Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles by Sara Ahbel-Rappe;

Author:Sara Ahbel-Rappe;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 79. On the Assimilation of What Reverts to Its Cause

Now Damascius develops the remarks in chapter 78 above concerning the intelligible triad and the three forms of reversion, that is, what happens when intellect reverts to Being, to life (vital reversion) and to itself (intellectual reversion) and speaks of “pleromas” in the sense that, as stated above, each of these three reversions gives rise to a distinct pleroma, namely, the noetic, noetic-noeric, noeric.

But for now we have given an account of the reversion of intellect to Being, that is, of the third to the first. But we shall also give an account of the similar reversions of the third to the second, that is, of intellect to life. Intellect has knowledge of life, if, at least, it also has knowledge of Being, and it has this in the same manner, although intellect will enter into the limit of life, which is its substance, and because of which intellect becomes intellective life, just as intellect becomes intellectual substance because of its assimilation to Being, just as intellect is intellect according to its own third characteristic. Consider now, if you please, that the intellect, although it is third, is by itself altogether three natures: Being and life and intellect, as collected and distinguished and separate. Insofar as intellect lives and is becoming distinguished in some way, to the extent that there is the separate in the midst of what is becoming distinguished, it assimilates itself to life and is rooted in life, and this is the substantial reversion to life. But what would the vital reversion to life be? It is one thing to be situated at the limit of life and to become life, and another thing, being intellect, and established in itself as just what it is, to touch life as the third contacts the second, and to live rather than to be life, and to long for life, but not already to be living.

(II 138) Now we can use the same scheme of the three reversions everywhere, wherever [the elements] are situated or of whatever number [the reverting terms are], or toward whichever presubstantial realities they revert. What reverts does so toward each of the realities that precede it, whether they are near or far, and [each] is assimilated to the entire entity to which it is reverting. [And this assimilation takes place] either by means of the native qualities that are flowing into [those which revert] from the things to which they are reverting, or [these qualities may be] from pleromas or elements, or they may come to be co-substantialized together with that which receives them, or they may be imported, having come into being in some other way. Or [the assimilation takes place] by means of the various constitutions belonging to what is doing the reverting, since they properly belong to it, and have not arrived from above, and have in some other way proven to be structured like those natures that belong to still more primal elements, toward which reversion is accomplished by likeness.

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