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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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5. Causation and change. The demiurge

The Eleatic trend of thought in Greek philosophy denies the reality of change and movement. In Advaita and in Eleaticism

alike the deepest reason fox this attitude is a denial of the reality of time and of its impact upon things. Psychologically this is connected with the desire that time may have no impact upon the continuation of our own personality, as for instance in the desire for immortality. This view manifests itself, as we have remarked elsewhere,192 among Indians in the problem of causation (satkārvāada, satkāraṇavāda, asatkāraṇavāda, pratītyasamutpādavāda) and among Greeks in the problem of change (Eleatic being versus Heraclitean becoming). The Indian thinkers asked: how can anything cause anything different from itself? The Greek thinkers asked: how can anything become anything different from itself? The attitude of ‘continuity’ answered both questions by denying the difference of the second from the first (‘abhedavāda’).

 

For Parmenides the mḕ ón, stands for change and movement, which is not whereas the immutable and unchanging ôn is. Zeno tried to show the same by a reductio ad absurdum of the opposite doctrine (e.g. ‘the arrow moves’). In Plato the always changing sensible world is supplemented with an eternal and unchanging realm, the ideal world of forms. We can perfectly know this world and Plato thus interprets and clarifies the ideas of the school of Elea: our thought demands unchangeable being in order to be able to affirm tò gàr autò esti noeîn tè kaì eînai, ‘for the same is thinking and being’. The Heraclitean flux is difficult to assimilate for human thinking or reasoning (before the infinitesimal calculus) but is more in accordance with experience. Plato comes to care more for experience in the course of his life by an increasing desire to ‘save the phenomena’, sōizein tà phainoména. This amounts to a gradual but fundamental change in Plato's thought. In the Sophistes, ‘at a certain stage193 of the argument, it is doubted whether all change in this world must really be denied as utterly unintelligible. The value of the thesis of ‘father Parmenides’ is doubted, and, hesitatingly, it is concluded that non-being in some respect must be, and being in its turn in some way not be.194 This little fact of a very un-Eleatic opinion is only

one out of many later passages, where the generally given image of Plato's metaphysics is completely overturned We see how Plato introduces change in the world of forms, stability in the sensible world, and through that makes the latter partly knowable. So a certain knowledge of nature can arise.’195

 

Aristotle accepts change and attempts to refute the view that change is unreal. ‘But, as the phenomenon of change remains difficult for everyone, who wants to understand it in terms of Parmenidean, two-valued logic, he created a new logic; modal logic. With the help of the discrimination of necessary, contingent, possible and impossible predicates, a certain kind of reasoning about change becomes possible. In order to become, actual, something must have been previously possible. That is called its potentiality (dúnamis). The pot exists potentially in the clay. The clay Aristotle calls the material cause and the shape of the pot the formal cause. The change from potentiality into actuality needs the agency of something actual, which Aristotle calls the efficient cause. The efficient cause is in the first place a producer of change in the thing changed. As fourth case, there is the final cause, the end or aim, that in the case of the clay-pot can be to carry water. The different causes can merge into another.196 It is also shown by Aristotle's analysis that transformatory (pariṇāma) change cannot be explained without an efficient or a final cause. Of Aristotle's four causes only the efficient cause corresponds to the modern meaning of the term cause. Likewise, kāraṇa in satkāraṇavāda is not what we should call cause’.

 

Plotinus foliowed Plato and introduced motion into the intelligible world.197 But the ancient Eleatic doctrine is still much alive in the structure of his system. The entire ‘evolution’ of the hypostases is not a change or a temporal process, but a logical-

ontological relation: ‘for every moving entīty there must be something towards which it moves; as this is not the case for the One, we have to assume that it does not move; and when an entity comes after it, it has necessarily to come into being while always turned towards itself. Becoming in time should not be a difficulty for us when speaking about eternal entities: in language we attribute becoming to them in order to express their causal relation and their order’.198 Bréhier said therefore rightly: ‘the succession in which the hypostases are considered indicates only the order of expression, a logical and not a temporal order’.199 This is consistent with the view that the One is immutable and unchangeable and that becoming is exclusively due to the húlē. Plato established this opposition in the Timaeus by distinguishing between ‘that which always is and has no becoming’ and ‘that which is always becoming and never is’,200 Proclus called the higher principles ónta, ‘beings’, and the lower ginómena, ‘products (of becoming)’.201

 

The unreality of becoming follows from the unreality of time and from the timelessness of the One. Likewise the doctrine of cyclical time deprives any possible becoming of its meaning. A relative significance can be given to becoming in terms of the hierarchy of being: time and becoming are said to possess a ‘lower reality’, But as always in connection with the Neoplatonic doctrine of the hierarchy of being, there are difficulties inherent in the concept of ‘degrees’ of reality (Parmenides, therefore, excluded such formulations).

That creation is absent from the One follows from the immutable character of this highest principle. But creation is mentioned or alluded to in contexts where another being occurs, i.e., the Demiurge, dēmiourgós, ‘the divine Craftsman’. In Plato the Demiurge occurs mainly, though not exclusively,202 in the dialogue where an attempt is made to provide a cosmogony, i.e., the Timaeus. The Greek term dēmionrgós denotes craftsman, artisan, and occurs in that meaning in Plato.203 In the Timaeus the Demiurge ‘took over all that is visible-not at rest, but in disordant and unordered motion-and brought it from disorder into order, since he judged that order was in every way the better’.204 Therefore Ross says, also summarizing other texts: ‘Three things existed already independently of him-the unchanging forms, the disordered world of becoming, and space, in which becoming takes place’.205 It is thus clear that the Demiurge is not a creator out of nothing or, at least, ‘out of himself’, but a God who gives shape and order to a chaotic preexistent mass, looking for inspiration upon the ideal world of forms as his example. Later his activity in connection with the four elements206 is described as an evolving, developing or manifesting of ‘rudimentary’ into ‘genuine’. This resembles (but with contrary evaluation: see below) the evolution from the avyākṛtam (rūpam) into the vyākṛtam (rūpam) or from the ‘subtle’ into the ‘gross’ state. ‘By shapes and numbers’ the Demiurge shaped into genuine fire, air, water and earth the rudimentary fire, air, water and earth, which alone existed before he began his fashioning work’.207

 

One of the difficult problems of the interpretation of Plato is whether Plato looked upon this Demiurge as a highest God. In the Republic another highest being occurs: the idea (form) of the Good. But we do not know the relation between the two and Ross declares: ‘There is no foundation, anywhere in Plato, for the

view that the Demiurge is to be identified with the form of the good, or with the forms taken as a whole’.208

 

In Plotinus this Demiurge occurs and several of the Platonic texts dealing with him are quoted. As a whole the position in Plotinus is clearer than in Plato. There cannot be the least doubt about the fact, that the Demiurge is lower than the One. This follows immediately from the nature of the One. Moreover, Plotinus nus affirms it explicitly: Plato's Demiurge is the nous.209 This identification follows from a Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato, as Bréhier210 has shown: in the Philebus the cause is identical with nous and the Demiurge is once spoken of as nous, ‘intelligence’. In the Timaeus, on the other hand, the Demiurge produces the soul.211

 

Elsewhere Plotinus calls the Demiurge one of the two aspects of tò kosmoûn, ‘the ordering principle’,212 and states that the Demiurge is an intemporal entity. ‘We must entirely exclude from the Demiurge any thought of past and future and we must attribute to him a life which is immutable (átreptos) and timeless (intemporal: ákhronos)’.213 Later it is again affirmed that ‘he remains immutable in himself while creating’.214 This ‘creation’, moreover, is not an act of will, but a natural and necessary phenomenon: ‘it is wholly a natural phenomenon, and he does not make in a way which can be compared to craftsmen’.215 In short, there is essential difference between the Demiurge and any creator in the monotheistic sense. The Demiurge is close to the impersonal and contemplating intelligence or nous. Plotinus makes this very clear by reproaching the Gnostics as follows: ‘often they replace

the contemplating nous by the creative, ‘demiurging’ (dēmioûrgousa) soul’.216

 

In conclusion there are two important parallels with Advaita and one important difference. The parallels are:

 

(1) Below the impersonal divine (Brahman; the One) there is a personal God (Īśvara; the Dēmiourgós).217 This distinction is one of the most interesting views which human being, reflecting about the Divine, has produced. In both philosophies it has been attempted to explain or at any rate to render less unintelligible, how human thought could evolve such a doctrine. The reasons are partly the same and partly related to an analogous historical and social background. Without attempting to explain philosophy from historical reasons a remark of R. Eisler, quoted by E.R. Curtius, is worth mentioning:218 ‘....almost everywhere original creation is characterised by heaviness and earthliness, by degrading manual work and by the exertion of physical, ‘demiurging’, activity....It cannot be denied, that for posterity the myth of creation lost much of its loftiness on account of this....’.

 

(2) The lower Demiurge or Īśvara is not a creator who creates out of nothing. He orders in an impersonal and natural way pre-existent matter, or unfolds and manifests what is virtually already present (in India analogously in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika). Tradition called the Demiurge also ‘dator formarum’, ‘bestower of forms’, and Bréhier ‘the cause which rnakes that potential being becomes actual being.’218a Both formulations could be very well applied to

Īśvara. Both concepts of God pay very little attention to time and its possible impact upon God.

 

(3) The one important difference between Advaita and Neoplatonism is, that the Demiurge is always regarded as a real entity in itself, whereas Īśvara is only real in so far as he is identical with the Absolute. This is later specified as follows: the world and the individual soul are in a different way related to Brahman. The first relation is bādha-sāmānādhikaraṇya, ‘apposition through sublation’, and the second aikya-sāmānādhikaraṇya, ‘apposition through identity.’219 But what holds in this respect for the jīva, a fortiori holds for Īśvara. This is also expressed in the following way: Īśvara himself is not illusory but the Īśvaratva through which he is different from Brahman, is illusory. The Demiurge, on the other hand, is a real entity in itself. Moreover, the latter's work is, in accordance with this, valued positively, and not negativelỸ as in Advaita: he introduces order ‘since he judged that order was in every way better’, bringing thus the chaotic world of becoming nearer to the perfection of the ideal world of forms. By the latter activity he imposes forms upon the world, which is a positive act as well (see next section).

 

At this stage we are in a position to formulate some of the characteristics of the monotheistic concept of God. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam the concept of God is not only different from the Advaitic concept in that God is not the only reality; but it is also in addition different from the Neoplatonic concept, in that he is not a lower entity but a personality and a creator who acts in time. The Neoplatonic position is between the monotheistic and the Advaitic position, but nearer to the latter.220 (In one respect Advaita seems to be nearer to monotheism than Neoplatonism: for, though the vyāvahārika realm is ultimately not real, in this realm much attention is paid to bhakti, to devotion and to prayer, which is not so in Plotinus).

As far as the concept of God is concerned, there is another important aspect in which Christianity differs from Advaita, from Neoplatonism and from other forms of monotheism. In Christianity there is a God who once (not only in time but) in history, had become man, entirely and unreservedly. This is an incarnated God.221 Augustine considered this difference the most decisive in describing in the Confessiones his conversion from Neoplatonism to Christianity.222

 

Modern philosophical consciousness is so much influenced by the Christian concept of God, even if it is unreligious or atheistic, that we should have a clear picture of these differences. Since one is better aware of one's own position, if one knows its historical background, and some of the following developments are interesting in themselves, and since they explain some later parallelisms between Advaita and Western philosophy, this section will be concluded with a survey of some of the developments resulting from the meeting of the Neoplatonic and Christian concepts of godhead.

 

In the early Christian223 middle ages the influence of Neoplatonism was very great and in the end there was once again a

great revival. The position of Christian thinkers regarding Neoplatonism can be easily inferred from their views concerning the relation between God and being. The more orthodox thinkers had to take into account the above mentioned scriptural statement ‘I am that I am’, interpreted as the identity of God and being.224 Thus it is intelligible that in the Corpus Areopagiticum, which introduces such a large amount of Neoplatonic thinking into medieval thought under the label of scriptural authority,225 the author is at least in one respect more Christian than Platonic or Plotinian: he replaces the One-above-being by the divinity who is ‘esse omnium’, ‘the being of everything’226 and (in contradistinction to the expression of Speusippus) oúte anoúsios, ‘not un-essential.227 But Scotus Eriugena, the earliest of the great medieval thinkers, returns again to the ineffable divinity of Neoplatonism. He says of God that he ‘est qui plus quam esse est’ ‘is he who is more than being.’228

 

In the central and most creative period of medieval Christian thought, in the XlIIth century, when the writings of Aristotle and

of the great Muslim philosophers have been translated and thoroughly assimilated, Thomas Aquinas gives a solution to the problem of the relation between God and being which was foreshadowed since Aristotle in the celebrated analogia entis. In this view neither is God's being identified with the being of the creatures (a view tending towards pantheism),229 nor is God made inaccessible and wholly ineffable by being above being; but there is an analogy between our being (e.g., the mode in which our attributes are in us), and God's being (e.g., the mode in which his attributes are in him). This complex doctrine resembles the Advaitic laksaṇajñāna (e.g. in the Vedāntaparibhāṣā), especially studied by R. de Smet.230

 

With the last great medieval mystics we are once again back in the Neoplatonic atmosphere, which later re-appeared fully in the Italian Renascence of Neoplatonism (e.g. the Philosopher Marsilio Ficino, translator of the Enneads and of Dionysius into Latin). Gilson said about Meister Eckehart: ‘Not only one comes back to Eriugena and Dionysius, but one comes back as if there had been no Thomas Aquinas or Albertus Magnus in between.’231 The most striking characteristic of the German mystic is the doctrine of a impersonal deity (Gottheit), which manifests and reveals itself in a personal God (Gott); ‘“Gott” geht hervor aus der “gottgebarenden Gottheit” und verfliesst auch wieder in sie’: ‘“God” proceeds from the “Deity-who-gives-birth-to-God”, and merges again into it.’232 Accordingly Eckehart preaches contemplation, a detachment of the human personality.233 The deity is called ‘aliquad altius ente’, ‘something higher than being.’234 It is not surprising that these doctrines were condemned by the Church in

the famous buil of 1329.235 It is more important that they were in general rejected implicitly by Western philosophical consciousness, of which the Christian concept of God is an important constituent.

 

What does this last statement actually mean? It means, amongst other things, that the early Christians, when they evolved the concept of divine personality, partly discovered and partly created a structure of their own personality. Subsequently by religious and secular imitatio Christi and through belief in the statement ‘God has created man in his image,’ Western philosophical consciousness increasingly considered man in general as a being characterised in the same way as Christ was characterised in the beginning. This is a similar development as that from belief in immortality of the Pharaoh to belief in immortality of each human being. The resulting discovery but also creation of important aspects of human being is philosophically speaking the richest fruit of the doctrine of Christ's becoming man. This does not mean that Western culture as a whole is relativized and determined by particular and possibly limited religious views; but it shows how man, as in all religions, discovered and created his own characteristics by attributing them to the Divine.

 

What this means could be shown in greater detail by giving further examples (analogous ones will be mentioned in the next section). A few may be mentioned. That God was considered a personality has come to signify to the West that the personal is higher than the impersonal.236 That God was considered a creator out of nothing has come to signify to the West that the personality

of man implies that he can create freely and out of nothing,237 This applies not only to daily decisions but also to art, philosophy, the sciences and humanities, in short, to the culture which man has created himself and in which he lives more than in nature. That God has created once, become man once, etc., (there are other ‘unicities’ in Christianity and monotheism in general) has given to man his unicity and the conviction that he is irreplaceable. In this perspective unique importance is attached to this one life and reincarnation is rejected. That God has become man and has incarnated himself signifies that the human personality is considered a unity of spirit and body and not a soul ‘in’ the jail or grave of the body which can also exist independently. Thus there may be a struggle within the personality, against itself; but not of the soul against the body. Lastly, that God is free, has come to mean that man is free. Freedom in philosophy has manifested itself as doubt, first methodical (Descartes) and then existential (Pascal).


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