Proclus on the Vocation of Humanity

A new turn of thought

Proclus on Why the Soul Descends in Tim. III 324.6-19

ὅτι βούλεται μιμεῖσθαι τὸ προνοητικὸν τῶν θεῶν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πρόεισιν εἰς τὴν γένεσιν ἀφεῖσα τὴν θεωρίαν· διττῆς γὰρ οὔσης τῆς θείας τελειότητος, τῆς μὲν νοερᾶς, τῆς δὲ προνοητικῆς, καὶ τῆς μὲν ἐν στάσει, τῆς δ' ἐν κινήσει, τὸ μὲν μόνιμον αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ νοερὸν καὶ τὸ ἀκλινὲς ἀπεικονίζεται διὰ τῆς θεωρίας, τὸ δὲ προνοητικὸν καὶ τὸ κινητικὸν διὰ τῆς γενεσιουργοῦ ζωῆς. καὶ ὥσπερ ἡ νόησις αὕτη μερική ἐστιν, οὕτω καὶ ἡ πρόνοια μερική, μερικὴ δὲ οὖσα περὶ σῶμα διατρίβει μερικόν. ἔτι δὲ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ κόσμου τελειότητα συντελεῖ· δεῖ γὰρ εἶναι μὴ μόνον τὰ ἀθάνατα ζῷα καὶ νοερά, οἷα παρὰ τοῖς θεοῖς, μηδὲ τὰ θνητὰ καὶ ἀλόγιστα, οἷα δή ἐστι τὰ τελευταῖα τῆς δημιουργίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅσα μεταξὺ τούτων, ἀθάνατα μὲν οὐδαμῶς ὄντα, λόγου δὲ καὶ νοῦ μετέχειν δυνάμενα.

The soul descends into bodies because it wants to imitate the charity of the gods and, on this account, it goes forth into generation, abandoning contemplation. For divine perfection is of two kinds, the one is providential, the other is charitable, and since the one resides in rest and the other in change, the soul represents the stable, providential and unwavering perfection of the gods through contemplation, but the charitable and change-inducing perfection through the life that works generation. And just as the providential epiphany of the soul is itself particular and partial, so is also its charity particular and partial, and since it is such, it concerns itself with a particular and partial body.

Furthermore, the descent of the soul contributes to the perfection of the cosmos. For it is necessary that there be not only the immortal and providential living beings, which exist with the gods, nor only the mortal and irrational ones, which are the ultimate ends of the cosmic engineering, but that there be also some intermediate living beings, which, while not being immortal, are nonetheless capable of incorporating reason and providence.

Proclus gives us here an account of why the soul descends from the heavens - that is, why give life to a human being, for every soul in its first descent gives life to a human being. He is explaining, therefore, why are there human beings. And what he says is something that has escaped me until now.

I have for a few years now, studied and expounded Proclus’ arguments on the necessity of evil in the world. How the gods organize life on earth as a honey trap, so that most human beings choose vicious, evil lives, and thus are reborn as different kinds of irrational animals. Because only the vicious are reborn as animals and every animal requires a soul for its individual self-motion. This generates a rather depressing explanation of human beings: a precious few are meant to be philosophers, and the majority are condemned to be beasts. We are all transanimals: the wise behave as celestial ones, the many as irrational ones, and in between we lose sight of what an integrated human life might be like.

Being a human being cannot just be a half-way house for the irrationalization of souls and their passing into all the other species of animals. There must be a reason for the existence of humankind in itself, some special good realized by it. The multitude of animal species are desired by the gods because they reflect the multitude of the gods themselves: they are “the ultimate ends of the cosmic engineering”, the production of a perfect image of the Intelligized Animal, the reunion of all the gods in Being prior to their discrimination in the Place Beyond Space. For the same reason, all the heavenly bodies exist: to make the world a shrine of the gods. Now, if the gods have images in the heavens, and they have images amongst the beasts, shouldn’t they want also intermediate images, rational, embodied images? Isn’t that the purpose of human beings and also of human diversity?

The germ of this idea occurred to me when preparing a presentation on “guardian deities” of cities in Proclus. Surely, I realized, this expression has it backwards: a god is not the guard of a city as if the city were more precious than the god; the city exists for the sake of the god and it is insofar as it fulfills its function that it is protected and guarded. So it is wrong, technically to say that each city and each clan has its guardian deity - rather it is the deities who control the human groups, just like the individual humans control their own bodies. A multi-generational, stable human group for Proclus is a great living being, the body of a daimon, of a spirit.

(It is in this sense that the body that we care for is not only a particular body, but a “particular and partial” body, as I translated above. It is a particular, individual body, but it is also a partial one because it is always part of one or more greater bodies, the body of the family and the city and the nation and ultimately of humanity.)

We choose therefore to descend so that there might be a rational and mortal worship of the gods. For even the sunflower that bends with the sun and the cock that crows with its rising are praying, and we pray as well with morning prayer and evening prayer. For their must be prayer at every level of being.

Proclus also observes that we descend so as not to imitate only the providential, but the charitable perfection of the gods. For the gods qua gods do not exercise providence, in the sense of a prior comprehension of being and an organization of the world according to their ends - that is the province of nous. The gods qua gods bestow value on beings that have no value in themselves, they love from above, they love with charity and thus pour their value out onto the world, constituting thus the ends and goods according to which nous can then know and organize the world. And thus we do not desire solely to imitate the providential activity of the gods, their prior and eternal activity of producing the world as constituted by so many universal realities, Universal Beauty, Justice and Truth, the Universal Man, Horse and Eagle, but to imitate their charitable activity, the activity by which they institute the values of this world, the last things and things of ultimate concern, the sources of manic passion and desire. And how do the gods give value to things? By owning those things, by saying “It is I”: “I am in the wine, I am in the vine, I am in the bull, I am in the ecstasy”. And so do we say “It is I” and take possession of our bodies, and lead it to those things that we desire, which we identify with, ultimately with the god that whispers in our conscience saying “It is I: You are mine”.

There must be as many human groupings as there are deities, and human society must be so complex and admit of so many interlapping and interlocking groups in order to mirror the unity and multiplicity of the gods. This is a political philosophy that follows from the vocation of human beings as rational, mortal worshippers of the gods. It does not, crucially, aim to make all humans into saints, into pure souls, even into philosophers. The philosopher for Proclus is already on his way out of the human condition, he is really an exception, Proclus himself clearly has a death wish from Marinus’ account of his biography. It is only by a Christian bias (and the megalomania of youth) that one reads the Neoplatonists say “we should flee matter and join the gods” and says “I MUST abandon my body”. The philosophers are few, the temperament is not given to all, their vocation is not universal. The universal vocation is prayer and to do that we must find each our unique gods.

The philosophical interpretation of the myths as allegories of divine principles is to see them as they are in their causes, kat’aitian; the cynical interpretation of the myths, which sees only their effects in the manipulation of the crowd is to see them in their effects, kata methexin. But the religious, tautegorical intepretation of the myths, as describing the very life of the gods we serve, this is to see them in themselves, in their proper domain of existence, the deified imagination in which human beings find their fulfillment.