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CHAPTER THREE GOODNESS, BEAUTY, AND LOVE The dependence of the determined on its determination, and thus the dependence of all beings on God, is understood in Neoplatonism not merely as a static relation, but as a dynamic, though non-temporal, “motion” or “process .”1 This is the cycle of remaining, procession, and reversion (mon–, pr¬odoV, ÷pistrof–), which is already present in Plotinus’ thought but receives systematic articulation in Proclus: “Every effect remains in its cause, proceeds from it, and reverts upon it” (El. Th., prop. 35). For Plotinus and Proclus, the One is not only the containment of all things and the source (™rc–) from which they come, but also the end (t°loV) toward which they go. Dionysius adopts this doctrine in its Procline form, and it underlies his entire account of God as the Good, the Beautiful, and Love in chapter IV of On Divine Names. To understand this cycle in philosophical terms, we must explain why, in Neoplatonism, the One is also called the Good, for it is this name that best expresses God as at once the ™rc– and the t°loV of all things. We saw in chapter 1 how Plato argues that goodness is the principle of intelligibility, for anything can be intellectually understood only in virtue of its goodness. To be intelligible, then, is to be good, and the intelligible determination or form in each thing, by which that thing is what it is, is that thing’s way of being good. Consequently, Plato says that the Good provides “truth and being,” i.e. intelligibility and hence the status of being beings, to the forms, and so is itself “beyond being.” Every form, therefore, is a specification, a distinct mode, of goodness. Aristotle, too, argues that the formal cause of a thing is one with its final cause, as that which determines its shape, structure, and function, and so accounts for the thing’s being what it is (Physics II.7, 198a26, 198b3; II.8, 199a33). For Aristotle as for Plato, finality, or goodness, is the principle of unity and intelligibility: the end to which a thing is directed endows the thing with unity, with identity, with intelligibility, making it to be the one 35 36 THEOPHANY distinct “what” that it is.2 Hence, for Aristotle, the final cause of any thing is the fundamental ground of its being what it is. The form or “whatness” in a thing, therefore, is its distinct way of being good.3 Thus it is as a final cause, an object of desire, that Aristotle’s God, who is pure form and hence purely good (see Metaphysics XII.7, 1072b29), is the principle of actualization for the cosmos as a whole (Metaphysics XII.7, 1072a26, 1072b3).4 Following these Platonic and Aristotelian principles, Plotinus argues that the form, the constitutive determination of any thing, is that thing’s way of being good. “But shall we then define the good according to each thing’s excellence? But in this way we shall refer to form and reason-principle [eΔdoV ka¥ l¬gon], certainly a correct manner of proceeding” (VI.7.19.9– 12). Each level in Plotinus’ hierarchy of reality, as productive determination, as the principle of order, of unity, of identity to the next level down, is what is good for its consequent: “Is it then so that the good for the last and lowest among beings is what lies before it, and there is a continuous ascent which gives that above a thing to be good for what is below . . . ? . . . For form is the good for matter . . . and soul for body . . . and virtue for soul. And now, still higher, there is intellect, and above this what we call the first nature” (VI.7.25.18–28). In general, Plotinus says that “everywhere what comes as a good is form” (VI.7.28.2). At every level, then, goodness is intelligibility, increasing in intensity as we ascend from body to soul to Intellect (see VI.7.25.25ff; VI.7.28.20ff.). The goodness in a thing is its distinct way of being intelligible, and so its distinct way of being a being. Thus, as Plotinus says, being as such is “boniform” [™gaqoeid‰V]” (VI.7.16.5), and “each form is good and boniform” (VI.7.18.25–26). Since goodness is the principle of intelligibility, and to be is to be intelligible, goodness is the universal and constitutive character of all being. From...

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