We are looking at a stack of sources today that
feels a bit like an archaeological dig. We're
brushing the dust off the 5th century AD, which,
you know, it feels incredibly distant. And yet,
the ideas we're about to discuss are, well, they
feel strangely present in the room with us. They
really do. We're talking about a man who is often
called the last great light of antiquity. He
was a philosopher, a mathematician, a poet. and
a high priest of what was essentially a dying
religion. And, you know, he was a man who likely
shaped the way you think about God or maybe infinity,
even if you have never, ever heard his name.
That's the hook, isn't it? We're talking about
Proclus, specifically Proclus Diodicus. Right.
And usually when you see a title attached to
a name, it's something like the great or the
conqueror. But Diodocus, that means the successor.
It does. And in the context of ancient Athens,
that's a title that carries a massive amount
of weight. It immediately begs the question,
successor to whom? Yeah, I'm assuming we're not
talking about a political dynasty here. No, no,
nothing like that. This is an intellectual dynasty.
Proclus was the successor to Plato. To Plato?
He was the head of the Neoclatonic Academy in
Athens. And you have to remember, by the time
Proclus takes the chair in the 5th century, that
institution represents nearly a thousand years
of continuous philosophical tradition. A thousand
years. He is, quite literally, sitting in the
seat of the master. That feels like just an immense
burden. You're not just a professor at that point.
You are the living embodiment of a millennium
of thought. And he took that burden so seriously.
Our mission, really, in this deep dive, is to
try and understand how Proclus, who was living
in a world that was rapidly turning against his
beliefs. Right, the Christianization of the empire.
Exactly. How he managed to construct a system
of thought that was so robust, so intricate,
that it basically became a theory of everything.
Irony, which I know we'll get to, is that this
system became the secret architecture for the
very religions that were trying to replace him.
It's an incredible story. So we're pulling from
some pretty dense material today. We've got the
biography written by his student and his own
successor, Marinus, which gives us a look at
the man himself. We have his own commentaries
on Plato and Euclid, which are, they're just
massive. Huge, yeah. And then we have modern
historical analysis of how these texts even survived.
But I want to start with the man. Because when
I was reading Marinus' account, the first thing
that hit me wasn't the philosophy. It was just
the sheer exhaustion I felt reading about his
schedule. You're talking about his daily output.
I am. Marinus claims Proclus wrote 700 lines
of text every single day. It's staggering. I
tried to visualize that. That's not just scribbling
in a journal. This is composing complex, high
-level philosophical arguments in ancient Greek.
By hand, probably by candlelight. It's an industrial
level of production. Yeah. And you have to remember,
he wasn't doing this in a vacuum in isolation.
He was teaching. He was holding tutorials. He
was performing religious rituals multiple times
a day. And running the academy. And running the
entire academy. 700 lines. I mean, that's basically
writing a short book every single week while
also being a university president and a full
-time priest. It speaks to a kind of urgency,
doesn't it? Proclus was living in the twilight
of his civilization. He likely felt that if he
didn't write it all down, if he didn't systematize
it now, it would just be lost forever. A race
against time. But Marinus is really careful to
tell us that he wasn't some, you know. miserable,
hunched -over workaholic. He describes Proclus
as prosperous, generous, and very socially active.
Yeah, the sources mention he was a vegetarian
and a bachelor, and he lived in this really nice
house in Athens. He's supposed to have been a
magnet for people. He absolutely was. He wasn't
a hermit in a cave. He was deeply engaged with
his students, with his friends. He had a very
specific vibe, for lack of a better word. He
was even described as having this sort of radiant
quality about him. Inches. But that social...
Grace was paired with this just terrifying intellectual
discipline. It's an unusual combination. And
it's that discipline that led to these massive
works. I mean, Hegel, the German philosopher,
centuries later, he called Proclus' Platonic
theology the true turning point from ancient
philosophy to Christianity. Which is such a bold
claim. It's a huge claim. It suggests that Proclus
is the pivot on which the whole history of Western
thought turns. And Hegel's reasoning, I think.
was that he saw Proclus as the moment where the
ancient world's kind of messy, vibrant polytheism
got organized. It got sorted into a strict logical
hierarchy. Proclus essentially cleaned up the
ancient world, packaged it, and made it ready
for the medieval world to digest. He created
the system. He created the system. And to understand
how he did that, we really need to look at where
he came from. He wasn't actually an Athenian
by birth, was he? No, not at all. He was born
in Constantinople in 412 AD. His family was from
Lycia, which is in modern day Turkey. They were
high status aristocrats. Right. And like a lot
of high status young men of that era. His path
was pretty much predetermined. His father was
a high -ranking lawyer, a jurist, and Proclus
was sent to Alexandria to follow in those exact
footsteps. So he was studying rhetoric and Roman
law. The whole package. This is such a classic
narrative arc, isn't it? The golden child sent
off to the best schools to join the family firm.
And by all accounts, he was really good at it.
He was a successful practicing lawyer in Constantinople
for a brief period. He had the mind for it. That
ability to organize incredibly complex information,
the rhetorical skill. He could have been a very
powerful, very wealthy bureaucrat. But then he
hits a wall. He does. The sources describe a
trip he took back to Constantinople with his
instructor. And he has this epiphany. He realizes
he absolutely hates the law. He truly preferred
philosophy, is the quote. I think a lot of people
can relate to that moment. You're good at something.
You're on a successful path. But you realize
deep down it doesn't feed your soul. For Proclus,
the law was all about, you know, temporary human
squabbles over property and contracts. Philosophy
was about eternal truth. About the structure
of reality itself. A slightly bigger topic. Just
a bit. So he goes back to Alexandria, but he
pivots. Hard. He starts studying Aristotle under
a guy named Olympiadors the Elder and then mathematics
under a teacher named Heron. And we should clarify
for anyone furiously Googling this right now,
this is not Hero of Alexandria, the guy who invented
the steam engine. Right. Different Heron. Important
distinction. But this period in Alexandria is
crucial because Proclus very quickly runs into
a problem. Which is? He's smarter than his teachers.
That's a tough spot to be in for a student. The
sources say he became dissatisfied. The level
of instruction in Alexandria just wasn't rigorous
enough for him. It wasn't spiritual enough. He
wanted the real deal. So in 431 A .D., when he's
about 19 years old, he makes the pilgrimage.
He goes to Athens. Athens in 431 A .D. Let's
take that picture. This is not the golden age
of Pericles anymore, is it? Not even close. It's
essentially a quiet university town. But, and
this is a huge but, it is still the symbolic
heart of paganism. The Roman Empire is rapidly,
aggressively Christianizing. Temples are being
closed. They're being converted into churches.
There's real pressure. But in Athens, the academy
is holding on. It's an enclave. It's the last
bastion. So Proclus arrives, this brilliant young
man looking for the real stuff. And he finds
it? Oh, he finds it. He studies under Plutarch
of Athens. Again, not the famous biographer,
a different philosopher. And then under a man
named Sirianus, who becomes his key mentor. And
he also studied with a woman, right, Asclepaginia.
Yes, which is fascinating. She was the daughter
of Plutarch of Athens, and she's the one who
teaches him the more mystical side of the tradition.
She instructs him in the Chaldean oracles and
the courageical rituals. So he's getting the
logic from Sirianus and the magic from Asclepaginia.
He's getting the complete curriculum, and his
rise is just incredibly fast. Meteoric is the
word. He succeeds Sirianus as the head of the
academy in 437 AD. He's, what, roughly 25 years
old? So 25. 25. And he's leading the most prestigious
philosophical institution in the entire world.
But this wasn't just an academic post, was it?
In that political climate, being the successor
to Plato, that must have put a huge target on
your back. Absolutely. The Christian authorities
in Athens were not happy about this vibrant,
influential pagan center operating in their city.
And we have records that Proclus had to go into
exile for a year. Right. He traveled to Asia
Minor to, as the source puts it, avoid pressure
from Christian authorities. Pressure feels like
a very polite way of saying it. It likely meant
direct threats of imprisonment or violence or
the seizure of the academy's property. But he
came back. He came back. And for the next, what,
almost 50 years, until his death in 485, he managed
to keep the academy running. He navigated this
incredibly hostile political landscape with...
immense skill. He was a guardian. And this defensive
posture, this profound need to protect the tradition,
I think that's what drove him to build his system,
to codify everything. Okay, so let's get into
that system. We call it Neoplatonism, but I know
that's a modern term. They wouldn't have used
that. No, never. They just consider themselves
Platonists, or maybe the Platonists. They believe
they were simply transmitting the correct, divinely
inspired interpretations of Plato. But in reality,
they were building this massive metaphysical
skyscraper on top of Plato's original foundations.
That's a perfect analogy. Yeah. And to understand
Proclus, we have to understand the basic floor
plan of this skyscraper. It really starts with
the three hypostases, which was an idea established
by Plotinus a few centuries earlier. Right. The
three levels of reality. Correct. So at the very
top, the absolute peak, you have the one in Greek.
Two hen. The one. The one is the source of everything
that exists. It is absolute perfect unity. But
it's so unified that it's beyond being. It's
beyond thought. It's beyond language. You can't
even say the one is good because that implies
a distinction between the one and the quality
of goodness. So you can't describe it at all.
You can only say what it's not. It just is. The
ultimate singularity. Okay. So it's this incomprehensible
source. What happens next? From the one. Reality
overflows. It emanates like light from the sun
down to the second level. And that second level
is the intellect. In Greek, nousu. The intellect.
How should we distinguish that from the one?
Okay, so think of the one as pure, undifferentiated
white light. The intellect is like a perfect
crystal prism that that light shines through.
It splits the unity of light into a beautiful,
ordered spectrum of colors. The colors being?
The forms. Plato's forms. This is the realm where
the perfect eternal idea of justice, of beauty,
of triangularity, of man exists. It's the world
of pure eternal thought. It's being in its truest
sense. Okay. So the one is pure unity. The intellect
is the world of perfect ideas or forms. What's
the third level? The third level is the soul.
Or psyche. And the soul is the bridge. It's dynamic.
It looks up at the static eternal forms in the
intellect and it projects them down into time
and space. It puts them into motion. So the soul
is the active builder. It takes the blueprints
from the intellect and actually, you know, builds
the universe with them. Precisely. The cascade
is. The one, which is beyond being, overflows
into the intellect, which is true being. Which
is then articulated in time and space by the
soul creating the physical world we see. So that's
the basic neoplatonic framework that Proclus
inherits. But he doesn't just accept it wholesale.
He tweaks it. And one of the biggest tweaks he
makes concerns the very bottom of that chain,
the physical world, matter itself. This is a
critical distinction and is one of his most important
contributions. Plotinus, the founder of this
school, had a somewhat negative view of matter.
Right. He often spoke of matter as the point
where the divine light finally fades out. It's
a deficiency, a lack. Some even interpreted it
as being the source of evil. Which makes a certain
kind of sense if you're a philosopher trying
to escape the body. The body is the prison. The
material world is the trap. Exactly. But Proclus
looked at that and saw a major logical flaw.
What was the flaw? If everything, without exception,
comes from the one. Which is the first principle.
And the one is supremely good. Then matter must
also ultimately derive from the one. Therefore,
matter cannot be inherently evil. So he redeems
the physical world. He completely redeems it.
He argues that matter participates in the divine
order, just like everything else. It's the last,
faintest echo of the divine song, but it's still
part of the song. And that has huge implications.
Huge. It allows Proclus to be much more positive
about the natural world, about the beauty of
the cosmos, and importantly for him, about the
use of physical objects in religious rituals.
statues, talismans, things like that. Okay, that
makes sense. But his biggest innovation, and
this is the one that frankly makes my head spin
a little bit, is the henads. Ah, henads, yes.
This is Proclus' masterstroke. It's his unique
architectural addition to the skyscraper. We
need to break this down really carefully. Why
did he even need them? What was the problem he
was seeing in the old system? The problem was
the gap. The huge chasm between the absolute
abstract unity of the one and the teeming, messy
multiplicity of our world. Specifically, if you
have one single abstract one at the top, where
do the traditional Greek gods go? Where's Zeus?
Where is Apollo? Where is Athena? Are they just
metaphors for aspects of the one? And for a devout
pagan priest like Proclus, reducing the gods
he worships every day to mere metaphors is, that's
unacceptable. They have to be real distinct entities.
Precisely. He needed to find a place for the
gods in the org chart of reality. So Proclus
introduces a new layer. He inserts it between
the one and the intellect. And he calls this
layer the henads. The henads. The word comes
from the Greek hen, which just means one or unit.
So there isn't just the one. There are the ones,
plural. You can think of them as unitary gods
or super gods. They participate in the nature
of the one. They are beyond being. They are pure
unity, but they are also distinct from one another.
Each henad is the unique source, the head of
a specific chain of reality. A chain. Okay, this
is a key term for Proclus. Serera, I think, is
the Greek. Yes, serai, chains. This is the core
of his vision. Imagine a series of great luminous
chains hanging down from the highest heaven to
the lowest bit of earth. Okay. At the very top
of one chain holding it is a henod. Let's call
this henod by its traditional name. Helios, the
sun god. Okay, so Helios the Hinnad is at the
top. The divine power and character of Helios
then cascades down that specific chain. In the
realm of the intellect, it manifests as the perfect
idea of the sun. In the realm of the soul, it
manifests as the animating principles of sun
-like beings, like, say, angels or demons associated
with the sun. And then in our world? In the physical
sky, it manifests as the actual physical sun
that we see. And here on Earth, it manifests
in things that share that unique solar signature.
The metal gold, sunflowers, roosters, certain
sun -colored stones. So a sunflower isn't just
a plant that happens to look like the sun? No.
For Proclus, it is the bottom -most link of a
metaphysical chain that leads directly back uninterrupted
to the god Helios. Wow. And this applies to everything.
Everything. There's an Apollonian chain, which
includes things like music, healing, prophecy,
the laurel tree. There's a Hermetic chain for
communication, travel, interpretation. Proclus
sees the entire universe as what he calls a polycentric
network. It's not one center, but many. Every
single thing in reality belongs to one or more
of these divine series. So he solved the problem
of how a single one creates a diverse many. He
basically said the one first creates a kind of
divine committee, a board of directors. A divine
bureaucracy is a great way to put it or divine
taxonomy. And what's so beautiful about it from
his perspective is that it connects everything.
It means the world is thick with divinity. You
aren't separated from the gods by some uncrossable
abyss. You are literally surrounded by their
signatures, their presence in the world. And
he didn't just, you know, write this down as
a nice idea. He tried to prove it like a mathematician.
He did. His book, The Elements of Theology, is
one of the most audacious texts ever written.
It is structured exactly like Euclid's Elements
of Geometry. It's made up of 211 propositions,
each with a formal proof. Give us a taste of
how that reads. Is it accessible? It's dry. It's
incredibly rigorous. Proposition one is every
manifold in some way participates in unity. Okay.
That seems straightforward enough. A group of
things has to have some kind of oneness to be
a group. Exactly. And the proof is if a multitude
were not one in any way, it would be nothing.
It wouldn't be a group of things. It would be
absolute chaos without any definition. Therefore,
unity must be primary. And he just builds from
there. Proposition five. Every manifold is posterior
to the one. He builds these axioms one by one,
logically, relentlessly, proving why the one
must exist, why the intellect must follow, why
souls must ascend. It's an attempt to make theology
as certain, as irrefutable as geometry. If you
accept Proposition 1, you are logically forced
eventually to accept Proposition 211, which deals
with the souls of humans. That was the goal.
to make the existence of the gods as certain
as the Pythagorean theorem. But this brings us
to what seems like a major conflict. We have
Proclus the Logician writing these dry, rigorous
proofs, but then we have Proclus the Magician.
We have to talk about theurgy. Theurgia, yes.
Literally, it means god work. To a modern listener,
this sounds like a hard left turn. I have just
proven the entire structure of the universe with
impeccable logic. Now please hand me that magic
wand. Why did he need rituals if his logic was
so solid? Because Proclus believed that the individual
human soul is, well, it's damaged, it's fallen.
It has descended down the chain into a physical
body, and it's become distracted by our senses,
overwhelmed by our passions, and it has forgotten
where it came from. And logic isn't enough to
fix that state of amnesia. Logic can help you
draw a map. It can help you understand where
you are and where you need to go. But it cannot,
by itself, lift you up. The soul is too weak,
too mired in the material world to ascend back
to the one by intellect alone. We need leverage.
We need help from the outside. And that help
comes from those chains we were just talking
about. Precisely. This is where the physics of
the hen ends becomes a practical technology.
If you want to ascend the solar chain to purify
your soul and reconnect with the divine intellect
of Helios, you use the physical objects at the
bottom of his chain. The sunflower, the gold.
You use the sunflower, you use the gold, you
use specific herbs, you champ specific incantations,
the power -laden words associated with that specific
god. Okay, but how does that actually work? Is
it like a magnet? Is it a prayer? What's the
mechanism? Proclus uses the analogy of sympathy
or resonance. Think of two musical strings on
a harp that are tuned to the exact same note.
If you pluck one, the other one across the room
will start to vibrate on its own. Sympathetic
vibration. Right. The sunflower, in its very
essence, vibrates with the metaphysical frequency
of the henadhelios. By engaging with the sunflower
in a proper ritual context, by saying the divine
passwords or names of the god, you are tuning
the instrument of your own soul to that same
frequency. And that vibration pulls you up the
chain. The ritual draws you back up the chain
towards your source. It's very important to note
this isn't about commanding the gods like some
sorcerer. It's about purifying and tuning the
receiver of your own soul so that you can receive
their divine influence. So it's more like spiritual
radio engineering than casting spells? That's
a great way to think about it. And Proclus was
a true universalist in this. He famously said
something like, the philosopher should be the
hierophant of the whole world. He didn't just
practice Greek rites. No. Marinus tells us he
was initiated into Orphic mysteries. He practiced
Chaldean rituals. He studied Egyptian traditions.
He believed that different nations and cultures
had, over millennia, discovered different chains,
different pathways back to the divine. He was
collecting the keys to every single door he could
find. If it worked to purify the soul and lead
it back to its source, Poclus was interested.
There's another type of intermediate being that
serves as a bridge for Proclus, and it connects
to your earlier point about him being a brilliant
mathematician. We have to talk about his commentary
on Euclid. Yes. This is a text that, on the surface,
seems like it doesn't really fit with all the
mystical, theurgical stuff. It's a commentary
on Book I of Euclid's Elements, Geometry 101.
But historically, this might be his single most
important contribution to science. Why is it
so critical? I mean, it's a commentary, not an
original work. Because Proclus had, essentially,
a library card. to the Library of Alexandria
before it was completely gone. He had access
to a whole world of texts that are now lost to
us, specifically a comprehensive history of geometry
written by Eudemus of Rhodes, who was a student
of Aristotle. So when Perklas is writing his
commentary, he's quoting and summarizing books
that vanished from the earth 1 ,500 years ago.
Correct. In his introduction, he preserves what
we now call the Eudemian summary. He just casually
lists the entire lineage of Greek mathematics.
He tells us who did what. Thales, Mamercus, Hippias,
Leodamus, Archytas, Betetus, Eudoxus. It's a
roll call. It's the only reason we know who contributed
what. Without Proclus, would we know who discovered
the properties of the circle versus who first
worked on the dodecahedron? In many cases, no.
We would just have Euclid's final product with
no idea how it was built. Proclus literally saves
the history of Greek mathematics from oblivion.
That's incredible. But for him, math wasn't just
history. It was part of that ladder back to the
one. Yes. This is so key to his thinking. Proclus
places mathematical objects in a unique space
between the messy physical world and the pure
world of ideas. Why in the middle? Okay, think
about a circle. A physical circle, a drawing
in the sand, a dinner plate is never perfect.
It has bumps. It gets scratched. It's made of
matter. It changes. It's particular. Right. Now
think of the idea of circularity in the realm
of the intellect. It's perfect, but it's purely
abstract. It is one single, unchangeable concept.
But in geometry, you can imagine two perfect
circles intersecting. Or three, you can manipulate
them in your mind. They have extension and properties,
but they are made of matter. They exist in the
imagination. They're the training ground. They
are the gymnasium of the soul. Procolists believe
that doing geometry forces your mind to detach
from unreliable sensory data and to contemplate
pure eternal structures. It is the perfect preparation
for the philosophical contemplation of the forms.
It gets you ready for the beatific vision. So
it's the mental equivalent of the sunflower ritual.
One uses physical objects to lift the soul. The
other uses pure shapes to lift the mind. Both
are bridges. Both are forms of ascent. And in
his commentary on Plato's Timaeus, he goes even
further. He explains in exhaustive detail how
the world's soul creates the physical body of
the universe. Using mathematical proportions,
harmonic ratios, arithmetic, and geometric means,
he literally views the cosmos as a crystallized
mathematical construct. God geometrizes, as the
saying goes. To Proclus, that was not a metaphor.
It was the literal truth. So we have this incredible,
almost paradoxical image of a man. He is a rigorous
logician, a historian of science, a practitioner
of ritual magic and the leader of the academy.
He is fighting this desperate, brilliant battle
to preserve the pagan tradition. And he loses.
He loses. A few decades after he dies, the emperor
Justinian officially closes the academy in Athens
in 529 A .D. The doors are shut. Christianity
takes over completely. And usually that is where
the story ends, right? The loser of history is
forgotten. Their books are burned or left to
rot. That's what should have happened. But that
is not what happened with Proclus. And this is
the plot twist that makes this entire deep dive
so wild. Proclus, in defeat, basically pulled
off the greatest Trojan horse maneuver in the
history of Western theology. It's the ultimate
irony. His system was so good, so useful, so
all -encompassing, that his enemies had no choice
but to steal it. Okay, let's track exactly how
this happened. You mentioned there were two main
vectors, two smuggling routes for his ideas.
The first one involves a fascinating case of
stolen identity. Yes, the strange case of Pseudodionysius
the Areopagite. Let's set the scene. Who is the
real Dionysius the Areopagite? In the Bible and
the Acts of the Apostles. St. Paul goes to Athens
to preach. He gives his famous sermon on the
Areopagus, the hill of Ares. Most of the sophisticated
Athenian philosophers there laugh at him, but
one of them, a judge named Dionysius, converts
to Christianity. Okay, so he's a first century
Christian, a direct convert of St. Paul himself.
In terms of authority, that is as good as it
gets. Apostolic authority. The highest level.
Now, fast forward to the late 5th or early 6th
century. This is just a generation or so after
Proclus dies. A mysterious collection of theological
writings appears in Syria. The author claims
to be that very same Dionysius. But it wasn't
him. Not a chance. Modern philology and historical
analysis have proven beyond any doubt that this
author was writing much, much later. We have
no idea who he really was, so we call him Pseudo
-Dionysius. But here's the kicker. When you actually
read his books, works like The Divine Names or
The Celestial Hierarchy, the philosophical system
inside them is pure Proclus. So you're saying
this anonymous Christian author took Proclus'
entire metaphysical structure, the one, the emanations,
the triads, the return, and just pasted Christian
labels on top of it. Essentially, yes. Proclus'
one becomes the Christian God, the Father. Proclus'
complex hierarchy of henads and divine beings
becomes the angelic hierarchy, seraphim, cherubim,
thrones, dominions, and so on. The famous method
of negative theology, approaching God by saying
what he is not, is lifted straight from Proclus
and Plotinus. But because everyone in the medieval
world thought this author was the actual disciple
of St. Paul. They treated his writings with the
reverence of scripture. For a thousand years,
medieval monks, theologians like Thomas Aquinas,
mystics like Meister Eckhart, they all studied
these texts thinking they were learning the secret
wisdom of the early church. In reality, they
were absorbing the incredibly sophisticated system
of the last great pagan philosopher of Athens.
That's vector number one, the Trojan horse. Vector
number two is almost more of a detective story.
This one involves a book called the Liber de
Causes. The Book of Causes, yes. This text surfaced
in the Arabic world, probably in Baghdad, during
the Islamic Golden Age. It's a brilliant, concise
summary of Neoplatonic metaphysics. 32 propositions.
And who did the Islamic and Liber? the Christian
scholars think wrote it. Aristotle. Aristotle.
But Aristotle's philosophy is so different from
Proclus's. Aristotle is the bottom -up guy, the
biologist, the one who categorizes things in
the real world. He's not usually the mystical
emanation from a transcendent one guy. Not at
all. It's a terrible misattribution. Yeah. But
for whatever reason, it's stuck. The Leverde
Causes was translated from Arabic into Latin
in the 12th century, and it exploded in popularity.
It became a standard textbook in the new universities
of Paris and Oxford. So you have these brilliant
scholastic thinkers in the 1200s, guys like Albert
the Great, studying this book, thinking, ah,
at last, this is Aristotle's secret book on metaphysics.
This explains how God relates to the world. But
they're actually reading a summary of Proclus'
Elements of Theology. Exactly. Proclus was shaping
the minds. of the high middle ages, completely
incognito, under the name of his greatest philosophical
rival. So when did the mask finally pulled off?
How did they figure it out? Well, it wasn't until
the greatest mind of the age, Thomas Aquinas,
got involved. Aquinas was incredibly sharp, a
brilliant... textual scholar. And he had a friend,
a Flemish translator named William of Morbake,
who was one of the few people in Europe who could
translate Greek texts directly into Latin without
going through Arabic first. And Aquinas asked
William to translate Proclus' actual elements
of theology. So for the first time, a Western
scholar had both books in front of him. He has
the Libra de Causas, which everyone says is by
Aristotle, in one hand. And the real elements
of theology by Proclus in the other. And he sits
down and he compares them. And he realizes, wait
a minute, the Book of Causes is just a series
of excerpts and paraphrases from Proclus. He
was one of the very first to expose the misattribution
in his commentary. That is an incredible moment
of detective work and scholarship for the 13th
century. It's a landmark. But by then, in a way,
the damage was done, or rather, the influence
was already baked in. And Aquinas himself, even
after discovering the truth, had immense respect
for Proclus. He quotes him hundreds of times
and uses his concepts to explain the nature of
angels and the relationship between God and the
created world. And this influence didn't just
stop with the Middle Ages. The Renaissance thinkers,
they loved him too, right? They were obsessed
with him. Figures like Marsilio Ficino, who ran
the Platonic Academy in Florence, and Piccadillo
Mirandola, they saw Proclus as the key. The one
who had synthesized all ancient wisdom, Platonic,
Orphic, Egyptian into one coherent system. He
was the master synthesizer. And we can't forget
Boethius. No, absolutely not. Boethius writing
his Consolation of Philosophy while awaiting
execution. That book was arguably the most popular
and influential book in Europe for 500 years.
But everyone read it. Kings. Monks? Poets? And
in that book, Boethius lays down this profound
philosophical principle that comes straight from
Proclus. He says, and I'm paraphrasing, Okay,
let's unpack that. That sounds almost like modern
psychology or even quantum physics. It's incredibly
profound. It means that reality looks different
depending on who or what is looking at it. A
plant experiences the world through simple sensation.
An animal through instinct and imagination. A
human through reason. An angel or a god sees
all of time as a single, eternal now. We see
it as past, present, and future. The limitation
isn't in reality itself. It's in the capacity
of the viewer. That's a Proclan insight. It's
pure Proclus concerning the different levels
of knowledge that correspond to the different
levels of being. Sense, opinion, discursive reason,
and pure intellect. So if we just look at the
scorecard here, Christian mysticism. deeply influenced
by Proclus, Islamic philosophy, deeply influenced
by Proclus, Renaissance humanism, influenced
by Proclus, and then it just keeps going all
the way to German idealism. Hegel loved him.
Hegel explicitly credited Proclus with providing
the blueprint for his own dialectic method, that
famous triad of thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
For Proclus, this was the metastasical rhythm
of the universe. Everything is defined by the
movement of remaining in its cause, proceeding
out from its cause, and returning to its cause.
So a concept stays in itself, goes out into its
opposite, and then returns to itself. but enriched.
That is the engine of Hegel's entire philosophy.
And he freely admitted he got the blueprint from
Proclus. It is absolutely staggering. This man
who spent his entire life defending a dead religion
actually ended up providing the invisible skeletal
structure for the next 1500 years of Western
thought. He built a container, a philosophical
and theological container that was so elegant,
so logical, so perfect that everyone who came
after him wanted to pour their own wine into
it. As we wrap this up, I want to go back to
that central image of the system. We've talked
about chains and triads and hierarchies, and
it can all feel very, very abstract. But I think
there's a very human, almost emotional drive
behind it all. I completely agree. You have to
remember the world Proclus lived in. It was a
time of intense fragmentation. The Roman Empire
was falling apart. Old religious certainties
were dying. There was a deep sense of anxiety
and dislocation. Sounds a little familiar. It
does, doesn't it? And Proclus' response to that
chaos wasn't to retreat into skepticism or despair.
His response was to connect. His entire life's
work was an attempt to show that the flower in
the garden and the theorem on the page and the
ritual in the temple and the highest, most abstract
thought, they were all part of one unified story.
A unified field theory of everything. Yes. He
refused to let the world be broken into disconnected
pieces. He insisted with every fiber of his being
that if you look deep enough, With enough rigorous
logic and enough focused devotion, you will find
the golden thread that ties everything back to
the one. It's a beautiful vision. If you look
at a lunar map or if you have a really, really
good telescope, you can see a crater on the moon
named Proclus. It's famous among astronomers
because it's one of the brightest spots on the
lunar surface. It has these very distinct bright
rays coming out of it. That's fitting. He's still
reflecting light after all this time. It is.
So here is the thought I want to leave everyone
with. We live in an age of hyper specialization,
of fragmentation. Science often doesn't talk
to religion. Art doesn't talk to data. We live
in these little silos. Proclus challenges us
to ask, what is the henod in your own life? What
is the connecting principle, the unifying idea
or value that ties your work, your beliefs, and
your deepest experiences together into a coherent
whole? It's a big question. Are we brave enough
to even try to synthesize our world the way he
did? Or are we just content living with the fragments?
Find your chain. Follow it up. Thanks for diving
deep with us. A pleasure, as always.