A Critical History of Greek Philosophy by W. T. Stace (short story to read txt) 📖

CHAPTER XVIII

TRANSITION TO NEO-PLATONISM

It has been doubted whether Neo-Platonism ought to be included in Greek philosophy at all, and Erdmann, in his "History of Philosophy," places it in the medieval division. For, firstly, an interval of no less than five centuries separates the foundation of Neo-Platonism from the foundation of the preceding Greek schools, the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Sceptic. How long a period this is will be seen if we remember that the entire development of Greek thought from Thales to the Sceptics occupied only about three centuries. Plotinus, the real founder of Neo-Platonism, was born in 205 A.D., so that it is, as far as historical time is concerned, a product of the Christian era. Secondly, its character is largely un-Greek and un-European. The Greek elements are largely swamped by oriental mysticism. Its seat was not in Greece, but at Alexandria, which was not a Greek, but a cosmopolitan, city. Men of all races met here, and, in particular, it was here that East and West joined hands, and the fusion of thought which resulted was Neo-Platonism. But, on the other hand, it seems wrong to include the thought of Plotinus and his successors in medieval philosophy. The whole character of what is usually called medieval philosophy was determined by its growth upon a distinctively Christian soil. It was {369} Christian philosophy. It was the product of the new era which Christianity had substituted for paganism. Neo-Platonism, on the other hand, is not only unchristian, but even anti-christian. The only Christian influence to be detected in it is that of opposition. It is a survival of the pagan spirit in Christian times. In it the old pagan spirit struggles desperately against its younger antagonist, and finally succumbs. In it we see the last gasp and final expiry of the ancient culture of the Greeks. So far as it is not Asiatic in its elements, it draws its inspiration wholly from the philosophies of the past, from the thought and culture of Greece. On the whole, therefore, it is properly classified as the last school of Greek philosophy.

The long interval of time which elapsed between the rise of the preceding Greek schools, whose history we have traced, and the foundation of Neo-Platonism, was filled up by the continued existence, in more or less fossilized form, of the main Greek schools, the Academic, the Peripatetic, the Stoic, and the Epicurean, scattered and harried at times by the inroads of scepticism. It would be wearisome to follow in detail the development in these schools, and the more or less trifling disputes of which it consists. No new thought, no original principle, supervened. It is sufficient to say that, as time went on, the differences between the schools became softened, and their agreements became more prominent. As intellectual vigour wanes, there is always the tendency to forget differences, to rest, as the orientals do, in the good-natured and comfortable delusion that all religions and all philosophies really mean much the same thing. Hence eclecticism became characteristic of the schools. {370} They did not keep themselves distinct. We find Stoic doctrines taught by Academics, Academic doctrines by Stoics. Only the Epicureans kept their race pure, and stood aloof from the general eclecticism of the time. Certain other tendencies also made their appearance. There was a recrudescence of Pythagoreanism, with its attendant symbolism and mysticism. There grew up a tendency to exalt the conception of God so high above the world, to widen so greatly the gulf which divides them, that it was felt that there could be no community between the two, that God could not act upon matter, nor matter upon God. Such interaction would contaminate the purity of the Absolute. Hence all kinds of beings were invented, demons, spirits, and angels, intended to fill up the gap, and to act as intermediaries between God and the world.

As an example of these latter tendencies, and as precursor of Neo-Platonism proper, Philo the Jew deserves a brief mention. He lived at Alexandria between 30 B.C. and 50 A.D. A staunch upholder of the religion and scriptures of the Hebrew race, he believed in the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament. But he was learned in Greek studies, and thought that Greek philosophy was a dimmer revelation of those truths which were more perfectly manifested in the sacred books of his own race. And just as Egyptian priests, out of national vanity, made out that Greek philosophy came from Egypt, just as orientals now pretend that it came from India, so Philo declared that the origin of all that was great in Greek philosophy was to be found in Judea. Plato and Aristotle, he was certain, were followers of Moses, used the Old Testament, and gained their wisdom therefrom! {371} Philo's own ideas were governed by the attempt to fuse Jewish theology and Greek philosophy into a homogeneous system. It was Philo, therefore, who was largely responsible for contaminating the pure clear air of Greek thought with the enervating fogs of oriental mysticism.

Philo taught that God, as the absolutely infinite, must be elevated completely above all that is finite. No name, no thought, can correspond to the infinity of God. He is the unthinkable and the ineffable, and His nature is beyond the reach of reason. The human soul reaches up to God, not through thought, but by means of a mystical inner illumination and revelation that transcends thought. God cannot act directly upon the world, for this would involve His defilement by matter and the limitation of His infinity. There are therefore intermediate spiritual beings, who, as the ministers of God, created and control the world. All these intermediaries are included in the Logos, which is the rational thought which governs the world. The relation of God to the Logos, and of the Logos to the world, is one of progressive emanation. Clearly the idea of emanation is a mere metaphor which explains nothing, and this becomes more evident when Philo compares the emanations to rays of light issuing from an effulgent centre and growing less and less bright as they radiate outwards. When we hear this, we know in what direction we are moving. This has the characteristic ring of Asiatic pseudo-philosophy. It reminds us forcibly of the Upanishads. We are passing out of the realm of thought, reason, and philosophy, into the dream-and-shadow-land of oriental mysticism, where the heavy scents of beautiful poison flowers drug the intellect and obliterate thought in a blissful and languorous repose.

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CHAPTER XIX

THE NEO-PLATONISTS

The word Neo-Platonism is a misnomer. It does not stand for a genuine revival of Platonism. The Neo-Platonists were no doubt the offspring of Plato, but they were the illegitimate offspring. The true greatness of Plato lay in his rationalistic idealism; his defects were mostly connected with his tendency to myth and mysticism. The Neo-Platonists hailed his defects as the true and inner secret of his doctrine, developed them out of all recognition, and combined them with the hazy dream-philosophies of the East. The reputed founder was Ammonius Saccas, but we may pass him over and come at once to his disciple Plotinus, who was the first to develop Neo-Platonism into a system, was the greatest of all its exponents, and may be regarded as its real founder. He was born in 205 A.D. at Lycopolis in Egypt, went to Rome in 245, founded his School there, and remained at the head of it till his death in 270. He left extensive writings which have been preserved.

Plato had shown that the idea of the One, exclusive of all multiplicity, was an impossible abstraction. Even to say "the One is," involves the duality of the One. The Absolute Being can be no abstract unity, but only a unity in multiplicity. Plotinus begins by ignoring this {373} supremely important philosophical principle. He falls back upon the lower level of oriental monism. God, he thinks, is absolutely One. He is the unity which lies beyond all multiplicity. There is in him no plurality, no movement, no distinction. Thought involves the distinction between object and subject; therefore the One is above and beyond thought. Nor is the One describable in terms of volition or activity. For volition involves the distinction between the willer and the willed, activity between the actor and that upon which he acts. God, therefore, is neither thought, nor volition, nor activity. He is beyond all thought and all being. As absolutely infinite, He is also absolutely indeterminate. All predicates limit their subject, and hence nothing can be predicated of the One. He is unthinkable, for all thought limits and confines that which is thought. He is the ineffable and inconceivable. The sole predicates which Plotinus applies to Him are the One and the Good. He sees, however, that these predicates, as much as any others, limit the infinite. He regards them, therefore, not as literally expressing the nature of the infinite, but as figuratively shadowing it forth. They are applied by analogy only. We can, in truth, know nothing of the One, except that it is.

Now it is impossible to derive the world from a first principle of this kind. As being utterly exalted above the world, God cannot enter into the world. As absolutely infinite, He can never limit Himself to become finite, and so give rise to the world of objects. As absolutely One, the many can never issue out of Him. The One cannot create the world, for creation is an activity, and the One is immutable and excludes all {374} activity. As the infinite first principle of all things, the One must be regarded as in some sense the source of all being. And yet how it can give rise to being is inconceivable, since any such act destroys its unity and infinity. We saw once for all, in the case of the Eleatics, that it is fatal to define the Absolute as unity exclusive of all multiplicity, as immutable essence exclusive of all process, and that if we do so we cut off all hope of showing how the world has issued from the Absolute. It is just the same with Plotinus. There is in his system the absolute contradiction that the One is regarded, on the one hand, as source of the world, and on the other as so exalted above the world that all relationship to the world is impossible. We come, therefore, to a complete deadlock at this point. We can get no further. We can find no way to pass from God to the world. We are involved in a hopeless, logical contradiction. But Plotinus was a mystic, and logical absurdities do not trouble mystics. Being unable to explain how the world can possibly arise out of the vacuum of the One, he has recourse, in the oriental style, to poetry and metaphors. God, by reason of His super-perfection, "overflows" Himself, and this overflow becomes the world. He "sends forth a beam" from Himself. As flame emits light, as snow cold, so do all lower beings issue from the One. Thus, without solving the difficulty, Plotinus deftly smothers it in flowery phrases, and quietly passes on his way.

The first emanation from the One is called the Nous. This Nous is thought, mind, reason. We have seen that Plato regarded the Absolute itself as thought. For Plotinus, however, thought is derivative. The One is beyond thought, and thought issues forth from the One {375} as first emanation. The Nous is not discursive thought, however. It is not in time. It is immediate apprehension, or intuition. Its object is twofold. Firstly, it thinks the One, though its thought thereof is necessarily inadequate. Secondly, it thinks itself. It is the thought of thought, like Aristotle's God. It corresponds to Plato's world of Ideas. The Ideas of all things exist in the Nous, and not only the Ideas of classes, but of every individual thing.

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