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Advaita and Neoplatonism (1961)

Advaita and Neoplatonism

(1961)–Frits Staal–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

A Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy


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4. Knowledge. The húlē

Plotinus describes self-knowledge as the entity nearest to knowledge of the One. We know the Principle by knowing ourselves. This can be regarded as the ultimate consequence in Greek philosophy from the ancient saying Gnōthi seautón, ‘Know thyself’. But can we, as with Śaṅkara, reverse this and are we in a general situation of avidyā when ignoring the One?

 

Plato, consulted in this matter, provides the thesis, closely related to the theory of ideas, that knowing is a remembering, ánamnḗsis.146 Conversely the soul has come ‘in’ the body due to a fall which is the result of its forgetfulness. Plotinus thinks in the same perspective of thought when he says: ‘How is it that the souls have forgotten their divine father .... and that they ignore

themselves as well as him?147 ‘Having arrived at the most distant spot, they ignore even that they themselves are from there’.148 Elsewhere he says that release (lúesthai ‘to be released’) of the soul takes place when it contemplates (theâsthai) beings having started with remembrance (ex anamnḗseōs).149

 

In Plotinus' century and probably earlier (since the first centuries before Christ) parallels with Advaitic doctrines existed in the Corpus Hermeticum. This influenced, if not Neoplatonism itself, certain mystical and ‘esoteric’ movements in late Antiquity, in the middle ages and even later. The Corpus Hermeticum is as Festugière has shown, for the greater part a popularized and syncretistic mixture of Plato, Aristotle and their disciples, not a spiritual tradition of ancient origin. These writings contain statements which are quite ‘Advaitic’, e.g.: kakía dè psukhēs agnōsia, ‘the evil of the soul is nescience’150 and toúnantíon dè aretḗ psukhēs gnōsis, ‘conversely the virtue of the soul is knowledge’.151

 

According to Plotinus the noûs and the psukhḗ derive from the One and become themselves distinct but unseparated realities.152 When we ask how the nous comes into being from the One, Plotinus answers: through a principle called heterótēs, ‘difference’. The same principle is also responsible for the origination of the húlē. Plotinus describes the origination of the húlē from the One in an early153 treatise as follows: heterótēs, ‘otherness: difference; novelty’ (one of the category-like mégista génē, ‘greatest genera’ from the Sophistes),154 ‘makes’ (poîei)155 the húlē. Likewise, the nous comes into being through some kind of interaction between the One and heterótēs, for ‘otherness (is

needed) if there can be a distinction between the thinking (nooûn) and the thought (noouménon)’.156 This is in accordance with the fact that another entity in the realm of nous, the second hypostasis,157 is called húlē theîa ‘divine matter’158 or húlē noētḗ, ‘intelligible matter’.159

 

The question arises as to which relation exists between the húlē and the húlē noētḗ. One might be inclined to assume that the same principle-heterótēs-through which the nous has come into being and which is a purely intelligible principle, does confer some degree of reality to the húlē. There can be no doubt about the reality of the heterótēs. It is one of the ‘categories of being’, i.e., it is as fundamental as being itself and it is ‘given’ together with being. The question which naturally arises is whether the húlē is real or not. If the húlē is unreal, it has come into ‘being’ through some kind of interaction between two perfectly real entities.

 

Plotinus repeatedly asserts that the húlē is unreal: it is a mḕ ón, ‘non-being.’ He explains this for instance as follows, speaking about our own being: ‘Leave the thus-ness of saying: ‘I am thus,’ and you become the all; for also previously you were the all’ (note, as in the Upaniṣads, the superimposition: ‘I am thus’). ‘But in as far as you were something different and extra beyond the all, you became, though it is due to a surplus, less: for this surplus is not due to being (nothing could be added to it), but to non-being. You have become ‘somebody’ because of non-being: you are the universal entity, when you abandon this non-being.’160 if

non-being is the same as māyā or avidyā (and the term itself points in that direction), Śaṅkara would subscribe to every word of this passage.

 

Elsewhere a like passage occurs, where non-being is replaced by húlē (this is roughly the same as Sanskrit prakṛti): The húlē is for the soul the cause of its weakness and vice. The húlē is therefore bad and it is the first evil (principle). Being under influence of the húlē the soul has produced becoming; through its association with it it has become bad: húlē is the cause. The soul would not be engaged in becoming, but in being, if not because of the húlē’161

 

From these passages one is tempted to conclude that psukhḗ is not merely derived from the second hypostasis, nous or being-as is generally said-but is the product of both the nous and the húlē, or of ón and of mḕ ón. Existing ontologically through being and non-being is the same as both participating and not participating in being. The second clause in both expressions seems to be meaningless if non-being means actually non-being, i.e., if the húlē actually is not. Thus there are two possibilities: (1) either the húlē is not, and then the problem has to be envisaged, how it is possible (and feasible) to speak about something which is not; (2) or the húlē in some way, even in a very ‘feeble’ way, is. In the latter case again there are two possibilities: (a) either the húlē exists, independently of the three hypostases, or at any rate of the third, but originating from the One; or (b) the húlē is entirely independent from everything, with which supposition we are in dualism. These difficulties are akin to the problems of Advaita, especially manifest amongst some later Advaitins, and in both cases the danger of dualism hangs above the systems as a sword of Damocles.

 

That Plotinus wants to avoid dualism is clear from the fact that he combats this doctrine in the Gnostics.162 The only remain-

ing possibility is that the húlē originates from the One. In order to understand this the concept of húlē has to be analysed more closely. Though it has become customary to translate húlē as ‘matter’, this is misleading since húlē denotes an entirely different entity from what we would call matter, be it in daily life or in physics. For Plotinus húlē is immaterial asōmatos.163 The same holds for the Platonic and Aristotelian concept of húlē, which can sometimes be interpreted as ‘empty space’, as well as for the medieval materia.

 

The húlē is described in many ways. It is one of the theses of Plotinus that it is the same as evil, kakón. It is stérēsis, ‘privation’,164, pseûdos, ‘a lie’ and eídōlon, ‘a phantom’.165 For these reasons Puech, a very reliable interpreter of Plotinus' thought who is certainly not under the influence of ‘Indianizing’ interpretations, uses the terms ‘magical’ and ‘illusion’ to characterise the Plotinian third hypostasis. This is related to the magical character of sumpàtheia tōn hólōn (manifest for instance in the influence of prayers). Puech says: ‘This sensible world is therefore mere illusion. And magical illusion in the true sense of the term’.166 The húlē is unqualified and resembles in this respect the One (see below): it is indivisible, infinite, undetermined, invisible, inactive, etc.167 In short it is non-being.168 Plotinus introduces an imaginary opponent, a pūrvapakṣin who is shocked by this: ‘What? But if it is non-being then nothing would subsist!’ But Plotinus does not hesitate to draw this conclusion: ‘Not more (would anything subsist) than the image subsists when the mirror is no longer there.... the image is in something else and disappears necessarily when that disappears.’169 The conrparison with the mirror is only partly valid. If the images disappear the mirror remains, ‘because it is a form‘; but the húlē would not subsist without beings, as it is not even a form.170 All these passages seem to lead to the con-

clusion that the húlē is indeed non-being, i.e., is not. We have to infer that only the three divine hypostases subsast.

 

But there are other passages too. Śaṅkara avoids dualism by assuming that the āśraya ‘locus’ of adhyāsa can only be Brahman, Plotinus does the opposite: what is more or less the Greek counterpart of āśraya, tò hupokeímenon, ‘the underlying’, the subjectum, is the same as the húlē: ‘All who have dealt with the matter agree that the húlē is a hupokeímenon and hupodokhḗ ‘receptacle’, for the forms.’171 And there is more: Plotinus devotes several chapters to a proof that evil, which is the same as húlē, actually exists.172 In one of these chapters we find an important observation concerning the term mḕ ón: ‘mḕ ón does not mean absolute non-being. It only denotes what is other than being. Moreover, I mean with ‘other’ not the way in which movement and rest in a being are ‘other’ than that being; but the way in which the image of a being is ‘other’ than that being.’173 In that case that the húlē is mḕ ón does not mean that it is not, but merely that it is different from the ón of the second hypostasis. This also follows immediately from a previous conclusion, i.e., that ón means qualified being. For mḕ ón means accordingly unqualified being (similar to ‘Seiendes’) and nobody would deny that the húlē is unqualified being. In other words, the húlē is real, though of course a ‘lower’ entity, and Neoplatonism is in this rḗspect essentially different from Advaita.

 

Since two different modes of approach and two different sets of images and descriptions occur, we must conclude that there are in Plotinus two incompatible trends which blur the centre of his system. As the second and un-Advaitic trend clearly prevails the more Advaitic tendency is a ‘contrary tendency.’ This conclusion is in accordance with the conclusion of other authors, such as Merlan (who quotes in turn E. Schroeder), that Plotinus "has two alternatives: the ‘failing away’ from the One, and the ‘overflowing of the One’, which are ‘mutually exclusive.’174 Also Merlan seems to be of the opinion that the second tendency is more important.

If ón is ‘qualified being’, whereas both the One and ‘matter’ are unqualified being and can be described only in negations, both entities have indeed many points in common. To this ‘meeting of the extremes’175 Plotinus makes an allusion when he says: ‘just as the One is haploûn, ‘simple’, the húlē is also simple’.176 The difference between the two is a difference in value, Proclus treated this more systematically, as he does almost all the Neoplatonic topics, in his Stoikheíōsis theologikḗ, Elementatio Theologica.-This book is set up logically like the ‘Elements’ (Stoikheîa) of Euclid and is in this respect a precursor of Spinoza's Ethica ‘more geometrico demonstrata.’ Proclus speaks about two kinds of mḕ ón: tó mḕ ón hōs kreîtton toû óntos, ‘the non-(qualified) being which is better than (qualified) being’ (i.e., the One); and tò mḕ ón hōs kreîtton toû óntos, ‘the non-(qualified) being which is worse than (qualified) being’ (i.e., the húlē).177 Also other topics dealt with above are treated by Proclus, who is always more definite than Plotinus and nearer to conceptual clarity. He is not a mystic, but a scholar and a great commentator, Śaṅkara corresponds in certain respects to Plotinus and Proclus together.178 Proclus clearly says that the divine is present everywhere, even in matter,179 and he derives matter immediately (unlike Plotinus) from the One,180 thus maintaining and safeguarding the purity of monism.

 

Also with regard to the húlē noētḗ, ‘intelligible matter,’ Proclus has explicit views. Only by conceiving the unlimited as dúnamis can this concept be applied to the forms which are by definition limiting factors.181 In Proclus, says Dodds,182 ‘it is misleading to call Limit ‘the form of Infinitude’ or the Infinite ‘the Matter of Limit’....For him the essential character of infinitude is dúnamis....’.

 

Proclus solves in a particular way the conflict between a monism, which the ‘Advaitic’ experience as well as human reason

in general seem to demand, and a dualism, needed to explain the multiplicity of the phenomena. He places iminediately under the One a duality, which resembles the two concepts vikṣepa and āvaraṇa of later Advaita or the Sāṁkhya duality of puruṣa and prakṛti if interpreted in an Advaita manner.183 This duality consists of tò autóperas and hē autopeiría, the ultimate principles (arkhaí) corresponding to péras and apeiría.184 These are also identified with the cosmogonic principles of Orphism, aithḗr, ‘ether (akāśa)’, and kháos, ‘chaos’.185 In this way he gives traditional support to the Neoplatonic doctrines.

 

Let us now examine whether the húlē, and hence the world, can be called anirvacanīya. We know already that Plotinus calls his matter neither (absolute) non-being, nor ‘qualified’ being; but unqualified being. Without stressing the importance of anirvacanīyatva as a principle, the unintelligibility of matter and of the One is mentioned and results from the fact that both are outside the realm where intelligibility reigns in particular, i.e., the kósmos nóētos of the nous. Matter is for instance called ‘a shadow of reason’ and ‘a fall of reason.’186 Elsewhere, regarding the third hypostasis, Plotinus speaks about the indeterminacy (aoristía) of the soul, to which a nescience (ágnoia) corresponds which is, however, not a complete absence of knowledge (apousía,),187 just as avidyā is nevertheless something positive in Advaita.

 

That the whole sensible realm is anirvacanīya is a widespread idea in one important aspect of Greek thought: the school of Elea. In Parmenides there are two kinds of doctrines, the 'one ontological, expressed with unambiguity in the first part of his poem, and the other cosmogonical, expressed in the second part. The latter doctrine is dóxa, ‘appearance’, object of the dóxai, unreliable and ambiguous ‘opinions’, of the mortals. In this realm of dóxa there can only be obscurity. The Sophists were interested in such ambiguities. The main work of the Sophist Gorgias was called Perì tēs phúseōs ḕ toû mḕ óntos, ‘Concerning nature or non-being.’ - For Plato the sensible world is unintelligible (the object of dóxa, ‘opi-

nion’, ‘coniectura’188) and the world of ideas is mainly created in order to have a world where everything is intelligible and transparent (the appropriate object of epistǡmē, ‘science’). The ideas are intelligible factors abstracted from experience of the sensible world; they are therefore akin to ‘mathematicals.’ In the only Platonic dialogue where a consistent attempt is made to deal with the universe and with physics, the Timaeus (which has for centuries blocked the progress of physics), we are warned in advance: there can be no knowledge (epistḗmē) of the sensible world as of the ideal world; it can be dealt with in a myth only. Such a myth cannot claim any absolute certainty, but only probability.189

 

Another tradition in Greek thought dealt especially with phúisis in a series of works entitled Perì phúseōs, ‘About nature’. When Aristotle wrote his Physics, he traced some of his doctrines back to these. ‘But there is one view, Aristotle points out, which amounts to the abolition of natural philosophy - the view that reality is single, undivided and unchangeable’ (Ross).190 This is Eleaticism. It is constantly attacked by Aristotle in the historical parts of the Physics and Metaphysics. In this respect Aristotle is the greatest precursor of modern science, which could never have come into being if nature were really anirvacanīya.191


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