In Apophatic Theology as Antidote to Nihilism Corbin writes in more detail about the connections between Proclus and the pluralist metaphysics he is describing: Clearly, we can now see that what is at issue here is what has traditionally been referred to in philosophy as the « principle of individuation ». Once more citing our article: « We know that the dominant ontology and anthropology of Western humanity are centered quite precisely upon the invincible affirmation of the reality of the ego (in all its forms) and of the reality of individual forms in general. This belief seems to us to be correlative to a mutilation of being », because it has its origin and essence in « negativity or the principle of individuation identified with the reality principle ». Here again, the adoption of such a position appears to us a very serious matter. Such a decision is marked, indeed stained, by the same confusion denounced by our Iranian metaphysicians of the Avicennian tradition, to whit, the confusing of the transcendental unity of Being or Existence (wahdat al wojud) with an impossible, contradictory and illusory unity of existents or existent being(s) (mawjud, Latin ens). These Avicennian metaphysicians vigorously denounced this same confusion committed by the practitioners of a particular brand of Sufism, one that would occupy precisely the position defined by Georges Vallin as belonging to Oriental humanity. On the other hand, on this point our Iranian philosophers are in agreement with the metaphysics of Being professed by the great neoplatonist, Proclus : [I am referring to] the connection or relationship between the Henad of Henads and the Henads that lend their unicity to the multiplicity of singular existents that they pose in the act of being by making each in its turn one being, [or, by investing each in turn with its own singularity]. For Being can only be existent within the multiplicity of individual beings. To affirm the reality of individual forms is therefore in no way a mutilation of Being, but is on the contrary its revelation and fulfillment. To confound the order of Being with the order of beings is a fatal confusion. The principle of individuation is a positioning and positing of the existent. If one sees in this nothing but negativity then one has set ones course towards metaphysical catastrophe. Tom Cheetham, Corbin & Platonism
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 21:06:07 +0000
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