Abstract
In henadological Platonism, the significance of “the One” is understood to lie, not in an eminent singular entity, but in the modes of unity and the ways of being a unit. The science of units qua units is a systematic ground and counterweight to substance-based ontology, and manifests an organic bond with theology as the science of relation to supra-essential individuals or Gods. Because of the basic nature of unity relative to being, doctrines respecting unity tend to situate themselves as critiques of ontology; they exhibit both an analytical and a soteriological value. For its part, bhakti is not a mere sectarian movement but rather an inquiry at once speculative and practical into the nature of the relationship between the human and the divine. It bridges the diverse genres of ancient Indian thought (including the theophanic/cultic, the epic, along with diverse philosophical perspectives) and displays key commonalities with henadological Platonism. This paper begins the process of identifying these common themes with particular reference to the Bhagavadgītā. Chief among its themes is the distinction between structuring cause and structured mixture, which runs through Platonism from the Phaedo to the doctrine of principles, and which parallels the account of action in the Gītā as freedom independent of result, insofar as the latter pertains to the solidarity of worldly causality heteronomous to the agency of the ātman.
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Notes
On the Mahābhārata as “the principal monument to bhakti,” see Adluri and Bagchee (2016), pp. 91–103. My term “bhakti theory” should be understood to have the same sense as Adluri’s term “philosophy of bhakti” as used “to describe the intellectual aspects of Bhakti, specifically its cognitive-theoretical insight into the relation of the One and the many,” (Ibid., p. 79 n. 2).
Adluri (2014), p. 92.
Of the sort criticized in Adluri and Bagchee (2014); see especially chap. 3, “The Search for the Original Gītā.”
On the principles associated with such a hermeneutic, see further Butler (2016a).
Mar Gregorios (2002), p. 25.
See the remarks of Damascius, In Phaed. I, 172, in which we may clearly count Damascius himself in the “hieratic” tendency, given his strong affinities with both Iamblichus and Proclus.
Moreover, Mar Gregorios conflates theurgy and Gnosticism (26), even though Plotinus’ reasons for criticizing Gnosticism are such as “theurgical” Platonists like Iamblichus and his successors would have shared; in particular, the fact that the Gnostics “contract the divine into one” (Enneads II.9.9.36–7), i.e., that they were monotheists. More importantly, however, Mar Gregorios shows no grasp here of the theoretical basis of theurgy, on which see, e.g., Shaw (2014), Addey (2014); see as well Butler (2007), for the specific henadological grounding of theurgy, and Butler (2016b) on the continuities between Plotinus and the subsequent Platonic tradition on the key points in this respect. It is also unclear what Mar Gregorios intends to convey by his claim that “most of [Plotinus’ successors] were Asians who put more emphasis on acts of worship than on mental or intellectual exercises” (ibid.). There seems little point in characterizing quintessentially Hellenized Syrians such as Iamblichus and Damascius, or a Phoenician such as Porphyry, or a Lycian such as Proclus as “Asian” in any particular sense, much less the seemingly stereotypical one here.
Viz. E. R. Dodds’ famous denunciation of Iamblichus’ De mysteriis as “a manifesto of irrationalism, an assertion that the road to salvation is found not in reason but in ritual” (1951, p. 287). For a perceptive assessment of Dodds’ attitude toward the later antique Neoplatonists, see Hankey (2007).
On bhakti as “emotionalism,” see Adluri and Bagchee (2016), p. 88.
Passages from the Gītā are as translated by Van Buitenen (1981).
On the emergence of ontology through the inquiry into brahman, see further Butler (2017).
Biardeau (1994), pp. 88ff.
“Existence” as distinct from Being renders the terminological distinction in the later antique Platonists between huparxis, on the one hand, and einai, to on, or, most analogously, hupostasis on the other. Henadological Platonism may in this respect be very cautiously termed an existentialism.
Etienne Gilson (in L’être et l’essence (Paris: J. Vrin, 1948)), who coined the term “henology,” seems to have been the first modern thinker to speak of an opposition between henology and ontology, which is further developed in the works of Jean Trouillard, e.g., L’un et l’âme selon Proclos (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1972); see also Hankey (1980); Schürman (1983). It would be fair to say, however, that modern authors, under the spell to varying degrees of the monotheistic appropriation of Platonic thought, which reifies the One and obscures its systematic function as principle of individuation, have not gone far enough in appreciating that the core of this opposition lies in grasping the metaphysical priority for henology of individuation (“who”) to formal differentiation (“what”).
For polytheisms as “religions of relation” I am indebted to Thrax (2015).
De Lacy (1977) offers a thorough discussion of the term’s documented usage prior to Cicero and the use he makes of the concept (presumably following Panaetius) in De Officiis.
The Christian usage is complicated by the tendency to translate hypostasis also sometimes as “person” when referring to the Trinity, though properly “person” has nothing to do with the sense of this term.
Volf (1998), p. 67.
On the sense in which the Gods form a “(quasi-)class,” one which does not conform to the rules of Platonic class-logic as laid out, e.g., at Elements of Theology prop. 21 and 66, see Butler (2008c).
For more on this reading of the Platonic “paradigm,” see Butler (2014).
On the two modes of reversion, see Butler (2007). See also Adluri and Bagchee (2016), where it is argued that “to use a Plotinian expression … Bhakti is best understood as a kind of reversion, simultaneously intellectual and experiential, in which the soul through insight into its relation to a greater totality comes to rest in itself,” (118).
See the discussion of the philosophical significance of Plato’s recourse to reincarnation in Butler (2014). By contrast, choice plays only a very small part in Indian accounts of reincarnation; this, however, I would argue, has to do with the much narrower role reincarnation is playing in Plato. It should be noted that similar consequences of the doctrine of reincarnation for the philosophical question of individuation arise in Madhva, for whom the doctrine plays a crucial role in his argument for intrinsic difference (svarūpabheda) (see, e.g., Sharma (1962), pp. 196–203).
Though a praxis be performed for some extrinsic end, it seems that it is still a praxis (Nic. Eth. 1105a30–35), and does not become production, since the genus of praxis and of poiēsis are different (1140b3–4).
Because an integral unit can have no attribute by participation (Proclus, Elements of Theology, prop. 118), which means that all the attributes of such a unit are themselves unique and inalienable.
Note in this regard the criticism of Malinar in Adluri and Bagchee (2016), p. 109 n. 59. Malinar seeks to reduce bhakti to the articulation of social power relations. In Malinar’s words, “the relationship between the highest god and a potential king is made the model of the new theological interpretation of bhakti which implies exclusiveness and subordination.”
Plutarch, Amatorius 13, trans. Goodwin, modified.
On the technical sense of “paternal” here, see Butler (2016b), pp. 156–9. Briefly, the term designates the most primordial phase of activity of any God (including, as it so happens, Goddesses).
For a programmatic statement of “negations … [as] causes of the corresponding assertions,” see Proclus, In Parm. 1072.19–1077.18. On “transcendent negation” see also Martin (1995).
“Existence,” as opposed to Being, which pertains to the henads as huperousios, “supra-essential,” translates the Greek term huparxis. Historically speaking, this is the origin of the priority of “existence” over “essence” which we find in Avicenna, et al. and then in modern “Existentialist” thought, albeit of course this doctrine’s roots in polytheistic henadology were quickly forgotten.
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Butler, E.P. Bhakti and Henadology. DHARM 1, 147–161 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-018-0004-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-018-0004-6