From Eric Perl interview (14 February 2022): Halper’s questions: 55:53-1:21 (28 minutes)

Eric Perl interview, 14 February 2022

Halper’s questions: 55:53-1:21 (28 minutes)

Halper (55:53): Thank you, Professor Perl. I am not familiar with your work, but it is nice to be introduced to it. First, Gilson was my grandfather. My academic grandfather. So maybe I should say a few words on behalf of him. This distinction you were making a few moments ago, between a metaphysics that can be rationally derived, versus something that must be accepted on faith, is what Gilson wants to emphasize [in distinguishing] between a metaphysics of the One, and a metaphysics of Being. As I understand it, anyway. And he makes a really sharp distinction between people like Aquinas who think there is a distinction [between a metaphysics of the the One and a metaphysics of Being], and people like Anselm and Augustine and various other Neoplatonists, who really want to negate this distinction. And who think you can really derive everything from God. And in Anselm you get a derivation of the Incarnation, and it is kinda interesting. A lot of fun. He isn’t the only one to do it, of course. But that is the sort of thing that Gilson wants to object to. 

That there is a Neoplatonic strain in Aquinas, it seems to me that is well recognized. That is how it was taught to me as an undergraduate. I don’t think it is such a new idea. Having studied with Gilson’s students, I don’t think he would be necessarily opposed to that. The details are really where things are interesting. But like I said, the main emphasis is really on whether from this first principle, you can logically derive everything else. And you are really saying, no you cannot. I think you are more or less on the same page as Gilson.

Perl: You know, to a very large extent I think I am. At least in this sense: I don’t think I really disagree much with Gilson about Aquinas. It is about what the Neoplatonists are up to, Plotinus and Proclus: that is where I disagree with [Gilson]. I learned a tremendous amount from Gilson in terms of understanding Aquinas. But when I look at Plotinus and Proclus, so much of what the metaphysics of what Gilson is talking about in Aquinas, is there in Plotinus and in Proclus. So, I like the way you said that — you cannot derive the many from the One. Or the beings from the first principle. I think that is really important. I don’t think it is sufficiently recognized with regard to Proclus or Plotinus. The argument has to go bottom up. It is not a deduction of all things from the One. And I don’t like that language [of "the One"] since it hypostasizes it. It is not a deduction of all things from the One, but a reduction of all things TO the One. And there, there is a lot of common ground. I would have a lot of trouble with some interpreter of Plotinus or Proclus who present it as a deduction. As if you could start from the first principle, and explain the production of beings from the first. In fact, you start from sensible things. You start with a multiplicity of beings, and show that they depend on a first principle. That is what I mean by a reduction rather than a deduction. So are we on a lot of common ground there?

Halper: Maybe. I am wondering about how you would react to Avicenna. Who actually does take some sort of deductive approach: start from a necessary being (and he is practically quoting from Plotinus), "the One looking at itself" and creating the next hypostasis.

Perl: — [interrupting] well I think first of all, that that is a mistranslation of Plotinus. Whoever is mistranslating it. I know the passage you are referring to, and I don’t think that is actually Plotinus. But I am not familiar enough with Avicenna to be able to say. 

Halper: It is pretty deductive [in Avicenna]. That is the idea. And what you get is a world where there is no freedom. Everything is derived from the necessity being, and therefore everything has some sort of necessity. It is a very different world from Aquinas. And it seems to me that in some way it is more neoplatonic --- or at least [according to] one very standard form of Neoplatonism. 

Perl: Yes it is. But I think it is a misinterpretation. And if what you say about Avicenna is right, then I think Aquinas is more true to, or in continuity with, Neoplatonists than Avicenna is, in that respect. 

Halper: I think that is part of Gilson’s idea. 

Perl: People like Jon McGinnis, we need a better and deeper understanding of what is going on in Avicenna, than the kind of account given by Gilson. But I am not an Avicenna scholar. 

Halper: I would just ask you about what you said about the henads. Because this part of Proclus is very difficult. You described it as the difference between the One and the ones that are participated in. But I am wondering: just how they are participated in? Your example is something like beauty. So you have a one, and then you have a henad, and the henad could be the henad of beauty. Is that what you mean to say?

Perl: No, technically in Proclus' terms — which even he sometimes mixes up, which could be textual problems — that would be a monad, not a henad. A henad is — well, let's draw the analogy the way Proclus does. For any multiplicity, there must be a monad. And that is a Platonic principle that Aquinas quotes, attributes to Plato, and endorses. Wherever you have a multiplicity there must be a prior one that accounts for the many being the same. Proclus applies that in a different way from Aquinas, because he applies it not only in the case of what Aquinas would call being and the transcendentals, but to everything. So as I talk about in the article, you have many ensouled things, each with a soul, a participated soul. And soul itself, which is the monad. Many living things, each with its participated life, and life itself, the monad. But not everything is ensouled, not everything is living. But everything without exception, is a one thing. Everything has unity or it wouldn’t exist at all. Therefore, all things whatsoever have to be traced back to what stands in the position of a monad, One, unparticipated one itself, that is the first principle. So the henads are not any participated term, but participated ones. 

Halper: If the henad is something like life, then — 

Perl: — No, only analogously. You see, the henads are to all things whatsoever, as the participated lifes [sp] are to the various different living things. 

Halper: That is a problem. If there are many living things, and then there is a one that every many must have, there is the question of whether that one is the principle of the many or the living, or both. And if it is the principle of BOTH, then that one would be a plurality, it would be both one and living, and that is problematic. 

Perl: There is a confusion in the way that the analogy is working out here. The point is that, life is the cause of all living things qua living. Soul is the cause of all ensouled things qua ensouled. Beauty is the cause of all beautiful things qua beautiful. But one is the cause of all things period. Or qua things, if you like.

Halper: That part is a standard Neoplatonic move. It is the henad or monad, or whatever. 

Perl: Well, you cannot confuse henads and monads, that is a problem. They are not the same. 

Halper: Well henads that are somehow intermediate there, that I find confusing. 

Perl: In Aquinas, is the participated esse of this or that creature intermediate between the creature and God?

Halper: Is it participated? Well, I don’t know. I think there are two tracks there. That is what I would say. On the one hand, the actuality of the thing is coming from esse. On the other hand, there is another track or route, where the essence of the thing also comes from esse, but by a different route. And that means that there is a kind of one. And that is the neoplatonic dimension. 

But in order to make that go through, you need the essential characters to be a different track than participation. And this is something that Aquinas actually does get from Avicenna. But I think that it is, well, just how it works — he transforms it of course. Avicenna doesn’t make — he just has existence, he doesn’t have the connection between the existence and the essence that Aquinas is able to have. But the part that I find interesting, because I am not understanding it very well, the henad in Proclus: what is that actually doing? You say it is a participated one, but on the other hand, is it the counterpart to esse, in the sense that it is participated in making the thing one, but not in making the thing living? Do you see what I am getting at? If it is not [making the thing living], then you need the other track. You need the other something, some principle of life that will give the thing its character as a living thing. Because if the henad is now responsible for the thing’s being one, and being alive, then the henad would be itself a plurality. 

Perl: Well, I think it would be fair to say that being alive for example, is a way or a mode of being one. Wouldn’t it follow that the henads, because this is the way one is, contain the subordinate perfections. Because any subordinate perfection is some way of being one. 

Halper: Yea, everything is a way of being one. But once you fall off from the one itself, then you get some sort of plurality. 

Perl: Yea, that is why — well, not why — that is that there are beings! 

Halper: Right, right. But you know, that henad is a bit problematic, because it is a falling off. Which suggests that it should be —

Perl: I’m not sure why you say it is a falling off. It is diminished relative to one itself, just as in that it is participated. Just in the way that for Aquinas, esse is contracted to this or that being that participates it. Is that falling off from God? 

Halper: Absolutely! 

Perl: Well if that is all that you mean by falling off, then fine. 

Halper: So, on the one hand, the henad is a kind of falling off — Perl: diminution is the word that Proclus likes to use, but yea — Halper: If you prefer diminution, whatever you want to call it. But at the same time, as it falls off, it becomes a kind of plurality. And that makes calling it a henad problematic. 

Perl: Oh, okay. Why do you say it becomes a plurality? Because it is different from other henads? 

Halper: Because it is different from God, different from the one. There are many of them. There are many henads. [Perl: yea]. How do you get many henads? That is already puzzling. Many ones. 

Perl: Because they are participated by different beings. They are only many, they are only distinct from each other, in virtue of their participants, that is a crucial point. There is nothing in the henad itself, as if you could talk about the henad apart from its participants. Such that it is distinct from others. Its distinction lies in its belonging to this or that being.

Halper: So, if uhm, I am trying to think. Different things participate in one kind of henad, and another maybe say inanimate things participate in another kind of henad, then the henads are both one, but the things that partake of them are distinct. 

Perl: Each henad is a one. But I don’t think Proclus would want to say that there is one sort of henad for living things and a different sort of henad for non-living things and so on. That is not his point at all. All of those distinctions (being, life, intellect, and soul, and so on) are well, one Proclus scholar says they are different phases of operation of the given henad. That is why the same henad is the same henad of the sun, and the sunflower, and gold, and so on. Down through this whole series of analogies. so you have inanimate things like the mineral and living things like the sunflower, and celestial things like the sun itself, and so on up, even into higher levels. It is the solar henad that is operating at all of those different levels. 

Halper: why does one henad, why is it that one henad is the solar henad, and another one is the animal henad, or whatever it is? if it is one, what allows one henad to be that which is partaken of by the sun, and another henad to be that which is partaken of by the moon?

Perl: Well that is just what makes them different in the first place, is that they are participated by different things. So again, I don’t think you can do it top down: starting from the one, then getting the henads, then getting the participants, and so on. We must start with the world. and we find that there are different types of things: we find sun and moon and so on. and thereby learn or discover that they are one in different ways. and that is how we then say that there is a solar henad and lunar henad and so on. I am looking for the passage on that that I quoted here. It is on page 692 in the article. Where Proclus says: “is the multiplicity of henads unparticipated like the one itself, or is it participated by beings? and is each the henad of some being?” And then he says “if they are unparticipated, how will they differ from the one? Each is a one and exists primally from the one. it is necessary in every case…fall short [Perl: there is your falling off!] of the unity of its producer, and by the addition of something [there is your multiplicity in a way] be lessened from the monadic simplicity of the first.” So it is by the addition or inclusion of the participant that the henads are distinguished both from each other and one itself.

Halper: I don’t want to make up too much of your time, but I’ll ask the question in a different way. In Plotinus, you don’t have henads, you just go directly to the one. [Perl: ehh, you don’t have the term, but you do have a distinction between the unity of this thing, the unity of that, and the unity of the other, and the one itself. that is the first principle] sure, but one of the unity’s that you have is the unity that exists in the nous, or the unity that exists in soul. [Perl: or even the unity of each form within nous, and the unity of each soul and so on] That’s right. There are a plurality of forms of nous. And Plotinus doesn’t see the need for this intermediate level of henads. And that is what I find fascinating about Proclus. This intermediate level comes up and it is not clear to me why Proclus thinks he needs it. 

Perl: I don’t really think it is an intermediate level, in this sense: setting the issue up in that way, seems to make the henads separate from the things that participate them. As though there is the one, then there are the henads, and then there are the things that participate them. And that is not what he is doing. Anymore than in Aquinas, you have God and then the esse of things, and then the things. The henads exist, so to speak, only as the unities of these or those different beings. They do not occupy their own space. This is one of the problems I have with the way people do diagrams of Proclus. Because then it looks as though you have all of these different intermediate levels and so on. I just don’t think that is what he is doing. It is a LOGICAL structure where things have their ones. And that is what the henads are. The fact that he then chooses to worship them, is another matter. You don’t have that in Plotinus. I don’t think they are this discrete intermediate level. Because if they were, they could exist without being participated. And he is clear that they don’t. They are only participated, they exist only as participated. Their distinction from one another and from the one itself, without which there wouldn’t be henads, consists only in their belonging to different beings. So I don’t think they have the kind of separate status in between the one and beings that you are attributing to them.

Halper: Ok, I want to thank you. I have to say goodbye. It is nice to meet you virtually. 

1:21:46