A. PHRASES:
1. “figurative force of the sphere” (52)
2. “in spherics…we are nearly blind intuitively…” (53)
3. “ancient spherics…since Aristotle…merely figurative” (54)
4. “the recovery of a lost continent of the history of philosophy.” (56)
B. CONTEXT:
1. “… he has lost access to the figurative force of the sphere…” (52)
“Against the misunderstanding of their definition implied in this refutation, the Pythagoreans can only exclaim, “Not the revolution of the sphere; the sphere itself is time!” What Aristotle separates off and treats as a rather silly subvariant of an amateur astronomical thesis is, in fact, the formal intuition behind a phenomenological insight about time and the soul in earlier Greek physics. In his own way, he draws from the same intuition himself, in his discussion of the Now and of time and the soul in the Physical Lectures on Time. But he has lost access to the figurative force of the sphere, and would have blocked it for us too, if we didn’t have recourse to Plotinus and Iamblichus” (52).
2. “in spherics…we are nearly blind intuitively…” (53)
“In σφαιρική, ‘spherics’ as it used to be called, we are nearly blind intuitively, a phenomenon which is not unrelated to the fact that few educated moderns actually see the sky in the same space in which they theorize about it.“ (53)
“The ecstatically completed sky sphere which is also the Soul of the Whole includes everything in a timelike way, and not merely in so far as it is a spatial container. Greek astronomy is credited with having discovered that the earth is a sphere (as early as Anaximander). To us, this seems to be an intuition that is separate from the projection of the heaven of the stars as spherical. But because it is the ecstatic phenomenon of time, not a shape in space, the sphere itself, αὐτὴ ἡ σφαῖρα, is both of these and neither. It becomes the central object in the speculative logic of Parmenides. And though it is there meant to be the logical model of a physical object, it is neither a ball seen from outside, nor a containing firmament seen from within, but an all-encompassing self-referential equality of an intentional kind—a disclosure space” (53).
3. “Instead of the direct leap into ancient ‘spherics’ with which we have been experimenting here (a mode of thinking that since Aristotle has struck us as merely figurative), we can…” (54)
“Our doorway into this extended reflection on phenomenal time—the one that runs from Anaximander and Heraclitus through Aristotle into Plotinus and to a full theory of disclosure space, of “time and the soul”—is Iamblichus’ interpretation of the double intentionality of the Now. It relies on Archytas’ version of the Figure of Double Continuity. Instead of the direct leap into ancient ‘spherics’ with which we have been experimenting here (a mode of thinking that since Aristotle has struck us as merely figurative), we can connect with a mathematical representation whose phenomenological implications are familiar to us from Husserl. It is precisely this mathematical sensibility that makes Iamblichus such a rewarding juxtaposition to Husserl. And in this juxtaposition we can find a definition of transcendental phenomenology that is applicable to both sides of Cartesian ‘consciousness’” (53-4).
4. “…the recovery of a lost continent of the history of philosophy…” (56)
“These are real difficulties, reflected as we shall see in systematic complications for which the scholastic Neoplatonism that begins with Porphyry and Iamblichus is well known. But an even greater difficulty is created by my intention in this project to profit from Plotinus in the area of phenomenology. My goal is only incidentally the recovery of a lost continent of the history of philosophy, which in any case is already well underway in contemporary Neoplatonic studies, where the basic editing of sources and preliminary philology is mostly done and the properly philosophical work of exposition and engagement has begun. In other words, my aim here is not to learn, from the theme of time, about Plotinus, but to learn from Plotinus about time“ (56).
Manchester on Participation (μέθεξις)
“The Noetic Triad in Plotinus, Marius Victorinus, and Augustine,” in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism (ed. Richard Wallis and Jay Bregman), p. 210:
i. the factor unparticipated (amethektos), “in itself,” absolute;
ii. the factor participated (metechomenos), which involves a self-disposition and action by the factor, not a reaction to what participates in it; and
iii. the factor as participant (kata methexin, en tois metechousi, enschesei), that is, as enacted in the derived hypostasis and now its action, no longer that of the higher hypostasis.
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