Proclus - Influence

Influence

Proclus can be considered as the spokesman of mature Neoplatonism. His works had a great influence on the history of western philosophy. The extent of this influence, however, is obscured by the channels through which it was exercised. An important source of Procline ideas was through the Pseudo-Dionysius. This late 5th or early 6th century Christian Greek author wrote under the pseudonym Dionysius the Areopagite, the figure converted by St. Paul in Athens. Because of this fiction, his writings were taken to have almost apostolic authority. He is an original Christian writer, and in his works can be found a great number of Proclus' metaphysical principles.

Another important source for the influence of Proclus on the Middle Ages is Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, which has a number of Proclus principles and motifs. The central poem of Book III is a summary of Proclus' Commentary on the Timaeus, and Book V contains the important principle of Proclus that things are known not according to their own nature, but according to the character of the knowing subject.

A summary of Proclus' Elements of Theology circulated under the name Liber de Causis (the Book of Causes). This book is of uncertain origin, but circulated in the Arabic world as a work of Aristotle, and was translated into Latin as such. It had great authority because of its supposed Aristotelian origin, and it was only when Proclus' Elements were translated into Latin that Thomas Aquinas realised its true origin.

Proclus' works also exercised an influence during the Renaissance through figures such as Georgius Gemistus Pletho and Marsilio Ficino. Before the contemporary period, the most significant scholar of Proclus in the English speaking world was Thomas Taylor, who produced English translations of most of his works, with commentaries.

His work inspired the New England Transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, who declared in 1843 that, in reading Proclus, "I am filled with hilarity & spring, my heart dances, my sight is quickened, I behold shining relations between all beings, and am impelled to write and almost to sing."

Modern scholarship on Proclus essentially begins with E.R. Dodd's edition of the Elements of Theology in 1933. Since then he has attracted considerable attention, especially in the French-speaking world. Procline scholarship, however, still (2006) falls far short of the attention paid to Plotinus.

The following epigram is engraved on the tomb which houses Proclus and his master Syrianus:

"I am Proclus,

Lycian whom Syrianus brought up to teach his doctrine after him.

This tomb reunites both our bodies.

May an identical sojourn be reserved to our both souls!"

The crater Proclus on the Moon is named after him.