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The Demiurge in Ioane Petritsi's Commentary on Proclus' Elements

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The Demiurge in Ioane Petritsi's Commentary on Proclus' Elements The Demiurge in Ioane Petritsi’s Commentary on Proclus’ Elements of Theology LELA ALEXIDZE Tbilisi State University DOI: 10.36446/rlf2021224 l 149 Abstract: Ioane Petritsi, the twelfth century Georgian Christian Neoplatonist, wrote a commentary on Proclus’ Elements of Theology. In his work Petritsi goes far beyond the material contained in Proclus’ Elements, discussing the issues which are the subject of other treatises of ancient Greek philosophers. The aim of this paper is to analyze Petritsi’s point of view on the creator of the visible world, i.e. the demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus. In Petritsi’s commentary, on the one hand, the features of the supreme One and the demiurge as producers of the universe are in certain cases quasi identical, although on the other hand, the demiurge represents a lower level of intellect than the true being and in some cases is absent in places where a reader, following the context of Petritsi’s commentary, expects his presence. Key-words: one, true being, intellect, soul, matter. REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA de FILOSOFÍA Vol. 47 Nº1 l Otoño 2021 El Demiurgo en el Comentario de Ioane Petritsi a los Elementos de teología de Proclo Resumen: Ioane Petritsi, neoplatonista georgiano y cristiano del siglo XII, compuso un comentario sobre los Elementos de Teología de Proclo, en el que va mucho más allá del material abarcado por los Elementos y llega a discutir cuestiones de las que se ocupan los tratados de otros filósofos griegos de la Antigüedad. Este trabajo se propone analizar el punto de vista de Pe- tritsi sobre el creador del mundo visible, es decir, el demiurgo del Timeo de Platón. En el comentario de Petritsi, las características del Uno supremo y el demiurgo como productores del universo son, en ciertos casos, casi idénticas, aunque, por otro lado, el demiurgo representa un nivel de intelecto más bajo que el ser verdadero y está ausente en pasajes en los que el lector, a partir del contexto del comentario de Petritsi, esperaría su presencia. Palabras clave: uno, ser verdadero, intelecto, alma, materia. 1. Introduction 150 l oane Petritsi, the twelfth century Georgian Christian Neoplatonist, Itranslated Proclus’ Elements of Theology into Georgian. He com- mented on all propositions of Proclus’ Elements, and wrote a prologue and an epilogue to his commentary. In general, Petritsi follows Proclus’ philo- sophy and, at least in the commentary and the prologue, he exposes and interprets it quite adequately, without looking for harmony or differences between Proclus’ philosophy and the traditional Christian teaching. Instead, it is in the epilogue that Petritsi makes an attempt to prove the compati- bility of Platonic philosophy and Proclus’ theory of the supreme One with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. From this point of view, i.e. regarding the problem of the harmonization of pagan Neoplatonic philosophy with Christian worldview, Petritsi’s commentary, along with the prologue, is quite different from the epilogue. In this paper, I shall concentrate mainly on Pe- tritsi’s commentary, almost without taking into consideration his epilogue. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze Petritsi’s point of view on the creator of the visible world i.e. Plato’s demiurge in the Timaeus. But why does Petritsi write about the demiurge at all in his commentary on Proclus’ Elements? This is a legitimate question, because this text of Proclus’ does not contain any special discussions of the demiurge, unlike Proclus’ other more detailed works, first of all, his commentaries on Plato’s Timaeus. So, how should one explain why Petritsi is interested in the demiurge at all, LELA ALEXIDZE - The Demiurge in Ioane Petritsi’s Commentary on Proclus’ Elements... l 149-165 and how does he interpret the essence and the functions of the demiurge? It is not difficult to answer the first question: in his prologue and com- mentary, Petritsi goes far beyond the material contained in Proclus’ Elements, discussing the issues which are the subject of other treatises by Proclus and other philosophers as well. This is why it is quite natural that we come across the figure of Plato’s demiurge in Petritsi’s commentary on Proclus’ Elements of Theology. The second question is more complicated to answer. On the one hand, the demiurge in Petritsi’s commentary is similar to Plato’s demiurge as well as to Proclus’ interpretation of Plato’s demiurge. But, on the other hand, the demiurge in Petritsi’s commentary acquires (though quite vaguely) ad- ditional features which are not typical for the Proclean understanding of the craftsman. To the contrary, in certain cases, the demiurge seems to be almost absent in Petritsi’s commentary when he discusses the mechanism of cosmo- logical production. In what follows, I shall set forth Petritsi’s characteristic of the demiurge and try to analyze what and why he changed in the more or less traditionally Proclean image of Plato’s demiurge. Before we discuss the problems related to the figure of Plato’s de- miurge, let us see what Petritsi says about Plato’s Timaeus in his commentary on Proclus’ Elements of Theology. l 151 2. Plato’s Timaeus in Petritsi’s commentary etritsi mentions Timaeus several times in his commentary, though Pin some cases we are not sure whether he means Plato’s Timaeus or Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. (The same is true when Petritsi mentions Parmenides). In chapter 7, Petritsi explicitly mentions Plato’s Ti- maeus together with his Laws. He says that the creative power has no lack of either potency or wish [to create]. According to Petritsi, in these books (Timaeus and Laws) it is said that the providence which rules over everything is derived from the One, and the God who makes everything good neither lacks potency while making all beings good, nor does he experience any kind of envy (cf. Plato, Tim. 29a-e, Legg. X, 899b-c, 900c-e. See also Petritsi 1937: 32, chapter 7). Obviously, in these cases we have a kind of conta- mination of the functions of the supreme One with the demiurge of the physical cosmos. An interesting (but not an exact) quotation from Plato’s Timaeus is given in chapter 8 of Petritsi’s commentary. It concerns the demiurge, the paradigm of the cosmos, and the physical world. Strangely, Petritsi makes a quotation (Greek words in Georgian transliteration) from Timaeus but says that it is from Phaedrus. Why? This could be a simple mistake (caused, first, REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA de FILOSOFÍA Vol. 47 Nº1 l Otoño 2021 by the fact that he speaks about love, which is one of the themes in Phaedrus, and, second, because thereafter he really makes a quotation from Phaedrus) or else he does it deliberately. If this is not Petritsi’s mistake, then we can suppose that he was alluding to some neoplatonic commentary on Plato’s Phaedrus in which the passage from Timaeus was quoted and commented. But for now I cannot say anything more exact. Let us look at this fragment from Petritsi’s commentary, where he discusses the first beauty, harmony and goodness: Let us now say in Attic that what was said in Phaedrus: ‘ti tōn ontōn ariston ē tōn nooumenōn kalliston?’ This thesis is expressed in the form of a question: ‘what is the most excellent of the beings and the most beautiful of the in- telligible [things]?’ Thus, he is surprised as if he were excited because of the beauty of the results of the first cosmos, where the harmony and the first musical melody started by means of the excellent craftsman for rendering the intellectual forms visible, [forms] which have, as [the aim] of their return and [the subject of their] love the One which is higher than anything else and is the first goodness (Petritsi 1937: 34, chapter 8). As we already said, the fragment from Phaedrus is not really a fragment from Plato’s Phaedrus but an inexact quotation from Timaeus 29a5-6: ho men 152 l gar kallistos tōn gegonotōn, ho d’aristos tōn aitiōn (“of all the things that have come to be, [our universe] is the most beautiful, and of causes [the craftsmen] is the most excellent” (Transl. of Timaeus here and further by D. J. Zeyl, slightly modified, in Plato 1977: 1235). In Plato’s text, the first part of this passage concerns the physical world and the second one concerns the demiurge. It seems that Petritsi combined this passage from Plato’s Timaeus with other passages from the same dialogue: Tim. 30d1-2: tōi gar tōn noou- menōn kallistōi (“like the most beautiful of the intelligible things”) (transl. in Plato 1977: 1236) (this passage concerns the paradigm), and probably also Tim. 30a5-6: themis d’out ēn out’estin tōi aristōi drān allo plēn to kalliston (“it wasn’t permitted (nor it is now) that one who is supremely good should do anything but what is the most beautiful” (transl. in Plato 1977: 1236. This passage is about the demiurge). The similar text is in Plato’s Tim. 37a1-2: tōn noētōn aei te ontōn hupo tou aristē genomenē tōn gennēthentōn (“[the soul] came to be as the most excellent of all the things begotten by him who is himself most excellent of all that is intelligible and eternal” (transl. in Plato 1977: 1240. This passage concerns the cosmic soul and the demiurge). Proclus quotes the passage from Plato’s Tim. 29a5-6 in his Platonic Theology: [ho] kai o Timaios hēmin endeiknumenos ariston tōn aitiōn ton prōton sunekhōs apokalei demiouorgon (ho men gar tōn aitiōn aristos, ho de tōn gegonotōn LELA ALEXIDZE - The Demiurge in Ioane Petritsi’s Commentary on Proclus’ Elements..
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