Notes on Proclus &tc

Preface to "Philosophy as a Right of Rebirth" by Algis Uzdavinys (2008, Prometheus Trust) This book issues a serious challenge to the orthodox view of philosophy, and its accompanying narrative of development. Ancient understanding viewed reality as a series of descending steps, starting with the most ineffable and most simple which is first unfolded through divinity and then moves down through varying conditions of existence - the highest of which are closest to the originating simplicity and are purely intelligible, but the lower being increasingly complex and changeable, ultimately becoming perceptible to the senses. These lower conditions of existence were not rejected as evil or illusive, but they were seen as deriving their worth and trustworthiness from their relation to the highest. Each plane of reality had its answering correspondence in the nature of the human being. Since the highest levels possessed the greatest intelligibility and stability, it was here that...

Trans. Thomas Taylor (paragraph breaks added by me) "But as the human nature is twofold, he showed them that the more excellent kind was that which afterwards would be called man.  And as souls are from necessity engrafted in bodies, and as something accedes to and something departs from such bodies, he declared to them that, in the first place, one connate sense produced by violent passions was necessary to all; and, in the second place, love mingled with pleasure and grief. That after these, fear and anger were necessary, with whatever else is either consequent to these, or naturally discordant from a contrary nature. That such souls as subdue these would live justly, but such as are vanquished by them unjustly. And again, that he who lived well during the proper time of his life, should, again, returning to the habitation of his kindred star, enjoy a blessed life. But that he whose conduct was depraved, should in his second generation be changed into the nature of a woman. ...