Iamblichus of Chalcis (c.245–c.325 ce) was third in the succession of major Neoplatonic philosophers (after Plotinus and his pupil Porphyry), was possibly the student of Porphyry himself (and certainly knew him), and was the founder of his own school in Apamea in Syria. He is noted especially for bringing religious ritual (theurgy) into Neoplatonism. His de Mysteriis is a refutation of the more moderate Neoplatonism of Porphyry. In it Iamblichus argues for a correct kind of magic ritual to be used in practising his brand of Platonism. Iamblichus established a hierarchy of divinities from the One down through the realm of Nature, all of which were essential in the human being’s ascent to the gods.1
Central to Iamblichus’ philosophy is his doctrine of the soul. The human soul straddles two worlds (the realms of the Intelligible and of Nature) and can operate in both. Human souls descend to live a life on earth, but their real home is in the Intelligible World of the Forms. Through the help of the intermediary divinities, human souls re-ascend to the Intelligible and regain their proper abode. The human soul is the central character in this drama, and its purification through philosophy and ritual is central to its eventual ascent.
As in other areas, Iamblichus’ philosophy of the soul had a large impact on later Neoplatonists. We are lucky enough to have large sections of his de Anima, preserved by John Stobaeus. His de Mysteriis and fragments from his Platonic commentaries also shed light on Iamblichean psychology, but the most important fragments are preserved by the author of the commentary to Aristotle’s de Anima, who may or may not be Simplicius,2 and by Priscianus of Lydia. We will consider all of these sources as we examine Iamblichus’ unique doctrine of the soul.3
Plato laid the groundwork for all later Platonic conceptions of the soul: its immortality, punishment or reward in Hades, transmigration after death, affinity to the eternal Forms and involvement in the world of nature, and partition into different “parts”. Plato was a dynamic thinker, often trying new ideas in various dialogues, criticizing earlier doctrines, and honing these doctrines carefully. The earliest and most important exposition of his beliefs occurs in the Phaedo. There the human soul is opposed to the body but nonetheless straddles the two worlds of pure thought and of corporeal existence. The soul is akin to the Forms – incorporeal, eternal, and capable of being purified and living apart from the body. In the Phaedo, it is the body that causes harm to the soul, and the philosopher is urged to undergo a kind of death, withdrawing as much as possible from the body and enjoying to the degree possible separate, incorporeal thought (Phd. 66a–68b). The body is a kind of tomb into which the soul is plunged and from which it must extricate itself to practise philosophy properly (Phd. 82e). In the underworld myth, philosophers after death live happily on the highest, purest reaches of earth, free from all bodies (Phd. 114bc). In order to attain this outcome, we must divest ourselves of all bodily influences and live a properly ascetic life.
In the Republic, however, Plato reconsiders the nature of the soul and finds that it itself contains a nature that is opposed to philosophical engagement. Famously, Plato divided the soul into three aspects (rational, spirited and irrational).4 These three aspects demonstrate again the soul’s intermediary nature, with the rational part capable of thought and the two lower parts connecting the soul more closely to the body and the physical world. In book 4, Plato establishes the three parts by showing that each of the parts can hold desires that are at odds with other parts. If two parts hold mutually contradictory desires (e.g. when the irrational part desires drink and the rational part opposes drinking), then the two parts must be separate (R. 436a–441c). The result is that the soul is not opposed to the body but rather to itself – or to a separate part of itself. In the choice of lives at the end of the Myth of Er in book 10, disembodied souls make bad choices because of past lives, and these choices (since they are not fully rational) involve the other two parts of the soul besides the rational (R. 619b–620d). Thus, even the disembodied soul has three parts.
This conception of the tripartite disembodied soul is taken up again in the Phaedrus myth (Phdr. 246a–257a), where the human soul is compared to a charioteer (the rational part) struggling to control two horses, one noble (the spirited part) and one recalcitrant and demanding (the irrational part). In this myth the whole soul is immortal, but it falls into a body because of the bad influences of the horses. The philosophical charioteer has the best (but still incomplete) control of the two horses. This myth clearly concerns the soul in its disembodied state at the beginning of a 10,000-year period at the very time when it has a chance to contemplate the Forms. The 10,000-year period is divided into ten 1,000-year periods, during which the soul is born and reborn into different bodies. If the soul can lead a philosophical life three times in a row, it can escape the cycle of births, but only for that 10,000-year period. It must descend again at the beginning of the next period. Thus, unlike the Phaedo myth (where the philosophical soul lives bodiless forever), in the Phaedrus rebirth is a constant process that begins anew every 10,000 years.
In the Timaeus, Plato re-conceives the soul’s journey into body. There are still three aspects of the human soul (rational, spirited and irrational), but now they are conceived as separate souls, not parts of souls. The Demiurge creates the highest soul, the rational, and it alone is immortal. The younger gods create the lower two souls (or, perhaps, two aspects of a single soul), and these are mortal (Ti. 41a–44c). They house the souls in different parts of the body (Ti. 69b–71a). After death, the rational soul of the philosopher returns to its star (Ti. 42b). Plato does not make it clear if it must descend again. The lower souls perish with the body. The conception is therefore quite different from that of the earlier dialogues.
What remains constant throughout all of these dialogues is the soul’s intermediate nature. The soul belongs properly to the world of the Forms, and its home is there – bodiless, contemplating eternal truths. It also lives for a time in the world of becoming, and it must live as purely as possible there to re-ascend to the Forms. The Timaeus stresses the intermediary nature of the rational soul via its very composition. The Demiurge fashions the rational soul from Being, Sameness and Difference of two types: not just of the Intelligible variety but rather blended with what is divisible and of the world of generation (Ti. 35a–36b). Thus, the soul has in its very make-up aspects of both worlds and can therefore be active in both realms. It is in this sense intermediary.
In the Timaeus, Plato also differentiates between the Cosmic Soul, which was blended first from these three elements, and the human soul, which was blended later from the same three elements but in a less pure state (Ti. 41de). The Demiurge fashioned these and then handed over the rest of creation (the lower two souls and the body) to the younger gods (i.e. the planetary gods, which the Demiurge had also fashioned). Thus, there is a clear differentiation between the immortal rational soul (fashioned by the Demiurge) and the other mortal parts (fashioned by the gods). It is the rational soul that is constructed from the intermediary Being, Sameness and Difference, and so it is that soul alone that is not only immortal but also intermediary between the Forms and Nature.
IAMBLICHUS INTERPRETS PLATO
Iamblichus, like all later Platonists, had to make sense of what Plato had written. In particular, he had to allow for the soul to be tripartite yet ultimately single and partless. The Timaeus gave him a way to do so, but the shadow of the Republic and its tripartition had to be handled as well. Unlike modern interpreters of Plato, Iamblichus could not appeal to a conception of Plato changing his opinion in different dialogues or trying on different hats. For Iamblichus, all the dialogues must espouse a single Platonic doctrine.
Iamblichus presents his solution in sections 10–13 of his de Anima. He begins by distinguishing the soul’s essence from the powers it exerts (see Taormina 1993). A soul’s essence is single,5 while its powers are multiple. The powers of the soul include what it does: nourishing, perceiving, imagining, thinking, and so on. Its essence is the very nature of the soul, the life it leads while using its powers. Further, since the soul lives a double life – one in the body and one separated from it – it follows that its singular essence is split and that it brings forth different powers in each phase. Powers that are appropriate for the embodied soul (perception, say, or the functions of living in a body) would be inappropriate for the disembodied soul. It is, however, the same soul that exhibits these powers (section 10). The soul, then, has a continuum of powers. Following the Timaeus, priority is given to its disembodied powers – when the rational soul is separate from the body – but one cannot ignore the powers of the embodied soul, which differ from those of the disembodied.
Why do they differ? In section 11, Iamblichus argues (again using the Timaeus as his foundation) that the embodied soul has three parts that operate in three areas of the body. In Ti. 69c–70b, Plato said that the rational part resided in the head, the spirited in the chest, and the desiderative near the stomach. Iamblichus here accepts this description and adds that the rational soul itself has multiple powers that cover these lower functions. Thus the rational soul exhibits its powers through the body and the lower souls, and each of what for Iamblichus are two souls (rational and irrational) has its own place in the body complex.6 The soul has parts when it is embodied, but these are separate from and used by the rational soul. The powers that are actualized in the lower souls and body originate in the rational soul, but the rational soul requires the lower parts to actualize them.7
Although Iamblichus uses the Timaeus for the basis of his doctrine of the soul, he still must account for the tripartition of the soul in the Republic and Phaedrus. He does so in section 12, following an older doctrine that he shares with Porphyry.8 Both Porphyry and Iamblichus conclude that Plato’s division of the soul was made for the sake of explaining the four virtues. For them, Plato’s was a pedagogical move, not a philosophical doctrine. Thus the teachings of the Republic (and by extension the Phaedrus as well) are reduced to pedagogical analogies. They are true as far as they go, but the complete truth is that the soul has very many powers, more than tripartition suggests. Iamblichus combines Aristotle’s psychic powers (nutritive, perceptive, imaginative, desiderative, rational) with Plato’s two lower souls, and he thereby makes the whole conglomerate one that is necessarily attached to the soul/body complex. The rational soul itself is a separate entity.
If the rational soul is the source of the powers exhibited through the lower souls in the body, what is the status of these lower souls? Plato in the Timaeus makes it clear that the lower souls are mortal, but Iamblichus took a different view. Interpreting Plato’s use of the word “mortal” in a liberal fashion as “related to mortal matters”, he argues that these lower souls (though distinct from the rational soul) were in themselves immortal (Dillon 1973: 373–4). Further, Iamblichus accepted the existence of an immortal, ethereal vehicle of the soul, which housed the rational soul in its descent from the Intelligible and to which the lower souls were also attached. For Iamblichus, this whole complex (rational soul, irrational soul and vehicle) was immortal.9
A thorough discussion of the vehicle and its role in philosophy and theurgy is impossible here (see Finamore 2013). Briefly, the vehicle is the seat of the phantasia in the soul. It is therefore responsible for such things as our memory and our collection of perceptible images through which rational discursive thought is possible. It can also receive images through the rites of theurgic ritual, and these in turn become part of the ascent ritual which frees our rational soul from our bodies and raises it to higher levels of being. The vehicle’s immortality therefore guarantees that our personality (including especially our philosophical nature) is our permanent possession.10 Thus, after death, the soul leaves the body with its irrational soul and vehicle attached. What made us who we were on earth (our memories, our idiosyncrasies, our previous judgements) remain with us. As we enter Hades for punishment or reward, we are the same individual that we were before. Only the body is left behind.
Iamblichus’ reassessment of Plato’s doctrines is now coming into focus. Having collapsed the two mortal parts of the soul (desiderative and spirited) into a single irrational soul and having imported Aristotle’s concepts of nutrition, perception and desire into that irrational soul and of phantasia into the psychic vehicle, he now maintains the immortality of all the soul elements. In de Anima section 13, he writes that these lower powers (i.e. the vehicle and irrational soul) continue to exist after the soul’s separation from body. In Myst. VIII.6 he cites an Egyptian belief that human beings have two souls: one deriving from the Intelligible and the other from the planetary gods; that is, the rational and desiderative/spirited souls as described in the Timaeus. The irrational soul causes us to be adaptable to the world of generation, but the rational soul is the one by which we intellegize and reunite with the Intelligible. We have already seen that the higher soul works through the lower. We can now also see that Iamblichus’ solution helps bring the Republic and Timaeus into a kind of harmony. After the separation of soul and body and after the rational soul has ascended to the Intelligible (and perhaps higher, to the realm of the One itself), the soul returns to its irrational soul and vehicle. It thus has the same guiding control over these lower structures as it had had in its previous life. Thus, the rational soul can retain its own personality both in Hades (when it makes its own choice for its next life) and in the next life. There is, therefore, continuity between the various earthly lives of philosopher-theurgists.11 Looked at from the perspective of the Phaedrus, we can control our problematic horses just as well as we could before in our previous existence.
There is one more preliminary point to be made here. We have seen that Plato differentiated two sorts of souls: divine and human. The Neoplatonic universe was more complex. In books I, II and III of the de Mysteriis, Iamblichus distinguishes various kinds of soul between the planetary gods and human beings, including especially angels, daemons, heroes and purified human souls. These souls each exist in separate taxeis or ranks. They cannot metamorphose into each other. Once a human soul, always a human soul – and so too for the other ranks. The higher ranks of souls are useful for human ascent, but they (like the planetary gods) are separate from us. Human beings are near the bottom of the hierarchy. Our ascent requires that we master our lower souls and become philosophically and theurgically purified and also that we engage the help of the higher ranks to raise us to the gods.12
SIMPLICIUS AND THE IAMBLICHEAN INTERMEDIATE SOUL
Iamblichus lays out his own doctrine of the soul and its intermediary nature in de Anima sections 6–7. In section 6, he (rather unfairly) places previous Platonists into a single camp: Numenius, Plotinus, Amelius and Porphyry all fail to mark the distinctions between various kinds of soul, and indeed even between Intellect and soul.13 In section 7, he gives his own view: the human soul is an intermediary between Intellect above and the world of becoming below. It is distinct from Intellect and all the superior classes (angels, daemons, heroes, etc.), but is connected to them (above) and to generation (below). On the face of it, Iamblichus is not asserting anything new or revolutionary. All Platonists (including those he had mentioned in sect. 6) thought that the human soul was intermediary in just this way.
For Iamblichus’ unique position on the soul, we must turn to the commentary on the de Anima of Aristotle that comes down to us under the name of Simplicius. The commentator tells us that Iamblichus not only thought that the soul was an intermediary but also that it had a double essence.14 The soul is in its very essence both Intelligible (when it is engaged in intellegizing apart from the body) and generated (when it is engaged in bodily activities). Proclus later rejected this idea, saying that the soul changed in its activities but not in its essence.15 Iamblichus’ doctrine was more radical. Even as we are engaged in lower-level activities concerned with matters down here, our soul is still essentially intelligible; when it is engaged in pure thought above, it is still essentially involved in generation. As the commentator says, the soul “does not simply remain but simultaneously both remains what it is and becomes” (in de An. 90.4–5).
This doctrine is consciously associated with Aristotle’s active and passive intellect. Simplicius quotes Aristotle’s words from III.5 that the active intellect, once it has been separated, is what it is; that is, immortal (de An. 430a22–3) (quoted again and more fully at in de An. 77.10–11). He can then argue that the rational soul differs from the rest of the soul, which is necessarily tied to the body.
Although the rational soul is separate, it also forms a natural union16 with the other psychic powers (and therefore with the body to which they are attached) because of the lives it projects in its inclination outside of itself (in de An. 77.9–10). This inclination is, of course, a part of the life-drama of a human soul. As Iamblichus tells us, the soul, qua mean, exists on two levels. In its descent it comes to live the embodied life, projecting and activating its lower powers. Later in the commentary, Simplicius writes, following Iamblichus, that when the soul is dissipated and slackened,17 it sinks down towards what is secondary.18 This slackening is part of the soul’s dual essence in Iamblichean theory. That is to say, the soul is essentially what it is before and after the slackening. Both essences belong to the soul, and both essences are one. Returning to our passage, we move from this psychic declension with its associated secondary lives to the kind of union it forms with the body. It is not a structure of contiguous parts,19 such as corporeal parts would form, but a union appropriate for incorporeal entities, soul and body unified without division, one undivided whole (in de An. 77.12–15). Simplicius is imagining a thorough interpenetration of immaterial soul with body. It is not a cobbled together composite, but a unified whole with the incorporeal soul everywhere infused into the corporeal substrate.20 If the union of soul and body is unified in this way, he tells us, then the union of the separated and the unseparated souls must be even finer (in de An. 77.17–19), no doubt because it is the compound of two incorporeal substances. He qualifies the kind of inseparability he has in mind:
Even if some [forms of life] are inseparable [from the body], the other is separable but because of its standing apart from itself and its inclination to what is outside of it, it is somehow inseparable and joined together with the other [lives]; it actualizes common activities in the whole of itself but separate activities by itself, since it is transcendent in relation to the other [lives].
(in de An. 77.19–23 [Hayduck], my trans.)
The human soul exists on various levels from the nutritive faculty below to rational soul above.21 Of all of the various levels, only one is separable from the body, that of the rational soul. Mindful, however, of Iamblichus’ dictum that the soul is a mean between intellect and nature, and that it descends whole and changes thereby in its very essence (not just in its powers or activities), Simplicius is careful not to cast the rational soul’s separation as permanent or even stable. In this composite of soul and body, the role of the lower powers (the two mortal lower souls in the Timaeus) is to be permanently involved with the body. They are inseparably linked, and yet they are still soul. Just as they are closely intertwined with body, so too the rational soul is intertwined with them and these two psychic entities also form a compound. Thus, through this connection, the higher soul can be said to act with the lower soul in controlling the body. Nonetheless, this is only one aspect of the higher soul’s life since it, unlike the lower, can live separately, however unstably and impermanently.
As Simplicius presents it, Iamblichus’ doctrine makes the human soul schizophrenic. It is trapped in a twilight zone between pure contemplative thought and bodily activities. It can never fully embrace either extreme, but it lives in the middle. Returning to our passage, we can see how far Iamblichus’ doctrine has affected Simplicius. Even the connection between higher and lower soul is schizophrenic in this sense. Qua embodied, the rational soul exists at that level, its ability to contemplate harmed and its activities demoted. Qua intellect, it lives separately and purely. But it can live neither life completely nor forever. Such is the fate of the human soul.
We can obtain a glimpse of the underlying Iamblichean doctrine in frag. 86 of Iamblichus’ Timaeus commentary. There, Iamblichus is explicating Ti. 43a2–6. The younger gods have received the immortal soul from the Demiurge and have now borrowed fire, air, earth and water from the cosmos. The gods “glue together what they have taken into the same [mass], not with the indestructible bonds with which they themselves are held together but welding them together with thick rivets invisible because of their smallness, making each body one from all” (Ti. 43a2–4, my trans.).
Iamblichus interprets the “thick rivets” as “the union of the reason principles in nature” and the “welding together” as “their demiurgic coherence and union”. Thus, Iamblichus sees the rivets as metaphorical. The gods connect soul to body by placing logoi in the soul. These would, of course, be logoi relating to the body and to the irrational powers. They would, in fact, make the higher processes of the immortal soul more attuned to the composite life of soul and body, with its concomitant irrational necessities. This union, which Simplicius described as a total infusion of soul and body, Iamblichus similarly explains as a synoche and henōsis granted from the creator gods. These words are intended to express the close union involved, as remarked by Plato when he says that the bond, though inferior to that in the gods themselves, nonetheless accomplishes a unity from multiplicity.
We now come to another problem, first articulated by Carlos Steel.22 Simplicius (in de An. 313.1–30) reluctantly disagreed with Iamblichus’ interpretation of the two intellects in 3.5. Whereas he sees the two intellects at work in the human soul, Iamblichus sees them as external, as in fact the transcendent Intellect and that participated by soul. So, to understand what Iamblichus thought, we must leave Simplicius behind and turn instead to Priscianus’ Metaphrasis in Theophrastum.
Priscianus discusses intellect from Metaphrasis 25.27–37.34. The beginning of this section of the Metaphrasis is missing in the manuscripts. As Huby (1993) has argued, Priscianus makes use of Iamblichus’ theories of the soul in this treatise, borrowing materials from Iamblichus (probably from his de Anima) to use in responding to problems raised by Theophrastus.
In the opening of this section as we have it (Metaphr. 25.27–27.7), Priscianus is concerned with the concept of the potential intellect that he has found in Theophrastus. He paraphrases Theophrastus: “One must take ‘potentially’ analogically in regard to the psychic intellect, as [it is] related to intellect in actuality, that is to the separated intellect” (Metaphr. 26.5–7 [Bywater], my trans.).
As Huby notes, it is difficult to decide if the term “psychic intellect” is from Theophrastus.23 Like her, I find it doubtful. This seems an Iamblichean – or certainly Neoplatonic – phrase referring to the intellect in soul, which is to be contrasted with pure Intellect, and that indeed is how it is used here. Whatever distinction Theophrastus might have made, we have here a Neoplatonic one between transcendent Intellect and the intellect-in-soul.24
Priscianus then considers how this psychic intellect may be considered as “potential” (Metaphr. 26.12–23), and in so doing uses Iamblichean vocabulary with which we have already become familiar. Looking to Aristotle’s comment at 429a27–9 that the intellect is the place of the forms potentially, Priscianus says that the psychic intellect is of this sort (Metaphr. 26.12–14). The problem for this intellect arises in the soul’s inclination towards what is partial (Metaphr. 26.15–16). As we saw in the de Anima commentary, this declension leads the soul away from its intellectual activity and towards generation. Priscianus repeats the vocabulary of in de An. 241.9, using the verb chalasthai of the soul in this declension, saying that in the descent from the Intelligible “the connection between the two realms is somehow slackened and is not precise as was its unity in the separated [Intellect]” (Metaphr. 26.19–20).25 Thus this passage echoes the Iamblichean doctrine of the soul’s median position, existing in two realms and constantly torn between them. The descent causes essential changes in the soul itself, making it weaker and more attuned to the world of generation. Here, in Priscianus, we concentrate specifically on its deterioration vis-à-vis the Intellect. He stresses, therefore, the soul’s need for the actualizing transcendent Intellect (Metaphr. 26.20–23): “Therefore for purely indivisible knowledge [the soul’s intellect] itself has need of the Intellect that actually perfects, and the intelligible objects in it [i.e. in the psychic intellect] have need of the illumination of the separated intelligible objects so that its intelligible objects might be perfected [and so be] perfect.”
Thus, the transcendent Intellect qua active intellect always has the intelligible objects actually, but the human soul possesses them only intermittently when it is actually in contact with the Intellect itself, for at that time the soul’s intellect is actualized by the transcendent Intellect while the intelligible objects that are always in the actual Intellect become actualized in the psychic intellect as well.26 Unfortunately for the human soul, this experience is necessarily temporary, and it descends again, becomes weakened thereby, and associates itself with life in the body. It is in this way, Priscianus says (Metaphr. 26.26–9), the psychic intellect is potential.
So far Priscianus has been talking as if there were only two levels under consideration: transcendent Intellect and the intellect in our souls. Later (Metaphr. 32.25–34.28), when he expounds the teachings of Iamblichus and Plutarch of Athens, whom he calls the “genuine interpreters” of Aristotle (Metaphr. 32.34), he adds the intermediate level of Intellect-participated-by-soul. Thus we have the three moments of the Intellectual Triad: Unparticipated Intellect, Participated Intellect, and Intellect in participation.27 The last two moments of this triad cognize intelligible objects by using the logoi contained in them.28 The actual intellect knows all things too but on a higher level, and thus the other two lower intellects know them in a secondary fashion (Metaphr. 33.7–17). Thus, it is clear that what the actual intellect does immediately, purely, and from a higher perspective, the other two intellects do in a less pure fashion, dependent on logoi.
After defining “actuality” as “indivisible unity” (henōsis ameristos) and “unified perfection” (hēnōmenē teleiotes) of the Unparticipated Intellect and its objects (Metaphr. 35.4–5), he turns to “potentiality”. Characteristically of Iamblichus (as we have seen), it involves a declension to a lower level and the resultant lack of wholeness. Priscianus defines “potential” as “involving a union with otherness and a descent into what is somehow determined and perfected” (Metaphr. 35.8–9). Thus, the resulting union is less cohesive. Intellect and intelligible object are no longer identical, but there is some otherness and the perfecting comes from outside rather than from the intellect itself.
Priscianus admits that this kind of potential union is more appropriately applied to the psychic intellect, which he describes in Iamblichean terms as having a “slackened” (kechalasmenēn, Metaphr. 35.14) union with its objects and thus dependent on the transcendent Intellect (Metaphr. 35.12–15).29 Thus, as we have seen, the human soul is in its essence slackened and therefore incapable of complete union with the intelligibles and, further, in need of the transcendent Intellect for any union whatsoever.
What is striking is that the median intellect, the one participated by soul, is also slackened (Metaphr. 35.16–17). He says, “It is participated in because of its descent, it is suspended from its unifying and completely indivisible determinate, and it is perfected by it in its essence” (Metaphr. 35.17–18). As a mean term, it is lower ranked than the transcendent intellect and thus the human soul can participate in it, and moreover it is inferior to that intellect which provides its determinacy and perfection (two things which we saw the transcendent Intellect providing for itself). Nonetheless, this is a higher intellect than that in the soul, and qua intermediary, it is proximate to the transcendent Intellect, and therefore Priscianus is at pains to explain its potentiality. It is, he says, still closely related to the transcendent Intellect and perfects itself through it in a secondary way and is united with it in a secondary way (Metaphr. 35.19–23).30
The importance of the role of the Intellect in the life of the soul can be seen as well in frags 55 and 56 of Iamblichus’ Timaeus commentary.31 Iamblichus is interpreting Timaeus 36c2–5, where the Demiurge has split the soul ingredients into two and formed them into two circles: the Circle of the Same and the Circle of the Different. Iamblichus takes the novel approach that these circles refer not to the soul (as one would expect) but to intellect. He is able to do so because Plato had written that the motion was “carried around” (periagomenē, Ti. 36c3) and not carried in the soul (frag. 55.5–6), and it is the realm of the Intellect that surrounds the soul. Further, Iamblichus characterizes the motion of the Circle of the Same (which he associates with the transcendent Intellect in frag. 56) as a “motionless motion” (frag. 55.11–12), which exists in a unified way (55.12), is uniform (55.13), and is one and indivisible (55.13–14). The soul, on the other hand, is a self-moved motion (55.12–13) and dyadic (55.13), and divides and multiplies itself (55.14). As these epithets show, the relation between the transcendent Intellect and the psychic intellect here expressed is in harmony with that in Priscianus. The Intellect is more unified and hence more pure; the soul more divided.
In frag. 56 Iamblichus says that the Circle of the Same (the outer circle and the transcendent Intellect) contains (56.5) the World Soul and the individual souls32 and is unmixed with them (56.6), while the Circle of the Different (the Participated Intellect) is in the souls (56.6), and is mixed with and directs them (56.7). It is because of this arrangement that the Whole Soul actualizes in a stable fashion and is unified with the Demiurge himself (56.8–9).
We can now see why Iamblichus located these circles higher and why he interpreted the active and passive intellects in de An. 3.5 as he did. Given his conception of the soul, as a mean whose higher and lower activities show that the soul is, in its very essence, a changeable mean between Intellect and Nature, the soul requires external aid to be able to function stably. On its own, it cannot attain the heights of the Intellect. It is marred in its very nature, destined to fall. Thus, without an active role for the realm of Intellect, the life of the soul is doomed to roaming the lower depths of the cosmos. For this doctrine, Iamblichus was able to find the textual support he needed in the two most important philosophers in the Neoplatonic canon, Plato and Aristotle.
CONCLUSION
Iamblichus’ doctrine of the soul fits well with other tenets of his philosophy. As Plato prescribed, the human soul is intermediary between the unchanging world of the Forms and the ever-changing world of becoming. Like every Platonist before him (including some he himself criticized for not making the distinction clearly enough), Iamblichus taught that the soul was intermediary and took part in both realms at different times. This ability to live two lives, as it were, also aided in Iamblichus’ religious philosophy. The Iamblichean metaphysical universe is a complex place. Above the Forms and the Intelligible is the One itself.33 Below the Intellect are a series of psychic intermediaries (visible gods, angels, daemons, heroes, purified human souls). The human soul was placed far apart from the One and Intellect, adrift in the world of becoming. The soul could not ascend back to its Intelligible home without divine aid. Such aid was available through sacred rites and the-urgical practices. As Iamblichus makes clear in Myst. V. 18, the largest segment of humanity is held down by nature, is subject to fate, and never rises.34 Other human beings can and do make progress through theurgical ascent. Such souls could be trained and purified so that, starting with the lowest intermediaries (heroes, daemons, etc.), the soul could begin to separate itself from its body and rise towards the gods.
The theurgic rites unlock the harnessed higher powers of the soul: its higher, separated life. In de An. section 48, Iamblichus notes that the human soul possesses “a disposition, good in form, similar to that of the gods in intellect” (de An. 72.7–8). This is the psychic equivalent of Intellect, what we find Iamblichus equating with Aristotle’s passive intellect in his Timaeus commentary. This disposition is obviously not a fully formed intellectual principle, but it does offer the potentiality of the soul’s union with the Intellect itself. That this disposition is “good in form” (agathoeide) shows that the principle is also useful for ascending beyond the Intellect to the One. Iamblichus distinguishes the One of the Soul from the soul’s intellect (in Phdr. frag. 6.2–3). Thus there are present in the soul the powers that can, with the help of theurgy, bring the human soul into union with the Intellect and the One.35
The relationship between psychology, metaphysics and religious ritual works out in the following manner. The human soul has capacities for union with the Intellect and One, but these are buried in the human soul. Most of humanity never ascends beyond discursive thought, and so the potential for ascent comes to naught. Those few who can rise higher require the help of theurgists, ritual and divine intermediaries. Through these the soul is freed from the body and rises higher, eventually rising to the Intellect itself. The intellective faculty in the soul has the potential for pure thought. The Intellect itself possesses the objects of thought actually. The process follows Aristotelian principles: what is potential must be brought into activity by something actual. This psychic faculty, then, is actualized by Intellect, which provides fully actualized Intelligible objects to those existing only potentially in the human soul. At this point, the soul lives its highest life, engaging in pure intellection. Even as it does so, the soul is slipping back into its lower condition. The psychic intellectual capacity cannot hold, and the soul begins to project its lower powers, ready to descend and work at a lower level. This is Iamblichus’ unique doctrine. The soul, even when at its highest, slips and falls. Conversely, when a soul that can ascend is engaged in acts in generation, it also is raising itself higher. The soul has both aspects essentially, and both aspects exist in it simultaneously. There is an ever-present tug upwards and downwards.36
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A large part of the section “Simplicius and the Iamblichean intermediate soul” appeared earlier in Finamore (2009). I wish to thank University of Laval Press for allowing me to include it here. I also wish to thank the editors, Svetla Slaveva-Griffin and Pauliina Remes, and the anonymous reader for their comments and suggestions.
NOTES
1. There is a complex interweaving of ancient ritual in Platonism before Iamblichus. Various earlier Platonists – such as Plutarch and Apuleius, to name two – accepted the role of magic and religion into Platonic philosophy. The Chaldaean Oracles, a collection of Platonically inspired writings that claimed to have been received from the soul of Plato by a certain Julian in the time of Marcus Aurelius, contained a rite of the ascent of the soul that Iamblichus later adopted. Outside of Platonism, the Hermetic and gnostic texts contained their own versions of ascent rituals; it is unclear how much Iamblichus read of these non-philosophical texts (and perhaps he read none of them at all). In the de Mysteriis, he did attack the kind of magic that we find in the magical papyri (the sort that involves forcing daemons and the souls of the recently dead to work the will of the conjurer) and substituted instead the theurgical rite in which human beings cooperated with gods and other divinities. On the role of theurgy in Iamblichean philosophy, see especially Shaw (1995); cf. Finamore (2013: 347–54).
2. There is a long debate over whether the author of the de Anima commentary and Priscianus are the same person. Steel (1978) championed the view; Blumenthal (1982, 1990, 1996a, 2000) was always doubtful, sometimes arguing that Simplicius himself wrote it and sometimes an unknown other Neoplatonist; I. Hadot (2002) has argued for Simplicius as its author, and see also I. Hadot (1978: 193–202; 1982: 46–67; 1990: 290–94). I have argued (Finamore & Dillon 2002: 18–24) that the author is neither Priscianus nor Simplicius. Perkams (2005, 2008) tries to show that the author of the commentary is Priscianus, but his arguments do not rule out the possibility that the author is Simplicius himself. Most recently, De Haas (2010: 759–60) has surveyed the evidence, and considers the question still open, although we should “respect the unanimous attribution of the manuscripts” that the author is Simplicius. Although we cannot decide the authorship question beyond a doubt, the contradictory positions of the two philosophers on the two intellects (see below) indicate that the author of the de Anima commentary is not Priscianus. I. Hadot’s (2002) stance that the similarities between Simplicius and Priscianus are caused in part by the two authors’ reliance on the same commentary of Iamblichus is enticing. This reliance would also explain the commentator’s differences in style from other works of Simplicius and his use of vocabulary and technical terminology not found in his other works.
3. For the de Anima, see the edition of Finamore & Dillon (2002), where the Greek text and English translation are provided along with commentary. For the de Mysteriis, see Clarke et al. (2003) and most recently Saffrey & Segonds (2013). For the de Anima commentary, see the appendix to Finamore & Dillon (2002).
4. For a fuller discussion of the role of the soul in the Republic and Phaedrus, see Finamore (2005). See also Lorenz (2006: esp. 160–62) and G. R. F. Ferrari (2007: esp. 196–200).
5. Iamblichus introduces the concept of simplicity/singleness twice in section 12. He writes that Plato says that the soul has an incomposite essence (asynthetos ousia, 34.4) and Aristotle a simple essence (haple ousia, 34.5). As we shall see later, the simple essence is also dual, but its binary nature is in itself unitary.
6. Strictly speaking, Iamblichus collapses the two Platonic lower souls into a single soul that he denominates “irrational”. For the Platonic precedent, see Ti. 69e4: τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς θνητὸν γένος, referring to both lower souls. For more on Iamblichus’ irrational soul, see below.
7. See also my discussion in Finamore & Dillon (2002: 100–12).
8. See Porphyry, “On the Powers of the Soul”, frag. 253.11–18 [Smith] (= Stob. 350.19–25). See also Finamore & Dillon (2002: 113–14); Finamore (2011: 3–5); and Perkams (2006: 169–71).
9. Iamblichus, de Anima section 13; in Tim. frags 81, 84. For the vehicle, see Kissling (1922); Dodds (1963: 313–21); Dillon (1973: 47; 1987: 898); Finamore (1985: 1–6, 11–27, 144–55).
10. For the role of theurgy in Iamblichean philosophy, see Finamore (1985: esp. 125–55; 2013) and Shaw (1995: esp. 129–228).
11. There would be continuity as well among the various lives of those who were not saved by philosophy and theurgy. For them, the mistakes that they made in one earthly life would be repeated in the next unless they turned to and followed the Platonic path.
12. For the distinct roles of these “Superior Classes” of souls and the differences among them, see Finamore (2010).
13. For a good overview of Iamblichus’ strategy and his oversimplification of his predecessors’ doctrines, see Dillon’s notes in Finamore & Dillon (2002: 88–91).
14. In de An. 89.33–90.25 (= frag. C in Finamore & Dillon 2002: 234–7).
15. ET 191: “Every participated soul has an eternal essence but an activity in time.” Cf. Perkams (2006: esp. 181–2); instead of one soul that undergoes substantive change, Proclus adopted multiple souls that were each individual substances. On the distinction between essence and activity in the soul, see Steel (1997a: 296–7).
16. σύμϕυσις, 77.12. Compare Iamblichus, de An. sect.10, where he writes that Plato thinks that the psychic powers are “naturally conjoined (symphytoi, 34.3) with the soul”.
17. διαϕορεῖσθαί πως καὶ χαλᾶσθαι, 241.9.
18. See Simplicius 240.33–241.26, where he cites Iamblichus for this view. See the notes of Finamore & Dillon (2002: 256–8). The commentator mentions in this passage not only the descent (neusis) but also projection. He also quotes Aristotle, de An. 430a22–3.
19. The phrase is: ἡ σύμϕυσις οὐ κατὰ συνέχειαν (77.12–13). The unified compound is not “continuous” in the sense that it is not like atoms placed side by side to create a whole compound.
20. Thus, the whole soul senses through the sensitive faculty (78.29–30), as we saw in Iamblichus’ de Anima. The whole soul is involved “because each power is naturally united with the whole in an indivisible way” (79.30). It is this σύμϕυσις of irrational powers with the whole soul that puts the whole soul over the whole body. See Urmson & Lautner (1995: 177 n. 310). See also 78.31–3: the whole soul holds the body together “by means of the lives that are inseparable from it because of their indivisible natural union in the whole”; and 79.29–34: various psychic powers (such as the vegetative, sensitive and rational) are of the same kind as each other and the whole “because of their inseparable natural union with each other”. Looking at the larger cosmic significance, since the World Soul holds the same relation to the physical cosmos (its body), only without any slackening of its nature, the World Soul is fully united with the cosmos and so extends through it completely everywhere. The distinction is related to Plato’s doctrine in the Timaeus that the World Soul’s ingredients are purer than those of the individual souls. There is a general weakening that occurs down the ranks of soul, and the human soul therefore undergoes more “slackening”; that is to say, it more readily undergoes a fall into matter and an association with it, even to the point of identifying its essence with the material world.
21. On the bifurcation of the lowest phase of the soul between the body prepared for ensoulment and the ensouled body, see Blumenthal (1996a: 103–5). For the commentator’s “multiplying levels”, see Blumenthal (1982: 78; 1990: 308–9).
22. Steel (1978: 142–54). The “problem” arises only for those (such as Steel) who want to say that the author of the two works is Priscianus. Simplicius’ radical break with Iamblichus shows one alternative to the question of how the human soul acts. For Iamblichus and Priscianus, the human soul is fundamentally attached and involved with the Intellect, and the soul’s intellegizing depends in large part on the interaction of the Intellect itself. The author of the de Anima commentary sees the human soul as more independent. It does not seem likely to me that this fundamental contradiction in beliefs could exist in a single philosopher even over two separate works written at different times. Priscianus, a Neoplatonic contemporary of Simplicius and fellow student of Damascius, opted to follow Iamblichus; Simplicius chose another path.
23. Huby & Steel (1997: 64 n. 313). As she points out, Steel (1978: 148 n. 25), accepts it as Theophrastean. Huby points out that the term is found in Simplicius as well, which would point to Iamblichus as a common source.
24. For more on the relationship between the human rational soul with its intellectual component and Intellect itself, see Finamore (1997: 166–73).
25. On the verb χαλᾶσθαι, see Huby’s note in Huby & Steel (1997: 64 n. 318). She there cites Steel (1978: 66 n. 53) for the words’ first occurrences in Priscianus, Simplicius and Damascius. It is clear, however, that the word occurs in Iamblichean contexts and should be associated with him. See Finamore & Dillon (2002: 256). Cf. Metaphrasis 27.15, where Priscianus uses the verb again in a similar context.
26. For the rational soul’s departure from the Intellect and its actualization by it, see 27.14–29. To have a clearer notion of how radical Iamblichus’ doctrine is, consider it in relation to Plotinus’ doctrine that the human soul is always intellegizing.
27. For these three moments in a triad in Iamblichus, see in Tim. frag. 54.6–7 and Dillon’s note (1973: 335; cf. 33). On Priscianus here, see Huby in Huby & Steel (1997: 66 n. 362). For what follows in Priscianus (29.26–31.24), see Huby (1993: 10–12). As she shows, the remainder is about the individual soul, even though he has made this triple division here. She also shows how the passage is based on Iamblichean doctrines. For such triads in Simplicius, see Blumenthal (2000: 138 n. 296).
28. Huby, in Huby & Steel (1997) 68 n. 393, thinks that Priscianus “leaves it unclear whether the participated intellect and the rational soul are one and the same”, but the tenor of this section of the commentary shows that he differentiates them both. The evidence from Iamblichus’ Timaeus commentary (below) will verify this fact.
29. See also 35.15–16: the chalasmos is clearer with respect to the soul.
30. Cf. Priscianus’ remarks at 35.29–36.5, where he again stresses the Participated Intellect’s median nature. It is involved in a descent (so that the psychic intellect participates in it) and is actualized by the transcendent Intellect. He repeats the language of “perfection”, saying that “it is connected to the First [Intellect] and is perfected by it, or rather it perfects itself through it [i.e. through the transcendent Intellect]”.
31. Steel (1978: 143) has introduced passages from Simplicius’ Categories commentary that show that Iamblichus in his commentary also stressed the role of active intellect in the soul’s thinking.
32. For the “two souls” mentioned here being the World Soul and the individual souls “taken as a whole”, see Dillon (1973: 337).
33. For Iamblichus’ doctrine of three moments in the Realm of the One, see Dillon (1973: 29–33; 1987: 880–85).
34. Myst. V.17.223.8–12. See my discussion in Finamore & Dillon (2002: 161–3).
35. On these two psychic elements, see my note in Finamore & Dillon (2002: 211), Finamore (1997: 166–73), and Dillon (1973: 254). In Myst. V.22.230.14–231.2, Iamblichus claims that union with the One is rare and occurs only in advanced age. Clearly, advanced training in theurgy is required and, of course, takes time.
36. If the soul’s ascent to the One is parallel to its ascent to Intellect, then this dual essence is also apparent in the ascent to the One. In this case, there are no objects to be actualized (because we are rising above the realm of Forms and of thought itself to pure unity without differentiation). The One – certainly the One Existent, the lowest of the Iamblichean Ones (see Dillon 1973: 31–3) – actualizes the potentiality in the One of the Soul; see in Phdr. frag. 6 and Dillon’s note (1973: 254). The soul then experiences the complete unity of the One. The forces at work within the soul towards its declension can be overridden only by the One itself. In itself, the soul is helpless and dependent on the One.