Neoplatonic epistemology: knowledge, truth and intellection
Neoplatonic epistemology generally is rooted in the Platonic–Aristotelian account of knowledge (episteme) and belief (doxa), reflection on the materialist challenge to this account by the Stoics, and a response to the later Pyrrhonian arguments against the very possibility of wisdom, the central pretension of all “dogmatists”
Since Neoplatonists saw no essential difference between Plato and Aristotle regarding fundamental epistemological matters, they felt free to draw on both in order to meet the challenges posed by their opponents. The central challenge comes from materialism: first, for Plato and Aristotle, probably from Atomists and then later, more powerfully, from the Stoics themselves. The present chapter will focus on the fundamental elements in the integration of the Platonic–Aristotelian account into the larger Neoplatonic metaphysical framework.
In Timaeus, Plato explains the nature of this challenge (see Ti. 51c–e). He argues as follows: if knowledge is different from true belief, then separate Forms must exist, for these are the objects of knowledge.1 But Forms are immaterial entities; hence, materialism is false. Clearly, what requires scrutiny is the assumption that knowledge is something distinct from true belief and the further assumption that knowledge is exclusively of immaterial entities. As it happens, the reason for both assumptions is identical: knowledge is infallible or unerring.2 Knowledge is different from true belief because the latter does not have this property even though a true belief is, by definition, not false. Infallibility differs from truth as a property of a belief because one might have a true belief and yet not know that it is so. One might have it by accident, so to speak. By contrast, infallibility is the impossibility of error; that is, the knower cannot be in a state of knowing and at the same time not realize that he is in this state. Given the infallibility of knowledge, we can see at once that there cannot be knowledge of material entities or, stated otherwise, that knowledge can only be of immaterial entities. This is so because a material entity must be outside of the intellect, and so whatever is in the intellect must be merely a representation of that putative material object of knowledge. But there is no way to guarantee infallibility in the representation of anything. That is, there is no entailment from “S has a representation of p” to “S knows p”. The only way that infallibility is possible is if the objects of knowledge are immaterial entities such that they can actually be present to the intellect, a presence that does not, of course, preclude their presence to other intellects, too.
Aristotle in de Anima comes to the same conclusion via a somewhat more circuitous path (de An. 3.3.427a17–b7). He is arguing against materialists who maintain that sense-perception and thinking – the genus of which knowledge is a subspecies – are the same sort of thing, namely a kind of physical change in the cognizer produced by an external physical object. He argues in reply that thinking must be different from sense-perception because thinking can be false whereas sense-perceptions are true (de An. 3.3.427b11–14). If thinking were a mere physical change, then there could be no falsity in thinking only the presence or absence of the change. But the faculty which is capable of falsity is identical with that which is capable of truth. To be capable of a false belief it is necessary to have an immaterial intellect, for a false belief (or a true one) requires that (a) a subject of that belief be present in the intellect. Assume, like the materialist, that what is in fact present is a representation of the external physical object. In order to have the belief, one must then (b) cognize something universal in the attribution of a predicate to that subject. If this were not so, then falsity would not be possible because no one could have the false belief that “A is B” where “A” and “B” are representations of different physical objects. The predicate in the judgement or belief must be understood universally if the claim of predicative identity is to be made. The cognition of a universal could not be a bodily or material state, since every one of these has determinate particularity. So, to believe that “this is a dog” is to cognize “dog” universally, but universal cognition is not exhaustible by a particular instantiation or representation. That is, cognition of universals requires their non-representational presence. So, belief requires an immaterial intellect. But belief could not be possible unless one is capable of knowledge; that is, the presence of an intelligible object in the intellect and the awareness of its presence (de An. 3.4.429a24–9). In a belief, the cognition of a universal is not an example of knowledge. But such cognition is not possible unless knowledge is possible, too.
The presence of the intelligible object in the intellect for Plato is a “possessing” (kektesthai); the awareness of its presence is a “having” (echein) (Tht. 197b–d). For Aristotle, “possessing” becomes “first actuality” and “having” “second actuality” (de An. 3.4.429b5–9). Knowledge in the primary sense is the “having” or the “second actuality”. It is absolutely crucial for grasping this account that we recognize that the subject in which the intelligible object is present is identical with the subject which is aware of that presence. This is, of course, only possible if the subject is immaterial. So, fully actualizing knowledge or having it requires that the knower know himself, at least in so far as he is an intellect.3 That is, knowledge is self-knowledge.
In this light, it is not difficult to see why Plato insists that knowledge must be infallible. To maintain that it is coherent to say, “I know but I may be mistaken” is to use the word “know” in a way significantly different from the way that Plato uses the verbal forms of the word epistēmē. It is to make knowledge a form of belief, something that Aristotle accepts no more than Plato.4
The Academic Sceptic Arcesilaus deserves a brief mention in this context, since it is he who, in his attack on Stoic epistemology, was the first after Aristotle to see the essential connection between knowledge, immaterialism and infallibility. As Arcesilaus showed, if the Stoic claim to knowledge rests on “presentations” (phantasiai) then, since there is no such thing as false knowledge, there must be some criterion for distinguishing knowledge from a false belief. But presentations leading to the one or the other may be indistinguishable.5 From this it follows that one cannot know unless one is certain or infallible, but the grounds for claiming knowledge can never in principle be conclusive. Hence, knowledge is not possible. The materialist Stoics had no way of countering this argument.6
More important for our purposes is the argument found in Sextus Empiricus that is directed not against materialists exclusively but against all dogmatists; that is, against all those, immaterialists included, who maintain that knowledge must be infallible. As Sextus so clearly sees, if knowledge is to be infallible, then, as noted above, the subject in which the knowable object is present must be identical with the subject who is aware of its presence. But then,
If intellect (nous) grasps itself, either it is as a whole that it will grasp itself or not as a whole, but using some part of itself for this. It will not be able to grasp itself as a whole. For if it grasps itself as a whole, it will as a whole just be the grasping and, in grasping, since the grasping is the whole [that is, all there is of it], it will not be that which is grasped. But it is the height of absurdity that the grasping should exist but not that which is grasped. Nor can intellect use some part of itself for this. For how does the part itself grasp itself? If as a whole, the object sought will be nothing; if with a part, how will that part in turn cognize itself? And so on indefinitely. So, grasping is without a beginning (anarchon), since either there is no first subject to be found to do the grasping or else there will be no object to be grasped.
(Sextus Empiricus, M. 7.310–13)7
Sextus’ argument is intended to drive a stake through the heart of any dogmatic pretension to knowledge precisely because all dogmatists recognize that knowledge must be infallible. So, even if we grant the immateriality of the putative knower, if it can be shown that infallibility is not possible, then there can be no knowledge and the dogmatists’ quest for wisdom is vain.8
PLOTINUS
In one of the very few passages in the Enneads in which Plotinus seems to take notice of Sextus or at least of Pyrrhonian Sceptics, he actually responds to this argument or to one very much like it. He asks, “Must that which thinks itself be complex in order that, with one part of itself contemplating the others, it could in this way be said to think itself, on the grounds that were it altogether simple, it would not be able to revert to itself, that is, there could not be the grasping of itself?” (Enn. V.3[49].1.1–4, trans. Dillon & Gerson).9 The reply made by Plotinus is to the effect that self-thinking would not be possible if the complexity of the intellect were bodily complexity; that is, if it had parts outside of parts or extension.10 In that case, knowledge would not be possible because infallibility would not be possible. Knowledge would in that case consist in one “part” of the intellect monitoring or otherwise taking cognizance of the state of another part. As we have seen, there can be no infallibility in this case. So, the intellect must be immaterial and knowledge must be the self-reverting awareness by the intellect of its own state (epistrophe pros heauton). Infallible cognition is indistinguishable from “having” the truth, in Plato’s terminology (see Enn. V.3[49].5.19–26; V.3[49].8.36). Like Plato, Plotinus clearly identifies the activity of intellect, noesis, with episteme or sophia (Enn. I.2[19].7.3; cf. Enn. V.9[5].5.30, quoting Aristotle). He takes knowledge as the paradigm of cognition and all other types of cognition as imitations or inferior versions of this. But, again, following Plato, he maintains that these inferior types of cognition would not be possible unless we were the sorts of creatures capable of the highest type. Indeed, unless we already do possess knowledge, modes of cognition like discursive reasoning would not be available to us. As Plotinus puts it, we reason discursively by the “rules” (kanones) that we have from Intellect (Enn. V.3[49].4.15–17). These rules are not themselves the intelligibles or Forms; they are representations (typoi) of them.11 It is difficult to know precisely what Plotinus means to indicate here, but perhaps the simplest interpretation is that the rules or representations are elementary logical principles which are a necessary condition for thinking at all.12 What distinguishes these rules from mere signs is their universality. Animals can react to signs, but they cannot cognize universally. Only with such rules can we think at all and cognize universally.
The need for access to “rules” is owing to the fact that we possess “undescended intellects”.13 Briefly, the claim is based on the argument that since intellect and intelligibles are inseparable, the separateness of the one from the sensible world entails the separateness of the other. What this means is that our access to intelligibles is at the same time access to our own undescended intellects. The possibility of access is accounted for by our embodied souls being images of their paradigms, the undescended intellects.
So, following Aristotle, the paradigm of thinking is self-thinking: “In general, thinking seems to be an awareness (synaisthesis) of the whole with many things coming together into that which is identical, whenever something thinks itself, which is thinking in the principal sense” (Enn. V.3[49].13.13–15; cf. Enn. II.9[33].1; 5.6.1).
The rather obscure phrase “many things coming together into that which is identical” is firmly embedded in Plotinian metaphysics wherein the first principle of all, the One or the Idea of the Good, is absolutely simple or one or self-identical. Intellect, the second principle of all, is, as Plotinus says, minimally complex; that is, it is a one–many (see e.g. Enn. V.4[7].1.1–21). It is unavoidably complex because the One is uniquely simple. Its complexity consists in the facts that (a) there must be some distinction between intellect and intelligible, and (b) there must be a multiplicity of intelligibles to account for all the multiple genuine cases of sameness in the world. So, the “many things coming together into that which is identical” are the intelligibles or Forms with which Intellect is eternally cognitively identical; that is, they make it to be what it is by “informing” Intellect while Intellect is simultaneously eternally aware of this information (see Enn. V.8[31].4.4–12; cf. Procl., ET 52).
Accordingly, every image or inferior form of thinking constitutes an act of identification, in two phases, so to speak. Consider belief. To engage in the type of thinking that is belief is to affirm that, say, A is B, where “A” stands for the subject and “B” for an instance of the universal property or attribute that is predicated of it. Plotinus takes the “is” in this predicative judgement to be an act of identification, saying that B names one thing that A is. Of course, the identity may be accidental or adventitious. But the judgement or belief is an act of thinking that two things are, in a way, one. The second phase of this sort of thinking is the awareness of one’s own intellect being qualifiedly identified by; that is, identical with this belief. This is a qualified identity since the object cognized here, that is, the subject of the belief and its identity with an instance of the predicate, cannot identify or inform the intellect the way an immaterial entity can. A belief stands to knowledge or thinking in the “primary sense” roughly analogous to the way an instance of a Form or intelligible stands to that Form itself. Embodied thinking always occurs by imaging the perfect thinking of Intellect, the locus of intelligibility.
The Pyrrhonian argues that if we do not have a criterion for distinguishing true beliefs from false beliefs, there is no more reason to believe a proposition p is true rather than false. In other words, rational belief would not exist. But we can never have a criterion, for that would have to provide a means of distinguishing appearances that guarantees that they are appearances of reality from appearances that are deceptive. But there is no entailment from “s appears to me thus and so” to “s really is thus and so”. How could there be such an entailment so long as we distinguish appearance and reality? But if we do not distinguish them, not only will it follow that all appearances are true, but any effort to explain appearances will fail; there will be nothing to explain. Philosophy and science will be pointless activities.
Plotinus’ response to the Pyrrhonian objection is that if we do not right now know eternal truths, we are incapable of any higher cognition, perhaps nothing more than sense-perception and imagination. But if we are capable of higher cognition, including, say, a belief that there are no rational beliefs, then we must have access to eternal truth. The desiderated criterion for true belief is our possessing knowledge of eternal truth. The proof that we possess such knowledge is that if we did not possess it, we could not understand our own belief claims, regardless of whether these are true or false. So, Plotinus responds to the Pyrrhonists by hewing to the Platonic–Aristotelian account of knowledge and refusing to accept the assumption that the criterion of knowledge or rational belief must somehow consist in showing how sense-perception or appearance provides entailing evidence for the truth of belief.
It is crucial for Plotinus’ argument that our access to our intellects – whether these be undescended or not – is necessarily also access to intelligibles. That is, the intellect must be cognitively identical with these intelligibles or, as he puts it in a treatise the first part of which is devoted to the problem, they must not be “external” to it.14 If our access to our intellects were only access to a power, say, like using our muscles to lift something, then we would not have access to eternal truth, but only to some sorts of cognitive images or representations of the truth. But then the problem raised by the Pyrrhonists would be replicated at the level of the intelligible realm. In the first chapter of Enn. V.5., Plotinus wants to show that, given that intelligibles or Forms must exist if we are to explain sameness in difference in the sensible world, these intelligibles cannot be external to Intellect.
But the greatest objection is this. If, indeed, one were to grant that these intelligibles are totally external to Intellect, and then claim that Intellect contemplates them as such, it necessarily follows that it does not itself have the truth of these things and that it is deceived in all that it contemplates: for it is those intelligibles that would be the true reality. It will contemplate them though it does not have them, instead receiving reflected representations of them in a kind of cognition like this. Then, not having true reality, but rather receiving for itself reflected representations of the truth, it will have falsities and nothing true. If, then, it knows that it has falsities, it will agree that it has no share in truth. But if it is ignorant of this as well, and thinks that it has the truth when it does not, the falsity that is generated in it is double, and that will separate it considerably from the truth.
This is the reason, I think, that in acts of sense-perception truth is not found, but only belief, because belief is receptive,15 and for this reason, being belief, it receives something other than that from which it receives what it has. If, then, there is no truth in Intellect, an intellect of this sort will not be truth nor will it be truly Intellect, nor will it be Intellect at all. But there is nowhere else for the truth to be.
(Enn. V.5[32].1.50–68; cf. Enn. V.3[49].5.21–5)
The last line of this passage reveals the underlying strategy in this argument. Truth must exist in Intellect if intellection is to be possible. If intellection is not possible because truth does not exist there, then, as we have seen, no higher cognition is possible, including belief.
The truth that is in Intellect is ontological truth, a property of being in relation to an intellect.16 What Plotinus is disputing is the claim that what is in Intellect is only semantic truth; that is, a property of putative propositional representations of being. Suppose that the ne plus ultra of cognition were true belief. Then reality, the “truth makers” for true belief, would be external to all cognizers. In that case, the highest form of cognition would not be knowledge, for knowledge is infallible, and infallibility in the cognition of representations is not possible. But if there is no knowledge, then, as we have seen, there is no belief, or at least no true belief as distinct from false belief.
The explanation of why we must have access to Intellect, or to our own intellects, if we are to have higher cognition is essentially the same as the explanation of why we must have access to intelligibles. But if the explanation is the same, then this must be because Intellect and intelligibles are inseparable; that is, intelligibles are not external to the Intellect. The only way that ontological truth can be internal to Intellect is if being is internal to Intellect. If ontological truth is not internal to Intellect, then even the claim that we are representing reality is a sort of bluff. For the very idea of representation assumes a reality independent of that representation. But if intelligibles are not internal to Intellect, then the reality is completely inaccessible and claims to represent it are empty.
The internality of intelligibles to Intellect is the condition for what we do as embodied intellects. If I grasp, say, a mathematical truth, that is, if I see the truth of a mathematical proposition, I am not doing what Intellect does eternally, but I am doing something that I could not do if Intellect, and my own undescended intellect, were not eternally cognitively identical with intelligibles. Plotinus agrees with Aristotle (and Plato) that all our embodied cognition requires images.17 But he insists further that only those with intellects can recognize the images for what they are because an image is only graspable as an image in relation to its intelligible paradigm.
The ability to cognize images as images is closely connected to the general principle enunciated above that thinking is essentially, that is, paradigmatically, self-thinking. In self-thinking, there are no images or representations. There is cognitive identity with intelligibles. In the inferior or derived modes of cognition, there is also cognitive identity, but because there are images, this identity is qualified. And because the identity is qualified, it is easy to confuse the cognitive state with representations – including propositional representations – of it. In contemporary epistemological parlance, the things I know and believe are propositions; according to the Platonic model, my knowledge or belief are expressed in propositions, which are representations of my cognitive state. It is because I know or believe that I make such representations either to myself or to others. Even in the case of belief, however, there is qualified self-thinking, my awareness of the state I am in. I cannot be unqualifiedly cognitively identical with anything that is materially constituted. But I cannot cognize anything without some form of self-thinking.
The non-propositional and non-representational nature of primary or paradigmatic thinking follows from its perfect cognitive identity with all that is intelligible.18 This cognitive identification is also an activity (energeia). Accordingly, all of its inferior images, that is, all types of cognition, are images of this activity. For example, when I am in a belief state, I am, in my awareness of being in this state, not only identical with myself as informed by an instance of an intelligible, but I am also engaged in an activity which consists in identifying the predicate of the judgement with the subject. When I believe that “A is B” I cognize “B” as naming one of the things that is that which “A” names. Even though A is not necessarily B, its contingent identity with B is how the belief is represented to myself. The identity represented in a necessary proposition is, of course, closer to the paradigmatic state, indeed closer to the absolutely self-identical first principle of all. To see two (or more) things as one is the essence of higher cognition. At the level of Intellect, all intelligibles are seen in this way.
In order to complete this picture, it is necessary to emphasize that the paradigm of cognition is not, for Plotinus, as it is for Aristotle, identified with primary being or a first principle of all. In short, Intellect is not the Unmoved Mover. This needs to be stressed because the cognitive identity in Intellect is not perfect identity. Intellection, that is, self-thinking, could not be what the first principle of all consists in since all thinking is complex. The first principle of all can neither engage in cognition nor be cognized, at least in so far as cognition is understood as the presence of an intelligible in a cognizer and the awareness of that presence. The problem that this poses for Plotinus is that since all things desire the Good, that is, the first principle, how else could Intellect attain this Good but by engaging in intellectual activity, thinking itself as all that is intelligible? Plotinus’ implicit response to this is to maintain that the Good is virtually all things including all that is intelligible.19 It is virtually all things roughly in the way that “white” light is virtually the spectrum. Intellect “has” the Good in the best way possible; it knows all that the Good is virtually.
PORPHYRY
Porphyry, pupil of Plotinus and editor of his Enneads, wrote voluminously in defence of the Platonic system as articulated by his master. In his work, Launching Points to the Intelligibles (Aphormai pros ta noēta, Sententiae), Porphyry collects and more or less briefly comments on a number of passages from the Enneads collectively intended to orient the embodied human person in the direction of the first principle of all. On the matter of our return to the One, Porphyry seems to regard the activity of intellection as only the penultimate stage of ascent.
On the subject of that which is beyond Intellect, many statements are made on the basis of thinking, but it may be immediately contemplated (theōreitai) only by means of a nonthinking (anoesiai) superior to thinking; even as concerning sleep many statements may be made in a waking state, but only through sleeping can one gain direct cognition (gnōsis) or comprehension for same is known by same, because all cognition consists in assimilation (homoiōsis) to the object of cognition.
(Sent. 25 [Lamperz], trans. Dillon & Gerson)
This portentous passage takes up, however briefly, several remarks made by Plotinus to the effect that even if there is no cognitional access to the One, nevertheless there must be some way of attaining it since, ultimately, it is the source of our being. Plotinus addresses the point in his treatise On Nature and Contemplation:
Since cognition of other things comes to us through Intellect, and we are able to know Intellect by means of intellect, by what sort of simple grasp (epibolei athroai) could one get hold of (aliskoito) that which is by nature beyond Intellect? We shall say to the one to whom we have to explain how this is possible that it is by sameness in us. (Enn. III.8[30].9.19–23; cf.
Enn. V.3[49].14.1–6; V.6[24].6.32–5)
So, it is owing to the fact that we are images of the first principle that we can assume that it is possible somehow to attain some kind of union with this. Plotinus elsewhere connects the attainment of the One with the “greatest study” (megiston mathema) of the Idea of the Good in Republic.20
Yet what this “nonthinking superior to thinking” is remains quite obscure. It is highly plausible that Porphyry has in mind what he reports in his Life of Plotinus, namely that Plotinus “attained” (etyche) the goal of union with the One four times in his life (Plot. 23.16–17). But we cannot suppose that achieving this goal could consist in the obliteration of the self, given that it occurred four times.21 More important, since the One is absolutely simple, there can be no union with it, something that would evidently compromise its unqualified simplicity. It seems more likely that what Plotinus achieved was awareness that the One is all things – virtually. For present purposes, what is most important is the explicit limitation of intellection to intelligibles and its situation within the overall metaphysical, psychological and ethical framework of Platonism. Embodied human life is located on a sort of axis, one terminus of which is the One or the Good and the other terminus is totally unformed matter, as close to absolute non-being as it is logically possible to get. All human action, including thinking, is judged by Platonists from Plotinus onwards as orienting a person towards one terminus or the other. Knowledge, therefore, has a specific goal which is union with the One as far as possible. That is, knowledge is supposed to be transformative in the specific sense that by recovering the activity of our undescended intellects we unify the self, which is otherwise “dispersed” as a result of embodiment.
Porphyry thematizes the idea of reversion to our source as a cognitive enterprise in this way: “Everything that generates in virtue of its essence generates something inferior to itself, and everything that is generated reverts (epistrephei) by nature towards that which has generated it” (Sent. 13.1–2).
This passage generalizes the claim made by Plotinus that Intellect, after it has been generated by the One, reverts to the One and becomes Intellect when it looks at it; that is, when it seeks the Good (Enn. V.2[11].1.9–10). Our nature is rational, and reversion is accomplished by cognitive activity, certainly in the practical sphere when we act virtuously, but even more so as we engage in thinking that is disengaged from bodily desires.
That human progress consists in a reversion and that this reversion is primarily cognitive activity is explained ultimately by the One as producer of all things and, hence, virtually all things. Reflection on even the lowest type of human cognition gives an indication that our goal or good consists in a process of unification. For as we have seen, we could not have beliefs if we were not the sorts of beings to be able to have knowledge; that is, able to identify cognitively with intelligibles and to be aware of this identification (cf. Porphyry, Sent. 43.25–35 [Brisson]). Because all things desire their own good, and because the good of each individual is the same, namely the Good that is the unique absolutely simple first principle of all, our good is attained by progressing in the direction of the Good, and this progress consists in nothing but becoming knowers.
PROCLUS
Proclus’ Elements of Theology is a kind of summa of systematic Platonism. It draws heavily on Plotinus, whom Proclus called “the exegete of the Platonic revelation”, and those between Plotinus and himself – especially Porphyry, Iamblichus and his own teacher Syrianus – to set out the principles that integrate the various elements of the hierarchical metaphysics that is Platonism.
Plotinus anticipates Proclus in identifying reversion to the Good with “reversion to oneself” (epistrophe eis hauton) in the case of Intellect.22 But the centrality of this idea for Platonism, especially when applied to embodied human life, only becomes clear in the works of Proclus and his successors.23
The first claim made in this regard is that “all things that are able to revert to themselves are incorporeal” (ET 15). Following Plotinus in his claim that thinking is essentially self-reverting, Proclus concludes that the subject of thinking must be incorporeal. The reason for this is that a body has parts outside of parts, and if (a) the presence of an intelligible and (b) the awareness of that presence are distinguishable, as they must be, then they would have to be attributable to different parts of the putative corporeal soul. But in that case, (b) would have to become the new (a) and there would have to be a (c) that is aware of the presence of the intelligible in the new (a).
Next, “all that is able to revert to itself has an existence separable from all body” (ET 16). If the subject of thinking were only immaterial in the anodyne way that, say, a property of a body is immaterial, then it could not be self-reverting. For the activity of self-reversion could not occur in that whose existence is dependent on a body. This is so because the self-reversion requires that there be one subject that is both the subject of the information by the intelligible and the subject that is aware of this information. But the subject of the putative immaterial property is a body.24
Finally, “everything which is primarily self-moving is able to revert to itself” (ET 17). That which is “primarily self-moving” is the soul (ET 20.8–11). This does not quite amount to the conclusion that the cognition that is essentially self-reverting is an activity of the soul as such, for as Proclus points out, if that were the case then all things with soul would be capable of thinking (ET 19). So, then, how is the type of soul that is capable of thinking distinguished from the types that are not? Proclus’ answer to this question is to argue that self-movers are not uncaused, but must have their cause in an unmoved mover (ET 20.13–18). Intellect is such a mover, eternally active (aei … energōn) without change.25 The souls of human beings do not have thought essentially; they can participate in it. The souls of animals cannot participate, perhaps because their souls are in fact properties of bodies. That is, they are not immaterial entities.
Commenting on the nature of the World Soul in Plato’s Timaeus, Proclus says,
From this it is clear that self-reversion is self-cognition and cognition of all the things in it, as well as those things that come before it and those that result from it. It seems, then, that all cognition is nothing other than reversion upon what is cognized and a self-appropriating (oikeiōsis) or harmonizing (epharmosis) with it. Because of this, truth is also the harmony of the one who cognizes in relation to the thing that is cognized. But since reversion is twofold – being in one sense a reversion upon the Good, but in another sense a reversion upon being – the organic (zōtike) reversion of all things comes to be in relation to the Good, while the cognitive reversion takes place in relation to being. For this reason, the one reversion when it has been achieved is said to possess the Good, but when the other has been achieved it is said to possess being (each of these being the object of the reversion in question). And to arrive at the truth (alētheuein) is the grasp (katalēpsis) of being, whether it be in the identical thing which grasps it, or in what is prior to it, or in what comes after it.
(in. Ti. 3.286.32–287.11)
This passage makes a number of important points, especially the distinction between “cognitive reversion” and “non-cognitive reversion”. All living things revert to the Good which is just Proclus’ technical way of saying that they all desire the Good by desiring the good of each. Of course, this is true for us as well. But, uniquely, we are also capable of a cognitive reversion to being, and this is self-reversion. This is primarily the way we possess the Good.26
The self-appropriating or harmonizing with the truth, which is later described as “arriving at it”, is the awareness of the cognitive identity of oneself and intelligibles or being that are present to the intellect. We note further that the grasp of being is variously of that which is in constitutive of Intellect, namely the Forms, or prior to Intellect, namely the One or Good, or that which is posterior to Intellect, namely images or logoi of the Forms in Soul or in nature. Thus, Proclus acknowledges the grades of the self-reversion that thinking is.
SCHOOL OF AMMONIUS
Ammonius, son of Hermias, was an Alexandrian pupil of Proclus, and later immensely influential within his own school, which included Asclepius of Tralles, Simplicius, Olympiodorus, and the Christian philosophers John Philoponus, David, Elias and Stephanus. Abstracting from the mostly subtle differences among the views of these philosophers, I focus here on their treatment of an epistemological problem left by the rejection by virtually all later Platonists of Plotinus’ argument that our intellects are undescended.27 It is ultimately a problem that arises from the systematization of Platonism. The problem, as first encountered in Meno, and then solved there and in Phaedo, is how it is possible for embodied persons to acquire knowledge. The solution is that “having” knowledge is possible because we already “possess” it owing to our disembodied life prior to embodiment. We need only recollect it. With the systematization of Platonism by Plotinus, however, it emerges that our embodied intellects do not possess this knowledge, for intellect could only “have” knowledge; that is, eternally actualize it by being cognitively identical with all that is intelligible. That is, there is no way for embodied intellects to “possess” it; what we possess are only images of the intelligibles. Hence, since intellect is necessary for all higher cognition, we must somehow have access to our undescended intellects.28 The undescended intellect is the stand-in for the Platonic embodied intellect that “possesses” knowledge as a result of its previous disembodied life. Rejecting the idea that our intellects are undescended, Ammonius and his followers were led to reflect on how our descended intellects operate in relation to intelligibles and hence how knowledge is possible for embodied persons.29
The groundwork for the non-Plotinian solution to this problem is provided by Proclus, who makes a distinction between Forms considered in themselves and Forms considered as intentional objects of intellect.30 Since Intellect is cognitively identical with all intelligibles, Platonists are obliged to account for the fact that all sensibles with any measure of intelligibility must partake of Intellect without necessarily having intellectual properties; that is, without cognition of any sort. Indeed, all the Forms are united in their cognition by Intellect so that participation in them without cognition reveals a problem. It does not quite solve the problem to note that everything receives its prior principles according to its own capacity and so things without immaterial intellects cannot receive Intellect qua knower; they can only receive it qua Form or Forms.31 This might explain why chairs do not think, but it does not explain how those individuals manifestly capable of thinking are able to access intelligibles at the same time as they are descended; that is, separated from Intellect and so inferior to it in the metaphysical procession.
We might suppose that for the followers of Ammonius, Intellect can do for the embodied person what for Plotinus the undescended intellect does. But this cannot be quite right either. For Plotinus, in his systematic expression of Platonism, argues that we must not merely “possess” knowledge but we must “have” it as well, even though it is not the embodied person who has it. For the followers of Ammonius, we can only possess it by means of our pre-embodied encounters with Forms (Ammonius, in Cat. 37.11–12; Philoponus, in de Intell. 16.83–96, 38.84–9). But we do not possess the Forms themselves; rather, we only possess logoi of them in ourselves (Ammonius, in Metaph. 89.17–20). These are obscured by our embodiment.
What are these logoi supposed to be? Are they the same as the “rules” or “laws” that Plotinus says we have in our embodied intellects coming from Intellect? Perhaps, but the scant supply of examples suggests rather that they are universal concepts employed in propositional judgements. If we put this doctrine together with the rejection of the undescended intellect, and add that much of the discussion of the noera eide is conducted within commentaries on Aristotle’s de Anima, the possibility occurs that Ammonius and his school are appealing to Aristotle’s active intellect to account for embodied higher cognition.32
In Philoponus’ commentary on Aristotle’s de Anima book 3.4–8, extant only in the translation of William of Moerbeke and known as de Intellectu, Philoponus fairly clearly takes this strategy. In his commentary on chapter 5, he sets out the elements of the solution.33 First, he argues against Alexander of Aphrodisias and others that the active intellect is not to be identified with the divine intellect. Accordingly, the passive and active intellects are one, operating as principles of matter and form in the embodied person. Second, having already argued that the intellect pre-exists embodiment, and that intellect is the place of forms, he claims that the embodied intellect does possess; that is, already knows these forms.34 Third, he follows Aristotle in maintaining that we are not aware of the presence of forms owing to bodily impediments (de Intellectu 33.87–8, 40.30–43, 57.68–9). Finally, what the active intellect does is actualize the forms present in intellect.
This actualization, however, is not the identification of the intellect with the intelligibles, as it is for Plotinus in the undescended intellect (de Intellectu 36.68–9). Rather, the actualization is of a representation of these intelligibles, specifically, a ratio cognitiva (“gnōstikos logos”).35 What these representations are exactly is not so easy to ascertain. Philoponus writes,
Since the rationes of all things are in the soul, the rationes of the better things which are superior to it [are in the soul] in the form of representations (eikonice), the rationes of less good things which are posterior to it [are in the soul] as exemplars, when it actually produces the rationes which are in it, it actually becomes what they are either in a representative way or in an exemplary way, as we say that the image of Socrates becomes what Socrates is or that the ratio in the art of building becomes what the house is.
(de Intellectu 83.37–48, trans. Charlton)
So, the actualization of the intelligible or intelligibles in the intellect is a representational state. The object of knowledge is the content of the representation, not the intelligible itself.36 The knowledge is the identification of the intellect with the act of representing. So, presumably, when one understands or “sees” the truth of a proposition, the actualization of the intellect is this state of understanding.
Philoponus does not address the sceptical challenge posed by Sextus and faced by this account, but it is not too difficult to see how he might do so. Even though we know representations, we do not have to adduce a criterion whereby we can distinguish good representations from bad ones, for these representations are in effect actualizations of what we are potentially. We no more have to justify our claim to know a mathematical theorem than we have to justify our claims to possess cognitive powers when we are in fact actualizing them. When Plato in Parmenides has Parmenides sharply reject the claim that Forms are concepts and that knowledge of Forms is thus knowledge of concepts, he is assuming that concepts (noemata) are purely representational and so not necessarily derived from the Forms themselves (Prm. 132b–d). By contrast, Philoponus seems to be relying on the doctrine of recollection as the basis for the claim that what is in the embodied intellect potentially is the Form cognitively; that is, in the way that Aristotle explains knowledge.37 Representation, then, becomes actualization (cf. Ps.-Philoponus, in de An. 539.34–5).
Despite the differences among Platonists in accounting for knowledge, there is a deep underlying consistency in orientation. Knowledge, like digestion or pregnancy, is assumed to be a natural state. This naturalistic epistemology is, however, considerably removed from its contemporary counterpart. For the natural state of knowing is held to be an infallible mental state only available to intellects, the fundamental property of which is immateriality. All cognition, from the highest to the lowest, is mapped onto a hierarchical, integrated metaphysics. The epistemology is mostly unintelligible apart from the metaphysics, and vice versa. The epistemology and the metaphysics provide the framework for the various Platonic accounts of the facets of embodied human existence.
NOTES
1. The word is nous, not episteme, though they seem to be used synonymously. Cf. R. 534a4 with 511d6–e5.
2. See R. 477e6–7 where the property of knowledge is anamarteton. At Tht. 152c5–6 the property is apseudes.
3. Cf. de An. 430a4–5; 3.5.430a19–20; 3.6.430b25–6; 431a22–3; Metaph. 12.9.1074b38–75a5.
4. See APo. 1.33.88b30–37. Cf. 1.8.75b24; 1.18.81b5–7; Metaph. 7.15.1040a1–2; EN 6.3.1139b19–24. Plato, Tht. 187a1–201c7, argues that if true belief were knowledge, then false belief would not be possible. But since false belief is possible, true belief is not knowledge. This is because knowledge is (a) the presence of the knowable and (b) the awareness of its presence. If condition (a) alone is met that is not false belief; if neither (a) nor (b) are met, then there is not false belief either since there would be no object of belief.
5. See Cicero, Acad. 2.40; cf. Sextus Empiricus, M. 7.402–10. Sextus attributes this argument to Carneades, not to Arcesilaus.
6. Sextus, M. 7.252, says that the Stoics tried to counter the argument by adding the criterion “of such kind as could not come from that which does not exist”. In other words, they wanted to guarantee the distinctness of the “graspable presentations” (kataleptikai phantasiai) as experienced by the knower from that experienced by the mere believer. But this can hardly be correct: there can be no such externalist criterion of infallibility, even if there can be an externalist criterion of truth.
7. See Gerson (2009: 124–33). All translations of texts are those of the author unless otherwise noted.
8. See also PH 2.70–72 for the reductio argument that the truth or falsity of representations is “ungraspable” (akataleptikos); that is, indeterminable.
9. On the essential self-reflexivity of knowledge in Plotinus, see Kühn (2009).
10. See Enn. V.3[49].1.8–9 where it is sense-perception that cognizes “bodily nature” (tou sōmatos physin).
11. See Enn. V.3[49].2.10, 12 (typoi); Enn. V.3[49].3.12, “traces” (ichne). At Enn. V.3[49].4.2, Plotinus uses the metaphor of “laws” (nomoi). See Emilsson (2007: 207–13). Plotinus may also have in mind the megista gene of the Sophist, namely being, identity, difference, motion and rest.
12. At Enn. V.3[49].3.8–9, normative rules are included, i.e. the rules that give us the ability to judge something good or bad. Perhaps such judgements are a function of judgements of unity; that is, the more unity, the better something is.
13. See Enn. VI.4[22].14.16–22; IV.8[6].4.31–5; IV.8[6].8; IV.7[2].13 for Plotinus’ claim that our intellects are “undescended”, a claim that most later Platonists rejected. On the undescended intellect, see Szlezák (1979: ch. 4).
14. See Enn. V.5[32], That the Intelligibles are not External to the Intellect.
15. Taking the word for belief, doxa, as derived from the word for “receive”, dechomai.
16. At R. 508e1, the Idea of the Good provides truth to Forms and knowability (gignōskesthai). Cf. R. 509b5.
17. Aristotle’s insistence that there is no thinking without images (see de An 3.7.431a17, 432a9, Mem. 1.449b31–450a1) is, I assume, a Platonic point. Thinking for Plato is logos in the embodied soul, and logos is or contains images. See Tht. 189e4–190a6; Sph. 263e3–8. The paradigm or principle of thinking is episteme, which is non-imagistic. For that reason it is the prerogative of the separate intellect, not its embodied manifestation. See Plotinus, Enn. V.1[10].6.45–6; V.1[10].3.8–10; V.1[10].7.42 for the sense in which Soul is a logos; that is, an image of Intellect. At Enn. V.3[49].3.44–5 Plotinus concludes his discussion of our identity as discursive reasoners with the pronouncement: “sense-perception is our messenger, but Intellect is our king”, referencing Plato, Phlb. 28c7. We can only recognize the messenger for what it is if we acknowledge the king.
18. See Enn. V.5[32].1.50–68 where the argument is that if the intelligible were external to intellect, then intellect would have only representations of the (ontological) truth, not the truth itself. Such representations would include propositions. On non-propositional thought in Plotinus see A. C. Lloyd (1969–70), Sorabji (1982), Beierwaltes (1985), Emilsson (2007).
19. See Enn. III.8[30].10.1; IV.8[6].6.11; V.1[10].7.10–11; V.4[7].1.23–6; V.4[7].2.38; VI.9[9].5.36.
20. See Enn. VI.7[34].36.3–6 with R. 505a2. Cf. Enn. VI.7[38].40.1–4; VI.9[9].11.22–5. In this passage (VI.7[38].36.4) Plotinus says “either cognition or touching” (eite gnōsis eite epaphe) which I take it is not in contradiction to the claim that the One is beyond intellection. I suppose that the first alternative indicates “knowing” the One by knowing all Forms and that the second alternative indicates a super-intellective activity.
21. On the self in relation to the One see O’Daly (1973), Bussanich (1988), Remes (2007).
22. See Enn. VI.9[9].2.36. Cf. VI.9[9].7.28–34; V.3[49].6.39–43; V.6[24].5.16–19.
23. See Gerson (1997a), Chlup (2012: 142–4). On the identification of self-reflexivity with recollection, see in Alc. 13.12–6 [Segonds].
24. See Ps.-Simplicius, in de An. 211.1–8, where the point is made that self-reversion is necessary for an affirmation of the truth of what is present in the intellect. One cannot have a belief without believing that it is true, but one cannot believe one’s belief is true unless one engages in self-reversion.
25. Proclus here follows Aristotle in distinguishing energeia from kinesis, though the distinction has its root in Plato, who distinguishes the unique motion that is kinesis nou from all others in Lg. 897d3.
26. Cf. ET 158. See in Prm. 1047a1–24, on the One as the archē of all cognition.
27. The only other Platonist who embraced Plotinus’ argument for an undescended intellect is apparently Damascius, whose resultant heterodox epistemology cannot be treated here.
28. When Plotinus says at Enn. V.3[49].3.44–5, “sense-perception is our messenger, but intellect is our king”, he is referring to the intellect that is “over us”, like a king, namely the undescended intellect. This intellect is explicitly said to be “separate” (chōristos) in the line above. Proclus, in Ti. II.251.18–19, quotes this line but interprets it differently since he rejects the idea of the undescended intellect. Cf. ET 211; in Prm. 948.18–38.
29. One additional major consequence of the rejection of an undescended intellect is the felt need for some alternative means of access to the intelligible realm. Theurgy or pagan sacramentalism is, beginning with Iamblichus, motivated in part by this rejection. I shall not deal with this here.
30. See ET 176, 178; in Prm. 776.10. At in Ti. II.325.7–8 Proclus says that everything in the Living Animal is in the “intelligible mode” (noetōs) and in the Demiurge in the “intellective mode” (noerōs). Cf. 323.21; 418.6–10.
31. See ET 57, 12–13: “for even that which is soulless, in so far as it partakes of Form, partakes of Intellect or of the productive working of Intellect”.
32. Cf. Ps.-Simplicius, in de An. 41.31–42.3. See Perkams (2008).
33. See de Intellectu 42.91–53.84 [Verbeke]. Cf. Ps.-Simplicius, in de An 244.39.41.
34. Philoponus, de Intellectu 38.84–39.43, is aware that Aristotle insists that the soul is mortal and does not pre-exist embodiment. But he notes, accurately enough, that Aristotle distinguishes intellect (or the “rational soul”) from soul, de An. 2.2.413b26, and seems to want to say in chapter 5 that intellect both preexists embodiment and that it continues to exist post-embodiment. Cf. Proclus, ET 190; Ps.-Simplicius, in de An. 42.20–22.
35. See de Intellectu 9.11–12, 32.57. Charlton thinks that cognoscibiliter translates gnōstikōs, but this might well be synonymous with Proclus’ noerōs. Cf. in de An. 111.19, 596.9; Porphyry, Sent. 42.12, noeros logos.
36. See in de An. 2.7–12. These are variously called “concept” (conceptus) and “theorem” (theōrema).
37. See in A Pr 464.25–465.2. Cf. Ammonius, in Cat. 37.11–12. For Aristotle’s usage see de An. 3.4.427a27–9. In this regard, Philoponus is hearkening back to the Middle Platonic position. See e.g. Alcinous, Didask. 155.26–9 [Whittaker], where embodied concepts (physikai ennoiai) have as objects expressions of the primary intelligibles (prōta noēta) that are stored up in the soul (enapokeimene). Alcinous is, of course, not arguing against Plotinus’ undescended intellect, but rather the Stoic materialist conception of knowledge.