"we can see (at least the Proclean) “chain of being” as a relation of totalities, each unified by Gods for which “movement” between them is an existential unification of self."
Mmm. My favourite way to summarize this insight is the way Butler says that in the intelligible-intellectual moment, each God sees the cosmos (or a cosmos) in the other.
Beautiful essay, Oluwaseyi. What a thrill to find this lovely essay today, and then to find that it cites my essay on matter and the gods in Proclus! Thanks for reading it and using it in your own beautiful writing. I feel I have found a new friend. I'm looking forward to reading more!
I just started writing on Substack less that a month ago. I've been using it to share about music and creative projects, which for me are often hymns to "what is".
Thank you for the kind words! Your article and dissertation are brilliant works, essential to a lot of my thinking these days. Thank you again so much.
Absolutely spot on with the chain of being as degrees of comprehensiveness and dynamism. Though I find myself wondering about the role of contrastive and agonistic dialectic in Proclean theology. He certainly endorses Hellenic (and broadly Mediterranean) polytheism which can easily be extended to religious systems he didn’t know. But even within his own polytheistic tradition, he sees the need to purify certain understandings of mythology—particularly certain conceptions of strife among the gods. Is there an irenic and non-violent project of “meta-theology” which requires at least some of this dialectical pressure against some theological and religious interpretations?
I suppose I am asserting this about Proclus and asking what sort of theological discourse you think is necessary between and within religious traditions. Does polycentricity also have an account of error or imperfection to go along with the affirmation of multiple ontological schemas co-existing?
I'm not sure I have an affirmative answer to that. For the Platonists, "Theology" would have as an example, Homer's Theogony. Applying it to Christianity, an example would be any biblical book, like the Gospel of John. That's "Theology", the science. Basically, the myths themselves (in writing or ritual enactment) are the first conversation being had about the Gods, so the idea of theological discourse between religious traditions would probably make no sense except insofar a new local tradition is being created in a discovery of a pantheon of Gods one would find in very different pantheons elsewhere. Insofar as the discourse is happening, it is within a common tradition, on a wider or smaller scale. Theology is always very "local" and "thick". If I am following Iamblichus, it seems the purpose of philosophy is to correct and guide people *to* their theologies anew, to bring out potential in it that one might have missed or misconstrued. Philosophy is always "thin", underdetermining of its objects, and able to more easily pass between traditions. But unlike Iamblichus, we can't afford to be naive about the "unchangeability" of tradition. Philosophy changes tradition, myths and/or theologies and how they are received and understood, and even apart from it, these traditions change. The thrust of polycentricity is not to preempt this process for the sake of one's axiology. I think, following Petter Hubner, we should acknowledge the situatedness of our own philosophical constructs so that others, within and outside the tradition, can engage and converse with it, rather than claim to have the absolute unchangeable discursive truth (a contradiction, I believe, in the Platonic tradition, even if platonists say those things) on the scope and shape of inter- and intra-traditional discourse. This is indeed how it works anyway, the "objective world" is reified by mass consent (manufactured or otherwise) within a (re)produced epistemological regime.
I’m asking how you, within a polycentric framework, if the desire for a generous metaphysical and theological diversity still allows you to say certain theological and philosophical are wrong or at least incomplete. And, since I assume you do, how does that process of correcting error (and being corrected) look like in practice for your religious-metaphysical horizon.
It allows me to say things are wrong *within* a context, and in conversation. For instance, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for a Christian to condemn the sacrifice of chickens in an Afro-brazilian tradition because of a belief in Christ's abolishment of animal sacrifice or as an argument against "animal cruelty", because what those ideas mean are determined a lot by the mythotopoi (even the "secular" mythotopoi) we live in. I couldn't tell them to just "allegorize" it. They can *take* from my method and allegorize it, but they will always do so from their centre within a mythotopoi, and change the details as they need. They might even use my logic in conversation with theirs to upend my conclusions (like how the Ifa tradition did with Jesus, reaffirming the necessity of sacrifice while acknowledging that he is an Orisha by seeing his story as a tragic tale of the result of his father not performing the required sacrifice). For me to give value judgements to them, I will have to be in the tradition itself, a member of it. This is what polycentricity requires at the very least. I can give value judgements to a Christian because I live in that millieu. I can speak about *some* things in the Yoruba tradition because I am Yoruba, but I don't know everything. I am not an initiate, hence my default mode is to distance myself from authoritative claims and try to construct my own personal ontology for it. The thing is, there is no handbook for applying this everywhere the same. No one has figured out the way to translate ethics perfectly in a way that doesn't lead to the usual problems. We are all innovating. What I'm doing on my end is making explicit that I am also innovating, to at least help keep from overreaching.
"we can see (at least the Proclean) “chain of being” as a relation of totalities, each unified by Gods for which “movement” between them is an existential unification of self."
Mmm. My favourite way to summarize this insight is the way Butler says that in the intelligible-intellectual moment, each God sees the cosmos (or a cosmos) in the other.
Beautiful essay, Oluwaseyi. What a thrill to find this lovely essay today, and then to find that it cites my essay on matter and the gods in Proclus! Thanks for reading it and using it in your own beautiful writing. I feel I have found a new friend. I'm looking forward to reading more!
I just started writing on Substack less that a month ago. I've been using it to share about music and creative projects, which for me are often hymns to "what is".
Thank you for the kind words! Your article and dissertation are brilliant works, essential to a lot of my thinking these days. Thank you again so much.
Absolutely spot on with the chain of being as degrees of comprehensiveness and dynamism. Though I find myself wondering about the role of contrastive and agonistic dialectic in Proclean theology. He certainly endorses Hellenic (and broadly Mediterranean) polytheism which can easily be extended to religious systems he didn’t know. But even within his own polytheistic tradition, he sees the need to purify certain understandings of mythology—particularly certain conceptions of strife among the gods. Is there an irenic and non-violent project of “meta-theology” which requires at least some of this dialectical pressure against some theological and religious interpretations?
I suppose I am asserting this about Proclus and asking what sort of theological discourse you think is necessary between and within religious traditions. Does polycentricity also have an account of error or imperfection to go along with the affirmation of multiple ontological schemas co-existing?
I'm not sure I have an affirmative answer to that. For the Platonists, "Theology" would have as an example, Homer's Theogony. Applying it to Christianity, an example would be any biblical book, like the Gospel of John. That's "Theology", the science. Basically, the myths themselves (in writing or ritual enactment) are the first conversation being had about the Gods, so the idea of theological discourse between religious traditions would probably make no sense except insofar a new local tradition is being created in a discovery of a pantheon of Gods one would find in very different pantheons elsewhere. Insofar as the discourse is happening, it is within a common tradition, on a wider or smaller scale. Theology is always very "local" and "thick". If I am following Iamblichus, it seems the purpose of philosophy is to correct and guide people *to* their theologies anew, to bring out potential in it that one might have missed or misconstrued. Philosophy is always "thin", underdetermining of its objects, and able to more easily pass between traditions. But unlike Iamblichus, we can't afford to be naive about the "unchangeability" of tradition. Philosophy changes tradition, myths and/or theologies and how they are received and understood, and even apart from it, these traditions change. The thrust of polycentricity is not to preempt this process for the sake of one's axiology. I think, following Petter Hubner, we should acknowledge the situatedness of our own philosophical constructs so that others, within and outside the tradition, can engage and converse with it, rather than claim to have the absolute unchangeable discursive truth (a contradiction, I believe, in the Platonic tradition, even if platonists say those things) on the scope and shape of inter- and intra-traditional discourse. This is indeed how it works anyway, the "objective world" is reified by mass consent (manufactured or otherwise) within a (re)produced epistemological regime.
I'm not sure I understand the question, or if you're asking this about Proclus. Could you clarify?
I’m asking how you, within a polycentric framework, if the desire for a generous metaphysical and theological diversity still allows you to say certain theological and philosophical are wrong or at least incomplete. And, since I assume you do, how does that process of correcting error (and being corrected) look like in practice for your religious-metaphysical horizon.
It allows me to say things are wrong *within* a context, and in conversation. For instance, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for a Christian to condemn the sacrifice of chickens in an Afro-brazilian tradition because of a belief in Christ's abolishment of animal sacrifice or as an argument against "animal cruelty", because what those ideas mean are determined a lot by the mythotopoi (even the "secular" mythotopoi) we live in. I couldn't tell them to just "allegorize" it. They can *take* from my method and allegorize it, but they will always do so from their centre within a mythotopoi, and change the details as they need. They might even use my logic in conversation with theirs to upend my conclusions (like how the Ifa tradition did with Jesus, reaffirming the necessity of sacrifice while acknowledging that he is an Orisha by seeing his story as a tragic tale of the result of his father not performing the required sacrifice). For me to give value judgements to them, I will have to be in the tradition itself, a member of it. This is what polycentricity requires at the very least. I can give value judgements to a Christian because I live in that millieu. I can speak about *some* things in the Yoruba tradition because I am Yoruba, but I don't know everything. I am not an initiate, hence my default mode is to distance myself from authoritative claims and try to construct my own personal ontology for it. The thing is, there is no handbook for applying this everywhere the same. No one has figured out the way to translate ethics perfectly in a way that doesn't lead to the usual problems. We are all innovating. What I'm doing on my end is making explicit that I am also innovating, to at least help keep from overreaching.
Yes, this makes perfect sense to me. Thanks for the clarification!