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Proclus and Trouble in Paradise

This chapter addresses the contributions of Proclus to the completion of the Platonic project. Proclus, living some two hundred years after Plotinus, extended the systematization of Platonism. Moreover, it is Proclus, in part through Pseudo-Dionysius, and in part through the Liber de Causis, who served as the gateway to Platonism for the next millennium. Proclus was at once full of admiration for Plotinus as an exegete of Plato and also frequently critical of him. As seen in both Plato and Plotinus, the fundamental systematic law of Platonism is expressed as “remaining,” “procession,” and “reversion.” In his Elements of Theology, Proclus connects the procession with the distinction between cause and condition in Phaedo and cause and accessory to the cause in Timaeus. The chapter then details the analytic prowess Proclus shows in discovering a deep problem in the systematic construction of Platonism. This is a problem that Proclus's student, Damascius, exploits in a remarkable way.