above, the idea of a supreme principle ‘begetting’, according to Proclus, means ‘begetting’ something which is of the same nature as its progenitor. However, Mind/Intellect stands on a lower ontological level, even though, at a couple of points, Mind is stated as produced from the One by ‘birth’ (γέννησις).⁸⁹⁷ This is not really a contradiction: Mind which was ‘born’ from the One was not meant to be ontologically inferior: Plotinus depicted the generation of Intellect from the One in terms of the latter ‘giving birth’ to the former,⁸⁹⁸ and he described the Intellect’s attempt to return to the One as thinking which is also desire. Proclus elaborated on this generation by describing a three-stage movement of abiding, procession, and return (μονή, πρόοδος, ἐπιστροφή),⁸⁹⁹ which have nothing to do with temporal succession.⁹⁰⁰ Intellect remains in the One, which means that it has the One as its origin. There is no clear grasp of this ‘abiding’, which is also envisaged as a state ‘prior to the Intellect’;⁹⁰¹ but, no matter what it means, so long as the Intellect is envisaged as ‘remaining’ with the One, it is not ontologically different from it, even though it is an ‘offspring’. Subsequently, the Intellect proceeds from the One: it is only then that it comes to be a separate entity, that is, an ontologically inferior reality. But the Intellect returns to the One, which means that it does not sever itself off from its generative source altogether, but it receives the good, which is its identity, from the One. Proclus envisions this threefold tendency of the Intellect and uses it in order to structure all levels of his system below the One and above material reality, so that all things except the material ones remain, proceed, and return. In other words, when Proclus uses the imagery of the One ‘giving birth’ to the Intellect, he does not actually contradict his own axiom stated above, namely, ‘prior to creating things which are dissimilar to it, any generative principle, in the first place engenders off-

 Proclus, op. cit. v. 4, p. 82, quoted infra, note 905.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.8.9: Οὐ γὰρ ἀρχὴ τὰ πάντα, ἀλλ᾿ ἐξ ἀρχῆς τὰ πάντα, αὕτη δὲ οὐκέτι τὰ πάντα οὐδέ τι τῶν πάντων, ἵνα γεννήσῃ τὰ πάντα, καὶ ἵνα μὴ πλῆθος ᾖ, ἀλλὰ τοῦ πλήθους ἀρχή· τοῦ γὰρ γεννηθέντος πανταχοῦ τὸ γεννῶν ἁπλούστερον. Εἰ οὖν τοῦτο νοῦν ἐγέννησεν, ἁπλού στερον νοῦ δεῖ αὐτὸ εἶναι.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1048; commTim, v. 3, pp. 18; 31.  Proclus, commEucl, p. 153: οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἐν ἐκείνοις οὐ τὰ μὲν προϋπάρχει κατὰ χρόνον τὰ δὲ ἐπιγίνεται, ἀλλὰ ὁμοῦ μὲν πάντα, καὶ ἡ μονὴ καὶ ἡ πρόοδος καὶ ἡ ἐπιστροφή.  At that obscure stage, the procreative capacity, and indeed the divinity itself, of the Demi urge is ‘fused with the One itself’. Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 364: ἄλλη μὲν γάρ ἐστιν ἡ νοερὰ ἕνωσις, ἄλλη δὲ ἡ πρὸ τοῦ νοῦ, καθ᾿ ἣν συνῆπται πρὸς αὐτὸ τὸ ἓν ἡ γεννητικὴ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ θεότης καὶ ἡ πάντα συνέχουσα ἀγαθότης.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1027

spring which is the same as this generative principle itself.’ The original state of Mind is to be with the One: this is the perfect state of Mind,⁹⁰² although this state is ‘ineffable’ and impossible to grasp.⁹⁰³ Given this, it is understandable why Proclus depicts the state of the One ‘begetting’ the Nous as one being ‘superfluous’ and ‘abundant’, owing to the ‘additional participation of the created first substance to the foremost One’, which resulted in the ‘first triad’ containing both ‘the progenitor and the progeny’.⁹⁰⁴ This is what allows him to say that ‘the One gives birth to Being’ (τὸ ἓν ὂν ἀπογεννᾷ), and ‘the One participates in essence’, and ‘the essence participates in the One’, thus forming the triad of One, Being, Essence.⁹⁰⁵ In any case, whatever the generative power of the Intellect may give birth to (such as ‘knowledge’, for instance), this power is ultimately attributed to the One,⁹⁰⁶ which after all is the actual progenitor of ‘number’.⁹⁰⁷ Damascius, for his part, took notice of Proclus’ idea that ‘the One is the Father of the triad’ (τὸ μὲν ἓν ὁ πατὴρ τῆς τριάδος), since the One/Father is prior to Being, and progenitor of Being (πρὸ τοῦ ὄντος καὶ γεννητὴς τοῦ ὄντος). He also adumbrated the procession of Being from the One as ‘birth’ of the Intellect (ἐπὶ

 Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 4, p. 7: ὁ νοῦς μὲν κατ᾿ ἐπιστροφὴν εἰδοποιεῖται μᾶλλον, ἡ δὲ ζωὴ κατὰ τὴν πρόοδον, ἡ δὲ οὐσία κατὰ τὴν μονήν. commCrat, 149: προόδου μὲν γὰρ καὶ διακρί σεως αἴτιον τὸ θῆλυ, ἑνώσεως δὲ καὶ μονῆς σταθερᾶς τὸ ἄρρεν.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 274: καὶ ἔχοις ἂν τὸ μὲν ἄρρητον ὄνομα τῆς τοῦ παντὸς ἐν τῷ πατρὶ μονῆς, τὸ δὲ κόσμος τῆς προόδου, τὸ δὲ οὐρανὸς τῆς ἐπιστροφῆς.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 3, p. 84: Μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο τὸ μόνως ὑπερούσιον καὶ ὑπερὸν καὶ ἄμικτον πρὸς πάσας τὰς ὑπάρξεις, ἑνάς ἐστι μετεχομένη μὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ ὄντος καὶ περὶ ἑαυτὴν ὑποστήσασα τὴν πρώτην οὐσίαν καὶ πλεονάσασα τῇ προσθήκῃ τῆς μεθέξεως ταύτης τοῦ πρώ τως ἑνός, αὐτὴ δὲ ὑπερούσιος ὕπαρξις καὶ *** τῆς πρωτίστης νοητῆς τριάδος. Δύο δὴ τούτων ὄντων ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ τριάδι, τοῦ ἑνὸς καὶ τοῦ ὄντος, καὶ τοῦ μὲν γεννῶντος, τοῦ δὲ γεννωμένου, καὶ τοῦ μὲν τελειοῦντος, τοῦ δὲ τελειουμένου.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 4, p. 82: Διὸ καὶ ὁ Παρμενίδης ἀρχόμενος τῶν περὶ τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ λόγων ἀναμιμνῄσκει τῆς πρώτης ἡμᾶς ὑποθέσεως, δι᾿ ἧς τὸ ἓν ὂν ἀπογεννᾷ, τὸ ἓν οὐσίας μετέχειν λέγων καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν τοῦ ἑνός, ὡς ἂν τῆς τριάδος ταύτης κατ᾿ ἐκείνην ὑποστάσης, καὶ τοῦτο εἰκότως. To say that ‘the One gives birth to Being’ (τὸ ἓν ὂν ἀπογεννᾷ) is the same as saying that the One gives birth to the Intellect, since, ‘the Intellect is no other than Being’ (καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἐστὶ νοῦς ἢ τὸ ὄν). Op. cit. v. 4, p. 106.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 703: ὁ εἷς καὶ ὅλος καὶ ἀμέθεκτος νοῦς, πρώτως ἐκφανεὶς ἀπὸ τῶν ἡνωμένως ὄντων, ἀπογεννᾷ μεθ᾿ ἑαυτὸν ἅπαν τὸ νοερὸν πλῆθος καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν ἀμέριστον οὐσίαν. Op. cit. 1047: ᾿Aλλ᾿ εἰ χρὴ τὴν μίαν ἀρχὴν τῆς γνώσεως εἰπεῖν, τὸ ἓν αἰτια τέον τοῦ νοῦ τὸ γεννητικὸν πάσης τε τῆς ἐν αὐτῷ γνώσεως καὶ τῆς ἐν ταῖς δευτέραις τάξεσι τῶν ὄντων θεωρουμένης. Likewise, in Theologia Platonica, v. 3, p. 12: Καὶ γὰρ ἡ φύσις φυσικῶς καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ ψυχικῶς καὶ ὁ νοῦς νοερῶς ἀπογεννᾷ τὰ δεύτερα· καὶ τὸ ἓν ἄρα καθ᾿ ἕνωσιν αἴτιον ἐστὶ τῶν ὅλων καὶ ἑνοειδὴς ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἡ πρόοδός ἐστιν.  Proclus, In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 259: τὸ δὲ ἓν καὶ πρὸ ψυχῆς καὶ πρὸ νοῦ· γεννᾷ γὰρ τὸν ἀριθμόν.

1028

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

τὴν τοῦ ὄντος γέννησιν), which desires ‘return’ to the paternal unity. This is the most august ‘return’, since this is not return to any essence, but to the One itself (ἣ ἐστὶ πασῶν ἐπιστροφῶν πρεσβυτάτη, οὐκ εἰς οὐσίαν ἐπιστρεφομένη, ἀλλ᾿ εἰς τὸ ἓν ἁπλῶς).⁹⁰⁸ It is hard to read Proclus and not to recall Origen every now and then. However, the points which appear to be relevant pertain to Proclus’ debts to Christianity, not the other way around, and certainly these are not the points because of which Origen was accused as ‘heretic’. Proclus denounced him as not deserving the honour of being called a pupil of Plato only because Origen was an Anaxagorean who refused to introduce ontological classifications into the supreme ontological principle. No matter whether his God was the Anaxagorean Non-reflecting and then Reflecting Mind, or the Christian Trinitarian God, he never allowed classifications within Deity. As a pagan, he held that the Demiurge was no other than the supreme King, which was the same as the Anaxagorean Mind. As a Christian, he maintained that the Three Trinitarian Persons are both one and three. The Father is the source of all Deity, the Son is the Wisdom and Logos who is the proximate agent of the Trinitarian creative act and bestows to the world all manifestations of rationality, and the Holy Spirit is the source of sanctification proceeding from the Father through the Son. The fact that the Father begat the Son does not make the Logos an inferior God: it makes him another God standing on an ontological par with the Father, so that that the Anaxagorean and Biblical monotheism could be understood as a Trinitarian monotheism. Neoplatonism was not a monolithic whole, anyway. Whereas Proclus saw the ‘birth’ of a principle from another as a production of the same nature, Porphyry averred that this act always has to result in progeny that is inferior to its progenitor (πᾶν τὸ γεννῶν τῇ οὐσίᾳ αὐτοῦ χεῖρον ἑαυτοῦ γεννᾷ), and this progeny (though not always) strives to return to its source.⁹⁰⁹ Given the debts that Proclus owes to Christian thought, it would be all too natural to surmise that he received his germane propositions from Origen’s Trinitarian doctrine, which was impeccable in terms of orthodoxy according to Athanasius: to Origen the Logos that was begotten from the Father was another God, equal and of the same nature with to his progenitor. Neoplatonic considerations of the ontological pattern and chain of Being in terms of ‘birth’ are not surprising: after all, the three ontological levels were ex-

 Damascius, Princ, p. 313.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 13: Πᾶν τὸ γεννῶν τῇ οὐσίᾳ αὐτοῦ χεῖρον ἑαυτοῦ γεννᾷ, καὶ πᾶν τὸ γεννηθὲν φύσει πρὸς τὸ γεννῆσαν ἐπιστρέφει· τῶν δὲ γεννώντων τὰ μὲν οὐδ᾿ ὅλως ἐπιστρέφει πρὸς τὰ γεννηθέντα, τὰ δὲ καὶ ἐπιστρέφει καὶ οὐκ ἐπιστρέφει, τὰ δὲ μόνον ἐπέστραπται πρὸς τὰ γεννήματα εἰς ἑαυτὰ μὴ ἐπιστρέφοντα.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1029

pressed through the lineage of Uranus who gave birth to Cronus, who, in turn, begat Zeus. Little wonder that Michael Psellus described the One as the ‘supreme Progenitor’ (ἀρχηγικώτερος δὲ γεννήτωρ ὑπάρχει τὸ ἕν), and recounted how Iamblichus and Proclus ‘made abundant use of this kind of terminology’ (πολλὴ γὰρ ἡ τοιαύτη τῶν ὀνομάτων χρῆσις), adding that Porphyry also used it. It is more important, however, that, once again, he reports that this imagery about ‘begetting’ was a coin used by ‘the two Julians, who lived in the reign of Marcus’ Aurelius.⁹¹⁰ Psellus was a specialist on Chaldean thought and his reference is not accidental, since he assured that the idea of a Father creating through his Son was in fact Chaldean.⁹¹¹ What is more, he himself saw no substantial difference between the Neoplatonic One, ‘the God of the Jews, and the Trinitarian Being, especially the Father’.⁹¹² He saw the entire chain of the Neoplatonic pattern as formed in terms of ‘birth’ being granted by superior principles to lower ones, and he took it as an axiom that, in those cases, ‘birth’ meant procreation of an inferior being.⁹¹³ Then, he quoted ‘a Greek theological maxim’ according to which ‘any progenitor is senior to the progeny in terms of time’,⁹¹⁴ which he rebukes as ‘nonsense (φλυάρημα), since the Father gave birth to a Son who is equal with Him’. His argument is noteworthy and goes thus: this maxim holds only if there is a span of time between the progenitor and the progeny; but since the relation between the Father and Son is timeless, they are equal. One would be surprised at finding out that this is what Damascius (who was aware of this maxim) believed about his corresponding principles: the One is neither posterior nor anterior to those which it gives birth to, since both of them are one and the same: the One is only more honourable.⁹¹⁵

 Michael Psellus, Opuscula i, 46. The two Julians, father and son, were Chaldean, held in high esteem by Porphyry. See, Suda, letter iota, entries 433, 434. Julian the son was a miracle worker and wrote books on issues of theurgy. See also, RCR, p. 174.  See chapter 8, pp. 589 90.  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 105: οὐδὲν οὖν τῶν ὄντων ἀγέννητον, εἰ μὴ παρ᾿ ἐκείνοις τὸ ὂν καὶ παρ᾿ Ἰουδαίοις θεὸς καὶ παρ᾿ ἡμῖν κοινῶς μὲν ἡ τριαδικὴ ὑπόστασις, ἰδίως δὲ ὁ πατήρ.  Michael Psellus, loc. cit. Τὸ γοῦν παρ᾿ ἐκείνοις ἓν λεγόμενον, ὃ τέως οὐκ ἔτυχε διακρίσεως, τὸ πᾶν τὸ γεννῶν χεῖρον τῇ ἑαυτοῦ οὐσίᾳ γεννᾷ, ἐντεῦθεν ἔχει τὴν σύστασιν. γεννῶν γὰρ τὸ ἓν τὸ ὄν, καὶ τὸ ὂν τὸν νοῦν, καὶ ὁ νοῦς τὴν ψυχήν, χείρονα ἑαυτῶν γεγεννήκασι.  Loc. cit. εἴποι ἂν ὡς ἐπ᾿ ἐκείνων τῶν γεννώντων καὶ γεννωμένων χώραν ἔχει τὸ θεολογικὸν ἐκεῖνο ῥητὸν τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ἐφ᾿ ὧν τὸ γεννῶν πρεσβύτερον τῷ χρόνῳ τοῦ γεννωμένου.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, pp. 239 40: Οὔτε ἄρα νεώτερον οὔτε πρεσβύτερον τὸ ἓν τῶν ἄλλων· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ πρὸς ἑαυτό, ὡς μὲν αὐτὸ ὂν τὸ γεννῶν τὸ γενητόν, πρεσβύτερον ἑαυτοῦ, ὡς δὲ τὸ γεννώμενον, νεώτερον, ὡς δὲ τὸ συναμφότερον ὁμοῦ ταὐτόν, οὔτε νεώτερον οὔτε πρε σβύτερον, τιμιώτερον πέφηνεν.

1030

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

The most ancient witness to this proverbial principle is Origen.⁹¹⁶ Then, Cyril of Alexandria dismissed it with contempt, while in effect drawing on Origen.⁹¹⁷ The Logos proceeds from the Mind (πρόεισι μὲν γὰρ ἐκ νοῦ λόγος), and neither Mind nor its Logos can exist apart from each other. Therefore, in this case, the principle, ‘that which gives birth is senior to its progeny’ is ‘absolutely stupid’ (ὡς ἔστι που πάντως τοῦ γεννωμένου τὸ γεννῶν πρεσβύτερον ἠλίθιον οἶμαι παντελῶς).⁹¹⁸ Cyril is considered a great star of Christian orthodoxy, hence his implicit drawing on Origen was taken as part of orthodoxy, too. His actual point is the normal doctrinal thesis that Origen expounded, namely, that the divine creative act took place through an order by the Father to his Son/Logos, which is why it was written ‘Let us create man’.⁹¹⁹ However, Cyril did not cite Origen: instead, he quoted from a Hermetic text, which reads, ‘And the Lord of all things forthwith spoke loudly to his own holy and intelligible and creative Logos: Let there be sun’.⁹²⁰ In fact though Cyril had in mind Origen who was the one who introduced the expression Creative Logos (Δημιουργικὸς Λόγος) into Christian exposition. But Cyril could not appeal to his controversial predecessor (whom he never mentioned by name). For this expression was perhaps a suspect, because Neoplatonists were fascinated by this, too.⁹²¹ Nevertheless, both before and after Cyril, a few, yet conspicuous, Christian authors also made use of it, perhaps because it was Eusebius that used it confidently.⁹²² In any event, it is barely a coincidence

 Origen, commGen, PG.12.69.42 (Philocalia, 23.14): πᾶν γὰρ τὸ ποιοῦν πρεσβύτερον τοῦ πε ποιημένου, which though clearly pertains to the ‘creation’ of the universe, not to ‘giving birth to’. Eusebius quoted extensively from this work of Origen, in the Praeparatio Evengelica, 6.11, which includes also the present point (op. cit. 6.11.56).  Origen, commJohn, II.19.130.  Cyril of Alexandria, De Sancta Trinitate Dialogi, p. 451.  Genesis, 1:26. Origen, Cels, II.9; II.31.  Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum, 2.30. See this in Corpus Hermeticum, Fragmenta varia (verba Graeca), fr. 33: Ὁ δὲ πάντων κύριος εὐθέως ἐφώνησε τῷ ἑαυτοῦ ἁγίῳ καὶ νοητῷ καὶ δημι ουργικῷ λόγῳ, Ἔστω ἥλιος, etc.  Porphyry, commTim (fragmenta), Book 2, fr. 51 (bis), apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, pp. 394 & 396. Also, Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 223; v. 3, pp. 206 & 222. Simplicius, commCael, p. 44.  Origen, frJohn, fr. 1; selPs, PG.12.1296.37 39: τὸ πρόσωπον τοῦ Θεοῦ οἱ λόγοι εἰσὶ τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς, οἱ χαρακτηρίζοντες τὸν δημιουργικὸν αὐτοῦ λόγον. Eusebius, Commentaria in Psalmos, PG.23.188 & 221 & 1220; Praeparatio Evangelica, 7.11.4; 7.12.4; 11.14.4; Demonstratio Evangelica, 5.1.17. Athanasius, Oratio i Contra Arianos, 17.2; Oratio ii Contra Arianos, 2.5. Pseudo Didymus (= Cassian the Sabaite), De Trinitate, PG.39.849.15; Commentarii in Psalmos 29 34, Cod. p. 151. Fragmenta in Psalmos Altera, frs. 299; 947; 1280. Gregory of Nazianzus, De Moderatione in Dispu tando (orat. 32), PG.36.205.31. Aeneas of Gaza, Theophrastus, p. 58. Photius, Epistulae et Amphi

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1031

that the expression does not show in the acts of any oecumenical synod, which means that bishops refrained from quoting such passages from the authorities of old. It is remarkable that Eusebius (a staunch and ardent admirer of Origen) saw the Creative Logos in Anaxagorean terms, namely, a Logos generated by the Nous. Following a quotation from Porphyry’s epistle to Anebo, Eusebius remarks scornfully that this attests to Egyptian theology worshiping the heavenly bodies, and having no inkling ‘either of an incorporeal Nous, or of a Creative Logos (λόγον δημιουργικὸν τῶν ὅλων), certainly not of any intelligible God of Gods and invisible powers: they [saw as God] only the visible sun’.⁹²³ Much later, the Byzantine historian and statesman George Acropolites (1217/20 – 1282), commenting on Gregory of Nazianzus’ De Filio, 2.7, argued differently: all of the ancient peoples (Chaldeans, Egyptians, Indians, Greeks) had theologies that recognized a Supreme Being (τὸ πρῶτον ὄν); all of them posited it as a Creative Cause (δημιουργικὸν καθωμολόγηται αἴτιον), from which ‘all corporeal and incorporeal species’ were produced according to the Creative Logos (κατὰ τὸν δημιουργικὸν λόγον).⁹²⁴ What matters is that Eusebius couched his propositions in Anaxagorean terms: “the Logos of God, who created the world and he is the creator of everything, is a certain Divine and Creative Nous.”⁹²⁵ A few centuries after Eusebius, Maximus Confessor was bolder still, reflecting along the same line: when Paul wrote that ‘God is the head of Christ’,⁹²⁶ he meant that ‘the Creative Logos was born by the Ineffable Nous, and he was in essence the same as that Nous’.⁹²⁷ Considering that Cyril of Alexandria had applied the designation Nous to the Father, Maximus reasonably felt that he could apply this Anaxagorean terminology with confidence.

lochia, 2; 65; 265. Michael Psellus, Opuscula i, Opuscula 16; 30; Opuscula ii, p. 97. Eustratius of Nicaea, Orationes, Oration 5, p. 136.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.4.3: οὔ τινα νοῦν ἀσώματον οὐδὲ λόγον δημιουργικὸν οὐδὲ μὴν θεὸν οὐδὲ θεοὺς οὐδέ τινας νοερὰς καὶ ἀφανεῖς δυνάμεις. He quoted from, and com mented on, Porphyry, Epistula ad Anebonem, 2.13a. Also, Eusebius, op. cit. 3.4.4 5, following quotation also from Porphyry, Epistula ad Anebonem, 2.13a.  George Acropolites, In Gregorii Nazianzeni Sententias, 8.  Eusebius, Commentaria in Psalmos, PG.23.1200.40 42: νοῦν δέ τινα θεῖον καὶ δημιουργικὸν εἶναι Λόγον Θεοῦ τὸν κοσμοποιὸν καὶ πάντων ποιητὴν αὐτόν.  1 Cor. 11:3.  Maximus Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium, 25: Κεφαλὴ δὲ Χριστοῦ, τουτέστι τοῦ κατὰ πίστιν διὰ τῆς κατὰ φύσιν τῶν γεγονότων θεωρίας ἀναλόγως τοῖς οὖσι διαφαινομένου δημιουρ γικοῦ λόγου, ἔστιν ὁ κατ᾿ οὐσίαν αὐτὸν γεννῶν ἀπόρρητος νοῦς.

1032

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Origen writing after 265 AD When Proclus wrote about ‘the exegetes of Plato’, especially ‘Origen and Plotinus, who shared the same education’, he knew what he was talking about. Origen maintained personal friendship with Plotinus, even after they had parted ways, and he knew of the Enneads well before they were committed to systematic copy-editing by Porphyry. In this context, there is a stunning instance, which bears on Plato’s famous asseveration that ‘the Good itself is not essence, but still transcends essence in dignity and surpassing power’ (ἐπέκεινα οὐσίας πρεσβείᾳ τε καὶ δυνάμει).⁹²⁸ Plotinus went a step beyond arguing for utter transcendence of the One, which he made ‘beyond essence, and beyond activity and beyond mind and thought’ (ἐπέκεινα οὐσίας, ἐπέκεινα καὶ ἐνεργείας καὶ ἐπέκεινα νοῦ καὶ νοήσεως).⁹²⁹ Of this, Plotinus emphasized the notion of being ‘beyond mind’ (ἐπέκεινα νοῦ):⁹³⁰ the One is ontologically superior to the Mind/Intellect. Of all authors, whether pagan or Christian ones, who wrote before the Enneads were published, only Origen mentioned this expression, which is clearly an oblique reference to Plotinus himself, indeed a quotation from him. By saying that the God of the universe is Mind, or that the God of everything is beyond mind and essence, and is simple and invisible and incorporeal, we would maintain that God is not comprehended by any being other than him who is made in the image of that Mind.⁹³¹

Origen did not actually endorse the Platonic axiom that God is not essence but transcends all essence, since (especially after Aristotle’s work) this could suggest that God cannot be considered as a concrete Being, indeed the personal one of the Bible. God intervenes into History, he speaks to men and comes to dialectical relation with them, as it happened in the biblical history. Origen could not allow this God to be almost lost into the fog of the Plotinian transcendentalism.⁹³² This is why, although he quotes the Platonic motif, he takes distances from it, and his implication is that God is an ‘essence’, that is, a real Being, with whom men can converse. To Celsus, who said that ‘God does not participate in being’, the reply was that this proposition could be taken only in the sense that ‘God is participat Plato, Respublica, 509b. Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. V.3.13; V.4.2.  Plotinus, op. cit. I.7.1; cf. V.1.8; V.4.2; VI.8.16. Damascius, Princ, p. 48.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.8.9; V.1.8; V.3.11; V.3.12; V.4.2; V.8.1; V.9.2.  Origen, Cels, VII.38: Νοῦν τοίνυν ἢ ἐπέκεινα νοῦ καὶ οὐσίας λέγοντες εἶναι ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀό ρατον καὶ ἀσώματον τὸν τῶν ὅλων θεόν, οὐκ ἂν ἄλλῳ τινὶ ἢ τῷ κατὰ τὴν ἐκείνου τοῦ νοῦ εἰκόνα γενομένῳ φήσομεν καταλαμβάνεσθαι τὸν θεόν.  See PHE, chapters 10 and 11.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1033

ed in’ by essence (no matter what ‘essence’ may mean), rather than that God ‘participates’ in essence. Celsus argued Neoplatonically that God is not being; Origen replied that God is Being and he can be participated in by means of the Holy Spirit. He goes on arguing that, although Plato spoke of ‘beyond essence’, the fact is that ‘the doctrine about essence is great and hard to grasp’, especially if this is about ‘unmoved and incorporeal essence’; this is why one should enquire whether the case in actually Plato’s point in the Republic 509b, or rather God himself is ‘essence (i. e. a certain Being), who though is said to be invisible’, that is ‘incorporeal’. It is clear that Origen opts against Plato on this: God is a Being, indeed he is an ‘essence’ (i. e. self-existent being) of his own, which is unlike any other one, but an essence still.⁹³³ This is a thesis that Origen maintained throughout his life, because it is an Anaxagorean one. It should be recalled that Aristotle appealed to Anaxagoras in order to argue that Mind is sheer actuality and absolutely prior to any potentiality whatsoever. Even during the early stages of his Christian life, Origen did not concede otherwise: in the commentary on John, he mentions Plato’s statement impartially, and only as one among different ones. However, he goes on with exploring scriptural passages in order to determine what God’s essence is, not if God is himself ‘essence’. His attitude is anti-Platonic once again.⁹³⁴ He confirms this shortly after that point in the same work: he modifies the Platonic proposition of God who ‘is beyond essence’, and makes it God ‘who is superior in terms of essence, and dignity and divinity’ (ὑπερέχων οὐσίᾳ καὶ πρεσβείᾳ καὶ δυνάμει καὶ θειότητι).⁹³⁵ The notion of ‘essence of God’ does make sense and it is far superior to the essence of all creatures. In the last case (chapter 25), Origen makes use of the Platonic statement about the Good, as he did shortly before that (chapter 21). But in the present case, he attributes this supremacy not to God in general, but to God the Logos. Plato liked to describe the Good in terms of ‘surpassing dignity and power’; however, Origen applied this to the Logos as much as did he so to the Father. He adds of course that the Logos cannot be compared to the Father, because the former is ‘an image’ of the latter. This however is not an ontological distinction: it is only the doctrine that God manifesting Himself in the universe as Logos is an ad extra manifesta-

 Origen, Cels, VI.64. See his critical distinction of not seen from invisible discussed in COT, pp. 110 2.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.21.123. He mentions no names, but in fact he refers to the alleged Stoic conception of God as corporeal essence and Plato’s notion of God being beyond essence. That is, he refers to the two diametrical theories of Antiquity.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.25.152.

1034

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

tion of Him, which does not exhaust description and knowledge of the entire incomprehensible Deity. Origen was twenty years older than Plotinus and this reference makes it clear that he wrote the Contra Celsum, after the publication of the Enneads in c. 265 by Plotinus’ pupil and doctor Eustochius,⁹³⁶ which antedated that by Porphyry. The latter was born in c. 234 and joined Plotinus when he was thirty (i. e. in 264). By that time, Plotinus ‘had written twenty-one treatises’.⁹³⁷ Nevertheless, the text of the Enneads, or probably part of it, would have been sent specifically to Origen, who was definitely the first of ‘the few people’ who ‘were carefully selected’ to this purpose.⁹³⁸ Given Plotinus’ highest regard for Origen, the latter should have been the foremost to receive a version of the Enneads, and certainly that Origen had joined Christianity was entirely immaterial.⁹³⁹ Plotinus articulated his theory that the supreme principle is not only ‘beyond essence’, as Plato had it (Respublica, 509b8‒10), but also ‘beyond the Intellect’ (which Plotinus identified with Plato’s Demiurge, and never with the Soul), in Enneads, I (a late treatise, probably written shortly before Plotinus’ death).7.1; V (the tenth treatise in Porphyry’s chronological order).1.7&8; V.4.2; VI (also a later treatise, around the end of the six-year period when Porphyry was with Plotinus, Vita Plotini, 5).8.16. But the Praeparatio Evengelica (15.10&22) of Eusebius (which was probably composed in 313 at Caesarea) suggests that there had been an edition of the Enneads by Plotinus’ pupil and doctor Eustochius, which is also indicated as a comment on several manuscripts of the Enneads (A E R J C), appearing at the end of chapter 19 of Ennead IV.4. In the Arabic version⁹⁴⁰ of the Enneads IV.[7].2, line 55, a scholion claims to mark the  Against the fiction which Eusebius represented as Origen’s biography, he died not in 255, but after 267, while living in obscurity in Tyre, where he spent the last twenty eight years of his life. After his decampment from Alexandria to Caesarea of Palestine, he remained in that city only for two years. See Epiphanius of Salamis, infra, p. 1150 1. I discuss this in a forthcom ing biography of Origen.  Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 4. By 264 AD, Plotinus γράψας εὑρίσκεται εἴκοσι καὶ ἓν βιβλίον ἃ καὶ κατείληφα ἐκδεδομένα ὀλίγοις. This is how the standard edition by P. Henry and H.R. Schwyzer has it. But they should have emended βιβλίον to βιβλία. For as it stands, the text goes, ‘Plotinus had written twenty one book, which had been published for the sake of a few people’. Porphyry knew good Greek, and he could have never written βιβλίον ἃ … ἐκδεδομένα.  Porphyry, loc. cit: Οὐδὲ γὰρ ἦν πω ῥᾳδία ἡ ἔκδοσις οὐδὲ εὐσυνειδήτως ἐγίγνετο οὐδ᾿ ἁπλῶς κἀκ τοῦ ῥᾴστου, ἀλλὰ μετὰ πάσης κρίσεως τῶν λαμβανόντων.  Cf. Porphyry, loc. cit: “When Origen came once to a meeting of the school of Plotinus, the latter blushed and broke off his lectures abruptly, saying he did not care to speak before those who knew all he was about to say”.  One of the most influential works among those translated into Arabic was the Enneads IV VI, which circulated in the Arabic speaking world under Aristotle’s name.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1035

point where the treatise came to an end ‘according to the edition of Eustochius’, whereas in the edition of Porphyry it ended at another point. The scholion reads as follows: ἕως τούτου ἐν τοῖς Εὐστοχίου τὸ δεύτερον Περὶ ψυχῆς καὶ ἤρχετο τὸ τρίτον. ἐν δὲ τοῖς Πορφυρίου συνάπτεται τὰ ἑξῆς τῷ δευτέρῳ. In his juxtaposition of the manuscripts of the Enneads and Eusebius, P. Henry detected no less than 103 points at which the text of Eusebius was different from the versions of the Enneads preserved by the known manuscripts of this work. Consequently, the fact that Eusebius quoted a missing passage was interpreted by P. Henry as evidence that another version antedated that by Porphyry, and that was the source for Eusebius to quote from,⁹⁴¹ since it would be implausible to assume that the differences were owing to scribal mistakes.⁹⁴² The question of the recension of Eustochius has been dealt with by Luc Brisson and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé in the outstanding Vita Plotini of the Paris Team 76 of the CNRS. Both scholars argued that, before the systematic edition by Porphyry, Plotinus’ work had received some form of circulation, though Brisson credited Amelius with that, and made Eustochius merely ‘an agent of transmission’.⁹⁴³ However, M.-O. Goulet-Cazé argued that an edition of the Enneads had existed before Porphyry, and that this had been produced by Eustochius, who should receive the credit for it.⁹⁴⁴ The passage that we are now discussing is a striking proof that Origen was alive after the Enneads were published by Eustochius, and the treatise against Celsus was written probably in the mid‒260s, whereas Origen died in or after 267, as I hope I show in a forthcoming new biography of his.⁹⁴⁵ Celsus used the Platonic notion and argued that God ‘is neither mind, nor intelligence nor knowledge (οὔτε νοῦς οὔτε νόησις οὔτ᾿ ἐπιστήμη), but he enables mind to think and he is the cause of the existence of intelligence, and of the ability to

 P. Henry, Recherches sur la Préparation Evangélique d’Eusèbe et l’édition perdue des Œuvres de Plotin publiée par Eustochius, Paris, 1935 (Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Religieuses, 50), p. 73. L. Brisson, Une édition d’Eustochius?, pp. 65 9.  Op. cit. p. 45.  L. Brisson, Une édition d’Eustochius?, p. 69.  M. O. Goulet Cazé, “Remarques sur l’édition d’Eustochius”, in L. Brisson et al (eds.), Por phyre. La “Vie de Plotin”, vol. II, Paris 1992, p. 75.  Origen was converted to Christianity by Hippolytus in c. 234, when he was nearly 49 years old, probably in Rome. Between 234 and 237 he wrote in Alexandria. Then, he decamped to Cae sarea of Palestine, where he wrote and preached as a presbyter for two years. Then, he decamp ed again, this time to Tyre, where he lived in obscurity for twenty eight years, from 239/240 to 267/8, until his death, at the age of 82. He wrote the Cels between 265 and 267, at a time when Plotinus’ Enneades (or at least part of them) either had been published by Plotinus’ pupil Eustochius, or this had been handed over to him, as well as to ‘a few selected ones’.

1036

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

know, and he causes the existence of intelligible things and of truth itself and of being itself, since he transcends all things (πάντων ἐπέκεινα ὤν) and he is intelligible by a certain indescribable power’.⁹⁴⁶ Celsus’ argument is the same as that of both Plotinus⁹⁴⁷ and Porphyry; indeed the analogies of human senses being depended on the external causes of hearing or sight, which causes are ‘untouchable’ by the senses, makes the whole passage as if written by the hands of Porphyry.⁹⁴⁸ More remarkable still is the fact that Origen himself gave voice to the Plotinian proposition that the supreme principle is ‘beyond mind and essence’, but he identified this not with the Plotinian One, but with the Mind, arguing that there is nothing prior to Mind whatsoever. Origen says that whether we speak of ‘Mind’, or of ‘Mind which is beyond mind and essence’ is makes no difference: in either case, he means the Anaxagorean God who is ‘simple’⁹⁴⁹, invisible, and incorporeal. His point is that the ‘unmixed’ (i. e. radically different in terms of ontology) God/Mind can be grasped from the point of view of the universe only by means the Mind’s manifestation into this, that is, by means of God the Logos. Nevertheless, Origen had formed an entire Eschatology,⁹⁵⁰ urging that, at the ultimate end, God will be seen, although the difference between the Uncreated and Created will never be abolished. God who reveals the Mind is a ‘second’ God, but ontologically he is the same God, not a secondary one. All references to Plato’s Republic, 509b (and this statement of Plato itself) make it clear that positing utter transcendence refers to the supreme Good (τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ). This is how Origen understood and cited this explicit Platonic statement, and one should have thought that it would have been natural for him to identify it with the Father.⁹⁵¹ However, he used the same Platonic expres-

 Origen, Cels, VII.45.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.3.13: ἐπέκεινα πάντων καὶ ἐπέκεινα τοῦ σεμνοτάτου νοῦ.  Porphyry, In Platonis Parmenidem Commentaria (fragmenta), 13: διὸ οὐδὲ εἶδος οὐδὲ ὄνομα ἔχει οὐδὲ οὐσίαν … οὐκ οὐσία, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπέκεινα πάντων καὶ πάντων αἰτία ἀσύζυγος. Ὧσπερ μὲν τοί νυν ὅρασις μὲν τοῦ ἀκουστοῦ οὐκ ἐφάπτεται οὐδ᾿ ἀκοὴ τοῦ ὁρατοῦ οὐδ᾿ ἀμφότεραι τοῦ γευστοῦ οὐδὲ οἶδεν ἑκάστη ὅτι ἑτέρα ἐστὶν τῆς ἑτέρας οὐδ᾿ ὅτι ἀκουστὸν ἕτερον τοῦ ὁρατοῦ, ἄλλη δ᾿ ἐστὶν δύναμις ἐπαναβεβηκυῖα τούτων.  Plato, Cratylus, 413c: μόνον γοῦν φησιν αὐτὸν τῶν ὄντων ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ τε καὶ κα θαρόν. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b17: ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀμιγές. De Anima, 405a16 17: μόνον γοῦν φησιν αὐτὸν τῶν ὄντων ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ τε καὶ καθαρόν. Op. cit. 429b23 24. Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ νοῦν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ λέγων ἁπλοῦν. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1227. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 86. Sophonias, paraphrAnim, pp. 15; 133. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.5; 3.7; 3.9.  Against frivolous allegations that Origen had no Eschatology, see PHE, chapter 9.  Cf. Origen, Cels, VI.64; commJohn, XIII.21.123.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1037

sion in order to adumbrate also the Son, and, quite strikingly, he did so at the same point where he remarked that the Son ‘is not comparable with the Father in any way’. But although he [the Saviour] transcends in essence and rank and power and divinity (since he is a living Logos) and wisdom, he is not comparable with the Father in any way.⁹⁵²

To notice and contemplate the divine presence and activity in the world (that is, having an inkling of ‘God as Creator and Wise and Provident and Judge’)⁹⁵³ does not procure a comprehensive knowledge of what God in Himself is. Therefore, knowing God from the point of view of the world cannot claim that this is all God really is. The divine epiphanies in the Biblical history are appearances of God the Logos, not of the Father.⁹⁵⁴ On that account, and on that account alone, is the Logos ‘incomparable with the Father’. God in Himself is incomparable with God as he appears in all of his manifestations within History, that is, with God the Logos. This means that, concerning the Son, there is no inferiority being involved; there is only the old idea⁹⁵⁵ that the Logos/Son is a manifestation of the Deity within the world: the world vis-à-vis God is entirely encompassed in terms of divine knowledge and might. The converse does not hold, however: the world can know only the extent of the divine activity in it; but this does not suffice to provide a complete adumbration of God Himself. The manifested God is a ‘second God’, meaning only the divine rapport with the world and the extent to which God allows himself to be known. The latter is the ‘first God’. However, there is no ontological distinction between these two, which is why Origen speaks about the second God who is not comparable with the Father, and yet, at the same point, he depicts conveniently this second God in the same terms as he does for the Father, actually using both the Platonic expression as above, and the Plotinian one at another point, too.⁹⁵⁶

 Origen, commJohn, XIII.25.152, applying the expression of Plato’s Republic, 509b, to the Son/Logos.  Cf. Origen, frPs, Psalm 138:14 16; selPs, PG.12.1661.41 47: Βιβλίον Θεοῦ ἐστιν ἡ θεωρία σω μάτων καὶ ἀσωμάτων, ἐν ᾧ πέφυκε διὰ τῆς γνώσεως γράφεσθαι νοῦς καθαρός. Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ τῷ βιβλίῳ εἰσὶ γεγραμμένοι καὶ οἱ περὶ προνοίας λόγοι καὶ κρίσεως, δι᾿ οὗ βιβλίου γινώσκεται ὁ Θεὸς ὡς δημιουργὸς καὶ σοφὸς καὶ προνοητὴς καὶ κριτής.  This is a thesis arrived at gradually. In the Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 46, Origen takes it that the God who appeared in the Old Testament was ‘the first God’. However, later his thesis was modified: in all the epiphanies it was the Logos who appeared and spoke to the holy men.  See Appendix I: the idea is Semitic and at least as old as fourtenth century BC.  Origen, Cels, VII.38.

1038

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

With the exception of Eusebius, who made extensive quotations from the Enneads, ⁹⁵⁷ no author entertained this notion of ‘being beyond Mind’ during the next two hundred years after Origen’s death. One would be surprised at finding out that this author was not any Neoplatonist⁹⁵⁸ enthusiast: it was Cyril of Alexandria, the star of Christian orthodoxy, who was obsessed with applying Plotinus’ expression ἐπέκεινα νοῦ.⁹⁵⁹ As a rule, Christian authors refrained from using the precarious Platonic catchphrase, until Michael Psellus did so in the eleventh century. This, however, did not prevent the council of Ephesus from employing it conveniently, copying from Cyril’s writings, of course.⁹⁶⁰ As discussed above,⁹⁶¹ Cyril was the Christian author who was obsessed with identifying God as Mind, indeed the Anaxagorean one. There is reference to a work of his ‘against the Synousiasts’, which is not extant, but we learn of this from a quotation by Justinian writing against the Monophysites. There are subsequent references to this work, all of them drawing on Justinian, but the fact that this work is not extant is strange: how was it possible for a tract by a pillar of the Byzantine establishment and a powerful bishop to be lost? Perhaps this quotation from Justinian

 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 11.17.10.9.  Damascius used the expression ἐπέκεινα τῶν πάντων in the opening of his tract in order to express the old tenet that the One is transcendent to being. Princ, p. 1. Simplicius described Ar istotle’s First Immovable Mover in the same terms (πάντων ὄντος ἐπέκεινα). commCael, p. 432.  Cyril of Alexandria, De Incarnatione Unigeniti, p. 683: Θεὸς δὲ ὁ παντὸς ἐπέκεινα νοῦ, γε νέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς τὴν ὕπαρξιν ἔχων ἐξῃρημένην τε καὶ ὑπερίσχουσαν. Op. cit. p. 685: ὁ ὢν ἐν ἀρχῇ τῇ παντὸς ἐπέκεινα νοῦ. Epistulae Paschales, PG.77.725.34: Τροπὴν γὰρ οὐκ οἶδεν ἡ παντὸς ἐπέκεινα νοῦ καὶ ἀνωτάτω φύσις. Op. cit. PG.77.769.46: ᾿Aποδέχεται τὸν λόγον, ὡς Λόγου Πατήρ, ὁ παντὸς ἐπέκεινα νοῦ, φημὶ δὴ Θεός. Op. cit. PG.77.773.33: καὶ ὁ πρὸ παντὸς αἰῶνος καὶ χρόνου τὴν ἐκ Θεοῦ τοῦ καὶ Πατρὸς ἀπότεξιν ἔχων, τὴν ἐπέκεινα νοῦ καὶ λόγου παντός. Op. cit. PG.77.885.45: καὶ ἀναμορφοῦσθαι τρόπον τινὰ δι᾿ εὐαγοῦς πολιτείας πρὸς τὸν παντὸς ἐπέκεινα νοῦ. Op. cit. PG.77.893.18: τὴν θείαν τε καὶ ἀκήρατον φύσιν, τὴν παντὸς ἐπέκεινα νοῦ, καὶ πέραν λόγου καὶ θαύματος. Op. cit. PG.77.924.20: Ὁ γὰρ ἐπέκεινα νοῦ παντός, ὁ δι᾿ οὗ τὰ πάντα παρήχθη πρὸς γένεσιν, ὁ ἐξ αὐτῆς ἀναφὺς τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρὸς Λόγος. Gla phyra in Pentateuchum, PG.69.465.46: Ἄποπτος γὰρ παντελῶς, καὶ μὴν καὶ ἐπέκεινα νοῦ παντός, καὶ λόγου δύναμιν ὑπερφέρεται. Commentarius in Isaiam Prophetam, PG.70.896.47: ἀλλὰ αὐτὸς ἡ πάντων ἀρχὴ καὶ παντὸς ἐπέκεινα νοῦ, καὶ μετ᾿ αὐτὸν οὐκ ἔσται. Μένει γὰρ ὁ αὐτός, καὶ ἀναλ λοίωτον ἔχει τὴν φύσιν, καὶ ἀκράδαντον τὴν κατὰ πάντων ὑπεροχήν, καὶ διηνεκῆ βασιλείαν. De Sancta Trinitate Dialogi, p. 383: καὶ τὰ παντὸς ἐπέκεινα νοῦ καὶ γοῦν ἐν ἐσόπτρῳ καὶ αἰνίγματι βλέπειν. Op. cit. p. 506: τὴν ἀπόρρητον καὶ παντὸς ἐπέκεινα νοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ φύσιν. Op. cit. p. 558: πρὸς τὰ ἐπέκεινα νοῦ παντὸς ἀναμύειν οὐ παραιτούμεθα.  ACO, Concilium Universale Ephesenum anno 431, 1.1.1, p. 48 (apud Cyril, De Incarnatione Un igeniti, p. 683): θεὸς δὲ ὁ παντὸς ἐπέκεινα νοῦ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς τὴν ὕπαρξιν ἔχων ἐξῃρημέ νην τε καὶ ὑπερίσχουσαν. Op. cit. tome 1.1.1, p. 50 (apud Cyril, op. cit. p. 685): ὁ ὢν ἐν ἀρχῇ τῇ παντὸς ἐπέκεινα νοῦ.  See supra, pp. 1010 11, and notes 836, 837.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1039

provides the answer: not only did Cyril make the Christian God ‘Mind’ (or, Intellect), but now he describes Him in sheer Anaxagorean terms: the Supreme Nature is ‘pure’, ‘simple’, and ‘unmixed with anything else’.⁹⁶² Of course, Justinian had no idea what was this all about, but presumably later it was realized that Cyril had gone too far. Nevertheless, styling God Platonically as one being ‘beyond everything’ (ἐπέκεινα πάντων) became a recurrent theme in Christian literature because of Cyril of Alexandria, who championed this usage at scores of points, but Origen had refrained from such a usage.⁹⁶³ Hence, the followers of Cyril probably felt that it would be better to suppress and not hand down this work and its precarious statements to posterity. For all this, an anonymous biographer of the late Byzantine period quoted how awkwardly Cyril explained himself: the Father is the Mind, the Son is the Logos, and the Spirit is the Holy Spirit.⁹⁶⁴ It should be remarked that Origen used the Plotinian expression ‘beyond essence and mind’ only because Celsus used the Platonic one in the first place, having spoken of ὁ πάντων ἐπέκεινα ὤν (‘the one who is beyond everything’).⁹⁶⁵ Origen did not do so accidentally: as I said in the beginning of this chapter, in

 Justinian, Contra Monophysitas, 68 (quoting from Cyril’s Against the Synousiasts): ἐν ἁγίοις Κύριλλος … λέγει γὰρ ἐν τῷ κατὰ τῶν Συνουσιαστῶν λόγῳ ταῦτα … δεῖ γὰρ τῇ πάντων ἐπέκεινα καὶ ἀνωτάτω φύσει σῴζεσθαι καθαρῶς τὸ ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀσυμμιγὲς ἑτέρῳ. Cyril’s work entitled Κατὰ Συνουσιαστῶν is mentioned by Justinian also in op. cit. 9, and in the following texts: Flo rilegium Cyrillianum, pp. 138; 141. Doctrina Patrum, pp. 33; 59; 125. Eustathius (monk, Constanti nople, sixth century), Epistula ad Timotheum Scholasticum De Duabus Naturis Adversus Severum, line 954. Nicephorus I of Constantinople (Patriarch, eigthth ninth century), Eusebii Caesariensis Confutatio, 66. Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 229, p. 253a. ‘Synousiasts’ were styled those who sus tained that, in Christ, the divine and human natures were made one, or so Justinian claimed.  Cf. Origen, Cels, VI.64: whether God is ‘beyond essence’ (quoting Plato, Respublica, 509b) or He is essence himself, is a question that Origen leaves moot. Likewise, in VI.64. In VII.45, πάν των ἐπέκεινα ὤν are Celsus’ words. More interesting is a reference made long before Cels was composed. In the Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 47, he seems to allow for comprehension of the in comprehensible God: as every instrument of the body is akin to grasping specific kinds of stim uli (e. g. an eye can see things that are visible and an ear can hear sounds), likewise mind is akin to grasping ‘intelligible things, and God, who is beyond intelligible things’ (ὥσπερ ἕκαστον μέλος ἡμῶν πρός τι πέφυκεν οἰκειότητα σῴζειν, οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ πρὸς τὰ ὁρατὰ καὶ ὦτα πρὸς τὰ ἀκουστά, οὕτω νοῦς πρὸς τὰ νοητὰ καὶ τὸν ἐπέκεινα τῶν νοητῶν θεόν). In Cels, VII.45, he is ex plicit on this, too: ‘although God is beyond everything, He can be grasped intellectually, by means of a certain ineffable power’ (πάντων ἐπέκεινα ὤν, ἀρρήτῳ τινὶ δυνάμει νοητός).  Cyril of Alexandria, apud Anonymous, Vita sancti Andreae sali, 36, lines 3018 27: νοῦς γὰρ ὁ πατήρ, λόγος ὁ υἱός, πνεῦμα ἐκείνη ἡ εὔπνοια, δι᾿ ἧς τὸν αἰθέρα ἀναπνέομεν. … καὶ εὑρήσεις νοῦν τὸν πατέρα καὶ λόγον τὸν μονογενῆ αὐτοῦ υἱὸν καὶ πνεῦμα τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον· διὰ γὰρ τῶν τριῶν τούτων ὑποστάσεων εἷς θεὸς καὶ ὁρᾶται καὶ κηρύσσεται θεοπρεπῶς.  Origen, Cels, VII.45.

1040

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

the Contra Celsum, he felt he should exhibit his superior knowledge of pagan sources, and sought not so much to refute as to overwhelm Celsus, in order to show that he was superior to his adversary by any standard of erudition. Since then Celsus quoted a cliché from Plato (which was prosaic to the intelligentsia of those times), Origen fired back with entertaining an expression which was distinctly Plotinus’ and marked a new era of philosophy. At the time when Celsus wrote his True Discourse, Plotinus was not born yet. It was Origen who highlighted the Plotinian terminology, which betokens awareness of the novel Neoplatonic approach. Since Plotinus’ Enneads were written during a span from c. 253 until his death in 270, three alternatives can be surmised: either the actual source for both Plotinus and Origen was Ammonius Saccas; or, the notion was communicated to Origen by Plotinus’ early edition of the Enneads by Eustochius; or, Porphyry himself (who was with Plotinus during the period 262‒268) handed over a draft to Origen in c. 265 and the Contra Celsum was written afterwards, between 265 and 267.

An authentic Origenist exponent The only other author who spoke of ‘Mind which is beyond everything’ was Basilius Minimus, a bishop commenting on an oration by Gregory of Nazianzus. All Gregory actually did was mere honorific quotation from Isaiah, 9:5 of the Septuaginta, styling Christ ‘Angel of the Great Counsel’ (μεγάλης βουλῆς ἄγγελος), but Basilius went on to elaborate, in fact he commented on the Old Testament rather than on Gregory’s sermon: the Logos is so called because he is alive, he bears upon him a manifestation (χαρακτηρίζων ἐν ἑαυτῷ) of the Father. But here is how he describes the latter: “The Father, who is the Mind that is beyond everything (τὸν πάντων ἐπέκεινα νοῦν Πατέρα)”.⁹⁶⁶ Basilius is the sole author who used the Platonic and Plotinian expression πάντων ἐπέκεινα not in order to agree with those Greeks who urged that the Supreme God is beyond the Mind, but to claim the opposite: the Father who is beyond everything, is Himself the Mind. This author is a faithful pupil of the real Origen, and escaped the notice of the inquisitors of theological aberration only because the times of Constantine Porphyrogennitus were different from those of Justinian.⁹⁶⁷ His text contains pre Basilius Minimus, Commentarii in Gregorii Nazianzeni Orationem xxxviii, 3.18.  Basilius styled himself Minimus (ὁ ἐλάχιστος) in humble distinction from his predecessor of the same see, namely, Basil the Great. He dedicated almost all of his works to Emperor Con stantine Porphyrogennitus (912 959).

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1041

cise parallels (using the same characteristic language) from Origen on such critical issues as the eternal generation of the Son by the Father,⁹⁶⁸ and the notion that the Father created because he did not will to keep in himself the logoi of his rationality, but instilled them in the Son out of goodness.⁹⁶⁹ Finally, he explains what he no doubt had learned from Origen: the Son is the Logos and the expression of the Father himself (ὅρον τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ λόγον); he is the Logos who came forth from the Mind/Father;⁹⁷⁰ the Logos fulfils the essence of the Father, and demonstrates what the Father himself is.⁹⁷¹ This is indeed an authoritative and succinct exposition of what the ontological relation between the Father and the Son is, couched by a faithful and authentic pupil of Origen. No room for classification is allowed whatsoever: the Logos appears as a second, but not secondary, God; he announces and makes known the Father to the universe, being himself a manifestation of the fullness of Deity, to which the Logos himself belongs by essence.

An Anaxagorean Second God? Aristotle claimed that Anaxagoras abused the term ‘aether’ by using this it instead of ‘fire’,⁹⁷² and, according to Hippolytus, Empedocles identified aether

 Basilius Minimus, op. cit. 3.1a: Χριστὸς γεννᾶται. [Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, In Theophania (orat. 38), PG.36.312.48] γεννᾶται εἶπεν, οὐκ ἐγεννήθη· διὰ τί; … διότι τὴν αὐτὴν ἀεὶ σῴζει θείαν πρόοδον ὁ Υἱὸς καὶ Θεὸς ὡς Λόγος ἐκ Νοῦ ἀνεκφοιτήτως ἀεὶ γεννώμενος, οὐχ ἅπαξ ἐκ τοῦ Πα τρὸς προελθών τε καὶ γεννηθεὶς ὡς ἡμεῖς. Cf. Origen, homJer, 9.4 (see this being quoted supra, p. 995, note 777).  Basilius Minimus, op. cit. 3.86a: Ἑαυτὸν γὰρ ὁ θεῖος οἷον ὁρῶν νοῦς καὶ νοῶν καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ πάντας τοὺς τῶν ὄντων ἀναθεωρῶν καὶ συνέχων λόγους, ᾗ φασι τινὲς ἰδέας καὶ παραδείγματα, οὐκ ἠρκέσθη φησὶ [Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, op. cit. PG.36.320.36] μὴ οὐχὶ καὶ προαγαγεῖν καὶ πλουσίως τὸ ἀγαθὸν ὥσπερ ὑπερεκβλύσαν ἐκχέαι καὶ τὸν πάντα πλοῦτον δεῖξαι τῆς ἀγαθότητος. Cf. Origen, commJohn, I.38.283: οὕτω τὰ τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρήματα οὐ συνέχων ὁ πατὴρ ἐρεύγεται καὶ ποιεῖ τὸν τύπον αὐτῶν ἐν τῷ λόγῳ, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο εἰκόνι καλουμένῳ τοῦ ἀοράτου θεοῦ. Cf. supra, pp. 887 8.  Op. cit. 3.1a; 3.128. See supra, p. 995, note 778; op. cit. 3.18: the Mind is the Father.  Basilius Minimus, op. cit. 3.128: Εἰκότως οὖν ὅρον τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ λόγον. Cf. Gregory of Na zianzus, op. cit. PG.36.325.23: τὸν Υἱὸν εἶπεν οὐ μόνον ἀπαθῶς ὡς Λόγον ἐκ Νοῦ προελθόντα τοῦ Πατρός, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὡς συμπληρωτικὸν οὐσίας καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ τί ἐστι δηλοῦντα τοῦ Πατρός.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 270b24 25: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ καταχρῆται τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ οὐ καλῶς· ὀνομάζει γὰρ αἰθέρα ἀντὶ πυρός. Likewise, Meteorologica, 339b (tentatively: “I think that Aanax agoras thought that this is the same as fire”, ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν τῷ πυρὶ ταὐτὸν ἡγήσασθαί μοι δοκεῖ σημαίνειν), and 369b14 15. Sometimes, translators render καταχρῆται ‘misuse’, which is not entirely erroneous, although, strictly speaking, the verb for ‘misuse’ is παραχρῶμαι, not κα

1042

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

with fire.⁹⁷³ However, in Presocratic philosophy, ‘aether’ had also a religious sense, which I discuss later in this chapter. Aristotle argued that Anaxagoras identified ‘fire’ with ‘aether’, but this he said confidently only in his treatise On the Heavens. ⁹⁷⁴ However, in the Meteorologica, he appears not so sure about what Anaxagoras really meant, which is why he is not categorical, and says ‘as it seems to me’ (ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ σημαίνειν).⁹⁷⁵ Then, in the same work, he makes a slight distinction: aether is not exactly fire; it is only that kind of fire which has descended into the lower atmosphere.⁹⁷⁶ There is nothing strange about reading natural realities and phenomena in a double sense. Damascius could read confidently Presocratic philosophy and theology in both a natural and a theological sense, and he did not regard the latter as inferior to philosophical understanding. Far to the contrary, as shown in a moment. He felt he could interpret conveniently ‘thunder, thunderbolt, and lightning’ not only philosophically but also in a ‘priestly’ manner; that is, in a sacerdotal (hieratic) sense (ἱερατικῶς), assuring that, in this way, the import of those natural powers would be the same as that which was maintained by the Chaldeans and Plato alike.⁹⁷⁷ Damascius advised that the distinction between philosophy and hieratic thought was pointed out by Pythagoras: actually, either of those activities ‘departs from different principles; however, on the one hand, philosophy posits one supreme principle and then it seeks to explain everything by means of that principle’; on the other, ‘hieratic activity, which is god-worship, starts from the things of this world. This was the way the Egyptians thought, and, in this sense, the Egyptians were the first to practice philosophy; it was from ταχρῶμαι, which actually means ‘abuse’. However, this point is not about grammar: in fact, Ar istotle accuses Anaxagoras of sacrilege, since he applied the name of an element (fire) to a di vine substance (aether). See infra, p. 1044, Plato, Cratylus, 410b. Pseudo Aristotle, De Mundo, 392b; note 986.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 7.29.20: πῦρ γάρ ἐστιν ὁ αἰθήρ.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 270b, quoted supra, note 972. Op. cit. 302b14 15: τὸ γὰρ πῦρ καὶ τὸν αἰθέρα προσαγορεύει ταὐτό. Meteorologica, 369b14 15, quoted infra, note 976.  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 339b: ὁ γὰρ λεγόμενος αἰθὴρ παλαιὰν εἴληφε τὴν προσηγορίαν, ἣν ᾿Aναξαγόρας μὲν τῷ πυρὶ ταὐτὸν ἡγήσασθαί μοι δοκεῖ σημαίνειν. Cf. Simplicius saying that ‘at several points, Anaxagoras used the term aether instead of fire.’ commCael, p. 603: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aνα ξαγόρας πολλαχοῦ τῷ τοῦ αἰθέρος ὀνόματι ἀντὶ τοῦ πυρὸς κέχρηται.  Aristotle, op. cit. 369b: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ τοῦ ἄνωθεν αἰθέρος [sc. λέγει πῦρ], ὃ δὴ ἐκεῖνος καλεῖ πῦρ κατενεχθὲν ἄνωθεν κάτω.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 125, he quotes, Οἳ Ζηνὶ βροντήν τε δόσαν τεῦξαν τε κεραυνόν, stating that this is a verse by Orpheus. However, this is from Hesiod, Theogonia, verse 141. See this being quoted by Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria, v. 1, p. 327, and Anonymous, Scholia in Apollonii Rhodii Argonautica (scholia vetera), p. 61.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1043

them that Pythagoreans learned everything about Deity, and transferred that knowledge to the Greeks’. Nevertheless, ‘it is easy to reflect philosophically and adapt this thought to the mode of thinking of the Egyptians’.⁹⁷⁸ Accordingly, speaking of hope, he also saw this as a threefold one: one, the hope of the multitude; second, the hope of a philosopher; third, the hope by a person who is committed to sacerdotal activity.⁹⁷⁹ Nevertheless, it is not a characteristic of a philosopher either to pronounce prophecies or to engage in anything which is befitting sacerdotal activity.⁹⁸⁰ Hence, his distinction of those whom nowadays students of philosophy complacently lump together under the wholesale designation ‘philosophers’. Certain ones opt for philosophy, such as Porphyry, Plotinus, and many other philosophers; others [opt for] sacerdotal activity, such as Iamblichus, Syrianus, Proclus, and all of those who are of a priestly nature.⁹⁸¹

Each of those kinds of activity has virtues that are befitting each one of them: a man of sacerdotal nature is oriented to the divine nature of the soul and to those virtues that are appropriate to that kind of existence, which were manifest in Iamblichus, and more clearly so in the followers of Proclus.⁹⁸² Both activities certainly seek to avert evil; however, their methods are different: philosophy does so by means of reflection which in turn tends to determine different qualities of action; on the other hand, priestly activity seeks to turn evil away by means of theurgy (τῆς ἱερατικῆς μηχανῆς).⁹⁸³ Each one of those different practices opts for its own way of explaining the ancient lore,⁹⁸⁴ but Damascius does not conceal that he places sacerdotal activity on a higher pedestal: as all other arts and sciences reassure themselves by having recourse to philosophy, in like a manner, philosophy itself establishes its own doctrines by being elevated to the sacerdotal activity.⁹⁸⁵

 Damascius, Vita Isidori, fr. 3, apud Suda, letter iota, entry 159.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 48.  Damascius, Vita Isidori, fr. 213, apud Suda, letter omicron, entry 795.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 172: Ὅτι οἱ μὲν τὴν φιλοσοφίαν προτιμῶσιν, ὡς Πορφύριος καὶ Πλωτῖνος καὶ ἄλλοι πολλοὶ φιλόσοφοι· οἱ δὲ τὴν ἱερατικήν, ὡς Ἰάμβλιχος καὶ Συ ριανὸς καὶ Πρόκλος καὶ οἱ ἱερατικοὶ πάντες.  Damascius, op. cit. 144.  Damascius, op. cit. 486.  Damascius, op. cit. 496 (explaining Socrates either way). Cf. op. cit. 508.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 2), 109: Ὅτι ὥσπερ αἱ ἄλλαι τέχναι καὶ ἐπιστῆμαι ἐπὶ φιλοσοφίαν καταφυγοῦσαι βεβαιοῦνται, οὕτω καὶ φιλοσοφία ἐπὶ τὴν ἱερατικὴν ἀναβᾶσα τὰ οἰ κεῖα δόγματα συνίστησιν.

1044

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Was Aristotle sincere in reporting the meaning of ‘aether’ in Anaxagoras? I am myself not so sure. Once again, study of the context is indispensable, and possibly illuminating. The context in that part of the first book of the Meteorologica is an argument for the theory that the celestial region is composed not of fire and air, but of a fifth element (i. e. the aether). Aristotle speaks as a scientist who is aware of the latest developments of science while despising ‘the childish opinion’ (τῆς παιδικῆς δόξης) of his predecessors, by which he suggests not only Anaxagoras, but also Heraclitus, at least. To him, this element is divine, which is why he feels it necessary to recall the ancient etymology of ‘aether’. We have already described and characterized the first element, and explained that the en tire world of the upper motions is full of that body (πᾶς ὁ περὶ τὰς ἄνω φορὰς κόσμος ἐκεί νου τοῦ σώματος πλήρης ἐστι). This is an opinion we are not alone in holding: it appears to be an old assumption and one which men have held in the past, for the word aether has long been used to denote that element. Anaxagoras, it is true, seems to me to think that the word means the same as fire. For he thought that the upper regions were full of fire, and that men referred to those regions when they spoke of aether. In the latter point he was right, for men seem to have assumed that a body which was eternally in motion was also divine in nature; and, as such a body was different from any of the terrestrial el ements, they determined to call it ‘aether’ (τὸ γὰρ ἀεὶ σῶμα θέον ἅμα καὶ θεῖον τι τὴν φύσιν ἐοίκασιν ὑπολαβεῖν, καὶ διώρισαν ὀνομάζειν αἰθέρα),⁹⁸⁶ because it is different from all ter restrial things. For we maintain that the same opinions circulate among men, not once or twice or occasionally, but infinitely often. On the other hand, those who maintain that not only the bodies in motion but also that which contains them (τὸ περιέχον) are composed of pure fire and that the space between the earth and the stars is filled by air, would perhaps have ceased to hold this childish opinion if they had studied what mathematics has now sufficiently demonstrated.⁹⁸⁷

It is clear then that Aristotle accorded aether a divine character, which is what Euripides implied, too, as we learn from Iamblichus: “The Earth is Hestia herself being held in the bosom of the Aether.”⁹⁸⁸

 Cf. Plato, Cratylus, 410b. Pseudo Aristotle, De Mundo, 392b: Οὐρανοῦ δὲ καὶ ἄστρων οὐσίαν μὲν αἰθέρα καλοῦμεν, οὐχ, ὥς τινες, διὰ τὸ πυρώδη οὖσαν αἴθεσθαι, … ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ ἀεὶ θεῖν κυ κλοφορουμένην, στοιχεῖον οὖσαν ἕτερον τῶν τεττάρων, ἀκήρατόν τε καὶ θεῖον.  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 339b16 34.  Iamblichus, Theologoumena Arithmeticae, p. 6: καὶ δὴ Εὐριπίδης, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρου γενόμε νος μαθητὴς οὕτω τῆς γῆς μέμνηται· Ἑστίαν δέ σ᾿ οἱ σοφοὶ βροτῶν νομίζουσιν. Cf. Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 944: καὶ Γαῖα μῆτερ· Ἐστίαν δέ σ᾿ οἱ σοφοὶ βροτῶν καλοῦσιν ἡμένην ἐν αἰθέρι. For the meaning of ἡμένη, see Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, letter eta, entry 453: ἡμένη· καθημένη (Ilias, I.358); ἐν κόλποις βαστάζουσα. Anonymous, Epimerismi Homerici (= D scholia), (comm. on Ilias, I.358), ἡμένη· καθεζομένη. Likewise, Anonymous, Scholia in Iliadem (scholia

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1045

Given the explanation about aether by Euripides (as well as the ancient meaning of it), this bespeaks a divine imposition on ‘air’⁹⁸⁹ that involved no distinction, and yet this was a multitude.⁹⁹⁰ Shortly after (καὶ μετ᾿ ὀλίγον)⁹⁹¹ this opening of his Physics, Anaxagoras adds that ‘air and aether separate out of the multiple receptacle (τοῦ πολλοῦ τοῦ περιέχοντος); and certainly the receptacle of this multitude is infinite.’⁹⁹² The primeval confusum of Anaxagoras was not entirely undifferentiated: for while ‘all things were together’, ‘air and aether’ are stated as two realities standing apart from that confusum, as I discuss below. There are two points where, in Anaxagoras’ own words, ‘the receptacle’ (τὸ περιέχον) is accompanied by a notion of multitude, which he did not deem incompatible with the primal state.⁹⁹³ In respect of this, it should be recalled that, in his philosophy, oneness and multitude are not as incompatible with each other as common experience could has it.⁹⁹⁴ The term τό περιέχον suggesting a certain receptacle ‘encompassing’ everything is interesting, and it appears also in Anaximenes, who maintained that air is a primary principle,⁹⁹⁵ and ‘in like a manner that our soul is air and holds the body together, the entire world is held together by air and spirit’. The doxographer’s opinion was that ‘air and spirit’ were used as ‘synonyms’.⁹⁹⁶ It should be recalled that testimonies had it that Anaximenes was a teacher of Anaxagoras

vetera), comm. on the same verse of the Ilias. Diels correctly considered this testimony by Iam blichus as referring to Anaxagoras (Testimonia, fr. 20b).  To Origen the ‘air’ was ‘belched out’; see supra, pp. 887 8 and infra, pp. 1056 8.  Cf. infra, p. 1057, Origen: οὐ συνέχων ο πατήρ.  These are words of Simplicius.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 156: καὶ γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ ἀποκρίνονται ἀπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ τοῦ περιέχοντος, καὶ τό γε περιέχον ἄπειρόν ἐστι τὸ πλῆθος.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 155: ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ ἀποκρίνονται ἀπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ τοῦ περιέχοντος. καὶ τό γε περιέχον ἄπειρόν ἐστι τὸ πλῆθος. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 157: ὁ δὲ νοῦς, ὃς ἀεί ἐστι, τὸ κάρτα καὶ νῦν ἐστιν ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα, ἐν τῷ πολλὰ περιέχοντι καὶ ἐν τοῖς προσκριθεῖσι καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀποκεκριμένοις.  See supra, chapter 7, p. 475. Aristotle ascribed this idea to both Anaxagoras and Empedo cles. Physica, 187a21: καὶ ὅσοι δ᾿ ἓν καὶ πολλά φασιν εἶναι, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι ἐκκρίνουσι τἆλλα. Simplicius, op. cit. p. 153: μεταβαίνει λοιπὸν ἐπὶ τοὺς περὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέα καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόραν ἓν καὶ πολλὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν λέγοντας. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 93. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 1.14: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καθ᾿ ὃ ἓν καὶ πολλὰ τὰ στοιχεῖα ἔλεγον ὡμοφώνουν.  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 2, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 24.  Anaximenes, apud Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.12 (apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philoso phorum, 876A B): ᾿Aναξιμένης δ᾿ ὁ Μιλήσιος ἀρχὴν τῶν ὄντων ἀέρα ἀπεφήνατο· ἐκ γὰρ τούτου τὰ πάντα γίνεσθαι καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν πάλιν ἀναλύεσθαι, οἷον ἡ ψυχή φησίν ἡ ἡμετέρα ἀὴρ οὖσα συγ κρατεῖ ἡμᾶς, καὶ ὅλον τὸν κόσμον πνεῦμα καὶ ἀὴρ περιέχει· λέγεται δὲ συνωνύμως ἀὴρ καὶ πνεῦμα.

1046

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

at Miletus, before the latter decamped to Athens where Archelaus became his first Athenian pupil.⁹⁹⁷ Besides, Aristotle points out common views of the two philosophers.⁹⁹⁸ Another reference to τό περιέχον was made in relation to Heraclitus: once again, this points to the supreme ontological principle, namely the Logos, and Sextus Empiricus explained what he meant: the human mind becomes rational only by means of its association with (actually, by ‘breathing’) the ‘divine Logos’ (τῷ περιέχοντι συμβαλὼν λογικὴν ἐνδύεται δύναμιν), but when we are asleep, our mind is separated from its natural union with that which contains it’ (χωρίζεται τῆς πρὸς τὸ περιέχον συμφυΐας).⁹⁹⁹ In any event, Anaxagoras’ words allow for assuming this as the primal reality, which was different from the Mind itself. The latter was the first mover that caused this creative process.¹⁰⁰⁰ Following this, it appears that the notion of ‘the encompassing’ was shared by some Presocratics, although they attributed different imports to it. Perhaps, it would not be too much of exaggeration if we recall that the idea of ‘egg’ (ᾠόν), suggesting the primal Being, was a common theme in the oriental lore, and it was employed by Orpheus. According to Damascius, he posited Aether and Chaos as two principles governed by a supreme one, namely Time, whereas he thought of Being as being an egg,¹⁰⁰¹ which was born by Time.¹⁰⁰² Thus, there is an ‘infinite receptacle’ (τό περιέχον ἄπειρον), in which ‘air’ and ‘aether’ are already distinguished from each other, and then, as ‘air’ and ‘aether’ were further distinguished from one another by means of rotation,¹⁰⁰³ everything began to be distinguished from everything else. In other words, ‘air’ and ‘aether’ come forth together out of the ‘receptacle’. Put in simple words (and recalling Euripides, as above), Anaxagoras says that the primal

 Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 3. Theophrastus, op. cit. 4, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 27. Harpocration, Lexicon in Decem Oratores Atticos, p. 33. Cf. Strabo, Geographica, 14.1.36.  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 365a; De Caelo, 294b.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 129.  Michael Psellus, commPhys, 1.15: Οὗτος δὲ καὶ πρῶτος ἐδόξασε δημιουργὸν νοῦν ὡς ποιη τικὸν αἴτιον, τὸν κινοῦντα τὴν ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος ἔκκρισιν, διὸ καὶ χαριέντως τινὲς αὐτὸν ἐκάλουν Νοῦν.  Damascius, Princ, p. 317.  Damascius, op. cit. p. 318.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 156: καὶ ὁ ἀὴρ καὶ ὁ αἰθὴρ οἱ ἀποκρινόμενοι. ἡ δὲ περιχώρησις αὐτὴ ἐποίησεν ἀποκρίνεσθαι.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1047

Mind gave rise to the Aether/Logos (‘who is the progenitor of men and gods’), and from ‘air’ the natural reality came forth.¹⁰⁰⁴ The expression, ‘the air and aether withheld (κατεῖχεν) all things’ deserves particular attention: the verb κατεῖχεν means that air and aether were already distinct realities and then all subsequent distinction of things followed. Considering the divine nature of aether (an idea of old, which both Plato and Aristotle endorsed)¹⁰⁰⁵ on the one hand, and the fact that Anaximenes was a teacher of Anaxagoras, on the other, I should have thought that Anaxagoras’ expression, πάντα γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ κατεῖχεν ἀμφότερα ἄπειρα ἐόντα, suggests this: the Aether, which permeates all of the universe and it is a divine being, bespeaks the fact that the Mind produced its (rather: his) Logos; on the other hand, ‘air’ suggests the emergence of the material universe.¹⁰⁰⁶ In other words, in the primal undifferentiated reality, ‘aether’ was present as the divine agent acting at the behest of the ‘unmixed’ Mind, and ‘air’ was the potential existence of all principles. I will return to this point later. Later philosophies (both Greek and Christian) put this in terms of God begetting his Son, and creating the universe. The former is an act relating to what God is (in the case of Anaxagoras: became); the latter bespeaks what God did. A text ascribed to Aristotle clearly pointed out the ‘divine nature’ of aether (τὴν αἰθέριον καὶ θείαν φύσιν);¹⁰⁰⁷ he stated that regarding aether as a ‘first body’ was a tenet of old; the aether was always considered as being different from the four elements, and he mentions the etymology of the ‘aether’ derived from ‘eternally running’.¹⁰⁰⁸ It is at that point that he rebuked Anaxagoras be-

 Doxography has it that Empedocles, too, saw the aether likewise (infra, pp. 1061; 1072; 1081). Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 887B, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.37.3. Pseudo Galen attributed this idea to Diocles (of Cnidus?). Historia Philosophica, 49.  See supra, p. 1044.  Thus, somehow I could endorse the view of F.M. Cornford, “Anaxagoras’ theory of mat ter”, Classical Quarterly 24, 1925, pp. 14 30, 83 95 (p. 25) [repr. in A.C. Bowen (ed.), Selected Pa pers, New York, 1987], according to which Anaxagoras intended ‘air’ and ‘aether’ to be thought of as extreme opposites. The view of Theophrastus claiming that, to Anaxagoras, aether and air were different respectively simply in terms of rare/hot/bright/light and dense/cold/dark/heavy, is simply reproduction of the spirit of Aristotle towards Anaxagoras.  Pseudo Aristotle, De Mundo, 392b (also quoted by Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.40.1).  Aristotle, De Caelo, 270b: αἰθέρα προσωνόμασαν τὸν ἀνωτάτω τόπον, ἀπὸ τοῦ θεῖν ἀεὶ τὸν ἀΐδιον χρόνον. So Plato, see supra, p. 1044, note 986.

1048

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

cause it appeared to Aristotle that he had abused the name aether by using it as a synonym for fire.¹⁰⁰⁹ It should be noticed that the terms in which ‘aether’ was described later are the same as those Anaxagoras used of Mind itself. Once he styled Mind ‘the finest’ and ‘purest’ of all things (λεπτότατον πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον),¹⁰¹⁰ a series of authors used the same locution in order to extol the Nous, whether the human or the universal one.¹⁰¹¹ The case of Plotinus is of particular interest. In his treatise ‘On the Three Primary Hypostases’, he explains the ‘lineage’¹⁰¹² of the Intellect, saying that this lineage is ‘worthy of the purest Intellect’ (ὁ νοῦς οὗτος ἄξιος¹⁰¹³ νοῦ τοῦ καθαρωτάτου), since it springs from the first principle’.¹⁰¹⁴ The instance in Plotinus is more than an occasional linguistic loan from Anaxagoras. For although he identifies his own Intellect with Plato’s Demiurge and essays to convince that his source is Plato, in fact, he wrote while having in mind Anaxagoras’ Nous. This is why, shortly after that point,¹⁰¹⁵ he feels it necessary to mention Anaxagoras by name in order to acknowledge that he did not really say anything different, even though his predecessor’s ‘account was not very accurate, because of his ancientness’. However, the fact of the matter is that Plotinus’ expression καθαρώτατος νοῦς comes from Anaxagoras, not from Plato. Cyril of Alexandria,¹⁰¹⁶ who was obsessed with using the Anaxagorean vocabulary¹⁰¹⁷ and applied the designation Nous to the Father, did so once again: the Father is a simple, incorporeal, and purest

 This did not deter lexicographers from defining ‘aether’ as ‘the fire which is expanded throughout the firmament’. Lexicon Vindobonense, letter alpha, entry 118: αἰθὴρ τὸ ὑφηπλωμένον τῷ στερεώματι πῦρ.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156; 177. Cf. Wisdom of Solomon, 7:22 24.  Cf. νοῦς styled καθαρώτατος. Philo, De Plantatione, 126 (human mind): ὁ ἀειδὴς καὶ κα θαρώτατος νοῦς. Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 64 (human mind): ὁ καθαρώτατος νοῦς. De Aeternitate Mundi, 77 (human mind): ὁ καθαρώτατος καὶ ἀκραιφνέστατος νοῦς. De Congressu Eruditionis Gratia, 132 (ref. to Moses): ὁ καθαρώτατος νοῦς. De Fuga et Inventione, 71: νοῦς ἐστι καθαρώτατος. De Mutatione Nominum, 208 (ref. to Moses): νοῦς ὁ καθαρώτατος. De Somniis, 1.135 (the universal Logos): νοῦς ὅλος δι᾿ ὅλων ὁ καθαρώτατος εἶναι λέγεται. Op. cit. 1.147 (the universal Logos): ὁ καθαρώτατος νοῦς.  Using the expression of Ilias, VI.211.  I opt for the known alternative ἄξιος, not ἀξίας which makes no sense.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.7.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9. Cf. supra, chapter 8, p. 539.  Supra, pp 979; 1010 11.  Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus de Sancta Consubstantiali Trinitate, PG.75.76.21 23: ἁπλοῦς δὲ καὶ ἀσώματος, καὶ αὐτὸ δὴ τοῦτο νοῦς ὁ πάντων καθαρώτατος.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1049

 Cf. καθαρώτατον and λεπτομερὲς for αἰθήρ. Josephus, De Bello Judaico, 6.47: τὸ κα θαρώτατον στοιχεῖον αἰθὴρ ξενοδοχῶν ἄστροις ἐγκαθιδρύει. Op. cit. 2.154: τοῦ λεπτοτάτου αἰθέρος. Claudius Ptolemaeus, Syntaxis Mathematica, p. 14: τῶν σωμάτων πάντων λεπτομερέ στερος καὶ ὁμοιομερέστερός ἐστιν ὁ αἰθήρ, τῶν δὲ ὁμοιομερῶν ὁμοιομερεῖς αἱ ἐπιφάνειαι. This, along with its context, was quoted by Simplicius, commCael, p. 411. Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 4: Ἔστι γὰρ ὁ αἰθὴρ ἀὴρ ὁ λεπτομερέστατος. This section was quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.11.1 2. Likewise, John Tzetzes, Exegesis in Homeri Iliadem, comm. on verse I.406, scholium 58: τὸ πυρῶδες καὶ λεπτομερὲς τοῦ ἀέρος. Michael Psellus, Opuscula i, 55: ὁ δὲ αἰθὴρ καὶ πνεῦμα λεπτόν. … λεπτότατον καὶ καθαρώτατον καὶ διαυγέστατον, φιλιοῦται ψυχῇ λογικῇ, σῶμα ἀσώματόν πως ὑπάρχον. Theologica, 30 (ref. to the soul): λεπτομερὴς καὶ αἰθέριος. Op. cit. 5 (on various angelic bodies): πάντῃ αἰθέριον καὶ θρονικὸν ἢ χερουβικὸν ἢ σεραφικόν. Op. cit. 80 (on the ‘spiritual food’ Jesus mentioned to his pupils): περὶ δὲ τῆς αἰθεριώδους καὶ μείζονος μνημονεύων [sc. τροφῆς, contrasted to the παχυτέρας one]. Michael of Ephesus, In Parva Naturalia Commentaria, p. 90: τὸ δὲ λεπτότατον τοῦ αἰθέρος. Michael Gly cas, Quaestiones in Sacram Scripturam, ch. 7, p. 80 & ch. 96, p. 457 (ref. to Paul’s expression about the resurrected ‘spiritual body’): ἐγείρεται σῶμα πνευματικόν, τουτέστι λεπτὸν καὶ κοῦ φον καὶ αἰθέριον. Anonymous, Prooemium in Arati Phaenomena, 9: αἰθὴρ δὲ οὐσίας χύμα τὸ λε πτότατον θερμὸν φύσει καὶ λαμπρόν, τὸ πρῶτον φῶς καὶ μὴ κατὰ μετοχὴν ἑτέρου γινόμενον. Anonymous, Scholia in Aelium Aristidem (scholia vetera), p. 100: τὸ τοῦ αἰθέρος λεπτομερέστα τον. Anonymous, Scholia in Aratum (scholia vetera), scholion 1: τὴν λεπτομερεστάτην οὐσίαν τοῦ αἰθέρος καὶ νοερωτάτην.  Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 102 (ref. to Stoicism): συμπάσης τῆς οὐσίας εἰς τὸν λεπτότα τον ἀναλυθείσης αἰθέρα. Plutarch, De Facie In Orbe Lunae, 928C (ref. to Stoicism): τοῦ αἰθέρος τὸ μὲν αὐγοειδὲς καὶ λεπτόν. Galen, In Arteriis Natura Sanguis Contineatur, p. 706: λεπτομερέστερον οἷον τὸ αἰθερῶδες. De Tremore, Palpitatione, Convulsione et Rigore, p. 597: εἰ γὰρ αἰθερῶδες εἴη καὶ λεπτὸν καὶ καθαρόν. Ad Glauconem De Medendi Methodo, p. 111: οὐκ αἰθερῶδες τὴν οὐσίαν οὐδὲ λεπτόν. Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, Problemata, 1.72: τὸν μέντοι ἀνώτερον ἀέρα ὡς λεπτομερῆ καὶ αἰθεροειδῆ κινῶν. Op. cit. 2.61: ἅπερ ἐν λεπτοτάτῳ καὶ αἰθεροειδεῖ τυγχάνει πνεύ ματι. Porphyry, De Abstinentia, 4.13 (quoted also by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 9.3.20): ἐκ τοῦ λεπτοτάτου αἰθέρος. Theon of Alexandria, Commentaria in Ptolemaei Syntaxin Mathemati cam, p. 379: πάντων λεπτομερεστέρου καὶ ὁμοιομερεστέρου τοῦ αἰθέρος. Proclus (regarding aether as incorporeal), commRep, v. 2, p. 187: διά τὴν λεπτότητα τοῦ αἰθέρος. commTim, v. 3, pp. 187 8: ὁ δὲ Κρόνος τὴν ὑψηλοτάτην χώραν καὶ λεπτοτάτην κατευθύνει τοῦ αἰθέρος, μέσος παρὰ τῷ Πλάτωνι τεταγμένος, διότι τὸ μέσον ἐν ταῖς ἀσωμάτοις οὐσίαις. Simplicius, commCael, p. 118: ἐξαιρέτως τὸν οὐρανὸν τῷ τοῦ αἰθέρος τιμήσαντες τὸ ἄκρον καὶ ὑπερανέχον δηλοῦντι καὶ τῶν ὑφ᾿ ἑαυτὸν λεπτότατόν τε καὶ καθαρώτατον. Of Christians: Origen, commJohn, XIII.21.123: φύσεως λεπτομεροῦς καὶ αἰθερώδους. frJohn, 87 & 139: εἰ δὲ ὡς ἐν σωματικοῖς τόποις ἔστι τις τόπος τοῦ αἰθέρος ἐν τοῖς καθαρωτάτοις καὶ λεπτότητι φωτὸς διαυγεστέροις. Epipha nius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 1, p. 187: τὰ μὲν γὰρ κοῦφα καὶ λεπτότερα τῆς πάσης φύσεως ἐπι πολάσαι ἄνω τουτέστιν φῶς καὶ αἰθέρα καὶ τὸ λεπτότατον τοῦ πνεύματος. Macarius of Magne sia, Μονογενής, Book 2, p. 39: τὸν ὑπερκείμενον λεπτότατον αἰθέρα τὸν ἐκ πυρίνων φωστήρων ἀδιαστάτως αἰθόμενον. Photius, Bibliotheca, Codex 232, p. 288a: λεπτὸν καὶ ἀερῶδες καὶ αἰθέριον καὶ πνευματικὸν ἐν τῷ καιρῷ τῆς ἀναστάσεως ἀποληψόμεθα τὸ σῶμα.

1050

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Nous. At the same time though, authors applied to the ‘aether’ epithets that Anaxagoras used for Nous, namely ‘purest’¹⁰¹⁸ and ‘finest’.¹⁰¹⁹ The opening of Anaxagoras’ own text makes it clear that ‘aether’ was there along with ‘air’ in a state where neither fire, nor water, nor anything else was there yet. How then could Anaxagoras possibly have used ‘aether’ instead of ‘fire’? As his text stands, aether is prior to fire, indeed it is prior to any distinction, that is, to any creation. Aether is there along with air, while no distinction by the Mind had taken place yet. The text also makes it clear that ‘all things were together’; however, at the same time, both ‘air and aether’ were there, too; actually, they ‘withheld’ everything. From this follows that the term τὸ περιέχον does indeed make sense, as the expression τὸ πολὺ τὸ περιέχον also does: this was ‘air and aether’. For although this was a ‘mixture’ (μῖγμα),¹⁰²⁰ the distinct presence of ‘air and aether’ allows for the epithet τὸ πολύ, which in turn is compatible with Anaxagoras’ ensuing phrase, καὶ γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ ἀποκρίνονται ἀπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ τοῦ περιέχοντος, καὶ τό γε περιέχον ἄπειρόν ἐστι τὸ πλῆθος. This means that, in the primeval state, ‘air and aether’ are already distinct (ἀποκρίνονται) from the confusum of the undifferentiated principles. Therefore, ‘aether’ bespeaks something divine that was present upon creation, which is made clear not only from the statements of Euripides as above, but also from Anaxagoras’ own text. The term ‘aether’ was a commonplace in this specific sense (i. e. meaning something divine), and Aristotle reminded the etymology of it, namely ἀεὶ θέειν, meaning that which moves ceaselessly.¹⁰²¹ This etymology actually comes from Plato,¹⁰²² but it enjoyed some currency in Late Antiquity because of the reference by Aristotle rather than by his teacher at the Academy.¹⁰²³ The sole intellectual who assessed Aristotle critically on this was John Philoponus. Beyond the fact that he alone reminded that this etymology actually belonged to Plato,¹⁰²⁴ he adds that it is only the etymology that was of ancient provenance. For, otherwise, no one before Aristotle had ever claimed that the heaven is made of a different substance; therefore, Philoponus urges, ‘Aristotle struggled in vain to attribute his own theory to those before

 The term μῖγμα is not Anaxagoras’, as far as his text is extant; Simplicius adumbrated the primal state using the term σύμμιξις. Nevertheless, μῖγμα is an acceptable term.  Aristotle, Meteorologica, 339b.  Plato, Cratylus, 410b.  Cornutus, De Natura Deorum, p. 2. Achilles Tatius, Isagoga Excerpta, 21. Alexander of Aph rodisias, commMeteor, p. 129. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Aristotelis Meteora Commentaria, p. 20. Etymologicum Magnum, p. 33. Anonymous, Scholia in Pindarum, Ode 1, scholion 10.  John Philoponus, commMeteor, p. 17.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1051

him.’ Moreover, in relation to the criticism against Anaxagoras for associating ‘aether’ with ‘fire’, Philoponus reminds that Plato maintained that ‘most of heaven, including the stars, is full of fire, whereas it contains little of the other elements, and Heraclitus thought likewise’.¹⁰²⁵ Actually, the ancient philosophers, who saw the heavenly things moving eternally, called them ‘aether and god’ (αἰθέρα καὶ θεὸν αὐτὰ ὠνόμασαν), partly because they shine (τὸ μὲν παρὰ τὸ αἴθειν) and partially because they run eternally (τὸ δὲ παρὰ τὸ ἀεὶ θέειν).¹⁰²⁶ In any case, both the testimony of Philoponus criticizing Aristotle and that of Aristotle himself have something in common: the ancient tradition attributed to aether a divine nature, and this motif Aristotle entertained for himself repeatedly. Later, the Stoics made ‘aether’ the Universal Logos, while caring little to distinguish this from the Mind of Anaxagoras: to them, this was the ever-active divine substance, which permeates the entire universe and it is the progenitor of gods and men, as Euripides put it. This is the Logos who is present in the minds of men, the same Logos that Heraclitus described in like terms, as above.¹⁰²⁷ And since ‘Air’ is circumscribed as the extreme opposite of that, this is the Nature. Later still, Proclus used characteristically Anaxagorean language while mixing it with that of Plato: he styled Nous ‘God himself, who is the foremost and purest and unblemished Mind’ (νοῦς δὲ ὁ πρώτιστος καὶ καθαρώτατος καὶ ἀκήρατος οὗτος ἐστὶν ὁ θεός).¹⁰²⁸ In this passage (which Proclus wished to represent as stemming from Cratylus, 523a), Cronus, the father of Zeus, is described as the supreme Mind, who in turn is the life-giver,¹⁰²⁹ and it is the same Zeus that is also called Aether. Anaxagoras maintained that, in the primal mixture, ‘air and aether withheld (κατεῖχεν) all things’, and both of them were ‘infinite’.¹⁰³⁰ In the first place, ‘the receptacle’ (τὸ περιέχον) is described as a multitude. In scholarship, normally this primordial state is referred to as ‘mixture’ (μῖγμα), although this is not a term of Anaxagoras, but one one of Aristotle and then of Simplicius speaking

 John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 16. See his further analyses on pp. 17 18.  John Philoponus, op. cit. p. 18.  Zeno, fr. 154 1077 (SVF, I.41); Chrysippus, frs. 634 1077 (SVF, II.192); 1064 (SVF, II.312); 1076 (SVF, II.315); 1077 (SVF, II.315).  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 32. The νοῦς καθαρώτατος is an expression of Anax agoras; that this is God himself, is expressed in Anaxagoras’ statement, ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός. Plato’s expression in Cratylus 396b, τὸ καθαρὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀκήρατον τοῦ νοῦ, is an Anaxagorean proposition to which Plato added the epithet ἀκήρατον.  Cf. Plato, Cratylus, 396a. Then, Anonymous, Lexicon de Atticis Nominibus (Περὶ ᾿Aττικῶν Ὀνομάτων), (36.) Ζεύς. ὁ αἴτιος τοῦ ζῆν. (37.) Κρόνος. ὁ καθαρώτατος καὶ ἀκήρατος νοῦς.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 155: πάντα γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ κατεῖχεν ἀμφότερα ἄπειρα ἐόντα. Cf. op. cit. pp. 34 & 156: σύμμιξις πάντων χρημάτων.

1052

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

of Anaxagoras, who only wrote that ‘all things were together’. The plural things, clearly suggests that the original state was not sheer simplicity: it was multiplicity all the same. This multiplicity was somehow ‘encompassed’ so as to be an undifferentiated one, yet multiplicity it was still. What held this multiplicity together in an indistinguishable state was ‘air and aether’; and yet, air and aether were two, not one, which is why Anaxagoras writes of them ἀμφότερα. There is no way to speak of ἀμφότερα (‘both’) unless these are somehow supposed to be two, not only one, even if one and two should not be understood in terms of the empirical numerical distinction. In other words, the notion of the Pythagorean Indeterminate Dyad, which Plato took up, makes an implicit mark in this context, too. In Origen’s terms, this is the uncreated Logos/Son along with the created multitude of logoi that ‘decorated’ his Body, and yet all of this manyness was oneness none the less. In Empedocles’ terms, this is the Sphaerus, which is oneness, but it is oneness because of Love prevailing, which though contains the possibility of an implicit manyness to come to pass because of subsequent prevalence of Strife. Thus, τὸ περιέχον is the first reality that subsequently became the Single Body from which everything stems by means of the operating principles that were ‘distinguished’ therein by the Mind. Put in later terms, this ‘distinction’ stands for emergence of all potentialities, that is, the rationality which appears initially as (Origen’s) Providential creation, according to which the Actual material one came to pass, and it still does. These potentialities were, and always are, realized by the Mind Logos, which Euripides poetically called Aether, that is, the creative and active manifestation and operation of the rational Mind in relation to, and within, the world. Once again, we need to visit Porphyry. He refers to the Orphic hymns which extol God, but it is instructive to explore the terms he uses while doing so. We have his text from an expansive quotation by Eusebius: Porphyry (deciphering the symbolism of a certain statue of Zeus) quotes an Orphic hymn, in which it was supposedly maintained that ‘Zeus is the mind of the world’ (Δία τὸν νοῦν τοῦ κόσμου ὑπολαμβάνοντες). This is what Eusebius says, at least. However, Porphyry’s quoted text has certain things to say that are slightly different.¹⁰³¹ In the Orphic hymn that he quoted (and Eusebius did so in turn) ‘Zeus’ is stated as the supreme God, and the entire universe is his ‘body’ (πάντα γὰρ ἐν Ζηνὸς μεγάλῳ τάδε σώματι κεῖται). This includes ‘fire, water, earth, aether, night and day’. However, in that list, ‘aether’ is not a kind of rarefied ‘air’, as one might have expect-

 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.9.1 2, making a general reference to what ‘the Greeks believed’. But Porphyry was more specific, which we shall see in a moment.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1053

ed; instead, only six verses after that, aether is explicitly styled mind of Zeus, who ‘is absolutely truthful, kingly, and imperishable aether, by means of which everything is perceived and articulated’ (Νοῦς δέ ἀψευδής, βασιλήϊος, ἄφθιτος αἰθήρ, ᾧ δὴ πάντα κλύει καὶ φράζεται).¹⁰³² This aether is not just a kind of ‘air’ (which was Zeus’ wife, Hera):¹⁰³³ it is Zeus/Mind ‘manifesting himself as aether, who brings forward everything and creates by means of his thoughts’ (Ζεὺς δὲ καθὸ νοῦς ἀφ᾿ οὗ προφέρει πάντα καὶ δημιουργεῖ τοῖς νοήμασι). Beyond Porphyry’s quotation, Christian comments are equally important: the sentiment was of course disapprobatory, sometimes polemical, but normally the explicit or tacit purpose of Christian authors was to show that the Greeks had some inkling of the real God. Pseudo-Clement of Rome knew that ‘the aether which permeates everything is God, who is above everything’ (ὁ διὰ πάντων διήκων αἰθὴρ καὶ ὁ ὑπὲρ τὰ ὅλα θεός),¹⁰³⁴ whereas ‘air’ was Hera, the wife of Zeus.¹⁰³⁵ Eusebius states that, to show that aether was no other than the mind of Zeus was the purpose of Orpheus (and then, of Porphyry) (τὸν νοῦν τοῦ Διὸς λέγων εἶναι τὸν αἰθέρα καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο).¹⁰³⁶ What Eusebius also understood in those Orphic verses, as well as in the comments by Porphyry, was the doctrine about Zeus being a ‘great animal’ identified with the world; the mind of this Zeus was aether, and his body was the rest of things in the world (νοῦν μὲν αὐτοῦ τὸν αἰθέρα, σῶμα δὲ τὰ λοιπὰ μέρη τοῦ κόσμου).¹⁰³⁷ Hardly could Stoics have disagreed with this. To them, ‘aether is God’ or, their God was aether.¹⁰³⁸ Besides, God is also ‘a rational animal, and aether was its ruling part’ (ἔχειν ἡγεμονικὸν μὲν  This, along with some of the surrounding verses, was quoted also by Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 82. Eusebius quoted from Porphyry, too, and confirmed that, to him, ‘aether was the mind of Zeus’, while castigating the idea. Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.10.2 3: ἢ πῶς ὁ αἰθὴρ νοῦς ποτ’ ἂν ἐπινοηθείη τοῦ τῶν ὅλων ποιητοῦ, ἢ τοῦ νοῦ τοῦ δημιουργικοῦ; ὅτι μὲν οὖν ταῦτα σεσόφισται τῷ τῶν ἐπῶν ἑρμηνεῖ. … (3.10.10): ὁ νοῦς τοῦ Διὸς οὐδὲν ἄλλο πλὴν τοῦ δηλωθέντος αἰθέρος ἦν.  A few lines below, Porphyry explains that aether considered as rarefied air is represented by Zeus’ wife Hera, not Zeus himself: Τὴν δὲ Ἥραν σύνοικον τῷ Διὶ πεποιήκασιν, τὴν αἰθέριον καὶ ἀέριον δύναμιν Ἥραν προσειπόντες. Ἔστι γὰρ ὁ αἰθὴρ ἀὴρ ὁ λεπτομερέστατος. Likewise, infra, note 1074. On the identification of Hera with formless matter, see infra, pp. 1075 6.  Pseudo Clement of Rome, Contestatio, 4.2.  Pseudo Clement of Rome, Homiliae, 6.8.2: ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ διήκοντος Διός τοῦ θερμοτάτου αἰθέρος ὁ ἀὴρ μέχρι τῶν ἐνταῦθα διικνεῖται τόπων, ἣν ἐπονομάζουσιν Ἥραν.  Eusebius, op. cit. 9.9.9.  Eusebius, op. cit. 9.9.10; cf. 3.10.2: πῶς ὁ αἰθὴρ νοῦς ποτ᾿ ἂν ἐπινοηθείη τοῦ τῶν ὅλων ποιη τοῦ, ἢ τοῦ νοῦ τοῦ δημιουργικοῦ; 3.10.8: καὶ νοῦν αὐτοῦ τὸν αἰθέρα μέλη τε αὐτοῦ καὶ σῶμα τὰ λοιπὰ τοῦ κόσμου μέρη.  Zeno, SVF, I.41.30. Chrysippus, SVF, II.315 6, fr. 1077; Boethus, SVF, III.265, fr. 2.

1054

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

τὸν αἰθέρα). Particularly, Chrysippus saw ‘the purest part of aether’ as being ‘the supreme [or, first] God’ (πρῶτον θεόν), who permeated all animals and plants as if materially (αἰσθητικῶς ὥσπερ κεχωρηκέναι), whereas the same God acted as cohesive force sustaining the earth itself (διὰ δὲ τῆς γῆς αὐτῆς καθ᾿ ἕξιν).¹⁰³⁹ Also, aether is the ruling part of the world: this is analogous to what the soul is to the body;¹⁰⁴⁰ God and Mind and Heimarmenne is one and the same thing.¹⁰⁴¹ Besides, to them, the mind of Zeus is Heimarmene,¹⁰⁴² which is the same as his rationality (τὸν τοῦ Διὸς λόγον).¹⁰⁴³ Since the aim of Eusebius was polemical, it was natural for him to point out whatever he saw as weakness of the theory. Nevertheless, this also reveals that he had understood correctly the Greek tenet: the ‘aether’ was the ‘mind’ of Zeus, it engaged in creative activity, and Zeus became Aether to this purpose.¹⁰⁴⁴ Eusebius deplored this idea, arguing that this means that the primal God was mindless (ἄνους) and he assumed rationality afterwards¹⁰⁴⁵ (which Aristotle would have been glad to read). Nevertheless, his argument is a valuable commentary of what this sect of Greek religion really maintained. Which sect was that? And what did it have to do with Anaxagoras? In the first place, Porphyry says that he speaks about the Orphics, and quotes their hymn. But then his own commentary interprets the statue of Zeus not in the Orphic context, but in an Anaxagorean one. For he explains that what Zeus represented in that ‘anthropomorphic sculptured figure’ (ἀνθρωπόμορφον τοῦ Διὸς τὸ δείκηλον) ‘was the Mind’ of God, according to which God ‘created, and accomplished all things by means of seminal logoi’ (νοῦς ἦν καθ᾿ ὃν ἐδημιούργει, καὶ λόγοις σπερματικοῖς ἀπετέλει τὰ πάντα).¹⁰⁴⁶ This ‘creative Mind’ is the ‘king of the world’ (βασιλεὺς γὰρ τοῦ κόσμου ὁ δημι-

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.139.  SVF, II.192.8; II.194.6&15; II.4.3.  SVF, I.28, fr. 102; II.179, fr. 580.  Anonymous, Scholia in Opera et Dies, comm. on Hesiod, Opera et Dies, verse 105: οὐ δυ νατόν ἐστι τοῦ Διὸς νοῦν ἐκκλῖναι, ὅ ἐστι τὴν εἱμαρμένην· ταύτην γὰρ οἱ Στωϊκοὶ Διὸς νοῦν προσηγορεύκασι.  Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1050E & 1056C.  Eusebius, op. cit. 9.10.9: οὐ γὰρ ἂν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν δημιουργοίη οὐδ᾿ ἂν ἔτι νοῦς λέγεσθαι δύναιτο οὗ νοῦς ἦν ὁ αἰθήρ.  This is a lesson Eusebius had learned from Origen, who argued that the Logos was begin ningless, because there was no state in which God the Son/Wisdom was without rationality. Cf. commJohn, II.19.130: οὐκ ἦν γάρ, ὅτε ἡ ἀρχὴ ἄλογος ἦν. The Son became Life, Light, and the rest of his ‘conceptions’ (ἐπίνοιαι), but he was Wisdom and Logos beginninglessly. See COT, pp. 32 9; 123 9.  Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 3 4, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.9.1 9.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1055

ουργικὸς νοῦς), it is the manifestation of the primary Mind now being engaged in creation. In any event, the logoi as a means for the universe to come to pass, or as ‘the way to creation’ as Proclus put it expounding the theory of Porphyry,¹⁰⁴⁷ was a notion exclusive to Anaxagoras alone, who bequeathed this fundamental idea to the Stoics, and then to Porphyry and Origen. In his commentary on Timaeus, Porphyry reflected on ‘the way to creation’ (τὸν τρόπον τῆς δημιουργίας) in characteristically Anaxagorean terms. He saw everything being created in the manner ‘seeds’ grow: the human seed contains in itself all the logoi, which develop in due course, in order to produce a human being (τὸ σπέρμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, τοσοῦτον ὄγκον ἔχον καὶ πάντας ἐν ἑαυτῷ τοὺς λόγους); all the ‘homoiomeries’ of the human body, as well as whatever proceeds from them (πάντα τά τε ὁμοιομερῆ καὶ τὰ ἐξ αὐτῶν) come to be not just from the ‘little bulk’ of the human seed (ἐξ ὀλίγου ὄγκου), but in fact from the incorporeal logoi which have no bulk at all (ἐκ τοῦ ἀόγκου). For all of these ‘homoiomeries’ are produced from logoi (οἱ γὰρ λόγοι ταῦτα γεννῶσιν), which are ‘immaterial’, since ‘they are everywhere’ (οὗτοι δὲ ἄογκοι πανταχοῦ ὄντες). If then a certain ‘logos’ (comprising many logoi) which exists in a human seed can produce a full human being, this holds all the more so for the universal Creative Logos (ὁ δημιουργικὸς λόγος), who did not need any matter at all, as it happens with a seed, in order to cause thing to be; instead, ‘he produced everything while remaining what he is.’¹⁰⁴⁸ Therefore, beyond the symbolic language of his interpretation of the statue of Zeus, Porphyry explained the same ideas more clearly in his commentary on Timaeus. Nevertheless, in both cases he made it all too clear that the ‘way to creation’ is performed by the ‘Creative Mind’, or the ‘Creative Logos’, and that this process is realized by means of ‘logoi’, whereas Aether is only another name for the Creative Mind. It seems then that the idea of a ‘second God’ was latent in Anaxagoras long before Philo used the expression for the Logos of God,¹⁰⁴⁹ before the Middle-Platonist Numenius made this a recurrent theme, as we learn from Eusebius and Proclus,¹⁰⁵⁰ and before Atticus and Albinus saw the idea in Plato’s Demiurge and went on with elaborations of their own. The distinction between Mind itself

 See supra, chapter 10, p. 757.  Porphyry, commTim (fragmenta), Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 395.  Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 2.86: τὸ δὲ γενικώτατόν ἐστιν ὁ θεός, καὶ δεύτερος ὁ θεοῦ λόγος. Quaestiones in Genesim (fragmenta), Book 2, fr. 62: ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸν δεύτερον θεόν, ὅς ἐστιν ἐκείνου λόγος.  Numenius, Fragmenta, frs. 11; 13; 15; 21.

1056

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

and the Logos of the Mind appeared in Late Antique Greeks and Christians alike.¹⁰⁵¹ However, when a doxographer reported that, according to Anaxagoras, the creation (‘decoration’) of things was performed by ‘the mind of God’,¹⁰⁵² this was probably a distinction running parallel to those of Euripides rendering the same philosophy from stage. This is not about a ‘God within God’, as some modern scholars took it: rather, it is about God the Mind manifesting himself in a creative act, and yet in essence being the same God, which introduces no ontological distinction between God in himself and God as creator. Nor does this mean that Mind is a transcendent Nous who creates indirectly through a second god, as it happens with the Platonic Demiurge, or as a ‘third god’ as some Chaldeans would have had it. It is the same Mind who acts, yet that which is involved with the universe is the rationality of the Creative Mind. Discovering that Origen was influenced by Anaxagoras, and that he was largely an Anaxagorean philosopher even after his conversion to Christianity, would be a ground for understanding some facets of Anaxagoras’ own thought, which otherwise appear either hardly intelligible or even obscure, given the scarcity of his extant texts and the fragmentary quotations, however expansive, by the only trustworthy source, namely, Simplicius. In the early parts of the commentary on John, which Origen wrote upon his conversion to Christianity, he ventures a first approach to the creative act of God by means of a metaphor, which he believed he found in Psalm 44:1 (‘My heart belched out a good word’, ἐξηρεύξατο ἡ καρδία μου λόγον ἀγαθόν). He considers the curious verb ἐρεύγεσθαι of this Psalm, and wonders whether ‘good word’ suggests the Logos himself, that is, whether this is about the Father begetting the Son/Logos. He determined that the Son himself is not a ‘belching out’ of the Father. Rejection of this doctrine by Origen is found at two points. In the commentary on this psalmic verse, he notes that ‘it is not the Son himself that is called belching out’: this is only ‘a narrative about the Son’.¹⁰⁵³ What is this ‘narrative’ about? This is made clear in the first book of the commentary on John. His point is that the verb ‘belch out’ was used intentionally and meaning-

 Cf. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 376C (Eudoxus reporting Egyptian views): ὅτι καθ᾿ ἑαυτὸν ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ νοῦς καὶ λόγος ἐν τῷ ἀοράτῳ καὶ ἀφανεῖ βεβηκὼς εἰς γένεσιν ὑπὸ κινήσεως προ ῆλθεν. Athenagoras of Athens, apologist, Legatio, 10.2 (the Son is the mind and logos of the Fa ther): νοῦς καὶ λόγος τοῦ πατρὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881A, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.2: ᾿Aναξαγόρας φησὶν ὡς εἱστήκει κατ᾿ ἀρχὰς τὰ σώματα, Νοῦς δὲ αὐτὰ διεκόσμησε θεοῦ καὶ τὰς γενέσεις τῶν ὅλων ἐποίησεν.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1428.37 42: Τὸ δὲ Ἐξηρεύξατο ἀντὶ τοῦ ἐφθέγξατο εἶπεν· οὐχ ἵνα τὸν υἱὸν ἐρυγὴν εἴπῃ, ἀλλὰ τὴν περὶ αὐτοῦ διήγησιν.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1057

fully, although other verbs could have been used instead of this, such as, for example, ‘My heart cast forth (προέβαλεν) a good word’; or, ‘My heart spoke (ἐλάλησεν) a good word’. However, the Psalmist used neither προέβαλεν nor ἐλάλησεν: instead, he used the verb ἐξηρεύξατο.¹⁰⁵⁴ Perhaps then this is a metaphor intending a doctrine implying the creative act of God: since a belch is forward motion of hidden air out of the body into the open, as though he who belches exhales in this way, so the Father does not withhold the objects of contemplation of the truth (τὰ τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρήματα) by keeping them to himself (οὐ συνέχων ὁ πατήρ), but he belches them forth, and creates a form of them in the Logos (καὶ ποιεῖ τὸν τύπον αὐτῶν ἐν τῷ λόγῳ), which is why the Logos is called the image of the invisible God.¹⁰⁵⁵

Origen did not allow that the Son himself is an ‘utterance’ of the Father. In a letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, Arius accused three bishops of being heretics, because they depicted the relation between the Father and the Son erroneously: Patriarch Philogonius of Antioch posited the Son as a ‘belching out’ (ἐρυγήν) of the Father; Bishop Hellanicus of Tripolis descibed him as a ‘projection’ (προβολήν) of the Father; and Patriarch Macarius of Jerusalem posited the Son as ‘counbegottend’ (συναγέννητον) with the Father.¹⁰⁵⁶ For his part, Origen rejected all three hypotheses, remarking also that many interpreters had it that the psalmic verse was an expression uttered by the Father.¹⁰⁵⁷ At any rate, a few chapters before that point, he had already rejected the theory which had it the Logos/Son is not a self-subsistent hypostasis, but a mere utterance of the Father.¹⁰⁵⁸ The point he makes is that the Father did not withhold the θεωρήματα, or objects of contemplation, to himself, but he imprinted them on the Logos; and since they are forms of the Logos, they are ‘logoi’, too, as Origen explains in the same work. These logoi is the object of creation. This is an Anaxagorean exegesis that he concealed under the anthropomorphic metaphor of a human being belching out the ‘air’ out of one’s body: the metaphorical undifferentiated ‘air’ is analogous to the primeval Anaxagorean mixture, in which ‘all things were

 The verb ἐρεύγομαι means ‘belch out’; subsequently, it came to mean ‘utter’ speech. But Origen abides by its literal sense.  Col. 1:19. Origen, commJohn, I.24.151 2.  The letter was recorded by Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 3, p. 157. Then, Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica, p. 26, who also quoted this letter, assured that all three bishops were fol lowers of the Nicene orthodoxy. Likewise, Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopulus, Historia Ecclesias tica, 8.9.  Origen, commJohn, I.38.283.  Origen, op. cit. I.24.151 152.

1058

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

together’. The image of ‘exhaling’ the air is an ingenious figure of the Mind causing ‘distinction’ of the principles, which are in the Mind and yet they are ‘unmixed’ with it. This banning of mixture is suggested by the same representation: the air existing in one’s body is not part of the body, even before it is belched out. The Mind caused the distinction of the principles/logoi while remaining ‘unmixed’ with them at any stage, either before or after the act of distinction. At the same time though, Origen is clear in seeing the product of the divine creative act as logoi, by means of a double punning of the term λόγος, considering them as both generated creative causes and ‘utterances’. Hardly could have anyone’s answer to this dilemma matched Origen’s metaphor: for the figure he used suggests that the human body, on the one hand, and the ‘air’ which is exhaled, on the other, are neither ‘one’ nor ‘distinct’ from one another: this ‘belched out air’ is not an integral part of the human body; and yet, before this physiological function takes place, ‘human being’ and ‘air’ are apparently one. Barely could anyone have thought of a more depictive illustration of the primeval state envisioned by Anaxagoras, while explaining a psalmic verse, that is, reflecting in terms of Anaxagoras’ philosophy seemingly by means of scriptural exegesis. Conclusion: although we should be always alert to the necessary adaptations of Anaxagorean philosophy that Origen made to his own purposes, we should bear in mind this metaphor, which is illuminating. He represents the Father/Mind as a man who has in himself the ‘air’ that a man happens to have in his stomach and, at some moment, he belches it out. Whereas, this air is not part of that man’s being, it is within himself none the less, and it is withheld until this is belched out. Anaxagoras wrote that, in the primeval state, the principles were absolutely indistinct from one another, ‘because they were withheld by both the air and the aether’.¹⁰⁵⁹ The newly converted Christian Origen writing under the spell of Anaxagoras, averred that, ‘the Father did not wish to withhold the theoremata of truth within himself, which is why he belches them out and impresses them on his Logos’¹⁰⁶⁰ (which in turn, reminds us of the engraved Indian statue of Bardaisan). The ‘aether’ that holds the ‘air’ within is somehow the Mind’s rational volition, until this man decides to belch it out. There is always a question that could be invited in respect of the Anaxagorean fundamental proposition: what was the state of the mixture of ‘all things being together’ just before Mind caused them to be distinct? Were ‘all things’  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 155: καὶ πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲν ἔνδηλον ἦν ὑπὸ σμικρότητος· πάντα γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ κατεῖχεν, ἀμφότερα ἄπειρα ἐόντα.  Origen, commJohn, I.38.283: τὰ τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρήματα οὐ συνέχων ὁ πατὴρ ἐρεύγεται καὶ ποιεῖ τὸν τύπον αὐτῶν ἐν τῷ λόγῳ.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1059

along with the Mind one? But how could they possibly be ‘one’ once they are ontologically sheer different? On the other hand, how could they be ‘different’ (i. e. distinct from each other) in the absence of any notion of distinction whatsoever? I have discussed above that ancient commentators, including Aristotle, conceded that in Anaxagoras ‘one and many’ was not a notion that should be considered on empirical grounds. In my view, given the foregoing implications of ‘Aether’, in Anaxagoras the primal reality of ‘air and aether’ (ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ) holding the principles from distinction denotes two different things: ἀήρ produces the universe under the dominion of the sacred ‘aether’, which is God the Creative Mind, that is, the manifestation of the rationality of Mind within the universe. Damascius reported ‘the Phoenician theology according to Mochus’,¹⁰⁶¹ which he had read in Eudemus of Rhodes. In this, ‘Aether and Air are the two first principles’ from which the supreme intelligible god is born, which Mochus identified with the Intellect. Apart from Eudemus, we find the mythology of the Phoenicians according to Mochus, with both Aether and Air being posited as two first principles (αἱ δύο αὗται ἀρχαί). From them, Oulomos is born, the intelligible god (ὁ νοητὸς θεός), who is himself, I think, the summit of the intelligible [realm] (αὐτό, οἶμαι, τὸ ἄκρον τοῦ νοητοῦ); from him [i. e. Oulomos], they say, Chousoros the Opener first came into Being, when he [i. e. Oulomus] mated with him self, and then the egg (ᾠόν), by which (I think) they mean the Intelligible Intellect (τὸν νοη τὸν νοῦν λέγοντες), whereas, by Chousoros the Opener [they mean] the intelligible power which first differentiated the undifferentiated nature (τὴν νοητὴν δύναμιν ἅτε πρώτην δια κρίνασαν τὴν ἀδιάκριτον φύσιν) … and Oulomos would be the Intelligible Intellect himself, (αὐτὸς ὁ νοητὸς εἴη νοῦς) and Chousoros the Opener [would be] the first order after the intelligible realm] (ἡ μετὰ τὸ νοητὸν πρώτη τάξις), and the egg is the heaven. For when Chousoros splits into two, heaven and earth arise.¹⁰⁶²

We should bear in mind that Damascius explored the distribution of intelligible triads according to Proclus (with his own schema being somewhat more complex), but in fact he had in mind Porphyry whose exposition was systematized by Proclus. Nevertheless, it was Proclus who always sought to find a Chaldean equivalent for every rank of his own abstruse triadic structure of reality. Once Damascius finished with his exposition of the Chaldean triads, he went on with ‘the theology of the Orphic Rhapsodies’ while drawing on a book by ‘the Peripatetic Eudemus’ of Rhodes. In that system, the theogony starts with time (χρόνος) being the supreme principle, whereas the ensuing Dyad consists of Aether and Chaos; from this, Being is produced, which is adumbrated as ‘egg’

 About Mochus, see Appendix I, p. 1522.  Damascius, Princ, p. 323.

1060

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

(ᾠόν), ‘and this is what they posit as first triad’ (καὶ τριάδα ταύτην πρώτην ποιοῦντες).¹⁰⁶³ Likewise, when Damascius goes on with expounding the theology of ‘Hieronymus and Hellanicus, if indeed the latter is not the same personage’, things are not too different: although now the ‘Ageless Time’ is a ‘third principle’, which is ‘united with Necessity’ (to which Democritus definitely had dues),¹⁰⁶⁴ and ‘the dyad consists of two natures in the egg, male and female, and the multiplicity [corresponds to] the various seeds in the middle of the egg’ (ἡ δυὰς τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ φύσεων, ἄρρενος καὶ θηλείας, καὶ τῶν ἐν μέσῳ παντοίων σπερμάτων τὸ πλῆθος), this Ageless Time ‘is the father of Aether and Chaos’ (Αἰθέρος καὶ Χάους πατήρ).¹⁰⁶⁵ The idea of ‘male and female’ explaining oneness turning to multiplicity is notably reminiscent of the Indian statue that the Indians recounted to Bardaisan, as we saw in chapter 10. The appearance of this statue was androgynous: the right side of its countenance was male, the left female. Likewise, we should recall the report by Philodemus of Gadara, who reported that, to the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon (second century BC), ‘Zeus is both male and female’ (Ζεὺς ἄρρην Ζεὺς θῆλυς).¹⁰⁶⁶ Moreover, no matter who this Hieronymus and/or Hellanicus was, his vocabulary is strikingly parallel to that of Anaxagoras: for he spoke of παντοίων σπερμάτων τὸ πλῆθος,¹⁰⁶⁷ whereas Anaxagoras wrote of σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλῆθος οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις.¹⁰⁶⁸ However, since the impact of Anaxagoras on Classical and Late Antiquity has heretofore been overlooked, it was rather natural for M.L. West to assume that Hieronymus’ theogony reflects Hellenistic and especially Stoic motifs.¹⁰⁶⁹ Nevertheless, what matters is that there was a tradition of which Anaxagoras was aware, which posited Aether as a principle. Although not the supreme one, this was ranked as either second or third, and it was a principle that played a vital role in generation of things. Therefore, to systems such as the Orphic one or the Hesiodian echoed by Acusilaus of Argos, aether was regarded as much the purest form of rarefied air as was it an ontological principle. This was pivotal to generation at the behest of a supreme prin Damascius, op. cit. p. 316: ἀντὶ μὲν τῆς μιᾶς τῶν ὅλων ἀρχῆς τὸν Χρόνον τιθέντες, ἀντὶ δὲ τοῖν δυεῖν Αἰθέρα καὶ Χάος, ἀντὶ δὲ τοῦ ὄντος ἁπλῶς τὸ ᾠὸν ἀπολογιζόμενοι, καὶ τριάδα ταύτην πρώτην ποιοῦντες. Likewise, p. 318: “the highest principle in that theology is Ageless Time, [who is] the father of Aether and Chaos (Οὗτος γὰρ ἦν ὁ πολυτίμητος ἐν ἐκείνῃ Χρόνος ἀγήραος καὶ Αἰθέρος καὶ Χάους πατήρ).”  See pp. 243 4; 248; 260; 1069 73; 1082; 1463; 1478; 1538.  Damascius, op. cit. p. 318.  Philodemus of Gadara (first century BC), De Pietate, 15.  Damascius, loc. cit.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34 & 156.  M.L. West, The Orphic Poems, Oxford, 1983, pp. 193 4.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1061

ciple, which was classified immediately above aether. This is the context in which the Hermetic literature had it that ‘the heaven is the origin of our creation’ whereas ‘aether and air’ are ‘the hands and the holy spirit of God the Sole Ruler’,¹⁰⁷⁰ and, likewise, Empedocles made ‘aether’ an encompassing, which ‘bounds all things from all around’.¹⁰⁷¹ To him, aether was the first to have been ‘distinguished’, to be followed by fire, water, and air,¹⁰⁷² and it was also Empedocles who identified Zeus as ‘aether’.¹⁰⁷³ The notions of aether and air taken as indicating principles, as well as parts of the natural reality, turned out an idea that made its way right through all of the Late Antiquity, and later still.¹⁰⁷⁴ It should be clear that the opening of Anaxagoras’ text indicates that the primeval state of things was not an absolute confusum after all, since, alongside with ‘all things’ that ‘were together’, there was the ‘unmixed’ Mind/God, as well as the Aether/God as Creator, and ‘air’. Consequently, there were three realities, and I have no doubt that Aristotle knew of this and encroached on the Anaxagorean philosophy, which is why (as it has been always the case) he was so hostile to Anaxagoras. One, he made the Anaxagorean Mind his First Immovable Mover; two, he made Anaxagoras’ Aether his own ‘forms’; three, he made the original ‘air’ his own ‘formless matter’. In Anaxagoras’ philosophy, both ‘air and aether’ comprise a totality denoting the Body of the Logos/Aether and the undifferentiated ‘logoi’ on this. It is this Body of which Porphyry said that, according to Anaxagoras, all things proceed from a Single Body. Origen’s notion of the Body of the Logos and of the ‘logoi’ on this being the object of creation is in essence the same idea. Therefore, as it often happened, Origen saw the punning in respect of the term ‘aether’, too: no matter what the heaven is made of,¹⁰⁷⁵ Aristotle’s aether re-

 Corpus Hermeticum, Fragmenta, fr. 23.34, apud Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.49.44: Οὐρανέ, τῆς ἡμετέρας, εἶπεν, ἀρχὴ γενέσεως, αἰθήρ τε καὶ ἀὴρ καὶ τοῦ μονάρχου θεοῦ χεῖρες τε καὶ ἱερὸν πνεῦμα.  Empedocles, apud Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.8.48: Τιτὰν ἠδ᾿ αἰθὴρ σφίγγων περὶ κύκλον ἅπαντα.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 887B & Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.37.3: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τὸν μὲν αἰθέρα πρῶτον διακριθῆναι. Pseudo Galen attributed this to Diocles, which is perhaps a scribal error. Historia Philosophica, 49.  Empedocles, apud Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.11b (quoting from Plutarch): Ἐμπεδοκλῆς Δία μὲν λέγει τὴν ζέσιν καὶ τὸν αἰθέρα.  Cf. Matthaeus Blastares (fourteenth century), Collectio Alphabetica, letter epsilon, chapter 6: τοῦ μὲν γὰρ εἰδώλου τοῦ Διὸς πρωτότυπον ὁ αἰθήρ· τῆς δὲ Ἥρας, ὁ ἀήρ.  Origen did not care to dispute Aristotle’s aether, and he used the idea in a rather impartial mood, taking it as denoting the uppermost part of the heaven. Cf. the same idea of aether being attributed to Empedocles (Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 50), to Plato (Pseudo Plutarch,

1062

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

ferring to this is not immaterial, but it is perishable. However, in Anaxagoras’ philosophy, ‘aether’ should be read in two different senses: in the primeval state, both aether and air were an ‘encompassing’ that withheld the confusum itself. Then, aether assumed the rather natural sense that Anaxagoras’ era knew of along the divine sense of it. Given the history of the idea of aether that I just outlined, it is hardly coincidence that aether assumed such a venerated sense in Plato, Aristotle and Stoicism. In all probability, this is the crossroad at which the Stoics met Anaxagoras: since they never cared to consider what their God was per se and always considered him in his activity and association with the perceptible universe, they made room for others to attribute them the theory that their God was material. The fact is, however, that Anaxagoras used the aether in a twofold sense, and I should have thought that, so he did in the beginning of his exposition, in an arcane sense. In this context, one should take into account ‘the wondrous Greek travels to the East’,¹⁰⁷⁶ and that Anaxagoras was one of those who cared to call on the ancient lore. Given that Origen followed the Anaxagorean philosophy closely, his reference to the Father is telling: he uses the expression οὐ συνέχων ο πατήρ (= the Father does not withhold the theoremata within himself, but he creates them as distinct ones and places them, as an ‘ornament’ on the Body of his Logos). His proposition clearly refers to the object of creation (θεωρήματα), which implies divine knowledge, not actual logoi as a consummate object of creation. I should note that the verb συνέχω means keep from dispersing, constrain, hinder, hold back, maintain enclosed or compassed.¹⁰⁷⁷ No doubt, Origen wrote this metaphor while having Anaxagoras in mind, and indeed there is no case of any other author having applied this philosophy so vividly and in such a pithy manner. The theological (in later terms: metaphysical) sense of ‘aether’ was all around during Anaxagoras’ times. When Anaxagoras speaks of aether and air being ‘set apart from’ the confusum (ἀποκρίνονται), his statement should be taken also in a theological, or at least, metaphorical, sense, meaning the not-yet-manifested rationality of Mind, which was subsePlacita Philosophorum, 887.D), and to Aristotle holding aether as ‘a fifth body’ which is ‘impas sible’ (ἀπαθῆ, πέμπτον δὴ σῶμα); Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.38.5 & Stobaeus, Antholo gium, 1.22.1b. All Origen was at pains to stress was that aether is material and subject to destruc tion, like any other kind of matter. Cf. commJohn, XIII.40.266; frJohn, 20.  See Appendix I.  The meaning of συνέχειν is made clear a little further in the same work: a prophet who is filled by the Holy Spirit has a ‘good word’ (λόγον ἀγαθόν) of prophecy within himself; but he is unable to withhold and not pronounce it (συνέχειν αὐτὸν οὐ δυνάμενος); hence, he says, ‘My heart belched out a good word’, ἐξηρεύξατο ἡ καρδία μου λόγον ἀγαθόν) (Psalm 44:1). comm John, I.39.284.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1063

quently expressed by causing the principles to appear and act as distinct causes effecting potentialities into actualities. This is the reading about ‘second God’ that Origen would have come upon in Anaxagoras’ work. As a ‘physicist’ as Anaxagoras was, the religious aspect of his thought should not be overlooked. When he was asked what was the purpose for him to have been born (actually, why should one choose to be born rather than not to be born), he replied that this purpose was to look up to the heaven and reflect on the universal order.¹⁰⁷⁸ Were it for him to mean just the constitution of heavenly bodies, he did not need to observe the heaven, since he thought of all of them as being ‘fiery stones’, and there were plenty of stones on earth for him to observe. He meant something different, and one of them presumably was that ‘aether and air’ were two notions that indicated how the Not-yet-reflecting Mind turned into a Reflecting, hence, Creative, one. I should have thought that this is a symbolic exposition, which would be rendered in philosophical terms as follows: the Father allowed for potentialities to appear by creating the Body of the Logos: he ‘embroidered’ this Body by means of ‘precious stones’ (logoi)¹⁰⁷⁹ and the entire creation proceeded from the Body of the Logos, which is in no way different from the Anaxagorean ‘single Body’, from which everything proceeds, that Porphyry reported according to Arabic sources. Origen used the verb οὐ συνέχων ὁ πατὴρ in order to adumbrate the state of the Father before (as it were) creation, and Anaxagoras used a similar one, namely, κατεῖχεν. While all things were together, none of them was manifest because they were suppressed; for air and aether withheld everything (καὶ πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲν ἔνδηλον ἦν ὑπὸ σμικρότητος· πάντα γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ κατεῖχεν).¹⁰⁸⁰

Translators normally render σμικρότητος ‘smallness’, that is, literally. However, once Anaxagoras’ meaning is grasped, there is more to it. For this is not actually about size, but about things not having any ontological identity. Besides, when Anaxagoras speaks of things being ‘infinite in terms of multitude and σμικρότητα’, he means that no thing was a certain quid. There were no things identified, because they were not distinct. This is the meaning of κατεῖχεν attached to ‘air and aether’, which is essentially the same as Origen’s συνέχων. Air and aether did not make things infinitely small; they prevented them from having an identity

 Aristotle, Ethica Eudemia, 1216a.  See these scriptural terms (πολυποίκιλος σοφία and λίθοι τίμιοι) canvassed in COT, pp. 54; 65; PHE, pp. 187.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 155.

1064

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

of their own. Air and aether are posited as those which banned actual existence, not as ones that imposed smallness. It should be recalled that Aristotle considered the notions of ‘Great and Small’ arguing that, although this does not necesarrily have to mean ‘quantity’, definitely it suggests distinction and otherness, that is, relation of things to one another.¹⁰⁸¹ Finally, in the Metaphysics, 992b, he dismisses ‘the Great and the Small’, arguing that this is too abstract a material principle and it does not explain motion. At that point, he identifies this notion with the ‘rare and dense of which the physicists speak’. But Anaxagoras spoke of ‘rare and dense’ having appreared following the act of distinction by the Mind.¹⁰⁸² The primeval state according to Anaxagoras was a confusum. However, at that state, alongside Mind, there were two realities which were not absorbed by this confusum, and these were aether and air, which withheld all things from being distinct. Bearing in mind the divine nature of aether, and the natural one of air, it would be possible to translate this reality in Origen’s own terms, which were Anaxagorean in essence and Scriptural in letter: the Father/ Mind¹⁰⁸³ did not want to withhold the theoremata/logoi within himself, which is why he imprinted them on the Son; thus, the Body of the Logos became ‘embroidered’ with ‘precious stones’/logoi, out of which it became possible for the universe to come to pass. In Anaxagorean terms, the agent that implemented this ‘will’ of Mind,¹⁰⁸⁴ and ceaselessly keeps doing so, was the Aether, later identified with Zeus by various sects of thought. In either case, ‘everything stems from a single body’, as Porphyry described the philosophy of Anaxagoras, and as Origen put it also speaking of the Body of the Logos. Hence, ‘aether and

 Aristotle, Categoriae, 5b27 29: τὸ δὲ μέγα ἢ μικρὸν οὐ σημαίνει ποσὸν ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον πρός τι· πρὸς γὰρ ἕτερον θεωρεῖται τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν. In the Metaphysics, 987b, he interpreted Plato as identifying ‘the great and the small’ with the material principle, and he said that it was eccentric of Plato ‘to posit a duality instead of a single Unlimited, and to make the Unlimited consist of the Great and the Small’. In op. cit. 988a, he identified this notion of Plato with Anax agoras’ ‘infinity of homoiomeries’, as well as with all four elements of Empedocles and the Un limited of the Italians (meaning the Pythagoreans).  Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156 & 174 & 176 & 179 & 181: καὶ ἀπο κρίνεται ἀπό τε τοῦ ἀραιοῦ τὸ πυκνὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ τὸ θερμὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ζοφεροῦ τὸ λαμπρὸν καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ διεροῦ τὸ ξηρόν.  I should remind once again that no Christian author did ever make this identification of Anaxagorean Mind with the Trinitarian Father more explicit and a recurrent theme than Cyril of Alexandria. See supra, pp. 979; 1010 11.  See discussion of this notion in chapter 5.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1065

air’¹⁰⁸⁵ express the same reality as the Body of the Logos prior to the Biblical Fall, the only difference being that, in Origen’s theory, the creaturely character of the logoi is expressed more explicitly. This is the same reality as Empedocles’ μῖγμα, which bespeaks the unity of his Sphaerus.¹⁰⁸⁶ Aristotle saw this as an idea which was common to Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Anaximander, and Democritus: Hence, not only is it possible for generation to obtain accidentally from that which is not, but also everything is generated from that which is, but is potentially, yet it is not actually. And this is the one of Anaxagoras; for his all things were together, and the mixture (τὸ μῖγμα) of Empedocles and Anaximander and the doctrine of Democritus, they would all be ex pressed better as all things were together potentially, not actually. ¹⁰⁸⁷

He reiterates his view that everything is actualization of a certain potentiality (except for the First Mover, which is sheer actuality). Perhaps, this ‘total confusion’ is fair to Anaximander’s ἄπειρον, and to Empedocles’ σφαῖρος, but not to Anaxagoras. For, to the latter, Mind is unmixed with the (even undifferentiated) principles; hence, they cannot be one, as Aristotle claims, since the Anaxagorean primeval state comprises (1) Mind; (2) Aether and Air; (3) the original confusum. Only (2) and (3) can be seen as parallels to Empedocles theory. Anaxagoras’ theory was always acclaimed for making the incorporeal Mind absolutely unmixed with the ‘total fusion’, as well as incorporeal. Thus, in a sense, the primeval state of Anaxagoras (and of Empedocles) was ‘both one and many’, which was partially recognized by Aristotle.¹⁰⁸⁸ His criticism was that the material principle in the primal state should have been described as existing only potentially. Following this, Anaxagoras’ state of mixture, in which ‘the air and aether withheld (κατεῖχεν) all things’¹⁰⁸⁹ more or less represents the same reality as

 Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 5.18: ὁ δὲ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς μῖγμα ἐξ αἰθερώδους καὶ ἀερώδους οὐσίας. Cf. Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 155: πάντα γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ κατεῖχεν.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 673 (λέγοι δ᾿ ἂν μῖγμα τὸν σφαῖρον); 691; 826 (λέγων μῖγμα τὸν σφαῖρον). Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 187. Simpli cius, commPhys, p. 154. John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 93 4. Gennadius Scholarius, adnotA rist, Book 6 (marginal notes on the Metaphysics), lines 255 70.  Aristotle, Metaphyhsica, 1069b.  Aristotle, Physica, 187a: οἱ δ᾿ ἐκ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἐνούσας τὰς ἐναντιότητας ἐκκρίνεσθαι, ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξίμανδρός φησι καὶ ὅσοι δ᾿ ἓν καὶ πολλά φασιν εἶναι, ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι ἐκκρίνουσι τἆλλα.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 155: πάντα γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ κατεῖχεν ἀμφότερα ἄπειρα ἐόντα.

1066

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

that of Empedocles’ undifferentiated Sphaerus,¹⁰⁹⁰ in which though a certain distinction can be pointed out: there is total unity of the Sphaerus (uniformity, μονοειδές), in which Necessity dominates, and it is the ‘one’ (τὸ ἕν). The four elemements are the ‘matter’ upon which Necessity acts, whereas Love and Strife are ‘kinds’ (i. e. different manifestations) of Necessity.¹⁰⁹¹ Love contributes to unity and ‘creates’ the Sphaerus, Strife destroys it.¹⁰⁹² Sphaerus is the same body as the Body of the Logos in Origen, which is why commentators called the Sphaerus ‘God’.¹⁰⁹³ There is some similarity of doctrine which presumably stems from the fact that Empedocles and Anaxagoras knew each other, but the term τό περιέχον suggesting a certain receptacle ‘encompassing’ everything appears also in Anaximenes, as well as in Heraclitus. In general, all those who are lumped together under the general designation ‘Presocratics’ shared several common ideas as much as did they dissent from one another to an either lesser or larger extent. In view of this, when Theophrastus proposed that, ‘in like a manner that our soul is air and holds the body together, the entire world is held together by air and spirit’,¹⁰⁹⁴ it would be hard to imagine that his idea was not somehow influenced by the propositions of Anaxagoras about ‘aether and air holding everything back’. Therefore, we should consider ‘aether and air’ in the context of Porphyry’s testimony about the primeval state according to Anaxagoras: “All things are hidden in the first body and their coming into existence is only their emergence into

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 673: ὡς οὖν ᾿Aναξαγόρας διὰ τοῦ λέγειν ὡς ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα τὴν ὕλην ἐφαντάσθη μέν, οὐκ ἔγνω δέ, οὕτω καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος λέγων γενέσθαι τὰ τῇδε (λέγοι δ᾿ ἂν μῖγμα τὸν σφαῖρον). Likewise, op. cit. p. 826. Themistius, Para phrPhys, p. 13: ᾿Aναξαγόρας τε καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς, ὁ μὲν τάς τε ὁμοιομερείας καὶ τὸν νοῦν, ὁ δὲ τὰ στοιχεῖα τὰ τέσσαρα καὶ τὸν σφαῖρον.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς σφαιροειδὲς καὶ ἀΐδιον καὶ ἀκίνητον τὸ ἓν καὶ τὸ μὲν ἓν τὴν ἀνάγκην, ὕλην δὲ αὐτῆς τὰ τέτταρα στοιχεῖα, εἴδη δὲ τὸ Νεῖκος καὶ τὴν Φιλίαν. λέγει δὲ καὶ τὰ στοιχεῖα θεοὺς καὶ τὸ μῖγμα τούτων τὸν κόσμον καὶ πρὸς τούτοις τὸν Σφαῖρον, εἰς ὃν πάντα ταῦτ᾿ ἀναλυθήσεται, τὸ μονοειδές.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 718; 826. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 187. Sim plicius, commCael, pp. 293; 528; commPhys, p. 1121. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Gor giam Commentaria, 35.12.  Themistius, ParaphrPhys, p. 34: ὁ μὲν γὰρ σφαῖρος αὐτῷ ὁ θεὸς παριὼν ἐκ τῆς κατὰ τὴν φιλίαν συγκρίσεως, ἀμέτοχος δὲ ὢν τοῦ νείκους. Proclus, In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 113: καὶ τῷ κατὰ τὸν Ἐμπεδοκλέα νοητῷ θεῷ· σφαῖρον δὲ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνος εἴωθεν ἀποκαλεῖν. In Platonis Par menidem, p. 723: καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὕστερον ἑωρακώς, ἅτε Πυθαγόρειος καὶ αὐτὸς ὤν, Σφαῖρον ἀπεκάλει πᾶν τὸ νοητὸν ὡς ἡνωμένον ἑαυτῷ, καὶ εἰς ἑαυτὸν συννεύειν τὸν καλλοποιὸν καὶ ἑνο ποιὸν διὰ τοῦ κάλλους θεόν. Simplicius, commAnim, p. 70. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 264 5; 267; et passim.  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 2, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 24.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1067

appearance out of that body as a species, a genus, a mass, a shape, and a denseness or a rareness.”¹⁰⁹⁵ In Anaxagoras’ own words, in the primeval undifferentiated reality, the aether and air withheld (κατεῖχεν) all thing from being distinct ones, that is, having individual natures. In Origen, there is the Body of the Logos, which became ‘decorated’ with ‘precious stones’. This is all about the same reality, and, given that ‘aether and air’ are primal realities,¹⁰⁹⁶ it would follow that ‘aether and air’ is a symbolic language bespeaking the Logos of the Mind and his Body. In other words, ‘aether and air’ are ‘homonyms’ in the sense that Aristotle considered the notion in the Categories, and Origen made abundant use of this, which means that aether and air had both a theological and a natural meaning.

The notion of incorporeal: Presocratics and Stoics Having discussed both the Stoics and Origen, it appears that the Mind acting within the universe, although ‘unmixed with everything’, permeates it as a Second God, be that Mind/Logos, or Aether, or Zeus, which later became the Stoic Logos, and then, Son the Logos in Christianity. With reference to Anaxagoras, the question which is now invited is this: was this Second God a material or an immaterial one? This takes me to the issue on whether in Presocratic thought everything is matter. In the first place, I believe that to pursue the question corporeal/incorporeal as if this were a real philosophical question during that time, would be anachronistic. For, in fact, ad hoc discussion of the distinction between corporeality and incorporeality actually emerged with and after Socrates, who introduced discussion about notions proper, which he called ἔννοιαι, and Plato in turn called them Ideas and accorded them subsistent being. Prior to that period, no such distinction was called for, and certainly it occurred to no Presocratic thinker to use such terms as ἀσώματον (incorporeal) in order to make any distinction from an assumed opposite of it. However, an inkling of incorporeality was indeed there implicitly, although no one felt it necessary to point it out: could it possibly be maintained that Democritus’ Necessity, Empedocles’ Love and Strife, Anaxagoras’ Nous were mate-

 H. Wolfson, op. cit. p. 508.  See supra, p. 1059, Damascius’ testimony to the Phoenician theology: “both Aether and Air were posited as two first principles (αἱ δύο αὗται ἀρχαί)”. Princ, p. 323.

1068

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

rial? It could not, but we have seen that only the Anaxagorean Nous was acclaimed as incopropreal by all of his posterity. It is usually assumed that, to the Presocratic mindset, the notion of ‘incorporeal’ was weird, perhaps unknown, and, in any case, the various philosophies that are lumped together under that label are assessed on the grounds that corporeality is the notion that should be promptly and confidently applied as a main clue to interpretation. Eusebius rebuked Porphyry for seeing in the Orphic religion ideas that went beyond worship of visible heavenly bodies. For ‘Orpheus received all of his religious ideas from the Egyptians, who had no inkling of anything intelligible, nor did they know about anything being included in a substance which is incorporeal and unseen’.¹⁰⁹⁷ Thus, Eusebius’ rhetoric question, ‘whence is it that [the poet of the Orphic hymns] got knowledge of incorporeal [substance]?’ (ἀσωμάτου δὲ ἡ γνῶσις αὐτῷ πόθεν;).¹⁰⁹⁸ But this was not only about ‘the theologians’, as the archaic poets of theogony and cosmogony were normally styled: it was also about the ‘physicists’. It was Plotinus who took exception to the impression that had been entrenched during the Classical age right down to his own times, following the disparaging manner in which ‘the physicists’ had been treated by Plato and, much more so, by Aristotle. Plotinus argued that the Presocratic philosophy was not simply about arid materialism, as Aristotle frequently saw it, even though Plotinus himself considered this philosophy as an ‘ancient’ one, by which he implied ‘primitive’, somehow meaning that some seeds of his own ontological pattern were present in the thought of those ancestors. In his treatise ‘On the Three Primary Hypostases’, he argued that the Mind of Anaxagoras was no different from his own One, even though Anaxagoras passed over an accurate account of this ‘because of his antiquity’ (τὸ δ᾿ ἀκριβὲς δι᾿ ἀρχαιότητα παρῆκε).¹⁰⁹⁹ Likewise, ‘Heraclitus also knows that the One is eternal and intelligible’ (τὸ ἓν οἶδεν ἀΐδιον καὶ νοητόν), and Empedocles, by positing Love and Strife alongside the four elements, knew that ‘Love is the One, which he makes incorporeal, too’ (ἀσώματον δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς τοῦτο).¹¹⁰⁰ The only case of incorporeality of Presocratic principles that was impossible to refute (even for Aristotle) was the Pythagorean number,

 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.9.1 14.  Eusebius, op. cit. 3.10.2.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9.  Plotinus, loc. cit. Cyril of Alexandria quoted as follows from this part of the Enneads, and probably his quotation is more correct than that of the current standard text (notice the italics). Contra Julianum, 2.46: Τῷ δὲ Ἐμπεδοκλεῖ τὸ μὲν Νεῖκος διαιρεῖ, ἡ δὲ Φιλία τὸ ἕν· ἀσώματον δὲ καὶ αὐτῷ τοῦτο, τὰ δὲ στοιχεῖα ὡς ὕλη.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1069

and Plotinus cited Pythagoras along with other Presocratics in order to confirm his own ontological pattern, which, of course, he attributed to Plato.¹¹⁰¹ To Aristotle it was an axiom that ‘the elements’ (in which intermittently and inconsistently he included the Anaxagorean principles, as we saw in chapter 1) cannot ‘be generated from the incorporeal’ (οὔτε ἐξ ἀσωμάτου γίγνεσθαι δυνατόν), but ‘they are produced from one another’,¹¹⁰² whereas ‘it is impossible for any incorporeal to be mixed with a body’ (ἀδύνατον γὰρ τὸ ἀσώματον σώματι μεμεῖχθαι).¹¹⁰³ In the On the Heavens, 305a31‒33, he took it for granted that ‘generation from the incorporeal is impossible’ (οὔτε ἐξ ἀσωμάτου γίγνεσθαι δυνατόν), which is why ‘elements have to be generated from each other’. How could then have he ever allowed that the Anaxagorean principles which give rise to all reality are incorporeal? The Pythagoreans apart, Aristotle would have been the last to acknowledge incorporeal principles in the Presocratic philosophy.¹¹⁰⁴ He abhorred any idea of self-existent incorporeal anyway, let alone one which could claim dignity as a ‘principle’. This is why he could have never allowed that incorporeal principles alone produced the material universe, which is though what Anaxagoras maintained. But what about Empedocles, who spoke of Love and Strife alongside the four elements, or Democritus who spoke of ‘void’ alongside atoms,¹¹⁰⁵ let alone Necessity?¹¹⁰⁶ The real import of this ‘Necessity’ is not clear. Diogenes Laertius took this to be the δίνη, which may mean circular motion and whirling about (certainly, not merely ‘vortex’), but it may well mean ‘roaming about’ in a more general (though

 Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. IV.7.8d; IV.8.1; V.1.9; V.5.6; VI.6.5.  Aristotle De Caelo, 305a32 33.  Aristotle, Topica, 149b.  He saw ‘incorporeality’ in the ‘soul’/fire of Hercalitus: De Anima, 405a25 27, speaking not strictly, of course. Cf. Simplicius, commAnim, p. 31, and Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 14.  Plutarch, Adversus Colotem, 1110E; 1113E. Galen, De Elementis ex Hippocrate, p. 417; De Ex perientia Medica, 15.7. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 36; 303. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 882C. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 7. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.11; 1.50. Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 1.21; 2.24; Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adver sus Logicos 1), 135. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.44.3. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 4.13; 4.68. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 9.45; 9.72. Simplicius, commCateg, p. 217. The editor of the anonymous Paraphrasis Categoriarum, 39 (M. Hayduck, Anonymi in Aristotelis Categorias Paraphrasis) presumably did not notice that this is actually a text of Simplicius. John Philopo nus, commGenCorr, pp. 154; 157; 177; commAnim, pp. 9; 67; commPhys, pp. 25; 110. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, pp. 33; 275. Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 11.  Besides, we saw above that Damascius reporting the theology of Hieronymus and/or Hel lanicus, spoke of the ‘Ageless Time’ which is ‘united with Necessity’.

1070

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

undetermined) sense.¹¹⁰⁷ Despite his confident identification of ἀνάγκη with δίνη, in fact Laertius was not sure about its actual meaning, which is why, when he comes to Leucippus (who held the same ideas as Democritus), he confesses that he does not know what the meaning of ἀνάγκη is in that context.¹¹⁰⁸ Perhaps, more accurate is the report by Plutarch, who described this ‘Necessity’ as something which is prior to all events (past, present and future ones) and determines them all. In any case, his testimony has it that all events are ‘predetermined in advance, before infinite time’ (ἐξ ἀπείρου χρόνου προκατέχεσθαι τῇ ἀνάγκῃ).¹¹⁰⁹ No matter what ἀνάγκη really means, one thing is for sure: Democritus posited something which is prior to all events and bears upon them all, in terms of determining the shape, position, and motion of the atoms. Therefore, his conception of Becoming clearly excludes blind chance: everything takes place in accordance with Necessity (omnia ita fato fieri, ut id fatum vim necessitatis adferret). Thus, the testimony of Cicero makes sense: Fate causes everything to take place, but this Fate implements the force of Necessity all the same.¹¹¹⁰ This is a crucial point concerning understanding of Democritus’ thought, and Aristotle inadvertently contributes to this, notwithstanding the criticism involved in his statement: Having left aside the final cause [of creation of things], Democritus refers all the means that Nature employs to Necessity.¹¹¹¹

Clearly then, Necessity is not identified with Nature, but it is prior to Nature. Moreover, this ἀνάγκη is neither the atoms nor the void: it is something beyond

 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 9.45: Πάντα τε κατ᾿ ἀνάγκην γίνεσθαι, τῆς δίνης αἰτίας οὔσης τῆς γενέσεως πάντων, ἣν ἀνάγκην λέγει.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 9.33: κατά τινα ἀνάγκην, ἣν ὁποία ἐστὶν οὐ διασαφεῖ.  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 1.8.7, quoting from Plutarch’s Stromateis: καὶ καθόλου, οἷον πᾶν ἐστιν, ῥητῶς ἐκτίθεται μηδεμίαν ἀρχὴν ἔχειν τὰς αἰτίας τῶν νῦν γιγνομένων, ἄνωθεν δ᾿ ὅλως ἐξ ἀπείρου χρόνου προκατέχεσθαι τῇ ἀνάγκῃ πάνθ᾿ ἁπλῶς τὰ γεγονότα καὶ ἐόντα καὶ ἐσόμενα. The infinitive προκατέχεσθαι referring to the Atomists has the parallel προειλημμένα in Simplicius speaking of Anaxagoras. Simplicius, commCael, p. 609. The same notion became προβεβουλευμένα in the Gnostic system of Basilides, and προκαταβεβλημένα in Numenius, and προκαταβεβλημένα and τεθεωρημένα in Gregory of Nyssa (Apologia in Hexaemeron, p. 120). Ori gen spoke of προτρανωθέντας λόγους. All of these more or less bespeak the same idea, and it is now plain that the ultimate source of it was Anaxagoras. See chapter 8, pp. 601 6.  Cicero, De Fato, 17.39.  Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 789b: Δημόκριτος δὲ τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα ἀφεὶς λέγειν, πάντα ἀνάγει εἰς ἀνάγκην οἷς χρῆται ἡ φύσις. Aristotle adds that he agrees with the idea of ‘necessity’, but he blames Democritus for overlooking the fact that everything takes place for the sake of a certain purpose, i. e. a Final Cause, and for the sake of what is better in each case.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1071

and prior to them both, and it determines the outcome of the interaction between atoms themselves, and between atoms and void. To posit this ‘Necessity’ as material could be just absurd, indeed as much absurd as to believe that it is possible to grasp Democritus’ philosophy just on the basis of ‘atoms and the void’, and arrangement of atoms simply in accordance with their shape, order, and position,¹¹¹² while ignoring his axiomatic statement that all of these are inexorably determined by Necessity. The same notion was recognized also in Empedocles: this was the name for Love and Strife being considered together; ‘Necessity’ is that which determines that Love should be succeeded by Strife, and vice versa, which allows for (indeed, causes) this process to take place.¹¹¹³ Since Empedocles’ principles were ‘mixed’ (μικτάς),¹¹¹⁴ that is, corporeal (the four elements) and incorporeal (Love and Strife), ‘Necessity’ was the administration ¹¹¹⁵ of all material elements: in other words, Love and Strife were two ‘species’ (εἴδη) of Necessity,¹¹¹⁶ whereas the four elements were the material substratum that Necessity acted upon. The Presocratics made ‘necessity’ a fundamental idea of their exposition, no matter how different specific aspects of their theories were,¹¹¹⁷ and this happened long before Heimarmene (Εἱμαρμένη) became a technical term of the Greek philosophical locution, especially the Stoic one. Philodemus of Gadara (first century

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 36.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 7.29.23: ἀνάγκην καλῶν τὴν ἐξ ἑνὸς εἰς πολλὰ κατὰ τὸ Νεῖκος καὶ ἐκ πολλῶν εἰς ἓν κατὰ τὴν Φιλίαν μεταβολήν.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 82: μικτὰς δὲ ἔλεγον Ἐμπεδοκλῆς μετὰ τῶν τεσσάρων στοιχείων τὸ νεῖκος εἰσάγων καὶ τὴν φιλίαν ἀσωμάτους φύσεις. Gennadius Scholarius, Transla tio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 2.8: Εἰ δὲ ἕκαστον τῶν στοιχείων ἔχει κί νησιν ἰδίαν ἐν τῷ μικτῷ, ὡς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τιθέναι ἐδόκει. Op. cit. 3.7: συμπεραίνει ὅτι ἀνάγκη τὸν νοῦν, διὰ τὸ νοεῖν πάντα ἐν δυνάμει, μὴ εἶναι μικτὸν ἐκ τῶν σωματικῶν πραγμάτων, ὡς Ἐμπε δοκλῆς ἔφασκεν, ἀλλ᾿ εἶναι μᾶλλον ἀμιγῆ, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐτίθει.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 884F & Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 41 & Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.4.7c: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς οὐσίαν ἀνάγκης αἰτίαν χρηστικὴν τῶν ἀρχῶν καὶ τῶν στοιχείων. Quoted also by John Laurentius Lydus, De Mensibus, 4.81.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς σφαιροειδὲς καὶ ἀΐδιον καὶ ἀκίνητον τὸ ἓν καὶ τὸ μὲν ἓν τὴν ἀνάγκην, ὕλην δὲ αὐτῆς τὰ τέτταρα στοιχεῖα, εἴδη δὲ τὸ Νεῖκος καὶ τὴν Φιλίαν.  Plutarch summarized this by referring to Empedocles, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxago ras. De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1026B: ἣν εἱμαρμένην οἱ πολλοὶ καλοῦσιν, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ Φιλίαν ὁμοῦ καὶ Νεῖκος. Cf. Pseudo Aristotle, De Mundo, 401b. Likewise, Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 884E & Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 40 (Parmenides, Democri tus); 885A (Stoics). Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 1 & Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 884F (Her aclitus). Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. III.1.3&4. Philo, De Migratione Abrahami, 179; Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 300; De Somniis, 2.130. Porphyry, Epistula ad Anebonem, 2.13a. Iamblichus, Theologou mena Arithmeticae, 80 (Pythagoreans); De Mysteriis, 8.7; 10.5. Et. al.

1072

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

BC) reported that ‘Chrysippus, in the first book of his treatise On Gods, identified Zeus with the [universal] Logos that administers all things, and with the soul of the universe; everything lives by participation in that [soul]’. Then, ‘Zeus is the master and cause of all things’, and by this name ‘also the common nature of everything and the Heimarmene and Necessity is meant’.¹¹¹⁸ This ‘Zeus’ is no other than the cohesive force (or, ‘tension’, τόνος), which permeates the entire universe and makes all things what they are. The witness to this, namely, Clement of Alexandria, stressed that this permeating ‘pneumatic force’ (i. e. a force acting as ‘breath’) was identified with ‘the aether’, and points out that this was the doctrine of Empedocles, too.¹¹¹⁹ This identification of Zeus with aether was likewise attributed by Pseudo-Aristotle to Heraclitus,¹¹²⁰ who clearly identified Necessity with Heimarmene.¹¹²¹ His Logos was no other than ‘the essence of Heimarmene’, which means that the Logos was an established universal agent, or law, according to which creation takes places and functions by means of conflict of opposites.¹¹²² Even though this agent was styled ‘aetheral body’ which ‘permeates everything’, there is nothing to suggest that this was a material body, since in Heraclitus the notion of materiality pertains to his ‘fire’, which, as already said, was sometimes styled ‘incorporeal’ and it is tantamount to the modern conception of ‘energy’.¹¹²³ Beyond this (anachronistic, to be sure) identification, we should always bear in mind that the Presocratic (as well as Stoic)

 Chrysippus, fr. 1076, apud Philodemus, Περὶ Εὐσεβείας: ὀνομάζεσθαι τὸν Δία καὶ τὴν κοι νὴν πάντων φύσιν καὶ εἱμαρμένην καὶ ἀνάγκην.  Chrysippus, fr. 447, apud Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.8.48.3: ὁ διήκων πνευματι κὸς τόνος καὶ συνέχων τὸν κόσμον εἴη ἄν. ἄμεινον δὲ ἐκδέχεσθαι τὸν αἰθέρα πάντα συνέχοντα καὶ σφίγγοντα, καθὰ καὶ ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς φησίν.  Pseudo Aristotle, De Mundo, 401a: Εἷς δὲ ὢν πολυώνυμός ἐστι, κατονομαζόμενος τοῖς πά θεσι πᾶσιν ἅπερ αὐτὸς νεοχμοῖ. Καλοῦμεν γὰρ αὐτὸν καὶ Ζῆνα καὶ Δία, παραλλήλως χρώμενοι τοῖς ὀνόμασιν, ὡς κἂν εἰ λέγοιμεν δι᾿ ὃν ζῶμεν. Κρόνου δὲ παῖς καὶ χρόνου λέγεται, διήκων ἐξ αἰῶνος ἀτέρμονος εἰς ἕτερον αἰῶνα· ἀστραπαῖος τε καὶ βρονταῖος καὶ αἴθριος.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 884F: Ἡράκλειτος πάντα καθ᾿ εἱμαρμένην, τὴν δὲ αὐτὴν ὑπάρχειν καὶ ἀνάγκην. John Laurentius Lydus, De Mensibus, 4.81: τὴν δ᾿ εἱμαρμένην Ἡρά κλειτος τὴν αὐτὴν καὶ ἀνάγκην εἶναι βούλεται.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b: Ἡράκλειτος τὸ περιοδικὸν πῦρ ἀΐδιον εἶναι θεόν, εἱμαρμέ νην δὲ λόγον ἐκ τῆς ἐναντιοδρομίας δημιουργὸν τῶν ὄντων. See supra, note 1104.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 42 & Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 885A & Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.5.15: Ἡράκλειτος οὐσίαν εἱμαρμένης ἀπεφαίνετο λόγον τὸν διὰ οὐ σίας τοῦ παντὸς διήκοντα. αὕτη δ᾿ ἐστὶ τὸ αἰθέριον σῶμα, σπέρμα τῆς τοῦ παντὸς γενέσεως καὶ περιόδου μέτρον τεταγμένης. Cf. Anonymous, Scholia in Hesiodum, Scholia in Opera et Dies, p. 18bis: The son of Cronus was called either Zeus or Heimarmene (ὁ Κρόνου παῖς ἤγουν ἡ εἱμαρμένη); then, ὁ Ζεύς, ὁ ναίων καὶ ἐν τῷ αἰθέρι, καὶ ἐν ταῖς ῥίζαις τῆς γῆς, καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀν δράσι· διὰ πάντων γὰρ διήκει ἡ εἱμαρμένη. Δία δὲ εἶπον, ὅτι τὴν εἱμαρμένην νῦν λέγει.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1073

‘fire’ had not to be visible by all means: the fire of a burning object is one thing, but the flame outside it is another, and the light or radiance that proceeds from the flame is another still; anyway, the warmth of a living organism was considered invisible, although it was assumed to be the product of a certain ‘fire’, too. In short, to be ‘material’ does not necessarily mean to be ‘seen’, which makes the association between ‘material’ and ‘body’ more intricate than currently believed. Whereas the key-notion of Necessity in Democritus has been largely neglected, things with Empedocles were clearer, since it was recognized (e. g. by Plotinus, and then by Cyril of Alexandria, as above) that, in his philosophy, there is indeed an indisputably incorporeal cardinal notion, which is the idea of Love and Strife. John Philoponus acknowledged explicitly that those two principles of Empedocles were ‘incorporeal’,¹¹²⁴ but his classmate Asclepius of Tralles missed this point, arguing that Empedocles ‘had no inkling of incorporeal principles’.¹¹²⁵ Nevertheless, long before them both, Alexander of Aphrodisias insightfully had pointed out that ‘according to Leucippus and Democritus, matter is both corporeal and incorporeal, because the void [which is part of matter] is itself incorporeal’.¹¹²⁶ John Philoponus made a classification of Presocratics maintaining either material principles (Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander, Heraclitus), or incorporeal ones, i. e. numbers (Pythagoreans), or ‘mixed ones’ (μικτάς), such as Empedocles who introduced also ‘incorporeal natures, such as Strife and Love’ (τὸ νεῖκος εἰσάγων καὶ τὴν φιλίαν ἀσωμάτους φύσεις).¹¹²⁷ While bearing in mind that the Presocratics shared several pivotal ideas, their differences were by no means insignificant. Anaxagoras stands out as the sole philosopher who introduced a clear notion of an incorporeal Mind being the supreme master and creator of everything. My final point is to show that, although he shared with Empedocles (and partially with Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Democritus, and others) the notion of a primeval reality comprising ‘aether and air’, his theory was different also in the following respect. To him, ‘Aether’ is a Second God produced by the original Mind. His primeval state of things, therefore, comprised three distinct realities:

 John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 82: μικτὰς δὲ [τὰς ἀρχάς] ἔλεγον Ἐμπεδοκλῆς μετὰ τῶν τεσσάρων στοιχείων τὸ νεῖκος εἰσάγων καὶ τὴν φιλίαν ἀσωμάτους φύσεις καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας μετὰ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν τὸν νοῦν· ἀσώματον γάρ φησιν αὐτὸν εἶναι.  Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 60: κἂν εἴ τις ταύτας τὰς ἀρχὰς τὰς ὑλικὰς πλείονας λέγῃ μὴ λέγων ἀσωμάτους ἀρχάς, οἷον ὥσπερ ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς· τέσσαρα γὰρ αἴτια ὑποτίθεται ὑλικὰ καὶ οὔτε ποιητικὸν αἴτιον κυρίως λέγει τῶν κατὰ μέρος οὔτε εἰδικόν.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 61: οὐκ ἐμνημόνευσε δὲ Λευκίππου τε καὶ Δη μοκρίτου, καθ᾿ οὓς καὶ σῶμα καὶ ἀσώματον ἡ ὕλη· τὸ γὰρ κενὸν οὐ σῶμα.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 82.

1074

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

One, Mind, who is unmixed with all things. Two, Aether, which is the divine agent assigned with the creation of the universe, as well as with endless maintenance of it: thus, the etymology of aether from ἀεὶ θέειν, means that this Second God is permanently present and acting within the universe, whereas Mind itself (or, himself) was ‘unmixed’ with everything. In other words, Aether acts as Creative Mind, indeed as a ruling and cohesive force of the universe. This was the Stoic Logos, as well as God the Son Logos of the Christians, which Origen saw, and availed himself of the theory. Three, ‘air’, which was a collective name for the principles which had to be ‘distinguished’ (that is, created) and come to pass. Whereas, in the beginning, nothing was ἔνδηλον (= existing per se as a self-subsistent being having its own identity), both ‘aether and air’ were there, and they did exist. This is the reality of which Origen says that the Father ‘withheld’ (συνέχων) the theoremata, whereas the Son/Wisdom/Logos was already there. However, the Son was there without his Body having been ‘decorated’ yet. In that reality, that which exists is the Father’s theoremata, on the one hand, and the Son on the other. Then, the Father imprints them on the Son, thus ‘decorating’ the Body of the Logos with ‘precious stones’, which were called logoi, that is, active principles thereafter existing as distinct ones assigned with creation, cohesion, and function of the universe. This is the reality in which both the Creator/Logos and the creatures/logoi are one, and Origen, in order to adumbrate the original state of creation before the Fall, implicitly availed himself of Empedocles’ Sphaerus, in which Love prevails. This is Origen’s primeval unity of the Body of the Logos, and Porphyry said nothing different when he reported that, to Anaxagoras, everything stems from a single Body. It should be clear that the history of Greek philosophy is not a series of parthenogeneses following one another. Aristotle did not write his theories out of scratch, but mostly only his debts to Plato are recognized. However, since he abhorred any notion of self-existent incorporeal principles (such as those of Anaxagoras), he transformed his predecessor’s idea to the twofold reality of ‘formless matter’ and ‘forms’ acting upon that, while banning self-existence of either of them. Aristotle had his own agenda concerning his predecessors, anyway: Plato had spoken of an ‘eternal and imperishable Receptacle which provides room for all things that are subject to generation; this is not apprehensible, and it is grasped by means of reasoning which is hardly reasoning (λογισμῷ τινι νόθῳ, μόγις πιστόν)’;¹¹²⁸ but he did not identify this as matter, which

 Plato, Timaeus, 52a b.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1075

could have spared him of all his vague descriptions of that ‘receptacle’.¹¹²⁹ However, Aristotle decided that Plato had in mind Aristotle’s own ‘formless matter’: “Plato, in the Timaeus, says that matter and the receptacle are one and the same.”¹¹³⁰ But the truth is that Plato did not say so. The case was entirely similar with that of Aristotle having decided that Anaxagoras’ philosophy involved ‘formless matter’, and then he coined also the name ‘homoiomeries’. In reality, Aristotle’s idea of three fundamental principles (First Mover, forms, formless matter) was all but parthenogenesis, and his debts to his predecessors are mentioned by him himself, if in his own way of argument. By the same token, the Stoics saw ‘Aether’ as ‘Zeus’/Logos, but, at the same time, they employed the twofold reality of Aristotle: as Origen informed us, Chrysippus maintained that Zeus is the Universal Logos producing the logoi which act upon formless matter, represented as Hera, the wife of Zeus. This is how Chrysippus explained an utterly lewd and unspeakable representation of Zeus and Hera in a picture at Samos.¹¹³¹ The obscenity of that picture was repugnant to Diogenes Laertius, who criticized Chrysippus for having written ‘six hundred verses’ in order to commend that image as a ‘natural’ one, although, to Laertius, ‘no one would have contaminated his mouth by describing it’. But the important information involved in this report is that Chrysippus wrote his interpretation of the Samos picture in a work entitled ‘On the ancient Physicists’ (Περὶ τῶν ἀρχαίων φυσιολόγων), that is, explaining the theory of certain Presocratics.¹¹³² There is no reference about either aether or air in this report, but, in the confession of the magician Cyprian of Antioch, this intercourse of Zeus with Hera is indeed interpreted as the union of aether and air.¹¹³³ Likewise, Celsus pointed out that the words of Zeus to Hera in Ilias, XV.18‒ 24, bespeak ‘the logoi¹¹³⁴ of God to matter’ (λόγους εἶναι τοῦ θεοῦ πρὸς τὴν ὕλην); ‘the logoi to matter vaguely suggest that, in the beginning, matter was

 Cf. P. Tzamalikos, “The concept of matter (ὕλη) in Plato’s Timaeus”, Yearbook Philosophia, of the Center for the Research of Greek Philosophy at the Academy of Athens, 27 28, 1997 98, pp. 131 41.  Aristotle, Physica, 209b.  Origen, Cels, IV.48.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.187 8.  Cf. M.P. Nilson, “Greek Mysteries in the confession of St. Cyprian of Antioch’, Harvard Theological Review, XL, 1947, pp. 167 76. Theophilus of Antioch criticized Chrysippus, and he dared to explicate that this picture was about oral sex. Ad Autolycum, 3.8. Pseudo Clement of Rome (Homiliae, 5.18.6 5.19.1) rebuked Chrysippus, but he spoke of a similar picture at Argos of which Chrysippus wrote in his Erotic Epistles. Dio Chrysostom spoke of the secret marriage between Zeus and Hera without mentioning the specific picture. Orationes, 36.56.  A punning with logoi/words and logoi/active principles.

1076

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

wanting (πλημμελῶς ἔχουσαν), and God granted it certain proportions, he bound it together, and set it in order’ (διαλαβὼν ἀναλογίαις τισὶ συνέδησε καὶ ἐκόσμησεν ὁ θεός).¹¹³⁵ It is clear, therefore, that what Chrysippus saw as ‘aether and air’ in the ‘ancient Physicists’ (i. e. in Anaxagoras par excellence, who spoke of them both upon the opening of his work, but also in others) was God the Creator, on the one hand, and his creature, on the other. Hence, we can now understand better why Origen was happy to employ the notion of God ‘belching out’ the ‘air’/logoi from within himself upon the divine creative act. To him, as well as to his Greek predecessors, ‘air’ was a suitable symbol bespeaking an attenuated reality, something which both is and is not there. Clearly, Origen was happy to discover in the scriptures the philological grounds in order to reflect by means of his Anaxagorean background. In the beginning, therefore, Nous set out to act as Aether, wherefore creatures came to be. In Origen’s terms, the beginningless Logos became Life, and the logoi of his Body were the means to creation. In Anaxagoras, ‘aether’ was not ‘fire’ in the sense Aristotle claimed that to be, unless as ‘fire’ we should understand the divine element of Heraclitus duly adapted by Anaxagoras to his own set of ideas. The views of the Presocratics that I have considered were not identical, yet some fundamental ideas were analogous to a certain extent, and Anaxagoras was credited with being the sole one who made God the Mind clearly incorporeal. Consequently, when Aristotle spoke of ‘forms’ acting upon ‘formless matter’, he said nothing really new, nor was he the father of the idea that ‘formless matter’ is not a body, but it is only potential being, indeed this is potentially everything, but actually nothing,¹¹³⁶ whereas a ‘form’ is ‘actuality’ (ἡ οὐσία καὶ τὸ εἶδος ἐνέργειά ἐστιν), and ‘nothing eternal is potential’ (οὐθὲν δυνάμει ἀΐδιον).¹¹³⁷ We should bear this in mind against his exposition (followed by almost every modern student of Anaxagoras) interpolating the notion of materiality of principles into Anaxagoras’ philosophy. Aristotle applied his proposition about ‘matter’ also to a ‘seed’ (σπέρμα), which is an Anaxagorean notion distinguishing him from all other Presocratics.

 Origen, Cels, VI.42. Porphyry explained the verse XV.18 of Ilias as suggesting that ‘Hera is the nature of the universe’ (Ἥραν γὰρ εἶναι τὴν τοῦ παντὸς φύσιν). Quaestionum Homericarum ad Iliadem Pertinentium Reliquiae, Ilias book 18, verses 239 240. Likewise, Heraclitus, the ob scure Homeric exegete (probably first century AD) explained this verse as suggesting the priority of aether over air (πρῶτος αἰθὴρ καὶ μετὰ τοῦτον ἀήρ). Allegoriae (= Quaestiones Homericae), 40.6.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1042a26 27; 1060a20 21; 1069b19 20.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1050b38 39.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1077

To Aristotle, a seed has everything potentially, but it has nothing in actuality (καὶ πάντα τὰ μόρια ἔχει δυνάμει, ἐνεργείᾳ δ᾿ οὐθέν),¹¹³⁸ which is an idea that went back not only to Anaxagoras’ ‘seed’, but even to the Orphic ‘egg’. In fact, Aristotle conceded this later in the same work of his, but either he was confused or he pretended to be so. On the one hand, he acknowledged that, the proposition ‘all things were together’ suggests potential existence, which his is correct in respect of the distinguished original mixture.¹¹³⁹ However, he took it that potentiality somehow suggests materiality, since, to him, the idea of potentiality is associated with formless matter (which however is per se immaterial): hence, he jumped to the conclusion that the primal state of all the principles existing potentially, not actually, has to mean that these are material ones.¹¹⁴⁰ Furthermore, he argued that the original (indistinct) state of principles could not be one of potential being, because matter (which he identified with the undifferentiated Anaxagorean principles) cannot move itself, unless there is a cause which exists in actuality. For, to him, the only possibility for matter to be able to move is either that which is caused by earthquakes, or that of seeds and sperms of animals.¹¹⁴¹ There were many ideas that were explicit in Anaxagoras, and yet Aristotle appears to ‘forget’ them. For it is now clear that the primeval confusum of Anaxagoras was not potential being: potentiality proper appeared only once Mind ‘distinguished’ the principles. Besides, Aristotle ostensibly forgets that the process of generation according to Anaxagoras is indeed very much like that of a seed developing into actuality at the behest of Mind, since it was Aristotle himself who wrote that ‘actuality is prior, which is testified by Anaxagoras who posited Mind as actuality’.¹¹⁴² But in fact, the case was that he pretended to be oblivious of ideas that he had taken up from Anaxagoras.

 Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 737a23 24.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b19 23: ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐξ ὄντος γίγνεται πάντα, δυνάμει μέντοι ὄντος, ἐκ μὴ ὄντος δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ. καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι τὸ ᾿Aναξαγόρου ἕν· βέλτιον γὰρ ἢ ὁμοῦ πάντα καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους τὸ μῖγμα καὶ ᾿Aναξιμάνδρου, καὶ ὡς Δημόκριτός φησιν ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα δυνάμει, ἐνεργείᾳ δ᾿ οὔ.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1069b23 24: ὥστε τῆς ὕλης ἂν εἶεν ἡμμένοι.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1071b26 31: καίτοι εἰ ὡς λέγουσιν οἱ θεολόγοι οἱ ἐκ νυκτὸς γεννῶντες, ἢ ὡς οἱ φυσικοὶ ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματά φασι, τὸ αὐτὸ ἀδύνατον. πῶς γὰρ κινηθήσεται, εἰ μὴ ἔσται ἐνεργείᾳ τι αἴτιον; οὐ γὰρ ἥ γε ὕλη κινήσει αὐτὴ ἑαυτήν, ἀλλὰ τεκτονική, οὐδὲ τὰ ἐπιμήνια οὐδ᾿ ἡ γῆ, ἀλλὰ τὰ σπέρματα καὶ ἡ γονή.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1072a5 6.

1078

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Euripides The ‘philosopher of stage’ or ‘scenic philosopher’ knew that ‘aether’ was in fact an active divine principle identified as God/Zeus or Logos of the universe. In other words, ‘aether’ was a name for the administrator of the Anaxagorean principles, ‘all of which stem from a single body’, as Porphyry informed us, and will be discussed next. Anaxagoras mentioned ‘aether’ in the extant passages of his Physics preserved by Simplicius. Moreover, Euripides rendered the Anaxagorean philosophy in terms that are conclusively very similar to those that Origen employed in his own theology about the Logos, while also reflecting in Anaxagorean terms. A passage from Euripides’ lost play Chrysippus is illuminating in this respect. Greatest Earth and the Aether of Zeus (Διὸς Αἰθήρ), he, the progenitor of men and gods (ἀνθρώπων καὶ θεῶν γενέτωρ), she, receiving moistening drops of rain, gives birth to mor tals, gives birth to the species of beasts and their food; hence, not unjustly is she consid ered the mother of all. The things grown from the earth return to the earth, but those which arose from the aetheral seed (ἀπ᾿ αἰθερίου βλαστόντα γονῆς) have returned to the celestial sphere. For not one of the things that come to be dies; but each one comes from another, and appears [anew] in different form by means of separation (διακρινόμενον).¹¹⁴³

The second part of the passage makes it clear that Euripides reflected in terms of the philosophy of Anaxagoras, since he applies the term διάκρισις and takes it for granted that generation takes place by means of ‘separation’ (διακρινόμενον). This was also recognized by ancient doxographers, who described the theory of Anaxagoras about generation in the same terms, and they quoted the last part of these verses of Euripides, advising posterity that this was what ‘Anaxagoras and Euripides maintained’ on this issue.¹¹⁴⁴ The text of Euripides clearly associates Aether with Zeus, ‘the progenitor of men and gods’, unlike the rest of animals, which are produced from the earth alone. It is then plausible to see the Aether as a manifestation of Zeus that

 Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 839. The first part of these verses of Euripides was quoted by Sex tus Empiricus, Adversus Musicos, 17 (who spoke of ‘the tragedians’, not of Euripides by name). The verse γαῖα μεγίστη καὶ Διὸς αἰθήρ was quoted by Posidonius as an exemplar of genuine po etry, in his definition of what a ποίημα is, and its difference from ποίησις. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.60.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 908D & Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 123: μέρη γὰρ εἶναι τοῦ κόσμου ταῦτα [sc. τὰ ζῷα], ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Εὐριπίδης· θνῄσκει δ᾿ οὐδὲν τῶν γιγνομένων, διακρινόμενον δὲ ἄλλο πρὸς ἄλλο μορφὰς ἑτέρας ἐπέδειξεν. Diels made Euripides’ verse ‘fragment 112’ of his testimonia to Anaxagoras, and rightly so.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1079

gave birth to rational animals, such as men and the multitude of gods. In short, Euripides saw ‘aether’ as the Mind which is immanent in the world. Put in Christian terms, he saw this as the Son/Logos. Likewise, in the Antiope, another lost play, he wrote, ‘I sing of Aether and Earth, the progenitor of all’ (Αἰθέρα καὶ Γαῖαν πάντων γενέτειραν ἀείδω).¹¹⁴⁵ And in yet another one, whose title is unknown to us, the verse goes, ‘O daughter, birth is given to you by Zeus, whom men name Aether’ (ἀλλ᾿ αἰθὴρ τίκτει σε, κόρα, Ζεὺς ὃς ἀνθρώποις ὀνομάζεται).¹¹⁴⁶ In other words, Zeus is identified with aether once again. It is not the fact that Euripides saw aether as god that associates his verses with Anaxagoras. For this specific idea was older, since it appeared in earlier theogonies, and we can identify the ideas of Pherecydes in them, too.¹¹⁴⁷ It is characteristic that Origen excoriated ‘Aristotle and the Peripatetics, who say that aether is immaterial,¹¹⁴⁸ and posit it as being of a fifth nature, alongside the four elements’, adding that ‘the followers of both Plato and the Stoa nobly took exception to this tenet’.¹¹⁴⁹ On this, he followed Anaxagoras who treated

 Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 1023; quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 4 (Ad versus Physicos 2), 315, and by Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 10.7.2.  Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 877; quoted by Anonymous, Epimerismi Homerici (ordine alpha betico traditi), letter zeta, gloss 7; and Etymologicum Gudianum, entry zeta, p. 230.  Cf. the testimony about Orpheus by Damascius, Princ, p. 317. Also, op. cit. p. 320: Acusilaus held that Chaos was the original principle that produced Darkness (Ἔρεβος) and Night (Νύκτα), who, following their intercourse, gave birth to Aether. According to Eusebius, Orpheus held that Aether was ‘the mind of Zeus and nothing else’ (ὁ νοῦς τοῦ Διὸς οὐδὲν ἄλλο πλὴν τοῦ δηλω θέντος αἰθέρος ἦν), which was identified with fire (πυρώδης ἀπὸ τοῦ αἴθεσθαι, ὅπερ ἐστὶ καίεσθαι) and it was material, as indeed the air was to them (σώματα δὲ ἄμφω ὅ τε ἀὴρ ὅ τε αἰθήρ). Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 3.10.10, deploring the Greeks for making Zeus’ Mind material. In general, Eusebius argued that all of these were Chaldean doctrines. The Christian apologist Hermias (Irrisio Gentilium Philosophorum, 12) wrote that Pherecydes identified Zeus with Aether, which is the active creative principle (ὁ μὲν αἰθὴρ τὸ ποιοῦν, ἡ δὲ γῆ τὸ πάσχον).  In fact, to Aristotle aether had no qualities (it was neither hot, cold, wet, or dry), it was impervious to change (with the exception of change of place), by its nature it moved in circles, and it had no contrary, or unnatural, motion. Nevertheless, to him aether was a body, yet a body of divine nature, the sole one deemed worthy of making up the heaven and the heavenly spheres. Meteorologica, 339b. Cf. Simplicius, commCael, p. 119. Aristotle opted for Plato’s opinion (Cratylus, 410b) that αἰθὴρ is derived from ἀεὶ and θεῖν, with a punning on θεῖος as well. I have argued that Origen did not care for direct contact with Aristotle’s writings; instead, he studied Aristotle through the commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias.  Origen, Cels, IV.56: προσφεύξεται δὲ ᾿Aριστοτέλει καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ Περιπάτου, ἄϋλον φάσκουσιν εἶναι τὸν αἰθέρα, καὶ πέμπτης παρὰ τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα αὐτὸν εἶναι φύσεως· πρὸς ὃν λόγον οὐκ ἀγεννῶς καὶ οἱ ἀπὸ Πλάτωνος καὶ οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς ἔστησαν. His point is that

1080

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

aether as being simply a very rarefied matter,¹¹⁵⁰ whereas the Anaxagorean allegiances of Euripides are denoted through the idea that nothing really dies and animals come from each other by means of διάκρισις.¹¹⁵¹ Euripides wrote that ‘although the [individual] mind of the dead lives no longer, it has immortal intelligence, since it falls into the eternal aether’.¹¹⁵² In other words, the constitutive principles that give rise to a personal being do not perish, but they keep existing along with the Mind. This is what Porphyry said expounding the philosophy of Anaxagoras: the Arabic sources inform us that ‘all things stem from a single Body’; and Porphyry’s treatise On Statues says so, too: everything that exists in the universe, it exists on the great Body of Zeus (πάντα γὰρ ἐν Ζηνὸς μεγάλῳ τάδε σώματι κεῖται), who ‘hears and considers everything; not any speech, nor cry, nor noise, nor ominous voice escapes the ear of Zeus’.¹¹⁵³ The identification of Zeus and Aether appears not only in the Anaxagorean Euripides,¹¹⁵⁴ but also in Aeschylus,¹¹⁵⁵ and it became common among later authors.¹¹⁵⁶ Likewise, Zeus was called either ‘Mind’, or ‘Mind and Aether’,¹¹⁵⁷ as it

the heaven is material, just as all other things are, which is why this is subject to destruction, according to the saying ‘the haevens shall perish, but you shall endure’ (Psalm, 101:27).  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 179: “The dense and dry and cold and the dark came together here, where now the earth is, and the rare and the hot and the dry went out to the extremity of the aether’” (τὸ μὲν πυκνὸν καὶ διερὸν καὶ ψυχρὸν καὶ τὸ ζοφερὸν ἐνθάδε συνεχώρησεν, ἔνθα νῦν ἡ γῆ, τὸ δὲ ἀραιὸν καὶ τὸ θερμὸν καὶ τὸ ξηρὸν ἐξεχώρησεν εἰς τὸ πρόσω τοῦ αἰθέρος). Also, the Mind also set in order the revolution, in which the things that are now separated revolve (καὶ τὴν περιχώρησιν ταύτην ἣν νῦν περιχωρέει), the stars and the sun and the moon and the air and the aether. This revolution caused them to separate off (ἡ δὲ περιχώ ρησις αὐτὴ ἐποίησεν ἀποκρίνεσθαι).” Simplicius, commPhys, p. 156. Plato criticized Anaxagoras and ‘saw the man making no use of the Mind, nor predicating any real causes for the ordering of things, but mentioned as causes air and aether and water and many other absurdities’ (καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ καὶ ἄτοπα). Phaedo, 98c.  Origen endorsed Celsus’ claim that ‘a snake is formed out of a dead man, and a bee from an ox, and a wasp from a horse, and a beetle from an ass, and in general worms from most an imals’ because this was a particular manifestation of the Anaxagorean principle, ‘everything comes from everything’. Cels, IV.57.  Euripides, Helena, verses 1014 6: ὁ νοῦς τῶν κατθανόντων ζῇ μὲν οὔ, γνώμην δ᾿ ἔχει ἀθάνατον εἰς ἀθάνατον αἰθέρ᾿ ἐμπεσών. Cf. Marcus Aurelius, supra, p. 608.  Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 3. Notice the analogy to Origen’s Body of the Logos.  Euripides, fr. 877: ἀλλ᾿ αἰθὴρ τίκτει σε, κόρα, Ζεὺς ὃς ἀνθρώποις ὀνομάζεται.  Aeschylus, Fragmenta, Tetralogy 11, play Heliades, fr. 105a, apud Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.14.114.4, and Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 13.13.41: Ζεύς ἐστιν αἰθήρ, Ζεὺς δὲ γῆ, Ζεὺς δ᾿ οὐρανός, Ζεύς τοι τὰ πάντα χὤ τι τῶνδ᾿ ὑπέρτερον.  Cf. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.20.4, quoting from Arius Didymus (Physica [frag menta], fr. 39) referring to the Stoics: Εἶναι δὲ ψυχὴν ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ φασίν, ὃ καλοῦσιν αἰθέρα καὶ ἀέρα, κύκλῳ περὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ θάλασσαν καὶ ἐκ τούτων ἀναθυμιᾶσθαι. The passage was excerpted

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1081

happened with the Orphic verses quoted by Porphyry, then by Eusebius, and then by Proclus, as discussed above. Even Empedocles, who posited the four elements as principles, styled fire ‘Zeus and aether’.¹¹⁵⁸ Therefore, it should be Empedocles, not Anaxagoras, that Aristotle should have criticized for using the term ‘aether’ for ‘fire’,¹¹⁵⁹ even though, in the Presocratic mindset, this specific usage of fire is not just one of the four elements, but something more than that. Clement quoted some verses from an unknown work of Euripides, which are the words of prayer uttered by one who offers a sacrifice. The offerer asks from God (‘whether you are called Zeus or Hades’) to deign accept the sacrifice. This is a God who ‘administers’ (or, holds) ‘the kingly sceptre of Zeus’ (σκῆπτρον τὸ Διὸς μεταχειρίζεις) and ‘shares power’ (μετέχεις ἀρχῆς) over ‘the heavenly gods’ (θεοῖς τοῖς οὐρανίδαις) ‘the things of earth’ (χθονίων) and those of the nether world (᾿Aΐδῃ). Further, the sacrificer asks from this God who ‘administers the kingly power of Zeus’ to illuminate him: thus, the petition is that God grant knowledge about such difficult questions as the origin of human beings, the root of evil, and the future state of men, namely, whether this will be a state of bliss and a resting-place following the toil of the present life. Clement of Alexandria reasonably argues that this Euripidean passage indicates two Gods: one, the Father; the other is the Son who administers the power of the Father over all

as Chrysippus, fr. 821 (J. von Arnim) & Posidonius, Fragmenta [Theiler], fr. 351. However, the text of Eusebius has it that this was a view of Zeno, and there is reference neither to Chrysippus nor to Posidonius. Cornutus, De Natura Deorum, p. 33. Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 7.5.48. Apion, Fragmenta De Glossis Homericis, p. 29. Pseudo Clement of Rome, Homiliae, 6.12.4. Heraclitus (Homeric exegete, prob. first century AD), Allegoriae, 15.3; 24.1; 39.11. Pseu do Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 878A. Porphyry, Quaestionum Homericarum ad Iliadem Per tinentium Reliquiae, comm. on Ilias, XV.13 ff. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 7.29.4. Pseudo Justin, Oratio ad Gentiles, p. 38C. Pseudo Theodoret, Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Or thodoxos, p. 130. Orion (grammarian, fifth century AD), Etymologicum, letter eta, p. 68. John Lau rentius Lydus, De Mensibus, 4.34. George Monachus, Chronicon, p. 72; Chronicon Breve, PG.110.116.35 37. Michael Psellus, Opuscula i, 54. John Galen (grammarian, twelfth century), Al legoriae in Hesiodi Theogoniam, pp. 331; 361 (appealing to an Orphic hymn). Eustathius of The ssaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, v. 1, p. 231: v. 2, pp. 515; 524; 641; v. 3, pp. 616; 629; 630; 720; 852; 864; v. 4, pp. 38; 922; Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam, v. 1, p. 11. Anonymous [Plu tarch], De Homero 2, lines 999 1001. Anonymous, Scholia in Iliadem (scholia vetera), comm. on Ilias, XV.192 3; XVI.233b. Matthaeus Blastares, Collectio Alphabetica, letter epsilon, chapter 6: τοῦ μὲν γὰρ εἰδώλου τοῦ Διὸς πρωτότυπον ὁ αἰθήρ· τῆς δὲ Ἥρας, ὁ ἀήρ.  Eustathius of Thessaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, v. 1, p. 34; v. 3, pp. 629 30. John Tzetzes, Exegesis in Homeri Iliadem, Iliadic verse I.202, scholium 3.  Achilles Tatius, Isagoga Excerpta, 3: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ ἀρχάς φησι τῶν ὅλων τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα, καὶ τὸ μὲν πῦρ καλεῖ Δία καὶ αἰθέρα.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 270b; cf. Meteorologica, 369b.

1082

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

heavenly powers, as well as over both the earth and the nether world. His assumption is then that Euripides ‘somehow implies the Father and the Son’ (πατέρα καὶ υἱὸν ἅμα οὐκ οἶδ᾿ ὅπως αἰνισσόμενος), as well as ‘the Saviour himself, even though he [Euripides] does not know him’ (καὶ ὅτι τὸν σωτῆρα αὐτὸν οὐκ εἰδὼς λέγει).¹¹⁶⁰ It should be remarked that Euripides does not care to distinguish the names of those whom Clement saw as Father and Son. In the above prayer, the administrator of the power of Zeus is called Zeus, too; which suggests that there is no ontological distinction between those two gods involved whatsoever. Euripides did not attempt to describe what God is, which he deemed impossible, and he had no inhibition about declaring himself ignorant of who or what Zeus is.¹¹⁶¹ But his ignorance referred to what God is; it was not about whether God exists or not.¹¹⁶² We saw above that, to Democritus, ‘Necessity’ represented creative, cohesive, and dissolving active force prevailing upon atoms and arranging them in different ways, thus giving rise to different things and phenomena. We need to recall this in connection with a telling passage of Euripides which shows his philosophical knowledgeability. In the Troiades, Hecuba prays to God, although (as noted above) she does not know exactly who he is. O you that do support the earth and rest thereupon, whoever you are, a riddle past our knowledge (δυστόπαστος εἰδέναι)! Zeus, o whether you are natural necessity, or the mind of men (εἴτ᾿ ἀνάγκη φύσεος εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν), I pray to you; for, though you tread over a noiseless path, all your dealings with mankind are guided by justice.¹¹⁶³

The distressed queen wonders whether God is ‘natural necessity’ or ‘the mind of men’. Hecuba prays to Zeus, no matter whether he is Nature (as Ionians had it), or ‘Necessity’ (as Democritus suggested), or ‘Mind’ (as Anaxagoras had taught). Although Nature is a reality of the world that no one could afford not to acknowl-

 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.11.70.1: Εὐριπίδης τοῖς προειρημένοις ἡμῖν συνῳδὸς διὰ τούτων εὑρίσκεται, πατέρα καὶ υἱὸν ἅμα οὐκ οἶδ᾿ ὅπως αἰνισσόμενος (then, he quotes Euri pides, fr. 912 [A. Nauck], with some editorial variations from Clement’s text).  Lucian of Samosata, Juppiter Tragoedus, 41: Ζεύς, ὅστις ὁ Ζεύς, οὐ γὰρ οἶδα, πλὴν λόγῳ κλύων. A. Nauck excerpted this from Plutarch, Amatorius, 756B (which has it that Euripides used this verse in the beginning Melanippe; but the editor missed the participle κλύων, which Plutarch did not quote). The same verse is also quoted by the apologist Athenagoras of Athens (Legatio, 5.1), who presumably received this from Plutarch, since the participle κλύων is not there either.  Euripides, Helena, 711 ff; 1137 43.  Euripides, Troiades, 884 8.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1083

edge, there is something that surpasses it, and this is the Nous. It is quite evident that Hecuba (i. e. Euripides) opts for the latter, not only because, in her phrase, this is placed last, but also because this is styled ‘Nous’ – and it should be recalled that Anaxagoras’ proposition was that ‘the Mind, whether the greater or the lesser one, is the same’ and Euripides wrote, ‘our mind, in each one of us, is God’. In other words, the supreme Mind, the Mind/Logos and human mind are the same. In like a manner, Origen taught that the Logos is present in timelessness (as transcendent God the Son), as well as in the entire universe, hoding and sustaining it as a whole, as much as is he present in each and every rational being individually, according to John 1:26, ‘He stood in the midst of us’, indeed in the heart, where the ruling part of the soul (τὸ ἡγεμονικόν) is located.¹¹⁶⁴ Besides, the expression ‘whoever you are’ indicates the certainty that God does exist, notwithstanding human inability to describe him through discursive thought; however, no matter who and what God is, to the heroine, he is God whom she prays to. Moreover, God is styled ‘self-grown’ (αὐτοφυᾶ),¹¹⁶⁵ which is reminiscent of Anaxagoras styling Mind αὐτοκρατές. and μόνον αὐτὸ ἐπ᾿ ἐωυτοῦ ἐστι.¹¹⁶⁶ This is a personal Mind, which is why one can pray to him. Clement of Alexandria recognized that the Anaxagorean philosophy rendered by Euripides posits both a Mind in itself and a Mind which is immanent in the world. The latter is God himself existing within us (ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός), which is Anaxagoras’ proposition about the Mind being the same, whether the greater of the lesser one (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων).¹¹⁶⁷ Nevertheless, the Logos is also transcendent to the world, since he is ontologically the same as the Mind who is ‘unmixed’ with everything. This immanent Logos, whom Euripides calls by the same name (i. e. ‘Zeus’ as well ‘God’), is also identified with the Aether, regarded as a personal being, to whom Euripides’ heroes pray, too.

 Origen, commJohn, II.35.215. See COT, chapter 5, ‘The Place of the Logos’, pp. 165 72.  Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 593: σὲ τὸν αὐτοφυᾶ τὸν ἐν αἰθερίῳ ῥύμβῳ πάντων φύσιν ἐμπλέξανθ᾿, apud Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.14.114 (quoting from Euripides’ work Peir ithus). This passage of Clement was quoted also by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 13.13.41. The relation of this passage of Euripides’ Peirithus with Anaxagoras (being mentioned by name) is made by the anonymous authors of the Scholia in Euripidem (scholia vetera) (scholion on Orestes, verse 982), lines 11 20, and Scholia in Euripidis Orestem (on Orestes, verses 981 1000), lines 36 44.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 156; 164; 174; 176; 301.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 157.

1084

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Can you see this high and infinite aether, who embraces all of the earth in his supple bosom? This is the one you should regard as Zeus; this is the one whom you should believe to be God.¹¹⁶⁸

These verses were attested by several authors throughout all antiquity, but none of them was aware of the title of the play in which Euripides included this distinctly Anaxagorean statement.¹¹⁶⁹ However, the context in some of these testimonies is illuminating of how aether was understood by Euripides. Pseudo-Lucian of Samosata identified this ‘Zeus’ with ‘God ruling on high, who is great, immortal, heavenly, Son [produced] from the Father, Spirit proceeding from the Father, One of Three and Three from One. This is the one you should regard as Zeus; this is the one whom you should believe to be God’.¹¹⁷⁰ Athenagoras of Athens explained the verses of Euripides, adding also those in which the poet declares that he does not know who or what Zeus is, he only knows that he is God.¹¹⁷¹ Lucian of Samosata did exactly the same.¹¹⁷² But the most illuminating interpretation of Euripides’ verses is one by the obscure intellectual called Heraclitus, who wrote exegetical commentaries on Homer. Following quotation of

 Euripides: ὁρᾷς τὸν ὑψοῦ τόνδ᾿ ἄπειρον αἰθέρα καὶ γῆν πέριξ ἔχονθ᾿ ὑγραῖς ἐν ἀγκάλαις; τοῦτον νόμιζε Ζῆνα, τόνδ᾿ ἡγοῦ θεόν.  Heraclitus (Homeric exegete, perhaps first century AD), Allegoriae, 23.7. Lucian of Samo sata, Juppiter Tragoedus, 41. Plutarch, De Exilio, 601A; Ad Principem Ineruditum, 780D; Aetia Physica, 919B. Porphyry, Quaestionum Homericarum ad Iliadem Pertinentium Reliquiae, comm. on Ilias, XIV.200. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.2. Anonymous, Scholia in Aratum (scholia vetera), scholion 1. Of Christians: Athenagoras of Athens (apologist), Legatio, 5.1. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.14.114.1. Eusebius (copying from Clement), Praeparatio Evangelica, 13.13.41. Arsen ius (Bishop of Monembasia, paroemiographer, fifteen sixteenth century), Apophthegmata, 13.2a.  Pseudo Lucian of Samosata, Philopatris, 12: Ὑψιμέδοντα θεόν, μέγαν, ἄμβροτον, οὐρανίω να, υἱὸν ἐκ πατρός, πνεῦμα ἐκ πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, ἓν ἐκ τριῶν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς τρία, τοῦτον νό μιζε Ζῆνα, τόνδ᾿ ἡγοῦ θεόν. This is a stunning passage indeed: the author describes the Christian Trinity in doctrinally impeccable terms, but then it concludes with identifying this Deity with the God of Euripides. The author uses the words of Aristophanes, identifying Zeus, the God who rules on high, with Aether (Aristophanes, Nubes, verses 563 70: ὑψιμέδοντα μὲν θεῶν … Ζῆνα … καὶ μεγαλώνυμον ἡμέτερον πατέρ’, Αἰθέρα σεμνότατον). So did Gregory of Nazianzus, Epi grammata, 8.5 (Εἷς θεὸς ὑψιμέδων); 8.114 (Θεοῦ κράτος ὑψιμέδοντος). Carmina Dogmatica, col. 457 & Carmina Moralia, cols. 522 & 550 & 572 (Θεὸν ὑψιμέδοντα); Carmina De Se Ipso, pp. 993 & 1313 (Θεὸν ὑψιμέδοντα); et passim. Also, he styles God ‘an immortal’ one (θεὸς ἄμβρο τος, as in Ilias, XX.358; XXIV.60; again, so did Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmina Dogmatica, cols. 483 7 514 & 516; et passim). Then, Gregory describes God through the Homeric (and Euripi dian, extremely rare, anyway) term οὐρανίων (‘heavenly’, Ilias, I.570; XVII.195).  Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio, 5.1 (quoting Euripides): Ζῆνα γὰρ ὅστις ἐστὶ Ζεύς, οὐκ οἶδα πλὴν λόγῳ.  Lucian of Samosata, Juppiter Tragoedus, 41.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1085

the Euripidean verses, he goes on with explaining that ‘the first aether’ is a ‘mediator’ in the offerings and other things used upon a solemn oath (ὁ μὲν οὖν πρῶτος αἰθὴρ καλεῖται μεσίτης τῶν ὁρκίων), whereas ‘rivers and the earth, that is, material elements, appeared following the primary nature of the aether’ (ποταμοὶ δὲ καὶ γῆ, τὰ ὑλικὰ στοιχεῖα, μετὰ τὴν πρώτην φύσιν αἰθέρος).¹¹⁷³ Moreover, in an unknown tragedy, Euripides introduces someone addressing a young woman: “It is the Aether which gives birth to you, o young girl; this is the one whom humans call Zeus”.¹¹⁷⁴ Aether ‘which embraces all of the earth, is the topmost of all gods’.¹¹⁷⁵ It is Aether, not the air,¹¹⁷⁶ that gives life to human beings.¹¹⁷⁷ And since Aether (not ‘air’) is God, Helen can say to Menelaus, ‘it is Aether out of which you have a wife that the gods laboured over’; that is, his wife was a divine gift to him.¹¹⁷⁸ This Aether is a personal God, which is why Menelaus can say to Agamemnon ‘it is Aether himself who heard you say this’.¹¹⁷⁹ The contemporaries of Euripides thought of him as a blasphemous nearlyatheist, or, at best, a religious sceptic¹¹⁸⁰ who deceived the Athenians by concealing his faithlessness. However, they did not wonder why was it that an unfaithful (or atheist, or sceptic, or agnostic, or apostate, or rationalist) dealt with gods every now and then in his plays, even though he prayed (for instance) to Aether and Prudence, whereas Aeschylus prayed to goddess Demeter.¹¹⁸¹ On the other hand, Christian apologists since the second century onwards had a very different

 Heraclitus (Homeric exegete), Allegoriae, 23.7 8.  Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 877, apud Etymologicum Gudianum, entry zeta, p. 230: ἀλλ᾿ αἰθὴρ τίκτει σε κόρα, Ζεὺς ὡς ἀνθρώποισιν ὀνομάζεται.  Euripides, op. cit. fr. 919, apud Cornutus (first century AD), De Natura Deorum, p. 35: κορυφὴ δὲ θεῶν ὁ πέριξ χθόν᾿ ἔχων φαεννὸς αἰθήρ.  English translators normally translate αἰθὴρ as ‘air’, which is a serious mistake obscuring Euripides’ meaning and philosophical inspiration.  Euripides, fr. 908b, apud Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 3.3.22.4: ὅδ᾿ αἰθὴρ ἐνδιδοὺς θνητοῖς πνοάς.  Euripides, Helena, verse 584: αἰθήρ, ὅθεν σὺ θεοπόνητ᾿ ἔχεις λέχη.  Euripides, Iphigenia Aulidensis, verse 365: οὗτος αὑτός ἐστιν αἰθὴρ ὃς τάδ᾿ ἤκουσεν σέθεν. Again, translating αἰθὴρ ‘air’ would be detriment to the poet’s philosophical implications, which he made abundantly clear throughout his works.  As it happened with Anaxagoras, Aristophanes played a major part in such a criticism of Euripides, who was older than Aristophanes by one generation, but they coexisted for twenty years. Aristophanes branded Euripides ‘a sophist’, even though the latter rebuffed the sophists. Cf. Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae, verses 450 ff; 1098 1102; 1450 ff; Ranae, verses 889 ff; Pax, verses 71 81; 724 25; Acharnenses, 407 ff. See chapter 11, pp. 844 6.  Aristophanes, Ranae, verses 885 94. But the apologist Athenagoras of Athens explained that Euripides regarded such things as Aether and Earth as the visible manifestation of invisible things (ὄψιν τῶν ἀδήλων νοῶν τὰ φαινόμενα). Legatio, 5.1 3.

1086

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

appraisal of the religious ideas of this poet and deemed him a religious man, which is probably why the dramas of Euripides that have survived are more than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles put together,¹¹⁸² even though Euripides wrote less plays than either of them. Clement of Alexandria regarded him as a kind of prophet on the side of the Greeks, one who was ‘consonant with us’ (ἡμῖν συνῳδός), since he adumbrated the Father and the Son.¹¹⁸³ All of the ancient scholars who had full access to all of Euripides’ work realized that, to that poet, αἰθὴρ was the name for Deity within the world: he is God who illuminates people, the Mediator who receives human prayers, while Aether is also the vitalizing force of the entire universe. Therefore, to Euripides, Aether is the one who (not which) vitalizes the universe by permeating all of it. He is the Mind’s Logos (or Mind the Logos), he is immanent in the world, and he is the Logos who is present in each human being none the less. Since Anaxagoras taught that Mind, both the greater and the less one is the same, it was natural for Euripides to echo this, saying that ‘our mind, in each one of us, is God’ (ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός).¹¹⁸⁴ It is in view of this that Aristotle’s reference to Anaxagoras having ‘misused the name aether’ should be considered. Once again, we need to study the context in order to see what both his point of departure and his aim was. The section that is revealing is On Heavens, 270b, where he says that to believe that gods dwell in the upper spaces has always been a commonplace accepted by everyone who believed that gods actually exist, whether barbarians or Greeks. Simplicius advises that, at this point, Aristotle introduces the idea that the heavenly bodies themselves are not gods, notwithstanding their aetheral substance: rather, they are

 There are eighteen extant plays by Euripides, as against seven plays by Aeschylus and seven by Sophocles.  Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.11.70.2. Cf. Clement pointing out verses of Euripides which stand in harmony with the Christian doctrine: Stromateis, 5.11.75.1; 6.2.10.6 (& 5.3.16.8).  Euripides, fr. 1018. His anonymous commentator pointed out that ‘this can be seen in Anaxagoras teaching’ (ὁρᾶται δὲ ἐκ τῶν ᾿Aναξαγορείων λόγων). Scholia in Euripidis Troiades, scholium 884. The proposition became proverbial, and it was also attributed to Menander (Sen tentiae e codicibus Byzantinis, line 531); to Pythagoras (Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.10.12 & Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 876F); to Socrates and Plato (Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.10.16a & Pseu do Plutarch, op. cit. 878B). This appears also in the Sententiae Sexti, 26 & 562, which is a book that Origen used to read carefully, which had fatal consequences for his personal life, since it contributed to his self castration (commMatt, 15.3; cited also in Cels, VIII.30). Cf. Maximus Con fessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium, 28: ἐπεὶ ὁ θεὸς νοῦς ἐστι ἄγνωστος καὶ λόγος ἄρρητος καὶ ζωὴ ἀκατάληπτος, καὶ οὔτε λαλεῖ οὔτε λαλεῖται, αὐτόλογος ὢν καὶ αὐτοβουλὴ κατ᾿ οὐσίαν ὑπάρχων.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1087

vehicles of gods (εἰ μὴ ἄρα ὡς θεῶν ὄντα ὀχήματα).¹¹⁸⁵ Therefore, here is one remarkable difference between Plato and Aristotle: whereas the former posited that each soul is assigned to one star,¹¹⁸⁶ Aristotle associated each god with each and every heavenly body, as I discuss in chapter 12. Simplicius was not surprised at this: he maintained that Aristotle did believe that ‘there are eternal and incorporeal gods’ and argued for this ‘in the eighth book of his Physics, and in his Metaphysics, as well as at the present point’ of his On Heavens. ¹¹⁸⁷ Simplicius finds it all too natural for Aristotle to hold this idea: “It is impossible for the upper region to be divine, unless God is there, too” (ἀδύνατον τὸν ἄνω τόπον θεῖον εἶναι μὴ ὄντος ἐκεῖ θεοῦ);¹¹⁸⁸ and when Aristotle said that ‘the immortal is closely associated with the immortal’ (τῷ ἀθανάτῳ τὸ ἀθάνατον συνηρτημένον),¹¹⁸⁹ he did not suggest the region of heaven in general: he meant specifically the heavenly bodies themselves (τὸ οὐράνιον σῶμα συνηρτῆσθαί φησι καὶ οὐ τὸν τόπον).¹¹⁹⁰ The main point that Aristotle made in that section is plain and it has a strongly theological tenor: the ‘primary body’ (that is the fifth one, or aether) ‘is eternal, it suffers neither growth nor diminution, it is ageless, unalterable, and impassible.’ He speaks about the Deity and aether in exactly the selfsame terms, which is why he adds that ‘the immortal is closely associated with the immortal’, and that ‘the name of this first body has been passed down to the present time by the ancients, who thought of it in the same way as we do’. In short, speaking of the aether or ‘first body’ (τοῦ πρώτου σώματος), which ‘is different from earth and fire and air and water’,¹¹⁹¹ Aristotle

 Simplicius, commCael, p. 116.  Plato, Timaeus 41e: καὶ ἐμβιβάσας ὡς ἐς ὄχημα τὴν τοῦ παντὸς φύσιν. Cf. Proclus, comm Rep, v. 2, p. 357; In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 821; commTim, v. 3, p. 265. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 103.  Simplicius means specific points of Aristotle slipping in flagrant self contradiction, which I discuss in chapter 12. These are, Aristotle, Physica VIII (258b11; 259a7 15; 259b28 31; 260a14 16), Metaphysica, XII.8 (1073a26 b3). Also, the point of De Caelo, 270b5.10 (especially 270b9 10), “the immortal is closely associated with the immortal” (ὡς τῷ ἀθανάτῳ τὸ ἀθάνατον συνηρτη μένον) that Simplicius comments upon. commCael, p. 116.  Aristotle further (De Caelo, 270b14 21) argues that he bases his argument of the divine presence on the heavens, namely, ‘of no trace of change either in the whole of the outermost heaven or in any one of its proper parts’ having been noticed, on astronomical records ‘handed down from generation to generation’; also, ‘the name of the first body’ (aether) has been handed down to the present time by the ancients’. Simplicius commented on this, saying that he ‘had heard’ that the astronomical records of the Egyptians went back for 630.000 years, and those of the Babylonians for 1.440.000 years. commCael, p. 117; then, op. cit. p. 481.  Aristotle, De Caelo, 270b9.  Simplicius, commCael, pp. 116 7.  Aristotle, op. cit. 270b22; cf. Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 1; 79; 376; 406 7; 621.

1088

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

used the same designations as those all of theologians, both Gentiles and Christians, in order to adumbrate God. But then, all of a sudden, of all his predecessors, he remembers Anaxagoras alone, and mentions him by name in order to tell us that he ‘misused the name of aether’. Anaxagoras had to be besmirched once again: total condemnation beyond any chance of redemption. However, the fact is that when Euripides (480‒406 BC) rendered the philosophy of Anaxagoras from stage (and no one ever doubted this fact whatsoever) proclaiming aether as the god to whom he prayed, Aristotle (384‒322 BC) was not yet born. For that ‘aether’ was no other than the Logos of the Mind, that is, the cohesive and sustaining force of the universe. Therefore, the case is the same, once again: instead of acknowledging his debts to Anaxagoras rather than speaking of ‘ancients’ in general, Aristotle was haunted by his predecessor and essayed to belittle him one more time. To Origen, and to all Christian authors, the human body after death goes to the earth, but the human spirit returns to God. Euripides said this a long time before them all, once again identifying God with Aether.¹¹⁹² He reiterated the general Presocratic principle that everything is dissolved into the constitutive elements that made it up in the first place.¹¹⁹³ In Anaxagorean terms, this means that, once the logoi/principles cease to concur in a certain thing or phenomenon, this passes away, but the logoi that made up this thing or phenomenon continue to exist as immaterial ones.¹¹⁹⁴ Thus, in the Supplicants (verses 531‒6), Euripides says this: Let the dead now be buried in the earth, and each [constituent of it] return to the place from where it came to light (ἐς τὸ φῶς ἀφίκετο), the spirit to the aether, the body to the ground; for in no way did we get it for our own, but to live our life, and after that its mother earth must take it back again.

The expression ‘coming to light’ is an allusion to the Anaxagorean principles making them perceptible in this natural reality as ‘uncocealment out of concealment’.¹¹⁹⁵ Consequently, although human mind ceases to exist as an individual one, it is immortal in the sense that its constitutive elements (the Anaxagorean  Euripides, Supplices, verses 533 4: πνεῦμα μὲν πρὸς αἰθέρα, τὸ σῶμα δ᾿ ἐς γῆν. Quoted also by Stobaeus, Anthologium, 4.55.3a, and by Arsenius (paroemiographer), Apophthegmata, 7.59i.  Cf. Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 839: χωρεῖ δ᾿ ὀπίσω τὰ μὲν ἐκ γαίας φύντ᾿ εἰς γαῖαν, τὰ δ᾿ ἀπ᾿ αἰθερίου βλαστόντα γονῆς εἰς οὐράνιον πάλιν ἦλθε πόλον.  Likewise, in Origen, the logoi who make up the natural reality stem from the Body of the Logos/Son.  See supra, pp. 366; 504; 796.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1089

principles) continue to exist, since they are part of the Body of the immaterial Logos, as Porphyry explained about Anaxagoras. Thus, unless Euripides in fact quoted from Anaxagoras,¹¹⁹⁶ he simply put in his own words the proposition that αἰθὴρ is the Logos in the world and the all-encompassing vitalizing force, into which all those who die are absorbed anew: The mind of the dead does not live, yet it makes an eternal mark as it falls into the immortal Aether (ὁ νοῦς τῶν κατθανόντων ζῇ μὲν οὔ, γνώμην δ᾿ ἔχει ἀθάνατον εἰς ἀθάνατον αἰθέρ᾿ ἐμπεσών).¹¹⁹⁷

This is the sense in which ‘both Anaxagoras and Euripides believed’ that all things are parts of the whole, and one thing comes from another.¹¹⁹⁸ Hence, ‘nothing really dies: it only assumes a different form by means of [new] distinction [of principles]’ (θνῄσκει δ᾿ οὐδὲν τῶν γιγνομένων, διακρινόμενον δ᾿ ἄλλο πρὸς ἄλλο μορφὰς ἑτέρας ἀπέδειξεν).¹¹⁹⁹ This portion is from Euripides’ lost work Chrysippus, in which he also wrote that Earth is the progenitor of humans, whereas ‘the Aether of Zeus is the progenitor of gods’ (Γαῖα μεγίστη καὶ Διὸς Αἰθήρ, ὃ μὲν ἀνθρώπων καὶ θεῶν γενέτωρ). Then, he goes on by saying that the earth ‘gave birth to the mortal beings’ once it received drops of water within itself,¹²⁰⁰ which is is only a faithful reproduction of a distinctly Anaxagorean theory.

 See supra, note 1080, note 1165, fr. 593: σὲ τὸν αὐτοφυᾶ τὸν ἐν αἰθερίῳ ῥύμβῳ πάντων φύσιν ἐμπλέξανθ᾿. The anonymous commentators of Euripides associated this with Anaxagoras by name.  Cf. Euripides, Helena, verses 1014 16; also, Fragmenta, fr. 330: “All mortals are destined to return to the same one, whom they call aether” (ἐς ταὐτὸν ἥκειν φημὶ ταῖς βροτῶν τύχαις τόνδ᾿ ὃν καλοῦσιν αἰθέρα).  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 908D.  Euripides, fr. 839: Γαῖα μεγίστη καὶ Διὸς Αἰθήρ, ὃ μὲν ἀνθρώπων καὶ θεῶν γενέτωρ. See this quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Musicos, 6.17; also in Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.60 (Euripides being quoted by Posidonius). Moreover, Euripides fr. 1023 (Nauck) & Fragmenta Anti opes (J. Kambitsis), frs. 6 & 182a (B. Snell) from Antiope, fr. 182a: Αἰθέρα καὶ Γαῖαν πάντων γε νέτειραν ἀείδω.  Euripides, fr. 839: ἣ δ᾿ ὑγροβόλους σταγόνας νοτίας παραδεξαμένη τίκτει θνητούς. See ex position of this theory of Anaxagoras by the following: Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.9: ζῷα γίγνεσθαι ἐξ ὑγροῦ καὶ θερμοῦ καὶ γεώδους, ὕστερον δὲ ἐξ ἀλλήλων. Hippolytus, Refutatio Om nium Haeresium, 1.8.12: ζῷα δὲ τὴν μὲν ἀρχὴν ἐν ὑγρῷ γενέσθαι, μετὰ ταῦτα δὲ ἐξ ἀλλήλων. Sto baeus, Anthologium, 1.15.6c, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 887E (quoted by Eu sebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.39.1): Διογένης ᾿Aναξαγόρας μετὰ τὸ συστῆναι τὸν κόσμον καὶ τὰ ζῷα ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἐξαγαγεῖν.

1090

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

It follows then that the Aether of Euripides is no other than the Second God which is implicit in Anaxagoras: Aether is Zeus who gives life and acts at the behest of the First God, namely the Mind. Therefore, when Euripides wrote the verse, ‘I swear in the holy Aether, the abode of Zeus’ (ὄμνυμι δ᾿ ἱερὸν αἰθέρ᾿, οἴκησιν Διός),¹²⁰¹ it is plain that, once again, he means the manifestation of the supreme God in the world. As a matter of fact, this phrase could be reminiscent of Paul writing to the Colossians about Christ, ‘For in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily’ (ἐν αὐτῷ κατοικεῖ πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος σωματικῶς).¹²⁰² Aether/Zeus/God is the one who has in him the all-surpassing Mind; in other words, this Mind/Zeus appears in the world by ‘dwelling’¹²⁰³ on his Logos/Aether, who is also called Zeus. Anaxagoras wrote that, initially, aether and air were made distinct from the περιέχον, and that this ‘receptacle occupied everything’. Both of them were infinite, as also the περιέχον itself was,¹²⁰⁴ and out of them natural reality appeared gradually and in due course. It is now clear that by ‘aether’ suggested the active divine principle that appeared along with material reality (‘air’). In the first place (that is, on the first tiny fraction of a second upon creation of the material universe), the περιέχον was the principles along with the emerging material particles. Then, as the universe expanded, things took shape, heavenly bodies and phenomena came to pass, hence, the immaterial principles, on the one hand, and the material reality, on the other, (καὶ τὴν περιχώρησιν ταύτην, ἣν νῦν περιχωρέει τά τε ἄστρα καὶ ὁ ἥλιος καὶ ἡ σελήνη καὶ ὁ ἀὴρ καὶ ὁ αἰθὴρ οἱ ἀποκρινόμενοι. ἡ δὲ περιχώρησις αὐτὴ ἐποίησεν ἀποκρίνεσθαι) can be considered separately as a result of rotation (περιχώρησις) which gave rise to their distinction.¹²⁰⁵ Origen described the same process in his own terms, yet he had Anaxagoras in mind. To him, the logoi which decorate the Body of the Logos gave rise to the material reality, in which the Logos himself continues to be unfailingly present, thus sustaining the entire universe in existence. Anaxagoras’ statements simply  Euripides, Fragmenta, fr. 487, quoted in Suda, letter pi, entry 356.  Col. 2:9.  Euripides, fr. 487: ὄμνυμι δ᾿ ἱερὸν αἰθέρ᾿, οἴκησιν Διός, apud Aristophanes, Thesmophoria zusae, verse 272. Also, Suda, letter pi, entry 356. This comes from Euripides’ lost play Melanippe. See Anonymous, Scholia in Aristophanem (Scholia vetera in Ranas), verse 100: αἰθέρα Διός· Εὐ ριπίδου ἐκ Μελανίππης ὄμνυμι δ᾿ ἱρὸν αἰθέρ᾿, οἴκησιν Διός.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 155: πάντα γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ κατεῖχεν, ἀμφότερα ἄπειρα ἐόντα· ταῦτα γὰρ μέγιστα ἔνεστιν ἐν τοῖς σύμπασι καὶ πλήθει καὶ μεγέθει. … καὶ γὰρ ἀήρ τε καὶ αἰθὴρ ἀποκρίνονται ἀπὸ τοῦ πολλοῦ τοῦ περιέχοντος, καὶ τό γε περιέχον ἄπειρόν ἐστι τὸ πλῆθος.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 156.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1091

refer to the first moments of the universe and describe the natural process by means of which material reality gradually emerged, and it continues to do so. Origen said that Wisdom contained the logoi in herself, and then the logoi gave rise to the natural reality.¹²⁰⁶ Therefore, aether is Mind’s Logos which is immanent in the world. In Porphyry’s words, as above, it can be reasonably inferred that ‘aether’ is the ‘single body’ of the Logos from which the Anaxagorean principles emerged as distinct ones. As it happened with Anaxagoras, likewise Euripides incurred the satire of Aristophanes, and his name was added to that of those intellectuals that were deemed heretics or indeed atheists, such as, Anaxagoras, Diagoras of Melos, Socrates, Protagoras. Euripides left Athens in 408 BC to decamp to Macedonia on invitation by King Archelaus, never to return to his birthplace. Anonymous biographies claim that the reason for him to do so was the ill-will of the Athenians and the ridicule he suffered by the comics. However, Christians had good reason to be fond of Euripides, since he disputed the established religiosity of his era, for which he was suspect of irreverence, just like his teacher Anaxagoras was. What Euripides disputed was not the existence of God, but the gods of the pagan pantheon. As one would have expected, Euripides followed Anaxagoras in making himself a representative of the new era of Enlightenment that was just dawning. In his plays, Christians could find striking parallels to scriptural statements.¹²⁰⁷ Little wonder then that portraits of Euripides and Anaxagoras represented them as saints in frescoes of Christian churches. In the church of St Nicolas in Tsaritsani (built in 1615, on the feet of Mount Olympus, in the region of Larissa, Greece) there is a fresco of the ‘tree of Jesse’ (Isaiah, 11:1&10; Rom. 15:12) in which the saints are twelve Greek scholars (including Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Solon, et. al.), one of them being Euripides. Likewise, in frescoes painted in the porch (exonarthex) of the church of the Annunciation in the Moscow Kremlin in 1564, Anaxagoras appears as a saint, along with Homer, Anaxarchus, Aristotle, Plutarch, Zeno, and others.

 See infra, Anaxagoras’ own words.  For example, the passage of Medea, 1078 80 is a striking parallel to Paul’s epistle to the Romans, 9:15 22; and Troiades, 884 (ὦ γῆς ὄχημα κἀπὶ γῆς ἔχων ἕδραν) is parallel to Isaiah, 66:1 (ἡ δὲ γῆ ὑποπόδιον τῶν ποδῶν μου), also in Lamentationes, 2:1; Matt. 5:35; Acts, 7:49. See also supra, pp. 620 1, and p. 1084, note 1170.

1092

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Conclusion There were specific reasons which made it easy for Origen to move from the Anaxagorean Mind to the Trinitarian God. First, Anaxagoras himself realized that the Mind which exists beginninglessly and set out to ‘distinguish’ (or, create) the principles as of a certain beginning, had to engage in the creative act by means of that rationality which belonged to this Mind by nature. Therefore, Mind is the ‘greater’ God, and his rationality, or Logos, is the ‘lesser’ one, and Anaxagoras had already posited that both ‘greater and lesser Mind’ are the same. As discussed in Appendix II, to Origen this was an indispensable axiom: once the action of the Trinity is one, the Persons should be considered as standing on the same ontological par, since ‘it is impossible for the sanctification which is effected by one and single action to be performed by means of Beings which are different from each other (διαφόρων) and incoherent (ἀσυναρτήτων), it is irreverent to attribute one single action to those who are of different nature (ἑτεροφυῆ) and disjoined from one another (ἀσύναπτα). Therefore, he [i. e. Jesus] pledges and assures (παρεγγυᾷ) a Trinity which is ‘consubstantial’ (τριάδα ὁμοούσιον).’¹²⁰⁸ There can be no single action by three Persons which are not of the same nature and of the same ontological level. As long as Origen was a pagan philosopher of note, he was simply and purely an Anaxagorean one who interpreted Plato accordingly, since his genius no doubt saw Plato’s obvious debts to his predecessor. Proclus was right in suggesting that, as ‘an exegete of Plato’, Origen interpreted that philosophy in terms that are immediately recognized as Anaxagorean. This is why ‘Plato could have never included such exegeses among his own doctrines’ and Origen among his pupils. To Proclus, how Origen interpreted Plato was ‘full of the Peripatetic novelty’, since he made Mind the supreme principle, while ignoring the One altogether. However, it has been shown that the supreme principle of Aristotle is distinctly the Anaxagorean Mind, and indeed Aristotle himself described it in characteristic Anaxagorean terms at several points. I should have thought that Origen did so once he realized how heavily Plato availed himself of Anaxagoras, at least as much as did he so of Pythagoras. Once Origen joined Christianity, he had to struggle in order to make the Anaxagorean Mind a Trinitarian God. The seeds of this transformation could be found in Anaxagoras and in his pupil Euripides. Nevertheless, this turned out a process which passed through stages of utilizing his own background to one extent or another. Eventually, the doctrine he arrived at was the one that Ni-

 See Appendix II, pp. 1566; 1585 62.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1093

caea employed as orthodox, which Athanasius acknowledged and credited Origen with. However, Origen was not alone in his effort: although he never mentioned Clement of Alexandria, it is quite evident that he did avail himself of his predecessor’s work. In respect of this, a critical point is Clement’s claim (and valuable testimony about Euripides) that the idea of Father and Son is present in Euripides’ notion of Deity, which of course was entirely Anaxagorean. This analysis has been meant to show that it was in Anaxagoras that Origen could find the seeds of the notion that the supreme principle can be both One and Two, and yet those two stand on the same ontological par and they are one none the less. Therefore, the doctrine about a ‘second God’ who is not a secondary one was not really a radical innovation, either by Origen, perhaps not even by Anaxagoras. Clement of Alexandria rightly saw this idea in Euripides who taught the philosophy of Anaxagoras through his plays. As discussed in Appendix I, the knowledge that Anaxagoras procured from his travels to the East should not be overlooked or underestimated. The idea of a ‘second God’ was earlier than the fifteenth century BC, and it was familiar to the ancient peoples of the Middle and Near East. There was inkling of a supreme God, whereas his activity in the world was adumbrated by means of a second God, who was his son. God El was the parallel to the Mind, and Baal was the parallel to God acting in the world, that is, his Logos. Following the tablets discovered at Ugarit (Ras Shamra) of Northern Syria, in 1929, it appears that Baal (not only the ‘king of fertility’, but also the ‘king of gods’) was a god known at least as early as in 1500 BC, and his worship was transmitted to Egypt since the fourteenth century BC. Near the temple of Baal was the temple of Dagon, whom the tablets identified as the father of Baal. In Aramaic he became known through the Babylonian pronunciation Bal, and eventually the name was Hellenized as Belus, to be identified with Zeus. Nevertheless, to Neoplatonists at least, Zeus was not the supreme God: he was only the son of Cronus and the grandson of Uranus, and no surprise that the Roman continuator of Baal was the omnipotent god Saturn, that is, Cronus. However, there is no way to determine conclusively that those ancient peoples of the East thought of the ‘son’ as a secondary God: this was only what Neoplatonists wished to read in Chaldean thought, since they were eager to discover parallels to Plotinus’ pattern. In any event, Damascius’ analysis that hardly could an ontological classification between the One and the Intellect make sense is probably an indication that Chaldeans did not really espouse such a classification either.

1094

Chapter 11 – Origen, a pupil of Anaxagoras

Initially, this Semitic deity was not rejected by Israel as meaning apostasy: Judge Gedeon was called Jerub-baal,¹²⁰⁹ King Saul had a son called Asabal, and Saul’s son Jonathan had a son called Meribaal.¹²¹⁰ The name Baal became a damned one among the Israelites following their reaction to the attempt, during the ninth century BC, of introduction the Phoenician worship of Baal as against the traditional worship of Yahwe. This means that, unlike the other peoples of the Middle East, in Israel no room was ever made for a second God. Therefore, El was the Phoenician one great god, shared also by the northwest Semitic religiosity. But there was also the deity that ruled over the earth, the sky, and the underworld, which was Baal, also called Adon or Lord. The fact of the matter is that the distinction in Deity was already there, and it was Semitic: there is the supreme but obscure God, who is omnipotent yet not entirely involved with the world; he is in full command of the universe through his son, who is a supreme and immediately omnipotent from the point of view of the world, and he acts within it at the behest of his father. The notion of second God was already there: Anaxagoras perhaps received something of it from his travels and association with the wisdom of those ancient peoples, and Origen only had to follow both the ancient lore and Anaxagoras, while making necessary adaptations. One then can see the point of Michael Psellus, the erudite expert on Chaldaen wisdom, who assured that, when Plotinus introduced the One as standing above and beyond Mind, he actually entertained a Chaldean doctrine.¹²¹¹ The ancient Jewish loath for any second God was renewed in their rejection of Christ being the second God. However, this was no problem to Origen: once he joined Christianity, he was an opponent of the Jewish faith anyway. But still there was ample room to go along with Anaxagoras. My aim in this section has been to show that Origen was aware of the ancient roots of the notion of a ‘second God’, who though is not a secondary one, and this is how he entertained the notion in his own work. At that time, he had parted ways with Plotinus, certainly he was far from Numenius, and wheras Plotinus struggled to accommodate old Chaldean ideas, as well as Theophrastus’ considerations mentioned above, with his own system, Origen paved his own way, drawing inspiration from Anaxagoras, and his theory became eventually a doctrine of Christian orthodoxy. However, the real innovation (and comfort) that Origen discovered in Christianity was not a God who was Creator, but one who was

 Judges, 6:32.  1 Paralipomenon, 8:34.  See chapter 8, pp. 589 90; Appendix I, pp. 1601 3.

Δεύτερος Θεός: a second (= another) or a secondary God?

1095

a Father of a Son: not only was the latter a second (though not secondary) God, but also both the Father,¹²¹² who gave birth to an ontologically equal Son, and the Son himself, stand in a relation which is personal and one of love. He saw a salient characteristic of Christian philosophy in the fact that it knows God as Father, ‘since the hoi polloi have a conception of God as creator, but they do not profess him to be the Father of a Son’.¹²¹³ It should not elude us that Origen speaks of the ‘multitude’ in order to make this cardinal distinction, but he does not speak of the ‘Greeks’, as he normally did whenever he wished to draw a line between them and his own views. I believe he did so because he had found the seeds of this notion not only in unidentified sects of the ancient lore of the East, as much as did he so in Anaxagoras. In any event, Origen read this idea in the narrative of the Christian message; and once he came across this, he spent the rest of his life in order to explain its dramatic implications involved in a new philosophy of History.

 In Plato, the ‘Father’ is not only identified with the Demiurge (i. e. not the supreme God), but also he is a father of creatures. Cf. Timaeus, 37c; 41a; 42a. Moreover, as Plutarch explained, and later George Gemistus repeated appealing to Plutarch, ‘the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato appear to agree in every respect with those of Zoroaster, who lived five thousand years be fore the Trojan War’. Moreover, according to Clement of Alexandria, ‘Pythagoras was fascinated by Zoroaster the Magus’. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 1.15.69.4 6.  Origen, frLuc, 162: ὁ γὰρ ὁ γινώσκων αὐτόν, καθὸ θεός ἐστι καὶ καθὸ πατήρ ἐστι, γινώσκει. καὶ οἱ πολλοὶ γοῦν ἔχουσιν ἔννοιαν θεοῦ δημιουργοῦ, οὐ μὴν ὁμολογοῦσιν αὐτὸν υἱοῦ πατέρα. The οὐ γὰρ ὁ γινώσκων, in M. Rauer’s edition, is a serious editorial mistake, in view of what Ori gen meant to say. Also, Origen, commJohn, X.37.246: ἀνάγκη τὸν υἱὸν πατρὸς εἶναι υἱόν, καὶ τὸν πατέρα υἱοῦ πατέρα.

Chapter 12 Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity Anaxagorean influence, Aristotelian self-contradiction It has been always an essential part of teaching Aristotle’s philosophy that he maintained the notion of an Immovable Mover,¹ which was one of his fundamental doctrines, indeed the paragon of his enterprise to challenge Plato’s theory of Ideas and advance an alternative to it. Less known is that he introduced a plurality of immovable movers. This is a blatantly contradictory to his cardinal notion of the Immovable Mover, which is in no place, neither outside the celestial sphere (where nothing can exist whatsoever) nor inside it (which would make the supreme principle ‘contained’ within something other that itself). How then was it possible for him to introduce an existential and functional relation of unmovable movers with specific spatial places, namely, the stars and their respective spheres? And what would possibly be the difference of this theory from the Neoplatonic outlook, especially that of Proclus and Damascius, who spoke of ‘intelligible minds’? In the discussion of the Immovable Mover in the Physics VIII, especially chapter 6, originally Aristotle posited the existence of only one principle of this character. The same section contains no reference to the question concerning the cause of the peculiar motions of planets. However, when the question of

 One Immovable Mover: Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072b7: ἐπεὶ δὲ ἔστι τι κινοῦν αὐτὸ ἀκίνητον ὄν, ἐνεργείᾳ ὄν, τοῦτο οὐκ ἐνδέχεται ἄλλως ἔχειν οὐδαμῶς. Op. cit. 1073a23 25: ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ πρῶτον τῶν ὄντων ἀκίνητον καὶ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ καὶ κατὰ συμβεβηκός, κινοῦν δὲ τὴν πρώτην ἀΐδιον καὶ μίαν κίνησιν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ κινούμενον ἀνάγκη ὑπό τινος κινεῖσθαι, καὶ τὸ πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον εἶναι καθ᾿ αὑτό, καὶ τὴν ἀΐδιον κίνησιν ὑπὸ ἀϊδίου κινεῖσθαι καὶ τὴν μίαν ὑφ᾿ ἑνός. Op. cit. 1074a36 37: ἓν ἄρα καὶ λόγῳ καὶ ἀριθμῷ τὸ πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον ὄν· καὶ τὸ κινούμενον ἄρα ἀεὶ καὶ συνεχῶς· εἷς ἄρα οὐρανὸς μόνος. Physica, 201a27: ἔστι γάρ τι κινοῦν καὶ ἀκίνητον. Op. cit. 257b23; 258a5 8; 259b20 33. De Motu Animalium, 698a8 16; 700a20 21; 700b8 9: καὶ πῶς κινεῖ τὸ πρῶτον κινοῦν, διώρισται πρότερον ἐν τοῖς περὶ τῆς πρώτης φιλοσοφίας. First Immovable Mover: Metaphysica, 1012b30 31: ἔστι γάρ τι ὃ ἀεὶ κινεῖ τὰ κινούμενα, καὶ τὸ πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον αὐτό. Op. cit. 1067b7 9: ἔστι δέ τι τὸ κινοῦν πρῶτον· ἔστι δέ τι τὸ κινούμενον, ἔτι ἐν ᾧ χρόνῳ καὶ ἐξ οὗ καὶ εἰς ὅ. Op. cit. 1070a1; 1070b35; 1073a22 36: ἀνάγκη καὶ τούτων ἑκάστην τῶν φορῶν ὑπ᾿ ἀκινήτου τε κινεῖσθαι καθ᾿ αὑτὴν καὶ ἀϊδίου οὐσίας. ἥ τε γὰρ τῶν ἄστρων φύσις ἀΐδιος οὐσία τις οὖσα, καὶ τὸ κινοῦν ἀΐδιον καὶ πρότερον τοῦ κινουμένου, καὶ τὸ πρότερον οὐσίας οὐσίαν ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι. Op. cit. 1074a31 38; Physica, 224a34; 242a53 59; 242b71 72; 243a32 35; 256a20 21; 258b 261a; 266a9; 267a b. De Anima, 433b32; De Caelo, 300b15.

Anaxagorean influence, Aristotelian self-contradiction

1097

plurality of immovable movers (one for each planetary sphere) was raised, Aristotle inserted three interpolations in that chapter. First, in the Physics, 258b11, following the expression, ‘something eternal which first imparts motion’, he added, ‘whether one thing or many’ (εἴτε ἓν εἴτε πλείω). That he had the immovable movers in mind is suggested by the ensuing phrases: “The contention that all unmoved movers are eternal is not to our present purpose”, by which he alluded to the Platonic notion that the vital principle of every living being is immortal.² However, this is irrelevant to that point of the Physics. Nevertheless, he went on thus: “But the following considerations will show that there must be something that is not itself susceptible of any movement in the way of external change (τὸ ἀκίνητον μὲν αὐτὸ πάσης ἐκτὸς μεταβολῆς), either primarily or incidentally, while it is capable of causing movement in something else (κινητικὸν δ᾿ ἑτέρου).”³ Secondly, in 259a7‒15, following his expression ‘First Mover ’, he added that this may be ‘one’ or ‘more than one’ (ἀΐδιον καὶ τὸ κινοῦν ἔσται πρῶτον, εἰ ἕν· εἰ δὲ πλείω, πλείω τὰ ἀΐδια), and proceeded to show (1) why ‘we ought to suppose that there is one rather than many’ (ἓν δὲ μᾶλλον ἢ πολλά); (2) ‘it is sufficient to assume only one mover’ (ἱκανὸν δὲ καὶ ἕν), which should be the first of the immovable ones (ὃ πρῶτον τῶν ἀκινήτων) and the eternal source of the movement of others (ἀΐδιον ὂν ἔσται ἀρχὴ τοῖς ἄλλοις κινήσεως)’; and (3) that the First Mover ‘must be’ something which is ‘one’ (ἀνάγκη εἶναι τι ἓν καὶ ἀΐδιον τὸ πρῶτον κινοῦν). Thirdly, in 259b28‒31 and 260a14‒16, he assumes, though not explicitly, that, alongside the Immovable Mover , there is a mover for each planetary sphere and each of those movers is moved accidentally. Then, having these assumptions in mind, he proceeded to explain how the accidental motion of those movers of the planetary spheres differs from the accidental motion of the souls of terrestrial creatures. Furthermore, the idea appears in the Metaphysics, following the point that we discussed earlier, namely, Aristotle’s argument against the Pythagoreans and Speusippus: perfect beauty and goodness do exist in the beginning, because any seed comes from prior creatures which are perfect, and that which is first is not the seed but the perfect creature.⁴ In respect of this, I have argued that Aristotle opposed the idea of evolutionary generation, and, in effect, he opposed not only those whom he mentioned by name, but also Anaxagoras. Therefore, there  Cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 245c.  Aristotle, Physica, 258b10 16.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a. See discussion supra, chapter 8, pp. 560; 583, and chapter 11, pp. 941 2.

1098

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

is a substance, then, there must be also a substance prior to this which should be more perfect. It will be shown that this was the argument what caused Aristotle’s self-entrapment to the contradiction discussed below. It was immediately after that point that he went on with urging that there is a certain substance which is eternal and it is immovable and separate from sensible things, namely the First Mover, which has no magnitude, while being impartible, impassible, unalterable, and indivisible; this is the ‘supreme principle (ἀρχή) of all beings (τὸ πρῶτον τῶν ὄντων), which is immovable both essentially and accidentally, but it excites the primary motion, which is one and eternal’.⁵ Aristotle was tantalized by the question whether he should maintain that there is either one substance of this kind or more than one, and if more than one, how many (πότερον δὲ μίαν θετέον τὴν τοιαύτην οὐσίαν ἢ πλείους, καὶ πόσας), and then he comes up with explicating the idea that the motions of the heavenly bodies presuppose a plurality of unmoved movers. Now since that which is moved must be moved by something, and the prime mover must be essentially immovable, and eternal motion must be excited by something eternal, and one motion by some one thing (καὶ τὴν μίαν ὑφ᾿ ἑνός), and since we can see that, beside the simple spatial motion of the universe (which we hold to be excited by the primary immov able substance), there are other spatial motions (those of the planets) which are eternal, because a body which moves in a circle is eternal and it is never at rest (which has been demonstrated in our physical treatises),⁶ then, it follows of necessity that each of these spa tial motions must also be excited by a substance which is essentially immovable and eter nal (ἀνάγκη καὶ τούτων ἑκάστην τῶν φορῶν ὑπ᾿ ἀκινήτου τε κινεῖσθαι καθ᾿ αὑτὴν καὶ ἀϊ δίου οὐσίας). For since the nature of the heavenly bodies is a kind of substance, it is eternal; and that which moves is eternal and prior to the moved; and that which is prior to a substance must necessarily be a substance, too (καὶ τὸ κινοῦν ἀΐδιον καὶ πρότερον τοῦ κινουμένου, καὶ τὸ πρότερον οὐσίας οὐσίαν ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι). Therefore, for the reason already stated (διὰ τὴν εἰρημένην αἰτίαν πρότερον), it is clear that there must be an equal number of substances, which are eternal in nature, essentially immovable, and without magnitude (φανερὸν τοίνυν ὅτι τοσαύτας τε οὐσίας ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι τήν τε φύσιν ἀϊδίους καὶ ἀκινήτους καθ᾿ αὑτάς, καὶ ἄνευ μεγέθους). Thus, it is clear that the movers are substan ces, and that one of them is first and another second and so on, in the same order as the spatial motions of the heavenly bodies (καὶ τούτων τις πρώτη καὶ δευτέρα κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν τάξιν ταῖς φοραῖς τῶν ἄστρων, φανερόν).⁷

Therefore, the movers of the individual spheres, like the First Mover, do not exist in the spheres of which they are the movers: they are transcendent to the spheres

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1073a23 26.  Cf. Aristotle, Physica, XIII.8&9; De Caelo I.2, II.3 8.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1073a26 b3.

Anaxagorean influence, Aristotelian self-contradiction

1099

themselves, and they exist apart from them. As it happened with the First Mover, likewise they move their respective spheres as final causes and this is how they cause the spheres to move. Werner Jaeger argued that the discussion in Metaphysics XII.8 in its original form did not include the passage of 1074a31‒38, but then, Aristotle, after having advanced this theory of a plurality of transcendent immovable movers (and realizing how inconsistent he was), put a note down on the margin of the manuscript of chapter 8, in order to support the uniqueness of the transcendent Immovable Mover .⁸ This is the passage 1074a31‒38, which goes thus: It is evident that there is only one heaven. For if there is to be a plurality of heavens (as there is of men), the principle of each must be one in kind but many in number. But all things which are many in number have matter (because one and the same definition ap plies to many individuals, e. g. that of ‘man’, whereas Socrates is one), whereas the primary essence has no matter, because it is complete reality. Therefore, the prime mover, which is immovable, is one both in formula and in number; consequently, so is that which is eter nally and continuously in motion. Therefore, there is only one heaven.⁹

W. Jaeger remarked that Aristotle’s ‘faithful editors introduced it into the text’, where it stands as a glaring contradiction to the rest of the chapter. Harry Wolfson went along with Jaeger in not disputing the interpolative character of Aristotle’s passages. However, he marshaled a battery of arguments which resulted in a very important conclusion: Even on the basis of Professor Jaeger’s theory that these texts contain later interpolations, which show a gradual development in the thought of Aristotle, in the final form of these texts, as we have them today, there is no difference between Physics VIII.6 and Metaphysics, XII.8, and no inconsistency in the latter between the interpolated passage and the rest of the chapter.¹⁰

In my view, this text of Aristotle is not a later interpolation. I should add one more point from his On Heavens, which Simplicius was glad to welcome and see it as conforming with Aristotle’s foregoing statements. First, echoing Aristotle, Simplicius says that to believe that gods dwell in the upper spaces has al-

 Harry Wolfson, “The Plurality of Immovable Movers in Aristotle and Averroes”, Harvard Stud ies in Classical Philology, v. 63, 1958, pp. 233 53. Werner Jaeger, Aristoteles: Grundlegung einer Ge schichte seiner Entwicklung, Berlin, 1923; English tr. by Richard Robinson, Aristotle: Fundamen tals of the History of His Development, 1934, pp. 351 53 (page references are to the English translation).  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1074a31 38.  H. Wolfson, op. cit. p. 242.

1100

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

ways been a commonplace accepted by those, whether barbarians or Greeks, who believed that gods actually exist.¹¹ However, it was Aristotle who introduced the idea that the heavenly bodies themselves are not gods, notwithstanding their aetheral substance: they are propably vehicles of gods (εἰ μὴ ἄρα ὡς θεῶν ὄντα ὀχήματα).¹² Therefore, here is one remarkable difference between Plato and Aristotle: whereas the former posited that each soul is assigned to one star, Aristotle associated a god with each and every heavenly body. Simplicius appears not surprised at this: to him, Aristotle did in fact believe that ‘there are eternal and incorporeal gods’ and argued for this ‘in the eighth book of his Physics, and in his Metaphysics, as well as at the present point’ of the On Heavens. ¹³ He finds it all too natural for Aristotle to hold this idea: “It is impossible for the upper region to be divine, unless God himself is there, too” (ἀδύνατον τὸν ἄνω τόπον θεῖον εἶναι μὴ ὄντος ἐκεῖ θεοῦ);¹⁴ and he explains that when Aristotle speaks about the immortal being closely associated with the immortal,¹⁵ he does not suggest the region of heaven in general, but he means specifically the heavenly bodies (τὸ οὐράνιον σῶμα συνηρτῆσθαί φησι καὶ οὐ τὸν τόπον).¹⁶ In short, Simplicius was aware that Aristotle did in fact entertain the idea of multiple incorporeal gods associated with heavenly bodies, and he was happy to endorse it and comment on this. Therefore, there is no room for surmising editorial mistakes or interpolation concerning the Aristotelian text, as W. Jaeger would like to have it is his desire to maintain his Hegelian axiom that Aristotle’s philosophy was part of the historical process which reveals the uninterrupted development of truth, therefore, no contradictions can be there. For in reality contradictions were indeed there, al This is in fact a statement of Aristotle, De Caelo, 270b1 3.  Cf. Plato, Timaeus 41e: καὶ ἐμβιβάσας ὡς ἐς ὄχημα τὴν τοῦ παντὸς φύσιν. Cf. Proclus, comm Rep, v. 2, p. 357; In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 821; commTim, v. 3, p. 265. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 103.  These are the points that I have just discussed: Aristotle, Physica VIII (258b11; 259a7 15; 259b28 31; 260a14 16), Metaphysica, XII.8 (1073a26 b3). Also, the passage of De Caelo, 270b5 10, especially 270b9 10, “the immortal is closely associated with the immortal” (ὡς τῷ ἀθανάτῳ τὸ ἀθάνατον συνηρτημένον) that Simplicius comments upon. commCael, p. 116.  Further, Aristotle (De Caelo, 270b14 21) argues that he bases his argument of the divine pres ence in the heavens, namely, ‘of no race of change either in the whole of the outermost heaven or in any one of its propre parts’ having been noticed, on astronomical records ‘handed down from generation to generation’; also, ‘the name of the first body’ (aether) has been handed down to the present time by the ancients’. Simplicius commented on this by saying that he ‘had heard’ that the astronomical records of the Egyptians extended over 630.000 years, and those of the Babylonians 1.440.000 years. commCael, p. 117; then, op. cit. p. 481.  Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, 270b9: τῷ ἀθανάτῳ τὸ ἀθάνατον συνηρτημένον.  Op. cit. pp. 116 7.

Anaxagorean influence, Aristotelian self-contradiction

1101

though Neoplatonists who commented on Aristotle were happy at discovering such views in the text and barely did they feel like pointing them out as contradiction. Long before Simplicius, Proclus had offered a glaring testimony, which leaves no possibility for the hypothesis that this was all about mistakes by Aristotle’s ancient editors: There were also those, such as the Peripatetics, who posited immovable objects of desire, which are prior to all the eternally moving [heavenly bodies], which move those which are moved.¹⁷

Aristotle spoke of ‘unmoved object of desire’ (ἀκίνητον ὀρεκτόν) in the treatise On the Soul, 433a-b, meaning ‘the unmoved practical good’ (ἀκίνητον τὸ πρακτὸν ἀγαθόν).¹⁸ However, Theophrastus saw this notion as primarily suggesting an immovable cause of eternal circular motion. This cause is prior to Nature, and the latter moves things only apparently.¹⁹ The case of Alexander of Aphrodisias is more interesting, indeed it is stunning, since it shows that oftentimes he studied Aristotle critically and with an open mind. He likewise saw ‘the first object of desire’ (i. e. the First Immovable Mover) as that which causes the heavenly circular motion.²⁰ However, with respect to the present topic, there are two distinct stages of his writing as a commentator. In his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, which is lost, he was critical of Aristotle for unnecessarily having posited multiple immovable movers. I discuss this below²¹ in relation to Simplicius, who saved Alexander’s relevant passages for us and sought to exonerate Aristotle. However, in his extant commentary on the Metaphysics (the critical section of 1073a14 ff),²² Alexander expounds Aristotle’s views as if they were natural, consistent, and his analyses almost tend to show that Aristotle posited multiple immovable movers with good reason: ‘There are also other moving causes’ (καὶ ἄλλα αἴτια κινητικά) which move ‘Cronus, Zeus, and the other planets’; then, Aristotle, ‘determines  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 887 8: οἱ δὲ τὰ ἀκίνητα ὀρεκτὰ πρὸ πάντων ἔθεντο τῶν ἀεὶ κινουμένων, ὑφ᾿ ὧν τὰ κινούμενα κινεῖται, ὡς οἱ ἐκ τοῦ Περιπάτου.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072a26; Ethica Nicomachea, 1097a; 1141b. Also God being desir able (ἐφετόν), Physica, 192a16 17: ὄντος γάρ τινος θείου καὶ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ ἐφετοῦ.  Theophrastus, Metaphysica (fr. 12, Wimmer), p. 4b: τοιαύτη δ᾿ ἡ τοῦ ὀρεκτοῦ φύσις, ἀφ᾿ ἧς ἡ κυκλικὴ ἡ συνεχὴς καὶ ἄπαυστος.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 686: πρῶτον νοητὸν καὶ μάλιστα καὶ πρῶτον ὀρεκτὸν καὶ μάλιστα τὸ κινητικὸν τῆς κύκλῳ κινήσεως εἶδος. Cf. op. cit. p. 687: πρώτως αὕτη [sc. ἡ προειρημένη φύσις] ὀρεκτή τε καὶ νοητή. Op. cit. p. 701: ἀρχὴ τὸ πρῶτον πάντων τῶν ὄντων ἀκίνητόν ἐστι καὶ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ καὶ κατὰ συμβεβηκός, κινοῦν δὲ ὡς ἐφετὸν δηλονότι τὴν πρώτην καὶ ἀΐδιον καὶ μίαν κίνησιν.  See infra, pp. 1112 18.  See this partly quoted supra, pp. 339; 391, note 268.

1102

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

that the number of moving causes has to be the same as that of the spheres’ that are being moved, because ‘each [sphere] must by moved by its own [cause]’ (ἓν γὰρ ἑνός ἐστι κινητικόν). All of these expressions are more or less Aristotle’s own ones, being a little paraphrased. But then, Alexander is rather baffled: he decides that Aristotle referred all those immovable movers to the First one (ταῦτα δὲ πάλιν πάντα ἀνάξει ὑπὸ τὸ πρῶτον αἴτιον), although Aristotle himself said nothing of the kind. Anyway, Alexander sees those movers as having essentially the same ontological characteristics as the first one, namely, ‘they are themselves immovable both essentially and accidentally’ (καὶ αὐτὰ γὰρ καθ᾿ αὑτά ἐστιν ἀκίνητα καὶ κατὰ συμβεβηκός),²³ and he goes on with paraphrasing Aristotle’s text without deviating from it, only adding that Aristotle’s number of immovable movers is the same as that of the heavenly spheres, namely fifty-five, ‘which he demonstrated at another point’.²⁴ In other words, not only were Aristotle’s references to immovable movers genuinely his own, but also they became part of the Peripatetic tradition which reached Proclus himself. Of course, Aristotle’s expressed view was that these movers are fifty-five in number; but he never explained how could it be possible for those immovable movers (indeed as many as fifty-five ones) to be both many and yet immaterial? For Aristotle posited that spatiality is concomitant with motion, ²⁵ and materiality is concurrent with both change ²⁶ and numerical multiplicity, and vice versa.²⁷ However, this is not my main argument. The critical point is that Aristotle assumed a plurality of immovable movers, which are as many as the number of the spheres, on the grounds that this nec-

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 701. This is Aristotle’s phrase in Metaphysica, 1073a25.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. pp. 700 2. Alexander had in mind Aristotle’s Metaphysica, 1074a10 12: ὁ δὴ ἁπασῶν ἀριθμὸς τῶν τε φερουσῶν καὶ τῶν ἀνελιττουσῶν ταύτας πεντήκοντά τε καὶ πέντε. Claudius Ptolemaeus was aware of Aristotle’s immovable movers already in the early first century AD. See chapter 13, p. 1238, and note 276.  Aristotle, Physica, 212b29: οὐ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ ὂν ἐν τόπῳ, ἀλλὰ τὸ κινητὸν σῶμα (‘for everything which exists does not exist in a spatial place: only that which is a moving body exists in a spatial place’). Cf. op. cit. 223a19 20.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b24: πάντα δ’ ὕλην ἔχει ὅσα μεταβάλλει (‘all things which change have matter’).  Aristotle, op. cit. 1074a33 34: ἀλλ᾿ ὅσα ἀριθμῷ πολλά, ὕλην ἔχει (‘those which are numerical ly many, they are material’). De Anima, 432a3 7: ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐδὲ πρᾶγμα οὐθὲν ἔστι παρὰ τὰ μεγέθη, ὡς δοκεῖ, τὰ αἰσθητὰ κεχωρισμένον (‘nothing has a separate existence, except sensible magni tudes’). Cf. Physica, 204a8 10, and commentators. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 716; commDeSensu, pp. 120 1. Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 115. Dexippus, commCateg, p. 59. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 178. Simplicius, commAnim, pp. 283 4. John Philoponus, com mAnim, p. 568; commPhys, p. 401; commGenCorr, p. 76. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Com mentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, Book 3, ch. 13.

Anaxagorean influence, Aristotelian self-contradiction

1103

essarily followed from ‘the reason already stated’ (διὰ τὴν εἰρημένην αἰτίαν πρότερον). The compelling reason which he had to comply with in order to be consistent was his argument mentioned above, namely, that perfect beauty and goodness do exist in the beginning, because any seed comes from prior creatures which are perfect, and that which is first is not the seed but the perfect creature. However, although he meant his polemic against Pythagoreans and Speusippus, in effect he opposed also Anaxagoras, as we saw earlier. ‘The reason already stated’ then was Aristotle’s axiom that ‘perfect beauty and goodness do exist in the beginning, because any seed comes from prior creatures which are perfect’.²⁸ Consequently, he felt he should suppose that the heavenly ‘spatial motions must also be excited by a substance which is essentially immovable and eternal’, because ‘the nature of the heavenly bodies is eternal, indeed a kind of substance; and that which moves is eternal and prior to the moved; and that which is prior to a substance must be a substance, too’, as above, ‘for the reason that has been stated above’ (διὰ τὴν εἰρημένην αἰτίαν πρότερον), that is, because of the argument in the Metaphysics, 1072b32‒1073a3. Consequently, the passage 1074a31‒38 is not an interpolation, as Jaeger took it: it was an earlier idea of Aristotle, which became obsolete in view not only of the context at that point of the Metaphysics, but also of the remarks be had made in the Physics, which we saw above. Therefore, alongside the First Immovable Mover, Aristotle assumes also other immovable movers, that is, the movers of the planetary spheres, which he does not describe as being ‘first’. The First Mover is one and unique, because only this is immovable, and this alone produces only one kind of motion. The manyness of the movers of the planetary spheres consists in their each producing a different kind of motion in a different sphere. This manyness Aristotle would have described as a manyness either in species or in form or in definition, and it is a manyness which does not involve matter.²⁹ But this is flagrantly contradicting his principle that plurality involves matter (as just noted above), and, as I argue below, this could make sense only if Aristotle understood the immovable movers as Anaxagorean principles. For how else should we possibly understand his statement positing that, whereas ‘formless matter’ is not a body (it is only sheer potentiality, since this is potentially everything, but actually nothing)³⁰ and a ‘form’ is ‘actuality’ (ἡ οὐσία καὶ τὸ εἶδος ἐνέργειά ἐστιν) since ‘noth-

 Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072b32 1073a3.  H. Wolfson, op. cit. pp. 242 3.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1042a26 27; 1060a20 21; 1069b19 20.

1104

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

ing eternal is potential’ (οὐθὲν δυνάμει ἀΐδιον)?³¹ How could this possibly square with Aristotle’s fundamental doctrine that every being in the universe is an actualization of a certain potentiality, and that the First Mover alone is sheer actuality and pure form? It would be not superfluous to remind that Aristotle couched this cardinal proposition in strikingly Anaxagorean terms.³² By this, he told us that a form is the active agent and formless matter is the passive one undergoing the activity of forms. But now he dignifies the ‘forms’ with an attribute which otherwise he reserved for the First Mover alone: not only are the forms ‘eternal’ (ἀΐδιον), they are also endowed with sheer ‘actuality’ for that matter. This is not simply the case of ‘forms’ being regarded as the active agent prevailing upon matter; nor is it merely a point of Aristotle identifying ‘essence’ with ‘form’, although, at other points, he weavered as to whether essence is either matter or form or both of them. The main point is that he speaks as a Platonist once again: beyond the visible reality (of the heavenly bodies), there is another one which is the real agent making these bodies to be what they are: this reality is invisible, it is substantial, and it is eternal – in short, this is the divine reality of gods acting upon those bodies. However, it will be shown that, ultimately, it was Anaxagoras, not Plato, whom Aristotle had in mind while advancing these propositions. In respect of this, we should recall another statement which is ‘Platonic’ on the face of it, but in essence this is Anaxagorean: The efficiency of an army consists in both the order and partly in the general; but chiefly in the latter, because he does not depend upon the order, but the order depends upon him. … All things are ordered together in some way, but not in the same way; … and the system is not such that there is no relation between one thing and another, but there is a definite connection.³³

The ‘order in the mind of the general’ which is superior to the actual ‘order of the army’ has been discussed and it was recognized as an Anaxagorean notion by Porphyry, whereas it was taken up by Zeno and later by Philoponus and Damascius.³⁴ Anyway, Aristotle maintained that ‘the First Mover, which is immovable, is one in formula and in number’,³⁵ but the immovable movers of the planetary

  ὢν   

Aristotle, op. cit. 1050b38 39. Aristotle, De Anima, 433a17 19: καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής, τῇ οὐσίᾳ ἐνέργεια· ἀεὶ γὰρ τιμιώτερον τὸ ποιοῦν τοῦ πάσχοντος καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς ὕλης. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1075a. See pp. 553; 603; 809. Aristotle, op. cit. 1074a37 38: ἓν ἄρα καὶ λόγῳ καὶ ἀριθμῷ τὸ πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον ὄν.

Anaxagorean influence, Aristotelian self-contradiction

1105

spheres are many. If we have to reconcile Aristotle with himself, we must assume that these movers are many, yet not in number, since they have no matter. Also, they cannot be many in genus, since they all constitute one genus, namely, that of being immaterial and essentially immovable. It remains that they are many in species. What is the specific difference that sets off each of these movers as a species different from any other of these movers? Actually, the only difference that can be found between them is that each of them is the cause of a different kind of motion in a different planetary sphere. Therefore, their difference lies in the difference of the objects which they cause to move. As Harry Wolfson put it, they are different as one of them being ‘Saturn-mover’, the other ‘Jupitermover’, ‘Mars-mover’, and so on, the differential being ‘Saturn’, ‘Jupiter’, ‘Mars’, and so on. It is in this sense that Aristotle says that these immovable movers are many, and they are numbered as first, and second (πρώτη καὶ δευτέρα), and so on, ‘according to the same order of the orbital motions’ (κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν τάξιν ταῖς φοραῖς τῶν ἄστρων)’.³⁶ Therefore, the differentia between the movers arise from the differences in the motions which, as final causes, they effect upon different planetary spheres. I endorse Wolfson’s conclusion that this kind of differentia does not imply matter and that these movers can be described as many in species but not in number, each of them being a species which consists of only one member.³⁷ Wolfson’s analyses happen to be the argument of Alexander of Aphrodisias that I expound below, which in turn follows the syllogism which Aristotle developed in the Metaphysics, 1073a34‒39. Besides, following what I have argued in the present book, Aristotle in fact employed the Anaxagorean principles, which are all unlike each other, they are many and yet immaterial. But Aristotle’s theory stumbled on such propositions as that only moving bodies are in specific place (Physics, 212b29), and ‘those which are numerically many, they are material’ (Metaphysics, 1074a33‒34), and ‘nothing has a separate existence, except sensible magnitudes’ (De Anima, 432a3‒7). How then could possibly the immaterial movers be in the specific place of their respective heavenly spheres which they move, as well as to be many? According to Anaxagoras, the Mind as a ‘guardian’ of the universe generates, moves, holds together, and dissolves things by means of the principles/logoi. Each of the events in the cosmic process takes place be means of these causes, either concurring in appropriate combinations or diverging from each other. Concurrence means many principles collaborating with each other in order to pro-

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1073b1 3.  H. Wolfson, pp. 240 1.

1106

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

duce the composite material things and phenomena. However, in the case of stars, which according to Aristotle are ‘of a certain eternal essence’ (τῶν ἄστρων φύσις ἀΐδιος οὐσία τις οὖσα),³⁸ therefore simple, it would be impossible to posit a simple essence (let alone divine) as being produced (in this case: moved) by many principles/logoi. It had to be a single principle/cause, which had also to be of some divine nature, since (being a mover) it is prior to the moved object. But such agents, which became necessary for Aristotle to avail himself of, could be found in no other philosopher than Anaxagoras. Since all the orbits of the spheres are different from each other, each immovable mover had to be unlike each other, and it was Anaxagoras alone who had posited that not one of his principles was like any other (οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις).³⁹ Werner Jaeger wrote that ‘the keenest thinkers of posterity have racked their brains to understand how an Aristotle would have involved himself in such contradictions’,⁴⁰ and noted that, among those who saw in this passage a contradiction to the rest of the chapter, it was Plotinus and several modern students of Aristotle.⁴¹ I will consider some modern views of this puzzle later, but now I am going to argue for my own view, which is that this point is one more evidence that Aristotle drew heavily on Anaxagoras. The ‘unmoved movers’ which stand below the First Mover are only a version of the Mind of Anaxagoras which acts within the universe using the principles as tools. Aristotle’s name for the principles, that is, ὁμοιομέρειαι, does not suggest simply that he understood them as each one being of the same ‘material’. Were that his understanding, he would have called them ‘homogenous’ (ὁμογενῆ), not ὁμοιομερῆ. There is more to this term, however, which is that the principles of Anaxagoras’ Nous can have no other name than nous, too. Proclus and Damascius took up the idea, but I postpone this discusion until later in this chapter. My point is that Plotinus knew that Aristotle drew heavily on Anaxagoras. This reveals that Aristotle himself knew that Anaxagoras’ principles were called ἀρχαί, they were immaterial, and the travesty of Anaxagoras which he concocted in order to belittle his predecessor was a deliberate distortion aiming at concealing heavy liabilities to him. I am therefore going to consider the fact that, when Plotinus criticized Aristotle’s self-defeating notion of many unmovable movers, he knew that Aristotle appropriated an idea of Anaxagoras, which though was consistent with the

 Aristotle, op. cit. 1073a34.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34 & 156: καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλήθους οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις.  W. Jaeger, op. cit. p. 353.  W. Jaeger, op. cit. pp. 351 53; H. Wolfson, op. cit. p. 243.

Anaxagorean influence, Aristotelian self-contradiction

1107

Anaxagorean philosophy but a scandalous incongruity within Aristotle’s own exposition. It is not coincidence that, when Plotinus set out to criticize this idea of Aristotle in the Ennead V.1.9, he started his analysis with one name: Anaxagoras. He praises the Clazomenian as the one who ‘posited a Mind pure and unmixed’, thus ‘affirming One First Principle as a simple and separate one’ (ἁπλοῦν καὶ αὐτὸς τίθεται τὸ πρῶτον καὶ χωριστὸν τὸ ἕν), even though ‘because of his ancientness’ he did not use the precise technical terminology that later philosophers used. Likewise, he praises Heraclitus and Empedocles, then he comes to considering Aristotle, and here he has some devastating criticism to do: Aristotle began by making the First separate and intelligible, but he cancels that primacy by supposing it to have self-intellection. Furthermore, he introduces a multitude of other intelligible beings; they are as many as the spheres in the heavens, so that each particular intelligible may move one particular sphere; hence, he describes the intelligible reality in a different way from Plato, and presents as plausible a proposition which is not required by philosophical necessity. But one might even doubt whether this is even plausible at all: for it would be more reasonable to posit that all the spheres, by contributing to a single order, should look to the One and First Principle. Moreover, it is question whether Aristotle held that the many intelligible beings spring from one, namely, the First, or there are many primary principles in the intelligible world. The fact is that he refers to things which are ‘uncreated and entirely immovable’ in relation to his considerations of the heavens.⁴² Whereas ‘immovable and eternal things’ may also mean abstract notions or objects of cognition (mainly mathematical),⁴³ his expression in the specific context of treating the issue of heaven may point to his immovable movers, too. Moving on, Plotinus considers the two alternatives that Aristotle would have maintained. One, if they spring from one, the situation would be analogous to that of the heavenly spheres in the perceptible world, where each one contains the other, and the outermost dominates over them all. In this way, there is also an intelligible universe, in which the First contains everything, and there is an intelligible

 In the De Caelo, 298b19 21, Aristotle blamed ‘the followers of Melissus and Parmenides’ who made this a question of natural science; he argues that ‘the existence of certain things that are not created and are entirely immovable (τὸ γὰρ εἶναι ἄττα τῶν ὄντων ἀγένητα καὶ ὅλως ἀκίνητα) is not for natural science to consider, but it is a matter for another and more sublime study’.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1015b14 14: ἀΐδια καὶ ἀκίνητα (things eternal and unmoving). Op. cit. 1067b10 (abstract notions); 1020b203: ὡς τὰ ἀκίνητα καὶ τὰ μαθηματικὰ (mathematical no tions); so in 1026a14 16; 1052a5 (geometry). See a fuller account in the Physica, 198a21 198b11.

1108

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

world. It will then be the case that, as it happens in this perceptible world where the spheres are not empty, but the first is full of heavenly bodies and the others have heavenly bodies in them, so also the moving principles (τὰ κινοῦντα) will contain a multitude of beings, and that will be a realm of a more profound reality. Secondly, if each one of them is a primary principle, then, all the principles as a whole will be nothing short of a random multitude. In that case, one should wonder, why should all these principles collaborate with each other? And why should they concur in order to produce the harmony of the entire heavenly system? And why should it be necessary for the material bodies of the heavenly system to be equal in number to the intellectual moving principles? And how can these incorporeal beings be numerically many when there is no Matter to serve as the basis of difference? The criticism of Plotinus against Aristotle is devastating indeed. The gist of it is to show that there is no way for Aristotle to make such statements and present them as Aristotelian ones. In effect, Plotinus says that he knows that, in fact, Aristotle plagiarized from ‘ancient’ philosophers (τῶν ἀρχαίων), and this is quite evident from the closing part of the present analysis of his in Ennead, V.1.9. For these reasons, those of the ancient philosophers who took up positions closest to those of Pythagoras and of his later followers, and to that of Pherecydes, engaged in analyses of this Nature. Some of them produced full accounts of the subject in their writings; others did not commit their ideas to writing, but expounded them only orally in group discussions (ἐν ἀγράφοις ἐδείκνυον συνουσίαις), while some others left it entirely and did not analyze it at all.⁴⁴

Why does Plotinus feel it necessary to name Pythagoras and of his later followers, as well as Pherecydes upon closing this section? He did so for the same reason he mentioned also Anaxagoras and Empedocles in the beginning of this. For in fact Plotinus has in mind the criticism of Aristotle in Metaphysics, 1091b, making goodness a first principle,⁴⁵ which I discussed earlier. It is in that section that he mentioned Anaxagoras and Empedocles, along with Pherecydes ‘and some others’ (meaning the Pythagoreans). At that point, I remarked that Aristotle appears as a staunch Platonist who was anxious to defend the supremacy of universals. What Plotinus actually does here is showing that, also at that point, Aristotle could not speak even as a Platonist and his statements were self-defeating. Moreover, he shows that only philosophers such as Anaxagoras, whom Aristotle

 Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1072b; 1075b; 1091b. Cf. supra, pp. 322; 564.

Anaxagorean influence, Aristotelian self-contradiction

1109

criticized every now and then, could consistently propound these ideas, although Aristotle actually criticized not the real philosophy involved therein, but a caricature of his own making. Plotinus says here that he was aware of the views of those ancient philosophers, including Anaxagoras. His point is that the ‘immovable movers’, which Aristotle essayed to instil into his own philosophy, was a loan from previous philosophers, who though entertained their ideas consistently, but such isolated loans made no sense and were contradictory in Aristotle’s own exposition.⁴⁶ Plotinus does not specify whom he has in mind when he refers to those who expounded those theories ‘orally in group discussions’ (ἐν ἀγράφοις ἐδείκνυον συνουσίαις). It might be that he implies his teacher Ammonius Saccas. However, this had not to be reference to one person only: for we know that such συνουσίαι are attested about the private discussions that Anaxagoras held with either Pericles or Euripides.⁴⁷ Aristotle’s reference in his lost work On Philosophy to Plato’s ‘oral group discussions’ (συνουσίαι) was famous, and it was taken seriously by commentators.⁴⁸ Proclus mentioned similar discussions with his own master Plutarch,⁴⁹ as well as ancient ones, such as those which Parmenides held with his pupil Zeno of Elea,⁵⁰ and Plotinus with his own pupils,⁵¹ and Marinus of Neapolis (the student of Proclus) wrote about similar meetings that Proclus held with his own pupils, too.⁵²

 See further, op. cit. VI.3.23, where Plotinus examines the transition from potentiality to ac tuality: “In what then is the movement, when it moves something else, and indeed when it pass es to actuality from an immanent potentiality? Is it in the mover?” His ensuing analysis challeng es Aristotle once again.  Plutarch, Pericles, 6.1: τῆς ᾿Aναξαγόρου συνουσίας ἀπέλαυσε Περικλῆς. Julian, emperor, Ἐπὶ τῇ ἐξόδῳ τοῦ ἀγαθωτάτου Σαλουστίου παραμυθητικὸς εἰς ἑαυτόν (ref. to Anaxagoras and Peri cles), 4: Καίτοι καὶ τοῦτον ἄκοντα, φασίν, ᾿Aθηναῖοι τῆς πρὸς τὸν διδάσκαλον ἀπέστησαν συνου σίας. Likewise, Libanius, Declamationes, 1.1.156. Long after Plotinus, Proclus recounted that An tiphon (‘who said he was Plato’s brother’) expounded orally the teaching of Anaxagoras to certain Clazomenians who visited Athens. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem. p. 625: καὶ ἔστιν αὕτη δηλαδὴ τρίτης τῆς συνουσίας ἔκθεσις. Likewise, Archelaus and Euripides were taught or ally (διήκουσαν) by Anaxagoras. Cf. Strabo, Geographica, 14.1.36. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 2.18; 2.45. Suda, letter epsilon, entry 3695. So were Empedocles (Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 8.56), The mistocles (Plutarch, Themistocles, 2.5), and Thucydides (Marcellinus, Vita Thucydidis, 22).  Simplicius, commPhys; pp. 542; 545. John Philoponus, commGenCorr, p. 27; commAnim, pp. 75; 145; commPhys, pp. 515; 521. Anonymus, Prolegomena Philosophiae Platonicae, 13. Sophonias, paraphrAnim, p. 13.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 42.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 633; 682; 997; 1033.  Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 213.  Marinus of Neapolis, Vita Procli, lines 552 5.

1110

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

Why was it that, once Anaxagoras’ philosophy was appropriated, it became a self-defeating Aristotelian philosophy? Anaxagoras’ immaterial principles were both one and many, both united and distinct from each other, both here and everywhere, both now and ever, and each one of them is always the same and different from any other. There can be no notion of either ‘less’ or ‘more’ that could be applied to them; for it is impossible for any of them to be more than all, since they are all equal. Thus, ‘everything is in everything’, and yet the principles are all unlike each other. ‘Everything participates in everything’ and ‘the smallest is equal with the entire multitude’, which is why ‘it is impossible to determine anything as being either the biggest or the smallest’. These principles, along with the various species which they produce in the world, ‘are mixed with each other’, ‘because of both their primal incorporeal nature and their mutual fusion during the stage of creation’.⁵³ By contrast, Aristotle’s axiom was that all things that are many in number have matter.⁵⁴ Aristotle’s editor W.D. Ross, who saw the difficulty involved in the notion of many immaterial movers, suggested a tentative solution: these movers of the planetary spheres ‘are pure forms specifically different, each of them being the sole member of a separate species, as some of the schoolmen maintained that angels are.” However, he forthwith objects to his own tentative solution: “But at that rate there might be specifically different prime movers, and Aristotle’s argument for the unity of the universe would break down.”⁵⁵ Ross was correct in arguing that this solution is inapplicable to Aristotle. However, our analysis makes it plain that this in a perfectly consistent Anaxagorean solution: for put in these terms, the principles are indeed ‘specifically different, each of them being the sole member of a separate species’, since each and every principle is different from any other. Furthermore, Ross raised another objection to his tentative solution: “And this way of escape is not open to Aristotle; for he holds that specific difference implies a fortiori numerical difference,”⁵⁶ which Ross infers from Aristotle’s Metaphysica, 1016b36: “All things which are one numerically are also one formally, but not all things which are one formally are one numerically” (ὅσα ἀριθμῷ καὶ εἴδει ἕν, ὅσα δ᾿ εἴδει οὐ πάντα ἀριθμῷ). Ross took the second part of this proposition as meaning that those things which are one in species are not one in number, from which he infered that those things which are many in species are a fortiori not one but many in number. However, Harry Wolfson made an    

Simplicius (ref. to Anaxagoras), commCael, p. 609. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1074a; see supra, p. 1102, notes 25 27. W.D. Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 1924, v. 1, Introduction, pp. cxxxix cxl. Op. cit. p. cxl.

Aristotle’s commentators

1111

apt remark on this translation: the οὐ πάντα is not a universal negative; it means, ‘those things which are one in species are not all one in number’. The implication is that ‘some things which are one in species are also one in number’. The opposite of this proposition is that ‘those things which are many in species are not all many in number’, from which it follows that, ‘some things which are many in species are one in number’. Following this, Wolfson wonders whether could it have been possible for Aristotle to believe that the proposition ‘there may be many species which are not many in number’ would ‘refer to the plurality of the movers of the planetary spheres.’⁵⁷ However, this idea of being ‘many and not many in number’, is not Aristotelian: it is Anaxagorean, as already discussed. Wolfson tended to think (though only tentatively) that, beside the First Immovable Mover, Aristotle assumed also other immovable movers, that is, the movers of the planetary spheres, which Aristotle did not described as first. The First Mover is one and unique, because this alone is immovable even accidentally and produces only one kind of motion. The manyness of the movers of the planetary spheres consists in their each producing a different kind of motion in a different sphere. This manyness Aristotle would describe as manyness either in species or in formula or in definition, and it is such a manyness that does not involve matter. I would be prepared to endorse Wolfson’s conclusion that perhaps this is what Aristotle meant. However, I should add that, even if that were the case, this is a distinctly Anaxagorean idea, which fits perfectly with all the analysis of Anaxagoras’ philosophy made in this book, whereas it is utterly alien to Aristotle and self-defeating, once used in the context of his own philosophy. It should be recalled that what Plotinus castigated was not so much the idea itself, but the fact that it appeared too weird only once Aristotle used it.

Aristotle’s commentators Beyond the views of those modern scholars who dealt with this problem, it is necessary to mention also Aristotle’s commentators. In doing so, we should bear in mind that, in the context of Aristotle’s philosophy, what is ‘immovable’ has to be ‘incorporeal’, and vice versa. His normal view was that this is only the First Immovable Mover. By the same token, whatever is said to ‘move’ has to be a body, while anything which is either incorporeal or indivisible is incompatible

 H. Wolfson, op. cit. p. 242.

1112

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

with motion.⁵⁸ However, it will be shown in this section that, mysteriously, Aristotle contradicted himself. Alexander of Aphrodisias admired Aristotle, but he was reasonably puzzled and did point out his contradiction, which we learn also from Simplicius. Why is it that the First Mover, although one, cannot move more than one spheres, in the same way it does so for everything else, that is, by causing motion as a final cause and as being itself loved? For there is nothing which hinders a multitude of things to aim at this [First Mover].⁵⁹

Alexander then concluded that ‘either this argument should be explained as one conforming with’ the rest of Aristotle’s philosophy, which Alexander himself just pointed out (ἢ κατὰ τὸ εὔλογον, φησίν, ἥδε ἡ ἐπιχείρησις προΐοι ἄν), ‘or’ it should be assumed that this statement was made by Aristotle although this was unnecessary, since there was nothing that needed demonstration (οὐχ ὡς ἀναγκαῖον τι δεικνύουσα)’.⁶⁰ Put in simple words, Alexander saw that there was a problem with this statement of Aristotle. As far as he was concerned, Alexander himself had no problem with explaining heavenly motion: “The heaven, by being moved by this [First Mover] in the first place, moves everything else in turn” (κινούμενος δὲ ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ προσεχῶς ὁ οὐρανὸς αὐτὸς τὰ ἄλλα κινεῖ).⁶¹ No need for more immovable movers whatsoever. Simplicius criticized Alexander for disputing Aristotle’s consistency, and sought to establish this by having recourse to the Anaxagorean premisses. He quoted both the text of Metaphysics, 1073a23‒34 (including, ‘there must be an equal number of substances, in nature eternal, essentially immovable, and without magnitude’) and demurred at Alexander of Aphrodisias’ objection to the rationale of this. It is at that point that Simplicius in effect had recourse to Anaxagoras in order to exonerate Aristotle of the blame of inconsistency: even if there are many moving causes, there is one which prior to them all (ἀλλὰ κἂν πολλὰ τὰ

 Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 77: ὁ δὲ αὐτὸς ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἐν τῇ αὐτῇ Φυσικῇ πᾶν μὲν τὸ κινούμενον σῶμα εἶναι ἀπέδειξεν, οὐδὲν δὲ ἀσώματον οὐδὲ ἀμερὲς πεφυκέναι κινεῖσθαι. καὶ τοῦτο πάντες οἱ μετ᾿ αὐτὸν προσήκαντο φυσικοί, ᾿Aλέξανδρος καὶ Πορφύριος καὶ ᾿Aμμώνιος, ἔτι δὲ καὶ Δαμάσκιος καὶ Σιμπλίκιος καὶ Πρισκιανός, καὶ μετ᾿ αὐτοὺς ὁ φιλοπονώτατος Ἰωάννης, πρὸ δὲ τούτων ἁπάντων Θεόφραστος ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλους διάδοχος καὶ ὁ λοιπὸς τῶν φυσιολόγων χορός. See supra, p. 1099, notes 25 27.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 270.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, loc. cit. Origen concurred: Cels, I.13.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 696. Likewise, commMeteor, p. 6: κινούμενος γὰρ ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ πᾶν τὸ θεῖον σῶμα κινεῖ καὶ τὰ πλησίον αὐτοῦ καὶ γειτνιῶντα αὐτῷ σώματα, δι᾿ ὧν καὶ τὰ μετ᾿ αὐτὰ κινεῖται καὶ κυβερνᾶται.

Aristotle’s commentators

1113

κινοῦντα αἴτια καὶ ἓν πρὸ τῶν πάντων ἐστίν); for these immovable movers are of necessity part of the universal setting of one world (ἀνάγκη καὶ μίαν εἶναι πάντων σύνταξιν), which owes its order to one ultimate cause (πρὸς τὸ ἓν αἴτιον συντεταγμένων). Subsequently, he recalls that the Anaxagorean principles are many and yet united, and they constitute the particular causes which effect all kinds of both generation and becoming in the perceptible world (συντεταγμένον, ἀλλ᾿ αἰτιῶδες πλῆθος καὶ ἡνωμένον). This is the sense in which in the Metaphysics, Aristotle appealed to immovable primary intelligible movers seeing them as ‘causes’ (τῶν πρώτως κινούντων ἀκινήτων νοητῶν αἰτίων); for they are part of an intelligible world which comprises many immovable causes (ἐκ πολλῶν ἀκινήτων αἰτίων συνεστηκότος), and it is because of them that the heavenly spheres receive their motion (αἱ ἀΐδιοι κυκλοφορίαι πρώτως κινοῦνται), whereby they contribute to the make-up of one perceptible world (ὅτι καὶ αὗται εἰς ἕνα τελοῦσι τὸν αἰσθητὸν κόσμον)’. Therefore, Simplicius concludes, ‘it is not the case that this statement by Aristotle was unnecessary, as Alexander believes’, since Aristotle holds God to be not only final cause of the world, but also the creative one.⁶² As mentioned at the end of this chapter, the real point of dissent of Simplicius and Alexander was no other than the issue of whether the God of Aristotle was either only a final cause or also a creative one: Alexander saw this as only a final cause, whereas Simplicius argued against him that this God was not only a final cause, but also a creative one.⁶³ One would remark that the ground on which Simplicius argues in order to rescue Aristotle is not in fact Aristotelian. This is true, actually as much as is it true that Simplicius essays to rescue Aristotle by arguing on Anaxagorean grounds and in effect revealing Aristotle’s Anaxagorean liabilities. We have not the text of Alexander from which Simplicius quoted; presumably, this was part of Alexander’s lost commentary on either Aristotle’s Physics, which Aristotle wrote before the Metaphysics, or Aristotle’s On the Heavens, a commentary that Alexander cites.⁶⁴ I myself was surprised at Simplicius taking this idea of Aristotle for granted while he was unmoved at reading different things. In his commentary on Aristotle’ Physics, he takes up the issue about ac-

 Simplicius, commCael, pp. 270 2; especially, p. 271: εἰ δὲ καὶ ἐφετόν τις αὐτὸν μόνως λέγων ἀπορεῖ, διὰ τί μὴ ὑφ᾿ ἑνὸς ἐφετοῦ πλείους οὐρανοὶ κινοῦνται, ῥᾴδιον λέγειν, ὅτι τῷ ἑνὶ τὸ πλῆθος οὐ προσεγγίζει μὴ καὶ αὐτὸ ἑνωθέν· τῷ γὰρ ὁμοίῳ τὸ ὅμοιον πελάζει. Simplicius main tained that Aristotle’s God is not only final but also creative cause, on which his ‘master Ammo nius’ wrote an ad hoc treatise aguing for this. See supra, chapter 8, pp. 545; 551 69.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 271: οὔτε μέντοι τελικὸν μόνον αἴτιον τοῦ κόσμου τὸν θεὸν ὁ ᾿Aριστο τέλης ὑπολαμβάνει, ἐξ οὗ ἠπόρησεν ὁ ᾿Aλέξανδρος.  Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 703: καὶ δι᾿ ἣν αἰτίαν εἴπομεν ἐν τῇ Περὶ οὐρανοῦ.

1114

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

tuality and potentiality of things:⁶⁵ those that are moved are in a state of potentiality, whereas things which move others are in a state of actuality (ὅσα κινούμενα κινεῖ διὰ μὲν τὸ δυνάμει εἶναι κινεῖται, διὰ δὲ τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ εἶναι κινεῖ).⁶⁶ Besides, although Aristotle said that ‘it is sufficient to assume only one mover’ (ἱκανὸν δὲ καὶ ἕν), which should be the first of the immovable ones (ὃ πρῶτον τῶν ἀκινήτων, clearly implying a multitude of immovable movers), Simplicius (commenting on this passage) opted for speaking of multiplicity of movements rather than of movers: there is one movement existing in advance, which contains all the other ones, and this is the movement of the outermost heavenly sphere; therefore, there is one moving cause, which is the foremost and excelling one, which causes all other movements.⁶⁷ In fact, Simplicius chose to eschew Aristotle’s contradicting statements and opted for the solution that the First Mover is ‘one’ (καὶ ὅτι ἕν ἐστιν) and moves everything. This includes the heavenly spheres, and their motion is the first one, which is caused by the immovable supreme principle that ‘causes motion either proximately (προσεχῶς κινοῦν) or by means of [other] self-moving’ agents (ἢ διὰ μέσου τοῦ αὐτοκινήτου). By ‘directly caused’ motion, he means that of the heavens (εἶναι τινὰ συνεχῆ καὶ ἀΐδιον κίνησιν, ἣν πρώτην οὖσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ πρώτου κινοῦντος), which is the first and leading one of all kinds of motion and change (ἡ φορὰ πρώτη τῶν ἄλλων κινήσεων καὶ μεταβολῶν ἐστι); and since this is caused ‘directly by the immovable and eternal cause, of necessity, it has to be eternal, too’ (καὶ τὸ κινούμενον προσεχῶς ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀκινήτου καὶ ἀϊδίου αἰτίου ἀΐδιον ἀνάγκη εἶναι).⁶⁸ The Aristotelian definition has it that ‘motion is the actualization of the potential as such’. This means that motion is the activity or process, by means of which potentiality seeks to develop to actuality, and, accordingly, a potential being pursues its own complete reality (ἐντελέχεια) by becoming what it was meant to be, that is, by realizing its own essence fully (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι).⁶⁹ This discussion by Aristotle pertains to ‘things of Nature’ (τὰ φυσικά), where motion may suggest either potentiality or actuality, which means that a thing may be either an active or passive agent (τὰ φυσικά, ἐν οἷς ἡ κίνησις, καὶ δυνάμει καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ

 In two consecutive sections, Simplicius comments on Aristotle’s Physica, 201a19 25, and then on 201a25 28.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 418.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1254 (quoting and commenting on Aristotle, Physica, 259a12 13): ἐστὶ μία προϋπάρχουσα ἡ περιέχουσα τὰς ἄλλας ἡ τῆς ἀπλανοῦς καὶ τῶν κινητικῶν αἰτίων ἐστὶν ἓν τὸ ὑπερανέχον, εἰς ἃ καὶ νῦν ἀποβλέπων ἐπήγαγεν, ὅτι ἱκανὸν καὶ ἕν, ὃ πρῶτον τῶν ἀκινήτων ἀΐδιον ὄν, ἔσται ἀρχὴ τοῖς ἄλλοις κινήσεως.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 1365.  See discussion of this in chapter 6, pp. 325 6.

Aristotle’s commentators

1115

ἐστὶ καὶ ποιεῖ καὶ πάσχει). Consequently, ‘the same things of Nature’ may exist as either potentialities or actualities’ (τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ δυνάμει καὶ ἐντελεχεία). It is in this context that Simplicius feels it necessary to point out the ‘things of Nature’ (τὰ φυσικά) to which Aristotle’s analysis pertains, in order to urge that ‘not all things are like the things of Nature’ (οὐ γὰρ πάντα τοιαῦτά ἐστι). Why is that so? Because there are also ‘the intelligible and divine ones, which have nothing potentially, because their existence is actuality’ (τὰ γὰρ νοερὰ καὶ θεῖα οὐδὲν ἔχει δυνάμει, διότι τῇ οὐσίᾳ εἰσὶν ἐνεργείᾳ).⁷⁰ This means that Simplicius turned a favourable ear to Aristotle’s notion of multiple immovable movers and took no offence at the contradiction. Had Aristotle’s text not survived, one can easily imagine the obloquy (which modern scholarship is universally employing in reference to Simplicius’ analysis of the Anaxagorean philosophy): Aristotle said nothing of the kind; Simplicius made it all up as ‘Neoplatonic’ interpretation of Aristotle. I have remarked that, in general, those modern scholars who deal with Anaxagoras dismiss the analysis of that philosophy by Simplicius on the allegation that he essayed to represent Anaxagoras through his own Neoplatonist lenses. Hardly is there any suspicion that the charge of underhandedness should be laid at the door of Aristotle rather than that of Simplicius. Now, if we had not the entire text of Aristotle available to us (as it happens with that of Anaxagoras), modern scholars of this quality would have been all too quick to argue that Simplicius strove to misrepresent also Aristotle as a ‘Neoplatonist’. But fortunately Aristotle’s text is extant, and no room for such allegations is allowed. If real or imagined Platonism and Neoplatonism are there, this is so because Aristotle’s text moves along this or that way, not because Simplicius distorted or thought wishfully of it. This should be instructive to those who dispute Simplicius’ acumen rendering critically Anaxagoras’ philosophy, since, in the present case, Simplicius could not have been more faithful to Aristotle’s text and import. Simplicius takes it for granted that the First Mover is not the sole immovable one, but there are also the immovable intelligible beings which cause the motion of the heavenly spheres. These are ‘the intelligible and divine ones’ to which no notion of potentiality could apply whatsoever. There is more to this, however: the idea of potentiality being inapplicable to the divine immovable movers applies not only to the movers themselves, but also to the heavenly bodies which are moved by them. Although ‘potentiality’ in inherently related to ‘motion’,⁷¹ Simplicius argues that, ‘as regards their essence’, heavenly bodies (‘although they

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 419.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1045b; 1056b; 1065b; Physica, 201a; 202; 251a.

1116

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

are bodies’, καὶ σώματα ὄντα) are immune to potentiality (κατὰ μὲν τὴν οὐσίαν οὐκ ἔχει τὸ δυνάμει), since they are exempt from generation and destruction, and they are subject to potentiality only in so far as they are regarded as bodies performing spatial motion (κατὰ δὲ τὴν τοπικὴν κίνησιν τὸ δυνάμει ἔχει). This means that Simplicius regards Aristotle’s immovable movers in exactly the same way Aristotle himself did: the heavenly bodies are moved by those movers, which he feels he can style ‘first moving causes’ (κινούμενα ταῦτα ὑπὸ τῶν πρώτως κινούντων αἰτίων), thus endorsing Aristotle who postulated that the First Immovable Mover is not the sole immovable cause of motion in this world, nor is it the sole self-subsistent incorporeal being.⁷² Both propositions show how honest an exponent of the ancient legacy Simplicius was, notwithstanding them being a detriment to Aristotle’s consistency. Now, Alexander of Aphrodisias seems to have withdrawn his own objections to the consistency of Aristotle’s argument and appears satisfied that there is indeed need for introducing many immovable movers of the spheres: since the movement of the other spheres (beyond that of the outermost one, which is moved by the First Mover) is also eternal, it is necessary for them to be moved by an immovable Being, which must be not only immovable, but also eternal (καὶ οὐ μόνον ὑπὸ ἀκινήτου καθ᾿ αὑτὸ οὐσίας ἀνάγκη αὐτὴν κινεῖσθαι, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὑπὸ ἀϊδίου); for since the nature of the stars is eternal (as Aristotle said in the Metaphysica, 1073a34), of necessity their movers must be prior to them; and, if they are prior, they have to be self-subsisting beings (ἀλλ᾿ εἰ πρότερον, ἀνάγκη οὐσίαν αὐτὸ εἶναι). “For that which precedes a subsistent being has to be itself an autarkic being, too (τὸ γὰρ τῶν οὐσιῶν πρότερον οὐσία), because it is impossible for the essence of other [posterior] beings to be there, unless it it preceded by a substistent being (διὰ τὸ μὴ δύνασθαι χωρὶς οὐσίας τῶν ἄλλων τι εἶναι)”. These are the words of Aristotle, as above, which Alexander endorses and uses himself. Therefore, ‘if a simple cause is that which causes a single and simple movement, as it has been shown (εἰ οὖν τὸ ἁπλοῦν αἴτιον μιᾶς καὶ ἁπλῆς ἐστι κινήσεως κινητικόν, ὡς δέδεικται), then, any single movement which is simple has to be caused by one and simple cause (καὶ ἡ μία καὶ ἁπλῆ κίνησις ὑφ᾿ ἑνὸς καὶ ἁπλοῦ αἰτίου γίνεται).⁷³ It is therefore plain that there are as many movers as movements, that is, as many beings that are being moved (φανερὸν ὅτι ὅσαι εἰσὶν αἱ κινήσεις, ἤτοι τὰ κινούμενα, καὶ τὰ κινοῦντα τοσαῦτα ἔσται), and these movers are themselves eternal and immovable (τήν τε φύσιν ἀΐδια καὶ ἀκίνητα καθ᾿ αὑτά). Consequently, there is the first of them, and the second,

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 419.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 701.

Aristotle’s commentators

1117

and the third (καὶ τούτων τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἔσται, τὸ δὲ δεύτερον, τὸ δὲ τρίτον), and, in general, there are as many movers as spheres that are moved by them (ὡς γὰρ ἔχει τὰ ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν κινούμενα, οὕτως ἕξει καὶ τὰ κινοῦντα).⁷⁴ Furthermore, carrying on with his commentary, Alexander essayed to settle things implicitly: since Aristotle determined that there must be ‘one ruler’,⁷⁵ it should follow that the causes of the moving spheres must be gods, too; but these are ‘gods who are dependent on participation in the supreme and most blessed Mind, and on its will’.⁷⁶ However, the point is that Alexander uses a Platonic notion, namely, ‘participation’ (μέθεξις), which Aristotle had rebuked styling this an ‘empty phrase and poetical metaphor’,⁷⁷ since it does not in fact describe how exactly ‘participation’ works. As a matter of fact, he criticized and challenged the notion of ‘participation’ also a few lines before the point of the Metaphysics on which Alexander comments, asking the rhetorical question, ‘and what is the reason for something to have participated or to participate’ [in the Forms]? (διὰ τί γὰρ μετέσχεν ἢ μετέχει;).⁷⁸ Alexander could have eschewed the precarious term ‘participation’, by saying that these celestial movers are moved by the First Mover, and they move celestial bodies in turn. However, in that case, it would have been equally difficult to explain ‘what is the reason’ for such divine beings as the heavenly spheres not to be moved directly by the First Mover at all. It was only a few lines after that point that Aristotle criticized Anaxagoras, who ‘made the Good a principle and one causing motion’ but Anaxagoras ‘did not explain’ the reason why the supreme principle moves things.⁷⁹ The answer actually lies in Aristotle’s own words, but he was too biased to see it: the ‘Good’ (as Aristotle called the Anaxagorean ‘Mind’ at that point) moves things out of goodness. It was only a few pages before this point that Aristotle posited that the First Mover ‘causes motion as being an object of love’ (κινεῖ δὲ ὡς ἐρώμενον).⁸⁰ Since he styled the Anaxa-

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. pp. 701 2, which is what Aristotle argued in the Metaphy sica, 1073a34 39. H. Wolfson reached this conclusion as one of his own, without making any mention of Alexander of Aphrodisias, probably because he was not aware of this syllogism by Alexander.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1076a4, and Politica, 1292a23, quoting Homer, Ilias, II.204.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 721: τὰ γὰρ τῶν πλανωμένων αἴτια θεοὶ μέν, ἀλλὰ με θέξει καὶ τῷ βουλήματι τοῦ πρώτου καὶ μακαριωτάτου ἐξήρτηνται νοός. Alexander comments on Aristotle’s Metaphysica, 1075b24 1076a4, and, following Aristotle’s text, he quotes Homer, Ilias, II.204, too.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 991a22 & 1079b26.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1075b19 20.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1078b8 9.  Aristotle, op. cit. 1072b4 5. Cf. supra, pp. 555 6; 564; 805.

1118

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

gorean Mind Good, why should this not be taken as causing motion (and thus, existence) to things as objects of love? And, in the final analysis, why is the idea of the First Mover being ‘an object of love’ less of a ‘poetical metaphor’ than Plato’s ‘participation’ in the Forms? The explanation of why Alexander opted for this phrase is that, like Aristotle himself, he had implicitly recourse to Anaxagoras: this is why he speaks of ‘divine Mind’ and adds the notion of the ‘will’ of this Mind. As already explained in chapter 5, in no philosophy other than that of Anaxagoras is will attached to the supreme principle, which certainly renders the Platonic notion of ‘participation’ redundant and unnecessary. Simplicius noted that Aristotle believed that the heaven is animate,⁸¹ and ‘although we are inclined to think of the stars as mere bodies, we ought to consider them as partaking of life and as active ones’. On this, Simplicius is happy to remark that both Plato and Aristotle, as well Alexander of Aphrodisias, are at one.⁸² However, he rebukes Alexander for having misinterpreted Aristotle, when he argued that the heaven moves by virtue of its inherent ‘soul’, which he identified with its ‘nature’. Simplicius argues that, to Aristotle, soul and nature are two different things, and it is only soul, not nature, that can cause motion.⁸³ In short, Simplicius took no offence at Aristotle’s statements about particular immovable movers, quite simply because he took them to be a manifestation of the souls of the heavenly bodies. To Simplicius, the ultimate cause of motion remains the First Mover, whereas the particular souls of the spheres are inherent in them, as indeed are they inherent in every animate being.⁸⁴ However, at a certain point, he seems to allow for divine minds to be the cause of motion of the spheres, when he extols the divine and eternal nature of the heavens, and that of the ‘first bodies’ (σώματα τὰ πρῶτα) that perform ‘the first spatial motion’, which is befittingly dependent upon ‘divine minds and primary souls’ (νοῖ θεῖοι καὶ αἱ πρῶται ψυχαί).⁸⁵ Besides, the commentary that was attributed to Simplicius does so, too; actually, it goes as far as to aver that ‘it is the Mind that stands above the souls of the heavenly bodies’.⁸⁶ Then, citing Ar-

 Simplicius, commCael, p. 377, commenting on Aristotle, De Caelo, 285a29 30.  Simplicius, loc. cit. commenting on Aristotle, De Caelo, 292a18 20.  Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 380 1.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 805 & 1261 2.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 85. Cf. Pseudo Aristotle, De Mundo, 391b16 19: Πλήρης δὲ ὢν σω μάτων θείων, ἃ δὴ καλεῖν ἄστρα εἰώθαμεν, κινούμενος κίνησιν ἀΐδιον, μιᾷ περιαγωγῇ καὶ κύκλῳ συναναχορεύει πᾶσι τούτοις ἀπαύστως δι᾿ αἰῶνος.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 25: αἱ δὲ τῶν οὐρανίων ψυχαὶ καὶ μάλιστα καὶ πρώτως, εἰ μὴ ἄρα καὶ πρὸ τούτων ὁ νοῦς.

Aristotle’s commentators

1119

istotle’s ‘statement in the Physics’ (i. e. 403b28), the author has it that ‘not even the moving causes of the heavenly bodies, whether they are souls or minds, dominate themselves over all of their own motion’,⁸⁷ meaning that they are only agents which can act only because they receive their moving power from the First Mover, which the author just called ‘Mind’. John Philoponus was somewhat bolder, and one should have thought that he was a studious reader of Aristotle’s specific points. He speaks of ‘immovable causes, which are inherent in the sun, moon, and the other stars’, and these causes themselves ‘move accidentally’ (καὶ τὰς ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀκινήτους αἰτίας κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς κινεῖσθαι). However, this statement is self-defeating: for how could possibly ‘immovable’ causes ‘move’ themselves? As a matter of fact, Philoponus realized this only a few lines below, and made this clarification: And when we say that the immovable move (καί ὅταν δὲ λέγωμεν κινεῖσθαι τὰ ἀκίνητα), we do not mean the intellects (οὐ τοὺς νοῦς λέγομεν), since they do not exist therein as under lying ones, but we mean the underlying lives of those bodies, which lives are incorporeal yet irrational. For a mind shines upon a body by entering from outside.⁸⁸

The text of Philoponus is remarkable for many reasons, the main one being that he refers to the immovable causes as ‘minds’ or ‘intellects’ (τοὺς νοῦς), which Aristotle himself did not do, but the Late Antiquity (both Greek and Christian one) abundantly employed both the term and the idea. However, it can be gathered that never did Philoponus realize the turbulent story concerning Aristotle’s idea of immovable movers. For despite those references in his tract On the Creation of the World, he attacks this idea which was advanced by Theodore of Mopsuestia who probably was aware of Aristotle’s proposition, since Aristotelian studies flourished at the region of Antioch.⁸⁹ Philoponus mentions Theodore’s theory which maintained that ‘it is angels that cause the moon and the sun and the stars to move’ and lampoons it by wondering, ‘are they [i. e. angels] any sort of asses for the yoke, which either pull [heavenly bodies] from in front of them, or they push them from behind just like those who move rolling merchandise? Or are they both of them, or they move [stars by currying them] on their shoulders –of which nothing could be more ridiculous?’. Philoponus then determines that it was all too simple and easy for God to endow heavenly bodies with ‘inherent capacity to move them-

 νοῖ  

Simplicius, op. cit. p. 25: ὅπου γε οὐδὲ τὰ τῶν πλανωμένων κινητικὰ αἴτια, εἴτε ψυχαὶ εἴτε εἶεν, διὰ τὸ μὴ μόνα τῆς πάσης κατάρχειν αὐτῶν κινήσεως. John Philoponus, commPhys, p. 892. RCR, pp. 43; 203; 245; 254; 367; Scholia, pp. 5; 27; 30 1; 240.

1120

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

selves’ so that ‘no need should be there for angels to force them to move.’⁹⁰ These are the ‘inherent causes’ of which he spoke above, thus demythologizing Aristotle’s immovable movers while rebutting not Aristotle himself but Theodore of Mopsuestia, who wrote all of this as both a Christian intellectual and an learned Aristotelist, while also having in mind Philo, as we shall see presently.

Doxographers During the Late Antiquity, there was not one ‘Plato’, but many ones, since his writings were explained according to each one’s own aspirations and aims. During the later stage of that period, commentators such as Proclus were anxious to present themselves as faithful Platonists, and, as a result, little attention was paid to Aristotle’s contradiction. Proclus was more interesting in showing that his own ‘Plato’ (that is, Proclus himself) expounded ontology more fully than Aristotle did.⁹¹ Thus, he shushed aside the passages of Aristotle that I have discussed in this chapter; instead, he mentioned the ‘heavenly gods’ (τοῖς οὐρανίοις θεοῖς) that Aristotle posited as being those who are assigned with the agency of ‘creation and providence’ (παρὰ τούτων γὰρ εἶναι τὴν δημιουργίαν καὶ τὴν πρόνοιαν), in contrast to Plato who maintained that these operations belong to the Creative Mind.⁹² How accurate this reference of Proclus is will not be discussed here, since it would be necessary to consider also the notion of Nature: to Aristotle, Nature is a functional process which contains unspecified (yet rational)⁹³ dynamic tendencies, and it is awakened out of love for the divine nature, so that itself should be made like this. Besides, whether Aristotle sustained any idea of providence is another moot question.⁹⁴

 John Philoponus, De Opificio Mundi, p. 28.  Cf. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 887. He argues that Plato had furnished an exposition which was fuller than those by Aristotle and the Stoics, and indeed he had anticipated both schools considered together (Πλάτων δέ, συναγαγὼν εἰς ἓν ἀμφότερα).  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 295.  Cf. chapter 8, pp. 542 3, discussing Aristotle’s propositions, ‘Nature does nothing haphaz ardly’ or ‘God and Nature do nothing haphazardly’.  There are three different groups of testimonies. One, Aristotle did not sustain any notion of providence at all. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.21.6b, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 886D; the same text, in Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 46 & Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum, 2.15. Atticus, Fragmenta, fr. 12, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.12.2. Two, there is providence only in the superlunar region. Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos, 2.1. Clement of Alex andria, Stromateis, 5.14.90.3. Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, ᾿Aπορίαι καὶ Λύσεις, pp. 65; 70 71 (‘a certain providence’). Origen, Cels, I.21; III.21 (Aristotle ‘interrupted the providence’). Euse

Doxographers

1121

Doxography mingled Plato’s account of his God with the Anaxagorean one: the Platonic God is ‘single’, ‘unique’, ‘truly Good’. Summing up the different designations of it (τὸ ἕν, τὸ μονοφυές, τὸ μοναδικόν, τὸ ὄντως ὄν, τἀγαθόν), Stobaeus says that, to Plato, ‘all of these designations, as well as similar ones, conduce to bespeaking the Mind’ (πάντα δὲ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν ὀνομάτων εἰς τὸν νοῦν σπεύδει), which ‘is unmixed (ἀμιγές) with any sort of matter, and it is intertwined with none of the corporeal things’.⁹⁵ His analyses by and large show that he had in mind the Plotinian pattern rather than Plato’s Good. He adds then that, beyond the ‘patterns’ of the ‘intelligible world’, there are also ‘certain powers up in the aether, which are incorporeal logoi’ (πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ἐναιθέριοί τινες δυνάμεις, λόγοι δ᾿ εἰσὶν ἀσώματοι), as well as others, which are ‘fiery and airy and watery’.⁹⁶ This vocabulary has nothing to do with Plato, who never used such terms as ἐναιθέριος, or λόγοι ἀσώματοι, or ἀμιγὴς νοῦς. Subsequent doxography actually described a pattern in the terms that the Stoics had received from Anaxagoras, and the whole of it (as reported by Stobaeus) is neither Platonic, nor Plotinian, nor Stoic: it is an Anaxagorean account, and whoever the original doxographer, he saw this from the start, which is why he noted that his description actually bespeaks the Mind. The expression ‘incorporeal logoi, which exist up in the aether’, is in fact the Anaxagorean notion that Aristotle used in his own description of those immovable movers. Even if the case were that Aristotle interpolated the passages later, his guide was Anaxagoras. There is some irony surrounding Aristotle’s theory of multiple immovable movers. God causes the motion of the outermost sphere of the fixed stars, from which motion of the entire universe is caused. Inner spheres of the heavens are dragged into this supreme movement, but they appear as having their own particular locomotion. Aristotle introduced the notion of the secondary immovable movers in order to explain the particular movement of the individual

bius, op. cit. 15.5.1; 15.5.14. Gregory of Nazianzus, Adversus Eunomianos, 10. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, Prologue, 9; Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium, PG.83.484.34. Three, Ar istotle did maintain providence. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 7.19.7 8. Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 295. Simplicius, commCael, p. 467. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 441. In modern times, the controversy has been perpetuated. I should only note that Eduard Zeller (1814 1908) urged that Aristotle did not believe in providence, whereas Franz Brentano (1838 1917) adduced such passages as De Generatione et Corruptione, 336b27 34, in order to argue that Aristotle sustained providence.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.1.29b. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881F. Also, Euse bius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.7.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.1.29b.

1122

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

spheres on which the planets are fixed. The motion of planets is dependent on the motion of the spheres.⁹⁷ The ontological identity of these immovable movers, which they regulate the movement of the heavenly spheres,⁹⁸ is analogous to that of the First Mover. Their relation to God is not one of genus and species, but one of analogous similarity. These particular intelligible beings, or minds, or intellects, Aristotle identified with the traditional gods of Greek mythology, thus vindicating old polytheistic legends, which he normally used to do. Thus, by introducing these immovable intellects, he took a huge leap from astronomical considerations to theological mythology. Little surprise then that doxographers recorded that Aristotle considered each of the heavenly spheres as a composite animal comprising body and soul: its body is the heavenly star; its soul is ‘an immovable logos, which causes motion’, in the same way any soul causes a body to move. It is remarkable that a report has it accurately that, according to Aristotle, the particular spheres which make up the universe ‘are similar in nature, but different from each other’, which confirms the analyses made above.⁹⁹ This was the explanation for banning divine providence from the sublunary world: rationality (hence providence) was a characteristic of the superlunary realm, because that part alone contains animate and vital spheres.¹⁰⁰ Even if we did not have these doxographic testimonies, one thing is clear out of Aristotle’s sporadic references themselves: the spheres of the heavenly bodies are moved by something outside them, namely, by those immovable movers. But this is exactly the proposition which draws a line between animate and inani-

 Aristotle received the theory of spheres from Eudoxus of Cnidus and Callipus of Cyzicus, which Alexander of Aphrodisias pointed out (commMetaph, p. 702). He accorded each of those spheres a hypostasis of their own, and gestated them as consisting of a specific kind of material, namely, the fifth one.  Doxography opted for the simple solution by attributing to Aristotle the idea that the heav enly ‘spheres are animate and full of life’. Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.21.6b: τὰ μὲν γὰρ οὐράνια πάντων τούτων κοινωνεῖν, σφαίρας γὰρ περιέχειν ἐμψύχους καὶ ζωτικάς.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 881F. Also, Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.8: διῃρημένου δὲ τούτου [i. e. τοῦ παντός] κατὰ σφαίρας, τῇ μὲν φύσει συναφεῖς τῷ λόγω δὲ κεχωρισμένας, ἑκάστην οἴεται τῶν σφαιρῶν ζῷον εἶναι σύνθετον ἐκ σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς, ὧν τὸ μὲν σῶμα ἐστὶν αἰθέριον κινούμενον κυκλοφορικῶς, ἡ ψυχὴ δὲ λόγος ἀκίνητος αἴτιος τῆς κινήσεως κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.21.6b, apud Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 886E (copied by Eusebius, op. cit. 15.34.2). Pseudo Galen, op. cit. 46. Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum, 2.15: τὰ μὲν γὰρ οὐράνια πάντων τούτων κοινωνεῖν, σφαίρας γὰρ περιέχειν ἐμψύχους καὶ ζωτικάς, τὰ δὲ περίγεια μηδενὸς αὐτῶν, τῆς δ᾿ εὐταξίας κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς οὐ προηγουμένως μετέχειν.

Doxographers

1123

mate beings: ever since Plato, the definition had it that those which are moved from the outside are called inanimate, whereas whatever is moved from the inside we call animate.¹⁰¹ If, therefore, the spheres of the heavenly bodies are moved by something outside them, by definition they should be posited as inanimate beings along with their respective planets. However, this was far too profane a blasphemy for Aristotle ever to have asserted. After all, he knew how Athens had treated Anaxagoras, who was as impertinent as to utter the abominable proposition that the sun is only a fiery stone, not a god. Since the times of those works by Jaeger (1923) and Ross (1924), some attempts have been made to remove this contradiction from Aristotle’s work. Harry Wolfson reviewed them in his learned article, and his view was that all of them moved along the line of explanations offered by medieval commentators of Aristotle.¹⁰² My own view is that this contradiction befell Aristotle only because he availed himself of Anaxagoras without caring to adapt his liabilities to his own philosophy, if indeed any room for that were left at all, which is doubtful. The logic which Wolfson struggled in vain to attribute to Aristotle (even though Ross had rightly determined that there was no room for such an adaptation) was in fact an Anaxagorean logic, although one applied inadvertently, which Wolfson never realized. My suggestion then is that only once the influence of Anaxagoras upon Aristotle is recognized can this point, as well many other ones, be resolved. One might wonder why was it that Aristotle did not opt for the sole solution befitting his own context, namely, that the First Immovable Mover itself is the cause of movement of all celestial bodies, as much as is it so for the things of the sublunary world. The only plausible answer to this is that he felt too much awe at the divine nature of the superlunary reality to grant that the causes which effect locomotion in both realms are of the same nature, even though the original source of it is ultimately the same, namely the First Mover. It appeared to him that a vicarious intermediary agent and agency were necessary, and this he thought he found in Anaxagoras’ immaterial principles. Certainly, he was wrong in believing that the efficient, cohesive, and generative causes of the universe are

 Cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 245e: πᾶν γὰρ σῶμα, ᾧ μὲν ἔξωθεν τὸ κινεῖσθαι, ἄψυχον, ᾧ δὲ ἔνδοθεν αὐτῷ ἐξ αὑτοῦ, ἔμψυχον. Aristotle, De Anima, 403b25 27: τὸ ἔμψυχον δὴ τοῦ ἀψύχου δυσὶ μά λιστα διαφέρειν δοκεῖ, κινήσει τε καὶ τῷ αἰσθάνεσθαι. Cf. De Caelo, 284b32 33; 284b32 34; Ethica Eudemia, 1224a22 24; Physica, 255a16 18. Also, numerous commentators, of whom I quote only Simplicius, commEpict, p. 6: Καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὰ ἔνδοθεν κινούμενα σώματα, ἔμψυχα λέγομεν· τὰ δὲ ἔξωθεν μόνως, ἄψυχα. Moreover, Origen, Princ, III.1.2. J. von Arnim picked this up and ascri bed it to Chrysippus, fr. 988, but such an attribution is not justified by this testimony.  H. Wolfson, p. 243.

1124

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

different in different parts of it. But this impression gave rise to the issue that we are discussing in this chapter, which reveals the critical debts of Aristotle to Anaxagoras. Of them all, this is probably the most characteristic one, since it can remove the veil from his caricatured exposition of that philosophy, and show that he knew the true fundamental ideas of Anaxagoras, which had to wait for yet another millennium until Simplicius expounded them clearly and faithfully. Plotinus, commenting on that part of Aristotle’s text, was entirely right in saying that, although it might appear that Aristotle spoke as a Platonist, this was not really the case. What Plotinus did not say though was that Aristotle spoke as an Anaxagorean, but, anyway, Anaxagoras is mentioned conspicuously and laudably by Plotinus in that little section, indeed right from the beginning of it. If we consider these movers in Anaxagorean terms, then the tentative proposition of Ross does indeed make some sense, with some necessary adaptation: as a matter of fact, these movers of the planetary spheres ‘are pure principles’ (not forms) specifically different, each of them being the sole member of a separate species.’ All of the principles are indeed unique and different from each other; consequently, although all of them belong to the same genus, each one is the sole member of a separate species, that is, each of them is a specific principle/logos. In short, each principle is a genus including only one member, namely, the principle itself – which is a pleonasm, no doubt. Ross added, ‘as some of the schoolmen maintained that angels are’. This means that the principles (or, immovable movers) were seen as living ones, and we already saw that this is how later doxography saw Aristotle’s theory on this specific point. This is an opportunity for me to consider two points. One, whereas Anaxagorean in origin and in terms of function, were these principles subsequently accorded other names, such as ‘ideas’, ‘logoi’, ‘forms’, or indeed ‘minds/intellects’? Two, is the proposition of Ross about ‘angels’ susceptible of further investigation? To both questions, my answer is positive.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo Philo Aristotle applied the Anaxagorean notion of principles/logoi functioning universally as instruments of the Mind/Logos to the motion of the heavenly bodies, that is, in a narrow sense. However, this idea was put to broader use by his commentators, and it came to be identified with the function of ‘angels’. According to

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1125

Wolfson, this was a medieval idea advanced by Averroes and Avicenna, and then considerd by Thomas Aquinas.¹⁰³ However, it can be shown that this influence by Anaxagoras took place much earlier. For we come upon this in Philo, who clearly identified angels with the logoi of the universe. The Anaxagorean principles, which sustain the universal order as ministers of the Mind, are now angels administering the will of God. Their activity involves not only universal natural order, but also moral order and guard of the precepts that are commanded by the logoi (words) of God in the sacred writings. Thus, the logoi are both cosmic principles (λόγοι = ἀρχαί) and words (λόγοι = the divine words of the Bible), all of them originating in God’s will and action. Angels are the ministers, as well as messengers, of the divine will concerning both the universal order and human action. Long before the Middle Ages, the notion of logoi identified as angels makes a clear mark in Philo: treating Jacob’s wrestling with passions, he notes that he was ‘trained in the wresting-bound with the angels, that is, the logoi, preparing him for the conflict (ἀγγέλοις ἀλείπταις, λόγοις, χρώμενος)’. He clearly means that the Logos of God supplied Jacob with logoi-angels, so that he could prevail in battle, and the reference is clearly to the opening of Genesis, 32:1, ‘The angels of God met him’ (καὶ συνήντησαν αὐτῷ ἄγγελοι τοῦ Θεοῦ).¹⁰⁴ This is a conscious application of an idea that was clear to Philo, since he entertains it also at other points, in respect to getting rid of bodily passion: in the minds of those who are purified, God, ‘the Ruler of all’ (ὁ τῶν ὅλων ἡγεμών) walks noiselessly, alone, and invisibly’;¹⁰⁵ but in the minds ‘of those who are still undergoing cleansing and have not yet fully washed their own life, which is defiled and stained by the weight of the body, there walk angels who are divine logoi (ἄγγελοι, λόγοι θεῖοι), making them bright and clean with the cleansers (ῥύμμασιν)¹⁰⁶ of what is good and beautiful’.¹⁰⁷ In the second book of his long treatise On Dreams (of which the conclusion is not extant), there are three pairs of dreams: of them, the second (of the chief

 See infra, p. 1134, discussion and quotation from Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 2.91 2. Unlike Origen, who posited that only the Holy Trinity in incorporeal, Thomas Aquinas argued that angels are incorporeal, too.  Philo, De Sobrietate, 66.  Philo quotes Lev. 26:12: “I will walk in you, and will be your God”.  Other editions have it ὄμμασιν, or δόγμασιν, instead of ῥύμμασιν. But ῥύμμασιν is called for by the preceding context, which is an allusion to Plato, Respublica, 429e. Either way, the iden tification of ‘angels’ and ‘logoi’ is all too clear.  Philo, De Somniis, 148.

1126

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

baker and chief butler in prison –who represent drunkenness and gluttony, 155‒ 214), as well as the third, are explained by Joseph himself. In this, the Pharaoh’s cup-bearer is styled eunuch; on the other hand, the Logos is represented by the High-Priest. Philo’s description of what is signified spiritually by eunuch and high priest is revealing indeed: the High Priest is ‘blameless, perfect’, and ‘not only is he able to sow the seed of undefiled and virgin thoughts’ but also ‘he is the father of holy intelligences’ (πατὴρ λόγων ἱερῶν). What are those intelligences? They are those who survey and watch the things of Nature (ἐπίσκοποι καὶ ἔφοροι τῶν τῆς φύσεως πραγμάτων), whereas others are ‘God’s ministers, hastening to kindle and keep alive the heavenly flame’ (184‒186) and ‘he who is at once the preceptor and father of these is no ordinary part of the holy congregation, but one without whom the solemn council of the soul’s parts could never be convened’; he is ‘the creator’ who ‘alone and by himself and without any other, is capable of considering and executing all things’ (187‒188). This ‘Father of the logoi’ is the Logos himself, who is the administrators of those ‘holy intelligences’, or ‘holy logoi’. There is one more instance in Philo, which is important, since it marks the transition of this idea (logoi identified with angels) to Origen. He considers the ode of Deuteronomium, 32:8‒9, which (in LXX) reads, ‘when the Most High divided the nations’, He set the boundaries of them ‘according to the number of the angels of God’. Philo’s explanation is too allegorical, since he read in it that God divided ‘the nations of the soul’; but the interesting point is his statement that God ‘fixed the boundaries of the offspring of virtue corresponding to the number of angels (ἰσαρίθμους ἀγγέλοις); for there are as many nations and species of virtue as there are logoi of God (ὅσοι γὰρ θεοῦ λόγοι, τοσαῦτα ἀρετῆς ἔθνη τε καὶ εἴδη)’; and then, he asks himself, ‘But what are the portions of His angels, and what is the allotted share of the All-Sovereign Ruler?’.¹⁰⁸ In short, Philo once again identified angels with the logoi of God.

Origen The principles of Anaxagoras can be named after their progenitor, the Mind, thus they can be called ‘minds’, too. It is certainly no coincidence that, Origen, who joined Christianity departing from the Anaxagorean philosophy and seeking to read much of this into the Christian scriptures, perhaps also spoke of ‘minds’ which were originally created by God. Whether he did so at all, or not, can be

 Philo, De Posteritate Caini, 91 2.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1127

only a tentative surmise. Yet, if he did so, this would have been his first and very early approach, before he adapted his Anaxagorean background by making the ‘minds’ that which they were originally posited to be (namely, active causes) and call them ‘logoi’, as the Stoics did. The reason for Origen to go ahead with a temporary transformation of Anaxagoras would have been the need to express himself in Biblical terms and through Biblical argument, namely, to explain the primeval Fall and to come to terms with the recurrent theme of ‘angels of the Lord’ who intervene in the human affairs every now and then. Origen noticed the interpretation of Deuteronomium, 32:8‒9 (‘when the Most High divided the nations’) by Philo, which we saw above, and he employed the exegesis duly adapted to Christian context, although he was quick to add, ‘we do not expound this as a definitive opinion of ours, since such great things need to be thoroughly examined in order to determine whether they are so or not’.¹⁰⁹ Therefore, whereas the Mind/Father sent the Logos/Christ, the Logos sent the specific logoi upon the prophets, and those logoi were ‘angels’.¹¹⁰ Since the Logos generates logoi, it is not strange that Origen styles him Bridegroom, whose brides are different orders of angels (and rational natures in general) being the brides, with all of whom the Logos communicates. For he is in touch not only with ‘one soul’, but also with others, which are both many and various ones (οὐ μιᾷ ψυχῇ κοινωνῶν, ἀλλὰ πλείοσι καὶ διαφόροις).¹¹¹ Origen moves conveniently from calling the different orders of angels ‘logoi’, to styling them ‘souls’, which is understandable: a soul is a logos made of logoi,¹¹² it gives rise to new logoi, and the same happens with angels. In view of this, when Origen’s detractors denounced ‘the Origenists’ for maintaining that ‘the soul was once an angel’,¹¹³ one can now understand what possibly Origen would have meant by using this expression, if indeed ever he did so at all.¹¹⁴

 Origen, commJohn, XIII.50.332. He draws implicitly on Philo in sections 331 335, and appa rently identifies the logoi as angels. He returns to Deut. 32:8 9 later, and appears confident about his exegesis, if not explicitly. Cf. Cels, IV.8; V.29; V.35; homJer, 5.2; frPs, Psalm 118:7; selPs, PG.12.1213.34 36.  Origen, commMatt, 12.30: ὥσπερ δὲ ἔρχεται ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐν τῇ δόξῃ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ, οὕτως ἄγγελοι γινόμενοι οἱ ἐν τοῖς προφήταις λόγοι μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ παραγίνονται, τὴν ἀνα λογίαν σώζοντες τῆς ἑαυτῶν δόξης.  Origen, Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17.277.42 43: λόγος ἐστὶν ὁ νυμφίος· λογικὸν ζῶον ἡ νύμφη. … ἐξῆλθεν ἀπὸ τοῦ παστοῦ τοῦ ἐπουρανίου, κοινωνεῖ ἀγγέλοις καὶ ἀρχαγγέλοις, αἵ τινές εἰσιν αἱ νύμφαι τοῦ λόγου, καὶ θρόνοι καὶ κυριότητες.  See chapter 13, ‘Theory of the soul’, pp. 1322; 1331; 1408.  ACO, Canones xv (contra Origenem sive Origenistas), v. 4.1, p. 248. Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, p. 411 (ref. to Origen): τὴν ψυχὴν γὰρ τὴν ἀνθρωπείαν λέγει προϋπάρχειν, ἀγγέ

1128

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

It turns out then that Origen saw the Anaxagorean logoi in their proper sense, that is, as natural causative forces (in effect, the same as the Stoic seminal logoi, if incorporeal ones), yet conveniently he entertained the idea that these logoi operate as angels, who are the ministers of the Logos/Mind, and therefore, ministers of the ‘kingdom’ (οἱ τοῦ λόγου ἄγγελοι καὶ ὑπηρέται ἐκ πάσης τῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ βασιλείας).¹¹⁵ The totality of logoi is ‘the kingdom of God’, so that the angels/logoi are ‘the sons of the kingdom’. Since, in Anaxagoras, the logoi are posited as ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα), and the later Stoics took up the term making it ‘spermatic logoi’, Origen expounds his ideas by means of the imagery of ‘seeds’ and ‘sowing’, whenever the scriptural text provides him with the opportunity to do so. Thus, he uses the scriptural terms ‘sons of the kingdom’ in order to indicate logoi, either righteous¹¹⁶ and wicked¹¹⁷ ones, that take hold of one’s mind. The ‘healthy logoi about each and everything’ (τοὺς περὶ ἑκάστου ὑγιεῖς λόγους) are ‘seeds’ and ‘sons of the kingdom’ (υἱοὺς τῆς βασιλείας) that have been sown into the soul by the Logos. By contrast, ‘evil logoi’ (οἱ μοχθηροὶ λόγοι) are ‘the tares’ that have been sown by the ‘wickedness of the evil one’, and they are destined to be destroyed by the righteous ‘sons of the kingdom’, that is, by the good logoi/angels. Wherefore, Origen is encouraged by the scriptural text and expounds the philosophical idea which is as Anaxagorean as is it a Stoic one: not only the Church, but also the entire world is a field;¹¹⁸ for the good seed has been sown into the entire world by the Logos, whereas the tares, which are the evil logoi, have been sown by the wicked one.¹¹⁹ Origen never spoke of the soul as if this were a self-substantial being, that is, an οὐσία (= essence = a certain individual self-subsistent quid). He only spoke of the essence of the soul, which is simply incorporeality, owing to the incorporeal logoi which concur in order to make up an individual rational creature. When he considers the ‘bread’ of the Dominical Prayer, he explains that this betokens the action of the Logos (which is instruction towards rationality). This is the meaning

λους δὲ ταύτας εἶναι καὶ δυνάμεις ἄνω. Pseudo Athanasius, Quaestiones ad Antiochum Ducem, PG.28.608.10 12: οὐ μὴν δὲ ἄγγελός ποτε ἦν ἡ ψυχή, ὡς οἱ Ὠριγενιασταὶ μυθεύονται.  When, and if, any ‘Origenist’ said that the soul was ‘angel’, he simply meant that a soul is a ‘logos’ produced by a certain concurrence of logoi, and the logoi are also styled ‘angels’.  Origen, commMatt, 10.2.  Cf. Matt. 13:38. The blessed ‘sons of the Kingdom’. Origen, commMatt, 10.2; frPs, Psalm 44:9 10.  Cf. the evil ‘sons of the Kingdom’. Matt. 8:12. Origen, commJohn, XIII.60.425; commMatt, 10.12. The learned Origenist Evagrius of Pontus styled ‘the logoi’ of heretics ‘angels of death’. Sententiae ad Monachos, 125.  Matt. 13:38 39.  Origen, commMatt, 10.2.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1129

of the interaction between the Logos and the logos/soul (that is, the rational function of a certain individual rational creature).¹²⁰ Since the Logos is the Creator of the logoi and contains them all, he is ‘essentially akin to the soul’.¹²¹ The Logos contains the logoi and the soul is made of certain logoi. It is possible to speak of essence of the rational soul, but not of rational soul itself as a self-substantial being. The ‘rational soul has something which is akin to God’, ‘since both of them are intelligible, invisible, and incorporeal’, but on no account does this mean that the soul is itself a certain self-subsistent something. ¹²² At an early stage of his Christian life, he spoke of incorporeal nature which is ‘akin’ to God, but he took heed not to divulge his Anaxagorean philosophical premisses. What is the affinity between rational creatures and God? Is it incorporeality? But, for one thing, Origen holds that there is no rational creature which is incorporeal, since all of them are always endowed with bodies; for another, there are three classes of Being: corporeals, incorporeals, and the Holy Trinity,¹²³ which means that ‘incorporeality’ does no institute any affinity with the Holy Trinity, i. e. this is not a common genus. There is only one notion of affinity that makes sense: the logoi were initially created in the Body of the Logos and they were placed on this Body; they constitute the ‘created wisdom’, also adumbrated as ‘decoration’ of that Body. This is the only kinship between the primal creatures and the Creator, or, in Anaxagorean terms, between the logoi and the Mind. Therefore, when Origen refers to an ‘incorruptible nature’, which is ‘akin to God’,¹²⁴ he has in mind these logoi: the

 See COT, pp. 165 72: ‘The Place of the Logos’.  Origen, De Oratione, 27.9: ἐπιούσιος τοίνυν ἄρτος ὁ τῇ φύσει τῇ λογικῇ καταλληλότατος καὶ τῇ οὐσίᾳ αὐτῇ συγγενής.  Cf. Origen, Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 47: Ἔτι δὲ καὶ φιλοζωεῖ ἄνθρωπος πεῖσμα λαβὼν περὶ οὐσίας λογικῆς ψυχῆς ὡς ἐχούσης τι συγγενὲς θεῷ. νοερὰ γὰρ ἑκάτερα καὶ ἀόρατα καί ὡς ὁ ἐπικρατῶν ἀποδείκνυσι λόγος, ἀσώματα. frLam, fr. 7: συγγενέστερά ἐστι τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ ἀπερίστατα τὰ θεωρητικὰ μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ πρακτικά.  See infra, pp. 1334; 1389 1401.  Origen used this expression in the treatise written upon his conversion to Christianity. Nev ertheless, he abandoned it later, presumably to avoid misunderstanding, even though his state ments against Platonism are recurrent in his works. He wrote as an Anaxagorean philosopher, and yet he was, and still is, mistaken as a Platonist, despite his numerous anti Platonic views, which I have pointed out in previous books of mine. Origen, Princ, III.1.13, apud Philocalia, 21.12: ἄφθαρτον γὰρ φύσιν πεποίηκε τὴν νοερὰν καὶ αὐτῷ συγγενῆ. Princ, IV.2.4, apud, Philocalia, 1.14: ἀναγκαίως δὲ ὡς περὶ συγγενῶν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων λογικῶν, θειοτέρων τε καὶ ἐκπεπτωκότων τῆς μακαριότητος, καὶ τῶν αἰτίων τῆς τούτων ἐκπτώσεως, ἐχρῆν εἰς τοὺς λόγους τῆς θείας ἀνει λῆφθαι διδασκαλίας, καὶ περὶ τῆς διαφορᾶς τῶν ψυχῶν, καὶ πόθεν αἱ διαφοραὶ αὗται ἐληλύθασι, τίς τε ὁ κόσμος καὶ διὰ τί ὑπέστη, ἔτι δὲ πόθεν ἡ κακία τοσαύτη καὶ τηλικαύτη ἐστὶν ἐπὶ γῆς, καὶ εἰ μὴ μόνον ἐπὶ γῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀλλαχοῦ, ἀναγκαῖον ἡμᾶς μαθεῖν.

1130

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

incorruptible nature of the soul is owing to the incorruptible logoi which make it up by means of their concurrence; the soul is not any self-existent entity eternally immortal, which is in fact not even a Platonic idea.¹²⁵ One of the accusations against Origen was that he sustained the tenet allowing the existence of incorporeal minds, which were the primeval impeccable creatures of God that fell and thus became souls. I have shown that the Fifth Oecumenical Council based all of these allegations on a book written by Antipater of Bostra,¹²⁶ from which the leaders of the Laura of Sabas copied and composed a text that became verbatim Justinian’s edict against Origen, and then the core of the anathemas against him.¹²⁷ The obloquy had it that he introduced certain ‘minds’ that were ‘living’.¹²⁸ Considering that the Anaxagorean principles are incorporeal and serve as tools for the Mind to administer the world, I would not be surprised if an Anaxagorean philosopher such as Origen made use of this notion upon his conversion to Christianity. Once there is no distinction in the Body of the Mind, it would be all too natural for the Anaxagorean principles to be called ‘minds’ (νόες), too, that is, ‘homoiomeries’, so named after the name of the whole. On the same grounds, it was natural for him also to call them ‘logoi’, once the supreme prin Cf. Damascius castigating Iamblichus for arguing that, according to Plato, the souls are endlessly immortal. In Phaedonem (versio 1), 207.; infra, pp. 1215 6.  Extensive passages from this book were quoted by John of Damascus, Sacra Parallela, PG.96.492.25 (becoming ‘pure mind’ upon resurrection): καὶ γενέσθαι καθαροὶ νόες. Op. cit. PG.96.501.26 30 (primeval fall): καὶ πῶς ἤρξαντο κινεῖσθαι οἱ νόες, καὶ πῶς ἔπεσαν εἰς διάφορα σώματα. Op. cit. PG.96.501.42 48: ὅτιπερ οὐκ ἤρξατο ὁ Θεὸς δημιουργεῖν, καὶ τοὺς νόας, πῶς τε τάξεως, καὶ γνώσεως μετέσχον, καὶ πῶς μετέπεσαν, καὶ εἰς πόσας διαφορὰς διῃρέθησαν. Op. cit. PG.96.504.4 13: τῆς προτέρας μακαριότητος ἀποστάντες … γεγόνασιν ἀπὸ νόων ἄγγελοι, ἀρχάγγελοι, καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς. And here is an Anaxagorean echo and vocabulary, op. cit. PG.96.504.37 41: τοὺς ἀπολέσαντας τὸ καλὸν παρὰ τοῦ Κυρίου καταβληθὲν σπέρμα, … τοῦ πρώ του σπέρματος τὴν καθαρότητα ἀποβαλόντες.  ACO, Synodus Constantinopolitana et Hierosolymitana anno 536, tome 3, p. 191 (Justinian, Edictum contra Origenem, pp. 72 & 116): ψυχὰς διὰ ἁμαρτίας τοῖς σώμασι τιμωρίας χάριν ἐμβλη θῆναι, ὡς δὴ πρῶτον μὲν νόας οὔσας καὶ ἁγίας δυνάμεις. Op. cit. p. 213: Εἴ τις λέγει ἢ ἔχει προϋ πάρχειν τὰς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ψυχὰς οἷα πρώην νόας οὔσας καὶ ἁγίας δυνάμεις. ACO, Canones xv (contra Origenem sive Origenistas), tome 4.1, p. 248 (Justinian, Epistula ad Synodum De Origene, p. 122): Εἴ τις λέγει πάντων τῶν λογικῶν τὴν παραγωγὴν νόας ἀσωμάτους καὶ ἀυ΅λους γεγονέναι δίχα παντὸς ἀριθμοῦ καὶ ὀνόματος. Op. cit. p. 249: καὶ ὅτι ἐν τῇ μυθευομένῃ ἀποκαταστάσει ἔσον ται μόνοι γυμνοὶ οἱ νόες, καθάπερ καὶ ἐν τῇ παρ’ αὐτῶν ληρωδουμένῃ προϋπάρξει ἐτύγχανον. … ὅτι ἡ ἀγωγὴ τῶν νοῶν ἡ αὐτὴ ἔσται τῇ προτέρᾳ, ὅτε οὔπω ὑποβεβήκεσαν ἢ καταπεπτώκεισαν. Justinian, Epistula ad Synodum De Origene, p. 122: καὶ ὅτι ἀνακομίζονται πάλιν ἅπαντες εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν ἑνάδα καὶ γίνονται νόες, καθὰ καὶ ἐν τῇ προϋπάρξει ἐτύγχανον. See RCR, pp. 303 17.  See supra, notes 126; 127; also, Cassian the Sabaite (= Pseudo Caesarius), Quaestiones et Re sponsiones, 168; Anastasius of Sinai, In Hexaemeron, Book II, lines 929 35.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1131

ciple was called Logos instead of Mind (which is simply another name, whereas the notion is identical). This is what Eustratius of Nicaea did, a good eight centuries after Origen’s death: he spoke of ‘subsistent logoi’ (λόγους ἐνυποστάτους), which are divine and incorporeal (θείους νοερούς). In chapter 11, I have argued that this could be an echo of Anaxagoras’ philosophy as described by Porphyry according to the Arabic sources that we have seen. Specifically, the imagery of God ‘engraving things upon matter’ is what the twelfth century vaguely remembered of the Indian statue that was described to Bardaisan,¹²⁹ along with Porphyry’s report of the actual theory of logoi by Anaxagoras.¹³⁰ Eustratius commented on Greek philosophy by reproducing what he had read in the champion of the quest for Greek philosophical harmony, namely, Ammonius of Alexandria. For when Ammonius set out to comment on Aristotle’s On Interpretation, he produced a hybrid which hardly would Aristotle himself have ever endorsed: using characteristic Anaxagorean language, he spoke of ‘gods’ (οἱ θεοί), who know everything about all beings (ἀγνοεῖν μὲν οὐδὲν τῶν ὄντων αὐτοὺς ἐνδέχεται), and they generate and decorate everything (τὰ πάντα παράγοντάς τε καὶ διακοσμοῦντας). What is the nature of those ‘gods’? Ammonius is lavishly descriptive: ‘they are minds, which are altogether unmixed with matter’ (νοῦς τε παντελῶς ἀμιγεῖς πρὸς ὕλην ὄντας), which is simply Anaxagoras’ language adapted to the specific concerns and priorities of Ammonius.¹³¹ We have not Origen’s specific texts available to us. Were it for the term ‘minds’ ever to have been used, it would have been natural for such references to perish, since his enemies were eager to extinguish them and his follower anxious to suppress. However, we have some second-hand references to them. First, John of Damascus preserved an extensive passage from a book written by Antipater of Bostra, which I mentioned earlier¹³² The idea attributed to Origen was that the primordial minds/intellects (νόες) fell out of the divine bliss, and they were distributed to different ranks of life as rational beings, that is, as either angels, or humans, or daemons.¹³³ If indeed Origen used such terms (which would  See supra, pp. 784 6; 884; 891; 960 1.  Eustratius of Nicaea, In Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea i Commentaria, p. 40.  Ammonius of Alexandria, commDeInterpr, p. 132.  See RCR, p. 325. When the anti Origenists of the Laura of Sabas read parts of that old book of Antipater within church, Origen’s followers (who were the most erudite of monks) were out raged at the allegations made therein, fury eurpted in church, and soon afterwards those monks moved out of the monastery.  John of Damascus, Sacra Parallela, PG.96.492.25: καὶ γενέσθαι καθαροὶ νόες … PG.96.501 5: καὶ πῶς ἤρξαντο κινεῖσθαι οἱ νόες, καὶ πῶς ἔπεσαν εἰς διάφορα σώματα, καὶ γεγόνασι διάφορα τάγματα, οὐρανίων τε καὶ ἐπιγείων; … ὅτιπερ οὐκ ἤρξατο ὁ Θεὸς δημιουργεῖν, καὶ τοὺς νόας, πῶς τε τάξεως, καὶ γνώσεως μετέσχον, καὶ πῶς μετέπεσαν, καὶ εἰς πόσας διαφορὰς

1132

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

have been the case during the very initial stage of his conversion to Christianity), he did so only because he essayed to accommodate the Anaxagorean notion of the Mind ‘distinguishing’ the principles/logoi/minds with the Biblical story of the Fall. Echoes of his Anaxagorean inspirations do indeed exist in the text of Antipater,¹³⁴ who had himself no inkling of the relevant implications: the primordial state is described by the term ‘seed’ (σπέρμα), which is related with the ‘purity’ (καθαρότητα) granted therein by the Anaxagorean ‘purest Mind’ (καθαρός).¹³⁵ Besides, the phraseology involving primordial ‘minds’ appears in the anathemas against Origen,¹³⁶ which were in fact composed by the anti-Origenist leaders of the Laura of Sabas.¹³⁷ Nevertheless, we have two more testimonies. Although these echo rumours about what Origen believed, in one of them, the author says that he read them ‘in the books of Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius’. What he read was that in the primordial state, ‘the human souls were bare minds, that is, incorporeal, and, likewise, both angels and daemons were bare minds, too’.¹³⁸ Moreover, another sixth-century text attributes to Origen the theory that daemons were ‘minds’ before they fell.¹³⁹ However, my caveat is that these texts actually are posterior to (or, at best, contemporaneous with) the terrorism Justinian had imposed concerning what anyone should believe

διῃρέθησαν. … γεγόνασιν ἀπὸ νόων ἄγγελοι, ἀρχάγγελοι, καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς. … τῆς πρώτης μακαριότη τος ἀποστάντες εἰς διάφορα τάγματα σωματωθέντες ἀπεμερίσθησαν.  John of Damascus, op. cit. PG.96.504.38 41: τὸ καλὸν παρὰ τοῦ Κυρίου καταβληθὲν σπέρμα, καὶ τὴν αὐτῶν διόρθωσιν ἐπιτραπῆναι παρὰ τοῦ Κυρίου ἐζήτουν αὐτοί, τοῦ πρώτου σπέρματος τὴν καθαρότητα ἀποβαλόντες.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405a: ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ ἀμιγῆ τε καὶ καθαρόν. Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.9: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ νοῦν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ λέγων. Plutarch, Pericles, 4.6: νοῦν ἐπέστησε καθαρόν.  ACO, Synodus Constantinopolitana et Hierosolymitana anno 536, tome 3, p. 191: τί γὰρ ἕτερ ον παρὰ τὰ Πλάτωνι εἰρημένα τῷ τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν μανίαν πλατύναντι Ὠριγένης ἐξέθετο; … ὡς δὴ πρῶτον μὲν νόας οὔσας καὶ ἁγίας δυνάμεις, ἔπειτα κόρον λαβούσας τῆς θείας θεωρίας καὶ πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον τραπείσας καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ἀγάπης ἀποψυγείσας καὶ ἐντεῦθεν ψυχὰς ὀνο μασθείσας καὶ τιμωρίας χάριν τοῖς σώμασιν ἐμβληθείσας. Likewise, op. cit. p. 213. Also, Canones xv (contra Origenem et Origenistas), tome 4.1, p. 248: Εἴ τις λέγει πάντων τῶν λογικῶν τὴν πα ραγωγὴν νόας ἀσωμάτους καὶ ἀΰλους γεγονέναι δίχα παντὸς ἀριθμοῦ καὶ ὀνόματος.  See NDGF, pp. 406 7; RCR, pp. 258 60; 267; 324 5.  Barsanuphius et John (sixth century), Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Coenobitas, 60: Καὶ λέγουσιν ὅτι οὐκ ἐδημιουργήθησαν αἱ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ψυχαὶ μετὰ τῶν σωμάτων, ἀλλὰ προϋ πῆρχον αὐτῶν, νόες γυμνοὶ οὖσαι, τοῦτ᾿ ἔστιν ἀσώματοι. Ὁμοίως καὶ οἱ ἄγγελοι νόες γυμνοὶ ἦσαν καὶ οἱ δαίμονες νόες γυμνοί.  Pseudo Caesarius (= Cassian the Sabaite), Quaestiones et Responsiones, 168: τὰ Ὠριγένους φρονεῖν … τοὺς δαίμονας ἅμα τῷ διαβόλῳ νόας ὑπάρχοντας καὶ ἀσωμάτους ἁμαρτήσαντας καὶ τῶν οὐρανῶν καταρραγέντας.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1133

about the heretics of old, all of whom he decided to anathematize posthumously, to the outrage of the fathers of the east at this unprecedented novelty.¹⁴⁰ This is one more point showing that the guardians of the imperial orthodoxy, especially after Justinian, were always extremely selective. I do not mean simply that, whereas Justinian introduced posthumous anathematization of alleged heretics, he was not himself treated in the same way, although he died a heretic, namely, an Aphthartodocetist. Instead, the Eastern Orthodox Church canonized him as a saint. What I mean is that the notion of ‘incorporeal minds’ (ἀσώματοι νόες) conveniently made its way into the orthodox Christian literature, in which identifying ‘minds’ with angels became a matter of course.¹⁴¹ The possibility that Origen wrote something of the sort during his very early stages of Christian life cannot be excluded. Since, during his pagan period, his

 See RCR, pp. 40; 259 321; 396.  Cf. the following authors speaking conveniently of ‘incorporeal minds’, and sometimes identifying them with ‘angels’. Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmina Dogmatica, column 451, line 10: Ἤδη μὲν καθαροὶ καὶ ἀείζωοι θεράποντες οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν ἁγνοὶ νόες, ἄγγελοι ἐσθλοί. The same in Carmina Moralia, column 528, line 9. Pseudo Gregory of Nyssa, De Occrsu Domini, PG.46.1156.47 49: κατὰ τοὺς ἀσωμάτους νόας τρυφήσωμεν. Basil of Seleucia, Sermones, column 429 line 27: ὁ καταλάμπων ἀῤῥήτως τοὺς ἀσωμάτους νόας τῷ νοερῷ σου φωτί. Theodore Stu dites, Μεγάλη Κατήχησις, 17, p. 114: ἵνα ζήσωμεν ἀγγελικῶς, ζηλοῦντες τοὺς ἀσωμάτους νόας. Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, De Divinis Nominibus, p. 132: καὶ ὀνομάζονται νόες πνευματι κῶς δηλαδὴ τῆς τοιᾶσδε πατρότητος καὶ υἱότητος ἐκτελουμένης, τοῦτ᾿ ἔστιν ἀσωμάτως, ἀΰλως, νοητῶς. Op. cit. p. 144: καὶ ὡς ἀσώματοι καὶ ἄϋλοι νοοῦνται καὶ ὡς νόες ὑπερκοσμίως νοοῦσι καὶ τοὺς τῶν ὄντων οἰκείως ἐλλάμπονται λόγους καὶ αὖθις εἰς τὰ συγγενῆ τὰ οἰκεῖα δια πορθμεύουσιν. Photius, De Spiritu Sancti Mystagogiae, 69: καὶ ὁ μὲν οὐδὲ τὴν ἀσώματον εὐλαβεῖ ται φύσιν, οὐδὲ ὅτι ὡς νόες καθαροὶ καθαρῶς καὶ ἀμέσως τῷ κοινῷ παριστάμενοι Δεσπότῃ. Epis tulae et Amphilochia, 228: ἵνα μὴ νομίσῃς ὡς καὶ τοὺς ἀσωμάτους νόας διαδραμοῦσα χώραν ἔχοι καὶ μέχρις αὐτῆς τῆς πρώτης φύσεως προϊέναι· … ἐπεὶ τίνα λόγον ὅλως ἔχοι ἀγγέλοις μὲν ἐπι φέρειν τὴν ἄγνοιαν. Op. cit. 244: καὶ σκιρτημάτων καὶ παχύτητος ἀπηλλάχθαι προσύλου τὴν πρὸς τοὺς ἀσωμάτους νόας ἰσότητα ἀναδεδεγμένοι. ἐπισκεπτέον δὲ τὸ ἔσονται ὡς ἄγγελοι θεοῦ. Op. cit. 315: διττὸς γὰρ ὁ τοῦ νοῦ λόγος, … τὸν θύραθεν … εἰ βούλει δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἀσωμάτους νόας. Antonius Studites, Oratio, p. 114: ἣν ἀνυμνοῦσιν ἀπαύστως ἀσώματοι νόες οὐράνιοι. Nic olas of Methone, Refutatio Institutionis Theologicae Procli, 20: ἀλλ᾿ ἡμεῖς γε τοσούτου δέομεν τοὺς νόας τῆς αὐτοκινησίας ἀποστερεῖν, ὡς καὶ τὸ θεῖον αὐτό, ὃ καὶ πρῶτον νοῦν καὶ ὑπέρνοον ὀνομάζομεν. Op. cit. 182: πρὸ ἡμῶν δὲ μετέχουσι τῆς τοιαύτης θειότητος οἱ ἀσώματοι καὶ μέ νοντες ἐν τῷ ἀγαθῷ ἀμεταπτώτως νόες. John Beccus (supra, chapter 11, note 642), Refutatio Libri Photii De Processione Spiritus Sancti, p. 817: ὡς νόες καθαροὶ καθαρῶς καὶ ἀμέσως τῷ κοινῷ παριστάμενοι Δεσπότῃ. Analecta Hymnica Graeca, Canones Junii, 3.1.9: σὺν ἀσωμάτοις νόες βραβεύοντες τοῖς συνελθοῦσιν ἄφεσιν. Also a synaxarium in Codex 12 (amidst the folia writ ten in 1465/6; the rest of the codex was written in 1364), Monastery of Roussanos, Meteora, folio 234v: Θείους μεταστὰς Κασιανὸς πρὸς νόας (‘Once Cassian was transferred to the divine minds’). However, see Thomas Aquinas, apud Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 2.91, quoted infra, note 144.

1134

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

God was the Anaxagorean Nous, it would have been natural for him to call also nous the object which the Nous created. Somehow, the incipient Christian Origen would have found it practical to make some use of the notion of living ‘minds’ created by God/Mind. His plausible aim would have been to make room for the Biblical notion of primeval Fall. The primordial creatures had to be endowed with freedom in order for their fall to make sense as an act which should be called to account. Accordingly, the reality portrayed is the divine one. There is no incorporeal ‘world’ whatsoever: it is God alone who is incorporeal, since ‘life without a body is found in the Trinity alone’,¹⁴² and ‘we believe that to exist without material substance and apart from any association with a bodily element is a thing that belongs only to the nature of God, that is, of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’¹⁴³ As late as the fifteenth century, this distinctive feature of Origen’s thought was known as a commonplace, and Gennadius Scholarius epitomizing Thomas Aquinas attributes to Origen this distinctly anti-Platonic notion which he really held: Origen said that, apart from the Holy Trinity, there is no incorporeal self subsistent [ration al] being.¹⁴⁴

The principles/logoi do exist, but they are themselves not self-subsistent rational animals: for a rational animal is given rise to by a concurrence of more than one logoi. Besides, Gennadius saw this as a counter-point to the Prersocratic thought, employing the platitude that all Presocratics stood on the opposite side and made all beings corporeal, which was incorrect as far as Anaxagoras was concerned. The fact is though that Origen did in fact saw all sorts of ‘angels, whether good or evil’ as existing always in a corporeal form. Therefore, although we know that distortions of Origen’s thought took place already during his lifetime, to which he tried to be always alert,¹⁴⁵ it would have been natural for him to identify the incorporeal ‘logoi’ with ‘angels’ while struggling to reconcile the Anaxagorean pattern with the Biblical notion of primeval sin and Fall. This, if indeed it happened at all, would have been a temporary influence by Philo which lasted only for a short while. For in the crippled version of the extant De Principiis, he makes the remark that incorporeality belongs to

 Origen, Princ, II.2.2. Cf. the idea is that all rational beings live in corporeal form. commJohn, I.17.98: καὶ γὰρ ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ ἡλίου ἐν σώματι καὶ πᾶσα ἡ κτίσις.  Origen, Princ, I.6.4. II.1.4; II.2.8; commJohn, XIX.20134.  Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 2.91: τοῦ Ὠριγέ νους εἰπόντος μηδεμίαν οὐσίαν παρὰ τὴν θείαν τριάδα ἄνευ σώματος ὑφεστάναι.  Origen homJer, 16.1: παράδειγμα ἔλαβον, μὴ ἀφορμάς τις λαμβανέτω ὧν οὐκ ἤκουσε.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1135

the Trinity alone, and, although there are incorporeal objects of creation, these are only the usual objects of cognition: all rational creatures have to be corporeal, whether angels or humans or daemons.¹⁴⁶ Nevertheless, the identification of logoi with angels remained one of his lifelong lasting convictions. The impact of this formulation (‘living minds’) on Christian literature was substantial, but it was only Origen who was anathematized for using this. Gregory of Nazianzus,¹⁴⁷ who clearly sustained the notion of ‘incorporeal minds’, rebuked the idea of angels being corporeal. The interesting point is that Michael Psellus, who praised Gregory for this opinion and quoted it, explained that, against this, Porphyry argued for corporeal angels,¹⁴⁸ which is one more point of Origen and Porphyry sharing common views. If one argued that there is too much smoke not to be fire, I would concede that perhaps Origen used the notion of ‘incorporeal minds’ at an early stage of his Christian life, although the extant De Principiis is contradictory statements and has suffered too much of interpolation, distortion, and clumsy translation to deserve credit. I should have thought that such an opinion, if ever at all, appeared in the early chapters of his commentary on Genesis, which he started shortly before De Principiis, and then continued to write both works simultaneously. It would have been during the early stage of De Principiis that he abandoned the incorporeality of minds, anyway. Besides, the reason why he styled them ‘minds’ is not a question: no other name could possibly have been accorded them once they were created by the supreme and universal Mind. Moreover, this is also a tenet that Origen would have shared with Porphyry, since the notion of ‘incorporeal minds’ does appear in Porphyry writing to Anebo, who wrote that ‘the gods are pure minds’ (θεοὺς εἶναι νόας καθαρούς) and treating the question whether one should pray to the ‘pure minds’, although they are themselves too unlike the human nature.¹⁴⁹ Nevertheless, we just saw that Porphyry shared with Origen the theory that angels are corporeal.

 See Princ, II.2.2, and supra, note 142.  Gregory of Nazianzus, De Theologia, 8: πόθεν ὅτι ἄγγελοι σώματα, καὶ τίνα ταῦτα;  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 51: ἦσαν γάρ τινες τηνικαῦτα, οἳ καὶ τοῖς ἀγγέλοις ἐδίδοσαν σώματα, λεπτομερῆ δὲ καὶ κοῦφα καὶ ἀέρια … οὐ γάρ μοι ἀρέσκει τὰ λόγια, οὔτε ἡ τοῦ Πρόκλου περὶ τούτων ἐξήγησις οὔθ᾿ ὁ Πορφύριος σωματικὰ τοῖς ἀγγέλοις διδοὺς ὀχήματα. ἀΰλους δὲ πάν τως αὐτοὺς πᾶς τις εἴποι, εἰ δὲ ἄϋλοι, καὶ ἀσώματοι.  Porphyry, Epistula ad Anebonem, 1.3a: ἔτι γὰρ μᾶλλον ἀκλίτους καὶ ἀμιγεῖς αἰσθητοῖς εἰπὼν εἶναι τοὺς καθαροὺς νόας, ἀπορεῖς εἰ δεῖ πρὸς αὐτοὺς εὔχεσθαι. See Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 1.15. Porphyry was opposed to the theurgy of his disciple Iamblichus and wrote a letter criticizing the latter’s ideas of theurgy, and it is to this letter that Iamblichus wrote On the Egyptian Mys teries in response.

1136

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

No matter what Origen wrote during the obscure period that followed immediately his conversion to Christianity and before he wrote his De Principiis, the fact is that, soon after that, he came to identifying the Anaxagorean principles with angels functioning within the world, therefore, the incorporeal principles themselves appear to be endowed with bodies and administer the divine will. The idea of different existence of the logoi is perfectly compatible with the Anaxagorean philosophy as explained by Zeno, Porphyry, Simplicius, and Damascius, who pointed out the different mode of existence of the logoi depending on their particular operations. Eventually, the custodians of the imperial orthodoxy condemned Origen. The question is what happened with this notion of ‘incorporeal pure minds’ after him. There is always the question of views of ‘Origenists’ that posterity was all too quick to attribute to Origen himself.¹⁵⁰ A puzzled monk of the sixth-century called on abbot Barsanuphius and asked him anxiously about the ‘bare minds (νόες γυμνοί)’: is that how angels and daemons existed in the beginning? And does universal apokatastasis mean general return to the primeval state of being bare mind?¹⁵¹ The questions were understandable, but the monk was not sure about his sources: he said that he ‘came across the books of Origen, Didymus, the Gnostica of Evagrius, and the books of his disciples’.¹⁵² But the difference between Origen and Didymus is at points one between an Anaxagorean and a Platonist, whereas the difference between Origen and ‘the disciples of Evagrius’ is greater still.¹⁵³ It should be noticed that all accusations against Origen on such issues appear during and after the sixth century, a period in which ‘Origenism’ was a blind wholesale obloquy, indeed a label that normally had noth-

 See RCR, pp. 259 321.  Barsanuphius and John, Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Coenobitas, Epistle 600. This is the doctrine allegedly propounded by ‘the Origenists’: Καὶ λέγουσιν ὅτι οὐκ ἐδημιουργήθησαν αἱ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ψυχαὶ μετὰ τῶν σωμάτων, ἀλλὰ προϋπῆρχον αὐτῶν, νόες γυμνοὶ οὖσαι, τοῦτ᾿ ἔστιν ἀσώματοι. Ὁμοίως καὶ οἱ ἄγγελοι νόες γυμνοὶ ἦσαν καὶ οἱ δαίμονες νόες γυμνοί. … καὶ πάλιν ὅτι δεῖ τὴν μέλλουσαν κόλασιν τέλος λαβεῖν καὶ ἔχουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι καὶ οἱ ἄγγελοι καὶ οἱ δαίμονες ἐπανελθεῖν ὡς ὑπῆρχον νόες γυμνοί, ὃ λέγουσιν ἀποκατάστασιν. Op. cit. Epistle 604: Παυομένης τῆς κολάσεως μέλλει ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἀποκαθίστασθαι εἰς ὅπερ ἦν ἐξ ἀρχῆς, εἰς κα θαροὺς νόας.  Barsanuphius and John, op. cit. Epistle 600.  Cf. Évagre le Pontique, “‘Chapitres des disciples d’Évagre’ dans un manuscript grec du Musée Bénaki d’Athènes”, J. Paramelle (ed.), in Mélanges offerts au R. P. François Graffin, S. J Parole de l’Orient 6 7 (1975 76), pp. 101 13. Also, Chapitres des disciples d’Evagre, Sources Chré tiennes, n. 514, Paris, 2007. Greek title: Κεφάλαια των Μαθητῶν Εὐαγρίου.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1137

ing to do with Origen’s thought.¹⁵⁴ Thus, after Barsanuphius, Anastasius of Sinai referred to ‘Origen and Origen’s initiated exponents’ (Ὠριγένης καὶ οἱ τοῦ Ὠριγένους μῦσται) and attributes to them all the idea that the ‘skin tunics’ of Genesis 3.21 stand for corporeality, and, before humans were clothed with tunics (that is, bodies), they were ‘bare minds (γυμνοὺς νόας πρὸ τῶν χιτώνων)’.¹⁵⁵ However, there is another line of tradition beside the invective against Origen. This includes authors who spoke unreservedly about ‘pure minds (νόες καθαροί)’ and by this, they meant ‘angels’. Gregory of Nazianzus was an admirer of Origen and composed the Philocalia along with Basil of Caesarea; hence, he would have taken up the expression from Origen without taking any offence at that.¹⁵⁶ Besides, a considerable number of Christian authors saw ‘bare minds’ as part of the make-up of the universe, they understood them to be personal rational creatures, notably, angels.¹⁵⁷ Nilus of Ancyra (or Nilus of Sinai, died c. 430), the disciple of John Chrysostom, believed that, once the mind of a hesychast concentrates on itself, it could see ‘the bare minds’ (γυμνοὺς νόας).¹⁵⁸ Photius, who was a fan of the idea of incorporeal and yet individual beings, spoke of ‘pure minds that stand right next to the Lord’.¹⁵⁹ Despite his education, Photius had no inkling of the old and widely accepted Aristotelian principle that ‘anything that moves, it has to be a body’ and ‘motion involves corporeality’.¹⁶⁰ A century after him, the erudite Michael Psellus reminded that Aristotle had set this principle forth,¹⁶¹ and added that ‘what is incorporeal or invisible, it is by nature incompatible with motion’ (οὐδὲν δὲ ἀσώματον οὐδὲ ἀμερὲς πεφυκέναι κινεῖσθαι). Accordingly, he cited a long series of authors who maintained this

 See RCR, pp. 259 321.  Anastasius of Sinai, In Hexaemeron, Book 11, lines 929 39. See infra, pp. 1292; 1295; 1461 2. I have demonstrated the folly of this attribution to Origen in RCR, pp. 291 300, where it is shown that this idea was sustained by Gregory of Nazianzus.  Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmina Dogmatica, column 451, lines 9 10 & Carmina Moralia, col umn 528, lines 8 9: Ἤδη μὲν καθαροὶ καὶ ἀείζωοι θεράποντες οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν ἁγνοὶ νόες, ἄγγελοι ἐσθλοί.  See supra, p. 1133, note 141.  The passage of Nilus is attested by Gregory Palamas, Pro Hesychastis, 1.3.40.  Photius, De Spiritu Sancti Mystagogiae, 69: καὶ ὁ μὲν οὐδὲ τὴν ἀσώματον εὐλαβεῖται φύσιν, οὐδὲ ὅτι ὡς νόες καθαροὶ καθαρῶς καὶ ἀμέσως τῷ κοινῷ παριστάμενοι Δεσπότῃ.  Cf. Photius, Epistulae et Amphilochia, 228, line 107 (τοὺς ἀσωμάτους νόας). Op. cit. 244, lines 20 30 (identifying ἀσωμάτους νόας with angels, op. cit. 315, line 20 (positing τοὺς ἀσω μάτους νόας in an Anaxagorean sense; then, arguing that either the Father or the entire Diety is a Νοῦς): ὅτι νοῦς μὲν λέγεται ὁ πατὴρ ὡς γεννήτωρ καὶ προβολεὺς καὶ τῶν ἐξ αὐτοῦ προϊόν των αἴτιος, νοῦς δὲ καὶ τὸ θεῖον ἁπλῶς πρὸς ἀντιδιαστολὴν τῶν ὑπὸ τὴν κτίσιν. νοῦς τε γὰρ δημ ιουργεῖ καὶ νοῦς κυβερνᾷ καὶ νοῦς συνέχει.  See supra, p. 102, notes 25 27.

1138

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

principle, beginning with Aristotle, and going on with Theophrastus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyry, Ammonius, Damascius, Simplicius, Priscian, John Philoponus, ‘Proclus, the lover of wisdom, and the great Syrianus’; also, ‘all of the Platonists’, and ‘Plotinus and Iamblichus’. Psellus spoke of them in utter admiration, and the fact that he styles those men ‘bare minds’ (νόες γυμνοί) is only a metaphor emphasizing his admiration.¹⁶² Nevertheless, he identified the ‘divine minds’ (οἱ θεῖοι νόες) with ‘angels’, he elaborated considering the different orders of angels after Paul the apostle, and spoke of some lower angels who ‘complement the work of the divine minds’ (οἱ δὲ ἄγγελοι συμπληρωτικῶς ἀποπερατοῦσι τὰς ὅλας τῶν οὐρανίων νόων διακοσμήσεις). His logic is Aristotelian, anyway: the heavenly order is dependent on those minds, which he calls also ‘heavenly substances’ (αἱ μὲν γὰρ ὑφειμέναι τῶν οὐρανίων οὐσιῶν διακοσμήσεις).¹⁶³ Later still, Eustratius of Nicaea felt at liberty to identify ‘the rational souls’ with ‘pure minds (καθαροὶ νόες)’,¹⁶⁴ and then, Neophytus Inclusus used the same expression speaking of ‘angels’.¹⁶⁵ No Christian inquisitor did ever take offence at such statements, even though any idea supposed to be either ‘Platonic’ or ‘Neoplatonic’ or ‘Greek’ in general, real or imagined, was exorcized as a daemon. Whether Origen spoke of ‘living minds’ at an early stage of his Christian life, or not, is a question that I leave moot; indeed, I do not exclude the possibility of having doing so. However, I have emphasized that his thought should be studied not statically, as if this were a statue, but as a process. Perusal of this turns out to cast some light on one of the most enigmatic ways in which he expressed himself. The entire constitution of the world is various and diverse; for it consists of rational beings, and others more divine, and of bodies of different kinds; … then, secondly, of places, such as heaven or the heavens.¹⁶⁶ … In this world, some creatures are said to be super celestial, that is placed in the more blessed abodes and clothed with the brighter and more heavenly bodies; and among these many differences are revealed.¹⁶⁷ … Some creatures, however, are called earthly, and among these, too, there are no small differences, for some are barbar ians, others Greeks, and of the barbarians, some are wilder and fiercer, whereas others

 Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 78.  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 112. The same text, in the anonymous Miscellanea Philosophica (Codex Baroccianus Graecus 131), chapter 33, p. 104, was in fact written by Psellus.  Eustratius of Nicaea, In Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea vi Commentaria, p. 346.  Neophytus Inclusus, Πανηγυρική Βίβλος, oration 19: πρὸς τοὺς νόας τοὺς καθαρούς, πρὸς τοὺς θείους λειτουργούς, πρὸς τοὺς φύλακας ἡμῶν τὸν λόγον ἰθύνωμεν.  Origen, Princ, II.1.1; II.2.2; II.3.4; II.1.4; II.9.1.  Origen, op. cit. II.4.3.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1139

are more gentle.¹⁶⁸ … There are also certain invisible powers, to which the management of things upon earth is entrusted; and we must believe that among these, too, no small differ ences exist, just as is found to be the case among men. The apostle Paul indeed intimates that there are also certain infernal powers and among these in like manner a condition of variety must undoubtedly be looked for.¹⁶⁹

Although this world is one and ‘single’,¹⁷⁰ it comprises particular spaces. However, he was interested not in the particular ‘worlds’ themselves as spatial places, but in the dwellers of them. The pertinent reference in the De Principiis is quite expressive: the ‘places’ are only a ‘secondary’ idea; what is significant is that there is a hierarchy of different ranks. He appeals to Col. 1:16, which speaks of ‘thrones, dominions, principalities and powers’; also, to Eph. 1:21, about Christ ‘who is above every principality and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this world, but also in the world to come’, and here is the conclusion: Here he plainly shows that, beside those beings he has mentioned, there are certain oth ers, which may be named indeed in this world, but they have not on the present occasion been enumerated by him, which perhaps were not known to any other person; and there are others still, which cannot be named in this world, but will be named in the world to come.¹⁷¹

This is from the first book of the De Principiis. At that point, he affords a classification of the higher rational beings by their names: they are ‘gods’ ‘thrones’, ‘dominions’, principalities.¹⁷² This he did also in the first book of the commen-

 Origen, loc. cit. using the language of 1 Cor. 15:40.  Origen, loc. cit. Presumably, he refers to those who dwell in the ‘lower parts of the earth’, according to Eph. 4:9. Origen maintained this existential classification ever since he was an emi nent pagan philosopher, whom Longinus held in the highest regard and wrote that, although Origen opted for oral teaching rather than writing books, he wrote one book entitled On Dae mons (Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 20). Porphyry clearly advises that the pagan Origen maintained a threefold classification of ‘daemons’. Porphyry, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria (fragmen ta), Book 1, fr. 10, apud Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria, v. 1, p. 77.  Origen, op. cit. II.3.6.  Origen, op. cit. I.5.1. The scriptural passages on which Origen grounds this notion are the following: Heb. 1: 4; Col. 1: 16; Eph. 1: 21; also, Matt. 25:41 and Rev. 12:7 (for the expression ‘angels of the devil’); John: 12:31; 14:30; 16:11 (‘prince of this world’); 1 Cor. 2:6 (‘princes of this world’) and Eph. 6:12; Luke: 7:21; 4:33 (‘evil spirits’ and ‘impure daemons’); Phil. 2:10 (being ‘earthly’ or ‘under the earth’); Deut. 32:9 (considering ‘reference to certain different classes, as when it is said ‘the Lord’s portion in his people Jacob, Israel in the cord of his inheritance’) and Deut. 32:8 (‘angels of God’).  Quoting Psalms, 135:2; 49:1; cf. 1 Cor. 8:5.

1140

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

tary on John, which he wrote simultaneously with that part of the De Principiis, referring to creatures of other spaces which have been created by God through the Son:¹⁷³ I think therefore that rational beings are classified in various ranks and among them there is the supreme one, then the second, then the third, and so on, down to the last of the whole; to say for sure which is the supreme rank of life, which is the second and which is the third and to classify them down to the last one is not within human capability, but it is beyond our nature.¹⁷⁴

Therefore, ‘the entire universe of things that exist, both celestial and super celestial, earthly and infernal, may be spoken of in general way as a single perfect world, within which or by which those other worlds that are in it must be supposed to be contained’.¹⁷⁵ There are ‘most pure celestial spaces of the world’ (ἐν τοῖς καθαρωτάτοις τοῦ κόσμου χωρίοις ἐπουρανίοις) and ‘even purer super-celestial ones’ (ἢ καὶ τοῖς τούτων καθαρωτέροις ὑπερουρανίοις).¹⁷⁶ Besides, he recalls Anaxagoras and those who followed him (such as Aristotle) on the idea that aether occupies the highest places, and speaks of the ‘aether and those places which are located above it’ (ἐν αἰθέρι καὶ τοῖς ἀνωτέρω αὐτοῦ τόποις).¹⁷⁷ Pointing to places that are lower and inferior compared to the human condition, he refers also to beings which exist ‘down in the Hades or in any space like that’ (ἐν ᾅδου κάτω ἤ τινι τοιούτῳ χωρίω).¹⁷⁸ The places that are ‘up’ are numerous and, among them, there are differences.¹⁷⁹ In the commentary on Matthew, he refers to the ‘heavenly places’ (οὐράνιοι τόποι),¹⁸⁰ using Plural. Likewise, in the commentaries on the Psalms, he speaks of the ‘dimmer spaces’  Origen, commJohn, II.14.100.  Origen, op. cit. I.31.211.  Origen, Princ, II.3.6.  Origen, Cels, V.4.  Origen, op. cit. III.42 & Philocalia, 19.5. Cf. homJer, 14.17. ἀπὸ τῶν κρειττόνων χωρίων. Cels, VII.32: εἰς τοὺς καθαρωτέρους καὶ αἰθερίους καὶ οὐρανίους τόπους. commJohn, XIX.20.133: Ὅσον δὲ ἐπὶ τοῦ κόσμου τόπους συνεξετάζεσθαι εἶεν ἄν τινες τόποι κάτω καὶ ἄλλοι ἄνω· τὰ μὲν γὰρ περίγεια κάτω ἐστίν· τὰ δὲ οὐράνια ἄνω· ὡς κατὰ τοῦτο τὸν μὲν ἐκ τῶν κάτω πάντως εἶναι ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου· τὸν δὲ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου μὴ πάντως εἶναι ἐκ τῶν κάτω. (The edito rial emendation, Ὅσον δὲ ἐπὶ τῷ κόσμου τόποις κόσμου συνεξετάζεσθαι, makes no sense). De Oratione, 26.6: οὐ πάντως περὶ τῶν ἐν τόπῳ τῆς γῆς κελεύει γίνεσθαι τὰς εὐχάς· ὅπως ὁμοιωθῶσι τοῖς ἐν τόπῳ οὖσιν οὐρανίῳ. frPs, Psalm 88:7 8: Νεφέλαι γὰρ τοὺς οὐρανίους λέγει τόπους· ἀπὸ μέρους τὸ πᾶν ὀνομάζων.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.37.244.  Origen, op. cit. XIX.22.143: ὥσπερ ἐστὶν τῶν κάτω διαφορὰ διὰ τὸ λέγεσθαί τι κατωτάτω, οὕτως καὶ τῶν ἄνω διαφορά.  Origen, frMatt, 51.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1141

(σκυθρωποτέροις χωρίοις),¹⁸¹ using plural too; also, of ‘various worlds’ (τοὺς ποικίλους κόσμους) which ‘contain the various bodies of rational creatures’ (τὰ διάφορα σώματα τῶν λογικῶν).¹⁸² Moreover, he speaks of all ‘rational natures’ (λογικῶν φύσεων) which ‘are sorted out in various worlds and bodies in proportion to their existential state’ (διαιρουμένων κόσμοις καὶ σώματι κατὰ ἀναλογίαν τῆς καταστάσεως).¹⁸³ This is the sense in which various ‘bodies, comprise the world’,¹⁸⁴ drawing a distinction between ‘life in flesh and blood’ and life ‘in aetheral body’.¹⁸⁵ The latter belongs to ‘resurrected’ creatures, living in ‘places’ (χωρίοις) that are of most pure aether and so thin as to be more translucent than light itself (λεπτότητι φωτὸς διαυγεστέροις).¹⁸⁶ The quality of matter of those bodies is commensurate with the existential quality of creatures, and this is the import of such references as ‘purer and aetheral and heavenly places’ (καθαρωτέρους καὶ αἰθερίους καὶ οὐρανίους τόπους).¹⁸⁷The material character of those bodies is too fine and ‘more translucent’ to grasped by the human senses. The notion of ‘body’ should be understood in a broader sense. There is no need to insist on the nature of those bodies. Suffice it to bear in mind that all rational creatures are corporeal. This corporeality can be realized through different qualities of matter.¹⁸⁸ The differences among rational creatures of sundry ranks of life lie in the different degree of their participation in (and knowledge of) the Logos.¹⁸⁹ Christ nevertheless is present in all ranks of life, since ‘all rational creatures participate in Christ’.¹⁹⁰ Rationality (ὁ λόγος) is what establishes a certain affinity between God and creatures.¹⁹¹ Creatures ‘cannot be regarded as totally alienated from God’¹⁹² precisely on account of their rationality, even though the degree of it in rational creatures varies. Christ as Logos is present  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1256.51 52.  Origen, frPs, Psalm 138:14 16; selPs, PG.12.1661.52.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.197.14.  Origen, Cels, IV.57; op. cit. III.51 52.  Origen, op. cit. VII.5. Op. cit. III.35: τῆς καθαρωτέρας χώρας καὶ θειοτέρας. Op. cit. VII.32: τοὺς καθαρωτέρους καὶ αἰθερίους καὶ οὐρανίους τόπους.  Origen, frJohn, 87 & 139.  Origen, Cels, VII.32.  Origen, op. cit. XX.28.250: καὶ τὸ τοιὸν μὲν σῶμα· καὶ ποιὸν σῶμα· ἄλλο δέ τι ἕτερον σώματος.  Origen, selPs, PG.12: 1172.46 47; 1661.50 53; 1676.30 33; frPs, Psalms 134:5 6; 148:4. An ex tensive account of the ‘secret’ doctrine of different ranks of rational creatures is given in the commentary on Matthew, 7.2.  Origen, commJohn, II.11.80.  Origen, Cels, IV.25.  Origen, loc. cit: ὁ γὰρ λόγος τὴν ἀρχὴν ἔχων ἀπὸ τοῦ παρὰ θεῷ λόγου οὐκ ἐᾷ τὸ λογικὸν ζῷον πάντῃ ἀλλότριον νομισθῆναι θεοῦ.

1142

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

in all ranks of life,¹⁹³ indeed ‘he is present in each rational creature’.¹⁹⁴ Even ‘daemons are regarded as created by God, yet not qua daemons, but in as much as they are a sort of rational creatures’ (καθὸ λογικοί τινες).¹⁹⁵ The higher a ‘heaven’ the closer to the Logos is supposed to be. This is the sense in which Christ is ‘the king of heavens’ and his ‘kingdom is not a dominion over a part of the lower places, or over a part of the higher ones, but it is [dominion over] all the higher places which have been called heavens’.¹⁹⁶ For Christ the Logos has full authority ‘not only over one heaven, but over all of the heavens’.¹⁹⁷ Therefore, since the dwellers of various particular spaces in the ‘one and single world’ are always endowed with a body, is is not possible to identify them with the incorporeal logoi. This Origen actually confirms: the ‘names’ of superior tiers of being indicate not ‘any species of animal’ (οὐκ εἶδος ζῴου), but they are names of ‘actions (ὀνόματα πραγμάτων), which those thus named have been assigned with’.¹⁹⁸ This is a statement made upon his conversion to Christianity, which means that he had a clear philosophical grasp of what this was all about while writing as a theologian. This suggests that, unlike later intellectuals who did admire Origen, he himself did not mean to indentify the logoi with the various orders of rational beings mentioned by Paul. For the former are incorporeal, and the latter are corporeal creatures. How then do angels come to be associated with logoi? This is a delicate point, which Origen explained by means of the passage of the Deuteronomium, 32:8‒9: When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the children of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

The answer to this question should be found in the intermittent identification of persons with their function: Jesus was the Logos, who taught his logoi (teaching); his disciples, as well as Paul, were men as well as logoi, due to their function as

 Origen, commJohn, I.31.216 8; Cels, I.62.  Origen, frJohn, 18.  Origen, Cels, IV.65.  Origen, commMatt, 14.7.  Origen, op. cit. 13.31.  Origen, commJohn, II.23.146: τὰ ὀνόματα οὐχὶ φύσεων ζώων ἐστὶν ὀνόματα ἀλλὰ τάξεων, ὧν ἥδε τις καὶ ἥδε λογικὴ φύσις τέτευχεν ἀπὸ θεοῦ. Θρόνος γὰρ οὐκ εἶδος ζῴου οὐδὲ ἀρχὴ οὐδὲ κυριότης οὐδὲ ἐξουσία, ἀλλὰ ὀνόματα πραγμάτων, ἐφ᾿ ὧν ἐτάχθησαν οἱ οὕτως προσαγο ρευόμενοι. See discussion infra, pp. 1156; 1327.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1143

promulgators of the divine logos (teaching). Accordingly, in the first book of the commentary on John, we read that ‘the gospel is served by men and angels, and, I think, by principalities and powers and thrones and dominions, and by every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.’¹⁹⁹ In this text, angels are not identified with principalities, et cetera; and the point underlying this statement should be found in Origen positing that ‘names’ indicate ‘actions’: in essence, it is possible to indentify the name of an agent of a certain activity with the activity itself, since names only indicate certain realities.²⁰⁰ This is why we come upon ‘thrones, principalities’, etc. being styled ‘rational creatures’ (λογικά) in the same work, indeed in the same book (the second one of the commentary on John) in which Origen explicated that those names do not indicate living creatures, but only actions that living creatures are assigned with by God.²⁰¹ This point can be further clarified by Origen’s references to the foregoing passage of Deuteronomium, 32:8‒9: once the world was made, the logoi keep acting within it in the Anaxagorean sense, and ‘angels’ supervise the activity of the logoi.²⁰² The idea of angels supervising the logoi is introduced in order to vouchsafe the notion of the divine providence. Aristotle introduced immovable movers of the spheres, although he could have assigned this function to the supreme Immovable Mover. Probably the reason for him to have done so was that he did in fact maintain a notion of divine providence²⁰³ in the super-lunar region and made those movers ‘heavenly gods’ (τοῖς οὐρανίοις θεοῖς)²⁰⁴ who are acolytes  Origen, op. cit. I.15.88. Cf. Eph. 1:21.  Origen, Cels, I.24 (& Philocalia, 17.1); I.71; commJohn, I.9.52; I.24.156; VI.41.216; XIX.15.98; XX.29.267; XXXII.26.330; Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 46; De Oratione, 14; Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos, 36a & Philocalia, 9.3; selPs, PG.12.1164.59 61 & Philocalia, 26.8; commMatt, 12.3; 14.22; selNum, PG.12.581.14 16.  Origen, commJohn, I.31.214; II.14.104; frJohn, 1. Cf. ‘thrones, principalities’, etc. identified as ‘angels’ in op. cit. X.39.269; XIII.25.151; XIII.50.332; Cels, IV.29; VI.71; De Oratione, 17.2.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.50.332: ἕκαστος μὲν τῶν ἀγγέλων κάμνει περὶ τὴν ἰδίαν μερίδα· οἰ κονομῶν τὰ κατ᾿ αὐτήν. Cf. homJer, Homily 5.2: ὅτε γὰρ διεμέριζεν ὁ ὕψιστος ἔθνη· ἐγενήθημεν ἡμεῖς οὐ μερίς σου οὐδὲ μετὰ τοῦ λαοῦ Ἰακὼβ σχοίνισμα κληρονομίας σου· [Deut. 32:9] ἀλλὰ γε γόναμεν ἄλλων μερίδες. frPs, Psalm 118:7: ἀλλ᾿ ἡμεῖς μὲν ἀγγέλων γεγόναμεν κλῆροι· ὁ δὲ Ἰσραὴλ μερὶς ἐχρημάτισε τοῦ Κυρίου καὶ σχοίνισμα κληρονομίας αὐτοῦ; [Deut. 32:9] Πῶς οὖν ἡ κληρονο μία τῶν ἀγγέλων ἐπίστευσεν· ἡ δὲ μερὶς τοῦ Κυρίου ἠπίστησεν; selPs, PG.12.1213.34 36. Οὕτως ἐγενήθη σχοίνισμα κληρονομίας αὐτοῦ Ἰσραήλ. Εὐδοκῶν δὲ τῇ ἰδίᾳ κληρονομίᾳ· ὡς κρατίστῃ ταῦτα φησί.  See supra, p. 1120, and note 94.  Supra, p. 1120, Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 295.

1144

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

serving to his God’s ‘creation and providence’. Likewise, Origen (who believed that Aristotle allowed only for partial providence)²⁰⁵ saw the scriptural ‘angels’ as surrogate agents administering the function of the logoi. At several points of his exposition, Origen stops short of elaborating, since this is about ‘a deeper mystery’, or an ‘ineffable’ one. Normally, he quotes from Heb. 5:11, ‘we have many things to say, which are hard to interpret’, (πολὺς ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος καὶ δυσερμήνευτος λέγειν), but he uses this in the sense of ‘very profound doctrine’, and always omits the second half of Paul’s phrase, namely, ‘seeing that you are dull in hearing’. The explanation²⁰⁶ of this involves something more mysterious and more profound, the un derstanding of which is beyond the capacity of the common people. To explain these mat ters, and to reply to Celsus’ question about Christ’s advent … it is necessary to touch on the subject of divisions, and explain why when the Most High divided the nations and he scat tered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God; and the Lord’s portion was Jacob, the lot of his inheritance. ²⁰⁷ And it will be necessary to explain generation within the limits of each boundary, each one being subject of the one who has been assigned that region. … For there are some ineffable and indescrib able connections and interrelations about the different dispensations concerning human souls.²⁰⁸

Moreover, Let us take the risk and give an account of a few of the more profound truths which have a mystical and secret conception of the way in which different regions of the earth were div ided from the beginning among different overseers. … It seems to me that Celsus misunder stood certain very mysterious teachings about the division of the regions of the earth. Even Greek history touches on them in some way, when it introduces the idea that some of the supposed gods contended with one another over Attica, and, in the poets, makes some of the supposed gods confess that some places are closely related to them.²⁰⁹ Barbarian his

 Cf. Origen, Cels, I.21; III.21: Aristotle ‘interrupted the providence’.  Concerning the timing when the Incarnation took place.  Deut. 32:8 9.  Origen, Cels, IV.8.  On the contest between Athena and Poseidon for Attica, see Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Demosthenis Dictione, 28. Pseudo Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 3.179. Themistius, Πρεσβευτικὸς ὑπὲρ Κωνσταντινουπόλεως ῥηθεὶς ἐν Ῥώμῃ, p. 47. Pseudo David, In Porphyrii Isagogen, Praxis 35, p. 90. John of Sardis (bishop, ninth century), Commentarium in Aphthonii Progymnasmata, p. 124. Suda, letter alpha, entries 726 & 4358; letter gamma, entry 195; letter mu, entry 1337; letter pi, entry 2105. John Tzetzes, Scholia et Glossemata in Chiliades, Chilias 5, verse 673. Anonymous, Prolegomena in Artem Rhetoricam, p. 21. Anonymous, Expositio Artis Rhetoricae, p. 726. Anony mous, Scholia in Aristophanem, Scholia in Ecclesiazusas (scholia vetera), comm. on verse 473. Anonymous, Scholia in Aristophanem, Commentarium in Nubes, comm. on verse 587a. Anony

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1145

tory also, especially that of the Egyptians, shows similar things in the matter of the division of the so called nomes of Egypt, when it says that the same Athena who obtained Sais also possesses Attica.²¹⁰

The passage of Deuteronomium, 32:8‒9, is a recurrent theme; however, in all cases, Origen’s exposition is cryptic and he does not elaborate.²¹¹ What stands behind always is the implicit idea that God administers the world by means of the ‘logoi’ or by ‘angels’. Origen maintained his enigmatic style on this until the end of his life, when he wrote the commentary on Matthew, in which, for the last time, he considered the passge of Collossians 1:16‒18, in which ‘thrones, dominions, principalities, powers’ are said to be ‘created by Christ’, who is before all things, and in him all things consist, and he is head of the body.’ He went only as far as to say that ‘the dominions that were created in Christ are a certain species, and they are different from either the powers or the thrones or principalities’. Each one of them ‘rules over certain ones’ (καὶ ἑκάστη ἐξουσιάζει τινῶν), but he does not explain what ‘ones’ means. It is not even clear whether ‘ones’ is the genitive of a masculine or of a neuter pronoun; only a couple of lines after that, his expression καὶ τῶν ἐξουσιαζομένων ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν πραγμάτων (‘those things which are ruled by them’) suggests that the foregoing τινῶν is neuter, meaning ‘certain things’. His only proposition is that each and every of them (thrones, dominions, etc.) ‘rules over certain things’, because ‘they have been ordered by God to rule over those who deserve to be ruled, in accordance with a certain secret merit of those who are being ruled, depending on their difference.’ However, Origen maintains the veiled character of his exposition, using again the language of Collossians 1:16: And the teaching concerning either those [ruling] powers or the things that are ruled by them, would be profound and hard to interprert.²¹²

My own suggestion is that the case was not that he could not interpret those points; rather, he did not wish to do so because he could not interpret it unless

mous, Scholia in Euripidem (scholia vetera), Scholia in Phoenissas, a comment on verse 854. Anonymous, Scholia in Homerum, Scholia in Iliadem (scholia vetera) (D scholia), comm. on Ilias, XVII.53.  Origen, Cels, V.28 29 & Philocalia, 22.6.  Cf. op. cit. 5.29 & 5.31 (Philocalia, 22.7 & 22.10).  Origen, commMatt, 17.2: καὶ ἑκάστη ἐξουσιάζει τινῶν· τεταγμένη ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ κατά τινα ἀπόρρητον ἀξίαν ἐπὶ τῶν ἀξίων ἐξουσιάζεσθαι κατὰ τὴν διαφορὰν αὐτῶν ὑπὸ ἑκάστην τῶν ἐξουσιῶν.

1146

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

in terms of Anaxagorean philosophy, which was how he comprehended critical points of the scriptural text,²¹³ including the question of heavenly powers ruling over human things.²¹⁴

Natural and symbolic language in Origen When Origen spoke of ‘angels’ and the like, he knew that he used a symbolic (theological) language, and we learn this when he treats the same topic using philosophical language in order to say the selfsame things. It is irony that the man who founded Christian theology and paved the way to Nicaea was himself raised like a Greek, not simply because Porphyry said so, but also because we see him always striving to explain his theological accounts by reasonable reference to reality, or to ‘the nature of things’.²¹⁵ Therefore, the specific designations that he used in order to adumbrate the nature of things in respect of generation, of death, or of the soul, are of little importance. He clearly reflected in Anaxagorean terms, and described the function of the world by means of them, notwithstanding his circumstantial symbolic language at some points, which I will not explore further. I will only add, as a bottom line to the preceding analysis, that, since he was not ‘superstitious about terms’, but he sought ‘the nature of things’,²¹⁶ he depicted the Anaxagorean principles also as ‘hunters’ (θηρευταί), which he picked up from the text of Jeremiah.²¹⁷ He used this term in order to explain ‘those who require one’s soul’, as in the parable in Luke, 12:16‒20, em-

 Cf. Origen, Cels, V.59, quoting Heb. 5:11 (the doctrine about creation of the universe); op. cit. VII.32 (the doctrines of resurrection and of the soul); commJohn, VI.14.87 (the doctrine of the soul); commMatt, 16.12 (interpretation of scripture, in general).  Origen, commMatt, 17.2: πολὺς ἂν ὁ λόγος καὶ δυσερμήνευτος εἴη περὶ τῶν κατὰ τὰς ἐξουσίας ταύτας καὶ τῶν ἐξουσιαζομένων ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν πραγμάτων.  Origen, Cels, I.30: ἀνερευνῶν τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων φύσιν. Op. cit. I.31: Εἰκὸς γὰρ εἶναι ἐν τῇ φύσει τῶν πραγμάτων. Op. cit. I.41: τοῦ ἐν τῇ φύσει τῶν πραγμάτων εἱρμοῦ καὶ ἀκολουθίας. Op. cit. IV.3: Ταῦτα δ᾿ ἰδιώτας μὲν καὶ ἀσυνέτους δύναται συναρπάσαι οὐ μὴν καὶ τὸν ἐνορῶντα τῇ φύσει τῶν πραγμάτων. Op. cit. IV.83: Τίνα δ᾿ οὐκ ἂν τῶν ἁπλουστέρων ἀνθρώπων καὶ οὐκ ἐπι σταμένων ἐνορᾶν τῇ φύσει πάντων πραγμάτων ἀποτρέψαι. frLuc, 10c (ref. to God seeing clearly ‘the nature of things’) γυμνὴ γὰρ αὐτῷ τῶν πραγμάτων ἡ φύσις θεωρεῖται καὶ ὁ σκοπὸς κατανοεῖται. frPs, Psalm 93:8 9: συνιδεῖν ἐθελήσατε καὶ μαθεῖν τῶν πραγμάτων τὴν φύσιν. ad notGen, PG.17.12.40 42: Ἄλλως τε ἡ μεταμέλεια τοῖς μετὰ τὴν πεῖραν μανθάνουσι τῶν πραγμάτων τὴν φύσιν κατάλληλος.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.15.98: μὴ δεισιδαιμονοῦντές γε περὶ τὰ ὀνόματα, ἀλλὰ βλέποντες τὰ πράγματα.  Jer. 16:16.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1147

phasizing that the time of death is unknown, and ‘one cannot know when the hunters are sent’.²¹⁸ His analysis of the resurrection of Lazarus is quite telling: when Jesus asked his deceased friend to ‘come forth’,²¹⁹ he did not in fact summon the soul as if this were sitting next to the dead body (ὡς παρακαθεζομένης τῷ νεκρῷ), which would be ‘absurd’ (ἄτοπον) to maintain. He only asked for the soul of Lazarus to come back into his body. What would be that which would come into the body ‘again’ (πάλιν) to make it alive? What else indeed other than life proper? This is why Origen adds that the soul (life) should come back ‘by being carried by those who have been assigned with such duties’ (ἀγομένην ὑπὸ τῶν τεταγμένων ἐπὶ τούτοις).²²⁰ Who are ‘those’? He determined this in the same commentary, when he spoke of ‘the angels who have been assigned with the sowing of men’ (ἀγγέλων ἐπὶ τῆς σπορᾶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων τεταγμένων) and of ‘the service by the angels sowing bodies souls in bodies’ (ἡ τῶν ἀγγέλων πρὸς τὸ ἐνσπείρεσθαι ψυχὰς σώμασιν λειτουργία). These are also ‘the angels that have been assigned with the duty of carrying out the physical generation of men in the womb’ (καὶ διὰ τῶν τεταγμένων ἐπὶ τῆς γενέσεως ἀγγέλων θεὸν πλάττειν ἐν κοιλίᾳ λέγειν).’²²¹ But it was the same Origen who described similar process of generation in purely natural terms: in that case, ‘the logoi’ which produce plants are the ‘spermatic logoi’, taken as a synonym with ‘angels’.²²² Therefore, whether a man if formed in the womb and then becomes a fully human being, or a man dies, everything takes place according to the operation of certain logoi, which Origen also calls ‘angels’: he conveniently calls them ‘logoi’ or ‘spermatic logoi’ at some points, and ‘angels’ at others. Therefore, when he says that ‘the soul’ of Lazarus was ‘brought back from the place of souls’ and he was carried ‘by those who have been assigned with such duties’, this is only a mere figure describing the same process: the logoi which concurred in order for a certain human being to be alive, and then they ceased to concur thus causing death, ‘return’ (that is, resume their operation) resulting in the soul (= life) coming back again. There is not such thing as a specific ‘space’ somewhere in the universe where incorporeal souls go, rest, and loiter.

 Origen, homJer, 16.4.  John, 11:43.  Origen, commJohn, XXVIII.6.43 47.  Origen, op. cit. XIII.50.329.  Loc. cit. See the passage infra, pp. 1150 1. Origen, selPs, PG.12.1097.25 35, apud Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, pp. 246 7.

1148

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

Whenever ‘the opportune time’ (kairos)²²³ for a certain occurrence comes, this is effectuated by acting logoi, as in the case of angels / logoi carrying out the development of an embryo, ‘at the appointed time’²²⁴, meaning a period of nine months. Likewise, by the end of Contra Celsum (VIII.31) he is more explicit: “the earth functions according to nature because of the appointment of invisible farmers and other administrators who control not only the produce of the earth but also all flowing water and earth.” These ‘farmers’ maintain the natural equilibrium ‘for rain to become and circulate, and air to be free of pollution and give life to those who breath it.’ In the Homilies of Joshua (23.2), he expresses this idea of angels / natural principles much more ‘boldly’. And regarding the parable of the rich man, God told him, “You fool; this night they require your soul from you”.²²⁵ Once again, who are ‘they’? Origen makes himself crystal-clear about this at some points, which render his Anaxagorean inspiration plain. At a fairly mature stage of writing the commentary on John, it is made clear that the ‘kingdom of God’ is analogous to the Anaxagorean principles in their most sublime mode of existence, as ‘decoration of the Body of the Logos’, or ‘embroidered wisdom’. Understood in this sense, it is plain that the kingdom of God can be either ‘within’ us, or outside and far above. Considering this, he notes in distinctly Anaxagorean language: And so long as we preserve the seeds and principles of the truth that have been sown with in our soul (τὰ ἐνσπαρέντα ἡμῶν τῇ ψυχῇ τῆς ἀληθείας σπέρματα καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς αὐτῆς), the Logos has not departed from us. If the opposite happens and man indulges in sin, then we will die in our sin, ²²⁶ being seized while overtaken by it, and taken away by means of it by those appointed to demand back the soul (οἱ παραλαμβανόμενοι ἀπὸ ταύτης ὑπὸ τῶν τεταγ μένων ἐπὶ τῷ ἀπαιτεῖν τὴν ψυχήν), according to him who said, You fool; this night they re quire your soul from you. ²²⁷

A little further, he notes likewise: The souls of all those who are released from the body are taken away when those who have been assigned with this task require them (πάντων μὲν αἱ ψυχαὶ τῶν ἀπαλλαττομένων τοῦ σώματος, παραλαμβάνονται· ἀπαιτούντων τινῶν αὐτὰς τῶν ἐπὶ τοῦτο τεταγμένων). And it is natural that those who have been appointed to this service are superior to the souls. For

    

I have canvassed this in PHE, pp. 130 44: ‘The concept of καιρός’. Origen, commJohn, XIII.50.329: καὶ ἐν καιρῷ τῷ τεταγμένῳ. Luke, 12:16 20. Cf. John, 8:21; 8:24. Origen, commJohn, XIX.12.78.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1149

what the statement, You fool; this night they require your soul from you, indicates is some thing such as this.²²⁸

It is then clear that whether we call ‘those assigned with this task’ logoi or angels, there is no difference: Origen described them and their function by using both designations alike. The texts of Philo identifying logoi with angels were familiar to Origen. When he wrote the thirteenth book of his commentary on John, he was in Caesarea of Palestine, where he lived for only two years before moving to Tyre, where he spent the last twenty-eight years of his life.²²⁹ The latter was a gloomy stage of his Christian life, and probably he was no longer a presbyter of the Church, or he was so only nominally. At this point, his identification of the logoi with angels could not be clearer, and it is telling that he chooses to expound his views by means of the distinctly Anaxagorean notion of ‘seeds’, a term which is not difficult to come upon in scripture. Thus, the natural generation of human beings by means of the natural process is understood as taking place by the action of angels/logoi. What is this process? But of course, the intercourse of male and female, which produces an embryo that gradually grows into a fully developed human being according to natural laws. This is what he describes as coming about through the action of ‘angels’, that is, of the logoi of the universe according to which this natural process is carried out: We must consider whether, since the angels have been assigned with the sowing of men (ἀγγέλων ἐπὶ τῆς σπορᾶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων τεταγμένων), the apostles, who are their co la bourers in the perfection of those who have been sown, perhaps enter into the labour of others by reaping and discovering fruits in those benefited. … It is worthwhile to see if the service of the angels in sowing bodies souls in bodies (ἡ τῶν ἀγγέλων πρὸς τὸ ἐνσπείρεσθαι ψυχὰς σώμασιν λειτουργία) is laboured because they bring together two cer tain things, which are opposite in nature, into one mixture (δύο τινὰ συναγόντων τῇ φύσει ἐναντία εἰς κρᾶσιν μίαν) and, at the appointed time (καὶ ἐν καιρῷ τῷ τεταγμένῳ), these begin to make the constitution concerning each one, while they also advance to perfection that which was formed earlier (καὶ εἰς τελεσφόρησιν προαγόντων τὸν προπεπλασμένον).²³⁰ … just as the Law was ordained by angels,²³¹ and the logos spoken [by angels] became steadfast,²³² although actually this was spoken by God, so it is possible to say that God

 Origen, op. cit. XIX.15.98.  See Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, pp. 405 6; De Mensuris et Ponderibus, lines 511 19. Scholars abstinately turn a blind eye to this testimony.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.50.326 27.  Cf. Gal. 3:19.  Heb. 2:2.

1150

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

forms man in the womb by means of the angels who have been appointed over creation (καὶ διὰ τῶν τεταγμένων ἐπὶ τῆς γενέσεως ἀγγέλων θεὸν πλάττειν ἐν κοιλίᾳ λέγειν).²³³

This is simply a description of a natural process: an embryo will develop ‘to perfection at the appointed time’, that is, after a period of nine months into the womb. Everyone knows what happens during this: the matter supplied by the mother to the embryo makes it possible for the embryo to develop. Thus, we have the principles determining naturally this process by imposing the natural laws upon matter. This is how ‘that which was formed’ (= the embryo) advances ‘to perfection’ and becomes a new human being. All of this is described by means not of natural laws acting upon the case, but by means of ‘angels’ doing the job. These angels are simply the Anaxagorean logoi acting upon matter in a specific manner. ‘Angels’ is only a name for the logoi, or active causes. In order that no doubt should remain as to what Origen really had in mind, I will give the following example of what he meant by saying that a ‘seed’ develops into ‘perfection’, which is simply the Anaxagorean notion of potentiality developing to actuality, an idea that, in turn, was taken up by the Stoics. My point is that the real source of all this idea is no other than Anaxagoras. If Methodius of Olympus’ invective against Origen had a felicitous result, this was preservation of a very illustrative account of the latter’s doctrine of generation, which was recorded by Epiphanius of Salamis.²³⁴ The vital force for a new being to be generated is a ‘seminal logos’ (σπερματικὸς λόγος). This is evidently perceived as incorporeal,²³⁵ in exactly the same way as a soul is understood to be incorporeal, too: it is adumbrated abstractly, not as an independent entity; actually, this force is realized only once it is associated with a physical object, whether an animated body or an inanimate object or a phenomenon. Methodius was not sure whether he had grasped correctly Origen’s illustration of a seminal logos creating wheat out of a seed, which is why he states, ‘if we have understood his example properly’ (εἰ καλῶς ἐλάβομεν τὸ παράδειγμα). To be sure, he had grasped it perfectly. Let us then follow the argument:

 Origen, op. cit. XIII.50.329.  Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, pp. 422 7.  The father of the doctrine, namely Chrysippus, actually thought of it as corporeal. Origen rebuked the Stoics for this, blaming them for having made ‘the first principles corporeal’. Cels, I.21: ἀρχὴν φθαρτὴν εἰσάγοντος τὴν σωματικήν. Op. cit. VI.71: τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, σωματικὰς λέγοντας εἶναι τὰς ἀρχάς. So did Plotinus meaning both the Stoics and the Atomists, perhaps also the Epicureans. Op. cit. III.1.2; IV.4.20; V.4.1.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1151

Once the seminal logos seizes the matter which is around and takes hold of all of it, and compels it to be shaped according to the forces that are inherent in this [logos], it imposes [its own power] upon that which formerly was earth, and water and air and fire. Once it has conquered the qualities of these [four elements] (νικήσας τὰς ἐκείνων ποιότητας), it trans forms them to that quality, of which this [logos] is the creator. This is how wheat is brought into being, which is by far different from the initial seed (εἰς ὑπερβολὴν διαφέρων τοῦ ἐξ ἀρχῆς κόκκου), in terms of size and shape and variety.²³⁶

Despite the Stoic notion of ‘seminal logos’ being there, my experience from modern scholarship, which is always eager to discover Platonism everywhere in Origen, is that it would be branded ‘Platonism’, too. However, this is actually Stoicism building on the legacy of Anaxagoras, and we know this only because Origen himself replying to Celsus informed posterity that this was a Stoic doctrine.²³⁷ For all his dissent on grounds of ontological principles, Plotinus had grasped the Stoic notion, which makes him a reliable source of reconstructing some Stoic views.²³⁸ Plutarch, Porphyry, and Proclus criticized the Stoics for having made the soul a product of the earth: it appeared to Neoplatonists that the Stoics produced ‘the superior from the inferior’.²³⁹ Plotinus argued that these logoi must of necessity be immaterial, whereas the Stoics held them to be material. The truth is, however, that Plotinus was rather baffled at the Stoic notion of logoi, which he was unable to classify among the genera or species he was aware

 Origen, selPs, PG.12.1097.25 35, apud Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, pp. 246 7.  Origen, Cels, IV.48: Ὅπου γε ὁ Σολεὺς Χρύσιππος, ὁ τὴν Στοὰν τῶν φιλοσόφων πολλοῖς συγγράμμασι συνετοῖς κεκοσμηκέναι νομιζόμενος, παρερμηνεύει γραφὴν τὴν ἐν Σάμῳ, ἐν ᾗ ἀρ ρητοποιοῦσα ἡ Ἥρα τὸν Δία ἐγέγραπτο. Λέγει γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ συγγράμμασιν ὁ σεμνὸς φιλόσοφος ὅτι τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ ὕλη παραδεξαμένη ἔχει ἐν ἑαυτῇ εἰς κα τακόσμησιν τῶν ὅλων. This is fr. 1074 of Chrysippus’ Fragmenta Logica et Physica. Cf. Cels, I.37: Εἰ γὰρ γενητός ἐστιν ὁ κόσμος, ὡς καὶ πολλοῖς Ἑλλήνων ἤρεσεν, ἀνάγκη τοὺς πρώτους μὴ ἐκ συνουσίας γεγονέναι ἀλλ᾿ ἀπὸ γῆς, σπερματικῶν λόγων συστάντων ἐν τῇ γῇ.  We owe to Plotinus the following portions attesting to Stoic thought. Chrysippus, frs. 314; 315; 319; 320; 371; 373; 375; 376; 400; 402; 443; 478; 799; 804; 858; 934; 946; 986. J. von Arnim made a wholesale attribution of all references to Chrysippus, but the fact is that nowhere does Plotinus mention Chrysippus by name. By the same token, in the SVF there are sixty six references by Origen, which have contributed to our understanding of the Stoic philosophy. However, Origen refers to Chrysippus by name at ten points only. This means that the rest of his references do not necessarily record Chrysippus’ views, as von Arnim assumed: they may be either Origen’s own, or ones by later Stoics, such as Cornutus. I postpone further discussion of this issue, which at present is beyond my scope.  Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1052F 1053A; op. cit. 1053C D; De Primo Frigido, 946C; De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1084D E. Porphyry, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evan gelica, 15.11.4.

1152

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

of.²⁴⁰ He thought that involvement of immaterial forms with matter is only detriment to them.²⁴¹ His point was that ‘bodies are able to do what they can thanks to incorporeal powers’; therefore, that which matter assumes upon itself ‘are immaterial and incorporeal logoi’.²⁴² Despite this dissent, the doctrine of seminal logos forming matter and producing natural objects exercised some appeal to him,²⁴³ even though he dismissed seminal logoi as a formative power of the soul.²⁴⁴ In reality, he saw the ingenuity and plausibility of nature operating according to principles which are forming forces: he took exception only to the axiom that these principles are material. Origen actually believed that seminal logoi are present and function immediately upon formation of an embryo, following intercourse between a man and a woman.²⁴⁵ Like Plotinus, he maintained that, unlike personal natural characteristics (such as stature, shape of face, etc.), the tendencies of a human soul are formed by exercise of free will and action.²⁴⁶ Nevertheless, he allowed for some mental predispositions originating with certain seminal logoi, which explains hereditary qualities.²⁴⁷

 Plotinus, op. cit. VI.1.29.  Plotinus, op. cit. I.8.8.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.7.8a.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.9: Ὡς γὰρ ὄντος λόγου ζῴου τινός, οὔσης δὲ καὶ ὕλης τῆς τὸν λόγον τὸν σπερματικὸν δεξαμένης.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.4.39: Γίνεται τοίνυν τὰ ἐν τῷ παντὶ οὐ κατὰ σπερματικούς, ἀλλὰ κατὰ λόγους περιληπτικοὺς καὶ τῶν προτέρων ἢ κατὰ τοὺς τῶν σπερμάτων λόγους· οὐ γὰρ ἐν σπερ ματικοῖς λόγοις ἔνι τι τῶν γινομένων παρὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς αὐτοὺς λόγους οὐδὲ τῶν παρὰ τῆς ὕλης εἰς τὸ ὅλον συντελούντων, οὐδὲ τῶν δρωμένων εἰς ἄλληλα παρὰ τῶν γενομένων.  Origen, Cels, I.37: Τί οὖν παράδοξον, εἰ βουληθεὶς ὁ θεὸς θεῖον τινα ̀ διδάσκαλον πέμψαι τῷ γένει τῶν ἀνθρώπων πεποίηκεν, ἀντὶ τοῦ διὰ σπερματικοῦ λόγου τοῦ ἐκ μίξεως τῶν ἀρρένων ταῖς γυναιξὶ ποιῆσαι, ἄλλῳ τρόπῳ γενέσθαι τὸν λόγον τοῦ τεχθησομένου;  Origen, commMatt, 13.26: δοκεῖ μοι ὅτι ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις σώμασίν ἐστι μεγέθη διάφορα, ὡς τινὰς μὲν αὐτῶν εἶναι μικροὺς ἑτέρους δὲ μεγάλους καὶ ἄλλους τοὺς μεταξύ, καὶ πάλιν εἶναι μικρῶν διαφορὰς ἐπὶ πλεῖον ἢ ἔλαττον ὄντων μικρῶν, ὁμοίως καὶ μεγάλων, καὶ τῶν μεταξύ, οὕτως καὶ ἐν ταῖς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ψυχαῖς ἐστί τινα χαρακτηρίζοντα τὴν μικρότητα αὐτῶν καὶ ἄλλα τὴν (ἵν᾿ οὕτως εἴπω) μεγαλότητα καὶ ἁπαξαπλῶς ἄλλα ἀνάλογον τοῖς σωματικοῖς τὴν μεταξύτητα. ἀλλ᾿ ἐπὶ μὲν τῶν σωμάτων οὐ παρὰ τὴν αἰτίαν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ἀλλὰ παρὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους ὁ μέν τις ἐστι βραχὺς καὶ μικρός, ὁ δὲ μέγας, ὁ δὲ μεταξύ. ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ψυχῶν καὶ τὸ ἐφ᾿ ἡμῖν καὶ αἱ τοιαίδε πράξεις καὶ τὸ τοιοῦτον ἦθος τὴν αἰτίαν ἔχει τοῦ μέγαν τινὰ εἶναι ἢ μικρὸν ἢ ἐν τοῖς μεταξὺ τυγχάνειν.  Origen, commJohn, XX.2.5 6: ἀπό τινων σπερματικῶν λόγων, συγκαταβαλλομένων τισὶν ὡς οἶμαι ψυχαῖς, δεῖ χαρακτηρίζειν τοὺς ὄντας σπέρμα τοῦ ᾿Aβραάμ …. δῆλον ὅτι οὐ πάντες ἄνθρωποι μετὰ πάντη σπερματικῶν λόγων τῶν αὐτῶν ἐγκατασπαρέντων αὐτῶν ταῖς ψυχαῖς τῷ βίῳ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐπιδεδημήκασιν. Op. cit. XX.3.13: τοῦτο νοητέον περὶ τοῦ σπέρματος τοῦ Σὴμ καὶ Νῶε καὶ τῶν ἀνωτέρω δικαίων, ὧν τὰς ἰδιότητας σπερματικῶς δοκοῦσιν κοινῇ ἀνει

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1153

Proclus followed this doctrine in its salient features. Nevertheless, although the principle sounds Stoic,²⁴⁸ the specific example of seed developing to wheat impelled by the force of seminal logos is Origen’s. This is the same imagery that Proclus himself used in order to make the same point: a seed contains in itself the logoi that produce its next stage of existence. Proclus, of course, was explicit on those logoi being immaterial,²⁴⁹ and so did Origen, who criticized the Stoics for having made ‘the principles material’, as mentioned earlier. Therefore, Origen held that the Anaxagorean principles or logoi could be identified as ‘angels’,²⁵⁰ or the messengers and workers carrying out what the Mind dictates according to its rationality or Logos. I will then say a few things about the theory of Origen on this, which confirms his idea of what ‘angels’ really are, in order to show that what Wolfson thought to be a medieval novelty was in fact a much older one. Following this analysis, it can now be argued that Origen dissented from Aristotle’s immovable movers, as much as did he so from Neoplatonism: the heavenly spheres are moved not by additional divine intellects, or souls, but by the one and same Creator ruling over his natural logoi/principles. Little wonder that he follows the logic of Alexander of Aphrodisias once again. Besides, a statement which he made by the end of his life in reply to Celsus has escaped attention: it has not be noticed that Origen actually expresses himself in relation to Aristotle’s contradictory theory about immovable movers,

ληφέναι εἰς γένεσιν ἐρχόμενοι ᾿Aβραὰμ καὶ Ναχὼρ καὶ ᾿Aρράμ· ἀλλ᾿ ὁ μὲν ᾿Aβραὰμ γεγεωργηκέναι οὓς εἶχεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ σπερματικοὺς λόγους πάντων τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ δικαίων, καὶ τούτοις προστε θεικέναι ἁγίαν ἰδίαν ποιότητα, τὴν κατὰ τὸ ἴδιον αὐτοῦ σπέρμα, οὗ ἐδύναντο μετέχειν οἱ μετ᾿ αὐτὸν καλούμενοι σπέρμα ᾿Aβραάμ. Op. cit. XX.5.36 38: ἔστιν δὲ ἰδεῖν ἐπικρατοῦντα καὶ τὸν λόγον τῆς γυναικὸς ἢ τοῦ πατρὸς τῆς γυναικὸς ἢ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτῆς ἢ τοῦ πάππου αὐτῆς, κατὰ τοὺς ἐν ταῖς μίξεσι βρασμοὺς ἅμα πάντων σειομένων, ἕως ἂν ἐπικρατήσῃ τις τῶν σπερμα τικῶν λόγων. ταῦτα δὴ μεταγέσθω ἐπὶ τὴν πεπληρωμένην ψυχὴν νοητῶν σπερμάτων, ἐληλυ θότων ἀπό τινων ὀνομαζομένων πατέρων αὐτῆς, καὶ τὸ παρὰ τὸ πολυκίνητον ἢ εὐκίνητον τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ καὶ τὴν ἐπὶ τοιάσδε φαντασίας ἐπίστασιν προκυπτέτωσαν οἱονεὶ σπερματικοί τινες τῶν πατέρων λόγοι· ὧν γεωργουμένων ἔσται τις τέκνον ὅδε μὲν τοῦ ᾿Aβραάμ, δῆλον δ᾿ ὅτι ὁ αὐτὸς ὢν καὶ τοῦ Νῶε, ἄλλος δὲ τοῦ Νῶε, οὐχ ὥστε δὲ εἶναι καὶ τοῦ ᾿Aβραάμ, καὶ ἄλλος τοῦ Χαναάν, καὶ ἄλλος τινὸς τῶν δικαίων ἢ τῶν ἀδίκων. Op. cit. XIII.41.273: Ἡμεῖς οὖν θερισμὸν συναγομένου καρποῦ εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἐκλαμβάνομεν κατὰ τὴν τελείωσιν τοῦ σπερματικῶς ἐγ κειμένου κατὰ τὰς ἐννοίας ἡμῖν λόγου ἀπὸ γεωργίας πλείονος τετελειωμένου.  J. von Arnim ascribed this statement of Origen to Chrysippus, fr. 1074, apud Origen, Cels, IV.48. However, there is no evidence allowing for making this an attribution to any particular Stoic.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 396.  See further discussion infra, pp. 1190 1; 1327; 1359; 1373 4; 1343 8.

1154

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

which naturally any Neoplatonist would be quick to style ‘souls’, or the like. Speaking of the pagan folly of believing in many gods, he says this: How much more certain and superior to these fantasies is it to be persuaded by the visible universe that the world is well ordered, and to worship the one Maker of that which is itself one! For the world is one and coherent throughout (ἑνὸς ὄντος ἕνα καὶ συμπνέοντος αὐτοῦ ὅλῳ ἑαυτῷ); therefore, it cannot have been made by many makers. Nor can it be held to gether by many souls which move the whole heaven ²⁵¹ (ὡς οὐδ᾿ ὑπὸ πολλῶν ψυχῶν συνέ χεσθαι ὅλον τὸν οὐρανὸν κινουσῶν). For one soul is enough, which bears up the whole fixed sphere from east to west (ἀρκεῖ γὰρ μία ἡ φέρουσα ὅλην τὴν ἀπλανῆ ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν ἐπὶ δυσμάς), and comprehends within itself all (καὶ ἐμπεριλαβοῦσα ἔνδον πάντα) that the world needs and that it is not self sufficing in itself (τὰ μὴ αὐτοτελῆ). All things are part of the world; but God is not part of the whole (πάντα γὰρ μέρη κόσμου, οὐδὲν δὲ μέρος ὅλου θεός). For God may not be incomplete as a part is incomplete (δεῖ γὰρ εἶναι τὸν θεὸν μὴ ἀτελῆ, ὥσπερ ἐστὶ τὸ μέρος ἀτελές). And probably a more profound teaching (βα θύτερος λόγος) could show that, strictly speaking, just as God is not part, so also He is not the whole either (κυρίως θεὸς ὥσπερ οὐκ ἔστι μέρος οὕτως οὐδὲ ὅλον), since the whole is made of parts (ἐπεὶ τὸ ὅλον ἐκ μερῶν ἐστι). And reason does not demand that we should accept the view that the supreme God is made up of parts (τὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεὸν εἶναι ἐκ μερῶν), each of which cannot do what the other parts can (ὧν ἕκαστον οὐ δύναται ὅπερ τὰ ἄλλα μέρη).²⁵²

There are important things that Origen says at this point. For one thing, implicitly he replies to Aristotle’s idea, and argues that it is unacceptable to posit many ‘souls’ which move the particular heavenly spheres. Then, he uses the Platonic thesis that the whole is not made of parts, nor is it to be understood as an aggregate of parts, which is in fact a Presocratic thesis, and Simplicius told us that this was held by both Parmenides and Anaxagoras.²⁵³ He uses the vocabulary of his opponent Celsus, and puts to use the Parmenidian and Anaxagorean idea in order to argue that positing God as ‘whole’ does not suggest that this whole is made of parts, which was a notion embraced by Christians²⁵⁴ and Neoplatonists alike.²⁵⁵ Moreover, we can see his ambivalence

 A reply to both Plato and Aristotle. Italics are mine.  Origen, Cels, I.23.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 34: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομένιος ἔοικε τῶν εἰδῶν πάντων τριτ τὴν θεάσασθαι τὴν διαφοράν, … καὶ εἴη ἂν τὸ σύμπαν τοῦτο τὸ τοῦ Παρμενίδου ἓν ὄν.  Athanasius followed Origen on this almost to the word, Contra Gentes, 28: ὁ γὰρ Θεὸς ὅλον ἐστὶ καὶ οὐ μέρη, καὶ οὐκ ἐκ διαφόρων συνέστηκεν, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτὸς τῆς πάντων συστάσεώς ἐστι ποιητής. Likewise, Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, De Divinis Nominibus, p. 136: ᾿Aλλὰ καὶ ἓν ὢν καὶ παντὶ μέρει καὶ ὅλῳ καὶ ἑνὶ καὶ πλήθει τοῦ ἑνὸς μεταδιδοὺς ἕν ἐστιν ὡσαύτως ὑπερ ουσίως οὔτε μέρος ὂν τοῦ πλήθους οὔτε ἐκ μερῶν ὅλον. Michael Psellus, Theologica, 11: ὁ δὲ θεὸς οὐχ ὅλον, ἀλλ᾿ ἁπλῶς θεός.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1155

concerning the issue of whether heavenly bodies are animate: if the outermost heavenly sphere is moved by the First Mover/God alone, and the inner ones are moved not by different movers/intellects (or, souls), this means that they are not endowed with life of their own. However, although Origen says this in the first book of the Contra Celsum, we saw that he was not prepared to endorse the thesis of Anaxagoras that the sun is simply a fiery stone. Nevertheless, no matter how implicitly, he indicates his Anaxagorean ideas once again. One should wonder, why is it that he feels it necessary to reject the idea that ‘the supreme God is not made of parts each of which cannot do what the other parts can’? Because, for one thing, the Mind is entirely different from the principles/logoi; and, for another, each and every principle is unlike any other, which is why each of them ‘cannot do what the other principles can’. In contrast to Plotinus’ Intellect, Origen’s God the Logos/Son is not the aggregate of the logoi, which are in Him: the Logos as Personal Hypostasis is not Himself made of the logoi which are only the ‘decoration’ of his Body. Therefore, it is plain that Origen was aware of Aristotle’s idea about each heavenly sphere being moved by a particular immovable mover, and explicitly rejects this idea, while reflecting on Anaxagorean premisses. Following this, no matter what the designation Origen attached to the Anaxagorean principles, this does not really matter. A genuine philosopher as he was, at the same point of his commentary he declares that we should not be superstitious about terms whenever we cannot find other terms while we concentrate on realities.²⁵⁶ For Origen cared about the ‘nature of things’ (φύσις τῶν

 Plato, Theaetetus, 204e: Τὸ ὅλον ἄρ᾿ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ μερῶν. πᾶν γὰρ ἂν εἴη τὰ πάντα ὂν μέρη. Cf. Parmenides, 137c. Sophista, 245a: ᾿Aλλὰ μὴν τό γε μεμερισμένον πάθος μὲν τοῦ ἑνὸς ἔχειν ἐπὶ τοῖς μέρεσι πᾶσιν οὐδὲν ἀποκωλύει, καὶ ταύτῃ δὴ πᾶν τε ὂν καὶ ὅλον ἓν εἶναι. Cf. analysis of this passage of the Sophist by Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 3, pp. 70 1: Οὐκοῦν ἐκ τριῶν τούτων ἐπιχειρήσεων ὁ Ἐλεάτης ξένος διέκρινε τὸ ἓν ἀπὸ τῶν μετεχόντων τοῦ ἑνὸς καὶ διηπόρησε πρὸς τοὺς ἓν τὰ πάντα λέγοντας, τὸ ἓν ὄν, τὸ ὅλον, τὸ πᾶν. Ὧν τὸ μὲν πᾶν μετέχει τοῦ ὅλου καὶ ἔστι πλῆθος ἐκ μερῶν πλειόνων τὸ δὲ ὅλον ὁλομελές· τοῦ ὄντος, ὂν γάρ ἐστι καὶ τὸ ὅλον, ὡς Παρ μενίδης μαρτυρεῖ. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 53. Damascius, Princ, p. 116: Ἆρα οὖν οὐκ ἄλλο νοοῦμεν τὸ ὅλον, καὶ ἄλλο τὰ μέρη, καὶ ἄλλο τὸ συναφότερον τοῦτο ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐξ ὁμοταγῶν, οὐδὲ ἐκ στοιχείων, οὐδὲ ἐκ μερῶν, οὐδὲ ὅλον, οὐδὲ σύνθετον, οὐδὲ ἄρα μικτόν.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.15.98: “If we are not superstitious about use of terms, but concen trating on the things themselves, which can be known by using other terms [it might be said that Jesus killed himself]” (μὴ δεισιδαιμονοῦντές γε περὶ τὰ ὀνόματα, ἀλλὰ βλέποντες τὰ πράγματα μὴ εὑρισκόμενα ἄλλοις ὀνόμασιν χρῆσθαι κατὰ τῶν πραγμάτων). E. Preuschen noticed a corrup tion in the text at this point. The term δεισιδαιμονία suggests (as in Latin superstitio sometimes does) excessive scrupulousness in the use of words. Definitely, Origen took up this idea from Philo, De Somniis, 1.230: “Now he gives the title of God to His most senior Logos, not because he was superstitious about application of terms, but because he had set one aim before him,

1156

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

πραγμάτων),²⁵⁷ that is, about reality itself, not about elegant religious or philosophical tales appeasing human ears and anxieties. I have discussed elsewhere the significance of the notion of ‘nature of things’ and what the ‘things’ that Origen actually had in mind were.²⁵⁸ Names indicate ‘pragmata’ (πράγματα, ‘things’).²⁵⁹ The term (plural of the noun πρᾶγμα) is derived from the verb πράττω (to act) from which ‘praxis’ (πρᾶξις) is derived, too. Etymologically, the noun πρᾶγμα signifies the result of an action.²⁶⁰ Therefore, πράγματα indicates action, particularly, results of action. Consequently, his remark is characteristic of how good a command of Greek language Origen had: ‘names’ are ‘indicative of various kinds of action’.²⁶¹ This is why the ‘names’ of superior tiers of being indicate a certain existential ‘rank’, not particular names of specific rational animals: they bespeak the order of existential standing in which ‘a certain rational nature’ has been placed by God (τὰ ὀνόματα οὐχὶ φύσεων ζώων ἐστὶν ὀνόματα ἀλλὰ τάξεων, ὧν ἥδε τις καὶ ἥδε λογικὴ φύσις τέτευχεν ἀπὸ θεοῦ). Accordingly, such names as ‘thrones’, ‘principalities’, ‘dominions’, and the rest, indicate not ‘any species of animal’ (οὐκ εἶδος ζῴου), but they are ‘names of actions’ (ὀνόματα πραγμάτων) which they have been assigned with.²⁶² This is why he always refers to rational beings of other ranks of life using not masculine (οἱ λογικοί, which he never used), but invariably neuter (τὰ λογικά).²⁶³ Consequently, whenever the plural genitive τῶν λογικῶν predicates no noun, it indicates neuter, not masculine.²⁶⁴ The implica-

namely, to express things themselves [= reality]” (καλεῖ δὲ θεὸν τὸν πρεσβύτατον αὐτοῦ νυνὶ λόγον, οὐ δεισιδαιμονῶν περὶ τὴν θέσιν τῶν ὀνομάτων, ἀλλ᾿ ἓν τέλος προτεθειμένος, πραγματο λογῆσαι). This is the sole parallel, which marks one more influence upon Origen by Philo. The only other instance is the following (if indeed this is not in fact Origen’s). Didymus, Fragmenta in Psalms Altera, fr. 709a: οἱ περὶ τὰς λέξεις ταύτας δεισιδαιμονοῦντες. He wrote this urging his readers to seek the meaning behind words, and not to be deterred by apparently ‘naïve’ terms used about God, such as ‘body’ etc. The tenor is exactly the same as that of Philo.  Origen, Cels, I.30; I.31; I.41; IV.3; IV.83; frLuc, 10c; frPs, Psalm 93:8 9; adnotGen, PG.17.12.42.  PHE, pp. 332; 341; 380; 383; 385; 394; 398; 400; 421.  Origen, commJohn, I.9.52; I.24.156; VI.41.216; X.12.63; XIX.15.98; XX.29.267; XXXII.26.330; Philocalia, 26.8 (apud selPs, PG.12.1164.2 4); commMatt, 12.3; 14.22; Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos, 36a; Cels, I.24; I.71.  In Greek etymology, the final syllables (neuter) μα, (feminine) μη, and (neuter) ος, signify the ‘result’ of what the root (theme) of the word indicates.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.164.28: τὰ ὀνόματα … διαφόρων ἐνεργειῶν εἰσὶ γνωρίσματα.  Origen, commJohn, II.23.146.  Origen, Cels, IV.81 & Philocalia, 20.29; Princ, III.1.12 & Philocalia, 21.11; commJohn, I.19.111; II.11.80; frJohn, 2; commEph, 9; frPs, Psalm 37:3; selPs, PG.12.1676.31; selEz, PG.13.780.35.  Origen, commJohn, I.27.181; II.2.15; II.3.20; II.5.44; II.15.109 110; II.18.128; II.23.148; X.45.316; XX.36.333; frJohn, 45; De Oratione, 6.1; 27.12; frMatt, 3 (& Philocalia, 6.1); commEph, 9; 11; selPs,

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1157

tion is about ‘rational nature’ (λογικὴ φύσις), since he is mainly interested in indicating the activity of rational creatures.²⁶⁵ Therefore, there are angels, but their different names point to angelic action, namely, to activity of logoi, not to living rational creatures themselves. This is why Origen did not use the expression ‘rational essence’ (λογικὴ οὐσία)²⁶⁶ which was favourite to Platonists, and opted for speaking of either ‘rational nature’ (λογικὴ φύσις) or ‘rational natures (λογικαὶ φύσεις) instead. For, since the Classical times, ‘essence’ was a static notion meaning predominantly (its other significations aside) ‘individual real being’, which is not what Origen intended speaking of rational creatures of other ranks of life, as he himself just explained. On the other hand, ‘nature’ is a dynamic notion and suggests action and relation of one with another. We just saw that, to Origen, the names of angels indicate only action, or as he put it, performance of the different duties that these ‘logoi’ have been assigned with by God. Accordingly, when angels are identified as ‘logoi’, they are understood as acting agents within the universe, and they are concurrences of many logoi. It should be recalled that oneness and manyness should be understood in accordance with the nature of the principles/logoi. The universe is produced by many logoi, but they also can be collectively described as ‘the [one] logos of the universe’. Likewise, life is produced and sustained by many concurring logoi, but there is one logos of human life, which is exactly what ‘soul’ means. The classification of the Anaxagorean logoi existing differently in different existential levels is clearly present here. This is actually the real ground on which Origen reflects, and only the terminology is adapted to the character of his writings: the logoi which decorate the Body of the Logos are the totality of logoi, and, in that state, they are both one (in God the Logos) and many, and there is oneness and no diversity. However, in the entire realm of creation, the

PG.12.1481.36 37. Cf. Cels, IV.24; IV.74; IV.81; VII.17; VII.60 & VIII.69 (τῶν λογικῶν ζῴων); Princ, III.1.22 (τῶν λογικῶν ὑποστάσεων); commJohn, I.31.210 (τῶν λογικῶν ζῴων). See explanation in frPs, Psalm 103:10 11: Λογικάς τινας διὰ τῶν λογικῶν τούτων αἰνίττεται φύσεις. Op. cit. Psalm 118:107: ἀλλὰ πλειόνων ὄντων τῶν λογικῶν ζώων (εἰς ἀγγέλους γὰρ διῄρηνται καὶ ἀνθρώπους). Op. cit. Psalm 138:14 16 & selPs, PG.12.1661.51 52: διὰ τὸ διάφορα σώματα τῶν λο γικῶν καὶ τοὺς ποικίλους κόσμους καὶ τοὺς περιέχοντας τοὺς αἰῶνας. selPs, PG.12.1305.26 27: Ἡ μὲν γένεσις τὴν τῶν λογικῶν οὐσίωσιν δηλοῖ.  Cf. Cels, VIII.72; commJohn, II.23.146; De Oratione, 27.2&9; commMatt, 16.23; frLuc, 216; Com mentarii in Romanos, pp. 178; 180; selEz, PG.13.816.18; expProv, PG.17: 169.11; 176.34; 193.18; et pas sim.  Although included as ‘fr 45’ in the current edition of Origen’s frJohn, this is probably a text of Didymus.

1158

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

logoi exist as diverse ‘incorporeals’ (ἀσώματα),²⁶⁷ which are objects of cognition as much as are they generative, cohesive, and dissolving causes. They produce the material reality, in which these logoi exist differently. Therefore, in the realm of creation, there is both oneness and manyness, and the logos of anything (be that ‘the world’, or ‘the soul’, or whatever) can be said to be one as well as many logoi. This is the sense in which angels are logoi, which is not strange for him to say; for also a man such a Paul, or men such as Jesus’ disciples, are themselves logoi, too, since they made an important impact (by means of their logoi, i. e. teaching and action) within the world. Clearly then, the logoi exist differently on the Body of the Logos, differently as incorporeal ones within the universe, and differently in their causative and cohesive association and involvement with material objects. All of them are certainly also objects of cognition. An important passage of Origen is illuminative in this respect: when Paul says, ‘I am crucified unto the world, and the world unto me’,²⁶⁸ he means this: “I have grasped the logos of the world, and this is now elevated, and no longer down (νενόηταί μοι ὁ λόγος ὁ περὶ κόσμου καὶ ἐπῆρται καὶ οὐκέτι κεῖται κάτω).” In other words, if comprehension of the logoi in their involvement with matter (that is, generation of things by means of them) is science, comprehension of the logoi of the world in their higher existential status is ontology or theology. Simplicius put it brilliantly: The topic of a physicist is the things that move, in like a manner immovable things are the subject of the mathematician and the theologian.²⁶⁹

The point which makes the difference is the existential state of the logoi that one actually grasps and considers. Origen then goes on, ‘to anyone who has not grasped the logos of creation’ (τῷ γὰρ μὴ συνέντι τὸν λόγον τῆς κοσμοποιΐας), the Logos has not been crucified (ὁ λόγος οὐκ ἐσταύρωται),²⁷⁰ by this implying his doctrine of the Fall and the reason for the world to have come to pass, as well as that, ever since and upon the divine creative act,²⁷¹ the Incarnation of the Logos was set to take place at the appointed time (or, kairos).²⁷² The ‘logos of creation’ involved the mystery of Incarnation of the Logos in due course. Origen argues that, if creation

     

See chapter 13, ‘Three Classes of Being’, pp. 1389 1401. Gal. 6:14. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 520. Origen, frLuc, 257. 1 Cor. 2:7; Eph. 1:4; 3:9; Col. 1:26; Heb. 9:26; 1 Peter 1:20; Rev. 13:8. I have canvassed this in PHE, pp. 65 116; 130 44.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1159

is not understood in this context, ‘one has not grasped the logos of creation’. Therefore, ‘it is good’ to grasp the logoi following this ‘mystical crucifixion’ that happened to Paul, which means grasping the logoi in their highest existential condition. Origen’s care about ‘the nature of things’ was his major qualitative difference from his subsequent Christian theologians, and from such Neoplatonists as Proclus none the less: many of them cared for mythology rather than ‘the real nature of things’. As discussed earlier, Proclus took up casual formulations from his predecessors and developed an entire mythology of flowery prose about the soul, which was abandoned only by his sixth-century colleagues. He was a man of hieratic rather than philosophical nature,²⁷³ and such Christians as Didymus the Blind influenced him,²⁷⁴ whereas Origen always remained a philosopher par excellence. As a philosopher, he has been altogether ignored, and his thought became the topic treated almost exclusively by theologians and clergymen, who wrote about him with one eye on Origen’s text while being all ears to the episcopal doctrine coming from the pulpit. They anathematized him as a ‘heretic’, despite expression of ostensible sympathy for the ‘poor wretched man who fell astray from truth’, by ‘truth’ meaning the doctrine that has always come from the mouth of bishops, many of whom were only thirsty for mundane power. With only few exceptions referring to scholars both ancient and modern, actually, contemporary, Origen’s real thought has been suffering for nearly eighteen centuries. The references to him by Porphyry and Proclus have been dismissed as referring to ‘another Origen’ styled ‘the pagan’ or, ‘the Neoplatonist’. At the same time, this Origen was, and still is, branded a ‘Platonist’, while no one cared, or could at all, pick up and consider the references to that ‘other’ Origen and see whether they concur with this Origen.

Neoplatonism Plotinus spoke very little of ‘many intellects’,²⁷⁵ and he never identified them with ‘angels’ which is a notion unknown to his work. Instead, Porphyry spoke

 Cf. Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 172 (quoted supra, p. 1043, and note 985): whereas Porphyry, Plotinus, and other philosophers, had a proclivity for philosophy, others, such as Iam blichus, Syrianus, and Proclus, opted for the sacerdotal activity.  See RCR, ‘Christian Influnce on Neoplatonism’, pp. 333 77.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.7.17.26 34; III.9.6. Section IV.3.5, which deals with the difficulty of ‘indi viduality’ of an incorporeal soul, suggests that he regards a soul as the lower manifestation of an

1160

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

of ‘angels’ in a spirit running parallel to Origen, which is additional indication that their personal relationship lasted for a lifetime.²⁷⁶ Proclus abused the notion and used it at scores of points,²⁷⁷ whereas Damascius employed it moderately (mostly speaking of either Proclus or the Chaldeans),²⁷⁸ and less so did Simplicius.²⁷⁹ Concerning ‘intellects’ or ‘minds’, once again this was used by Porphyry,²⁸⁰ probably parallel to a certain early period of Origen’s Christian life, and probably also during his pagan one. Once again, use by Proclus was excessive,²⁸¹ whereas Simplicius and Damascius employed it sparingly.²⁸² Considering that the idea of ‘angels’ had also a strong Chaldean colour, the irony is that, of all Neoplatonists, the one who seems to have been of undisputable Greek extraction was Proclus.²⁸³ And yet, he propounded ideas which, although known as Neoplatonic, probably were loans from the Chaldeans, and yet it is currently popular to maintain that the Chaldean testimonies and sources were influence by Neoplatonism in the first place.²⁸⁴

individual mind. This conforms to the early Christian Origen allegedly having suggested (if ever, at all) that ‘souls’ should struggle to become ‘minds’. See infra, pp. 1332; 1360; 1441.  Porphyry, De Abstinentia, 4.13; Ad Marcellam, 21; commTim. Book 1, frs. 17 & 21; Epistula ad Anebonem. 1.4a; 2.3b. Likewise, Iamblichus, Theologoumena Arithmeticae, pp. 24; 57; De Myster iis, 2.2; 2.3; 2.4 10; 3.18; 3.25.  Proclus, commRep, v. 1, pp. 86; 91; 112; 114; 147; 185; v. 2, pp. 52; 94; 97; 100; 110; et passim; Theologia Platonica, v. 3, pp. 98 9; v. 5, p. 88; v. 6, p. 24; In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 3; 32; 103; 187; In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 617; 629; 662 3; 674; 685; et passim; commCrat, 51; 71; 95; 118; 121; et passim; commTim, vols. 1, 2, 3, passim; De Providentia, 25; 62; 65.  Damascius, Princ, pp. 243; 307; In Phaedonem (versio 1), 90; 175; 302.  Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 1157; 1159; commEpict, pp. 42; 45; 80.  Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 79, apud Proclus, commTim. v. 3, p. 64; Epistula ad Anebo nem, 1.3a b. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 1.15.  Proclus, commRep, v. 2, pp. 149; 211; 213; Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 71; v. 3, pp. 11; 15; et passim; Institutio Theologica, 21; 22; 62; 64; et passim; In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 9; 11; 112; et passim; commCrat, 162; 169; commTim. v. 1, pp. 306; 400 1; 425; v. 2, p. 45; et passim.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 85; commPhys, pp. 147; 1337; commAnim, pp. 25; 222; 226; 230. Damascius, Princ, pp. 16; 222; 243; 267 8; 286; 306 7; et passim; In Parmenidem, pp. 5; 9; 15 6; 140; 145; In Phaedonem (versio 1), 302.  Michael Psellus, Theologica, 74: Ἑλλήνων δὲ παῖδες, ὧν δὴ τελευταῖος δᾳδοῦχος καὶ ἱερο φάντης ὁ Πρόκλος ἐγένετο.  Oracula Chaldaica (fragmenta), oracle 49, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 14. Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 13: Διὸ καὶ συνάπτουσιν τοὺς μεριστοὺς νόας ταῖς οἰκείαις πηγαῖς, οὓς πηγάς, τέλη ἅμα καὶ ἀρχὰς οἱ Χαλδαῖοι καλοῦσι· … οἱ ὑπεράρχιοι μερισταί … οἱ ἀρχικοί … οἱ ἀρχαγγελικοί, ψυχικοὶ ὄντες· μεθ᾿ οὓς οἱ ἄζωνοι … μεθ᾿ οὓς οἱ ζωναῖοι … Cf. Damascius, Princ, p. 241. Michael Psellus (probably the best expert on Chaldean doctrines), Opuscula ii, pp. 146 7: φασὶ δὲ καὶ ἀρχικὸν ἥλιον ἀπὸ τῆς ἡλιακῆς πηγῆς καὶ ἀρχαγγελικόν, … καὶ πηγαίας

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1161

Parallel to Christian usage, Proclus made the same notion a conspicuous part of his philosophy. He saw the immaterial intellects as gods of a lower rank, yet not too inferior nevertheless: although the One is represented as Uranus (Heaven), his descendants Cronus/Intellect and then Zeus/Creator are also styled ‘intellects’, or ‘fatherly intellects’.²⁸⁵ At any rate, the recurrent theme in Proclus is that ‘the divine intellects’²⁸⁶ were created by the Intellect²⁸⁷ as substantial beings,²⁸⁸ and the Intellect/Mind encompassed them all.²⁸⁹ Certainly, his accounts could not be Aristotelian, but, in Proclus, echoes of Aristotle’s notion of the intellects being related to circular motion are surprisingly present.²⁹⁰ Damascius followed with characteristic convenience, making use of the Anaxagorean notion more openly: although he certainly remained faithful to the Neoplatonic idea of

ἀκρότητας … καὶ ὑλικὰς δὲ πηγάς φασιν … μετὰ δὲ τὰς πηγὰς λέγουσιν εἶναι ἀρχάς. αἱ γὰρ πηγαὶ ἀρχικώτεραι τῶν ἀρχῶν.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 15.  Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 21: καὶ μετὰ νοῦν τὸν πρῶτον νόες, καὶ μετὰ τὴν ψυχὴν τὴν πρώτην ψυχαί. Op. cit. 62: ἐκ δὴ τούτων φανερὸν ὅτι πλείους μὲν αἱ σωματικαὶ φύσεις τῶν ψυχῶν, πλείους δὲ αὗται τῶν νόων, οἱ δὲ νόες πλείους τῶν θείων ἑνάδων. Op. cit. 111: Πάσης τῆς νοερᾶς σειρᾶς οἱ μέν εἰσι θεῖοι νόες ὑποδεξάμενοι θεῶν μεθέξεις, οἱ δὲ νόες μόνον. comm Tim, v. 1, p. 400: μηδεὶς οὖν οἰέσθω τὸν Πλάτωνα τῶν εἰδῶν ποιεῖσθαι τὴν διαίρεσιν εἴς τε τὰ νενοωμένα καὶ τὰ ἀνόητα· τὰ γὰρ ἐκεῖ πάντα νόες, ὡς εἴπομεν, ὅπου καὶ θεοὺς πάντα καλεῖ Πλάτων. Op. cit. v. 2, p. 45: τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ δημιουργῷ στοιχεῖα νόες εἰσὶ καὶ νοεραὶ δυνάμεις ἀμέθεκτοι. Op. cit. v. 3, p. 59: ὁ δὲ χρόνος καθ᾿ αὑτὸν μὲν αἰώνιος, νοῦς ὤν, ὡς δέδεικται, μετέ χεται δὲ γενητῶς, οὐχ ὅλος ἅμα οὐδὲ ἀκινήτως, ὥσπερ οἱ πρὸ αὐτοῦ νόες, ἀλλὰ κινητῶς.  Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 160: Πᾶς ὁ θεῖος νοῦς ἑνοειδής ἐστι καὶ τέλειος καὶ πρώτως νοῦς, ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους νόας παράγων.  Proclus, op. cit. 64: καὶ νόες οἱ μὲν οὐσίαι αὐτοτελεῖς. Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 73; v. 3, p. 15: ὥσπερ δὴ καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς οἱ μετεχόμενοι νόες πρὸς τὸν ὅλον νοῦν καὶ αἱ μετεχόμεναι ψυχαὶ τὰ σώματα πρὸς τὴν ὅλην ψυχήν. Op. cit. v. 3, p. 75: οἱ πρῶτοι νόες οὐσίαι· καὶ ἐπεὶ ὁ νοῦς νοερὸς πανταχοῦ κατὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν, αἱ πρῶται ψυχαὶ νοεραί. commCrat, 169: ὑπέστησαν δὲ νόες ἐποχούμενοι ταῖς ψυχαῖς καὶ πληροῦντες μετ᾿ αὐτῶν τὴν ὅλην δημιουργίαν. Platonis Parmeni dem, p. 931: θεοὺς γὰρ πληροῖ καὶ νόας ἑαυτῆς.  Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 117: οὕτω δὴ καὶ αἱ ψυχαὶ αὐτῶν περιέχονται ὑπὸ τῆς μιᾶς ψυχῆς τῆς ταὐτοῦ κυκλήσεως καὶ οἱ νόες ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ. Op. cit. p. 198· καὶ γὰρ τούτους ὁ νοῦς ὁ τοῦ παντὸς ἐν ἑαυτῷ περιέχει καὶ πάντες οἱ ὑποστάντες νόες. Op. cit. p. 205: ἀνεκφοίτητοι γάρ εἰσιν οἱ νόες τοῦ θείου νοῦ καὶ ἀγένητοι παντελῶς. Op. cit. p. 209: οἱ δὲ νόες οἱ ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἄνω θεν ἐπιβεβηκότες οὐκ ἂν λέγοιντο ἔργα τοῦ πατρός· οὐδὲ γὰρ γένεσιν ἔσχον. Op. cit. pp. 315 6: εἰσὶ γὰρ δὴ νόες ὑπὸ ψυχῶν μετεχόμενοι θείων σώμασιν ἀχράντοις ἐποχουμένων.  Proclus, commRep, v. 2, p. 149: πόλοι δὲ οἱ νόες, περὶ οὓς οἱ κύκλοι κινοῦνται πασῶν, ἐξ ὧν ἐδημιουργήθησαν. Op. cit. p. 211: οἱ δὲ πόλοι νόες τινὲς περὶ τὰ αὐτὰ παρέχοντες τοῖς τῆς περι φορᾶς τμήμασιν τὴν κίνησιν καθ᾿ ἕνα λόγον καὶ μίαν τάξιν. Loc. cit.: νόες ἄρα τινὲς ἡμῖν ἀνε φάνησαν οὗτοι, λέγω δὲ ὁ ἄξων καὶ ὁ πόλος· καὶ ὅτῳ διαφέροντες ἀλλήλων τε καὶ τοῦ κεντρικοῦ νοῦ, προείπομεν.

1162

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

considering those intellects as gods,²⁹¹ he stated that they are many and proceeded from the one Mind,²⁹² they are distinct from, and unlike, each other,²⁹³ they are classified in orders, each of which has its own leader,²⁹⁴ and they actually serve as ‘instruments’ carrying out the duties that they are assigned with.²⁹⁵ Porphyry had already spoken of ‘angels’,²⁹⁶ as well as of ‘archangels in the heavens, who look towards the gods’,²⁹⁷ and he made distinctions between the presence of either ‘gods or angels or archangels or daemons or any ruler of the soul’.²⁹⁸ In the Sacra Parallela of John of Damascus, we have similar references to minds (νόες),²⁹⁹ but we have also more of Anaxagorean language: these ‘minds’ are the object of creation, they are also called ‘seeds’ created by the Lord (τὸ καλὸν παρὰ τοῦ Κυρίου καταβληθὲν σπέρμα), and the primeval condition of these seeds was characterized by ‘cleanness’ (τοῦ πρώτου σπέρματος τὴν καθαρότητα).³⁰⁰ This phraseology was applied to a doctrine of creation, and this would hardly not have been one more influence by expressions of Anaxagoras

 Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 13: εἷς νοῦς καὶ πολλοὶ νόες. Op. cit. p. 15: πολλαὶ ψυχαὶ ἀμέ θεκτοι καὶ πολλοὶ νόες. Op. cit. p. 16: εἰ γὰρ οἱ ἐπὶ τάδε νόες θεοί, πάντως ὅτι καὶ ὁ πρῶτος πα τρικὸς νοῦς θεός. Op. cit. p. 145: οἱ νοεροὶ θεοὶ ὄντως νόες εἰσίν.  Damascius, op. cit. p. 5: οὐσίαι τινὲς καὶ οἱ ἀμέθεκτοι νόες· καὶ γὰρ οἱ νοεροὶ … τινες. Op. cit. p. 145: οἱ νοεροὶ θεοὶ ὄντως νόες εἰσίν. Princ, p. 16: εἷς νοῦς καὶ πολλοὶ νόες. Op. cit. p. 222: ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἡνωμένου πολλὰ ἡνωμένα, ὡς νόες ἀπὸ νοῦ καὶ ψυχαὶ ἀπὸ ψυχῆς. Op. cit. p. 243: ὡς ἀριθμὸς ἀπὸ μονάδος οἱ πολλοὶ νόες ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς νοῦ. … οἱ δὲ ἀριθμοὶ καὶ οἱ νόες εἰς αὐτοτελεῖς διακέκρινται περιγραφάς. Op. cit. p. 247: ἀπὸ ζωῆς ζωαί, καὶ ἀπὸ νοῦ νόες, καὶ ἀπὸ ψυχῆς ψυχαί. Op. cit. p. 248: Ὅτι μὲν γὰρ νοερὰ πρόοδός ἐστι, καὶ πολλοὶ νόες προέρχονται ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς νοῦ, δώσει τις εἰκότως. Op. cit. p. 257: καὶ μετὰ τὸν ἕνα νοῦν πολλοὶ νόες. Op. cit. p. 261: καὶ νόες μετὰ τὸν ἕνα πολλοί. Op. cit. p. 267: ἕπεται πολλοὺς εἶναι νόας αὐτοτελεῖς μετὰ τὸν ἕνα προελθόντας.  Damascius, Princ, p. 250: Οἱ δὲ νόες πρῶτοι περιεγράφησαν ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων τε καὶ τοῦ ὅλου, ἅτε διακεκριμένην ὑπόστασιν ποιησάμενοι κατὰ τὴν οἰκείαν περιγραφήν. Op. cit. p. 243: ὅθεν γνωριμώτερόν ἐστι πολλοὺς εἶναι νόας μετὰ τὸν ἕνα.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 9: Ἐπεζήτει δὲ ὁ λόγος εἴ τινες εἶεν καὶ νόων ἡγούμενοι ὁμοῦ πλειόνων· εἰ δ᾿ οὖν μεριστοί εἰσιν οὗτοι οἱ νόες, πάντως ὅτι καὶ κατὰ ἀγέλας διῄρηνται· ἀεὶ γὰρ διὰ τῶν ἐλαττόνων ἀριθμῶν ἡ πρόοδος εἰς τοὺς μείζονας.  Damascius, Princ, p. 267: εἰ μὴ μόνον δείκνυσιν ὁ λόγος πολλοὺς νόας ἁπλῶς, ἀλλὰ καὶ συν τεταγμένους ταῖς πολλαῖς ψυχαῖς, ὡς ὀργάνοις ἢ ὡς ὀχήμασιν.  Porphyry, Ad Marcellam, 21; Epistula ad Anebonem, 2.3b; et passim. Proclus, commRep, v. 1 pp. 86; 91; et passim, at hundreds of points.  Porphyry, commTim, Book 1, fr. 17, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 152.  Porphyry, Epistula ad Anebonem, 1.4a.  John of Damascus, Sacra Parallela, PG.96.501 2 (quoting Antipater of Bostra writing against Origen): καὶ πῶς ἤρξαντο κινεῖσθαι οἱ νόες, καὶ πῶς ἔπεσαν εἰς διάφορα σώματα … ὅτιπερ οὐκ ἤρξατο ὁ Θεὸς δημιουργεῖν, καὶ τοὺς νόας, πῶς τε τάξεως, καὶ γνώσεως μετέσχον … γεγόνασιν ἀπὸ νόων ἄγγελοι, ἀρχάγγελοι, καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς.  John of Damascus, Sacra Parallela, PG.96.504.40 41.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1163

styling his principles ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα) and his Mind ‘clean’ (καθαρός). The fact of the matter is that references to ‘minds’ as creative agents appear not earlier than Proclus, which might suggest that he was influenced by the Anaxagorism of Origen. Such references appear also in Damascius and, no matter how these two philosophers (especially Proclus) struggled to represent them as Platonic, in fact these are Anaxagorean influence. All Proclus does is to re-phrase Plato and instill his own ideas into him. This was after all normally the case with all Neoplatonists appealing to Plato. For instance, when Plato speaks of the genealogy of gods (in Timaeus, 40e), Proclus discovers in that text ‘three kings’ and forthwith he makes them ‘three creative minds’ (τρεῖς νόας καὶ δημιουργούς).³⁰¹ All of these should not be taken too literally, since it was by means of such extrapolations that the Anaxagorean influence upon the Neoplatonists was branded ‘Platonism’, and their universe came to be filled with all sorts of ‘minds’.³⁰² What matters is that, to a certain extend, the ‘Neoplatonic’ Plato was constructed by means of Anaxagorean ideas. Accordingly, Proclus has no problem with usually styling both Cronus and his son Zeus ‘fathers’; but it is telling that he styles them both ‘minds’, of which Cronus is of course superior, hence he is ‘the first mind’, and Proclus was satisfied that all of this derived from Plato’s Philebus. ³⁰³ Likewise, Proclus has no inhibition about em-

 Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 306: τούτους οὖν τοὺς τρεῖς νόας καὶ δημιουργοὺς ὑποτίθεται καὶ τοὺς παρὰ τῷ Πλάτωνι τρεῖς βασιλέας καὶ τοὺς παρ᾿ Ὀρφεῖ τρεῖς, Φάνητα καὶ Οὐρανὸν καὶ Κρόνον.  Cf. Proclus, op. cit. v. 3, p. 190: ἀδελφοὺς δὲ αὐτῶν τοὺς κοινωνοῦντας αὐτοῖς τῆς γενε σιουργοῦ δημιουργίας, νόας καὶ αὐτοὺς ὄντας καὶ συμπληρουμένους κατὰ τὴν ὁμοίαν ἐκείνοις τελειότητα καὶ δύναμιν. Cf. reference to ‘minds’ as divine subsistent agents acting in the world. In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 931: the ‘substance of intelligible things’ (νοητῶν ἡ οὐσία) fills both ‘gods and minds’. Theologia Platonica, v. 3, p. 75: οἱ πρῶτοι νόες οὐσίαι· καὶ ἐπεὶ ὁ νοῦς νοερὸς πανταχοῦ κατὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν, αἱ πρῶται ψυχαὶ νοεραί. Op. cit. v. 4, p. 113: οἱ δὲ νοεροὶ κατὰ τὰ πέρατα, διὸ δὴ καὶ νόες ἐπονομάζονται πάντες καὶ νοεροί. Op. cit. v. 5, p. 15: καὶ δύο νόες οὗτοι καὶ πατέρες νοεροί. Institutio Theologica, 111: Πάσης τῆς νοερᾶς σειρᾶς οἱ μέν εἰσι θεῖοι νόες ὑποδεξάμενοι θεῶν μεθέξεις, οἱ δὲ νόες μόνον. commCrat, 169: ὑπέστησαν δὲ νόες ἐποχούμενοι ταῖς ψυχαῖς καὶ πληροῦντες μετ᾿ αὐτῶν τὴν ὅλην δημιουργίαν. commTim, v. 1, p. 400: πάντα τὰ ἐκεῖ νενοωμένα καὶ νόες.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 15: Διὸ δὴ καὶ πατήρ ἐστι τοῦ μεγίστου Διός, καὶ ἁπλῶς πατήρ· ὁ γὰρ τοῦ πάντων πατρὸς πατὴρ πολλῷ δήπου μειζόνως ἔλαχε τὴν πατρικὴν ἀξίαν. Νοῦς μὲν οὖν οὗτος πρῶτος, νοῦς δὲ καὶ ὁ μέγιστος Ζεύς, βασιλικὴν μὲν ἔχων ψυχήν, βασιλικὸν δὲ νοῦν, ὡς ὁ ἐν τῷ Φιλήβῳ Σωκράτης· καὶ δύο νόες οὗτοι καὶ πατέρες νοεροί, ὁ μὲν νοερὸς ὢν ἐν τοῖς νοεροῖς, ὁ δὲ νοητός. Cf. Plato, Philebus, 30d1 2 (and 28c7 8). This is simply a Neopla tonic extrapolation that Origen dimissed, which is why Proclus argued that Origen was an anti Platonist (Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31).

1164

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

ploying a fully Anaxagorean description of the mind (even human mind) as ‘impassible’ and ‘unmixed’ with whatever any specific instance involves.³⁰⁴ As it happened, Damascius was more moderate in such practices and, at least, more explicit when he spoke of ‘many minds proceeding from one Mind’ (καὶ πολλοὶ νόες προέρχονται ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς νοῦ).³⁰⁵ Definitely, the Anaxagorean tenor in him is more salient,³⁰⁶ which might be owing to Proclus having received the idea from Origen rather than directly from Anaxagoras. I have argued that there was considerable Christian influence on Neoplatonism, with the influence of Didymus the Blind upon Proclus being a conspicuous example.³⁰⁷ By the same token, Proclus might have been influenced by Origen on this point about ‘minds’, too, all the more so since Proclus knew Origen’s work very well and mentions it repeatedly in admiration notwithstanding the fact that he accuses Origen of anti-Platonism. In any event, it is understandable why Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite used the term ‘incorporeal minds’ (ἀσωμάτων νόων):³⁰⁸ he would have adapted a notion he had received from Proclus, although the latter did not use the specific expression itself. But since in either Greek or Christian literature there were scarcely instances of the expression ‘incorporeal minds’ having been used explicitly, it is hard not to suspect that Basil of Seleucia³⁰⁹ received his expression from Origen, even though Basil (who died probably between 458 and 460) was contemporary with Proclus (412‒485). Proclus also mentioned ‘archangels’,³¹⁰ although he knew³¹¹ that Iamblichus took exception to such designations, because Plato never made any mention of

 Proclus, op. cit. v. 1, p. 92: κατὰ γὰρ τὴν πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς ἕνωσιν καὶ ὁ νοῦς ἄτρεπτος καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς πρὸς τὰ δεύτερα· καὶ ὡς μὲν ἑνοειδὴς τοιοῦτος ἐστίν, ὡς δὲ πληθυόμενος ἔχει τὸ μὲν κρεῖττον ἐν ἑαυτῷ, τὸ δὲ καταδεέστερον. Italics are mine.  Damascius, Princ, p. 248: Ὅτι μὲν γὰρ νοερὰ πρόοδός ἐστι, καὶ πολλοὶ νόες προέρχονται ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς νοῦ, δώσει τις εἰκότως.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 5 (there are some lacunae in the text): … τὰς ἀμεθέκτους ταῖς μεθεκταῖς, εἴπερ οὐσίαι τινὲς καὶ οἱ ἀμέθεκτοι νόες· καὶ γὰρ οἱ νοεροὶ … τινες. Op. cit. p. 145: ἤδη γὰρ ταῦτα καὶ ἐν τοῖς νοητοῖς ἀπεφήναμεν τὸν κρυφιμώτερον τρόπον, κατὰ τοὺς πατρικοὺς ὑφεστῶτα νόας. … οἱ νοεροὶ θεοὶ ὄντως νόες εἰσίν.  RCR, pp. 333 77.  Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, De Celesti Hierarchia, p. 14: τῆς ὑλαίας καὶ ἀλλοτρίας τῶν ἀσωμάτων νόων αἰσθήσεως.  Basil of Seleucia, Sermones, p. 429: Δέσποτα παντόκρατορ, βασιλεῦ κτίσεως ἁπάσης, ὁ κα ταλάμπων ἀῤῥήτως τοὺς ἀσωμάτους νόας τῷ νοερῷ σου φωτί.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1038; commTim, v. 3, p. 43; commCrat (‘Hermes is an archangel, and yet he is venerated as god’), 79; 117.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 152.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1165

them, as Damascius also maintained,³¹² who though used the idea for himself,³¹³ stating that this was a Chaldean one.³¹⁴ Actually, Damascius and Simplicius made scarce use of the notion of angels,³¹⁵ presumably because they believed that this was not Platonic, and Plotinus never indulged in such accounts or terms. Anyway, Damascius did not allow that it would be possible for a human soul to be transformed to an either daemonic or angelic nature, because this could be un-Platonic. He comments on Plato’s Phaedo, 69e1‒2 (‘because I believe that there, no less than here, I shall find good rulers and friends’), urging that this demonstrates that, when the soul returns to its eternal abode, this is a human soul still, and so always it will be: “Since [it is said that the soul] will arrive at rulers and friends, [it follows that] there, too, it will be a human being, and it will coexist with other men under the rule of the gods. Therefore, those who say that a soul can be transformed³¹⁶ into a daemon or an angel or a god, do not reflect in accordance with the Platonic doctrines’ (οὐκ ἄρα Πλατωνικῶς δοξάζουσιν οἱ εἰς δαίμονα ἢ ἄγγελον ἢ θεὸν ἀναχέοντες τὰς ψυχάς).³¹⁷ Likewise, Simplicius maintained that any angelic or divine soul is unalterable (ἀπαράτρεπτος).³¹⁸

 Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 200.  Damascius, Princ, pp. 241; 287.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 9.  Damascius, op. cit. pp. 6; 51; 60 (‘angels and daemons’); 220. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1157; 159; commEpict, pp. 42; 45 46; 80.  Nevertheless, see discussion in chapter 13 (pp. 1292 3) about Plato’s in the Timaeus: we are told that ‘one who has failed shall be changed into woman’s nature at the second birth; and if, in that shape, he still does not refrain from wickedness, he shall be changed every time, accord ing to the nature of his wickedness, into some bestial form after the similitude of his own na ture’. Plato, Timaeus, 42a, classifying degradation of men through reincarnation to women, then to ‘the tribe of birds’, then to ‘the wild species of animal that goes on foot’, and, worst of all, to ‘the tribe of fishes and of shell fish (or, oysters) and to all creatures of the waters’. Cf. Plato, op. cit. 90e. However, this involves the idea that ‘living creatures keep passing into one another in all these ways, as they undergo transformation by the loss or by the gain of rea son and unreason’ (νοῦ καὶ ἀνοίας ἀποβολῇ καὶ κτήσει μεταβαλλόμενα, op. cit. 91d 92b). This is all about transmutation of existence within this world, not about different ranks of life. In any event, Plato did not say anything about reincarnation into plants. Moreover, he did not explain what is the kind of ‘sin’ that a bird would commit so as to fall further into the species of a wild animal.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 175.  Simplicius, commEpict, p. 80: Οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἔτι σωφροσύνη καὶ δικαιοσύνη ἀνθρωπίνη, εἰ μὴ καὶ παρατρέπεσθαι πέφυκεν· ἀπαράτρεπτός τε οὖσα, ἀγγελική τις ἂν ἦν, ἢ θεία, καὶ οὐκ ἔτι ἀνθρωπίνη. Cf. op. cit. p. 42. Whereas angelic or divine souls are by nature not alterable, human ones can remain so only by choice. Op. cit. p. 44.

1166

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

Thomas Aquinas By the end of the Middle Ages, the common opinion in Europe was that celestial bodies were moved by external intelligences, identified with the angels of the book of Revelation.³¹⁹ The Unmoved First Mover (identified with God) moved the outermost moving sphere, which in turn moved with the daily motion affecting all subordinate spheres. Each of the lower spheres was moved by a subordinate spiritual mover (a replacement for Aristotle’s multiple divine movers) called intelligence.³²⁰ Harry Wolfson noted that, according to Aristotelian commentators, namely, the Arab Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126‒1198) and the Persian polymath Avicenna (Ibn Sina, c. 980‒1037), there is a plurality of movers called Intelligences, all of which are transcendent beings and impart motion as final causes. Both philosophers proceeded on the basis of the Aristotelian principle positing that all things that are many in number have matter.³²¹ According to Wolfson, Thomas Aquinas by and large followed those philosophers, but, unlike them, he did not hesitate to describe these Intelligences as ‘diverse’ (diversae), and make them not many individuals of one species, but as many species as there are individuals.³²² This report by Wolfson can be confirmed from an epitome of Aquinas’ attack on the gentiles by Gennadius Scholarius, yet there is more to be said about it: Thomas argued with Aristotle that, if there are many individuals under the same species, this could entail that they are material; the only way for many separate incorporeal substances to exist is that they should be different not only in number, but also in species (οὐκ ἄρα ἀριθμῷ διαφέρουσι μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ εἴδει); therefore, ‘in each [incorporeal] substance only one individual can be found’ (ἐν ταῖς χωρισταῖς οὐσίαις ἓν μόνον ἄτομον ὑφ᾿ ἓν εἶδος εὑρεθήσεται).³²³ This is simply the Anaxagorean proposition, ‘all of the seeds are dissimilar to each other’ (καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλῆθος οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις).³²⁴ Moreover, the number of incorporeal principles exceeds by far those which can be noticed through their material products in the universe: these products are only the outcome of action by some principles, not by all of them, which are ‘infinite’ to

 Edward Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200 1687, Cambridge, 1994, p. 527.  Edward Grant, op. cit. pp. 526 45.  H. Wolfson, op. cit. pp. 243 4. See supra, p. 1102, notes 25 27.  H. Wolfson, op. cit. pp. 249 50. See a more detailed account with references to Aquinas’ work by Philip Merlan, “Aristotle’s Unmoved Movers”, Traditio 4, 1946, pp. 1 30.  Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 2.91 3.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34; 156.

Immovable movers: from Aristotle to Philo

1167

human mind. Aquinas said exactly the same: “The multitude of separate [incorporeal] substances outnumbers the multitude of material bodies” (ὑπερβάλλει τοίνυν τὸ πλῆθος τῶν χωριστῶν οὐσιῶν τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ὑλικῶν σωμάτων).³²⁵ This is exactly the ground on which Aquinas ‘condemns the thesis of those who maintain that the separate incorporeal substances are as many as the kinds of heavenly movement, a thesis of which the leader was Aristotle’.³²⁶ Since ‘there is no movement in the heaven that cannot be noticed’ by men, the number of these movements cannot be infinitely large. Consequently, the entire theory of Aristotle sustaining that ‘there are separate incorporeal substances which cause the heavenly movements’ is wrong (μὴ εἶναι τινὰς χωριστὰς οὐσίας, ἀφ᾿ ὧν τινες κινήσεις ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ προΐασιν). For, were it for that to bethe case, the number of incorporeal powers could not be infinite to human mind. Gennadius develops Thomas’ argument further, but what matters is the conclusion: Thomas ‘concludes from all these’ that Aristotle’s theory entails that there can be no incorporeal substances other than those that move the heavenly spheres (μὴ εἶναι πλείους χωριστὰς οὐσίας τῶν καταλειφθεισῶν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ κινήσεων), which is unacceptable to him, because it runs contrary to Scripture.³²⁷ Since Aquinas maintained against Origen that angels (divine intellects) are incorporeal,³²⁸ he appeals to the Old Testament mentioning ‘a thousand thousand’ of angels ‘ministering’ God,³²⁹ and to Dionysius the Areopagite who had explained this as meaning that ‘the multitude of those substances exceeds any incorporeal assembly’.³³⁰ This means that Aquinas dismissed Aristotle’s theory not by showing that this is contradictory in the context of the Aristotelian philosophy itself, but because he believed that the Scripture taught differently.

 Gennadius Scholarius, op. cit. 2.92.  Loc. cit.: Ἐντεῦθεν ἀποσκορακίζεται ἡ θέσις τῶν λεγόντων τὰς χωριστὰς οὐσίας κατὰ τὸν ἀριθμὸν τῶν οὐρανίων κινήσεων, ἢ κατὰ τὸν ἀριθμὸν τῶν οὐρανίων οὐσιῶν εἶναι, ἧς δόξης ἡγε μών ἐστιν ᾿Aριστοτέλης.  Loc. cit.  Op. cit. 2.91.  Daniel (Theodotionis versio), 7.10.  Op. cit. 2.92. The author had in mind a reference by Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, De Caelesti Hierarchia, p. 50, who saw those angels as ‘supra mundane minds’ (αἱ μακάριαι στρατιαὶ τῶν ὑπερκοσμίων νόων) which exceed any number that human mind can imagine (τὰς ἡμῖν ἀναριθμήτους τῶν οὐρανίων οὐσιῶν διατάξεις).

1168

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

Divine Creation If there was a point on which the Greek philosophers who clandestinely ransacked Anaxagoras’ philosophy clearly dissented from him, this was the Neoplatonic idea that the Intellect/Mind creates not by deliberation, but by being what it is. There is some irony in this, since Plato saw creation as order being enforced upon a preexisting chaos.³³¹ Aristotle determined that the world is beginningless, and one can understand how he felt at this doctrine of his teacher. We have seen that the Anaxagorean Mind decided to engage in creative action out of the blue, indeed out of will, to produce an ordered cosmos, which involves rational reflection resulting in the Mind becoming also Logos, so as to instill his own rationality into that which was going to come to pass. This was the idea that no Neoplatonist could allow. Plotinus regarded deliberate rational activity (in the ordinary human sense) as inferior to the divine activity, which is spontaneous and works without planning.³³² He seems to apply notions of will in the Enneades (βούλησις, θέλησις, ἔφεσις),³³³ but they are mainly used in order to dismiss the idea that secondary beings exist through the will of the One.³³⁴ At any rate, Plotinus allows the lower levels of reality to create by will (θέλησις), but at the same time, he regards the creation of lower levels of reality as necessary. ³³⁵ Therefore, he did not follow Plato all along, and presumably he felt able to be dismissive of actual volition in connection with lower tiers of reality. Against Plato’s ambiguous statements in the Timaeus, it was deemed more safe and comfortable to apply Aristotle’s doctrine that the supreme principle is ‘sheer actuality’, which entailed that to exist means to act; therefore, existence

 The notion of will is not altogether absent from the Platonic texts; for example, Timeaus, 29a (ὡς πρὸς τὸ ἀΐδιον ἀπέβλεπεν); 29e (ἠβουλήθη παραπλήσια ἑαυτῷ); 30a (βουληθεὶς γὰρ ὁ θεὸς ἀγαθὰ μὲν πάντα); 41b (τῆς ἐμῆς βουλήσεως). In that work, the Demiurge is repeatedly rep resented as deliberating, that is, thinking about how to achieve his aims. Nevertheless, see chap ter 5, pp. 315 6.  Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. V.8.7, criticizing the idea of ‘artisan’ creation by the Maker of the Uni verse. Cf. IV.3.10.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.8.9. (44 8); VI.8.13; VI.8.15 (1 10); VI.8.18 (35 52); VI.8.21 (8 19). Ploti nus, nevertheless, dismisses many of these references as inaccurate; Enneads, VI.8.13 (1 5 and 47 50); op. cit. VI.8.18 (52 53). Later Platonists also attributed a notion of ‘will’ to the Demiurge’s creative act. Cf. Iamblichus, De Mysteriis 3.28: Proclus, commTim, 1.362; 1.371; 1.374. Cf. the fa mous passage of the Enneades, III.8.4, where the philosopher interrogates Nature as to why does she create, and the response he receives from her.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.6 (25 7).  Op. cit. II.9.3 (1 18); II.9.8 (21 7); III.2.2; 3.2.3 (3 5); IV.8.6 (12 13); V.1.6; V.1.7 (37); V.3.16 (1).

Divine Creation

1169

in the absence of activity is not really existence, which is a syllogism Aristotle advanced in respect of the Anaxagorean Nous, too.³³⁶ Ironically then, the Neoplatonist Damascius buttressed this fundamental doctrine on Aristotle: to exist in actuality (ἐνεργείᾳ) can only mean ‘to exist along with performing a certain action’ (σὺν ἐνεργείᾳ), in like a manner that to exist potentially means to exist while being endowed with a certain potential (ὡς τὸ δυνάμει σὺν δυνάμει τινί). Thus, to exist in actuality (ἐνεργείᾳ) is synonymous with performing a certain activity (ἐνέργεια): In order for existence to be real existence, it is necessary not only to be able to act, but also to act actually (ἔστι γὰρ μόνη ὕπαρξις ἐν τῷ ὑπάρχειν μόνῳ τὸ δύνασθαι καὶ τὸ ἐνεργεῖν ἔχουσα).³³⁷

Therefore, ‘the most suitable’ philosophical description (προσφυέστερον εἰπεῖν) is to put it thus: to speak of ‘existence’ suggests ‘only real subsistence’ (ἡ μὲν ὕπαρξις τὴν ὑπόστασιν δηλοῖ μόνον),³³⁸ in like a manner ‘potential’ only suggests ‘potentiality’ (ὥσπερ ἡ δύναμις τὸ δύνασθαι μόνον), and ‘action’ means only ‘the ability to act’ (καὶ ἡ ἐνέργεια τὸ μόνον ἐνεργεῖν). But to speak of ‘self-subsisting being is a whole, which includes all three of them’ at the same time (ἡ δὲ οὐσία τὸ ὅλον ἐστὶ καὶ τὰ τρία συνειληφός).³³⁹ It would make no sense to maintain that God has the potential to act and yet he does not exercise this potential; such an assertion would only mean that God does not exist at all. Therefore, we claim that, that which either exists but can do nothing (ὅθεν τὸ ὑφεστὼς μέν, δυνάμενον δὲ μηδέν), or it can act but it performs no action whatsoever (ἢ τὸ δυνάμενον

 Aristotle, De Anima, 429b 430a. But Porphyry was not moved by this. See supra, chapter 11, pp. 920 1.  Damascius, Princ, p. 143.  Damascius uses several critical terms that received different meanings throughout the his tory of Greek philosophy. Only the context and the real purpose of his argument can provide an accurate rendering into English of what would have been immediately grasped by his audience. Lexica are of no use on this point, since translation has to follow the real import of the author’s words. The term ὕπαρξις was not conceded by Porphyry when he was writing his Sententia 26 (see chapter 11, pp. 920 1), describing the One as ‘Non Being that transcends Being (τὸ ὑπὲρ τὸ ὂν μὴ ὄν)’, which means that he paid his respects to his teacher Plotinus (chapter 10, p. 741, and note 187). But Porphyry’s thought underwent many shifts during his life, and later he did accord the One the term ὕπαρξις. Cf. Porphyry, Historia Philosophiae (fragmenta), fr. 18, apud Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum, 1.45: τῇ ἐκείνου ὑπάρξει. In Platonis Parmenidem Commentaria (fragmenta), 13; 14. One can see that Damascius at this point divests the term ὕπαρξις of the meaning of ‘full existence’.  Damascius, Princ, pp. 311 12.

1170

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

μέν, οὐδὲν δὲ ἐνεργοῦν) do not exist at all, or they exist in vain (οὐδὲ εἶναι φαμέν, ἢ μάτην γε εἶναι).³⁴⁰

Consequently, either there is a God who is acting always, or there is no God at all. Aristotle said that God is sheer actuality and, in the Metaphysics, 1072a4‒6, he appealed to Anaxagoras as the authority who said so. However, in his On the Soul, 429b30‒31 (again, considering Anaxagoras’ thought), he could not see how was it that the Nous was not beginninglessly active, hence, this time he resolved that ‘somehow the Mind potentially is identical with the objects of thought, butit is actually nothing before it reflects.’ For Anaxagoras’ Mind ‘began to work as of a certain beginning’, by work meaning ‘reflection’, as explained in the Physics, 203a31‒32. Of course, it is not at all too easy to square all of those statements by Aristotle with each other; but this is exactly one indication of how ambivalent he was as to what Anaxagoras had really said. Damascius went a step further: God has to be sheer activity (not simply actuality), otherwise he does not exist at all. This is certainly an august Neoplatonic statement, but the enunciation of it in such imposing terms came from Porphyry. In valuable parts from his commentary on the Timaeus preserved by Proclus, we read how Porphyry understood the essential characteristics of the supreme principle. First, we ought to seek this beyond any sort of multiplicity, since oneness precedes manyness. What shows the value of a supreme principle is not that there is no other principle prior to it, but the fact that everything proceeds from this (τῷ πάντα ἐξ αὐτῆς). Then, Proclus immediately adds that Porphyry ‘says many times that the being of the [supreme] principle consists in the fact that is creates’ (τοῦτο δέ, ἐπειδὴ πολλάκις φασὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐν τούτῳ ἔχειν τὸ εἶναι, ἐν τῷ δημιουργεῖν). “Once this is granted, there is no way to speak of beginning of the world, as if this did not exist before”. Then, Porphyry turns against ‘those who believe that it is possible for God to exist without creating’: those who say so ‘do not know that the real powers exercise their activity by means of their being itself’ (αἱ ἀληθεῖς δυνάμεις αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι ἐνεργοῦσι).³⁴¹ This was the point of departure for Damascius to make this tenet a fundamental proposition of his own philosophy. Nevertheless, Porphyry was aware of Aristotle’s criticism against the Platonic Ideas, and cared to adumbrate his own theory of generation, which we have canvassed. Thus, according to Proclus, Porphyry ‘expounds the way to creation’

 Damascius, op. cit. p. 311. This is precisely the thesis of Aristotle in the De Anima, 429b30 31.  Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 393.

Divine Creation

1171

(τὸν τρόπον ἐπιδεικνύει τῆς δημιουργίας) arguing that the Divine Mind implements it by its own Being itself (αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι τὸν θεῖον νοῦν ἐπιτελούμενον), namely, by being what it is. Nevertheless, Porphyry cared also to say that this generation takes place by means of the immaterial logoi acting upon matter, thus producing the material universe. Proclus felt quite convenient while expounding this theory,³⁴² and reports Porphyry arguing that there is nothing strange either about the Creator granting existence to material things by his own thinking alone (αὐτῷ τῷ νοεῖν), or about material beings generated from immaterial ones. For we know that a human seed can create different parts of the body ‘by having all the logoi in itself’ (ἔχον καὶ πάντας ἐν ἑαυτῷ τοὺς λόγους)’, which are ‘without bulk throughout’ (ἄογκοι πανταχοῦ ὄντες), since any fraction of the seed contains all of the logoi (ὅ τι γὰρ ἂν λάβῃς τοῦ σπέρματος, ἐν αὐτῷ πάντα εὑρήσεις). The Mind, which is described also as the Creative Logos (ὁ δημιουργικὸς λόγος), produces everything in a manner which is analogous to generation by means of the immaterial logos of a seed (ὥσπερ ὁ τοῦ σπέρματος).³⁴³ The Anaxagorean tenor, terminology, and inspiration instilled into an otherwise Neoplatonic exposition is all too plain. We owe this part from the lost commentary of Porphyry to Proclus. This shows that Proclus once again picked up occasional (although fundamental) statements from his predecessors and made them a heavily recurrent theme in his own writings. This time, the expression he picked up was αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι, referring to the Mind implementing generation by its own Being itself, that is, by being what it is. Proclus made this expression (as he normally did with other technical expressions) a heavily recurrent one. By ‘predecessor’ I do not mean only Porphyry, but also Proclus’ teacher Syrianus, who, no doubt, took up the expression from Porphyry, although Syrianus himself did not care to formulate his exposition by means of the Anaxagorean notion of logoi, as Porphyry himself did. Nevertheless, Syrianus wrote about the Mind acting by means of ‘primary causes that are prior to their products’ (αἰτίας πρωτουργοὺς καὶ τῶν ἀποτελεσμάτων ἐξῃρημένας), which (in analogy to the Mind) generate things ‘by being what they are’ (αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι). Moreover, since they are principles, ‘they are less in number than the material results they produce, they are close to the One, and they were immediately produced from the Monad’.³⁴⁴ Then, he echoes Porphyry, and says that ‘God creates by being what he is’ (θεὸς αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι

 See supra, chapter 10, pp. 757 71.  Porphyry, op. cit. Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, op. cit. v. 1, p. 395.  Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 108.

1172

Chapter 12 – Divine intellects: from Aristotle to Late Antiquity

ποιεῖ),³⁴⁵ and this creator is explicitly stated to be the Mind, which creates by being what it is.³⁴⁶ According to his habit, Proclus took up such moderate and scarce statements and made them heavily repetitive themes, which though did not add anything substantial to the idea, except for the fact that he attributes generation ‘by being what one is’ not only to the Mind, but, depending on the context, also to the soul, or to ‘intelligible powers’ (his Neoplatonic analogous to the logoi), or even to the Good.³⁴⁷ It would appear that the idea of God producing by being what he is would be of no interest to the Peripatetic tradition, since Aristotle held that the world is beginningless. Nevertheless, we saw that Aristotle did in fact care to associate the actuality of the supreme God with his reflecting activity. It would also appear that this is not even pertinent to Plato himself, since he clearly posited a beginning of the ordered cosmos. In any event, a priority of some commentators was to argue for harmony between Plato and Aristotle. As early as the second to third century AD, Alexander of Aphrodisias did not care to ponder upon any ‘creative’ act by the Aristotelian God: his master had taught him that this was all about the ultimate and supreme cause of motion by an Immovable Mover, which was the final (if not the creative) cause of the world. This was the reason for Alexander to point out Aristotle’s contradictions introducing additional immovable movers of the heavenly spheres: once there is a universal supreme mover, what is the need for positing more and ancillary ones? It was Simplicius who set out to argue against Alexander that the God of Aristotle was not only a final cause, but also a creative one.³⁴⁸ The enterprise originated with his teacher Ammonius of Alexandria, who (according to Simplicius) wrote an entire book in order to prove this point, namely, that Aristotle’s God was also a creative cause.³⁴⁹ He re-

 Op. cit. p. 109. In fact, Syrianus says that his statements are those used by men of old, no doubt having Porphyry in mind, whom he mentions at other points of his work, and indeed a few lines before this point.  Syrianus, op. cit. p. 117: νοῦν τις δημιουργικὸν ὑποστάτην καὶ αἴτιον τῶν ὅλων ἐνθυμηθείς, αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι κατὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ ἰδιότητα τὰ πάντα γεννῶντα καὶ ἀξιοῦντα προνοίας ὑποθέμενος. Op. cit. p. 163: εἰ δὲ νοῦς τις καὶ ταῦτα μετατίθησιν ὁ δυνάμει ἢ ὁ ἐνεργείᾳ ἢ καὶ ὁ συναμφότερος, δῆλον ὡς εἰ μὲν αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι δημιουργοίη.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 82; v. 3, pp. 7; 26; v. 4, p. 12; v. 5, pp. 52 3; 56; 61; v. 6, p. 32; et passim.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 271; see quotation supra, p. 1113, note 62.  Loc. cit. ὁ ἡμέτερος καθηγεμὼν ᾿Aμμώνιος ἐν ὅλῳ τῳ βιβλίῳ τοῦτο δεικνύς, ὅτι οὐ τελικὸν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ποιητικὸν αἴτιον οἶδε τοῦ κόσμου τὸν θεὸν ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης. Simplicius argues likewise: commPhys, p. 258. Whether Aristotle’s God was a poietic cause, or not, was hotly de bated until as late as the fifteenth century. See chapter 8, pp. 554 69.

Divine Creation

1173

buts Alexander also at other points, although he does not refer to him by name,³⁵⁰ and this theory about Aristotle was endorsed by Ammonius’ pupils, namely, Asclepius of Tralles,³⁵¹ John Philoponus,³⁵² and Simplicius,³⁵³ who also refer to this Aristotelian God (and sometimes, to the ‘Nature’) as producing ‘by being what it is’ (αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι), as Neoplatonists did, even though John Philoponus, a Christian as he was, would have never signed up to this doctrine.³⁵⁴ The man who came up with a systematic account against the idea that God creates by being what he is, was Origen. Following Anaxagoras, he was the founder of the Christian notion of God creating out of untrammelled will.³⁵⁵ Accordingly, he added that the Biblical Trinitarian God caused generation and is acting by means of created logoi. However, as common a source as Anaxagoras was to both Origen’s theory of logoi and Aristotle’s multiple immovable movers, Origen’s concept had nothing to do with Aristotle’s incongruous idea that was all too weird within a Peripatetic exposition, which never really managed to become a coherent ‘system’.

 Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 1360; 1361.  Asclepius of Tralles, op. cit. p. 23: ὁ δὲ θεός, φησίν, αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι πάντα παράγει καὶ δημι ουργεῖ καὶ ἐπινάει. Cf. op. cit. p. 441, Asclepius referring to ‘Nature creating by what it is’, alleg edly according to Aristotle.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 571.  Simplicius, commCael, p. 137; commCateg, p. 219; commPhys, p. 314.  John Philoponus, commAnim, pp. 117; 138; commPhys, p. 321; De Aeternitate Mundi, pp. 14; 245; 247; 256; 260.  NDGF, pp. 354 7. See a thorough rebuttal of Proclus’ formula about God creating αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι, by Pseudo Justin, Quaestiones Christianorum ad Gentiles, pp. 168 75. The author was prob ably the newly discovered Cassian the Sabaite (c. 475 548). Also, COT, pp. 119 64, Origen’s ar guments about God creating by will, not out of necessity.

Part IV Theory of the Soul

Part IV Theory of the Soul

1177

You could never discover the boundaries of the soul, not even if you tracked it on every path exploring it; so profound a reality this is (ψυχῆς πείρατα ἰὼν οὐκ ἂν ἐξεύροιο πᾶσαν ἐπι πορευόμενος ὁδόν· οὕτω βαθὺν λόγον ἔχει). Heraclitus, apud Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum, 9.7.

The only real beings that the natural philosophers [i. e. the Presocratic physicists] accepted were the natural [= empirical] ones, whereas they argued that universals are not natural re alities. Following this, the debate was whether one should seek a general definition of the soul, as the Platonists maintain, or [one should seek a definition] of this or that [kind of] soul, as the Physicists asserted, such as the soul of a horse, or that of a man, of that of God. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.1.

There are three things the essence of which man is unable to know: God, angels, and the soul. The essence of all three of them can be known by God alone. Pseudo-Athanasius, Liber De Definitionibus, PG.28.536.9‒11.

Chapter 13 Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity Exordium Il est toujours aisé d’être logique. Il est presque impossible d’être logique jusqu’au bout. Albert Camus, Le Mythe De Sisyphe

I read the Myth of Sisyphus when I was a student. Albert Camus himself styled this remarkable work ‘essay’ (‘essai sur l’absurde’) introducing the notion of ‘irrational’ as a serious philosophical problem. Like everyone, I was impressed by its astuteness and originality, but what struck me most was a phrase in the introduction, which I just quoted: “It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.” I revisited this essay several times ever since, oftentimes I recalled this aphorism while studying Greek philosophy, and I have come to believing that philosophers can be classified in two categories: those who cared to be logical to the bitter end, and those who did not give a damn for it. Camus himself belonged definitely to the former, and it was only ostensibly a paradox that, in the forefront of his essay, he quoted two verses from the third Pythian ode of Pindar: “Do not crave immortal life, my dear soul, but use to the full the resources of what is possible”.¹ In the first group, Anaxagoras appears to be the coryphaeus, but I should have thought that he was not the first, since extant texts conspire to show that also his teacher Parmenides was attentive to harmonious and cohesive exposition. The heretofore unnoticed paradox about Anaxagoras is that he is supposed to be the thinker who brought the Ionian enlightened spirit to Athens. However, in terms of intellectual identity, he should not be counted as an Ionian philosopher, notwithstanding his extraction: for, in fact, he was largely a spiritual offspring of the Eleatic mindset. In the second category, Pythagoreans and Plato are outstanding examples. Although number one (though not the countable one) is the supreme principle which contains in itself potentially all numbers, Pythagoreans never came up

 “O mon âme, n’aspire à la vie immortelle, mais épuise le champ du possible”. Albert Camus, Le mythe de Sisyphe, Essai sur l’absurde, Paris, 1942, p. 9. The original, Pindar, Pythia, Ode 3 (verses 61 62): μή, φίλα ψυχά, βίον ἀθάνατον σπεῦδε, τὰν δ’ ἔμπρακτον ἄντλει μαχανάν.

Exordium

1179

with a coherent account of how absolute oneness produces duality, and then multiplicity. Plato, for his part, never decided as to whether an Idea per se is a living being, and always wavered as to its precise relation to material objects, which were posited as shadows of Ideas. This is why he incurred relentless criticism, of which Aristotle was the leader. Aristotle stands in between. There are glaring inconsistencies in his work, some of which I have discussed, but, on the whole, many of his syllogisms tend to show that he was alert to logical coherence, though not always ‘to the bitter end’. We should always bear in mind that his extant works are mostly classroom notes; had he cared to publish them in a definitive form, no doubt, he could have also cared to smooth out his exposition, to the extent this would have been possible, anyway. Later, the Stoics essayed to move along this line. None of them appears to be logically impeccable, but in fairness to them, they should be credited with concern for consistency, even though debate was always hot: for instance, the criticism of the Stoic materialism by later philosophers (Plotinus, Origen, Porphyry, Proclus, et. al.) was relentless, notwithstanding the Stoic allowance for ‘four incorporeals’ (χῶρος, χρόνος, κενόν, λεκτόν, space, time, void, an expression). The difficulty with assessing fairly the Stoic thought lies not only in some real dissent among themselves (of which Origen informed us): more importantly, one cannot be sure as to whether doxographic testimonies did justice to them; actually, as it happened with other philosophies, not rarely did doxographers not have a clear grasp of the systems they reported. I should remind that Camus made this point in relation to the fundamental question raised at that very same point of his work: “Is there any logic to the point of death?” Bearing in mind Plato’s definition of philosophy being ‘the study of death’,² the present exploration is perhaps not too close to Camus’

 Plato, Phaedo, 81a. This aphorism appealed to numerous Greek and Christian authors alike, and it became proverbial. However, less known is that the Stoics maintained exactly same idea, in letter at least, when they defined philosophy as ‘study of the physical death’, which de termined ‘the five ways for one to step out from this life’. We learn this from Elias of Alexandria, who added that ‘Plotinus wrote a monograph entitled On Reasonable Departure [from life] (= on justified suicide), in which he dismissed all of those five ways’. Elias, In Porphyrii Isagogen, pp. 14 6. J. von Arnim made this an attribution to Chrysippus (fr. 768), drawing on J.A. Cramer’s Anecdota Graeca (1841), but the reference was made simply to the ‘Stoics’. Before Elias, his teacher Olympiodorus of Alexandria had attested to this monograph by Plotinus. In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 1.8 This was attested also by Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 128, which is the most valuable of all three testimonies: for he quotes a Chaldean oracle, adding that Plotinus also quoted this in that work of his, which confirms Plotinus’ Chaldean predilec tion once again. Psellus explains the meaning of the Chaldean oracle shortly after that point

1180

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

point, but it is not too far from his context, which is death. I will, therefore, discuss whether is there any consistent logic in the numerous definitions of the soul; also, in the theory of pre-existence of souls, and in the concomitant notion of transmigration. Particularly, I will explore Origen’s doctrine, along with the Stoic one, while pointing out the heavy liabilities of both of them to Anaxagoras. At the point of the Phaedo where Plato gives the foregoing definition of philosophy, he feels that he can speak conveniently of an individual substance that is both ‘formless’ (ἀειδές) and it can migrate to another place, which is ‘formless’, too (τόπον ἕτερον καὶ ἀειδῆ). The fundamental axiom that place and motion is inherently involved with corporeal entities, which in turn presupposes spatial transition, was of no concern to him. How much of consistency is there in such statements? Aristotle would have been the last to see them as logically sound, in view of his axioms identifying ‘motion’ with ‘place’,³ or ‘alteration with ‘matter’,⁴ or indeed ‘multiplicity’ with ‘matter’, too.⁵ However, Plato had no inhibitions about treating spatial transition along with incorporeality, even though he knew that others were at pains to explain that, since incorporeal substances have neither mass nor volume, they are everywhere by definition. Damascius remarked that, in the Parmenides, Plato apparently believed that the soul is a flower which is not only heavenly but also earthly, although one would think of it as being only earthly. Nevertheless, in the Timaeus, he posited that a soul is only a heavenly being. Damascius, for his part, maintained that the soul is a real mixture of heavenly and earthly character, whereas in fact it is nei-

(p. 129) as total ban on suicide, quoting also Plato’s Phaedo, 62c5 6, ‘which he had learned from’ the Chaldeans (the editor B. Tambrun Krasker included this in a collection of Chaldean oracles attributed to George Gemistus, or Plethon; but Gemistus’ source was Psellus, who was born near ly three and a half centuries earlier). For his part, Galen reported that it was Hippocrates (older than Plato by 32 years) who defined ‘study of death’ the ‘medical art of doctors of old’. Galen, De Venae Sectione Adversus Erasistratum, p. 163.  Aristotle, Physica, 212b29: οὐ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ ὂν ἐν τόπῳ, ἀλλὰ τὸ κινητὸν σῶμα (‘for everything which exists does not exist in a spatial place: only that which is a moving body exists in a spatial place’). Cf. op. cit. 223a19 20.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1069b24: πάντα δ’ ὕλην ἔχει ὅσα μεταβάλλει (‘all things which change have matter’).  Aristotle, op. cit. 1074a33 34: ἀλλ᾿ ὅσα ἀριθμῷ πολλά, ὕλην ἔχει (‘those which are numerically many, they are material’). De Anima, 432a3 7: ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐδὲ πρᾶγμα οὐθὲν ἔστι παρὰ τὰ μεγέθη, ὡς δοκεῖ, τὰ αἰσθητὰ κεχωρισμένον (‘nothing has a separate existence, except sensible magni tudes’). Cf. Physica, 204a8 10, and commentators. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 716; commDeSensu, pp. 120 1. Themistius, paraphrAnim, p. 115. Dexippus, commCateg, p. 59. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 178. Simplicius, commAnim, pp. 283 4. John Philoponus, com mAnim, p. 568; commPhys, p. 401; commGenCorr, p. 76. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Com mentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, Book 3, ch. 13.

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age

1181

ther heavenly nor earthly.⁶ In any event, it is evident that Damascius could not ascertain which one of those two accounts would be styled ‘Platonic theory of the soul’. The purpose of this section is to explore this question of consistency, and to argue that it is hard to find any intellectual other than Origen speaking of this point with more congruity. My point is that he was able to achieve this only because he was a devout student of Anaxagoras throughout his life, both the pagan and the Christian one. Plato wavered on this topic, as much as did he so with his own theory Ideas, hence the differences from one dialogue to another, and the subsequent standstill of the Academy, which, after a short period of revisiting Pythagoreanism, went asleep for centuries. Since we are going to reflect about the soul, we should have a quick look at what philosophers understood a soul to be, and how they treated questions surrounding the idea (or, illusion) of that which they called soul. However, before exploring what philosophers thought the soul to be, I should point out that one should not be surprised at Plato’s inconsistencies. The idea of transmigration was known to the Egyptians (from whom Pythagoras took it up), as well as to other peoples, as far as India. However, this came to be styled by intellectuals (including Origen) a ‘Platonic’ doctrine.⁷ How did this come to be so? The reason is quite simple: unlike what is thought of him today, to serious ancient intellectuals, Plato was the most notorious plagiarist of all history, as discussed in the Appendix.⁸

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age Democritus used to say that external impressions have not the same impact upon different individuals; hence, it is uncertain which of these impressions are either true or false, since any them is no more true than another, but they are equally so. Consequently, either there is no truth, or we cannot discover it.⁹ On that account, appearances should be identified with truth (τὸ ἀληθὲς δὲ ταὐτόν ἐστι τῷ

 Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 250: Ἔστιν ἄρα φυτὸν οὐ μόνον οὐράνιον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἔγγειον ἡ ψυχὴ κατὰ τὸν Παρμενίδην, εἰ καὶ ἄλλον τρόπον οὐράνιον, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἔγγειον κατὰ τὸν Τίμαιον· μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τούτων τὸ μίγμα ἀληθέστατον οὐράνιον καὶ ἔγγειον, καὶ οὔτε οὐράνιον οὔτε ἔγγειον.  Origen, Cels, IV.17.  See pp. 1518; 1523 31.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1009b.

1182

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

φαινομένῳ),¹⁰ which is what Anaxagoras said, too. Consequently, Democritus argued that, if cognition of appearances is assigned to the soul, and knowledge of truth is a function of the mind (νοῦς μὲν περὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ψυχὴ δὲ ἔχει περὶ τὸ φαινόμενον), it follows that the mind and the soul is the same thing (ὁ νοῦς καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ ταὐτόν), since appearances and truth itself is the same thing (ταὐτὸν τὸ φαινόμενον καὶ τὸ ἀληθές).¹¹ Aristotle blamed Anaxagoras for not clarifying the difference between mind and soul. On many occasions he speaks of mind as the cause of getting something right and correct, but at other points he says so of the soul. For he regards mind as existing in all living things, great and small, noble and base; but mind in the sense of intelligence does not ap pear to belong to all living things, not even to all men.¹²

Then, ‘Anaxagoras indeed seems to regard soul and mind as different, as we have said before, but he treats them both as being of one nature, except that he regards Mind as the ultimate principle above all things.’ However, ‘when he says that Mind set everything in motion, he attributes the power of both knowing and moving to the same principle.’¹³ Thus, he believed that Anaxagoras treated Mind and soul as if they were of the same nature (χρῆται δ᾿ ἀμφοῖν ὡς μιᾷ φύσει), indeed pretty much like Democritus, who posited them as the selfsame thing (ψυχὴν μὲν γὰρ εἶναι ταὐτὸ καὶ νοῦν).¹⁴ There is some truth in Aristotle’s statement, but, as it happened, this is less than one half of the truth. He did not care to quote a single case of the alleged ‘many occasions’ from Anaxagoras’ work, in which ‘soul means the cause of getting something either right or correct’. For indeed no proof attesting to this allegation does exist at all. Instead, Simplicius supplied us with textual evidence showing that Anaxagoras’ ideas were quite different from what Aristotle argued them to be: ‘soul’ means only ‘life’ of any animate being (plant, animal, humans), and nothing beyond that.

 John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 71. His source is Aristotle, De Anima, 404a, arguing that De mocritus maintained that ‘any appearance is a manifestation of truth’ (τὸ γὰρ ἀληθὲς εἶναι τὸ φαινόμενον) and identified soul with mind.  Democritus, apud John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 71.  Aristotle, op. cit. 404b.  Aristotle, op. cit. 405a.  Aristotle, loc. cit.

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age

1183

Anaxagoras held that, although all the principles are united with each other, it is the Mind alone that stands apart and on its own right.¹⁵ Besides, he attributed the faculty of knowing not to any imaginary entity called ‘soul’, but to the mind, whether the universal or the individual one.¹⁶ Simplicius replied to Aristotle by saying that the Mind is not involved with matter so as to become ‘form vested with matter’ (εἶδος ἔνυλον).’¹⁷ On the contrary, he emphasizes that the Mind is a creative cause, which stands apart from creatures and it is of a different nature.¹⁸ This was a reply not only to Aristotle, but also to Proclus, who was as confused as to say that the supreme principle of Anaxagoras was ‘an incorporeal soul’ (ψυχὴν ἀσώματον), and that, according to Aristotle, the same notion suggests an ‘immovable Mind’ (νοῦν ἀκίνητον).¹⁹ Aristotle recognized that ‘almost all philosophers defined the soul on account of three attributes of it, namely, causing movement, having sensation, and being incorporeal; each of them is referred to the first principle. Consequently, those who define this as a power of knowing describe it as an element, or as being derived from the elements, and all of them argue along similar lines, with one exception’.²⁰

 Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 164: ἐν παντὶ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστι πλὴν νοῦ, … μοῖραι δὲ πολλαὶ πολλῶν εἰσι. παντάπασι δὲ οὐδὲν ἀποκρίνεται οὐδὲ διακρίνεται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου πλὴν νοῦ.  Cf. Themistius (referring to the Anaxagorean Mind), paraphrPhys, p. 13: τὸ γινώσκειν δὲ ὅτι μάλιστα νοῦ ἴδιον τοῦτο. Simplicius, commAnim, pp. 225 6: ὥσπερ ᾿Aναξαγόρας φυλάττει ἀμιγῆ πρὸς τὰς ὁμοιομερείας τὸν νοῦν, ἵνα αὐτῶν πασῶν κρατῇ, οὗτος μὲν πάντα δημιουργῶν καὶ νοῶν ἐξῃρημένως.  Meaning that a form does not exist apart from matter. According to Aristotle, this is physis par excellence. Only in theory can an incorporeal form be conceived as separate. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, pp. 133; 178; 215; 360; 375; 497; 515 6; 639; 683; et passim.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 301: ὅτι τὸν νοῦν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας οὐκ ἔλεγεν εἶδος ἔνυλον, οἷον ἦν τὸ νῦν ζητούμενον, ἀλλὰ διακριτικὸν καὶ κοσμητικὸν αἴτιον χωριστὸν ἀπὸ τῶν κοσμουμένων καὶ ἄλλης ὂν ὑποστάσεως παρὰ τὰ κοσμούμενα.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1214. Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 432a1 4: the mind is ‘a form which employs forms’ (καὶ ὁ νοῦς εἶδος εἰδῶν).  Aristotle, De Anima, 405a. John Philoponus thought that Aristotle introduced this exception because Anaxagoras identified soul with mind. It should be recalled that Aristotle (De Anima, 405b19 23) argued that the Anaxagorean Mind is unable to cognize anything, only because Ar istotle could not understand why is the Mind different from the soul (= the cognizant agent, ac cording to all Antiquity). However, Anaxagoras never saw the soul in the manner the Classical age and subsequent philosophers did. Quite simply, the soul is nothing special, nor is it a self subsistent being: it means simply life (see chapter 8, pp. 46; 541; 557; chapter 10, p. 748, and infra, p. 1188, note 42). Cf. John Philoponus, commAnim. p. 91: ᾿Aναξαγόρας … τὸν νοῦν ψυχὴν ἔλεγε. Plato also believed that Anaxagoras treated mind and soul as synonymous. To him, Anax

1184

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

He was partially both right and wrong in expounding his half-truths: to Anaxagoras, the soul (= life) is indeed the product of certain concurring principles (which Aristotle referring to Anaxagoras distorted, branding them ‘elements’). However, the soul itself is not a principle: it is only a derivative worldly reality, namely, life. The soul is only one of the innumerable manifestations of the perceptible world, and Anaxagoras had no reason to make any specific analysis of it, as if the soul was something exceptionally different from all the other things and phenomena that come to pass as a result of concurring principles. In other words, unlike Plato and Aristotle, Anaxagoras did not put the soul on any august pedestal. He only saw it as a collective derivative function, which did not deserve to become a specific something, since this is not any self-subsistent entity, and a certainly there was no reason to make it a half-god: for to Anaxagoras, there are neither half-gods nor indeed gods, other than the Mind which he did not actually style God.²¹ No author other than Thomas Aquinas rendered by Gennadius Scholarius did ever describe what really was the case, which he did in a brilliantly succinct passage, which settles things once and for all: Among the ancient philosophers, there were two alternative doctrines concerning the soul (διπλῆ δόξα περὶ ψυχῆς). Of them, the Platonists posited universal entities as separate ones (τὰ καθόλου χωριστά), arguing that they are forms and causes (εἴδη καὶ αἰτίας) of particular [sensible] things, indeed existing [causes for these things] to be known. Accordingly, they argued that there are some souls that are separate and they are themselves causes and forms of the particular souls (αἰτίας καὶ ἰδέας τῶν μερικῶν ψυχῶν); whatever particular souls were said to be, in the first place this was produced and diverted (παρῆχθαι καὶ με τωχετεῦσθαι) [to particular souls] by those [separate souls]. By contrast, the philosophers of Nature [i. e. the Presocratic] accepted as real beings only the natural [= empirical] ones (μὴ εἶναι οὐσίας φυσικὰς εἰ μὴ τὰς μερικὰς μόνον), and they argued that universals do not belong to the very nature of things (καὶ τὰ καθόλου μὴ εἶναι ἐν τῇ τῶν πραγμάτων φύσει). Following this, the debate was whether one should seek a general definition of the soul, as the Platonists maintain (ἕνα κοινὸν λόγον ψυχῆς), or [one should seek a definition] of this or that [kind of] soul (ἢ ταύτης κἀκείνης τῆς ψυχῆς), as the Physicists asserted, such as the soul of a horse, or that of a man, of that of God.²²

Hardly could anyone have put things more straight: speaking of the ‘soul’ and investigating its nature only means determining the kind of life of an animate

agoras maintained that ‘it is the Mind and the soul which orders and holds the nature of all things’. Cratylus, 400a.  See chapter 1, Aristotle’s erratic use of the terms ‘elements’ (στοιχεῖα) and ‘principles’ (ἀρχαί) in relation to the soul.  Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.1.

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age

1185

being. If one wishes to speak of soul in general, then the only explanation of it would be that this means life. For all his dualism, Plato actually held that the human identity is not the entity soul/body: it is the soul alone that should be identified with the human person. The soul is only a prisoner incarcerated in a body, and it is is eager to get rid of its bonds and return to its natural abode in the Beyond. If the soul transmigrates to other living beings such as a fish or an oyster,²³ it is the same soul still. This is only about a prisoner having changed prison and having decamped to a worse one. The point was simply about what kind of prison is a living being condemned to live in. But this was only mere adaptation of Pythagoreanism, since it was Pythagoras who made the soul a self-subsistent entity. We saw that Empedocles spent some time of his discipleship with both the Pythagoreans and Anaxagoras. An eclectic as he was, he chose to take up this Pythagorean doctrine (while works by poets such as Orpheus were always there) along with the Heraclitean notion of recurrent cosmic periods; consequently, he created the setting for what developed into the doctrine of transmigration of souls, which was Egyptian, anyway. All of this was sheer dissent from Anaxagoras, who attributed the faculties of moving things, of knowledge (indeed omniscience), of will, of cause of motion, and certainly of incorporeality, to the Mind alone,²⁴ whereas he used the term ‘soul’ simply to indicate ‘life’. Therefore, Aquinas’ apt recapitulating comment actually applies not to all the Physicists, but only to some of them, and above them all, to Anaxagoras. In the teeth of this fact, Aristotle thought that the ‘one exception’ was Anaxagoras, only because Aristotle himself confused mind with the individual soul. Anaxagoras is alone in his belief that mind cannot be acted upon [i. e. it is impassible] and that it has nothing in common with anything else. But how the Mind, being of such a na ture, can ever recognize anything, and by what agency, he did not explain, nor is this clear from his expressed views. All those who assume pairs of contraries among their first prin ciples also construct the soul from contraries.²⁵

 Plato, Timaeus, 42a; 90e 92b.  See chapter 5.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405b. Cf. Sophonias commenting on this. His interpretation was that ‘those who introduce many principles, they also make the soul a multitude’; paraphrPhys, p. 16: οἱ δὲ πλείους λέγοντες τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν πλείω ποιοῦσιν. ὅσοι δ᾿ αὖ ἐναντιώσεις ποιοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς, καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἐκ τῶν ἐναντίων συνιστῶσιν.

1186

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

This is irony, since allegedly (though inaccurately) among those who posited ‘contraries among the principles’ was Anaxagoras, which was claimed by Aristotle himself,²⁶ as well as by some of his eminent commentators.²⁷ Aristotle maintained that knowing is a sort of passion, in the sense that an object of knowledge causes a stimulus, thus making its impact on the mind of the cognizant agent, which is what causes the object itself to be known. ²⁸ In other words, he associated any knowledge (even the divine one) with duality (ἔστω γὰρ δυάς),²⁹ and he projected his own idea to Anaxagoras, too. On that account, he argued that the Mind cannot know once it is assumed to be ‘unmixed’ with anything else; therefore, ‘this Mind is absurd [or, ‘without reason’] since it seeks things that are impossible’ (ὥστε ἄτοπος τὰ ἀδύνατα ζητῶν ὁ νοῦς), because it is impossible for it to ‘distinguish’ things even of it wishes to do so.³⁰ Consequently, he set out to ‘correct’ Anaxagoras (and to make it possible for the Mind to create) by positing the Mind as both active and passive: in its passive sense, the Mind becomes all things; in the active sense, it makes all things, like ‘light which makes potential colours’ actual ones. This (Aristotle claims) can be the only sense in which ‘the Mind is separate, impassible, and unmixed’, since ‘this is by essence active actuality’.³¹ Since he had to admit that this Mind is incorporeal, implicitly he had recourse to Parmenides who identified Being with Thinking, hence Aristotle identified the Mind with the intelligible objects of its knowledge³² (an idea that Plotinus was happy to take up about his

 Aristotle, Physica, 189a. Simplicius argued that Aristotle’s passage in the Physica 184b20 22 (ref. to ‘contrary principles’) was also a reference to Anaxagoras, and he advised that this was the interpretation by Porphyry and Themistius, too. commPhys, p. 44. In op. cit. p. 155, Simplicius added that this was also the view of Alexander of Aphrodisias. For his part, Simplicius advanced this thesis in op. cit. pp. 156; 174; 180.  Theophrastus, Physicorum Opiniones, 2 (apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 24); 4 (apud Simpli cius, op. cit. p. 27). Alexander of Aphrodisias commMetaph, pp. 303; 658. John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 26; 89; 93; 95; 110. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 275. Michael Psellus, commPhys, 1.14. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aris totelis, 1.3; Translatio Thomae Aquinae Commentarii in Aristotelis De Physico Audito, Book 1, pp. 179; 186; commPhys, pp. 2; 7.  Aristotle, De Anima, 429b23 26: εἰ ὁ νοῦς ἁπλοῦν ἐστι καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ μηθενὶ μηθὲν ἔχει κοι νόν, ὥσπερ φησὶν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, πῶς νοήσει, εἰ τὸ νοεῖν πάσχειν τί ἐστιν (ᾗ γάρ τι κοινὸν ἀμφοῖν ὑπάρχει, τὸ μὲν ποιεῖν δοκεῖ τὸ δὲ πάσχειν), ἔτι δ᾿ εἰ νοητὸς καὶ αὐτός;  Aristotle, op. cit. 429b20.  Aristotle, Physica, 188a. Concerning ἄτοπος, see chapter 6, p. 418, note 366.  Aristotle, De Anima, 430a. See chapter 7, p. 451, note 71.  Aristotle, op. cit. 430a3: τὰ νοητά. Op. cit. 431b: ὅλως δὲ ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν, ὁ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν, τὰ πράγματα.

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age

1187

Intellect), only because he desperately needed ‘a common element’.³³ However, this he allowed this only in reference to the ‘reflecting Mind’ (which is a ‘certain something’), whereas he decided that, prior to engaging inreflection, this Mind was ‘nothing’.³⁴ Quite remarkably, in the Eudemian Ethics, considerations about the soul are couched in Anaxagorean terms, although that name is not mentioned except for two points which are of anecdotal character.³⁵ He maintains that human desire for the right thing is formed not by chance, but it is a gift given from heaven. The starting point of moral deliberation itself is not really a springboard; instead, there is cause for reflection which comes from the outside, and this is God (τίς ἡ τῆς κινήσεως ἀρχὴ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ. δῆλον δὴ ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ θεός). In like a manner that God is the beginning of all motion, in human soul there is a cause of motion which is no other than the divine element in us (κινεῖ γάρ πως πάντα τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν θεῖον). Therefore, what God is to the universe, this is the soul to human being.³⁶ Whether consciously or not, Aristotle (who, professedly, declared himself baffled at Anaxagoras’ statements) came to the heart of the theory: for indeed Anaxagoras did ‘construct the soul’ from the principles – yet not because he cared to say anything particular about it, but only because he treated this as being simply generated from the principles, which he did with all things, or phenomena, or objects of cognition. Aquinas got it right: according to ‘the physicists’, one cannot speak of ‘soul’ in general; it is only possible to investigate what a particular kind of soul is. Otherwise, this research is doomed to be inconclusive. This is why an unknown Christian writer said that ‘there are three things, the essence of which man is unable to know: God, angels, and the soul. The essence of all three of them can be known by God alone.’³⁷ Quite true: once the soul is presumed to be a self-substantial something, any theory about it could be simply mythology, not philosophy.

 Aristotle, op. cit. 429b25: τι κοινὸν ἀμφοῖν ὑπάρχει. 429b30: κατὰ κοινόν τι.  Aristotle, op. cit. 429b31 32: τι δυνάμει πώς ἐστι τὰ νοητὰ ὁ νοῦς, ἀλλ᾿ ἐντελεχείᾳ οὐδέν, πρὶν ἂν νοῇ. I have argued that this gnome of Aristotle is the real source of the Neoplatonic theorem postulating that ‘God creates by being what he is’. See supra, pp. 1168 73.  Aristotle, Ethica Eudemia, 1215b; 1216a.  Aristotle, Physica, 203a: καί τινα ἀρχὴν δεῖ εἶναι τῆς γενέσεως, αὕτη δ᾿ ἐστὶν μία, οἷον ἐκεῖ νος καλεῖ νοῦν, ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐργάζεται νοήσας. Ethica Eudemia, 1248a: ἀλλ᾿ ἔστιν ἀρχή τις, οὐδ᾿ ἐνόησε νοήσας πρότερον ἢ νοῆσαι, καὶ τοῦτο εἰς ἄπειρον. οὐκ ἄρα τοῦ νοῆσαι ὁ νοῦς ἀρχή.  Pseudo Athanasius, Liberte Definitionibus, PG.28.536.9 21: Τρία εἰσὶ κατ᾿ οὐσίαν ἀνθρώποις ἀγνώριστα καὶ ἀόριστα, Θεός, ἄγγελος, καὶ ψυχή, μόνῳ Θεῷ κατ᾿ οὐσίαν γνωριζόμενα.

1188

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Asclepius of Tralles, the classmate of both Simplicius and John Philoponus under Ammonius the son of Hermias, wrote a comment on Aristotle’s Physics 989b20‒21, which is largely a verbatim copy from Alexander of Aphrodisias.³⁸ However, as it happened with other points at which he attacks Anaxagoras out of his own initiative, he felt it necessary to add this: Although Anaxagoras spoke of the Mind as being incorporeal, he did not consider partic ular incorporeals such as the soul and the like. So did the other Physicists, too.³⁹

Unlike the normal case, this time Asclepius got it right. Anaxagoras did not care to say anything about the soul in particular, but Asclepius did not realize that the reason was quite plain: there is no such thing as ‘soul’ assumed to be a separate self-existent entity. All of the extant words of Anaxagoras make it plain that ‘soul’ simply means ‘life’: he wrote of ‘men and all other animals which have soul’ (ἀνθρώπους καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ζῷα, ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει),⁴⁰ or that ‘the Mind rules over those which have soul, whether major or minor ones’ (καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ τὰ μείζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ),⁴¹ meaning any kind of being which has life, whether human, or animal, or plant. It is certainly all but coincidence that Euripides used the term ‘soul’ in the most natural and literal sense of ‘life’, which was the lesson he had learned from Anaxagoras.⁴² If

 Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 63, commenting on Aristotle’s Physica, 989b20 21. He copies from Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 72.  Asclepius of Tralles, loc. cit.: ὁ γοῦν ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἰ καὶ εἶπε νοῦν ἀσώματον, ἀλλ᾿ οὖν γε περὶ τῶν κατὰ μέρος ἀσωμάτων οὐ διαλέγεται, ψυχῆς καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτα· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι φυσικοί.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 609; commPhys, pp. 35; 157.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys pp. 156; 177.  Here are some examples (numbers indicate verses). Euripides, Alcestis, 712: “We must live with a single life, not with two” (ψυχῇ μιᾷ ζῆν, οὐ δυοῖν, ὀφείλομεν). Medea, 224 5: “In my case, however, this sudden blow that has struck me has destroyed my life” (ἐμοὶ δ᾿ ἄελπτον πρᾶγμα προσπεσὸν τόδε ψυχὴν διέφθαρκ᾿·); op. cit. 247: “But we must fix our gaze on one person only” (ἡμῖν δ᾿ ἀνάγκη πρὸς μίαν ψυχὴν βλέπειν); op. cit. 968: “And to free my children from exile I would give my life, not merely gold” (τῶν δ᾿ ἐμῶν παίδων φυγὰς ψυχῆς ἂν ἀλλαξαίμεθ᾿, οὐ χρυσοῦ μόνον); Heraclidae, 14 15: “But we escaped from him, and though we lost our city, we saved our lives” (καὶ πόλις μὲν οἴχεται, ψυχὴ δ᾿ ἐσώθη); Hippolytus, 440: “Will you, because of love, destroy your own life?” (κἄπειτ᾿ ἔρωτος οὕνεκα ψυχὴν ὀλεῖς;); Hecuba, 21 22: “But when Troy was sacked and Hector lost his life” (ἐπεὶ δὲ Τροία θ᾿ Ἕκτορός τ᾿ ἀπόλλυται ψυχὴ πα τρῴα θ᾿ ἑστία κατεσκάφη); Supplices, 776 6: “For this one thing, once it is spent, man cannot recover the breath of life, though he knows ways to get his wealth again” (τοῦτο γὰρ μόνον βρο τοῖς οὐκ ἔστι τἀνάλωμ᾿ ἀναλωθὲν λαβεῖν); Hercules, 452: “Or rob me of my wretched life?” (τῆς ταλαίνης τῆς ἐμῆς ψυχῆς φονεύς;) op. cit. 1146: “Why do I spare my own life when I have be come the murderer of my dear children?” (τί δῆτα φείδομαι ψυχῆς ἐμῆς τῶν φιλτάτων μοι γε

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age

1189

Augustine were taken as slightly ad rem,⁴³ it would be said that anima carnis vita est, which means that the soul is vital energy (ζωτικὴ ἐνέργεια), as Michael Psellus put it.⁴⁴ The impression that there is something existing in itself called ‘soul’ is a derivative one, which stems from observations of the physical functions of the body operating according to the concurring natural principles appropriate to it. Posterity was obsessed with the idea that the soul is an incorporeal quid; subsequently, philosophers were anxious to discover what Anaxagoras said about their own notion of soul. But since he had nothing to say about it, some of them decided to follow Aristotle and presume that Anaxagoras treated mind and soul as alternative names of the same assumed entity. Hence, Proclus reported that ‘Anaxagoras said that the soul is incorporeal’ (ψυχὴν ἀσώματον, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἔλεγεν), while, at the same point, he attributed Anaxagoras’ cardinal notion of Mind as immovable mover to Aristotle (νοῦν ἀκίνητον, ὡς ᾿Aριστοτέλης ὕστερον).⁴⁵ Likewise, Themistius decided that ‘Democritus and Anaxagoras determined that the soul is the cause of movement, and perhaps so did Plato’.⁴⁶ Then, he argues with Aristotle that, concerning this distinction, this Presocratic was obscure: although he posited the Mind as supreme principle, he felt that it was necessary for the soul to know and move things; besides, he said clearly that the soul moves things, but he did not say so clearly about the cognizant soul, because this is a distinctive attribute of the Mind.⁴⁷ Themistius (317‒390) lived well before Simplicius (c. 490 ‒ c. 560), hence, he had no inkling of the statements of Anaxagoras postulating that the Mind is omniscient, which

νόμενος παίδων φονεύς;); Troiades, 1134 5: “And she begged her master leave to bury this poor dead child of Hector who breathed his last when hurled from the turrets” (καί σφ᾿ ᾐτήσατο θάψαι νεκρὸν τόνδ᾿, ὃς πεσὼν ἐκ τειχέων ψυχὴν ἀφῆκεν Ἕκτορος τοῦ σοῦ γόνος); op. cit. 1329 30: “And I expect the struggle for life and death, o Creon, is already decided by the sons of Oedipus” (δοκῶ δ᾿ ἀγῶνα τὸν περὶ ψυχῆς, Κρέον, ἤδη πεπρᾶχθαι παισὶ τοῖσιν Οἰδίπου); Orestes, 662: “But give to my miserable father my life and the life of my sister” (ψυχὴν δ᾿ ἐμὴν δὸς τῷ ταλαιπώρῳ πατρί κἀμῆς ἀδελφῆς); op. cit. 1034: “It is a piteous thing for all men to lose life, which is so sweet” (πᾶσιν γὰρ οἰκτρὸν ἡ φίλη ψυχὴ βροτοῖς); Iphigenia Aulidensis, 1441: “Must I not mourn the loss of your life?” (οὐ πενθεῖν με σὴν ψυχὴν χρεών;).  Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIX.26: vita carnis anima est.  Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 51: ὥσπερ ἡ ψυχὴ θερμὴ οὐκ οὖσα ζωτικὴ ἐνέργεια γίνεται τῷ σώματι.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1214; see supra, p. 1183.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 9: ὁρισάμενοι τὴν ψυχήν, ἀπὸ τῆς κινήσεως μὲν Δημόκριτος καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, τυχὸν δὲ καὶ Πλάτων.  Themistius, op. cit. p. 13: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δέ, … οἴεται μέντοι καὶ αὐτὸς ἄμφω τῇ ψυχῇ ἀναγκαῖα, καὶ τὸ γινώσκειν καὶ τὸ κινεῖν, καὶ τὸ μὲν κινεῖν καὶ πάνυ σαφῶς· ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα, νοῦς δὲ αὐτὰ διέκρινεν ἐπελθών· τὸ γιγνώσκειν δὲ ὅτι μάλιστα νοῦ ἴδιον τοῦτο.

1190

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

is why he fell prey to Aristotle’s allegations. Likewise, John Italus (eleventh century) quoted Anaxagoras’ proposition about the Mind being ‘separate’ from, and ‘unmixed’ with, the principles, while substituting the term ‘Mind’ for ‘soul’,⁴⁸ and by the same token the Aristotelian commentator Sophonias (fl. c. 1300) appealed to Anaxagoras’ statements about the Mind in order to determine that the soul is incorporeal.⁴⁹ Little by little, that which was plain to earlier commentators, namely, that the Mind is incorporeal,⁵⁰ was transformed into the interpolative statement that the soul is incorporeal according to Anaxagoras. No one cared to realize that the ‘soul’ was a collective noun meaning only ‘life’, and that Anaxagoras had no reason to deal particularly with something which is not even ‘a being’, but it only indicates the function of living creatures qua living ones. Since the real object of creation is the logoi, God rules over the world by means of them:⁵¹ they are ‘parts of the one and single world, and they concur and converge towards one result’ (συμπνεόντων καὶ συννευόντων εἰς ἓν ἀποτέλεσμα), that is, to the harmonious function of the universe. Nevertheless, in God the Logos/Wisdom, these logoi exist not only as individual ones: they exist also as a whole, which is a perfect reproduction of the philosophy of Anaxagoras postulating the principles as being both one and many⁵² and producing the world by their ‘concurrence’ (σύγκρισις), which Origen illustrates by the Present tense participles συμπνεόντων (of the verb συμπνέω) and συννευόντων (of the verb συννεύω). Thus, he speaks of σύμπνευσις (concurrence) and σύνευσις (convergence), in order to express the Anaxagorean σύγκρισις / διάκρισις in what he probably saw as more befitting terms, which are not different anyway.⁵³ He makes it clear that the divine will is administered by means of the logoi (or, ‘angels’)

 John Italus, Quaestiones Quodlibetales, 50: Ἐπεὶ οὖν πάντα νοεῖ, ὥς φησιν ᾿Aναξαγόρας, φανερὸν ὡς ἀμιγὴς καὶ χωριστὴ τῶν αἰσθητῶν καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἀθάνατος ἅμα καὶ ἀΐδιος.  Sophonias, paraphrPhys, p. 17: πῶς οὖν ἀσώματος [sc. ἡ ψυχή] κατ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόραν καὶ Πλάτωνα;  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 82: καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας μετὰ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν τὸν νοῦν· ἀσώ ματον γάρ φησιν αὐτὸν εἶναι. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 63: ὁ γοῦν ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἰ καὶ εἶπε νοῦν ἀσώματον, ἀλλ᾿ οὖν γε περὶ τῶν κατὰ μέρος ἀσωμάτων οὐ διαλέγεται, ψυχῆς καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτα.  Origen, Homiliae in Job (fragmenta in catenis, typus I+II), p. 363: ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι πάντα ἐν μέτρῳ δι οικεῖ τὰ καθ᾿ ἡμᾶς ὁ Θεὸς τοῖς τῆς αὐτοῦ προνοίας λόγοις.  Origen, commeph, 6: οὐ μόνον γὰρ οἱ κατακερματισμοὶ τῶν οἰκονομουμένων καὶ οἱ καθ᾿ ἕνα λόγοι τῶν διοικουμένων εἰσὶν ἐν τῷ τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγῳ καὶ τῇ Σοφίᾳ αὐτοῦ, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡ ἀνακε φαλαίωσις καὶ (ὡσὰν εἴποι τις) συγκεφαλαίωσις πάντων.  See discussion supra, pp. 896 8; 997.

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age

1191

that ‘concur’ towards producing a specific result, whether knowledge,⁵⁴ or good deeds,⁵⁵ or the making of the world itself.⁵⁶ This convergence lasts for a certain period of time, after which these (actually, some of these) principles cease to concur; they diverge from each other (διάκρισις) and a living being is dissolved into the principles which made it up for a certain period of time. This is why Simplicius described the existence of perceptible objects as ‘perceptible concurrence’ of certain principles (κατὰ τὴν αἰσθητὴν σύμπνοιαν), and disappearance of bodies as separation out, or ‘dissolution into the same principles’ which made up a body in the first place (τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν).⁵⁷ Origen implicitly repudiating Aristotle’s multiple movers, speaks of one soul ‘embracing all things that the world needs which are not self-sufficient’ (καὶ ἐμπεριλαβοῦσα ἔνδον πάντα, ὧν χρείαν ἔχει ὁ κόσμος, τὰ μὴ αὐτοτελῆ), and ‘all things are parts of the world, but God is not part of the whole; for it is necessary [to accept] that God is not incomplete, in the way parts are incomplete’ (δεῖ γὰρ εἶναι τὸν θεὸν μὴ ἀτελῆ, ὥσπερ ἐστὶ τὸ μέρος ἀτελές). Moreover, ‘just as God is not a part, so also He is not the whole either, since the whole is made of parts’. He then dismisses the notion that ‘the supreme God is made up of parts, each one of which cannot do what the other parts can’ (τὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεὸν εἶναι ἐκ μερῶν, ὧν ἕκαστον οὐ δύναται ὅπερ τὰ ἄλλα μέρη).⁵⁸ This statement is Anaxagorean in essence, and Origen maintained it during his Christian period: the Mind is not the totality of the principles/logoi, as indeed the Logos/Son himself is not the sum total of the logoi of his Body. Besides, the statement about ‘parts, each one of which cannot do what the other parts can’, is simply another expression adumbrating the Anaxagorean principles/seeds, all of

 Origen, De Oratione, 27.11: εὐφραινομένων καὶ τρεφομένων ἐν τῇ τοιαύτῃ ἐπιδείξει τῶν ἀγγέλων καὶ ἑτοιμοτέρων γινομένων πρὸς τὸ παντὶ τρόπῳ συνεργῆσαι καὶ πρὸς τὸ ἑξῆς συμπνεῦσαι τῇ πλειόνων καὶ μειζόνων καταλήψει τοῦ ἐπὶ προτέροις παρεσκευασμένου τροφίμοις μαθήμασιν. Italics are mine.  Origen, commMatt, 16.5: τοῦ ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεοῦ συμπνέοντος καὶ συνεργοῦντος. frPs, Psalm 118:5: Ἐὰν μὴ κατευθύνῃ ὁ Θεός, συμπνέων ἡμῖν, ὁδὸν οὐ φυλάξομεν. Personal choice is a result of both freedom and concurring divine power by means of logoi. selPs, PG.12.1161.8 10 (Philocalia, 26.7): οὕτω τὸ τοῦ λογικοῦ ἀγαθὸν μικτόν ἐστιν ἔκ τε τῆς προαιρέσεως αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς συμ πνεούσης θείας δυνάμεως τῷ τὰ κάλλιστα προελομένῳ.  Origen, Cels, I.23: κατὰ τὴν εὐταξίαν τοῦ κόσμου σέβειν τὸν δημιουργὸν αὐτοῦ ἑνὸς ὄντος ἕνα καὶ συμπνέοντος αὐτοῦ ὅλῳ ἑαυτῷ καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μὴ δυναμένῳ ὑπὸ πολλῶν δημιουργῶν γεγονέναι.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35.  Origen, Cels, I.23.

1192

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

which are unlike each other, and they exist throughout the universe.⁵⁹ Anaxagoras, as well as somehow the Stoics who followed him, believed that the Mind is the creator and administrator of the logoi, and yet Mind proper is not the proximate actor, but he acts by means of the logoi. Hence, although Mind is present throughout the universe, once one attempts to specify this presence, this Mind is absent it all the same. This is what makes any principle/logos ‘not self-sufficient’ (μὴ αὐτοτελής), since it acts not out of its own, but at the behest of the Mind.⁶⁰ The Stoics, who were true heirs to the legacy of Anaxagoras, did not dissent from the gist of this tenet: actually, they made it an axiom that ‘any part is neither different from the whole, nor is it the same with it’ (οὔτε ἕτερον τοῦ ὅλου τὸ μέρος οὔτε τὸ αὐτό φασιν ὑπάρχειν).⁶¹ For instance, a hand is not the same as the man himself who has this hand, which is conveniently considered as different from this man.⁶² It should be noticed that, speaking of the universe, Origen uses the term ὅλον, not πᾶν. It was a Stoic doctrine that ὅλον means the world, which is finite, whereas πᾶν includes also the void outside the world, and this is infinite.⁶³ At this point, nevertheless, there are remarkable implicit ideas involved in Origen’s statement.

 Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 34: καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλήθους οὐδὲν ἐοι κότων ἀλλήλοις. τούτων δὲ οὕτως ἐχόντων ἐν τῷ σύμπαντι χρὴ δοκεῖν ἐνεῖναι πάντα χρήματα. Op. cit. p. 156: καὶ σπερμάτων ἀπείρων πλήθους οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις. οὐδὲ γὰρ τῶν ἄλλων οὐδὲν ἔοικε τὸ ἕτερον τῷ ἑτέρῳ.  Cf. the testimony according to which Anaxagoras styled the Mind ‘guardian of the universe’. Harpocration, Lexicon in Decem Oratores Atticos, p. 33: νοῦν πάντων φρουρὸν εἶπεν. Likewise, Photius, Lexicon, letter alpha, entry 1573; letter alpha, entry 1981. George Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, p. 278. Also, everything ‘moves according to his mastery and absolute rule’ (κατὰ τὴν ἐπικράτειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν δεσποτείαν). Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Tho mae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.7.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 336. Aristotle treated the problem of the relation between the whole and the part in the Physica, 185b11. Cf. comments on this by Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 83 6, and by John Philoponus, commPhys, pp. 45 6. Cf. a rel evant analysis of Aristotle’s Metaphysica, 1034b20, by Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 502.  Sextus Empiricus, loc. cit.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.21.3b, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 886C & Pseu do Galen, Historia Philosophica, 44 (Cyril of Alexandria used this testimony, regarding it as a genuine one by Plutarch himself: Contra Julianum, 2.14). Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 332. Achilles Tatius, Isagoga Excerpta, 5. Apollodorus of Seleucia, apud Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 7.143: ὅ τε κόσμος καὶ καθ᾿ ἕτερον τρόπον τὸ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τοῦ ἔξωθεν κενοῦ σύστημα. ὁ μὲν οὖν κόσμος πεπερασμένος ἐστί, τὸ δὲ κενὸν ἄπειρον. The same, in Suda, letter pi, entry 149.

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age

1193

The Neoplatonists would have been reluctant to endorse this thesis: they called ‘self-sufficient’ not only the world, but also the parts of it.⁶⁴ Anyway, in Neoplatonism the term ‘world’ is all too often accorded a divine status, and it means realities higher than the visible universe; hence, to call the ‘world’ (in its different meanings) ‘self-sufficient’ was only natural,⁶⁵ but it was not parallel to what Origen meant. On the other hand, a testimony under the name of Galen represents the Stoics as sustaining that the world (which is an ‘animal’) is made of ‘integral parts, it is perfect made of perfect [parts], and it is in want of naught because it comprises self-sufficient [things]’ (ἐξ ὅλων μὲν οὖν ὁ κόσμος ὅλος ἥρμοσται καὶ ἐκ τελείων τέλειος καὶ ἐξ αὐτοτελῶν ἀνενδεής).⁶⁶ The testimonies about the Stoics sometimes appear contradictory only because they are fragmentary: whereas Zeno and Cleanthes styled God not the world itself, but the soul of the world,⁶⁷ there are other testimonies advising that the world itself was supposed to be God.⁶⁸ Perhaps, such statements are not as contradictory as they appear from appearances alone: since the world is permeated by the divine providence, and ‘the essence of God lies in carrying out this providence’ (ἐν τῷ προνοεῖν τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ τιθεμένους),⁶⁹ even if the world is not divine by essence, its is deified anyway, and thereafter this is all about how the idea has been rendered by different authors. Nevertheless, in this case, ‘Galen’ probably meant that the Stoic ‘logoi’ are ‘self-sufficient’, in the sense that they are the principles by means of, and ac-

 Cf. Simplicius, commCateg, p. 375: αὐτοτελὴς γὰρ ὢν ὁ ὅλος κόσμος ἐκ μερῶν τελείων συμ πεπληρωμένος ἔχει πάντα τὰ ἐν ἑαυτῷ πλήρη καὶ οὐδενὸς ἀμοιροῦντα τῶν ἐπιβαλλόντων ἑαυ τοῖς. The text of the anonymous Paraphrasis Categoriarum, p. 70, is in fact Simplicius’ one.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 5, p. 38: Ἐκεῖ τοίνυν καὶ τὰ τῶν ὅλων δημιουργῶν αἴτια πρώ τως ὑφέστηκε καὶ τὰ μερικώτερά γε τῆς ζωῆς γένη, καὶ ἡ τούτων ἁπάντων ἕνωσις καὶ ἡ ὅλη θεὸς ὁμοῦ μὲν ἐξῄρηται τῶν ἑαυτῆς πληρωμάτων, ὁμοῦ δὲ συντέτακται αὐτοῖς, καὶ οὕτω δὴ μονοειδής τε καὶ πολυειδής ἐστι, καὶ μία καὶ ἁπλῆ καὶ αὐτοτελὴς ὑπάρχουσα κόσμος ἐστὶ ζωογονικός. In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 763: καὶ ἔστιν εἷς νοῦς πολλῶν νόων περιληπτικὸς καὶ κόσμος νοερῶς αὐτοτελῶν νόων μονάς.  Pseudo Galen, An Animal Sit Quod Est in Utero, p. 161. Likewise, the Pythagorean Ocellus (if indeed the work is his own), De Universi Natura, 1.8 (ref. to the world): αὐτὸς ἄρα ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ ἀΐ διός ἐστι καὶ αὐτοτελὴς καὶ διαμένων τὸν πάντα αἰῶνα.  SVF, I.120.38; but in I.25.22, I.43.7; I.120.21, Cleanthes is represented as saying that the world is God.  SVF, II.169.14; II.303.34; II.306.13&23; II.194.2; II.297.10; II.315.6; II.315.6; III.216.33; III.217.10.  Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, ᾿Aπορίαι καὶ Λύσεις, p. 69 (SVF, II.324.23).

1194

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

cording to, which the world is made and functions. As for Christians, the title ‘self-sufficient’ was accorded God alone.⁷⁰ Against all these, we just saw Origen staunchly arguing that whatever exists and functions within the world is not self-sufficient (ἔνδον πάντα, ὧν χρείαν ἔχει ὁ κόσμος, τὰ μὴ αὐτοτελῆ), because they are all ‘parts’, and any part is ‘imperfect’, whereas God is perfect, therefore, he cannot be ‘part’ of the world.⁷¹ The statement is crystal-clear and those who judge Christian orthodoxy would find it impeccable in tenor and meaning. But who was the intellectual who agreed with Origen on this and couched his own analyses in similar terms? Once again, this was Porphyry, his young friend and admirer. His text is evidently a comment on Plato’s Timaeus, 29e5‒30a6, and it is not included in the fragments of this commentary published by A.R. Sodano.⁷² The source is a quotation by John Philoponus, who pursued his own (Christian) cause in his polemical work against Aristotle’s idea sustaining eternity of the world. The argument by both Philoponus and Porphyry is that the cause for God to make the world was only sheer goodness, but Porphyry’s text stresses that, since the world was not made by means of an automatic process without external agency (οὐκ ἐκ ταὐτομάτου), it is not ‘self-sufficient’ for that reason (οὐδὲ αὐτοτελὴς ἑαυτῷ). Instead, the world ‘was produced from God, it was made out of His essence, and this essence is God’s goodness, which means that the fundamental source of the world is God himself’ (ἀλλ᾿ ἀπὸ θεοῦ παρελθὼν καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς οὐσίας γενόμενος, οὐσία δὲ θεοῦ ἡ ἀγαθότης, θεὸς αὐτοῦ κυρίως εἴη ἀρχή).⁷³ There can be no doubt that there is affinity between the text of Origen and that of Porphyry stressing that the world is not self-sufficient: Origen styles the reality of the world τὰ μὴ αὐτοτελῆ, Porphyry speaks of the world as being οὐδὲ αὐτοτελὴς ἑαυτῷ.

 Cf. Pseudo Didymus (= Cassian the Sabaite), De Trinitate, 7.3.3: ἐν οἷς ῥητοῖς αὖθις τῆς αὐ τοτελοῦς καὶ γενεσιουργοῦ τριάδος τὸ τέλειον καὶ σύμφωνον καὶ κοσμητικὸν καὶ ἐπίπαν ἄφθονον σημαίνεται μυστικῶς.  Origen, Cels, I.23, supra, p. 1191.  In Sodano’s edition, there are comments by Porphyry on Timaeus, 29e2 4, and then, on 30a2 6. In that edition, the text of Timaeus, 29e5 30a1, along with Porphyry’s comment on that, is missing. The editor could have used this text of Philoponus, which is extensive and fills the gap.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 172.

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age

1195

Nevertheless, there is a critical point involved in Plato’s statement maintaining that the principal cause of the world was the divine goodness: he said that he received this idea ‘from certain prudent men’ (παρ᾿ ἀνδρῶν φρονίμων).⁷⁴ Who those ‘prudent men’ could possibly be? I have pointed out that the anthropomorphic metaphor of Demiurge denotes a Mind (νοῦς), which is a notion appearing at several points in Plato,⁷⁵ even though some modern scholars essayed to see in Plato’s Nous the rational cosmic soul – which makes no difference, since, in essence, this is only a matter of names, and I have no reason to deal with this dispute: during the Late Antiquity, commentators (almost all of them Neoplatonists) endeavoured to project the Neoplatonic ontological pattern into Plato’s texts, and, on such dilemmatic questions, modern scholarship moves along the same line. The point is that Plato did avail himself of the notion of Nous, and the sole source of it was Anaxagoras, as Plato himself acknowledged. Even at the point in the Laws, where implicitly he criticized Anaxagoras for his ‘impious doctrines’ (891d; 967b-e), he goes on with affirming the Anaxagorean theory of the Mind, while implicitly expressing regret at the fact that Anaxagoras fell prey to abuse by poets. Therefore, there is no way for the expression ‘prudent men’ to refer to anyone other than Anaxagoras – and I should remind once again that the points at which Plato refers to Anaxagoras implicitly are more pregnant with meaning than those where the Presocratic philosopher is mentioned by name. This plausibly means that the answer to the question by ancient critics of Anaxagoras is underlying in this Platonic reference: Plato knew of the text of Anaxagoras and of the reason why the Mind set out to create (or, ‘distinguish’, which is the same, according to Simplicius) the principles was simply sheer divine goodness. This is one more point which shows why Origen found in Anaxagoras a real inspiration for several of his Christian resolutions duly adapted. The views of Porphyry make it clear that he was inspired by Anaxagoras and saw the fate of the soul after death exactly as Simplicius described the general doctrine: ‘dissolution into the same principles’ which made it up in the first place (τὴν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γένεσιν καὶ εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν).⁷⁶ Whereas Atticus and Albinus interpreted Plato as holding that an irrational soul perishes after death, Porphyry argued that both the body (‘vehicle’, ὀχήματος) and the ‘irrational soul’ (καὶ τῆς ἀλόγου ψυχῆς) are ‘somehow’ dissolved into the ‘elements’

 Plato, Timaeus, 29e5 30a2: ταύτην δὴ γενέσεως καὶ κόσμου μάλιστ᾿ ἄν τις ἀρχὴν κυριωτάτην παρ᾿ ἀνδρῶν φρονίμων ἀποδεχόμενος ὀρθότατα ἀποδέχοιτ᾿ ἄν. Cf. Anaxagoras, supra, pp. 322; 564 5.  See chapter 8, p. 528, and note 8.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 35.

1196

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

which made them up in the first place, and they return to the ‘spheres, from which they received their composition’ (ἀναστοιχειοῦσθαι δὲ αὐτά φασι καὶ ἀναλύεσθαί τινα τρόπον εἰς τὰς σφαίρας, ἀφ᾿ ὧν τὴν σύνθεσιν ἔλαχε). What are those ‘spheres’? But of course the existence of the principles which made up the corporeal entity of a human being along with its vital operation (such as stomach and genital functions) not in this ontological level, but in a higher one, according to the classification of the different existence of principles made by Porphyry, Simplicius, Damascius, and the Stoics. This is the meaning of Porphyry’s infinitive ἀναλύεσθαι,⁷⁷ which is the same terminology as the one used by Simplicius (εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν). Quite simply, the principles/logoi which concurred in order to make the entire physical/psychic/spiritual human entity, subsequently diverge from each other, they are separated out, only to return to the state of existing differently, and yet being always at hand in order to concur again in order to produce another human being, or whatever. Porphyry described this concurrence of logoi by means of the term φυράματα (‘mixtures’) ‘descending from the heavenly spheres’ in order to pick up a soul (φυράματα δὲ εἶναι ταῦτα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανίων σφαιρῶν καὶ κατιοῦσαν αὐτὰ συλλέγειν τὴν ψυχήν). Thus, it can be said that these mixtures ‘both exist and do not exist’ (ὥστε καὶ εἶναι ταῦτα καὶ μὴ εἶναι), since they are in fact temporary, like every material construction, or concurrence of logoi in the universe. These mixtures, or concurrences, are individual accidental events which are destined to pass as such (αὐτὰ δὲ ἕκαστα μηκέτ᾿ εἶναι μηδὲ διαμένειν τὴν ἰδιότητα αὐτῶν). The logoi themselves are incorruptible and indestructible, but the sundry derivative combinations of their concurrences (called by Porphyry also φυράματα) are only temporary and transient.⁷⁸ This is the sense in which something can be both mortal and immortal, which Origen alludes to⁷⁹ in Contra Celsum. Once the soul is understood to be a concurrence of Anaxagorean logoi, it was natural for Porphyry to argue that the soul cannot be confined by the physical body, since the immaterial logoi are not trammelled: in fact, to them, the body is as if non-existent, since whatever is incorporeal it does not extent  It would be worth considering this in respect of Paul describing his imminent death as ‘anal ysis’, in 2 Tim. 4:6: καὶ ὁ καιρὸς τῆς ἀναλύσεώς μου ἐφέστηκεν. Proclus saw the views of Por phyry as Chaldaean influence. Be that as it may, these views were also Anaxagorean, which Pro clus did not notice.  Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 80, apud Proclus expounding the views of Porphyry about ‘what is either mortal or immortal’, commTim, v. 3, p. 234. He dismissed the claim that this was a view of Plato, ‘who did not explicitly perish everything which is irrational’. See infra, p. 1356, Origen using the term φυράματα, too.  In Cels, IV, sections XIV, XVI, XVII, LIV, LXI, all of the references to ‘immortal’ and ‘mortal’ suggest this function of the Anaxagorean principles.

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age

1197

through bodies as if this were a corporeal substance.⁸⁰ Therefore, to say that the incorporeal nature is ‘included’ in a body, is not like the case of a beast confined into a menagerie (ὡς ἐν ζωγρείῳ θηρίον): for this is not like a liquid or air enclosed into a flask. Instead, this is the source generating forces that hold the body qua body together. It is because these forces ‘descend’ that a body can be produced as a coherent material entity. This means that there is ‘ineffable extension’ of the incorporeal logoi throughout the body, in order to sustain and hold it together as a body.⁸¹ Quite simply then, Porphyry describes the Anaxagorean principles/logoi generating and holding together a human being, which is one of the very few consistent accounts of all antiquity about the soul, and it is quite characteristic that he speaks of ‘the incorporeal’ (τὸ ἀσώματον), but he does not use the term ‘soul’ (ψυχή) at all. This is the basis on which in reality there is no death,⁸² since the essential constituents of inanimate and animate things do not vanish, but they exist always, and it is only the different ways of their mutual reaction that construct and dissolve perceptible things. There is a remarkable instance of the phenomenon that I have called clandestine use of Anaxagoras during the Late Antiquity, which though sometimes was a serendipitous one. Olympiodorus of Alexandria wrote a commentary on Plato’s Phaedo, which was subtitled ‘On the Soul’. In that dialogue, the proposition ‘there is no death’ is based on the theory that ‘the Ideas are immortal and indestructible, and they are the sole object of knowledge’. Plato’s theory was that qualities do not change into one another: since change takes place anyway, this should be not change from one quality to another, but change into something that is beyond the qualities involved in a certain process of this kind, because ‘contraries are not generated from their contraries’.⁸³ Olympiodorus’ aim

 Porphyry, Sententiae, 27: Οὐδὲν τὸ ἀσώματον τὸ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ ἡ τοῦ σώματος ἐμποδίζει ὑπόστα σις πρὸς τὸ μὴ εἶναι ὅπου βούλεται καὶ ὡς θέλει. ὡς γὰρ τῷ σώματι τὸ ἄογκον ἄληπτον καὶ οὐδὲν πρὸς αὐτό, οὕτω τῷ ἀσωμάτῳ τὸ ἔνογκον ἀνεπιπρόσθητον καὶ ὡς μὴ ὂν κεῖται· οὐδὲ τοπικῶς διέρχεται τὸ ἀσώματον ὅπου βούλεται.  Porphyry, op. cit. 28: Τὸ ἀσώματον ἂν ἐν σώματι κατασχεθῇ, οὐ συγκλεισθῆναι δέει ὡς ἐν ζωγρείῳ θηρίον· συγκλεῖσαι γὰρ αὐτὸ οὐδὲν οὕτω δύναται καὶ περιλαβεῖν σῶμα οὐδ᾿ ὡς ἀσκὸς ὑγρόν τι ἕλκειν ἢ πνεῦμα, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτὸ δεῖ ὑποστῆσαι δυνάμεις ῥεπούσας ἀπὸ τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸ ἑνώ σεως εἰς τὸ ἔξω, αἷς δὴ κατιὸν συμπλέκεται τῷ σώματι· δι᾿ ἐκτάσεως οὖν ἀρρήτου τῆς ἑαυτοῦ ἡ εἰς σῶμα σύνερξις.  See supra, Conclusion of Part I, p. 520.  Plato, Phaedo, 103a b. Cebes was baffled because, earlier, Socrates had assumed that ‘con traries are generated from their contraries’; now, Socrates explains himself at this point. Cf. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 9.2: καὶ αὐτὰς μὲν τὰς ποιό τητας οὐ βούλεται μεταβάλλειν εἰς ἀλλήλας, ἀλλὰ μετὰ ἀλλήλας αὐτὰς βούλεται.

1198

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

was to argue that, since ‘life and death are contraries’, there must be something that remains out of the change of them, and this is ‘the soul, which exists for ever’.⁸⁴ This is all very well, but the point is that Olympiodorus quotes a passage which he says he found in Proclus. In reality, however, this should have been written by Proclus’ teacher Syrianus, and Proclus maintained it as it was out of respect, while commenting on Syrianus. The passage (which is not extant in the works of Syrianus or those of Proclus that we currently have) reads thus: Life and death is coming together and separation out; since they are contraries, the conclu sion is evident (ζωὴ καὶ θάνατος σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισίς ἐστιν, ταῦτα ἐναντία, καὶ δῆλον τὸ συμπέρασμα).⁸⁵

The ‘conclusion’ (‘the soul remains for ever’) is one by Olympiodorus himself, not by Syrianus, which becomes evident when Olympiodorus returns to this quotation later in the same work. In his mind and context, life coming from the dead, and vice versa, means nothing more than transmigration of souls in accordance with reading Plato’s Phaedo, 70c‒72a. To this purpose, he appeals to ‘the old tradition about this doctrine’,⁸⁶ mentioning relevant verses from Orpheus and Empedocles.⁸⁷ Nevertheless, he feels it necessary also to quote the same passage ‘from Proclus or Syrianus’ once again, yet this time in a somewhat wider context: Life and death are coming together and separation out (ἡ ζωὴ καὶ ὁ θάνατος σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις); they are contraries (ταῦτα δὲ ἐναντία), and contraries change into each other (τὰ δὲ ἐναντία μεταβάλλει εἰς ἄλληλα); therefore, a living and a dead being change into each other (ὥστε καὶ τὸ ζῶν καὶ τὸ τεθνεὸς μεταβάλλει εἰς ἄλληλα).⁸⁸

However, there is nothing to suggest that Syrianus meant to speak about transmigration. Besides, Olympiodorus himself later adds that Ammonius of Alexandria taught that ‘generation from each other is a principle that applies not only to  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, loc. cit.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, loc. cit. quoting ‘either Proclus or Syrianus’ (so at 9.5; 10.4). Later (10.5) he determined that this was indeed written by Syrianus.  Plato, Phaedo, 70c5 6. Olympiodorus says that Plato means Orpheus and Pythagoras; op. cit. 10.6.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, op. cit. 10.3.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, op. cit. 10.3 4. In op. cit. 10.1, Olympiodorus quotes from Aris totle, De Anima, 407b22, who rejected transmigration of souls: “… as though it were possible, as the Pythagorean fables suggest, for any soul to find its way into any body”, slightly paraphrased by Olympiodorus.

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age

1199

men, animals, and plants, but universally to everything that is generated’ (καὶ ξυλλήβδην ὅσαπερ ἔχει γένεσιν),⁸⁹ which is a proposition specifically set forth by Anaxagoras, according to Aristotle: “Any one thing is generated by any other thing (ὁτιοῦν ἐξ ὁτουοῦν γιγνόμενον)”.⁹⁰ Even if Aristotle is not given full credit, the testimony of (Pseudo‐) Plutarch attests to the perspective of Anaxagoras, who believed that ‘animals are generated from one another, because they are all parts of the world’.⁹¹ In other words, the principle of ‘generation from each other’ has to do not with Plato’s doctrine of transmigration, but with Anaxagoras’ theory of generation. In any event, Plato was haunted by Anaxagoras, and at points (as indeed in the present one, Phaedo, 72c) his obsession with that philosopher is actually funny. He wished to prove transmigration by means of such quality of arguments as this: “If all things that have life should die, and, when they are all dead, they should remain in that condition, it is inevitable that, eventually, all things will be dead and nothing will be left alive.” Why is that so? Because Plato took death to be ‘coming together’ (σύγκρισις) and life ‘separation-out’ (διάκρισις): “If all things were mixed together and never separated, then the saying of Anaxagoras, all things are fused, would soon come true.”⁹² However, this was nonsense: for the doctrine of Anaxagoras was that the world had a beginning,⁹³ it was made once and for all, it will remain for ever under the supervision of the Mind, and there is no possibility for this ever to return to the original fusion.

 Olympiodorus of Alexandria, op. cit. 10.7. This point does not occur Ammonius’ extant edi tions.  Aristotle attributed this to Anaxagoras by name, while discussing the latter’s fundamental proposition ‘all things were together’. Physica, 203a24 25. See the verses of Euripides being quot ed supra, p. 514, note 123: “Not one of the things that come to be dies, but, once they are sep aratied off from one another, they appear in different form.”  According to this testimony, this was what Epicurus, as well as Anaxagoras’ pupil Euripides, also believed. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 908D: Οἱ περὶ Ἐπίκουρον, καθ᾿ οὓς ἀγένητος, ἐκ μεταβολῆς τῆς ἀλλήλων γεννᾶσθαι τὰ ζῷα· μέρη γὰρ εἶναι τοῦ κόσμου ταῦτα, ὡς καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας καὶ Εὐριπίδης. Likewise, Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 123. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.9. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.8.10. Origen, Cels, IV.57.  Plato, Phaedo, 72c. So Olympiodorus of Alexandria, op. cit. 10.4.  The notion of creation ex nihilo was maintained by Origen (COT, pp. 119 75) since the times of Ammonius Saccas. This is tenuously latent in Anaxagoras, according to the analysis of Aris totle (Physica, 203a31 32: ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐργάζεται νοήσας), and that of Simplicius, who confirmed a beginning of creation: commPhys, p. 461: τοιοῦτος δὲ ὁ νοῦς, ὃν ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς τινος ἐνόησεν ἐργαζόμενον, ἐν οἷς λέγει ἄρξασθαι τὸν νοῦν διακρίνειν. Op. cit. p. 301: the ‘intellectual distinction itself was creation’. This is why Hierocles of Alexandria was clear in affirming that this principle was sustained by Ammonius (Hierocles, De Providentia, apud Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 214, p. 172a; Cod. 251, pp. 460b 461a).

1200

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

That Plato said so is not surprising: he always resented Anaxagoras’ ingenious propositions. But it is surprising that Olympiodorus reproduced this allegation, given that he was a pupil of Ammonius and partook of the same education as Simplicius and Philoponus, who attested exactly to the opposite about Anaxagoras.⁹⁴ This is only an example showing how Anaxagoras’ thought was distorted, whereas, at the same time, his ideas were plundered.⁹⁵ At that point, Plato actually meant to ridicule Anaxagoras, and placed the irony in the mouth of Socrates, as he always did. The result is, however, that this is one more point showing how feeble the celebrated Socratic dialectics was at several points. To both Platonists and Aristotelists it was irritating that Anaxagoras thought differently on the question of the soul and he did not deign to say anything about it. Despite Aristotle’s severe criticism of Plato’s theory of Ideas, and the strong denial of self-existent incorporeal beings except for the supreme principle, there was a substantial point shared by both traditions alike: whether the soul was posited as an exalted being of transcendent extraction that has arrived here from the higher realm, or it was seen as merely the form of the body that cannot survive death, both Plato and Aristotle maintained that the soul is a specific something, which is worthy of study on its own merits. Several centuries later, Aristotle’s commentator Sophonias put it clearly: the soul has to be a ‘portion, which is pure and self-existent’ (μοῖραν τινὰ καθαρὰν καὶ εἰλικρινῆ);⁹⁶ in other words, it has to be a precious being existing in itself. Anyway, to Aristotle, the soul is to the body what God is to the entire universe. Building on Aristotle,⁹⁷ John Philoponus argued that Anaxagoras did not clarify how it is possible for the Mind to cognize; nevertheless, he conceded that Anaxagoras ‘said that the soul is incorporeal’ (which though actually he did not). Philoponus assumed this only because Aristotle said so, namely, that, to Anaxagoras, the mind and the soul are the same thing: since the Mind

 Simplicius, op. cit. p. 154: τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόραν λέγειν ἅπαξ γενόμενον τὸν κόσμον ἐκ τοῦ μίγμα τος διαμένειν λοιπὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ ἐφεστῶτος διοικούμενόν τε καὶ διακρινόμενον. John Philopo nus, commPhys, p. 94: ὁ μὲν ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἅπαξ τὸν νοῦν φησιν ἐκ τοῦ μίγματος τοῦ πρώτου ἀρ ξάμενον διακρίνειν εἰσαεὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖν, καὶ μηκέτι ἐνδέχεσθαι πάλιν ἓν μῖγμα πάντα γενέσθαι.  Although hardly did Plato have any inkling of the actual import of the Anaxagoras’ doctrine of σύγκρισις / διάκρισις, he took up the terminology and used it abundantly. Cf. Phaedo, 71b6; 72c3; Sophista, 243b5; Politicus, 283b c; Parmenides, 156b5; 157a6; Philebus, 42c10; Timaeus, 58b7; 64e4; 65c4; 67d6; 80c4 5; Leges, 893e6; 894b10; 897a6.  Sophonias, paraphrPhys, p. 16.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405b: “But how Mind, being of such a nature, can ever recognize any thing, and by what agency, he did not explain, nor is it clear from his [Anaxagoras’] expressed views.”

From Anaxagoras to Classical Age

1201

is incorporeal, the soul has to be incorporeal, too. Then, he hurls a wholesale stricture, following Aristotle’s remark made in his On the Soul, 405b12: all philosophers who treated the question of the soul made it consistent of all of their fundamental principles, because only if the soul had in itself all the principles could it be possible for the axiom ‘like is known by the like’ to hold, and for the soul to be able to cognize. “But Anaxagoras was the only one who did not tread along this path” (᾿Aναξαγόρας οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν τούτοις ἐβάδισε). The way for him to do so was postulating the ‘incorporeal Mind’ as a supreme ruler, who knows and moves everything. Thus, all other philosophers made the soul consistent of all of their principles because they wished to solve the problem of how a soul can know, except for one (πλὴν ἑνός),⁹⁸ who did not need to do so because he posited the Mind in the way he did.⁹⁹ Then, Philoponus carries on with the criticism of Aristotle (‘how it is possible for this Mind to know, Anaxagoras did not clarify’), which we have discussed already and it is not relevant to the present point; what is important is that, along with Aristotle, Philoponus got it right in pointing out that, in respect of the soul, Anaxagoras alone did not care to move along the lines others did, because he did not need to do so. The irony is that, whereas Anaxagoras did not need to say anything about the soul, his Theory of Logoi was employed in order for others to do so, while they were (largely unconsciously) influenced by him. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the remarkable legacy of Anaxagoras’ philosophy on the question of the soul, for which normally he did not receive the credit he deserved. First, however, a brief survey of theories about the soul is called for. Once Plato made the soul the crown jewel of human existence, and Aristotle followed him on this, notwithstanding his dissent from his teacher, what philosophers held the soul to be turned out a pivotal criterion of their fundamental allegiances, and of their piousness none the less.¹⁰⁰ Little wonder then that many subsequent authors were baffled as to what was it that Anaxagoras held the soul to be, and contradicting reports about this were only natural to follow. However, Anaxagoras’ views were all too clear: the soul is the result of a certain concurrence of principles (σύγκρισις), which is the cause for a certain kind of life to ap-

 Aristotle, op. cit. 405b12.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 91.  On the priority of the soul over the body, see Plato, Leges, 891c; 892a b; 896 ff; Timaeus, 34b c. Concerning this issue, philosophers normally appealed to Plato. Cf. Plutarch, De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1013F. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 93. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 356. Sto baeus, op. cit. 1.49.28. Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 113 5; 117. John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 175.

1202

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

pear. John Philoponus knew that, when Aristotle criticized those who posited generation as a certain concurrence of principles, and perishing as separation out, the notion of ‘generation’ included also the soul, which was not exempt from the overall process of becoming and perishing: for this is produced from a certain concurrence of principles, in the same way bodies are.¹⁰¹ In other words, everything that becomes is simply a temporary ‘concurrence of principles’ (συνδρομὴ ἀρχῶν). It is all but coincidence that this expression belongs to Porphyry,¹⁰² who followed Origen along Anaxagorean lines, and this is how he saw the concurrence of logoi/principles as the cause of generation in general. The perceptive Gennadius Scholarius pointed out that ‘Anaxagoras and Plato averred that the soul is consisted of the principles of beings’ (ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν τῶν ὄντων αὐτὴν ἐνόμισαν συνεστάναι), namely, of the logoi. He adds that this is what also Empedocles maintained, since he posited not only the four elements, but also Love and Strive, ‘and he constructs the essence of the soul from them all’.¹⁰³ This is why, in the sixth cenrury, Asclepius of Tralles, on the one hand acknowledged that Anaxagoras had posited an ‘incorporeal Mind’ (εἶπε νοῦν ἀσώματον) while, on the other, he did not deem it necessary ‘to treat specific incorporeals, such as the soul, and others’.¹⁰⁴

 John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 90: τῇ γὰρ τοιᾷδε συγκρίσει καὶ διακρίσει τῶν ἀρχῶν καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς γίνεσθαι καὶ τὰς διαφορὰς τῶν σωμάτων, ὥσπερ καὶ ἡμεῖς τῇ διαφόρῳ τῶν στοιχείων κράσει τὰ διάφορα σώματα. Cf. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 420: καὶ δῆλον ὅτι ταύτης εἰσὶ τῆς δόξης τῶν τε παλαιῶν φυσιολόγων ὅσοι σωματικὴν ἢ μίαν ἢ πλείους ὑπέθεντο τὴν ἀρχήν, καὶ τῶν νέων οἱ Στωικοί, κατὰ γὰρ τὴν τῶν ἀρχῶν διάκρισιν ἢ σύγκρισιν ἢ ἀλλοίωσιν ἔλεγον οἱ πάλαι γίνεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα.  Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1 p. 392: αἰτίας γὰρ ἀνῃρη μένης ἡ συνδρομὴ τῶν τοιῶνδε ἀρχῶν ἄλογος ἔσται καὶ ἀναίτιος. Aristotle refers to those before him who described the testicles as ‘concurrence of many principles’. Definitely, he had in mind certain Presocratics, but he did not identify them. De Generatione Animalium, 788a: τινὲς ὑπο λαμβάνουσιν αὐτοὺς τοὺς ὄρχεις εἶναι σύναμμα πολλῶν ἀρχῶν. Cf. John Philoponus, commGe nAnim, p. 245: ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ὥς τινες ὑπέλαβον εἶναι τοὺς ὄρχεις σύναμμα καὶ σωρείαν καὶ συνέλευσιν πολλῶν ἀρχῶν … ἀλλ᾿ ἔστιν ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ ὄρχει πολλῶν δυνάμεων καὶ ἀρχῶν συνδρομή.  Gennadius Scholarius, adnotArist, Book 3, lines 66 9, comm. on Aristotle’s De Anima, 404b9 15. He writes pace Aristotle, who, at that point, had argued that Anaxagoras did not dis tinguish between mind and soul. In effect, Gennadius says that Anaxagoras did not need to do so, since, to him, everything is made of specific concurrence of principles, and the soul is not something special compared to everything else in the world, so as to be considered particularly on its own merit.  Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 63: ὁ γοῦν ᾿Aναξαγόρας εἰ καὶ εἶπε νοῦν ἀσώματον, ἀλλ᾿ οὖν γε περὶ τῶν κατὰ μέρος ἀσωμάτων οὐ διαλέγεται, ψυχῆς καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτα.

Definitions of the soul

1203

Definitions of the soul It is not difficult to collect information about how soul was understood and defined by philosophers. In his pragmaty on the soul, Aristotle reviewed relevant views of his predecessors.¹⁰⁵ Later authors reported accounts by previous schools, mostly with the purpose to refute them. An informed doxographer as he was, Stobaeus assembled different opinions in his anthology. We have similar reports by Themistius, and, of course, by such Christian scholars as Clement, Eusebius, and Theodoret. So did an unknown writer of a work a history of philosophy spuriously ascribed to Galen (Περὶ φιλοσόφου ἱστορίας), as well as the philosopher who became a bishop, but he actually remained a philosopher throughout his life, namely, Nemesius of Emesa. Thales ‘was the first who posited the soul as ever-moving and self-moving’ (ἀεικίνητον ἢ αὐτοκίνητον), which Plato took up and made it a proverbial statement.¹⁰⁶ Aristotle maintained that the soul is immovable and prior to motion; it is involved with motion only accidentally, in accordance with the forms of bodies.¹⁰⁷ Concerning Aristotle’s definition of the soul as ‘the prime full reality of a natural organic body which potentially is animate’ (ἐντελέχειαν πρώτην σώματος φυσικοῦ, ὀργανικοῦ, δυνάμει ζωὴν ἔχοντος), the doxographer explained

 Aristotle, De Anima, 403b20 22: Ἐπισκοποῦντας δὲ περὶ ψυχῆς ἀναγκαῖον; τὰς τῶν προτέ ρων δόξας συμπεριλαμβάνειν.  Plato, Phaedrus, 245c. Cf. Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 3.234; De Sacrificiis Abelis et Caini, 127; De Abrahamo, 154; De Aeternitate Mundi, 84. Plutarch, De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo 1023C; the same in Epitome Libri De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1031A. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 898B; 899B. Galen, De Tremore, Palpitatione, Convulsione et Rigore, p. 616. Alexander (son of Numenius), De Figuris, p. 11. Albinus, Epitome Doctrinae Platonicae, 5.5; 25.4. Hermogenes of Tarsus, Περὶ Ἰδεῶν Λόγου, 1.6. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commAnalPr, p. 324; commTop, pp. 299; 582. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 24. Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.12. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.19.10. Pseudo Hippolytus, Contra Beronem et Heliconem, p. 323. Themistius, Quae Fertur in Aristotelis Analyticorum Priorum Librum i Para phrasis, pp. 108 9. Julian, emperor, Contra Galilaeos, p. 166. Sopater, Scholia ad Hermogenis Sta tus seu Artem Rhetoricam, p. 4. Hermias of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, pp. 103; 104; 108; 109; 112; 113; 121. Ammonius of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, pp. 35; 74; commA nalPr, pp. 3; 5; 6; 11; 14; 29. Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.1a; 1.49.5; 1.49.11. Cf. Chrysippus, fr. 4. Posido nius, Fragmenta, fr. 391a. Boethus, Fragmenta, fr. 7. Corpus Hermeticum, Fragmenta, fr. 3. Also, Christians: Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, 2.9.82.1. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.8 (endorsing Plato); Contra Hieroclem, p. 408. Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 2, pp. 17; 29.  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 899B: ἀκίνητον τὴν ψυχὴν πάσης κινήσεως προ ηγουμένην, τῆς δὲ κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς μετέχειν καθάπερ τὰ εἴδη τῶν σωμάτων.

1204

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

that, by ‘full reality’ one should understand ‘actuality’, which might well mean also ‘reality’ (τὴν δ᾿ ἐντελέχειαν ἀκουστέον ἀντὶ τῆς ἐνεργείας).¹⁰⁸ Since its functions are cognizing as well as moving the body, Pythagoras posited the soul as a number that moves itself (ἀριθμὸν αὑτὸν κινοῦντα), by ‘number’ meaning another name for ‘mind’ (τὸν δὲ ἀριθμὸν ἀντὶ τοῦ νοῦ παραλαμβάνει). So believed Xenocrates, who was frank enough as to acknowledge that the Academy was indebted to Pythagoras, and he did not seek to suppress those debts, as Plato had struggled to do.¹⁰⁹ Therefore, it was widely thought that Pythagoras’ ‘number’ was only another name for the Mind.¹¹⁰ Alcmaeon sustained that the soul is a self-moving nature; its motion is eternal, hence, it is immortal and akin to the divine realm (ἀθάνατον αὐτὴν καὶ προσεμφερῆ τοῖς θείοις).¹¹¹ Dicaearchus of Messenia (c. 350 ‒ c. 285, a disciple of Aristotle and friend of Theophrastus) saw the soul as ‘harmony of the four elements’ (fire, air, water, earth),¹¹² which Aristotle himself had discussed as a doctrine advanced by Empedocles,¹¹³ as well as by the Pythagorean Philolaus.¹¹⁴ This means that the soul is mortal and it perishes once this harmony ceases to exist. Considering it from this point of view, Galen saw this theory as one shared by Epicurus, too.¹¹⁵ Attribution of the idea that the soul is a harmony of the four elements to Dinarchus is wrong. This is only an editorial oversight

 Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 898B. He reports and explains Aristotle, De Anima, 412a b. Cf. Ar istotle arguing that the ‘full reality’ (ἐντελέχεια) of a body is produced from ‘combination of ac tivity’ (ἐνέργεια, ἡ πρὸς τὴν ἐντελέχειαν συντιθεμένη). Metaphysica, 147a30; cf. 1050a23; 1066a; Physica, 202a14 21; 257b7 9.  Xenocrates, Testimonia, Doctrina et Fragmenta, fr. 262: αὐτὴ γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ψυχὴ τῆς κράσεως ταύτης αἰτία καὶ τοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς μίξεως τῶν πρώτων στοιχείων. Also fr. 166, apud Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, 91a. Likewise, Xenocrates, frs. 169; 170; 182; 183; 184; 186; 187; 190; 191; 192; 194; 197; 262. Simplicius, commAnim; pp. 30; 61; 65 6.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.1a apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 898C: Πυθαγόρας ἀριθμὸν αὑτὸν κινοῦντα, τὸν δὲ ἀριθμὸν ἀντὶ τοῦ νοῦ παραλαμβάνει.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.1a.  Pseudo Plutarch, De Musica, 1138D; Placita Philosophorum, 898C. Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 2, p. 17. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectiorum Curatio, 5.18. Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.1a.  Aristotle, De Anima, 498a.  Aristotle, op. cit. 407a 408a. Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 86c; 88d; 91c 94e; Respublica, 591d; Ti maeus, 37a; 47d. The Stoics did not deny that the soul is ‘a certain harmony’, yet they saw it as harmony of corporeal spermatic logoi (σπερματικῶν λόγων). Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima, p. 26. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem Commentarii, 55.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 24: θνητὴν μὲν ψυχὴν Δικαίαρχος καὶ Ἐπίκουρος ᾠήθησαν.

Definitions of the soul

1205

by H. Diels¹¹⁶ having read Nemesius,¹¹⁷ who otherwise had copied from (Pseudo‐) Plutarch.¹¹⁸ Theodoret¹¹⁹ erroneously attributed this to Clearchus instead of Dicaearchus, but editor W. Dehrli correctly emended the attribution of both testimonies (by Nemesius and Theodoret) to Δικαίαρχος.¹²⁰ By the way, Dicaearchus has also suffered in relation to his city of origin. It has been assumed that he was from Messene of Sicily, but facts suggest that he was from the region of Messenia in Peloponnesus. Sources mention him as Δικαίαρχος ὁ Μεσσήνιος.¹²¹ The mistake was created by the composer of the Suda: although he calls him Μεσσηνίῳ Δικαιάρχῳ,¹²² he makes him a native of Sicily.¹²³ Hesychius of Alexandria mentions him, too, athough he did not make Dicaearchus a lemma, nor did he mention anything about his native city.¹²⁴ Following this mistake, some scholars wonder why was it that Dicaearchus spent most of his life in Peloponnesus, or why was it that he cared to write a tract on the Spartan Constitution (Πολιτεία Σπαρτιατῶν). The reason is simply that Messenia is a region of Peloponnesus and its closest geographical neighbour is Sparta. From another point of view, Dicaearchus is at one with Aristotle considering the soul as being not a self-existing essence (ἀνούσιος), as Nemesius of Emesa pointed out.¹²⁵ This only means that the soul cannot exist (let alone, live) apart from the body. Therefore, different conceptions of the soul had to do with the controversy on whether this is an individual being that comes from a higher realm (or from God himself) and it is vested with a body, or it is simply

 H. Diels, in his Doxographi Graeci (Aetius, De Placitis Reliquiae [Theodoreti et Nemesii ex cerpta], p. 347). But Pseudo Plutarch got it right (Δικαίαρχος), Placita Philosophorum, 898C. Migne has the correct Δικαίαρχος, too. PG.40.537. So does Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.1a.  Nemesius of Emesa, op. cit. chapter 2, p. 17: ᾿Aριστοτέλης δὲ καὶ Δείναρχος (instead of Δικαίαρχος) ἀνούσιον.  Nemesius, loc. cit.: Δείναρχος δὲ ἁρμονίαν τῶν τεσσάρων στοιχείων, ἀντὶ τοῦ κρᾶσιν καὶ συμφωνίαν τῶν στοιχείων. οὐ γὰρ τὴν ἐκ τῶν φθόγγων συνισταμένην, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐν τῷ σώματι θερμῶν καὶ ψυχρῶν καὶ ὑγρῶν καὶ ξηρῶν ἐναρμόνιον κρᾶσιν καὶ συμφωνίαν βούλεται λέγειν.  Or perhaps a scribe did so, in Graecarum Affectiorum Curatio, 5.18.  W. Dehrli, Dikaiarchos, fr. 12b.  Zenobius (sophist, who taught at Rome during Emperor Hadrian, 117 138 AD), Epitome Col lectionum Lucilli Tarrhaei et Didymi, 2.15. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 11.4. Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 2.31. Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.32. Anonymous, Vita Aeschyli, 1, line 68. Anonymous, Scholia in Aristophanem, Scholia in Pacem, verse 1244c5. So Tertullian, De Anima, 15.2, Migne, PL.2.670A: Messenius Dicaearchus.  Suda, letter alpha, entry 3927.  Op. cit. letter delta, entry 1062: He is mentioned also in op. cit. letter sigma, entry 643, with no mention of his origin being made.  Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, letter epsilon, entry 3276.  Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 2, p. 22, disagreeing with Dicaearchus.

1206

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

a vital force which emerges out of a proper (either ‘harmonious’, or whatever) combination of the four elements. An anonymous doctor put it plainly: unlike animals which have their soul formed by the surrounding air that vitalizes the body, human soul is a certain ‘incorporeal essence’ given directly by God.¹²⁶ The view of medical doctor Asclepiades of Bithynia (c. 125 BC – c. 40 AD) is also interesting, since he also makes the soul the product of an animated body: the soul is the result of the senses having been trained by means of their mutual collaboration.¹²⁷ Consequently, the mind is coextensive with the senses and stretches out over the entire body: it makes no sense to speak of any incorporeal ruling part of the soul. This is why Tertullian launched an attack on both Dicaearchus and Asclepiades for negating the commanding function of the ruling part of the soul (ἡγεμονικόν), regarding them as those who denied a fundamental doctrine, which was not only Christian, but also Greek.¹²⁸ For indeed, to Aristotle, the soul is a primary full reality (or, complete reality, ἐντελέχεια) of a natural body; it possesses life potentially and makes use of the body’s organs (that is, of the senses).¹²⁹ Although it does not survive death, as long as it lives its function is of paramount importance. Beyond these views, other intellectuals thought of the soul as a kind of substance, either ‘air’ (or, aerial nature, ἀερώδης),¹³⁰ or hot ‘air’ (πνεῦμα νοερόν, θερμόν),¹³¹ or a fiery one (πυρώδη).¹³² Democritus defined the soul as a fiery

 Anonymous, De Corporis Hominis Natura, 5: Ψυχὴ δὲ ἀνθρώπου ἐστὶν οὐσία ἀνούσιος λο γικὴ ἀθάνατος, νοερά, οὐκ ἐκ στοιχείων, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ θεοῦ τὴν ὕπαρξιν ἔχουσα, οἵαν οἶδεν αὐτὸς μόνος.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.1a. ᾿Aσκληπιάδης ὁ ἰατρὸς συγγυμνασίαν τῶν αἰσθήσεων. So Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 898C.  Tertullian, De Anima, 15.2, PL.2.670A 671A: In primis an sit aliquis summus in anima gra dus vitalis, et sapientalis, quod appellant, id est principale, si negetur, totus animae status peri clitatur. Denique, qui negant principale, ipsam prius animam nihil censuerunt. Messenius ali quis Dicaearchus, ex medicis autem Andreas et Asclepiades, ita abstulerunt principale, dum in animo ipso volunt esse sensus, quorum vindicatur principale. … Sed plures et philosophi ad versus Dicaearchum, Plato, Strato, Epicurus, Democritus, Empedocles, Socrates, Aristoteles; et medici adversus Andream et Asclepiadem, Herophilus, Erasistratus, Diocles, Hippocrates, et ipse Soranus; jamque omnibus plures christiani, qui apud Deum de utroque ducimur, et esse principale in anima, et certo in corporis recessu consecratum.  Aristotle, Physica, 412a27: ψυχὴ ἐστιν ἡ ἐντελέχεια πρώτη σώματος φυσικοῦ, δυνάμει ζωὴν ἔχοντος. Likewise, 412b5.  Stobaeus (op. cit. 1.49.1b) attributed this to Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, and Dio genes of Apollonia; so did Theodoret, Graecarum Affectiorum Curatio, 5.18.  Stobaeus, loc. cit. Also, Theodoret, loc. cit.: [τὴν ψυχήν] πνευματικήν, πλείστου μετέχουσαν τοῦ θερμοῦ.

Definitions of the soul

1207

compound, consisting of particles that are grasped intellectually: their shape is spherical, their power is owing to fire, and soul is definitely a body.¹³³ Heraclides of Pontus saw the soul as light-like (φωτοειδῆ) and Leucippus as something made of fire (ἐκ πυρός). Epicurus defined the soul as a compound of four elements: (1) a fiery quality (ἐκ ποιοῦ πυρώδους), which effects motion; (2) an air-like quality (ἐκ ποιοῦ ἀερώδους), which brings about rest; (3) a breath-like quality (ἐκ ποιοῦ πνευματικοῦ), which produces temperature of the body; (4) a fourth quality, which is nameless (ἀκατονόμαστον) and it gives rise to sense-perception (the five senses). Furthermore, the list by both Stobaeus and Theodoret goes a long way, naming philosophers and respective views. As far as the constitution of the soul is concerned, there was also widespread dissent among philosophers. First, there were those who believed that the soul is corporeal. Democritus, Epicurus, and all of the Stoics believed that it is a body, which though does not suggest identical theories. For instance, Democritus held that the soul is fire made of ‘spheroid particles’ (σφαιροειδῆ), with air also being present. The Stoics maintained that this is warm spirit. Critias (one of the Thirty Tyrrants) and Empedocles saw it as blood. ¹³⁴ On that account, Critias argued that parts of the body that have no blood (such as bones, nails, teeth) are without sense or feeling (ἀναίσθητα). Hippo of Rhegium posited the soul as water. Heraclitus spoke of the ‘soul of everything’ being evaporation stemming from the liquids within it (τὴν μὲν τοῦ παντὸς ψυχὴν ἀναθυμίασιν ἐκ τῶν ὑγρῶν), which means that it emerges from water.¹³⁵ On the other hand, no less of dissent was there among those who sustained that the soul is incorporeal. Nemesius wrote that there was ‘infinite disagreement’ (ἄπειρος γέγονεν ἡ διαφωνία),¹³⁶ but he mentions no names. There were those who urged that the soul is an immortal subsistence (οὐσία ἀθάνατος),¹³⁷ while others had it that this is incorporeal, but not immortal (Aristotle, Dicaearchus, Asclepiades). According to Aristotle, the soul has some relation to

 Stobaeus, loc. cit. Parmenides and Hippasus. Theodoret (loc. cit.) adds Heraclitus, and states that he availed himself of Plutarch, Porphyry, and Aetius. Stobaeus evidently did so, too, since there are passages that are parallel to those of Theodoret, despite minor differences in either adding or omitting certain names of philosophers.  Stobaeus, loc. cit.: Δημόκριτος πυρῶδες σύγκριμα ἐκ τῶν λόγῳ θεωρητῶν, σφαιρικὰς μὲν ἐχόντων τὰς ἰδέας, πυρίνην δὲ τὴν δύναμιν, ὅπερ σῶμα εἶναι.  Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 2.8.48 (Empedocles and Critias). Etymologicum Gudianum, entry alpha, p. 114. Etymologicum Magnum, p. 34 (Empedocles).  See Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 6.2.17.2, citing Heraclitus: ἐξ ὕδατος δὲ ψυχή.  Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 2, p. 16.  Plato, Phaedrus, 245e, which was embraced by several Christian authors.

1208

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

the divine realm, whereas Plato posited it as an intelligible substance, which moves by itself, according to a harmonious number.¹³⁸ Furthermore, although different philosophers were at one as to the soul being a subsistent being (an essence, οὐσία), they dissented from each other with respect to the genus of this essence. Some of them held that this is an individual being (δῆλον δὲ ὅτι καὶ τούτων οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι τὴν ψυχὴν οὐσίαν εἶναι λέγουσιν), others, a harmony or compound (ἁρμονία, or κρᾶσις). Aristotle and Dicaearchus sustained that the soul is not an essence, that is, self-subsistent. Pythagoras and Xenocrates, who held that the soul is number, appeared to Nemesius of Emesa as identifying the soul itself as ‘quantity’, which is a theory he rebuked.¹³⁹ One or many souls? Some philosophers maintained that there is only one soul, the universal one, which is fragmented into pieces, and then the whole returns to the one soul again. Others sustained that there are many individual souls of different kinds, only to receive the rejoinder that the soul is both one and many.¹⁴⁰ Yet again, those who conceded that a soul is a certain ‘substance’ were not at one as to what they really understood by this. Many Platonists saw this as one and homoiomerous (i. e. each part is like each other, as well as like the whole: οὐσίαν ὁμοιομερῆ καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν καὶ μίαν ἀποφαίνονται). This means that the substance of human soul is in no wise different from that of gods and daemons (νοῦ καὶ θεῶν καὶ τῶν κρειττόνων γενῶν οὐδὲν ἡ ψυχὴ διενήνοχε κατά γε τὴν ὅλην οὐσίαν). Stobaeus reports Numenius holding this, but he is unsure as to whether Plotinus really agreed, whereas his disciple Amelius expressed contradictory views and Porphyry was ambivalent about the idea.¹⁴¹ The other option was that the soul is different from the mind, and second to it, since it was the Mind/Intellect that generated the Soul (χωρίζει μὲν τὴν ψυχήν, ὡς ἀπὸ νοῦ γενομένην δευτέραν καθ᾿ ἑτέραν ὑπόστασιν), which is definitely that of Plotinus. This gave rise to the debate as to whether the soul’s coexistence with mind only suggests that, following its generation, it is dependent on the mind (τὸ δὲ μετὰ νοῦ αὐτῆς ἐξηγεῖται ὡς ἐξηρτημένον ἀπὸ τοῦ νοῦ, μετὰ τοῦ

 Nemesius (op. cit. chapter 2, p. 30) attributes this to Plato. Πλάτων δὲ οὐσίαν νοητὴν ἐξ ἑαυτῆς κινητὴν κατὰ ἀριθμὸν ἐναρμόνιον. But this is a view appearing in different versions, no tably, in Thales (who saw the soul as self and ever moving), Pythagoras, Xenocrates (the soul is a number which moves itself), and Plato, according to Plutarch’s testimony, De Animae Procre atione in Timaeo, 1012D; 1013D; 1023C D.  Nemesius of Emesa, op. cit. chapter 2, p. 29.  Nemesius, loc. cit.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.32.

Definitions of the soul

1209

κατ᾿ ἰδίαν ὑφεστηκέναι αὐτοτελῶς). Plotinus granted the soul an essence of its own (ἴδιον δὲ αὐτῇ τῆς οὐσίας ὅρον ἀπονέμει), which though is different from the essence of the ‘superior genera’ (χωρίζει δὲ αὐτὴν καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν κρειττόνων γενῶν ὅλων). This essence stands midway between divisible and indivisible realities, as well as between corporeal and incorporeal ones (τὸ μέσον τῶν μεριστῶν καὶ ἀμερίστων τῶν τε σωματικῶν καὶ ἀσωμάτων γενῶν). This universal soul is the ‘fullness of the universal logoi’ (τὸ πλήρωμα τῶν καθόλου λόγων); it serves to creation of things (μετὰ τὰς ἰδέας ὑπηρεσίαν τῆς δημιουργίας); it has a life of its own, which it receives from the intelligible realm (ζωὴν παρ᾿ ἑαυτῆς ἔχουσαν τὸ ζῆν τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ νοητοῦ προελθοῦσαν). Anyway, the soul appeared in a process of it having been produced as a reality which is inferior in comparison with the higher realm of true being (τὴν αὖ τῶν γενῶν ὅλου τοῦ ὄντως ὄντος πρόοδον εἰς ὑποδεεστέραν οὐσίαν), and, in Neoplatonism, the soul was never accorded a world of its own. Plotinus himself would have argued that this was a doctrine he had learned from Plato himself, Pythagoras would have argued that he believed so prior to Plato, and Xenocrates would have endorsed it without reservation,¹⁴² since he was satisfied that he was a good pupil of both Pythagoras and Plato at the same time, which is why Proclus¹⁴³ praised him. Concerning the powers (or, parts) of the soul, Plato maintained that the substance of the soul is not composite, but simple (ἀσύνθετον οὐσίαν τῆς ψυχῆς). So did Aristotle, who saw it as ‘a simple substance’ (ἁπλῆν οὐσίαν), ‘incorporeal’ and ‘effective of the form’ (εἴδους τελεσιουργόν). Therefore, allowing for ‘powers of the soul’ does not suggest that they exist in a composite soul. Chrysippus and Zeno, ‘and all those who regard the soul as a body’, postulated human being as ‘composite, consisted of dissimilar elements’ (σύνθετον φύσιν ἐξ ἀνομοίων). The soul is a substance preceding the appearance of its specific ‘powers’. The idea that comes from Pythagoras and Plato is that the soul has a ‘twofold life’ (ἡ ψυχὴ διττὴν ζωὴν ζῇ): one, the life of its own; two, its life in association with the body. By contrast, ‘the Stoics sustained that the soul has one life, which it

 Reported by John Philoponus, who criticizes Xenocrates for holding such views: commA nim, p. 165; cf. op. cit. p. 58. He argues that Aristotle himself would have never dismissed the idea of the soul being ‘the fullness of forms’ (πλήρωμα εἰδῶν), provided that those who said so should not urge that the forms are self existent Ideas. commAnalPost, p. 243, referring to Ar istotle, De Anima, 429a27; cf. 432a3 7.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 896: Τὰς δὲ τῶν οὐσιωδῶν λόγων προβολὰς νοήματα λέγοντες, καθ᾿ ἃς γιγνώσκομεν ὅπως καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ πάντων πλήρωμά ἐστι τῶν εἰδῶν. Likewise, De Philosophia Chaldaica, fr. 5; commTim, v. 2, p. 200: Τὸ δὴ μετὰ ταῦτα λόγων πλήρωμα τὴν ψυχὴν εἶναι φαμέν, ἁπλουστέραν μὲν τῶν αἰσθητῶν, συνθετωτέραν δὲ τῶν νοητῶν.

1210

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

has in association with the body, and so did the Peripatetics, who held that there is no other way for the soul to live unless in association with the body.¹⁴⁴ In view of this, what is the difference between souls, according to either the Stoics or Aristotle? The Stoics maintained that souls differ from each other on account of different material substrata (διαφορότητι ὑποκειμένων σωμάτων). Souls are ‘[material] spirits, which have their beginning in the ἡγεμονικόν, and each of them stretches out as far as the eyes, ears, and the other organs of the five senses’.¹⁴⁵ Moreover, souls differ on account of different qualities in respect to the same subject: ‘an apple (that is, one body) has both sweetness and sweet smell’.’ Likewise, the ruling part of the soul (ἡγεμονικόν) can have in unison ‘the ability to form images, to assent, to have drives, and to have reason’ (τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν ἐν ταὐτῷ φαντασίαν, συγκατάθεσιν, ὁρμήν, λόγον συνείληφε).¹⁴⁶ On the other hand, to Aristotelians, ‘and to all those who regard the soul as indivisible’, the essence of the soul is its powers themselves (κατὰ μὲν τὴν οὐσίαν αἱ δυνάμεις), whereas souls are classified in different species, on account of the different actions that they can carry out (κατὰ δὲ εἴδη ὧν δύνανται ποιεῖν). Plato regarded the soul as ‘tripartite’ (τριμερής), or ‘having many powers’ (πολυδύναμος). The Stoics spoke of it having many parts, too. When the idea of ‘three parts’ is ascribed to Plato, it means the soul living ‘three lives’ at the same time,¹⁴⁷ according to the distinction he made: to speak of ‘part of essence’, actually would suggest another being. But to speak of ‘part’ as a different ‘power’ bespeaks the same subject performing different functions, such as ‘to give birth to’, or ‘to act’ in some way. This is how soul can be also styled πολυδύναμος, that is, one ‘having many powers’. The next question that naturally followed was how many powers, or parts, are there in the soul. Zeno posited eight parts of it, but he allowed for a larger number of powers, such as ‘the ability to form images, to assent, to have drives, and to have reason’ (τὰς δυνάμεις εἶναι πλείονας, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ἡγεμονικῷ ἐνυπαρχουσῶν φαντασίας, συγκαταθέσεως, ὁρμῆς, λόγου). Plato, Archytas and the rest of Pythagoreans opted for a tripartite soul (τὴν ψυχὴν τριμερῆ ἀποφαίνονται), dividing it into reason, passion, desire (λογισμὸν καὶ θυμὸν καὶ ἐπιθυμίαν). What they understood by ‘powers of the soul’ was ‘cognitive ability, the senses, formation of opinions, the ability to animate the physical body, to un-

   

Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.33. See infra, pp. 1249; 1252 3; 1257. Stobaeus, loc. cit. Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.33: τριπλῆ ζωὴ παραλλάττουσα.

Definitions of the soul

1211

derstand, or to desire good things’.¹⁴⁸ Aristotle divided it into five powers: nature, sense, spatial movement, desire, reflection (εἰς πέντε αὐτὰς διαιρεῖ, φύσιν, αἴσθησιν, κίνησιν κατὰ τόπον, ὄρεξιν, διανόησιν).¹⁴⁹ Then comes the distinction between essential and additional powers of the soul (περὶ τῶν κατ᾿ οὐσίαν τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τῶν προστιθεμένων αὐτῇ δυνάμεων). Plotinus associated only ‘pure reasoning power’ (καθαρὸν λογισμὸν εἰς τὴν καθαρὰν οὐσίαν) with the pure essence of the soul, while he dismissed ‘irrational powers, the senses, formation of mental images, different kinds of calculation’ as having nothing to do with this essence (ἀφαιρεῖ τὰς ἀλόγους δυνάμεις, τὰς αἰσθήσεις, τὰς φαντασίας, τὰς μνήμας, τοὺς λογισμούς). But those Platonists who were inspired by Democritus associated all of these powers with the essence of the soul. Plato himself did so, too, although he made a distinction concerning life of animals.¹⁵⁰ As far as actions of the soul are concerned (περὶ τῶν ἐνεργειῶν τῆς ψυχῆς), the Peripatetics stipulated the soul as immovable and made it the cause of movement. This is the Aristotelian ‘immovable full completeness of the soul’ (ἀκίνητος ἐντελέχεια τῆς ψυχῆς), which provides all animate beings with energy.¹⁵¹ To Plato, there is nothing in the movement of animate beings that pertains to the essence of the soul. Since it lives two different lives (one with the body, another without it), its actions are classified in those that pertain either to the soul itself (‘contemplation of immaterial and divine things’) and those that relate to the shared life of body and soul. The latter are, (1) actions stemming from the soul; (2) actions originating with the body; (3) those caused by both soul and body, yet the soul is the ultimate cause of them all. Therefore, the soul makes use of the body in order to perform its own works, that is, it uses the body as an instrument or vehicle (οὕτως ἄρα καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτή τε ὅλῳ χρῆται τῷ σώματι καὶ τὰ ἔργα μεταχειρίζεται, ὡς ὄργανον ἢ ὄχημα τὸ σῶμα περιέχουσα).¹⁵² Opposite them were the Stoics, who maintained that the soul is a body. So were ‘the Physicists’, who considered the soul as inherently involved with becoming (ὅσοι συγκεκρᾶσθαι αὐτὴν εἰς τὴν γένεσιν οἴονται). Likewise, those who regarded the soul as an offspring of bodies and a kind of harmony. Stobaeus thought that all

    

Stobaeus, Stobaeus, Stobaeus, Stobaeus, Stobaeus,

op. cit. 1.49.34. Cf. Plato, Respublica, 440e 441a; 550b. loc. cit. Aristotle, De Anima, 414a31; 432a29. loc. cit. op. cit. 1.49.36. loc. cit.; 1.49.43. Cf. infra, pp. 1220 2; 1455; 1538 42.

1212

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

of them saw the soul as a corporeal agent which moves the body (σωματοειδεῖς τὰς κινήσεις αὐτῇ ἀποδιδόασιν).¹⁵³ Where do souls come from? Do they move downwards from somewhere else? Plotinus, Amelius, and Porphyry believed that the souls descend from heaven. In Plato’s Timaeus, the souls have been sown by the Demiurge. “Another sect of Platonists has it that souls are always vested with a body: they are Eratosthenes and Ptolemaeus the Platonist,” which I discuss later. Other Platonists, such as Heraclides of Pontus, maintained that souls come down from the galaxy. Others sustained that they come down ‘from the spheres of the heaven’. The Platonist Taurus urged that souls are sent by gods. Heraclitus had it that the souls ‘move up and down’, since ‘change of place brings about rest, whereas staying in the same state is a source of fatigue’.¹⁵⁴ Is this a voluntary descent? Some philosophers believed that souls come down voluntarily; others, that souls descend with the specific duty to administer earthly affairs; others, that they move downward because they have been so bid by superior powers; others had it that the soul comes down against its will, only because it is violently urged to do so and fall to an inferior abode.¹⁵⁵ What is the purpose for the soul to descend? Depending on philosophical school, it is either salvation, or purification, or perfection, or exercise and rectification, or coming to this world in order for the soul to withstand trial and judgment. Cronius, Numenius, and Harpocration, believed that any embodiment of the soul is bad. In short, the world is regarded as either a penitentiary place or a place of training.¹⁵⁶ Where did souls live before they came to be associated with a body? They were either in a state from which they enjoyed a clear view of divine things, or they were co-habitant with gods and akin to them, or they are souls that dwell in the Hades, they are full of passions, and subsequently they assume bodies. When does a soul start to be associated with the body? According to Hippocrates, upon formation of a fetus. Porphyry sustained that the soul enters the body upon birth. The Stoics had it that different powers of the soul arise in

 Stobaeus op. cit. 1.49.36. Although he mentions the Stoics and the ‘Physicists’, Di chaearchus himself also shared the same view, as explained above.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.39.  Stobaeus, loc. cit.  See γυμνάσιον in Cels, I.2; IV.75; IV.78; VI.44; VIII.31; De Oratione, 10.1; Commentarii in Epis tulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21), 52; frPs, Psalm 118:75; selPs, PG.12: 1136.55; 1417.16; PG.17.141.8.

Definitions of the soul

1213

the body at different times: first, natural functions; then, the senses; then impulses; then, rationality; finally, contemplation.¹⁵⁷ How does a soul enter the body? (1) The soul is ‘pulled from outside’ upon conception. (2) By virtue of the progenitor’s ‘willingness’, through respiration. (3) By reason of the willingness of the womb which receives the embryo. (4) Due to ‘mutual sympathy’ between womb and fetus, which ‘attracts’ the soul by causing ‘nature’ to be ‘moved’. (5) The soul, which is ‘self-moving’ (αὐτοκίνητον), enters the body ‘out of necessity’, either from the universe, or from the universal soul, of from the world in general. How does the soul use the body? (1) The soul is like the captain of a ship, which is why the ship is wrecked when the captain is gone. (2) The soul is like a charioteer; therefore, the chariot/body follows the course determined by the soul. (3) There is a concurrence, or mutual assent, by both parties; as a result, the body acquires gradually some similarity with its own soul. (4) Others dismissed all of the foregoing theories, and simply considered the soul as just one more part of an animal. (5) Some intellectuals saw the soul as a kind of ‘art’, which grows in the natural organs of the body, like the art of a captain who knows how to use the helm (οἴαξ). It there any communion of the soul with the gods? (1) It is impossible for a soul to communicate with gods, by reason of it being still in a body. (2) Whether souls are in a body, or not, there is only one community which comprises pure souls along with gods. (3) Only the souls of daemons and heroes can communicate with gods. (4) Plato made the distinction between ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ souls that are in a body, depending on the degree of their purification. (5) What the Stoics saw as ‘communion’ of a soul was simply its interaction with the universal logos ‘according to nature’. (6) The Peripatetics gave emphasis to consciousness of ‘symmetry according to nature’ and to contemplative life. (7) According to Herillus of Carthage, this communication can be made possible only through science. Aristo of Chios opted for indifference, and Democritus saw merit in decency (εὐσχημοσύνῃ). What is the fate of the soul after death? According to the Peripatetics, the soul ceases to exist. Democritus and Epicurus urged that the soul’s particles are dispersed. Plotinus sustained that each of the ‘irrational powers’ of the soul returns to the universal deposit from which it was partitioned, whereas Porphyry thought that the soul remains immutable after death.

 Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.41. He does not cite the Stoics by name, but, clearly, he refers to them. I canvass this doctrine infra, pp. 1274 5; 1286; 1325; 1345 6; 1365.

1214

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Does the soul have a body after death? Stobaeus reports that, according to ‘most of the Platonists’, the soul assumes a body, which is of the same shape as the natural one. Others vested the soul with different kinds of bodies: their substance varies, being either virtually incorporeal, or bodies that are aetheral, or angelic, or heavenly, or spiritual, or spherical ones, which function as ‘vehicles’ of the soul.¹⁵⁸ Plotinus was more alert to the implications of considering the soul as incorporeal. Since the soul is a whole, one could say that the toe of a human body is the entire soul of a man, and, in turn, that this is itself the same one as the universal soul. For if the soul of the universe gives itself to all the partial living things, and each individual soul is a part in this sense, then, if it were divided, it would not give itself to each, but it will be itself everywhere, the complete soul existing simultaneously in many things as one and identical. But this would no longer allow one soul to be the whole and the other a part, especially in the case of things which have the same amount of power: for all the powers are present in both souls. And since organs have different functions, eyes and ears for in stance, we must not say that one part of the soul is present in sight, another in the ears (this sort of division belongs to other philosophers), but the same part, even if a different power, is active in each separate organ.¹⁵⁹

Consequently, ‘how will there still be one particular soul which is yours, one which is the soul of this particular man, and one which is another’s?’¹⁶⁰ This is the real point, and we do not need to follow Plotinus’ reflection along the lines of his own ontological pattern: suffice it that, on mere account of the soul being incorporeal, this is both ‘indivisible’ (ἀμέριστον) and ‘without volume’ (ἄογκον). In short, whatever is incorporeal it is impervious of any notion of individuality and movement: it has to be universally everywhere, as a ubiquitous presence.¹⁶¹

 Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.42a.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.3.3. Furthermore, (loc. cit.) ‘the soul is one thing everywhere’, and ‘if our souls were like sense perceptions, it could be not possible for each one of us to think himself, but the universal soul would have to do the thinking. For if our thinking was our own, each soul would be independent.’  Op. cit. IV.3.5.  Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 98: καὶ οὐ μέρει μὲν πανταχοῦ, μέρει δὲ οὐδαμοῦ· οὕτως γὰρ ἂν αὐτὸ ἑαυτοῦ διεσπασμένον εἴη καὶ χωρίς, εἴπερ τὸ μὲν αὐτοῦ πανταχοῦ καὶ ἐν πᾶσι, τὸ δὲ οὐδαμοῦ καὶ πρὸ τῶν πάντων· ἀλλ᾿ ὅλον πανταχοῦ. In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 875: καὶ ὅλων με τέχει τὰ τῇδε τῶν εἰδῶν καὶ μερῶν· ὅλων μέν, καθόσον ἀμέριστος αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ ποίησις, διὸ καὶ ὅλη πανταχοῦ πᾶσιν ἡ αὐτὴ πάρεστιν ἑαυτῆς οὖσα πρότερον, ἔπειθ᾿ οὕτω καὶ τὴν τῶν μετε χόντων οὐσίαν ἀποπληροῦσα τῆς οἰκείας δυνάμεως. Loc. cit.: καὶ ὅλων μετέχει τὰ τῇδε τῶν

Definitions of the soul

1215

Nevertheless, there is a way for a certain incorporeal entity to be both individually here and everywhere. This mode of being can be found only in the philosophy of Anaxagoras, as already discussed. If we have a universal, such as that of a triangle, we can make it an individual by means of drawing a triangle on the blackboard. For instance, the Pythagorean theorem is a universal, but it can be made a concrete individual reality if we draw a right triangle. In order to do that, we need a piece of chalk or some ink and paper. Therefore, in order to individualize an incorporeal entity, one needs matter: some chalk and a blackboard, or ink and a piece of paper, or, at least, some sand on the ground in order to draw a triangle. In other words, one needs matter, the πρῶτον ὑποκείμενον,¹⁶² which (in its abstract ideational sense) Aristotle called ‘potential body’ (δυνάμει σῶμα,¹⁶³ or τὸ δυνάμει ἕκαστον),¹⁶⁴ and a particular drawing, that is, the specific form, or specific quality (δεύτερον ὑποκείμενον, or, ἰδίως ποιόν).¹⁶⁵ Put in more general terms (which John Philoponus commenting on Aristotle did), ‘any quality can exist only once in association with matter’ (πᾶσα γὰρ ποιότης ἐν σώματι ἔχει τὸ εἶναι): no ‘second subject’ (δεύτερον ὑποκείμενον) can exist at all, unless matter is there; a quality cannot exist on its own account (αἱ ποιότητες καθ᾿ ἑαυτὰς ὑποστῆναι οὐχ οἷαι τε ἦσαν).¹⁶⁶

εἰδῶν καὶ μερῶν· ὅλων μέν, καθόσον ἀμέριστος αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ ποίησις, διὸ καὶ ὅλη πανταχοῦ πᾶσιν ἡ αὐτὴ πάρεστιν ἑαυτῆς οὖσα πρότερον, ἔπειθ᾿ οὕτω καὶ τὴν τῶν μετεχόντων οὐσίαν ἀπο πληροῦσα τῆς οἰκείας δυνάμεως. Damascius, Princ (ref. to Plotinus) p. 69: οὕτω γὰρ καὶ τὸ ὂν ὁ Πλωτῖνος ἀξιοῖ νοεῖν, τὸ αὐτὸ πανταχοῦ ὅλον παρὸν κοινῇ τε πᾶσι καὶ ἑκάστῳ τῶν πολλῶν. John of Damascus, Expositio Fidei, 13: Ἰστέον δὲ ὅτι τὸ θεῖον ἀμερές ἐστιν, ὅλον ὁλικῶς πανταχοῦ ὂν καὶ οὐ μέρος ἐν μέρει σωματικῶς διαιρούμενον, ἀλλ᾿ ὅλον ἐν πᾶσι καὶ ὅλον ὑπὲρ τὸ πᾶν.  Cf. πρῶτον ὑποκείμενον, Origen, selPs, PG.12: 1093.21 35; 1096.4; 1097.14. Relation between matter and qualities. Cels, IV.54; IV.57; commJohn, VI.14.85; XIII.61.429; De Oratione, 24.2; Princ (Latin), II.1.4; IV.4.6 7.  Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 329a34; De Partibus Animalium, 668a24. Cf. Simpli cius reporting Alexander of Aphrodisias on the notion of ‘potential body’, which is itself ‘not yet a body, nor does it exist in any place’ (τὸ γὰρ δυνάμει σῶμα οὐδέπω οὔτε σῶμα ἐστὶν οὔτε ἐν τόπῳ). Simplicius, commCael, p. 594.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1092a4; De Anima, 430a6.  Aristotle, Categoriae, 3b. Cf. Dexippus, commCateg, pp. 23; 24; 65 (& Simplicius, commCa teg, p. 121). Damascius, Princ, p. 28. Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 48; 111; 140. John Philoponus, comm Categ, pp. 65; 83; commPhys, p. 156.  John Philoponus, commCateg, p. 65: οὕτω καὶ ἡ ὕλη ὑποβάθρα τις οὖσα καὶ δεκτικὴ πάντων τῶν εἰδῶν τῶν ἐν τοῖς σώμασι θεωρουμένων, οὐδὲ ἓν ἕξει οἰκεῖον εἶδος. αὕτη οὖν ἐξογκωθεῖσα κατὰ τὰς τρεῖς διαστάσεις ποιεῖ τὸ δεύτερον ὑποκείμενον κατὰ ᾿Aριστοτέλην, τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι τὸ ἄποιον σῶμα· ἐπειδὴ γὰρ αἱ ποιότητες καθ᾿ ἑαυτὰς ὑποστῆναι οὐχ οἷαι τε ἦσαν (πᾶσα γὰρ ποιότης ἐν σώματι ἔχει τὸ εἶναι), ἐδεήθησαν τοῦ σώματος τῷ οἰκείῳ λόγῳ ἀποίου ὄντος, ἵνα ἐν τούτῳ ὑποστῶσι.

1216

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Following this survey, it would be absurd even to attempt compose a universal definition of the soul. As late as the sixth century, Damascius was puzzled at the variety of views he had to consider in order to comment on Plato’s Phaedo, that is, on the soul: Some philosophers, like Numenius, maintain an immortal soul for human life, be that ra tional or not; Plotinus extends this as far as all of nature; philosophers of old (Xenocrates, Speusippus) as well as recent ones (Iamblichus, Plutarch) extend the soul as far as irration ality. Others, such as Proclus and Porphyry, associate the soul with rationality only. Others, such as many of the Peripatetics, see the soul as existing only in association with mind, while they dismiss subjective impressions. Others posit only a universal soul, which, after death, absorbs in itself all individual souls, which means that there is no individual soul after death’.¹⁶⁷

The man who was responsible for puzzlement concerning the soul was Plato, specifically, his proposition that it is possible for an incorporeal entity to exist per se, and yet to change place. In that case, the question is what is the sense that transmigration of a soul could possibly make: once a soul is stipulated as incorporeal, it would be absurd to speak of ‘migration’ anyway, since incorporeal is by definition everywhere. Antiochus of Ascalon (c. 130 – c. 68 BC) was a member of the Academy under Philo of Larissa (c. 154 – c. 84 BC) at a period when Philo had allowed his Platonism to degenerate into an arid Scepticism. He struggled to show that the Stoic doctrines were present already in Plato. But when he argued that talk of an immaterial substance (such as the Platonic Ideas) was ‘unintelligible’, and that he saw ‘no possibility of existence … of anything immaterial or transcendent or external to the material universe’,¹⁶⁸ he himself actually moved into Stoicism, instead of forcing the Stoa into the Academy as Sextus Empiricus had claimed somehow mourning the eviction of Scepticism from the later periods of the Academy.¹⁶⁹  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 177: Ὅτι οἱ μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς λογικῆς ψυχῆς ἄχρι τῆς ἐμψύχου ἕξεως ἀπαθανατίζουσιν, ὡς Νουμήνιος· οἱ δὲ μέχρι τῆς φύσεως, ὡς Πλωτῖνος ἔνι ὅπου οἱ δὲ μέχρι τῆς ἀλογίας, ὡς τῶν μὲν παλαιῶν Ξενοκράτης καὶ Σπεύσιππος, τῶν δὲ νεωτέ ρων Ἰάμβλιχος καὶ Πλούταρχος· οἱ δὲ μέχρι μόνης τῆς λογικῆς, ὡς Πρόκλος καὶ Πορφύριος· οἱ δὲ μέχρι μόνου τοῦ νοῦ, φθείρουσι γὰρ τὴν δόξαν, ὡς πολλοὶ τῶν Περιπατητικῶν· οἱ δὲ μέχρι τῆς ὅλης ψυχῆς, φθείρουσι γὰρ τὰς μερικὰς εἰς τὴν ὅλην. Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. IV.7.14: Εἰ δὲ ἔστιν ἄλλο τι εἶδος ψυχῆς, οὐκ ἄλλοθεν ἢ ἀπὸ τῆς ζώσης φύσεως δεῖ καὶ ταύτην εἶναι καὶ αὐτὴν οὖσαν ζωῆς τοῖς ζῴοις αἰτίαν, καὶ δὴ καὶ τὴν ἐν τοῖς φυτοῖς.  A quotation from Cicero, De Finibus, apud J. M. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, p. 84.  Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, 1.235: ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁ ᾿Aντίοχος τὴν Στοὰν μετήγαγεν εἰς τὴν ᾿Aκαδημίαν, ὡς καὶ εἰρῆσθαι ἐπ᾿ αὐτῷ ὅτι ἐν ᾿Aκαδημίᾳ φιλοσοφεῖ τὰ Στωικά· ἐπεδείκνυε γὰρ ὅτι παρὰ Πλάτωνι κεῖται τὰ τῶν Στωικῶν δόγματα. ὡς πρόδηλον εἶναι τὴν τῆς σκεπτικῆς ἀγωγῆς διαφορὰν πρός τε τὴν τετάρτην καὶ τὴν πέμπτην καλουμένην ᾿Aκαδημίαν.

Definitions of the soul

1217

This concern appears as early as Plato: in his dialogue about the soul, namely, the Phaedo, Cebes asks anxiously Socrates this question through the lips of Simmias: But the common fear … that when a man dies the soul is dispersed and this is the end of his existence, still remains. For assuming that the soul comes into being and is brought togeth er from some source or other, and exists before it enters into a human body, what prevents it, after it has entered into and left that body, from coming to an end and being destroyed itself?¹⁷⁰

Cebes speaks of the incorporeal soul in spatial terms: the soul is dispersed (διασκεδάννυται ἡ ψυχή); and, after it has entered into and left that body (ἐπειδὰν δὲ ἀφίκηται καὶ ἀπαλλάττηται τούτου), it is brought together from some other source (συνίστασθαι ἄλλοθέν ποθεν). It is remarkable that Plato’s concern is not about the logical inconsistency of something being both incorporeal and migrating spatially, but about showing that the soul is immortal,¹⁷¹ a notion which Damascius disputed and contradicted Iamblichus who maintained that, according to Plato, the soul after death is eternally immortal.¹⁷² This idea of ‘ampulla’ standing for the soul was as familiar to ancient people as is it so to the modern implicit conception of it. In his review of different opinions about the soul, Stobaeus considers the question of ‘whether the soul is sown along with the body, being like air is in a flask’ (εἰ δὲ παρέσπαρται μὲν καὶ ἔνεστιν ἡ ψυχὴ τῷ σώματι καθαπερεὶ ἀσκῷ πνεῦμα), and, after death, the soul has to be dispersed into the air: “It is then evident that it gets out of the body, and, upon departure, it is exhausted by being dissipated and dispersed” (δῆλον που τοῦτο ὅτι ἔξεισιν μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐκβαίνειν διαφορεῖται καὶ διασκεδάννυται).¹⁷³ Ten centuries after Plato, Damascius was not content with the answers Cebes had received from Socrates, which is why he revisited the same question (ἔτι γὰρ ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ στρεφόμεθα τῆς ἀπορίας):

 Plato, Phaedo, 77a b.  Plato, op. cit. 102a 107a.  See infra, pp. 1219 22.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.43, reports that this was a view of both Democritus and Epicurus. Ar istotle ascribes this to Democritus and Leucippus; De Anima, 404a: to them, the soul is a sort of fire and heat. Spherical forms and atoms of fire and soul are likened to motes in the air, which can be seen in the sunbeams passing through windows (τὰ ἐν τῷ ἀέρι ξύσματα διὰ τῶν θυρίδων φαινόμενα).

1218

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Once a certain quantity of air is enclosed into a flask, and it is thereafter set free into the air, it is not possible for this to be closed into the flask for a second time.¹⁷⁴

Damascius was uneasy by the imagery that represented the soul as a quantity of air enclosed in a flask. For there are only two possibilities to be considered: either the soul is inseparable from the body (which entails that both of them live and die together), or the soul is separable from it, in like manner air is separated from the flask that contains it.¹⁷⁵ Damascius never rested content with the explanation to Cebes’ question concerning the implications of incorporeality and migration in Plato’s theory. To him, this kind of distinction was a precarious tenet: We may distinguish the smoke of a burning piece of wood; but once this smoke goes away, it is not possible for it to enter the wood again.¹⁷⁶

Given the vast variety of views of the soul, what is actually that which is supposed to transmigrate? Is it the soul as fire? Or as air? Or as mind? Or as water? Or as blood? Or as a compound of certain elements? Is it an incorporeal living self-existent personal being that transmigrates? Or is it something different? And in what sense? The implicit (though grossly self-defeating) notion was that the soul is an ampulla, which contains air (or, ‘spirit’, or fire, or air, or whatever). However, were that the case, there could be no way for it to transmigrate. For when air is out of a flask, it is irreversibly diffused into the atmosphere. Is this soul going to persist, no matter what its essence? In other words, is the soul immortal? Plato never made up his mind on this issue. All those who sought answers in his work (especially in the Phaedo) were bound to receive bafflement instead of any clear answer. The reason for this, in my view, is that Plato’s exposition was a hardly assimilated potpourri gathered from Egypt, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras,¹⁷⁷

 Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 209: καὶ ὅ φησι Κέβης [Phaedo, 70a5] (ἔτι γὰρ ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ στρεφόμεθα τῆς ἀπορίας), τὸ πνεῦμα κατακλεισθὲν ἐν ἀσκῷ, ἔπειτα διαπνευσθέν, οὐκέτι κατακλείεται πάλιν, ὁ δὲ καπνὸς ἐν διακρίσει τὴν πρώτην λαβὼν ὑπόστασιν οὐκέτι οὐδὲ ἅπαξ εἰς τὸ ξύλον συγκρίνεται.  Damascius, op. cit. 183: ἢ ἀχώριστος ἡ ψυχή, ὡς ἁρμονία, ἢ χωριστή, ὡς πνεῦμα ἀπὸ ἀσκοῦ. Op. cit. 185: εἰ γὰρ χωρίζεται ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ σώματος ὡς πνεῦμα ἀπὸ ἀσκοῦ, διακρίνεται ἄρα. Op. cit. 218: οἷον τι καὶ ἡ Κέβητος ἡ ἀπορία κατὰ τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ ἀσκοῦ.  Damascius, op. cit. 209: ὁ δὲ καπνὸς ἐν διακρίσει τὴν πρώτην λαβὼν ὑπόστασιν οὐκέτι οὐδὲ ἅπαξ εἰς τὸ ξύλον συγκρίνεται.  See Appendix I.

Definitions of the soul

1219

and who knows who else, whereas he posited the soul as a self-existent entity and put himself into a dead end from which he was unable to escape. Therefore, those who sought answers in Plato were baffled and eventually everyone believed what one wanted to. Following this, it was only natural that the sixth century inherited the confusion unresolved.¹⁷⁸ Every one urged his own understanding, and every one argued that his own explanation was the genuine theory of Plato. Olympiodorus of Alexandria was practical and succinct: Since Cebes asked Socrates if the soul exits from the body like smoke or air out of a flask, he made it clear that the soul continues to exist after its exit therefrom.¹⁷⁹

This was the situation when Damascius set out to write his own commentary on the Phaedo. Commenting on the confusion surrounding the issue, his mood was melancholic: of all ancient exegetes of Plato, no one succeeded in either composing a commentary which could show the soundness of the Phaedo, or in coming up with a sound defence of the dialogue against those who opposed the views therein. As for ‘the great Iamblichus’, he, ‘in accordance with his [over-haughty] temperament’ (οἷος ἐκείνου θυμός)¹⁸⁰ and ‘jumping beyond the limits’ (ὑπὲρ τὰ ἐσκαμμένα πηδήσας),¹⁸¹ sought to present himself as accomplished [an exegete] (ἐσπούδασεν αὐτὸν τελεώσασθαι εἰς τοσοῦτον) as to demonstrate that the soul is absolutely immortal (εἰς ὅσον ἀποδεῖξαι παντελῆ τὴν ψυχῆς ἀθανασίαν), even though not even Socrates himself did ever maintain such a doctrine’ (οὐδὲ Σω-

 During the fifth century AD, Hermias of Alexandria made one more attempt to sort out the numerous conficting opinions about what Plato really meant. In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, pp. 104 ff; 122.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 9.3.  Quoting Homer, Ilias, XV.94; see infra, p. 1221, note 188.  This is one more proverbial phrase, which has been used continuously ever since, and it is still current in Modern Greek. It was said of an athlete, namely, Fayllus of Croton, who jumped more than fifty feet in the pentathlon, but his leg was injured. The phrase is used in accusatory sense for those who exceed normal measure in any kind of behaviour. Plutarch, Ἐκλογὴ περὶ τῶν ᾿Aδυνάτων, line 18. Pausanias (lexicographer, second century AD), ᾿Aττικῶν Ὀνομάτων Συναγωγή, letter upsilon, entry 9. Lucian of Samosata, Gallus, 6. Julius Pollux, Onomasticon, 3.151. Timaeus (Neoplatonist sophist, grammarian, probably fourth century AD), Lexicon Platonicum, p. 1006a. Libanius, Orationes, 64.69. Simplicius, commCael, p. 190; commPhys, p. 148. Also, Christians: Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 5.13.83.1. Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae in Hexaemeron, 6.5. Ger manus I of Constantinople (seventh eighth century), Orationes, 7.377. Michael Psellus, Theologi ca, 31. Photius, Lexicon, letter upsilon, p. 624. Suda, letter upsilon, entries 363; 364; letter phi, entry 144; et passim. Michael Glycas, Annales, p. 556; et passim. Eustathius of Thessaloniki, Com mentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, v. 1, p. 616; et passim.

1220

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

κράτους αὐτοῦ τηλικοῦτον ἐπ᾿ αὐτῷ φρονήσαντος).¹⁸² Damascius was modest enough as to entitle this section ‘exposition of ideas of my master [presumably Isidore] concerning points of the Phaedo, which are set forth tentatively, and yet they maintain the truth of what is written therein’. Beside his master, he pays his respects to Syrianus, of whom he says ‘he had a sense of due proportions’ (ἐν πᾶσι συμμετρίᾳ παρισωμένος), by which he meant that, as an interpreter, he was a sober scholar, not an enthusiast. This is why Syrianus ‘took heed not to comment in a manner which would be as unprofessional and self-defeating as that of his predecessors’ (τῶν τε προτέρων τὸ ἰδιωτικόν τε καὶ ἄπορον φυλαξάμενος); hence, he sought, on the one hand, to loose the exaggerations of Iamblichus,¹⁸³ and, on the other, to prove those who made mock of the dialogue slanderers’.¹⁸⁴ For all his foregoing remark, Olympiodorus took note of this view of Damascius and included a paraphrase of this in his own commentary: his point is that, in the past, ‘three false theories about the soul were propounded’ (τρεῖς γὰρ αὗται δόξαι ψευδεῖς περὶ ψυχῆς γεγόνασι): one, ‘the soul is harmony and it is destructed upon death, which was maintained by Simmias¹⁸⁵ and by certain Pythagoreans’; secondly, the soul is a like thin body, similar to smoke (οἷον σῶμα οὖσαν λεπτομερὲς καὶ καπνῷ ἐοικυῖαν), which is dispersed and destroyed following its exit from the body (μετὰ τὴν ἔξοδον τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος σκεδάννυσθαι καὶ φθείρεσθαι), which was set forth by Cebes, but Socrates contradicted him by saying that the soul persists for some time after death; this was what ‘the Poet [i. e. Homer] maintained’, too.¹⁸⁶ Thirdly, the theory that an uneducated soul perishes right after its exit from the body, whereas the educated and virtuous one  Prior to Damascius, Proclus also reported that Iamblichus (disagreeing with two groups of Platonists, [1] Atticus and Albinus, who argued that Plato maintained total destruction of the ir rational nature, and [2] Porphyry ‘who was more moderate’) ‘banished any notion of destruc tion, whether of the vehicle of the soul, or of the irrational elements of a human being’. comm Tim, v. 3 pp. 234 5: τρίτοι δὲ αὖ εἰσιν οἱ πᾶσαν φθορὰν ἀνελόντες ἀπό τε τοῦ ὀχήματος καὶ τῆς ἀλογίας καὶ εἰς ταὐτὸν ἄγοντες τήν τε τοῦ ὀχήματος διαμονὴν καὶ τὴν τοῦ ἀλόγου. See infra, pp. 1221 2.  This is noteworthy, since, at some points, Damascius notes that Syrianus was a follower of Iamblichus. Vita Isidori, fr. 77; In Parmenidem, p. 149; In Philebum, 5.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 207. In this scholion, the interesting remark by Dam ascius is that, whereas ‘Porphyry, Plotinus, and other philosophers, had a predilection for phi losophy, others, such as Iamblichus, Syrianus, and Proclus, opted for the sacerdotal activity’. Op. cit. 172. See supra, p. 1043.  Plato, Phaedo, 85e3 86d4.  Olympiodorus (In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 10.2) quotes Homer, Ilias, XVI.856 (& XXII.362, also quoted by Plato, Respublica, 386d) and then, Ilias, XXIII.1101 (also quoted by Plato, Respublica, 387a), and other authors.

Definitions of the soul

1221

remains until the conflagration of the world,¹⁸⁷ which was maintained by Heraclitus.¹⁸⁸ It is evident that the enumeration of ‘false theories about the soul’ by Olympiodorus is not the same as that by Proclus above, which only means that, a thousand-odd years after Plato had written his Phaedrus, this work was a source of confusion rather than a clear and instructive exposition. It would be argued that the discussion in the Phaedo, 80a-e, gives the impression that the soul is a certain incorporeal something, which is immortal by nature, and it returns to its proper abode after death. However, the statements therein are not as clear as one would have wished them to be. This is evident from what posterity made of them. The doxographer was clear: Plato postulated that the soul is ever-moving and it will never perish (ἀεικίνητον καὶ οὐδέποτε διαφθαρησομένην).¹⁸⁹ Who could blame him for saying so, evidently following his reading of Phaedrus, 245c, while not taking into account the fact that Plato introduced conditions concerning either the souls of plants and animals, or how much philosophy did one study during one’s life? As late as the fifth century, Proclus, who flattered himself with the idea that he was an authoritative exponent not of his own philosophy, but of that of Plato, recapitulated the confusion ‘among the exegetes of Plato’ as to what is really either mortal or immortal. He classified them into three categories: (1) Those who thought that only the rational soul is immortal, whereas that of plants and animals, along with the ‘spiritual vehicle of the soul’, is liable to destruction. He names Atticus and Albinus as exponents of this theory: they urged that it is only the ‘mind’ which survives death and becomes like the gods. (2) ‘The more moderate ones (μετριώτεροι)

 However, Pseudo Plutarch attributed this doctrine to the Stoics. Placita Philosophorum, 899C: Οἱ Στωικοὶ ἐξιοῦσαν ἐκ τῶν σωμάτων ὑποφέρεσθαι ††τὴν μὲν ἀσθενεστέραν ἅμα †τοῖς συγκρίμασι γίνεσθαι, ταύτην δ᾿ εἶναι τῶν ἀπαιδεύτων· τὴν δ᾿ ἰσχυροτέραν, οἵα ἐστὶ περὶ τοὺς σοφούς, καὶ μέχρι τῆς ἐκπυρώσεως.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, loc. cit. Evidently, Olympiodorus wrote this comment follow ing the spirit of Damascius. It is characteristic that, criticizing Iamblichus’ interpretation of the Phaedo, like Damascius, he quoted Homer’s verse from Ilias, XV.94 (οἷος ἐκείνου θυμός), which only a few authors did. Damascius, Vita Isidori, fr. 57. Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 242, p. 339a. Strabo, Geographica, 13.1.42.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 24. Likewise, Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 899C: Πυθαγόρας Πλάτων ἄφθαρτον εἶναι τὴν ψυχήν, ἐξιοῦσαν γὰρ εἰς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ψυχὴν ἀναχωρεῖν πρὸς τὸ ὁμογενές. Timaeus (sophist), Lexicon Platonicum, letter alpha, p. 972a: ᾿Aδιά λυτον, τὸ μὴ διαφθειρόμενον, ὡς Πλάτων ἐν τῷ περὶ ψυχῆς. Photius, Lexicon, letter alpha, entry 358: ᾿Aδιάλυτον· τὸ μὴ διαφθειρόμενον, ὡς Πλάτων ἐν τῷ Περὶ ψυχῆς. Michael Psellus, comm Phys, 1.19: Ἐκ τούτου τοῦ λόγου καὶ Πλάτων ἐν Φαίδωνι προσεπιχειρεῖ τῇ ψυχῇ τὸ ἀθάνατον. Anonymous, Scholia in Aristotelis Sophisticos Elenchos (commentarium 2) (comm. on 176a30 31): ἀλλὰ ψεῦδος τὸ μὴ εἶναι τὸ κατ᾿ ἀξίαν, ἢ τὸ τὴν ψυχὴν φθείρεσθαι ἄδοξον· οὐ γὰρ δοκεῖ Πλάτωνι, Ὁμήρῳ, τοῖς ἄλλοις.

1222

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

such as the followers of Porphyry’: they dismissed total destruction of irrational souls and of the ‘spiritual vehicle of the soul’, arguing that these dissolve into the elements from which they were produced, which means that they both exist and do not exist. To them, Proclus replies that there is no clear evidence that Plato maintained the destruction of irrational souls.¹⁹⁰ (3) Those who refused any sort of destruction, neither of the souls of any kind nor of the ‘spiritual vehicle of the soul’. To this category belonged ‘Iamblichus and those who claimed to be his followers’.¹⁹¹ At the same time, outsiders read different things in Plato: Alexander of Aphrodisias, wishing to takes sides with Aristotle, argued that Plato maintained total destruction of the soul after death.¹⁹² John Philoponus read in the Phaedrus, 245c-d, that, after death, the soul returns to the Whole and it is fused into this.¹⁹³

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body Plotinus initiated his philosophy by employing the oriental notion of One standing above the Mind (or Intellect), and introducing the Soul on a lower ontological level of its own. Nevertheless, his statements about the Intellect are in essence Anaxagorean. To him, ‘the soul is an expression and a sort of activity of the Intellect, just as Intellect is so of the One’ (ψυχὴ λόγος νοῦ καὶ ἐνέργειά τις, ὥσπερ αὐτὸς ἐκείνου).¹⁹⁴ As Aristotle put it, and Plotinus took it up,¹⁹⁵ the ‘Intellect in its essence is actuality’:

 On the other hand, Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 899C: Πυθαγόρας Πλάτων τὸ μὲν λογικὸν ἄφθαρτον· καὶ γὰρ τὴν ψυχὴν οὐ θεὸν ἀλλ᾿ ἔργον τοῦ ἀϊδίου θεοῦ ὑπάρχειν· τὸ δ᾿ ἄλογον φθαρτόν.  Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 234.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 508.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 267: ἀλλ᾿ ἅμα τῇ ἀναιρέσει αὐτῆς εὐθὺς καὶ τὴν ἐξ αὐτῆς τῷ παντὶ τάξιν ἐφήκουσαν εἰς σύγχυσιν ἄγεσθαι. Cf. Pseudo Plutarch, op. cit. 899C: Πυ θαγόρας Πλάτων ἄφθαρτον εἶναι τὴν ψυχήν, ἐξιοῦσαν γὰρ εἰς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ψυχὴν ἀναχωρεῖν πρὸς τὸ ὁμογενές.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.6.  Porphyry wrote that Plotinus’ work is full of clandestine Peripatetic and Stoic doctrines. In respect of the present point, see (1) the idea of the Intellect identified with its objects of thought. Plotinus, op. cit. V.3.7: Ἑαυτὸν ἄρα νοῶν οὕτω πρὸς αὑτῷ καὶ εἰς ἑαυτὸν τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἴσχει. Ar istotle, De Anima, 429b30 430a4: ὅτι δυνάμει πώς ἐστι τὰ νοητὰ ὁ νοῦς, ἀλλ᾿ ἐντελεχείᾳ οὐδέν, πρὶν ἂν νοῇ· … καὶ αὐτὸς δὲ νοητός ἐστιν ὥσπερ τὰ νοητά. ἐπὶ μὲν γὰρ τῶν ἄνευ ὕλης τὸ αὐτό ἐστι τὸ νοοῦν καὶ τὸ νοούμενον. Op. cit. 431b: ὅλως δὲ ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν, ὁ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν, τὰ πράγ ματα. And (2) the superiority of the divine Intellect over the soul. Plotinus, op. cit. V.1.6: καὶ κρείτ των ἁπάντων νοῦς, ὅτι τἆλλα μετ᾿ αὐτόν· οἷον καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ λόγος νοῦ καὶ ἐνέργειά τις, ὥσπερ

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body

1223

There is the mind which becomes everything; however, there is a Mind which makes all things; this is a kind of positive state like light; for in a sense light makes potential into actual colours. Mind in this sense is separate and impassible and unmixed, since in es sence this is actuality.¹⁹⁶

Likewise, Plotinus reflected in the same Anaxagorean vein, and in the same way Aristotle did: Again, the Intellect is activity contained in himself (καὶ γὰρ αὖ καὶ ἔστιν ὁ μὲν νοῦς ἐν αὑτῷ ἐνέργεια); as for the soul, the part of it directed to Intellect is, so to speak, within, and the part outside the Intellect is directed to the outside. In one part, then, it is made like that from which it comes; in the other, even in its unlikeness, it is made like, even here below, in its action and production.¹⁹⁷

In short, the soul, even that which is acting and producing in the material realm, is activity, just like its progenitor, namely, the Mind is. More clearly still, Plotinus saws the soul as ‘activity’ when he says that ‘the Soul is only form and power and the second active actuality after the Intellect’ (εἶδος μόνον καὶ δύναμις, καὶ ἐνέργεια δευτέρα μετὰ νοῦν ἐστι ψυχή).¹⁹⁸ These references make it possible to explain a point that has remained obscure, scholars thought that it does not make sense, and editors interpolated unnecessary emendations by introducing words that Plotinus himself never used at that point. For unless one bears in

αὐτὸς ἐκείνου. Aristotle, Ethica Eudemia, 1248a26 29: κινεῖ γάρ πως πάντα τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν θεῖον· λόγου δ᾿ ἀρχὴ οὐ λόγος, ἀλλά τι κρεῖττον· τί οὖν ἂν κρεῖττον καὶ ἐπιστήμης εἴη καὶ νοῦ πλὴν θεός; Nevertheless, Aristotle following Anaxagoras maintained that the Mind is the supreme God. I should remind, that both Mind and Intellect render the term Nous.  Aristotle, describing the Anaxagorean Mind as if this were Aristotle’s own philosophy. De Anima, 430a: καὶ ἔστιν ὁ μὲν τοιοῦτος νοῦς τῷ πάντα γίνεσθαι, ὁ δὲ τῷ πάντα ποιεῖν, ὡς ἕξις τις, οἷον τὸ φῶς· … καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής, τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια. This is one of the points making it clear that Aristotle received the notion of potentiality from Anaxagoras. The proposition, ‘the Mind distinguished the principles’, means that the Mind was ‘in a sense light, which develops potential colours into actual ones’, and this light was the Anaxagorean χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής Nous.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.3.7. In relation to Intellect, ‘activity’ means that action is at the same time ‘contemplation’. Little wonder that Proclus copied to the letter from Aristotle, De Anima, 430a17 18: Καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγὴς τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια (Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 66).  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.4.16.

1224

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

mind his Anaxagorean (and Pythagorean) allegiances, it is impossible to understand that point of Plotinus.¹⁹⁹ Therefore, the Intellect holds the Soul which comes after it, so that the Soul, down to its very lowest manifestations, is in number (ὥστε ἐν ἀριθμῷ εἶναι); and its lowest manifesta tion is altogether indeterminate (τὸ δὲ ἔσχατον αὐτῆς ἤδη ἄπειρον παντάπασι);²⁰⁰ and such an Intellect²⁰¹ is a part,²⁰² although it contains all things; and the entire Intellect, and [the intellects] are parts of this Intellect which is actuality;²⁰³ hence, the soul is part of a part (ψυχὴ δὲ μέρος μέρους), but [it is a part which is] activity stemming from this [Intellect] (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἐνέργεια ἐξ αὐτοῦ). For when [the Intellect] acts within itself, the object of its ac tion is the other minds (ὅτε μὲν γὰρ ἐν αὐτῷ ἐνεργεῖ, τὰ ἐνεργούμενα οἱ ἄλλοι νοῖ); but its activity is directed toward outside itself [and the object of its action] is the [cosmic] Soul (ὅτε δὲ ἐξ αὐτοῦ, ψυχή). And since this Soul acts as a genus or a form, the particular souls are generated as species of it.²⁰⁴

Once again, Plotinus regards generation as activity produced from acting higher ontological levels, beginning with the Intellect/Mind. He saw the products of it, down to the particular souls, as ‘activity’, too. Whether this is an Aristotelian influence, since normally in Aristotle ἐνέργεια means ‘actuality’, is a question that I leave moot. Aristotle defined the soul as ‘the first full reality of a natural body possessing organs’.²⁰⁵ Simplicius, on the one hand, averred that ‘the soul is not

 Cf. the note by A. H. Armstrong, in his Loeb translation of Plotinus’ sixth Ennead (p. 175): “No satisfactory sense can be extracted either from Kirchhoff’s or that printed by Henry and Schwyzer in their first edition”.  He means formless matter, styling this ‘indefinite’ (ἄπειρον), after Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1087a17, who saw this in like terms (indefinite, ἀόριστον).  He means the Creative Mind (the Logos of the Christians), which proceeded from the primal Mind once it decided to engage in creative activity.  Cf. supra (pp. 1002 8) Origen treating the notion of the Logos being ‘less’ than the Father: the creative manifestation of the Mind/Logos is a particular manifestation of the Mind; this is related to the universe, but it does not reveal entirely what the Minbd per se is.  Aristotle, De Anima, 430a17: καὶ οὗτος ὁ νοῦς χωριστὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀμιγής, τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια. Ethica Nicomachea, 1177a: κρατίστη τε γὰρ αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ ἐνέργεια· καὶ γὰρ ὁ νοῦς τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ τῶν γνωστῶν, περὶ ἃ ὁ νοῦς. Metaphysica, 1069b: ὁ γὰρ νοῦς εἷς, ὥστ᾿ εἰ καὶ ἡ ὕλη μία, ἐκεῖνο ἐγένετο ἐνεργείᾳ οὗ ἡ ὕλη ἦν δυνάμει. These stataments are only Anaxagorean lia bilities, as Aristotle himself felt he should explicate in the Metaphysica, 1072a: τὸ μὲν δὴ δύναμιν οἴεσθαι ἐνεργείας πρότερον ἔστι μὲν ὡς καλῶς ἔστι δ᾿ ὡς οὔ (εἴρηται δὲ πῶς)· ὅτι δ᾿ ἐνέργεια πρότερον, μαρτυρεῖ ᾿Aναξαγόρας (ὁ γὰρ νοῦς ἐνέργεια) καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς φιλίαν καὶ τὸ νεῖκος, καὶ οἱ ἀεὶ λέγοντες κίνησιν εἶναι, ὥσπερ Λεύκιππος.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.2.22.  Aristotle, De Anima, 412a: ἐντελέχεια ἡ πρώτη σώματος φυσικοῦ δυνάμει ζωὴν ἔχοντος. Op. cit. 412b: ἐντελέχεια ἡ πρώτη σώματος φυσικοῦ ὀργανικοῦ.

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body

1225

activity’,²⁰⁶ while, on the other, eminent commentators, treating Aristotle’s definition, associated ἐντελέχεια, the perfect nature of a thing, with its ability to express itself by means of action. ²⁰⁷ Besides, Aristotle himself noted that the soul is ‘essence and action of a body’ (οὐσία καὶ ἐνέργεια σώματός τινος), adding that the ‘essence of a thing exists in its form and action’ (τὸ γὰρ τί ἦν εἶναι τῷ εἴδει καὶ τῇ ἐνεργείᾳ ὑπάρχει); and then, in the proposition ‘the essence and form is ἐνέργεια’²⁰⁸ the context calls for this to be understood as ‘actuality’ rather than ‘activity’, although it is always possible to urge that, in this context, actuality is activity.²⁰⁹ While expounding his own views of the soul, Plato recalled a certain previous theory, which stipulated the soul as posterior to the body, and it is clear that

 Simplicius maintained that the soul is not activity, but it brings about ‘perfection’ (οὐχ ὅτι ἐνέργειά ἐστιν ἡ ψυχή, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι κατ᾿ ἐκείνην ἡ τελειότης αὐτῷ). commPhys, p. 414. Evidently, he understood Aristotle’s definition as denoting not ‘action’, but that the soul is by nature the agent that makes it possible for a body to reach full perfection of its own nature. This is an echo of Simplicius’ Platonic sympathies. Proclus argued for this also from a Platonic point of view (namely, the theory of knowledge is in fact about ἀνάμνησις): he argued that the soul is not like an unwritten slate, but it has all things buried in itself, indeed not potentially but in actual ity. commCrat, 61. However, the author of the commentary, commAnim (p. 48), which was attrib uted to Simplicius, wrote that ‘in its essence, the divine soul of the universe is energy’, and here ἐνέργεια clearly means ‘energy’, not ‘actuality’. This agrees with the interpretation by all other commentators (next note), but perhaps this is one of the reasons why this work is treated as du bious.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima, p. 16. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 41. Pseudo Plu tarch, Placita Philosophorum, 898C: τὴν δ᾿ ἐντελέχειαν ἀκουστέον ἀντὶ τῆς ἐνεργείας. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 5.17: ἐντελέχειαν δὲ τὴν ἐνέργειαν κέκληκεν. Michael of Ephesus (fl. early or mid twelfth century AD), In Ethica Nicomachea ix x Commentaria, p. 561: ἡ δὲ ἐντε λέχεια ἐνέργεια· ἡ ζωὴ ἄρα ἐνέργεια. Sophonias, paraphrPhys, p. 42: ἡ γοῦν ψυχὴ ποικίλως ἐνερ γοῦσα διαφόροις ὀργάνοις προσχρήσεται τοῦ σώματος. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Com mentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 2.1: τῆς ἐντελεχείας, ἥτις ἐστὶν ἐνέργεια. Likewise, op. cit. 2.4. Cf. Corpus Hermeticum, Νοῦς πρὸς Ἑρμῆν, 2: ἐνέργεια δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ νοῦς καὶ ψυχή.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1043b1 2; 1050b2 3; cf. 1072a4 6. In De Anima, 430a17 18, ‘in its essence, the Nous is ἐνέργεια’ means ‘active actuality’, and Mind is adumbrated in plain Anax agorean terms. See supra, p. 928, and note 470.  This is how Aristotle’s commentators saw this. Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 590. John Philoponus, commAnim, pp. 523; 540. Nevertheless, concerning terminology, Dam ascius made an important distinction: ‘existence’ means mere ‘hypostasis’, in the same way ‘power’ suggests mere ‘ability’, and ‘activity’ suggests only ‘action’. Damascius, Princ, pp. 311 12: Τάχα δὲ ἐκεῖνο προσφυέστερον εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἡ μὲν ὕπαρξις τὴν ὑπόστασιν δηλοῖ μόνον, ὥσπερ ἡ δύναμις τὸ δύνασθαι μόνον, καὶ ἡ ἐνέργεια τὸ μόνον ἐνεργεῖν. This ‘more felicitous’ (προσφυέστερον) analysis of terms can be understood in modern terms, by means of Heideg gers’s distinction between the notions of ontological and ontic. See chapter 6, p. 406.

1226

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

he had in mind Anaxagoras.²¹⁰ In the Timaeus, he feels it necessary to stress that ‘the soul is prior to the body in terms of birth and excellence, since she was meant to be queen and ruler, and the body [was meant] to be ruled’.²¹¹ Naturally, the issue comes up also in the Phaedo, when Simmias set forth the following argument: since the soul is represented as harmony, what should be made of the harmony of a lyre? Evidently, once the lyre is shattered and its strings are cut, the harmony that is produced from it will perish along with the lyre itself. Likewise, once the body is destroyed along with the harmony of heat, cold, moisture, and dryness, the soul must of necessity perish. In fact, since the soul is a harmonious mixture of the elements of the body, the soul should be the first to perish upon death.²¹² This is a necessary corollary of the philosophy of Anaxagoras, anyway. Philoponus grasped Plato’s anxiety and remarked that such statements made by Plato in the Timaeus ‘were disputed by many’ philosophers (ὅτι γὰρ οἶδεν τοῦτο καὶ περὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας ψυχῆς παρὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀμφιδοξούμενον).²¹³ Consequently, Philoponus quotes extensively from that point of the Timaeus, in order to conclude: “Therefore, he [Plato] knows that there are many people who maintain that our soul is posterior to the structure of our body.”²¹⁴ Philoponus was right. The soul then is not a self-substantial being on its own merit: it is the aggregate of vital functions, which distinguish any living being from a dead one. Consequently, what is called ‘soul’ appears only along with formation of the body as a living being; therefore, this is posterior to the body. Plato loathed Anaxagoras precisely because of this point: whereas he himself sustained that the soul is ‘the most primal of all things that have been generated’, Anaxagoras was unconcerned about according soul any particular dignity, certainly not any self-substantial and independent existence, let alone seeing it as a divine substance. As I argued earlier, it has not been noticed that Plato’s criticism of Anaxagoras is more fierce and derogatory at the points where he refers to him implicitly:

 Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 34b10 (see this passage excerpted by Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.28, and dis cussed by Proclus, commTim, v. 2, pp. 113; 272). Also, Plato, Leges, 967b c. I canvass this in a moment.  Plato, Timaeus, 34c. He postulated the soul as ‘standing midway between the being which is indivisible and unchangeable, and the being of bodies, which is transient and divisible.’ Loc. cit. This statement was destined to become the leitmotif of a long series of subsequent authors.  Plato, Phaedo, 85e 86d.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 175.  John Philoponus, loc. cit.: ὥστε οἶδεν τοὺς πολλοὺς ὑστέραν εἶναι τὴν ἡμετέραν ψυχὴν τῆς τοῦ σώματος κατασκευῆς οἰομένους.

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body

1227

And even in those days there were some who dared to hazard the conjecture that Mind (νοῦς) is the orderer of everything that is in the heavens. Yet again, the same thinkers, mis taking the nature of the soul which they conceived to be posterior, not prior, to the body (ἁμαρτάνοντες ψυχῆς φύσεως ὅτι πρεσβύτερον εἴη σωμάτων, διανοηθέντες δὲ ὡς νεώτε ρον), turned everything [in the universe] upside down, as it were, and most of all them selves. For everything they saw moving in the heavens appeared to them to be a total of stones and earth and many other lifeless bodies (τὰ κατ᾿ οὐρανὸν φερόμενα, μεστὰ εἶναι λίθων καὶ γῆς καὶ πολλῶν ἄλλων ἀψύχων σωμάτων), which dispense the causes of the en tire cosmos. These were the systematic studies at that time (τὰ τότε ἐξειργασμένα), which involved many godless theories and vexatious questions. For indeed certain poets took oc casion to be abusive,²¹⁵ comparing those philosophers to dogs barking vainly, and talking other nonsense of the same sort. … It is impossible for any mortal man to become perma nently god fearing if he does not grasp the two truths now stated, namely, that the soul is oldest of all things that partake of generation, it is immortal, and rules over all bodies; in addition to this, he must also grasp that the Mind (νοῦν) which, as we have often affirmed, controls what exists among the stars, together with the necessary preliminary sciences.²¹⁶

We have no specific instances of such excoriation of Anaxagoras by any poet other than Aristophanes,²¹⁷ who lampooned Anaxagoras’ ideas while satirizing the plays of Euripides. He did so according to his habit, while paying lip service to established ideas (there is testimony that he was bribed to the purpose of incriminating Socrates).²¹⁸ No doubt, Plato’s statement is accurate and epitomizes the uproar against Anaxagoras, who was considered as a menace to established religious ideas. Evidently, he maintained those feelings for Anaxagoras until the end of his life, since the Laws was written by the end of it, and it was not published until a year after his death by his pupil Philip of Opus. In view of this, we can understand similar references made earlier in the same work: he spoke of those who ‘hold fire, water, earth and air to be the first of all things, and that it is precisely to these things that he gives the name of nature, while soul he asserts to be a later product therefrom (ψυχὴν δὲ ἐκ τούτων ὕστερον).’²¹⁹ This is not an accurate description of Anaxagoras’ philosophy, but Plato evidently

 Plato was dismissive of poetry; Respublica, 607b c. However, despite his severe dissent from Anaxagoras, he did not like the fact that poets mocked a philosopher, indeed one that had engaged in ‘systematic studies’.  Plato, Leges, 967b e. Those who cared to study of Anaxagoras by means of excerpted ‘frag ments’ alone, were bound to study them out of context, as explained in the Introduction. Be sides, since the excerptors picked up ‘fragments’ only from passages in which the name ‘Anax agoras’ appeared, a vast number of testimonies not mentioning the name has remained out of collections and consideration. This passage is an example of this kind.  See chapter 11, pp. 845 6.  Aelian, Varia Historia, 2.13.  Plato, Leges, 891c.

1228

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

cared about the cardinal points of the theory, not about details. Anyway, when he returns to the same point a little later, in the passage quoted above, he leaves no doubt that he had in mind Anaxagoras: indeed, page 967 of the Laws is the closing section of the entire work which is concluded on page 969. I have already remarked that consistency is not one of Plato’s strong points, and his admirers knew this. Plutarch was happy to quote and endorse Plato’s foregoing statements and urge for his part that the soul is prior and superior to the body; however, it did not elude him that, whereas in the Phaedrus Plato postulated the soul as uncreated, in the Timaeus he argued that this is created. In fact, his purpose was to defend Plato against those who pointed out that he was inconsistent (and Plutarch suggests that they were many), and to show that Plato’s views were congruous after all.²²⁰ The fact is that the idea of the soul being posterior, indeed a product of combination of the material elements which make up the body, was appalling to those who, in one way or another, felt some respect for Plato.²²¹ Having said this, it should be noted that Plotinus believed that consciousness of what goes on in the soul is limited and dependent on the condition of the body.²²² Faithful Platonists, of course, regarded the soul not as the result, but as the cause of the harmonious (usually meaning ‘according to number’) mixture of elements that make up the body.²²³ As to the Stoics, they saw the soul as the result of the combined (which Pythagoreans and Platonists would have styled ‘harmonious’) operation of corporeal logoi. Some commentators took this as suggesting that the corporeal logoi permeate the body, thus, a body permeates another body.²²⁴ However, ‘Stoicism’ did not always speak with one voice,²²⁵ and

 Plutarch, De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo, 1016A. Cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 245c 246a; Ti maeus, 34b ff.  Cf. Philo, De Somniis, 2.141: ψυχῆς γὰρ οὐ νεωτέρας οὐδὲ ἀγόνου καὶ ἐστειρωμένης, ἀλλὰ τῷ ὄντι πρεσβυτέρας καὶ γεννᾶν ἐπισταμένης. Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 223: Τῶν δέ γε νεωτέραν τοῦ σώματος τὴν ψυχὴν εἶναι λεγόντων, προκατεσκευάσθη διὰ τῶν κατόπιν ἡ ἀτοπία.  Plotinus, op. cit. I.4.10; IV.3.30.  Xenocrates, fr. 262, apud Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 32: αὐτὴ γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ψυχὴ τῆς κρά σεως ταύτης αἰτία καὶ τοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς μίξεως τῶν πρώτων στοιχείων.  See testimonies reporting the Stoic doctrine about body permeating another body. Alexand er of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 216. Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1077E. Galen, In Hippocratis De Natura Hominis Librum Commentarii, p. 32. Themistius, In Aristotelis Physica Paraphrasis, p. 104. Simplicius, commPhys, p. 530.  Once again, it was Origen who advised us that Chrysippus, at several points of his own writings, attacks Cleanthes and dissented from him, even though Chrysippus, when he was still a young man and beginning to study philosophy, was a disciple of Cleanthes. Cels, II.12.

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body

1229

Alexander of Aphrodisias rightly points out their ‘diversity of speech’ (πολυφωνίας), meaning that different Stoics accorded critical terms different imports, such as mixture (κρᾶσις) here.²²⁶ We saw earlier the Stoic theory about children being like their parents, on the grounds of parental seed. Plutarch reported that the Stoics used this as proof that the soul is posterior, since the dispositions of it follow those of the parents.²²⁷ And then, here comes an anonymous commentator reporting that, in reality, the Stoics maintained that ‘there is no soul whatsoever: generation takes place out of mixture of the elements’, adding that ‘it was Galen who became the main exponent of this theory.’²²⁸ This person upset Late Antiquity with his naturalistic theories, and I am going to deal with his views in a moment. There is only one remark that is called for in advance: when Aristotle reported the different views of philosophers about the soul,²²⁹ he took it as a matter of course that, in general, they considered the soul as something akin to, or even identified with, whatever they posited as supreme principle. Thus, he believed that Anaxagoras identified the mind and soul, and Diogenes of Apollonia ‘and some others’ believed that the soul is air, since, to them, air was the supreme principle, and so on. Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (129 ‒ c. 200/216 AD), better known as Galen of Pergamum, was the personality who scandalized both the heirs of Classical philosophy and Christian intellectuals alike, by arguing that the soul is posterior to the body. We already saw that he was not the first to do so, as Plato mentioned, but he carried through on a tradition which was interrupted right after Anaxagoras. For indeed, to Anaxagoras, the soul is a result, though not one of intermixing elements, but one of concurring principles. Nearly four centuries after Galen, another medical doctor, namely, Palladius of Alexandria, wrote that Hippocrates sowed and Galen ploughed.²³⁰ This was true, and one of the principles Galen had learned from the Hippocratic tradition

 Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 216: οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς περὶ κράσεως διαλαμβά νειν. οὔσης δὲ καὶ ἐν τούτοις πολυφωνίας (ἄλλοι γὰρ ἄλλως αὐτῶν τὰς κράσεις γίνεσθαι λέγουσιν) … σῶμα διὰ σώματος ἀντιπαρήκειν.  Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1053D (Chrysippus, fr. 806). See supra, chapter 11, pp. 953 4.  Anonymous, Commentarium in Hermogenis Librum Περὶ Ἰδεῶν, p. 884: οἱ μὲν γὰρ Στωϊκοὶ λέγουσι μὴ εἶναι ψυχήν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ τῆς κράσεως τῶν στοιχείων ἀποτελεῖσθαι τὴν γένεσιν· … ταύτης τῆς δόξης προστάτης ἐγένετο καὶ Γαληνός. J. von Arnim attributed this to Chrysippus (fr. 789), but this testimony is only about ‘the Stoics’.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405a.  Palladius of Alexandria, Commentarii in Hippocratis Librum Sextum De Morbis Popularibus, p. 157: Ἱπποκράτης μὲν ἔσπειρεν, ἐγεώργησε δὲ ὁ Γαληνός.

1230

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

was that it is not possible to know the art of medicine unless one knows what a human being is. The author notes that the views of ‘those who wrote about the Nature, like Empedocles and others,’ were assumed to belong to philosophy, but his view is that whatever was written by either philosophers or medical doctors about ‘what man really is, how he was made in the beginning, and what his constitution is’ (ὅ τί ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος, καὶ ὅπως ἐγένετο πρῶτον καὶ ὅπως ξυνεπάγη) was close to the art of painting rather than to the art of medicine. To Hippocrates, ‘it is impossible to learn about the nature from any source other than the art of medicine’, and this knowledge means ‘to know accurately what a human being is, and what are the causes that generate it, and the like’.²³¹ The work which is a landmark in the history of theories about the supposedly ‘psychic’ faculties within the body, is Galen’s tract entitled, On that the powers of the soul are subsequent to the mixtures of the body (ὅτι ταῖς τοῦ σώματος κράσεσιν αἱ τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεις ἕπονται). This treatise remained always a scandal to philosophers who felt that they should treat the soul as something precious and having an existence of its own. However, the author did not consider previous philosophers as unworthy of being given a hearing; this is why he says that he began his studies with his teachers of medicine, and then he continued ‘with the best of philosophers’. His conclusion, ‘following a long time of persistent research on the topic from many and different points of view, not only on his own but along with masters of medicine and philosophy’ (οὐδ᾿ ἐπ᾿ ἐμαυτοῦ μόνου βασανίσας τε καὶ πολυειδῶς ἐρευνήσας ἀλλ᾿ ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς μὲν ἅμα τοῖς διδασκάλοις, ὕστερον δὲ σὺν τοῖς ἀρίστοις φιλοσόφοις), was that ‘the functions of the soul are subsequent to the mixtures of the body’ (ταῖς τοῦ σώματος κράσεσιν ἕπεσθαι τὰς δυνάμεις τῆς ψυχῆς).²³² Moreover, in a book that was written after this monograph, he urged that the faculties of the soul are gradually perfected along with growth of the natural organs of human body (σὺν γὰρ τοῖς ὀργάνοις τελειούμεναι αἱ τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεις ἐνεργοῦσιν), and referred his reader to that monograph.²³³ Of course, this idea of gradual perfection of rationality in essence is not different from the Stoic (as well as Origen’s) notion of συμπλήρωσις τοῦ λόγου, denoting that the intellectual capacity of a human being grows with age and it is perfected by the period of late adolescence.²³⁴ The author forces previous philosophy, specifically Aristotle’s one, to his own direction: if we are to accept that the soul is a certain subsistent being

 Hippocrates, De Prisca Medicina, 20.  Galen, Quod Animi Mores Corporis Temperamenta Sequantur, 4.767.  Galen, De Foetuum Formatione Libellus, 4.674: ἔνεστι δὲ τοῦτο μαθεῖν τῷ βουληθέντι τὸ βι βλίον ἀναγνῶναι, καθ᾿ ὃ δείκνυμι ταῖς τοῦ σώματος κράσεσιν ἕπεσθαι τὰς τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεις.  See infra, pp. 1274 5; 1325; 1328; 1343 6; 1365.

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body

1231

(οὐσία τις οὖσα), there is no way to understand this being otherwise than as ‘a mixture’ (οὐκ ἐγχωρεῖ λέγειν ἄλλο τι παρὰ τὴν κρᾶσιν).²³⁵ All of those human manifestations which are described as ‘character’²³⁶ of the soul are the result of specific mixtures, as well as of the specific nature of certain people by birth. Nevertheless, by the end of this treatise, Galen made some room for education and practice, but he notes that, if one’s nature is evil by construction, it is not always possible to achieve improvement; education and practice is as influential as the kind of food one receives, which determines the juices of his body and the balance between them.²³⁷ Therefore, both ‘those who believe that all men are susceptible of virtue’ and those who believe that no man is susceptible of this, grasp only one half of human nature (ἐξ ἡμίσεος ἑκάτεροι τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην ἑωράκασι φύσιν). For not all men are by nature either lovers or enemies of justice: what they eventually become in respect of this depends on the mixtures within their bodies.²³⁸ The theory of Galen was not easy to rebut, not even to argue against it, simply because it was learned, it would be arguably shown as conforming with common experience, and had a very good command of both philosophical and scientific knowledge. He did not care to dispute either Plato’s tripartite division of the soul or the Aristotelian definition of it as ‘form’ and ‘full reality’ of the body. Instead, he went straight to the point: when ‘confused’ (συγκεχυμένοι) philosophers spoke of ‘powers’ of the soul, they thought of them as if they were ‘things’ residing within the soul. They took the soul as a ‘subsistent being’ (οὐσία), and the ‘powers’ of it appeared to them ‘as something being analogous to us as people who dwell in houses’ (ὡς γὰρ ἐνοικοῦντός τινος πράγματος ταῖς οὐσίαις, ὡς ἡμεῖς ταῖς οἰκίαις), only because they did not realize that ‘power’ means ‘action taking place in relation to something else’ (μὴ γιγνώσκοντες, ὅτι τῶν γιγνομένων ἑκάστου ποιητική τις ἐστιν αἰτία νοουμένη κατὰ τὸ πρός τι). In other words, any subsistent being (whether an animal, or simply a healing remedy) has as many ‘powers’ as the actions it engages in (τοσαύτας δυνάμεις ἔχειν τὴν οὐσίαν φαμέν, ὅσας ἐνεργείας). For instance, a certain medicine (say, aloe vera) has as many ‘powers’ as the different occasions on which this is applied: it may be used either for cleaning the stomach, or for healing wounds, or for drying the eyebrows, and

 Galen, op. cit. 4.783.  Cf. Galen, op. cit. 4.795; 4.805; 4.806: τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ἤθη. Op. cit. 4.795: τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς ἠθῶν. Op. cit. 4.799: τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἤθη. Op. cit. 4.802; 4.803: τὰ ἤθη. Op. cit. 4.798 9: τὴν κρᾶσιν εἶναι αἰτίαν τῶν ἠθῶν.  Op. cit. 4.813 (while quoting from Plato, Timaeus, 87b): ἐπιτηδεύματα καὶ μαθήματα κακίας μὲν ἀναιρετικά, γεννητικὰ δ᾿ ἀρετῆς ἐστιν, οὕτω καὶ ἡ τροφή.  Op. cit. 4.814.

1232

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

so on. In each of these cases, a particular ‘power’ of the medicine is manifested and acting. The same goes for the soul, once we take into account the function of the five senses, as well as all manifestations of reflection, desire, will, and so on. Now, ‘if Plato was convinced that the rational part of the soul is immortal’, Galen declares himself indifferent to such questions and not feeling like engaging in such a kind of dogmatic debate (ἐγὼ δ᾿ οὔθ᾿ ὡς ἔστιν οὔθ᾿ ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν ἔχω διατείνεσθαι πρὸς αὐτόν).²³⁹ The author says that it is not his intention to discredit whatever good things have been said by philosophy: his aim is only to compose an instructive and didactic tract on a question which ‘was ignored until a short while ago by some philosophers’.²⁴⁰ He does indeed put previous philosophy to use by quoting extensively from Plato and Aristotle in order to make his point, but he treats his contemporary Platonists of the decadent Academy with contempt,²⁴¹ because they failed to support their views by facts stemming from observation of the real world.²⁴² Nevertheless, he refers to ‘very ancient’ philosophers, who were truly ‘wise’ while they did not care to write ‘books or to exhibit dialectical or natural knowledge, but they departed from observation of the real phenomena which fall immediately into perception, and thus they practiced virtue in deed, not in words.’²⁴³ It is quite plain that Galen has not in mind prolific writers, but such men as Pythagoras, who did not engage in writings books. Nevertheless, since he speaks also of men of scientific spirit who knew the science of nature (φυσικὴν θεωρίαν) and believed in their eyes and observation, not in myths, while also they were virtuous, Galen might well have in mind Anaxagoras, who was honoured by Antiquity for his virtues, and not so much for his book, which was after all either maltreated or lost: Aristotle did not preserve a single word from it, and religious people who honoured Anaxagoras would have been eager to suppress his profane (and, to some, ‘atheistic’) views. It should be noted that, in the collective conscience of posterity, Pythagoras and Anaxagoras were stated together for various reasons; almost all sources that have something to say about them state the name of Anaxagoras first and then

 Galen, op. cit. 4.772.  Op. cit. 4.814.  Op. cit. 4.809: τοὺς γενναίους Πλατωνικούς. Op. cit. 4.811: ὦ γενναιότατοι Πλατωνικοί.  Op. cit. 4.817: ἀπὸ τῶν ἐναργῶς φαινομένων τὰς ἀρχὰς τῶν ἀποδείξεων ποιεῖσθαι.  Op. cit. 4.817 18: καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἐοίκασι μάλιστα πάντων οἱ παλαιότατοι πρᾶξαι τε καὶ κληθῆναι σοφοὶ παρὰ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, οὔτε συγγράμματα γράφοντες οὔτε διαλεκτικὴν ἢ φυσικὴν ἐπιδει κνύμενοι θεωρίαν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐξ αὐτῶν μὲν τῶν ἐναργῶς φαινομένων τῆς θεωρίας ἀρξάμενοι τῶν ἀρε τῶν, ἀσκήσαντες δ᾿ αὐτὰς ἔργοις, οὐ λόγοις.

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body

1233

that of Pythagoras.²⁴⁴ Aristotle said that the Italians buried Pythagoras and honoured him, and so did the people of Lampsacus for Anaxagoras, even though both philosophers were foreigners.²⁴⁵ Plutarch states three examples of wise men that benefited eminent people of their cities: what Anaxagoras was to Pericles, Plato was to Dio, and Pythagoras to the most eminent citizens of Italy.²⁴⁶ Diogenes Laertius quoted the honorific epigram that the Lampsacenes engraved on Anaxagoras’ tomb,²⁴⁷ adding that Alcidamas was a pupil of Pythagoras and of Anaxagoras, and he admired the virtue of the former and the scientific theory of Nature of the latter.²⁴⁸ He quoted from Hermippus of Smyrna’s list of the seventeen sages of Antiquity, which included both Pythagoras and Anaxagoras.²⁴⁹ He also says that Empedocles, after he had attended the lessons of Parmenides, cared to make himself a pupil of two philosophers, namely, Anaxagoras and Pythagoras,²⁵⁰ which is remarkable, considering that the views of those philosophers on the cardinal issue of theology were different: Pythagoras saw the sun as god, Anaxagoras as a mere stone.²⁵¹ Josephus wrote that ‘the most wise of Greeks’ held a right view of Deity (which they received from the Jews), and as examples he mentions Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, and the Stoics.²⁵² Alexander of Aphrodisias names in admiration the three exceptional philosophers who did not make any of the material elements a supreme principle: Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, and Plato,²⁵³ but the other commentator of Aristotle, namely, Asclepius of Tralles, also considering this legacy, mentions only the Pythagoreans and Anaxagoras.²⁵⁴ This is not surprising, since, among the pupils of

 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.15.11. Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.22. Theodoret wrote that Anaxagoras and Pythagoras visited Egypt (op. cit. 2.23; cf. 2.26) in order to learn the arcane wisdom by the sages of the region. See Appendix I.  Aristotle, Rhetorica, 1398b.  Plutarch, Maxime Cum Principibus Philosopho Esse Disserendum, 777a.  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum, 2.15.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 8.56.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 1.42.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 8.56.  Maximus of Tyre (sophist, second century AD), Dissertationes, 19.3: καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἄλλως μὲν ὁρᾷ Πυθαγόρας, ἄλλως δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, Πυθαγόρας μὲν ὡς θεόν, ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὡς λίθον.  Josephus, Contra Apionem, 2.168, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 8.8.5. Likewise, Eusebius, op. cit. 14.16.11 (copied by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Virtutibus et Vitiis, p. 114). See the same reference and allegation about Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Plato, being made by Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 2.51; 2.16; Quaestiones in Libros Re gnorum et Paralipomenon, PG.80.676.8 19.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, commMetaph, p. 61, commenting on Aristotle, Metaphysica, 988a32.  Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 43.

1234

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Ammonius of Alexandria, it was a commonplace that Plato drew heavily on Anaxagoras; this is why Simplicius says that ‘it was Anaxagoras who introduced the divine Mind’ in philosophy; and, when he adds the name of Plato, he says ‘which is the same as saying, the Pythagoreans’.²⁵⁵ In other words, Anaxagoras and Pythagoras introduced the notion the divine Mind: Plato just followed suit. Later, Gennadius Scholarius wrote that Anaxagoras and Pythagoras received lessons from the Egyptian sages, and, when Plato heard their lessons, he went to Egypt himself, ‘according to the testimonies by Jerome, and Plutarch, and, before him, by Xenophon’. It is thence that Plato received ‘many seeds of the sacred truth’.²⁵⁶ Nevertheless, when the same author feels it necessary to state the greatest names of philosophers of old, his catalogue is ‘Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and Anaxagoras’.²⁵⁷ Anaxagoras was put to trial after he was denounced by Cleon for saying that the sun is a fiery stone;²⁵⁸ Pythagoras was put to trial and persecuted by Cylon of Croton:²⁵⁹ both of them were banished from their cities as dangerous blasphemers. Perhaps the most stunning example of Pythagoras and Anaxagoras being remembered side-by-side by Late Antiquity is one in which the name of Anaxagoras is not mentioned at all: Damascius had both philosophers in mind, although he mentions only Pythagoras. He says though that not all souls are the same: Pythagoras’ is of one kind, Cylon’s of another, as by the same token Plato’s is of one kind and Cleon’s of another, too.²⁶⁰ While having in mind Anaxagoras as a peer to Pythagoras, he mentioned only the name of Anaxagoras’ persecutor. When Galen was about to conclude his pragmaty, and he made mention of ‘very ancient’ philosophers, he had finished with extensive quotations from  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 8: καὶ τὸ ποιητικὸν δὲ αἴτιον τῶν μὲν ἄλλων παραλιμπανόντων, τοῦ δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρου καὶ τοῦ Πλάτωνος, ταὐτὸν δὲ εἰπεῖν τῶν Πυθαγορείων, τὸν θεῖον νοῦν τι θέντων. Concerning Plato having plagiarized from the Pythagoreans by purchasing the works of the Pythagorean Philolaus of Croton, see Appendix I.  Gennadius Scholarius, Contra Plethonis Ignorationem De Aristotele, p. 12.  Gennadius Scholarius, Dialogi De Processu Spiritus Sancti, Dialogue 1, p. 13.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.12.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 2.46. Diodore of Sicily, Bibliotheca Historica, 1010.2. Plutarch, De Genio Socratis, 583A; De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1051C. Porphyry, Vita Pythagorae, 54 5. Iambli chus, De Vita Pythagorica, 34.247 9; 35.258 9. Themistius, Σοφιστής, 285a: “Pythagoras left Samos and decamped to Croton because of Polycrates; then, he left Croton and decamped to Locroi, because of Cylon; and then he left Locroi and decamped to Taras, because the people of Locroi could not stand him; and the people of Taras, who saw him as a burden, sent him off to Metapontium, where he died in the Temple of the Muses, after having forborne from food for forty days.” Cf. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 8.39 40. Porphyry, op. cit. 56. Iamblichus, op. cit. 249.  Damascius, Princ, p. 263.

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body

1235

Plato and Aristotle. He was now talking about people who were truly ‘wise’ and they did not care for writing ‘books or to exhibit dialectical or natural knowledge, but they departed from observation of real phenomena which fall immediately into perception, and they practiced virtue in deed, not in words.’²⁶¹ Galen was now concerned about wisdom and virtue. The proof-texts he had quoted were no longer necessary, since the point was already made. Speaking about wisdom and virtue, he would certainly have had in mind the anonymous text that circulated in the schools of rhetoric and it was available to ordinary educated men, too. The author rejects the claim that ‘there are no recognized teachers’ and his rejoinder is that this is not true: What else other than teaching wisdom and virtue do sophists do? What else other than this were the followers of Anaxagoras and Pythagoras?

The author concludes that it is worth attending the lessons of wise people, who taught ‘wisdom and virtue’, and his example is ‘the followers of Anaxagoras and those of Pythagoras’.²⁶² Therefore, when Galen refers to those wise men of old who did not write extensive treatises, but made observation of phenomena the starting point of practicing virtue and wisdom, it is plausible to assume that he would have had in mind such figures of old as Pythagoras and Anaxagoras. This work of Galen remained always a scandal that embarrassed philosophers. Posterity cited this only to refute it, or, at least, to assume Galen’s limited allowance for the educational role of learning and experience, although Galen had a different view of it: he determined that what Plato meant by ‘pursuits and studies’ (ἐπιτηδευμάτων μαθημάτων)²⁶³ was only ‘gymnastics and music’ and ‘geometry and arithmetic’.²⁶⁴ But whereas philosophers of Galen’s times understood philosophy in the sense that prevailed during the Late Antiquity and Modern times, that is, abstract reasoning at the exclusion of knowledge of mathematics and science (which though was espoused by Plato himself), Galen was

 Galen, op. cit. 4.817 18; quoted supra, p. 1228, note 243.  Anonymous, Dialexeis (Δισσοὶ Λόγοι), Fragmenta, 6.7 8: ὡς ἄρα οὐκ ἐντὶ διδάσκαλοι ἀποδε δεγμένοι, τί μὰν τοὶ σοφισταὶ διδάσκοντι ἄλλ᾿ ἢ σοφίαν καὶ ἀρετάν; τί δὲ ᾿Aναξαγόρειοι καὶ Πυ θαγόρειοι ἦεν;  Plato, Timaeus, 87b.  Galen, op. cit. 4.813: ἐπιτηδεύματ᾿ οὖν λέγει τὰ γε κατὰ γυμναστικήν τε καὶ μουσικήν, μα θήματα δὲ τά τε κατὰ γεωμετρίαν καὶ ἀριθμητικήν. Cf. ‘gymnastics and music’, Plato, Respubl ica, 376e4; 404b; et passim; Leges, 673b; 743d; et passim; ‘geometry and arithmetic’, Gorgias, 450d e; 508a; Meno, 85e. Nevertheless, Plato did not place geometry and arithmetic on a par with the study of philosophy.

1236

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

in essence a staunch scientist and a man of reason, who kept an open eye to the occurrences he observed in both nature and society. Proclus was only able to say about this treatise that ‘it is not right to make allowance for Galen’s theory that the powers of the soul are posterior to the body, since the soul is immortal’.²⁶⁵ John Philoponus stuck to Galen’s qualified allowance that perhaps education might contribute to a man’s character, which is far from sure though. However, Philoponus took Galen’s reference to Plato’s ‘pursuits and studies’ (ἐπιτηδευμάτων μαθημάτων,²⁶⁶ which Galen interpreted ‘gymnastics and music’ and ‘geometry and arithmetic’) as meaning ‘study of philosophy’. If, therefore (Philoponus argued), philosophical studies are not subject to the mixtures of the body, then the soul is prior to it.²⁶⁷ Quite evidently, Philoponus’ argument was based on wishful thinking, which was taken up by the next generation of Ammonius’ pupils at Alexandria, namely, Olympiodorus: he also interpolated into Galen’s text a phrase, which in fact had nothing to do with it, and ran contrary to the argument. Thus, he made it, ‘the powers of the soul are posterior to the mixtures of the body, unless philosophy counteracts [these mixtures]’, ²⁶⁸ which is a wishful interpolation, too. The majority of intellectuals rejected the theory of Galen about the soul, but no philosopher nor theologian, either Greek²⁶⁹ or Christian,²⁷⁰ did ever come up with any convincing rebuttal of it. As a matter of fact, there are no ad hoc treatises aiming at demolishing the theory; there are only dismissive remarks made in passing, but no comprehensive and compelling argument did ever appear. Shortly after Galen, Alexander of Aphrodisias was perhaps the only one to refute the theory by means of some argument.²⁷¹ However, in general, this received lit-

 Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 349. Cf. commRep, v. 1, pp. 222; 250; In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 226.  Plato, Timaeus, 87b.  John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 51: καὶ τοῦτο καὶ αὐτοί φασιν οἱ ἰατροί· εἰπόντες γὰρ ἕπεσθαι ταῖς κράσεσι τοῦ σώματος τὰς τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεις, προστεθείκασι χωρὶς τῶν κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν διατριβῶν. Op. cit. p. 183: ἐντεῦθεν ἔχεις τὴν λύσιν ὧν ἀπορήσας ἀνωτέρω οὐκ ἐπε λύσατο, ἡνίκα ἔλεγεν ἕπεσθαι ταῖς κράσεσι ταῖς τοῦ σώματος τὰς τῆς ψυχῆς κινήσεις. τοῦτο γὰρ συμβαίνει, ὅταν παρὰ φύσιν ἔχῃ ὁ ἄνθρωπος. Cf. op. cit. pp. 141; 146; 149; 155; 195. commPhys, pp. 131; 191.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Gorgiam Commentaria, 49.6: εἴρηται γὰρ ὅτι ταῖς τοῦ σώματος κράσεσιν ἕπονται αἱ τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεις· ἀλλὰ προστιθέασι χωρὶς εἰ μὴ τὰ κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν ἀντιπράξοι. Cf. In Aristotelis Meteora Commentaria, p. 148.  Calen’s contemporary Lucian of Samosata simply rebuked the theory, in his Alexander, 4.  Cf. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.22.57; 15.22.65 66. Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 233.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima, pp. 24; 26; 92.

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body

1237

tle citation²⁷² and no systematic refutation (apart from dogmatic rejection by means of a single sentence), since its scientific argument was based on common facts that were impossible to dispute. Michael of Ephesus (fl. early or mid-twelfth century AD) was perhaps the only author who said a couple of laudatory words about this theory, but he did not elaborate either.²⁷³ The erudite Theodoret wrote that ‘the most wise of medical doctors (οἱ σοφώτατοι τῶν ἰατρῶν) called soul the balanced intermixture of qualities in the body’ (τὴν τοῦ σώματος εὐκρασίαν ψυχὴν προσηγόρευσαν). His rejoinder was only a sophism unworthy of such an erudite man as Theodoret: it is not the balanced intermixture of qualities in the body that make up the essence of the soul; instead, the soul can show its wisdom by means a balanced intermixture of qualities in the body.²⁷⁴ A century before Theodoret, Nemesius of Emesa was less successful: “To those who say that the soul is a harmony of health, power, and beauty, we reply that a body can be still alive without health, power, and beauty; therefore, the soul is not a balanced intermixture in the body” (οὐκ ἄρα εὐκρασία τοῦ σώματος ἔστιν ἡ ψυχή)”.²⁷⁵ These are not arguments, of course; however, they are indicative of the abyssal distance between dogmatic/mythological assumptions about the soul and the confident scientific propositions based on careful observation of natural realities, which was in line with the spirit of Anaxagoras. Galen was an authentic representative of the scientific spirit of his era, and he appealed not to Anaxagoras, but to his own forefather Hippocrates. As it happened shortly before him with Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. 90 ‒ 168 AD), who was

 Cf. Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, pp. 24; 36; 142. Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 2.62. Eustathius of Thessaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Odys seam, v. 1, p. 99: ἕτεροι δέ, ἐπὶ ψυχῆς τὸν θυμὸν ἐκλαμβάνονται, χρώμενοι συνηγόρῳ τῷ Γαλη νῷ, εἰπόντι ἐν τοῖς εἰς Τίμαιον, ὅτι αὐξανομένῳ τῷ σώματι, συναυξάνονται καὶ τῆς λογικῆς ψυχῆς αἱ δυνάμεις. Sophonias, paraphrPhys, p. 27: ἀλλ᾿ οὔτε μήν, ἐπείπερ ἔστιν αἷς τῶν κράσεων αἱ τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεις ἕπονται, ἤδη καὶ ὅλη τῶν κράσεων ἀποτέλεσμα, ὡς ἰατροὶ λέγουσιν. … He simply dogmatized that ‘the soul is self subsistent and enters the body from outside’ (αὐθυποστάτως προϋφεστηκὸς ἐγγίνεται), and then he decided, ὅτι μὲν οὔθ᾿ ἁρμονίαν οἷον τ᾿ εἶναι ἢ κράσεων ἀποτέλεσμα τὴν ψυχὴν οὔτε κύκλῳ περιφέρεσθαι, δῆλον ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων.  Michael of Ephesus, In Parva Naturalia Commentaria, p. 135: καὶ ὁ πολυμαθέστατος Γαλη νὸς ἐν τῷ βιβλιδαρίῳ, ἐν ᾧ δείκνυσιν ὅτι ἕπονται ταῖς τοῦ σώματος κράσεσιν αἱ τῆς ψυχῆς δυ νάμεις, τὰ αὐτὰ τούτῳ διατάττεται.  Theodoret, Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium, PG.83.480.48 481.22.  Nemesius of Emesa De Natura Hominis, chapter 2, p. 25, copied by Meletius of Tiberiopolis, De Natura Hominis, p. 146. Nemesius refers to Galen’s theory of the soul, in op. cit. chapter 2, p. 23 (copied by Meletius of Tiberiopolis, op. cit. p. 145), and expounds his own refutation of it in chapter 2, p. 25.

1238

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

aware Aristotle’s mythological interpolations into astronomy,²⁷⁶ Galen did not care about the mythological and self-defeating accounts of the soul that earlier philosophy had advanced. He knew that there were two main (κατὰ τὴν πρώτην τομήν) streams of thought: one of them argued for the unity of all universe (ἡνῶσθαι τὴν κατὰ τὸν κόσμον οὐσίαν ἅπασαν); the other saw the universe as a fragmented entity allowing for void in it (διῃρῆσθαί φασι κενοῦ περιπλοκῇ), which Galen says he had rebutted in a previous work of his.²⁷⁷ The foregoing discussion has shown that the real patriarch of the former theory was Anaxagoras. Galen was not interested in opting for any of the ancient theories about the soul: to him, there were many mythological assumptions by the ‘confused philosophers’ of his era, who could not make out the difference between ‘nature’ and ‘essence’ of things.²⁷⁸ His radically different opinion was that the ‘soul’ has a ‘nature’, which is manifested as the totality of actions by a certain human being, yet it does not have any subsistent ‘essence’, whether incorporeal, or fire, or air, or whatever. The soul is the manifestation of one’s ethos, and this ethos is determined by the physical construction of one’s organism. Put in modern terms, he would have said that a human soul is simply the result stemming from a specific DNA, indeed a manifestation of it. This is why he argued that it is not always possible to rectify a certain character by means of Plato’s ‘pursuits and studies’. For there are characters (or, ‘souls’) which are impervious to improvement, only because their physical constitution does not allow for this to be brought about. It is natural for men to like what is good, and to detest what is bad, while no one cares to explain how or whence something or someone came to be good or bad. Men kill without hesitation scorpions, venomous spiders, vipers, which are made what they are by nature, not by their own will. By the same token, societies put to death those men who are incurably evil (ἀποκτείνομεν τοὺς ἀνιάτως πονηρούς), without caring to consider why or how they came to be evil: for every one knows that neither the Muses, nor Socrates nor Pythagoras could have ever been able to improve the character of such evil men. Likewise, we like and approach good people, without seeking to determine whether they are good by nature or they became so by education, or by teaching, or by their own choice and exercise. Even God who is good, we all

 See chapter 12. Claudius Ptolemaeus, Syntaxis Mathematica, p. 7: ἀϊδίους δὲ καὶ ἀπαθεῖς οὐ σίας συμβεβηκότων περί τε τὰς φορὰς καὶ τὰς τάξεις τῶν κινήσεων.  Galen, op. cit. 4.785: τὴν δευτέραν αἵρεσιν ἐφωράσαμεν οὐκ ἀληθῆ δι᾿ ἐκείνων τῶν ἐλέγχων, οὓς ἐν τῷ περὶ τῶν καθ᾿ Ἱπποκράτην στοιχείων ἐγράψαμεν.  Galen, op. cit. 4.769: εὔδηλον δ᾿ ὅτι τὸ τῆς φύσεως ὄνομα κατὰ τοὺς τοιούτους λόγους ταὐ τὸν σημαίνει τῷ τῆς οὐσίας … συγκεχυμένοι δ᾿ εἰσὶν εὐθὺς ἐν τούτῳ πολλοὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων ἀδιάρθρωτον ἔννοιαν ἔχοντες τῆς δυνάμεως.

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body

1239

love and know that he is good eternally, and he did not become so, since the notion of ‘becoming’ does not befit the unbegotten and eternal God.²⁷⁹ Galen knew all too well that only an extremely small number of people were able to follow his scientific analyses (ὀλιγίστοις ἀκροαταῖς, κατακολουθεῖν ἐπιστημονικοῖς λόγοις δυναμένοις).²⁸⁰ He shrank from speaking about ‘essence of the soul’, or of it being either ‘incorporeal’ or ‘spirit’, since he knew that a compelling argument for the opposite was advanced: the soul has not any existence of its own (μηδὲ εἶναι τινὰ ὕπαρξιν αὐτῆς ἰδίαν); this is only the collective demonstration of all the natural functions of an animate body (ἀλλὰ τὴν ἰδιότητα τῆς τοῦ σώματος οὐσίας, ὧν ποιεῖν πέφυκε); there are no ‘powers’ of the soul which have a nature of their own (οὐκ οὐσῶν τινων ἐκείνων ἰδίαν φύσιν ἐχουσῶν); there is only the living body which acts and reacts naturally to the stimuli of its environment (δυνάμεις ἔχειν λεγομένης, ὧν πέφυκε δρᾷν). The soul is only the manifestation of a natural harmonious combination of qualities of an animate body (τῆς φυσικῆς εὐκρασίας ἐν τῷ σώματι).²⁸¹ In this specific text (which is a fragment of nine pages from a codex), Galen tries to appear moderate and not too provocative to traditional philosophy. However, in other works of his, he is more assertive. We learn from him that many of his fellow-doctors were shy about going public and say, for instance, that different human moods are created not in and by the heart (widely considered as the seat of the soul), but in the brains. This, Galen says, is a truism among medical doctors; however, some of them do not declare this openly, because they are afraid of being accused of heresy. Consequently, what they believe deep down is one thing, but what they say in public is quite different (ὅσοι γε μὴ διὰ φιλονεικίαν αἱρέσεως ἄλλα μὲν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ φρονοῦσιν, ἄλλα δὲ λέγουσιν).²⁸² This is why Galen praises Andronicus of Rhodes for being courageous enough as to dare declare that ‘the soul is a mixture or power of the body’. Also, he commends him for ‘speaking out his view as a free man, without perplexities’, and adds that, ‘in many other instances’, Andronicus showed a similar noble charac Galen, op. cit. 815 6.  Galen, De Substantia Facultatum Naturalium, p. 758.  In effect, the term εὐκρασία was peculiar to Galen. All other authors used it only casually, in one or two instances. His analyses show that the term means harmonious combination of el ements or qualities within a functioning body, which effects good health. Lexica paid almost no attention to the term, but Michael Glycas produced a good definition of it, in reference to ‘the wise Galen’; Quaestiones in Sacram Scripturam, chapter 40, p. 496: Εὐκρασία γὰρ ἀληθὴς ἡ τῶν ποιοτήτων ἰσομοιρία κατὰ τὸν τὰ τοιαῦτα σοφὸν Γαληνόν. Presumably, Glycas had in mind Galen’s statement in the De Substantia Facultatum Naturalium, p. 762: πιθανώτερον δὲ εἶναι νομίζω, κατὰ τὰς ποιότητας γίγνεσθαι τὰς κράσεις.  Galen, De Locis Affectis, p. 166 7.

1240

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

ter.²⁸³ One can gather from this that, during those times, which were times of anxious transition in many respects, it took considerable boldness for intellectuals to pronounce openly this heretical theory of the soul. Nevertheless, Galen staunchly declared that, ‘in a previous work’, he had proved that the soul is subsequent to the mixtures of the body’ (ταῖς τοῦ σώματος κράσεσιν ἀκολουθούσας ἀπέδειξα τὰς τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεις), which is an opinion that was already accepted by the best of medical doctors and philosophers (ὡμολόγηται τοῖς ἀρίστοις ἰατροῖς τε καὶ φιλοσόφοις).²⁸⁴ Who those philosophers were is impossible to determine with certainty. What we know is that Galen’s theory received no serious rebuttal by any author, except for cursory and dogmatic dogmatic denial by a few ones, as discussed above. The logic of Galen was devastating, and Plato’s hostile anxiety at the theory that made the soul posterior to the body indicates that it came from very old, namely and clearly, from Anaxagoras. This probably explains Plato’s invective against that great iconoclast. The latter had posited the Mind as supreme principle and posterity generally acknowledged that Plato’s Good was the selfsame notion. Moreover, Anaxagoras had gone farther than Plato, since he made the Mind more than a cosmic principle: for this Mind wills, reflects, decides, gives rise to motion, knows, and administers the universe. Against all this, Plato alleged that Anaxagoras posited the Mind as creative cause and yet he subsequently made nothing of this idea. Why did Plato say this? Because there was one point which he presumably loathed about Anaxagoras: the latter did not care to make human being the Prince of the Universe, since he spoke about ‘soul’, but he attributed this invariably to all living beings, including animals and plants. Once everything (both animate and inanimate ones) is produced by concurrence of certain principles and it is dissolved anew into those principles after a certain period of existence, there is hardly anything to guarantee permanence of something of the human being. Empedocles at least had clearly spoken of successive worlds and reincarnation, but Anaxagoras posited a single world which was made once and for all, and he did not see human soul as a certain self-subsistent something, nor did he care to say anything that would provide consolation disguised as ‘philosophy’ (which to Plato was ‘study of death’),²⁸⁵ or, at least, to give his audience a reason for some smiling. Anaxagoras did not care for smiling; in fact, he was reputed for never having been seen himself laughing, not

 Galen, De Substantia Facultatum Naturalium, p. 783. He dissented from Andronicus only on the point where the latter, speaking of the soul, had added the alternative ‘or power’ (of the body).  Galen, De Locis Affectis, p. 191.  Plato, Phaedo, 81a1 2.

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body

1241

even smiling.²⁸⁶ Although he introduced a Mind which has so many capacities, it permeates all of the universe, and it works incessantly within it, to Plato this was ‘made nothing’ of the Mind, only because Anaxagoras did not care to make human soul a certain ‘something’, let alone an immortal one. The soul is simply the collective manifestation of life observed in all living creatures, and it is liable to perishing. Galen said that the notion of soul as self-subsistent being was alien to his thought (ὅτι ψυχῆς οὐσίαν οὐκ ἴσμεν), and he was not prepared to allow that ‘life is the activity of the soul’ (εἴπερ οὖν ἐνέργεια μὲν ψυχῆς ἡ ζωή); he adds with some irony that, in such a case, ‘it would appear that respiration is a great service to the soul’.²⁸⁷ Therefore, life is not an action of the soul, nor is life the one of the soul; rather, soul is simply the manifestation of life. Galen’s theory did make its way into Christian theology. Extant testimonies point to Apollinaris being the culprit, and, if we are to believe Nemesius of Emesa, this should have been Apollinaris the Younger, who died in 390. This probably contributed to his condemnation, although he was a staunch antiArian and the theologian who propounded the formula positing that Christ was consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity and consubstantial with us as regards his humanity, which later became the official orthodox doctrine. However, the theory of soul that Nemesius ascribed to Apollinaris circulated among Christian theologians at least a hundred years before him, since Pamphilus in his Apology for Origen says so, and describes this in exactly the same terms as those Nemesius and Gennadius Scholarius used expounding these ideas of Apollinaris.²⁸⁸ I would not be surprised if the specific inspiration were found in Anaxagorean philosophy, but there is no way to support this hypothesis, although Plato clearly stated Anaxagoras as the one who maintained the theory. What I do know is that, to Origen, the soul was not a principle, but the product of principles.²⁸⁹ There is a remark that Origen made in passing, but he did not elaborate, according to his practice not to expound the ‘ineffable’ doctrine of the soul: upon his decampment to Caesarea, perhaps shortly before that, he remarked that ‘one should examine the difference between transmigration [of the soul] and incarnation’, while arguing that transmigration entails an eternal world, which ran

 Aelian, Varia Historia, 8.13: ᾿Aναξαγόραν τὸν Κλαζομένιον φασὶ μήτε γελῶντά ποτε ὀφθῆναι μήτε μειδιῶντα τὴν ἀρχήν.  Galen, De Utilitate Respirationis, p. 472.  Pamphilus, Apologia pro Origene, PG.17.605 6.  Origen, Cels, IV.17: Εἰ δὲ ἦν ἐννοήσας, τί ἀκολουθεῖ ψυχῇ ἐν αἰωνίῳ ἐσομένῃ ζωῇ καὶ τί χρὴ φρονεῖν περὶ τῆς οὐσίας αὐτῆς καὶ περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν αὐτῆς.

1242

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

against his doctrines.²⁹⁰ This was an argument that he sustained until the end of his life, when he wrote the commentary on Matthew. This point is pregnant with meaning and it can be potentially illuminating. Origen never used the term ἐμψύχωσις (= animating), which would clearly suggest that a pre-existing soul entered a body and made it alive. Instead, he signalized the term ἐνσωμάτωσις (incarnation), which suggests the principles which exist ‘differently’ apart from matter,²⁹¹ they give rise to matter, they shape it, and they produce an animate being. Therefore, ἐνσωμάτωσις (incarnation) is exactly the opposite of speaking about principles being separated out, thus leaving behind a dead body, which Simplicius called ‘analysis’ of a body into the principles that gave rise to it in the first place (εἰς τὰ αὐτὰ ἀνάλυσιν).²⁹² Origen did not use the term ἐμψύχωσις (= animating), because there is no existence of any soul in advance, and he clearly denounced the notion of transmigration explicitly at many points. On the other hand, ἐνσωμάτωσις (incarnation) is that which is produced by the concurrence of principles that give rise to a human being, notably, certain principles involved with matter and producing an animate body. It is noteworthy that he uses the term ἐνσωμάτωσις only in respect of the Incarnation of the Logos.²⁹³ In the only case where he applied it otherwise was during the very early stage of his conversion to Christianity, upon writing the De Principiis in Alexandria, in reference to Jacob and Esau: he explains that this pertains to the sublime doctrine about the soul (ἀνελθόντας εἰς τὸν περὶ ψυχῆς τόπον), but he goes on stating that ‘all souls that are subject to God are of one nature’ (μιᾶς φύσεως πάσης ψυχῆς ὑποκειμένης τῷ θεῷ), and then he explains that ‘all rational hypostases are made of one mixture’ (ἑνὸς φυράματος²⁹⁴ ὄντος τῶν λογικῶν ὑποστάσεων). But ‘mixture’ of what? Certainly, he means one of the specific concurrence of logoi that give rise to animate rational beings. The term ‘soul’ should not mislead us: like Anaxagoras, Origen uses it simply in the sense of ‘life’, while speaking of ‘all rational hypostases’, that is, creatures in all ranks

 Origen, commJohn, VI.14.86: Ἐν οἷς καὶ τί ἐστι κυρίως μετενσωμάτωσις ἐξετάσαι δεήσει, τί τε αὕτη διαφέρει ἐνσωματώσεως, καὶ εἰ ἀκολουθεῖ τῷ λέγοντι μετενσωμάτωσιν ἄφθαρτον τη ρεῖν τὸν κόσμον.  Cf. supra, p. 497; 882.  See supra, p. 1191 2.  Origen, commJohn, VI.5.29: τὸ μυστήριον τῆς τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐνσωματώσεως καὶ καταβάσεως. Op. cit. VI.30.157: τὸν περὶ τῆς ἐνσωματώσεως αὐτοῦ λόγον. Op. cit. VI.34.172: περὶ τοῦ μυστηρίου τῆς ἐνσωματώσεως. Cels, I.43.37: τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ τὸ ἀνδραγάθημα οὐ κατὰ τοὺς αὐτοὺς τῆς ἐνσωματώσεως μόνους γέγονε χρόνου. Op. cit. I.38: ἐν τοῖς μαθητεύσασιν αὐτῷ καὶ μετὰ τὸν χρόνον τῆς ἐνσωματώσεως ἑαυτοῦ. Op. cit. VI.78: τὴν μὲν κατὰ τὴν ἐνσωμά τωσιν οἰκονομίαν νῦν δι᾿ εὐλόγους αἰτίας ἐπιπληρώσαντα.  Using the language of Rom. 9:21.

A scandalous theory: the soul is posterior to the body

1243

of life, whereas he maintained that, strictly speaking, ‘soul’ means human being.²⁹⁵ At that point, he speaks not only of humans, but also of angels and daemons, which, properly speaking, could not be called ‘souls’. Therefore, in this unique case, ἐνσωμάτωσις means ‘embodiment’ of the logoi which give rise to rational creatures of any rank of being, not embodiment of any ‘soul’, since this term makes no sense in respect of ranks of life other than human, of which Origen also speaks at that point.²⁹⁶ It is significant that the telling term ἐμψύχωσις is used and clearly explained by an author who used the name of Galen, and wrote in this spirit, as discussed next. The argument that the soul is posterior to the body was supposed to come from the Bible, or so Apollinaris saw it, as discussed in a moment. The author signing ‘Galen’ says that ‘the theologian of the Hebrews’ (that is, Moses) ‘seems to indicate that, when the human body was already made and it had received the bodily creation in its completeness, [then] God breathed into man the spirit [of life] and made him a living soul.²⁹⁷ This is precisely what the author understands as ‘animation of the created body’ (πλασθέντος τοῦ σώματος ἡ ἐμψύχωσις). He goes on with a devastating lampoon (τὰ καταγέλαστα) of ‘some Platonists, who take pride’ (ἐφ᾿ οἷς τινες τῶν Πλατωνικῶν σεμνύνονται) in assuming that the soul is ‘a self-moving something that comes from outside and enters into the body through either the mouth or the nostrils’, as if it were air or the like. Then, he adds seriously that ‘one would be certainly ashamed even if one merely uttered such things’ (δὴ ταῦτα ἃ καὶ λέγων ἄν τις αἰσχύνοιτο). For ‘animation of the body is a natural process’, which is nothing more (yet nothing less) than natural laws contributing to all constituents of the body coming together in harmony so as to make it an animate creature (φυσικὴ γὰρ ἡ ἐμψύχωσις καὶ δι᾿ ὅλου ἡ ἔξαψις κατὰ συμφωνίαν τῶν ἁρμοσθέντων πρὸς τὸ ἐναρμόσαι οἷον τε). This is a process that has nothing to do with one’s personal choice, or will, or attention, which play no role whatsoever (οὐδὲν οὔτε βουλήσεως οὔτ᾿ ἐπιτηρήσεως οὔτε προαιρέσεως πρὸς τὴν παρουσίαν συμβαλλομένης): once the body is ‘ready’ (that is, fashioned, even partially), then the soul (= life) appears in it; it comes quite all of a sudden, as indeed it disappears all at once upon death (ἐξαίφνης δὲ καὶ ἡ παρουσία καὶ ἡ διάλυσις), in like a manner a lightning appears and disappears abruptly; it either

 Origen, Cels, VII.38: Καὶ ἄνθρωπος μὲν οὖν, τουτέστι ψυχὴ χρωμένη σώματι, λεγομένη ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος ἀλλὰ καὶ ψυχή. Cf. op. cit. VI.71.  Origen, Princ, III.1.32.  Gen. 2:7; cf. 2:19. Pseudo Galen, Ad Gaurum Quomodo Animetur Fetus, 11.1 2: ὁ τῶν Ἑβραίων θεολόγος σημαίνειν ἔοικεν, ὅταν πεπλασμένου τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου σώματος καὶ ἀπειληφότος πᾶσαν τὴν σωματικὴν δημιουργίαν ἐμφυσῆσαι τὸν θεὸν αὐτῷ εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν λέγῃ τὸ πνεῦμα.

1244

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

exists or does not exist, and its appearance and disappearance does not stretch over any period of time. The soul is not like a bird which leaves the body through the nostrils (ὥσπερ ὄρνεον διὰ θυρίδος εἰς οἰκίαν, οὕτως ἵπταται διὰ στόματος ἢ ῥινῶν ἡ ψυχὴ διὰ τοῦ ἀέρος πετομένη). Either animation exists throughout the whole of a subject (καὶ δι᾿ ὅλου ἅμα τοῦ ὑποκειμένου ἡ ἐμψύχωσις), or it does not exist at all.²⁹⁸ Therefore, what matters is the animation of a body (ἐμψύχωσις), which is why Galen (this time, the real Galen himself) declared that ‘the art of medicine is not harmed by ignoring the so-called animation [of the body] and transmigration [of soul]’.²⁹⁹ For a body can be alive only so long as it is fit to perform vital operations (ἐπιτήδειόν τε γὰρ εἶναι τὸ σῶμα χρὴ τὸ δεξόμενον τὴν ψυχήν), whereas it dies once it suffers a serious harm (ἀλλοιωθέντος τε αὐτοῦ μεγάλην ἀλλοίωσιν ἐν τῇ κράσει παραχρῆμα τὴν ψυχὴν ἐξιέναι), in which case it becomes immediately cold, because it is bereft of its blood (ψυχομένου μέντοι σφοδρῶς ἐν ταῖς κενώσεσι τοῦ αἵματος).³⁰⁰ It can be shown by argument that, in general, Galen considerably influenced Origen, but this is out of my present scope. I just note that only Origen and Galen were those who pointed out the distinction between incarnation and transmigration (Origen: ἐνσωμάτωσις / μετενσωμάτωσις, Galen: ἐμψύχωσις / μετεμψύχωσις).³⁰¹ The scriptural argument, which the unknown writer under the name Galen used, was exactly the same as the one adduced by Apollinaris. However, here is a dazzlingly strange occasion: Gregory of Nyssa wrote about ‘certain ones’ who used the passage of Genesis in order to argue that the soul is posterior to the body.³⁰² This text, along with its wider context, was quoted by Justinian,³⁰³ who made it a synodical decision against Origen.³⁰⁴

 Pseudo Galen, op. cit. 11.2.  Galen, De Substantia Facultatum Naturalium, p. 763: καὶ κατά γε τοῦτο πρὸς τὴν ἰατρικὴν τέχνην οὐδὲν ἡγοῦμαι βλαβήσεσθαι διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τῆς καλουμένης ἐμψυχώσεώς τε καὶ μετεμψυχώσεως.  Galen, loc. cit.  The only other case of distinction ἐμψύχωσις / μετεμψύχωσις appears in the Corpus Her meticum, Fragmenta, fr. 26 (apud Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.69).  Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 229: ἕτεροι δὲ τῇ κατὰ τὸν Μωσέα τάξει τῆς κα τασκευῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου προσέχοντες δευτέραν εἶναι τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ σώματος κατὰ τὸν χρόνον φασίν, ἐπειδὴ πρῶτον λαβὼν ὁ θεὸς χοῦν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἔπλασεν, ἔπειτα οὕτως ἐψύχωσε διὰ τοῦ ἐμφυσήματος.  Justinian, Edictum contra Origenem, p. 88. As noted earlier, this text was not actually writ ten by Justinian himself, but by Gelasius the abbot of the Laura of Sabas and his band, who re lied on an old book against Origen written by Antipater of Bostra.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1245

This constitutes one of the most stunning cases of a council being misled by Justinian, since both on this issue and on transmigration, Gregory was not referring to Origen.³⁰⁵ It was Gennadius Scholarius who explained that Gregory had in mind Apollinaris,³⁰⁶ even though bigots and Justinian alike made it an accusation against Origen, and the text of Pamphilus’ Apology clearly indicates that the theory of Apollinaris about souls ‘entering’ bodies upon their incipient construction in the person of Adam was older than Origen’s times.³⁰⁷ The Byzantine theologian Nicetas Seides (1040‒1120) was always ready to argue for his theses, which is why he wrote against the primacy of the pope, as much as did he so against Eustratius of Nicaea for his dialogues with the Armenians. Hence, he argued also staunchly for the soul being posterior to the body, relying also on the foregoing instance of Genesis, but also appealing to John Chrysostom citing the twelfth homily on the sixth day of creation (ἐν τῇ δωδεκάτῃ ὁμιλίᾳ τῆς ἕκτης ἡμέρας), and to Theodoret (citing his ‘eleventh chapter of exegesis’ on Ezekiel’s chapter 37, ‘the dry bones’).³⁰⁸ Whether Seides wrote after having read Galen cannot be supported by argument. The fact is that, as late as the twelfth century, Galen’s theory found support in a work of an erudite Christian, who treated Origen as a heretic,³⁰⁹ but he did not hesitate to style him ‘the wise Origen’ and quote from him.³¹⁰

The Stoic concept of the soul Any animate being ends up an inanimate object after having lived for a certain period of time. What is the difference between a person which is alive and then

 ACO, Synodus Constantinopolitana et Hierosolymitana anno 536, tome 3, p. 199.  See supra, p. 906.  Gennadius Scholarius, Quaestiones Theologicae De Praedestinatione Divina et De Anima, 2.1.11: ᾿Aπολινάριος δὲ ἄρα τῷ μὴ προσέχειν ἐθέλειν τῇ πρώτῃ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου κατασκευῇ τῷ ψεύδει δεδούλευκεν.  Pamphilus, Apologia pro Origene, PG.17.605 6.  Nicetas Seides (Constantinople, twelfth century), De Controversiis Ecclesiae Graecae et Lat inae (recensio PG), 1.I.4c: Καὶ αὖθις, τὸ τιμιώτερον τῶν ἄλλων κτισμάτων ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὕστερος πάντων ἐπλάσθη καὶ ἡ ἐν αὐτῷ ψυχὴ δευτέρα τοῦ σώματος ὑπέστη κρείττων οὖσα κατὰ πολύ. Τὸ σῶμα γὰρ πλασθῆναι πρότερον, εἶτα τὴν ψυχὴν ἐμπνευσθῆναι παρὰ θεοῦ.  Nicetas Seides, op. cit. (recensio A), 4.2.  Nicetas Seides, Oratio Contra Eustratium Nicaeensem, 16: Ἄκουσον καὶ τρίτου μάρτυρος, τοῦ σοφοῦ Ὠριγένους, ἐπειδὴ καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν οὐχ ἡμετέρων ἐκλέγεσθαι οἱ Πατέρες τὰ κάλλιστα προετρέψαντο. Then, he quotes Origen’s, frJohn, 58, which is included in the Catena in Joannem (catena integra), p. 219.

1246

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

dead? The normal answer to this is that the former has a soul, whereas a dead man has not. A Stoic would have replied that a dead man is not only a being that does not reflect, does not feel, does not wish, does not get either angry of feared; it is also one who does no longer speak, no longer moves, nor walks, nor smells, nor hears. Absence of all these functions is what absence of the soul means. Therefore, to the Stoics, the ‘soul’ is not the aristocrat who landed on this earth from higher realms and deigns to use a body as a ‘garment’ or ‘vehicle’, while being a distressed outcast because of its ‘imprisonment’ in a body considered as a ‘tomb’. Soul does not denote only higher mental functions, or feelings: it is everything that distinguishes an animate being from an inanimate object; it is the sum total of manifestations of all physiological and mental functions. Upon death, the concurrence of certain natural laws cease to function on a certain human being. If illness suggests some malfunction and disorder, death means total destruction and dissolution of the natural system that is called human body. The constitutive elements that make up and sustain this system are the logoi, or spermatic ones, as Cornutus styled them.³¹¹ It is not these logoi themselves that make up a soul: it is their concurrence and interaction that produces it, meaning either elementary natural functions or higher mental ones. These logoi are creative, forming, and interacting causes; they are the agents by means of which Nature functions in all respects; they produced the universe, as much as are they generating individual things and phenomena. Therefore, the spermatic logoi are constructive, cohesive, and sustaining interactive forces, and destructive ones none the less. Hence, this technical expression actually denotes not only principles, but also their dynamic action (understood as a specific concurrence of logoi in each case). They generate, transform, hold together, and dissolve things. In consistence with the universal (real or imagined) Stoic materialism, these logoi are material, which invited criticism by Origen³¹² and Neoplatonists³¹³ alike.  Different translators have rendered λόγος or σπερματικὸς λόγος in plural as either con structive principles, or, formative principles, or, principles, or, rational principles, or, rational forming principles, or, spermatic logoi, or seminal reasons. All of them are correct, but no one expresses the notion of λόγος fully. For the term involves not only principles, but also ob jects of cognition, constructive, cohesive, and dissolving (or disbanding) causes, and active agents of dynamic action, including interaction between themselves.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.21.128: Καὶ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν οὐκ αἰδοῦνται λέγειν ὅτι καὶ φθαρτός ἐστιν σῶμα ὤν, σῶμα δὲ πνευματικὸν καὶ αἰθερῶδες, μάλιστα κατὰ τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν αὐτοῦ· φθαρτὸν δὲ ὄντα μὴ φθείρεσθαι τῷ μὴ εἶναι τὸν φθείροντα αὐτὸν λέγουσιν. Cels, I.21: καὶ οἱ σῶμα εἰπόντες τὸν θεὸν Στωϊκοὶ τοῦ λόγου τούτου ἤκουσαν· ἵνα μὴ πληρωθῇ ὁ κόσμος λόγου ἀθετοῦντος πρό νοιαν ἢ διακόπτοντος αὐτὴν ἢ ἀρχὴν φθαρτὴν εἰσάγοντος τὴν σωματικήν, καθ᾿ ἣν καὶ ὁ θεὸς

The Stoic concept of the soul

1247

Origen reprimanded the Stoics for not granting existence to ‘intelligible substances’ (τοῖς ἀναιροῦσι νοητὰς οὐσίας Στωϊκοῖς), by which he meant the Anaxagorean principles, and he went further with accusing them of arguing that ‘the things, of which we have comprehension, are comprehended by the senses, and all comprehension is based on sense-perception’.³¹⁴ This is one more token of the Anaxagorean Origen speaking: the Stoics urged that all of reality is material and sense-perception is the source of all knowledge, and they argued against the Sceptics who denied any possibility of knowledge. In this context, they posited the καταληπτικὴ φαντασία (‘direct apprehension’) as the touchstone vouchsafing the soundness of knowledge, arguing that this is an indisputably true direct impression upon the mind.³¹⁵ However, in line with Anaxagoras, Origen believed that this criterion of knowledge is of relative authority because there are also intelligible realities which elude sense-perception: some of them are grasped by the ‘divine sense’ (θεία αἴσθησις).³¹⁶ To him, ‘direct apprehension’ is only the criterion of knowledge specifically sustained by the Stoics, whereas other sects established their own ones.³¹⁷

τοῖς Στωϊκοῖς ἐστι σῶμα οὐκ αἰδουμένοις λέγειν αὐτὸν τρεπτὸν καὶ δι᾿ ὅλων ἀλλοιωτὸν καὶ με ταβλητὸν καὶ ἁπαξαπλῶς δυνάμενον φθαρῆναι, εἰ ἔχει τὸν φθείροντα, εὐτυχοῦντα δὲ μὴ φθαρῆναι παρὰ τὸ μηδὲν εἶναι τὸ φθεῖρον αὐτόν. Op. cit. III.75: ᾿Aλλὰ καὶ ἄλλους δεδόσθω ἡμᾶς ἀποτρέπειν ἀπὸ ἰατρῶν στωϊκῶν θεὸν φθαρτὸν εἰσαγόντων καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ λεγόν των σῶμα τρεπτὸν δι᾿ ὅλων καὶ ἀλλοιωτὸν καὶ μεταβλητόν, καί ποτε πάντα φθειρόντων καὶ μόνον τὸν θεὸν καταλειπόντων. Op. cit. VI.71: Κατὰ μὲν οὖν τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, σωματικὰς λέ γοντας εἶναι τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πάντα φθείροντας.  Plotinus criticized the Stoics in exactly the same terms as Origen did: the Stoics were those who ‘postulated corporeal principles’ (οἱ μὲν τὰς ἀρχὰς σωματικὰς θέμενοι. Op. cit. III.1.2). Pro clus also spoke of those who postulated ‘material principles’, which applies to some Presocrat ics, Stoics, and the Epicureans alike. Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 19: σωματικὴν μὲν εἶναι τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀδύνατον. Op. cit. v. 4, p. 55: τοῖς τὰς ἀρχὰς σωματικὰς ποιοῦσιν. However, Origen admired the Presocratics as much as did he despise the Epicureans, which is why he rebuked the doctrine of ‘corporeal principles’ making mention of the Stoics alone, whom he also admired for their ethics, but denounced part of their natural theories.  Origen, Cels, VII.37: καὶ δογματίζειν παραπλησίως τοῖς ἀναιροῦσι νοητὰς οὐσίας Στωϊκοῖς περὶ τοῦ αἰσθήσεσιν καταλαμβάνεσθαι τὰ καταλαμβανόμενα καὶ πᾶσαν κατάληψιν ἠρτῆσθαι τῶν αἰσθήσεων.  See COT, pp. 139; 158 61. Also, Origen, Cels, I.42 (& Philocalia, 8.53).  I have canvassed this in PHE, p. 421; cf. p. 410.  Cf. Origen, Cels, VIII.53: reference to ‘people who speak rashly about Jesus’ and argue ‘with out direct apprehension, as the Stoics term it, nor with any other criterion by which each sect of philosophers has established the reality of a given phenomenon, according to their doctrines’ (περὶ οὗ ἑκάστη τῶν φιλοσόφων αἵρεσις τὸ φαινόμενον, ὡς ἔδοξε, κατεσκεύασεν). In other words, to Origen, any manifestation of reality is a φαινόμενον, as indeed so was it to Anaxago ras.

1248

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

It should be made clear that the issue was not so much about the notion of God being either material or immaterial, which I have canvassed in chapter 9. Certainly, the Stoics were criticized for attributing materiality to the supreme principle, and this criticism did not start with Plotinus and Origen. The Middle Platonist Albinus reprimanded the idea of a material God,³¹⁸ and his testimony is interesting not because it is original, but because it is couched in the same terms as those of Origen’s.³¹⁹ Once again, J. von Arnim decided that this is a quotation from Chrysippus, although Origen mentions simply ‘the Stoics’.³²⁰ Origen had already denounced this doctrine during the early stage of his Christian life, when he rebuked the Christian apologist Melito of Sardis for having written a treatise urging that God is corporeal.³²¹ However, the point I am making is more specific: when Origen reproved the Stoic materiality of the logoi, he had in mind not so much the cardinal question of what God is, but how God comes to create material reality. This how was the big failure of Plato’s theory of Ideas, and Aristotle’s answers did not solve the problem. It was only when Origen and Porphyry realized that there was a Theory of Logoi in Anaxagoras’ philosophy that this problem was solved. Therefore, the vehement objection to the Stoics was about their logoi being posited as material, and no less so about the theory which made God material as it appeared to several authors who criticized the Stoics. The idea that Origen and Porphyry defended was not simply that an incorporeal God created the material universe, but also

 Albinus, Epitome Doctrinae Platonicae, 10.8: ὧν ἀτόπων ὄντων ἀσώματον αὐτὸν ὑπολη πτέον· καὶ γάρ, εἰ σῶμα ἐστί, καὶ φθαρτὸς ἔσται καὶ γενητὸς καὶ μεταβλητός· ἕκαστον δὲ τούτων ἄτοπον ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῦ.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.21.127 128: Εἰ δὲ πᾶν σῶμα ὑλικὸν ἔχει φύσιν τῷ ἰδίῳ λόγῳ ἄποιον τυγχάνουσαν, τρεπτὴν δὲ καὶ ἀλλοιωτὴν καὶ δι᾿ ὅλων μεταβλητὴν καὶ ποιότητας χωροῦσαν, ἃς ἐὰν βούληται αὐτῇ περιτιθέναι ὁ δημιουργός, ἀνάγκη καὶ τὸν θεὸν ὑλικὸν ὄντα τρεπτὸν εἶναι καὶ ἀλλοιωτὸν καὶ μεταβλητόν. Likewise, Cels, III.75: ᾿Aλλὰ καὶ ἄλλους δεδόσθω ἡμᾶς ἀποτρέπειν ἀπὸ ἰατρῶν στωϊκῶν θεὸν φθαρτὸν εἰσαγόντων καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ λεγόντων σῶμα τρεπτὸν δι᾿ ὅλων καὶ ἀλλοιωτὸν καὶ μεταβλητόν, καί ποτε πάντα φθειρόντων καὶ μόνον τὸν θεὸν καταλειπόντων.  See SVF, II.311.1 15 (Chrysippus, fr. 1054). Cf. Chrysippus, frs. 1051, 1052, 1053: all of them are excerpts from Origen’s Contra Celsum. However, only at one point does Origen mention ‘Zeno and Chrysippus’ by name. The rest of passages are general references to ‘the Stoics’.  Origen, selGen, PG.12.93.10 13: Ἴδωμεν δὲ πρότερον οἷς χρῶνται οἱ τὸ πρῶτον λέγοντες· ὧν ἐστι καὶ Μελίτων συγγράμματα καταλελοιπὼς περὶ τοῦ ἐνσώματον εἶναι τὸν Θεόν. Cf. Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, 4.26.2, copied by Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopulus, Historia Ecclesiastica, 4.10: Μελίτωνος, Περὶ ἐνσωμάτου θεοῦ. Michael Glycas also denounced this, saying that ‘some of us set forth the doctrine that God is corporeal’. Quaestiones in Sacram Scripturam, 11.145: Ὅρα γὰρ νουνεχῶς, ὅτι καί τινες ἕτεροι τοῦτο παθόντες, εἰς λογισμοὺς ἀτόπους ἐξεκυλίσθησαν. Οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐνσώματον εἶναι τὸν Θεὸν καθ᾿ ἡμᾶς ἐδογμάτισαν.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1249

that the ‘tools’ (principles/logoi) he used to this purpose were immaterial, too. The source of this idea was Anaxagoras alone, since Plato’s Ideas were unable to perform this duty, because they stood aloof and self-contained in their sublime (yet ineffective) transcendence. In other words, Origen went along with the Stoics only in so far, in his own view, they were not lapsed Anaxagorean intellectuals. According to the Stoics, the soul is ‘a refined body, which moves out of itself, according to spermatic logoi’ (σῶμα ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ κινούμενον κατὰ σπερματικοὺς λόγους).³²² It is a material ‘warm spirit (πνεῦμα ἔνθερμον) that permeates the entire body’. This spirit is the essence of the soul itself (οὐσία ψυχῆς ὑπάρχει τὸ πνεῦμα).³²³ Although in the foregoing footnote Pseudo-Galen’s references may tempt one to identify soul (ψυχή) with nature (φύσις), they are different realities; actually, they differ in three ways, which are characteristic of the soul, but not of nature: ‘the five senses of natural perception, representation of images, and impulse to do things’.³²⁴

 Pseudo Galen, Definitiones Medicae, p. 355: ψυχή ἐστιν κατὰ δὲ τοὺς Στωϊκοὺς σῶμα λε πτομερὲς ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ κινούμενον κατὰ σπερματικοὺς λόγους. (Chrysippus, fr. 828, but the author refers only to ‘the Stoics’). Likewise, op. cit. p. 371: φύσις ἐστὶ πνεῦμα ἔνθερμον ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ κινού μενον κατὰ σπερματικοὺς λόγους γεννῶν τε καὶ τελειοῦν καὶ διατηροῦν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐν χρόνοις καὶ μεγέθεσιν ὡρισμένους.  Galen, De Simplicium Medicamentorum Temperamentis ac Facultatibus, p. 731: οἱ μὲν οὖν Στωϊκοὶ ταὐτὸν τοῦτο τὸ πνεῦμα τὴν οὐσίαν τῆς ψυχῆς εἶναι δοξάζουσιν· ἡμεῖς δὲ περὶ οὐσίας ψυχῆς οὔτε πάνυ τι τολμῶμεν ἀποφαίνεσθαι καὶ πρὸς τὰ παρόντα περιττὸν ὑπολαμβάνομεν. De Utilitate Respirationis, p. 502: χρὴ τοῦτο τὸ πνεῦμα πάντως ἤτοι τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτὴν εἶναι τῆς ψυχῆς ἢ τὸ πρῶτον γε αὐτῆς ὄργανον. This is one more Stoic point that Philo adapted to his Platonic outlook. Quod Deterius Potiori Insidiari Soleat, 81: πνεῦμα ἐστὶν ἡ ψυχῆς οὐσία. Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 55 6: ἔδοξε τῷ νομοθέτῃ διττὴν καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν εἶναι ψυχῆς, αἷμα μὲν τῆς ὅλης, τοῦ δ᾿ ἡγεμονικωτάτου πνεῦμα θεῖον. Quaestiones in Genesim (fragmenta), Book 2, fr. 59: ἕτερόν ἐστι ψυχὴ καὶ ἕτερον αἷμα, ὡς εἶναι ψυχῆς μὲν ἀψευδῶς οὐσίαν πνεῦμα, μὴ καθ᾿ αὑτὸ δὲ χωρὶς αἵματος τόπον ἐπέχειν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐμφέρεσθαι καὶ συγκεκρᾶσθαι αἵματι.  Chrysippus fr. 458, apud Philo, Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis, 41: ψυχὴν δὲ φύσεως τρισὶ διαλ λάττουσαν ὁ ποιῶν ἐποίει, αἰσθήσει, φαντασίᾳ, ὁρμῇ. Sallustius Secundus is a hardly known non Christian politician and writer, who wrote a work in Greek, sustaining transmigration of souls. He died in Rome in c. 370 AD. He had grasped the point I made earlier, namely, that the soul is the totality of attributes and functions which make the difference between an animate and an inanimate being. De Deis et Mundo, 8.2: Πρῶτον δὲ ὅτιπέρ ἐστι ψυχὴ ζητητέον. Ὧι τοίνυν διαφέρει τὰ ἔμψυχα τῶν ἀψύχων τοῦτο ἐστὶ ψυχή, διαφέρει δὲ κινήσει, αἰσθήσει, φαντασίᾳ, νοήσει. On this point, obviously the author wrote following Philo, and probably he had no ink ling of this being a Stoic doctrine, since he never mentioned either the Stoa or the Stoics.

1250

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

A man consists of ‘soul and body’;³²⁵ the ‘soul is a body that causes the body to move’ (σῶμα συγκινοῦν),³²⁶ and of this, no part is exempt from participation in the soul’.³²⁷ The soul is itself a body,³²⁸ which has existence of its own and permeates the physical body.³²⁹ This is an important point showing that the Stoics distanced themselves from mytho-poetical theories positing the soul as a certain quantity of something (air, spirit, fire, blood, or whatever) dwelling in the body, in like a manner a quantity of liquid is stored into a vessel, or some air is so in a flask. A man who saw this remarkable difference between Plato and the Stoics did not reveal his real name, since he wrote under the name of Alexander of Aphrodisias: “The soul does not use the body as if this were a vessel” (ἀλλὰ οὐδὲ ὡς ἐν ἀγγείῳ τῷ σώματι εἴη ἂν ἡ ψυχή). For in that case, ‘it could not be the entire body that is animate’. Neither do soul and body stand side by side (οὐδὲ κατὰ παράθεσιν), since, in that case, the body could not be entirely animate (οὐδ᾿ ὅλως ἔμψυχον). This man was not hurling his rejoinder at Plato alone: he had in mind Philo, who (despite his occasional Stoicism) was misled by Plato and had made ‘mind’ something which is contained in the body, as if this were the content of a vessel.³³⁰ Alexander of Aphrodisias was appalled to report that the Stoic doctrine of κρᾶσις (mixture, or blending) was entirely dependent on their conception of the soul, notably, on their ‘weird doctrine’ (θαυμαστοῦ δόγματος) which sustained that it is possible for one body to permeate another body (σῶμα χωρεῖν διὰ σώματος).³³¹ Although not sympathetic to the Stoic materiality, Simplicius saw this as a dispute between ‘the ancient’ philosophers, and conceded that

 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 5 (= Adversus Ethicos), 11.46 (Chrysippus, fr. 96, but Sextus speaks only of ‘the Stoics’).  Zeno, fr. 136, apud Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 24.  Chrysippus, fr. 473, apud Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Mixtione, p. 216: οὐδὲν γὰρ ψυχῆς ἄμοιρον τοῦ τὴν ψυχὴν ἔχοντος σώματος.  Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 2, p. 20 (Chrysippus, fr. 790).  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 217: τὴν ψυχὴν ἰδίαν ὑπόστασιν ἔχουσαν, ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ δεχόμενον αὐτὴν σῶμα, δι᾿ ὅλου τοῦ σώματος διήκειν ἐν τῇ μίξει τῇ πρὸς αὐτὸ σώζουσαν τὴν οἰκείαν οὐσίαν.  Philo, De Migratione Abrahami, 193: ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἡμέτερος νοῦς οὐ δεδημιούργηκε τὸ σῶμα, ἀλλ᾿ ἔστιν ἔργον ἑτέρου· διὸ καὶ περιέχεται ὡς ἐν ἀγγείῳ τῷ σώματι.  Alexander of Aphrodisias, op. cit. p. 216 (Chrysippus, fr. 475). Pseudo Alexander of Aphro disias, De Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 115 (Chrysippus, fr. 797). Cf. Chrysippus, fr. 467 (apud Simpli cius, commPhys, p. 530); fr. 471 (apud Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.17.4); fr. 787 (apud Galen, Quod Animi Mores Corporis Temperamenta Sequantur, p. 784); fr. 789 (apud Anonymous, Commentarium in Librum Περὶ Ἰδεῶν, p. 884).

The Stoic concept of the soul

1251

the Stoics desperately needed to posit this doctrine in order to secure consistency with their fundamental tenets.³³² Therefore, although the proposition, ‘man consists of body and soul’, in letter was espoused by both Platonists and Stoics, to either of them it had an entirely different import since the Stoic soul was a material ‘spirit’.³³³ Consequently, the soul is the cause of life or death,³³⁴ since it may be associated (intermingled) with the body, as much as can it depart from it; but it will do so as a body departing from a body, which it permeates (ὡς σῶμα ἔξεισιν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος).³³⁵ There is no difference of essence between a rational soul and an irrational one: these attributes stem from conflicting forces in the soul, but they do not correspond to different parts of the soul. Passion is not anything different from the logos. For the same part of the soul, which is called intellect or ruling part of it (διάνοια ἤ ἡγεμονικόν) is pervious to changes imposed from the outside, since there is nothing irrational in the ruling part of the soul itself.³³⁶ Therefore, ‘the universe of wickedness comes into us from outside’ (ἔξωθεν ἐπεισέρχεται ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἡμῶν τὸ σύμπαν τῆς κακίας).³³⁷ Whereas Cleanthes made some room for the Platonic tripartition (although he spoke only of three powers, τρεῖς δυνάμεις, not parts) of the soul,³³⁸ others allowed only for two conflicting forces in the

 Simplicius, commPhys, p. 530: Τὸ δὲ σῶμα διὰ σώματος χωρεῖν οἱ μὲν ἀρχαῖοι ὡς ἐναργὲς ἄτοπον ἐλάμβανον, οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς ὕστερον προσήκαντο ὡς ἀκολουθοῦν ταῖς σφῶν αὐτῶν ὑποθέσεσιν, ἃς ἐνόμιζον παντὶ τρόπῳ δεῖν κυροῦν. Nevertheless, this was also an Epicurean doc trine, notwithstanding other Epicurean differences from the Stoics. Epicurus, Epistula ad Hero dotum, 63: ἡ βεβαιοτάτη πίστις ἔσται ὅτι ἡ ψυχὴ σῶμα ἐστὶ λεπτομερές, παρ᾿ ὅλον τὸ ἄθροισμα παρεσπαρμένον, προσεμφερέστατον δὲ πνεύματι, θερμοῦ τινα κρᾶσιν ἔχοντι.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 24: Zeno and his disciples thought of the soul as being ‘spirit’: πνεῦμα γὰρ εἶναι ταύτην ὑπενόησαν καὶ οὗτοι.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 9.198: εἰ ἔστι τι ψυχή, ἔστιν αἴτιον· αὕτη γὰρ καὶ τοῦ ζῆν καὶ τοῦ θνῄσκειν αἰτία γίνεται, τοῦ μὲν ζῆν παροῦσα, τοῦ δὲ θνῄσκειν χωριζομένη τῶν σωμάτων. Chrysippus, fr. 337, but, at that point, neither Chrysippus nor ‘the Stoics’ nor ‘the Stoa’ are mentioned whatsoever. Sextus speaks about ‘causes acting upon matter’ (active/passive causes) following his assessment of ‘those who speak dogmatically about active principles’ (περὶ τῶν δραστηρίων ἀρχῶν), which included the Stoics, too.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 17 (Zeno, fr. 145).  Plutarch, De Virtute Morali, p. 441C (Zeno, fr. 202): ὃ δὴ καλοῦσι διάνοιαν καὶ ἡγεμονικόν, δι᾿ ὅλου τρεπόμενον καὶ μεταβάλλον ἔν τε τοῖς πάθεσι καὶ ταῖς καθ᾿ ἕξιν ἢ διάθεσιν μεταβολαῖς κα κίαν τε γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀρετήν.  Galen, Quod Animi Mores Corporis Temperamenta Sequantur, p. 820 (Chrysippus, fr. 235. J. von Arnim emended ἐπεισέρχεται to ἐπέρχεται, which is not correct).  See infra, pp. 1252, note 340; 1455 6.

1252

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

soul, namely rationality and irrationality³³⁹ (δύο ἔχει τὰς ἀντιπαρηκούσας ἀλλήλαις δυνάμεις, τὴν λογικὴν καὶ τὴν ἄλογον): there are no separate ‘parts’ hosting either the ‘desiring power’ (ἐπιθυμητική) or the ‘passionate’ one (θυμοειδὴς δύναμις), and so forth.³⁴⁰ In relation to cosmic cycles and periodic consummations, the souls of rude and uneducated people perish a short while after their death; but the souls of the ‘excellent ones’ (τῶν σπουδαίων) persist until such as time as the next conflagration.³⁴¹ According to Diogenes Laertius, the latter was a view of Chrysippus, whereas Cleanthes allowed for all souls to persist until the end of a cosmic period.³⁴² Therefore, the Stoic soul is not like the Platonic one in any sense. It is a corporeal entity, entirely commingled with the body, and comprising eight parts (ὀκταμερῆ), which are the following: (1) the five senses; (2) the ability to speak (τὸ φωνητικόν); (3) the ability to reflect, which is intellect itself (αὐτὴ ἡ διάνοια); (4) the ability to produce offspring (τὸ γεννητικόν).³⁴³ But then, Diogenes Laertius repeats the catalogue as follows: (1) the five senses; (2) the spermatic logoi, which procure offspring (τοὺς ἐν ἡμῖν σπερματικοὺς λόγους); (3) the ability to

 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 7.359 (Chrysippus, fr. 849, but Sextus spoke only of ‘the dogmatists’). Nevertheless, see Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 3.3.24: ἐμπέπλησται γὰρ ὁ περὶ ἡγεμονικοῦ λόγος ὑπὸ Χρυσίππου γεγραμμένος ἐπῶν ποιητικῶν ἤτοι τὰ πάθη περὶ τὸν θώρακά τε καὶ τὴν καρδίαν συνίστασθαι μαρτυρούντων ἢ δύο εἶναι τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεις ὅλῳ τῷ γένει διαφερούσας ἀλλήλων, τὴν μὲν ἄλογον, τὴν δὲ λογι κήν. This opinion was attributed to Cleanthes, Zeno, and Chrysippus.  However, this is an uncertain Stoic attitude. Galen wrote that Chrysippus wavered on this, he was ambivalent, and that his statements were contradictory. De Placitis Hippocratis et Plato nis, 4.1.14 (Chrysippus, fr. 461): ὡς ἐπαμφοτερίζων γράφει, τὰ δὲ ὡς μηδεμίαν ἡγούμενος εἶναι δύναμιν τῆς ψυχῆς μήτε ἐπιθυμητικὴν μήτε θυμοειδῆ. Op. cit. 4.4.6: μηδὲ γὰρ εἶναι τινὰ τοιαύ την, ὡς ἔνιοι τῶν φιλοσόφων ὑπολαμβάνουσιν ἐπιθυμητικήν τε καὶ θυμοειδῆ προσαγορεύοντες, τὸ ὅλον γὰρ εἶναι τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἡγεμονικὸν λογικόν (Chrysippus, fr. 463). Posidonius, ‘who was an erudite Stoic that dissented from Chrysippus’, appears to have endorsed ‘three powers’ governing the soul; he claimed that he followed Cleanthes on this. Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 8.1.14 15: ἀπέστη τε τοῦ Χρυσίππου καὶ δείκνυσιν ἐν τῇ περὶ παθῶν πραγματείᾳ δι οικουμένους ἡμᾶς ὑπὸ τριῶν δυνάμεων, ἐπιθυμητικῆς τε καὶ θυμοειδοῦς καὶ λογιστικῆς· τῆς δ᾿ αὐτῆς δόξης ὁ Ποσειδώνιος ἔδειξεν εἶναι καὶ τὸν Κλεάνθην (Cleanthes, fr. 571).  Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.20.6 (Chrysippus, fr. 809), recording Arius Didymus’ Physica (Fragmenta, fr. 39).  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.157: Κλεάνθης μὲν οὖν πάσας ἐπιδιαμένειν μέχρι ἐκπυρώσεως, Χρύσιππος δὲ τὰς τῶν σοφῶν μόνων. (Cleanthes, fr. 522; Chrysippus, fr. 811). Op. cit. 7.110: Φασὶ δὲ τὴν ψυχὴν εἶναι ὀκταμερῆ· μέρη γὰρ αὐτῆς τά τε πέντε αἰσθητήρια καὶ τὸ φωνητικὸν μόριον καὶ τὸ διανοητικόν, ὅπερ ἐστὶν αὐτὴ ἡ διάνοια, καὶ τὸ γεννητικόν (Chrysippus, fr. 828).  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.157 (Chrysippus, fr. 828): μέρη δὲ ψυχῆς λέγουσιν ὀκτώ, τὰς πέντε αἰσθήσεις καὶ τοὺς ἐν ἡμῖν σπερματικοὺς λόγους καὶ τὸ φωνητικὸν καὶ τὸ λογιστικόν.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1253

speak (τὸ φωνητικόν); (4) the ability to reflect. According to Porphyry,³⁴⁴ the list goes thus: (1) the five senses; (2) the ability to speak; (3) “seventh is the capability of procreating offspring” (4) “eighth is the ἡγεμονικόν, that is, the ruling part of the soul”.³⁴⁵ On the latter point, all testimonies are unanimous. Even when the author who wrote under the name ‘Galen’ spoke of ‘four parts’,³⁴⁶ actually he meant eight. For he counted the five senses as one, to which he added another three: rationality, ability to speak, and ability to procure offspring. Galen himself reported accordingly: the soul is a ‘spirit’ which is congenital with the entire body and permeates every part of it; it comprises ‘parts’ which are arranged so as to allow the five senses to operate, also to produce semen and offspring, as well as to endow a human being with the capability to perform intellectual functions.³⁴⁷ On this, all of the Stoics were at one. They dissented only about the location of the ruling part of the soul: some of them proposed the breast, others opted for the head; but even those who agreed on either of them dissented from each other as to which exactly part of either the breast or of the head hosts the throne of the ἡγεμονικόν.³⁴⁸

 Porphyry, De Anima, apud Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.25a (Chrysippus, fr. 830).  Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 5.20. Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, 14 (Chrysippus, frs. 827 & 836).  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 24: Στωικοὶ δὲ τέσσαρα μέρη τῆς ψυχῆς εἶναι φασὶ λογικὸν αἰσθητικὸν φωνητικὸν σπερματικόν.  Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 3.1.9 11 (Chrysippus, fr. 911): λέγω δὴ ὅτι ὁ Χρύσιππος κατὰ τὸν πρῶτον αὐτοῦ περὶ ψυχῆς λόγον τῶν μερῶν αὐτῆς τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ μνημο νεύειν ἀρχόμενος, ἔνθα δὴ δεικνύναι πειρᾶται τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ μόνῃ περιέ χεσθαι οὑτωσὶ λέγει· ἡ ψυχὴ πνεῦμα ἐστὶ σύμφυτον ἡμῖν συνεχὲς παντὶ τῷ σώματι διῆκον ἔστ᾿ ἂν ἡ τῆς ζωῆς εὔπνοια παρῇ ἐν τῷ σώματι. ταύτης οὖν τῶν μερῶν ἑκάστῳ διατεταγμένων μορίῳ τὸ διῆκον αὐτῶν εἰς τὴν τραχεῖαν ἀρτηρίαν φωνὴν εἶναι, τὸ δὲ εἰς ὀφθαλμοὺς ὄψιν, τὸ δὲ εἰς ὦτα ἀκοήν, τὸ δ᾿ εἰς ῥῖνας ὄσφρησιν, τὸ δ᾿ εἰς γλῶτταν γεῦσιν, τὸ δ᾿ εἰς ὅλην τὴν σάρκα ἁφὴν καὶ τὸ εἰς ὄρχεις ἕτερον τιν᾿ ἔχον τοιοῦτον λόγον, σπερματικόν, εἰς ὃ δὲ συμβαίνει πάντα ταῦτα ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ εἶναι, μέρος ὂν αὐτῆς τὸ ἡγεμονικόν.  Galen, loc. cit.: οὕτω δὲ ἐχόντων αὐτῶν τὰ μὲν λοιπὰ συμφωνεῖται, περὶ δὲ τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ μέρους τῆς ψυχῆς διαφωνοῦσιν ἄλλοι ἐν ἄλλοις λέγοντες αὐτὸ εἶναι τόποις. οἱ μὲν γὰρ περὶ τὸν θώρακά φασιν εἶναι αὐτό, οἱ δὲ περὶ τὴν κεφαλήν. κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ δὲ ταῦτα διαφωνοῦσι, ποῦ τῆς κεφαλῆς καὶ τοῦ θώρακός ἐστιν, οὐ συμφωνοῦντες αὑτοῖς.

1254

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Spermatic logoi Whatever happens or comes into being, it takes place according to logoi.³⁴⁹ The entire world is formed by the universal Logos, which is identified with Zeus who contains all spermatic logoi³⁵⁰ and produced the four elements (fire, water, air, earth).³⁵¹ ‘Nature’ is simply everything that exists and becomes and generates ‘according to spermatic logoi’,³⁵² and Zeus ‘is the mind, which created everything and produced all things by means of spermatic logoi’ (ὅτι νοῦς ἦν καθ᾿ ὃν ἐδημιούργει, καὶ logoiς σπερματικοῖς ἀπετέλει τὰ πάντα).³⁵³ Nevertheless, such distinctions should not be pressed too far, since relevant doxographic testimonies are not only rich, but also variant: Zeus was oftentimes identified with Nature,

 Iamblichus attributed the idea of logoi to Pythagoras: they exist potentially in the primal Monad, and numbers proceeded out of it through some kind of ‘extension’. Iamblichus, In Nic omachi Arithmeticam Introductionem, p. 10: Πυθαγόρας δὲ (sc. φησὶν τὸν ἀριθμὸν εἶναι) ἔκτασιν καὶ ἐνέργειαν τῶν ἐν μονάδι σπερματικῶν λόγων, ἢ ἑτέρως τὸ πρὸ πάντων ὑποστὰν ἐν θείῳ νῷ ἀφ᾿ οὗ καὶ ἐξ οὗ πάντα συντέτακται καὶ μένει τάξιν ἄλυτον διηριθμημένα. However, the expres sion only represents Iamblichus’ own struggle to render the Pythagorean tenet about numbers being produced out of the monad. This is why he speaks ‘of the logoi that existed in the Monad, or, alternatively, those which existed in the divine mind before anything else’. He just renders Pythagoras while using Stoic terminology. The Pythagoreans were never able to come up with a satisfactory theory of how is multiplicity produced out of the original simplicity. Cf. Iamblichus’ Theologoumena Arithmeticae, p. 13 (goddess Isis is allegorized as physis): καὶ φύσιν δὲ αὐτὴν καλοῦσι· κίνησις γὰρ εἰς τὸ εἶναι ἐστὶν αὕτη καὶ οἷον γένεσίς τις ἀπὸ λόγου σπερ ματικοῦ καὶ ἔκτασις, τετευχυῖα παρὰ τὸ τοιοῦτον τῆς ὀνομασίας, παρ᾿ ὅσον ἐστὶ κίνησίς τις ἀφ᾿ ἑτέρου εἰς ἕτερον κατ᾿ εἰκόνα τῆς δυάδος.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.135. (Chrysippus, fr. 580): ἕν τε εἶναι θεὸν καὶ νοῦν καὶ εἱμαρ μένην καὶ Δία· πολλαῖς τε ἑτέραις ὀνομασίαις προσονομάζεσθαι. δι᾿ ἀέρος εἰς ὕδωρ· καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ γονῇ τὸ σπέρμα περιέχεται, οὕτω καὶ τοῦτον σπερματικὸν λόγον ὄντα τοῦ κόσμου τοιόνδε ὑπολιπέσθαι ἐν τῷ ὑγρῷ, εὐεργὸν αὑτῷ ποιοῦντα τὴν ὕλην πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἑξῆς γένεσιν, εἶτα ἀπο γεννᾶν πρῶτον τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα, πῦρ, ὕδωρ, ἀέρα, γῆν. ἔστι δὲ στοιχεῖον ἐξ οὗ πρώτου γί νεται τὰ γινόμενα καὶ εἰς ὃ ἔσχατον ἀναλύεται.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.136 (Zeno, fr. 102): καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ γονῇ τὸ σπέρμα περιέχεται, οὕτω καὶ τοῦτον σπερματικὸν λόγον ὄντα τοῦ κόσμου, τοιόνδε ὑπολείπεσθαι ἐν τῷ ὑγρῷ, εὐερ γὸν αὑτῷ ποιοῦντα τὴν ὕλην πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἑξῆς γένεσιν· εἶτα ἀπογεννᾶν πρῶτον τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα πῦρ, ὕδωρ, ἀέρα, γῆν. λέγει δὲ περὶ αὐτῶν Ζήνων ἐν τῷ περὶ τοῦ ὅλου.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 2.7.7d (Chrysippus, Fragmenta Moralia, fr. 141): Τῶν δὲ κατὰ φύσιν ἀδια φόρων ὄντων τὰ μέν ἐστι πρῶτα κατὰ φύσιν, τὰ δὲ κατὰ μετοχήν. Πρῶτα μέν ἐστι κατὰ φύσιν κίνησις ἢ σχέσις κατὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους γινομένη, οἷον ἀρτιότης καὶ ὑγίεια καὶ αἴσθησις (λέγω δὲ τὴν κατάληψιν) καὶ ἰσχύς. Κατὰ μετοχὴν δέ, ὅσα μετέχει κινήσεως καὶ σχέσεως κατὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους, οἷον χεὶρ ἀρτία καὶ σῶμα ὑγιεινὸν καὶ αἰσθήσεις μὴ πεπηρωμέναι. Ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τῶν παρὰ φύσιν κατὰ τὸ ἀνάλογον.  Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 2.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1255

and both of them with God, Logos, Heimarmene, et cetera, as discussed in chapter 9. What is for sure is that the four elements do not suffice to give rise to Nature; there is need for the logoi and powers according to which these elements will react with each other in order for reality to come to pass, that is, to produce the physis, which is ‘logoi or numbers’ reacting with each other.³⁵⁴ Consequently, physis is the all-inclusive cohesive power that sustains the world: this is ‘an established state which is self-moving according to spermatic logoi’.³⁵⁵ All of the logoi ‘are included’ in ‘God’, who is ‘skilful fire’ (πῦρ τεχνικόν) and ‘spirit that permeates the entire world’. The Stoic God imbues all ‘matter’, upon which he causes ‘various transformations’ (παραλλάξεις).³⁵⁶ A ‘spermatic logos’ itself is a ‘skilful artificer’ (ὁ τεχνίτης αὐτὸς εἶναι τὸ σπέρμα),³⁵⁷ and god is a certain

 Plutarch, De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1077B C: ᾗ καί φασιν … τὸ μὲν σπέρμα παρὰ τὴν ἐπὶ μικρὸν ὄγκον ἐκ πολλοῦ σπείρασιν ὠνομάσθαι, τὴν δὲ φύσιν ἐμφύσησιν οὖσαν καὶ διάχυσιν τῶν ὑπ᾿ αὐτῆς ἀνοιγομένων καὶ λυομένων λόγων ἢ ἀριθμῶν. ἀλλὰ τοῦ γε κόσμου πάλιν τὸ πῦρ ὃ σπέρμα λέγουσιν εἶναι καὶ μετὰ τὴν ἐκπύρωσιν εἰς σπέρμα μετέβαλε τὸν κόσμον, ἐκ βραχυτέρου σώματος καὶ ὄγκου χύσιν ἔχοντα πολλὴν καὶ τοῦ κενοῦ προσεπλαμβάνοντα χώραν ἄπλετον ἐπινεμομένην τῇ αὐξήσει, γεννωμένου δ᾿ αὖθις ὑποχωρεῖν τὸ μέγεθος καὶ συνο λισθάνειν, δυομένης καὶ συναγομένης περὶ τὴν γένεσιν εἰς ἑαυτὴν τῆς ὕλης.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.148 (Chrysippus, fr. 1132): φύσιν δὲ ποτὲ μὲν ἀποφαίνονται τὴν συνέχουσαν τὸν κόσμον, ποτὲ δὲ τὴν φύουσαν τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς. ἔστι δὲ φύσις ἕξις ἐξ αὑτῆς κινουμένη κατὰ σπερματικοὺς λόγους, ἀποτελοῦσα τε καὶ συνέχουσα τὰ ἐξ αὐτῆς ἐν ὡρισμένοις χρόνοις καὶ τοιαῦτα δρῶσα ἀφ᾿ οἵων ἀπεκρίθη. ταύτην δὲ καὶ τοῦ συμφέροντος στοχάζεσθαι καὶ ἡδονῆς, ὡς δῆλον ἐκ τῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου δημιουργίας. Suda made this a lemma for ‘physis’ (letter phi, entry 864). Cf. Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.148: ἔστι δὲ φύσις ἕξις ἐξ αὑτῆς κινουμένη κατὰ σπερματι κοὺς λόγους ἀποτελοῦσά τε καὶ συνέχουσα τὰ ἐξ αὑτῆς ἐν ὡρισμένοις χρόνοις καὶ τοιαῦτα δρῶσα ἀφ᾿ οἵων ἀπεκρίθη. Pseudo Galen, Definitiones Medicae, p. 371: φύσις ἐστὶ πνεῦμα ἔνθερμον ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ κινούμενον κατὰ σπερματικοὺς λόγους γεννῶν τε καὶ τελειοῦν καὶ διατη ροῦν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐν χρόνοις καὶ μεγέθεσιν ὡρισμένους. Op. cit. p. 372: Ἕξις ἐστὶ πνεῦμα συ νέχον καὶ συγκρατοῦν τὰ μέρη.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.1.29b (Chrysippus, fr. 1027), apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosopho rum, 881F (copied by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.9): οἱ Στωικοὶ νοερὸν θεὸν ἀποφαί νονται, πῦρ τεχνικόν, ὁδῷ βαδίζον ἐπὶ γενέσει κόσμου, ἐμπεριειληφὸς πάντας τοὺς σπερματι κοὺς λόγους καθ᾿ οὓς ἅπαντα καθ᾿ εἱμαρμένην γίνεται, καὶ πνεῦμα μὲν ἐνδιῆκον δι᾿ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου, τὰς δὲ προσηγορίας μεταλαμβάνον κατὰ τὰς τῆς ὕλης, δι᾿ ἧς κεχώρηκε, παραλλάξεις. So the Christian apologist Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio, 6.4.  Galen, De Foetuum Formatione Libellus, p. 699 (Chrysippus, fr. 743): μάλιστα δ᾿ ἄν τις θαυμάσειε τὴν πρὸς τοὺς γεννήσαντας ὁμοιότητα τῶν ἐκγόνων, ὅπως γίγνεται· φαίνεται γὰρ πάλιν ἡ διαπλάττουσα τὸ σῶμα ψυχὴ παρὰ τῶν γονέων εἰς τὸ κυούμενον ἥκειν, ὡς ἐν τῷ σπέρ ματι περιεχομένη. Καὶ πού τινες αὐτῶν οὐχ ὕλην ἀλλ᾿ ὄργανον ὑπάρχειν αὐτῆς τὸ σπέρμα φασίν, ὕλην γὰρ εἶναι τὸ τῆς μητρὸς αἷμα, λεγόντων ἑτέρων (sc. τῶν Στωϊκῶν) τἀναντία· δοκεῖ γὰρ αὐ τοῖς ὁ τεχνίτης αὐτὸς εἶναι τὸ σπέρμα, τισὶ μὲν ὅλον, ἐνίοις δὲ τὸ περιεχόμενον ἐν αὐτῷ πνεῦμα.

1256

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

kind of ‘fire’ that ‘contains all spermatic logoi’ and acts like a craftsman.³⁵⁸ Philo criticized the Stoic idea of consummation of the world, upon which the universal Logos is supposed to be exempt from destruction, styling this idea ‘impious’.³⁵⁹ This however did not deter him from using the fundamental Stoic idea for himself.³⁶⁰ In effect, the Stoic logoi are the principles of Anaxagoras. The difference is that the former were posited as corporeal carrying out their function according to the universal Logos which is their source, whereas to Anaxagoras they were incorporeal and functioned under the supervision of the Mind, which is their creator, and yet ‘unmixed’ with them. That aside, the Stoic idea of providence is no different from Anaxagoras’ tenet that Mind is ‘the guardian’, ‘ruler’, ‘king’³⁶¹ of the universe, it knows in advance everything that exists and happens, and everything ‘moves according to his mastery and absolute rule’ (κατὰ τὴν ἐπικράτειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν δεσποτείαν).³⁶² This is the sense in which Sextus Empiricus reported that ‘when Anaxagoras said all things were together, and Mind came and set them in order, he assumed that Mind, which according to him is God, is an active principle.’³⁶³ The Stoic God embraces all the spermatic logoi of the world, in like manner man contains the logoi that procure offspring. This is one of the eight functions of the soul. The ruling part of it (ἡγεμονικόν) is like the tentacles of an octopus,

καί μοι περὶ τούτων ἰδίᾳ γέγραπται κατά τι βιβλίον, ἐν ᾧ περὶ τῶν ὑπὸ Χρυσίππου λεγομένων ἐν τοῖς περὶ ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ γράμμασιν ἐπισκέπτομαι.  See supra, note 357 (τεχνίτης).  Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 85; 93.  Philo used the Stoic idea conveniently, and applied this to ‘the divine Logos’; Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 119: ὁ γὰρ διοιγνὺς τὴν μήτραν ἑκάστων, τοῦ μὲν νοῦ πρὸς τὰς νοητὰς κα ταλήψεις, τοῦ δὲ λόγου πρὸς τὰς διὰ φωνῆς ἐνεργείας, τῶν δὲ αἰσθήσεων πρὸς τὰς ἀπὸ τῶν ὑποκειμένων ἐγγινομένας φαντασίας, τοῦ δὲ σώματος πρὸς τὰς οἰκείους αὐτῷ σχέσεις τε καὶ κιν ήσεις ἀόρατος καὶ σπερματικὸς καὶ τεχνικὸς θεῖος ἐστὶ λόγος, ὃς προσηκόντως ἀνακείσεται τῷ πατρί. De Opificio Mundi, 43 4: ἀλλ᾿ οὐ μόνον ἦσαν οἱ καρποὶ τροφαὶ ζῴοις, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρασκευαὶ πρὸς τὴν τῶν ὁμοίων ἀεὶ γένεσιν, τὰς σπερματικὰς οὐσίας περιέχοντες, ἐν αἷς ἄδηλοι καὶ ἀφανεῖς οἱ λόγοι τῶν ὅλων εἰσί, δῆλοι καὶ φανεροὶ γινόμενοι καιρῶν περιόδοις.  See chapter 2, p. 181, note 83. Harpocration, Lexicon in Decem Oratores Atticos, p. 33. Pho tius, Lexicon, entries 1573 & 1981. George Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, p. 278. Sextus Em piricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 6. Hermias, the Christian apologist and philosopher, Irrisio Gentilium Philosophorum, 6. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 4. Olym piodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem Commentarii, 137 8. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 3.7. But prior to and above them all, Plato, Cratylus, 413c.  Gennadius Scholarius, op. cit. 3.7. See supra, p. 181.  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 6.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1257

but in this case these tentacles are seven, the eighth being the ἡγεμονικὸν itself: five of them stretch out toward the organs of the five senses, another goes as far as the pharynx and the tongue in order to produce oral speech, and the seventh one stretches from the ἡγεμονικὸν down to the testicles; this is called ‘seed’ (σπέρμα), which ‘is spirit, too’.³⁶⁴ Origen testifies that, ‘to the Greeks’, human race is only the product of interaction between spermatic logoi, which caused human being to be produced out of the earth, and he was not himself particularly interested in taking distances from that doctrine.³⁶⁵ Once again, we are faced with a fundamental problem of J. von Arnim’s collection of fragments that he attributed to the Stoics: Origen says that the theory which maintained that not all men were produced from the intercourse between a man and a woman ‘was sustained by the Greeks’. He does not mention the Stoics, as he did at several other points citing that philosophy. The industrious excerptor attributed this fragment to Chrysippus, but there is nothing in the context to support this. Normally, when Origen speaks of ‘Greeks’ and does not specify ‘the Stoics’, he means that more than one schools of philosophy sustained the doctrines he discussed. At this point, he says that the theory which maintained that the world was made (that is, not beginningless) ‘was favourite to many Greeks’ – and this somehow includes the Stoics, since they sustained infinite successive worlds each one having a beginning,³⁶⁶ for which Origen contradicted them.³⁶⁷ I have shown earlier that the shadow of Anaxagoras is clearly cast upon this statement of Origen. For in the expression ‘the first men must have come into existence without sexual intercourse, but from the earth instead, once spermatic

 Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 903B (Chrysippus, fr. 836): ᾿Aπὸ δὲ τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ ἑπτὰ μέρη ἐστὶ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐκπεφυκότα καὶ ἐκτεινόμενα εἰς τὸ σῶμα καθάπερ αἱ ἀπὸ τοῦ πολύ ποδος πλεκτάναι· τῶν δὲ ἑπτὰ μερῶν τῆς ψυχῆς πέντε μέν εἰσι τὰ αἰσθητήρια, … Τῶν δὲ λοιπῶν τὸ μὲν λέγεται σπέρμα, ὅπερ καὶ αὐτὸ πνεῦμα ἐστὶ διατεῖνον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ μέχρι τῶν παρ αστατῶν. Likewise, Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 3.1.10 (Chrysippus, fr. 911), quoted supra, p. 1253, note 347. So fr. 885 (SVF, II.238 9).  Origen, Cels, I.37.  Nevertheless, Philo represented the Greek Peripatetic philosopher Critolaus of Phaselis (c. 200 c. 118 BC) as allegedly attacking the Stoics when he defended the Peripatetic doctrine of the eternity of the world and indestructibility of the human race. The words that Philo put in Critolaus’ mouth may be Philos’ own. Anyway, the phraseology is pretty much like Origen’s one. Philo, De Aeternitate Mundi, 55: εἰ γέγονεν ὁ κόσμος, ἀνάγκη καὶ τὴν γῆν γεγονέναι· εἰ δὲ ἡ γῆ γενητή, πάντως καὶ τὸ ἀνθρώπων γένος. Evidently, Critolaus meant creation of human race anew upon each cosmic period. Origen suggested that such a creation had to take place by means of ‘spermatic logoi obtaining in the soil’.  Origen, Cels, IV.67 68; V.20 21.

1258

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

logoi obtained in the soil’ (ἀπὸ γῆς, σπερματικῶν λόγων συστάντων ἐν τῇ γῇ), the term σπερματικῶν λόγων may suggest that some Stoics (not necessarily those of the Old Stoa) embraced the doctrine, although this could well have been Origen’s own expression. Anyway, there is no evidence that Chrysippus sustained this, as von Arnim took it.³⁶⁸ On the other hand, there are credible testimonies that Anaxagoras taught that all living creatures were produced from the earth, and this theory was maintained by Diogenes of Apollonia (fl. 425 BC), whose physics was influenced by that of his contemporary Anaxagoras.³⁶⁹ Therefore, even if the expression σπερματικῶν λόγων suggests Stoic usage, which is of course probable, the source of the theory was definitely Anaxagoras. During intercourse of a man with a woman, the characteristics of both of them intermingle, their hereditary traits blend with each other, and the result can be a progeny which will bear characteristics determined by those of the spermatic logoi that will eventually prevail: they can be either those of the man, or those of the woman, or of any of their ancestors, or a combination of them. The outcome is the result of the specific manner in which spermatic logoi interact with each other.³⁷⁰ However, whereas the Stoics determined that all the characteristics of the progeny are the result of the spermatic logoi of parents (including both body and soul), Origen argued that this holds only about the body, whereas moral and spiritual stature is a result of free will.³⁷¹

 SVF, II.211.3 7 (Chrysippus, fr. 739).  Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 887E, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.39.1: Διογένης καὶ ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἔφησαν μετὰ τὸ συστῆναι τὸν κόσμον καὶ τὰ ζῷα ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἐξαγαγεῖν ἐγκλιθῆναι πώς τὸν κόσμον ἐκ τοῦ αὐτομάτου εἰς τὸ μεσημβρινὸν αὑτοῦ μέρος (ἴσως ὑπὸ προνοίας, ἵνα ἃ μὲν ἀοίκητα γένηται ἃ δὲ οἰκητὰ μέρη τοῦ κόσμου κατὰ ψύξιν καὶ ἐκ πύρωσιν καὶ εὐκρασίαν). Copied by Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.15.6c. Besides, Anaxagoras maintained a theory which is reminiscent of Charles Darwin, namely, that all animals were produced from one another. See supra, p. 516.  Origen, commJohn, XX.5.36 37. This idea seems to be Stoic, and it is indeed. As it happens with other fundamental Stoic tenets, this comes from Empedocles. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Phil osophorum, 906C D & Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 115: ιαʹ. Πόθεν γίνονται τῶν γονέων αἱ ὁμοιώσεις καὶ τῶν προγόνων· Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁμοιότητας γίνεσθαι κατ᾿ ἐπικράτειαν τῶν σπερμα τικῶν γόνων, ἀνομοιότητας δὲ τῆς ἐν τῷ σπέρματι θερμασίας ἐξατμισθείσης. Nevertheless, Ori gen was influenced by Galen in many respects, and this point has a parallel in Galen, too: De Semine, p. 642: καὶ γὰρ ὅτι τοῖς προγόνοις ὁμοιοῦταί τινα κατὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους, οὐ μόνον τοὺς τοῦ πατρός, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς τῆς μητρός, εὔδηλον ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων ἐστί.  Origen, commMatt, 13.26.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1259

Criticism against the Stoics For all his dissent on grounds of ontological principles, Plotinus by and large had grasped the Stoic notion, which makes him a reliable source for reconstructing some Stoic views. Plutarch, Porphyry, and Proclus criticized the Stoics³⁷² for having made the soul a product of the earth: it appeared to Neoplatonists that the Stoics produced ‘the superior from the inferior’.³⁷³ Plotinus argued³⁷⁴ that the logoi of necessity must be immaterial, whereas the Stoics held them to be material. The truth is, however, that Plotinus was rather baffled at the Stoic notion of logoi, and he was unable to classify them among the genera or species he was aware of. But if they were to say that qualia (τὰ ποιά) are qualified matter, first of all their logoi will be immanent in matter (οἱ λόγοι αὐτοῖς ἔνυλοι); they will not make something composite

 RCR, p. 343.  Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1052F 1053A: Τὸ βρέφος ἐν τῇ γαστρὶ φύσει τρέ φεσθαι νομίζει καθάπερ φυτόν· ὅταν δὲ τεχθῇ, ψυχόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀέρος καὶ στομούμενον τὸ πνεῦμα μεταβάλλειν καὶ γίνεσθαι ζῷον· ὅθεν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου τὴν ψυχὴν ὠνομάσθαι παρὰ τὴν ψῦξιν. αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν τὴν ψυχὴν ἀραιότερον πνεῦμα τῆς φύσεως καὶ λεπτομερέστερον ἡγεῖται μαχόμενος αὑτῷ. πῶς γὰρ οἷον τε λεπτομερὲς ἐκ παχυμεροῦς καὶ ἀραιὸν γενέσθαι κατὰ περί ψυξιν καὶ πύκνωσιν; ὃ δὲ μεῖζον ἐστί, πῶς περιψύξει γίνεσθαι τὸ ἔμψυχον ἀποφαινόμενος ἔμψυχον ἡγεῖται τὸν ἥλιον, πύρινον ὄντα καὶ γεγενημένον ἐκ τῆς ἀναθυμιάσεως εἰς πῦρ μετα βαλούσης. Likewise, op. cit. 1053C D: ἐνταῦθα δήπου σαφῶς τῇ μὲν ἐκπυρώσει καὶ τὰ ἄψυχα τοῦ κόσμου φησὶν εἰς τὸ ἔμψυχον τρέπεσθαι, τῇ δὲ σβέσει πάλιν καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀνίεσθαι καὶ ἀνυ γραίνεσθαι, μεταβάλλουσαν εἰς τὸ σωματοειδές. ἄτοπος οὖν φαίνεται τῇ περιψύξει νῦν μὲν ἐξ ἀναισθήτων ποιῶν ἔμψυχα, νῦν δ᾿ εἰς ἀναίσθητα καὶ ἄψυχα μεταβάλλων τὸ πλεῖστον μέρος τῆς τοῦ κόσμου ψυχῆς. ἄνευ δὲ τούτων ὁ περὶ ψυχῆς γενέσεως αὐτῷ λόγος μαχομένην ἔχει πρὸς τὸ δόγμα τὴν ἀπόδειξιν. γίνεσθαι μὲν γάρ φησι τὴν ψυχήν, ὅταν τὸ βρέφος ἀποτεχθῇ, κα θάπερ στομώσει τῇ περιψύξει τοῦ πνεύματος μεταβαλόντος, ἀποδείξει δὲ χρῆται τοῦ γεγονέναι τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ μεταγενεστέραν εἶναι. De Primo Frigido, 946C: οἱ δὲ Στωικοὶ καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα λέγου σιν ἐν τοῖς σώμασι τῶν βρεφῶν τῇ περιψύξει στομοῦσθαι καὶ μεταβάλλον ἐκ φύσεως γίνεσθαι ψυχήν· ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ἀμφισβητήσιμον. De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos, 1084D E: ᾿Aλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν παρὰ τὰς κοινὰς βιάζονται προλήψεις· ἐκεῖνα δ᾿ ἤδη καὶ παρὰ τὰς ἰδίας, τὸ θερμότατον περιψύξει καὶ πυκνώσει τὸ λεπτομερέστατον γεννῶντες. ἡ γὰρ ψυχὴ θερμότατόν ἐστι δήπου καὶ λεπτομερέστατον· ποιοῦσι δ᾿ αὐτὴν τῇ περιψύξει καὶ πυκνώσει τοῦ σπέρματος οἷον στομώσει τὸ πνεῦμα μεταβάλλοντος, ἐκ φυτικοῦ ψυχικὸν γενόμενον. Porphyry, apud Euse bius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.11.4: Τὰ μὲν οὖν ἄλλα ὅσα περὶ αὐτῆς εἰρήκασιν ἄλλοι, αἰσχύνην ἡμῖν φέρει. πῶς γὰρ οὐκ αἰσχρὸς ὁ ἐντελέχειαν τιθεὶς τὴν ψυχὴν λόγος σώματος φυσικοῦ ὀργαν ικοῦ; πῶς δὲ οὐκ αἰσχύνης γέμων ὁ πνεῦμα πώς ἔχον αὐτὴν ἀποδιδοὺς ἢ πῦρ νοερόν, τῇ περι ψύξει καὶ οἷον βαφῇ τοῦ ἀέρος ἀναφθὲν ἢ στομωθέν;  We have the following portions from Plotinus, all of which J. von Arnim attributed to Chrys ippus, frs. 314; 315; 319; 320; 371; 373; 375; 376; 400; 402; 443; 478; 799; 804; 858; 934; 946; 986. However, never did Plotinus himself mention Chrysippus by name.

1260

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

when they have come to be in matter, but before the composite, which they make, they will be composed of matter and form; therefore, they should be themselves neither forms nor logoi. However, if they were to say that the logoi are nothing but matter in a certain state (ὕλην πως ἔχουσαν), they obviously will be saying that qualia (τὰ ποιά) are things in a certain state, and they ought to be classified in the third genus. But if this is a different kind of state, what is the difference? Now, clearly in this case, being in a certain state is more of an existence. … But if it is not an existence there too, why do they count it as one genus or species?³⁷⁵

It appeared to Plotinus that allowing for involvement of forms with matter is tantamount to condemning these noble immaterial aristocrats to a state of decay. The forms in matter are not the same as they would be if they were by themselves; they are logoi immanent in matter, corrupted in matter and infected by its nature (λόγοι ἔνυλοι φθαρέντες ἐν ὕλῃ καὶ τῆς φύσεως ἐκείνης ἀναπλησθέντες).³⁷⁶

His point is that ‘bodies are able to do what they can because of energy implanted into them by incorporeal powers’³⁷⁷ Therefore, ‘it is evident’ that what matter really assumes ‘are immaterial and incorporeal logoi’ (πῶς οὐ δῆλον ποιεῖ τὰ προσγενόμενα λόγους ἀΰλους καὶ ἀσωμάτους εἶναι;).³⁷⁸ Porphyry was aware of the Stoic locution, hence he distinguished different meanings of the term logos, such as logos ψηφιστικὸς (‘calculating’ = mathematical), logos προφορικός (‘oral’), logos ἐνδιάθετος (‘residing in the mind’), and spermatic logos (σπερματικός).³⁷⁹ This was simply the corollary of his Anaxagorean proposition about the principles existing differently in different manifestations of being,³⁸⁰ and he knew that the Stoics were heirs of Anaxagoras’ philosophy in terms of both ontology and (in essence) creation of things. We saw earlier that the Stoics grasped the different function of the principles/logoi, depending on the ontological level of their operation: thus, ‘Zeno and all of his followers were unanimous in believing that God is present throughout all beings’; but ‘here he is present as Mind, whereas there [he is present] as a soul, and [elsewhere] as nature, or [elsewhere] as cohesive force’.³⁸¹ This proposition is the

 Plotinus, op. cit. VI.1.29 (Chrysippus, fr. 376).  Plotinus, op. cit. I.8.8.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.7.8a: τὰ σώματα ἀσωμάτοις δυνάμεσι δύναται ἃ δύναται.  Plotinus, loc. cit.  Porphyry, commCateg, p. 64.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10. Simplicius, commPhys, pp. 34 5. Damascius, Princ, p. 243; In Par menidem, p. 144. See supra, p. 497, note 43.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 35 (Zeno, Fragmenta Physica, fr. 158, SVF, I.42.11 4). Likewise, Chrysippus, (SVF, II.192, fr. 634, fr. 634 & Posidonius, Fragmenta (Theiler), fr. 345, apud Diogenes

The Stoic concept of the soul

1261

same as the one by Porphyry, Simplicius, and Damascius interpreting the Anaxagorean ‘everything is in everything’: all of them pointed out the different modes of existence of logoi in accordance with the things they are involved in.³⁸² Likewise, the Stoics saw that certain physiological human functions are not too different from those taking place in mere plants: “Certain processes take place in us in a vegetative manner” (ἐφ᾿ ἡμῶν τινα φυτοειδῶς γίνεται).³⁸³ This is why they also maintained that, upon birth, the ruling part of a human soul is like a paper being available to being written,³⁸⁴ and it should noticed that Aristotle used the same imagery when he considered the Anaxagorean Mind.³⁸⁵ Likewise, the Stoics identified the ‘spermatic logos which permeates everything’ (τὸν σπερματικὸν λόγον τὸν διήκοντα διὰ πάντων) with god Hermes,³⁸⁶ and called the ‘spermatic logoi’ also ‘natural principles’.³⁸⁷ The gist of Plotinus’ criticism against the Stoic theory was that those spermatic logoi are in effect constitutive elements of an automaton, which bans free choice altogether. It remains to look at the theory of the principle which interweaves and, so to speak, chains everything to everything else, and makes each individual thing be the way it is, a principle assumed to be one, from which all things come about by spermatic logoi (ἀρχὴν τιθεμένην μίαν, ἀφ᾿ ἧς πάντα κατὰ λόγους σπερματικοὺς περαίνεται). … If they are like this, starting from a single principle, they will leave nothing for us except to move wherever they push us. For our mental images will depend on pre existing circumstances and our impulses will follow our mental images, and what is in our power will be a mere word; it will not exist any more just because it is we who have the impulses, if the impulse is produced in accord ance with those pre existing causes; our part will be like that of animals and babies. …

Laertius, Vitae, 7.139: [God] δι᾿ ὧν μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἕξις κεχώρηκεν, ὡς διὰ τῶν ὀστῶν καὶ τῶν νεύρων, δι᾿ ὧν δὲ ὡς νοῦς.  Cf. Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.8 (13 24).  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.86, expounding the biography of Zeno.  Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 92: Οἱ Στωικοί φασιν· ὅταν ἄνθρωπος γένηται, ἔχει τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν μέρος τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ ὥσπερ χάρτην εὐεργὸν εἰς ἀπογραφήν. So Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 900B; von Arnim, Chrysippus, fr. 83, but these doxographers spoke only of ‘the Stoics’.  Aristotle, De Anima, 429b30 430a2: “Mind is potentially identical with the objects of thought, but is actually nothing until it thinks. What the Mind thinks must be in the same sense as letters are on a tablet which bears no actual writing (ὥσπερ ἐν γραμματείῳ ᾧ μηθὲν ἐνυπάρχει ἐντελεχείᾳ γεγραμμένον).”  Porphyry, Περὶ ᾿Aγαλμάτων, 8.  Porphyry, Εἰς τὰ Ἁρμονικὰ Πτολεμαίου Ὑπόμνημα, p. 12: πολλαχῶς τοῦ λόγου λεγομένου λέ γεται οὐχ ἧττον λόγος φυσικός, ὅ τε τῆς σπερματικῆς δυνάμεως καὶ ὁ κατὰ τὴν σύνταξιν τῶν τῆς αὐτῆς φύσεως.

1262

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

every one sees this and does not dispute it; but they look for other causes of this impulse of ours, and do not stop at this universal principle.³⁸⁸

This was a fundamental difference between Plotinus’ Platonism and Origen’s Anaxagorism. The latter did not have to care about this question: as already noted, the Stoics saw all the characteristics of the progeny as a result of the spermatic logoi of parents (including both body and soul); by contrast, Origen argued that, whereas this holds true about the body, moral and spiritual stature is associated with free will.³⁸⁹ He was able to argue for this because he knew that the logoi ‘exist differently’, as both Neoplatonist and Stoic intellectuals rightly grasped. The second point of Plotinus’ criticism touches upon the Stoic principle of immanence, and on the natural explanation of everything at the exclusion of any transcendent cause being responsible for the things of this world. Quite simply, Plotinus contends that there must be ‘formative principles’ (λόγοι), which are ontologically prior to the Stoic spermatic logoi. The things here below depend on the world above, the things in this world on the diviner beings, and this universe also has a share in those higher realities. Therefore, what comes to be in the All does not come to be according to spermatic logoi, but according to logoi which are prior to and more comprehensive than the spermatic logoi. For in the spermatic logoi there is nothing of what happens outside the sphere of the spermatic logoi themselves, or of the contributions which come from matter to the whole, or of the interactions on each other of the things which have come to be. But the logos of the whole is more like the formative thought which establishes order and law.³⁹⁰

Although he spoke of ‘different lives’ and associated them with ‘different logoi’,³⁹¹ and he allowed that bodies act because of ‘incorporeal powers’ (ἀσωμάτοις δυνάμεσι) and ‘incorporeal logoi’ (λόγους ἀΰλους καὶ ἀσωμάτους) enabling them to do so,³⁹² he concluded with seeing the life of plants and animals as ‘another kind of soul’, of which the cause of generation is Nature, not the

 Plotinus, op. cit. III.1.7.  Origen, commMatt, 13.26.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.4.39: Γίνεται τοίνυν τὰ ἐν τῷ παντὶ οὐ κατὰ σπερματικούς, ἀλλὰ κατὰ λόγους περιληπτικοὺς καὶ τῶν προτέρων ἢ κατὰ τοὺς τῶν σπερμάτων λόγους· οὐ γὰρ ἐν σπερ ματικοῖς λόγοις ἔνι τι τῶν γινομένων παρὰ τοὺς σπερματικοὺς αὐτοὺς λόγους οὐδὲ τῶν παρὰ τῆς ὕλης εἰς τὸ ὅλον συντελούντων οὐδὲ τῶν δρωμένων εἰς ἄλληλα παρὰ τῶν γενομένων. ᾿Aλλὰ μᾶλλον ἂν ἐοίκοι ὁ λόγος τοῦ παντὸς κατὰ λόγον τιθέντα κόσμον πόλεως καὶ νόμον.  Plotinus, Enneades, III.8.8.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.7.8 (1).

The Stoic concept of the soul

1263

logoi.³⁹³ This makes clear that when Porphyry interpreted Anaxagora’s principles as ‘existing differently’, this was indeed a step beyond Plotinus, who, in the foregoing passage, did not allow for different existence of the logoi, but for logoi being ontologically different. To Neoplatonists, it was appalling to see the creative principles of all things (let alone the soul itself) being postulated as material, and being stored in the Stoic Logos, which almost all of Late Antiquity commentators assumed to be material. What a human existence could possibly be then other than a wretched being destined to be reduced to dust, plus some natural causes of inferior ontological rank that bestow a certain form upon this dust and withdraw from matter after death? The next point of Plotinus’ rejoinder runs in a similar vein: Since the universe is certainly a living being containing all living beings and, as it is, deriv ing its being from one another, and the origin of that from which it derives is traced back to Intellect, its whole archetype must necessarily be in Intellect, and this Intellect must be an intelligible universe. … for just as, if there exists the rational forming principle of a living creature and the matter which receives the seminal forming principle, the living principle must necessarily come into being, in the same way also when an intelligent and all power ful nature exists and nothing hinders it, since there is nothing between it and what is able to receive it, it is necessary that one should be formed into the order and beauty of the uni verse and the other should form it. And that which is formed into the universe has its form divided, man in one place and the sun in another; but the forming nature has all things in one.³⁹⁴

Conclusion: Plotinus was uneasy about the Stoic notion of spermatic logoi, and anxiously sought to expel them from any ontological pattern describing the constitution and function of the world. Nevertheless, he was fascinated by the doctrine of the logoi forming matter and then natural objects,³⁹⁵ even though he dismissed the spermatic logoi as a formative power of the soul, only because he believed that this was a way for him to make room for human freedom.³⁹⁶ In any event, he could not escape influence by his forbears, but he chose to be di Plotinus, op. cit. IV.7.14.  Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.9: Κόσμου δὴ τοῦδε ὄντος ζῴου περιεκτικοῦ ζῴων ἁπάντων καὶ παρ᾿ ἄλλου ἔχοντος τὸ εἶναι καὶ τοιῷδε εἶναι, παρ᾿ οὗ δέ ἐστιν εἰς νοῦν ἀναγομένου, ἀναγκαῖον καὶ ἐν νῷ τὸ ἀρχέτυπον πᾶν εἶναι, καὶ κόσμον νοητὸν τοῦτον τὸν νοῦν εἶναι, ὅν φησιν ὁ Πλάτων ἐν τῷ ὅ ἐστι ζῷον. Ὡς γὰρ ὄντος λόγου ζῴου τινός, οὔσης δὲ καὶ ὕλης τῆς τὸν λόγον τὸν σπερ ματικὸν δεξαμένης, ἀνάγκη ζῷον γενέσθαι, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον καὶ φύσεως νοερᾶς καὶ πανδυνά μου οὔσης καὶ οὐδενὸς διείργοντος, μηδενὸς ὄντος μεταξὺ τούτου καὶ τοῦ δέξασθαι δυναμένου, ἀνάγκη τὸ μὲν κοσμηθῆναι, τὸ δὲ κοσμῆσαι. Καὶ τὸ μὲν κοσμηθὲν ἔχει τὸ εἶδος μεμερισμένον, ἀλλαχοῦ ἄνθρωπον καὶ ἀλλαχοῦ ἥλιον· τὸ δὲ ἐν ἑνὶ πάντα.  Plotinus, loc. cit.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.4.39. See quotation and translation, supra, p. 1262, and note 390.

1264

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

rectly affected by Anaxagoras rather than by the Stoics, even though the Neoplatonic claim always was that, by means of proper interpretation, their own system could be found in Plato: the Intellect is the ultimate maker standing above everything; he is Intellect the Creator (νοῦς δημιουργός), who ‘gives to the soul, which comes next, gifts that are traced in the third one’.³⁹⁷ What are those ‘gifts’? Plotinus explains this only a few lines following that point: As long as Intellect and the Soul exist, the logoi (οἱ λόγοι) will flow into this lower form of soul, just as, as long as the sun exists, all of its rays will shine from it.³⁹⁸

Therefore, the ‘gifts’ are no other than the logoi. This means that the Neoplatonic soul (both the cosmic and the lower one) was but an invention introducing the soul as one more intermediary between the Creator and its product, namely, the perceptible world. This was hardly necessary an invention, and little wonder that this activity of soul remained obscure, and not always distinct from the creative activity of the Intellect, whereas the soul was never granted a world of its own: it always stood in the middle as a factotum acting as an intermediary. In fact, however, the means for the Creator to create had been always there: this was the logoi, and Plotinus was persistently haunted by this idea. Once again, he argued that the forms must be prior to the Demiurge,³⁹⁹ and certainly anterior to the universe. However, this could invite a rejoinder, namely, why should the logoi not be considered instead of a ‘Demiurge’ standing between the Mind and the actual universe? To this, the answer was that the Intellect needs another intermediary because the actuality of the Intellect itself is identical with the really existing things, which was an idea of Aristotle projecting his own viewpoint into Anaxagoras’ thought.⁴⁰⁰ Since then the substance of things is no other than the archetypes, Plotinus identifies ‘intellect’ with ‘substance’ proper, and normally the case is that the intellect is substance proper, not has substance.⁴⁰¹ For ‘the Intellect itself is the really existing things’ (ὁ νοῦς ἄρα τὰ ὄντα ὄντως), and ‘there is no way for

 Plotinus, op. cit. II.2.18: ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ νοῦς δημιουργός, ὃς καὶ τῇ ψυχῇ τῇ μετ᾿ αὐτὸν δίδωσιν ὧν ἴχνη ἐν τῇ τρίτῃ.  Plotinus, loc. cit.  See also chapter 11, p. 914.  Aristotle, De Anima, 431b17: ὅλως δὲ ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν, ὁ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν, τὰ πράγματα.  Plotinus, op. cit. VI.6.8: καὶ νοῦς ἐστι καὶ οὐσία ἡ ὄντως. Op. cit. VI.7.16: ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ φύσις αἰτία οὐσίας καὶ νοῦ. Op. cit. VI.7.36: καὶ γενόμενος οὐσία καὶ νοῦς καὶ ζῷον παντελές. Op. cit. VI.7.39: Διὸ καὶ ὀρθῶς ἑτερότητα λαμβάνει, ὅπου νοῦς καὶ οὐσία. Op. cit. VI.8.9: ἀλλ᾿ ἔστιν ὡς ἔστιν ἡ οὐσία, οὖσα ὅπερ ἐστὶν οὐσία καὶ ὅπερ ἐστὶ νοῦς. VI.9.2: νοῦς ἡ οὐσία. Op. cit. VI.9.5: καὶ ἄγει εἰς οὐσίαν νοῦς.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1265

this to think of them as if they were somewhere else’ (οὐχ οἷα ἔστιν ἄλλοθι νοῶν), since the really existing things ‘are neither prior nor posterior’ to the Intellect (οὐ γάρ ἐστιν οὔτε πρὸ αὐτοῦ οὔτε μετ᾿ αὐτόν).⁴⁰² Thus, once again, Plotinus turns against the Stoics in order to argue that ‘if they are going to say that the logoi suffice [to the purpose of creation], quite evidently, these logoi must be eternal (ἀϊδίους δῆλον); but if they are eternal and impassible, they must be in an Intellect (Mind, ἐν νῷ δεῖ εἶναι), indeed an intellect that should be prior to the natural cohesive force⁴⁰³ and to nature and to the soul (καὶ τοιούτῳ καὶ προτέρῳ ἕξεως καὶ φύσεως καὶ ψυχῆς): for these are potentialities (δυνάμει γὰρ ταῦτα).’ This is an illuminating point which shows how swayed Plotinus was by Aristotle’s account of Anaxagoras. He presumed that Anaxagoras’ principles exist potentially, which is plain wrong: for once the principles were ‘distinguished’ in the beginning (i. e. they were created), thereafter they are unfailingly existing actually, and it is their own existence and interaction that gave rise to the realm of all potentialities. Therefore, this expression of Plotinus in the Enneads, V.9.5 (26), about ‘logoi’ existing only ‘potentially’ is simply what he had read in Aristotle’s distorted exposition of Anaxagoras: prior to reflecting, the Mind itself was in fact non-existent (De Anima, 429a18‒29, 429b22‒430a3), and the universal unity of principles is tantamount to them existing not actually but only potentially (Metaphysica, 1007b25‒28; 1009a25‒36; 1063b25‒30; 1069b135‒23). Therefore, the case is not simply about the Enneads being ‘clandestinely mixed with Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics in particular is therein present in a condensed form’, as Porphyry wrote. Worse still, Plotinus used also Aristotle’s assessment of his Presocratic predecessors. Now it was Anaxagoras who was misrepresented and treated unjustly in the specific tract of the En-

 Plotinus, op. cit. V.9.5.  The term ἕξις normally means an ‘entrenched habit’ which eventually becomes nearly per manent part of one’s quality or character. This is why ἕξις was proverbially styled ‘second na ture’, although technically this is not part of one’s nature. John Chrysostom, In Epistulam i ad Corinthios, PG.61.64.10 11: Διὰ δὴ τοῦτο καί τινες τῶν ἔξωθεν, δευτέραν φύσιν τὴν συνήθειαν ἐκάλεσαν. Nicolas Catascepenus (twelfth century), Vita Sancti Cyrilli Phileotae, 5.1: Ἕξις μὲν γὰρ ἀπὸ συνηθείας· ἀπὸ δὲ ἕξεως φύσις ἐγγίνεται. Anacharsis or Ananias (twelfth century), Ana charsis, lines 1438 9: δευτέραν φύσιν τὴν ἕξιν, ἤτοι τὴν μάθησιν, ἐπιστάμεθα. Neophytus Inclu sus, Liber Catechesium, 2.28: εἰς ἕξιν τινὰ καὶ φύσιν δευτέραν μεταποιηθεὶς ὁ ἄνθρωπος. How ever, in the present case, this term has an entirely different meaning: it means ‘natural cohesive force’, and refers to inanimate objects, such as stones and pieces of wood, being kept together by ἕξις. Origen explained this extensively in the De Oratione, 6.1, which von Arnim attributed to Chrysippus (fr. 989); but Origen mentions neither the Stoics nor Chrysippus, although this was indeed an idea espoused also by the Stoics.

1266

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

neads, which dealt with the crucial topic, On Intellect [= Nous = Mind], the Forms and Being. Plotinus believed that he levelled one more Platonic criticism against the Stoics, and we should recall that Sextus also reported that either ‘cohesion, or nature, or soul’ are different kinds of forces sustaining bodies as such, as much as do they so for the entire world.⁴⁰⁴ However, the origin of the Stoic doctrine was Anaxagoras, who maintained that the logoi (once they were ‘distinguished’, that is, created) are immaterial as well as everlasting. In other words, and probably without realizing it, Plotinus’ retort to the Stoics was serendipitously Anaxagorean. For, ipso facto, the implication was that, only if the logoi are dependent on the Mind/Intellect (i. e. they are not inferior products of Nature) could a theory of creation of perceptible things be acceptable. But this theory would be Anaxagorean. It was also Stoic, but Plotinus did not realize it, once he determined that the Stoic spermatic logoi are ontologically different from those of the Stoic Logos. Even so, however, Plotinus could have been unable to accommodate it within his own system, and the reason is quite simple: if by ‘really existing things’ the Anaxagorean logoi were meant, as indeed they should, Plotinus’ Aristotelian (De Anima, 429a‒430a) proposition, ‘the Intellect itself is the really existing things’ could be unacceptable on Anaxagorean grounds. For the Mind is totally unmixed with the logoi (the ‘really existing things’) and it is ontologically different from them, unlike the Intellect which is itself the ‘really existing things’. The presuppositions which Plotinus set forth were there indeed, and they were Anaxagorean, yet he could not go all the way through along with Anaxagoras. This only his pupil Porphyry saw and expounded later, as we learn from the Arabic sources that we discussed. Proclus believed that the Stoic spermatic logoi were incorruptible (ἀφθάρτους). He recorded the different approaches by the Peripatetics, the Stoics, and Plato, while not concealing his sympathy for the latter. In his commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, he says that, whereas the Peripatetics postulated principles that are ‘immovable objects of desire’ (ἀκίνητα ὀρεκτά), the Stoics introduced the spermatic logoi, which are incorruptible, and they are the ultimate causes of the things that exist and move.⁴⁰⁵ To Proclus, Plato’s Ideas being pos-

 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 80 1: ἡνωμένον τοίνυν ἐστὶ σῶμα καὶ ὁ κόσμος. ἀλλ᾿ ἐπεὶ τῶν ἡνωμένων σωμάτων τὰ μὲν ὑπὸ ψιλῆς ἕξεως συνέχεται, τὰ δὲ ὑπὸ φύσεως, τὰ δὲ ὑπὸ ψυχῆς.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 887: Ταύτης γὰρ ἐφιέμενοι πάντες τῆς αἰτίας, οἱ μὲν τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους εἶναι τοιούτους οἰηθέντες ἀφθάρτους αὐτοὺς ἐποίησαν, ὡς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς. οἱ δὲ τὰ ἀκίνητα ὀρεκτὰ πρὸ πάντων ἔθεντο τῶν ἀεὶ κινουμένων, ὑφ᾿ ὧν τὰ κινού μενα κινεῖται, ὡς οἱ ἐκ τοῦ Περιπάτου.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1267

ited as ultimate causes (in contrast to the theories of Aristotle and the Stoics) constitute a superior theory, since ‘the notion of spermatic logoi falls short of explaining everything that happens’. Spermatic logoi ‘are unable either to hold themselves together, or to perfect themselves’, hence they always remain ‘imperfect’: for although they are posited as material, they are in themselves mere potentialities lacking any specific material substratum of their own (ἀτελεῖς ὄντες· δυνάμει γάρ εἰσι καὶ ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ).⁴⁰⁶ What Proclus could not understand (and did not condone) was how could it be possible for those ‘material principles’, which are ‘imperfect’ (ἀτελεῖς), to cause ‘natural activity’ (ἀπὸ δὲ τούτων εἰς τοὺς φυσικοὺς λόγους, τὸ σωματικὴν ἔχειν ἐνέργειαν), and, more importanlty, to effect the conditions which make up a soul within the temporal reality (ἀπὸ δὲ τούτων εἰς τοὺς ψυχικούς, τὸ ἔγχρονον τῆς ποιήσεως). His thesis is plain, yet he rests his case not with Plato, but with Xenocrates, thus making room for some Pythagoreanism into his account: an Idea is ‘a separate and divine cause’ (χωριστὴν αὐτὴν καὶ θείαν αἰτίαν), which stands midway, between the supreme Principle (which is either the Good or the Number) and material things. Specifically, an Idea is posterior to the universal Final Cause, whereas the Creative Cause itself is posterior to the Ideas (ἀλλὰ τό τε κυρίως τελικὸν πάντων αἴτιον καὶ οὗ ἕνεκα πάντα πρὸ τῶν ἰδεῶν ἐστι, καὶ τὸ κυρίως ποιητικὸν μετὰ τὰς ἰδέας), which tends to become like the Idea which is respective to a generated thing (κἂν γὰρ αὐτῷ τῷ εἶναι λέγωμεν αὐτὴν δρᾷν, καὶ τέλος εἶναι τῶν γιγνομένων τὴν πρὸς αὐτὴν ὁμοίωσιν). Nevertheless, according to Xenocrates, Plato placed his Ideas on ‘a holy pedestal’, which is the ‘Pure Mind’, while making them both ‘incorporeal and immovable causes’ (ταῖς δὲ ἰδέαις ἄμφω προσῆν καὶ νοεραῖς εἶναι καὶ ἀκινήτοις κατ᾿ οὐσίαν, ἐν ἁγνῷ βάθρῳ τῷ καθαρῷ νῷ βεβώσαις) and causes which ‘grant actuality to potential beings and form to material objects’ (καὶ τελειωτικαῖς τῶν δυνάμει ὄντων καὶ εἰδοποιΐας αἰτίαις). However, even if the Ideas ‘are definitely causes’ (αἰτίαν εἶναι πάντως), they are too remote to be either causes of ‘instruments or material or particular things’ (ὀργανικοῖς, ἢ ὑλικοῖς, ἢ εἰδικοῖς) or to be simply ‘final or creative ones’ (οὔτε τῶν αἰτίων ἐν τοῖς τελικοῖς ἁπλῶς ἢ ποιητικοῖς). An Idea is only ‘a crite-

 Proclus, op. cit. p. 888: Οὔτε γὰρ οἱ σπερματικοὶ λόγοι σώζειν ἦσαν ἱκανοὶ τὰ γιγνόμενα, πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς οὐ δυνάμενοι συννεύειν καὶ ἑαυτοὺς συνέχειν οὐδ᾿ ὅλως τελειοῦν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀτελεῖς ὄντες. Op. cit. p. 731: οὔτε τοὺς τοῖς σπερματικοῖς αὐτὰς λόγοις συνάπτοντας· οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασιν ἀτελεῖς εἰσιν, οἱ δὲ ἐν τῇ γεννώσῃ φύσει τὰ σπέρματα γνώσεως ἄμοιροι καὶ κα τωτέρω φαντασίας. commTim, v. 2, p. 193: μηδὲ παραβαλλέτω τοῖς σπερματικοῖς λόγοις τὴν ἐν πᾶσι πάντων παρουσίαν (ἀτελεῖς γάρ εἰσιν ἐκεῖνοι καὶ σωματοειδεῖς καὶ ἔνυλοι καὶ παντάπασιν ἀπολείπονται τῆς ἀΰλου καὶ καθαρᾶς τῶν ψυχικῶν λόγων οὐσίας). Cf. supra, p. 799.

1268

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

rion and a model and a pattern’ (κριτήριον βλέπων καὶ κανόνα τὸ παράδειγμα), yet its stands midway (μέση γὰρ οὖσα ἀμφοῖν) between the Pure Mind, which the Idea itself desires, and the creative cause which craves the Idea (τοῦ μὲν ἐφίεται, τοῦ δέ ἐστιν ἐφετόν). This is ‘the definition of Idea’ (τὸν ὅρον τῆς ἰδέας) that Xenocrates believed it was what really his master [Plato] meant (ὡς ἀρέσκοντα τῷ καθηγεμόνι), which made the Idea a cause and yet a ‘separate’ (i. e. transcendent) and ‘divine’ one (χωριστὴν αὐτὴν καὶ θείαν αἰτίαν τιθέμενος). This explains why was it that Plotinus rejected the theory of the Stoic spermatic logoi, and refused to see them as being associated with the divine Intellect whatsoever: he saw them as ontologically inferior to the immaterial logoi at which he was fascinated. Proclus followed suit along the same rationale. In other words, to Proclus quoting from Xenocrates, though not endorsing the report wholeheartedly, an Idea grants objects existence and movement, and, at the same time, it attracts an object to become like the archetype/Idea respective to it.⁴⁰⁷ For how could it be possible (Proclus wonders) to depart from ‘indefinite and formless’ principles and eventually get specific and definite objects out of them? (πῶς γὰρ ἂν διὰ τῶν ἀορίστων καὶ ἀνειδέων εἰς εἶδος καὶ πέρας καὶ ὅρον καταντήσαιμεν;). By perusing material objects, the best that one could achieve would be to arrive at ‘material spermatic logoi’, which are ‘imperfect’, and this flaw is the sole characteristic that these spermatic logoi have in common (ἀπὸ μὲν τῶν ἐνύλων εἰς τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους ἀνιόντες, εὑρίσκομέν τι κοινὸν αὐτοῖς, τὸ ἀτελές). As a result, not only natural laws, but also the soul itself would be nothing more than a sort of a corporeal physical activity (σωματικὴν ἐνέργειαν); but this would call into question the soul’s participation in the Ideas (ἀπορίαν διὰ τὴν κοινωνίαν περὶ τῆς μετοχῆς τῶν εἰδῶν): actually, such a participation could make no sense at all.⁴⁰⁸ Proclus did not concede that the spermatic logoi are inherently involved with material objects themselves, indeed ‘they are immersed’ into them (συνδιαβαπτιζόμενοι), which ran contrary to the Platonic doctrine of the transcendent Ideas being participated in by material objects in a specific sense, however partial, imperfect, indirect, and attenuated this participation might be. The Stoic spermatic logoi appeared to him as participating themselves in matter, instead of being participated in by matter, even though they are ‘incorruptible’, that is, of somewhat superior rank. To any Neoplatonist, the notion of the superior participating in the

 Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 887.  Proclus, op. cit. pp. 889 90.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1269

inferior was sheer scandal, since this could only make the soul a mere natural attribute and render a human being not at all different from any other animal. This is a main reason why Proclus is unyielding and holds fast to the conviction that the specific character of an Idea (τῆς ἰδέας τὸ ἰδίωμα) is not a concurrence of logoi, whether seminal or natural ones (μήτε τοῖς σπερματικοῖς λόγοις ὂν ταὐτόν, μήτε τοῖς φυσικοῖς ὅλως) that are on a par with matter itself (οἵ εἰσιν ὁμοταγεῖς τοῖς ὑλικοῖς). Ideas are absolutely irrelevant to any reality characterized by ‘division into multitude’ (ἀλλ᾿ ἕτερόν τι πρὸ τούτων ἀσύντακτον πρὸς πᾶν τὸ μερισθὲν περὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς). An Idea is beyond the present reality of material individualization, it is ‘above and beyond phenomena’: even though an Idea indulges in a great deal of association with them, in fact, it is transcendent to all phenomena, and it is only in an attenuated sense that it lends them its own character by being itself only far too little altered (ἐξῃρῆσθαι τῶν φαινομένων, ἀλλ᾿ ἔχει κοινωνίαν παμπόλλην, ἐλαχίστην δὲ τὴν ἐξαλλαγήν).⁴⁰⁹ If Platonists and Neoplatonists were trapped into such conundrums, this was because they could not go too far along the ontology of Anaxagoras (which had much in common with the Parmenidian one in this respect, as Simplicius taught):⁴¹⁰ simplicity and multiplicity are not two irreconcilable alternatives, and they are not mutually exclusive; it is the ontological simplicity that co-exists (and gives rise to) ontic multiplicity. As discussed earlier,⁴¹¹ Martin Heidegger made the distinction in modern times: the adjective ontic is different from the ontological. It characterizes beings, not their being. Anything that in any way ‘exists’ is ontic. The synonym for ontic is existent, the word to be understood (but only approximately, indeed not that much widely) in the sense of real, concrete, empirical, given to experience, perceptible. Therefore, ontic denotes the concrete manifestation of a certain being, or a certain type of analysis of it, such as analysis of the properties of an object.

 Proclus, op. cit. p. 886; cf. p. 1055: περὶ τῶν ἐνύλων εἰδῶν καὶ πάντων τῶν σπερματικῶν λόγων.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 34: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ ὁ Κλαζομένιος ἔοικε τῶν εἰδῶν πάντων τριτ τὴν θεάσασθαι τὴν διαφοράν, τὴν μὲν κατὰ τὴν νοητὴν ἕνωσιν συνῃρημένην, … καὶ εἴη ἂν τὸ σύμπαν τοῦτο τὸ τοῦ Παρμενίδου ἓν ὄν. Op. cit. p. 144: λείπεται οὖν τὸ νοητὸν πάντων αἴτιον, δι᾿ ὃ καὶ ὁ νοῦς ἐστι καὶ τὸ νοεῖν, ἐν ᾧ πάντα κατὰ μίαν ἕνωσιν συνῃρημένως προείληπται καὶ ἡνωμένως, τοῦτο εἶναι τὸ Παρμενίδειον ἓν ὄν, ἐν ᾧ μία φύσις καὶ τοῦ ἑνὸς καὶ ὄντος ἐστί. comm Cael, pp. 608 9: ἔοικε δὲ διττὴν ἐνδείκνυσθαι διακόσμησιν ὁ ᾿Aναξαγόρας, τὴν μὲν νοητὴν καὶ ἡνωμένην … τὴν δὲ αἰσθητὴν καὶ διακεκριμένην ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνης τῆς ἑνώσεως ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργικοῦ νοῦ, ὃν καὶ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ νοητοῦ προελθόντα διακοσμῆσαι πάντα φησίν. … νοητὴν ἐνδείκνυταί τινα διακόσμησιν πρὸ ταύτης τῆς αἰσθητῆς κατ᾿ αἰτίαν καὶ σπερματικῶς ταύτην προειληφυῖαν.  See chapter 6, p. 406.

1270

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Nevertheless, concerning the relation between ontological and ontic, we have a formulation by Damascius, which he styled ‘more felicitous’ (προσφυέστερον): he points out that such terms as ‘existence’ (ὕπαρξις), ‘power’ (δύναμις), ‘energy’ (ἐνέργεια), are essentially ontological designations, since, respectively, they bespeak ‘mere being’, ‘mere ability’, ‘mere action’ only in a general sense.⁴¹² Therefore, the lesson that Simplicius taught about both Anaxagoras and Parmenides was that the ontological and the ontic make sense at the same time, the former denoting unity and the latter distinction. The fact that the logoi exist differently in different manifestations of Being does not make them immune to what happens to this sensible world. A point in case is the one and single kind of motion that Anaxagoras postulated, against the six that Aristotle decided later: this is ‘mutation’ (or, alteration, ἀλλοίωσις), which is a cause of both generation and passing away; it takes place as a perceptible occurrence by means of concurrence and disjuncture of particular principles that make up a certain thing or phenomenon. Now, ‘mutation’ on the one hand, and ‘concurrence and disjuncture’ on the other, are two different aspects of acting principles, but they betoken the same process: ‘mutation’ takes place because of ‘concurrence and disjuncture’; and ‘concurrence and disjuncture’ can effect results because there are certain principles causing ‘mutation’. In other words, ‘mutation’ refers to Being, whereas ‘concurrence and disjuncture’ refers to beings (ἥ τε γὰρ ἀλλοίωσις πάθος περὶ τὸ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ἡ σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις περὶ τὰ ὄντα).⁴¹³ As it happened with the etymology of ‘truth’ meaning ‘exit from oblivion’, whose Greek provenance I explained in the Introduction, likewise, the distinction ontological / ontic is not as radical a breakthrough by Heidegger as it is currently believed to be. Once again, this is a debt to the last great masters of the Academy, namely, Damascius and Simplicius. Consequently, when Proclus argued that the Ideas are absolutely irrelevant to any reality characterized by ‘division into multitude’, he simply did not take advantage of the great teaching of such eminent Presocratics as Parmenides and his pupil Anaxagoras. With the exception of Porphyry, the same happened with other Neoplatonists, until Simplicius and Damascius entered the fray. Little wonder then that, to Middle-Platonists and Neoplatonists, the Stoic doctrine was a scandal: the soul was produced from dust. Put in Biblical terms, it meant, ‘Dust you are, and to dust shall you return’.⁴¹⁴

 Damascius, Princ, pp. 311 12: Τάχα δὲ ἐκεῖνο προσφυέστερον εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἡ μὲν ὕπαρξις τὴν ὑπόστασιν δηλοῖ μόνον, ὥσπερ ἡ δύναμις τὸ δύνασθαι μόνον, καὶ ἡ ἐνέργεια τὸ μόνον ἐνεργεῖν.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163.  Genesis, 3:19.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1271

Intellectuals did not understand this doctrine always. The Neoplatonist Pseudo-Galen,⁴¹⁵ writing in a spirit which contradicts the real Galen himself,⁴¹⁶ despises ‘all those who are unable to understand how the soul enters the body and how it departs from it’. He is appalled at the idea that the soul ‘is made according to the logoi of nature’ (κατὰ τοὺς λόγους συνήρμοσται τῆς φύσεως). In his view, the Stoics ‘display ignorance by making the soul the product of seminal logoi’ (σπερματικὴν ποιοῦντες τὴν ψυχήν); this is only ‘a token of ignorance by the Stoics’ (ἄρα δὴ ταῦτα τῶν Στωϊκῶν ἀγνοήματα), who ‘dared produce the sublime things from the mean ones, only because they turned themselves upside down (οἳ κάτωθεν ἄνω ἐστραμμένοι ἀπὸ τῶν χειρόνων ἐτόλμησαν γεννᾶν τὰ κρείττω); they postulated that any essence is material; they made physis an offspring of the perceptible cohesive force which holds things together (γέννημα δὲ ποιοῦντες ἕξεως μὲν τὴν φύσιν); and they made the soul a product, which comes to being simply by ‘mixture’ of natural ‘elements’ (κρᾶσις τῶν στοιχείων).⁴¹⁷ In general, the Stoics ‘understand every kind of birth as a process from below up’, which means that ‘everything that gives birth is inferior to its own offspring’. This is the result of ‘making the logoi embodied into the seed’, since ‘Chrysippus made the soul an offspring of nature’. In this respect, ‘no teaching would be more godless, since it produced the superior from its inferior’.⁴¹⁸ Proclus did not understand (or did not allow) that the Anaxagorean, and then, the Stoic logoi are prior to Nature. To him, it is Nature that gives birth to them and, in turn, Nature is formed by God (ὁ θεὸς οὗτος διαπλάττει τὴν φύσιν).⁴¹⁹ Nature is inferior to God, and the logoi are inferior to Nature. By all accounts, the spermatic logoi are subsequent to (therefore, under the domination of) the Nature.⁴²⁰ This is presumably why he felt that Nature itself is a limit: this

 Pseudo Galen, Ad Gaurum Quomodo Animetur Fetus, chapters 13 14.  The author actually uses against the Stoics Plato’s argument in the Laws, 967b e (supra, pp. 1226 7), which was meant against Anaxagoras.  Anonymous, Commentarium in Librum Περὶ Ἰδεῶν, p. 884: οἱ μὲν γὰρ Στωϊκοὶ λέγουσι μὴ εἶναι ψυχήν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ τῆς κράσεως τῶν στοιχείων ἀποτελεῖσθαι τὴν γένεσιν. Chrysippus, fr. 789.  Pseudo Galen, op. cit. 14.2 4.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 143: εἴτε οὖν φυσικούς τινες ἐν τῷ παντὶ λέγοιεν λόγους εἴτε σπερματικούς, τὴν πάντων τούτων αἰτίαν εἰς τὸν θεὸν τοῦτον ἀνενεκτέον. ὃ γὰρ ἡ φύσις ποιεῖ δύνουσα κατὰ τῶν σωμάτων, τοῦτο θείως καὶ ἐξῃρημένως ὁ θεὸς οὗτος διαπλάττει τὴν φύσιν κινῶν καὶ ὀργάνῳ χρώμενος αὐτῇ πρὸς τὴν σφετέραν δημιουργίαν.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 3, p. 191: ὑπὸ τὴν φύσιν γὰρ οἱ σπερματικοὶ λόγοι πάντες, ὁ δὲ Ζεὺς αἰσθητὰς καὶ ἐμφανεῖς, διακοσμῶν καὶ οὗτος καὶ εἰδοποιῶν τὰ τῇδε ὁλικῶς ζῶντα καὶ κινούμενα ποιῶν. Op. cit. v. 3, p. 188: καὶ τὸν μὲν Φόρκυν ἁπάσης τῆς σπερματικῆς οὐσίας καὶ τῶν λόγων τῶν φυσικῶν καὶ οἷον σπερματικῶν ἔφορον εἶναι φήσομεν, ὡς φέροντα τὴν κύησιν καὶ γεννή σεως αἴτιον· οἱ γὰρ σπερματικοὶ λόγοι καθ᾿ ἕκαστον στοιχεῖον εἰσί, καὶ προεστᾶσιν αὐτῶν

1272

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

is the reality of incorporeal and corporeal natures being involved with each other, therefore, it is ‘full of logoi and forces, by means of which it administers the affairs of the world’.⁴²¹ This intermediate status of Nature is in fact an idea advanced by Origen and Plotinus alike,⁴²² although certainly Origen did not endorse the idea that the logoi are posterior to Nature; instead they are prior to it: they are the tools by means of which the universal Mind creates and administers all universe including Nature itself, being himself the ‘guardian’ (φρουρὸς πάντων) of it, as Anaxagoras taught. However, the Stoic doctrine was different, and Diogenes Laertius correctly reports it: although Nature is ‘self-moving’ (ἐξ αὑτῆς κινουμένη) and it gives birth and holds together its offspring, it functions according to the spermatic logoi, which make it possible for Nature to come to pass as a process.⁴²³ There is nothing prior to the spermatic logoi, except for the universal logos (or, Zeus) that gave them birth, and holds them together, even during universal conflagration, that is, at a time when Nature does not exist at all. If Nature is sometimes identified with the Deity, this happens only in references that natural reality is supposed to exist and function. There is a dynamic conception of these logoi, which is what allowed the initial monadic reality (to Anaxagoras, the Mind; to Pythagoreans, the Monad; to Stoics, the Logos; to Origen, the Biblical God) to give rise to multiplicity.⁴²⁴ Granted, the Pythagoreans never came up

διάφοροι τάξεις θεῶν τε καὶ δαιμόνων, ἃς δὴ πάσας διὰ τοῦ Φόρκυος περιέλαβε. Op. cit. v. 3, p. 192: διαιρεῖ δὲ νοερῶς μόνον ὁ Κρόνος, ζωοποιεῖ δὲ ἡ Ῥέα, λόγοις δὲ σπερματικοῖς ὁ Φόρκυς διακοσμεῖ, φανερὰ δὲ ἐξ ἀφανῶν ὁ Ζεὺς ἀποτελεῖ, ἐξελίττει δὲ ἡ Ἥρα κατὰ παντοίας τῶν ἐμφανῶν μεταβολάς.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 1, p. 11: ἡ τοίνυν φύσις ἐσχάτη μέν ἐστι τῶν τὸ σωματοειδὲς τοῦτο καὶ αἰσθητὸν δημιουργούντων αἰτίων καὶ τὸ πέρας τοῦ τῶν ἀσωμάτων οὐσιῶν πλάτους, πλήρης δὲ λόγων καὶ δυνάμεων, δι᾿ ὧν κατευθύνει τὰ ἐγκόσμια.  See infra, ‘The logos of this world’, pp. 1401 10.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.148: ἔστι δὲ φύσις ἕξις ἐξ αὑτῆς κινουμένη κατὰ σπερματικοὺς λόγους ἀποτελοῦσα τε καὶ συνέχουσα τὰ ἐξ αὑτῆς ἐν ὡρισμένοις χρόνοις καὶ τοιαῦτα δρῶσα ἀφ᾿ οἵων ἀπεκρίθη. By contrast, Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 731: οὔτε τοὺς τοῖς σπερματικοῖς αὐτὰς λόγοις συνάπτοντας· οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐν τοῖς σπέρμασιν ἀτελεῖς εἰσιν, οἱ δὲ ἐν τῇ γεννώσῃ φύσει τὰ σπέρματα.  Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 142 (ref. to Pythagoras): ὅταν μὲν γὰρ ἔκτασιν καὶ ἐνέργειαν τῶν ἐν μονάδι σπερματικῶν λόγων εἶναι φῇ τὸν ἀριθμόν, τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκείας ἀρχῆς αὐτογόνως καὶ αὐτοκινήτως προεληλυθότα καὶ τὸν ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἱδρυμένον καὶ ἐν εἴδεσι παντοίοις ἀφωρισμένον παραδίδωσιν· ὅταν δὲ τὸ πρὸ πάντων ὑποστὰν ἐν θείῳ νῷ, ἀφ᾿ οὗ καὶ ἐξ οὗ πάντα συντέτακται καὶ μένει τάξιν ἄλυτον διηρθρωμένα, τὸν παραδειγματικὸν καὶ ποιητὴν καὶ πατέρα θεῶν τε καὶ δαιμόνων καὶ τῶν θνητῶν πάντων ἀριθμὸν ἀνυμνεῖ. Anonymous, Scholia In Hesiodum, Scholia in Opera et Dies, verses 769 71: ἡ δὲ τετράς ἐστιν ἐν τῇ μονάδι συγγενής, διότι καὶ αὐτὴ πάντας

The Stoic concept of the soul

1273

with a coherent theory of how exactly does the Monad become Dyad, yet, whatever their problems, to all those who thought in terms of spermatic logoi there is nothing prior to these logoi, except for the Divine Mind that produced them. Origen moved along this line in his own doctrine of creation, including creation of the soul.

The Stoic soul after death Any Platonist or Neoplatonist was understandably appalled at the Stoic idea of the soul. For to Plato this was a noble aristocrat who deigned (or, was forced) to descend from the bliss of its exalted realm and to be imprisoned into a body, which entailed decadence in terms of relinquishing both full knowledge and freedom from passion. By contrast, the Stoic soul was the result of a natural process, which involved materiality all the way through. The soul was not a complete self-sufficient entity that entered the body. Rather, it was the result of natural logoi concurring and interacting with each other, so as to effect the functions that characterize an animate being. The sundry operations of the soul come to pass neither immediately nor at the same time, but gradually and in due course. Of them, those physical operations which are indispensable to life proper are congenital with a human being; but mental capacity follows, and rationality follows later still. In order for a man to be considered ‘rational’, a good fourteen years were required, if we are to believe Iamblichus, as well as an anonymous Platonist commentator.⁴²⁵ This was in fact the view sustained by Aristotle: the soul becomes rational only once all of the physical human constitution is complete.⁴²⁶ However, a Platonist would have rejected out of hand the Stoic

περιέχει τοὺς ἁρμονικοὺς λόγους, οὓς εἶχεν ἡ μονὰς σπερματικῶς. … οὗτοι δέ εἰσιν οἱ ἁρμονικοὶ λόγοι.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.48.8 (from Iamblichus’ treatise On the Soul): Πάλιν τοίνυν περὶ τοῦ νοῦ καὶ πασῶν τῶν κρειττόνων δυνάμεων τῆς ψυχῆς οἱ μὲν Στωικοὶ λέγουσι μὴ εὐθὺς ἐμφύεσθαι τὸν λόγον, ὕστερον δὲ συναθροίζεσθαι ἀπὸ τῶν αἰσθήσεων καὶ φαντασιῶν περὶ δεκατέσσαρα ἔτη. Οἱ δ᾿ ἀπὸ Πλάτωνος καὶ Πυθαγόρου παρεῖναι μὲν καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀρτιγενέσι τὸν λόγον φασίν, ἐπισκο τεῖσθαί γε μὴν ἐν τοῖς ἔξωθεν καὶ μὴ ἐνεργεῖν τὴν οἰκείαν ἐνέργειαν, ἀλλ᾿ ἡσυχάζειν. (Chrysip pus, fr. 835). Anonymous, Scholia in Platonem (scholia vetera) (comm. on Alcibiades i), 121e: δὶς ἑπτά. τότε γὰρ ὁ τέλειος ἐν ἡμῖν ἀποφαίνεται λόγος, ὡς ᾿Aριστοτέλης καὶ Ζήνων καὶ ᾿Aλκμαίων ὁ Πυθαγόρειος φασίν (Zeno, fr. 149). Nevertheless, see infra, pp. 1274 ff.  John Philoponus, commAnim, pp. 163 4: οὐκ ἄλλον τινὰ λέγει εἶναι τὸν νοῦν παρὰ τὴν λογικὴν ψυχὴν ἔξωθεν ἡμῖν ἐπεισιόντα, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτὴν τὴν λογικὴν ψυχὴν νοῦν ἐκάλεσε. σαφέστατα οὖν καὶ διὰ τούτων ἀθάνατον εἶναι τὴν ἡμετέραν ψυχὴν ἀποφαίνεται ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης. ἐγγίνεται δὲ ἡ λογικὴ ψυχὴ τῷ σώματι μετὰ τὴν διάπλασιν τοῦ τελείου ζῴου, τῶν ἄλλων

1274

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

tenet that the soul ‘grows and decreases along with the body’.⁴²⁷ Nor could any Platonist have ever endorsed the idea that ‘our soul is a portion detached from this world’ (τοῦ κόσμου ἀπόσπασμα).⁴²⁸ To Stoics, the soul is a product of this world, since there is no other world to consider. It permeates all of this reality, and humans are animated by this vitalizing force, which is produced by proper combination of logoi.⁴²⁹ This of course makes the soul ‘the cause of both living’ (so long as it is present) and ‘dying’ (once a specific combination of logoi no longer functions). In other words, the soul is a cause only in as much as Nature itself acts as a cause, yet neither of them is a ‘prime cause’: the soul is only a ‘secondary cause’, since humans owe their existence to a more primary and fundamental causality whichderives from spermatic logoi.⁴³⁰ An important Stoic notion⁴³¹ is the ‘completion of logos’ (συμπλήρωσις τοῦ λόγου): a human being collects data through experience, and this completion happens upon the fourteenth year of age, although there are differences as to the exact number of it,⁴³² since another testimony has it that, ‘according to Heraclitus and the Stoics’, rationality is complete at the end of the second week of

ψυχικῶν δυνάμεων ἤτοι τῶν λόγων αὐτῶν συγκαταβαλλομένων τῷ σπέρματι. So the anony mous Platonist commentator in the previous note.  Anonymous, Scholia in Iliadem (scholia vetera), comm. on Ilias XI.115c: καὶ ᾿Aντίπατρος ὁ ἰατρὸς συναύξεσθαί φησι τῷ σώματι τὴν ψυχήν. J. von Arnim added the name of Aristotle at that point (SVF, III.251.23), following Antipater of Tarsus (medical doctor), fr. 50: οὗτως ᾿Aριστο τέλης καὶ ᾿Aντίπατρος ὁ ἰατρὸς συναύξεσθαί φασι τῷ σώματι τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ συμμειοῦσθαι πάλιν. However, the name of Aristotle is not mentioned in that Homeric comment.  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.143: οὐδὲν δὲ τοῦ κόσμου κρεῖττον· ζῷον ἄρ᾿ ὁ κόσμος. ἔμψυχον δέ, ὡς δῆλον ἐκ τῆς ἡμετέρας ψυχῆς ἐκεῖθεν οὔσης ἀποσπάσματος. Chrysippus, fr. 633, SVF, II.191.39.  Hermias, the Christian apologist, Irrisio Gentilium Philosophorum (reporting Cleanthes), 14: τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν δι᾿ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου διήκειν, ἧς μέρος μετέχοντας ἡμᾶς ἐμψυχοῦσθαι (Cleanthes, fr. 495).  Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogmaticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 198: τοίνυν εἰ ἔστι φύσις, ἔστι τι αἴτιον. ἀλλὰ μὴν τὸ πρῶτον· ἄρα τὸ δεύτερον. καὶ ἄλλως· εἰ ἔστι τι ψυχή, ἔστιν αἴτιον· αὕτη γὰρ καὶ τοῦ ζῆν καὶ τοῦ θνῄσκειν αἰτία γίνεται, τοῦ μὲν ζῆν παροῦσα, τοῦ δὲ θνῄσκειν χωριζομένη τῶν σωμάτων (Chrysippus, fr. 789).  Origen used this abundantly. See infra, pp. 1325; 1328; 1343 6.  Iamblichus, De Anima, apud Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.48.8. Platonists and Pythagoreans alike held that ‘rationality’ (λόγος), that is, mind, along with soul, enters a human being right upon birth. However, although this is present even in newborn babies, it is darkened, inactive, and put to rest. In fact, ‘to many Platonists, mind and soul is the same thing’ (οὐδὲ εἶναι ὅλως ἑτέραν μὲν αὐτήν, ἕτερον δέ). The Peripatetics distinguished between ‘mind which comes form the seed and nature’ (ἐκ σπέρματος ἀπὸ τῆς φύσεως ἄλλον νοῦν) and that which ‘comes from outside’ (θύραθεν νοῦς) at a very later stage (ὀψιαίτατα), when human mind attains perfection. Origen mentions θύραθεν νοῦς in Cels, III.80. See PHE, p. 165. See also supra, pp. 597 8.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1275

life. Theodore Studites using the Stoic terminology centuries later, maintained that it is upon the sixteenth year of age ‘that [human] rationality is completed’, but he teaches not natural knowledge: he only postulates when a juvenile must be held responsible for his actions.⁴³³ Nevertheless, what matters is the idea, which is that human rationality becomes perfect by means of diligent and devout practice, which also Origen held, as discussed in the next section. The idea is naturally involved with the fundamental Stoic notion of ‘progress’ (προκοπή), which has not only a moral character, but also a cognitive one. The soul explores and learns: it does not strive to ‘recollect’ any pre-existing knowledge. As for what happens after death, the soul departs from the body, yet not to return to any previous abode of it. It abandons the body, while being itself a body. Therefore, when one refers to ‘separation’ of the soul from the body, this means only separation of one body from another.⁴³⁴ The difference is that, ‘whereas a body can exist without a soul’ (a dead body, that is), a soul cannot exist without a body, since the soul is the full reality, as well as the form, of the body. ⁴³⁵ Proclus made a contemptuous reference to the notion of souls being corporeal, indeed spheroid ones (σφαιροειδεῖς), after separation from the body, but he made no mention of any Stoic, or of Stoicism.⁴³⁶ There can be some speculation about the origin of this tenet.⁴³⁷ Aristotle attributed this doctrine to Democritus and Leucippus,⁴³⁸ or to Democritus alone.⁴³⁹ As it happened, posterity believed

 Theodore Studites, Epistulae, 489: καὶ ἡ βίβλος δηλοῖ καὶ τὸ καθ᾿ ἔπος λέγειν ἐνταῦθα οὐκ ἐπαρκές, πλὴν ὅτι μετὰ τὴν συμπλήρωσιν τοῦ λόγου, ἤγουν ἀπὸ ἑξκαιδεκαετίας καὶ πρός, μεθ᾿ ὃν καὶ τιμαὶ καὶ τιμωρίαι, ὥς φησιν αὐτός, περὶ αὐτῶν ἐγκρίνεσθαι δεῖν, καὶ συνάπτεσθαι ταῖς ἀδελφότησιν διὰ τῆς μοναχικῆς τελειώσεως προστέταχε.  Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 2 (Chrysippus, fr. 790): ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ καὶ ἐφάπτεται καὶ χωρίζεται τοῦ σώματος· οὐκ ἄρα ἀσώματος ἡ ψυχή. τούτων τὸ μὲν τὸν θάνατον χωρισμὸν εἶναι ψυχῆς ἀπὸ σώματος ἀληθές ἐστιν.  Pseudo Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 117: διότι σῶμα μὲν καὶ ἄνευ ψυχῆς ὑφίσταται, ψυχὴ δὲ ἄνευ σώματος οὔ. ἐντελέχεια γὰρ καὶ εἶδος τούτου. The author argues also that the Stoic theory has it that body and soul coexist as two bodies. Loc. cit.: οὐχ ὑγιὴς δὲ λόγος οὐδὲ ὁ λέγων μηδὲν ἀσώματον σώματος χωρίζεσθαι, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν τοῦ σώματος χωρίζεσθαι, ὥστε μὴ εἶναι ἀσώματον.  Actually, he speaks of ‘cyclical shape of the soul’. Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 284: ἀπέρραψε διὰ τῆς ρήσεως ταύτης τὰ στόματα τῶν οἰομένων ὄντως κυκλικὸν εἶναι τὸ σχῆμα τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ διαστατόν. I have discussed this in RCR, pp. 275 9; 283 4. However, see Proclus discussing sim ilar views of Iamblichus, and attributing them to Plato. Cf. Iamblichus, Theologoumena Arithme ticae, p. 46, and Proclus discussing Iamblichus’ views, commTim, v. 2, p. 72.  I canvass this in relation to the obloquy againt Origen allegedly sustaining this doctrine, in RCR, chapter 6.  Aristotle, De Anima, 404a.

1276

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

him,⁴⁴⁰ but it is highly likely that Democritus simply said that a soul is consisted of atoms which are themselves spheroid, or he spoke of the world-soul having this shape because so the universe as a whole appears to be.⁴⁴¹ A later commentary on Homer’s Ilias ⁴⁴² has it that Antisthenes of Athens sustained that ‘the souls have the same shape as the bodies which contain them’ (ὁμοσχήμονάς φησι τὰς ψυχὰς τοῖς περιέχουσι σώμασιν εἶναι). Against this, according to the same commentator, Chrysippus’ view was that, ‘after separation from the body, souls assume the form of a sphere’.⁴⁴³ The same comment appears in Eustathius of Thessaloniki,⁴⁴⁴ but there is no way to determine which of the two texts is earlier. Even these instances refer to the shape of the soul after death, not to that of an assumed posthumous body of the soul. To J. von Arnim, this information appeared as a testimony to Chrysippus’ views, but the textual evidence is too precarious (and too late) to be taken seriously.⁴⁴⁵ My own conjecture is that Proclus did not necessarily have the Stoics in mind; rather, he thought of some intellectuals being bowled head over heels into mysticism, such as Iamblichus, who was indeed attracted to the idea of a ‘spheroid’ soul, although otherwise Proclus mentioned Iamblichus with respect. The reason was simple: since the individual soul is part of the cosmic soul which is spherical (as the perfect shape of the heaven shows),⁴⁴⁶ a soul that is ‘liberated’ from the bonds of matter must assume this perfect shape, too.⁴⁴⁷

 Aristotle, De Respiratione, 472a.  Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 2, p. 16. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosoph ica, 35. Marcus Aurelius, Τὰ εἰς Ἑαυτόν, 11.12.1. Themistius, paraphrPhys, p. 9. Sophonias, para phrPhys, pp. 10 11.  Xenocrates, Testimonia, Doctrina et Fragmenta, fr. 198. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.16.6: Δημόκριτος θεὸν ἐν πυρὶ σφαιροειδῆ τὴν κόσμου ψυχήν. Likewise, Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum, 1.38. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.5; 1.7. Cf. Plutarch, Platonicae Quaestiones, 1004C (ref. to Plato’s Timaeus, 36e ff): τὸ δ᾿ ὄντως σφαιροειδὲς οὐκ ἔστιν αἰσθητοῦ σώματος ἀλλὰ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τοῦ νοῦ στοιχεῖον.  Cf. Homer, Ilias, XXIII.65. The portion recounts ‘the spirit’ of the deceased ‘hapless Patro clus’ appearing to the slept Achilles, with Patroclus being ‘in every wise like his very self, in stat ure and fair eyes and in voice, and in like raiment was he clad withal’.  Anonymous, Scholia in Iliadem (scholia vetera), comm. on Ilias XXIII.66, scholion 5: Χρύσιππος δὲ μετὰ τὸν χωρισμὸν τοῦ σώματός φησιν αὐτὰς σφαιροειδεῖς γενέσθαι. (Chrysippus, fr. 815).  Eustathius of Thessaloniki, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, v. 4, p. 682: Σημείωσαι δὲ ὅτι ἐντεῦθεν ᾿Aντισθένης κατὰ τοὺς παλαιοὺς ὁρμηθεὶς ὁμοιοσχήμονας ἐδόξασεν εἶναι τοῖς σώμασι τὰς ψυχάς. Χρύσιππος δέ, φασίν, ἄλλως ἢ καθ᾿ Ὅμηρον λέγων, διάφορός ἐστι δοξάζων σφαιροειδεῖς τὰς ψυχὰς μετὰ θάνατον γίνεσθαι.  Chrysippus, Fragments Logica et Physica, fr. 815 (SVF, II.224).  Proclus, commTim, v. 2 p. 101.

The Stoic concept of the soul

1277

Furthermore, the question is what happens to a soul that has been separated from its body. Following the Peripatetic conception of it, it was all too natural to sustain that, once the soul is deprived from its body, it can no longer exist, which is what Boethus of Sidon (c. 75 ‒ c. 10 BC) urged, according to Simplicius.⁴⁴⁸ As already mentioned, the opinion of Cleanthes was that all souls persist until conflagration, that is, until the end of a cosmic cycle, whereas Chrysippus maintained that only the souls of the wise persist until the end of the period.⁴⁴⁹ Theodoret of Cyrrhus reports that the souls of the unwise, which are ‘feeble’ ones, linger only for a short while after death, whereas those of the wise are ‘powerful’ and persist until conflagration.⁴⁵⁰ Following the discovery of the Toura papyri, a text of Didymus unknown to J. von Arnim has it that, to the Stoics, ‘the souls of the wicked perish into non-being’.⁴⁵¹ Marcus Aurelius maintained that any soul lingers only for a short while after death.⁴⁵² The lesson that Damascius read in Plato was that the soul persists only for a certain period after death, and he says that Iamblichus, who ascribed to Plato the theory that souls are immortal and endure forever, was only an over-enthusiast.⁴⁵³ Conclusion: although incorporeality of the soul was the paragon of Platonism, the hierophants of Plato tacitly understood (not always consciously) the soul as an individual entity (something like a flask of air, or of whatever) which forsakes the physical body in order to return to a fabulous supernatural realm.

 Iamblichus, Theologoumena Arithmeticae, p. 46: ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀναγκαίως, καθὼς προείπομεν, πρὸς τούτοις καὶ στερεὸν ἔδει καὶ σφαιρικόν γε τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς μέγιστον εἶδος.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 247: ἵνα μὴ ὡς ὁ Βοηθὸς οἰηθῶμεν τὴν ψυχὴν ὥσπερ τὴν ἐμψυχίαν ἀθάνατον μὲν εἶναι ὡς αὐτὴν μὴ ὑπομένουσαν τὸν θάνατον ἐπιόντα, ἐξισταμένην δὲ ἐπιόντος ἐκείνου τῷ ζῶντι ἀπόλλυσθαι (Boethus of Sidon, fr. 11).  Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 7.157: Κλεάνθης μὲν οὖν πάσας ἐπιδιαμένειν μέχρι ἐκπυρώσεως, Χρύσιππος δὲ τὰς τῶν σοφῶν μόνων (Cleanthes, fr. 522. Chrysippus, fr. 811).  Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 5.23 24: Οἱ δὲ Στωϊκοὶ τὰς χωριζομένας τῶν σωμάτων ψυχὰς διαρκεῖν μὲν καὶ καθ᾿ ἑαυτὰς ζῆν ἔφασαν, ἀλλὰ τὴν μὲν ἀσθενεστέραν ἐπ᾿ ὀλί γον, τὴν δὲ ἰσχυροτέραν μέχρι τῆς τοῦ παντὸς ἐκπυρώσεως (Chrysippus, fr. 810). Once again, von Arnim attributed the doctrine to Chrysippus, although Theodoret makes only a general ref erence to ‘the Stoics’. In the same fragment, von Arnim quotes also another similar view, which he also ascribed to Chrysippus, even though the testimony mentions only ‘the Stoics’.  Didymus, Commentarii in Psalmos 20 21, Cod. p. 53: οὐ γὰρ προσεκτέον τοῖς λέγουσιν ὅτι αἱ τῶν φαύλων ψυχαὶ εἰς τὸ μὴ ὂν καταστρέφουσιν, ὡς βούλονται παρ᾿ Ἕλλησιν Στοϊκοί [sic] παρὰ δὲ δῆθεν Χριστιανοῖς οἱ Ἱερακαῖται. Didymus attributes the same tenet to the Christian heresies of Ἱερακαῖται and Στρατιῶται, whom he mentions also in the Commentarii in Job (12.1 16.8a), p. 387, and Commentarii in Ecclesiasten (3 4.12), Cod. p. 102.  See supra, pp. 608 9; 938.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 207, discussed supra, pp. 1219 20.

1278

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

The Stoics saw the soul as a body permeating the human the body; consequently, they allowed the soul’s departure from the body, as a body departing from a body, while banning any notion of ‘supernatural realm’. Therefore, ordinary intellectuals who dignified themselves with the designation ‘Platonist’, while depicting the soul as an ‘ampulla of air’ being dispersed, in effect described a Stoic soul, while at the same time they felt both loyal to the Platonic sublimity and at liberty to scorn the Stoic ‘materialism’. Following this exposition, I am now coming to Origen. My point is that his conception of the soul comes straight from the Anaxagorean philosophy. The Stoics were to him a digression from Anaxagoras. However, as lapsed Axagoreans as they were, they did not lack some originality, mainly as moralists, even though their Physics had also some important things to say, too. Some decades ago, I argued that Origen’s concept of time is in essence the Stoic one being transformed so as to comply with Christian premisses: he made time proper a creature, an idea which was taken up by the Cappadocians and Augustine, and, in general, this is the notion of time which currently holds in Christian mindset.⁴⁵⁴ However, since the times of Antiochus of Ascalon, who revolted against the scepticism of the Academy, the school moved gradually to assimilation of Stoic and Peripatetic theories. Therefore, Stoic teaching and subsequent influence did not always stem from Stoic mouths. Considering issues of ethics and theodicy, the Middle Platonists were indebted to the Stoics. Therefore, when Origen and Clement of Alexandria treated such issues, we should explore also sources other than the Stoic ones; and when we study the subject of Providence, we should take into account the Stoic debts to Anaxagoras, too. Concerning the theory of soul, we have seen that Anaxagoras inspired some of the Stoic theory. When, therefore, we come upon Origen using Stoic notions and terms, we should always bear in mind that he was an Anaxagorean in the first place, who was always ready to criticize Stoics theories, such as that God is material and immanent in the universe, or that the logoi are corporeal, or indeed the Stoic doctrine of the Heimarmene. Consequently, Origen’s Stoic terminology on this issue only means that he goes along with them only as far as he deems it fit, while his real inspiration on more fundamental issues was Anaxagoras, who was also a creative flare of the Stoics themselves after all.

 P. Tzamalikos, “Origen and the Stoic View of Time”, Journal of the History of Ideas, v. 52 (4), 1991, pp. 535 61. Likewise, “Origen: The Source of Augustine’s Theory of Time”, Philosophia, Yearbook of the Research Center for Greek Philosophy at the Academy of Athens, v. 17 18, 1989, pp. 396 418. Also, “The Autonomy of the Stoic View of Time”, Philosophia, v. 19 20, 1989 90, pp. 352 69.

Origen on the soul

1279

Origen on the soul Incorporeality and individuality Origen normally associates the doctrine of transmigration of souls with either Plato alone, or Plato and Pythagoras, or the Egyptians, while at one point he adds the name of Empedocles, too.⁴⁵⁵ The question then is this: what does he mean speaking of his own ‘more sublime theory’, while explicitly dismissing Plato’s doctrine of reincarnation? The notion of the soul being an individual hypostasis living an incorporeal life of its own is alien to Origen. Instead, the soul is produced from incorporeal logoi, which concur in order to make it up, as much as do they so for the body. The specific concurrence, which forms one’s personal identity, in turn produces new concurrences of logoi by means of human activity, inventiveness, creativity, imagination, or simply free choice. Given the universal unity of all logoi, any such thrust or initiative or action affects the entire universe; therefore, the result of human action (no matter what its quality) remains for every rational being as a deposit account within the world, which also vouchsafes individual identity, owing to the fact that free will entails capability to cause new concurrences of logoi.⁴⁵⁶ This is why a later Byzantine intellectual wrote that ‘the soul which gives birth to logoi is immortal, and so are the logoi which are its offspring’ (ἀθάνατος μὲν ἡ γεννῶσα τοὺς λόγους ψυχή, ἀθάνατα δ᾿ αὐτῆς οἱ λόγοι τέκνα).⁴⁵⁷ Origen’s theory of the outcome of Judgement at the end of a cosmic period⁴⁵⁸ involves contingent existential transformation of rational creatures. However, this does not suggest that a specific concurrence of logoi will form material bodies for all souls immediately after the consummation. As it happens with realization of any potentiality which takes place in due course and order, likewise, realization of the outcome of Judgement takes place in due course, too, in the same sense that some billions of years had to elapse until the earth was formed, and more time still was necessary before the human race appeared on the planet. The

 Origen, Cels, I.13 (& Philocalia, 18.7: Plato); op. cit. IV.17 (Plato); op. cit. I.20 (& Philocalia, 18.5: Egyptians); op. cit. III.75, meaning Empedocles and Pythagoras, as it seems from I.32, V.49, VII.30 (but perhaps Plotinus, too: Enneades, III.4.2). Also (‘those who maintain the doctrine of transmigration’, in general), op. cit. V.29; VI.36, and commMatt. 13.1 (& frMatt, 8), et passim.  On the implications of this idea, see pp. 1283; 1368; 1449; 1486. On one’s personal identity, see pp. 1314 9; 1439; 1443; 1448.  Nicephorus Gregoras, Epistulae, 96.  See COT, ‘The outcome of Judgement’, pp. 296 309.

1280

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

logoi concerning ‘Adam’ (= human nature)⁴⁵⁹ were there since the beginning of the world, but humans appeared not earlier than nearly fourteen billion years following the Big Bang. Upon that occurrence, there was no human race: however, the laws which stipulate that once certain environmental, as well as other natural conditions allow for it, human race would come to pass – those laws were there right from the moment when the universe began to exist, as much as do these laws hold now, even though many billion years had to lapse for the homo sapiens to appear. This means that, upon judgement, new potentialities are formed, and certain (partially or entirely) other logoi will concur at some moment during the new cosmic period, in order to form an individual living being, or soul (which is always endowed with a material body).⁴⁶⁰ Come the time, the concurrence of logoi that made up each rational being will effect new realities in the dynamic cosmic drama. Origen’s difference from the Stoics is that consecutive worlds are neither identical nor do they last for equal periods of time: we have not been with our friends and families infinite times in the past, and it is doubtful that such meetings will take place once again in a next world-setting. The Stoic theory postulated that all of the specific instances during a certain world-cycle would recur identically and infinitely. Origen’s theory is that this recurrence of logoi will form a next setting, in which divine judgement will intervene and will be involved. The next arrangement will not be the same, it will not come to pass all at once, but everything and everyone will appear and play his part in the cosmic drama in due course. The idea of providence and theodicy is indeed present in Stoic thought; but this kind of divine act pertains to occurrences throughout a cosmic period: it does not appear upon conflagration and it does not affect the setting of the next world, which will be identical with all others, both previous and future ones.⁴⁶¹ In Origen, any new world-setting, especially concerning rational creatures, is causally related to action during a previous cosmic period. This is the notion of ‘antecedent causes’ (πρεσβύτερα αἴτια).⁴⁶² Since rational creatures are arranged in different planes of being (and in different degrees of rationality), a change of the previous concurrence of logoi will result in new lives and circumstances, which are causally related to the previous setting. Everything has to do with concurrence of logoi, not with transmigrating individual personal incorporeal souls.

   

Origen, Cels, IV.40. See supra, pp. 787; 871 3; 900 4. See infra, p. 1282, note 473. Origen, op. cit. IV.59; IV.67 8; V.20 1. Origen, Princ, III.1.21 22; II.4.3 (Philocalia, 1.19).

Origen on the soul

1281

Origen had a full and clear grasp of his own theory, but he was shy to divulge it explicitly out of fear lest he might be misunderstood. Now it is clear that the seed of someone has the logoi of its procreator (τοὺς λόγους τοῦ σπείραντος) in itself still at rest and reserved. However, the child exists once it has been formed and prepared for birth, when the seed has been transformed and has moulded the material surrounding it (ἐργασαμένου τὴν περικειμένην αὐτῷ ὕλην) provided by the woman and the collected nourishment … But, on the other hand, since the children of Abraham are determined from custom and works, never from any spermatic logoi that are sown along with certain souls, in my opinion, it is necessary to designate those who are seed of Abraham by a characteristic mark. … Not all men have come into human life with completely identical spermatic logoi which were sown in their souls. However, it is possible for a few that have distinguished more carefully the things that precede the birth and the things that accompany the birth of each one, to grasp the cause of these things in accordance with ‘judgements’ that are ‘great and difficult to explain’,⁴⁶³ and they are contemplated by those who have received the ‘mind of Christ’,⁴⁶⁴ that they may perceive the things given them by God. And since such things would trouble some people who have an inkling of these matters, but do not understand them thoroughly, we will ex pose ourselves to danger concerning such matters where it is precarious to mention and disclose such things, even if one speaks the truth.⁴⁶⁵

He is clear that his account refers to certain cosmic principles, which cause individual generation of humans to turn out in different ways according to divine providence. Of them, some come down on to birth, whereas others somehow ascent into birth (ὧν μετέχουσι διαφόρως οἱ κατιόντες εἰς γένεσιν ἢ εἰσιόντες, καὶ τάχα δέ πως καὶ ἀνιόντες). He urges that Psalm 125:6 (‘when they went, they went and wept, bearing their seeds’) might well betoken the seeds that one receives into oneself, that is, one’s own specific spermatic logoi.⁴⁶⁶ Considering his reluctance to enunciate his theory, hardly could Origen have become more specific about his ideas concerning the soul and his tenet of ‘antecedent causes’. Now, it is precarious because the ‘administrator of the mysteries of God’⁴⁶⁷ must seek the proper time for the presentation of such doctrines so as not to harm the hearer, and at the same time also to consider carefully the measure [of the presentation], whether it is too little or too much, measured by Reason,⁴⁶⁸ even if the time is right. In addition, he

     

Wisdom of Solomon, 17:1. 1 Cor. 2:16. Origen, commJohn, XX.2.2 6. Origen, op. cit. XX.4.17 18. 1 Cor. 4:1. Luke 12:42.

1282

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

must examine very carefully whether those to whom such doctrines are delivered are fellow servants, or are servants of someone other than the Lord of Lords.⁴⁶⁹

He affirmed the existence of ‘corporeals and incorporeals’ (σωμάτων καὶ ἀσωμάτων),⁴⁷⁰ but incorporeals are creatures, indeed they are the principles/ logoi, which are as much universal causes of generation as are they objects of knowledge and contemplation.⁴⁷¹ On the other hand, he is conscious of the notion of spermatic logoi: in order for a result of their concurrence to produce a living human being, matter is involved, too. A soul is a concurrence of incorporeal logoi, and this is the sense in which a soul is incorporeal, but there is no such thing as self-existent soul being bereft of matter. How could it be possible for something incorporeal to be individualized? Earlier in his chapter, I gave the example of the Pythagorean theorem: this holds ever since the beginning of the world, even though humans discovered it recently, as indeed only recently did they themselves appear on this earth. This theorem is applicable throughout the world. Since this is a product of ratiocination (that is, something incorporeal), this is everywhere and always. In other words, this theorem is a logos. Can we limit it, which means, individualize it? Of course we can: all we need is a blackboard and some chalk, or a pen and a piece of paper, in order to draw a right triangle. In that case, we have an individual and specific representation of the Pythagorean theorem by means of the triangle we drew. In other words, an eternal and ubiquitous notion is individualized by means of matter. The same goes for the incorporeal soul: it comes to pass by means of concurrence of incorporeal logoi, but it can be individualized only by means of a material body.⁴⁷² The soul is indivisible from the material body (τὸ συναμφότερον),⁴⁷³ and it only bespeaks the very fact of someone being animate. The idea was as old as Aristotle: distinction means enumeration, which in turn entails materiality of necessity.⁴⁷⁴ Much later, Gennadius Scholarius remarked that the cause of distinction according to Democritus and to all ancient

 1 Tim. 6:15. Origen, commJohn, XX.2.7.  See infra, pp. 1393 5; 1446 7.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.61.429; frJohn, 13; frPs, Psalms 106:30; 138:14 16; selGen, PG.12.125.5 6; selPs, PG.12: 1276.5; 1465.38; 1508.29; 1581.54; 1661.42; expProv, PG.17: 161.27; 176.25; 181.3; 192.4; 196.37; 207.49.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1074a: ἀλλ᾿ ὅσα ἀριθμῷ πολλά, ὕλην ἔχει.  Origen, frLuc, 242: ἓν γάρ τι τὸ συναμφότερόν ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἡ ζωὴ κοινή, καὶ ἑκατέ ρων δεῖ πρὸς τὸ τὴν ἐκ θανάτου ζωὴν πάλιν συστῆναι.  See supra, in this chapter, p. 1180, notes 3 5.

Origen on the soul

1283

Physicists was matter alone, except for Anaxagoras who saw the cause of distinction in both matter and the Creative Mind.⁴⁷⁵ This is why, to Origen, not only humans, but also all rational creatures in every rank of life are always understood as living in a body:⁴⁷⁶ there is no notion of creaturely individual incorporeal life whatsoever. This kind of life is exclusive to the Trinity alone. The reason for him to sustain this tenet throughout his life is all too evident: matter is indispensable for individuality to make sense. Since a soul is the result of spermatic logoi having concurred, it can either progress or lapse. This means that human freedom is a source of new logoi making their mark in this world (or, emerging to light out of concealment). During a lifetime, these logoi, which effect certain results, create and possibly modify the individual ‘deposit account’ of a rational creature, which means the impact that individual free action makes upon the Body of the Logos.⁴⁷⁷ Judgement upon the end of a certain cosmic period means that this account will effect a new rational being, in a new body, in due course at some moment of the next cosmic period. There is a causative relation between these two rational creatures, but it is not one soul which transmigrates during the next cosmic period, as if it changed ‘vehicle’ or ‘garment’ in a Platonic sense. Evidently, a new soul will emerge as a concurrence of logoi during a certain moment of the new period. Prior to that moment, this soul (= concurrence of specific logoi) does not exist. Judgement upon the end of a period does not suggest that all living rational creatures that lived during the past aeon will appear in new bodies simultaneously. Following the events of a past aeon, the incorporeal logoi of this world change, that is, they concur in different ways and produce different effects. It is in accordance with those events that the next cosmic period will come to pass. This is the radical dissent of Origen from the Stoic idea of recurrence of identical worlds, which he himself pointed out several times. A human soul exists along with a body between death and consummation of the cosmic period, which is in fact Chrysippus’ idea, whereas Marcus Aurelius allowed such an existence only a short while after death, as indeed Plato did. But there is no notion of any selfsubstantial soul living in a body before it comes to be born, as indeed neither does this notion exist in Stoicism. This is the ground on which Anaxagoras re-

 Gennadius Scholarius remarked that ‘the cause of distinction according to Democritus and to all ancient Physicists’ was ‘matter alone’, except for Anaxagoras who saw the cause of distinc tion in matter along with the Creative Mind. Epitome Primae Partis Summae Theologicae Thomae Aquinae, 3.47: ἢ τὴν ὕλην μετὰ τοῦ ποιοῦντος νοῦ, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐτίθει.  COT, chapter 3, pp. 112 16. Cf. Origen, selPs, PG.12.1097.9 14; Princ, I.1.6; II.2.2; II.3.3; II.1.4.  See pp. 1371; 1476; 1497. Simplicius (‘impact on Being’), p. 1270.

1284

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

flected on this issue: soul is posterior to the body, because this is the life of the body, which is why Plato excoriated Anaxagoras, as we saw earlier. Only once Origen’s debts to Anaxagoras are recognized will it be possible to see, against all uninformed accounts, that, in him, there is indeed a notion of pre-existent worlds, of pre-existent causes, and of pre-existent logoi, but not one of pre-existence of souls. The vast majority of his writings were burned down,⁴⁷⁸ yet it is possible to reconstruct his views, provided they are read knowledgeably. Besides, it is possible to trace them, even during the dark era of the sixth century, when Origen’s real views and ‘Origenism’ were usually two entirely different things.⁴⁷⁹ A text which was written during that period plainly advises that Origen (in the non-extant commentary on Paul’s epistle to Titus) had explicated that to hold that the soul is prior to the body is a heresy.⁴⁸⁰ A monk who was tantalized and sought authoritative answers, asked abba Barsanuphius for instruction with respect to (sixth-century) Origenism. In this collection of five questions followed by replies concerning issues of doctrine and spiritual life by the two famous sixth-century recluses Barsanuphius and John, there are some references to doctrines allegedly sustained by Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius.⁴⁸¹ In the first question, ‘a certain brother’ says that he ‘came upon the books by Origen and Didymus and the [Kephalaia] Gnostica by Evagrius and by his pupils’ (εἰς τὰ Γνωστικὰ Εὐαγρίου καὶ εἰς τὰ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ).⁴⁸² He says that he read that ‘human souls were not created along with

 Cf. Marcus Eugenicus, Oratio Altera De Igne Purgatorio, p. 129: ὑπὸ τῆς πέμπτης ἀπεδοκιμάσθη συνόδου τὰ τούτου συγγράμματα καὶ πυρὶ παρεδόθη. … διὰ τοῦτ᾿ ἀφανισθῆναι τὰ τούτου συγγράμματα καὶ πυρὶ δοθῆναι. He adds though that ‘not all of Origen’s works’ were burned down (τοῦτο γὰρ οὐδὲ τὰ Ὠριγένους ἔπαθε πάντα), and mentions the Philocalia as an example of books that were spared. I have suggested that the prologue to Philocalia was written by Theodore Studites: RCR, pp. 365 6; Scholia in Apocalypsin, p. 91. Cf. this Prologue, 1b, referring to Origen’s doctrines and works: τὸν μὲν εἰς τὴν καλὴν ἀποθήκην τὴν ἐκκλησίαν εἰσήγαγον, τὸ δὲ τῷ πυρὶ παραδεδώκασι τῷ ἀσβέστῳ, κἂν Ὠριγένης μὴ βούληται.  See RCR, pp. 259 321.  Barsanuphius and John, Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Coenobitas. I have discussed this work in NDGF, pp. 220; 366; 380; 382; 515; 516; 530; 532. RCR, pp. 118; 175; 188; 193; 276; 300 303; 317; 321; 402. The practice of writing texts of the philological genre of ‘Questions and Answers’ was a late fifth and sixth century one.  Sancti Barsanuphii, Doctrina Circa Opiniones Origenis, Evagrii et Didymi, PG.86.891 902.  There is a collection entitled Κεφάλαια τῶν Μαθητῶν Εὐαγρίου, which was fully published only recently: Évagre le Pontique, Chapitres des disciples d’Evagre, Sources Chrétiennes, n. 514, Paris, 2007. See J. Paramelle, “Chapitres des disciples d’Évagre’ dans un manuscript grec du Musée Bénaki d’Athènes”, Mélanges offerts au R. P. François Graffin, S. J Parole de l’Orient 6 7 (1975 76), pp. 101 13. Also, A. Guillaumont, “Fragments syriaques des ‘disciples d’Evagre’”,

Origen on the soul

1285

bodies, but they pre-existed in the form of bare (meaning pure) minds, that is, incorporeal ones (νόες γυμνοί οὖσαι, τοῦτ᾿ ἔστιν ἀσώματοι). Likewise, angels were bare minds and daemons were bare minds, too’.⁴⁸³ However, this ‘brother’ did not determine where exactly had he read those views. Nevertheless, upon reading about the doctrines of pre-existence of souls and of apokatastasis, the monk grew double-minded and was overwhelmed by ambivalence (διψυχίαν). But this ambivalence originated not in the sixth-century orthodoxy surrounding him, but in Origen’s and Evagrius’ own words. There is a characteristic bafflement in his words. On the one hand, he says that he read about the doctrine of ‘pre-existence of incorporeal pure minds’ and of ‘end of punishment and restoration’ in those texts, but (save the reference to Evagrius’ Kephalaia Gnostica) he does not determine exactly where had he read those views. On the other, he assures that what Origen wrote (and the monk read) in his Commentary on the Epistle to Titus, ⁴⁸⁴ was this: The doctrine of souls being prior to the body is not authorized either by the apostles or by the tradition of the Church (μὴ εἶναι τῶν ᾿Aποστόλων μηδὲ τῆς Ἐκκλησίας παράδοσιν, τὸ πρεσβυτέραν εἶναι τὴν ψυχὴν τῆς τοῦ σώματος κατασκευῆς).

Moreover, the monk goes on, Origen ‘determines that anyone who sustains these [doctrines] is a heretic’ (ὡς αἱρετικὸν χαρακτηρίζων τὸν ταῦτα λέγοντα). Furthermore, the same monk quotes specific points from Evagrius’ Kephalaia Gnostica, where Ponticus urges that ‘no one has ever taught anything about these questions’ (περὶ τούτων οὐδεὶς ἐμήνυσεν). Likewise, ‘no one has ever taught anything about the primeval things’ (περὶ μὲν τῶν προτέρων ὁ μηνύων οὐδείς) and ‘never did the Holy Spirit offer any account, either of the first division of rational creatures, or of the primary substance of bodies (τὴν πρώτην οὐσίαν τῶν σωμάτων)’.⁴⁸⁵ It is quite plain that Barsanuphius had read those texts of Evagrius, since he cited and quoted from that work, mentioning points of it accurately and in detail. Of Origen’s work, he only cites the commentary to Titus and the statement made therein, but citations and quotations from Evagrius’ books are far more detailed. Once again, we come upon the difference between Origen and ‘Origen-

ibid. pp. 115 23. Of the 198 Greek and 8 Syriac chapters (two of them overlapping), these refer ences include only 5 Greek and 8 Syriac chapters.  Barsanuphius and John, Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Coenobitas, 600, lines 3 4.  Origen cites and quotes from this epistle in his commMatt, 14.22.  Sancti Barsanuphii, op. cit. PG.86.891 93.

1286

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

ism’, which I have canvassed elsewhere.⁴⁸⁶ In any event, this is a testimony by an informed author who had access to now non-extant works of Origen, in which he had plainly styled the notion of pre-existence of souls ‘heretic’. In contrast to the notion of ‘progress’ of the soul with age and practice, Plato maintained that ‘so far as the soul is bound with the mortal body, at first it is irrational’ (ἄνους ψυχὴ γίγνεται).⁴⁸⁷ By this, he meant that the soul is perfect in itself, it knows everything, but it becomes inferior than its essential perfection because of association with corporeality. There is no room for the soul to become better: it only can become what it was in the first place before entering the body. This is exactly how Proclus understood this point, arguing that ‘this is the conclusion from everything that has been said about incarnation of souls’ (ἐνσωματώσεως τῶν ψυχῶν). Plato drew this conclusion from all the ‘disturbance and uproar (ταραχῆς καὶ θορύβου) surrounding a soul coming to [corporeal] being’. ‘Irrationality is instilled into new-born babies’ (τῆς ἀνοίας τῆς ἐν νεογνοῖς ἐμφυομένης), out which ‘the rational soul has been fettered and idle, since this is held captive by the irrational forces’ (πεπεδῆσθαι δὲ καὶ ἀργεῖν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀλόγων δυνάμεων κρατουμένην). Proclus’ conclusion is that this state of the soul holds not only for the beginning of human life, but also throughout it, thus controverting ‘others, who think that the soul is subsequently liberated’. To Proclus, ‘rationality’ (ὁ λόγος) is held in bondage by irrationality and it is ‘idle’ all the way through.⁴⁸⁸ The difference between Origen and Platonism is a stark one indeed: whereas Proclus regarded the soul as doomed because of its enslavement to, and incarceration in, the body, Origen leaves all options open: the soul can attain perfection by means of exercise, and any man can progress as far as to make himself deified by means of divine grace. Nothing could be nearer to Stoicism than this, considering the cardinal Stoic notion of ‘progress’ (προκόπτειν and προκοπή) along with the ‘completion of reason’ (συμπλήρωσις λόγου), to which I return later in this section. Origen’s spermatic logoi originate in the personal Logos/Mind, and all of them are part of the Body of the Logos. Therefore, creation of a soul does not originate in the earth: instead, it emanates from concurrence of creatures / logoi made by the Logos, that is, from creative and cohesive principles which are the object of divine creation and ‘decorate’ the Body of the Logos.

 RCR, pp. 259 332.  Plato, Timaeus, 37b. Cf. 86e: “and the soul acquires much evil because of the body”. Cf. Phaedo, 81b; 83d.  Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria, v. 3, p. 348.

Origen on the soul

1287

There was a simple reason for Origen not to reflect like Plato, which is also why he was not like the Stoics, notwithstanding his debts to their common source, namely Anaxagoras: to him, a man is not simply a soul/body entity: instead, a man is spirit/soul/body. This means that a human being is endowed with not only physical logoi, but also with spiritual ones that are granted by God. Put in Porphyry’s terms explaining Anaxagoras, in a human being there are logoi which at the same time exist differently: there are physiological ones, as well as psychic (meaning a soul which is subject to passions), plus spiritual ones. In the twentieth book of his commentary on John, where the Stoic theory makes a mark, Origen makes the following point, which is his own way to demarcate himself from Stoicism, and to remain faithful to Anaxagoras. Let these things⁴⁸⁹ be applied to the soul that has been filled with spiritual seeds which have come from some of those called its fathers, and because of the easily and ever moving ruling part of it (τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ) … let them emerge as if they were certain spermatic logoi of the fathers. When these are cultivated, one will be a child of Abraham … another child of Noah … another child of Chanaan. However, not all of us have come with seeds that are equal and the same. Neither, however, has anyone come devoid of saving and holy seeds, unless perhaps someone should change our mind by adducing immediately on this subject God’s help, which does not give up as hopeless even the worst of men who have come into this life without the best of seeds.⁴⁹⁰

The ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα) are the Anaxagorean logoi which make up a human being. To the Stoics, these were material and determined the offspring’s physical structure as much as did they do so about his moral and spiritual character. To Origen, there are parental logoi which affect only the physical making of the body; but there are also other ones which are not owing to the constitution of progenitors, whereas also one’s character becomes the outcome of personal struggle, free choice, and responsibility.

 That is, the Stoic theory of spermatic logoi that he had put to use up to that point, into which J. von Arnim discovered many of his fragments of the Old Stoics. But hardly could any Stoic philosopher have ever endorsed Origen’s views expressed at this point.  Origen, commJohn, XX.5.37 8. On his notion of kind of ‘seeds’ other than the physiological ones, see op. cit. XX.2.2 6 and XX.5.34 (‘spiritual seeds’), Cels, I.37; V.18; commEph, 17. The quality of ‘cultivation’ of all kinds of ‘seeds’ by human free will makes in turn the present human body itself a ‘seed’, out of which one’s body of the next cosmic period will be formed in accordance with the quality of deeds during this life. comm1Cor, 84; 87. See supra, p. 951.

1288

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Testimonies about Origen on transmigration There is a widespread impression that the doctrine of transmigration or reincarnation was instilled into Christianity by Origen, and consequently this doctrine came to be synonymous with his name. How much of truth is there in this allegation? Gregory of Nyssa, writing one hundred and thirty years after Origen, said that, during his own times, the doctrine of the relation between soul and body was disputed among the churches (τὸ διεξετάσαι τὸ ἀμφιβαλλόμενον ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις περὶ ψυχῆς τε καὶ σώματος).⁴⁹¹ Therefore, we should try to sort out the testimonies about Origen, particularly the allegations attributing the doctrine of pre-existence to him. There are two kinds of references in this respect: either to the doctrine itself, with no mention of Origen being made; or references blaming Origen by name for holding this tenet. First, there are references rejecting the doctrine either implicitly or explicitly, and arguing that body and soul come into being simultaneously, while making no mention of Origen by name.⁴⁹² In a passing reference by Gregory of Nyssa there is nothing to suggest that he refers to Origen,⁴⁹³ whereas in two extensive passages which criticize a previous author ‘who treated the teaching about the first principles’⁴⁹⁴ Gregory certainly had not in mind Origen, as I will show in

 Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 229.  Aeneas of Gaza, Theophrastus, p. 1. Theodoret, Epistulae: Collectio Sirmondiana, 131. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarii in Joannem, v. 1, pp. 10 & 108 (he only mentions this doctrine as one sustained by ‘certain ones’; anyway, nowhere in Cyril’s corpus is Origen mentioned by name). Olympiodorus the deacon of Alexandria, Commentarii in Ecclesiasten, PG.93.52.14 20. Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina, 6. Cosmas Indicopleustes rejects the doctrine, he speaks of Ori gen in reverence (‘the wonderful Origen’) and dissents from him explicitly only on the doctrine of restoration. Topographia Christiana, 5.178: Αἰσχυνέσθωσαν τοίνυν Ἕλληνες οἱ συναΐδιον τῷ Θεῷ τὸν κόσμον ὑποτιθέμενοι καὶ προβιοτὴν καταγγέλλοντες καὶ ἀνάστασιν σωμάτων ἀθετοῦντες. Op. cit. 7.93: ᾿Aλλ᾿ οἱ μὲν αὐτῶν τὰς ψυχὰς μόνας μετὰ θάνατον περιπολεύειν σὺν τῇ σφαίρᾳ καὶ ὁρᾶν ἤτοι γινώσκειν πάντα λέγουσιν, οἱ δὲ καὶ μετενσωμάτωσιν βούλονται, ἄλλοι καὶ προ βιοτὴν ἀσπάζονται· οἷς καὶ ἕπεται λέγειν ἐξ ἀκολουθίας καταλύεσθαι τὴν σφαῖραν, ἤτοι πάσας, καὶ πᾶσαν σωματικὴν φύσιν ἀπόλλυσθαι καὶ ὑποστρέφειν εἰς τὴν ἀρχαίαν τάξιν τὰς ψυχάς, ὥσπερ καὶ οἱ περὶ τὸν θαυμάσιον Ὠριγένην δοξάζουσι. In op. cit. 7.95, he blames a certain author who embraced Greek doctrines and wrote ‘partially following the honourable Origen’ (εἰ μὴ ἐκ μέρους τῷ χρηστῷ Ὠριγένῃ), whose doctrines are ‘estranged from the faith of Christians’.  Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum Canticorum, p. 241: οὔτε γὰρ προϋπάρχει τοῦ σώματος ἡ ψυχὴ οὔτε προκατασκευάζεται τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ σῶμα, ἀλλ᾿ ὁμοχρόνως ἐν τῇ ζωῇ γίνονται. Record ed by Procopius of Gaza, Catena in Canticum Canticorum, p. 1649.  Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, p. 229; Dialogus De Anima et Resurrectione, PG.46.116.

Origen on the soul

1289

a work which hopefully will follow the present one, also determining who that previous author actually was. Secondly, authors mentioned Origen by name allegedly holding the doctrine of pre-existence and transmigration of souls. They should be classified in two categories, namely, those either before or after the age of Justinian. In the first category, there are two authors, to whom Jerome would be added, although his allegation was too extravagant and untrustworthy.⁴⁹⁵ In the second, there is a long series of theologians promptly endorsing the imperial orthodoxy and taking for granted that Origen was the father of this tenet within Christianity.⁴⁹⁶ Eustathius of Antioch, the detractor of Origen, made no mention of this doctrine, thus, there is no evidence that he laid it at the door of Origen. Even in his tract ‘On the soul against the Philosophers’ (fragments of which are quoted by John Damascus), no mention of Origen concerning this issue is made, although he defends the opinion that the soul is created simultaneously with the body. Therefore, the actual turning point was Justinian’s numerous references to Origen allegedly having advanced the doctrine of pre-existence.⁴⁹⁷ Prior to him, explicit obloquy against Origen appears only in Nemesius of Emesa and Epiphanius of Salamis. It was only after the fifth oecumenical council of Constantinople, in 553, that it became fashionable to blame Origen not only for this, but also for  Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 3, p. 44. Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, p. 411. P. Koetschau (Princ, fr. 17a) included an allegation by Jerome (Epistula ad Avitum, 4) claiming that Origen had argued ‘extensively’ (sermone latissimo disputavit) that angels or human souls or daemons might be condemned to inhabiting the bodies of beasts, even of fishes. Justinian employed this in his letter to Menas. However, Rufinus had rejected the calumniation and dismissed the doctrine of transmigration, as Origen himself did throughout his work.  Doctrina Patrum, p. 335. Pseudo Athanasius, Quaestiones ad Antiochum Ducem, PG.28.608.9 13, but the author attributes the doctrine to Manichaeans, whereas ‘Origenists’ are blamed for holding that ‘the soul was once an angel’. Pseudo Caesarius (= Cassian the Sa baite), Quaestiones et Responsiones, chapters 170 & 171. ACO, Synodus Constantinopolitana et Hi erosolymitana anno 536, tome 3, pp. 192 213. Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Euthymii. p. 39. Vita Sabae, pp. 124; 199. Antiochus of Palestine, Pandecta Scripturae Sacrae, 130. Anastasius of Sinai, Viae Dux, 5.1; 22.3; Capita vi Adversus Monotheletas, 10.4; In Hexaemeron, Book 11, lines 929 & 975; (not by name): Viae Dux, 2.5; In Constitutionem Hominis, 2, line 45. Pseudo Anastasius of Sinai, Questiones et Responsiones, 21.5. Germanus I of Constantinople, Narratio Haeresibus et Synodis ad Anthimum Diaconum, 9; cf. 33 & 34. John of Damascus, Expositio Fidei, 79; Oratio in Sabbatum Sanctum. 6. Theodore Studites, Epistulae, 532. George Syncellus, Ecloga Chronograph ica, p. 438. George Monachus, Chronicon, pp. 629; 633; Chronicon Breve, PG.110: 780.14; 782.22. Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 117, pp. 92a 93b (reviewing the work of an anonymous author defend ing Origen’s orthodoxy); Epistulae et Amphilochia, 1; 288. Arethas of Caesarea, Scripta Minora, 60, p. 22.  Justinian, Edictum contra Origenem, pp. 74; 76; 78; 80; 82; 84; 86; 88; 92; 96; 100; 110; 116. Epistula ad Synodum De Origene, p. 124.

1290

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

every possible and impossible heresy. This notwithstanding, John Philoponus speaks of Origen in admiration, and so did Cosmas Indicopleustes, although the latter made a general statement of disagreement with him.⁴⁹⁸ On the other hand, until the time when Justinian decided to anathematize Origen (in the mid‒530s), there were favourable references to his name. His defence by a good number of eminent figures was by far more authoritative than the references by Epiphanius, or, by such prelates as Methodius of Olympus or Eustathius of Antioch. Against Nemesius (who was more of a philosopher than a theologian, a convert anyway) and the fanatic fundamentalist Epiphanius, there are the great stars of Christian theology, who never said that Origen espoused this tenet: Athanasius attests to him having been an orthodox concerning the doctrine of Trinity,⁴⁹⁹ and speaks in admiration of Origen being a champion of the catholic faith.⁵⁰⁰ Basil of Caesarea noted that he had read Origen’s commentaries on the Psalms, where the Alexandrian venerated the Holy Spirit, ‘even though he is a man whose opinions about this issue are not entirely correct’,⁵⁰¹ which did not prevent Basil from compiling the Philocalia culling from Origen’s works. Origen flourished one century before Basil, and it would be argued in turn that, had Basil himself lived a century later, he would have made his references to the Holy Spirit fuller. Later still, in the turn of the fifth to sixth century, Procopius of Gaza composed his anthology on the Song of Songs quoting conveniently from Origen, as well as from Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, Didymus, Eusebius, Theodoret, and others.⁵⁰² The most important testimony comes from the historian Socrates. He reports that Athanasius used Origen’s books in the battle against Arianism,⁵⁰³ and that both Pamphilus and Eusebius defended him.⁵⁰⁴ In addition, he records the reaction to Epiphanius obloquy against Origen by a legendary saintly figure, namely, bishop Theotimus of Scythia. At the time when Epiphanius lobbied Theotimus in order to engineer a condemnation of Origen, Theotimus upbraided Epiphanius: he declared that he will not go along, and he ‘will not excommunicate people and works that our predecessors did not reject’ (ἐκβάλλων ἃ οἱ πρὸ ἡμῶν οὐκ

      

Supra, note 492, and John Philoponus, De Opificio Mundi, pp. 166; 195 6; 228; 278. Athanasius, De Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, 27.1. Athanasius, In illud: Qui Dixerit Verbum in Filium, PG.26.649: 21 22 & 38 39. Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 29.73. Procopius of Gaza, Catena in Canticum Canticorum, p. 1545. Socrates Scholasticus, Historia Ecclesiastica, 6.9; 6.13. Socrates Scholasticus, op. cit. 3.7; 4.27.

Origen on the soul

1291

ἠθέτησαν).⁵⁰⁵ Moreover, Theotimus declared that he had read himself Origen’s books and found nothing wrong with them, and then he went on with a devastating argument: there were four prelates accusing Origen, namely, Methodius of Olympus, Eustathius of Antioch, Apollinaris of Laodicea, and Theophilus of Alexandria, all of whom Theotimus styled ‘the slanderous tetrad’ (ἡ τῶν κακολόγων τετρακτύς). Since none of them was able to produce anything important on his own merit, they sought fame by speaking-evil of those who were superior to them. Theotimus’ point was this: each one of them accused Origen of different things, which suggests that they found the rest of Origen’s doctrines orthodox. Not a single doctrine of Origen’s was incriminated by at least two of them. Therefore, there was no alleged heresy by Origen pointed out by all four of them, nor even by two. In addition, after Methodius had rebuked Origen, he eventually turned an admirer of Origen, and wrote favourably of him in a certain a dialogue of his, entitled ‘the Guest-Chamber’ (ξενών). Therefore, Theotimus declares, ‘their obloquy against Origen, in my eyes, is a commendation of him’. ‘These men made a mistake, because by accusing Origen, they also accused Athanasius, the man who praised Origen as a great defender of orthodoxy’.⁵⁰⁶ A few decades later, the church historian Sozomenus recorded these accounts of Socrates: he was evidently impressed by Socrates’ compassion for Origen, as well as by Theotimus’ vigorous attack on Epiphanius in defence of Origen. Sozomenus is somewhat more explicit in recording Epiphanius’ malicious lobbying with the bishops that happened to be in Constantinople at that time, in order to secure condemnation of Origen: he had managed to persuade some prelates, but most of them did not go along.⁵⁰⁷ All in all, Sozomenus’ personal view was that Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus strengthened the faith of those who followed the Nicaean Creed only because they had studied Origen’s works.⁵⁰⁸ As late as the fifteenth century, shortly after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, Cardinal Bessarion names Origen as one of the ‘Greek Fathers and masters’, alongside the names of Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria.⁵⁰⁹ Writing to a friend of his, he tells him that there is no need for the addressee to send Origen’s Contra Celsum to Bessarion, ‘since we have this book, too’.⁵¹⁰

     

Socrates Scholasticus, loc. cit. Socrates Scholasticus, op. cit. 6.12: ὁ ἐπ᾿ εὐλαβείᾳ καὶ βίου ὀρθότητι περιβόητος Θεότιμος. Sozomenus, Historia Ecclesiastica, 8.14. Sozomenus, op. cit. 6.17.2. Bessarion, In Verbum Evangelii: sic eum volo manere, quid ad te?, 5.3. Bessarion, Epistulae, 37, p. 489.

1292

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

During the same period, Theodore Agallianus, a prelate of Constantinople, bishop of Media (a city of Peloponnesus in Greece), seems baffled: although ‘the great doctor and father Gregory of Nyssa was fascinated by Origen’s doctrine of apokatastasis’, subsequent doctors of the Church, and the catholic Church itself, condemned Origen and his followers as heretics, but they granted ‘the marvellous Gregory’ forgiveness,⁵¹¹ although he was indeed renown as an exponent of the doctrine of universal restoration, which he believed to be the real ‘resurrection’.⁵¹² Anastasius of Sinai notes that those who argued for the universal restoration (the ‘Origenists’) adduced ‘not few proof-passages’ (οὐκ ὀλίγας χρήσεις), not only from Gregory of Nyssa but also from his namesake of Nazianzus, but he does not specify those passages.⁵¹³ It appears, therefore, that the voices defending Origen before the era of Justinian were more learned, more authoritative, and not biased, compared to the opprobrium by those who incriminated him afterwards. What happened then? The answer to this is to be found in Palestine, namely, in the events that made up the Origenistic controversies during the sixth century, which I have canvassed elsewhere.⁵¹⁴

 Theodore Agallianus, De Providentia, p. 430: καὶ ἕτερος πρὸ αὐτοῦ μέγας διδάσκαλος καὶ πατὴρ Γρηγόριος ὁ Νύσσης συνηρπάγη τῷ δόγματι τοῦ Ὠριγένους τῷ περὶ ἀποκαταστάσεως καὶ κολάσεως τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν … ἀλλ᾿ οἱ ἐφεξῆς διδάσκαλοι καὶ ἡ καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία κατε ψηφίσαντο μὲν τῶν Ὠριγενειακῶν οἷς εἴποντο καὶ τὰ τοῦ Νύσσης ἐν τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ τῆς ἀπο καταστάσεως δίκην αἱρέσεως, τῷ δὲ θαυμαστῷ Γρηγορίῳ συνέγνωσαν.  A specific passage of Gregory of Nyssa, became almost proverbial; In Ecclesiasten, v. 5, p. 296: οὐδὲ γὰρ ἄλλο τι ἐστιν ἡ ἀνάστασις, εἰ μὴ πάντως ἡ εἰς τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἀποκατάστασις. Dia logus De Anima et Resurrectione, PG.46.148.1: ἀνάστασις ἐστὶν ἡ εἰς τὸ ἀρχαῖον τῆς φύσεως ἡμῶν ἀποκατάστασις. The phrase probably was earlier, perhaps it belonged to Eusebius (Commentaria in Psalmos, PG.23.1285.55 56: ἡ γὰρ ἀνάστασις εἰς τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἐστἱν ἀποκατάστασις), but poste rity quoted this ascribing it invariably to Gregory. Michael Glycas, Annales, pp. 177; 189; Quaes tiones in Sacram Scripturam, 5.56; 5.61 2; 7.72; 8.107; 8.114; 9.119; 78.274; 92.433. Barsanuphius and John, Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Coenobitas, 604. Maximus Confessor, Quaestiones et Dubia, 19. Anastasius of Sinai, Viae Dux, 22.3. Theodore Studites, Epistulae, 471 (quoted also by Marcus Eugenicus, Oratio Altera De Igne Purgatorio, p. 129). Gennadius Scholarius, De Spiritu Sancto i, Part 2 p. 55; Part 3, pp. 93 & 398; Part 6, p. 229; De Verbis Patrum Latinorum De Processu Spiritus Sancti, p. 54; Excerptum Tertii Dissertationis Theologicae, lines 2 9. Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 232, p. 291a; Cod. 233, p. 292a. Quoted as a proverb, Doctrina Patrum, p. 253: ᾿Aνάστασίς ἐστιν ἡ εἰς τὸ ἀρχαῖον τῆς φύσεως ἡμῶν ἀποκατάστασις.  Anastasius of Sinai, Viae Dux, 22.3. Gregory of Nazianzus would have expounded this in the following works: De Spiritu Sancto, 27, line 13; In Pentecosten, PG.36.444.24; In Novam Domini cam, PG.36.613.2; De Filio, 6, lines 24 27; In Sanctum Baptisma, PG.36.368.34.  RCR, chapter 6.

Origen on the soul

1293

Against transmigration Following this, we should consider Origen dismissing the notion of transmigration, indeed doing so vigorously throughout his work. He actually rejected not only Empedocles, Plato, and Pythagoras, but also certain Gnostics, such as Basilides (fl. c. 120‒140 AD),⁵¹⁵ which was an additional reason for Origen to repudiate the idea that had deep roots in Egypt.⁵¹⁶ Therefore, on the one hand, we have authors who laid this doctrine at his door, whereas, on the other, Origen himself spoke of his own doctrine of the soul as being ‘a more sublime’ one, while excoriating the notion of transmigration. As we saw, he distinguishes between ‘incarnation’ (ἐνσωμάτωσις)⁵¹⁷ and ‘reincarnation’ (μετενσωμάτωσις), rejecting the latter explicitly. He terms this doctrine either μετενσωμάτωσις or μετεμψύχωσις.⁵¹⁸

 Cf. Origen attacking Basilides in commMatt, 12.12; 12.23.  According to a testimony by Clement of Alexandria, Basilides explained the retribution by God ‘until third and fourth generation’ (Ex. 20:5; 34:7; Deut. 5:9) as denoting successive reincar nations. Clement of Alexandria, Excerpta ex Theodoto, 1.28.  See the term ἐνσωμάτωσις in reference to the doctrine of reincarnation: Origen, commJohn, VI.14.86 87. The term ἐνσωμάτωσις in reference to the Incarnation. Cels, I.43; II.38; VI.78; comm John, VI.5.29; VI.30.157; VI.34.172. Reference to Jacob and Esau: Princ, III.1.22. Clement explicity denounced ‘the best of [Greek] philosophers’ for having appropriated (σφετερισαμένους) the doctrine of transmigration from the Egyptians. Stromateis, 4.6.35.1. Cf. repudiation of the doc trine, in op. cit. 4.12.85.3. Photius read the Hypotyposeis in ‘eight volumes’ under the name of Clement, where transmigration was sustained (Ἔτι δὲ μετεμψυχώσεις καὶ πολλοὺς πρὸ τοῦ ᾿Aδὰμ κόσμους τερατεύεται), but he doubted as to whether this was actually Clement’s work (ἄλλα δὲ μυρία φλυαρεῖ καὶ βλασφημεῖ, εἴτε αὐτός, εἴτε τις ἕτερος τὸ αὐτοῦ πρόσωπον ὑποκριθείς). Bibliotheca, Cod. 109, p. 89a.  Origen, homLuc, 4, p. 27: Οὐ γὰρ ἐν ψυχῇ Ἠλίου φησίν· οὐ γὰρ ἦν μετεμψύχωσις, ἀλλ᾿ ἐν πνεύματι καὶ δυνάμει Ἠλίου. Ἦν γὰρ ἐπὶ τὸν Ἠλίαν πνεῦμα καὶ δύναμις, εἴτ᾿ οὖν πνευματικὸν χάρισμα, ὥσπερ καὶ ἐπὶ ἕκαστον τῶν προφητῶν. Τὸ οὖν πνεῦμα, ὅπερ ἦν ἐν Ἠλίᾳ, γέγονεν ἐν Ἰωάννῃ. frLuc, 17e: πλὴν καὶ ὁ Ἠλίας οὔπω ἀπέθανεν, καὶ οὐ δυνατόν, οὐδὲ κατὰ τὸν ἐκείνων λόγον, μίαν ψυχὴν ἐν ἑνὶ καιρῷ ἐν δύο σώμασιν ἐνεργεῖν. Loc. cit.: ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ τοῖς πρὸς μετεμ ψύχωσιν βουλομένοις τὸ ῥῆμα βιάζεσθαι χώραν δίδωσιν ἡ ἱστορία. ἐτόλμησαν γὰρ πολλοὶ ταύ την ἐπιρρῖψαι τὴν θεωρίαν τῇ τοῦ κυρίου φωνῇ. καὶ εἰ ἦν Ἠλίας ἀποθανών, ἐδίδοτο πρὸς τοῦτο χώρα αὐτοῖς· εἰ δὲ μετὰ σώματος ἀνελήφθη, πῶς ψυχὴ ἡ ἐνσώματος εἰς ἕτερον σῶμα μετεκομίσθη; ἀλλὰ τό· ἐν πνεύματι, ὡς ἀποδέδοται, ἐν τῷ προφητικῷ λέγει χαρίσματι. Philocalia, 20: ἐν οἷς καὶ κατὰ μετεμψυχώσεως καὶ περὶ οἰωνιστικῆς καὶ τῆς κατ᾿ αὐτὴν ἀπάτης. τόμου τε τάρτου κατὰ Κέλσου. selEz, PG.13.805.54 808.2: Οὔ γάρ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν τὴν γῆν ταύτην ἣν πατοῦ μεν εἶναι λογικήν, καὶ αὐτὴν ἁμαρτάνειν, ὥς τινες ἐφαντάσθησαν. Εἰ γὰρ τοῦτο δώσομεν, ὥρα τὰ πάντα λέγειν ἔμψυχα, καὶ συνηγορεῖν τοῖς τὰς μετεμψυχώσεις εἰσάγουσι.

1294

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Basilides, failing to observe that these things ought to be understood of natural law, drags the apostle’s discourse into senseless and godless fables⁵¹⁹ and attempts to build out of this utterance⁵²⁰ of the apostle the doctrine called μετενσωμάτωσις,⁵²¹ that is, that souls are transferred into one body after another. For he says that the apostle says, I was once alive apart from the law, ⁵²² that is, before I came into this body, I lived in a bodily form which was not under law, namely, that of a cow or a bird. But he has failed to look at what follows, namely, But when the commandment came, sin revived. ⁵²³ For Paul did not say that he came to the commandment, but the commandment came to him; and he did not say that sin did not exist in him, but that it was dead and revived. By these statements, he assuredly shows that he was saying both things about one and the same life of his. But let Basilides and those who share his perceptions left to their own impiety. Let us, however, turn to the sense of the apostle in accordance with pious reverence toward ecclesiastical doctrine.⁵²⁴

This commentary is a later and mature one, explicitly styling the doctrine of reincarnation impious and contrary to the ecclesiastical doctrine. In his commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon, Origen wrote likewise, deploring those who did not understand the scriptures and believed that souls are transferred from one body to another, even into bodies of animals; as a result, those people thought that a man may become a foal or a donkey, and likewise, his soul may assume the body of a snake, a horse, or other animals (et putaverunt transmutari humanam animam in pecudam corpora, ut aestimarent quod aliquando serpentis suscipit corpus vel viperae, aliquando equi, vel reliquorum animalium).⁵²⁵ This staunch rejection of transmigration was one of the ideas that accompanied him since the early stages of his life. In the sixth book of his commentary on John, which he wrote upon his decampment to Caesarea of Palestine, he wrote this: We will also have to investigate what reincarnation (μετενσωμάτωσις) is in a strict sense, in what way it differs from incarnation (ἐνσωματώσεως), and if sustaining reincarnation en tails also maintaining the world as incorruptible.⁵²⁶ In these investigations it will also be necessary to compare the arguments of those who sustain, in accordance with the scrip tures, the soul to be sown together with the body and the consequences which follow these arguments. In general, since the theory of the soul is sublime and difficult to interpret

       

Cf. 1 Tim. 4:7. Ref. to Rom. 7:8 10. Greek in the Latin text. Rom. 7:8 9. Rom. 7:9. Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Latin), pp. 318 9. Pamphilus, Apologia pro Origene, PG.17.614 5. He developed this argument later in his life, in the commentary on Matthew, 13.1.

Origen on the soul

1295

(ὁ περὶ ψυχῆς λόγος πολὺς καὶ δυσερμήνευτος ὤν), and it is gathered from words occurring here and there in the scripture (ἀναλεχθησόμενος ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν ταῖς γραφαῖς σποράδην κει μένων), it needs its own systematic treatise.⁵²⁷

We have no specific treatise by Origen dealing with the issue of the soul. Nevertheless, one thing is for sure: he believed that the scriptural teaching was that the soul is sown together with the body. As he put it, ‘if Celsus had grasped what is appropriate for a soul which will attain to eternal life, and what one should sustain about its essence and origin, he could not have ridiculed the immortal⁵²⁸ entering a mortal body, which takes place not according to Plato’s doctrine of the transmigration of souls, but according to a different and more sublime theory’ (οὐ κατὰ τὴν Πλάτωνος μετενσωμάτωσιν ἀλλὰ κατ᾿ ἄλλην τινὰ ὑψηλοτέραν θεωρίαν).⁵²⁹ This is a good reason for us to explore this ‘sublime doctrine’ and essay to reconstruct it, to the extent this is possible, at least. In spite of his own statements, in Christian literature to speak of transmigration of souls or (which is the same) pre-existence, came to be tantamount to speaking of Origen, especially after Justinian’s edict which incriminated him. This, despite the fact that Origen himself explicitly and repeatedly rejected the doctrine, and the compilers of the Philocalia included extensive accounts of his rebuttal into their anthology (chapters 18 & 22). Consequently, on the one hand, he dismisses Plato’s doctrine by name, while on the other he has been, and still is, accused of having smuggled Platonism into Christian doctrine. That being the case, before anything else, we have to agree on a minimum basis, which is this: was Origen a paranoid schizophrenic so as to codemn Plato’s doctrine and yet to espouse it? If we agree that his work does not allow for this, we should move on to the next step, which is reading his work, notably, Contra Celsum and his commentary on Matthew: he warns that the doctrine of the soul is ‘secret and mysterious’, and he does so by using a Platonic phraseology in order to dismiss Plato’s tenet altogether: And the statement that the man who was cast out of Paradise with the woman was clothed with skin tunics, ⁵³⁰ which God made for those who had sinned on account of the transgres sion of mankind, has a certain secret and mysterious meaning, which is superior to the Pla

 Origen, commJohn, VI.14.86 87. Once again, he uses the language of Heb. 5:11.  τὸν ἀθάνατον. Perhaps, either τὸ ἀθάνατον, or τὸν ἀθάνατον λόγον. He does not say τὴν ἀθάνατον ψυχήν. H. Chadwick’s translation (p. 195) ‘an immortal person entering a mortal per son’ is misleading.  Origen, Cels, IV.17.  Gen. 3:21.

1296

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

tonic doctrine of the descent of the soul (ὑπὲρ τὴν κατὰ Πλάτωνα κάθοδον τῆς ψυχῆς), which loses its wings and is carried hither ‘until it gets hold of something solid.’ ⁵³¹

Likewise, The doctrine concerning these things is a great and mystical one (πολὺς δ᾿ ὁ λόγος καὶ μυσ τικός) and not everyone is able to be taught it. The souls are bound with a body not accord ing to the doctrine of reincarnation (οὐκ ἐκ μετενσωματώσεως)’.⁵³²

I have canvassed the issue of ‘skin tunics’, and showed that Origen had nothing to do with this.⁵³³ Even fifth- and sixth-century theologians, such as deacon Olympiodorus of Alexandria,⁵³⁴ or Cosmas Indicopleustes, who attacked the doctrine, are either silent about Origen, or gentle to him, even though they were dismissive of some of his other doctrines.⁵³⁵ In the fifth century, the theory of preexistence and transmigration (the former was rendered through the rare term προβιοτή) was espoused by the Neoplatonist philosopher Hierocles of Alexandria (c. 430), whom Photius criticized while admiring his book.⁵³⁶ To Origen, the ‘Platonists who espoused all those beliefs about reincarnation’ would have appeared ‘foolish’ (μωρίαν ἀνειληφέναι) to ‘Stoics and Peripatetics’.⁵³⁷ Despite Jerome’s allegations, he dismissed vehemently the idea about the ‘soul which falls from the vaults of the heaven and descends as far as irrational animals, not only the tame but even those which are very wild’, which is simply part of ‘the fictitious doctrine of transmigration’ (τὴν μυθικὴν μετενσωμάτωσιν).⁵³⁸ By contrast, ‘we cure those who have suffered harm caused by the folly of transmigration (τοὺς πεπονθότας τὴν περὶ μετενσωματώσεως ἄνοιαν) taught by the physicians (ἀπὸ ἰατρῶν) who degrade the rational nature

 Origen, op. cit. IV.40, using the phraseology of Plato, Phaedrus, 246c; however, according to Hierocles of Alexandria, this idea and vocabulary belonged to Empedocles. In Aureum Carmen, 24.3: ὃν ἀπολιπὼν τῇ ὁρμῇ τῆς πτερορρυήσεως εἰς γήινον ἔρχεται σῶμα ὀλβίου αἰῶνος ἀμερθείς.  Origen, op. cit. V.29; partially using the language of Heb. 5:11.  See RCR, pp. 290 300; 348.  Olympiodorus, the deacon of Alexandria, Commentarii in Ecclesiasten, PG.93.525.16 20: ἔρχεται δὲ εἰς σῶμα ἡ ψυχὴ ἵνα παιδεύηται, ἀγαθὸν ἄρα ἡ ἐν σώματι ζωὴ ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐν τῇ προ βιοτῇ ἁμαρτανούσης ψυχῆς, καὶ θείας ἐπιστροφῆς μὴ ἀξιουμένης. ᾿Aνατέτραπται οὖν οὗτος ὁ λόγος, οὐδὲ προϋπέστη ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ σώματος.  Aeneas of Gaza, Theophrastus, p. 1: ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ἀνθρώπων προβιοτὴ καὶ ὅτι ἀθάνατος ἡ ψυχή. Loc. cit. Ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ἀνθρώπων προβιοτή· ἔλεγχος τῆς παρ᾿ Ἕλλησι λογομαχίας.  Hierocles of Alexandria, op. cit. 10.27. Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 214, p. 172b.  Origen, Cels, I.13: τὸν Πλατωνικόν, πιστεύοντα τῇ ἀθανασίᾳ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τοῖς περὶ αὐτῆς λεγομένοις περὶ μετενσωματώσεως.  Origen, op. cit. I.20. Cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 246b d.

Origen on the soul

1297

sometimes to an entirely irrational animal, sometimes even to that which is incapable of perception’.⁵³⁹ Who are those ‘physicians’? Plato had not taught reincarnation into plants. His view was that ‘those who have indulged in gluttony and violence and drunkenness, and have taken no pains to avoid them, are likely to pass into the bodies of asses and other beasts of the sort … and those who have chosen injustice and tyranny and robbery pass into the bodies of wolves and hawks and kites.’⁵⁴⁰ By the same token, in the Timaeus, we are told that ‘one who has failed shall be changed into woman’s nature at the second birth; and if, in that shape, he still does not refrain from wickedness, he shall be changed every time, according to the nature of his wickedness, into some bestial form after the similitude of his own nature.’⁵⁴¹ Hence, Plato classifies degradation of men through reincarnation to women, then to ‘the tribe of birds’, then to ‘the wild species of animal that goes on foot’, and, worst of all, to ‘the tribe of fishes and of shell-fish (or, oysters) and all creatures of the waters’. His general conclusion is that ‘living creatures keep passing into one another in all these ways, as they undergo transformation by the loss or by the gain of reason and unreason (νοῦ καὶ ἀνοίας ἀποβολῇ καὶ κτήσει μεταβαλλόμενα)’.⁵⁴² What Plato did not explain is the sense that ‘sin’ could possibly make in a bird, so that this animal should incur reincarnation into the worse condition of an oyster. In Plato, however, there is not a word about reincarnation into plants, which is why Origen does not mention his name at that point. This idea was advanced by Empedocles,⁵⁴³ and definitely it was Plotinus who expounded it seriously. Ac-

 Origen, op. cit. III.75.  Plato, Phaedo, 81e; so in 82b (passing into ‘species, as those of bees or wasps or ants’); like wise, Respublica, 620a (‘the soul of Orpheus selected the life of a swan’).  Plato, Timaeus, 42a; cf. 90e.  Plato, op. cit. 91d 92b.  Empedocles, apud Diogenes Laertius, op. cit. 8.77, and Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 1.3.2 (becoming ‘either bush or fish’). Empedocles, fr. 117. Diels excerpted this from these authors and made it fr. 117. Actually, there are more references, some of which are fuller: Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 6.2.24.3. John Philoponus, commAnim, p. 140 (remarking that Empedocles said this because ‘he was a Pythagorean’: Πυθαγόρειος γὰρ καὶ οὗτος). Olympiodo rus of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 1.3. Sophonias, paraphrPhys, p. 24. George Cedrenus gave a fuller quotation in his Compendium Historiarum, p. 276: ἐγὼ ὅδ᾿ εἰμὶ θεὸς ἄμβροτος, οὐκέτι θνητός. ἦτοι μὲν πρῶτα κοῦρος ἐγενόμην κόρη τε καὶ θὴρ καὶ θάμνος καὶ ἐξ ἁλὸς ἔμπνοος ἰχθὺς καὶ ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ βοῦς. See this (including Empedocles’ reference to himself having been ‘an ox at Olympia’ [not in D K]), in Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, 1.1. Suda, letter epsilon, entry 1003; letter pi, entry 3121. A fuller quotation appears in the Anthologia Grae ca, 9, epigram 569. Also, according to Empedocles, in case a man should have to result in becom

1298

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

cording to Plato’s statement in the Phaedrus, 246b, ‘the soul, considered collectively, has a care for all that is soulless, and it traverses the whole heaven, appearing sometimes in one form and sometimes in another’. Consequently, Plotinus avers that ‘it traverses the entire universe at different times, either in the perceptive form, or the rational, or in this growth-form’ (ἢ ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ φυτικῷ).⁵⁴⁴ It is then possible that Origen had in mind either Empedocles or Plotinus,⁵⁴⁵ or perhaps Pythagoras, whom he associates with transmigration into animals (though not in plants) at another point.⁵⁴⁶ But since the reference is to ‘physicians’, this was probably a metaphorical expression pointing to Plotinus’ pertinent ethical ideas. Origen revisited the doctrine of reincarnation intermittently, always with the purpose to reject it, sometimes to mock it. ‘But it is perhaps those who hold the doctrine of reincarnation who would speak of a narrow descent again’ (κάθοδον δὲ αὖθις στενὴν τάχα οἱ τὴν μετενσωμάτωσιν εἰσάγοντες φήσουσιν).⁵⁴⁷ ‘The soul needs always a body; our doctrine of resurrection has nothing to do with the doctrine of transmigration’, as those who ‘misheard of our doctrine of resurrection might presume’ (τῆς μετενσωματώσεως παρακούσαντες).⁵⁴⁸ Beyond the rebuttal of Celsus, in the commentary on John there are extensive accounts in order to secure that, when Jesus said about the Baptist ‘this is Elias’, the statement by no means should be taken as suggesting reincarnation.

Body / Soul / Spirit: logoi co-existing differently There is a noteworthy designation that Origen applies to himself, which is ἐκκλησιαστικὸς (‘a man of the Church’). This appears for the first time in the sixth book

ing either an animal or a plant, the best ‘decampemnt’ for him would be to become ‘either lion or laurel’ respectively. Aelian, De Natura Animalium, 12.7.  Plotinus, op. cit. III.4.2. Furthermore: “But if they did not even live by sense along with their desires but coupled them with dullness of perception, they even turn into plants’ (ἀλλὰ νωθείᾳ αἰσθήσεως μετ᾿ αὐτῶν καὶ φυτά). Pophyry took exception to his master’s teaching on this point. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, X.30.  I discuss the philosophical relationship between Origen and Plotinus in a forthcoming bi ography of Origen.  Origen, Cels, VIII.30: “In no way do we speak about reincarnation of the soul, and fall of it down to dumb animals; clearly then, we do not share the views of Pythagoras (οὐδαμῶς μέντοι γε λέγοντες μετενσωμάτωσιν εἶναι ψυχῆς καὶ κατάπτωσιν αὐτῆς μέχρι τῶν ἀλόγων ζῴων, δηλο νότι οὐδ᾿ ὁμοίως Πυθαγόρᾳ).”  Origen, op. cit. VI.36, quoting also an expression of Celsus.  Origen, op. cit. VII.32.

Origen on the soul

1299

of his commentary on John, evidently reflecting his sense of responsibility and pride at having been ordained presbyter upon his decampment to Caesarea. The same adjective appears in his commentaries and homilies on Matthew, on Luke, and on Jeremiah, but now it has a different import: Origen attacks ‘men of the Church’ (actually bishops) who are corrupt and unworthy of the office and of that title.⁵⁴⁹ When he left Caesarea to decamp to Tyre, where he spent the last twenty-eight years of his life, he no longer used this title. In all probability, he was presbyter only nominally, if at all, and definitely his relationship with the local bishop would not have been worse. This is important to point out: if in Alexandria a downright rejection of transmigration was part of marshaling his assault on the Gnostics, and this was mentioned in passing, later, he felt that a positive theory was required, especially in view of what was said of John the Baptist, in Matt. 11:14 (‘and if you wish to accept it, this is Elias who was to come’)⁵⁵⁰ and Luke, 1:17 (‘and he will go before them with the spirit and power of Elias’).⁵⁵¹ When he came upon Matt. 11:14, in the second book of his commentary on John, he did not engage in any specific treatment of the portion in order to exclude pre-existence of John’s soul; neither were those two points the cause for him to reject the idea of transmigration of souls.⁵⁵² As a matter of fact, in Origen’s work, the terms for transmigration (μετενσωμάτωσις,⁵⁵³ μετεμψύχωσις⁵⁵⁴) were used only after he had decamped from Alexandria: μετενσωμάτωσις appears

 Origen, commJohn, VI: 11.66; 11.69; 11.70; 13.74; 13.76; 13.77; 14.79; XIII.44.294; selEx, PG.12.289.49 53: Ὁ δὲ ἐκκλησιαστικός, οὔτε ὡς Ἰουδαῖος σωματικῶς ἀκούει τῶν λεγομένων, οὔτε ὡς αἱρετικὸς ἀναπλάσσει ἄλλον, ἀλλ᾿ ἕστηκεν ἀμφοτέρων μέσος, καὶ λέγει καλῶς μὲν ταῦτα γεγράφθαι· οὐκ οἶδα δὲ τῶν γεγραμμένων τὸν νοῦν. homJob, PG.12.1033.31 32: Οἱ δὲ εἰ δότες αὐτοῦ τὰ σφάλματα ἐκκλησιαστικοὶ ἐροῦμεν. homJer, 9.1: καθ᾿ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἐκκλησιαστικούς. But then, there is a turning point: homJer, 11.3: οὐ πάντως ὁ κλῆρος σῴζει· πολλοὶ γὰρ καὶ πρε σβύτεροι ἀπολοῦνται, πολλοὶ καὶ λαϊκοὶ μακάριοι ἀποδειχθήσονται. Ἐπεὶ οὖν τινές εἰσιν ἐν κλήρῳ οὐχ οὕτως βιοῦντες ὥστε ὠφεληθῆναι καὶ κοσμῆσαι τὸν κλῆρον. commJohn, XXXII.12.133: ὥστε τοὺς ἐν ὁποιᾳποτοῦν ὑποθέσει βίου τυγχάνοντας πιστοὺς τοῦτο ποιεῖν, εἴτε ἐν ἐκκλησιαστικῇ δοκοῦντας εἶναι ὑπεροχῇ ἐπισκόπους καὶ πρεσβυτέρους, εἴτε καὶ ἐν ἄλ λοις κοσμικοῖς τισιν ἀξιώμασιν. commMatt, 16.8: καὶ ἐξαιρέτως ἐν τοῖς ὑπεροχήν τινα ὀνόματος ἐκκλησιαστικοῦ φοροῦσι. homLuc, 2, p. 13; so in the Latin translation, homLuc, 16.6. selPs, PG.12: 1608.18; 1681.26 28: ἐλεγμοὺς δὲ ἐν τοῖς λαοῖς, τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσι, κατὰ τὸν βίον νομιζομένοις ἐκκλησιαστικοῖς.  Origen, commJohn, II: 30.181; 37.224; VI: 10.62; 46.238; frJohn, 75; commMatt, 10.20; 12.9.  Origen, op. cit. VI: 10.63; 11.66; 11.67; 20.114; homLuc, 4, p. 27; commMatt, 10.20; 13.2.  Origen, op. cit. II: 30.181; 37.224.  Cf. μετενσωμάτωσις: commJohn, VI: 10.64; 11.66; 11.70; 12.72; 12.73; 14.86; commMatt, 10.20; 13.1 2; Cels, I.13; I.20; III.75; IV.17; V.29; V.49; VI.36; VII.32; VIII.30.  Cf. μετεμψύχωσις: homLuc, 4, p. 27; selEz, PG.13.808.2.

1300

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

for the first time in the sixth book of his commentary on John (the first book that he wrote in Caesarea), and then in the Contra Celsum and the commentary on Matthew. Interestingly, the term μετεμψύχωσις appears only in comments on Luke and on Ezekiel, which would suggest that they belong to later works of his, since he used μετεμψύχωσις instead of μετενσωμάτωσις by the end of his life.⁵⁵⁵ The term ‘transmigration’ shows for the first time in the sixth book of the commentary on John, written in Caesarea. In this book, the idea of the second book of the commentary on John, namely, reference to an already existing soul that has been ‘sown together with the body’, is gone. There is a battery of statements mentioning ‘transmigration’ by its own name and rejecting it out of hand.⁵⁵⁶ That having been said, I should make a brief note on a question which is not the place to expound fully: Origen’s life should be divided in four periods: one, his pagan period; two, his life in Alexandria as a Christian; three, his life after decampment from Alexandria; four, his life in Tyre, where he died after having lived there for twenty-eight years. Too much credit has been given to Eusebius, and all too easily has Porphyry’s testimony about Origen been dismissed. But what reason would Porphyry possibly have had to lie about Origen? Why should he have picked up an intellectual of the ‘audacious barbaric enterprise’ (βάρβαρον τόλμημα), which was how he styled Christianity, in order to claim one of their intellectuals as ‘a Greek nourished by means of the Greek paideia? (Ἕλλην ἐν Ἕλλησιν παιδευθεὶς λόγοις)’.⁵⁵⁷ By contrast, it is well-known that Eusebius was a good intellectual only on matters that were of no concern to the imperial court; otherwise, he had no inhibitions about leaving real history aside, and make up history, in which the implausible hagiography of Origen should be included.

 Origen did not end his life in Caesarea, nor did he remain there for a long time, namely for more than two years. This issue is out of my present scope, and I postpone discussion of this until a new biography of his is published.  Origen, commJohn, VI.10.64: τάχα τούτῳ χρήσονται οἱ ἐκ τούτων τῷ περὶ μετενσωματώ σεως παριστάμενοι λόγῳ, ὡς τῆς ψυχῆς μεταμφιεννυμένης σώματα καὶ οὐ πάντως μεμνημένης τῶν προτέρων βίων. Op. cit. VI.11.66: Ἕτερος δέ τις ἐκκλησιαστικὸς τὸν περὶ τῆς μετενσωματώ σεως ἀποπτύων ὡς ψευδῆ λόγον. Op. cit. VI.11.70: ἐκκλησιαστικὸς … ἑτέρως παρὰ τὸν ὑπολαμ βάνοντα μετενσωμάτωσιν ἀπολογούμενος ἐρεῖ. Op. cit. VI.12.72: Ὁ δὲ πρῶτος, οὗ τὸν νοῦν παρ εθήκαμεν οἰομένου μετενσωμάτωσιν ἐντεῦθεν κατασκευάζεσθαι. Op. cit. VI.12.73: τὸ Σὺ Ἠλίας εἶ … δῆλον ὅτι τοῦτο ἔλεγον τὸ περὶ μετενσωματώσεως δόγμα οἰόμενοι εἶναι ἀληθὲς ὡς πάτριον τυγχάνον καὶ οὐκ ἀλλότριον τῆς ἐν ἀπορρήτοις διδασκαλίας αὐτῶν.  Porphyry, Contra Christianos, fr. 39, apud Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, 6.19.7.

Origen on the soul

1301

Withdrawal from Greek philosophy and conversion to Christian doctrine was to Origen a agonizing groping for truth. This makes this genius all the more admirable, given that it turned out that a former pagan celebrity eventually paved the way to Nicaea. How could Eusebius possibly have reported that an ex-pagan formed the most august doctrine of Christianity? Origen’s Trinitarian orthodoxy was solemnly acknowledged by Athanasius, who though emphasized that Origen wrote many things ‘as an exercise’ on issues that had not been settled by the official doctrine.⁵⁵⁸ The doctrine of the relation between soul and body remained controversial until long after the death of Origen, as Gregory of Nyssa wrote with reference to his own times. Therefore, none of the four periods of Origen’s life just mentioned was entirely uniform in terms of the doctrines he espoused. When he was writing the De Principiis, he concept of Diety was the Anaxagorean Nous, and hardly had he formed any complete doctrine of the Trinity. But when he wrote the rejoinder to Celsus by the end of his life at Tyre, he had indeed advanced on this doctrine. In his first two books of the commentary on John, there were some apparently flawing points (assuming they were not interpolated by later fanatics, who revelled in styling themselves anti-Origenists). At least one of the two first books of that commentary was written before De Principiis, as argued below,⁵⁵⁹ and, by that time, Origen had not yet a clear grasp of the difference between the spirit of a man and the Holy Spirit. Only if we recognize a certain evolution in Origen’s thought can we follow him on the issue of the soul. When he wrote the second book of the commentary on John in Alexandria, he was struggling to form a Christian theory of it flowing from scattered statements here and there in scripture, which is why he wrote:

 Athanasius, De Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, 27.1: ἃ μὲν γὰρ ὡς ζητῶν καὶ γυμνάζων ἔγραψε, ταῦτα μὴ ὡς αὐτοῦ φρονοῦντος δεχέσθω τις, ἀλλὰ τῶν πρὸς ἔριν φιλονεικούντων ἐν τῷ ζητεῖν.  The division of human being into body, soul, spirit (which is made in the Princ, as well as in the latest works of Origen) was not advanced explicitly in the second book of the commentary on John. commJohn, II.21.138: “Man is characterized either by soul or body or both of these together, but not also of spirit, which is more divine than these. The spiritual man receives this title in accordance with his predominate participation in the spirit” (τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἤτοι ἐν ψυχῇ ἢ ἐν σώματι ἢ ἐν συναμφοτέροις χαρακτηριζομένου, οὐχὶ δὲ καὶ ἐν τῷ τούτων θειοτέρῳ πνεύματι, οὗ κατὰ μετοχὴν ἐπικρατοῦσαν χρηματίζει ὁ πνευματικός). Nevertheless, in the course of devel opment of his ideas, he distinguished the human spirit from the Holy Spirit.

1302

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

He who is careful to do nothing unjustly, or by chance or caprice, must admit that John’s soul, being older than his body and subsisting prior to it, was sent to the ministry of testi mony concerning the light.⁵⁶⁰

From this thesis, he ended up with the commentary on Matthew arguing that what Elias and John had in common was definitely not the soul. Nevertheless, even during his early Christian stages, he was besieged by doubts and not categorical on his opinion. If the overall theory concerning the soul is sound, namely, that the soul has not been sown simultaneously with the body but exists before it (οὐ συνεσπαρμένης τῷ σώματι ἀλλὰ πρὸ αὐτοῦ τυγχανούσης), and for various reasons is clothed with flesh and blood, the expres sion sent by God ⁵⁶¹ will no longer seem to be exceptional when used of John.⁵⁶²

In other words, pre-existence would hold for all human beings. Origen, therefore, essayed a tentative explanation introduced with a big if. Once a process of evolution in Origen’s thought is not grasped, then one is bound to be trapped into absurd generalizations about a ‘Platonist Origen’ making use of statements that turn out self-conflicting. There are those who want to see similarities with the De Principiis, II.9.1‒8. I should not deny this. But no one should be blind to the fact that, in the first books of commentary on John, Origen had only started his long journey to his real theology, which paved the way to Nicaea. In the second book of the commentary on John, he made the foregoing tentative statement, which displays doubts and uncertainty, but he had no better exegesis to offer by that time. In the sixth book of the same work, he made mention of those who hold that the soul is sown simultaneously with the body (συσπείρεσθαι), according to scriptures (κατὰ τὰς γραφάς).⁵⁶³ His doubts had grown, but he was not sure of anything yet, and he was still in a limbo. Even the verb he used, that the soul is sown along with the body has things to tell us, as discussed later. This is not about the hackneyed idea of qualities sown in the soul: it is about the soul itself being sown. He maintained this notion until

 Origen, commJohn, II.30.181: ἀναγκαῖον παραδέξασθαι πρεσβυτέραν οὖσαν τὴν Ἰωάννου ψυχὴν τοῦ σώματος καὶ πρότερον ὑφεστῶσαν πεπέμφθαι ἐπὶ διακονίαν τῆς περὶ τοῦ φωτὸς μαρ τυρίας. The question of whether souls pre exist is posed by Origen always in the same context, namely, in relation to scriptural references to John the Baptist, either when he was a fetus (Luke, 1:15), or when Jesus associated him with Elias (Matt. 11:14; Luke, 1:17).  John, 1:16.  Origen, op. cit. II.30.182; italics are mine.  Origen, op. cit. VI.14.86.

Origen on the soul

1303

the end of his life.⁵⁶⁴ Literally, this comes from Plato, and was revered by Proclus, who wrote, ‘by the term sowing Plato indicates the fall of the soul into becoming’.⁵⁶⁵ Plato had indeed done so once,⁵⁶⁶ but Proclus made it a recurrent motif through the Theory of Logoi. The tenor of his statements is sheer Anaxagorean, but it is highly unlikely that he was aware of this. For in fact he followed Porphyry who however was aware of who the father of such propositions was.⁵⁶⁷ This is why more significant is its usage of this idea by Porphyry.⁵⁶⁸ In any event, we should bear in mind that the notion of generation (of anything) put in terms of development out of seeds was fathered by no other than Anaxagoras, which I discuss presently in relation to Origen’s theory of soul. Not only does the term ‘transmigration’ appear in the sixth book of the commentary on John, but also the notion of the difference between soul and spirit is there, too. The idea sought authority in 1 Thess. 5:23, and it was as old as the De Principiis. However, Origen had not yet elaborated on this: he had only entertained the distinction in order to sustain the threefold approach to scriptural exegesis (literal, ethical, spiritual) corresponding to the three parts that comprise a human being (body, soul, spirit).⁵⁶⁹ He put this distinction into pregnant theological use only later.⁵⁷⁰

 Cf. Origen, op. cit. II.30.182: Ἐὰν δὲ κρατῇ ὁ καθόλου περὶ ψυχῆς λόγος ὡς οὐ συνεσπαρ μένης τῷ σώματι ἀλλὰ πρὸ αὐτοῦ τυγχανούσης. commMatt, 15.35: εἰ γὰρ συνεσπάρη ἡ ψυχὴ τῷ σώματι.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 154: καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς διασπείρουσι περὶ τὴν γένεσιν· σπορὰν γὰρ καὶ ὁ Πλάτων ὀνομάζει τὴν εἰς γένεσιν πτῶσιν τῆς ψυχῆς.  Plato, Phaedo, 83d e: ὥστε ταχὺ πάλιν πίπτειν εἰς ἄλλο σῶμα καὶ ὥσπερ σπειρομένη ἐμφύεσθαι. Cf. Timaeus, 41c d.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 3, p. 233: βέλτιον οὖν, ὡς ὁ διδάσκαλος ἡμῶν ἐπέκρινε, σπορὰν τὴν γέ νεσιν ἀκούειν, ἐπεὶ καὶ προσήκει τῷ πατρὶ τὸ σπείρειν καὶ τὸ λόγους γεννᾶν. Op. cit. v. 3, p. 234: σπείρει μὲν οὖν τὴν ψυχὴν γεννῶν ὡς λόγων πατήρ, ὑπάρχεται δὲ τὸ ὄχημα παράγων· τοῦτο γὰρ ἀρχή ἐστιν ἤδη τῆς θνητοειδοῦς ζωῆς. commRep, v. 2, p. 279: διεσπείροντο δὲ ἐν τοῖς ὑποδε χομένοις, ἄλλης ψυχῆς ἄλλον κλῆρον λαγχανούσης.  Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum, 14: καὶ χιτών γε τὸ σῶμα τῇ ψυχῇ ὃ ἠμφίεσται, θαῦμα τῷ ὄντι ἰδέσθαι, εἴτε πρὸς τὴν σύστασιν ἀποβλέποις εἴτε πρὸς τὴν πρὸς τοῦτο σύνδεσιν τῆς ψυχῆς. οὕτω καὶ παρὰ τῷ Ὀρφεῖ ἡ Κόρη, ἥπερ ἐστὶ παντὸς τοῦ σπειρομένου ἔφορος.  Origen, Princ, IV.2.4; homLev, p. 334.  Origen, Dialogus cum Heraclide, 6 8; commMatt, 13.2; 14.3; 16.8; Scholia in Matthaeum, PG.17.300.1 4; commLuc, PG.17.357.33 & 48 50. As mentioned earlier, in the second book of the commentary on John, Origen takes man as consisted of only body and soul, ‘but not also of spi rit, which is more divine than these’; commJohn, II.21.138. At that stage, he had not spoken of any distinction between a man’s spirit and the Holy Spirit. This makes (at least) the first books of this commentary slightly earlier than the De Principiis.

1304

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Before this, however, he had ventured the first and decisive step upon his arrival in Caesarea. The controversial point was Luke, 1:17, where Jesus assured that John the Baptist ‘will go before them with the spirit and power of Elias’. He now writes as a ‘man of the church’ (ἐκκλησιαστικός), who ‘spurns the doctrine of transmigration as a lie, and does not admit that the soul of John was ever Elias’. His concern was to demonstrate that what Elias and John had in common was not their soul. He declares himself able ‘to demonstrate through countless scriptural sayings that the spirit is different from the soul, and that the ‘power’ which is mentioned differs from both the ‘spirit’ and the ‘soul’.⁵⁷¹ It had been said that spirits ‘had been granted upon prophets by God, as though they were called their possessions’.⁵⁷² In other words, ‘the same spirit was in both ‘Elias and John the Baptist’.⁵⁷³ Origen grasped the point: those references about John the Baptist would appear vulnerable to being interpreted as suggesting transmigration. For that reason, First of all, we must investigate more carefully and inquire further, among other things, about the doctrine concerning the essence of the soul (οὐσίας τῆς ψυχῆς),⁵⁷⁴ the origin of its constitution (τῆς ἀρχῆς τῆς συστάσεως αὐτῆς),⁵⁷⁵ its entrance into an earthly body, the distributions of the life of each soul, its release from the body, and see whether it is possible (εἰ ἐνδέχεται),⁵⁷⁶ or not, that it enter a second time in a body, and during the same [cosmic] period and the same order (καὶ τῇ αὐτῇ περιόδῳ⁵⁷⁷ καὶ τῇ αὐτῇ διακοσμή σει⁵⁷⁸), or not, and whether it enters the same body or another. Further, if it is in the same body, we must inquire whether it remains the same in substance but changes in qual ity (καθ᾿ ὑποκείμενον μένοντι τῷ αὐτῷ κατὰ δὲ ποιότητα μεταβαλομένῳ),⁵⁷⁹ or if it will be the same both in substance and quality (ἢ καὶ καθ᾿ ὑποκείμενον καὶ ποιότητα ἐσομένῳ τῷ

 Origen, commJohn, VI.11.66.  Origen, op. cit. VI.11.67 (quoting 1 Cor. 14:32; 4 Kings 2:15): τὰ ἐν τοῖς προφήταις πνεύματα, ἅτε δεδωρημένα αὐτοῖς ὑπὸ θεοῦ οἱονεὶ ἐκείνων ὀνομάζεσθαι κτήματα.  Origen, op. cit. VI.11.71. In that section, his recurrent term is ‘transmigration (μετενσωμάτω σις), only in order to reject it.  Cf. οὐσία τῆς ψυχῆς. SVF, I.38.33; I.118.2; II.218.34; II.219.4; III.30.23.  SVF, II.152.37: τὴν οὐσίαν πᾶσαν ἐπιδέχεσθαι σύστασιν. SVF, III.44.38 41.  SVF, II.280.23 40; II.279.15 37.  SVF, I.111.21: περίοδος καὶ διακόσμησις. SVF, I.111.28; II.168.7; II.169.20; II.184.4&37. Cf. Ori gen, Cels, IV.14; V.20; VI.47; Fragmenta De Principiis, fr. 11.  SVF, II.184.22: κατὰ περιόδους τὴν αὐτὴν διασώζεσθαι τοῦ κόσμου διακόσμησιν. SVF, I.28.16; I.32.6 9; I.111.21; II.168.9 19; II.176.25; II.182.8; II.186.37; II.310.31.  ὑποκείμενα / ποιά. SVF, II.214.30: δύο ἕκαστος ἡμῶν ἐστιν ὑποκείμενα, τὸ μὲν οὐσία, τὸ δὲ ποιότης. II.113.30; II.124.31; II.125.6 34; II.126.19: τὸ κοινὸν τῆς ποιότητος τὸ ἐπὶ τῶν σωμάτων διαφορὰν εἶναι οὐσίας, οὐκ ἀποδιαληπτὴν καθ᾿ ἐαυτήν, ἀλλ᾿ εἰς ἕν νόημα καὶ ποιότητα ἀπολή γουσαν. II.114.25; II.116.11; II.126.32; II.128.15&20; II.129.6; II.134.34; II.186.37; II.220.43.

Origen on the soul

1305

αὐτῷ), and if it always uses the same body or will change it. We will also have to investigate what transmigration (μετενσωμάτωσις) is in a strict sense, in what it differs from incarna tion (ἐνσωματώσεως), and if it follows that one who speaks of transmigration maintains the world to be incorruptible (ἄφθαρτον τηρεῖν τὸν κόσμον).⁵⁸⁰ In these investigations it will be necessary to compare the arguments of those who wish, in accordance with the scriptures, the soul to be sown together with the body (τοὺς λόγους τῶν θελόντων κατὰ τὰς γραφὰς συσπείρεσθαι τὴν ψυχὴν τῷ σώματι)⁵⁸¹ and the consequences which follow these arguments. In short, since the doctrine of the soul is sublime and difficult to inter pret, being gathered from words occurring here and there in the scriptures, it needs a sys tematic treatise of its own.⁵⁸²

As already mentioned, as far as I can tell, Origen did not go ahead with composing such a pragmaty. Nevertheless, this is a statement speaking for itself as to the terms in which he thought of the soul: the passage is heavily couched in Stoic terminology. This bespeaks an intellectual that had already found answers in the Stoic concept of the soul: all he needed was to adapt them to his own Christian premisses. The way to do so was no other than Anaxagoras. He returned to this distinction by the end of his extant commentary on John: I have dared modestly (ἐτόλμησα μετρίως) to raise these questions since I have noticed a distinction between soul and spirit in all scripture. I observe that the soul is something in termediate (μέσον μέν τι θεωρῶν εἶναι τὴν ψυχήν) and pervious to both virtue and evil,⁵⁸³ but the spirit of man that is in him is impervious (ἀνεπίδεκτον) to things that are inferior. For the best things are said to be fruits of the spirit⁵⁸⁴ and not, as one might think, of the Holy Spirit, but of the human spirit.⁵⁸⁵

To him, the doctrine of transmigration remained always ‘a false doctrine’ (ψευδοδοξία),⁵⁸⁶ since it had never been suggested by either the apostles or by any point of the scriptures (οὔτε παραδιδόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων οὔτε ἐμφαινόμενόν που τῶν γραφῶν).⁵⁸⁷ He had gone a long way indeed: the second book of the commentary on John, where he takes man as consisted of only body

 SVF, II.174.10; III.265.23: ἀφθαρσία κόσμου. SVF, II.111.5: ἄφθαρτοι ἀρχαί. SVF, II.169.19; II.179.9; II.181.9; II.182.7; II.186.3; II.188.42; II.191.10; III.265.22. In the commentary on Matthew, 13.1, Origen proves that this is a consequence stemming from the doctrine of transmigration.  See supra, pp. 1302 3.  Origen, commJohn, VI.14.86 87.  Cf. Origen, Princ, I.8.3; II.6.5; II.8.4; III.4.2.  Gal. 5:22 23.  Origen, commJohn, XXXII.18.218 9.  Origen, commMatt, 10.20: τῆς μετενσωματώσεως ψευδοδοξίαν.  Origen, op. cit. 13.1.

1306

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

and soul, ‘but not also of spirit, which is more divine than these’,⁵⁸⁸ that is, from the stage at which he could see no distinction between a man’s spirit and the Holy Spirit, he arrived at the thesis just quoted. He made the same point later, but only once, as far as his extant texts show, again in relation to Luke, 1:17, using the same argument. He advanced his reasoning, which he had introduced in the sixth book of the commentary on John quoted above, although at that point he only mentioned views of third parties (that is, anonymous Christian clergymen) who argued over the debated issue. Finally, he decisively determined that transmigration is untenable, since, if that were allowed, then the world could be indestructible and of infinite duration. This would be incompatible with Daniel, 42, assuring that ‘God knows everything before it was made’. Therefore, that which the ‘substance’ that Elias and John the Baptist had in common (τίς ἡ αὐτὴ οὐσία) was not their soul: it was the same spirit and the same power. ⁵⁸⁹ In other words, some of the logoi which concurred in order to make up Elias did so also in the case of John. We should recall that the Anaxagorean logoi ‘exist differently in the mind, differently in the soul, differently in plants, and differently in things’, whereas they also ‘exist in the Beyond, in an ineffable manner’.⁵⁹⁰ Within a human being, the logoi which make it up exist differently, too: there are those which sustain physical constitution, those which make psychic operations possible, and those which relate to superior intellectual functions. Origen’s affirmation about the similarities between Elias and John intimated that what they had in common were those highest logoi, which are symbolically named ‘spirit of man’, or simply ‘spirit’ or ‘power’. Elias and John had neither the same body (that is, the logoi of physical constitution), nor were they identical persons in terms of psychic functions (logoi of psychic constitution); but they were the same in terms of ‘spirit’ or ‘power’, that is, the same logoi which exist in the most sublime mode concurred in both Elias and John. Origen said the same thing, which he deliberately couched in his own Christian terms: considering ‘Christ the Logos’, along with those sitting on either his right or his left side,⁵⁹¹ means that there is some difference between ‘left’ and ‘right’. He then proposes that ‘right’ bespeaks the ‘invisible creatures’ (meaning, ‘incorporeal’)⁵⁹² and ‘left’ indicates ‘visible and corporeal ones’, ‘still Christ

 Origen, commJohn, II.21.138.  Origen, commMatt, 13.2. He adduces the same scriptural passages, this time enriched with Daniel, 3:86: “Bless, o spirits and souls of the righteous”.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 10. See supra, p. 765.  Matt. 20:21; 20:23; Mark 10:40.  See the notion of invisible (contrasted to not seen) meaning incorporeal, COT, pp. 110 12.

Origen on the soul

1307

reigns over them all’.⁵⁹³ What he actually meant was that what Elias and John the Baptist had in common did not relate to their souls or bodies, but it was some logoi that made up their different human minds, that is, certain higher logoi which were granted them by God in accordance with the divine dispensation. Origen’s rejection of tranmigration of souls is remarkable for two main reasons: first, because, Empedocles had tranferred it into Greek philosophy from the East; secondly, because Origen read some passages in the New Testament, where the doctrine seems to have been taken for granted. For example, when Jesus started teaching, the Jews were wondering who could he possible be, and they asked him, ‘Are you Elias’, to which Jesus answered, ‘No’.⁵⁹⁴ Likewise, when Jesus came upon a blind man, his pupils asked their teacher whether it was this man or his parents that had sinned, which resulted in the suffering of that man. Once again, Jesus’ reply was simply that it was neither that man nor his parents that had sinned.⁵⁹⁵ However, in the first place, the question of the pupils was not taken as an absurd or weird one, nor was Jesus’ reaction to their question one of the kind, ‘how could have it been possible for a man who suffered from congenital blindness to have sinned so as subsequently to incur this malady?’ Although the doctrine of transmigration is sometimes attested as a controversial one among the Jews, it has been argued that it is part of the Jewish mysticism.⁵⁹⁶ Hence, not only had Origen to distance himself from relevant ideas of Empedocles, Pythagoras, and Plato, but also he felt it a task to interpret precarious scriptural statements and instances in a manner that banned this doctrine. And so he did. But the only way for him to attain this was the Anaxagorean theory of logoi.

The ‘inner man’: Paul, Origen, and Heidegger In the Introduction, I have argued that Heidegger introduced theological concepts in his system, which though was a system he meant to be atheist.

 Origen, commMatt, 16.5: δεξιὰ δὲ ὅρα εἰ δύνασαι νοῆσαι Χριστοῦ τὰ ἀόρατα ὀνομαζόμενα κτίσματα, ἀριστερὰ δὲ τὰ ὁρατὰ καὶ σωματικά. ἀλλὰ Χριστὸς μὲν πάντων βασιλεύει.  John, 1:19 21.  John, chapter 9. Cf. Origen, Philocalia, 21.20 21.  Josef Blaha, Reflections on Jewish Mysticism, Praha, 2013, p. 149: “The transmigration of souls is something that belongs to Jewish mysticism”. Cf. Alan Unterman, The Jews: Their Reli gious Beliefs and Practices, Brighton, 1996, p. 23. J.H. Laenen, Introduction to Jewish Mysticism, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, p. 178.

1308

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

My proposition has been that probably he had read Damascius and drew on him heavily while attributing new names to old concepts. A case in point has been discussed by John Dillon,⁵⁹⁷ in relation to Damascius’ notion of the ineffable.⁵⁹⁸ In the Introduction, I have argued that Heidegger owed his etymology of ‘truth’ (ἀ-λήθεια) to Damascius, and, in the present chapter, it turned out that Heidegger’s distinction ontic / ontological was a fundamental idea known to (and treated by) both Damascius and Simplicius. I am now going to discuss another fundamental idea of his, which turns out to be theological within a system which was meant to be an atheist one. The ‘inner man’ of Paul⁵⁹⁹ (and of Origen) is the precise antecedent of Martin Heidegger’s reference to two kinds of Being, namely, the ‘authentic’ and the ‘inauthentic’ one.⁶⁰⁰ Indeed, the notion of ‘authenticity’ (Eugentlichkeit) is cardinal in that philosophy: ‘authentic’ is one that ‘has made his own self his own’; ‘inauthentic’ is one that ‘has not made his own self his own’.⁶⁰¹ In general, ‘To be here’ (Dasein) is determined by everything that at any time is mine. The essence of Dasein consists in the fact that it exists in the empirical realm. This is why the characteristics that can be attributed to this being are not ‘attributes’ of an existence that happens to be there, but they are modes according to which a certain being can exist, and nothing more than that.⁶⁰² ‘To be here’ is at any time that which (das, was) it can be and in accordance with whatever (wie) it can be. Existence is there as an event which is what it is, in the sense that Dasein is thrown in the perceptible realm, and this ‘being thrown’ (Geworfenheit) betokens the event of Dasein having been surrendered to, and roaming into, the inauthenticity of the multitude of perceptible things and conditions of the world. This ‘throwing’ should be understood in a passive, not active, sense:

 John Dillon, “Damascius on the ineffable”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, v. 78, Issue 2, pp. 120 9. He put his case rather diffidently in reference to Damascius’ notion of the ineffable and Heidegger’s Ereignis. “I think that one can find analogies for such a basic intuition as Dam ascius is postulating here in various disparate branches of modern thought not perfect anal ogies, to be sure, but not entirely inapposite either.” I hope the discussion in this book, both in the Introduction and in the present chapter, will make it clear that Heidegger drew on Damascius to an extent which is far wider than that assumed by the author in this paper.  See reference to this in chapter 10, pp. 817 20.  Rom. 7:22; 2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 3:16.  Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 42 43; 53; 122; 130; 144; 163; 179; 187 188; 191; 193; 221; 234; 250 251; 260; 262 264; 268 269; 271; 277; 279 280; 286 287; 295 298; 302; 304; 306; 322 323; 325 326; 328; 336; 338 339; 343 344; 383 386; 391; page numbers refer to the standard German edition of 1927.  Martin Heidegger, op. cit. pp. 42 43; 53.  Martin Heidegger, op. cit. p. 42.

Origen on the soul

1309

the Dasein is thrown in the present worldly state of affairs.⁶⁰³ Here (Da) means an essential openness (Erschlossenheit) and Dasein is what it is as an individually only by means of this openness.⁶⁰⁴ In other words, it exists in such a way as to be here as lighting (Lichtung); therefore, existence is tantamount to ‘coming to light’.⁶⁰⁵ It is then worth recalling al-Shahrastani’s testimony discussed in chapter 6: Anaxagoras was the first who advanced the theory of hiding-and-appearing insofar as he supposed that all things are hidden in the first body and their coming into existence is only their emergence into appearance out of that body as a species, a genus, a mass, a shape, and a denseness or a rareness, just as the ear of corn emerges into appearance out of a single grain, a stately palm out of small date-stone, a man, perfectly shaped, out of a paltry drop of sperm, and a bird out of an egg. All these are instances of the emergence of appearance out of hiding, of actuality out of potentiality, of form out of the disposition of matter. Creation (al-ibdda‘), however, is only of one thing, and it applies to no other thing except to that first body.⁶⁰⁶ According to Heidegger, ‘to be here’ (Dasein) does not mean that something exists by being limited to its own self or being (Unverschlossenheit). In Paul’s and Origen’s language, a man is not only an individual but also he is always part of a Body, in like a manner that man’s constituents (namely, the logoi) are both distinct and united at the same time, they belong to a totality, which Paul and Origen also call pleroma or fullness (πλήρωμα).⁶⁰⁷ In Paul there is an unceasing tension between the ‘inner’ and ‘outward’ man,⁶⁰⁸ which is vivid also in Origen, who stresses that the acts of the latter can indeed ruin the former, since any human act makes an impact on the universal totality of the Anaxagorean logoi, or (which is the same), on the Body of the Logos, or (which is the same) on ‘the kingdom of heavens’. This is not

 Martin Heidegger, op. cit. p. 135.  Martin Heidegger, op. cit. p. 132.  Martin Heidegger, op. cit. p. 135; cf. pp. 132 135; 137; 139; 143; 145 147; 170; 270; 350 351; 366.  H. Wolfson, op. cit. p. 508.  Eph. 1:23: “The church, which is his body, the fulness of him that fills all in all’ (τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν πληρουμένου). Col. 1:19: “For he approved that all fullness should dwell in himself’ (ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ εὐδόκησεν πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα κατοικῆσαι). Cf. Eph. 3:19; 4:13. Also, John, 1:16: “And of his fullness have we all received” (ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος αὐτοῦ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἐλά βομεν). Origen, De Oratione, 23.2; Fragmenta in Jeremiam, 18; commEph, 9; (commenting on John, 1:16); commJohn, I.10.60; II.35.213; VI.3.14 15; VI.6.33; VI.6.35 36; VI.13.74; X.33.211; frJohn, 10; Phil ocalia, 1.28; rejecting the Gnostic notion of pleroma: commJohn, XIII.19.115 6.  Rom. 7:21 23.

1310

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

at all different from Heidegger’s two kinds of Being, namely, the ‘authentic’ and the ‘inauthentic’ one, both of which are entirely real. There is hardly a notion more irrelevant to this theory than the Platonic ‘soul’. The unauthenticity of Dasein does not suggest any ‘less’ or ‘inferior’ degree of Being: it is all too real. Instead, inauthenticity is a characteristic of Dasein existing and acting within a specific reality; for instance, when it is stimulated to do something, or its interest is absorbed by, or focused on, something; or when it tends to pleasure.⁶⁰⁹ It is in such situations that the ‘inauthentic’ Dasein ‘has not made his own self his own’. Inauthenticity does not mean anything like Beingno-longer-within-the-world; on the contrary, it constitutes a very characteristic Being-within-the-world; it is the Dasein which has been enchanted (indeed, beguiled) totally by both ‘the world’ and by its ‘co-existence here-with’ (MitDasein) ⁶¹⁰ others. And yet, ‘authentic self’ proper does not drag the Dasein away from the world, nor is it made an isolated, hanging, and unsettled self. Following a personally elected potential of one’s existence, the Dasein which decides for itself can liberate itself within the world.⁶¹¹ In other words, to be authentically one’s own self is an existential variety of this fundamental existential attribute (namely, of authenticity).⁶¹² ‘To listen to’ (hören) constitutes the most profound and authentic (eugentliche) openness (Offenheit) of Dasein towards its own potential to realize what is ‘its own par excellence’ (eigenstes), understood as ‘hearing the voice of the friend’.⁶¹³ The Dasein is always freedom for the authenticity of Being to be there as potentiality (Mörglichkeit). To this Being, the Dasein has been handed over as Being-in-the-world. ⁶¹⁴ This potentiality⁶¹⁵ stands higher than reality itself.⁶¹⁶ Mere potential, which characterizes the Dasein itself, should be distinguished from the general abstract accidental possibility according to which a certain individual being could come to pass. Instead, potentiality (Mör-

 Martin Heidegger, op. cit. p. 43. Cf. §§25 27; 30; 35 38; 51 52; 59; 68c; 71.  Martin Heidegger, op. cit. §§25 27.  Martin Heidegger, op. cit. p. 298; cf. §§25; 40 41; 53 58; 64.  Martin Heidegger, op. cit. p. 298; cf. §§ 25; 40 41; 53 58; 64. Cf. Paul, 1 Cor. 12:28, explaining the same notion, namely, that authenticity can exist within variety: “You are the body of Christ and members in particular. And God has set some in the church, first apostles, then prophets, then teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healing, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.”  Martin Heidegger, op. cit. p. 163.  Martin Heidegger, op. cit. p. 188.  In Origen’s thought, this is the realm of the Anaxagorean logoi, which has nothing to do with any Platonic Beyond.  Martin Heidegger, op. cit. p. 38.

Origen on the soul

1311

glichkeit) as an existential characteristic is the most profound and paramount positive ontological characteristic of the Dasein. ⁶¹⁷ The ‘inner man’ suggests only the logoi which make up human nature, as they actually exist in the particular human being. Therefore, ‘inner man’ bespeaks the universal which is individualized by means of concurrence of certain logoi. When the Song of Songs describes the eros of the Bridegroom/Logos for his Bride/Soul, it does not describe a love for a specific part of human existence, but love for all of this existence, even if, in casual references, Origen refers to a human being as ‘soul’, only because he had made it clear that a human being is an indissolvable existence (τὸ συναμφότερον).⁶¹⁸ In any case, the ‘inner man’ is not an abstract incorporeal or a universal, but it denotes one’s particular existential identity,⁶¹⁹ it is the Anaxagorean logoi which concur in order to make the impeccable human nature of an individual personal being. This is the fundamental notion imbuing Origen’s analyses and expressions, no matter whether it is referred to as ‘soul’,⁶²⁰ or as that which was created ‘in image’ (τὸ κατ᾿ εἰκόνα),⁶²¹ that is, the impeccable human nature, or both of them,⁶²² or as ‘mind’,⁶²³ or again as both mind and soul,⁶²⁴ or as ‘the ruling part’ of the human existence (ἡγεμονικόν),⁶²⁵ or even ‘essence’,⁶²⁶ or indeed as ‘Christ’.⁶²⁷ Origen did not contradict himself, nor was his language erratic: these are only different designations and names of a symbolical language bespeaking one and the same notion. It could be only nonsense to assume that he contradicted

 Martin Heidegger, op. cit. p. 143.  Origen, frLuc, 242.  Origen, Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21), 39 (comm. on Rom. 7:9): τὸ γὰρ ἐγὼ ἐπὶ τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον ἀναφέρεται.  Origen, Cels, VII.38: Καὶ ἄνθρωπος μὲν οὖν, τουτέστι ψυχὴ χρωμένη σώματι, λεγομένη ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος ἀλλὰ καὶ ψυχή.  Origen, op. cit. VI.63: τὸ κατ᾿ εἰκόνα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν τῷ καθ᾿ ἡμᾶς λεγομένῳ ἔσω ἀνθρώπῳ.  Origen, Dialogus cum Heraclide, 23: Εἰ νενόηται ἡ ψυχή, καὶ νενόηται κατὰ τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον, καὶ νενόηται ὅτι ἐν ἐκείνῃ ἐστὶν τὸ κατ᾿ εἰκόνα. Cf. frLuc, 186.  Origen, Cels, V.60: τροπικῶς μὲν λεγομένου προσώπου γυμνότερον δ᾿ ὡς ἂν ὀνομάσαι τις τοῦ νοῦ, ἐν ᾧ ἐστι τὸ κατὰ τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον πρόσωπον.  Origen, frLuc, 195: ἐπειδὴ δὲ καὶ νὺξ ὁ βίος ἡμῶν, λύχνου δεόμεθα, ὅς ἐστι νοῦς ὀφθαλμὸς ὢν ψυχῆς, καὶ εἰ ἐν τῷ ἔσω ἀνθρώπῳ ἐστὶν ἐγρήγορσις.  Origen, commeph, 15: καὶ τὸ παραδοξότατον, ὅλος ὢν ὁ Χριστὸς καὶ καθ᾿ ἑαυτὸν ζῶν κατοι κεῖ καὶ ἐν τοῖς μετέχουσιν αὐτοῦ, κατοικεῖ δὲ διὰ τῆς πίστεως εἰς τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον, τουτέστι τῷ ἡγεμονικῷ. … εἰς τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον, λέγω κατὰ τὰς καρδίας ὑμῶν, τουτέστιν τὰ ἡγεμονικά.  Origen, frLuc, 181: καὶ γὰρ ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος, ὃς κυρίως οὐσία ἐστίν, μὴ τυχὼν ζῶντος ἄρτου ἐχθρῷ ζωῆς θανάτῳ γίνεται, ὡς τὸ σῶμα μὴ τρεφόμενον.  Origen, frPs, Psalm 64:5 6: Εἴρηται γὰρ διὰ τῆς πίστεως κατοικεῖν τὸν Χριστόν, τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον, πρὸς τὸν τηροῦντα τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ.

1312

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

himself, indeed within the same work such as the mature Contra Celsum. Instead, it is the variety of descriptions itself concerning the ‘inner man’ that is instructive: in all of those cases, the actual suggestion is that the logoi which make up human nature by means of their involvement with those logoi which give rise to matter, result in generation of a human being. When he argues confidently that each man is ‘two men’, his proposition has nothing to do with Plato, but it stands in full accord with Anaxagoras explained by Porphyry: a human being is consisted of various kinds of logoi, some of them determining physiological existence and function, others doing so for psychic operations, such as desire, passions, and rational reflection none the less.⁶²⁸ Consequently, Origen’s notion of ‘inner man’⁶²⁹ should be explained by means of the Song of Songs, which he regarded as the scriptural book containing theological knowledge par excellence, whereas the Proverbs is about moral teaching, and Ecclesiastes taught knowledge of nature.⁶³⁰ The inner man is a set of certain logoi sown by the Logos, and they make up an individual personal which is loved by the Logos/Bridegroom. But in order for inner man to exist, a ‘man’ should come to be in the first place, which means that those logoi which give rise to the more valuable existence of a specific human being do not exist in themselves apart from one’s physiological existence. There is no such thing as a tenuous, elusive, aetheral sort of substance called ‘soul’, the stuff that thoughts, desires, passions, and dreams are made of, and which is free and independent of ordinary ponderous material existence. Origen had neither interest nor need to consider the ‘soul’ as a self-subsistent being in a Platonic sense, which though was cherished by orthodox Christian authors. The inner man is no other than the primal impeccable human nature, that is, the prelapsarian one, which Origen calls ‘Adam’, arguing that this name in Greek means simply ‘man’, and, consequently, ‘Adam’ indicates the unfallen ‘human nature’, not any individual person.⁶³¹ Once a human being arises from certain logoi cooperating with each other, he is also endowed with free will: this means that any man is able to make an

 Origen, Dialogus cum Heraclide, 11: Δύο ἀνθρώπους ἡ γραφὴ λέγει εἶναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον. Ex cerpta in Psalmos, PG.17.120. 50: Ἔθος τῇ Γραφῇ δύο ἀνθρώπους εἰσάγειν. Cf. homJer, 1.13; selEz, PG.13.808.6 11. Plato’s ‘man within’ us (ὁ ἐντὸς ἄνθρωπος, Respublica, 589a7 b6) suggests the rational part of the soul. Likewise, Plotinus, Enneades, I.1.10 (15).  Cf. Rom. 7:22; 2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 3:16.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.220.50 56.  Origen, Cels, IV.40: οὕτω δὲ καὶ περὶ τοῦ ᾿Aδὰμ καὶ περὶ τῆς ἁμαρτίας αὐτοῦ φιλοσοφήσουσιν οἱ ἐγνωκότες ὅτι καθ᾿ ἑλλάδα φωνὴν ὁ ᾿Aδὰμ ἄνθρωπός ἐστι, καὶ ἐν τοῖς δοκοῦ σι περὶ τοῦ ᾿Aδὰμ εἶναι φυσιολογεῖ Μωϋσῆς τὰ περὶ τῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1313

impact on the totality of the logoi (the Body of the Logos) as a result of freedom of will. This is what affects the acting ‘inner man’, as indeed it does so upon the entire Body of the Logos. Not all the logoi of a human being, but only those that determine the closest affinity with the Logos himself allow for free action. Those logoi are subject to the options of individual human freedom, actually they are entrusted to human freedom, which can bring about its own impact upon the Body of the Logos; therefore, the notion indicates the precarious human condition.⁶³² In other words, human action is able to make an impact on all of the logoi of the world, and this is what the dramatic character to History itself is about.⁶³³

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity Origen and the Anaxagorean theory Simplistic solutions have been asserted about Origen’s theory of soul, by theologians who had a vague idea about ‘Platonism’ only from relevant chapters of histories of philosophy. The fact that he reproved Platonic theories of the soul impressed only a few scholars. Otherwise, in general, ‘Platonism’ appears to be an easy expedient to those who think of it as a story about individual souls making intermittent tours between Up and Down worlds. No serious attempt has ever been made to establish this opinion by means of the entirety of Origen’s extant work. Normally, the case with modern accounts, as it happened with those which served to anathematizing him, is testimony from third (and hostile) parties allegedly quoting from his De Principiis and the first two books of the commentary on John. Almost no one did ever wonder why was it that only this part of Origen’s work was cited in order to incriminate him; no qualification was allowed in view of the fact that the De Principiis is almost entirely lost, apart from some passages in the Philocalia and the untrustworthy Latin translation of it by Rufinus.⁶³⁴ And little attention has been paid to the fact that the anathemas against ‘Origen and Origenism’ ignored altogether later works, such as the

 Origen, selPs, PG.12.1625.29 31 & frPs, Psalm 118:169: Τί δὲ ἐν ἡμῖν ἀόρατον; Ὁ κρυπτὸς τῆς καρδίας ἄνθρωπος, ὃν ὠνόμασεν ἡ Γραφὴ ἔσω ἄνθρωπον; Τούτου γοῦν ἐστιν ἐγγίσαι τῷ Θεῷ. homLuc, 16, p. 99: ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος πεπτωκώς μου ἦν, ὁ ἔξω ἄνθρωπός μου εἱστήκει. See infra, note 637: Origen eventually identified ‘inner man’ with the mind, not the soul.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1432.30 33; frLuc, 180; commLuc, PG.17.353.34 37. See discussion of this in PHE, pp. 358 434.  See discussion on this, in PHE, pp. 9 10, et passim.

1314

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Contra Celsum and the commentaries on Matthew and on the epistle to the Romans. I know of no work engaging in analysis of what exactly does ‘Platonism’ mean in Origen, and explaining how this allegation squares with the accounts and statements by Origen himself, one by one. Unfortunately, all of those who branded him a ‘Platonist’ were theologians who had no inkling of the philosophical background of that genius. In this book, I have taken the step which Origen himself did not wish to take: I have sought to point out and consider the philosophical premisses of his thought, as well as their implications and roots, which he always vested with the garment of exegesis of scriptural passages. I will then make a discussion in order to show that Origen was an anti-Platonist because he was an Anaxagorean philosopher, who by and large carried with him his Anaxagorean ideas of the soul also after his conversion to Christianity. Attention should be paid to how Origen explained to Heraclides why is a soul both mortal and immortal:⁶³⁵ it can die because of sin, but it cannot be said that it perishes altogether. It might be assumed that his point was that it is not possible for an incorporeal hyspostasis to perish. However, he says quite the opposite: no mortal nature can be transformed into an immortal one, ‘since there is no common substratum between corporeal an incorporeal nature’ and such a transformation could make no sense. Therefore, corporeal nature perishes altogether because the logoi that gave rise to it in the first place separate off from each other; this is why a human soul can be ‘clothed with incorruption’, but it cannot be ‘transformed into an immortal one’.⁶³⁶ Those of the logoi that human freedom creates which are discrepant, they are destined to perish. Those which do no harm to the Body of the Logos will concur in different form, in order to give rise to a different material existence, which he calls ‘transformation to immortality’, having in mind the scriptural exemplar of the transfiguration of Jesus. If there is something in the universal order that endures, this is the personal identity of a rational creature, which in the first place is one’s impeccable nature, so constructed by the initial concurrence of logoi, and it is called ‘the inner man’, that is, human nature as created ‘in the beginning’. It is impossible for the inner man to live together with sin; therefore, when sin is committed, the higher logoi that make up this human being are harmed, or (in symbolic language) the inner man ‘dies’, that is, the logoi which originally made it are pushed away.⁶³⁷ If  Origen treated this in the Dialogus cum Heraclide, 24 26.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.61.429.  Origen believed he found this in Rom. 7:8 10. Cf. Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21), 39: τὸ γὰρ ἐγὼ ἐπὶ τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον ἀναφέρεται. Cf. comm1Cor,

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1315

‘human nature’ is a genus determining the human species, there is also the individual identity, which stems from the fact that God knows everything and everyone: someone exists because God knows (actually, thinks of) him, and this knowledge constitutes the relation which attributes everyone and everything existence proper. In Anaxagorean terms, the principles act because the Mind wills so and knows everything, right down to the minutest thing, phenomenon, or person.⁶³⁸ Christianity put this in a similar way: the ultimate death, which is far worse than the physical one,⁶³⁹ is expressed in terms of God refusing to know those damned.⁶⁴⁰ Death means that a person ‘is deleted from the book of the living ones’.⁶⁴¹ By contrast, to live means to be known by God, ⁶⁴² and to be included ‘in the book of the living’.⁶⁴³ Rational creatures are distinguished in the sight of God, and this happens ‘from the time their personality first emerged’.⁶⁴⁴ Thus, the fact of the individual personal relation to God itself constitutes the personal identity of a rational creature. This is why ‘to receive commands from God’⁶⁴⁵ is a fundamental characteristic of free rational beings. This personal and distinct dialectical relation to God is what actually remains constant and unchangeable throughout the alterations of rational creatures from one ‘aeon’ to another. The very fact that God has established a personal relation with each rational creature by knowing it, endows it with its individual personality, which is thereafter free to come to a dialectical relation both to God and to other rational beings. This is the answer that Origen

17. selEz, PG.13.816.42; expProv, PG.17.177.55 180.2. However, eventually he identified the ‘inner man’ not with the soul but with the ‘mind’ (νοῦς), which he saw also as the human prosopon (πρόσωπον), that is, human personal identity. Cels, V.60; likewise, frLuke, 195.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 608; commPhys, pp. 156; 165; 174; 177: πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς. καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν, ἅσσα νῦν μὴ ἔστι.  Cf. Origen, Dialogus cum Heraclide, 25; cf. op. cit. 16; 18; 26. Origen argued, ‘if death means total annihilation, what would be the meaning of posthumous punishment?’. This is why resur rection makes sense only as one of both soul and body, since ‘there is only one life, which is common to both body and soul’; frLuc, 242, quoted supra, p. 1282, note 473.  Cf. Matt. 7:23: Οὐδέποτε ἔγνων ὑμᾶς· ἀποχωρεῖτε ἀπ᾿ ἐμοῦ οἱ ἐργαζόμενοι τὴν ἀνομίαν.  Psalm 68:29: ἐξαλειφθήτωσαν ἐκ βίβλου ζώντων.  Cf. Amos, 3:2: ὑμᾶς ἔγνων ἐκ πασῶν φυλῶν τῆς γῆς. Phil. 4:3: ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα ἐν βίβλῳ ζωῆς.  Psalm 68:29 and Phil 4:3. Also, Rev. 3:5: καὶ οὐ μὴ ἐξαλείψω τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ἐκ τῆς βίβλου τῆς ζωῆς. Op. cit. 17:8: ὧν οὐ γέγραπται τὸ ὄνομα ἐπὶ τὸ βιβλίον τῆς ζωῆς ἀπὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου. Op. cit. 20:12: καὶ ἄλλο βιβλίον ἠνοίχθη, ὅ ἐστιν τῆς ζωῆς. Op. cit. 20:15: καὶ εἴ τις οὐχ εὑρέθη ἐν τῇ βίβλῳ τῆς ζωῆς γεγραμμένος ἐβλήθη εἰς τὴν λίμνην τοῦ πυρός. Op. cit. 21:27: οἱ γεγραμμένοι ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ ἀρνίου.  Origen, Princ, I.5.3.  Origen, op. cit. I.7.3.

1316

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

offers as a result of his fundamental idea that any rational creature is an inseparable entity, in which the distinction between body and incorporeal element is mere intellectual abstraction. A rational being is in itself indivisible, single and not compound. Thus, that which is theoretically described as ‘incorporeal’ element of a rational creature, is in no way understood to live in itself autonomously and independently from the body. There can be no notion of personal incorporeal mind existing in this fallen state. Human mind existing in itself into the world is an intellectual abstraction, not an independent reality. Such a mind does not live in itself either ‘before’ or after the Fall. For after the Fall it is the rational creature which lives as an inseparable being; on the other hand, ‘before’ the Fall, it is God’s Wisdom who lives.⁶⁴⁶ In either case, mind is regarded as participating, as it were, in life, yet in no case does this live itself as an independent personal incorporeal being. It is the faculty of man in his relation to God that vouchsafes a personal identity. The quality of mind changes, the quality of body changes, too – indeed it changes accordingly. What remains unchangeable is the capacity of this ‘mind/body’ entity maintain a dialectical relation to God, to be distinct in the eyes of God as an individual personality, and to be free either to obey or to disobey God’s will.⁶⁴⁷ The personal identity of a rational creature consists in his relation to God rather than in the creature itself regarded as an isolated and independent subsistence. Therefore, ‘every created thing, therefore, is distinguished in God’s sight by its being confined within a certain number and measure, that is, either number in the case of rational beings or measure in the case of bodily matter.’⁶⁴⁸ In any case, whether one is to be resurrected or condemned, this will involve both one’s body and the soul.⁶⁴⁹ Unlike the soul, it is impossible for a man’s spirit to ‘die’. For the spirit is different from the soul: it is the divine element, it is Anaxagoras’ ‘lesser mind’ granted by the Universal Mind upon a certain human being, namely, Origen’s ‘inner man’. This is the ‘spirit’ of the tripartite human being comprising body, soul, and spirit. This spirit is impervious to death, since it is a concurrence of logoi existing in the highest of the existential states of the Anaxagorean logoi, as described by Zeno of Citium, and then by Porphyry, Simplicius, and Damas-

 Origen, commJohn, II.17.123 4.  COT, pp. 96 7.  Origen, op. cit. IV.4.8; italics are mine. Cf. Anaxagoras, supra, note 638.  Origen, frLuc, 242: ἓν γάρ τι τὸ συναμφότερόν ἐστιν, ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἡ ζωὴ κοινή, καὶ ἑκα τέρων δεῖ πρὸς τὸ τὴν ἐκ θανάτου ζωὴν πάλιν συστῆναι. I have come upon this statement also in the text of an unpublished codex which contains the Greek text of Origen’s commentary on Matthew. Most of this text is heretofore unknown. The critical edition of this text is in prep aration, and I am confident that it will eliminate current distortions of this theology.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1317

cius alike. Therefore, when Paul makes the reference,⁶⁵⁰ supposedly said in the Old Testament, ‘Awake you that sleep, and arise from the dead!’, Origen explains that ‘awake’ refers to the spirit, and ‘arise from the dead’ to the soul, ‘since we have never found any mention made of the spirit dying, whereas [it is written that] a soul that sins will die.’⁶⁵¹ The idea of the soul ‘dying’ was available not only from Ezekiel, but also from Jesus himself, who said that both the soul and body can be destroyed in the Gehenna.⁶⁵² A dead soul is analogous to a dead body which is deprived of the five senses: in like a manner, such a soul is deprived of ‘the divine senses’ (θείων αἰσθήσεων), by means of which it communicates with the divine universal Logos.⁶⁵³ This idea of the Logos dwelling in one’s being is central to Origen’s thought. One would see this as analogous to the Stoic Spermatic Logos, which is present in every rational creature, according to the (Stoic) idea of the apologist Justin. However, beyond the fact that Origen’s notion is more sophisticated and involves also the ‘spirit’, in fact his idea goes back to Anaxagoras. If there is some analogy with the Stoic thought on this point,⁶⁵⁴ this is only because the Stoics were heavily indebted to Anaxagoras, as explained already. Therefore, the suggestion is that the Logos ‘visits’ one’s soul as a personal Instructor, He is present to the extent a certain human being can receive him,⁶⁵⁵ and man is free either to accept his instructions or not to do so. Actually, this ‘visit’ does not mean intermittent habitation of the Logos, who is inherently present in each and every rational being; it only suggests that his ‘voice’ either can or cannot be listened to, which determines the action of creaturely free will.⁶⁵⁶ Strictly speaking, the soul (and definitely the spirit) is not given by one’s parents, but by God; therefore, a mother or father are not the real parents: only God is. As always, Origen felt he should support this idea by means scriptural authority: he appealed to Ezekiel, 18:4, ‘all of the souls are mine’, which also had the advantage of speaking also of ‘death of the soul’, since the phrase goes on, ‘a

 Eph. 5:14, but Paul’s statement cannot be traced in the Old Testament.  Ezekiel, 8:14. Origen, commEph, 26.  Matt. 10:28. Origen, commJohn, XX.11.83; Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 34; selPs, PG.12.1093.5 8; PG.12.1097.10 12.  Origen, Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V.7), p. 208. Cf. Commentarii in Epistulam ad Roma nos (I.1 XII.21), 25.  See COT, ‘The Place of the Logos’, pp. 165 72.  Origen, frJohn, 2: ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ υἱὸς καὶ λόγος, θεὸς ὢν λόγος, ἐστὶ πρὸς τὸν θεόν, ὡς ἀρτίως εἴρηται, γινόμενος καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ὡς οἷοι τε εἰσὶν χωρεῖν αὐτοῦ τὴν παρουσίαν.  Origen, Cels, IV.5; IV.15; IV.18; VIII.72; commJohn, II.18.129; VI.38.188; X.24.141; X.28.174; XIII.28.171; De Oratione, 22.4; homJer, 6.2; frLam, 10; commMatt, 10.14; 10.23; 11.12; 15.5; 17.8; et pas sim.

1318

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

soul that sins, it will die’. We should recall the epistle attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, which was imbued by the spirit of Anaxagoras: the author argued that, since any kind of generation is determined by the cosmic principles, it could be argued that a child is born not from its parents, but by means of its parents (ὁ γεννηθεὶς διὰ γονέων γεγέννηται, οὐχ ὑπὸ γονέων).⁶⁵⁷ It is impressive, though not surprising, that Origen endorsed this notion fully: although parents provide the material for offspring to be formed, and thus ‘we have parents as far as our bodies are concerned’, otherwise, ‘there is neither mother nor father of any soul, since the latter was created by God alone’ (οὐ γάρ ἐστι ψυχῆς μήτηρ ἢ πατήρ· ταύτης γὰρ ὁ Θεὸς μόνος ἐστὶ ποιητὴς καὶ πατήρ). This is what God means by saying ‘all of the souls are mine’, since ‘every soul has an existence of its own’, and none of them is produced from one another.⁶⁵⁸ It took some time for Origen to come to terms with the idea that a soul is pervious to death, which would have appeared bizarre in the first place, particularly to Greek ears; but he did treat it upon writing the thirteenth book of his commentary on John: a soul dies when human action contravenes the universal harmony of the principles. Any individual human being is a specific concurrence of certain logoi, and this combination is not determined by the physical parents, but by God. The presence of the ‘lesser mind’, which ‘is the same as the greater one’ , according to Anaxagoras, and it is the Logos according to Origen, establishes a personal relation with God. This relation is one’s personal identity,⁶⁵⁹ which does not change, although the existential state of the logoi which make it up are liable

 Apollonius of Tyana, Epistulae, 58. Likewise, it is not the earth that gives birth to plants: the soil is only the medium upon which the cosmic principles act and make a plant grow (τὸ διὰ γῆς φυὲν οὐκ ἐκ γῆς φύεται). See supra, pp. 520 1.  Origen, selEz, PG.13.817.16 23: ἑκάστη ψυχὴ ἰδίαν ὑπόστασιν ἔχει, ἐν τῷ ἰδίῳ λόγῳ ἱστα μένη, καὶ οὐκ ἐν ἄλλῳ. Commenting on Ezekiel, 18:4, ‘all of the souls are mine’. Origen appeals to 1 Cor. 15:38 (Cels, I.37; V.18; cf. commJohn, XX.2.3 6; XX.5.34; comm1Cor, 84; 87; commEph, 17), in order to argue that a man is created not only from the natural seed of his parents, but also from ‘higher and more divine seeds’. This is the meaning of God saying ‘all of the souls are mine’ (Ezekiel, 18:4). Put in philosophical terms, the Anaxagorean principles/logoi, which deter mine one’s overall existence, originate not only in one’s parents (physical logoi) but also in prin ciples of higher existential status (supra, pp. 994 5; 1282; 1302), such as psychic and spiritual logoi. The latter are those incorporeal seeds which come from God in accordance with the divine providence, or (which is the same) from the totality of the incorporeal logoi at God’s behest. This totality of logoi is identified also as ‘kingdom of heavens’ (infra, pp. 1321 3; 1326). See also supra, p. 1309.  See also, PHE, pp. 339 43.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1319

to alteration from one cosmic period to another, as indeed they do change during one’s lifetime though not to the extent of making a man ‘angel’⁶⁶⁰ or ‘daemon’. Once Origen decamped from Alexandria to Caesarea of Palestine, where he lived for only two years before moving to Tyre for good, he realized the need for a systematic exposition of a theory of soul; he wrote that ‘the theory of the soul is sublime and hard to grasp’ (ὁ περὶ ψυχῆς λόγος πολὺς καὶ δυσερμήνευτος), and ‘it needs a treatise of its own’ (ἰδίας δεῖται πραγματείας). The ‘difficulty’ did not pertain to the essential ideas about the topic, but to the fact that he had to follow his usual method: he should eschew pagan theories so as to represent everything as stemming from ‘scriptural statements scattered here and there’ (ἀναλεχθησόμενος ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν ταῖς γραφαῖς σποράδην κειμένων).⁶⁶¹ If indeed he composed such a systematic exposition (according to Pamphilus, he did not), this is not extant, but we know of some of the questions he would have treated. In order to determine the meaning of the scriptural saying that ‘John was Elias’, and to determine if reincarnation was involved in such a statement, he wrote this: We must investigate more carefully and inquire further in a separate treatise the doctrine about the essence of the soul, the beginning of its constitution (τῆς ἀρχῆς τῆς συστάσεως αὐτῆς), its entrance into an earthly body, the distributions of the life of each soul, its re lease from the body, and see if it is possible or not that it enter a second time in a body, and this during the same cosmic period and order or not,⁶⁶² and if it enters the same body or another. And if it is the same body, we must inquire whether it remains the same in substance but changed in quality, or if it will be the same both in substance and quality, and if it will always use the same body or will change it.⁶⁶³

I know of translators who rendered τῆς ἀρχῆς τῆς συστάσεως αὐτῆς ‘the origin of its existence’. They forgot one thing, however: the meaning of terms must in the first place be interpreted by means of how the same author uses these terms,⁶⁶⁴ which though those translators did not do. For Origen used the expression in order to speak about how a certain body began to exist as such. He speaks about ‘the original composition of the body’ of Apollo (τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς συστάσεως τοῦ σώματος), and, using distinctly Anaxagorean language, he argues that he received this ‘from superior and more divine seeds’ (ἀπὸ κρειττόνων  Unless God sends angels in the form of men, as described in some instances of the Old Tes tament. Cf. Origen, commJohn, II.23.144.  Origen, op. cit. VI.14.87.  Origen implies the doctrine of reincarnation and successive worlds of Empedocles, and the somehow heirs of it, namely, the Stoics.  Origen, commJohn, VI.14.85.  Cf. “Homer must be construed by means of how Homer himself explains himself.” See chapter 8, p. 599.

1320

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

καὶ θειοτέρων σπερμάτων).⁶⁶⁵ The same expression means ‘the beginning of the natural formation of a human body’ (ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς συστάσεως τοῦ σώματος).⁶⁶⁶ Finally, in the commentary on the Song of Solomon (which was to him a theological exposition par excellence), he speaks of the soul by means of the symbolical language of that scriptural poem: the soul was born from the upper Jerusalem, who is the mother of the soul, and the beginning of its conception lies in that heavenly mother (διὰ τὸ ἐν τῇ συλλήψει τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς συστάσεως εἶναι); but this ‘Jerusalem’ can be properly said to be ‘mother’ only once the perfect condition of man is considered (μετὰ τὴν μόρφωσιν, καὶ τὴν τοῦ συλληφθέντος τελείωσιν).⁶⁶⁷ This suggests that the proper condition of a soul, understood as a specific concurrence of logoi, does not involve distortion of them by human free action which gives rise to new concurrence of logoi, concerning itself as well as its environment, which ultimately is the entire universe. The foregoing passage in the commentary on John, which was written at an early period of his Christian life upon settling at Caesarea, clearly speaks of a beginning of constitution of a particular soul; and the terminology in the surrounding context (quoted above) makes it plain that the soul is made of seeds. Quite evidently, Origen had in mind not the human semen, but the Anaxagorean σπέρματα, or principles, or logoi. As a matter of fact, he used the old example of the seed which produces the entire plant, even if it is cut into pieces, since each piece of it contains all the logoi of the entire seed. This is analogous to the Logos, who is present in each and every individual as ‘inner man’, and yet he is the entire Logos himself. Origen used the imagery of Exodus 16:14, which described the manna which fell from the heavens as being ‘like a seed of coriander’, and explained that the manna was no other than the Logos.⁶⁶⁸ Apparently, Origen employed this exegesis from Philo almost to the letter,⁶⁶⁹ but definitely Plotinus was

 Origen, Cels, I.37. In the same work (III.8 & VIII.47), ἀρχὴ τῆς συστάσεως of the Christians means the beginning of their existence as a separate group.  Origen, comm1Cor, 31.  Origen, Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17.269.29 38. Cf. Gal. 4:26.  This is what Jesus said of himself. John, 6:41; 6:51. On ‘coriander’, see chapter 11, p. 853: κόριον is reputed to be ‘a plant that functions as a seed, no matter which part of it is planted; hence, even when it is cut into pieces, it does not lose its power.’ Origen, selDeut, PG.12.808.52 809.1 (using the example of the seed of coriander, commenting on Exodus 16:14): Φασὶ δὲ τὴν τοῦ κορίου φύσιν ὅλην δι᾿ ὅλων λόγον ἔχειν σπέρματος, ὡς μηδὲ ἐν τῷ κατακόπτεσθαι τὸ τοῦ κορίου σπέρμα, ἐξαφανίζεσθαι αὐτοῦ τὴν δύναμιν, ὡς οὐκ ἔτι δυναμένην σπείρεσθαι. Τοιοῦτος δὲ δι᾿ ὅλου ὁ λόγος· καὶ πᾶν μόριον αὐτοῦ γεωργεῖσθαι πέφυκεν ἐν καλῇ καὶ ἀγαθῇ, τουτέστι ψυχῆς.  Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 3.170 1: φασὶ δὲ οἱ γεωπόνοι τὸ σπέρμα τοῦ κορίου διαιρεθὲν εἰς ἄπειρα καὶ τμηθὲν καθ᾿ ἕκαστον τῶν μερῶν καὶ τμημάτων σπαρὲν βλαστάνειν οὕτως, ὡς καὶ τὸ

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1321

aware of the idea,⁶⁷⁰ much earlier, so was Cleanthes of the Old Stoa,⁶⁷¹ and indeed the notion of a seed containing indivisibly all the convoluted powers of a certain being went back to Anaxagoras. Thus, Origen, despite opting for following Philo (both of them commented on the same point of the Old Testament, after all), in effect, he applied his Greek education, and his essential philosophical affinities actually lie with Porphyry.⁶⁷² Therefore, although a certain personal relation between a rational creature and God persists throughout cosmic periods, this by no means entails that a soul is a substantial personal being which exchanges bodies from one cosmic period to another.⁶⁷³ After all, ‘soul’ is a notion applied to the human condition alone, whereas the equivalent in reference to angels is ‘hypostasis’.⁶⁷⁴ The ‘heavenly Jerusalem’, which is a ‘mother’ that ‘gives birth’ to a soul, is no other than the Anaxagorean logoi which Origen adumbrates as ‘decoration of the Body of the Logos’. This is another name for the ‘kingdom of heavens’, which is no other than the totality of the Anaxagorean principles.

ὅλον ἠδύνατο· τοιοῦτος καὶ ὁ θεοῦ λόγος, καὶ δι᾿ ὅλων ὠφελητικὸς καὶ διὰ παντὸς μέρους καὶ τοῦ τυχόντος.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.9.5: Καὶ τὸ σπέρμα ὅλον καὶ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ τὰ μέρη, ἐν οἷς πέφυκε μερίζεσθαι, καὶ ἕκαστον ὅλον καὶ μένει ὅλον οὐκ ἠλαττωμένον τὸ ὅλον ἡ δ᾿ ὕλη ἐμέρισε καὶ πάντα ἕν. Op. cit. V.9.6: Ὁ δὲ πᾶς νοῦς περιέχει ὥσπερ γένος εἴδη καὶ ὥσπερ ὅλον μέρη. Καὶ αἱ τῶν σπερμάτων δὲ δυνάμεις εἰκόνα φέρουσι τοῦ λεγομένου· ἐν γὰρ τῷ ὅλῳ ἀδιάκριτα πάντα, καὶ οἱ λόγοι ὥσπερ ἐν ἑνὶ κέντρῳ· καὶ ὥ ς ἐστιν ἄλλος ὀφθαλμοῦ, ἄλλος δὲ χειρῶν λόγος τὸ ἕτερος εἶναι παρὰ τοῦ γε νομένου ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ αἰσθητοῦ γνωσθείς.  Stobaeus (reporting the Stoic Cleanthes), op. cit. 1.17.3: Ὥσπερ γὰρ ἑνός τινος τὰ μέρη πάντα φύεται ἐκ σπερμάτων ἐν τοῖς καθήκουσι χρόνοις, οὕτω καὶ τοῦ ὅλου τὰ μέρη, ὧν καὶ τὰ ζῷα καὶ τὰ φυτὰ ὄντα τυγχάνει, ἐν τοῖς καθήκουσι χρόνοις φύεται. Cf. John Philoponus, commGenAnim, pp. 34 5, describing the human sperm containing indivisibly all the logoi of a human being.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 37: ὡς τὸ τυχὸν μέρος τοῦ σπέρματος τὴν τοῦ παντὸς σπέρματος ἔχει δύναμιν. Ὥσπερ δὲ κρατηθὲν ἐν ὕλῃ τι σπέρμα καθ᾿ ἕκαστον ὧν ἐδύνατο λόγων ἐν τοῖς μέρεσι τῇ ὕλῃ κρατεῖται καὶ πάλιν συναχθὲν εἰς τὴν τοῦ σπέρματος δύναμιν καθ᾿ ἕκαστον τῶν μερῶν ἔχει τὴν πᾶσαν δύναμιν, οὕτω καὶ ψυχῆς ἀΰλου τὸ ὡς μέρος ἐπινοούμενον τῆς πάσης ψυχῆς ἔχει τὴν δύναμιν. Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 51, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 396: καὶ οὐ δεῖ τοῦτο θαυμάζειν, εἴ τι ἀσώματον ὂν καὶ ἀδιάστατον ὑποστατικὸν εἴη τοῦδε τοῦ παντός· εἴπερ γὰρ τὸ σπέρμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, τοσοῦτον ὄγκον ἔχον καὶ πάντας ἐν ἑαυτῷ τοὺς λόγους. … ταῦτα γὰρ πάντα τά τε ὁμοιομερῆ καὶ τὰ ἐξ αὐτῶν πως ὑφίστησιν ἐξ ὀλίγου ὄγκου, μᾶλλον δὲ ἐκ τοῦ ἀόγ κου· οἱ γὰρ λόγοι ταῦτα γεννῶσιν, οὗτοι δὲ ἄογκοι πανταχοῦ ὄντες· ὅ, τι γὰρ ἂν λάβῃς τοῦ σπέρ ματος, ἐν αὐτῷ πάντα εὑρήσεις πολλῷ δὴ οὖν μᾶλλον ὁ δημιουργικὸς λόγος τὰ πάντα παράγειν δύναται μηδὲν εἰς τὸ εἶναι τῆς ὕλης δεηθείς, ὥσπερ ὁ τοῦ σπέρματος· ἐκεῖνος μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἔξω ὕλης, ὁ δὲ τῶν πάντων ὑποστάτης ἐν ἑαυτῷ διαιωνίως ἕστηκε καὶ ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ μένοντος τὰ πάντα παρήγαγε.  On this doctrine of Origen, see COT, pp. 327 8.  Origen, Cels, VI.71; VII.38; homLuc, 14, p. 86.

1322

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

The only names that Anaxagoras uses for his principles are either ‘seeds (σπέρματα)’ or (loosely) ‘things’ (χρήματα). The notion of χρήματα in the sense of ‘money’ offered opportunities for Origen to make use of his Anaxagorean background while using scriptural language.⁶⁷⁵ Actually, the noun ‘seed’ was very convenient, because the gospels, and indeed Jesus’ words themselves, are full of imageries from agricultural life. In the parables, ‘seeds’ play an important role, and they betoken Jesus’ logoi (words). In the mature work of the commentary on Matthew, Origen puns with the term logos (principle, word, teaching, theory, definition) in order to make clear his own ideas. The sower of the ‘good seed’ is Christ the Logos,⁶⁷⁶ and the ‘good seed’ itself represents ‘the sons of the kingdom’.⁶⁷⁷ These ‘sons’ are the ‘logoi’ themselves.⁶⁷⁸ The ‘sons of the kingdom’ constitute the original creation of the logoi that were placed on the Body of the Logos, and it was according to them that the individual rational creatures initially were made. The ‘inner man’ is only their pure form, unperverted by the wickedness that human freedom produced subsequently. In this sense, ‘the kingdom of heavens’ is ‘inside’ ourselves,⁶⁷⁹ as much as is it an objective reality, namely, the totality of logoi that constitute the ‘decoration of the Body of the Logos’, or (which is the same) the totality of the Anaxagorean logoi that ‘stem from a single body’. The innocent and pure primeval nature has within itself ‘the seeds of truth and the origins of it’ (τῆς ἀληθείας σπέρματα καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς αὐτῆς),⁶⁸⁰ which is an Anaxagorean statement preserving the ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα) as much as does it so for the ‘principles (τὰς ἀρχάς)’.⁶⁸¹ Origen was able to accommodate his new faith at a time when he was already a mature man only because he had been trained by Anaxagoras. To

 See chapter 11, pp. 925 6.  Matt. 13:24; 13:27; 13:37 38.  Matt. 13:38.  Origen, commMatt, 10.2: Καὶ πρόσχες γε εἰ δύνασαι τὸ καλὸν σπέρμα τοὺς υἱοὺς τῆς βασιλείας πρὸς τοῖς προαποδεδομένοις καὶ ἑτέρως λαβεῖν, ὅτι ὅσα ἐν τῇ ἀνθρωπίνῃ φύεται ψυχῇ καλά, ταῦτα ὑπὸ τοῦ ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν λόγου θεοῦ γεννήματα τυγχάνοντα τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ βασιλείας [the totality of logoi = the embroidered wisdom = the sons of the Kingdom] ὡς εἶναι τοὺς περὶ ἑκάστου ὑγιεῖς λόγους τοὺς υἱοὺς τῆς βασιλείας.  Luke, 17:21.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.12.77 78.  Origen, loc. cit.: τούτοις δὲ φιλανθρώπως ὁ σωτὴρ ὑποδείκνυσιν καὶ τὰ περὶ τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ βασιλείας, ἵνα μὴ ζητῶσιν αὐτὴν ἔξω ἑαυτῶν μηδὲ λέγωσιν· Ἰδοὺ ὧδε, ἢ ἰδοὺ ἐκεῖ· φησὶ γὰρ αὐτοῖς· Ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ ἐντὸς ὑμῶν ἐστίν. καὶ ὅσον γε σώζομεν τὰ ἐνσπαρέντα ἡμῶν τῇ ψυχῇ τῆς ἀληθείας σπέρματα καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς αὐτῆς, οὐδέπω ἀπελήλυθεν ἀφ᾿ ἡμῶν ὁ λόγος· ἐὰν δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς κατὰ τὴν κακίαν χύσεως διαφθάρωμεν, τότε ἡμῖν ἐρεῖ· Ὑπάγω.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1323

him, the ‘kingdom of heavens’ is ‘the spiritual reality’,⁶⁸² and, if we speak of heavens (in plural), this is only because each and every logos of cognition is metaphorically adumbrated as ‘a heaven’.⁶⁸³ Therefore, Jesus’ teaching was itself a ‘kingdom of heavens’, since, a totality of logoi (= words) as it was, it invited the Pharisees to ‘repent’ their understanding of the divine word by means of seeing in the Old Testament only as a ‘shadow’ anticipating the truth of the New one. Consequently, the ‘kingdom of heavens’ is both the logoi (principles) of the primeval creation as much as are they the logoi (words) of Jesus. Whether one comes close to the primal logoi by clearing his own life (soul), or comes close to Jesus’ logoi, in either case one comes close to the kingdom of heavens.⁶⁸⁴ In this respect, the disciples of Jesus, who were logoi themselves, were also ‘the sons of the kingdom’.⁶⁸⁵ Therefore, reaching out for the words of Jesus is tantamount to getting close to the initial logoi of the Body of the Logos, and this is the ‘good and large land’ unto which the Logos will ‘bring’ his followers,⁶⁸⁶ a land watered by Christ himself.⁶⁸⁷ The soul is consisted of certain concurrent logoi, and its creator and instructor is the Logos. If the Logos is ‘the image of God’,⁶⁸⁸ then the soul which is made of the logoi (= the decoration his the Body) is ‘an image of the image’.⁶⁸⁹ Man then is not an ‘image’: he is made ‘according to the image’.⁶⁹⁰ This idea, which somehow sees the Logos as ‘second God’, belongs to the very early stage of Origen’s Christian life, when he groped for a way to transform the Anaxagorean Mind to a Trinitarian God. However, he abandoned this adumbration soon: the soul is not a mirrored representation of the Logos, in which case the soul should be understood as containing all of the logoi, as it was the tenet of Neoplatonists. Instead, the soul is a concurrence of certain logoi. What is

 Origen, commMatt, 10.14: κατὰ δὲ τὸ βαθύτερον, ὅτε τὰς διὰ τοῦ γράμματος τῶν γραφῶν εἰσαγωγὰς παραλαβών τις ἀναβαίνει ἐπὶ τὰ πνευματικὰ ὀνομαζόμενα βασιλείαν οὐρανῶν.  Origen, loc. cit.: Καὶ καθ᾿ ἕκαστόν γε διανόημα ἐπιτυγχανόμενον καὶ ἐπαναβεβηκότως νοη θὲν καὶ παραδειχθὲν καὶ ἀποδειχθὲν ἔστι νοῆσαι βασιλείαν οὐρανοῦ, ὡς τὸν περισσεύοντα τῇ ἀψευδεῖ γνώσει ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ γίνεσθαι τοῦ πλήθους τῶν οὕτως ἀποδεδομένων οὐρανῶν.  Origen, loc. cit.: 10.14: Διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ὅσον μὲν Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, ὁ ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν θεὸς λόγος οὐκ ἐπιδημεῖ ψυχῇ, οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν ἐκείνῃ ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν, ὅταν δὲ ἐγγύς τις γένηται τοῦ χωρῆσαι τὸν λόγον, τούτῳ ἐγγίζει ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.  Origen, frPs, Psalm 44:9 10: υἱοὶ γὰρ ὄντες τῆς βασιλείας οἱ μαθηταὶ, εἰκότως ἂν καὶ βασι λεῖς ὀνομάζοιντο.  Cf. Exodus, 3:8; 8:7.  Origen, selDeut, PG.12.809.9 12.  2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15.  Origen, Cels, VI.63; homLuc. 8, p. 49; De Oratione, 22.4.  Origen, commJohn, II.3.20. Cf. Gen. 1:26 27; 5.1; Ecclesiasticus, 17:3.

1324

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

more, since soul (ψυχή) is a feminine noun and Nous and Logos are masculine, the soul is the one who receives the ‘seeds’ of the Logos and becomes pregnant with the offspring of the divine grace. Thus, we arrive in the Song of Songs, and it is certainly not coincidence that Origen believed that this is the scriptural text that contains the most profound and sublime theological truths.⁶⁹¹ Now the soul is the Bride, and the Logos is the Bridegroom: this is the doctrine of Origen’s maturity, which he maintained until the end of his life.⁶⁹² The notion of male/female relation between Nous and the soul did not enjoy considerable currency.⁶⁹³ But it is noteworthy that Didymus explicates it,⁶⁹⁴ and then Proclus says that ‘certain philosophers made minds masculine gods, and posited souls as feminine’.⁶⁹⁵ He did not indicate where he received it from, but I have argued that the Christian Didymus considerably influenced Proclus,⁶⁹⁶ and I should have thought that this is one more instance of this phenomenon.

 Origen, expProv, PG.17.220.56.  Origen, Scholia in Canticum Canticorum, PG.17: 260.28 35; 268.54 61; 273.41 43. The Logos is the Bridegroom who communicates with many souls, not only with one; PG.17.277.42 47: λόγος ἐστὶν ὁ νυμφίος· λογικὸν ζῶον ἡ νύμφη· ἐὰν νοήσῃ ψυχὴ καὶ λάβῃ ὁ νυμφίος τὴν νύμφην· ἀλλ᾿ ἐπεί ἐστιν ὁ λόγος οὗτος, οὐ μιᾷ ψυχῇ κοινωνῶν, ἀλλὰ πλείοσι καὶ διαφόροις, τιμῇ τινι βασιλικῇ καὶ διαφαινούσῃ, λεγέτω τελεία περιστερά. Op. cit. PG.17.280.40 41: ἔστι δὲ ἡ νύμφη τοῦ λόγου ψυχή. Libri x in Canticum Canticorum (fragmenta), p. 175: Τάχα δὲ κλίνην κοινὴν ἑαυτῆς καὶ τοῦ νυμφίου τὸ σῶμα αἰνίττεται, ἐν ᾧ ἔτι οὖσα ἡ ψυχὴ ἀξιοῦται τῆς τοῦ λόγου κοινωνίας. comm Matt, 12.4: ἤδη δὲ καὶ πᾶσα δύναμις ἀντικειμένη, ἐπικρατοῦσα τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης ψυχῆς καὶ ἀνα μιγνυμένη αὐτῇ, μοιχός ἐστιν αὐτῆς, νυμφίον ἐχούσης ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ αὐτῇ δοθέντα τὸν λόγον. De Oratione, 17.2: ὁ δὲ κατανοήσας τί ποτ᾿ ᾖ τὸ κάλλος τῆς νύμφης, ἧς ὁ νυμφίος λόγος ὢν θεοῦ ἐρᾷ, ψυχῆς τυγχανούσης. frLuc, 186: ἐν δὲ τῷ ᾌσματι τῆς νύμφης, ἤτοι ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴν ἀναγομένης νυμφίῳ κοινωνούσης τῷ Χριστῷ. Homiliae in Exodum, p. 277: Οὕτως ἐπὶ ψυχῆς ἐχούσης ἕνα λόγον ἕνα νυμφίον· … Ὁ δὲ νυμφίος καὶ καλὸς ζηλωτής, κἂν πόρ νην ποτὲ παραλάβῃ, σωφρονίζειν ἐθέλει.  In the same context, Origen took up another relevant idea from Philo, namely, the expres sion χρὼς ζῶν (‘living flesh’) of Leviticus 13:14, meaning the Logos. Philo, Quod Deus sit Immu tabilis, 123. Origen (citing ‘a man of old’, meaning Philo), homLev, p. 404. Also, Adnotationes in Leviticum, PG.17.21 22; frLuc, 107; commLuc, PG.17.365.48 50.  Didymus, In Genesim, Cod. p. 62: Καὶ ἐπεὶ ἐλέγομεν δηλοῦσθαι τὴν ἀνθρώπου προσηγορίαν καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ νοῦ καὶ ψυχῆς, νοήσομεν κατ᾿ ἀναγωγὴν οὕτω τὸ ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ.  Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 242: διὸ καὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων τινὲς τοῖς θεοῖς ἐξομοιοῦντες τὰ ἀπ᾿ αὐτῶν τοὺς μὲν νόας κατὰ τὸ ἄρρεν γένος τῶν θεῶν, τὰς δὲ ψυχὰς κατὰ τὸ θῆλυ τάττειν ἀξιοῦσι· νοῦς μὲν γὰρ ἀδιαίρετος καὶ περισσοειδής, ψυχὴ δὲ διαιρετὴ καὶ δυοειδής.  RCR, pp. 333 77; NDGF, pp. 363; 411.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1325

Later still, the idea appears in Ammonius of Alexandria,⁶⁹⁷ which is rather natural since Proclus was his teacher at Athens. Origen affirms in advance the Cartesian ideae innatae existing within a man by physical construction. He uses the Stoic notion of ‘common concepts’ (κοιναὶ ἔννοιαι),⁶⁹⁸ which is closely related to his (Stoic) notion of ‘completion of reason’ (συμπλήρωσις λόγου)⁶⁹⁹ with age.⁷⁰⁰ One should be alert to the fact that he regards these ‘concepts’ as being in man’s ἡγεμονικόν, and hardly could he have used more Stoic a notion in order to suggest his philosophical predilection. It is indeed ironical and disappointing that the editors of the French edition of the De Principiis tried to represent Origen as a ‘Platonist’ by citing (but not quoting) the points where he speaks as a Stoic philosopher.⁷⁰¹ Even at a couple of points where he speaks in a loose sense of ‘innate concepts’ in association with the soul, he clearly suggests that the gist of the notion is no other that of the Logos existing in all rational creatures and acting as an instructor, which would be of no value to the ‘Platonism’-mongers⁷⁰² who never grasped the Anaxagorean tenor of Origen’s ideas. He speaks of the ‘advent of the Logos’ (ἐπιδημία τοῦ Λόγου) into one’s soul, or mind, or ἡγεμονικόν, or ‘in

 Ammonius of Alexandria, commDeInterpr, p. 35: κατὰ ταύτην γὰρ τὴν ἔννοιαν καὶ τὸν μὲν νοῦν ἀρρενικῶς τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν θηλυκῶς λέγειν διέταξαν, τὸν μὲν ἐλλάμπειν δυνάμενον τὴν δὲ ἐλλάμπεσθαι πεφυκυῖαν ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ θεασάμενοι.  Origen, Cels, I.4; III.40; IV.84; VIII.52; Princ, IV.1.1 (& Philocalia, 1.1): ταῖς κοιναῖς ἐννοίαις. Latin tr.: communi intellectui. Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21) (Philocalia, 9.2), 36a: κατὰ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας φύσει ἐγγεγραμμένου τῷ ἡγεμονικῷ ἡμῶν, καὶ τρανωτέρου μετὰ τῆς συμπληρώσεως τοῦ λόγου ὁσημέραι γινομένου. commGen (Philocalia, 23.7), PG.12.68.11. Cf. the Stoic notion of κοιναὶ ἔννοιαι. SVF, I.18.34; II.28.15&19; II.33.15; II.33.15&17; II.35.17. II.74.7; II.154.29; II.215.10; II.299.13; II.300.5; III.45.21; III.51.41.  See supra, p. 1275. Cf. SVF, II.215.6 11: ‘the concept of good and evil is formed during the second week’ of human life.  The remark that Origen considers the ‘natural concepts’ as Platonic ones being inherent in the soul is erroneous. This remark was made by H. Crouzel and M. Simonetti, in Origène, Traité des Principes, v. 269, p. 154. I have pointed out serious mistakes by H. Crouzel concerning Origen, in COT, pp. 88 9; 115; PHE, pp. 182 3; 217; 230 1; 242; 255; 288.  Here are the passages that H. Crouzel and M. Simonetti did not quote. Origen, Cels, VII.46: ἐνεσπαρμένα φυσικῶς ὑπὸ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ τῇ λογικῇ φύσει. commJohn, XIII.41.273: κατὰ τὴν τελείωσιν τοῦ σπερματικῶς ἐγκειμένου κατὰ τὰς ἐννοίας ἡμῖν λόγου ἀπὸ γεωργίας πλείονος τετελειωμένου.  Origen, Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21), 36a: παρὰ δὲ πάντα ταῦτα λέγε ται νόμος ὁ κατὰ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας ἐνεσπαρμένος τῇ ψυχῇ καί, ὡς ὀνομάζει ἡ γραφή, ἐγγεγραμ μένος τῇ καρδίᾳ λόγος, προστακτικὸς μὲν ὧν ποιητέον, ἀπαγορευτικὸς δὲ ὧν οὐ ποιητέον. Ori gen, selEx, PG.12.285.43 45: Ἐὰν ἀλληγορῶμεν ταῦτα εἰς τὴν ψυχὴν ἡμῶν, ἐροῦμεν ὅτι οἰκογενεῖς μέν εἰσιν οἱ συμπεφυκότες ἡμῖν καὶ γεωργηθέντες λόγοι, καὶ ἐπιστῆναι ἀπὸ συμφύτων ἐννοιῶν ἀρξάμενοι.

1326

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

a man’, or whatever,⁷⁰³ by analogy to the Anaxagorean axiom that the Mind is present in animate beings.⁷⁰⁴ Let then this be made clear, by quoting the following from Origen’s Christian maturity: he refers to the Last Day described in Matt. 24:40‒44, when ‘advent of the Logos’ will take place once again, but this ‘advent’ is in fact a continuous occurrence, since the Logos is present in each and every human being as an instructor. Once again, the imagery he used is that the soul is the feminine element which receives the masculine Nous within it. Once the Lord comes, he enters into the soul/house as the landlord Mind (οἰκοδεσπότης νοῦς); but the adverse thief [enters into the soul/house] with the purpose to despoil the mind, by undermining the natural concepts of the soul, which have been built up by the Logos (τὰς φυσικὰς ἐννοίας τῆς ψυχῆς, ἃς ᾠκοδόμησεν ὁ λόγος), and by overturning them.⁷⁰⁵

The natural concepts are simply the principles according to which the world is made, it is being held together, and known. They are the logoi, both as constructive and cohesive causes, and as objects of cognition and contemplation. These are ‘the sons of the kingdom’ (οἱ υἱοὶ τῆς βασιλείας), and they are both within a man and outside him: for indeed the ‘kingdom of heavens’ (made of all the logoi, the ‘decoration’ of the Body of the Logos) can be within a man as much as are they an objective reality outside him. This is also the pleroma (πλήρωμα), and it is remarkable how Origen (an avowed and staunch anti-Gnostic) boldly put a characteristic Gnostic term to new use.⁷⁰⁶ Therefore, in the case of ‘the earnest of our inheritance’,⁷⁰⁷ ‘the inheritance is not outside one who inherits, but in his

 Origen, commJohn, II.1.8: πρὸς μὲν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους πρότερον οὐ χωροῦντας τὴν τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ, λόγου τυγχάνοντος, ἐπιδημίαν ὁ λόγος γίνεται. Op. cit. XIII.57.392: Δύνανται δὲ καὶ δύο τοῦ λόγου εἶναι ἐπιδημίαι ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ. De Oratione, 22.4: τῇ εἰς τὴν ψυχὴν ἡμῶν ἐπιδημίᾳ τοῦ λόγου τοῦ θεοῦ. homJer, 9.1: πρὸς ἕκαστον ἐπιδημία ἐστὶν τοῦ λόγου. Cels, IV.5: ἐπιδημίᾳ τοῦ λόγου εἰς ἀνθρώπους τινά … τὸν παραδεξάμενον τὴν τοῦ λόγου τοῦ θεοῦ ἐπιδημίαν εἰς τὴν ἑαυ τοῦ ψυχήν. Op. cit. IV.6: διὰ τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ τῆς ἀεὶ ἐπιδημίας τοῦ λόγου ἀναλαμβάνειν ἡμᾶς τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν οἰκείωσιν. commMatt, 12.30: ἐπὰν δὲ τοιοῦτος μετὰ τῶν ἀγγέλων αὐτοῦ ἐπιδημήσῃ τῷ τοῦ πιστεύοντος νῷ ὁ λόγος, μεταδώσει ἑκάστῳ τῆς δόξης ἑαυτοῦ. Op. cit. 14.11: Ἰησοῦ, … ἐπιδημήσαντος αὐτοῦ τῷ ἡγεμονικῷ καὶ ἀνοίγοντος τοὺς ἐν τῇ παραβολῇ θησαυροὺς πάντας σκοτεινούς, ἀποκρύφους, ἀοράτους καὶ πληροφοροῦντος δι᾿ ἐναργῶν ἀποδείξεων. commMatt, p. 134: διὰ τὴν ἐσομένην ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐπιδημίαν τοῦ λόγου.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 164: ἐν παντὶ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστι πλὴν νοῦ, ἔστιν οἷσι δὲ καὶ νοῦς ἔνι. Also, op. cit. p. 172.  Origen, commMatt, p. 134. I use italics for the vocabulary of the passage of Matthew  Origen, commJohn, XX.19.162. Several points in his work make sense only once ‘pleroma’ is explained as the totality of the logoi, that is, the fullness of the decoration of the Body of the Logos. See further, infra, pp. 1309; 1326; 1322 4.  Eph. 1:14.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1327

mind and soul’ (ἀλλ᾿ ἐν τῷ νῷ τοῦ κληρονομοῦντος καὶ τῇ ψυχῇ αὐτοῦ). There is nothing that could be compared with the perfection of a mind (τελειότητι νοῦ) which contemplates the beauty of Wisdom and Logos and God and Truth’.⁷⁰⁸ It is the mind then which is the subject who contemplates, because it is illuminated by the Mind/Logos, whereas the object of contemplation is the logoi of the world. This being granted, Origen felt free to speak in a loose sense about ‘mind or soul’ at some points, only because he had not anticipated the nonsense of his later readers, who could not realize that it is impossible to follow him unless equipped with knowledge of his philosophical pressupositions. Origen’s Anaxagorean connotations can indeed be traced here and there, in passing statements of his. When he considers the ‘unshakable kingdom’ (βασιλείαν ἀσάλευτον) of Heb. 12:28, his understanding of it is telling: First, this kingdom is consisted of all the kinds and orders of angels,⁷⁰⁹ and it has now been made clear that ‘angels’ is only a symbolic expression betokening function of ‘logoi’, and the different names of the higher powers indicate not living beings, but different kinds of action. In the case of higher powers, the names are not names of the natures of living beings (οὐχὶ φύσεων ζῴων ἐστὶν ὀνόματα), but of orders of which this or that spiritual nature has been prepared by God. For throne is not a species of a living being (οὐκ εἶδος ζῴου), nor is prin cipality, or dominion, or power, ⁷¹⁰ but they are names of activities (ἀλλὰ ὀνόματα πραγμάτων)⁷¹¹ over which those thus named are appointed.⁷¹²

Secondly, the cognitive agent for man to grasp this kingdom is not the soul, but the mind (θεωρήσας ὁ νοῦς), which is ‘still bound with matter’ (ὁ ἔτι δεδεμένος σώματι ἀνθρώπινος νοῦς).⁷¹³ The affinity, by virtue of which cognition is made possible, is between the universal Mind and human mind. Furthermore, in his mature work commenting on the epistle to the Romans, he considers the expression about Christ, whom ‘God set forth to be a propitiation’ (προέθετο ὁ Θεὸς ἱλαστήριον), and then he says that scripture makes mention of ‘pure gold’ at many points,⁷¹⁴ which ‘betokens symbolically the pure  Origen, commEph, 8. Cels, V.60 (quoted supra, p. 1311, note 623).  Using the language of Eph. 1:21; Col. 1:16.  Cf. Eph. 1:21.  According to Origen, ‘names’ indicate πράγματα. commJohn, I.9.52; I.24.156; VI.41.216; X.12.63; XIX.15.98; XX.29.267; XXXII.26.330; Philocalia, 26.8 (apud selPs, PG.12.1164.2 4); comm Matt, 12.3; 14.22; Commentarii in epistulam ad Romanos, 36a; Cels, I.24; I.71. Etymologically, the noun πρᾶγμα signifies the result of an action. See chapter 12, p. 1156.  Origen, commJohn, II.23.146. Likewise, Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 4.5.4.  Origen, De Oratione, 17.2.  Cf. Ex. 25:17&23; 28:13; et passim; 2 Paralipomenon 4:20; et passim; Prov. 8:10.

1328

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

mind which is unmixed with matter’ (τὸν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ πρὸς ὕλην νοῦν)’.⁷¹⁵ This is the most Anaxagorean language ever used by any author outside a context of considering Anaxagoras himself, and Origen identifies this with the Mind/ Christ. The term χρήματα, which is the designation that Anaxagoras himself used of his principles along with the term σπέρματα, lent itself to punning, since χρήματα means both ‘things’ in the most abstract sense, and ‘money’. Once the ‘logoi’ can be considered in this double entendre, scripture offers opportunities to apply the trope. Thus, considering Prov. 17:6a (τοῦ πιστοῦ ὅλος ὁ κόσμος τῶν χρημάτων),⁷¹⁶ he explains the meaning it thus: A faithful man will see all the logoi of the world, which [scripture] metaphorically called χρήματα. By contrast, an unfaithful man will not grasp even the logos of the tiniest thing, because of the filth of his soul.⁷¹⁷

To put it simply, Origen considers the language of scripture as metaphorical, while using himself the Anaxagorean language literally. The ‘logoi of the world’, regarded also as objects of cognition, is a recurrent theme. For instance, the way for someone to secure victory over the adverse power is to ‘learn the logoi’ which determine the cunning activity of the adversary (τοὺς περὶ αὐτῆς λόγους μανθάνοντες). These logoi are only part of all those which make up the world, they are ‘logoi about animate and inanimate beings’ (περὶ ἐμψύχων καὶ ἀψύχων λόγους), or about ‘practical action and natural theory’ (περὶ πρακτικῆς καὶ φυσικῆς λόγοι)’, or ‘contemplation of corporeal and incorporeal things’ (περὶ σωμάτων καὶ ἀσωμάτων θεωρία).⁷¹⁸ Likewise, when he refers to ‘common concepts’ (κοιναὶ ἔννοιαι),⁷¹⁹ which is an idea interwoven with ‘completion of reason’ with age (συμπλήρωσις λόγου), he speaks about the soul which is endowed with ‘coins by the Lord’ (μετὰ τοῦ οἰκοδεσπότου νομισμάτων); these coins ‘come to light gradually with one’s completion of rationality’ (ἀναφαινομένων μετὰ τῆς τοῦ λόγου συμπληρώσεως), and then ‘they are multiplied by means of diligent care and exercise’ (καὶ τῆς ἑξῆς τῇ συμπληρώσει τοῦ λόγου ἐπιμελείας καὶ ἀσκήσεως). It is quite evident that, by νομίσματα, he has in mind its synonym χρήματα, as above.⁷²⁰ Furthermore, he af Origen, Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V.7), p. 185.  In fact, literally the proverb is about money: “All the money of the world belong to a faith ful man, whereas no obol belongs to an unbeliever”.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.197.35 38.  Origen, op. cit. PG.17.249.39 46.  See supra, p. 1325, note 698.  Origen, frLuc, 228. He refers to the parable as in Luke, 19:12 26.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1329

firms that the logoi cannot be infinite in number (as Simplicius confirmed of the Anaxagorean principles, against Aristotle), because, if they were infinite, it would be impossible for the concept of ‘prophecy’ to make sense.⁷²¹ However implicit, Anaxagorean echoes are clear, and they bespeak how the philosopher who was his creative flare influenced him. Origen was an anti-Platonist because he was an Anaxagorean philosopher, both before and after he joined Christianity. The irony is that, to Neoplatonists such as Proclus, Origen was an anti-Platonist, and to Christians he has been always branded a Platonist. The simple truth is that he was an Anaxagorean expagan who paved the way to Nicaea, and the current Trinitarian orthodoxy is simply the product of his thought, even though religious allergiances found it too hard to accept that an ex-pagan, who joined Christianity when he was already a mature man, is the brilliant theologian who formulated the core of the faith. The soul according to Origen is formed because certain logoi concur in order to form a human being. In the Contra Celsum, he argues against the Stoics who ‘posited the principles as material, and, consequently they believe that everything is liable to extinction’ (σωματικὰς λέγοντας εἶναι τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πάντα φθείροντας). To him, the Stoics were somehow the prodigal sons of Anaxagoras, since they took the ontological essence of his philosophy (a Mind/Logos acting by means of his principles/logoi) but they spoiled it by making the logoi material and perishable, as indeed they nearly did so with the Logos himself. Therefore, he deplores them and says, Let the Stoics consume utterly everything; we, however, know of no incorporeal substance which is consumed by fire, nor do we recognize that human soul is dissolved into fire, or that this happens to the hypostasis of angels, or thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers (οὐδ᾿ εἰς πῦρ ἀναλυομένην τὴν ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴν ἢ τὴν ἀγγέλων ἢ θρόνων ἢ κυρ ιοτήτων ἢ ἀρχῶν ἢ ἐξουσιῶν ὑπόστασιν).⁷²²

One of the testimonies about the Stoic theory of the soul has it that this is of ‘fiery’ nature (πυρώδης),⁷²³ whereas the cosmic soul perishes during conflagration.⁷²⁴ Likewise, according to Zeno, human soul is consisted of fire which is absorbed into the divine fire upon the universal conflagration.⁷²⁵

 των    

Origen, commMatt, 13.1: τούτῳ δὲ ἀκολουθεῖ μηδὲ προφητείας δύνασθαι γενέσθαι περὶ πάν ὡντινωνοῦν, ἅτε ἀπείρων ὄντων τῶν πάντων. See PHE, pp. 117 29. Origen, Cels, VI.71. SVF, II.308.21 (apud Plutarch, De Facie in Orbe Lunae, 926C); cf. supra, p. 1207. Chrysippus, SVF, II.131.24 25. Cicero, De Finibus, IV.5&12; Tusculanae Disputationes, I.9&19 (SVF, I.38.2).

1330

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

When Origen speaks of ‘human being’, he sometimes calls it ‘soul’, which is a designation indicating ‘human nature’ (the ‘inner man’).⁷²⁶ Although many would be quick to style this ‘Platonism’, the avowed enemy of Origenism, namely, Epiphanius of Salamis would have never done so. For he knew that, as it happened on numerous points of this theology, Origen actually followed the Stoic Cleanthes, ‘who called man the soul alone’ (Κλεάνθης … ἄνθρωπον ἐκάλει μόνην τὴν ψυχήν).⁷²⁷ Consequently, ‘the soul’ only bespeaks ‘human nature’, or human ‘hypostasis’, or simply, ‘human being’. This is why, when Origen refers to creatures of other tiers of life, he speaks of ‘hypostasis’ of angels of sundry orders, not of ‘souls’. The idea underlying his rejection of the notion that humans and angels perish upon conflagration is that the Anaxagorean principles do not perish, as indeed the logoi of Jesus (which, to Origen, are the primeval creative logoi in the Body of the Logos, that is, the same as the Anaxagorean principles) will never pass away either.⁷²⁸ By contrast, never did Origen say that the souls are principles. Instead, he made it abundantly clear that his principles are the logoi, as indeed the logoi (if material) are the Stoic principles,⁷²⁹ too. It is only the idea of the logoi being destructible upon conflagration that he rejects. If human and angelic beings are not destroyed, this is because their hypostasis (the human equivalent of which is the soul) is made of certain concurrences of logoi, which are never destroyed, as he points out every now and then.⁷³⁰ Human beings, as well as higher ones, are subject to existential transformation, that is, transposition to different planes of existence. Therefore, a higher hypostasis (or a human soul) is not a principle, on account of the fact each of them is subject to transformation, indeed a product of certain logoi. For how could it be possible for something, which is subject to transformation to be a principle? Therefore, there must be principles which are prior to ‘souls’ and to hypostases’ of higher beings. Whether

 Origen, Cels, VII.38: Καὶ ἄνθρωπος μὲν οὖν, τουτέστι ψυχὴ χρωμένη σώματι, λεγομένη ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος ἀλλὰ καὶ ψυχή. Dialogus cum Heraclide, 23: Εἰ νενόηται ἡ ψυχή, καὶ νενόηται κατὰ τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον. Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21), 39. Supra, p. 1311, notes 619 27.  Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 3, p. 508 (SVF, I.123.5 8).  Mark, 13:31; Luke, 21:33.  In Cels, I.21, Origen rebukes the Stoics for introducing ‘a perishable material [universal] principle (ἀρχὴν φθαρτὴν εἰσάγοντος τὴν σωματικήν), according to which the god of Stoics is a body’.  Cf. Origen, commMatt, pp. 123 4: ἀλλ᾿ ὁ οὐρανὸς μὲν καὶ ἡ γῆ παρελεύσονται, οἱ δὲ λόγοι αὐτοῦ μενοῦσι, λόγοι ὄντες τοῦ δι᾿ οὗ τὰ πάντα ἐγένετο· ὁ γὰρ λόγος τῶν γεγονότων οὐ πα ρέρχεται, εἰ καὶ αὐτὰ παρέρχεται. Quoting Mark, 13:31; Luke, 21:33.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1331

‘souls’ or ‘hypostases’, these designations indicate quality of existence, not principles of being, and we have seen that qualities are ontologically posterior to principles; in short, it is principles that give rise to qualities, hence, also to such qualities of life as either ‘soul’ or any higher ‘hypostasis’. These principles are the logoi, which effect transformation of things by means of their intermittent different convergence or divergence. Unlike qualities, the logoi themselves are not subject to annihilation; they remain intact even during total cosmic destruction, so that they should recur anew in order to form different combinations of themselves, and a new re-arrangement of rational creatures will come to pass as a result. The principles/logoi decorate the Body of the Logos, they do not constitute it.⁷³¹ For the Logos Himself is a self-substantial living being (καὶ τὸ εἶναι λόγος ζῶον, τὸ ὑφεστηκέναι καθ᾿ ἑαυτό),⁷³² whereas the logoi were created by him and placed on his Body. These logoi make up individual rational creatures (whether they are called souls or hypostases, they are always corporeal ones), in like a manner they produce everything in the world. The difference between rational creatures and the rest of all other animate or inanimate beings is that, in the former, the Logos is present himself, whereas in the latter he is providentially present by his action through the logoi. Therefore, any soul is made of ‘living stones’⁷³³ or logoi, which are themselves creatures. If the Logos is the ‘image’ of the God/Mind, and he realizes the ad extra manifestation of Deity, the product of the logoi in which the Logos is present, that is, the soul, is ‘image of the image’. This suggests the reality produced out of concurrence of logoi, which is a worldly reality. A soul is invisible and incorporeal (which is the selfsame notion⁷³⁴), because it is made by means of a certain concurrence of the incorporeal logoi, and it is immortal by the same token,⁷³⁵ although it is also subject to death.⁷³⁶ In this re-

 This is a substantial difference between Origen and Plotinus to whom, ‘Intellect itself is the really existing things’. Plotinus, Enneades, V.4.2 (45), in fact copying from Aristotle, De Anima, 431b17.  Origen, homJer, 20.1.  See COT, p. 54; PHE, p. 187; supra, pp. 837; 881; 955 6; 960; 1004.  Origen, frLuc, 186: τροπολογικῶς τὸ σῶμα ἐπὶ τῆς ψυχῆς λαμβάνομεν, καίτοι γε τῷ ἰδίῳ λόγῳ οὔσης ἀοράτου καὶ ἀσωμάτου κατὰ γὰρ τὴν εἰκόνα γέγονε τοῦ ἀοράτου θεοῦ. Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 12: ἡ γὰρ κατ᾿ εἰκόνα θεοῦ δεδημιουργημένη τιμιωτέρα ἐστὶ πάντων σωμάτων. Op. cit. 47: Ἔτι δὲ καὶ φιλοζωεῖ ἄνθρωπος πεῖσμα λαβὼν περὶ οὐσίας λογικῆς ψυχῆς ὡς ἐχούσης τι συγγενὲς θεῷ. νοερὰ γὰρ ἑκάτερα καὶ ἀόρατα καί, ὡς ὁ ἐπικρατῶν ἀποδείκνυσι λόγος, ἀσώματα. Cels, VI.71; VII.32; VIII.49; De Resurrectione, PG.11.96.20; selPs, PG.12.1097.10.  Origen, Cels, IV.54; IV.61; VI.58; Princ, III.1.17; commJohn, XIII.60.417 8; De Oratione, 27.9; frLuc, 168.

1332

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

spect, a soul is subject to alteration, which means modification of the concurrence of logoi which constitute it: if one complies with the divine word, one has the soul altered (μεταβάλλεις τὴν ψυχήν), indeed one becomes ‘something which is superior and more divine than they were earlier’.⁷³⁷ But once a soul sins, it is destined to die,⁷³⁸ which means that a soul relinquishes, therefore forfeits the degree of its rationality (that is, it falls to diminished communication with the inherent Logos/instructor), and a rational creature should be transposed to a different (lower) rank of life. As he put it, ‘if you see a soul which is subject to passions and sinful, this means that the power of the Logos upon it is diminished; if you see a soul which is saintly and righteous, you will also see a fruitful presence of the Logos in it’.⁷³⁹ This fact has existential consequences, and change of tier of being is the result of the periodic divine judgement.⁷⁴⁰ The testimony by Epiphanius of Salamis, according to which a rational being makes use of bodies in accordance with the place in which it lives, is no doubt faithful to Origen’s theory.⁷⁴¹ Human creatures come to being continuously. No matter what changes of their existential status may take place, what remains for ever is the relation with God. A soul is called incorporeal because it is made of logoi; and it is immortal because the hypostasis of a rational creature (that is, the specific logoi that generate it) makes its mark upon all over the universe because of the unity of the logoi. A human being may either regress to a lower rank of life or to be elevated to an higher status, in which case it may become the hypostasis of an angel, and Origen’s condemned proposition (that a soul may become mind) gets closer to its fulfillment: it means that the soul becomes something different (meaning, the rational hypostasis is generated by a different concurrence of logoi), the soul is free of passion, and ‘not confused’ as Origen adumbrated its fallen status. If a certain individual soul is illustrated as wretched ‘Jerusalem’⁷⁴²,

 Origen, Dialogus cum Heraclide, 24 26: Πρὸς τοῦτον τὸν λόγον ἐρῶ ὅτι καὶ ἀθάνατος ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ οὐκ ἀθάνατος ἡ ψυχή.  Origen, homJer, 14.10.  Ezekiel, 8:14.  Origen, homJer, 14.10.  See COT, pp. 296 309; 327 8.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1093.40 1096.3 (apud Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, p. 424): Καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν θαλάσσῃ ζῇν ἡμᾶς ἐνύδρους γενομένους εἰ ἐχρῆν, πάντως ἂν ἔδει παραπλησίαν ἔχειν καὶ τὴν ἄλλην ἰχθύων κατάστασιν· οὕτως μέλλοντας κληρονομεῖν βασιλείαν οὐρανῶν, καὶ ἐν τόποις διαφέρουσιν ἔσεσθαι, ἀναγκαῖον χρῆσθαι σώμασι πνευματικοῖς, οὐχὶ τοῦ εἴδους τοῦ προ τέρου ἀφανιζομένου, κἂν ἐπὶ τὸ ἐνδοξότερον γένηται αὐτοῦ ἡ τροπή· ὥσπερ ἦν τὸ Ἰησοῦ εἶδος, καὶ Μωϋσέως, καὶ Ἠλίου, οὐχ ἕτερον ἐν τῇ μεταμορφώσει, παρ᾿ ὃ ἦν.  Ref. to Lamentations, 1:4.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1333

this is so only because ‘this soul has fallen from its own place and exists in Confusion’.⁷⁴³ In that case, the logoi which make up a soul exist as ‘psychic’ ones: a soul is a worldly reality subject to passion and fault, not a heavenly one. This determines the difference between ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’: it is only the latter that is pervious of passions, such as sorrow, fear, anger, and the like. Even the soul of Jesus did not escape this, which is why it ‘was troubled’⁷⁴⁴ and ‘overwhelmingly sorrowful’.⁷⁴⁵ For ‘his soul was human; this is why it was troubled and sorrowful. It was then not the Logos himself who said, “Woe is me!”⁷⁴⁶ For the Logos is not susceptible of death: it was the human nature that was subject to it, as we demonstrated many times.’⁷⁴⁷ The human condition is a state where the logoi make up a living being, namely, a soul, which is suitable to the visible material universe. At the sunset of his life, Origen overcame his inhibitions and spoke of ‘the soul of Jesus’, although he had refrained from doing so during earlier stages. There is only one early statement of his in the commentary on John, written at a period when he groped for reconciling his philosophical background with Paul’s statements about the mystery of Incarnation being one that was determined upon the divine creative act.⁷⁴⁸ He came upon some scriptural instances of the term πλήρωμα being used,⁷⁴⁹ which was a precarious term to apply, because of its widespread Gnostic usage, but it fitted with his notion of the Body of the Logos,⁷⁵⁰ especially after John 1:16.

 Origen follows Gen. 11:9. Cf. Cels, V.29; homJer, 19.14. According to his explanation, ‘Babylon’ in Greek means ‘Confusion’.  John 12:26.  Matt. 26:38; Mark 14:34.  Jeremiah, 15:10.  Origen, homJer, 14.6. Even when he read the statement of John 13:21, ‘Jesus was troubled in spirit’, Origen insisted that this was about ‘the human spirit’; commJohn, XXXII.18.218 228. Cf. commMatt, 16.21: καὶ τὸ ἀπὸ τοῦ (ὡς οἶμαι) Ὠσηέ, ἔνθα ἡ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ψυχὴ λέγει δυσαρεστουμένη τῷ βίῳ τῶν ἁμαρτανόντων.  1 Cor. 2:7; Eph. 1:4; 3:9; Col. 1:26; Heb. 9:26; 1 Peter 1:20; Rev. 13:8. See supra, chapter 12, p. 1158, and infra, pp. 1334 5.  John, 1:16; Rom. 11:12; Eph. 1:23; 3:19; Col. 1:19; 2:9.  Cf. Origen, commJohn, VI.3.14 15; VI.6.35 36; VI.13.74; XIII.11.67 68; XX.36.324; Fragmenta in Jeremiam, 1; De Oratione, 23.2; commJohn, XX.1.1 (pleroma is the totality of logoi, also depicted as the decoration of the Body of the Logos): φιλοθεώτατε καὶ φιλομαθέστατε ἐν κυρίῳ ᾿Aμβρόσιε, εὐχόμεθα ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ, εἰς ὃν εὐδόκησεν πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα κατοικῆσαι, λαβεῖν νοήματα πλήρη. He considers the Gnostic usage by Heracleon in commJohn, X.33.211; XIII.19.115 116. Then, ‘the fullness of Deity’, which dwelled in the body of Jesus: homJer, 4.6; com meph, 9: τὸν Χριστὸν εἶναι τὸν πληροῦντα, οὐχὶ δὲ τὸν πληρούμενον· αὐτὸς γὰρ οὐ μόνον νόμου

1334

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Upon writing the twentieth book of his commentary on John (not too early a stage of his Christian life, but not a mature one either), and in order to furnish an exegesis of John 8:42,⁷⁵¹ he made a tentative statement:⁷⁵² We must not also leave the passage unexamined in relation to the doctrine of the soul (εἰς τὸν περὶ ψυχῆς λόγον). For perhaps the soul of Jesus was in God and in the pleroma [sc. the totality of logoi] (ἐν θεῷ καὶ τῷ πληρώματι ἦν) in its own state of perfection, and, after it had proceeded from there, by being sent by the Father, it took up the body from Mary. Other souls, however, did not proceed from God in this way (ἄλλαι δὲ οὐχ οὕτως ἐξῆλθον ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ), that is, they were neither sent out, nor were they sent forth by the divine will.⁷⁵³

While writing this passage, he had in mind the words of Jesus in John 8:42, ‘I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but He sent me’.⁷⁵⁴ A short while earlier, Origen had proposed also another tentative idea to be examined: when Jesus said, ‘I am not of this world’,⁷⁵⁵ the subject that pronounced this statement would be ‘the soul of Jesus, which is a denizen of that world; this soul encompasses it [i. e. that world] and leads his disciples unto it.’⁷⁵⁶ By ‘that world’, he had just described the totality of the logoi, which decorate the Body of the Logos, that is, ‘the embroiderment’ which is the ‘created wisdom’ placed on the Body of the beginningless Wisdom/Logos. If we take the foregoing casual and tenative statements out of the context of his mature works, the question is this: do these statements in the nineteenth and twentieth book of the commentary on John suggest a notion of pre-existence of the soul of Jesus? Whether such statements caused some outcry and were part of the reasons for Origen to end of his two-year stay at Caesarea and decamp to Tyre cannot be determined. Anyhow, it is quite eveident that such propositions are mere tentative statements, during a period when he groped for a Christian doctrine of the

ἐστὶ πλήρωμα, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντων τῶν πληρωμάτων ἐστὶ πλήρωμα, οὐκ ἂν χωρὶς αὐτοῦ τινὸς πλήρους γινομένου. See supra, pp. 1309; 1326.  “I have not come of myself, but He sent me”.  See PHE, pp. 18 25: ‘Tentative theological conjectures’. Pamphilus wrote that, in several cases, Origen’s aim was to set forth possible solutions to problems and discuss theories for the sake of completeness of analysis, but he did not set them forth as defintive doctrines. He quoted Origen’s own words saying so. Pamphilus, Apologia pro Origene, PG.17.608 (Origen’s words): “Sed haec, quantum ad not pertinent, non sint dogmata; sed discussionis gratia dicta sint, et abjiciantur. Pro eo autem solo dicta sunt, ne videatur quaestio mota, non esse discussa.”  Origen, commJohn, XX.19.162. Cf. Athanasius, supra, p. 1301.  I have canvassed the notion of ‘being in and out of God’, in PHE, pp. 333 8.  John 8:23; 17:14; 17:16.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.22.148.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1335

soul, which the official Church had left as a moot question, and so it remained long after his death. My own suggestion is that what he meant was the following: anything that comes to be in the universe is produced by means of the logoi of the Mind. Things come to be in the context of rationality encompassing the entire universe. This is the context in which human beings come to be: the fact that Plotinus was born was foreknown to the Mind, but it was not determined in advance by the Mind; it was a result of interaction between things happening in this world, particularly the circumstances that led his parents to give birth to a child called Plotinus. This occurrence was foreknown by the Mind, but it was neither caused nor pre-determined by it. The only exception is the mystery of Incarnation: this was determined by God right from the beginning of the world, as an occurrence which should be realized at a certain ‘opportune time’. The Incarnation is the only case of a human being that was pre-determined and realized as a purposeful action by God. Be that as it may, the fact is that Origen’s foregoing statement is a tentative one, whereas he had already said that ‘the doctrine concerning the soul is sublime and difficult to interpret’,⁷⁵⁷ and later he added that this is ‘a secret one’ (ἀπόρρητον),⁷⁵⁸ and it had nothing to do with Plato’s theories.⁷⁵⁹ However tentative, Origen was not happy with his foregoing explanation which could appear as allowing room for the notion of pre-existence. Then, by the end of his life, he revisited the point when he wrote his mature Christian work commenting on the epistle to the Romans, and then the Contra Celsum. Nevertheless, we should take into account that the foregoing passage of the commentary on John was written not too long after the De Principiis; and it should be noticed that, in the latter, whenever Origen suggests pre-existence, he speaks of seeds ⁷⁶⁰ and minds. ⁷⁶¹ Quite simply, he used an Anaxagorean lan-

 Origen, op. cit. VI.14.87.  Origen, commMatt, 15.34.  Origen, Cels, IV.17.  Origen, Princ, II.9.2: “the creator of all things obtained certain seeds (semina) and causes of variety and diversity”.  Origen, op. cit. II.9.1: “rational and intelligent beings, or whatever the aforementioned minds ought to be called (quomodo appellandae sunt quas mentes superius diximus)”; loc. cit. “rational creatures or minds (rationalibus creaturis uel mentibus)”; II.9.2: “the Creator grant ed the minds (mentibus) created by Him the power of free and voluntary movement”; loc. cit. “each mind (unaquaeque mens) was drawn to the opposite of good”; loc. cit. “according to the diversity of minds (pro diuersitate mentium), that is, of rational beings”; II.9.6: “God gathered the diversities of minds (diuersitates mentium) into the harmony of a single world, so as to fur nish, as it were, out of these diverse vessels, or souls or minds (diuresis uasis uel animis uel

1336

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

guage, and the seeds that the Mind created are called ‘minds’, too, on account of their creator. Little wonder that the Stoics employed this logic by calling their Anaxagorean Mind Logos, and the tools of it ‘logoi’. Once Origen reflected in Anaxagorean terms (as he definitely did), it was all too natural for him to feel that he had to compose a doctrine out of himself, since Anaxagoras did not care about making ‘the soul’ an object of investigation on its own merit: the soul was to him not any individual something, but only a collective manifestation of vital functions, meaning life. Instead of accepting this fact, Late Antiquity took up the pseudo-puzzlement of Aristotle, who declared that Anaxagoras ‘was unclear’ about distinguishing mind from soul. None of his commentators allowed for the alternative idea that Anaxagoras did not need to make any distinction between mind and soul, since the latter is not a distinct individual being to be compared with mind. For all the long tradition of commentaries on Aristotle, the late Byzantine commentator Sophonias (fl. c. 1300 AD) appeared as baffled as Aristotle himself: he believed that some statements of Anaxagoras allow for distinction between mind and soul, while others point to identification of them,⁷⁶² whereas others still leave readers confounded.⁷⁶³ This reproduced the anachronistic assumption of making the ‘soul’ a self-subsistent something, and projecting it into Anaxagoras’ philosophy, of which the source was Aristotle himself. Consequently, Sophonias wonders, once the mind is ‘something divine and superior to the soul’ (θειότερόν τι καὶ ὑπὲρ τὴν ψυχήν), how is it possible for Anaxagoras to place it even into animals and plants, and yet to say that ‘mind is not in everything, since not even all men can possess the mind of proper knowledge and prudence’ (ὁ γὰρ κατ᾿ ἐπιστήμην καὶ φρόνησιν νοῦς οὐ μόνον οὐκ ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ζώοις, ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ ἐν ἀνθρώποις πᾶσιν)?⁷⁶⁴ All Sophonias was prepared to praise was that Anaxagoras ‘along with Plato’ posited the soul as incorporeal (ἀσώματος κατ᾿ ᾿Aναξαγόραν καὶ Πλάτωνα),⁷⁶⁵ but he remained confounded, since he had already

mentibus), one house”; II.9.7: “each, in being created by God as a mind or rational spirit (mens uel rationabilis spiritus)”.  Sophonias, paraphrPhys, p. 11: οὗτος γὰρ [sc. ᾿Aναξαγόρας] ταὐτὸν εἶναι ἄντικρυς λέγει ψυχὴν καὶ νοῦν, οὐδενὶ διαστέλλων· … καὶ νοῦς καὶ ψυχὴ τὸ αὐτό.  Sophonias, op. cit. p. 12: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δ᾿ ἧττον διασαφεῖ περὶ αὐτῶν· ποτὲ μὲν γὰρ δοκεῖ δι ακρίνειν, ποτὲ δὲ εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ ἄγειν.  Sophonias, op. cit. p. 11 12. However, never did Anaxagoras speak about ‘mind according to proper knowledge and prudence’: he only spoke of the Mind which grants rationality to the function of the universe.  Sophonias, op. cit. p. 16.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1337

made a similar statement speaking of the mind, not of the soul.⁷⁶⁶ He then reproduces Aristotle’s partially correct statement that, of all Presocratics, Anaxagoras was the only exception (πλὴν ἑνός). In what sense? In two respects: first, Anaxagoras did not need to endorse the axiom, ‘the soul is made of all the principles’, and he did not make anything such as ‘the soul’ the cognitive agent – which is correct. Secondly, Anaxagoras did not define the soul as one made of principles (though not all of them), which is plain wrong: for to him, everything is made of principles, and there is no way for things to be generated other than by means of concurrence of certain principles.⁷⁶⁷ Therefore, Anaxagoras did not need the widespread principle ‘like is known by the like’ in connection to the soul: for the cognitive agent is the mind, not the soul, and ‘the mind both the greater and the lesser one is the same’ (νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων).⁷⁶⁸ This was the model that Origen followed in order to compose a Christian theory: the soul is not made of all the logoi; it generates logoi by one’s individual mind becoming pregnant by the Bridegroom Logos, which is how things come to pass. The soul is incorporeal and it has a certain affinity with the divine nature, but this is so only in the sense that the sum total of functions (spiritual, psychic, physical), which are expressed by the collective noun ‘soul’, is simply the concurrence of the specific principles/logoi that make up a certain human being. In other words, in order to speak of the soul with some confidence, Origen had recourse to Anaxagoras once again. Nevertheless, the soul is only the female (or, ‘passive part’, τὸ παθητικὸν μέρος)⁷⁶⁹ receptacle of the Mind/Logos, and consequently, of the human individual mind, which is the male (i. e. active) agent that causes it to be illuminated⁷⁷⁰ and to generate actions of different qualities:⁷⁷¹ this is why Origen styles the soul ‘chamber of the mind’,⁷⁷² and it is exactly one’s individual mind (not the soul in a Platonic sense) that he identifies with one’s ‘person’ or ‘inner man’,⁷⁷³ as well as ‘image’ of God (whom he styles ‘Mind’).⁷⁷⁴ The soul generates different kinds  Sophonias, op. cit. p. 15: πλὴν τοῦτο αὐτοῦ χάριεν, ὅτι τῶν σωμάτων [sc. ᾿Aναξαγόρας τὸν νοῦν] ἐχώρισε, καὶ αὕτη δοξῶν ἡ καιριωτάτη· νοῦν γὰρ ἀρχὴν καὶ ποιητὴν τῶν ὄντων πρῶτος ἐπέστησε καὶ νήφων ἐφάνη παρ᾿ εἰκῇ λέγοντας. Likewise, op. cit. pp. 124; 133.  Aristotle, De Anima, 405b11 15. Sophonias, op. cit. p. 15.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 157.  Origen, frPs, Psalm 107:3.  Origen, frLuke, 186; 187.  Origen, deOr, 13.3.  Origen, expProv, PG.17.200.9.  Origen, Cels, V.60.  Origen, op. cit. VII.38.

1338

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

of action, but this she can do only because the human mind has sown ‘seeds’ in her,⁷⁷⁵ whereas the ‘sower’ is the Logos/Nous acting as one’s individual nous/ mind over the soul.⁷⁷⁶ This is the sense in which the soul can generate either ‘female’ or ‘male’ offspring (i. e. either evil or righteous deeds,⁷⁷⁷ in accordance with personal free will complying with one’s individual mind, of which (when imbued by the divine Logos/Mind) Origen would have said with Anaxagoras and Euripides ‘this is God within us’. All of this explains why he styles ‘children of the mind’ (τέκνα νοῦ)⁷⁷⁸ those logoi in a man that are not merely physiological, which runs somehow parallel to the manner the Anaxagorean Mind ‘generated’ the principles/logoi. However, on no account was Origen prepared to reveal his creative flare, which is why (following his analyses about ‘seeds’ being not only physiological but also ‘spiritual’ –now referring to ‘the causes of this being so, which is an utterly sublime doctrine that is hard to explain’), he concluded with the caveat that ‘only a few people are able to understand those [i. e. Origen himself] who have expounded meticulously the theory about the state prior to creation’ (τὰ πρὸ γενέσεως), and ‘the theory of generation of each thing’ (τὰ ἐν γενέσει περὶ ἑκάστου διειληφόσιν). For, in his view, this theory would embarrass those who could make up a fallacious composition of the statements being involved, only because they would fall short of understanding them thoroughly. Therefore, Origen says, it would be precarious to expound this theory explicitly and properly, even if he spelled out and explained a true theory. Why was this precarious? But of course because Origen’s audience was not equipped with the philosophical background which was indispensable for his theory of both cosmogony and function of the universe to be thoroughly grasped. Speaking of ‘the state prior to creation’ (τὰ πρὸ γενέσεως), he had in mind not only the scriptural phrase about God ‘knowing everything before they were made’,⁷⁷⁹ but also Philo, who treated this primeval state abundantly; in fact, not only did he envision the state ‘prior to creation’ (πρὸ γενέσεως),⁷⁸⁰ but also emphasized that this notion means that nothing existed alongside God, who was ‘unmixed’ (ἀμιγὴς ἄλλῳ)⁷⁸¹ with anything, and so he remained after he caused the universe to  Origen, selGen, PG.12.113.17 19; selPs, PG.12.1213.53 55; frPs, 86:5 & selPs, PG.12.1548.1 4.  Origen, frJohn, 45; 125.  Origen, homJer, 5.7; selEx, PG.12: 288.11 13 & 296.50 51.  Origen, deOr, 16.3.  Sussana, 42: πάντα γὰρ οἶδε πρὸ γενέσεως αὐτῶν.  Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 2.3.  Philo, loc. cit. Likewise, see references to the ‘unmixed’ applied to God and his properties. Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis, 56 (ἀπροσδεᾶ καὶ ἁπλῆν φύσιν ἰδεῖν ἀμιγῆ καὶ ἀσύγκριτον); 77; Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis, 81; De Ebrietate, 44; De Confusione Linguarum, 73 (ἀμιγοῦς καὶ ἀκράτου); De Migratione Abrahami, 52 (τὸ δὲ θεῖον ἀκρατοῦς καὶ ἀμιγοῦς ἐστι λόγου, φθάνοντος μὲν ἀκοὴν διὰ

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1339

be. It hardly needs to be said that Philo made the epithet ‘unmixed’ a recurrent one adumbrating God, and there is no way to associate his source with any philosopher other than Anaxagoras, who was the sole Presocratic that used this in order to portray the transcendent God. Therefore, Origen states that the administrator of the mysteries of God (as in 1 Cor. 4:1) must seek the proper time for the explanation of such doctrines, so as not to harm his audience, while also caring to maintain the appropriate measure of such an exposition. Returning to the idea of ‘spiritual seeds’ that he had just expounded, his provides the criterion for ‘the measure’ of such an account: his audience should be equipped with those ‘seeds’ that make one ‘children of Abraham’, but not all men have such ‘logoi’ sown into their souls, which logoi could be cultivated so as to make them ‘children of Abraham’.⁷⁸² In other words, it would be better to leave the Anaxagorean provenance of this theory in the dark. However, once his background is elucidated in the absence of such fears as incurring doctrinal obloquy, things are pretty plain: a ‘soul getting pregnant with logoi by the nous/mind’ simply means that the totality of human existence/life functions, acts, and reacts in accordance not only with physiological necessities, but also following external impressions and influence upon human will, which call for and entail decisions to be made and chances to be taken. Following the foregoing analysis, we are now able to see the real Origen, and determine how far he went in respect of the doctrine of the soul by the end of his life. The main point he made was that the soul of Jesus did not preexist as such. The Incarnation was set to take place at a certain kairos of History, when ‘the fullness of time’ would come; this was known to God, indeed determined by Him, ever since the creation of the world. In respect of everything else, the Anaxagorean Mind does not coerce nor determine, but simply ‘knows all things’, those of the past, of the present, and of the future, and knows what each and every one of

λεπτότητα); Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 183 (τὸ μὲν θεῖον ἀμιγὲς καὶ ἄκρατον); Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 236 (τὸ γὰρ θεῖον ἀμιγές, ἄκρατον, ἀμερέστατον ὑπάρχον ἅπαντι τῷ κόσμῳ γέγονεν αἴτιον μίξεως, κράσεως, διαιρέσεως, πολυμερείας); De Congressu Eruditionis Gratia, 36 (φύσεως ἁπλῆς καὶ ἀμιγοῦς καὶ ἀκράτου); De Somniis, 1.163; De Abrahamo, 122 (of the Mond/God: ἀμιγῆ καὶ ἀσύμπλοκον καὶ καθ’ αὑτὴν οὐδενὸς ἐπιδεᾶ); De Vita Mosis, 2.204; De Specialibus Legi bus, 2.55 (ἀμιγὴς καὶ ἀκραιφνεστάτη).  Origen, commJohn, XX.2.6 8.

1340

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

them is going to be, simply because the ‘receptacle’ of all potentialities is his creature.⁷⁸³ This idea Origen found in Paul saying that God ‘determined in advance’ that ‘Christ’ should become a propitiatory offering (ὃν προέθετο ὁ Θεὸς ἱλαστήριον) by his blood’.⁷⁸⁴ The comment on this is telling: when Paul says that God ‘determined beforehand’ (προέθετο), this suggests that he was talking about ‘the soul of Jesus, or the Only-Begotten and First-Born of all creation’. This, however, does not suggest that the ‘soul’ of Jesus already existed and waited for the time of Incarnation to come. For the verb which Paul used is προέθετο, the aorist of the verb προτίθεμαι, which means ‘I intend’. Therefore, the ‘soul of Jesus’ which is suggested by this exegesis is only what God meant to do in the future, since the verb ‘προτίθεται denotes those which do not exist yet’ (τὰ μηδέπω ἐνεστηκότα).⁷⁸⁵ One of the reasons for Origen to be a devout student Anaxagoras’ philosophy was probably that (in contrast to Plato and Aristotle) this Presocratic was sound and immune to inconsistencies. His loyalty is made clear a short while after that point in the same codex (about after twenty pages) where he returns to the same issue: when Paul says that God ‘determined in advance’ that ‘Christ’ should become ‘a propitiatory offering’, perhaps he refers to ‘the soul of Jesus’ (ἢ τάχα μᾶλλον ἡ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ψυχή). He adds that the term ‘propitiatory offering’ (ἱλαστήριον) recurs in the Exodus of the Old Testament, and it is associated with ‘pure gold’ (χρυσίον καθαρόν),⁷⁸⁶ which he deems a natural term to be used. For ‘pure gold’ is a ‘symbolic’ expression’ (συμβολικῶς λέγεσθαι), betokening ‘the mind which is pure and unmixed with matter’ (τὸν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ πρὸς ὕλην νοῦν), and this is befitting to say about the soul of Jesus, ‘who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth’.⁷⁸⁷

 Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, op. cit. pp. 165 6: καὶ τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ τὰ ἀποκρινό μενα καὶ διακρινόμενα πάντα ἔγνω νοῦς, καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὁπόσα νῦν ἔστι καὶ ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς. Cf. op. cit. p. 156: ἔστι γὰρ λεπτότατόν τε πάντων χρημάτων καὶ καθαρώτατον καὶ γνώμην γε περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἴσχει καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον, καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ μείζω καὶ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ. … καὶ ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν καὶ ὅσα νῦν ἐστι καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς. The same passage of Anaxagoras in op. cit. pp. 174 & 177.  Rom. 3:25.  Origen, Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V.7), p. 160 (comm. on Rom. 3:25]: Ὃν προέθετο τῇ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ μᾶλλον ψυχῇ ἢ τῷ Μονογενεῖ καὶ πρωτοτόκῳ πάσης κτίσεως· προτίθεται [= intends] μὲν γὰρ ὁ Θεὸς τὰ μηδέπω ἐνεστηκότα.  Cf. Exodus, 25:17 18; 38:5 8.  Isaiah, 53:9, quoted in 1 Peter 2:22. Cf. John, 8:46. Origen, Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V.7), p. 185.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1341

This Anaxagorean identification has no parallel in literature, either pagan or Christian: in the association of the ‘propitiatory offering’ (ἱλαστήριον) of the Exodus with ‘pure gold’, Origen sees the Divine Mind, he describes it in the selfsame words that Anaxagoras used (namely, τὸν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ πρὸς ὕλην νοῦν), and identifies this Mind with ‘God the Logos who was in the beginning with God’ (τοιοῦτον δέ ἐστιν ἡμῶν τὸ ἱλαστήριον τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν Θεὸς Λόγος),⁷⁸⁸ and then, taking a step further (ἢ τάχα μᾶλλον), he identifies it with ‘the soul of Jesus’, which did not pre-exist, as Origen explained a few pages before that point. It is remarkable that Origen felt he could use more explicitly a characteristically Anaxagorean language by the end of his life. He did so not only in the commentary on the Romans that we just saw, but also in his rebuttal of Celsus. This calls for a critical remark which bears on the widespread folly that Origen instilled ontological classification of the divine Persons into the Trinity, which originated in guile (such as that of Jerome, and later of Antipater of Bostra) that was forced into doctrine by the authoritarian caesaropapism of Justinian. Against this slant, we can see Origen himself using the term ‘Mind’ invariably for any Person of the Trinitiy as much as did he so for the entire Trinity. In any case, his formulations that are presented for the first time in Appendix II, will settle things conclusively, no matter how shocking could they appear to current religious allegiances and misinformed convictions. Moreover, ‘the soul’ of the Son of God upon Incarnation is not identified with the Son of God himself. The latter is ‘the Son of God, who is the image of the invisible God’ (ἔστιν οὖν τις ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, εἰκὼν τυγχάνων τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου).⁷⁸⁹ The former, namely, ‘the human soul, which we believe that the Son of God assumed’ (ἥντινα νομίζομεν εἶναι ἣν ἀνέλαβεν ψυχὴν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ἀνθρωπίνην), is an ‘image of the image’ (καὶ τούτου εἰκὼν ἡ λεγομένη εἰκὼν τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ), that is, ‘an image of the Son of God’ who is himself ‘the image of God’. In other words, the soul of Jesus was fully human, and it is possible for everyone ‘to become like’ that (συμμόρφους)⁷⁹⁰ by pursuing and accomplishing virtue.⁷⁹¹ This involves the idea of the soul/Bride being united with the Logos/Bridegroom, so that eventually one could say, ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me’.⁷⁹² Therefore, in contrast to subsequent Alexandrian theologians (such as Cyril) who identified Jesus Christ with the Logos and sought to

    

Origen, loc. cit. Cf. John 1:1. Col. 1:15. Cf. Rom. 8:29. Origen, Commentarii in epistulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21), 1 & Philocalia, 25.2. Gal. 2:20. Origen, comm1Cor, 30. See PHE, p. 305.

1342

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

downplay his human nature, Origen clearly emphasized also this nature. This is why his legacy was cherished by, and inspired, the great Antiochene doctors such as Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Theodoret.⁷⁹³ But if Origen was able to reach this formulation, this was so only because he drew on Anaxagoras.⁷⁹⁴ Origen preserved the human nature of Christ by positing that this was united with God the Logos.⁷⁹⁵ This is possible for any human being to attain, but in Jesus this was a case of exemplary perfection. If there was something unique⁷⁹⁶ about Christ (yet attainable by any human being),⁷⁹⁷ this was the fact that his soul was perfectly united with the Logos, therefore, this particular soul was made of all the logoi of the world – which is an idea that Neoplatonists attributed to any human soul, as we saw. In any case, the soul itself is not a principle: it is a product of certain principles duly concurring, which Origen couched during his later intellectual stages, writing that the issue of the ‘essence and beginnings (or, principles) of the soul’ (περὶ τῆς οὐσίας αὐτῆς καὶ περὶ τῶν ἀρχῶν αὐτῆς) is a question which needs careful consideration.⁷⁹⁸ Already during his early period, when he wrote the commentary on John, he had also pointed out that ‘the essence of the soul and the beginning of constitution of the soul’ (τὸν λόγον ἐρευνητέον τὸν περὶ τῆς οὐσίας τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς τῆς συστάσεως αὐτῆς) is a question which calls for special investigation.⁷⁹⁹ Never did he actually elaborate on this. However, in the sev-

 I have canvased this in the Scholia, pp. 28; 31; 42; 50; 54; et passim.  See section ‘Human being: an image of the universal Mind’, infra, pp. 1368 74.  Origen, Cels, II.9: Ταῦτα δέ φαμεν οὐ χωρίζοντες τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ· ἓν γὰρ μάλιστα μετὰ τὴν οἰκονομίαν γεγένηται πρὸς τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ τὸ σῶμα Ἰησοῦ. Op. cit. IV.18: Καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο λέγοιτ᾿ ἂν πῇ μὲν περὶ τῆς τοῦ θείου λόγου φύσεως, ὄντος θεοῦ, πῇ δὲ περὶ τῆς Ἰησοῦ ψυχῆς. Op. cit. VI. 47: οὐκ εἰσὶ δύο ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ πρὸς τὸν πάσης κτίσεως πρωτότοκον θεὸν λόγον.  Origen, op. cit. V.39: Κἂν δεύτερον οὖν λέγωμεν θεόν, ἴστωσαν ὅτι τὸν δεύτερον θεὸν οὐκ ἄλλο τι λέγομεν ἢ τὴν περιεκτικὴν πασῶν ἀρετῶν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὸν περιεκτικὸν παντὸς οὑτινο σοῦν λόγου τῶν κατὰ φύσιν καὶ προηγουμένως γεγενημένων καὶ εἰς χρήσιμον τοῦ παντὸς λόγον· ὅντινα τῇ Ἰησοῦ μάλιστα παρὰ πᾶσαν ψυχὴν ψυχῇ ᾠκειῶσθαι καὶ ἡνῶσθαι φαμέν, μόνου τελείως χωρῆσαι δεδυνημένου τὴν ἄκραν μετοχὴν τοῦ αὐτολόγου καὶ τῆς αὐτοσοφίας καὶ τῆς αὐτοδικαιοσύνης.  Origen, op. cit. VII.17: Ἄξιον δὲ θεοῦ τὸ προφητευθέν ἐστιν ὑπὸ τῶν προφητῶν, ὅτι τῆς θείας φύσεως ἀπαύγασμα καὶ χαρακτήρ τις ἐνανθρωπούσῃ ψυχῇ ἱερᾷ τῇ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ συνεπιδημή σει τῷ βίῳ, ἵνα σπείρῃ λόγον, οἰκειοῦντα τῷ τῶν ὅλων θεῷ τὸν παραδεξάμενον αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ψυχὴν καὶ γεωργήσαντα καὶ ἐπὶ τέλος ἀγαγόντα πάντα, ὃς τὴν δύναμιν ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἔχει τοῦ ἐν ἀνθρώπου σώματι καὶ ψυχῇ ἐσομένου θεοῦ λόγου.  Origen, op. cit. IV.17.  Origen, commJohn, VI.14.86.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1343

enth book of the Contra Celsum, he gave an indication of what he had in mind by the foregoing statement which he made in the fourth book of that work. The soul is like a seed (λόγον ἔχειν σπέρματος). It is noteworthy that he used the same expression, λόγον ἔχειν σπέρματος, when he explained the manna as in Exodus 16:14. He spoke of this using the description of Wisdom in the book of Wisdom of Solomon 7:13, which is in fact an Anaxagorean description of the Mind.⁸⁰⁰ The manna was the Logos, who is like a seed, since no matter how small piece of it is taken and planted into the soil, it retains all the powers of the original seed.⁸⁰¹ The Logos affords the logoi, and a certain concurrence of them (a certain kind of ‘seed’) produces a certain soul/life, which, in turn, is a seed that generates logoi. The soul is a ‘seed’, which means that it grows gradually and procures its offspring little by little – and on this we should recall that Origen employed the Stoic notion of ‘completion of one’s reason’ (συμπλήρωσις λόγου) with age, but the Stoics were simply heirs of the Anaxagorean philosophy in many respects, and certainly on the issue of the spermatic production, constitution, and development of being. One thing is for sure: by saying that any soul is a sort of ‘seed’, he meant that, once a rational being is formed, it is planted in the field of this universe, and a relation of this soul to the Sower is established for ever: whether it will produce flowers or not, is a matter that Origen associated directly and explicitly with free rational action.

Acting Anaxagorean principles: the labourers By the end of his life, Origen felt he should venture a more explicit (rather, less obscure) exposition of his theory of the soul. Although he had listed the questions that should be considered in relation to the ‘essence and constitution of the soul’,⁸⁰² there is no philosophical language involved in his later analyses whatsoever. On the face of it, this is an exegesis of the parable of labourers in Matthew, 20, about a householder who went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard; and when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. Every three hours he went out

 Origen, selDeut, PG.12.808.45 55. ὁ λόγος οὗ σύμβολον ἦν τὸ μάννα ἐκεῖνο, λεπτόν ἐστι τῇ αὐτοῦ φύσει, καὶ διῆκον διὰ πάντων πνευμάτων νοερῶν, καθαρῶν, λεπτοτάτων. Ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἡ σοφία πνεῦμα νοερὸν, ἅγιον, μονογενές, πολυμερές, λεπτόν, καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς. … Φασὶ δὲ τὴν τοῦ κορίου φύσιν ὅλην δι᾿ ὅλων λόγον ἔχειν σπέρματος.  See supra, pp. 853; 963; 1320.  Origen, commJohn, VI.14.86 87.

1344

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

and found others standing idle in the marketplace and hired them, too. Right from the start, Origen points out that ‘the secret doctrine about the soul’ is expressed through this parable in a concealed manner (τὸν περὶ ψυχῆς ἀπόρρητον καὶ ἐν τούτοις κεκρύφθαι λόγον).⁸⁰³ Following this, he declares that he will expound this doctrine, which he ‘comprehended from many instances of scripture, as well as from this specific parable’ (καὶ ἐκ πολλῶν μὲν φαντασθέντες γραφῶν καὶ ἐκ τῆς προκειμένης δὲ παραβολῆς).⁸⁰⁴ This occupies a very extensive chapter of his commentary on Matthew, therefore, I should delineate his resolutions concisely. The ‘labourers’ betoken the Anaxagorean logoi, which at a certain moment concur in order to produce a human being; ‘day’ is the period of an aeon, that is, a cosmic period; the place ‘outside the vineyard’ is the one of the souls that have not been formed in a body; ‘vineyard’ is both this life and the place where the deceased dwell after departing form this life, which is also an active state, since Samuel and Jeremiah themselves were active after their death; and the hour ‘when evening was come’, is the end of aeon which marks the time of divine judgement. Therefore, a soul begins to be in an active state only once it is formed into this world, but it continues to be active after its departure from here. “Those who do not like these views, should answer this: how is it possible for the workers to stand idle all day, even though they wanted to work, but no one had hired them? And how can they be so daring, as to reply to the householder that they were idle because no man had hired them?” This is the challenge Origen sets forth to a hypothetical rejoinder. “If the soul has been sown along with the body, how was it that they stood idle all day?” Therefore, he concludes, there is a state before birth (which is the ‘market’ of the parable) where there is no soul acting. This state is the universal logoi, which act and give rise to an animate human being. It is significant that Origen retains and insists on his figure of ‘sowing’ a ‘seed’. It has been shown that this is distinctly Anaxagorean. When a farmer sows his farm, he sows seeds, not grown plants: ‘sowing’ suggests only ‘seeds’, which develop into plants in due course; it is only then that they will bring about their fruits. That a soul is sown means that, upon sowing, this is only ‘seeds’, that is, the soul exists potentially and develops along with the development of the physical body. The soul grows simultaneously with its own body, in order to form a human being capable of knowing, feeling, and moving. It is only then that this soul acts fully.

 Origen, commMatt, 15.34.  So he says in commJohn, VI.14.86 87.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1345

On this, Origen reflects in Stoic terms: the soul reaches its fullness and maturity gradually. Those who struggle to discover Platonism in Origen, should be informed that nowhere does he consider the soul as something that knows everything on account of its previous incorporeal life, and now it is in need of ‘recollecting’ what it ‘forgot’ following its association with matter. There is no idea of, not even hint to, ‘recollection’ (ἀνάμνησις). His logic is clearly Stoic, including his notion of ‘completion of logos’ (συμπλήρωσις τοῦ λόγου), on which there were differences as to the exact age at which the ‘completion of logos’ takes place, as discussed earlier. Nevertheless, what matters is the idea itself, which is that one’s rationality is pervious of improvement and becomes perfect by means of diligent and devout practice. This is precisely what Origen held. In him, there is no notion of souls recollecting any previous life, and no author made more of that Stoic idea.⁸⁰⁵ This is why also the cardinal Stoic notion of ‘progress’ (προκοπή) is abundantly present in his work: this progress has not only a moral character, but also a cognitive one. The soul explores and learns: it does not strive to ‘recollect’ any pre-existing knowledge.⁸⁰⁶

 Origen, frLuc, 228 & commMatt, 14.7: εἴ τις δὲ κατανοήσει τὸ ποικίλον τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης ψυχῆς καὶ τὰς πολλῷ διαφερούσας ἀλλήλων εὐφυΐας καὶ ἀφυΐας εἰς πλείονας τῶν ἀρετῶν ἢ ἐλάττονας, καὶ τάσδε τὰς ἀρετὰς ἢ τάσδε, τάχα ἂν ἐννοήσαι, πῶς ἑκάστη ψυχὴ ἐλήλυθε, μετὰ τίνων τοῦ οἰκοδεσπότου νομισμάτων [= principles, χρημάτων] ἀναφαινομένων μετὰ τῆς τοῦ λόγου συμπληρώσεως καὶ τῆς ἑξῆς τῇ συμπληρώσει τοῦ λόγου ἐπιμελείας καὶ ἀσκήσεως πρὸς τὰ δέοντα. commMatt, 17.33: εἰ δὲ γενέσεις καὶ νηπιότητες καὶ προβάσεις ἀπὸ νηπιότητος ἐπὶ τὸ συμπληροῦσθαι τὴν διάλεκτον καὶ ὕστερον τὸν λόγον καὶ ἐν τῇ συμπληρώσει τοῦ λόγου κα κίαν, καὶ μόλις ποτὲ πάλιν ἀρετὴν ἐν ὀλίγοις τοῖς ζητοῦσιν αὐτὴν εὑρίσκεσθαι. Scholia in Mat thaeum, PG.17.301.21 28 (the same passage, yet in different context): Καιρὸς καρπῶν, ὃν οἶδεν οἰκοδεσπότης, τάχα οὐχ ὅτι ἐκφύειν φύλλα, ἢ κυπρίζειν, ἢ ὀμφακίζειν, ἢ τρυγᾶσθαι· οἷον οἱ τῆς νηπιότητος, ἢ τῆς συμπληρώσεως τοῦ λόγου, ἢ οἱ τῆς ἐν ἀρετῇ προκοπῆς, ἢ ἀρχῆς· οἱ δὲ τῆς ἀγάπης, καὶ χαρᾶς, καὶ εἰρήνης, καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν. Δοῦλοι οἱ προφῆται τὰ πνευματικὰ καρπώ ματα ἀπαιτοῦντες προσάγειν ὡς ἱερεῖς τῷ Θεῷ. Cels, I.33; V.42: τὸ σχεδὸν ἅμα γενέσει καὶ συμ πληρώσει τοῦ λόγου διδάσκεσθαι. Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21), 14: τίνες δ᾿ ἂν εἶεν οἱ ἐν τῷ νόμῳ; ἢ πᾶς ὁ συμπληρώσας τὸν λόγον ἄνθρωπος; οὐκ εἰσὶ γὰρ ἐν τῷ νόμῳ οἱ ἔτι ζῶντες χωρὶς νόμου, ὁποῖος ἦν καὶ Παῦλος ποτέ. πλὴν οἱ ἅγιοι οὓς προέγνω καὶ προώρισεν καὶ ἐκάλεσεν καὶ ἐδικαίωσεν καὶ ἐδόξασεν νόμος εἰσὶ καὶ οὐκ ἐν νόμῳ. Partially the same text, in Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V.7), p. 144: Τίνες δ᾿ ἂν εἶεν οἱ ἐν τῷ νόμῳ ἢ πᾶς ὁ συμπληρώσας τὸν λόγον ἄνθρωπος; Οὐκ εἰσὶ γὰρ ἐν τῷ νόμῳ οἱ ἔτι ζῶντες χωρὶς νόμου, ὁποῖος ἦν καὶ Παῦλος ποτέ. Likewise, op. cit. pp. 136; 146 8. Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21), 36a, & Philocalia, 9.2: ὁ γὰρ γραπτὸς ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις νόμος καὶ ἐν ἐθνικοῖς φύσει τὰ τοῦ νόμου ποιοῦσιν οὐκ ἄλλος ἐστὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας φύσει ἐγγεγραμμένου τῷ ἡγεμονικῷ ἡμῶν, καὶ τρα νωτέρου μετὰ τῆς συμπληρώσεως τοῦ λόγου ὁσημέραι γινομένου.  Origen, frProv, PG.13.29.41 52: Ὁ Θεὸς τῇ σοφίᾳ ἐθεμελίωσε γῆν. ᾿Aλλὰ καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ ἡ πιστή, γῆ ἐστιν, ἑκατονταπλασίονα καρποφοροῦσα. Αὕτη δὲ ἐκ τῆς πιότητος, ἥ ἐστι σοφία, σοφὴ γίνε ται, θεμελιοῦντος αὐτὴν ἐπ᾿ αὐτῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ. Ἑδράζει γὰρ αὐτῇ τὴν εἰσαγωγὴν τῆς διδασκαλίας,

1346

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

J. von Arnim used Origen as his source in order to attribute the notion of ‘completion of logos’ (συμπλήρωσις τοῦ λόγου) to Chrysippus, although Origen does not mention the name of Chrysippus, and the attribution might well fit to a much later Stoic such as Cornutus (c. 60 AD).⁸⁰⁷ No author other than Origen did ever use this expression in its full Stoic sense,⁸⁰⁸ except perhaps Celsus before him.⁸⁰⁹ This distinctive Stoic mark of Origen’s concept of the soul has not been appreciated heretofore. Accordingly, that a soul is sown along with the body does not suggest that the soul pre-exists: it is only its ‘seeds’, that is, the logoi that pre-exist, and they have not yet concurred so that the potentialities should appear and develop gradually to actualities. This means that the Anaxagorean principles have not been combined in order make up a concrete personal human being. To put it in Origen’s scriptural terms, ‘the place outside the vineyard’, that is, ‘the marketplace’ where the ‘labourers’ were standing ‘idle’ (ὁ ἔξω τοῦ ἀμπελῶνος τόπος ἐστὶν ἡ ἀγορά, ἔνθα ἦσαν οἱ ἑστῶτες ἀργοί), which betokens ‘the place of the souls prior to this body’ (ἡ χώρα τῶν πρὸ τοῦ σώματος ψυχῶν), is the realm of the logoi that have not yet react with each other (the ‘pleroma’, as above), they have not yet concurred in order to produce a personal human being. By contrast, ‘the vineyard’ betokens ‘not only the present state’ of actual personal ex-

πῆξιν ἀπὸ σοφίας ποιούμενος, καὶ ἀεὶ προκόπτουσαν οὐρανὸν ἀπεργάζεται, καθαρώτατον κτί σμα, ἀγγέλων τε καὶ νοερῶν οὐσιῶν οἰκητήριον. Λαβοῦσα αἴσθησιν τοῦ ὄντος, καὶ κατανοοῦσα τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων ἀκρίβειαν, ἄρχεται διαιρεῖν καὶ ἀνατέμνειν αὐτά. The same text, in expProv, PG.17.168.49 169.3, both of them commenting on Prov. 3:19.  SVF, III.127 128 (fr. 477), commMatt, 13.16: εἰς ἃ μὴ πέφυκε παιδία ἐμπίπτειν, ὅσα τὸν λόγον μηδέπω συμπεπλήρωκεν; στραφεὶς ὡς παιδία καὶ ἕξιν ἀναλαβὼν ἐκ λόγου. Loc. cit. τὰ μηδέπω συμπεπληρωκότα τὸν λόγον παιδία. Op. cit. 17.8: ἐπὰν ὁ λόγος συμπληροῦσθαι ἄρχηται.  Origen, Cels, I.33: τὸν λόγον συμπληρωθῆναι. Op. cit. V.42: συμπληρώσει τοῦ λόγου. comm John, I.37.273: λόγος δὲ ὁ ἐν ἀνθρώποις … λέγεται, ἤτοι κατὰ τὴν συμπλήρωσιν τῶν ἐννοιῶν. Op. cit. II.24.156: τῷ ἐν ἡμῖν συμπληρουμένῳ λόγῳ. Op. cit. XX.13.107: πᾶς ἄνθρωπος συμπεπληρω κὼς τὸν λόγον. Op. cit. XX.20.31.279: ἐξ οὗ τὸν λόγον συμπεπληρώκαμεν. frLuc, 228 & comm Matt, 14.7: μετὰ τῆς τοῦ λόγου συμπληρώσεως καὶ τῆς ἑξῆς τῇ συμπληρώσει τοῦ λόγου. Op. cit. 17.33: ἀπὸ νηπιότητος ἐπὶ τὸ συμπληροῦσθαι τὴν διάλεκτον καὶ ὕστερον τὸν λόγον καὶ ἐν τῇ συμπληρώσει τοῦ λόγου κακίαν. Scholia in Matthaeum, PG.17.301.24: οἱ τῆς νηπιότητος, ἢ τῆς συμπληρώσεως τοῦ λόγου ἢ οἱ τῆς ἐν ἀρετῇ προκοπῆς. Commentarii in Epistulam ad Roma nos (I.1 XII.21), 5: καὶ τὸ γνωστὸν ἑαυτοῦ ὡς ἕκαστος κεχώρηκεν ὅτε τὸν λόγον συμπεπλήρωκεν. Op. cit. 14: πᾶς ὁ συμπληρώσας τὸν λόγον ἄνθρωπος. Op. cit. 36a: μετὰ τῆς συμ πληρώσεως τοῦ λόγου. Op. cit. 39: ὅτε συνεπλήρωσε τὸν λόγον. Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V.7), p. 136: ἅμα τῇ συμπληρώσει τοῦ λόγου. Op. cit. p. 144: πᾶς ὁ συμπληρώσας τὸν λόγον ἄνθρωπος. Op. cit. p. 146: συμπληρώσαντες τὸν λόγον. De Oratione, 29.5: τὸν λόγον συμπεπληρωκώς. frPs, Psalm 118:9: συμπληροῦντες τὸν λόγον.  Origen, Cels, IV.84 (Celsus’ words): λόγου συμπλήρωσις.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1347

istence in a body, but also the state that follows the earthly life of this body (ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ ἔξω τοῦ σώματος), where the ‘labourers’ continue to work, just as Samuel prophesied and Jeremiah prayed ‘for the sake of the people’.⁸¹⁰ Therefore, ‘hiring the labourers’ means logoi engaging in specific action, it means concurrence and interaction with each other. In other words, the logoi come to light; they unconceal themselves out of concealment. This can happen only once those logoi are involved with matter (which is a product of logoi, too). This is the way for them to cause motion and to produce individual beings. It is only with both motion and involvement with matter that individuality, and thus plurality, can make sense.⁸¹¹ This is in fact a principle of Aristotle,⁸¹² which Aristotle himself did not take into account when he introduced his incongruous notion of many unmoved movers. As noted earlier, Antiochus of Ascalon was initially a member of the Academy under Philo of Larissa. He essayed to show that the Stoic doctrines were present already in Plato. But when he argued that any proposition about of immaterial substance (such as the Platonic Ideas) would be only ‘unintelligible’, and he saw ‘no possibility … of anything immaterial, or transcendent, or external to the material universe’ really existing,⁸¹³ in effect he moved into Stoicism, and, like Aristotle, he saw that the notions of self-existent individuality and incorporeality are mutually exclusive. This is why some Platonists, such as Eratosthenes of Alexandria (born in Cyrene, c. 275 ‒ c. 194 BC) and Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. 90 – c. 168 AD) sustained that ‘a soul is always in a body’ and it transmigrates ‘from subtle bodies to other ones that are oyster-like ones’ (ἀπὸ σωμάτων αὐτὴν λεπτοτέρων εἰς τὰ ὀστρεώδη πάλιν εἰσοικίζει σώματα).⁸¹⁴  2 Macc. 15:14.  This is an Anaxagorean tenet. See Simplicius, commPhys, p. 1123: οὐ γὰρ ἦν διάκρισιν σω ματικὴν ἄνευ κινήσεως γενέσθαι. Gennadius Scholarius reported that, whereas ‘Democritus and all other ancient Physicists held that matter alone is the cause of individual distinction’, it was Anaxagoras alone who believed that distinction is produced by matter being acted upon by the Creative Mind. Gennadius Scholarius, Epitome Primae Partis Summae Theologicae Thomae Aqui nae, 3.47: τὴν ὕλην μετὰ τοῦ ποιοῦντος νοῦ, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἐτίθει ἕλκειν τὸν νοῦν τὸ μεμιγμέ νον τῇ ὕλῃ καὶ διακρίνειν οὕτω τὰ ὄντα.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1074a. See quotations in Introduction, pp. 29 30, notes 65 67.  See supra, p. 1216, note 169.  Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.39. Although he reports that “Eratothenes, Ptolemaeus, and others’ belonged to ‘another Platonist sect’ (ἄλλη αἵρεσις τῶν Πλατωνικῶν), Ptolemaeus was in fact a polymath prone to Aristotelian empiricism and Stoicism, even though Platonism is evident in his writings. Both intellectuals were reported as having sustained that different souls ‘dwell in a certain part of the perceptible world’ (διατρίβειν μὲν γὰρ αὐτὴν εἰς μοῖραν τινὰ τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ), they exchange ‘solid bodies, moving intermittently to different places of the entire world’ (καθήκειν γε μὴν εἰς τὸ στερεὸν σῶμα ἄλλοτε ἀπ᾿ ἄλλων τοῦ παντὸς τόπων), and they

1348

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

Therefore, ‘hiring the idle labourers’ means logoi being put to function at appropriate times during a cosmic period, by either producing or transforming matter and acting upon, which is what gives rise to individualization, and in the case of a human being, to distinct personality.

Rational essence and rational nature Since then the soul is not a self-existent substance, a significant point to consider is how Origen treats the question of essence proper. When he comes to explaining this, all he does is to expound the views of philosophers of different schools. He offers an account of ‘what essence is’ according to each of those who maintain that the reality of incorporeal things is primary, or ‘those who hold that the reality of incorporeal things is secondary and that of corporeal things is primary’.⁸¹⁵ Subsequently, he affords a detailed account of both definitions of essence. However, it is noteworthy that he does not suggest any view of his own, which is not coincidence; on the contrary, this is indicative of his perception of rational creatures as only conceptually consisting of a corporeal and an incorporeal element. His notion of providential creation has nothing to do with any Platonic view assuming a pre-existent intelligible world. Were this his opinion, he could have no difficulty to enunciate it, and subsequently, to employ a definition of essence stemming from a virtually Platonic perception of the world and its origin. However, in respect of the question of essence proper, he employed neither idealistic nor materialistic (Stoic) views, and certainly not the Aristotelian one.⁸¹⁶. Instead, he remained glaringly impartial. The reason why he did so was that a certain definition of essence is directly related to (actually, it stems from) a certain conception of the world and its origin, whether supposed to be created or uncreated. That Origen wished to keep aloof and not endorse any of those views, denotes that his theory of creation was different. For one thing, his concept of creation was Anaxagorean, which required no notion of ‘essence’ whatsoever. For another, in order for him to explicate his own definition of essence, he knew that he should first provide a de-

come into this world from different places (ἀπὸ τῶν διαφερόντων τόπων καταβάσεις τῶν ψυχῶν). Their influence on Origen is all too evident. However, this in not Platonism: it is an eclectic attitude employed by disillusioned Platonists. Galen, at least, had declared himself openly an ‘eclecticist’.  Origen, De Oratione, 27.8.  Although no explicit reference to any philosophical sect is made, the definitions of ‘es sence’, which are propounded here, actually pertain to those schools of thought.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1349

tailed account of his ‘mystical’ doctrine of the soul. This is exactly what he wished to eschew, which is why stated that ‘the doctrine about essence is great and difficult to contemplate’ (πολὺς δ᾿ ὁ περὶ τῆς οὐσίας λόγος καὶ δυσθεώρητος).⁸¹⁷ Not incidentally, this is by and large the same expression he used about the doctrine of the soul.⁸¹⁸ To put it plainly, to Origen ‘essence’ was simply the specific incorporeal Anaxagorean principles which make up something or someone. All of his pertinent averments about this issue can only be understood on the basis of that theory: God/Mind created the logoi, and he himself is ‘unmixed’ with them, that is, God is ontologically sheer different from the logoi. Accordingly, essence was brought into being out of nothing, since God ‘did not find essence uncreated’ (τὸν Θεὸν ἀγέννητον εὑρόντα τὴν οὐσίαν).⁸¹⁹ God himself is ‘beyond essence’ (ὑπερέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας),⁸²⁰ indeed ‘beyond mind and essence’ (ἐπέκεινα νοῦ καὶ οὐσίας),⁸²¹ and ‘God does not participate in essence at all’ (ἀλλ᾿ οὐδ᾿ οὐσίας μετέχει ὁ Θεός).⁸²² Quite simply, any essence is only the specific logoi that make up anything, and these logoi are but creatures. If there is a notion of dualism here (namely, dualism of spirit/matter) this is merely an intellectual, not actual, one. Origen was aware of the Platonic views on the subject, which did he not fail to contrast with his own theory. Although he did not elaborate on his own conception of the Fall, he highlighted its difference from the Greek views: Our Lord and Saviour indeed alludes to yet another world, which is difficult to describe and depict in actual truth, beyond this visible one. For he says, I am not of this world; ⁸²³ and the words ‘I am not of this world’, suggest that he was of some other world. I have already said that it is difficult for us to explain this other world; and for this reason (that is, if we did so),

 Origen, Cels, VI.64.  Origen, Princ, III.1.22 (Philocalia, 21.21): ἀνελθόντας εἰς τὸν περὶ ψυχῆς τόπον. commJohn, VI.14.87: ὁ περὶ ψυχῆς λόγος πολὺς καὶ δυσερμήνευτος. commMatt, 15.34: τὸν περὶ ψυχῆς ἀπόρ ρητον λόγον.  Origen, Commentarii in Genesim, 1. PG.12.48. This was written upon Origen’s conversion to Christianity, in part simultaneously with the De Principiis. See infra, pp. 1489 90.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.21.123; XIX.6.37. The vocabulary is obviously Platonic (Respublica, 509b9), but the import is not.  Origen, Cels, VII.38. This is a unique reference bespeaking personal acquaintance and intel lectual relationship between Plotinus and Origen. The latter was one of the selected few to whom an edition of the Enneades had been sent. This did not have to be Porphyry’s edition which was published later, indeed after Origen’s death. Instead, it was either an edition by Plo tinus’ pupil Eustochius or a partial dispatch ad hominem. See supra, pp. 1031 3.  Origen, op. cit. VI.64.  John, 17:14 16.

1350

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

there would be a risk of giving some men the impression that we are affirming the existence of certain imaginary forms, which the Greeks call ‘ideas’ (qua putent nos imagines quas dam, quas Graeci ἰδέας nominant). For it is certainly foreign to our mode of reasoning (quod utique a nostris rationibus alienum est) to speak of an incorporeal world that exists solely in the mind’s fancy (in sola mentis fantasia) or in the slippery region of mind (uel cogitationum lubrico consistentem); and how men could affirm that the Saviour came from thence or that the saints will go thither⁸²⁴ I do not see.⁸²⁵

As early as during that stage of his Christian life, Origen already spoke as an antiPlatonist, who did not try to conceal that he opted for remaining loyal to his Anaxagorean allegiances, which he maintained also earlier as a pagan. As for the Stoics, they insisted more than Aristotle did on the Ideas being mere products of human imagination.⁸²⁶ Syrianus reported that Chrysippus and Archedemus believed that ancient philosophers (‘Socrates, Plato, followers of Parmenides and of Pythagoras’) used ‘names’ of such non-existent things only by convention, in analogy to perceptible things (πρὸς τὴν χρῆσιν τῆς τῶν ὀνομάτων συνηθείας). Longinus, somewhat deviating, maintained that, in respect of the Stoic ‘expressions’ (which was one of the four ‘renown incorporeals’), there is something respective to them that actually exists in the mind (τοῖς λεκτοῖς τοῖς πολυθρυλήτοις ἀνάλογον τῷ νῷ παρυφίσταται). And Antoninus, by mixing the theories of Longinus and Cleanthes, maintained that Ideas exist in the mind as cognitive conceptions (τῷ νῷ παρυφίστανται κατὰ τὰς ἐννοητικὰς ἰδέας).⁸²⁷ Rational beings, as individual personalities, are entities having a corporeal body as well as something incorporeal in them, which is no other than their constitutive and cohesive logoi. However, this distinction is only an intellectual depiction of their nature. It is stressed that ‘it is only in thought and theoretically that a material substance is separable from them, and that, although this substance seems to have been produced for them or after them, yet neither have they lived nor do they live without it;’ for ‘life without a body is found in the Trin-

 Cf. John, 17:24.  Origen, Princ, II.3.6. This shows the folly of modern scholarship always speaking of ‘logoi or Ideas’ whenever a text of Origen mentioning logoi is considered. This happens only because of ignorance of the Theory of Logoi, let alone its Anaxagorean provenance.  Stobaeus, Anthologium, 1.12.3 (reporting Zeno, fr. 65): τὰ ἐννοήματά φασι μήτε τινὰ εἶναι μήτε ποιά, ὡσανεὶ δέ τινα καὶ ὡσανεὶ ποιὰ φαντάσματα ψυχῆς. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 105 (reporting Cleanthes, fr. 494): ἐννοήματά εἰσι παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς αἱ ἰδέαι, ὡς Κλεάνθης ὕστερον εἴρηκεν. Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum, 882E (copied by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 15.45.4, and by Arsenius, Apophthegmata, centuria 8.10c). Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 25: Οἱ ἀπὸ Ζήνωνος Στωϊκοὶ ἐννοήματα ἡμέτερα τὰς ἰδέας ἔφασαν.  Syrianus, loc. cit. Antoninus was a fourth century Neoplatonist in Egypt.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1351

ity alone’.⁸²⁸ I hardly need to remark that the tenor of this statement is not Platonic: it is Aristotelian, since it was Aristotle who banned self-existence of forms apart from matter (and of soul apart from body), while granting total incorporeality to his Immovable Mover alone. But of course it was not Aristotle that Origen mainly had in mind: it was Anaxagoras. Regarding our birth in flesh, we have a father and a mother. But such a father or mother is not the soul’s [father or mother]; for it is God alone who is the creator and father of the soul. This is what God teaches by saying, ‘all of the souls are mine’;⁸²⁹ and each soul has its own hypostasis and it stands on a logos of its own and not [on the logoi] of anyone else (ἑκάστη ψυχὴ ἰδίαν ὑπόστασιν ἔχει, ἐν τῷ ἰδίῳ λόγῳ ἱσταμένη, καὶ οὐκ ἐν ἄλλῳ).⁸³⁰

Put simply, the logoi which concur in order to form one’s moral and spiritual character are not the result of the spermatic logoi of one’s parents, which is a point of dissent from the Stoics. For a child is born not from its parents, but by means of its parents.⁸³¹ According to Proclus, Origen was an anti-Platonist because he posited the Mind as the supreme principle, while rejecting the One and arguing that ‘the One does at all exist’.⁸³² However, while praising Porphyry for being a faithful Platonist, he did not know that Porphyry urged the same doctrine of creation as Origen, since Porphyry was indeed influenced by Origen to some extent, and ultimately by Anaxagoras, as much as Porphyry was also a relentless critic of Socrates, whom he actually loathed.⁸³³ It is now understandable why Origen did not designate the soul as ‘rational essence’ (λογικὴ οὐσία). A single reference in the fragments on John is not in fact Origen’s, since it can be shown that several of these fragments, although by and large expounding Origen’s thought, were in fact written by Didymus, as I hope to

 Origen, op. cit. II.2.2. The expression ‘have been produced from them or after them’ shows that Rufinus had not grasped the precise views of Origen on the question of the substance of individual rational creatures. It is also obvious that the (non extant) original Greek text at this point had excluded the notion of this substance existing without beginning.  Ezekiel, 18:4.  Origen, selEz, 18.  See supra, p. 1318.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 2, p. 31.  Aeneas of Gaza reports that Porphyry was a polymath and Iamblichus a man inspired by God (ἔνθους), but both of them ‘despised the wisdom of those before them’ (τοὺς πρὸ αὐτῶν σοφίᾳ περιφρονοῦντες). They were outraged at Plato’s theories of transmigration of soul to an imals, and maintained that the rational soul is of an essence which is different from that of an irrational one. Theophrastus, p. 12. Cf. Porphyry, Fragmenta, fr. 11c, apud Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, 12.64.

1352

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

demonstrate in a future work of mine. Even so, and unlike Neoplatonic tenets, to Origen, a soul does not give birth to logoi out of her own: she is only the Bride of the Logos (according to the Song of Solomon) who becomes pregnant by the Bridegroom in order to generate seeds of rationality.⁸³⁴ By using a distinctly Anaxagorean language, and identifying ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα) as ‘logoi’, he argues that the soul does not generate ‘logical seeds’ out of its own, but she only receives them:⁸³⁵ the imagery of the scriptural parable was always there for Origen to make soul the ‘soil’ on which the husbandman-Logos ‘sows’ his rational seeds.⁸³⁶ The Stoic idea was there for Origen to draw on, anyway. Zeno of Citium had argued as a matter of principle that ‘the seed that proceeds from a rational source is itself rational, too’ (τὸ προϊέμενον σπέρμα λογικοῦ καὶ αὐτὸ λογικόν ἐστιν). This proposition was in fact not about the soul, but about the world as a whole, and it was Anaxagorean from start to finish: the world is itself a ‘seed’ (σπέρμα) owing its existence to a rational animal (the Logos/Mind) and it contains spermatically all the ‘seeds’ of rational animals.⁸³⁷ In reality, the notion of ‘rational essence’ was made up by Origen’s followers such as Didymus indulging in Platonic tendencies, who abused the notion and lapsed into identifying it with something like ‘personal rational hypostasis’.⁸³⁸  Origen, frJohn, 45: Ἡ λογικὴ οὐσία, ἧς μέρος ἐστὶ καὶ ἡ ἀνθρώπου ψυχή, ἐξ ἑαυτῆς οὐδενός ἐστι τῶν ἀγαθῶν γεννητική, εἰ καὶ δεκτική ἐστι τούτων. αὕτη τοιγαροῦν γυναικὸς τρόπῳ ἐξ ἄλλου γεννᾶν πέφυκεν ἃς δύναται τίκτειν ἀρετὰς πρακτικάς τε καὶ διανοητικάς. διὸ νύμφην αὐτὴν ἐρῶ, οὐ τοῦ τυχόντος ἀλλὰ μόνου τοῦ σπορέως τῶν ἀγαθῶν. … μέρος γὰρ τῆς νύμφης ἐστέ, ὄντες τῆς οὐσίας τῶν λογικῶν. See COT, pp. 165 72: the Logos is a permanent instructor of the soul and dwells in man’s ἡγεμονικόν.  Origen, homLev, p. 406: Καὶ γυνὴ δέ, ψυχὴ ἡ μὴ προετικὴ (= emitting easily) μὲν λογικῶν σπερμάτων, δεκτικὴ δέ. The adjective προετικὴ is derived from the verb προΐεμαι (Middle voice) which means ‘emit’ or ‘send forward from oneself’.  Matt. 13:3; Mark, 4:3; Luke, 8:5.  Zeno of Citium, Testimonia et Fragmenta, fr. 113, apud Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Dogma ticos 3 (= Adversus Physicos 1), 101: τὸ προϊέμενον σπέρμα λογικοῦ καὶ αὐτὸ λογικόν ἐστιν· ὁ δὲ κόσμος προΐεται σπέρμα λογικοῦ· λογικὸν ἄρ᾿ ἐστὶν ὁ κόσμος. Zeno’s argument is that, since the world is a seed of a rational Being, the world itself is a rational animal, too. Notice the similarity of Origen’s expression, especially use of the verb προΐεμαι.  Didymus, Commentarii in Psalmos 20 21, Cod. p. 21. He argues that the soil that receives the seeds of Jesus is the ‘rational essence’: καὶ ἡ μὲν δεκτικὴ σπερμάτων ἐστὶν λογικὴ οὖσα οὐσία. Commentarii in Job, Cod. p. 2: γέγονεν τοίνυν λογικὴ οὐσία ἀποστάτις θεοῦ. Commentarii in Zac chariam 3.307: ἀδύνατον γὰρ λογικὴν οὐσίαν εἰς τὸ μὴ ὂν καταστρέψαι, κἂν πάντα καὶ μεγάλα ἁμαρτήσῃ καὶ ἀσεβήσῃ. Commentarii in Ecclesiasten (1.1 8), Cod. p. 45: καὶ ὁ Στέφανος λέγων κύριε Ἰησοῦ, δέξαι τὸ πνεῦμα μου περὶ τῆς ψυχῆς ἑαυτοῦ λέγει καὶ τῆς λογικῆς οὐσίας. Commen tarii in Psalmos 20 21, Cod. p. 15: τὰ ἔργα τοῦ σωτῆρος μικρά ἐστιν ὡς πρὸς τὸ πεποιηκέναι τὴν λογικὴν οὐσίαν, τοὺς οὐρανούς, τὰς ψυχάς. Op. cit. p. 44: διὰ τὸ πᾶσαν λογικὴν οὐσίαν, κἂν τε

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1353

Only at one point does Didymus distinguish it as being something different from the soul itself, if ‘attached’ to it, in order to urge that ‘rational essence’ of the soul is the ‘divine mind’ of it. Presumably, he took it up from some lost work of Origen, and it is all but coincidence that he used characteristic Anaxagorean language about the mind.⁸³⁹ A fundamental mistake took place, which needs to be clarified. Styling a man or an angel as a whole ‘rational being’ (λογικὴ οὐσία) would be a tuism,⁸⁴⁰ but identifying it with the ‘soul’ is a different matter. To put it simply, the distance is as much as that of Anaxagoras from Plato, considering that, unlike the former, the latter thought of the soul as a subsistent individual being.⁸⁴¹ In the Greek mindset, the main meaning of οὐσία was real being, or existence par excellence. Origen knew of this, which is why he applied it only to the logoi. To him, these were the Anaxagorean ones, explained as the logoi that were created in the Body of the Logos, which was the same as ‘the first body’ from which ‘all things stem’, as Porphyry reported Anaxagoras’ theory. Consequently, these logoi produce the sundry manifestations of the world, which is only a derived reality: only the logoi constitute the fundamental and in-

λεία ᾖ, χρῄζειν τῆς παρὰ θεοῦ συμμαχίας. Op. cit. p. 57: ἡ κατάλληλος τῇ λογικῇ οὐσίᾳ τροφή. Op. cit. p. 75: αἰσχύνεται καὶ ἀπόλλυται ᾗ ἄδικός ἐστιν, οὐχ ᾗ λογικὴ οὐσία. Commentarii in Psal mos 35 39, Cod. p. 234: δυνατὸν δὲ οὐρανὸν ἐνταῦθα εἰπεῖν τὴν λογικὴν οὐσίαν, τὴν νοερὰν ὕπαρξιν. Fragmenta in Psalmos Altera, fr. 620: διὰ τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς οὐσίαν νοερὰν οὖσαν καὶ λογι κὴν εἶεν ἂν ἀγαπητοὶ αὐτοῦ. In Genesim, Cod. p. 21: μιᾶς οὔσης τῆς λογικῆς οὐσίας κατὰ τὸ ὑποκείμενον καὶ ἡ διάφορος γνώμη τὸν χωρισμὸν ἐνεποίησεν. Op. cit. p. 63: Εἰ δὲ ὡς πρὸς τὸν Λόγον τοῦ Θεοῦ τις ἐκλαβεῖν βούλοιτο, πᾶσα ἡ λογικὴ φύσις θήλεος πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔχοι τάξιν. Νυμφίος ἐστὶν οὗτος τῆς λογικῆς οὐσίας. … ὅστις σπορεὺς ὑπάρχει πάσης λογικῆς οὐσίας. Commentarii in Ecclesiasten (3 4.12), Cod. p. 77: ὁ σωτήρ ἐστιν ὁ νυμφίος τῆς λογικῆς οὐσίας. Similar expressions occur abundantly in Eusebius.  Didymus, Commentarii in Psalmos 29 34, Cod. p. 139: οὕτως ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν τοῦ θεοῦ παρα τιθέμενος ἑαυτοῦ τὸ πνεῦμα δείκνυσιν, ὅτι οὐκ εὐτελές τί ἐστιν τὸ πνεῦμα, ἀλλ᾿ ἤτοι ἡ παρεζευγ μένη οὐσία λογικὴ τῇ ψυχῇ ἢ ὁ νοῦς αὐτῆς ὁ θεῖος, ὁ ἀμιγῶς ἔχων καὶ πρὸς ὕλην καὶ πρὸς κακίαν.  Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Refutatio Confessionis Eunomii, 132 (in fact, these are words of Euno mius): ὅτι δοξαζόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ πνεύματος δι᾿ αἰῶνος καὶ πάσης λογικῆς καὶ γεννητῆς οὐσίας. Marcellus of Ancyra, Expositio Fidei, 3.1: The Son was πρὸ πάσης λογικῆς καὶ νοερᾶς οὐσίας. Sim plicius, commCateg, p. 28: ὡς ὅταν τὸ ζῷον ὁριζόμενοι οὐσίαν λογικὴν θνητὴν ὁριζώμεθα, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος.  Cf. Hierocles of Alexandria identifying ‘rational essence’ with the soul. In Aureum Carmen, 1.6; 8.6; 9.4; 10.3; 10.4; 10.7; 10.8; 10.10; 12.3; 13.6; 14.15; 18.2; 26.1; 26.6; 26.7. So does Proclus, comm Tim, v. 3, pp. 294; 318; 319; 351. However, in general, he considers it as the rational part of the soul. In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 893; commCrat, 51; 71; commTim, v. 1, p. 251; v. 2 p. 153. Likewise, Ammonius of Alexandria, commDeInterpr, pp. 217; 241. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 421. The idea was epitomized by Pseudo Zonaras, Lexicon, letter psi, p. 1876.

1354

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

destructible actuality. This is ‘unconcealed’ by means of the perceptiple products of logoi, which is what makes the Anaxagorean universe itself a revelation. If then it was necessary to speak of ‘rational essence’ (λογικὴ οὐσία) (which, anyway, Origen did not need to do, and actually he did not do), this would and should be related to the Mind. Origen’s younger friend, namely, Porphyry, was aware of this. We should be grateful to Stobaeus for having preserved an exposition by Porphyry concerning the views of Aristo of Chios presumably elaborating on the philosophy of Zeno of Citium. From this, we learn that a Stoic sect did not divide perception into empirical and intellectual one, but it maintained that any kind of perception originates in the mind, which acts in different ways, namely, either as sensible perception or as abstract reflection. Either way, they posited mind as a ‘rational essence’, which ‘engages in different kinds of action’ (μίαν μὲν τὴν οὐσίαν λογικὴν ἐτίθεντο, διαφόρους δὲ τὰς ἐνεργείας).⁸⁴² Beyond the fact that the Stoics were largely faithful heirs of Anaxagoras’ philosophy (their materiality is immaterial, as argued earlier), we should bear in mind also that Porphyry was an authoritative exponent of Anaxagoras’ philosophy, as we learn from Arabic sources, and it was Porphyry who put that philosophy into use in order to render a philosophical account of the ‘way to creation.⁸⁴³ Therefore, when he cares to record views that determine the true ontological level of what the multitude of philosophers called ‘rational essence’, this he would have done with good reason. No matter what that reason was, we know that, unlike Platonists of the Late Antiquity, Origen used the notion accurately (meaning, consistently, within an Anaxagorean context). Simplicius refrained from making use of this notion, which could have given rise to misconstruction. Perhaps the philosopher who used it most accurately after Origen was Damascius, who realized that ‘rational essence’ had to do with the mind, not with the soul.⁸⁴⁴ This essence is only a particular manifestation of specific concurrence of the logoi that generate rational creatures of all ranks of life. But essence proper is the totality of logoi, which generate everything in the universe, and this generation is also guided by rationality, indeed

 Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.24, reporting Porphyry’s views ‘On the powers of the soul’.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 395.  Damascius, Princ, p. 17. ἄλλα ἄλλων ἀπορρητότερα εἶναι φύσει, τὸ μὲν ἓν τοῦ ὄντος, τὸ δὲ ὂν τῆς ζωῆς, τὴν δὲ ζωὴν τοῦ νοῦ καὶ ἀεὶ ἑξῆς, ἀνὰ τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον, μᾶλλον δὲ τὸν ἀντίστρο φον ἀπὸ τῆς ὕλης ἄχρι τῆς λογικῆς οὐσίας.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1355

by the rationality of the Mind, who is the ‘guardian’ (φρουρός)⁸⁴⁵ of the rational function of the logoi. When intellectuals used the notion of ‘rational essence’, they had in mind only the rational part of the soul. The author who wrote a commentary using the name of Simplicius (perhaps Simplicius himself) makes it clear that, by this expression, he does not mean the cosmic Mind/Creator in which a soul is supposed to participate, nor does he suggest the Supreme Mind, which he styles ‘imparticipable’: he means only the rational part of the soul.⁸⁴⁶ This part is not superior to human intellect, but inferior to it; for, unlike the soul, human intellect has no parts,⁸⁴⁷ and, anyway, to style human mind ‘rational essence’ is only a casual concession to inaccurate convention.⁸⁴⁸ Therefore, ‘rational essence’ means only the rational function of the soul. This is not really an essence, unless one considers it in a purely Platonic context, in which case it should be no different than an Idea. However, Platonism was not favourite to Origen. This is why he did not use this expression, which did not enjoy much popularity, anyway. Didymus who is a likely author of the fragment on John, quoted above in note 834, used it in this sense, but the remarkable characteristic of his passage is its distinctly Anaxagorean terminology.⁸⁴⁹ This is why Origen did not use the expression ‘rational essence’ (λογικὴ οὐσία)’, and opted for ‘rational nature’ (λογικὴ φύσις), or ‘rational natures’ (λογικαὶ φύσεις)’ instead: since the times of Aristotle, ‘essence’ was in fact a static notion and it meant predominantly (its other significations aside) ‘individual real being’; but once this was applied to the soul (only to a part of it, actually), Origen would have never made the soul (let alone a part of it) ‘essence’, that is, an individual self-subsistent being. On the other hand, ‘nature’ is a dynamic no-

 Harpocration, Lexicon in Decem Oratores Atticos, p. 33. Photius, Lexicon, letter alpha, entry 1573. Suda, letter alpha, entry 1981. George Cedrenus, Compendium Historiarum, p. 278.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 218: ἔστι τοίνυν ὁ προκείμενος σκοπὸς οὐ περὶ τοῦ μετεχομένου ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς νοῦ οὐδὲ ἔτι μᾶλλον περὶ τοῦ ἀμεθέκτου, ἀλλὰ περὶ τῆς λογικῆς οὐσίας· ἐπειδὴ καὶ περὶ ψυχῆς ἡ πραγματεία, μόριον δὲ καὶ ὁ λόγος τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης ψυχῆς. Op. cit. p. 220: ἀλλὰ νοῦς, φασίν, ἡ κρείττων ἐστὶ τῆς ψυχῆς οὐσία, περὶ δὲ νοῦ ποιεῖται τὸν λόγον ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης καὶ οὐ περὶ τῆς λογικῆς οὐσίας. See further, infra, pp. 1358 62.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 42: ἐπειδὴ νοῦς καὶ τὸ ἄϋλον εἶδος καὶ ἡ λογικὴ οὐσία. ἀλλ᾿ ὁ μὲν παν τελῶς ἀμερής, ἡ δὲ ἐν διαστάσει πως διὰ τὴν ἀνέλιξιν καὶ τὸν χαλασμόν.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 223: περὶ τῆς λογικῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐν τούτοις εἰπεῖν οὐσίας, ἣν δὴ νοῦν καλεῖ.  Didymus, Commentarii in Psalmos 29 34, Cod. p. 139: οὐκ εὐτελές τί ἐστιν τὸ πνεῦμα, ἀλλ᾿ ἤτοι ἡ παρεζευγμένη οὐσία λογικὴ τῇ ψυχῇ ἢ ὁ νοῦς αὐτῆς ὁ θεῖος, ὁ ἀμιγῶς ἔχων καὶ πρὸς ὕλην καὶ πρὸς κακίαν.

1356

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

tion suggesting action and relation of things and phenomena with one another.⁸⁵⁰ Therefore, once again, Origen appears to expound his ideas by means of the same terminology as Porphyry did, which is a locution making clear the Anaxagorean tenor of the theories of both philosophers. During his early Christian life, Origen came upon the term φύραμα (‘mixture’) in Paul. A mature philosopher as he was, he put it to use conveniently and confidently, since this provided him with scriptural authority while he entertained an old Anaxagorean idea. The difference between various ranks of rational life stems from their different degrees of rationality. Nevertheless, no matter how different those degrees, rationality is a common characteristic of all rational creatures. Although he refrained from using the expression ‘rational essence’ itself (λογικὴ οὐσία) in order to denote ‘rationality’, he opted for ‘rational nature’ (λογικὴ φύσις), which (unlike ‘essence’) bespeaks either rational action, or a rational creature as a whole. Consequently, rationality per se is the outcome of a certain ‘mixture’ of the principles/logoi, and his proposition was that all rational creatures have rationality in common, despite their different sharing in it. This rationality stems from concurrence of logoi, which is what makes it a ‘mixture’ (φύραμα),⁸⁵¹ and allows for the thesis that all rational creatures are made of this ‘mixture’.⁸⁵² Although Porphyry and Origen treaded along different philosophical ways, their common Anaxagorean debts are there. The principles/ logoi concur in order to make up the whole of physical/psychic/spiritual human entity; after some time, they diverge from each other, they are separated out, only to keep on existing differently, and yet being always at hand in order to concur anew in different manners so as to produce another human being, or whatever. Porphyry described this concurrence of logoi by using the term φυράματα (‘mixtures’) ‘descending from the heavenly spheres’ in order to pick

 Origen, commJohn, II.15.109: ἀχώριστός ἐστιν ὁ ἐνυπάρχων τῇ φύσει τῶν λογικῶν λόγος ἀεὶ ὑποβάλλων τὰ πρακτέα. Op. cit. II.23.146: ἐπὶ τῶν κρειττόνων δυνάμεων τὰ ὀνόματα οὐχὶ φύσεων ζῴων ἐστὶν ὀνόματα ἀλλὰ τάξεων, ὧν ἥδε τις καὶ ἥδε λογικὴ φύσις τέτευχεν ἀπὸ θεοῦ. De Oratione, 27.2; 27.9; frLuc, 216; Commentarii in Romanos (III.5 V.7), pp. 178; 180: ἀνθρώπων δὲ ἐνώπιον καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν λογικῶν φύσεων. frPs, comm. on Psalms 4:3; 5:1; 53:3; 64:10; 64:13; 76:5; 67:19; 76:17; 85:9; 88:4 5; 88:9; 93:5; 93:10; et passim; selPs, passim; selEz, PG.13.816.5&18; expProv, PG.17: 176.34; 193.18; 197.19; 205.8; 233.38; 244.17; 248.9; Cels, III.54; III.69; III.75; IV.13; IV.74; VI.44; VII.46; VIII.72; commMatt, 16.23.  This is the language of Rom. 9:21. Cf. Porphyry, supra, p. 1196.  Origen, Princ, III.1.21 24 (Philocalia, 21.6; 21.20 23).

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1357

up a soul (φυράματα δὲ εἶναι ταῦτα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανίων σφαιρῶν καὶ κατιοῦσαν αὐτὰ συλλέγειν τὴν ψυχήν).⁸⁵³ What is a human being? Unlike Plato who saw it as a soul possessing and using a body as its instrument,⁸⁵⁴ Origen posited man as comprising three distinct parts: spirit, soul, and body.⁸⁵⁵ Nevertheless, at two points, he appears as saying that by ‘human being’ he means ‘a soul making use of body’,⁸⁵⁶ and identifies the soul⁸⁵⁷ with the ‘inner man’⁸⁵⁸ of the scripture. According to Hippolytus, this was a Gnostic interpretation,⁸⁵⁹ but the case was actually different, since the Gnostic idea was that the ‘inner man’ is superior to the soul, and it was identified with the ‘spiritual’ man, which Hippolytus noted shortly after that point.⁸⁶⁰ It is probable that it was Origen who initiated the above exegesis, since we find this in his most ardent admirers, such as Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Didymus,⁸⁶¹ whereas several others fol Porphyry, commTim, Book 2, fr. 80, apud Proclus expounding the views of Porphyry about ‘what is either mortal or immortal’, commTim, v. 3, p. 234.  Plato, Alcibiades i, 129e 130d. Cf. Plotinus discussing this in the Enneades, VI.7.5. He pushes the Platonic text to the extreme, and burdens the poor creature called ‘man’ not with one soul, but with two presumably the cosmic soul and its progeny, that is, the individual one.  Origen, Cels, II.51; Princ, IV.2.4: ὁ ἄνθρωπος συνέστηκεν ἐκ σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς καὶ πνεύματος. Fragmenta in Jeremiam, fr. 22; frLuc, 205; Dialogus cum Heraclide, 6 8; homLev, p. 334; commJohn, I.32.229; II.21.138; commMatt, 12.20; 13.2; 14.3; 16.8; comm1Cor, 24; Scholia in Lucam, PG.17.357.48 57: πάντα τὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ ἄνθρωπον ἐκ σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς καὶ πνεύματος συνεστῶτα.  Origen, Princ, IV.2.7: ἀνθρώπους δὲ νῦν λέγω τὰς χρωμένας ψυχὰς σώμασιν. Cels, VII.38: Καὶ ἄνθρωπος μὲν οὖν, τουτέστι ψυχὴ χρωμένη σώματι, λεγομένη ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος ἀλλὰ καὶ ψυχή, ἀποκρίνεται οὐχ ἅπερ Κέλσος ἀνέγραψεν, ἀλλ᾿ ἅπερ αὐτὸς διδάσκει ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ ἄνθρωπος.  Origen, Cels, VII.38; frLuc, 195; Dialogus cum Heraclide, 22; 23; Commentarii in epistulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21), 39. Catena in Epistulam ad Romanos (typus Vaticanus) p. 95; Catena in Epis tulam ad Romanos (typus Monacensis), pp. 174 5.  Rom. 7:22; 2 Cor. 4:14; Eph. 3:16.  Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, 6.34.5.  Hippolytus op. cit. 7.27.6; the idea was confirmed by Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, pp. 46; 49.  Origen’s influence is confirmed by such points as Cels, V.60 and frLuke, 195; see supra, p. 1314, note 637. Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum Canticorum, pp. 21; 399; Epistulae, 2.17. Pseu do Gregory of Nyssa, De Creatione Hominis Sermo Primus (recensio C), p. 13a; De Creatione Hom inis Sermo Alter, pp. 12 13; 44; 46; De Occursu Domini, PG.46.1181.1 11. Basil of Caesarea, Hom iliae Super Psalmos, PG.29.388.40; Homilia in Principium Proverbiorum, PG.31: 412.40 44; 413.30 33; De Baptismo, PG.31.1561.35 42. Didymus, Commentarii in Ecclesiasten (1.1 8), Cod. p. 45; Com mentarii in Ecclesiasten (11 12), Cod. p. 337; Commentarii in Ecclesiasten (3 4.12), Cod. pp. 87; 94; 97; Commentarii in Psalmos 20 21, Cod. p. 28; Commentarii in Psalmos 22 26.10, Cod. p. 58; Com mentarii in Psalmos 29 34, Cod. p. 197; Fragmenta in Psalmos Altera, frs. 639a; 968; 995; In Gen esim, Cod. pp. 55; 56.

1358

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

lowed suit,⁸⁶² including the great inquisitor of doctrine during the sixth century, namely, John Grammaticus.⁸⁶³ In any event, stating the soul as making use of the body, enjoyed some currency by later authors.⁸⁶⁴ However, there are specific reasons for not placing any great store by such casual expressions. First, only Platonists did not take up the expression; and when it was not used in order to bespeak a sharp soul/body dualism, the purpose was to point out the distinction between physical and spiritual functions of a human being. Aristotle himself did identify ‘man’ as ‘soul’ in a certain sense,⁸⁶⁵ which though did not (and could not) suggest self-existence of the soul. Secondly, on closer consideration, Origen posited that a man is a compound being, and life is common to both soul and body.⁸⁶⁶ At another point, he notes in passing that man is determined either by his soul or by his body, or both,⁸⁶⁷ which is a parallel not to Plato, but to Aristotle’s ‘threefold’ (τριχῶς) understanding of ‘essence’, which he defined as either form or matter or both.⁸⁶⁸ Thirdly, Origen maintained that the different natures that make up the body (corporeal, incorporeal) come to be together by means of ‘mixture’ (κρᾶσις). The idea is indeed Anaxagorean, but, once again it took for Simplicius to come over and put things in order. Following the distorted presentation by Aristotle, doxographers reported that, according to Anaxagoras, ‘mixtures take place

 Pseudo Macarius, Sermones 64, 4.25.1; 18.4.15; 18.7.2; 47.1.8; 48.6.11; 52.1.3; 52.2.1; 64.1.8; Epis tula Magna, p. 245. Ephraem Syrus, Institutio ad Monachos, p. 315; De Directione Uirtutis, line 12. John Chrysostom, De Resurrectione Mortuorum, PG.50.422.29. Barsanuphius and John, Quaes tiones et Responsiones, 13. Philagathus, Homiliae, 29.7. This exegesis ended up a lemma in the Suda, letter epsilon, entry 3170.  John Grammaticus, Apologia Concilii Chalcedonensis (excerpta Graeca), lines 145 8.  Plutarch, Adversus Colotem, 1119A. Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 1, p. 2, and Meletius of Tiberiopolis, De Natura Hominis, p. 150. Julian, emperor, Εἰς τοὺς ᾿Aπαιδεύτους Κύνας, 4. Hierocles of Alexandria, In Aureum Carmen, 13.8. Proclus, In Platonis Alcibiadem i, 45; 73; 77; 296; commTim, v. 3, pp. 307; 309; De Decem Dubitationibus Circa Providentiam, 36. Simpli cius, commCael, p. 16; commEpict, pp. 1 3; 45; 127; commAnim, pp. 9; 19; 45; 87; 91; 106; 301. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Alcibiadem Commentarii, 142; 202 5; 208. Michael Psel lus, Opuscula ii, pp. 23; 74. To them, the following commentators should be added: Elias of Alex andria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 22. Aspasius, In Ethica Nichomachea Commentaria, p. 21.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1043b2 5: ψυχὴ μὲν γὰρ καὶ ψυχῇ εἶναι ταὐτόν, ἀνθρώπῳ δὲ καὶ ἄνθρωπος οὐ ταὐτόν, εἰ μὴ καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ ἄνθρωπος λεχθήσεται· οὕτω δὲ τινὶ μὲν τινὶ δ᾿ οὔ. Plo tinus discusses this view in the Enneades, VI.7.5, actually having in mind this part of Aristotle’s analyses, without mentioning them specifically.  Origen, frLuc, 242, quoted supra, p. 1282, note 473; selPs, PG.12.1097.9 14.  Origen, commJohn, II.21.138: τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἤτοι ἐν ψυχῇ ἢ ἐν σώματι ἢ ἐν συναμφοτέροις χαρακτηριζομένου.  Aristotle, De Anima, 412a; 414a.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1359

by juxtaposition of elements’ (κατὰ παράθεσιν τῶν στοιχείων), whereas, to older ones such as Thales, this takes place by mutation (κατ᾿ ἀλλοίωσιν).⁸⁶⁹ However, Simplicius showed that the Anaxagorean philosophy definitely posited generation not only by means of juxtaposition but also by mixture (οὐ μόνον κατὰ παράθεσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ κατὰ κρᾶσιν), which is no other than the concurrence of certain principles/logoi and their mutual reaction.⁸⁷⁰ When Origen considers human being as a ‘mixture’, he actually thinks of all three parts of it (spirit, soul, body) as being the outcome of concurring principles which conduce to making this up. Of course, the nature of each one of them is different; but we should recall the lesson about the Anaxagorean principles by both Porphyry and Simplicius: these principles exist differently in different ontological levels. Therefore, the principles exist and function differently in order to produce a man’s spirit, and differently in order to produce what is known as ‘psychic’ functions, which are collectively styled ‘soul’; and they exist and function differently still, in order to produce the plain material part of human existence. This is the meaning of Origen’s statement that the logoi/angels ‘who have been assigned the duty to sow souls in bodies’ (ἡ τῶν ἀγγέλων πρὸς τὸ ἐνσπείρεσθαι ψυχὰς σώμασιν λειτουργία) are ‘labourers’; for they bring together two certain things which are contrary in nature into one mixture, (δύο τινὰ συναγόντων τῇ φύσει ἐναντία εἰς κρᾶσιν μίαν), and, at the appointed time (καὶ ἐν καιρῷ τῷ τεταγμένῳ), they begin to make the constitution concerning each one, while they also develop that which was formed in the first place to its complete nature (καὶ εἰς τελεσφόρησιν προαγόντων τὸν προπεπλασμένον).’⁸⁷¹ Besides, his plain statements about man being a total oneness of two parts that we can distinguish intellectually (τὸ συναμφότερον) show how he means the term κρᾶσις in relation to constitution of a human being. Considering the scriptural reference to a man becoming ‘one flesh’ with his woman,⁸⁷² he notes that this ‘oneness’ is a ‘mixture’ (κρᾶσις) which is analogous to that between wine and water, that is, an indissoluble one. For in that kind of mixture, the final product cannot be dissolved into the parts that made it up.⁸⁷³ He considers the oneness of prayers and hymns offered to God by congregations in churches in like terms: “This is analogous to what happens in wine vats,

 Doxographers copied from their predecessors, hence the following is in fact one testimony copied by different authors. Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.17.1, apud Pseudo Plutarch, Placita Philosopho rum, 883E. Pseudo Galen, Historia Philosophica, 29.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 164.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.50.327. Also, see chapter 12, pp. 1149 50.  Genesis, 2:24, quoted in Matt. 19:5; Mark, 10:8; 1 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 5:31.  Origen, comm1Cor, 36.

1360

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

where, from many and different grapes, one specific quality of wine is produced (μία κρᾶσις ἀποτελεῖται οἴνου).”⁸⁷⁴ Then again, he considers the constitution of human being in the same terms: “The entire man of God, who is consisted of body and soul and spirit” puts himself under the ‘divine inspiration’, which is analogous to the process of becoming leavened, so that the three kinds of flour become one mixture.⁸⁷⁵ Since earthly life is a fallen state, and the goal is to return to the ‘ancient fatherland’,⁸⁷⁶ a ‘man’ must eventually make himself ‘spirit’, indeed one spirit with the Logos/Mind/Son/Christ. Once this comes to pass, the principles/logoi which now exist differently in order to produce either earthly bodies, or psychic functions, or spiritual constructions, will exist only in one mode: this is the highest one of the those described by Porphyry, Simplicius, Damascius, as well as by Zeno of Citium. In that state, ‘all things will be one, and God will be all in all’, as described by Paul in the Christian scripture. Once man attaches himself to the Logos and becomes ‘one’ with him, a ‘soul’ is no longer a soul: instead, it becomes ‘spirit’. This is the eschatological ‘wedding of Christ’ (Χριστοῦ γάμος) to his ‘Church’, that is, total unification of the totality of the logoi now existing only in their most sublime mode, in a state in which the Bridegroom and the Bride ‘shall be one flesh’.⁸⁷⁷ Rationality exists throughout the entire universe, in every corner

 Origen, selPs, PG.12.1060.42 44.  Origen, Scholia in Lucam, PG.17.357.48 57: πάντα τὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ ἄνθρωπον ἐκ σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς καὶ πνεύματος συνεστῶτα, … εἰς ἀλεύρου σάτα τρία τὰ νενοημένα, ἕως οὗ ζυμωθῇ ὅλον. … μιᾶς κράσεως γενομένης τῶν τριῶν ἀλεύρων.  See PHE, pp. 88; 290. Origen, selPs, PG.12.1584.33. The same text was attributed to John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos, PG.55.337.7. The latter took the notion of ‘ancient father land’ from Origen and applied it heavily: De Cruce et Latrone, PG.49: 401.16; 409.38; De Futurae Vitae Deliciis, PG.51.350.49; In Genesim, PG.54.625.22; Expositiones in Psalmos, PG.55: 214.22; 273.3; 348.19; In Joannem, PG.59.152.5; Contra Ludos et Theatra, PG.56.264.9. Pseudo John Chrys ostom, Interpretatio in Danielem Prophetam, PG.56.227.1; In Pentecosten, PG.52.805.58. Then, in the sixth century, Cassian the Sabaite (= Pseudo Didymus), De Trinitate, PG.39.697.47. Origen’s detractors would be tempted to make the notion of ‘ancient fatherland’ one more point of Pla tonism. In respect of this, I only cite a characteristic instance of Anaxagoras’ life. Diogenes Laer tius reports that Anaxagoras was so absorbed by seeking to discover the permananet causes of things, that he eventually came to not caring about politics. Since this indifference was generally seen as ignominious (recall: ἰδιῶται, or ‘idiots’), a citizen asked him the question, ‘Don’t you care about your homeland?’, to which Anaxagoras replied, “Do avoid words of opprobrium! For I do care about my homeland, indeed exceedingly so”; and with his finger he pointed up to the heaven. Op. cit. 2.7.  Origen discusses this in the comm1Cor, 39, also quoting 1 Cor. 6:16: “He that is joined unto the Lord, is one spirit”.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1361

and detail of it. But rationality endowed with free choice is the privilege of rational creatures only, which is the part of ‘rational substance’ described by Origen as the Bride of the Bridegroom/Logos. This is the sense in which man is the ‘image of the image’ of God. Even if Origen speaks of it as ‘soul’, only because soul is not a specific ‘something’ but a collective noun, the affinity is between the Logos and the human mind. Rational soul means one which is enlightened by a rational mind, a soul which is rational by virtue of its communication with the Logos. This is why Simplicius (or whoever the author) identified ‘rational essence’ with human mind. He considers Aristotle’s analysis ‘concerning the part of the soul by means of which the soul knows and thinks’.⁸⁷⁸ This analysis turns out entirely dependent on the adumbration of Mind by Anaxagoras, indeed this philosopher is mentioned by name: the soul knows and thinks by means of the mind. The mind, not the soul, is the seat of intellectual operation. The commentator adds that this mind is not the Universal one before it came to create, that is, the ‘imparticipable Mind’ (ἀμέθεκτος νοῦς), nor is it the Creative Mind which is knowable, or ‘participated in’ (μετεχόμενος νοῦς): this is the mind of the individual human being, and this he calls ‘rational essence’ (περὶ τῆς λογικῆς οὐσίας).⁸⁷⁹ However, when he refers to the knowable Creative Mind, which is superior to the soul, he points out that, now, Aristotle refers to that (Anaxagorean) Mind, not to the ‘rational essence’ (meaning, a man’s individual mind).⁸⁸⁰ It is because of this double entendre, that this author feels himself at liberty to style any mind ‘rational essence’, whether he refers to the universal one or to one’s individual mind. How was it possible for him to do so? It was Aristotle who allowed for this; but, in doing so, Aristotle drew heavily on Anaxagoras: in the beginning of this commentary, the author grasped that Aristotle’s statement that ‘the mind is one and continuous, in the same sense as the process of thinking; indeed, thinking is the thoughts themselves’, and they appear ‘in succession, like that of numbers, whereas the unity of spatial magnitudes is not’ of that kind. Therefore, the mind

 Aristotle, De Anima, 429a: Περὶ δὲ τοῦ μορίου τοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς ᾧ γινώσκει τε ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ φρονεῖ.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 218.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 220: ἀλλὰ νοῦς, φασίν, ἡ κρείττων ἐστὶ τῆς ψυχῆς οὐσία, περὶ δὲ νοῦ ποιεῖται τὸν λόγον ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλης καὶ οὐ περὶ τῆς λογικῆς οὐσίας. Cf. p. 223: ‘mind’ is another name for the ‘rational essence’ of man (περὶ τῆς λογικῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐν τούτοις εἰπεῖν οὐσίας, ἣν δὴ νοῦν καλεῖ).

1362

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

‘is not continuous in the sense spatial magnitudes are, since it has no parts, and, at any rate, it is continuous not in the sense of being a certain magnitude’.⁸⁸¹ Aristotle’s analysis in that section⁸⁸² was meant to be a rejoinder to Plato’s views; however, in doing so, he drew heavily on Presocratic thought: it was not only Parmenides⁸⁸³ that supplied him with his analyses about the identification of thinking and the thoughts themselves and indeed with being; it was also Anaxagoras’ Mind that allowed him to assert the ‘continuity’ of mind. For although Aristotle eschewed acknowledgment of his source, he applied Anaxagoras’ idea that ‘the Mind is the same, both the greater and the lesser one’,⁸⁸⁴ and Mind is present in ‘some things’. It was Anaxagoras who posited continuity of Mind, from the Primeval to the Creative one, and then down to the mind of those individuals where the Mind is present, which definitely included human beings. The commentator then quite reasonably assumes that the ‘mind’ treated by Aristotle is no other than ‘the immaterial form and the rational essence’.⁸⁸⁵ In like manner God the Father/Mind produced the Creative Mind/Logos as his ‘image’, the logoi produce individual rational beings as ‘image of the image’ endowed with freedom. Since the Logos is the ‘rational essence’ existing in any individual rational creature, the ancient principle ‘like is known by the

 Aristotle, De Anima, 407a: ὁ δὲ νοῦς εἷς καὶ συνεχὴς ὥσπερ καὶ ἡ νόησις· ἡ δὲ νόησις τὰ νοήματα· ταῦτα δὲ τῷ ἐφεξῆς ἕν, ὡς ὁ ἀριθμός, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ὡς τὸ μέγεθος· διόπερ οὐδ᾿ ὁ νοῦς οὕτω συνεχής, ἀλλ᾿ ἤτοι ἀμερὴς ἢ οὐχ ὡς μέγεθός τι συνεχής.  Aristotle, op. cit. 407a3 b13.  Cf. Parmenides, apud Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 6.2.23.3: τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι. The plagiarism of Aristotle from Parmenides went as unnoticed as that from Anax agoras. De Anima, 431b17: “In general, the mind, when actively thinking is identical with its ob jects” (ὅλως δὲ ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν, ὁ κατ᾿ ἐνέργειαν, τὰ πράγματα). Metaphysica, 1072b19 21: αὑτὸν δὲ νοεῖ ὁ νοῦς κατὰ μετάληψιν τοῦ νοητοῦ· νοητὸς γὰρ γίγνεται θιγγάνων καὶ νοῶν, ὥστε ταὐτὸν νοῦς καὶ νοητόν. Go ahead with 1074b20 35, where clandestine plagiarism from Parmenides is evident, while Aristotle diligently conceals his source. Subsequent commentators thought they drew on Aristotle while in reality they reflected on the Parmenidian idea. Cf. Gennadius Scholar ius, Epitome Summae Contra Gentiles Thomae Aquinae, 4.11: ἐσχάτη τοίνυν τῆς νοερᾶς ζωῆς τε λειότης τῷ Θεῷ μόνῳ προσήκει, ἐν ᾧ οὐχ ἕτερον τὸ νοεῖν παρὰ τὸ εἶναι. Οὕτω τοίνυν τὸ νοηθὲν νόημα ἐν τῷ Θεῷ αὐτή ἐστιν ἡ θεία οὐσία. Epitome Primae Partis Summae Theologicae Thomae Aquinae, 6.70: ἐν δὲ μόνῳ τῷ Θεῷ ταὐτὸν τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ νοεῖν· ὅθεν καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ μόνῳ ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν ἡ οὐσία αὐτοῦ. Anonymous, In Ethica Nicomachea Paraphrasis, p. 204: τὸ γὰρ εἶναι καὶ ζῆν τὸ νοεῖν ἐστιν (commenting on Ethica Nicomachea, 1170b18).  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 13: νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιος ἐστὶ καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 42: ἐπειδὴ νοῦς καὶ τὸ ἄϋλον εἶδος καὶ ἡ λογικὴ οὐσία.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1363

like’⁸⁸⁶ could make some sense, on the ground that it is the individual mind, not the soul, that can know the universal Logos. Nevertheless, the author who wrote using the name Simplicius (probably Simplicius himself) introduces an important caveat: the faculty of cognizing emerges not from likeness of human mind with the universal one (ὡς μὴ καθ᾿ ὁμοιότητα ἡγούμενον γίνεσθαι τὴν γνῶσιν), but because the universal mind grants knowledge by acting upon human mind. The universal Mind is ‘unmixed with all creatures and it has nothing in common with them’ (ἀμιγῆ γὰρ ὄντα πρὸς τὰ ἄλλα τὸν νοῦν καὶ οὐδὲν ἔχοντα πρὸς αὐτὰ κοινόν); what is more, this Mind ‘is not participated in’ by creatures (ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ μετεχόμενον ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν), which is what its ‘impassibility’ means (τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ ἀπαθὲς δηλοῖ), ‘and yet it knows everything’ (ὅμως γινώσκειν πάντα).⁸⁸⁷ Where else other than Anaxagoras could Origen possibly have found the Christian idea that God grants knowledge as an act of grace, not because there is any ontological affinity between God and creatures? Simplicius remarks that, if the soul is taken to be a cognizant agent, it follows that what is known is not the object itself, but what appears as a representation of things in accordance with the specific cognitive capacities of man qua man (οὐκ αὐτὰ οὖν ἐν τῇ οὐσίᾳ τῆς ψυχῆς τὰ γινωσκόμενα πράγματα, ἀλλ᾿ αἱ πρὸς αὐτὰ συγγενεῖς εἰδητικαὶ ἰδιότητες).⁸⁸⁸ Anaxagoras had said that our knowledge is simply what our senses allow to reconstruct as reflection of reality within ourselves.⁸⁸⁹ If the logoi produced by the Mind are ‘images’ of it (which is why they were called ‘minds’ by some authors, probably including Origen during his pagan as well early Christian period),⁸⁹⁰ the soul, which is a specific concurrence of logoi,

 This doctrine reportedly was of Pythagorean origin, taken up by Empedocles, and then by Plato in the Timaeus, 37a b. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos et Grammaticos, 303; cf. Adversus Dogmaticos 1 (= Adversus Logicos 1), 92; 121. According to Plato and Neoplatonists, the cognitive agent is the soul. Aristotle challenged the principle, De Anima, 404b; 410a; Metaphy sica, 100b. Cf. comments on this, by the following: Themistius, paraphrPhys, pp. 10; 34. Syrianus, commMetaph, p. 44. Simplicius, commAnim, p. 69. John Philoponus, commAnim, pp. 73; 75; 86; 150; 180 2; 469; 487; 489; 564; 570. Asclepius of Tralles, commMetaph, p. 198. Sophonias, para phrPhys, pp. 12; 26; 33 4. Michael Psellus (objecting to the principle), Opuscula ii, p. 44. Genna dius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.12; 2.10. Endors ing the principle: Origen, selPs, PG.12.1224.44 45. Iamblichus, De Communi Mathematica Scientia, 38. Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 924; commTim, v. 2, pp. 295 302. Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 11.6.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 33, commenting on Aristotle, De Anima, 405b12.  Simplicius, op. cit. p. 67, commenting on Aristotle, De Anima, 409b18.  See Conclusion of Part I, p. 496.  See supra, pp. 1130 8.

1364

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

is ‘image of the image’. Put in Christian terms, the Logos is the ‘image’ of God,⁸⁹¹ whereas man was made ‘according to the image’ of God.⁸⁹² Therefore, man is ‘image of the Image’,⁸⁹³ and although Origen appears to attribute this mostly to the ‘soul’, when he comes to human cognition of God, he clearly makes the ‘mind’, not the ‘soul’, the agent of, and means to, divine knowledge.⁸⁹⁴ This is why sometimes he opts for the term ‘rational soul’ as a substitute for ‘nous’.⁸⁹⁵ Clement of Alexandria had already expounded this idea on the grounds of a plausible analogy: since the Logos is the image of the Mind, in man, the image of human mind is the human logos.⁸⁹⁶ According to Anaxagoras, all of the universe is imbued by rationality because the Mind is everywhere (and nowhere all the same), dominating upon things and knowing them all. The very idea that, in the beginning, everything was ‘distinguished’ and ‘decorated’ by the Mind means that rationality was instilled into the primal confusion; consequently, to be known by the Mind means that everything in the universe is arranged rationally. Transition from Anaxagoras to Christian Trinitarianism called for some adaptation. Origen then saw the Father present everywhere, and the Son /Logos present only in rational creatures, if in different degrees in different ranks of life (angels, humans, daemons). The Holy Spirit is present only in saints, and he is the source of sanctification.⁸⁹⁷ Therefore, the source of rationality is the

 2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15. However, in 1 Cor. 11:7, Paul styles man ‘image of God’.  Gen. 1:26 27; 5:1; Ecclesiasticus, 17:3; Col. 3:10.  Origen, commJohn, II.3.20; XX.7.48; XXXII.29.359; De Oratione, 22.4; homLuc, 8.49; comm Matt, 17 27; Commentarii in epistulam ad Romanos (I.1 XII.21), 1; selPs, PG.12.1128.29 30; homJer, 2.1; Cels, VI.63; VII.66; Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 12.  Origen, Cels, VII.33: Τὸ γὰρ γινῶσκον θεὸν οὐκ ὀφθαλμός ἐστι σώματος ἀλλὰ νοῦς, ὁρῶν τὸ κατ᾿ εἰκόνα τοῦ κτίσαντος καὶ τὸ δυνάμενον γινώσκειν θεὸν προνοίᾳ θεοῦ ἀνειληφώς. He also notes an etymology of the word ‘Israel’ meaning ‘mind seeing God’. comJohn, II.31.189; frLuc, 45b; 66g. This etymology comes from Philo, and it was taken up by a vast number of Christian authors. Cf. Philo, Legum Allegoriarum, 3.1863.212; De Posteritate Caini, 92; De Confusione Lingua rum, 56; Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 78; et passim. Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, 1.9.77.2. Hippolytus, Contra Haeresin Noeti, 5.4. Gregory of Nyssa, In Diem Luminum, p. 232; et pas sim; et al.  Origen, Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 47; De Oratione, 29.12 13; selPs, PG.12: 1085.22 31; 1197.16 25; 1681.38 42; Scholia in Lucam, PG.17.336.5 12.  Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, 10.98.4: Εἰκὼν μὲν γὰρ τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ λόγος αὐτοῦ (καὶ υἱὸς τοῦ νοῦ γνήσιος ὁ θεῖος λόγος, φωτὸς ἀρχέτυπον φῶς), εἰκὼν δὲ τοῦ λόγου ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἀληθινός, ὁ νοῦς ὁ ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ, ὁ κατ’ εἰκόνα τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ καθ᾿ ὁμοίωσιν διὰ τοῦτο γεγενῆσθαι λεγόμενος. Significantly, Clement styled the Son/Logos ‘the true Son of the Mind’. Cf. Stromateis, 3.5.42.6; 5.14.94.5; 6.9.72.2; Fragmenta, fr. 38.  Origen, Princ, I.3.1 8.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1365

Son/Logos, which means that ‘the Father is the source of divinity, the Son, that of logos (=rationality)’ both in human beings and in the constitution and function of the universe’.⁸⁹⁸ Later, however, he modified this thesis while elaborating further on his Trinitarian views, which in the De Principiis were still in the making.⁸⁹⁹ Coming closer to Anaxagoras, he saw the entire world as being granted rationality by the Logos. Speaking metaphorically of the Body of the Logos and of ‘decoration’ of it by means of the ‘created wisdom’ (that is, the logoi), he adumbrates this Body as a ‘world’ which is more excellent than the visible one, due to ‘participation of the things that have been set in order in the Logos and Wisdom, which set matter in order’.⁹⁰⁰ Rational creatures are rational only because they have a share in the Logos, and their existential state, whether a higher or lower one, is determined by the various degrees of participation in rationality. This participation makes the difference of rational life from that of animals, and it is accomplished gradually with age yet not equally by all men. When the Logos is said to be ‘life’,⁹⁰¹ this does not mean ‘the common life of rational and irrational beings: instead, this is the life that is added to the logos [= rationality] which is [gradually] completed in us (ἐν ἡμῖν συμπληρουμένῳ λόγῳ)⁹⁰² when a share from the supreme Logos is received.’⁹⁰³ In this context, ‘rational essence’⁹⁰⁴ in each creature means only participation in the Logos, that is, different degrees of rationality possessed by different ranks of life, as well as by different individuals of the same rank, such as humans. If ‘essence’ is taken to mean the common substratum in different species of a certain genus, then all rational creatures are of the same essence, which is rationality proper.⁹⁰⁵ A different degree of rationality in different ranks does not  Origen, commJohn, II.3.21.  Likewise, he saw the Holy Spirit as the source if illumination, and clearly maintained the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone through the Son. Princ (Greek), IV.2.2; frJohn, 20; commMatt, 13.18; commEph, 21. Grasping the secret meaning of scripture takes illumination by ‘the mind of Christ’ (1 Cor. 2:16), which we may receive from the sole one who grants it, name ly, the Father.’ Cels, V.1: νοῦν δὲ Χριστοῦ λαβόντες ἀπὸ τοῦ μόνου διδόντος αὐτὸν πατρὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ πρὸς τὴν μετοχὴν τοῦ λόγου τοῦ θεοῦ βοηθηθέντες.  Origen, commJohn, XIX.22.147: εἴη ἂν καὶ αὐτὸς κόσμος, τοσούτῳ ποικιλώτερος τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ κόσμου καὶ διαφέρων, ὅσῳ διαφέρει γυμνὸς πάσης ὕλης τοῦ ὅλου κόσμου λόγος τοῦ ἐνύλου κόσμου, οὐκ ἀπὸ τῆς ὕλης ἀλλὰ ἀπὸ τῆς μετοχῆς τοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς σοφίας τῶν κο σμούντων τὴν ὕλην κεκοσμημένων.  John, 1:4.  This involves the Stoic idea of συμπλήρωσις λόγου (completion of logos/reason in each human being). See supra, pp. 1325; 1328; 1343 6.  Origen, commJohn, II.24.156.  The term was not used by Origen, anyway.  Origen, commJohn, XX.24.206 7.

1366

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

make difference in essence.⁹⁰⁶ Therefore, angels, humans, and daemons, are of the same essence, which is rationality (variations of it notwithstanding). Finally, this means capability of free will and choice, which is the basis for personal responsibility, and virtue, or lack of virtue, to make sense.⁹⁰⁷ This was the basis of his argument against the Gnostics, in order to disprove the assertion that different men are made of difference essences by nature. Accordingly, this is what he meant when he spoke of the essence of human soul having ‘something akin’ to God,⁹⁰⁸ or when he depicted all rational creatures as ‘parts of the Bride, that is, of the essence of rational creatures’.⁹⁰⁹ Creatures of different ranks are not different by essence, because all of them partake of the rationality of the Logos, whether one accepts him within oneself or declines to do so. This proposition was not in fact deviation from Anaxagoras, who had stipulated that ‘in everything there is a share of everything except Mind, but there are some [things] in which the Mind, too, is present’,⁹¹⁰ and the Mind rules over all those who have soul, that is, animate beings, ‘whether they are greater or smaller’.⁹¹¹ Thus, on the one hand, the Mind himself is not subject to the ‘everything-ineverything’ principle, while, on the other, he is present in some things, although Anaxagoras was as careful as not to say that things contain the Mind. He said,

 Origen, Princ, III.1.10 (Philocalia, 21.29): αἱ δὲ προαιρέσεις αἱ διάφοροι οἱονεὶ ἡ γεγεωργη μένη γῆ ἐστι καὶ ἡ ἠμελημένη, μία τῇ φύσει ὡς γῆ τυγχάνουσα. commJohn, XX.33.287: οἱ τὴν περὶ διαφόρων φύσεων εἰσάγοντες μυθοποιίαν καὶ λέγοντες εἶναι φύσει καὶ ἐκ πρώτης κατα σκευῆς υἱοὺς θεοῦ.  Cf. Origen, commJohn, XX.23.198 200 (the ‘essence’ of the devil is not different from that of all other rational creatures): ὡς ἑτέρας οὔσης τῆς τοῦ διαβόλου οὐσίας παρὰ τὴν τῶν ἄλλων λογικῶν οὐσίαν. … ὡς γὰρ ἐν τούτοις οὐχ ἡ οὐσία διάφορος, ἀλλά τι αἴτιον ἐπισυμβέβηκεν τοῦ παρακούειν καὶ τοῦ παρορᾶν, οὕτως παντὸς τοῦ πεφυκότος λόγῳ παρακολουθεῖν ἡ παρα κολουθητικὴ οὐσία ἡ αὐτή ἐστιν, εἴτε παραδέχεται τὸν λόγον εἴτε ἀνανεύει πρὸς αὐτόν. Cf. frJohn, 18: περὶ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ λόγου. Cels, IV.18: Καὶ οὐ δή που ψεύδεται τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν ὁ λόγος, ἑκάστῳ τρόφιμος γινόμενος, ὡς χωρεῖ αὐτὸν παραδέξασθαι, καὶ οὐ πλανᾷ οὐδὲ ψεύδεται. Scholia in Matthaeum, PG.17.296.35 36: οὐ φύσεων συνάγει διαφόρων, ἀλλὰ γνωμῶν αὐτεξουσίων καὶ προαιρέσεων.  Origen, Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 47. περὶ οὐσίας λογικῆς ψυχῆς ὡς ἐχούσης τι συγγενὲς θεῷ. νοερὰ γὰρ ἑκάτερα καὶ ἀόρατα καὶ, ὡς ὁ ἐπικρατῶν ἀποδείκνυσι λόγος, ἀσώματα.  Origen, frJohn, 45: μέρος γὰρ τῆς νύμφης ἐστέ, ὄντες τῆς οὐσίας τῶν λογικῶν.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commPhys, p. 164: ἐν παντὶ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστι πλὴν νοῦ, ἔστιν οἷσι δὲ καὶ νοῦς ἔνι.  Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 24: καὶ ὅσα γε ψυχὴν ἔχει καὶ τὰ μείζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσ σω, πάντων νοῦς κρατεῖ.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1367

however, that ‘the Mind is the same, both he greater and the lesser one’,⁹¹² which means that the Mind that appears to be in ‘some things’ is not different from the universal one, and the proposition should be understood as indicating action of the Mind by means of the logoi. Whether Anaxagoras meant this presence of the Mind in ‘all things that have soul’ including ‘animals’,⁹¹³ or only humans, cannot be determined definitely, but no matter what the case, the starting point for Origen to make up his own doctrine was there. Following this, whether it is about the body, or soul, or spirit, of a human being, they all have a common source of generation: this is the logoi which make up a human being in all its different functions, be they physiological, or psychic, or spiritual. There is no question of different entities, such as a ‘soul’ being self-substantial apart from the whole to which it belongs inexorably and indissolubly. Κρᾶσις means no other than concurrence of different logoi producing a total mixture. A human being is an inseparable entity, just like a certain wine produced from different grapes put into one single wine vat, or a piece of bread leavened from three different kinds of flour. Therefore, ‘rational substance’ (λογικὴ οὐσία) is the outcome of concurring logoi, which function in a manner that gives rise to rationality. This is a concurrence different from a plant-like one (φυτοειδῶς),⁹¹⁴ or animal-like function, and different still from that which give rise to sundry natural phenomena (καθ᾿ ἕξιν). Intervention in the harmonious existence and function of logoi is possible only by rational creatures. This intervention, which affects the entire system of logoi, determines the quality of a rational being’s existence. Ultimately, it determines what is either virtuous or wicked action, which makes a mark upon the entire universe, or, on the Body of the Logos, for which a rational being is held accountable. This dramatic relation is universal, and the tension is between any free rational individual and the totality of the logoi. Action by any ‘individual soul’ could only mean this dramatic relation between a single rational being and the universal setting of the logoi. As far as we can tell, this was the tenet held by the Anaxagorean Origen, not Anaxagoras himself, in whom there is no notion of retribution of sins. Origen was an anti-Platonist also on this point, since animals, fishes, oysters, and the like, are not involved in this theory of rational action making an impact on the logoi. For all his biased distortions, Aristotle was right in saying that Anaxagoras said nothing about the soul. But it

 In Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, op. cit. p. 13: νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων.  Cf. Anaxagoras apud Simplicius, commCael, p. 609 and commPhys, pp. 35 & 157: καὶ ἀνθρώπους συμπαγῆναι καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ζῷα, ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει.  Cf. φυτοειδῶς, supra, p. 1261, and καθ᾿ ἕξιν, p. 1265, and note 403.

1368

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

is now clear that Anaxagoras did so only because there was nothing to be said about a fictitious something, which was simply an obsessive illusion of subsequent philosophers.

Human being: an image of the universal Mind Rational essence is the product of logoi co-operating under the administration of the supreme Mind. Perhaps the most felicitous précis of this is an expression, which a catenist ascribed to Cyril of Alexandria: “Every sinful action is wrongdoing against the rational essence” (πᾶν ἁμάρτημα ὡς πρὸς τὴν λογικὴν οὐσίαν παρόραμά ἐστι).⁹¹⁵ This means that free moral action may, or may not, result in harmonious effect with the totality of the logoi, which are a unity as much as are they distinct from each other. The fact that human will can create new logoi (meaning, different concurrences of logoi) is the ground that establishes responsibility. Man was created ‘in image and likeness’ in the sense that he is endowed with the capacity to generate logoi, and to administer them according to free will. Consequently, man is able to give rise to new situations in this world, that is, to be himself a generative cause of logoi.⁹¹⁶ On this account, man is a small Mind imitating the universal one, because this is how (that is, by means of the tools/logoi) the latter made and endowed man with the capacity to bring about changes in the world. It should be recalled that, according to Anaxagoras, any act, no matter how insignificant it may appear to be, affects the entire universe, on account of the unity of all principles. This is the sense in which Mind, the Lord of Logoi, made man the lord of those logoi which man himself can generate, and thus affect the entire universe. The fact that human freedom is not unlimited, since man is a physical animal subject to the natural laws of the universe, is not substantial, but this is why man is ‘image’ of the Mind, not the Mind itself. Human potential to act is subject to natural and physical limitations, but freedom to reflect is unlimited, whereas in between stands ability to pronounce oral speech, which is subject to social rather than natural limitations. Throughout Late Antiquity, seeing a human being as analogous to the entire universe was a favourite notion to both pagans and Christians alike: man can exercise creative action by means of his logoi in like a manner the Mind does

 Catena in Epistulam Joannis i (catena Andreae), p. 141. See infra, p. 1371, and note 929.  See quotations from Proclus, De Decem Dubitationibus Circa Providentiam, 13 and Isaac Comnenus, Περὶ τῶν δέκα πρὸς τὴν πρόνοιαν ἀπορημάτων, 3. Supra, chapter 10, p. 803.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1369

so by means of the universal principles. Plotinus (considering the Universal Soul in place of the Anaxagorean Mind) posited it as an axiom that ‘whatever comes into contact with soul is made like the essential nature of the soul’ (Ὅ τι γὰρ ἂν ἐφάψηται ψυχῆς, οὕτω ποιεῖται ὡς ἔχει φύσεως ψυχῆς ἡ οὐσία),⁹¹⁷ which is analogous to the Biblical idea about man having been made ‘in likeness’ of God, as discussed in a moment. However, Plotinus applied this idea to a wider range: not only man but also any animate being is ‘a small universe’, ‘just as the logoi in seeds mould and shape living beings like little ordered universes’ (οἷα καὶ οἱ ἐν σπέρμασι λόγοι πλάττουσι καὶ μορφοῦσι τὰ ζῷα οἷον μικρούς τινας κόσμους). Nevertheless, Plotinus could not escape the commanding shadow of Anaxagoras: any individual soul ‘was granted ordered beauty according to the logoi that the universal soul has potentially in it, and according to capacity of it to generate things according to logoi’ (ἐκοσμεῖτο δὲ κατὰ λόγον ψυχῆς δυνάμει ἐχούσης ἐν αὐτῇ δι᾿ ὅλης δύναμιν κατὰ λόγους κοσμεῖν).⁹¹⁸ As it happened with all of his theories, Proclus appeared anxious to ascribe also this to Plato, fancifully claiming that Plato proved this in the Philebus. ⁹¹⁹ However, at that point, Plato showed nothing of the kind: he only touched upon the truism that the four elements that make up the entire world, also make up the human body. Proclus probably received the idea not from Plato himself, but from his colleague of the same age and classmate under Syrianus, namely, Hermias of Alexandria (c. 410 ‒ c. 450). The interesting point is that Hermias reflected on this in Anaxagorean rather than Platonic terms, since he considered the ‘mind’, not the ‘soul’: he reflected in terms of the notion of ‘particular mind’ (μερικὸς νοῦς),⁹²⁰ arguing that this has in itself ‘as many forms as the all-perfect Mind’. His point was that any ‘particular mind’ is not different from the supreme universal one, ‘in like a manner a man is said to be a small uni-

 Plotinus, op. cit. IV.3.10.  Loc. cit. Cf. op. cit. I.6.6.29 32.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 202: διότι καὶ ὁ ἄνθρωπος μικρός ἐστι κόσμος, πάντα ἔχων με ρικῶς ὅσα τὸ πᾶν ὁλικῶς, ὥσπερ ἀπέδειξεν ὁ ἐν Φιλήβῳ Σωκράτης. Presumably, Proclus had in mind Philebus, 29. Cf. commTim, v. 1, p. 5: διότι μικρὸς κόσμος ὁ ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἔστι καὶ ἐν τούτῳ πάντα μερικῶς, ὅσα ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ θείως τε καὶ ὁλικῶς· νοῦς τε γάρ ἐστιν ἡμῖν ὁ κατ᾿ ἐν έργειαν, καὶ ψυχὴ λογικὴ προελθοῦσα ἐκ τοῦ αὐτοῦ πατρός. Op. cit. v. 1, p. 33; v. 3, pp. 172; 355. Olympiodorus of Alexandria took up the assumption from Proclus and rerpoduced the view; In Aristotelis Meteora Commentaria, p. 79: καὶ ὁ ἄνθρωπος μικρὸς κόσμος. ὁ σοφὸς γὰρ Πλάτων τοῦτο ἔφη. Likewise, In Platonis Gorgiam Commentaria, 42.2.  See chapter 11, pp. 1023 6.

1370

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

verse, although he is part of the universe’.⁹²¹ This is plainly an idea of Anaxagoras, who posited his fundamental doctrine that ‘both the greater and the lesser Mind is the same’.⁹²² Although Proclus did not follow this Anaxagorean tenet, and posited differences between particular and universal mind,⁹²³ he maintained the imagery of man being a small universe. A later author assured that both Christians and pagans alike accepted a ‘small universe’,⁹²⁴ although the fact is that the former⁹²⁵ entertained the idea more widely than the latter.⁹²⁶ More importantly, a trustworthy testimony apparently coming from Porphyry has it that the simile of man as ‘small universe’ actually came from Democritus, not Plato.⁹²⁷ Presumably, Democritus meant the natural elements only, but it seems that the Pythagoreans, although rejecting this naturalistic view, maintained the idea of man being a small universe, ‘because he has in himself all the powers of the universe’.⁹²⁸ In any case, the under-

 Hermias of Alexandria (c. 410 c. 450), In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 890: ὥσπερ ὁ ἄνθρωπος μικρὸς κόσμος λέγεται μέρος ὢν τοῦ κόσμου, καὶ ὁ μερικὸς νοῦς πάντα ἔχει τὰ εἴδη ὅσα ὁ παντέλειος. Op. cit. p. 194: καὶ ὁ ἄνθρωπος δὲ μικρὸς κόσμος ἐστίν.  Anaxagoras, apud Simplicius, commPhys p. 157: νοῦς δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μείζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάττων.  Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 4, p. 22; Institutio Theologica, 109; In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 700; 1047; commTim, v. 1 pp. 128; 245; 376; v. 3, p. 232. Cf. Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 11.  Philagathus of Cerami (d. 1154 or later, monk and preacher of Greco Calabrian or Greco Si cilian descent), Homiliae, 5.2: μικρὸς δὲ κόσμος ὁ ἄνθρωπος παρά τε τῶν θύραθεν καὶ τῶν παρ᾿ ἡμῶν ὡμολόγηται, ὡς ἔχων τά τε τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ κόσμου καὶ τὰ τοῦ νοητοῦ.  Gregory of Nyssa, In Inscriptiones Psalmorum, p. 30: ὅτι μικρός τις κόσμος ἐστὶν ὁ ἄνθρωπος πάντα ἔχων ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὰ τοῦ μεγάλου κόσμου. Op. cit. p. 32: μικρὸς δὲ κόσμος ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ὁ δὲ αὐτὸς οὗτος καὶ μίμημα τοῦ ἁρμοσαμένου τὸν κόσμον πεποίηται. Dialogus De Anima et Resurrec tione, PG.46.28.23 28. Gregory of Nazianzus, De Theologia, 22: καὶ συντόμως εἰπεῖν, ὅσοις ὁ μι κρὸς οὗτος κόσμος διοικεῖται, ὁ ἄνθρωπος. Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 1, p. 15: τοῦ φέροντος ἐν τῇ καθ᾿ ἑαυτὸν φύσει τῆς πάσης κτίσεως τὴν εἰκόνα, δι᾿ ἃ καὶ μικρὸς κό σμος εἴρηται. Why W. Theiler ascribed this, along with a very wide context, to Posidonius (fr. 309a), I myself cannot see. Olympiodorus the deacon of Alexandria, Commentarii in Ecclesiasten, PG.93.569.30 31: Μικρός τίς ἐστι κόσμος ὁ ἄνθρωπος. Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographia Chris tiana, 7.58: Εὖ γὰρ εἴρηται παρὰ τοῖς ἔξωθεν μικρὸς κόσμος ὁ ἄνθρωπος. Theodore Syncellus, Homilia De Obsidione Avarica Constantinopolis, p. 75. John of Damascus, Expositio Fidei, 26; De Duabus in Christo Voluntatibus, 15; In Transfigurationem, 18. Michael Psellus, Opuscula i, 30, line 125. John Italus, Quaestiones Quodlibetales, 70.  Pseudo Galen, An Animal Sit Quod Est in Utero, p. 159: ᾿Aλλὰ γὰρ ὥσπερ περὶ σμικροῦ κό σμου τοῦ ἀνθρώπου μέλλοντες λέγειν τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ μεγάλου ποιησώμεθα.  Pseudo David of Alexandria, In Porphyrii Isagogen, 14, p. 22: καὶ ἐπειδὴ μικρὸς κόσμος κατὰ Δημόκριτόν ἐστιν ὁ ἄνθρωπος, τὰ ἰδιώματα τοῦ κόσμου ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἔχει.  Photius (quoting from, while reviewing, an anonymous author who wrote a Life of Pytha goras), Bibliotheca, Cod. 249 p. 440a: ὁ ἄνθρωπος μικρὸς κόσμος λέγεται οὐχ ὅτι ἐκ τῶν τεσσά

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1371

lying notion was that there is correspondence between what happens in the ‘small universe’ of an individual human being and in the universe as a whole. Distraction of this universal harmony is the essence of what is called ‘sin’. When Origen said that ‘the soul is akin to God’, in effect he set forth the criterion of rational action. It is indicative that, to him, ‘sin’ is nothing other than ‘irrationality’, that is, offence against both the universal Logos/Mind and the principles administered by him. Put in figurative terms, ‘sin’ is violence against the Body of the Logos, it is violence of the harmonious concurrence of logoi, which, in the end, is ‘re-crucifixion of the Body of the Logos’ himself.⁹²⁹ This Body is decorated by the logoi, not by Ideas that are absolutely irrelevant to any reality characterized by division into multitude, as Proclus put it.⁹³⁰ The logoi are not transcendent Ideas; instead, they exist differently in different levels of being, but this does not make them immune to what happens in the sensible world. I have already discussed the notion of ‘mutation’ or alteration (ἀλλοίωσις), which is a process causing both generation and destruction, since it only means either concurrence or disjuncture of certain principles. There is no essential difference between ‘mutation’ and ‘concurrence and disjuncture’: quite simply, ‘mutation’ refers to Being, whereas ‘concurrence and disjuncture’ refers to beings (ἥ τε γὰρ ἀλλοίωσις πάθος περὶ τὸ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ἡ σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις περὶ τὰ ὄντα).⁹³¹ Nevertheless, whatever happens to particular beings bears on Being: the different ontological existence of the principles is a fact that does not severe any aspect of the perceptible reality from its universal relevance; on the contrary, this is what secures that no phenomenon is an isolated event, due to the inexorable unity of all universe. The notion of divine judgment is present not only in Christianity, as some scholars believe, but also in Hellenism, since this is the tenor of the Pythagorean and Platonic idea about reincarnation in accordance with one’s deeds or failures.⁹³² It betokens the accountability of the particular logos/human mind visà-vis its progenitor, the universal Logos/Mind. Plato and Aristotle accorded the soul will, source of motion, and capability of knowledge. By contrast, Anaxagoras saw the soul as only a derivative reality, which indicates collectively the functions that characterize the living nature of any animate being in accordance

ρων στοιχείων σύγκειται (τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ ἕκαστον τῶν ζῴων καὶ τῶν εὐτελεστάτων), ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι πάσας ἔχει τὰς τοῦ κόσμου δυνάμεις.  Cf. Origen, using the language of Heb. 6:6: homJer, 13.2; commJohn, XX.11.81; XX.12.89 90; XXVIII.15.126. See philosophical reasoning, supra, pp. 1269 70.  See supra, p. 1269.  Simplicius, commPhys, p. 163. See supra, pp. 516 7.  Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 81e, 82b, Timaeus, 42a; 90e, and supra, pp. 1165; 1297; 1347.

1372

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

with its existential class, whether a plant, or animal, or a human being. This is why Plato⁹³³ and Aristotle⁹³⁴ felt that they should accuse Anaxagoras of not having made clear the difference between Nous and soul. This is one more point on which Aristotle misled all of his commentators.⁹³⁵ Plotinus thought that Anaxagoras’ Mind was no other than the Neoplatonic the One;⁹³⁶ Proclus, thinking wishfully, took it that Anaxagoras identified the soul with the One (and of course he rejected the idea),⁹³⁷ in like a manner Aristotle conjectured that Anaxagoras thought of soul and mind as being the same,⁹³⁸ although he was not so sure about this.⁹³⁹ Only Damascius was cautious enough as to take distances and simply declare that there is nothing in Anaxagoras to suggest any specific theory about the soul.⁹⁴⁰ The fact is that Anaxagoras would have never cared to compare the Creator with a specific product of creation such as a soul, which to him was not an individual being but only an abstract designation of collective physiological functions. He called ‘soul’ the totality of manifestations of any living being, simply meaning ‘life’. All of the capabilities that make man an image and likeness stem from the Mind. Thus, a man, creates logoi, distinguishes logoi, wills, reflects, decides, decorates, and moves things. In short, a human being, within its natural limits, can do things analogous to those that the Mind does.

 Plato, Cratylus, 400a.  Aristotle, De Anima, 404b; 405a (‘Anaxagoras treats mind and soul as if they were of one and the same nature’); 405b. Hence, in 408a13 21, by confusing ‘logos’, ‘mind’, and ‘soul’, he makes Empedocles say that ‘the body has many souls’, although the idea of this ‘Presocratic was that the soul is produced from many logoi’.  Themistius, paraphrPhys, pp. 9; 10; 13; 35. Simplicius, commAnim, pp. 25 27; 31. John Phil oponus, commAnim, pp. 71 2; 85; 91. Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina, 45; 46. Sophonias, paraphrPhys, pp. 11; 15. Gennadius Scholarius, Translatio Commentarii Thomae Aquinae De Anima Aristotelis, 1.3; 1.5.  Plotinus, Enneades, V.1.9: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δὲ νοῦν καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγῆ λέγων ἁπλοῦν καὶ αὐτὸς τίθεται τὸ πρῶτον καὶ χωριστὸν τὸ ἕν, τὸ δ’ ἀκριβὲς δι’ ἀρχαιότητα παρῆκε.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 1214: οὔτε ψυχὴν ἀσώματον, ὡς ᾿Aναξαγόρας ἔλεγεν.  Aristotle, De Anima, 404a25 25; 404b1 3.  Aristotle, op. cit. 405a13 16: ᾿Aναξαγόρας δ᾿ ἔοικε μὲν ἕτερον λέγειν ψυχήν τε καὶ νοῦν, ὥσπερ εἴπομεν καὶ πρότερον, χρῆται δ᾿ ἀμφοῖν ὡς μιᾷ φύσει, πλὴν ἀρχήν γε τὸν νοῦν τίθεται μάλιστα πάντων.  Damascius, In Parmenidem, p. 13. Ἔτι δὲ τέταρτον ἐπιστήσωμεν ὅτι νῦν ἱστορεῖ τὸν ᾿Aνα ξαγόραν εἰσηγεῖσθαι τὸν ἀμετάβατον νοῦν· καίτοι ἄδηλον εἰ οὕτω τίθεται τὸν νοῦν, ᾿Aναξαγόρας· ἐν ἄλλοις δὲ αὐτὸς ψυχὴν ἄζωνον ὑποτίθεσθαι τὸν ᾿Aναξαγόρειον νοῦν.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1373

Man affects the entire universe by giving rise to new logoi through his action.⁹⁴¹ This means that he affects the setting of all logoi. Therefore, in this universe there are different wills: one is the will of the Mind/Creator; the other is that of a rational creature. Human intervention in the universe is a permanent process, and the consequences of it do not pass away. The Christian idea of divine judgment was based on this fact. Origen went a step beyond and took up Empedocles’ idea of successive worlds: his purpose was to eliminate the consequences of human action that run contrary to the Logos/Mind (which he accordingly called ‘irrational action’, identifying irrationality with wickedness) and to vouchsafe the goodness of God.⁹⁴² Philo, who identified logoi with angels, had some things to say about this human ability to embarrass the cosmic harmony of logoi. In the work where he expounds this identification, he adds some remarks about a little-known figure of the Old Testament, namely, Jobel (Gen. 4:20). At three different points, Philo felt it it necessary to call attention to the Greek meaning of this name, and then to consider its implications: in Greek, Jobel means the one who alters things (Ἰωβήλ, ὃς ἑρμηνεύεται μεταλλοιῶν).⁹⁴³ The context is pretty like what is generally thought to be Stoic, but it is actually derived from the Anaxagorean harmony of logoi: Philo maintains that ‘if a man uses his natural aptness and readiness not only to good and valuable ends, but also to opposite of them by treating things that are widely different as alike, let him be deemed unhappy.’⁹⁴⁴ Consequently, while he abhors ‘success concerning worthless things, and help to ends of that kind’, he adds that Jobel is ‘a partner, a great mischief’ towards such evil ends; he is ‘the one who alters things’, which results in ‘twisting everything and turning it round, by shifting the boundaries set upon things by nature’ (ὧν ἂν τύχῃ, στρέφειν καὶ ἀνακυκλεῖν ἕκαστα βουλήσῃ, τοὺς παγέντας ὑπὸ τῆς φύσεως τοῖς πράγμασιν ὅρους μετατιθείς).⁹⁴⁵ Shortly after that point, Philo introduces the idea that ‘there are as many nations and species of virtue as are there logoi of God’ (ὅσοι γὰρ θεοῦ λόγοι, τοσαῦτα ἀρετῆς ἔθνη τε καὶ εἴδη);⁹⁴⁶ then, he returns to the distortion of the logoi once again: “How then should Jobel escape  A vivid, and familiar to everybody, example is technology, which was pointed out by Pro clus, De Decem Dubitationibus Circa Providentiam, 13: καὶ ψυχὴ γεννᾷ λόγους τινὰς μὲν ἐν ἄλλαις ψυχαῖς ζῶντας καὶ κινουμένους, τινὰς δὲ εἰς ὕλην ἐκπίπτοντας, ἐπιστημονικοὺς μὲν ἐκείνους, τεχνικοὺς δὲ τούτους. Italics are mine: certain logoi are ‘technical’. See also similar statements by Isaac Comnenus, supra, p. 803, and note 451.  See supra, pp. 322; 564 5; 584; 644; 1108; 1195.  Philo, De Posteritate Caini, 83.  Philo, op. cit. 81.  Philo, op. cit. 82 83.  Philo, op. cit. 91.

1374

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

rebuke, whose name in Greek means ‘altering’ the nature of things or making them other than what they are?” (μεταλλοιῶν καλεῖται τὰς φύσεις τῶν πραγμάτων ἢ μεταποιῶν). “For it is always the case that impressions of a second seal destroys the imprints made by the first ones” (αἰεὶ γὰρ ἐπιτεθειμέναι δεύτεραι σφραγῖδες τοὺς τῶν προτέρων τύπους διαφθείρουσιν), and “these are what the Attic writers call wicked” (ἅπερ ᾿Aττικοὶ τὴν πρώτην ὀξυτονοῦντες συλλαβὴν καλοῦσι πόνηρα).⁹⁴⁷ A ‘second seal’ imposed on the ‘first’ one is the metaphor bespeaking the distortion of the cosmic harmony of logoi by perverted human action. In a context of interpreting this biblical name, Philo revisits the same point, which no other author did. Jubal, [Moses] tells us, was the brother of Jobel. The meaning of Jubal is akin to that of Jobel, for it means ‘shifting from one side to another’ (μετακλίνων); this is a figure of the oral logos, which by nature is brother of the mind. It is a most appropriate name for the utterance of a mind that alters the makeup of things (τὸν δὲ τοῦ μεταποιοῦντος νοῦ τὰ πράγματα λόγον μετακλίνοντα σφόδρα δεόντως ὠνόμασε).⁹⁴⁸

This means that, even by oral speech (λόγος), a rational creature himself can become a specific logos which impacts the harmony of all the logoi of the universe. This is what I have called ‘deposit account’ of each and every one of them. Therefore, the term ‘logos’, also in reference to ‘angels’, retains its double meaning, namely, generative principles of the world, as well as utterance.

Origen’s doctrine of the soul resolved Although Origen mentioned the philosophical points that should be perused in order for a coherent theory of the soul to be constructed, he did not go ahead with such a composition. While styling his theory of the soul ‘secret’ (ἀπόρρητον)⁹⁴⁹ and ‘sublime and hard to explain’ (πολὺς καὶ δυσερμήνευτος),⁹⁵⁰ he engaged in Christian exegesis at a time when the doctrine of the Church was not yet determined. Therefore, too many points had to be rendered according to his own understanding, which was tantamount to exposing himself to opprobrium of heresy and to slander that always lurked. In this section, I will try to reconstruct his doctrine, taking into account also a text that he    

Philo, op. cit. 93 94. Philo, op. cit. 100. Origen, Cels, IV.40; Princ, IV.3.6; commMatt, 15.34. Cf. Heb. 5:11. Origen, commJohn, VI.14.87, using the language of Heb. 5:11.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1375

wrote by the end of his life, that is, the fifteenth chapter of his commentary on Matthew. First though, let me summarize the main points that I have made so far. Origen’s starting point is the Anaxagorean principles, and their successor, the Stoic notion of spermatic logoi. To him, these are incorporeal, as indeed they were to Anaxagoras, which is why he felt he should criticize the Stoics for having made ‘the principles corporeal’. The spermatic logoi is the object of creation, and it is out of them that individual things, as well as the universe as a whole, are made, function, and evolve. A human soul is a concurrence of logoi, too; but a human being is more than a body/soul entity, since spirit (i. e. a higher existential state of logoi) is also granted upon man by God. It is out of the notion of concurrence of spermatic logoi that a soul is said to be ‘sown’. This means that a soul is like wheat which emerges from seeds sown by the sower, according to Origen’s illustration.⁹⁵¹ Here is a delicate point then: Origen denied that the soul is ‘sown’ along with the body (συσπείρεσθαι τῷ σώματι), although he knew that some people believed so following their own interpretation of scripture.⁹⁵² The orthodox view, both ancient and modern, is that the soul is made simultaneously with the body, although it is impossible to come upon any convincing account of how exactly does this happen. Instead, all relevant expositions rest content with the metaphysical / mythological adumbration of the soul regarded as a superior incorporeal something, which almost no one is willing to consider as being related also to physical functions. On the face of it, one would take Origen’s claim about the soul not being sown together with the body as suggesting that he maintained pre-existence of the soul as an incorporeal personal entity, which enters the body and supplies it with the ability to move, to know, to feel, to function physically; in addition, the soul would be identified with human personality. In other words, sheer Platonism. It would be also assumed that, when he makes such a reference (a conjectural one, actually)in the second book of the commentary on John, he advanced a Platonic outlook, even though he did not take sides: “If the overall theory concerning the soul is sound, namely, that the soul has not been sown simultaneously with the body but exists before it (οὐ συνεσπαρμένης τῷ σώματι ἀλλὰ πρὸ αὐτοῦ τυγχανούσης), and is clothed with flesh and blood for various reasons.” But before we determine what Origen meant,⁹⁵³ we have to understand the actual import of his expression, which is pregnant with a notable tradition.⁹⁵⁴

 Origen, selPs, PG.12.1097.25 35, apud Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, pp. 246 7.  Origen, commJohn, VI.14.86.  Origen, op. cit. II.30.182.  Origen used this during three different periods of his life: commJohn, II.30.182 (written in Alexandria); VI.14.86 (written in Caesarea of Palestine); commMatt (written in Tyre); 15.35. Dur

1376

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

First, when he says that the soul is sown, this means that he uses an illustration from agriculture. According to his example, the seed that is sown is by far different from the wheat that it gives birth to. This is how wheat is brought into being, which is by far different (εἰς ὑπερβολὴν διαφέρων) from the initial seed, in terms of size and shape and variety.⁹⁵⁵

In other words, the soul is the outcome of seeds that are sown in the first place. It has been made clear that these ‘seeds’ (σπέρματα) are the Anaxagorean principles and the Stoic spermatic logoi (σπερματικοὶ λόγοι), and I have pointed out that only a few authors employed the depiction of the soul itself being sown (either simultaneously, or not) with the body. This is the point that has to be discussed further, which will contribute to our conclusion. Of Christian authors, Didymus took up the figure.⁹⁵⁶ He did not actually entertain the notion of ‘seminal logos’ at all, except for one point,⁹⁵⁷ considering Genesis 1:20. Why he did so is evident: the Stoics produced the soul from corporeal ‘logoi’ of this kind, which was unacceptable to him. He criticized them implicitly, and deemed it safer to abide by Platonic premisses. For ‘it is not possible for an incorporeal substance to be produced from human semen.’⁹⁵⁸ Notwithstanding his assertion that ‘the soul was not sown along with the body’ (οὐδὲ γὰρ συνεσπάρη τῷ σώματι), he is far from Origen’s overall outlook: his aim is to argue that the soul is not posterior to the body (οὐδ᾿ αὖ ὑστέρα τοῦ σώματος πλάττεται). Since ‘God does no longer produce anything out of nothing’, it follows that the soul exists ‘prior’ to the body (προηγουμένη τυγχάνουσα),⁹⁵⁹ indeed it exists as a self-existent incorporeal substance, ‘which can exist without a body’. Unlike Origen, Didymus stuck to the fundamental Platonic tenet, which even later Platonists, such as Antiochus of Ascalon, had disowned deeming it ing each of those instances, he felt different about it. The last of them will be considered in a moment.  Origen, selPs, PG.12.1097.25 35, apud Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, v. 2, pp. 246 7. See full quotation in chapter 12, p. 1151.  Didymus, Commentarii in Job (1 4), Cod. p. 34 (διδασκαλίαν τοῦ μὴ συσπείρεσθαι τὴν ψυχήν, καθώς τισιν ἔδοξεν); op. cit. Cod. p. 56; Commentarii in Job (12.1 16.8a), pp. 377 & 387; Commentarii in Ecclesiasten (3 4.12), Cod. pp. 100 & 113; Fragmenta in Epistulam i ad Corinthios, p. 9; In Genesim, Cod. p. 48.  ‘The earth’ produced ‘irrational animals’, since there was ‘a spermatic logos within it, as it were’ (λόγου σπερματικοῦ ἐνυπάρχοντος αὐτῇ τρόπον τινά). In Genesim, Cod. p. 48.  Didymus, Commentarii in Job (1 4), Cod. p. 56: μὴ οἷον τε εἶναι ἐκ σωματικοῦ σπέρματος ἀσώματον οὐσίαν ὑποστῆναι.  Didymus, op. cit. pp. 56 7. In order to sustain this, he quotes Ecclesiastes, 1:9, ‘there is noth ing new under the sun’.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1377

absurd.⁹⁶⁰ Origen certainly had argued that it is impossible for a corporeal susbstance to alter into incorporeal, and vice versa.⁹⁶¹ In fact, Didymus used the same phraseology as Origen did on this issue. However, whereas Didymus allowed for man to be transformed to incorporeal life,⁹⁶² Origen rebutted the Stoic corporeal spermatic logoi while in essence employing their doctrine: he only revisited the source of it, namely Anaxagoras, and, like him, he considered these logoi as incorporeal. No Christian author other than Origen and Didymus did ever use this metaphor of ‘sowing’ again, even though these two authors did not necessarily mean the same thing. It is more important to explore Origen’s sources. The most ancient of them must have been Posidonius, who posited the soul as something ‘sown’ along with the physical constitution of the body.⁹⁶³ Although reproduced by anonymous authors,⁹⁶⁴ this seems to have been a coinage of the Platonic tradition.⁹⁶⁵ It was by the end of his life that Origen felt he should venture a more explicit (rather, less obscure) exposition of his theory of the soul. He made reference to

 Didymus, Commentarii in Ecclesiasten (3 4.12), Cod. p. 91: μόνη ἡ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴ λο γική ἐστιν χωριστὴν ὕπαρξιν ἔχουσα. χωριστὴν δὲ ὕπαρξιν λέγω ἔχειν αὐτήν, ἐπεὶ ὑπάρχειν δύ ναται καὶ χωρὶς σώματος. This runs sheer contrary to Origen’s thought. About Antiochus, see supra, p. 1347.  Origen, commJohn, XIII.61.429: “For this is like saying that something changes from a cor poreal to an incorporeal nature (ὅμοιον γὰρ τοῦτο τῷ λέγειν μεταβάλλειν τι ἀπὸ σώματος εἰς ἀσώματον), as if there were a common substratum underlying the nature of corporeal and incor poreal beings.”  Didymus’ statements are contradictory. At a couple of points, he argues that resurrection means assuming a more glorious body, but a body still. Commentarii in Psalmos 35 39, Cod. p. 259; Commentarii in Psalmos 40 44.4, Cod. p. 329. However, at other points, he sustains that ‘we may live in a body, but we also may live without a body. It is evident that, once we get rid of our body, we will attain to incorporeal life’. Commentarii in Psalmos 35 39, Cod. p. 259: ἔχομεν ζωὴν τὴν μετὰ σώματος, ἔχομεν ζωὴν καὶ τὴν ἄνευ τούτου. καὶ ὅτι ἀποβαλόντες τὸ σῶμα γινόμεθα ἐν ἀσωμάτῳ ζωῇ, παντί που δῆλον.  Posidonius, Fragmenta, fr. 389a, apud Anonymous, Scholia in Iliadem (scholia vetera), XII.386d; op. cit. (not mentioning Posidonius), VII.131a. Likewise, apud Eustathius of Thessalo niki, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, v. 3, p. 409.  Pseudo Galen, An Animal Sit Quod Est in Utero, p. 168: ἅμα τῇ τοῦ σπέρματος εἰς τὴν μή τραν ἐξακοντίσει συγκατέσπειρεν ὁ τῶν ὅλων δημιουργὸς καὶ τὴν ψυχήν, ἵνα τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὴν διοικοῦσαν αὐτὸ δύναμιν ἔχῃ.  The anonymous Sententiae Pythagoreorum, 106, used this phrase, τὸ συναρτώμενον τῇ ψυχῇ σπαρείσῃ σῶμα, in a text which is the same as that by Porphyry, Ad Marcellam, 32. Like wise, Proclus, commTim, v. 3, p. 276: ὡς μὲν ἐμβιβασθεῖσα εἰς ὄχημα πολῖτις γίνεται τῆς τοῦ παν τὸς ψυχῆς, ὡς δὲ ἐσπαρμένη σὺν τῷ ὀχήματι πολῖτις γίνεται τῆς Σεληνιακῆς περιφορᾶς ἢ τῆς Ἡλιακῆς ἢ ἄλλης τινός.

1378

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

the ‘place of the souls’ (τὸ χωρίον τῶν ψυχῶν), where Jesus and Lazarus went upon their death. He thought of it as being somewhere lower than the earth (καταβάς, about Jesus,⁹⁶⁶ ἀναπεμφθεῖσα, about the resurrected Lazarus⁹⁶⁷) and evidently he insinuated the Greek conception of Hades. This is a different notion from the ‘place of the souls that have not yet assumed a body’, which he used just once.⁹⁶⁸ The idea was indeed Greek,⁹⁶⁹ and it is likely that Origen took up the expression from the Anaxagorean tradition which came from Clazomenae: in the commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, Proclus says that, ‘according to Cephalus of Clazomenae [the narrator of Plato’s dialogue] and all the philosophers of Clazomenae’, the individual souls that exist jointly with Nature depart to a place of their own.’⁹⁷⁰ However, Proclus is quick to add that this bespeaks a natural theory, which is no surprise, since those men were ‘Physicists’ (ἅτε δὴ καὶ αὐτοὶ φυσικοί τινες ὄντες). He points out that the Ionian philosophers reflected on different premisses from the Italian ones, since the former ‘were preoccupied with questions of Nature, natural generations, and all of their philosophical arguments were based on natural grounds’; by contrast, the Italian school normally had recourse to ‘intelligible substances’ (θαμὰ περὶ τὴν τῶν νοητῶν οὐσίαν ἀνῆγεν ἑαυτό),⁹⁷¹ and it was only the Attic school that took the midway between those two extremes.⁹⁷² The expression ‘place of the souls’ did not enjoy any currency among Christian authors. Didymus rebuked it as an idea coined by ‘those who are arrogant

 Origen, frJohn, 79 & Origen, apud Catena in Joannem (catena integra), p. 316.  Origen, commJohn, XXVIII.6.43 44.  Origen, commMatt, 15.35.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 290: τινὲς γοῦν τῶν παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς θεολόγων καὶ τὸν γαλαξίαν καλούμενον κύκλον λῆξιν εἶναι καὶ χώραν ψυχῶν λογικῶν ἀπεφήναντο. Damas cius, In Phaedonem (versio 2), 143: οὕτω δὲ ἂν διέλοις καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ψυχῶν, τὰς μὲν ἄχρι τοῦ οὐ ρανοῦ κατιέναι μόνου, τὰς δὲ καὶ ἄχρι τοῦ Ταρτάρου, τὰς δὲ ἐν μέσῳ πλατικῶς κατὰ τὴν χώραν.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 629: Ὁ δὲ δὴ Κέφαλος καὶ οἱ ἐκ Κλαζομενῶν φιλόσοφοι ταῖς μερικαῖς ψυχαῖς καὶ τῇ φύσει συμπολιτευομέναις, ἰέναι τὴν ὁμοίαν ἔχοντες ἐν τούτοις χώραν.  Loc. cit. τὸ δὲ Ἰωνικὸν περί τε τὴν φύσιν καὶ τὰς φυσικὰς ποιήσεις καὶ πείσεις ἀνεστρέφετο, καὶ ἐν τούτοις ἐτίθετο τὴν ὅλην φιλοσοφίαν.  Proclus, op. cit. pp. 629 30. Upon opening the dialogue, Plato stages Cephalus saying that they ‘came from Clazomenae to Athens’ (Parmenides, 126a). Nowhere is Anaxagoras mentioned by name in this dialogue. However, Proclus adds that the Clazomenians who arrived in Athens were followers of Anaxagoras (ἐκ τῆς τοῦ ᾿Aναξαγόρου διδασκαλίας ᾿Aθήναζε ἀφικομένοις). In Platonis Parmenidem, p. 625. I have argued that, in reality, Anaxagoras stood closer to the Eleatic school rather than the Ionian one. See supra, pp. 208 9; 1178.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1379

because of having command of Greek wisdom’,⁹⁷³ although he apparently contradicted himself at other points.⁹⁷⁴ Nevertheless, Didymus’ reproof of the doctrine as being an invention of Greeks is telling, since he directs his invective against the physicists rather than the metaphysicists: he speaks of those Greeks who ‘think they have something to say about the nature of the heaven or the earth or the sea’ and they ‘aver a lot of things about the Hades, namely, that there is a place for the souls (ὅτι τε ψυχῶν ἐστιν χωρίον), as well as other things, and they invent theories which they are unable to prove’.⁹⁷⁵ Therefore, despite appearances, the specific notion of ‘place of the souls’ was expounded in a context originating in physicists rather than theologians, and its implicit relevance to Clazomenian thought can only mean that it betokens the different existence of the logoi which make up a soul after one’s death, according to Porphyry’s and Simplicius’ explanation about the Anaxagorean logoi existing differently in different realities.⁹⁷⁶ Following this, Origen felt he could speak conveniently of ‘the essence of the rational soul, which has something that is akin to God’ (περὶ οὐσίας λογικῆς ψυχῆς ὡς ἐχούσης τι συγγενὲς θεῷ). What is this? “They are both intellectual, invisible, and incorporeal” (νοερὰ γὰρ ἑκάτερα καὶ ἀόρατα καί ἀσώματα),⁹⁷⁷ which is why contemplative life rather than practical concerns are more akin to the soul.⁹⁷⁸ Consequently, a soul is the product of ‘principles’ that are incorporeal, as much as the ‘hypostasis’ (ὑπόστασις) of higher beings (angels) is. The ‘essence of the soul’ is not destructible only because the logoi that make up this essence are incorporeal in the first place. This is the ground on which the soul is ‘an in Didymus, Commentarii in Job (7.20c 11), Cod. p. 300.  Didymus, Fragmenta in Psalmos Altera, fr. 1231: ἔνθα τὸ χωρίον τῶν νεκρωθεισῶν ψυχῶν. Commentarii in Ecclesiasten (9.8 10.20), Cod. p. 279: τὸν αἰσθητὸν θάνατον διαδέξεται ὁ ᾅδης χωρίον ὂν ψυχῶν γεγυμνασμένων σαρκῶν. An attribution to Didymus in the Fragmenta in Psal mos Altera, fr. 97, is a mistake by the ancient compiler. For the text belongs to Eustathius of An tioch, the detractor of Origen who, ironically, used Origen’s notion, which appears in Theodoret, Eranistes, p. 100: ᾿Aλλὰ μὴν ἡ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ [fr. 97 adds: ψυχή] ἑκατέρων πεῖραν ἔσχε. Γέγονε γὰρ καὶ ἐν τῷ χωρίῳ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ψυχῶν, καὶ τῆς σαρκὸς ἐκτὸς γενομένη ζῇ καὶ ὑφέστηκε [fr. 97: ὑφίσταται].  Didymus, Commentarii in Job (7.20c 11), Cod. p. 300: καὶ περὶ ᾅδου πολλὰ λέγοντες, ὅτι τε ψυχῶν ἐστιν χωρίον καὶ ἄλλα, καὶ ῥάπτουσιν λόγους, ὧν τὴν ἀπόδειξιν φανερὰν καταστῆσαι οὐ δύνανται.  See supra, p. 712.  Origen, Exhortatio ad Martyrium, 47. Likewise, Cels, I.8; III.40; VI.18; Princ, III.1.13; De Ora tione, 27.9.  Origen, frLam, fr. 7: συγγενέστερά ἐστι τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ ἀπερίστατα τὰ θεωρητικὰ μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ πρακτικά.

1380

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

corporeal substance’,⁹⁷⁹ though not an incorporeal self-subsisting being: the soul lives always together with a material body.⁹⁸⁰ The incorporeal soul, therefore, owes its existence not to any material substratum (as the Stoic soul does), and, since it is incorporeal, it is also indivisible (ἀμέριστος).⁹⁸¹ The term ἀμέριστος was heavily loaded, especially in relation to the doctrine of the soul. It is remarkable that Origen used it to express what he regarded as incorporeal par excellence, namely, the Holy Trinity,⁹⁸² which is ‘simple, incomposite, and indivisible’.⁹⁸³ His logic is Aristotelian, no doubt. For it was Aristotle who posited God as being ἀμερὴς καὶ ἀδιαίρετος,⁹⁸⁴ it was also Aristotle who argued that ‘infinite’ (ἄπειρον) is ἀμέριστον ἀδιαίρετον,⁹⁸⁵ and Origen did associate the concept of God with the notion of infinite.⁹⁸⁶

 Origen, De Resurrectione (fragmenta), PG.11.96.20 (rendered by Methodius of Olympus): “The essence of the soul is incorporeal” (τὴν οὐσίαν τῆς ψυχῆς ἀσώματον). frLuc, 186: “Consid ered in itself, the soul is invisible and incorporeal” (ἐπὶ τῆς ψυχῆς λαμβάνομεν, καίτοι γε τῷ ἰδίῳ λόγῳ οὔσης ἀοράτου καὶ ἀσωμάτου).  Origen, op. cit. PG.11.96.27 28: “After a soul is released, it makes use of a body” (τῇ ἀπαλ λαγῇ σώματι χρῆται ἡ ψυχή). selPs, PG.12.1097.11 12: “the soul is incorporeal”, yet “it will be punished not separately from a body” (ἀσώματος ἡ ψυχὴ, τάχα δὲ δηλοῖ καὶ ὅτι χωρὶς σώματος οὐ κολασθήσεται). Cels, VII.32: “We do not talk about the resurrection, as Celsus imagines, be cause we have ‘misunderstood the doctrine of reincarnation’, but because we know that when the soul, which in its own nature is incorporeal and invisible (ἡ τῇ ἑαυτῆς φύσει ἀσώματος καὶ ἀόρατος ψυχή), is in any material place, it requires a body suited to the nature of that en vironment.”  Origen, Homiliae in Job (fragmenta in catenis; typus I & II), p. 363: Πέπλασται μὲν τὸ σῶμα ἐξ ὑποκειμένου τῆς γῆς, ἤτοι τῆς γυναικός· πεποίηται δὲ ἡ ψυχὴ μὴ προϋποκειμένου τινός, ὡς γὰρ ἀσώματος καὶ ἀμέριστος. The expression προϋποκειμένου τινὸς points to Origen’s reference to ‘material substratum’ being the πρῶτον ὑποκείμενον. selPs, PG.12.1096 97.  Origen, Fragmenta De Principiis (Eusebius quoting Marcellus of Ancyra quoting Origen), fr. 31: περὶ πατρὸς καὶ υἱοῦ καὶ ἁγίου πνεύματος ὀλίγα τῶν τότε παραλελειμμένων διεξελθεῖν· περὶ πατρός, ὡς ἀδιαίρετος ὢν καὶ ἀμέριστος υἱοῦ γίνεται πατήρ, οὐ προβαλὼν αὐτόν, ὡς οἴονταί τινες. commEph, 21: ἵνα τὸν τύπον τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος δεξάμενοι, ἀμερίστου μείναντος τοῦ σφραγίσαντος. Scholia in Matthaeum, PG.17.300.11 13: Ἡ γὰρ πανεπίσκοπος τοῦ Θεοῦ δύναμις ἀμέριστος μεριστὴ γίνεται τοῖς ἀξίοις.  Origen, Cels, IV.14: τὴν φυσικὴν τοῦ θεοῦ ἔννοιαν ὡς πάντῃ ἀφθάρτου καὶ ἁπλοῦ καὶ ἀσυνθέτου καὶ ἀδιαιρέτου.  Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1073a: “This substance can have no magnitude, because it is impar tible and indivisible (ἀμερὴς καὶ ἀδιαίρετος)”. Physica, 266a: “The first mover must necessarily be impartible (ἀμερές), hence, it has no magnitude (μηδὲν ἔχειν μέγεθος)”.  Aristotle set forth the same argument in the Metaphysica, 1066b and Physica, 204a. Actual ly, in both works this is the selfsame text.  PHE, pp. 52; 172 206.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1381

The idea of the soul being ‘impartible’ (ἀμερής) is Aristotelian.⁹⁸⁷ Aristotle himself rebuked his contemporary Xenocrates (the successor of Speusippus as head of the Academy) for holding that the soul is a number moving itself: this was to him ‘the most unreasonable of all theories’ (τῶν εἰρημένων ἀλογώτατον). For how could one conceive of a number moving? By what is it moved, and in what way, since it is without parts or differences? (ἀμερῆ καὶ ἀδιάφορον οὖσαν;).⁹⁸⁸ In any event, ‘irrespective of the soul being regarded as either partible or not, it has different powers’ (δυνάμεις διαφόρους),⁹⁸⁹ which, however, are no ‘parts’ themselves.⁹⁹⁰ No doubt, this is the sense in which Origen made some references to the ‘powers of the soul’ (δυνάμεις τῆς ψυχῆς), yet only in order to suggest the soul (i. e. life) making its mark by means of different functions, whether natural or mental ones.⁹⁹¹ Unlike Platonists, who conveniently spoke of something being both incorporeal and individual substance, Aristotle had a clear grasp of this incompatibility, and despised the notion of ‘moving’ incorporeal, since, to him, movement was understood only as associated with bodies. In the Laws, Plato made the ‘movement of the soul’ a tenth kind of motion, following eight categories of corporeal motion, and a ninth one of natural motion ‘which moves another object and is moved by another’. The tenth kind of motion is one by an agent (i. e. the soul)

 Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.33: Κατὰ δὲ τοὺς ᾿Aριστοτελικοὺς καὶ πάντας ὅσοι ἀμέριστον τὴν ψυχὴν διανοοῦνται. Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 153: ὃ καὶ ᾿Aριστοτέλης συνιδὼν εἶναι καὶ ἐν τοῖς μεριστοῖς τι δίδωσιν ἀμερές· ὥστε πολλῷ μᾶλλον τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ ὅλον καὶ ἓν μένοι ἂν πλη θυομένης καὶ μεριζομένης, διὸ καὶ ἀμέριστός ἐστιν, ὥς φησιν ὁ Τίμαιος. εἰ δὲ μὴ ἐσῴζετο τὸ ἓν αὐτῆς, μεριστὴ μόνως ἂν ἦν. Simplicius, commAnim, p. 11: ὁ δὲ ᾿Aριστοτέλης ὥσπερ πρὸς τῷ εἴδει, οὕτω καὶ πρὸς τῷ ἀμερίστῳ μᾶλλον τίθεται τὴν ψυχήν, τοῦτο μὲν ὡς οὐ μεριστήν, τοῦτο δὲ ὡς οὐ μόνον τῶν μεριστῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς περὶ τὰ σώματα μεριζομένης οὐσίας ἐξῃρη μένης τῆς λογικῆς ψυχῆς. Op. cit. p. 218: καὶ ἐπειδὴ ἡ ψυχὴ ἡ κατὰ λόγον ἐστὶ γνωστικὴ οὐσία, τὸ ταύτην ὁρίζον ἀμέριστος ἔσται γνωστικὴ οὐσία. τοῦτο δὲ ὁ νοῦς, ἀλλὰ μεθεκτὸς νοῦς καὶ τὸ ὅλον τοῦτο ψυχῆς νοῦς.  Aristotle, De Anima, 409a.  Aristotle, Ethica Eudemia, 1219b: διαφέρει δ᾿ οὐδὲν οὔτ᾿ εἰ μεριστὴ ἡ ψυχὴ οὔτ᾿ εἰ ἀμερής, ἔχει μέντοι δυνάμεις διαφόρους.  John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi, p. 354: αἱ δὲ ψυχικαὶ δυνάμεις ἀμερεῖς εἰσιν, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ψυχῆς ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἀπέδειξεν. οὐδ᾿ ἄρα εἰς ἁπλούστερα ἡ τῶν εἰδῶν ἀνάλυσις γίνεται.  Origen, commJohn, XX.24.204; XXVIII.7.59: τὰς τῆς ψυχῆς πορευτικὰς καὶ δραστικὰς καὶ θεωρητικὰς δυνάμεις. selGen, PG.12.96.9 12: Ὁ δὲ φάσκων τὸ κατ᾿ εἰκόνα μὴ ἐν σώματι εἶναι, ἐν δὲ τῇ λογικῇ ψυχῇ, παραστήσει οὐκ εὐκαταφρόνητον δόγμα, καταλαβὼν τίνες δυνάμεις εἰσὶν αὐτῆς. Ἡ γὰρ γνωστικὴ δύναμις ἡ ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, κριτική τε καὶ εὐποιητική, δικαιοπρα κτική τε καὶ ἐῤῥωμένη. frLam, 52; homLuc, 11, p. 76; frLuc, 120; 186; selPs, PG.12: 1301.46; 1309.9; frPs, Psalms 140:7; 118:65 66 (τῇ γευστικῇ δυνάμει τῆς ψυχῆς); selEz, PG.13.817.7; excPs, PG.17.137.7; expProv, PG.17.168.18.

1382

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

‘which moves both itself and another’ (τήν τε ἑαυτὴν κινοῦσαν καὶ ἕτερον).⁹⁹² To this, Simplicius (or an author using his name) remarked that Aristotle, who associated motion only with corporeal objects, ‘bans the notion of the soul being a cause of movement’ (ταύτην μηδενὶ τῶν κινητικῶν αἰτίων προσάπτειν ἀπαγορεύει). According to a double postulatum by Aristotle, whatever is said to ‘move’ it has to be a body, while anything that is either incorporeal or indivisible is incompatible with motion. Michael Psellus advised that not only Aristotelists such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and Aristotle’s heir, Theophrastus, but also Platonists, such as Damascius and Simplicius, plus John Philoponus, endorsed this doctrine.⁹⁹³ In other words, to Plato, everything in this world, ‘and the soul more than anything else’ (καὶ μειζόνως ἡ ψυχή), moves because there is ‘a descent of something which is indivisible’ (τοῦ ἀμερίστου ὑπόβασιν) into the world, and this ‘something’ longs for returning home.⁹⁹⁴

Soul standing ‘midway’ Some of Plato’s views were not only inconsistent: they were also untenable even by his devout admirers, who sought to disentangle relevant problems and ascribe their own resolutions to Plato himself. How can a soul be both incorporeal and individual, which means, both indivisible and divisible? Although at minor points Plato ostensibly reveled in dialectic argument, he treated this point as a dogmatic theologian: he just offered an account which had to be taken for granted unquestionably. His tale is expounded in the Timaeus, and it goes thus: God decided to construct the soul so that this should be older than the body and prior in both birth and excellence. Midway between the Essence (τῆς οὐσίας), which is indivisible (ἀμερίστου) and remains always the same, and the Essence which is transient and divisible (μεριστῆς) in bodies, he blended a third form of Essence compounded out of the twain, that is, out of the Same and the Other (τῆς τοῦ ταὐτοῦ φύσεως καὶ τῆς θατέρου). In like manner, he compounded it midway be Plato, Leges, 894b c.  Michael Psellus, Opuscula ii, p. 77: ὁ δὲ αὐτὸς ᾿Aριστοτέλης ἐν τῇ αὐτῇ Φυσικῇ πᾶν μὲν τὸ κινούμενον σῶμα εἶναι ἀπέδειξεν, οὐδὲν δὲ ἀσώματον οὐδὲ ἀμερὲς πεφυκέναι κινεῖσθαι. καὶ τοῦτο πάντες οἱ μετ᾿ αὐτὸν προσήκαντο φυσικοί, ᾿Aλέξανδρος καὶ Πορφύριος καὶ ᾿Aμμώνιος, ἔτι δὲ καὶ Δαμάσκιος καὶ Σιμπλίκιος καὶ Πρισκιανός, καὶ μετ᾿ αὐτοὺς ὁ φιλοπονώτατος Ἰωάννης, πρὸ δὲ τούτων ἁπάντων Θεόφραστος ὁ ᾿Aριστοτέλους διάδοχος καὶ ὁ λοιπὸς τῶν φυσιολόγων χορός.  Simplicius, commAnim, p. 25. Cf. pp. 34; 39; 50; 84; 92; 103. The only author who reproduced this expression (‘a descent of the indivisible’, τοῦ ἀμερίστου ὑπόβασιν) was an ardent admirer of Simplicius, namely, Michael Psellus, De Omnifaria Doctrina, 45 & 194.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1383

tween that which is indivisible (ἀμεροῦς) and the other which is divisible in bodies (κατὰ τὰ σώματα μεριστοῦ). Then, he took all three of them and blended them together into one form (εἰς μίαν πάντα ἰδέαν) by forcing the Other into union with the Same, in spite of its being difficult to mix. And when he mixed them with the aid of Essence (τῆς οὐσίας), and made of them one out of three, he began to distribute the whole thereof into so many portions as was meet (ὅσας προσῆκε); and each portion was a mixture of the Same, of the Other, and of Essence (ἔκ τε ταὐτοῦ καὶ θἀτέρου καὶ τῆς οὐσίας μεμιγμένην).⁹⁹⁵ In the Sophist, 254c, he urged that ‘some of the genera can mingle with each other’ (τῶν γενῶν ὡμολόγηται κοινωνεῖν). He appeased his readers, however, by saying that ‘this does not hold for all forms, lest we become confused’: it is only to the ‘highest’ ones that this mingling could apply. He determined that Being itself, Rest, and Motion (ὂν ταὐτὸ καὶ στάσις καὶ κίνησις) are ‘the highest’ genera (τῶν μεγίστων λεγομένων γενῶν).⁹⁹⁶ However, surpisingly, now he does allow for mingling for another triad of genera: Sameness, Otherness, and Essence (ταὐτόν, θάτερον, οὐσία). There is no use in seeking any modicum of consistency in Plato’s statements. We know that, by means of contradictory statements, his purpose was to have his pie and eat it: the soul is absolute unity, yet it has parts; likewise, the soul can be both incorporeal and individual, that is, restricted to a certain spatial place. Little wonder that, after his death, the Academy hovered between Pythagoreanism and Scepticism, whereas his immediate successors opted for remaining silent about Plato’s views on this point. The mathematician and engineer Heron of Alexandria is perhaps the only intellectual before Plotinus who saw the soul as standing midway between incorporeal and corporeal reality (ἡ ψυχὴ μέση ἐστὶ μεταξὺ τῶν νοερῶν καὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν). This was serviceable to mathematicians positing the soul (and mathematics itself, as a science) as standing midway between the perceptible reality and the incorporeal realm,⁹⁹⁷ an idea that was sustained by Porphyry⁹⁹⁸ and by later Neoplatonists.⁹⁹⁹  Plato, Timaeus, 35a b. Concerning the ontological rank of mathematics, see infra, pp. 1395; 1399 400.  Although he starts his sentence with talking of ‘genera’ (γενῶν), in his ensuing explanation he uses the term εἰδῶν, speaking of the same subject. In the Sophist, 245a, Plato postulated that it is possible for something ‘both to have parts and possess the attribute of unity is all its parts, and, in this way, to one, since it is all and whole’. Evidently, he had in mind the soul.  See the testimony by Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 153: τῶν δὲ πρὸ ἡμῶν οἳ μὲν μαθηματικὴν ποιοῦντες τὴν οὐσίαν τῆς ψυχῆς ὡς μέσην τῶν τε φυσικῶν καὶ τῶν ὑπερφυῶν, οἳ μὲν ἀριθμὸν αὐτὴν εἰπόντες ἐκ μονάδος ποιοῦσιν, ὡς ἀμερίστου, καὶ τῆς ἀορίστου δυάδος, ὡς μεριστῆς, οἳ δὲ ὡς γεωμετρικὴν ὑπόστασιν οὖσαν ἐκ σημείου καὶ διαστάσεως, τοῦ μὲν ἀμεροῦς, τῆς δὲ μεριστῆς. Cf. infra, Asclepius of Tralles, note 999.

1384

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

It was Plotinus that revived the question, to be followed by Iamblichus and Proclus. The soul has a nature of its own, which participates in both corporeal and incorporeal nature. This is how, with respect to incorporeality, the soul is indivisible (ἀμέριστος), whereas it is also divisible (μεριστόν) and indeed distributed (μεμερισμένον) by virtue of its individuality.¹⁰⁰⁰ It should be noticed that Plotinus classified the soul as being both indivisible and divisible ‘at the same time’ (ὁμοῦ or ἄμφω). In this respect, he urged that the soul is both ‘one and many’ (ἕν τε καὶ πολλά, καὶ μεμερισμένον καὶ ἀμέριστον ψυχὴν εἶναι). However, this cannot be a definition, since the ontological status of the soul remains undetermined and obscure. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Plotinus never granted the soul a world of its own. The task was taken up by another Neoplatonist, namely, Porphyry: the soul is not ‘both’: it stands ‘midway’ (μέση) ‘between indivisible and divisible essence’ (ἀμερίστου καὶ μεριστῆς οὐσίας).¹⁰⁰¹ Embarrassment at how to cope with the Platonic heritage is obvious. Whereas ‘mind’ is ‘an indivisible essence’ (ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἀμέριστος οὐσία), and only bodies are definitely divisible (τὰ δὲ σώματα μεριστά μόνον), the soul is ‘something in between’ (μέσον τί), which is defined not in itself, but by means of its contrast to both mind and bodies.¹⁰⁰² Of course, to define anything as being ‘something’ is hardly a definition. Worse still, Christian writers such as Epiphanius of Salamis, who was not deterred by such details as scholarly decorum, was unyielding: “If one allowed that the soul is divisible, how could it possibly be for this to be made in the image of God?”¹⁰⁰³

 Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 4: ἡ ψυχὴ τῆς ἀμερίστου καὶ μεριστῆς οὐσίας μέση εἶναι λέγεται. So in Sententiae, 5. Also, commTim, Book 2, fr. 61, apud Proclus, commTim, v. 2, p. 105. Cf. Proclus, op. cit. pp. 129; 161; 273; commEucl, p. 35.  Themistius, (c. 317 390), paraphrPhys, p. 10. Hermias of Alexandria (c. 410 450), In Pla tonis Phaedrum Scholia, p. 123: μέση ἐστὶ τῆς τε ἀμερίστου οὐσίας καὶ τῆς περὶ τὰ σώματα με ριστῆς οὐσίας. Ammonius of Alexandria (c. 440 520), commCateg, p. 37: μέσην γὰρ ἔχει τὴν τάξιν πρὸς τὰ πάντῃ ἐξῃρημένα τῆς ὕλης καὶ πάντῃ ἔνυλα. Asclepius of Tralles (sixth century), commMetaph, p. 47: συμβολικῶς ὁ Πλάτων διὰ τῶν μαθημάτων τὴν ψυχὴν δηλοῖ, ἥτις μέση ἐστὶ τῶν πάντῃ χωριστῶν τῆς ὕλης καὶ ἀϊδίων καὶ τῶν πάντῃ ἀχωρίστων, τουτέστι τῶν ἐνύλων εἰδῶν, ἐπειδή, φησί, ποτὲ μὲν χωρίζεται σώματος, ποτὲ δ᾿ ἐλλάμπει ἐν αὐτῷ. τοῦτο οὖν φησιν ὅτι ἔτι δὲ παρὰ τὰ αἰσθητὰ καὶ τὰς ἰδέας τὰ μαθηματικὰ τῶν πραγμάτων μεταξύ φησιν εἶναι τούτων. Op. cit. p. 98: εἰδέναι γὰρ χρὴ ὅτι ἐπειδὴ μέσην τάξιν ἀνεδέξατο ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ ποτὲ μέν ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς νοητοῖς ποτὲ δὲ ἐν τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς, ἐδεήθη καὶ φαντασίας, ἵνα δι᾿ αὐτῆς φυλάττῃ τοὺς τύπους τῶν αἰσθητῶν. χρεία οὖν ἐστι μαθημάτων πρὸς συνεθισμὸν τῆς ἀσωμάτου φύσεως.  Plotinus, op. cit. IV.2.2.  Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 4.  Porphyry, Sententiae, 5; attested also by Stobaeus, op. cit. 1.49.17; cf. 1.49.32.  Epiphanius of Salamis, Ancoratus, 56.2.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1385

Another Christian author, who wrote under the name of Gregory Thaumaturgus, was more of a philosophical mind, and he put it tersely: “Since [the soul] is incorporeal, it is simple; and since it is uncompounded (ἀσύνθετος), it is also indivisible (ἀμερής)”.¹⁰⁰⁴ Of Christians, it was Origen who made much of the notion of the soul being placed between ‘the spirit’ and ‘the body’, although he never mentioned the Platonic doctrine, nor did he style the soul one ‘standing midway’ (μέσην). The notion appears casually in his followers, though no one of them cared to pay the idea any special attention.¹⁰⁰⁵ According to Proclus, the soul stands ‘at the same time’ (ἅμα)¹⁰⁰⁶ ‘midway’ (μέση) ‘between indivisible and divisible essence’ (ἀμερίστου καὶ μεριστῆς οὐσίας).¹⁰⁰⁷ It is interesting that, whereas his aim was to comment on Plato’s theology, he had Plotinus’ work in front of him, and much of his vocabulary comes from his Neoplatonist forebear.¹⁰⁰⁸ He essayed to see the soul not as participating, but as ‘being participated in’ (μεθεκτή), which allowed him to decide that ‘the essence of the soul is eternal, whereas its action is temporal’.¹⁰⁰⁹ Proclus conceded that is it difficult to see how is it possible for the ‘indivisible essence’ not only to give rise to the ‘divisible’ one, but also to be part of it: it takes ‘a higher and more refined soul’ in order to grasp this, he wrote.¹⁰¹⁰ In any event, by and large he essayed to abide by the standard Plotinian formulas.¹⁰¹¹ Damascius was aware of the Platonic resolution about the soul.¹⁰¹² Although he reported the tenet, he did not actually make much of it, and appears rather

 Pseudo Gregory Thaumaturgus, Ad Tatianum De Anima Per Capita Disputatio, PG.10.11.41.58.  Eusebius, Commentaria in Psalmos, PG.23.1261.45 47: Τάχα δὲ μέσην ἀπολειφθεῖσαν τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ σώματος καὶ τοῦ πνεύματος. Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, pp. 145 6: τὴν μὲν σωματικωτέραν κατάστασιν καρδίαν εἰπών, ψυχὴν δὲ τὴν μέσην, διάνοιαν δὲ τὴν ὑψηλοτέραν φύσιν, τὴν νοεράν τε καὶ ποιητικὴν δύναμιν. Pseudo John Chrysostom, In Psalmos 101 107, PG.55.641.18 21: Μέση οὖσα ἡ ψυχή, τὸ μὲν σῶμα πρὸς ἡδονὰς κατασπᾷ, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα πρὸς Θεὸν ἀνέλκει.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 263.  Proclus, op. cit. v. 2, pp. 140; 216; 299; commRep, v. 2, p. 212; Theologia Platonica, v. 5, pp. 80; 113; commEucl, v. 2, pp. 13; 22; In the Theologia Platonica, v. 1, p. 95, actually he comments on Plotinus, not Plato. Cf. Plotinus, op. cit. IV.3.12.  Cf. Proclus, Theologia Platonica, v. 4, p. 60; v. 5, p. 98; Institutio Theologica, 190.  Proclus, Institutio Theologica, 190.  Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem, pp. 706; 809.  Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 263; v. 2, pp. 140; 142 3; 147 9; 152; 155; 164; 166; 193 4; 233; 243; 267; 302; v. 3, pp. 205; 212; 215; 257.  Damascius, Princ, pp. 144 5; 230.

1386

Chapter 13 – Theory of the soul: from Anaxagoras to Late Antiquity

unmoved by relevant Platonic accounts.¹⁰¹³ Nevertheless, he made a radical statement: the soul is not only both divisible and indivisible, but also it is ‘one and not one, many and not many, a whole and not a whole, parts and not parts; it is both the same and the other, whereas it is neither the same nor the other.’¹⁰¹⁴ In effect, Damascius opts for the soul being considered as either indivisible (ἀμέριστος) or divisible (μεριστή) depending on the object of its contemplation.¹⁰¹⁵ This was an old view sustained by ‘Theodore the Platonist,¹⁰¹⁶ in his work entitled On the soul being all kinds of forms’, arguing for transmigration of souls between men, animals, and plants. To this view Iamblichus took exception, arguing that transmigration takes place only between animals or between men.¹⁰¹⁷ We should recall that Iamblichus ‘wrote a great deal against Porphyry’s

 Damascius (reporting the Pythagorean idea of the soul as explained by Porphyry), In Phaedonem (versio 2), 59: Ἢ ὡς τὴν μέσην κατὰ Πορφύριον· εἶναι γὰρ αὐτὴν μεθόριον τῶν ὅλων, ἄκρων μὲν ὄντων θεοῦ καὶ ὕλης, παράκρων δὲ νοῦ καὶ σώματος· αὕτη τοιγαροῦν μεσότης ἂν εἴη, ἀεὶ δὲ τὴν μέσην ἁρμονίαν ἐκάλουν οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι.  Damascius is more sympathetic to Iamblichus on issues where the latter dissents from Porphyry. At this point, he also implies his sympathy for Iamblichus’ opinions, although prob ably the ideas are Damascius’ own. In Parmenidem, p. 248. Cf. pp. 230; 251; 255. Likewise, op. cit. p. 259 (reporting Iamblichus): Ἓν μὲν διὰ τοῦ μετέχειν τὸ ἀκρότατον αὐτῶν, ὅπερ καὶ κατιὸν εἰς γένεσιν, ὅμως οὐ κάτεισιν, ὥς φησιν ὁ μέγας Ἰάμβλιχος ἐν τῷ περὶ ψυχῆς μεταναστάσεως, ἀπὸ σώματος· τοῦτο οὖν ἀγενήτως κατιὸν καὶ ἀνιόν, μετέχει μόνον οὐσίας καὶ οὐ μετέχει· σύνεστιν γὰρ τῷ νοητῷ μόνον ἢ οὐ σύνεστιν, καὶ ἡ κάθοδος τῶν τοιούτων ψυχῶν παρουσίαν μόνον ἐμ ποιεῖ πρὸς τὰ τῇδε. Simplicius, commAnim, p. 240: εἰ μὲν οὖν παντελῶς ἡ αὐτὴ μένοι ἡ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀκροτάτη οὐσία, ἡ ἐνέργεια οὐχ ἡ αὐτὴ μένουσα οὐκ ἂν εἴη ὅπερ ἡ οὐσία, εἴ γε ὁτὲ μὲν νοεῖ, ὁτὲ δὲ οὐ νοεῖ. εἰ δὲ καὶ αὐτὴ ἡ ἄκρα αὐτῆς οὐσία οὐ μένει ἐν τῇ πρὸς τὰ δεύτερα ῥοπῇ εἰλικρινής, ἵνα καὶ ταύτῃ ᾖ μέση, ὡς καὶ τῷ Ἰαμβλίχῳ ἐν τῇ ἰδίᾳ Περὶ ψυχῆς πραγματείᾳ δοκεῖ, οὐ μεριστῶν μόνον καὶ ἀμερίστων, ἀλλὰ καὶ γενητῶν καὶ ἀγενήτων καὶ φθαρτῶν καὶ ἀφθάρτων, καὶ ἵνα καὶ αὐτὸ τοῦτο ὅτε μὲν νοῇ ὅτε δὲ μή· ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτῆς γὰρ ἐνεργοῦσα ἡ αὐτὴ ἀπαράλλακτος μένουσα καὶ ἐνήργει ἂν ὡσαύτως ἀεί, ἀλλ᾿ οὐδ᾿ ἂν ποτὲ μὲν προβαλλομένη δευ τέρας ζωὰς καὶ ταύταις συμπλεκομένη ἐν τῇ συμπλοκῇ ἔμενεν αὐτῶν ἀχώριστος, ποτὲ δὲ ἐχωρίζετο.  Damascius, In Phaedonem (versio 1), 4; 78; 428; In Philebum, 244.  Theodore of Asine in Laconia (third fourth century AD).  Nemesius of Emesa, De Natura Hominis, chapter 2, p. 35: Κρόνιος μὲν γὰρ ἐν τῷ περὶ πα λιγγενεσίας (οὕτω δὲ καλεῖ τὴν μετενσωμάτωσιν) λογικὰς πάσας εἶναι βούλεται, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ Θεόδωρος ὁ Πλατωνικὸς ἐν τῷ ὅτι ἡ ψυχὴ πάντα τὰ εἴδη ἐστί, καὶ Πορφύριος ὁμοίως· Ἰάμβλιχος δὲ τὴν ἐναντίαν τούτοις δραμὼν κατ᾿ εἶδος ζῴων ψυχῆς εἶδος εἶναι λέγει, ἤγουν εἴδη διάφορα. γέγραπται γοῦν αὐτῷ μονόβιβλον ἐπίγραφον ὅτι οὐκ ἀπ᾿ ἀνθρώπων εἰς ζῷα ἄλογα οὐδὲ ἀπὸ ζῴων ἀλόγων εἰς ἀνθρώπους αἱ μετενσωματώσεις γίνονται ἀλλ᾿ ἀπὸ ζῴων εἰς ζῷα καὶ ἀπὸ ἀνθρώπων εἰς ἀνθρώπους. So Meletius of Tiberiopolis (copying from Nemesius), De Natura Hom inis, p. 147.

The Anaxagorean shadow over Late Antiquity

1387

doctrine of the soul, arguing that Porphyry’s doctrine was neither Platonic nor Plotinian.’¹⁰¹⁸ Simplicius did not set any great store by this debate. It is interesting though that, commenting on Aristotle, he appears to opt for the Aristotelian view of the soul being without parts.¹⁰¹⁹ In the commentary of Aristotle’s theory of the soul, he mentions the Platonic view (though not with enthusiasm), which is probably why some scholars deem this work as dubious.¹⁰²⁰ Plato’s idea about the soul simultaneously belonging to two different ontological levels, in effect, enjoyed acceptance only by Plotinus and, more so, by Proclus. The inherent character of this proposition was mythological rather than philosophical. Simplicius seems to have opted for ignoring the proposition. Olympiodorus the Younger, the last Platonist master of Alexandria (c. 495‒570), saw how wanting this opinion was in terms of consistency and dialectical potential; hence, unlike the perspicacious Simplicius, he dismissed the Platonic view: according to the old Greek rule positing that like is known by the like, if the soul wishes to know the incorporeal reality which is ‘indivisible’ (ἀμερής), the soul itself has to be indivisible, too.¹⁰²¹ It seems, therefore, that Platonists were rather uneasy about a tenet that was propounded as a sibylline proclamation rather than as an argued Socratic proposition. Why Plato argued for this can only be a point of speculation. My own conjecture is that he wished to harmonize two incompatible notions, namely, incorporeality and individuality. This is not the only possibility, however. One would assume that Plato considered the same, the other and essence, and made real substances out of these three abstractions. Since like is known by the like, the soul was endowed by all three of them in order to be able to recognize real individual entities within this world. Others, such as Plutarch, saw that this proposition is untenable once it is intended for individual souls; consequently, he argued that Plato only meant ‘not any soul, but the soul of the world’ (οὐχ ἁπλῶς ψυχήν, ἀλλὰ τὴν τοῦ κόσμου

 Proclus, commTim, v. 1, p. 307. This is hardly a surprise, considering Porphyry’s admiration for Anaxagoras.  Simplicius, commCateg, p. 356; commPhys, pp. 1; 694; 779.  Simplicius, commAnim, pp. 3; 11; 40; 78; 84; 238.  Olympiodorus of Alexandria, In Platonis Phaedonem Commentaria, 5.1: ἡ δὲ λογικὴ ψυχὴ οἶδε τὰ αἰσθητὰ καὶ ἑαυτήν, οἶδε γὰρ ὅτι οἶδεν. εἰ οὖν ταῦτα οὕτως ἔχοι, οὐ συμπαραλήψεται ἐν τῇ ζητήσει κοινωνὸν ἡ ψυχὴ ἢ τὸ σῶμα ἢ τὰς αἰσθήσεις ἢ τὰ αἰσθητήρια, εἴ γε τὰ ἀμερ