Knowledge, Intellect and Being in Damascius’ Doubts and Solutions Concerning

First Principles

Abstract:

In this paper, I discuss Damascius’ theory of knowledge in his work Doubts and Solutions Concerning
First Principles. According to my analysis, he does not accept the skeptical consequences that might
result from his apparent rejection of the thesis that the knower (an intellect) and the object of
knowledge (an intelligible object) are identical in the act of knowing. I argue that Damascius’ account
of causality, according to which causes not only produce their effects but also change themselves in
order to establish a relationship with them, can explain how intellect can infallibly apprehend the
objects of thought.

Keywords:

Knowledge, intellect, being, Damascius, Neoplatonism

1 Introduction
One of the cornerstones of Neoplatonic epistemology is the thesis that knowledge of
the intelligible world requires the identity of the knower (an intellect) and the object
of thought. Identity here means numerical identity and identity in terms of essence:
the knower and the object known are one and the same in the act of knowing. This
thesis, which I will refer to as the Identity Thesis in the following, has an impressive
philosophical pedigree. Particularly important in the history of its development is
Aristotle’s analogy between thinking and perception in book 3 chapter 4 of his De
Anima, where he tackles the puzzle of how an intellect that is impassive and unmixed
can come to think anything at all, given how different it seems from any of the objects
of thought. Aristotle responds to the puzzle by arguing that what is known by the
immaterial intellect is strictly speaking an immaterial object of thought, e.g. the form
of stone, such that some common element exists between intellect and the object of
thought that can at least in principle explain their interaction.1 Just as in the case of
                                                                                                               
1
See Aristotle De An. III.4.429b22-26: ἀπορήσειε δ' ἄν τις, εἰ ὁ νοῦς ἁπλοῦν ἐστὶ καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ
µηθενὶ µηθὲν ἔχει κοινόν, ὥσπερ φησὶν Ἀναξαγόρας, πῶς νοήσει, εἰ τὸ νοεῖν πάσχειν τί ἐστιν; ᾗ γάρ τι
κοινὸν ἀµφοῖν ὑπάρχει, τὸ µὲν ποιεῖν δοκεῖ τὸ δὲ πάσχειν. (‘But someone might ask: “If the intellect is
simple and impassible and has nothing in common with anything else, as Anaxagoras says, how will it
be able to think, if thinking is being affected by something? For it is in so far as there is something

  1
hearing, the actual hearing and the sound being heard are one and the same, intellect
when it is thinking is the same as the object of thought. And just as the faculty of
perception must be capable of receiving the object of sense perception, intellect must
be capable of receiving the objects of thought, and so it must potentially be all the
forms.
It is well known that later Platonists, chief among them Plotinus, took up this
thesis of Aristotle with great enthusiasm. One of the key texts in this regard is
Enneads V 3.5, a dense and obscure chapter in which Plotinus goes as far as to argue
that the numerical identity of knower and the object known is a necessary condition
for knowledge. The main question guiding the chapter is how intellect (in its universal
sense, as the product of the One and as ideal knower) can come to know itself.
Throughout, Plotinus wrestles with the problem that the very idea of self-knowledge
could seem to introduce a duality into the thing that comes to know itself. If, for
example, we conceive of knowledge by analogy with vision, we might be led to think
that should intellect ‘see’ itself with another part of itself, it will only come to know
itself through the part of it that ‘sees’. But the part of intellect that is ‘seen’ would not
‘see’ itself, and so not know itself.2 It will not do, continues Plotinus, to say that self-
knowledge is possible because the ‘seeing’ and the ‘seen’ part of intellect are exactly
alike, because the very idea of separating intellect into distinct parts is incoherent.3
The only conclusion to draw from this failure to explain intellect’s knowledge
of itself in terms of a part/part relationship, concludes Plotinus, is to reject the idea

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
common to both that one is thought to act and the other to be affected’).
2
Cf. Enn. V 3.5.1–3.
3
The precise nature of Plotinus’ argument against the view that intellect can be related to itself as part-
to-part is difficult to reconstruct, but I take it that something like the following is his thought. If there is
any division in the intellect, something must do the dividing. But if the part of intellect that is
contemplating is also doing the dividing, and, as it were, isolating one part of itself as the object of
contemplation, then only the object-part will come to be known in self-knowledge, not the
contemplating part itself (lines 7–15). Alternatively, if the contemplating part of the intellect produces a
part from itself that has already contemplated the intelligible objects, this latter part must contain the
intelligibles in some form. If the intelligible objects are contained in the completed act of
contemplation merely as impressions, the contemplating part will come to know itself only indirectly
(lines 15–21). Why these two alternatives are the only ones Plotinus is considering is a question of
some difficulty. See Emilsson (1995), 33–4 for a more detailed discussion than I can give here, and
Crystal (1998) for an overview of the problem.

  2
that there is some internal division between knower and the object known: what I
come to know is already in my mind, and the same as it:

Text 1: The contemplation must be the same as the contemplated, and intellect the same as the
intelligible; for, if not the same, there will not be truth; for the one who is trying to posses
realities will possess an impression different from the realities, and this is not truth. For truth
ought not to be truth of something else, but to be what it says. In this way, therefore, intellect
and the intelligible are one, and this is reality and the first reality, and also the first intellect
which possesses the real beings, or rather is the same as the real beings (tr. Armstrong, slightly
modified).4

In this passage, we can see that when defending the Identity Thesis Plotinus is at least
in part responding to the possibility that our whole knowledge of intelligible reality
may consist in no more than impressions of the objects of knowledge, but not the
realities themselves (I will refer to this possibility as the Skeptical Scenario from here
on).5 Sextus Empiricus had already exploited the putative differences between the
objects of perception and the impressions produced by these objects in order to argue
that knowledge cannot be gained through the senses, since nothing guarantees that the
inference from sense impressions to the objects producing these impressions is
justified.6 A parallel reasoning can be applied to the relation between intellect and the
intelligibles: if intellect comes to know only impressions or representations of the
intelligibles, it is at least logically possiblr that the impressions or representations may
not accurately capture the nature of the intelligibles themselves. Thus, by affirming
that the intellect is the same as the intelligibles, Plotinus maintains that the intellect,
the paradigmatic knower, can know itself as a whole, and that this self-knowledge of
the intellect is immediate and infallible. The Identity Thesis thus leaves no room for
any gaps between knower and object known that could somehow give rise to
misrepresentation or error on the part of the knower.

                                                                                                               
4
Enn. V 3.5.21–8: δεῖ τὴν θεωρίαν ταὐτὸν εἶναι τῷ θεωρητῷ, καὶ τὸν νοῦν ταὐτὸν εἶναι τῷ νοητῷ· καὶ
γάρ, εἰ µὴ ταὐτόν, οὐκ ἀλήθεια ἔσται· τύπον γὰρ ἕξει ὁ ἔχων τὰ ὄντα ἕτερον τῶν ὄντων, ὅπερ οὐκ
ἔστιν ἀλήθεια. Τὴν ἄρα ἀλήθειαν οὐχ ἑτέρου εἶναι δεῖ, ἀλλ’ ὃ λέγει, τοῦτο καὶ εἶναι. 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.
5
On this aspect of Plotinus’ discussion, see Crystal (1998).
6
See Sextus Empiricus, PH II.72.1–8.

  3
 Since the objects of thought are also ‘real beings’ in Plotinus’ philosophy, it
follows from the Identity Thesis that intellect and the ‘real beings’ are identical, or, to
put it slightly differently, that intellect and being are the same. Apart from its good
Aristotelian parentage, this thesis would also have provided Plotinus with ammunition
against the view that intellect’s activity of thinking somehow produces the intelligible
objects and thus the whole realm of being. Some version of this view was current in
Gnostic circles, and is targeted explicitly at Enn. V 8.7.7 This is not to say, of course,
that one cannot distinguish at least conceptually between the two. Although we are
here entering a minefield of controversy, at least some passages in Plotinus strongly
suggest that for him being is in some sense prior to intellect. Thus, for example,
Plotinus writes that ‘what is being thought must be prior to the thinking of it, or how
could we come to think of it?’ (V 9.7.16–7), and in a particularly obscure passage
claims that ‘we must conceive of being as prior to intellect’ and ‘posit that real beings
lie within what is thinking them’ (V 9.8.11–12).8
The idea that being should have some conceptual priority over thought
provides in many ways a good launching-point into later developments in Neoplatonic
thinking about knowledge and being, and will be a useful background against which
to consider Damascius’ own theory. Although, as I have said, Plotinus’ division
between intellect and being seems to have remained a purely conceptual one, it was
eventually turned into a full-blown ontological difference. When we get to the time of
Proclus, intellect is not only one step removed from being, but in fact becomes the
third member of the triad being, life and intellect. 9 In a sense Proclus is not
contributing anything very new to metaphysical system-building in Neoplatonism,
since this triad was well familiar to Plotinus, and common currency in the
philosophical and theological literature of late antiquity.10 Its remote ancestor is, of
course, Plato’s Sophist (248e6–249a8), where we are told that it would be a terrible
account that separates ‘what completely is’ (τὸ παντελῶς ὂν), i.e. being, from
intelligence and life.

                                                                                                               
7
I am indebted here to the comments by Hadot (1999), 277–8.
8
These and other relevant passages are discussed in Sorabji (2001), from which I have learned much.
9
On this triad, see especially Proclus ET 101 and 161. See also the useful discussion in Chlup (2012),
92–9.
10
For a survey of the evidence in Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, see Majercik (1992).

  4
 With Proclus’ triad of being, life and intellect, we have finally reached the
starting-point for Damascius’ own discussion of knowledge. Proclus’ triad is a
hierarchically ordered structure, such that intellect is ontologically posterior to life,
and life to being. This hierarchy has some important epistemological consequences:
clearly, intellect can no longer be identical with being, since being is ontologically
prior and does not require thought, while the converse is not true, i.e. intellect requires
being for its existence. The following text from the Elements of Theology neatly sums
up Proclus’ position:

Text 2: For true being is intelligible not as co-ordinate with intellect, but as perfecting it
without loss of transcendence, in that it communicates to intellect the gift of being and fills it
with a truly existent essence (ET 161.12–14; tr. Dodds, slightly modified).11

Thus, although Proclus is committed to the Plotinian Identity Thesis and holds that
there is an intellect, called the ‘first intellect’ or ‘intelligible intellect’ that is
numerically identical with the objects of thought, he also maintains that ‘real being’
or ‘true being’ is also intelligible, but intelligible only in the sense of being the first
cause of the intelligibles in intellect.
Rather than becoming embroiled in the finer details of Proclus’ position,
however, I wish to suggest that it is vulnerable to an objection that sums up the main
force of Damascius’ challenge to the Identity Thesis: given that intellect is
ontologically posterior to being, we need to explain exactly how they are related. The
characteristic activity of secondary natures in relation to their ontological superiors is
that of reversion, that is, of striving to return to that from which they have ultimately
derived their existence. In Plotinus’ metaphysics, intellect for example is both a
product of the One (it has ‘proceeded’ from the One) and also strives to return to the
One by a process of reversion.12 One common way of describing the mechanism of
reversion in Neoplatonic writing is through the image of an effect ‘desiring’ its cause.
If we apply this image to the relation between intellect and being, and say that
intellect desires being, and the human knower the object of knowledge, the very fact
that one can describe this process as ‘desiring’ suggests that there is already some
                                                                                                               
11
vοητὸν γάρ ἐστιν οὐχ ὡς τῷ νῷ συντεταγµένον, ἀλλ’ ὡς τελειοῦν ἐξῃρηµένως τὸν νοῦν, διότι
κἀκείνῳ τοῦ εἶναι µεταδίδωσι καὶ πληροῖ κἀκεῖνον τῆς ὄντως οὔσης οὐσίας.
12
The details of this process are well discussed in Emilsson (2007), ch. 2.

  5
distance between the two.13 It is this point that we will find Damascius pressing in his
discussion: if there is a gap between the knower and the object known, and intellect
and being, what ensures that knowledge is metaphysically possible?
In the remainder of this paper, I aim to show how Damascius faces up to the
Skeptical Scenario, i.e. the possibility of a radical disjunction between knowledge and
the object of knowledge (and between being and the manifestation of being) that his
own theory seems to invite.

2. Knowledge and its object

First, though, we need to consider Damascius’ theory of knowledge in more detail.
The following passage sets out his definition of knowledge in general terms:

Text 3: What then is knowledge (ἡ γνῶσις) really? Is it like a halo, the forerunner in the
procession of light that comes to be in the knower from the object known? Certainly
perception takes place in accordance with the sense impression (ἡ αἴσθησις κατὰ τὸ αἴσθηµα),
and imagination exists according to the impression (ἡ φαντασία κατὰ τὸν τύπον), and opinion
(ἡ δόξασις) and discursive thought (ἡ διανόησις) according to the content of thought and
opinion respectively (ἡ µὲν κατὰ τὸ διανόηµα, ἡ δὲ κατὰ τὸ δόξασµα). In general, then,
knowledge (ἡ γνῶσις) exists according to the content of knowledge (κατὰ τὸ γνῶσµα), so to
speak (De Princ. II.149.12–17 Combès-Westerink).14

Two things in this passage are particularly worth exploring. First, what is the meaning
of the metaphor of a ‘halo’ that comes to be known in the knower? And second, how
exactly are we meant to understand the analogy between, say, the sense impression in
the case of perception and the ‘content of knowledge’, or γνῶσµα, in the case of

                                                                                                               
13
Note here, first, that Damascius does not think that intellect coincides with being; instead, intellect is
a more differentiated form of the higher unity that is being. It is for this reason that intellect’s relation
to being can be explained in terms of an effect ‘reverting’ back to a cause. A second point worth
making is that Damascius can subsume the question of the relation between knowledge and the object
of knowledge under a more general discussion of intellect’s relation to being. If one thinks of intellect
as an ideal or paradigmatic knower, as well as the intelligible principle of knowledge, and of being as
the totality of all things that can be known, it becomes more understandable why a discussion of the
relation between intellect and being should be able to illuminate the question of the relation between
knowledge and object of knowledge.
14
See also Cohen (2010) 66–7 for discussion of this passage, as well as the detailed comments in
Metry-Tresson (2012), 305–17.

  6
knowledge?
I will begin with this last question, and return to the light metaphor later. The
term γνῶσµα is Damascius’ own invention, as the addition of ‘so to speak’ suggests
here, and does not, to my knowledge, occur anywhere else in Greek philosophical
literature. Its meaning will therefore have to be gathered from the analogies drawn in
the passage. Almost all the terms that are said to be comparable to γνῶσµα
(αἴσθηµα15, δόξασµα and διανόηµα) share the noun ending –µα, suggesting that they
are the product of the faculty under which they fall (sense-perception, opinion and
discursive thought), or the result of the activity of that faculty. The inclusion of
δόξασµα and διανόηµα in the list of terms that are analogous to γνῶσµα has led some
translators (e.g. J. Combès) to translate γνῶσµα as ‘object of knowledge’ (objet de
connaissance). This translation could be supported by the following reasoning: if a
διανόηµα is what is thought, then a γνῶσµα is what is known, and what else is known
if not the object of knowledge? But the continuation of the passage quoted just above
shows that some distinction between the γνῶσµα and the ‘object of knowledge’ (τὸ
γνωστόν) needs to be made:

Text 4: Is the content of knowledge the same as the object known, except in so far as it has
already been made substantial in the knower?16
[We say that] knowledge completely accords with this, but that knowledge does not consist in
this.
Τὸ δὲ γνῶσµά ἐστιν αὐτὸ τὸ γνωστόν, ἀλλ’ ἤδη τῷ γιγνώσκοντι ἐνουσιωµένον;
ἢ κατὰ µὲν τοῦτο πάντως ἡ γνῶσις, οὐ τοῦτο δὲ ἡ γνῶσις (De Princ. II.149.17–20).

The initial question in the passage presupposes that there is at least some difference
between γνῶσµα and the ‘object of knowledge’: the addition of ‘except in so far as it
has already been made substantial in the knower’, puzzling though it is, attempts to
spell out this difference. What makes the difference is apparently that the γνῶσµα is
‘made substantial’ (ἐνουσιωµένον) in the knower, unlike the object of knowledge.17

                                                                                                               
15
In the case of perception, it is worth noting that Aristotle, in Metaphysics IV.1010b33–34, defines
αἴσθηµα not as the object of perception, but rather ‘as what depends on an effect (πάθος) in the
recipient’.
16
Reading a full stop after εἰ οἷόν τε φάναι in l.17 and retaining the question mark in l.19 with Ruelle.
17
I take the force of ἐνουσιωµένον to be that a γνῶσµα becomes one and the same in substance with
the knower in the act of knowing. This view, of course, echoes Aristotle’s own; cf. De An. III.5.430a3–

  7
Plausibly, then, the γνῶσµα describes the mode in which an object of knowledge is
present to the knower, and so can be translated as ‘content of knowledge’.18
Damascius’ reply to the question whether the object of knowledge is the same
as the content of knowledge in text 4, introduced with ἢ, does not at first sight appear
to clarify matters. We cannot easily tell what the τοῦτο is meant to refer to on the two
occasions it occurs, and some serious guesswork is needed. A priori, there are only
two viable candidates for τοῦτο: either the object of knowledge, or the content of
knowledge. But it is conceivable that τοῦτο refers to something different each time, to
one thing in the µέν-clause, and a different thing in the δέ clause, which would give us
a total of four options:

Simple views
(1) Knowledge completely accords with the object of knowledge, but is not identical with it.
(2) Knowledge completely accords with the content of knowledge, but is not identical with it.
Mixed views
(3) Knowledge completely accords with the content of knowledge, but is not identical with the
object of knowledge.
(4) Knowledge completely accords with the object of knowledge, but is not identical with the
content of knowledge.

In order to decide which of these views is the best way of spelling out the meaning of
the Greek, it will be useful to make explicit some assumptions. First of all, I take it
that Damascius is not here revising his earlier definition of knowledge (in text 3,
above) in any radical way, but that he is rather refining the relation between the object
of knowledge and the content of knowledge. If any view among (1)–(4) is found to
openly conflict with his earlier definition of knowledge as being ‘in accordance with
the γνῶσµα’, that would be reason enough to reject it. By this criterion, options (1)
and (4) are not viable, because they commit Damscius to the claim that knowlege
accords with the γνωστόν, not with the γνῶσµα, and nothing in the preceding line (‘Is

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
4: ἐπὶ µὲν γὰρ τῶν ἄνευ ὕλης τὸ αὐτό ἐστι τὸ νοοῦν καὶ τὸ νοούµενον. For the same sense of
ἐνουσιωµένον in Doubts and Solutions, see De Princ. II. 119.4–6, where Damascius uses the term to
describe how the reason-principle (logos) of a whole plant ‘exists and is made substantial in the nature
of the earth (ὄντι καὶ ἐνουσιωµένῳ τῇ φύσει τῆς γῆς)’. On the meaning of ἐνουσιωµένον, see also
Metry-Tresson (2012), 329–31.
18
This view has first been defended by Andron (2004).  

  8
the content of knowledge the same as the object known, except in so far as it has
already been made substantial in the knower?’) invites the expectation that some
change from the definition of knowledge in text 3, as being in accordance with the
content of knowledge, is here envisaged.19 To find Damascius suddenly stating a
completely different thesis (namely that knowledge accords with the γνωστόν),
without warning or justification, would turn his presentation into a hopeless muddle.
To avoid the muddle, then, we have to pick between (2) and (3). Here, I will
simply make the observation that (2) is a true but trivial claim: to say that knowledge
‘accords with the content of knowledge’ is a fortiori to say that it is not identical with
it. If the two were identical, what would be the point in saying that one ‘completely
accords’ with the other? This process of elimination leaves us with (3) as the most
plausible candidate: knowledge completely accords with the content of knowledge,
but is not identical with the object of knowledge. Option (3) presents a non-trivial
epistemological thesis, and connects well to what was said before in text 3 and to
what Damascius will subsequently go on to say.20
But if (3) can best claim to encapsulate Damascius’ theory of knowledge, we
have yet to work out what it really means. For one, we are faced with the question
what sort of knowledge he is talking about here, knowledge of propositions or
knowledge of objects (‘knowledge by acquaintance’, in Russell’s terminology). It is
clearly compatible both with an understanding of knowledge in terms of objects and
of propositions to say that knowledge accords with the content of knowledge but is
not identical with the object of knowledge. Knowing the red chair or knowing that the
chair is red both accord with their knowledge content (whatever is represented to me
in my mind when I become acquainted with the red chair or grasp the proposition ‘the
chair is red’), and neither of them is identical with the red chair (the object of
knowledge). But it would be surprising that anyone thinking of knowledge in terms of
propositions, not objects, could ask the question we find Damascius posing in text 4
(‘Is the content of knowledge the same as the object known, except in so far as it has
already been made substantial in the knower?’). The knowledge-content of a
proposition, whatever it is precisely, is clearly not generally identical with the object
known. And so we may conclude that Damascius conceives of knowledge primarily

                                                                                                               
19
I am grateful to Ursula Coope for pointing out the possibility that it may be so read.
20
The same conclusion is reached by Metry-Tresson (2012), 322.

  9
as a cognitive grasp we have of objects, rather than in terms of true propositions that
we come to know about them.
The other conspicuous problem with the account of knowledge presented so
far, encapsulated in statement 3 (‘knowledge completely accords with the content of
knowledge, but is not identical with the object of knowledge’) is that it does not tell
us very much about how content and object of knowledge are related. More
specifically, it does not tell us how well the object of knowledge is represented in the
knowledge-content. Damascius’ approach to this last question is the subject of the
next section.

3. Being and its manifestation

A good place to begin this part of our enquiry is the strange metaphor (in text 3
above) of the ‘halo’ that acts ‘as a forerunner in the procession of light that comes to
be in the knower from the object known’ (De Princ. II.149.12–13).21 Here at least we
get an image of what sort of impression the γνῶσµα is: it is like light coming out from
the knowable object that becomes present in the knower, in analogy with sense-
perception. Every knower, we are told, seeks to grasp the object of knowledge and
attains it in so far as it is an object of knowledge, that is, presumably, in so far as it
can be represented in knowledge as knowledge-content (De Princ. II.149.21–22). But
we may wish to probe the light analogy further: how is the object of knowledge itself
related to the light that gets emitted from it?
As a first answer to this question, Damascius elaborates the thought that
underlies the earlier halo-metaphor, when he describes the relation between the object
of knowledge and being by analogy with the process of sense perception (De Princ.
II.150.4–8). He makes a distinction between the subsistence (ἡ ὑπόστασις) of an
enmattered form and its visible aspect. The visible aspect that ultimately reaches
perception is the projection of the enmattered form, i.e. the ensemble of qualities
produced in particular bodies. But the enmattered form’s visible aspect itself does not
directly disclose the real being of the enmattered form itself, which is undivided and a
single essence, and so not directly visible.
Yet how are we meant to transfer this analogy to the knower and the object of
knowledge, and, by extension, to the larger metaphysical issue of the relation between

                                                                                                               
21
The metaphor occurs in what I take to be a rhetorical question, to be answered in the affirmative.

  10
intellect, as the ideal knower, and being, as the ground of all intelligibility? In what
sense does being, as the object of knowledge that intellect strives to know, ‘shine
forth light’? The answer is that being produces a ‘manifestation’ of itself that acts as
the analogue of the visible aspect that the enmattered form projects and that makes it
perceptible. The clearest statement what ‘the manifestation’ of being is occurs in the
following passage:

Text 5: What do we mean when we talk about ‘the manifestation’ (τὸ φανόν)?
We say that it is that which allows [being] to appear to secondary natures and which
offers itself in a co-ordinate manner to those natures that want to enjoy it and that desire to
embrace the light that conducts it (De Princ. II.150.25–151.2).22

The idea of the ‘manifestation’ (τὸ φανόν)23 of being is crucial to understanding

Damascius’ theory of knowledge, and it is worth reflecting on what aspect of being it
represents, and how it does so. If we take seriously the thought expressed in this
passage, that a manifestation is that which allows being to appear to secondary
natures, we might think that the ‘manifestation’ is that aspect under which being is
known to intellect and lower entities. 24 In that case, there is a parallelism in
Damascius’ theory between the γνῶσµα, as the way in which the object of knowledge
features in the mind of the knower, and the φανόν, as the manifestation of being that
is accessible to intellect as the ideal knower. We then face the following question: is
the φανόν a genuine property of being or is it something that only exists in the
intellect? If the φανόν does indeed show up a genuine property of being, then the
claim that our knowledge of being is in accordance with the manifestation could be
paraphrased by saying that we only have partial knowledge of being, i.e. that we have
access to some genuine properties of being, while others remain hidden to us. One

                                                                                                               
22
Τί οὖν τὸ φανὸν τοῦτο λέγοµεν; ἢ τὸ φαίνεσθαι τοῖς δευτέροις ἀνεχόµενον καὶ εἰς συµµετρίαν ἑαυτὸ
παρεχόµενον τοῖς ἀπολαύειν αὐτοῦ βουλοµένοις, καὶ περιπτύσσεσθαι αὐτοῦ τὸ προποµπεῦον φῶς
ἐφιεµένοις.
23
‘τὸ φανόν’ could perhaps also be rendered as ‘what has become manifest’ of Being, rather than as
‘manifestation’, as I translate it. The latter may suggest an ongoing process, rather than the result of
that process. But since one is dealing with the timeless activity of Being, the process/result distinction
appears to be rather less pertinent, and I do not think much hinges on the choice of either translation
here. I am grateful to Terry Irwin for presenting this issue to me.
24
Cf. De Princ. II.150.2–4: ἢ τὸ µέν ἐστιν ἡ ὑπόστασις, τὸ δὲ γνωστὸν οἷον τὸ φανὸν τῆς ὑποστάσεως.

  11
might think here, to use a helpful illustration used by Cosmin Andron, of coming to
know one side of a cube.25 The knowledge of the side captures a genuine feature of
the object (the cube has the side that I come to know), but it is incomplete and
provides only a partial perspective on the object. If this is the thought behind
Damascius’ analysis of knowledge, we might want to label him a perspectivist.26 This
thesis stands quite separate from the potentially more radical notion that all our
knowledge of being is only a representation, and so to speak only exists in our minds.
This last thesis, let us call it the idealist thesis, leaves open the Skeptical Scenario that
nothing we think we know of being truly is a property of being; that the representation
we have of being does not reflect what being is in itself.
There is good evidence to suggest Damascius is committed to something like
the perspectivist thesis. Consider for example the following passage:

Text 6: Is then the whole [of being] not knowable but only the light, just as colour is only
visible to sight, but not the underlying substrate?
We say that this is indeed so, and there is nothing surprising about it. But it is even
necessary that something belonging to the first principles be always beyond the grasp of the
secondary ones and ineffable. And in the same way that which is in every way transcendent is
absolutely ineffable for all things, but each of the other things has an ineffable aspect unique
to it with regard to its secondary principles, and is relatively ineffable (De Princ. II.151.2–
10).27

                                                                                                               
25
Andron (2004), 122.
26
Cf. Plato’s critique of mimetic art, as only being able to touch upon a small part of each thing that it
represents, at Rep. X.598b. In the case of incorporeal entities that are not extended in three dimensions,
one has to face the question how talk about ‘perspectives’ should best be understood. One interesting
approach would be to think about relations among different items of knowledge, e.g. where a knower
may have a grasp of the form of beauty, but not of the form of virtue, and so lack a full understanding
of how beauty is different from justice. Intellect, as a perfect knower, would presumably know all the
relations among forms, unlike partial intellects who may at best attain a limited understanding of such
interrelations. I am grateful to Ronald Polansky for presenting this question to me.      
27
Οὐκ ἄρα ὅλον γνωστόν, ἀλλὰ µόνον τὸ φῶς, οἷον τῇ ὄψει τὸ χρῶµα µόνον ὁρατόν, ἀλλ’ οὐ τὸ
ὑποκείµενον; ἢ µάλιστα µὲν οὐδὲν θαυµαστόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀναγκαῖον εἶναί τι τῶν πρώτων ἀεὶ τοῖς
δευτέροις ἄληπτον καὶ ἀπόρρητον· οὕτω γὰρ καὶ τὸ πάντη ἐκβεβηκὸς ἀπόρρητον ἦν ἁπλῶς πρὸς
πάντα, τῶν δὲ ἄλλων ἕκαστον πρὸς τὰ δεύτερα µόνον ἑαυτοῦ τὸ ἀπόρρητον ἔχει καὶ γίγνεται πρός τι
ἀπόρρητον.

  12
The natural implication of this passage is, I think, that ‘the light’ is a genuine property
of being, just as colour is a quality of an object. In the case of material objects, the
‘underlying substrate’, which is presumably the same as matter devoid of qualities, is
not perceptible; what can be perceived are only the qualities that the bodies receive
once they are shaped by enmattered forms. Still, one wonders what the equivalent to
‘underlying substrate’ would be in the realm of being. Part of the answer to this
question is likely to be that whatever the equivalent to ‘underlying substrate’ in the
realm of being is, it will be ineffable for us, so that this line of enquiry looks like a
dead end. All I want to say about this passage, in any case, is that it would support the
perspectivist reading well: there is some property of being that we can perceive with
the mind, and there are many others, whatever they are, that we cannot.
If there is some textual support for thinking that Damascius was committed to
some sort of perspectivist thesis, though, it is not yet clear whether he is justified in
thinking that whatever intellect comes to know about being is in itself something that
discloses a part of the true nature of being, rather than simply some impression in our
minds that need not reveal anything in particular about being at all. We have already
seen that Plotinus made the possibility of intellect’s complete self-knowledge,
understood in terms of the numerical identity between thinker and the object of
thought, a criterion for the existence of truth. The question that remains to consider in
the rest of this paper is whether Damascius’ denial that the knower and the object of
knowledge are identical entails the Skeptical Scenario.
In reply to this question, it will be useful to point out the importance of the
notion of συµµετρία in Damascius’ thinking about intellect’s knowledge of being. We
have already encountered this notion in text 5, where we are told that the φανόν
‘offers itself in a co-ordinate manner (εἰς συµµετρίαν ἑαυτὸ παρεχόµενον) to those
natures that want to enjoy it’. Elsewhere, we are told that the φανόν is ‘like a light that
conducts being until it reaches the knower’ and that is ‘naturally co-ordinate
(συµµέτρως) with being’ (De Princ. II.150.9–11). What is the nature of this
‘correspondence’ (συµµετρία) between being and its manifestation, and why does
Damascius feel entitled to postulate it?
To tackle this problem, we can do no better than to look at the following

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

  13
passage, which brings us back to the idea that the affection that is produced by being
in intellect is the manifestation of being:

Text 7: But perhaps someone may wonder if intellect really [only] knows [the light that is] the
forerunner of being, but not being itself, even though intellect knows being according to its
manifestation.
We reply that this forerunner was said to be the manifestation of being, but not some
emanation from being, as the light on earth comes from the sun; rather, it is as if someone sees
the sun itself according to the inherent luminosity of its nature (De Princ. II.151.11–17).28

I suggest that the main notion at work here, namely that of the sun’s ‘inherent
luminosity’, can best be read against a passage from Plotinus, where the light of the
sun is compared to intellect. I will reproduce only the part of the passage from
Plotinus that deals directly with the sun, and leave out the interesting, and difficult,
account of intellect’s seeing that immediately follows:

Text 8: For even the light of the sun which it has in itself would perhaps escape our sense of
sight if a more solid mass did not lie under it. But if someone said that the sun was all light,
one might take this as contributing to the explanation of what we are trying to say: for the sun
will then be light which is in no form belonging to other visible things, and will be, perhaps,
purely visible: for the other visible objects are not pure light (Enn. III 5.7.11–16; tr.
Armstrong).29

If we read text 7 by Damascius against this passage from Plotinus, we might offer
something like the following line of thought: suppose you could see the light of the
sun directly, rather than as it is reflected on earth. This sort of light would then not be
something extraneous to the nature of the sun but part of it, since the sun’s nature, if
one substracts bodily mass from it, is purely visible and pure light. In the same way,
we should not think of the manifestation of being as an emanation from being but as
                                                                                                               
28
ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο ἴσως ἀπορήσειεν ἄν τις, εἰ τῷ ὄντι τὸ προποµπεῦον τοῦ ὄντος γιγνώσκει ὁ νοῦς, ἀλλ’
οὐκ αὐτό, κατὰ µέντοι τὸ φανὸν. ἢ τὸ φανὸν αὐτοῦ ἐλέγετο εἶναι τοῦτο δὴ τὸ προποµπεῦον, ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ
ἀπόρροιά τις ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ, ὡς ἀφ’ ἡλίου τὸ περίγειον φῶς, ἀλλ’ ὡς εἴ τις ὁρῴη τὸν ἥλιον αὐτὸν κατὰ τὴν
ἐν αὐτῷ λαµπρότητα τῆς φύσεως.
29
Ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῦ ἡλίου τὸ φῶς τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ τάχ’ ἂν τὴν αἴσθησιν ἐξέφυγεν, εἰ µὴ ὄγκος ἐπέκειτο αὐτῷ
στερεώτερος. Εἰ δέ τις φῶς πᾶν εἶναι αὐτὸν λέγοι, τοῦτο ἄν τις λάβοι πρὸς δήλωσιν τοῦ λεγοµένου·
ἔσται γὰρ φῶς ἐν οὐδενὶ εἴδει τῶν ἄλλων ὁρωµένων, καὶ ἴσως ὁρατὸν µόνον· τὰ γὰρ ἄλλα ὁρατὰ οὐ
φῶς µόνον.

  14
something that immediately reveals the nature of being in the same way that pure
light reveals the nature of the sun.
From the way Damascius’ imagined objector pursues the question in the lines
immediately following text 7, he does not seem to have fully grasped the sense of the
sun analogy, since he repeats the worry that the manifestation of being might yield no
more than a surface knowledge of being, just as seeing the colour of an object might
only give us partial knowledge about the underlying substrate of the visible object:

Text 9: Does intellect know only the surface then, since it knows the manifestation of being
like a colour?
We must conceive of the manifestation as pervading the whole [of being], and think
that there is no part of being which is not illuminated and strives towards becoming manifest,
as you would say of a crystal or of some other transparent object that it is visible as a whole,
because the nature of the visible has spread throughout the whole (De Princ. II.151.17–22).30

Here, Aristotle’s De Anima provides the relevant background to the crystal analogy:
things like air, water or indeed crystals have some transparent nature in them, which
is completely visible, though not of course ‘visible in itself’, as Aristotle puts it, but
only when some colour or another acts on it.31 In Damascius, the analogy is meant to
close off the skeptical possibility that the features of being that become manifest
cannot lead to the attainment of a true grasp of the nature of being but only to a
superficial kind of knowledge. What becomes manifest is not simply one surface part
of being, but the whole is all at once being manifested.
In the continuation of text 9, however, Damascius expresses his dissatisfaction
with the crystal analogy, recalling the earlier worry that the visible aspect of a thing
may not be the same as the real nature of that thing by itself:

Text 10: However, the body is one thing, and another the manifestation [of light] throughout
its entirety, so that even in the intelligible world manifestation would be different from being.

                                                                                                               
30
Οὐκοῦν τὸ ἐπιπολῆς γιγνώσκει µόνον, εἴπερ ὡς χρῶµά τι γιγνώσκοι τὸ φανὸν τοῦ ὄντος; ἢ δι’ ὅλου
τὸ φανόν νοητέον, καὶ µηδὲν εἶναι αὐτοῦ ὃ µὴ διαλάµπει καὶ σπεύδει πρὸς ἔκφανσιν, ὡς εἰ λέγοις
ὕαλον ἤ τι τῶν διαφανῶν ὅλον ὁρατόν, ὅτι δι’ ὅλου κεχώρηκεν ἡ τοῦ ὁρατοῦ φύσις.
31
Cf. De An. II.7.418b3–26 on light and the transparent. See also Ahbel-Rappe (1998), 354, who draws
an interesting parallel between a skeptical argument to the effect that body as it is in itself is
unknowable, in Sextus Empiricus Adv. Math. VII.93–94.

  15
 The same problem will return, namely first that [knowledge] is not of being, but of its
manifestation, which is something other than being; since in the case of something completely
transparent, it is not the body that is visible, but only the colour (De Princ. II.151.23–152.3).32

It seems that we have made little progress towards finding a solution to the puzzle that
being itself may be separate from the manifestation of being, and that knowledge of
the manifestation of being may only be a surface knowledge as compared to
knowledge of being in itself, just as a transparent body is not perceived in itself but
only the colour that shows up through the medium of the transparent.
Yet one textual detail from text 9 above may lead us towards some kind of
solution to the problem. In the passage, Damascius claims that being ‘strives’
(σπεύδει) towards becoming manifest,33 which could be taken to imply some kind of
agency on the part of being, as if it were intentionally making itself known to
intellect. While this may appear to be no more than a metaphor, I suggest that it
anticipates an understanding of causality that Damascius explicitly discusses only in a
later section of his account of knowledge (De Princ. II.156.19–158.23). On this
account of causality, being presents features of itself to intellect in a way that intellect
can come to know them, such that the possibility of knowledge (and, as one of the
conditions of reliable knowledge, the relationship of συµµετρία between being and
the manifestation and being, between the object of knowledge and the content of
knowledge) is anchored in the relationship between causes and their effects. Instead
of insisting that all the divisions that are present in intellect−such as the difference
between the knower and the knowable−are in no way present in being, which is
purely undifferentiated, Damascius seems to allow that being makes itself knowable
to the intellect as well as bringing about intellect. The general principle behind this
idea runs as follows:

Text 11: Therefore, the effect does not act on the cause, but the cause acts on itself and on the
effect. For together with the substance [of the effect] the cause also introduces the relationship
                                                                                                               
32
Ἀλλ’ ὅµως ἕτερον τὸ σῶµα καὶ ἕτερον τὸ δι’ ὅλου φανόν, ὥστε κἂν ἐκεῖ τὸ φανόν ἀλλο παρὰ τὸ ὄν·
καὶ πρῶτον µὲν ἐπανήξει τὸ αὐτὸ, µὴ τοῦ ὄντος εἶναι, ἀλλὰ τοῦ φανοῦ ἑτέρου ὄντος (καὶ γὰρ τοῦ
πάντῃ διαφανοῦς οὐ τὸ σῶµα ὁρατόν, ἀλλὰ τὸ χρῶµα µόνον).
33
I am assuming that αὐτοῦ in II.151.19 cannot well refer to τὸ φανόν, given that it would be
something of a tautology, if not outright nonsense, to say that the manifestation ‘strives towards
becoming manifest’ (σπεύδει πρὸς ἔκφανσιν).

  16
 of contrast, and, if one can say this, before it makes the produced and the effect and what is
capable of desire and what is capable of knowing, it makes itself knowable and desirable and
cause and producer (De Princ. II.158.17–22).34

What motivates this principle is the thought that the relationship between cause and
effect cannot be something brought about equally by both parties, since in that case
the effect would be able to act upon the cause, contrary to the view that beings of
lower ontological rank cannot affect their superiors. At the same time, however, some
form of relationship is necessary in order to explain causality at all. 35 And so we find
the novel principle, introduced with an apologetic ‘if one can say this’, that the cause
must also act upon itself in order to make itself the proper object of knowledge and
desire for that which it has produced.
Damascius’ answer to the skeptic, then, seems to be this: at the point of
generating intellect, being undergoes a change within itself. It does not change any of
the properties that it already has, nor does it gain any properties that were not already
there. Rather, one might say that the cause makes some of its features visible to the
effect, in order to facilitate the relationship between the two. 36 As a result, the
property of ‘being knowable’ that exists in an undifferentiated manner in being
becomes manifest as intellect separates itself out. What Damascius is in effect

                                                                                                               
34
οὐκ ἄρα τὸ αἰτιατὸν δρᾷ τι εἰς τὸ αἴτιον, ἀλλὰ τὸ αἴτιον εἴς τε ἑαυτὸ καὶ τὸ αἰτιατόν· ἅµα γὰρ τῇ
οὐσίᾳ καὶ τὴν σχέσιν συµπαράγει τῆς ἀντιπαραθέσεως, καί, εἰ οἷόν τε φάναι, πρὸ τοῦ ποιῆσαι τὸ
παραγόµενον καὶ τὸ αἰτιατὸν καὶ τὸ ὀρεκτικὸν καὶ τὸ γνωστικὸν ἑαυτὸ προποιεῖ γνωστόν τε καὶ
ὀρεκτὸν καὶ αἴτιον καὶ παράγον.
35
Cf. De Princ. II.156.19–157.8. See Proclus ET 28 for a discussion of the relation between causes and
their effects. Proclus insists on the necessity of causes producing like effects, but unlike Damascius he
does not suggest that the cause in some way changes itself in order to establish a relation to the effect,
only that the relation is a necessary consequence of the process of emanation. See also Ahbel-Rappe
(1998), 356–60 for useful comments on Damascius’ engagement with the problem of causation.
36
Daniel Cohen’s fine (2010) study is a useful complement to this paper. While I am emphasizing here
the degree to which Damascius is willing to say that the cause makes itself recognizable to the effect
and in a sense assimilates itself to it, Cohen puts emphasis on the opposite process by which the effect,
through reversion, makes itself like the cause, and the knower like the object of knowledge, in so far as
this is possible. On the complex interaction between being as the ‘undifferentiated’ and intellect, which
reveals ‘the knowable’ in being by making it determinate, see especially the discussion in De Princ. II.
152.6–154.7. The fact that Damascius can describe the relation between intellect and being from
intellect’s perspective as well as from that of being adds an additional complexity to his theory.

  17
proposing, in a rather radical manner, is that being as a cause does not remain
completely transcendent and unchanged in the process of generating intellect, but that
it acts on itself in order to become knowable.37 If we apply this principle to our earlier
discussion about the ‘manifestation’ of being that is the proper object of knowledge
for intellect, we can now see why this ‘manifestation’ cannot be radically different
from the true nature of being itself, given that it has been produced by being itself in
order to make the cause-effect relationship possible in the first place. Being makes
itself knowable to intellect; what is knowable can be described as the manifestation of
being; therefore being’s activity ensures that the connection between manifestation
and reality will be reliable and accurate. For although Damascius does not explicitly
say so, we are surely meant to infer that the kind of change that being produces in
itself will not be liable to mislead or deceive intellect in the act of knowing.
Moreover, the worry that all that intellect can come to know about being is a
projection of its own characteristics onto some higher principle unknowable in itself
can be resisted, because whatever can be known about that higher principle is the very
result of that principle’s activity in relation to its cause. The principle that underlies
this view of causality, while it does come close to sacrificing the transcendence and
unchangeable nature of first causes, is not therefore suggestive of any strong idealist
or skeptical leanings on Damascius’ part.38 Although he thinks that intelligible reality
is only accessible from a certain perspective, what intellect comes to know is
ultimately something that genuinely exists in being.

4. Conclusion

The main question I have tried to pursue in this paper is what sort of theory
Damascius is committed to, given that he seems to reject the Identity Thesis that

                                                                                                               
37
One might object that Damascius does not envisage anything stronger than ‘mere Cambridge
change’ when he describes how the cause introduces a relationship of contrast along with producing
the effect. On this line of argument, when being produces intellect, there is a knower which can come
to know being, with the result that being can stand in a relationship of ‘being knowable’ to intellect,
without changing itself in any way. But this reading cannot easily be reconciled with Damascius’ text:
if no more than ‘mere Cambridge change’ is relevant here, what sense, if any, can we give to the claim
that the cause ‘acts’ (δρᾷ) on itself?
38
On the transcendence of divine causes, see especially Proclus ET 75.

  18
Neoplatonists such as Plotinus saw as the ultimate guarantee of knowledge and truth.
Even though Damascius’ general epistemological thesis that knowledge accords
completely with the content of knowledge but is not identical with its objects, and that
intellect does not know being but only the manifestation of being, may appear to leave
him vulnerable to the  Skeptical Scenario, I hope to have shown that he goes to great
lengths to show that intellect can know more than just the surface of being. We have
seen that he rules out any suggestion that there could be a radical difference between
the manifestation of being and being in itself. His considered view is that intellect
comes to know being in a way that does not leave any room for skepticism and error.
In the last instance, then, Damascius’ theory of knowledge does not present a radical
shift towards skepticism or idealism. It is much rather an attempt to clarify problems
in the great metaphysical construct of Neoplatonism that Damascius had inherited
from his predecessors, and in particular it is an attempt to put the concept of intellect’s
reversion to being onto surer foundations than Proclus had done before. This, I have
argued, Damascius achieves by introducing a novel account of the relation between
causes and their effects.

  19
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