Eric D. Perl - Lessened by Addition (Procession by Diminution in Proclus)

Lessened by Addition: Procession by Diminution in Proclus
and Aquinas
Eric D. Perl
The Review of Metaphysics, Volume 72, Number 4 (Issue No, 288), June 2019,
pp. 685-716 (Article)
Published by The Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/736636
[ Access provided at 12 Sep 2020 18:01 GMT from Cornell University ]

LESSENED BY ADDITION:
PROCESSION BY DIMINUTION
IN PROCLUS AND AQUINAS
ERIC D. PERL
W HEN A PHILOSOPHICAL IDEA is transplanted from one system or

thinker to another, it inevitably brings with it the roots and soil of its
meaning, grounds, and operation within the system from which it
comes, and its workings in its adoptive system cannot be understood in
isolation from these origins. A prime example is Thomas Aquinas’s
adoption of the Neoplatonic principle that participation entails the
limitation of a participated perfection by that which participates it. It
1
has been recognized at least since Norris Clarke’s 1952 article that
Aquinas draws this idea from the Neoplatonic tradition, specifically the
Procline Neoplatonism transmitted to him principally through Pseudo-
Dionysius and the Liber de causis. But it is not enough merely to
acknowledge the source. To understand how the principle works in
Aquinas, we must first articulate its meaning, grounds, and function
within the metaphysics of Proclus himself. It is in fact the classic
Platonic distinction between a perfection as it shows up in this or that
instance and the same perfection, as Plato likes to say, “itself by itself.”
2
Proclus uses this principle to argue that all things proceed from “one,”
and it is this principle that Aquinas uses in arguing that all things are
caused to be by ipsum esse subsistens, or God. Hence a thorough
examination of how the principle works in Proclus has profound
implications for our understanding of Aquinas’s philosophical doctrines
Correspondence to: Department of Philosophy, 1 LMU Drive, Suite 3600,

Los Angeles, CA 90045.
1
W. Norris Clarke, “The Limitation of Act by Potency: Aristotelianism or
Platonism?” New Scholasticism 26 (1952): 167–94. For a more recent treatment
of this theme in Aquinas see John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas and the Axiom
that Unreceived Act is Unlimited,” in Metaphysical Themes in Thomas
Aquinas II (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007),
123–51. Wippel considers it “likely . . . that the axiom’s remote origins are
Neoplatonic” (144), but does not examine its grounds in its original Neoplatonic
context and concludes simply that “Thomas regards it as a self-evident axiom
or adage” (150).
2
For reasons that will emerge I avoid the conventional expression “the
One.”
The Review of Metaphysics 72 (June 2019): 685–716. Copyright © 2019 by The Review of
Metaphysics.
686 ERIC D. PERL
of creation, of the relation of creatures to God, and of God as ipsum

esse. Such examination reveals that the affinity between Aquinas and
Proclus is even closer than is generally realized. Since Aquinas did not
have direct access to any works of Proclus himself except the Elements
of Theology, and that only in his very last years, the philosophical
parallelism and even precise verbal resonances are all the more striking,
displaying a genuine convergence of thought rather than a mere textual
borrowing. Mutatis mutandis—and we shall see that these are for the
most part matters of terminology—Aquinas’s metaphysics of creation,
in its underlying logic and meaning, is in thoroughgoing continuity with
Proclus’s doctrine of procession by diminution.
Every level in Proclus’s hierarchy of causal terms—being, life,

intellect, soul, nature, as well as the further articulated sublevels within
each—exhibits the universal “monad-multiplicity” structure that
dominates his entire system. “Every order, originating from a monad,
proceeds to a multiplicity coordinate with the monad, and the
3
multiplicity of every order is referred back to one monad.” In each case,
the multiplicity consists of the character in question as participated by
this or that subordinate term, while the monad is the same character
just by itself, or unparticipated. The psychic multiplicity or multiplicity
of souls, for example, are soul as participated by this or that body.
Hence they are many and different in virtue of their participants: soul as
participated by this body is numerically distinct from soul as
participated by that body. And each of them, just in that it is confined or
limited to the body to which it belongs, is distinct from the psychic
monad or soul as such, without and in that sense prior to the “addition”
of any participant whereby it would be not just soul, but the soul of
3
Proclus, The Elements of Theology (hereafter, El. theol.), ed. and trans.
nd
E. R. Dodds, 2 ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 21, 24.1–3; compare
Proclus, Platonic Theology (hereafter, Plat. theol.) (Théologie platonicienne, 6
vols., ed. H. D. Saffrey and L. G. Westerink [Paris: Belles Lettres, 2003]), 3.2,
8.1–12. All translations from Proclus are my own.
LESSENED BY ADDITION 687
4
something. Or again, the multiplicity of beauty consists of the mutually
distinct beauty of this beautiful thing and of that beautiful thing, while
the monad is just beauty itself as a unitary intelligible character. The
beauty of Helen and the beauty of Penelope, for example, cannot be
simply identical, for each includes a limiting condition, to wit, belonging
respectively to Helen or to Penelope, which the other does not. For
exactly the same reason, neither of them can be simply identical with
beauty itself, which has no such limiting condition.
For the unparticipated, having the status of a monad, as belonging to
itself and not to something else [literally, as of itself and not of an
other] and as transcending the participants, generates the terms that
can be participated. . . . But every participated term, coming to
belong to [literally, be of] something else by which it is participated,
is secondary to that which is present to all likewise and has filled
them all from itself. For that which is in one is not in the others; but
that which is present to all alike, in order5 that it may illuminate them
all, is not in one, but is prior to them all.
In every case, the distinction between multiplicity and monad is the

distinction between a character as participated, and thus confined to, or
“of,” this or that participant, and the same character as unparticipated,
6
or just as that character. Thus, “the multiplicity which is similar to a
7
monad is dividedly that which the monad is undividedly.”
The unparticipated monad is logically prior to the multiplicity just
in that it does not include in its definition anything other than the
character itself. Conversely, the multiple participated terms are
posterior to the monad just in that each of them is the same character
with something else, to which it belongs and by which it is therefore
limited. The participated terms are differentiated presentations, or
appearances, of the unparticipated monad: “The things that are
uniformly and enfoldedly in the monad appear [ἀναφαίνεται] dividedly
8
in the offspring of the monad.” The beauty of Helen and the beauty of
4
This example is justified by El. Theol. 22, 26.16–21, where Proclus
mentions, as examples of monads, not only being, intellect, and soul, but also
“each of the forms,” including “the beautiful,” “the equal,” “living thing,” and
“man.” “For,” he concludes, “the demonstration is the same.”
5
El. theol. 23, 26.25–34.
6
On the “adverbial” nature of Proclus’s distinctions see Dirk Baltzly,
“Mereological Modes of Being in Proclus,” Ancient Philosophy 28 (2008): 395–
411, at 395–99.
7
Plat. theol. 3.32, 9.7–8.
8
Plat. theol. 3.2, 8.12–14.
688 ERIC D. PERL
Penelope, for example, are beauty as it occurs, or shows up, in Helen

and in Penelope, respectively, and as such are distinct from each other
and from beauty just by itself. In this sense, and in this sense only, the
monad is the cause, and the multiplicity are its effects. The causality in
question just is the logical priority of any perfection itself, to that
perfection as possessed and displayed by this or that thing. Proclus’s
monad-multiplicity structure, repeated at every level of reality, is thus
the systematic elaboration of what Plato says of “all the forms”: “Each
is one, but appearing everywhere in association with actions, bodies,
9
and one another, each appears many.”
The limitation of each participated term to its participant is what
Proclus calls “diminution” (ὕφεσις) or “lessening” (ἐλάττωσις). Thus
he is fond of observing, paradoxically, that the participated terms are
“lessened by the addition,” that is, by the inclusion of the participant, of
that which is not itself the character in question. “For it is necessary in
every case that the secondary, being lower than that which is prior to it,
fall short of the unity of its producer, and by the addition of something
10
be lessened [ἐλαττοῦσθαι] from the monadic simplicity of the first.”
Or again: “In short, in every case, whatever each being is [τὸ ὅπερ ὂν
ἕκαστον, that is, that which just is the perfection in question] precedes
the things which by diminution are mixed with the privations of
11
themselves.” The beauty of Helen, for example, is diminished relative
to beauty itself in that it includes in its account a reference to Helen,
who is not herself the character “beauty.” Since it is only beauty
dividedly, that is, as it occurs in Helen, it falls short of the fullness of
beauty as such. Likewise each participated soul lacks the fullness of
soul as such: it is “lessened by the addition” of the body that possesses
it. For the same reason, the participated terms are multiplied by this
diminution: they are distinct from each other, and hence are many, in
virtue of the limitation of each of them to its own participant. Without
that distinguishing diminution, each and all of them would just be the
character in question and so would be the unitary monad. If there are
9
Republic 5.476a5–7, my translation. For Plato’s distinction between a
form “in us” or “that we have” and a form “itself” or “in nature,” corresponding
to Proclus’s distinction between participated and unparticipated terms, see
Parmenides 130b4; Phaedo 102d6–7, 103b5.
10
Plat. theol. 3.4, 14.19–22
11
Plat. theol. 2.3, 30.20–22.
many of the same character, they must differ from each other in virtue
of something other than that character, to wit, that which, in each case,
12
is not itself that character but has or participates it.
The posteriority of the many participated terms to the
unparticipated monad is what Proclus calls “procession,” describing in
dynamic language, as a productive activity or motion, what is in fact a
logical order of priority and posteriority. The beauty of Helen and the
beauty of Penelope, and therefore Helen and Penelope themselves qua
beautiful, “proceed from” the monad beauty, just in that each is
distinguished from the monad by its confinement to a participant. The
addition of the participant is not an event: it is simply the fact that the
perfection is so confined. The diminution in the effect is what
distinguishes it from the cause and thus constitutes it as an effect. “It is
by no means lawful that the caused be the same as the cause; for a
diminution and deficiency from the unity of the producer generates the
13
secondary things.” The distinction of an effect from its cause, and
hence its existence qua effect, consists in its diminution relative to the
cause, its confinement to its participant. Hence, as Proclus says,
14
“procession comes about through diminution.” It is not enough to say
that, in every case, the effect is “lesser” than the cause. Rather, we must
say that procession itself, the “emergence” of the effects as distinct from
the cause, just is the diminution that the participated terms exhibit
relative to the unparticipated monad.
If [the product] should remain only, without proceeding, it will be
nothing different from the cause, nor will it be something else that
has been generated while [the cause] remains. . . . Insofar, then, as it
has a moment of identity with the producer, 15 the product remains in
it; insofar as it is distinct, it proceeds from it.
Hence what Proclus presents from the top down, from cause to effect,
as a productive activity, must actually be understood from the bottom
up, from effect to cause, as the logical relation of a perfection qua
participated and thus diminished, to the same perfection without such
diminution. “Proceeds from” just means “is a diminution of.”
12
El. theol. 22, 26.10–15.
13
Plat. theol. 3.2, 6.24–7.1.
14
El. theol. 125, 110.33.
15
El. theol. 30, 34.20–25.
690 ERIC D. PERL
Thus Proclus speaks not only of “procession by diminution” but

also of “procession by likeness.”
All procession is accomplished through likeness of secondaries to
primaries. . . . If, then, the procession preserves in the diminution an
identity of the generated to that which generates, and the latter is
primally such as that which is after it manifests secondarily,
16
it [that
is, the procession] has its existence through likeness.
The procession of the effects from their cause consists in their likeness
to the cause. “Likeness” here signifies not reciprocal resemblance
between cause and effect, as if they both possessed a common character
in different ways, but rather sameness-with-diminution. The cause or
17
monad does not have but just is the character in question. The effect
or participated term is the same character with the diminution that
constitutes it as an effect. Hence, as Proclus says, the effect or
18
secondary term “is at once the same as and different from” the cause.
This sameness-together-with-difference, in which the difference is the
effect’s diminution, its confinement to a participant, is what Proclus
means by the “likeness” of effect to cause. Hence, once again, the
effect’s procession from its cause in fact just is its status as a
participated and thus diminished presentation of what the cause is
without diminution.
Proclus’s doctrine of the henads or Gods, and of the “one” or “one
itself” (αὐτοέν) as the principle of all things, is neither more nor less
than the application of this logical structure, which is repeated at every
region within the system of reality, to the system itself in its entirety. As
he argues, one is the absolutely common character found in all things
whatsoever. Not all things are ensouled, or intellective, or living, and
hence neither soul, nor intellect, nor life is the principle of all things
absolutely. In Proclus’s terms, it is not even the case that all things are
beings (ὄντα). The term “being” (ὄν), for Proclus, always carries the
16
El. theol. 29, 34.3–11.
17
Dodds’s translation of, for example, El. theol. 18 is therefore highly
misleading: “Everything which by its existence bestows a character on others
itself primitively possesses that character which it communicates to the
recipients.” What Proclus actually says is, “Everything which by its existence
provides to others, itself primitively is that [αὐτὸ πρώτως ἐστὶ τοῦτο] which
it communicates to the recipients” (El. theol. 18, 20.3–4). For a similar
mistranslation of Aquinas, see below, n. 66.
18
Plat. theol. 3.2, 7.13.
note of intelligibility. Matter, considered in itself as that which underlies

all formal characters whatsoever, has no intelligibility of its own and in
that sense is not a being. Yet it is not absolutely nothing (οὐδέν, literally,
“not one”), and it exists at all it just insofar as it has some share of one.
The ‘one,’ then, is most venerable, being perfective and preservative
of all beings, and on this account we name thus [that is, ‘one’] the
concept that is in us of the first, and because we have seen that not 19
all things are participants in others, not even if you say ‘being’ [ens];
for there is something [to wit, matter] that in itself is not a being and
is non-substantial; and much more is it the case that not all things
participate
20
in life and intellect and rest and motion; but in ‘one,’ all
things.
All things, then, participate or have the character one, or they would
simply not exist at all in any way whatever.
In that they participate one, all things are therefore, as Proclus says,
21
“both one and not-one.” This is a typically paradoxical expression of a
point that can in fact be articulated in perfectly straightforward terms.
Let us begin at a less comprehensive level. Any ensouled thing, for
example, is a composite of a participated soul, the soul that it has, and
something (to wit, a body) that is not itself soul but that has, or
participates, soul. Likewise, every living thing is a composite of
participated life and that which is not itself the character life, but has,
or participates, life. At the highest or most comprehensive level, we
come to what Proclus calls “the one-being” (τὸ ἓν ὄν), which he also
terms οὐσία. “This,” he says, “is nothing other than the highest among
22
23
beings and what is being itself and nothing other than being.” The one-
being, then, is being, or that-which-is, taken all together as one, logically
prior to the distinctions within it of one being from another. But even
the one-being, as its name says, both is and is one. That is, it is being,
and it has one as a character. Hence it is not “only one,” but is a
composite of the character one and that which is not the character one
19
This part of Proclus’s Parmenides commentary is extant only in Latin
translation.
20
Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem Commentaria [In Parm.], 3 vols., ed.
Carlos Steel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007–2009), 7, 510.13–19.
21
El. theol. 2, 2.15.
22
Plat. theol. 3.9, 35.13–21; 3.9, 38.8–9. Like Plato and Plotinus, Proclus
uses the term οὐσία to signify being qua intelligible. On this term see further
below, n. 95.
23
Plat. theol. 3.9, 135.5–7.
692 ERIC D. PERL
but has, or participates, that character. In this sense all things

whatsoever, since they participate or have one as a character, without
which they would not exist at all, are one and not-one: they are
composites of the participated character one and that which is not itself
that character but rather has or participates it.
The participated ones of the various kinds of beings are the henads
24
or Gods. “Each of the Gods is a henad, participated by some being.”
They are Gods just in that they are the principles by which beings are
25
one or good and so exist at all. As the principles by which beings exist,
they are themselves “above being.”
Every God is above being and above life and above intellect. For if
each [God] is a self-complete henad, but each of those [that is, being,
life, and intellect] is not a henad but a unified thing [ἡνωμένον], it is
clear that every
26
God is beyond all the aforementioned, being and life
and intellect.
But to say that the Gods are participated ones is to say that each of them
is not simply one (ἁπλῶς ἕν) or one itself (αὐτοέν), but is some one,
27
this one, the one of this or that being. Hence, like any participated
multiplicity in relation to its monad, they are diminished vis-à-vis one
itself just in that each of them is the character one as possessed by and
so confined to this or that being.
Is the multiplicity of the henads unparticipated, like the ‘one itself,’
or is it participated by beings, and is each the henad of some being,
as it were the flower and summit and center of a being, in relation to
which each being exists? But if they are unparticipated, how will they
differ from the ‘one,’ since each of them is a ‘one’ and exists primally
from the ‘one’? Or in what will they be more than the first cause and
established by it? For again, it is necessary in every case that the
secondary, being subordinate to what is prior to itself, fall short of
the unity of its producer, and by the addition28 of something be
lessened from the monadic simplicity of the first.
24
Plat. theol. 3.5, 17.14–15; compare El. theol. 116, 102.13–27; El. theol. 119,
104.16–30.
25
For the perfect convertibility of “one” and “good” see El. theol. 13, 14.24–
16.8.
26
El. theol. 115, 100.28–31; compare Plat. theol. 3.3, 14.8–9.
27
El. theol. 133, 118.10–11.
28
Plat. theol. 3.4, 14.11–22.
The henads or Gods, then, are distinct from one itself just in that each
of them is not unparticipated one but is one as participated and hence
diminished by some being.
Since all things exist in virtue of their participated ones, it follows
that the principle of all things is simply one or one itself. For as we have
seen, in every case a multiplicity of participated terms, together with the
participants by which they are diminished, multiplied, and distinguished
from one another and from their monad, are posterior to the
unparticipated monad. In that logical sense the monad is the cause of
all the participated terms together with their participants. Beauty is the
cause of all beautiful things, each with its participated beauty; soul is
the cause of all ensouled things, each with its participated soul; life is
the cause of all living things, each with its participated life. So, Proclus
observes, “the cause of all things must be that which all things
29
participate.” This does not mean that all things participate the first
principle, for as we have seen that is necessarily unparticipated.
Proclus’s point, rather, is that since all things participate or have one as
a character, the cause of all things must be not the participated one of
anything but just undiminished, unconditioned one itself. Thus he
proceeds to argue that what all things participate is one, and then
concludes,
The ‘one,’ then, which appears everywhere and is in all beings and
deserts none of beings, is either from 30
the ‘one’ which is ‘simply one’
or from what is better than ‘one;’ for that which undergoes ‘one’
[that is, that which has ‘one’ as an attribute] cannot be otherwise than
from the primally ‘one,’ to which the ‘one’ is not present 31
[that is, as
an attribute] but is the ‘one itself’ or nothing but ‘one.’
Later in the same chapter, continuing his argument to a first principle of

all things, he observes, “We say ‘better’ and ‘worse’ based on proximity
to the best, as we define more and less hot based on communion with
the primary ‘hot,’ and in general we judge the more and less with
reference to a maximum. It is necessary, then, that there be a first and
32
last limit among beings.” It is evident that the “maximum” here means
the undiminished or unparticipated perfection that things have, or
participate, with varying diminutions. It is in this logical sense that he
29
Plat. theol. 2.3, 24.15–17.
30
For meaning of this proviso see below, p. 697.
31
Plat. theol. 2.3, 26.1–6.
32
Plat. theol. 2.3, 28.9–13.
694 ERIC D. PERL
posits simply one or one itself—not a hypostatized entity named “the

One”—as the principle of all things absolutely.
Here again, therefore, now with regard to all things whatsoever and
in their entirety, we find the same bottom-up reasoning, from many
participants to a multiplicity of participated terms, to an unparticipated
monad. Thus Proclus explains that every monad is to its order what one
is to all things.
All the unparticipated monads are referred to the ‘one,’ because all
are analogous to the ‘one.’ . . . Being then principles of some things,
they depend on the principle of all things. For the principle of all
things is that which all things participate; but all things participate
only the first, while not all things, but some things, participate the
others. Wherefore the former [that is, the principle of all things] is
the first absolutely, while
33
the others are first relative to some order,
but not absolutely first.
Or again:
It is necessary, therefore, that prior to the participated causes, there
pre-exist in every case unparticipated [causes] in the whole of things.
For if it is necessary that the cause be to its own products what the
‘one’ is to the entire nature of beings, and the ‘one’ is unparticipated,
transcending all beings likewise as unitarily productive of all things,
it follows, then, that each of the other causes, imaging the excess of
the ‘one’ to all things, transcends
34
the things that are in secondaries
and are participated by them.
It might be better to express this in reverse, and say that the doctrine of
one as first principle is, as it were, the projection, with regard to “the
entire nature of beings,” of the logic that obtains with regard to every
distinct order of beings. Thus, in Platonic Theology 2.3, Proclus begins
by stating, “The cause of all things must be that which all things
35
participate,” proceeds to argue that since what all things participate is
one the first principle must be one itself, and then concludes:
It is necessary that in each genus there be that which is unmixed with
what is inferior so that there may be that which is mixed, just as we
say with regard to the forms. . . . In short, in every case, whatever
each being is [τὸ ὅπερ ὂν ἔκαστον, that is, that which just is the
perfection in question] precedes the things which by diminution are
mixed with the privations of themselves. Therefore the ‘one’ by itself
33
El. theol. 100, 90.7–16.
34
Plat. theol. 3.2, 10.16–26.
35
Plat. theol. 2.3, 24.15–17.
is transcendent to all multiplicity, and that which is one and at the

same time not one is not first but depends from the first ‘one,’
participating the ‘one’ through the principle, but now manifesting36
in
itself through lessening a cause of multiplicity and distinction.
So too, in the opening chapters of Platonic Theology 3, explaining why

there must be a multiplicity of henads or Gods, Proclus first lays out the
monad-multiplicity structure in general and then concludes, “Much
more greatly, then, the fountain of all goods produces what are by
nature unified to itself and establishes them in beings. Thus, one God
and many Gods, and one henad and many henads prior to beings, and
37
one goodness and many goodnesses after the one.”
It follows that, in the same sense in which all ensouled things
proceed from soul and all living things proceed from life, all things
38
whatsoever proceed from one, “likewise” or “indifferently.” Proclus’s
system is too often presented in merely sequential terms, as if “the One”
generates being, which in turn generates life, which in turn generates
intellect, and so on. This leads to the false impression that only being
proceeds immediately from the first principle, while all “subsequent”
terms proceed from the first only mediately or indirectly. But this is
quite wrong. Rather, in accordance with the logic we have articulated,
the whole system in its entirety proceeds immediately and absolutely
from one itself. All subordinate processions, such as life from being or
intellect from life, are not additional to but are contained within the
immediate procession of all things from one itself. Being (ὄν) is the
“first” product, not as first in a series to which others will be added, but
39
as most comprehensive, including all others within itself. What
proceeds immediately and likewise from one itself is simply and
absolutely everything at all levels whatsoever. This procession just is
the logical posteriority of all things, in that they exist at all only by being
in some way one, to unparticipated one itself.
The application of this logical structure to the system in its entirety
has radical implications. In all lesser cases, the character in question is
a positive intelligible content, which we attain by the removal or taking
away (ἀφαίρεσις) of all that is not that character itself but rather is
subordinate to it. Thought ascends to the level of soul, for example, by
36
Plat. theol. 2.3, 30.14–26.
37
Plat. theol. 3.3, 14.1–6.
38
Plat. theol. 2.7, 50.7–11; 2.12, 72.17–18.
39
See, for example, Plat. theol. 3.9, 35.8–9; 3.9, 39.3–4; 3.13, 47.3–5.
696 ERIC D. PERL
taking away the corporeality proper to bodies and the generation proper
to nature; it ascends to intellect by taking away motion, which is proper
to soul; it ascends to being as such, or the one-being, by taking away the
formal distinctions whereby beings are many and different from each
other. This ἀφαίρεσις constitutes the mode of negation that signifies
neither privation, nor coordinate difference, but causal priority: nature
is not body since it is the cause of body; soul is not nature since it is the
cause of nature; intellect is not soul since it is the cause of soul; life is
not intellect since it is the cause of intellect; being is not life since it is
the cause of life. But the ascent by ἀφαίρεσις cannot stop here. Even
the highest level, the one-being, is still an intelligible content, indeed is
the unitary containment of all intelligible contents. As such it is not only
one, but participates one and so is one and not-one. In the one-being,
one is diminished by the addition of being, that which has or participates
one. “For whatever you add you diminish the ‘one,’ and thereby manifest
not ‘one itself’ but that which undergoes the ‘one’: for it is not one alone
but in addition to this something else, which has the ‘one’ by
40
participation.” To complete the ascent, therefore, we must take away
being (ὄν) itself, so as to leave one alone with no diminution.
For the one-being does not remain
41
purely in an unmultiplied and
uniform existence [ὕπαρξις], but the ‘one’ surpasses all addition;
for whatever you add to it, you lessen its supreme and ineffable unity.
Hence it is necessary to order the ‘one’ prior to the42one-being, and
suspend the one-being from that which is ‘only one.’
But to take away being is to take away the entire system, the whole of
reality, all of which is contained within being. “If, then, at every
procession of beings, the effects are negated of the causes, it is certainly
necessary to take away [ἀφαιρεῖν] all things likewise from the cause of
43
all things.” At this point, we are left with no intelligible content,
nothing that has one, and so with nothing to think. As long as we have
any being, anything at all, we still have some one thing and so fall short
of one itself. The first, therefore, is not anything, because anything is
40
Plat. theol. 2.10, 63.14–17.
41
On this term in Proclus see below, pp. 711–12.
42
Plat. theol. 3.20, 69.5–10.
43
Plat. theol. 2.10, 62.15–18; compare In Parm. 6, 1075.13–1077.15. See
also Plat. theol. 3.23, 82.7–9.
necessarily some one thing and so not only one. “For this reason it is
44
none of all things, because all things proceed from it.”
Unlike soul, intellect, life, or being, therefore, one by itself does not
designate any intelligible content, for any such content would be some
one thing and so would not be only one. Consequently the name “one”
does not succeed in saying what the first is. Thus Proclus explains that
the term “one” names not the first principle itself but only our
understanding of it, which derives from our recognition of one as the
absolutely common character of all things. “It is not that [that is, the first
itself] which we name when we call it thus, but the understanding of
45
‘one’ which is in us.” Hence, “[w]e transfer to it therefore ‘one’ and
46
‘good’ from the donation that comes from it to all beings.” Any
intelligible meaning of the name “one” refers to the character one as it
occurs with diminution in all beings and as we know it from those
beings, and so it cannot designate the first itself. Hence Proclus
distinguishes between the first and the one that can be thought or
known as the cause of being:
Nor is the first truly one, for it is better, as we have often said, than
the ‘one.’ . . . There is then some ‘one’ prior to being, which also
establishes being and is the primary cause of being; for what is prior
to this is beyond even unity and cause, unrelated to all things and
unparticipated and transcendent to all things. But if this ‘one’ is the
cause of being and47 establishes it, there will exist in it a power
generative of being.
This participated one that is properly the cause of being is what Proclus
48
calls “limit,” and its generative power is what he calls “unlimited.”
Being is therefore the “product” of participated one or limit and its
power, or unlimited. Limit and unlimited themselves, Proclus explains,
are not “products” (which would lead to an infinite regress) but rather
“manifestations” of the first. That is, limit and unlimited are one thought
or known as the cause of, and thus as related to, being. As such they are
44
Plat. theol. 2.5, 37.24–25.
45
In Parm. 7, 509.12–13.
46
Plat. theol. 2.9, 60.22–24.
47
Plat. theol. 3.8, 31.11–20. On this point see Gerd van Riel, “Horizontalism
or Verticalism? Proclus vs. Plotinus on the Procession of Matter,” Phronesis 46
(2001): 129–53, at 139.
48
Plat. theol. 3.8, 32.2–5.
698 ERIC D. PERL
49
not the the first itself. On the strictly logical ground that anything at all
is something that has one and so is not only one, the first disappears
completely beyond any thought whatsoever. “It must be none of all
50
things, so that all things may be from it.” Consequently, “[a]ll the divine
is itself, on account of its ineffable unity above being, unknowable to all
secondary things, but can be grasped and known from its participants;
wherefore only the first is altogether unknowable, in that it is
51 52
unparticipated.” Hence we “conclude with silence the study thereof.”
II
Aquinas adopts the Procline triadic schema of

participant/participated/unparticipated in his understanding of beings
53
(entia), the esse that they participate, and God as ipsum esse. A being
(ens), for Aquinas, is a thing that has, or participates, esse. The
participation in question here is what is sometimes termed
“transcendental” participation, that is, a being’s participation or
possession of its own esse, the act-of-being (actus essendi) by which it
54
exists. In that any being is something that has esse, a being is not
simple but composite, consisting of that which has esse and the esse that
it has. Aquinas expresses this composition in a number of ways. It may
be articulated as the composition of that which is (quod est) and that by
49
Plat. theol. 3.9, 36.13–19. When Proclus says that “limit is a God,
proceeding to the intelligible summit from the unparticipated and first God”
(Plat. theol. 3.12, 44.24–45.1), this must be taken to mean that limit is what any
God, as a participated one, is to its participants. See Gerd van Riel, “Les
hénades de Proclus sont-elles composées de limite et d’illimité?” Revue des
sciences philosophiques et théologiques 85 (2001): 417–32, at 426–28.
50
In Parm. 6, 1076.23–25.
51
El. theol. 123, 108.25–28.
52
In Parm. 7, 521.25.
53
For present purposes it seems best to leave this term untranslated. To
translate it as “being” confuses it with ens (see below, pp. 709–14). “Existence”
is better but has the defect of substituting an abstract noun for an active verb,
and takes us outside the “being” family of words. “Act-of-being” is more
accurate but is a gloss rather than a translation, and needs to be reserved for
translating Aquinas’s phrase actus essendi.
54
See John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas:
From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2000), 125.
55
which it is (quo est). Again, perhaps most famously, it is the
56
composition of an essence, or what a thing is, and the esse that it has.
Or, perhaps most straightforwardly, it is the composition, within any
57
existing thing, between the thing itself and the esse by which it exists.
All of these are ways of saying that a being is a thing that has or exercises
an act-of-existing, and as such involves a distinction and composition
between the thing and the act-of-existing that it has or exercises. This
composition corresponds structurally to the distinction and
composition that Proclus articulates within any being between the being
which it is and the participated one that it has and by which it exists at
all.
For Proclus, any such participated one is not only one, but is
“lessened by the addition” of that which has or participates it. It is
diminished just in that it is not only one but the one of something.
Likewise, for Aquinas, the esse of any being is contracted to the being
that participates it, the being to which it belongs, the being of which it
is the actuality. “Everything, therefore, which is after the first being,
since it is not its esse, has esse received in something, by which esse
itself is contracted; and thus in anything created the nature of the thing
that participates esse is one [aliud] and the participated esse itself is
58
another.” Consequently the thing’s esse is not just esse (esse tantum)
59
or esse itself (ipsum esse), but is rather esse as participated by and so
limited to that being. Aquinas’s “contraction” thus answers precisely to
Proclus’s “diminution.” And just as, in Proclus, any and every
participated, diminished one ipso facto is not the first, so, in Aquinas,
the participated, contracted esse of any and every being is not God: just
55
For example, De ente et essentia, editio Leonina, vol. 43 (Rome: Editori
di San Tommaso, 1976), 3.
56
For example, De ente et essentia, 3.
57
For example, Quaestiones de quolibet, editio Leonina, vol. 25/1 (Rome
and Paris: Commissio Leonina/Cerf, 1996), 2, 2, 1, ad 1.
58
Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis, ed. Leo W. Keeler
(Rome: Gregorianum, 1937), 1, resp. All translations from Aquinas are my own.
59
In the passage cited Aquinas uses the phrase ipsum esse in referring to
the participated esse of the creature. Compare Summa theologiae, editio altera
emendata (Ottawa: Commissio Piana, 1953), I, q. 4, a. 3: “Esse itself [ipsum
esse] is common to all things.” Obviously ipsum esse in such statements does
not mean subsistent, unparticipated esse itself. The word ipsum here merely
serves to reinforce the distinction between participated esse and that which
participates it.
700 ERIC D. PERL
in that it belongs or is contracted to this or that being, it is not subsistent

esse and is not esse tantum or ipsum, the universal principle of all
beings as such. Thus Aquinas appeals to such contraction in
demonstrating that God, as ipsum esse, is infinite.
Anything is called ‘infinite’ in that it is not limited [finitum]. . . . Form
is limited by matter insofar as a form considered in itself is common
to many, but by being received in matter becomes determinately the
form of this thing. . . . Form is not perfected by matter, but rather its
amplitude is contracted by it. . . . But that which is most formal of all
things, is esse itself. . . . Since therefore the divine esse is not an esse
received in anything, but he is his own 60subsistent esse . . . it is clear
that God himself is infinite and perfect.
God is infinite, that is, not finite or limited, in that, as ipsum esse
subsistens, he is not the esse of anything, by and to which he would be
61
limited or contracted. For the same reason, Aquinas explains, God
cannot be esse formale, that is, the participated and therefore
contracted esse of any or every being, or esse commune, which is simply
the common perfection esse considered in abstraction from the things
to which it belongs.
The divine esse is without addition not only in thought but also in the
nature of things; not only without addition, but without even
receptibility of addition. Wherefore from this, that it neither receives
nor can receive addition, it can further be concluded that God is not
esse commune, but his own [esse]. And his esse is distinguished
62
from
all things on this account, that nothing can be added to it.
As in Proclus’s participation structure, the esse of anything is

contracted, or as Proclus would say diminished, by the addition of that
which participates it, that of which it is the esse. And as in Proclus, such
contraction is the ground of multiplicity. Esse itself, without the
addition of a participant, cannot be many, because the members of such
a multiplicity would have to be distinguished from one another by the
63
addition to each of something other than esse. This is precisely
60
Summa theologiae I, q. 3, a. 1.
61
Since “subsistent” here means that this esse is not the esse of anything
distinct from itself, it corresponds closely to “unparticipated.”
62
Summa contra gentiles, ed. Ceslaus Pera et al. (Rome and Turin:
Marietti, 1961), bk. 1, c. 26, 11.
63
For example, Summa contra gentiles, bk. 1, c. 42, 10; Summa theologiae
I, q. 11, a. 3.
Proclus’s argument for the necessary monadic singularity of any

64
unparticipated term.
Thus Aquinas argues, following the pattern of Proclus, that all
beings, existing in virtue of their participated and contracted esse, are
caused by uncontracted esse itself, or God.
It is necessary to say that everything which in any way is, is from
God. For if anything is found in something by participation, it is
necessary that it is caused in it by that to which it pertains essentially.
. . . But it was shown above that God is esse itself subsistent by itself.
And again it was shown that subsistent esse cannot be but one, just
as, if there were a subsistent whiteness, it could not be but one, since
whitenesses would be multiplied according to their recipients. It
remains therefore that all things other than God are not their own
esse, but participate esse. It is necessary therefore that all things
which are diversified according to diverse participation of existing
[essendi], so that they are more or less perfect, are caused65by one
first being, which is most perfectly [quod perfectissime est].
Perfectissime here clearly means “without contraction”: Aquinas’s point

is not that God has or possesses esse more perfectly or completely than
66
do creatures, but rather that God is not a thing that has esse at all but
just is esse itself. As such he does not fall short of the fullness of esse by
being an esse received in or participated by something other than itself.
The thrust of the argument is that all things that have or participate esse,
all things that are not just esse but composites of esse and that which
has or receives it, and by which it is contracted and diversified—in
short, “everything which in any way is”—are therefore from or posterior
to uncontracted, undiversified esse itself. The argument hinges on the
Platonic and Procline principle that “if anything is found in something
by participation, it it necessary that it is caused in it by that to which it
pertains essentially.” The latter phrase is Aquinas’s way of referring to
64
El. theol. 22, 26.10–15; see above, pp. 688–89.
65
Summa theologiae I, q. 44, a. 1. This effectively combines into a single
argument what in Quaestiones disputatae de potentia (De potentia), ed. P.
th
Bazzi et al., 9 ed. rev. (Rome and Turin: Marietti, 1953), 1, 3, 5 are presented as
three distinct arguments associated with Plato, Aristotle, and Avicenna
respectively, but that are really all versions of the same line of reasoning.
66
Here the Dominican Fathers’ translation is egregiously misleading,
rendering quod perfectissime est as “which possesses being most perfectly.”
The whole thrust of Aquinas’s argument is that God does not possess esse but
just is esse itself. The distinction between creatures and God is precisely the
distinction between things that possess esse and unpossessed esse itself.
702 ERIC D. PERL
that which does not participate but rather just is the perfection in
question, as the reference to God as ipsum esse and the counterfactual
example of “subsistent whiteness” indicate. The causation in question is
just the posteriority of a participated, contracted perfection to the same
perfection simply by itself. The argument thus replicates Proclus’s
reasoning from a multiplicity of participated terms, each possessed and
thus confined to or diminished by its participant, to the same perfection
just as such, unparticipated and undiminished. “As that which
participates is posterior to that which is by essence, so too is the
67
participated itself.” Aquinas’s argument from beings as participants of
esse to ipsum esse subsistens as the cause of all beings is therefore
structurally parallel to Proclus’s argument from all things as
participants of one to unparticipated one itself as the cause of all things.
Upon concluding this argument, Aquinas acknowledges its Platonic
background: “Wherefore Plato too says that it is necessary to posit a
unity before every multiplicity.” He then observes, “And Aristotle says,
in Metaphysics II, that that which is most being and most true [maxime
ens et maxime verum] is the cause of every being and every true thing,
68
as that which is most hot is the cause of every heat.” This remark, as
well as the reference in the argument itself to things that are “more or
less perfect,” plainly connects the Platonic argument from participation
with the “fourth way” argument to God, which must in fact be
69
understood in the same terms. Things that are more and less good,
67
Summa theologiae I, q. 3, a. 8. This statement occurs in the course of
Aquinas’s demonstration that God is not in composition with anything. Not
incidentally, he supports this article with references to his chief Procline
sources, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Liber de causis.
68
69
Summa theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3. On the intimate connection between the
argument at I, q. 44, a. 1 and the fourth way, see Lawrence Dewan, “What Does
Createdness Look Like?” in Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval, and Early
Modern Thought: Essays Presented to the Rev’d Dr Robert D. Crouse, ed.
Michael Treschow, Willemien Otten, and Walter Hannam (Leiden: Brill, 2007),
335–61, at 340. For the Procline nature of the fourth way, see above all Fernand
Van Steenberghen, “Prolégomènes à la ‘Quarta Via’,” Rivista di filosofia neo-
scolastica 70 (1978): 99–112. Since Van Steenberghen confines himself to
Aquinas’s textual sources, to wit, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Liber de causis, he
does not cite Proclus, Plat. theol. 2.3, 28.9–13 (quoted above, p. 693), which
would clinch his case. Matthew W. Knotts, “A Contextual and Philosophical
Analysis of Aquinas’s Fourth Way,” Archive of the History of Philosophy and
Social Thought 59 (2014): 37–54, attempts to show that the fourth way should
true, noble, and so on, are things that have these perfections in some
way, that is, with varying modes of “contraction” or “diminution.” As
such they are caused by that which just is that perfection, without
contraction. The meaning of maxime ens to which the fourth way
concludes is therefore the same as that of quod perfectissime est. Such
expressions cannot refer to God as a being that has esse in a maximal or
most perfect way. Nothing that has esse could be maxime or
perfectissime, for the esse of any such thing would be contracted by that
which has it. Rather, as Aquinas makes clear in countless other places,
these phrases refer to God as that which does not have but just is
uncontracted esse itself. “[God] is maximally being [maxime ens]
insofar as he is not a thing that has some esse determined by some
nature to which it comes, but is subsistent esse itself, in every way
70
indeterminate.” Just as Proclus’s first principle is not a thing that is
one, that is, that has one as a character and is therefore not only one or
one itself, so Aquinas’s God does not have esse in a greater way
(perfectly or maximally) than “other” beings, but just is nothing but esse
itself. The precise verbal parallel between Aquinas’s fourth way and the
71
passage from Proclus’s Platonic Theology cited earlier, though
72
striking, is of course due to their common derivation from Aristotle.
What is more significant, however, is that both Proclus and Aquinas
73
deploy this Aristotelian principle in exactly the same way to argue to a
cause of all things.
not be understood in Neoplatonic terms. But he does so (at 45–47) only by

arguing that it is not Augustinian. Since Van Steenberghen connects the fourth
way not with Augustine but with Procline Neoplatonism, Knotts’s argument
completely misses the point. Knotts also mistakenly refers to Van
Steenberghen’s 1980 volume Thomas Aquinas and Radical Aristotelianism,
which says nothing about this issue, rather than to his 1978 article on the fourth
way.
70
71
See above, p. 693.
72
Aristotle, Metaphysics 2.1.993b24–32.
73
Or Platonic principle: see Wippel, “Platonism and Aristotelianism in
Aquinas,” in Metaphysical Themes II, 272–89, at 283 n. 36: “If one accepts the
authenticity of Bk II [of Aristotle’s Metaphysics], it seems to me that one should
regard this text as a remaining trace of Platonism within Aristotle.” This remark
presupposes the view that Aristotle is not profoundly Platonic but retains at
most “traces” of Platonism.
704 ERIC D. PERL
Likewise, Aquinas adopts the Platonic one-before-many principle in

addressing the question “whether all things are good by the divine
goodness.” Here he presents the “Platonic” theory of “separate
essences” prior to the things that participate this or that perfection,
rejecting this position with regard to natural kinds but affirming it with
regard to being and good. He then explains, “Therefore from the first
being and good, [which is such] by its essence, anything can be called a
good thing and a being insofar as it participates it by way of a certain
assimilation, albeit remotely and deficiently,” which is to say, with
contraction. Aquinas concludes,
So therefore anything is called good by the divine goodness, as by
the first exemplary, efficient, and final principle of all goodness.
Nonetheless, though, anything is called good by the similitude of the
divine goodness inherent in it, which is formally its own goodness,
and gives it the name [that is, the name “good”]. And so there is one
74
goodness of all things, and also many goodnesses.
75
Here he unwittingly repeats the exact words of Proclus. Again, what
matters most is not the verbal identity, striking as it is, but the structural
or logical parallelism: in each of the many things that have a perfection
such as esse, one, or good, that perfection is found as limited, that is,
contracted or diminished, to that thing. As such it is not identical with
that which just is that perfection itself, unparticipated, uncontracted,
not diversified. “Hence,” in Proclus’s words, “one goodness and many
76
goodnesses after the one.”
Aquinas’s argument from beings, as things that participate esse, to
ipsum esse as their cause, thus exhibits exactly the same structure as
Proclus’s argument from any multiplicity of participants, each with its
diminished, participated perfection, to an unparticipated monad. Esse
is the cause of all things just in that every being exists by its participated,
contracted esse. Every being (ens), therefore, proceeds from
unparticipated esse itself, or God, just in that its esse is distinguished
from esse itself by being contracted to a participant. It follows that the
procession of all things from God, that is, their being created, just is the
posteriority of the participated esse by which anything is a being,
together with that which participates it, to unparticipated esse itself.
74
75
See above, p. 695.
76
Plat. theol. 3.3, 14.5–6.
This logical structure is all that can be meant, in strictly philosophical

terms, by “creation.” It is of course well recognized that for Aquinas
creation “signified passively,” that is, the being-created of all things, is
not a change or event but is nothing but the relation of dependence of
77
all things on God. “Creation is not a change, but the very dependence
of created esse on the principle by which it is established; and this is in
78
the genus of relation.” But this doctrine, it seems, is not always taken
seriously in its full force: the creation of all things by God, insofar as it
can be philosophically understood and justified, just is the logical
posteriority of beings, as things that have esse, to unconditioned esse
itself.
With Aquinas as with Proclus, therefore, we must always argue
from effects to cause, starting with beings as things that have esse and
recognizing their posteriority to, and in that sense (only) their derivation
from, esse itself. This bottom-up procedure obviates an otherwise
insuperable dilemma. It is impossible to explain the existence of beings,
as finite participants of esse, if we begin with esse itself and try to derive
beings from it. On the one hand, esse as such cannot account for its own
79
contraction. On the other hand, its contraction cannot come from
something else, if it is precisely the origin of this something else that we
are seeking to explain: a being does not exist prior (temporally or
80
ontologically) to its reception of esse. Nor can we escape this dilemma
by saying that the ultimate explanation of the limitation of esse in
81
creatures is God’s will, power, knowledge, or creative act. Since these
are not really distinct from the divine essence, that is, esse itself, they
77
For an exceptionally good treatment of this point see Dewan,
“Createdness.”
78
Summa contra gentiles, bk. 2, c. 18, 2. Compare Summa theologiae I, q.
45, a. 3, ad 2.
79
Compare Wippel, “Axiom,” 151: “Precisely because esse is the actuality
of all acts and the perfection of all perfections, one cannot account for its
limitation simply by appealing to esse itself.”
80
This dilemma constitutes the long-standing debate as to the relative
priority of limitation and composition. See Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 124–
31. In fact neither limitation nor composition can be prior to the other because
they are simply two ways of expressing the same thing, the of-ness or belonging
of a participated term to that which participates it.
81
For suggestions pointing in this direction see, for example, Rudi A. Te
Velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill,
1995), 159; Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 130–31.
706 ERIC D. PERL
cannot have any additional explanatory power. Thus Aquinas explains

that as creation “signified passively” is nothing but the relation of
dependence, so creation “signified actively,” that is, attributed to God as
an act, just is the divine essence “with a relation to the creature.” God’s
creative act, then, just is esse itself, considered as the cause of all things.
But Aquinas hastens to add that this causal relation is nothing real in
82
God but is only “according to reason.” To attribute creation to God as
83
an act is to introduce in thought a distinction between God and his act.
Hence this thought, like any thought we may have of God, falls infinitely
short of God himself. Aquinas’s point here may perhaps be compared to
Proclus’s distinction between one considered as the cause of being,
which is a manifestation of the first, and the first itself, which escapes
absolutely beyond all thought whatsoever. Since God’s creative will or
act is not really distinct from God or esse itself, it cannot help explain
the derivation of finite beings from esse.
The dilemma results from attempting to think as an origin what is
in fact a logical relation. We begin with beings, that is, things that have
or participate esse, and recognize that, within these beings, their esse is
contracted to that which possesses it. We thereby infer its distinction
from and posteriority to esse itself. In just that sense, esse accounts for
the existence of all things. We cannot begin with uncontracted esse itself
and deduce beings from it; we can only ever begin with beings, existing
in virtue of their contracted esse, and dialectically reduce, that is, trace
them back, to uncontracted esse itself. As in Proclus, the addition of the
participant is not an event but is simply the fact that esse here is
contracted. All things are distinguished and in that sense emerge from
ipsum esse just in that their esse is contracted to something other than
itself. As, for Proclus, the procession of participated terms from an
unparticipated monad just is their diminution relative to it, so, for
Aquinas, the being-created of all things just is the contraction of their
esse to a being that participates it. We may, if we like, turn this around
and express it by saying, “God creates all things” or “God causes all
things to be.” But this cannot legitimately mean anything more or other
than that their esse, in that it is contracted to them, is posterior to
uncontracted esse itself. Only in this sense can “creation” be
philosophically demonstrated and understood.
82
83
Compare Proclus, In Parm. 7, 1168.16–1169.4
In short, Aquinas’s argument from all beings, as things that

participate esse, to ipsum esse as cause of all things, is structurally
parallel to Proclus’s argument from all things as participants of one to
one itself as first principle. For Proclus, the perfection common to all
things whatsoever, whereby they exist at all, is one; for Aquinas, it is
84
esse: “Esse itself is common to all things.” “Since therefore esse is
found common to all things, which are distinct from each other as to
what they are, it follows that by necessity esse is attributed to them not
85
from themselves, but from some one cause.” As Proclus says, and
Aquinas agrees, “The cause of all things must be that which all things
86
participate.” In both cases, we first identify the absolutely common
perfection—one for Proclus, esse for Aquinas—that occurs, with diverse
diminutions or contractions, in all things whatsoever, and in virtue of
which they exist at all. We then take that same perfection without
diminution and ascribe its name to the first principle of all things. In
Proclus’s words, “We transfer to it therefore ‘one’ and ‘good’ from the
87
donation that comes from it to all beings.” This is the exact procedure
whereby Aquinas calls God ipsum esse. Thus he frequently refers to God
88
as principium totius esse, “the principle of all esse,” clearly indicating
that the name esse is transferred to God from that which all things
possess from him, namely, their esse. Hence esse in Aquinas holds the
same structural position as one in Proclus. Ipsum esse therefore does
not name an intelligible essence, for any such essence would be not just
esse but a thing that has esse. Thus it does not provide a conceptual
89
grasp of what God is any more than does one in Proclus. The statement
90
that God is ipsum esse is therefore strictly apophatic in meaning. We
84
85
De potentia 3, 5. Aquinas adds, “And this, it appears, is the reason of
Plato, who held that before every multiplicity there be some unity, not only in
numbers but in the nature of things.”
86
Plat. theol. 2.3, 24.15–17.
87
Plat. theol. 2.9, 60.22–24.
88
For example, Summa contra gentiles, bk. 1, c. 68, 3; Summa theologiae
I, q. 3, a. 5; I, q. 4, a. 3; De potentia, 3, 1.
89
Compare Te Velde, Participation, 120; Jean-Luc Marion, “Saint Thomas
d’Aquin et l’onto-théo-logie,” Revue thomiste 95 (1995): 31–66, at 59–65, esp. 64;
Stephen L. Brock, “On Whether Aquinas’s Ipsum Esse Is ‘Platonism,’” The
Review of Metaphysics 60 (2006): 269–303, at 301.
90
Compare Brian Davies, “Kenny on Aquinas on Being,” The Modern
Schoolman 82 (2005): 111–29, at 113–14, 124–27.
708 ERIC D. PERL
ascend dialectically to esse as cause of all things by the taking away

(ἀφαίρεσις in Greek, ablatio or remotio in Latin) of all determinate
content, since any such content is not just esse but something that has
esse. As Proclus repeatedly insists, since we ascend to each higher level
by negating or taking away its effects, so we must “take away all things
91
likewise from the cause of all things.” So too, for Aquinas,
The divine substance by its measurelessness exceeds every form
which our intellect attains; and thus we cannot apprehend it by
knowing what it is. Yet we have some knowledge of it by knowing
what it is not. We approach knowledge of it insofar as we are able to
remove [removere] more things from it by our intellect. . . . And then
there will be proper consideration of his substance when92
he is known
as distinct from all things [ut ab omnibus distinctus].
Aquinas’s apophaticism, like that of Proclus, is no mere

acknowledgment of the grandeur of God and the weakness of the
human intellect, but a strict dialectical necessity: since “everything
which in any way is” participates esse and in that sense is posterior,
dependent, or caused, we must “take away” all things from the cause of
all things, leaving no thought whatever of the cause itself.
III
Having articulated the structural parallelism between Aquinas and

Proclus with regard to participation, diminution or contraction, and
procession or creation, it remains for us to consider various points of
divergence between them.
First, and seemingly most significant, is the much vaunted claim
that for Aquinas the supremely common perfection shared by absolutely
all things whatsoever is being, so that God is being itself, whereas for
91
Plat. theol. 2.10, 62.17–18.
92
Summa contra gentiles, bk. 1, c. 14, 2–3. Compare Scriptum super
libros Sententiarum, ed Pierre Mandonnet and Maria Fabian Moos (Paris:
Lethielleux, 1929–1937), 1, 8, 1, 1, ad 4: “When we proceed to God by way of
remotion, first we negate of him corporeal things, and then even intellectual
things, as they are found in creatures, such as goodness and wisdom; and then
there remains in our intellect, that he is, and nothing more, wherefore it is as in
a certain confusion. But in the end we remove from him even this esse itself as
it is in creatures; and thus it remains in a certain darkness of unknowing.”
the Neoplatonic tradition that Proclus represents the perfection one is

even more extensively participated than being, so that his first principle
93
is not being, but beyond being. But this, I submit, is largely if not
entirely a terminological confusion, exacerbated in English by the
persistent abominable practice of translating both ens and esse as
94
“being.” Let us try to disentangle the muddle.
The Greek word ὄν, “being,” corresponding to Latin ens, means
“that-which-is.” This is a concrete, not an abstract, term: it refers not to
the character or perfection that a thing has or participates and by which
it is a being, but rather to the thing itself. Hence when Proclus argues
that being (ὄν) proceeds from or is produced by one, he is referring to
“what is,” “all that is,” taken all together in its totality. In Latin this would
be ens, not esse. That-which-is (τὸ ὄν), containing within itself all the
things-that-are (τὰ ὄντα), exists in virtue of its participated one and so
depends on, or proceeds from, one itself. To say that the first principle
95
is not being but beyond being is to say that it is beyond that-which-is.
It is above being (ὄν/ens, not esse) in that it is the cause of all that is.
Proclus’s distinction between ὄν, that-which-is, and ἕν, one, the
perfection by which anything is, thus corresponds closely to Aquinas’s
93
For example, Clarke, “Limitation,” 187; Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-
Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 203.
94
To avoid this confusion it might be best to translate esse literally, as “to
be.” This works extremely well in some cases, for example, “To be is common
to all things” or “To be is the actuality of all acts and on this account is the
perfection of all perfections.” In other cases it is more awkward, as in “God is
to be itself subsisting by itself.” But this very awkwardness is valuable in
highlighting the crucial point that for Aquinas the first principle is expressed
not by a noun but by a verb. God is not a thing but an activity, sheer activity
without any agent.
The same holds true for Proclus’s insistence that one is not οὐσία but
95
above οὐσία, or ὑπερούσιος. For, as we have seen, Proclus expressly equates

οὐσία with the one-being, that is, that-which-is taken all together as one. In this
respect Morrow and Dillon’s translation of substantia (clearly representing
οὐσία in the Latin translation of the Parmenides commentary) as “existence”
is misleading. See In Parm. 7, 497.1–5; Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s
Parmenides, trans. Glenn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1987), 580. A Greekless reader is almost bound to
assume that “existence” means something like Aquinas’s esse, so that Proclus’s
argument that the first principle is not “existence” makes him fundamentally
different from Aquinas. Once we realize that Proclus is speaking of οὐσία, the
apparent opposition dissolves.
710 ERIC D. PERL
distinction between ens, that-which-is, and esse, the perfection by which

anything is.
In this regard the (in)famous proposition 4 of the Liber de causis
96
is instructive: Prima rerum creatarum est esse. At some point in the
passage from Greek to Arabic to Latin, the wrong word has crept in. To
reflect its Procline origin, the line should read, Prima rerum creatarum
est ens. In Proclus, being is the “first product” in that it is the highest,
most comprehensive level that is not only one but participates one and
in that sense is made to be. It is the first composite of “one and not-one,”
that is, of a participated character one and that which has, but itself is
not, the character one. Being is the “first” product, not in the sense that
it is first in a series to which other terms will be added, but rather in that
it is all-comprehensive: all “other” things are not extrinsic or additional
to but contained within being. Being, ὄν, that-which-is, is everything that
is, taken all together as one, and this is the “first” and in that sense the
97
only product of one itself. The erroneous use of esse instead of ens in
the Liber de causis compels Aquinas, in order to make sense of the
proposition, to give it a meaning that works well enough within his own
98
system but has nothing to do with its Procline origin. Had the
proposition read ens instead of esse, Aquinas could have comfortably
endorsed it without imposing on it an alien interpretation. What is
created, or produced, is not esse by itself, which would force us to place
God beyond esse, but rather ens, that-which-is, which is a composite of
esse and that which has, but itself is not, esse, and as such is caused to
be. Thus later in the De causis commentary Aquinas explains that “the
first cause is above being [supra ens] insofar as it is infinite [that is,
99
uncontracted] esse itself,” and elsewhere he refers to the divine will,
which is not really distinct from the divine essence or God himself, as
“standing outside the order of beings [extra ordinem entium], as a
96
Die pseudo-aristotelishes Schrift Ueber das reine Gute bekannt unter
dem Namen Liber de causis, ed. Otto Bardenhewer (Freiburg im Breisgau:
Herder, 1882), 166.19.
97
Compare Baltzly, “Mereological Modes,” 399.
98
He interprets it as referring to the created esse of the highest beings, or
intelligences. See also Summa theologiae I, q. 45, a. 4, obj. 1 and ad 1, where he
again finds it necessary to explain (or explain away) this troublesome
proposition.
99
Super Librum de causis expositio, ed. H. D. Saffrey (Fribourg and
Louvain: Société Philosophique/Nauwelaerts, 1954), 6.
certain cause pouring forth all being [totum ens] and all its
100
differences.” This is just what Proclus means when he says that the
first principle is not being because it is the cause of being, and that
being, containing within itself all things, is the “first product.” Not
Aquinas’s esse, but rather his totum ens, as that which comes from and
so is not God, corresponds to Proclus’s ὄν.
The only sense in which being for Proclus does not include all
things whatsoever, and thus is narrower in scope than ens for Aquinas,
is that, as we have seen, the word ὄν strongly carries the note of
intelligibility: a being is a distinct, determinate, intelligible something,
and being in general is the totality of all such intelligible contents. In this
sense only, “being” does not apply either to matter or to the Gods.
Matter, as that which underlies all formal characters, has no
intelligibility of its own, and in that sense is not an ὄν. This does not
mean, for Proclus, that matter is absolutely nothing; it simply means that
matter is not intelligible per se. Conversely, the divine henads or Gods
are not ὄντα in that, as participated ones, they are principles by which
beings are beings. For Proclus, a being is a thing that has the character
one in some way. It follows that a God, since it does not have that
character but just is that character as possessed by this or that being, is
not in this sense a being. We could transpose this into Thomistic terms
by saying that a Procline God is not an ens but the participated esse of
some ens. This, and only this, is the sense in which the term ὄν does
101
not apply to absolutely everything, the sense in which matter and the
Gods are not beings.
Proclus does in fact have another term that comes much closer in
meaning to Aquinas’s esse. This is the word ὕπαρξις. Since he uses this
word to refer to the principle by which anything exists, it is perhaps best
translated as “existence,” or, to avoid begging the question, left
untranslated as we have done with Aquinas’s esse. Proclus expressly
equates ὕπαρξις with one: the participated one or limit of anything, in
100
Expositio libri Peryermeneias, editio Leonina, vol. 1*/1, editio altera
retractata (Rome and Paris: Commissio Leonina/Vrin, 1989), 1, 14, 22. Compare
Summa theologiae I, q. 45, a. 1, where Aquinas again speaks of “the emanation
of all being [totius entis] from the universal cause, which is God.”
101
On the relation between Proclus’s Gods and Aquinas’s esse see further
below, pp. 714–15.
712 ERIC D. PERL
virtue of which that thing exists at all, is its ὕπαρξις. Thus in arguing
102
that one is the supremely common term, even more than being (ὄν), he
observes, “It is possible for that which is not [τὸ μὴ ὂν] to have ὕπαρξιν;
but that which is not even one [τὸ . . . μηδὲν], and is devoid of the ‘one’
103
itself, would be altogether nothing [οὐδὲν].” Here “that which is not”
(that is, is not a being, ὄν) evidently refers to matter. Hence while matter
for Proclus is not strictly speaking an ὄν, that is, a determinate
intelligible “this something,” it does have ὕπαρξις, or existence, and this
is the same as saying that it has the character one, without which it
would not exist at all. Aquinas would express this by saying that matter
does not exist by itself, apart from form, but that it has esse through
form. Likewise, while the Gods are not ὄντα, beings, in the sense we
have explained, Proclus freely refers to them as ὑπάρξεις. As the
104
participated ones by which all things exist, the Gods are the ὑπάρξεις,
the existences, of all things. As a term for that by which anything exists,
ὕπαρξις even carries to some extent the “act” connotation of Aquinas’s
esse. Thus when Proclus equates participated one or limit, as the cause
of being, with ὕπαρξις, he correlates it with the unlimited as its power,
δύναμις: limit is to unlimited as ὕπαρξις to δύναμις. Ὕπαρξις,
105
existence, not ὄν, that-which-is, is thus the closest equivalent in

Proclus’s lexicon to Aquinas’s esse, and the ὕπαρξις of anything is its
participated one. Proclus’s distinction between ὄν, that which is, and
ἕν, one, the perfection by which it is, therefore corresponds closely to
Aquinas’s distinction between ens and esse.
Conversely, Aquinas’s esse, as the perfection by which all things
are, is much closer, in its metaphysical status, role, function, and
meaning, to Proclus’s ἕν than to his ὄν. This crucial point is obscured
102
For example, Plat. theol. 3.9, 39.27; 3.14, 51.6; 4.1, 7.29–8.1. The last
passage reads, “Καὶ ὥσπερ ἡ δύναμις ἀπεγεννᾶτο μὲν ἐκ τοῦ ἑνὸς καὶ τῆς
ὑπάρξεως, συνυφίστη δὲ τῷ ἑνὶ τὴν τοῦ ὄντος φύσιν.” Saffrey and Westerink
translate τοῦ ἑνὸς καὶ τῆς ὑπάρξεως as “l’Un et l’existence,” as if power were
generated from two things, the One and ὕπαρξις. This is incorrect. The
unlimited is the power of ὕπαρξις, that is, of participated one or limit, and
being is the product of limit and its power, the unlimited. Hence καὶ is
epexegetic: Proclus is saying that power comes from “‘one,’ that is, ὕπαρξις,”
and that power together with this one establishes being.
103
Plat. theol. 2.3, 25.20–22.
104
For example, El. theol. 133, 118.18.
105
Plat. theol. 3.9, 40.4–6.
when esse is translated as “being.” As the act or perfection by which

beings are, esse is not itself a being, an ens, a thing that has this
perfection or exercises this act. Creatures are not esse but entia, things
that have esse; God is not a thing that has esse but just is esse itself. Thus
it is not the case that for Aquinas, in supposed opposition to Proclus,
the term “being” extends to include both creatures and God. This is
nothing but an illusion that results from allowing the term “being” to
blur the distinction between ens and esse. For Aquinas as for Proclus,
there is no common term that embraces both creatures and God, or all
106
things and the principle of all things. To be sure, Aquinas frequently
speaks of God as an ens. But he explains that this usage is only ever
analogical, referring to God as the principle of which every ens, existing
by its contracted esse, is a likeness. “Whatever is said of God and
creatures is said according as there is some order of the creature to God
as to its principle and cause, in which all the perfections of things exist
107
excellently.” This is not unlike Proclus’s explanation of how the first
principle may be called an ἰδέα (as when Plato speaks of “the ἰδέα of
the good”), although it is not an ἰδέα in the proper sense of a
108
determinate intelligible content. As any multiplicity of participants,
with their participated perfections, are to their monad, so all things
absolutely are to one itself. In that sense the one may, analogically, be
termed an ἰδέα. So, for Aquinas, all beings (entia) absolutely stand in
this relation to ipsum esse, and in that sense only, God may be termed
ens. But just as one itself is above being (ὄν) or ἰδέα in the sense of
determinate intelligible content, which exists by the one that it has, so
Aquinas’s God is above being (ens) in the sense of that which has esse
109
and exists by the esse that it has. As we have seen, God for Aquinas is
110
above being (ens) in that he is uncontracted esse, just as, for Proclus,
the first principle is above being (ὄν) in that it is undiminished one.
106
Compare Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 571–72; Marion, “Saint
Thomas d’Aquin,” 45.
107
108
In Parm. 7, 1200.25–1201.2
109
Compare Dewan, “Createdness,” 344: “‘[B]eing in its totality’ (totum
ens) is the name for God’s effect, which he is himself beyond.” And again, 360:
“Creation is a doctrine which pertains to reality as such. . . . The Creator
himself must be beyond reality, and can be called ‘real’ only in a somewhat new
meaning of the word” (italics in original).
110
See above, pp. 710–11.
714 ERIC D. PERL
Perhaps a more genuine difference between Proclus and Aquinas is

that for Proclus the participated ones of beings are the henads or Gods,
real divine persons to whom he offers prayer, devotion, and ritual
111
worship. For Aquinas, of course, participated esse has no such
religious significance: it is simply the actus essendi of this or that
112
creature. But as I have suggested elsewhere, this cultic and
confessional difference, real as it is on its own level, can perhaps be
seen to overlie a deeper metaphysical affinity. On the one hand, Proclus
is very clear that each God, and all the Gods taken together, absolutely
and infinitely are not the first itself, precisely in that they are
participated and therefore diminished, or as Aquinas would say,
contracted.
Every God is a beneficent henad or a unifying goodness . . . ; but the
first is the good simply and one simply, while each of those after the
first is a certain [τὶς] goodness and a certain henad. . . . For each of
them is a certain good, but not all the good . . . wherefore that [that
is, the first] is the good, as constitutive of all goodness. For not all
the existences [ὑπάρξεις] of the Gods together are equal to the ‘one,’
113
so great an excess is that allotted over the multiplicity of the Gods.
To worship them as Gods, therefore, is not to mistake them for the first,
which cannot be an object of such worship precisely because it cannot
be intended at all but disappears altogether: “Let us as it were celebrate
him . . . as he is God of all Gods and as henad of henads and as beyond
the first inaccessibles and as more ineffable than all silence and as more
114
unknowable than all existence [ὑπάρξεως], holy among holies.” “Let
115
it be honored by silence and by union prior to silence.” Conversely,
could we not say that for Aquinas, what is divine is, most fundamentally,
actuality, as for Proclus what is divine is one? Esse in Aquinas, like one
in Proclus, is the “actuality of all acts” and “perfection of all
116
perfections,” and as unparticipated esse itself God is not anything
111
Strictly speaking this is true only as far down the scale of being as the
celestial bodies. The participated ones of things subject to generation and
corruption are not “self-complete henads” or Gods but only “illuminations of
unity.” See El. theol. 64, 60.20–62.12.
112
Eric D. Perl, “Neither One nor Many: God and the Gods in Plotinus,
Proclus, and Aquinas,” Dionysius 28 (2010): 167–91, at 190.
113
El. theol. 133, 118.8–19.
114
Plat. theol. 2.11, 65.5–14.
115
Plat. theol. 3.7, 30.7–8.
116
De potentia, 7, 2, ad 9.
actual (that is, actualized), nor the actuality of anything, but sheer
actuality itself. Actuality, and so divinity, is found everywhere with
contraction, as the esse of each being, and nowhere without contraction,
as just actuality itself, which is thus absolutely transcendent, infinitely
117
“distant,” ab omnibus distinctus.
The greatest truly philosophical difference between Aquinas and
Proclus with regard to the issue at hand is that we do not find in Aquinas
the “fractal” structure of Proclus’s system, in which the same monad-
multiplicity pattern repeats itself, level within level, at greater and lesser
degrees of “magnification.” While Aquinas admits the Platonic one-
before-many principle, he locates all Proclus’s “monads” in God, where
they are not really distinct from each other or from ipsum esse. To
negotiate this difference lies beyond the scope of the present study, for
it would entail a far-reaching dialogue at the level of Proclus’s and
Aquinas’s entire systems of thought. Such a dialogue would have to
address, at least: how Aquinas can justify his rejection of really distinct
unparticipated terms, prior to particulars but posterior to the absolutely
simple first principle; how Proclus’s monads are not, as Aquinas
represents them on the basis of his limited sources, a series of mutually
extrinsic “separate ideas,” but are contained in one another so that “all
118
things are in all things, but in each in its own way,” and indeed each is
all in its own way; and even the very meaning of “real distinction” and
how we should understand the relation between thought and reality.
None of this, however, affects or alters Aquinas’s thoroughgoing
adoption of the Procline logic of procession by diminution with regard
to beings, their participation of esse, and esse itself as the principle of
all things.
“Platonism” is said in many ways. Is Aquinas’s ipsum esse

119
Platonism? Emphatically yes: but not in the sense, regularly
repudiated by Aquinas, that it is a pseudo-genus “being,” first
conceptually abstracted from the differences among beings and then
hypostatized; nor in the sense that ipsum esse is just the common
117
“The infinite distance of creature to God:” Quaestiones disputatae de
veritate, editio Leonina, vol. 22.2/1 (Rome: Sancta Sabina, 1970), 11, ad 4.
118
El. theol. 103, 92.13.
119
See Brock, “On Whether Aquinas’s Ipsum Esse Is ‘Platonism.’”
716 ERIC D. PERL
perfection esse considered in abstraction from the things that

participate it. That, in Aquinas’s terms, is not ipsum esse subsistens but
rather esse commune. To be sure, such a conception provides the
meaning for the name esse as applied to God, which may in part explain
120
why it has sometimes been confused with ipsum esse. The principle
of all things is called esse, however, not because this name provides a
conceptual grasp of what God is, but because all things exist by their
participated esse, which precisely as participated cannot be first. Hence,
in accordance with the Procline reduction of a participated multiplicity
to an unparticipated monad, we call the principle of all things esse itself,
thereby indicating its priority to, not its identity with, that which is
found participated in all things. So, Proclus explains, “It is cause of
existence [ὑπάρξεως] to all things. . . . We transfer to it therefore ‘one’
and ‘good’ from the donation that comes from it to all beings. For we
say that the cause of the things that all beings participate is none other
121
than that which is established prior to all these.” In just this sense, the
meaning of Aquinas’s doctrine of ipsum esse as cause of all things, and
the reasoning that underlies it, is altogether Platonic.
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120
Most notoriously by Klaus Kremer, Die neuplatonische
Seinsphilosophie und ihre Wirkung auf Thomas von Aquin (Leiden: Brill,
1966). Kremer’s identification of ipsum esse with esse commune has been
universally and rightly rejected; but this identification is not authentic
Neoplatonism.
121
Plat. theol. 2.9, 60.19–26.

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Lessened by Addition: Procession by Diminution in Proclus

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W HEN A PHILOSOPHICAL IDEA is transplanted from one system or

Correspondence to: Department of Philosophy, 1 LMU Drive, Suite 3600,

of creation, of the relation of creatures to God, and of God as ipsum

Every level in Proclus’s hierarchy of causal terms—being, life,

In every case, the distinction between multiplicity and monad is the

Penelope, for example, are beauty as it occurs, or shows up, in Helen

Thus Proclus speaks not only of “procession by diminution” but

note of intelligibility. Matter, considered in itself as that which underlies

but has, or participates, that character. In this sense all things

Later in the same chapter, continuing his argument to a first principle of

posits simply one or one itself—not a hypostatized entity named “the

is transcendent to all multiplicity, and that which is one and at the

So too, in the opening chapters of Platonic Theology 3, explaining why

Aquinas adopts the Procline triadic schema of

in that it belongs or is contracted to this or that being, it is not subsistent

As in Proclus’s participation structure, the esse of anything is

Proclus’s argument for the necessary monadic singularity of any

Perfectissime here clearly means “without contraction”: Aquinas’s point

not be understood in Neoplatonic terms. But he does so (at 45–47) only by

Likewise, Aquinas adopts the Platonic one-before-many principle in

This logical structure is all that can be meant, in strictly philosophical

cannot have any additional explanatory power. Thus Aquinas explains

In short, Aquinas’s argument from all beings, as things that

ascend dialectically to esse as cause of all things by the taking away

Aquinas’s apophaticism, like that of Proclus, is no mere

Having articulated the structural parallelism between Aquinas and

the Neoplatonic tradition that Proclus represents the perfection one is

above οὐσία, or ὑπερούσιος. For, as we have seen, Proclus expressly equates

distinction between ens, that-which-is, and esse, the perfection by which

existence, not ὄν, that-which-is, is thus the closest equivalent in

when esse is translated as “being.” As the act or perfection by which

Perhaps a more genuine difference between Proclus and Aquinas is

“Platonism” is said in many ways. Is Aquinas’s ipsum esse

perfection esse considered in abstraction from the things that

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