Montag, 10. Juni 2019

Damascius on the Gods #2: Commentary on the Phaedo, version B

Damascius' commentaries on Plato's Phaedo were not written down by himself, but are lecture notes, originating from two separate courses, and with considerable differences. The author of the version at hand did not attend the first portion of the course and for this reason seems to have borrowed and copied version A or I, which covers the entire dialogue. I start with version B (or II) because I don't have the other at hand right now.

Unlike with the Philosophical History, in this case I will simply quote or summarize the theological points Damascius makes, without further discussion.

I use Westerink's translation.

§8. Dionysus is the efficient cause of all regeneration (paliggenesias).

§28. (10) "The mother of the Muses is Mnemosyne, a symbol of the latent memory that is the cause of inquiry."

§30. The 'divinity' of the human soul lies in its conformity to pure Being (less so than to the Good).

§57. Socrates mention of the goddess Harmonia is brought up, but not discussed theologically.

§72. Atlas is a "Titan who has the power of separating things in heaven from things under heaven. Hence he [=Plato/Socrates] will not grand him the power of holding things together (this is made clear by Homer, too, when he says that Atlas set up 'the colums that keep heaven and earth apart' [Od. 1.51], in other words, that prevent them from being united), rather they are joined together by the Good, which is the real bond; it is the Good, not the rotation of the sky, that makes the earth a compact whole. This is not the primal Good, but the creative (dêmiourgikon) and intellective Good."

§93. Our sources of knowledge about the things in Hades are 1. the "common opinions" which are inborn in us; 2. the accounts of the theologians (inspired mythological poets); 3. oracles of the gods; 4. the mysteries. 5. "the apparitions of the Gods themselves."

§94. Daimons are intermediate between "beings in constant change and beings conjoined with the henads". They are changeless and perfect, "but not attached to that which transcends being".

§95. There are daimons ranking next to the intramundane Gods; they are "characterized by the unity of the Gods and accordingly called the unitary and divine class of" daimons; the next ranks is characterized "by the intelligence that depends upon the God, called the intellective class"; a third is characterized "by soul, called rational" class; "another by nature, named natural, another by body, called the body-like (sômatoeides); one, finally, characterized by matter, design[at]ed as the material class of" daimons.

§96. A different division, according to locaton, is that "into celestial, ethereal, aerial, aquatic, terrestrial, subterranean". Damascius explains a Chaldaean (?) Oracle mentioning "hounds of air, of earth, of water" attending the "huntress" (Hekate?) by saying that there are irrational  (natural, body-like, and material) daemons from the level of aerial daimons downwards. (There is a similar oracle and attempt at explanation in Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles.)

§97. According to Proclus ("the commentator") , everything is ruled by daimons one level superior to them: humans, who are psychical, by intellective daimons; irrational animals by psychical daimons; but "immaculate souls are governed by divine" daimons. (An explanation of the Egyptian's words to Plotinus in the Life of Plotinus?)
According to Damascius, "the class of [daimons] as such, whatever their rank, is superior to the human race and to all the lower kinds. A better theory is, therefore, that guardian [daimons] do not belong to all ranks of [daimons] indiscriminately, but only to the companions of those Gods who are in charge of the descents and ascents of souls. To the [daimons] attached to these Gods the care of such lives is assigned, for it can be said in general that ascent and descent comprise different kinds of life, and so this group of [daimons] must belong to all various ranks (divine, intellective, and so forth) and divie the supervision of these lives among themselves accordingly."

§98. According to Proclus, the guardian daimons (eilêchotes) are etherial.
Damascius: "It is better to hold that in this respect, too, they are of all kinds, though always belonging to those subordinate to that particular class of Gods."

§99. Justice is one "and, after the one, many". Therefore there is not only one judge (Aeacus), but immortal heroic souls, and the whole order (choros) depending on Justice, which extends everywhere and "includes even irrarional demons and inanimate objects."

§103-107, 112 give further details on allotted daimons, the choice of the next life, etc.

§108. There are different destinations in the afterlife, as Plato makes clear by a philosophical and by a hieratic "argument, taken from ritual practices", i.e. from hiera; "the reference may be either to assimilation to different Gods, each soul having a divine example of its own (this is not specific enough); or to the wanderings of Demeter, who went astray because there were different roads; or to sacrifices offered to Hecate Trioditis at points where three roads meet and to representations of such forkings in other ceremonies. Furthermore, there are three ways of paying worship to the souls of the departed, one for the venerable priests, one for those who have died a violent death, one for the common run of people."

§113. "'Guides' (hêgemones) are those who lead the way, 'companions' (synemporoi) are souls in charge of the same [daimon] (homodaimones psychai) and bound for the same destination, but for the pious[,] Gods are both guides and companions on the journey to the upper, 'supracelestial' region, according to the Phaedrus [246e4-247c4]."

§115. "The Earth, as a constituent of the Universe (tou pantos) is a Deity (theos). For if the Universe is a God, so of course are the parts that constitute this God. Secondly, if the Earth is an integral part, not a fraction, the Earth must be a Deity; how indeed, as a wholly complete part of the world, can she be otherwise? That which makes the whole a God, confers the same status upon the complete part, containing the plenitude of all forms. Thirdly, if the Earth comprises other Gods, she must a fortiori be a Goddess herself, as Timaeus also says [40b8-c3], so that she must also have an intelligence dependent upon her and a rational soul; and a luminous (augoeides) body before this visible body."

§131. "The earth can be divided on three different principles. One way is to assign it to the three sons of Kronos, who according to Homer [Il. 15.193] have earth as well as heaven 'in common'; if it is common to them it can of course be distributed among them; indeed, if instead of Poseidon who speaks and divides his own realm, the speaker were Zeus, he would no doubt have divided heaven into three, as in Empedotimus' narrative, giving himself the sphere of the fixed stars, Poseidon the spheres down to the sun, and the rest to Pluto. Another division of the earth is analogous to that of the universe, into a celestial, a terrestrial, and a median region; there is worship of Olympian Earth and of Chthonic Earth, and an intermediate one may consequently be inferred. Finally the earth can be divided on the analogy of the animal, since it is itself a living being; so we can distinguish head, middle and feet."

§132. Damascius, against Proclus, thinks that the dodecahedron "is the common transitional form between each of the elements and the sphere, and for this reason earth, too, is essentially dodecahedral; furthermore, it is ruled by the providence of the Twelve Gods, who lift it up to the height of Intelligence." Each element has its own shape, "but from the supramundane level the dodecahedral shape is imparted to them all to prepare them for the participation in intelligence, that is, for sphericity."

§136. "In order to interpret the passage as an allegorical myth one should substitute for the creatures their Creators (dêmiourgous) and Guardians (ephorous), by homonymy and analogy, [humans] for example being taken to signify the God who creates [humans]."

§140. "Tartarus is the nethermost part of the earth and the opposite of Olympus; but there is also a God Tartarus, the guardian of the lowest extremity in each order of being. Accordingly we have a Celestial Tartarus, in which Uranus hid his children, but also a Cronian one, in which Kronos concealed his, and a Zeusian Tartarus, which belongs to the Creator of this world."

§142. "The children of Tartarus and Earth, the consort of Heaven, are Typhon, Echidna and Python, a sort of Chaldean triad in charge of all disordered creation. Typhon is the paternal and essential cause of disorder, not as such, but as a substratum provided by him to be organized by the universal Creator, Echidna is the potentiality, the feminine and emanative cause of disordered nature. Python may be regarded as an intelligence of the same character; therefore he is said to impede the divinatory exhalations and is defeated by Apollo."

§143. "... Some souls descend no father than heaven, some as low as Tartarus, some are spread over the whole range of the intermediate space."

§144. "That there are also Tartarean souls can be deduced from the existence of Tartarean Gods, on whom a complete series must depend, including souls."

§147. "What does it mean that those who have led a life of irreparable sin 'never come out again'? ... it can hardly be an entire world period, since souls complete many periods of their own within one universal period. Nor can it be, as the commentator thinks, a complete revolution of heaven, for even this is too long; nor that of one of the celestial bodies, e.g. the star that has the strongest influence, because in that case it will occur that a soul in need of prolonged treatment has only the briefest taste of Tartarus; nor that of the 'Divine Herdsman' [agelarchou theou] (the Sun, Saturn, or another), for this is again too long. Rather it is the period peculiar to each soul, which determines the highest and the lowest point of its circuit, whether it attains the intelligible world or descends into Tartarus, with its own measure of virtue or knowledge. [...]"

§153. "Socrates considers pledging from the cup because he remembered that this death-bringing character also exists among the Gods (tên toiautên idiotêta tôn theôn, tên thanatêphoron); he refrains, though, on the ground that tradition did not acknowledge the cult of it. Prayer, however, could be offered to all and on all occasions, since there is nothing that does not relate to the Gods." That is, Socrates was about to worship Death, or the gods as death-bringers.

§157. Why did Socrates say that he owed Asclepius the sacrifice, and why were those his last words? If it were due already, a man as careful as he was would not have forgotten it. - The reason is that a soul is in need of the care of the Healing God (Paiôniou) at the moment that she is free from all her toil; therefore the Oracle [frg. 131] says that souls in the upward flight sings the hymn to Paean." Paiônios is the adjective relating to Paean, a god of healing mostly treated as the same as Apollo, Asclepius' father. Asclepius is a Paean-ic god.

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