Elements of Theology
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Thomas Taylor
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 1 illegible passage, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~300,000 words · 1,404 passages
Cite this work
- APAProclus. (n.d.). Elements of Theology (Thomas Taylor, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proclus/elements-of-theology
- MLAProclus. Elements of Theology. Translated by Thomas Taylor. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proclus/elements-of-theology.
- ChicagoProclus. Elements of Theology. Translated by Thomas Taylor. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proclus/elements-of-theology.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Two hundred and eleven propositions on the One, the hypostases and the return of all things to their source, proved one after another as though it were geometry.
Context and history
The form is the thesis: Proclus writes Neoplatonism in Euclid's manner, statement and proof, with no dialogue. The book had an unforeseen second life: an adaptation made in the Arabic world passed into Latin as the Liber de causis, and for centuries Europe read it as if it were by Aristotle. It was Aquinas who identified its origin, once he could set it beside this text in translation.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
tfaings causally subsist, absorbed in superesseotial light, and involved in unfathomable depths, a beauteous progeny of principles proceed, ail largely partaking of the ineffable, all stamped widi the occult characters of deitjr, all possessing an overflowing fulness of good. From these dazzling summits, these ineffable blossoms, these divine propagations, being, life, intellect, soul, nature, and body depend; monads suspended from unities, deified natures proceeding from deities. Each of these monads too, is the leader of a series which extends from itself to the last of diings, add which while it proceeds from, at the same time abides in, and returns, to its leader. And all these principles and all their progeny are finally centered and rooted by their summits in the first great iA-compre« bending one. Thus all beings proceed from, and are comprehended in the first being ; all intel^ lects emanate from one first intellect ; all souls from one first soul ; all natures blossom from otie first nature ; and aU. bodies proceed from the vital and luminous body of die world. . And lastly, all these great monads are comprdiended in the first one, from which both they and all their depending series are unfolded into light. Hence this first one is truly the unity of unities, the monad of monads, the principle of principles, the God of Gods, one and all things, and yet one prior to aH.