“For Iamblichus, the central issue of his age was not the polemic between pagans and Christians but the far more serious conflict between “old ways” and “new ways,” between the ancient traditions inspired by gods, and those recently invented by man,”

Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 3

As we saw in the previous installment, Iamblichus advanced a religious epistemology according to which the superior kinds (κρείττονα γένη) are best not thought of as objects of propositional attitudes. He corrects Porphyry for even suggesting that the existence of Gods is something we “concede.” Properly speaking,

“one should always assume one definite account of their essence and reject the indeterminacy and instability characteristic of the human condition … for such a procedure is alien to the first principles of reason and life, and tends towards a secondary level of reality, such as belongs rather to the potentiality and contrariety of the realm of generation,” Iamblichus, De Myst. I.3

He expands on this procedure which is “alien to the first principles”:

“You, however, seem to think that knowledge of divinity is of the same nature as a knowledge of anything else, and that it is by the balancing of contrary propositions that a conclusion is reached, as in dialectical discussions. But the cases are in no way similar. The knowledge of the gods is of a quite different nature, and is far removed from all antithetical procedure, and does not consist in the assent to some proposition now, nor yet at the moment of one’s birth, but from all eternity it coexisted in the soul in complete uniformity,” (ibid.)

Crucially, Abamon concludes, “So this, then, is what I have to say to you about the first principle in us, from which anyone, who is to say or hear anything about the classes of being superior to us, must take a start,” (ibid.)

Given how much he expands on this point, and that it is the very first one he makes, perhaps it was thought to play an important role in securing or safeguarding the “old ways.” Let’s look a little closer at this epistemological posture, and see what it can tell us about Iamblichus’ universe.

Consider first then Iamblichus’ emphasis on contrasting the superior kinds and our knowledge of them with the lower kinds and our knowledge of them. Unlike, say, sensible objects, the superior kinds must be understood like first principles, and ones that are in us, for that matter.

Our contact with sensibles is through the incredible and beautiful, but deeply fallible, uncertain, and patchy mode of perception we know as sensation. That sense perception is of such a nature is made clear by any attempt to access intelligible reality through it: we have the sheer qualia of experience itself on the one hand, but then all the guesswork of trying to understand what it is we experienced on the other. Consider the sheer sensation of blistering heat. Now consider any of the beliefs that can surround this experience, such as that there is an object on fire, or that you are touching it. Sensations are extremely localized snapshots of reality: not just of limited details, but from limited and fleeting perspectives. Extracting information out of them, analyzing it, storing it and even retrieving it over time is just another matter altogether.

Our contact with the superior kinds is not like this, Iamblichus insists, and so we do not have to reason to or about them in the ways we reason to or about sensible reality. But how are the superior kinds not like sensibles? And so in what ways do we not have to reason to or about them?

For starters, properly speaking, for Iamblichus the κρείττονα γένη are not floating around for us to bump into as objects: they’re not reduced to spatially located masses. We do not encounter them as other. This is not to say that we do not encounter them at all as they are in other things, but that our contact with them as they are in themselves is not like this other sort of indirect contact. It is indivisible, innate, unitary, and as first principles in us. In other words, our first point of contact with them is constitutive rather than causal: they constitute us, first and foremost, and for that reason are as axiomatic, given and incorrigible as we are. We can no more consider their existence without assuming it than we can our own.

This is the sort of way we need to think about what Iamblichus is saying.

And he can see the various “kinds” as primarily being interlocked constitutively rather than causally because the Iamblichean universe is a single, seamless continuum from the one extreme of pure and unbridled Unity to the other of the very brink of non-existence.

In De Myst. I.5 Iamblichus says,

“These classes of being, then, bring to completion as intermediaries the common bond that connects gods with souls, and causes their linkage to be indissoluble. They bind together a single continuity from top to bottom, and render the communion of all things indivisible.”

And in 1.9, Iamblichus paints the following picture, worth quoting at length:

“even as the light is present in the air without blending with it…even so the light of the gods illuminates its subject transcendently, and is fixed steadfastly in itself even as it proceeds throughout the totality of existence. Even visible light, after all, is a continuum, everywhere the same throughout, so that it is not possible to cut off any part of it, nor to circumscribe it round about, nor to detach it ever from its source. On the same principle, then, the world as a whole, spatially divided as it is, brings about division throughout itself of the single, indivisible light of the gods. This light is one and the same in its entirety everywhere, is present indivisibly to all things that are capable of participating in it, and has filled everything with its perfect power; by virtue of its unlimited causal superiority it brings to completion all things within itself, and, while remaining everywhere united to itself, brings together extremities with starting-points. It is, indeed, in imitation of it that the whole heaven and cosmos performs its circular revolution, is united with itself, and leads the elements round in their cyclic dance, holds together all things as they rest within each other or are borne towards each other, defines by equal measures even the most farflung objects, causes lasts to be joined to firsts, as for example earth to heaven, and produces a single continuity and harmony of all with all.”

All of this is to say that for Iamblichus, reality is a single harmonious whole, united unbreakably by one level constituting the next. Each level anticipates the subsequent one, like a subject containing a predicate. And this is none other than the Platonic meta-causal maxim that there are no gaps in reality. Or, as Proclus said in proposition 28 of the Elements of Theology, “Every producing cause brings into existence things like to itself before the unlike.”

Iamblichus makes this clear in 1.6 when he says the intermediate classes “serve to fill out the indivisible mutuality of the two extremes [Gods and souls].”

And this sentiment goes back to Plato, in whose Symposium 202e1-7, Diotima says “‘Everything spiritual, you see, is in between god and mortal.’ ‘What is their function?’ I asked. ‘They are messengers who shuttle back and forth between the two, conveying prayer and sacrifice from men to gods, while to men they bring commands from the gods and gifts in return for sacrifices. Being in the middle of the two, they round out the whole and bind fast the all to all.'”

So whatever we say these intermediate kinds are, they are what is required to “fill out” the mutuality of the poles to a seamless reality that is constitutive of our very selves.

Tune in with us next time as we reach closer toward the “old ways” and encounter these superior kinds in the wonderful Pagan world they contain.