Revising my translation of the Elements of Theology, I came across a throwaway comment in proposition 119 that has not, as far as I know, received adequate attention in the literature. I think I’ll be writing an article about this, so I won’t go into great detail now. Above you find an image of the Greek as it will be appearing in my translation with facing Greek (I always bold the enunciation and underline the conclusion, also in the Portuguese translation). Below is a quick translation into English with the relevant remark in bold:
Proposition 119. Every god exists according to the Value beyond essence, that is, it neither has value nor is essentially valuable (for habits and essences have received a secondary and remote order away from the gods), but is a value beyond essence.
For if the Primary is Unity and Value, and qua Unity, it is Value, and qua Value, it is Unity, and the whole chain of the gods will have both the character of unity and of value according to a single unique property, and each god will not be a unity according to one property and a value according to another, but by that which makes it a unity, it is also a value, and vice versa. And as going forth from the Primary, the ones after the Primary have the character of value and unity, since that is Unity and Value; as gods, however, they are all unities and values themselves. Therefore, as the Unity of the gods is beyond essence, in the same manner is their value beyond essnece, not being something besides Unity. For each is not something else, and also a value, but just a value, in the same way that each is not something else, and then a unity, but just a unity.
Proclus has already shown in prop. 114 that every god is a divine unity and in prop. 115 that every god is beyond being. The purpose of this proposition is to show that it is also a value beyond being, i.e., it is a Value, it is not a being that has value through a property or whose essence is valuable. Thus, for instance, a god of purity does not have purity as a virtue (even in a maximal way) nor is its essence somehow pure, rather it just is the standard “purity.” Of course, gods are usually more complex than this, so the values are not so much like “purity” and “protection” and the like but things such as “Apollonianess” and “Dionisiacality”. (I think the Nietzschean contrast is a good way of thinking about how gods can be values, its only problem is that it stops at two gods.)
Now, what’s particularly interesting for understanding the status of Proclus’ gods is the contrast he draws between considering the gods as things that have “gone forth” from the primary and considering them as gods. According to the former persepctive the gods merely have the character of unity and value (they are ἑνοειδής and ἀγαθοειδὴς), whereas considering the gods “as gods” is to consider them as unities and values themselves (ἑνάδες καὶ ἀγαθότητες). This distinction is possible because “god” is not synonymous with “unity” in Proclus: a god is a self-complete unity together with the beings that incorporate (μετέχει) it. So it would be wrong to point to the sun and say “Look, a divine unity!”, but it is correct to point to it and say “Behold, a god!”. It makes sense, therefore, that the god qua god is a unity, since it is the divine unity that makes all that is incorporated divine, whereas what incorporates it merely has “the character of unity.”
What I have said until now is not novel. The new thing I noticed in prop. 119 is the contrast between “as gods” and “having gone forth”, which implies that "gods as gods”, i.e. divine unities, do not go forth from Unity itself. That is, to consider gods as gods is to consider them still remaining in Unity. There is much unclarity as to whether Proclus sees Unity itself as a principle from which the gods go forth in much the same way that souls go forth from Soul itself. From this proposition it would seem that this is not the case: the gods qua gods do not go forth at all. It is also interesting to notice the parallelism between “as gods” and “having gone forth” with the previous distinction between “each god”, which is a unity and a value and “the whole chain of the gods”, which merely has the character of unity and value. It would seem then that not only do the gods as such not go forth, but they only form a chain insofar as they are incorporated by beings. This confirms readings of other passages, which seem to imply that relations of superiority and inferiority amongst the gods are mere projections upon the gods of the relations between the beings that incorporate them.
This lone passage cannot decide anything about how to read Proclus’ work, which unfrotunately has many claims that, on the face of it, contradict each other with regard to the gods. But a quick review suggested to me that this particular passage hasn’t gotten much attention in the debates about Proclus’ henadology, and I hope readers will find it useful when considering the issue.
This reminds me of Proclus' critique of those who say that the First Hypothesis concerns "God and the Gods". Someone was just asking me about this, and I think it speaks to the same issue, namely that there isn't a hierarchy, chain or "pros hen" structure in the First Hypothesis.