Dionysius on Movement of Intellects, Soul, Nature

 IV. Movements of Intellect, Soul, Nature (cf.868b)

We discussed God's love as a kind of motion, but also Dionysius ascribes three kinds of motion to God in DN9.916c: 

"And yet what do the theologians mean when they assert that the unstirring God moves and goes out into everything? This is surely something which has to be understood in a way befitting God, and out of our reverence for him we must assume that this motion of his does not in any way signify a change of place, a variation, an alteration, a turning, a movement in space either straight or in a circular fashion or in a way compounded of both. Nor is this motion to be imagined as occurring in the mind, in the soul, or in respect of the nature of God [?A.a]. What is signified, rather, is that God brings everything into being, that he sustains them, that he exercises all manner of providence over them, that he is present to all of them, that he embraces all of them in a way which no mind can grasp, and that from him, providing for everything, arise countless processions and activities. And yet, in some mode conforming to what befits both God and reason, one has to predicate movement of the immutable God. One must understand the straight motion of God to mean the unswerving procession of his activities, the coming-to-be of all things from him. The spiral movement attributed to him must refer to the continuous procession from him together with the fecundity of his stillness. And the circular movement has to do with his sameness, to the grip he has on the middle range as well as on the outer edges of order, so that all things are one and all things that have gone forth from him may return to him once again."

1. “Illuminations of the good and beautiful without beginning or end”

1. Trinity (superior and source of good agatharchichen, hyperagathon, revealer of all providences of good things...680b)

2. DN 4.8: Good and beautiful (and Love?)

3. Illuminations of the good and beautiful (without beginning or end)

4. Divine intelligences, united to these illuminations, move circularly.

1. “Divine Intelligences” (Cf.868b)

1. First Motion: Move in a Circle: As unified with these illuminations.

2. Second Motion: Move in a straight line out of Providence to those below.

1. Analogy? To Trinity as beyond Good (circular), as source of all good providences...which are themselves the “illuminations” going out in “straight line”?

3. Third: Move in a spiral (Helikoeidos): while providing, they remain where they are, revolving (perichoreuontes) around the beautiful and good, the cause of sameness (tautotetos).

1. Perl, Theophany, p.80: “Because the principle of reality is pure Openness or Giving, the very identity, the being of each thing, is nothing but its relations to others, its place within the structure of immediate mediation....Nothing could be farther from the supposed ‘immovability’ of Dionysian hierarchy than this vision of being as perichoresis, as the Great Dance in which all beings are only in and through each other. 

2. Perl: “[angelic model] clearly applies to all things, since all things remain fixed in their identities in proceeding to their subordinates.” “The Hierarchical structure of reality is the articulated manifestation of the divine love that constitutes all things.” (80-1).

3. [Perl’s translation:] ‘Spirally, because even in providing for the inferior they remain not gone out...in identity around the beautiful and good cause of identity, ceaselessly dancing around...’”

4. Golitzin’s translation: “and in a spiral manner when, at once taking forethought for their inferiors, they remain without departure in identity, unceasingly dancing around the Good and Beautiful which is the cause of identity.” Mystagogy, p.123.

1. Golitzin on differences of angelic intellects with pagan.

1. Open-ended motion “breaks neoplatonic cycles” (DN 701a)

1. CH 15.3: angel’s ‘ever-moving course towards the divine’... entails “a continuing ascent and ever-deepening union into and with the God who is contemplated” p.125. (Gregory of Nyssa)

2. Angels are creatures and not demiurges

3. They are not exclusively real as is Nous in Enn. II.4.16 (p.124).

Q: What is the difference between the Divine Circular Motion and that of the Angels? Does God move spirally? Is the Trinity a moment of divine Love or prior to it? (DN 916C!!)

2. Souls: 

1. First movement: “moves in a circle”

1. First stage : “Turns within itself and away from what is outside”

1. Soul’s movement implies an inner and an outer necessarily.

2. The soul is in some sense “out there” and needs to come back in.

3. By contrast, the angels’ circular motion is already “at one” with the illuminations.

2. “Inner concentration [uniform ‘rolling up’ (enoeides sunelixis)] of intellectual powers” (noeron dunameon)

2. Second stage: having become uniform, it becomes united to those powers ‘unifiedly unified.’

3. Third stage:  it is guided up to the beautiful and good beyond all things.

1. Cf.DN7 865c ‘The human mind (noÓv) has a cognitive capacity, through which it sees (blepei) the intelligibles, and a unity which transcends the nature of the mind, through which it is joined to things beyond itself.’ Gavriluk, p.97.

Compare: DN 4.11.708D: “”we use letters, syllables, phrases, written terms and word because of the senses [tas aistheseis]. But when our souls are moved by intelligent energies [tais noerais energeiais...kineitai] in the direction of the things of the intellect [epi ta noeta] then our senses and all that go with them are no longer needed. And the same happens with our intelligent powers [noerai dunameis] which, when the soul becomes divinized [theoeides], concentrate sightlessly [epiballei...tais anommatois epibolais] and through an unknowing union on the rays of ‘unapproachable light’. When as a result of the workings of perception, the mind [nous] is stirred to be moved up to contemplative conceptions [theoretikas noeseis], it sets a particular value [timioterai]on most unambiguous perceptions [epideloterai ton aistheseon diaporthmeuseis], on the clearest words and on the things most distinctly seen, for when sense data [ta parakeimena tais aisthesesin] are in confusion then the senses cannot themselves report properly to the mind [oude autai toi noi parastesai ta aistheta kalos dunesontai].”

“Like other Platonists he equivocates between the understanding of sensation as pre-cognitive (sensory output as such has yet to acquire propositional content and therefore cannot be true or false) and the error theory of perception, which presupposes that the output of the senses has some cognitive content, which may cause the subject to be deceived by the senses.” Gavriluk, (ch. on Dionysius in Spiritual Senses, p.89)

DN. 7.2.868C: “...[human souls] on account of the manner in which they are capable of concentrating the many into the one, they too, in their own fashion and as far as they can, are worthy of conception like those of the angels. Our sense perceptions also can properly be described as echoes of wisdom...”

B. Second movement: Straight line: (out of order in the text)

I.  “instead of circling in upon its own intelligent unity, it proceeds to the things around it, and is uplifted from external things, as from certain variegated and pluralized symbols, to the simple and united contemplations.” [cf. Gilsonian realism]

Straight line: Liturgy, natural contemplation? 

Hankey, (Aquinas’ Neoplatonism), p.57: “Plotinus supplied Augustine both with a positive conception of immaterial substance and the way to arrive at it, namely, by interior self-knowledge. Aquinas, by contrast, adopts his way for arriving at the same end from Aristotle, from the Arabic philosophical melding of Proclus and Aristotle, and from what is Proclean in Dionysius. For all four --- Aristotle, Proclus, Dionysius, and Aquinas---the human soul was turned by nature to the sensible and was not capable of immediate self-knowledge.” [Also says Aquinas opts for Proclean against Augustinian neoplatonism when they conflict].

See also Gerson, Ancient Epistemology; Emillson, “Cognition and its Object” in Cambridge Companion to Plotinus for more discussion of Platonic view of sensation.

C. Third Movement: Spiral

I. when it “receives enlightenment of divine knowledge...through discursive reasoning, in mixed and changeable activities.”

3. Natural Motion:

Movements “in the realm of what is perceived”; See Aquinas commentary to 4.9.

4. Also caused by the Good and the Beautiful.

Microcosm? In some sense the motion of the soul unites the entire cosmos, the sensible and multiple things, are brought back into union with God through the motion of the Soul.

Q: Is this motion inevitably implanted in the nature of the soul? Virtue as peeling away the passions to uncover the inner natural motion that is already there? Christ as needed to successfully reach what is already there?