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The Divergent Uses of Greek Philosophical Terms By Platonic Philosophy and Modern Psychology: Two Illustrations

by Robert K. Clark

NOTES, Continued

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(11) Herbert Jennings Rose, "Nvmen Inest: 'Animism' in Greek and Roman Religion'", Harvard Theological Review, Volume XXVIII, October 1935, Number 4, p. 247. The present essay is not intended to address the entire history of the use of the word daimon. It is also not intended as a critique of modern psychology or to in any way suggest that its use of Greek terms is not valid or valuable within its own frame of reference.
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(12) That which is passive is subject to passion, able to be moved, as by prayer. Apuleius specifically notes that daimons are passive, but that the gods are not. The reason for this is set forth by Sallust: "If anyone thinks, in accordance with reason and truth, that the gods are not subject to change, and then wonders how they rejoice in the good and reject the bad, how they are angry with sinners and become propitious when appeased, the answer is that deity neither rejoices (for that which rejoices also feels sorrow), nor is angry (for anger is a passion), nor is a ppeased by gifts (for it would be then be subject to pleasure). It is not right to think that deity should be moved to good or to evil by human affairs. The gods are always good and always give aid and never harm, being ever in the same changeless state. We, when we are good, are united to the gods through our likeness to them; but if we are bad we are separated from them because we are unlike them. And when we live according to virtue, we are close to the gods; but when we become evil, we cause them to become our enemies—not because they are angry, but because guilt prevents us from receiving the illuminations of the gods. If by prayers and sacrifice we obtain release from our guilt, we do not appease or change the gods, but by the acts we perform and by turning toward the divine we heal our evil and so again enjoy the goodness of the gods. To say that the gods turn away from the bad is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind." Sallust, On the Gods and the World XIV. Translation © 2005 by Robert K. Clark. All rights reserved.
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(14) See, for instance, Plato, Republic 392a and 427b; Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras 31, 37 and 100; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 8:23; Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 38.
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(15) Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans 1-3. Translation ©2005 by Robert K. Clark. All rights reserved. I have translated cthonious daimonas as "daimons of the underworld". Hierocles, in his commentary, interprets this passage as referring to terrestrial (ekikthonioi) daimons. However, as it has been pointed out, "the adjective ' cthonious' has no other meaning than 'underground'." (Noel Anjoulat, Le Néo-platonisme Alexandrin d'Hiérocles d'Alexandrie (Leiden: Brill, 1986), p. 182. This has been noted elsewhere, as in the translation of the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans by N. Rowe included in M. Dacier, The Life of Pythagoras (York Beach: Weiser, 1981), p. 202. See also Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Eighth Edition, 1940) and A. Bailly, Dictionnaire Grec-Français (Paris: Hachette, 1950). The unusual order followed here, that of gods— heroes—daimons, is discussed in Johan C. Thom, The Pythagorean Golden Verses (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 103-112.
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(16) pneuma. While the general meaning of pneuma is "air", "breath" or "spirit", it acquired special meanings in the Neoplatonic and Stoic traditions. See G.R.S. Mead, The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition (London: Watkins, 1919), pp. 47 & 77; Robert Christian Kissling, "The ochema-pneuma of the Neoplatonists and the de Insomniis of Syrenius of Cyrene", American Journal of Philology 43 (1922), pp. 318-330; G. Verbeke, L'évolution de la doctrine de pneuma du Stoicisme à St. Augustin (Paris: Louvain, 1945); and E.R. Dodds, tr. Proclus: The Elements of Theology , Second Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), Appendix B, pp. 313-321.
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(18) C.G. Jung, Psychological Types (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 463.
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(19) Ibid.
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(20) Andrew Samuels, et. al., A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 115.
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(21) Plotinus, Ennead v. 1, especially chapters 2 and 3.
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(22) Plotinus, Ennead vi. 9. 1. 30.
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(23) Proclus, Elements of Theology , proposition 188.
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(24) Proclus, Elements of Theology, proposition 189; Plotinus, Ennead iv. 7. 9. 6-9.
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(25) Plato, Phaedrus 245e-246c and Definitions 411c. (The latter work was probably not composed by Plato himself.)
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(26) Plato, Meno 81; Letters VII 335A
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(27) Plotinus, Ennead iv. 4. 15; Proclus, Elements of Theology, proposition 191.
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(28) Proclus, Elements of Theology, proposition 186.
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(29) Plato, Alcibiades I 130c.
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(30) Plato, Alcibiades I 130e. See also Eliza Gregory Wilkins, "Know Thyself" in Greek and Latin Literature (New York: Garland, 1979), pp. 60-77.
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