Proclus: Ten Problems Concerning Providence

by Carlos Steel, Jan Opsomer

The universe is, as it were, one machine, wherein the celestial spheres are analogous to the interlocking wheels and the particular beings are like the things moved by the wheels, and all events are determined by an inescapable necessity. To speak of free choice or self determination is only an illusion we human beings cherish. Thus writes Theodore the engineer to his old friend Proclus, one of the last major Classical philosophers. Proclus reply is one of the most remarkable discussions on fate, providence and free choice in Late Antiquity. It continues a long debate that had started with the first polemics of the Platonists against the Stoic doctrine of determinism. How can there be a place for free choice and moral responsibility in a world governed by an unalterable fate? Proclus discusses ten problems on providence and fate, foreknowledge of the future, human responsibility, evil and punishment (or seemingly absence of punishment), social and individual responsibility for evil, and the unequal fate of different animals. Until now, despite its great interest, Proclus treatise has not received the attention it deserves, probably because its text is not very accessible to the modern reader. It has survived only in a Latin medieval translation and in some extensive Byzantine Greek extracts. This first English translation, based on a retro-conversion that works out what the original Greek must have been, brings the arguments he formulates again to the fore.

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Kaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely. Some stuff about reincarnation and culpability in this is hard to swallow, but it makes sense because it does follow. I wonder if this does actually provide another argument for restorative and reparative justice, to be honest, not libertarianism, as people who chose lives in more privileged positions can always stop causing harm and end cycles of violence. The translators in a few places seemed unsold by ways in which Proclus was characterizing how things move from indeterminate to determinate, and Proclus' argument is reminiscent of some discussions in modern theoretical physics for solving the puzzle of how events actually occur.

It was also an act of Providence that I read this when I did because the stuff Proclus wrote towards the end about the Henads having a position above Intellect is exactly why alarm bells were going off in my brain when I was skimming a book preview of the forthcoming hymn translation Greek Poems to the Gods, and I figured I was going to have to hunt down verbatim quotations about it to verify that that author missed the mark on page 16. Instead, it was just handed to me. Thanks, Proclus.