Yet when applied, this scheme revealed further minor irregularities, to explain which Ptolemy employed further geometrical devices: eccentrics (circles whose centers were displaced from the center of the Earth), minor epicycles (additional smaller circles that rotated about a major epicycle or deferent), and equants (which further explained variable speeds by positing another point away from the circle’s center about which motion was uniform). Ptolemy’s elaborate model of compound circles was able to give the first systematic quantitative account of all the celestial motions. Moreover, its versatility, whereby new conflicting observations could be met by adding new geometrical modifications (e.g., adding another epicycle to an epicycle, or an eccentric to an eccentric), gave the model a flexible power that sustained its reign throughout the classical and medieval periods. The Aristotelian cosmology, with its fixed central Earth, its circling aetheric spheres, and its elemental physics, had provided the basic framework for Hellenistic astronomers to forge this scheme, and the synthesized Ptolemaic-Aristotelian universe in turn became the fundamental world conception informing the West’s philosophical, religious, and scientific vision for most of the subsequent fifteen centuries.
Astrology
In the classical world, however, mathematical astronomy was not an entirely secular discipline. For the ancient understanding of the heavens as the locus of the gods was inextricably wedded to the rapidly developing astronomy to form what was considered the science of astrology, of which Ptolemy was the classical era’s culminating systematizer. Indeed, a large part of the impetus for the development of astronomy derived directly from its ties to astrology, which employed those technical advances to improve its own predictive power. In turn, the widespread demand for astrological insight—whether in the imperial courts, the public marketplace, or the philosopher’s study—encouraged astronomy’s further evolution and continued social significance, the two disciplines forming essentially one profession from the classical era through the Renaissance.
With the greatly increased precision of astronomical computations, the ancient Mesopotamian conception of celestial events indicating terrestrial events—the doctrine of universal sympathy, “as above, so below”—was now placed into a more sophisticated and systematic Greek framework of mathematical and qualitative principles. This system was then applied by Hellenistic astrologers to render predictions not only for large collectivities such as nations and empires, but also for individual persons. By calculating the exact positions of the planets at the moment of a person’s birth, and by drawing out archetypal principles from the perceived correspondence of specific mythic deities to specific planets, astrologers derived conclusions concerning the individual’s character and destiny. Further insights emerged by employing various Pythagorean and Babylonian principles pertaining to the structure of the cosmos and its intrinsic relation to the microcosm, man. Platonists elaborated on the means by which specific planetary alignments could bring about an assimilation of the planet’s character with the individual, an archetypal unity between agent and receiver. In turn, Aristotelian physics, with its impersonal terminology and its mechanical explanation of celestial influence on terrestrial phenomena via the elemental spheres, provided an appropriate scientific framework for the developing discipline. The accumulated elements of classical astrological theory were brought by Ptolemy into a unified synthesis, in which he catalogued the meanings of the planets, their positions and geometrical aspects, and their various effects on human affairs.
With the emergence of the astrological perspective, it was widely believed that human life was ruled not by capricious chance, but by an ordered and humanly knowable destiny defined by the celestial deities according to the movements of the planets. Through such knowledge it was thought that man could understand his fate and act with a new sense of cosmic security. The astrological conception of the world closely reflected the essential Greek concept of kosmos itself, the intelligibly ordered patterning and interconnected coherence of the universe, with man an integral part of the whole. In the course of the Hellenistic era, astrology became the one belief system that cut across the boundaries of science, philosophy, and religion, forming a peculiarly unifying element in the otherwise fragmented outlook of the age. Radiating outward from the cultural center of Alexandria, belief in astrology pervaded the Hellenistic world and was embraced alike by Stoic, Platonic, and Aristotelian philosophers, by mathematical astronomers and medical physicians, by Hermetic esotericists and members of the various mystery religions.
Yet the central basis of the astrological understanding was interpreted in different ways by the different groups, each according to its own world view. For Ptolemy and his colleagues, astrology seems to have been regarded primarily as a useful science—a straightforward study of how specific planetary positions and combinations coincided with specific events and personal qualities. Ptolemy noted that astrology could not claim to be an exact science like astronomy, since astronomy dealt exclusively with the abstract mathematics of the perfect celestial movements, while astrology applied that knowledge to the necessarily less predictable imperfect arena of terrestrial and human activity. But while its inherent inexactness and susceptibility to error left astrology open to criticism, Ptolemy and his era believed it worked. It shared with astronomy the same focus on the orderly motions of the heavens, and because of the powers of causation exercised by the celestial spheres, astrology possessed a rational foundation and firm principles of operation, which Ptolemy undertook to define.
In a more philosophical spirit, the astrological correspondences were interpreted by the Greek and Roman Stoics as signifying the fundamental determinism of human life by the celestial bodies. Hence astrology was regarded as the best method for interpreting the cosmic will and aligning one’s life with the divine reason. With their conviction that a cosmic fate ruled all things, and with their belief in a universal sympathy or law unifying all parts of the cosmos, the Stoics found astrology highly congenial to their world view. The mystery religions expressed a similar understanding of the planets’ dominion over human life, but perceived in addition a promise of liberation: beyond the last planet, Saturn (the deity of fate, limitation, and death), presided the all-encompassing sphere of a greater Deity whose divine omnipotence could lift the human soul out of the bound determinism of mortal existence into eternal freedom. This highest God ruled all the planetary deities, and could thus suspend the laws of fate and liberate the devout individual from the web of determinism.2 Platonists similarly held the planets to be under the ultimate government of the supreme Good, but tended to view the celestial configurations as indicative rather than causal, and not absolutely determining for the evolved individual. A less fatalistic view was also implicit in Ptolemy’s approach, in which he stressed the strategic value of such studies and suggested that man could play an active role in the cosmic scheme. But whatever the particular interpretation, the belief that the planetary movements possessed an intelligible significance for human life exercised an immense influence on the cultural ethos of the classical era.
Neoplatonism
One other field of thought sought to bridge the Hellenistic schism between the rational philosophies and the mystery religions. During the several centuries following Plato’s death in the mid-fourth century B.C., a continuing stream of philosophers had developed his thought by focusing on and amplifying its metaphysical and religious aspects. In the course of this development, the highest transcendent principle began to be called “the One”; new emphasis was placed on “the flight from the body” as necessary for the soul’s philosophical ascent to the divine reality; the Forms began to be located within the divine mind; and increased concern was shown for the problem of evil and its relation to matter. This stream found its culmination in the third century A.D. in the work of Plotinus, who, by integrating a more explicitly mystical element into the Platonic scheme while incorporating certain aspects of Aristotelian thought, formulated a “Neoplatonic” philosophy of
considerable intellectual power and universal scope. In Plotinus, Greek rational philosophy reached its end point and passed over into another, more thoroughly religious spirit, a suprarational mysticism. The character of a new era, with a psychological and religious sensibility fundamentally different from that of classical Hellenism, was becoming apparent.
For in Plotinus’s thought, the rationality of the world and of the philosopher’s quest is but the prelude to a more transcendent existent beyond reason. The Neoplatonic cosmos is the result of a divine emanation from the supreme One, which is infinite in being and beyond all description or categories. The One, also called the Good, in an overflow of sheer perfection produces the “other”—the created cosmos in all its variety—in a hierarchical series of gradations moving away from this ontological center to the extreme limits of the possible. The first creative act is the issuing forth from the One of the divine Intellect or Nous, the pervasive wisdom of the universe, within which are contained the archetypal Forms or Ideas that cause and order the world. From the Nous comes the World Soul, which contains and animates the world, is the source for the souls of all living beings, and constitutes the intermediate reality between the spiritual Intellect and the world of matter. The emanation of divinity from the One is an ontological process which Plotinus compared to the light that moves gradually outward from a candle until it at last disappears into darkness. The several gradations, however, are not separate realms in a temporal or spatial sense, but are distinct levels of being timelessly present in all things. The three “hypostases”—One, Intellect, and Soul—are not literal entities but rather spiritual dispositions, just as the Ideas are not distinct objects but rather different states of being of the divine Mind.
The material world, existing in time and space and perceptible to the senses, is the level of reality furthest from unitary divinity. As the final limit of creation, it is characterized in negative terms as the realm of multiplicity, restriction, and darkness, as lowest in ontological stature—holding the least degree of real being—and as constituting the principle of evil. Yet it is also, despite its deep imperfection, characterized in positive terms as a creation of beauty, an organic whole produced and held together by the World Soul in a universal harmony. It imperfectly reflects on the spatiotemporal level the glorious unity in diversity that exists on a higher level in the spiritual Intellect’s world of Forms: The sensible is a noble image of the intelligible. Although evil exists within this harmony, that negative reality plays a necessary role in a larger design, and ultimately affects neither the perfection of the One nor the well-being of the philosopher’s highest self.
Man, whose nature is soul-in-body, has potential access to the highest intellectual and spiritual realms, though this is dependent on his liberation from materiality. Man can rise to the consciousness of the World Soul—thereby becoming in actuality what he already is potentially—and thence to the universal Intellect; or he can remain bound to the lower realms. Because all things emanate from the One through the Intellect and the World Soul, and because the human imagination at its highest participates in that primal divinity, man’s rational soul can imaginatively reflect the transcendent Forms and thus, through this insight into the ultimate order of things, move toward its spiritual emancipation. The entire universe exists in a continual outflow from the One into created multiplicity, which is then drawn back to the One—a process of emanation and return always moved by the One’s superfluity of perfection. The philosopher’s task is to overcome the human bondage to the physical realm by moral and intellectual self-discipline and purification, and to turn inward to a gradual ascent back to the Absolute. The final moment of illumination transcends knowledge in any usual sense, and cannot be defined or described, for it is based on an overcoming of the subject-object dichotomy between the seeker and the goal: it is a consummation of contemplative desire that unites the philosopher with the One.
Thus Plotinus articulated an elaborately coherent rationalist and idealist metaphysics which found its fulfillment in a unitary mystical apprehension of the supreme Godhead. With confident and meticulous precision, and in often startlingly beautiful prose, Plotinus described the complex nature of the universe and its participation in the divine. Basing his philosophy on the Platonic doctrine of transcendent Ideas, he then added or drew out several new, defining features—teleological dynamism, hierarchy, emanation, and a suprarational mysticism. In this form, Neoplatonism became the final expression of classical pagan philosophy, and it assumed the role of Platonism’s historical carrier in subsequent centuries.
Both Neoplatonism and astrology transcended the intellectual bifurcation of the Hellenistic era, and, like much else in classical culture, both were the result of Greek thought-forms’ penetrating and intermingling with non-Hellenic cultural impulses. Each in its own way would have an enduring, if sometimes hidden, influence on later Western thought. Yet despite astrology’s near-universal popularity in the Hellenistic world, and despite Neoplatonism’s well-received renovation of pagan philosophy in the last years of the academies, by the late classical era new, powerful forces had begun to impinge on the Greco-Roman consciousness. In the end, the restless spirit of the Hellenistic era was to seek its redemption in a new quarter altogether.
With the several important exceptions already cited, the later efforts of Hellenic culture in the classical period appeared to lack the daring intellectual optimism and curiosity that had been characteristic of the earlier Greeks. At least on the surface, Hellenistic civilization seemed remarkable more for its variety than its force, more for its worldly intelligence than its inspired genius, more for its sustaining and elaboration of past cultural achievements than its origination of new ones. Many significant currents were at work, but the whole did not cohere. The cultural outlook was unsettled, alternately skeptical and dogmatic, syncretistic and fragmented. The highly organized centers of learning seemed to have a discouraging effect on individual genius. Already by the time of Rome’s conquest of Greece in the second century B.C., the Hellenic impulse was fading, displaced by the more Oriental view of human subordination to the overwhelming powers of the supernatural.
Rome
In Rome, however, classical civilization experienced an expansive autumnal flowering, spurred first by the Republic’s militaristic and libertarian ethos, and then nourished by the Pax Romana established during the long imperial reign of Caesar Augustus. With political shrewdness and steadfast patriotism, and fortified by belief in their guiding deities, the Romans succeeded not only in conquering the entire Mediterranean basin and a large part of Europe, but also in fulfilling their perceived mission of extending their civilization throughout the known world. Without that conquest, made possible by the ruthless military tactics and ambitious political genius of leaders like Julius Caesar, it is unlikely the positive legacy of classical culture would have survived, in the West or the East, the pressures of later barbarian and Oriental assaults.
Roman culture itself contributed significantly to the classical achievement. Cicero, Virgil, Horace, and Livy brought the Latin language, under the influence of the Greek masters, to an eloquent maturity. The Greek paideia found new life in the Roman aristocracy’s humanitas (Cicero’s Latin translation of paideia), the liberal education founded on the classics. Greek mythology was conflated with and preserved in Roman mythology, and through the works of Ovid and Virgil passed on to Western posterity. Roman legal thought, containing a new sense of objective rationality and natural law derived from the Greek concept of the universal Logos, introduced systematic clarity into commercial and legal interactions throughout the empire, cutting through the welter of divergent local customs and evolving principles of contract law and property ownership crucial for the West’s later development.
The sheer energy and massiveness of the Roman enterprise commanded the awe of the ancient world. But Rome’s cultural splendor was an imitatio, albeit inspired, of Greece’s glory, and its magnitude alone could not indefinite
ly sustain the Hellenic spirit. Although nobility of character often evidenced itself in the turmoil of political life, the Roman ethos gradually lost its vitality. The very success of the empire’s inordinate military and commercial activity, divorced from deeper motivations, was weakening the fiber of the Roman citizenry. Most scientific activity, let alone genius, radically diminished in the empire soon after Galen and Ptolemy in the second century, and the excellence of Latin literature began to wane in the same period. Faith in human progress, so broadly visible in the cultural florescence of fifth-century B.C. Greece, and sporadically expressed, usually by scientists and technologists, in the Hellenistic age, virtually disappeared in the final centuries of the Roman Empire. Classical civilization’s finest hours were by then all in the past, and the various factors that brought on Rome’s fall—oppressive and rapacious government, overambitious generals, constant barbarian incursions, an aristocracy grown decadent and effete, religious crosscurrents undermining the imperial authority and military ethos, drastic sustained inflation, pestilential diseases, a dwindling population without resilience or focus—all contributed further to the apparent death of the Greek-inspired world.
Passion of the Western Mind Page 12