Podcast episode
December 24, 2019
Episode 79: Alone with the Alone: Numenius’ Metaphysics
Numenius, like all Middle Platonists, had a major debt to the cosmological myth of Plato’s Timæus, to Plato’s Republic, and to numerous other Platonic writings. He seems to have been especially impressed by the cryptic ‘King of All’ passage from the pseudo-Platonist Second Letter – most likely a Neopythagorean forgery of the Hellenistic period – and so formulated a signature doctrine of ‘three gods’: the Good/Father/King/Un-noetic Nous, the Demiurge/Son/Second, Active Nous, and the Grandson/Noetic Creator/Third Nous. He was also invested in contemporary Neopythagorean speculations, and thus placed major emphasis on a monad/dyad ontology – however, what he does with this dichotomy is unique in (surviving) Middle Platonist philosophy. Numenius’ work shows an interestingly ‘theological’ tone – he is quite happy speaking of his realities in personalised terms as gods, a usage which is always present in some measure in Platonism, but which is usually toned down a lot more than we find it in Numenius; he is, if not as theistic as Philo of Alexandria, at least on the same side of the aisle as the great Jewish Platonist.
Numenius’ philosophy made a big impression on later Platonists and Christians alike. For the Platonists his thought – especially his placing of a transcendent principle, the Good, at the summit of universal ontology – was an important contribution deserving of serious consideration. Plotinus knew his work intimately (see Porph. Plot. 14.12; 18.2–3, 17.1–23) and responded to it throughout his own writings, as did to a lesser degree his student Porphyry, while later thinkers like Iamblichus and Proclus cite him in numerous contexts.
Christians tended to cite Numenius’ thought for a very different set of reasons, finding in his doctrine of ‘three gods’ a Hellenic prototype or exemplum of their developing doctrine of the Trinity, a doctrine whose difficulties demanded serious ingenuity to solve. This three-in-one metaphysics, along with his love of Moses and exegesis of Jewish scriptures as esoteric philosophic texts, made Numenius a minor but important figure in the story of early Christian attempts to adopt/co-opt/appropriate Platonist thought in the service of Christ.
Works Cited in this Episode:
Primary:
All translations and fragment references from Petty 2012.
Numenius of Apamea:
- The First god a Nous which is inactive: frr. 12.13, 15.2. The first god/the Good hidden (fr. 2.9), unknown, unsayable, and perfectly simple (fr. 11.11–14). The first god is Being, τὸ ὄν: frr. 5.5-14; 6.7-8; 8.2; 17.4. The first god as the (Biblical?) ‘One who exists’, ὁ ὤν: fr. 13.4. Undiminished giving of hypostasis: fr. 14.
- The second God is Plato’s demiurge: e.g. fr. 16.5; 22.1–2. He is an active Nous: fr. 15.3–4 He is split by matter: fr. 11.13–16. The primary demiurge continues to contemplate the first god noetically (frs. 11.14–20, 16.10–12, 21.4–5), but …
- The third god exercises discursive thought (διανοούμενον: fr. 22.4) and imposes the Forms onto matter, creating the cosmos (frs. 21.3–5, 22.4).
- The soul: Astral afterlife and reincarnation: fr. 12.14–16. ‘Undescended’ nature of the soul: fr. 42; cf. fr. 31.25–6; 52.73–5. Rational and irrational souls: fr. 44.
Other authors:
- Plato: The Form of the Good ‘beyond being’ or ‘beyond essence’ (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας): R. 509b8-9. The demiurge creates the world by using the Forms as a blueprint: 28a7. The ‘King of All’ passage from ‘Plato’s’ Second Letter: 312d7-313a6.
- Plotinus: A nous which does not exercise noêsis is an absurdity, on Aristotelean grounds that nous is its action, noêsis: Enn. VI.7[38]37.
- Proclus on Numenius’ rather theistic way of speaking of the first three principles: In Tim. I.303, 27-304, 7 Diehl.
Secondary:
- Dodds theorises that ὁ ὤν is a textual corruption: Dodds 1960, 15-16.
Recommended Reading:
George Karamonoulis’ article on Numenius in the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a superb first introduction to the metaphysics of the man from Apamea; highly recommended. Also relevant and good:
- M. Baltes. ‘Numenius von Apamea und der platonische Timaios’. Vigiliae Christianae, (29):241–270, 1975.
- R. Beutler. ‘Numenius’. Real-Encyclopaedie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, Supplement 7:664–678, 1940.
- J. Dillon. ‘Numenius: Some Ontological Questions’. In R. W. Sharples and R. Sorabji, editors, Greek and Roman Philosophy 100 BCE–200 CE, volume II, pages 397–402. Institute of Classical Studies, London, 2007.
- E. R. Dodds. ‘Numenius and Ammonius’. Volume 5 of Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique, pages 2–61. Fondation Hardt, Vandoevres/Géneve, 1960.
- M. Edwards. ‘Porphyry and the Intelligible Triad’. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 110:14–25, 1990.
- M. Frede. ‘Numenius’. ANRW, 36(2):1034–1075, 1987.
- J. Halfwassen. Geist und Selbstbewußtsein. Studien zu Plotin und Numenios. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1994.
- E.A. Leemans. Studie over de Wijsgeer Numenius van Apamea met Uitgave der Fragmenten. Mémoires de la Classe des Lettres/Académie Royale de Belgique. Academie Royale de Belgique, Brussels, 1937.
- P. Merlan. ‘Numenius’. In A.H. Armstrong, editor, The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, page 96–106. University Press, Cambridge, 1967.
- R. Petty. Fragments of Numenius of Apamea. Number VII in Platonic Texts and Translations. Prometheus Trust, Hockley, 2012.
- J. Whittaker. ‘Numenius and Alcinous on the First Principle’. Phoenix, 32(2):144–154, Summer 1978.
Themes
Apophatic Writing, Cosmic Ascent, Numenius, Soul, Transcendent Consciousness
James Derek Lomas
December 26, 2019
Merry Christmas! So, as I understand it, when we say merry Christmas, we celebrate the day when the Logos became incarnate.
The esoteric tradition centers on a belief in an ineffable Oneness that is the origin and nature of all things. From Heraclitus to the Stoics to Philo, the Logos was understood as the emanation from the One.
And so, Jesus was understood by the gospel of John and Origen to be the incarnation of the Logos in human form; “the word made flesh.” As a man, Jesus was born, but as the Logos, he was present since the beginning of time. He was the emanation of the One; the son of god, so to speak.
That idea, which is rather esoteric, seemed to be the dominant philosophical idea in Christian theology until around the year 399, when Pope Theophilus of Alexandria had to deal with rioting monks. He’d pissed them off when he claimed God was incorporeal, rather than anthropomorphic. He then did a major about-face to maintain support and killed off 10,000 monks as “Origenists” who believed in an incorporeal God, largely the acetic monks of the Nitrian desert [1]. He is also known for destroying the temples to Serapis (which held the classical library), Mithras and Dionysus in 393.
Where were we? Oh, yes, Merry Christmas!
[1] https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/1949/07/10/101999-10000-martyred-fathers-of-the-deserts-and-caves-of-scete-by-the
James Derek Lomas
December 26, 2019
“The One” father God of Numenius is a recurring theme. It’s earliest source may be in the Pythagoreans. Here is a fragment from Philolaus:
Philo, Mund. Opif., 24:”Philolaus confirms what I have just said by the following words; “He who commands and governs everything is a God who is single, eternally existing, immutable, self-identical, and different from other things.”
Here are some more fragments from Philolaus to get a sense of the Pythagorean understanding of the soul. Who is Philolaus?
PHILOLAUS OF TARENTUM, late 5th c BC, was educated by Lysis, one of the two Pythagoreans who escaped the persecution of the school at Croton. Philolaus was the first Pythagorean to write down any doctrines.
In the fragment below, Philolaus articulates the unusual idea that the *interaction* of the soul and the material body produces sensation/experience/feelingness. That is remarkable!
“The soul is introduced and associated with the body by Number, and by a harmony simultaneously immortal and incorporeal….the soul cherishes its body, because without it the soul cannot feel; but when death has separated the soul therefrom, the soul lives an incorporeal existence in the cosmos” (DK 22, Claudianus Mamertus, De Statu Animae, 2. p. 7).
This view differs sharply from the common view of the soul. I would wager that, for most, the Soul consists of 3 basic elements: 1. A glowing ball of light (seriously) 2. The true essence of the self 3. The medium of personal experience, with or without a body. Thus, when a person says “I don’t believe in a soul”, they mean they don’t agree with 1 or more of the above statements.
I think it is quite common to see the soul as “the medium of personal experience”; I. E., the soul is the experiencing part of us. But that’s not Philolaus, where feelingness requires both soul and body.
This is a kind of dualism, as the soul exists separately from the body (even as they are integrated together by sensation). This dualism is very, very similar to information/material dualism, which underlies theories of computation. Computational processing can occur in different media, it doesn’t matter : you can make a Turing machine out of water pumps and run the same logic as on silicon. Computation and arithmetic occur within the space of the platonic forms. This informationy-computationy space, for Philolaus, seems to be the nature of the soul.
But a sort of computational harmony, I suppose!
Macrobius says: “Plato says that the soul is a self-moving essence; Xenocrates defines the soul as a self-moving number; Aristotle called it an entelechy; and Pythagoras and Philolaus, a harmony.” (Macrobius, Commentariorum in Somnium Scipionis, 1. 14)
The harmony occurs in the world of forms, but is brought into the bodily experience, into thought, art and music, through number. See here:
“By means of sensation, Number instills a certain proportion, and thereby establishes among all things harmonic relations, analogous to the nature of the geometric figure called the gnomon; it incorporates intelligible reasons of things, separates them, individualizes them, both in limited and unlimited things. And it is not only in matters pertaining to daimons or Gods that you may see the force manifested by the nature and power of Number, but it is in all its works, in all human thoughts, everywhere indeed, and even in the productions of arts and music. ”
(DK 11,Stobaeus, 1. 3. 8 ).
This numerical nature of harmony in the soul seems like it might have some empirical support. Which is appropriate for a Pythagorean view! But I can’t review that evidence now.
Where I’m stuck is in understanding the relation between harmony and the logos…
The nature of goodness comes not from unity or uniformity, but rather from harmony. Otherwise, the best song would be a single, unison note – – that’s what Aristotle referred to as “the error of socrates”.
Philolaus “Harmony is generally the result of contraries; for it is the unity of multiplicity, and the agreement of discordances” (Nicomachus, Arith. Intr., 2. 509, DK 10).
“Of course, the things that were similar, and of similar nature, did not need harmony; but the dissimilar things, which have neither a similar nature, nor an equivalent function, must be organized by the harmony, if they are to take their place in the connected totality of the world.”
So, in synthesis, I understand that the soul brings harmony to the multiplicitous material world through the embodiment of wholeness, a reflection of the One. Apologies if that’s a bit esoteric.