Proclus' Commentary on Plato's "Parmenides" (review)

Book Reviews Proclus' Commentary on Plato's "Parmenides." Translated by Glenn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon, with Introduction and Notes by John M. Dillon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Pp. xlvi + 616. $8o.oo. Scholars have been looking forward to this (the first English) translation of Proclus' Parmenides commentary. They will not be disappointed. Half of it had been finished before his death by Glenn Morrow and the remainder of it is John Dillon's. Dillon has also written a thirty-page general introduction and shorter introductions to each of the seven Books. These latter introductions are a judicious mixture of summary and comment which will prevent even the reader who does not read consecutively from being lost. Dr. C. Steel has furnished Dillon with manuscript readings which allow him to use corrections to Cousin's Greek text beyond those which the Moerbeke translation suggest . In the expectation of a Bud6 text, however, neither are noted. There is a sense in which the almost total lack of literary merit and style of this commentary make fewer demands on its translator than on one faced with translating Plato or Plotinus. I am not referring to reading its meaning correctly. This depends largely on recognizing the constants of Proclus' philosophical system and the technical and semi-technical terms which reflect them, and Morrow and Dillon are of course experts in recognizing both. To risk being hypercritical I should say that they sometimes ignore the fact that the same technical term does not necessarily have only one technical use. For instance, Proclus (following the Philebus) occasionally uses 'henad' for the head of any series and so as a synonym of'monad'. Readers might at any rate have been given some indication of this--some may find themselves trying to make henads, in the narrower and more technical sense, out of the Platonic Ideas of Man and Horse (812-813). It is a habitual vexation on the part of Neoplatonist writers to leave it at first sight unclear not so much what they mean as what they are referring to. A translator can try to do the same or he can commit himself to an interpretation. Sense and reference not being in practice as distinct as all that, there are times when he must commit himself. There is a well-known excursus in this commentary where Proclus claims that the principle or origin of everything existing is a henad, in the narrow sense of 'hertads' as 'participated ones'. He starts with light and argues that the principle of intelligiblelight is "the One, the cause of existence and, as it were, the 'flower' of this Intellect" (lO44.a7-28, D.'s translation); he also calls it the henad of henads from which every henad derives. According to Dillon's convention the capital letter should mean that he has taken it to be the One itself, although it would be excessive to insist on the convention . If he has, he would apparently have Saffrey and Westerink on his side (see their [2991 300 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:2 APRIL 198 9 edition of Plat. theol.III, lxv). But I think that it must be wrong. The flower of Intellect is the henad of Intellect, as many passages confirm; and it is all the otherhenads which derive from it, as at Timaeus comm. III, 72, 11.28-3o. (I doubt too if hyparxiscan mean 'cause of existence': it is more likely to be the first term of the triad, and anyway belongs grammatically like "the 'flower' "to "this Intellect." In his final example (lo47) Proclus describes the principle of knowledge as "the one which belongs to Intellect." The Greek at 1.2 allows Dillon's translation, "the One, which generates Intellect and all the knowledge," but surely the rest of the page does not. The god that is both one and intellect is said to have the functions of providing coherence, generation and providence--all functions of henads, not of the One. I am aware that all this is open to dispute, but have thought it worth suggesting because, if it is right, it exemplifies how Proclus permits the One much less contact...