Damascius and the First-Principle Aporia in Neoplatonism

What is it about?

Damascius distinguishes two senses of the first principle, assigning the absolute transcendence and the causality to the Ineffable and the One separately. This approach can avoid the difficulty of attributing the two contradictory "characteristics” to one and the same thing. However, the separation of them also has the danger of making neither the Ineffable nor the One adequate for being the first principle. One the one hand, since the One serves as the cause of all beings and is beyond all beings, whereas the Ineffable cannot be regarded as the cause of anything at all, the Ineffable would be rendered superfluous in Damascius’ metaphysics. On the other hand, the One does not have genuine transcendence, but instead remains relative to plurality. Such an all-encompassing unity would hardly be distinguished from the Intellect , and the production of the Intellect by the One would be somewhat like a production by itself. In other words, the One would lose its superior status in comparison with its products. When Proclus posits henads as intermediary to bridge the gap between the One and the beings, Damascius actually renders the One an intermediary between the Ineffable and the Intellect. Although one of them adds reality below the One and the other above the One, both of them have to face the problem of infinite regress. Thus, in the attempt to resolve the difficulty in his predecessors’ philosophy, especially Proclus’, Damascius seems to have fallen into a similar situation.

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