Neoplatonic Virtue: Love, Ritual, Crafts and Wholeness

Neoplatonic Virtue: Love, Ritual, Crafts and Wholeness

We close Hermias of Alexandria's theoretical introduction to the four divine madnesses and begin his word-by-word commentary on the Phaedrus text.
The session turns on three connected puzzles. First: if the four madnesses are derived by exhaustive division, how can there be other kinds — the nymph-inspired, the Corybantic, possession by Pan? Syrianus' answer distinguishes the four as genera rather than infima species, accommodating other divine madnesses as sub-kinds. Second: theurgy is called the highest human practice by Iamblichus and Proclus, yet in Hermias' internal hierarchy it ranks below mantic and erotic. Syrianus resolves this by distinguishing what theurgy does strictly in itself (purification) from what it does when it holds all the other madnesses in its embrace — and warns against applying analogies carelessly across different respects, like confusing surface areas with perimeters. This leads into a broader discussion of why theurgy was so elevated in late antiquity: the argument is cultural as much as metaphysical, with a rich parallel to medieval Jewish contexts in which ritual expands to fill a space once occupied by a living philosophical and erotic tradition. Third: why does inspired knowledge in the arts and sciences endure while prophetic ecstasy comes and goes? The answer returns to the image of the consecrated statue: mastered technique functions in the soul like divine tokens in a prepared vessel, keeping it continuously on the threshold of illumination.
We close with the paradox of Dionysus — the god of division who provides wholeness — and Hermias' first textual comments on the oracles of Dodona and Delphi, where Apollo "assists Zeus's demiurgic work" by clarifying what the primordial oracle of Zeus leaves too raw to act on.
Part of an ongoing graduate reading group working through Hermias' commentary on Plato's Phaedrus.

Transcript