Philosophical Review

Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science. by Lucas Siorvanes

Review by: Ian Mueller
The Philosophical Review, Vol. 107, No. 4 (Oct., 1998), pp. 600-603
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
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BOOK REVIEWS
allows Lloyd's Aristotleto emerge as a veryinteresting,powerfulphilosopher and scientist,who lived and thoughta long timeago in a culturevery
differentfromours. And thisAristotleis fascinating.
CHARLOTTE WITT

University
ofNewHampshire

Review,Vol. 107, No. 4 (October 1998)

ThePhilosophical
PROCLUS: NEO-PLATONICPHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE. By LUCAS SIORPress, 1996. Pp. xv,340.
VANES. New Haven and London: Yale University
head of the (Neo-) PlatonicAcademy) is undoubtedly
Proclus (fifth-century
one of the most influentialfiguresin the historyof westernphilosophy;
understandingsof
his writingsdid more to shape pre-twentieth-century
Plato (and hence in many cases of philosophical truth) than any other
person. But todayfewstudentsof ancient philosophywould cite Proclus as
an authorityon Plato, and only a few scholars and certain people whom
manywould identifyas enthusiastsor mysticsare likelyto have read a whole
workof Proclus,even in translation.And although thereare some passages
mostnotablywhich can be read as originalphilosophical investigations,
but perhaps thisreflectsmyown philosophical interests-Proclus's discuson
sion of the role of imaginationin geometricalreasoning (Commentary
49-56), even those passages have to be abstracted
BookI ofEuclid'sElements,
fromtheirintellectualcontext to be made palatable to contemporaryacademic philosophical taste.The contextis an elaboratelytriadichierarchical metaphysicsrangingbetween the limitsof a One which is neitherdescribable nor apprehensible because it is above being and a matterwhich
is neitherdescribable nor apprehensible because it is below being. But the
metaphysicsis also a representationof a pagan theologyin which all the
Greco-Romanreligionfindtheirplace or places, and
gods of fifth-century
it is accompanied by a serious belief in practicesstandardlylabeled magical.
In the introductionto his new book on Proclus, Lucas Siorvanes notes
the relativelyrecent increase in interestin late ancient philosophyin the
English-speakingphilosophical world,and proposes to offera general survey of Proclus's metaphysical,epistemological,and scientificideas in the
hopes that "the reader will become familiarwith the facetsof Neo-Platonism and will be encouraged to delve deeper into the primarysources"
(x). Siorvanes does not ignore the religious and magical aspects of Proclus's thought,but he tends to treatthem as appendages to more strictly
philosophical ideas. The reader who is led to delve into the primarysourcor Ties, such as Proclus's commentarieson Plato's Republic,Parmenides,
600

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BOOK REVIEWS
maeus, may be surprised at the amount of baroque pagan superstition they
contain.
The book is divided into five lengthy chapters. Chapter 1 is a programmatic survey of Proclus's life, times, and influence (down to Mick Jagger's
recitation of a Shelley poem-"Such
is the popular diffusion of Neo-Platonism" (41)). Chapter 2 covers Proclus's general metaphysics-including
such topics as similarity and identity,parts and wholes, participation, and
causation-while chapter 3 provides a tour of the metaphysical hierarchy.
These are not the firstchapters of this kind to be written, nor will they be
the last. But it is difficult for me to see how a philosophically inclined
reader will want to delve deeper into, for example, the properties which
things derive from various "henads"' when they are simply listed as follows:
The (properties)intelligibleand hidden for(the henad of) Being.
The intelligibleand intellectivefor Life.
The intellectivefor Intellect.
The directive,above the physicalworld,for Soul.
The liberated,just above and just withinthe physicalworld forNature.
The encosmic, withinthe physicalworld,which includes the world soul and
the celestial objects.
I do not know whether any account of such elaborately fantastic and at
the same time scholastic ideas can bring them to philosophical life, but I
am relatively certain that broad surveys cannot accomplish this task.
One device Siorvanes employs-perhaps in the hopes of stimulating interest-is comparison with contemporary, or at least modern, ideas. An
example of this technique concerns the notion of soul (psyche), probably
the most fluid item in Neo-Platonic metaphysics, since it seems both to
occupy a fixed place in the hierarchy and to range all through the hierarchy between its upper and lower limits. Siorvanes identifies Proclean
soul, not implausibly but certainly problematically, with what he calls personal mind (140ff.). He writes:
The physicalsenses and the non-discursiveintellectmayperceive theirrespective objects directly,but personal mind triesto formulatea discursiveaccount
of them. For thispsycheuses its appropriatemode, which conditionsthe information.Accordingly,all the complicatedNeo-Platonicattributionsascribed,for
example, to imparticibleNature,Soul, Intellect,and beyond,are no more than
inferencesand best guesses, not identitystatementsof the objects themselves
[?]. By this,Proclus shows that he is not a naive realist,but is fullyaware of
the conditioningof knowledge. (144-45)
It is certainly true that Proclus was not a "naive realist," and he certainly
believed that much in his world could not be described literally, that is,
1"Ones," a curious class of entities postulated by Proclus below the ineffable
One (hen) in an attemptto "explain" how multiplicity
could arise fromthe One.

601

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BOOK REVIEWS
could not be given a "discursiveaccount." But to saythatis not to saythat
he would have considered his accounts "best guesses," or, more importantly,thathe would have denied that "personal mind" could have direct
experience of various thingswhich it could not describe. Precise formulation of issues here is not easy,but I am inclined to thinkthat invoking
the notion of naive realismflattensratherthan enriches discussion.
Siorvanes is particularlyprone to referencesto futuredevelopmentsin
whatforme were the mostinterestingpartsof the book, the last twochapterson Proclus's treatmentof sublunar physicsand of astronomy.For example, we are told that"Proclus recognizes,much like Newton twelvecenturieslater,thatphysicalforcesin action can be describedmathematically"
(225), where what is at stake is Proclus's development of Plato's use (Timaeus31bff.)ofwhatwe mightwriteas 'a3:a2b:: a2b:ab2::ab2:b3" to "deduce
mathematically[?] that there are only four simple bodies, theirrelationship, and the number of their fundamentalproperties" (226). I do not
mean to denigratePlato's or Proclus's commitmentto mathematics,but to
compare their basically analogical use of a simple proportionwithNewton's argumentationseems to me to be to conflate mathematicalphysics
and numerology.
I do not have space to discuss the details of the last two chapters,but
perhaps a summarywill indicate their interest.In chapter 4, Siorvanes
discusses Proclus's response to Aristotle'scriticismsof Plato's geometric
account of the "simple bodies," earth,water,air,and fire.The discussion
is veryinterestingalthough,I am inclined to think,not fullyappreciative
of the force of Aristotle'scriticismsand Proclus's failureto wiggle out of
them. There are also interestingdiscussionsof Proclus's non-Aristotelian
theoryof space (and a comparison of it withPhiloponus's theory)and his
treatmentof Aristotle'sdoctrineof naturalmotion.Throughout,Siorvanes
stressesthat Proclus abandons the Aristotelianfifthelement (aith&r),and
thus breaks down the contrastbetween the sublunar world and the heavens.
In chapter 5, Siorvanes turns to Proclus's astronomy.He does his best
to defend both Proclus's denial of the by then well-establishedfactof the
precession of the equinoxes in order to preservethe simplicityof the motions of the fixed starsand his denial of the best mathematicaltheoriesof
the motionsof the heavenlybodies in favorof a theoryaccording to which
the bodies move of theirown accord. These and otherfeaturesof Proclus's
astronomymake it easy to understandwhyhistoriansof science tend to
dismisshim as an anti-scientific
philosopher,as I seem to have dismissed
him as an unphilosophical religiousmystic.But whatmakes Siorvanes' discussion of Proclus as scientistcome alive in a way that his discussion of
Proclus as metaphysiciandoes not is that Proclus the scientisthas false
viewsabout subjectswe can understand,as we can understandhis reasons
602

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BOOK REVIEWS
and motivationsfor holding them, whereas Proclus the metaphysician
holds incredible views about subjectswe can littleunderstand,as we can
even less understandhis reasons and motivationsfor holding them.
In some waysthishas been as much a reviewof Proclus as of Siorvanes.
Although I have expressed some misgivingsabout the book, I hope I have
made clear that the task it sets itself-a general and accurate surveyof
Proclus's metaphysics,epistemology,and science designed to interestthe
philosophically inclined reader-is extremelydifficultand perhaps impossible. Readers seeking an introductionto Neo-Platonismmightdo well
with a more general book such as R. T. Wallis's Neoplatonism,
2d ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995). But if theywant a book in English specifically
on Proclus, theycan do no betterthan the one under review.The second
and thirdchaptersgive an overviewof his philosophy,and the fourthand
fifthprovide good insightinto the treatmentof importantissues in physics and astronomyin late antiquity.And there are copious referencesfor
those who do wish to delve deeper into the primary (and secondary)
sources.
IAN MUELLER

University
ofChicago

ThePhilosophical
Review,Vol. 107, No. 4 (October 1998)
REPRESENTATIONAND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM iN SPINOZA. By MiCHAEL DELLA RoCCA. New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1996. Pp. x,
223.
In this book, Della Rocca traces out the conceptual links between key
concepts and principles of Spinoza's systembearing on representation
and the mind-bodyproblem. In the course of doing so, he presentsand
defends a number of new,interestingtheses about Spinoza's thoughton
these matters.The argumentsare presented with impressiveclarityand
in (sometimes perhaps too) great detail. All in all, the book is a significant contributionto the literatureon Spinoza's metaphysicsand epistemology,and should be read by anyone with a serious interestin its historical subject or in the two perennial philosophical problems on which
it focuses.
The book is in two largely distinctparts, one for each of the issues
named in its title.The latterhalf,on the mind-bodyproblem,is especially
strong. Spinoza famouslyclaims, on the one hand, that modes of Extension are numericallyidentical withmodes of Thought, and, on the other,
that there is no trans-attribute
interaction.This is incoherent, goes the
classic objection, because if mode of Thought I causes mode of Thought
603

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