Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles

Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles

First philosophy

"Damascius was head of the Neoplatonist academy in Athens when the Emperor Justinian shut its doors forever in 529. His work, Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles, is the last surviving independent philosophical treatise from the Late Academy. Its survey of Neoplatonist metaphysics, discussion of transcendence, and compendium of late antique theologies, make it unique among all extant works of late antique philosophy. It has never before been translated into English. The Problems and Solutions exhibits a thorough?going critique of Proclean metaphysics, starting with the principle that all that exists proceeds from a single cause, proceeding to critique the Proclean triadic view of procession and reversion, and severely undermining the status of intellectual reversion in establishing being as the intelligible object. Damascius investigates the internal contradictions lurking within the theory of descent as a whole, showing that similarity of cause and effect is vitiated in the case of processions where one order (e.g. intellect) gives rise to an entirely different order (e.g. soul). Neoplatonism as a speculative metaphysics posits the One as the exotic or extopic explanans for plurality, conceived as immediate, present to hand, and therefore requiring explanation. Damascius shifts the perspective of his metaphysics: he struggles to create a metaphysical discourse that accommodates, insofar as language is sufficient, the ultimate principle of reality. After all, how coherent is a metaphysical system that bases itself on the Ineffable as a first principle? Instead of creating an objective ontology, Damascius writes ever mindful of the limitations of dialectic, and of the pitfalls and snares inherent in the very structure of metaphysical discourse."--

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press

2010

translated from the Greek by Sara Ahbel-Rappe

Series: AAR religion in translation.

Introduction to the life and the philosophy of Damascius -- On the Ineffable. On the ineffable -- Ascent to the first principle -- On the One. On the One and on the knowledge of the One -- On the One and all things -- On procession from the One -- The causality of the One -- On the merits of Iamblichus' position concerning the number of principles -- On the Intelligible Triad. Limit and unlimited -- On the third henad -- On Being as the Unified. On the unified substance -- Intelligible being -- On Reversion. On the differentiation of the unified -- On knowledge -- On the Many. On parts -- On the procession of the unified -- On the intellective procession -- Summaries and Comparisons. On the intelligible triads.

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