The Mortality and Anonymity of the Iamblichean Soul

G. Shaw: The Mortality and Anonymity of the Iamblichean Soul 177 The Mortality and Anonymity of the Iamblichean Soul Gregory Shaw . . .the nameless guest is greater than those present ___ —Iamblichus1 Look at this puppet here, A heap of many sores, piled up, Diseased and full ofgreediness, Unstable and impermament! Devoured by old age is this frame, A prey ofsickness, weak and frail; To pieces breaks this putrid body, All life must truly end in death. 77ie Dhammapada (147-48)2 Platonists, Christians, or even initiates of New Age religions might, on reflection, more easily bear these hard words of the Buddha because they too believe that the body is merely a physical organism and subject to decay. But the Buddha says more than this. He maintains that the soul, which many of us prize—however secretly—as the immortal inhabitant of our flesh, is an illusion created by our fear of extinction. He says: ... is it not really an utter fool's doctrine to say: This is the world, this am I; after death I shall be permanent, persisting, and eternal?3 1 See In Timaeum, frg. 4 in lamblichi Chalcidensis: In Platonis Dialogos Commentariorum Fragmenta, JM. Dillon, ed. and trans. (Leiden 1973). 2 Cited in A Buddhist Bible, D. Goddard, ed. (Boston 1970) 27-8. 3 Majjhima-Nikaya 22, D. Goddard, ed. (above, note 2) 36. 178Syllecta Classica 8 (1997) Such sentiments seem to be the very antithesis of Neoplatonism as it is generally understood and taught. Plato's doctrine of the immortality of the human soul is central to the tradition, and Plotinus' evocative descriptions of his journeys into divinity and immortality have understandably attracted many to Platonism for its profoundly beautiful and optimistic vision ofthe human soul. The affective current of this Platonism is upward, uplifting, and positive; it affirms the dignity and the divinity ofhumanity. It is understandable, therefore, that the Platonism of Iamblichus has been so reluctantly embraced. He seems to be the dark and uglier brother of the beautiful Plotinus. And for good reason. Iamblichus insults us and has a much darker view of human beings, one that dramatically diverges from Plotinian optimism and seems to revert to an almost unplatonic (yet very Greek) pessimism. In the De Mysteriis Iamblichus says: [T]he human race is weak and small, it sees but little and is possessed by a congenital nothingness (??d??e?a).4 "What is human," he adds, "is ugly, of no value, and ludicrous when compared to the divine."5 And yet, despite our congenital weakness, on reading Plato and particularly on reading Plotinus, we tend to think that our soul is divine and that we are immortal. If our weakness and impurity were not problem enough, the self-deception of believing that our personal identity, our "I," shall survive death as a permanent and eternal self is—in the opinion of both Iamblichus and the Buddha—a doctrine of fools. This is the tragedy of the human soul as perceived by Iamblichus, and his own less exalted and less optimistic psychology was his attempt to shed light on the hopelessness of the human condition and the futility of such vain beliefs. What makes the situation in the case of Iamblichus all the more complex and interesting is that he too was a Platonist and he too believed in the immortality of the human soul.6 It is this paradox in Iamblichean psychology that I will explore by examining (1) how IambUchus imagined the identity and divinity of the soul, (2) how the Iamblichean soul was alienated from its divinity, and (3) how its self-alienation and mortality was, in Iamblichus' view, the soul's only way to participate in its divinity. De Mysteriis 3.18, 144.12-14. The standard edition is, Jamblique: Les mystères d'Egypte, É. des Places, ed. (Paris 1966). Cf. De Mysteriis 9.10. 5 Ibid., 3.14, 146.10-12. I do not mean to equate Iamblichean Neoplatonism with Buddhism, yet Iamblichus' critique of the pretensions and hubris of the personal self bears similarities to the Buddhist analysis and critique ofthe notions of an immortal "self." Despite significant differences in their metaphysics and soteriology, both...