Proclus

Proclus , 410?-485, Neoplatonic philosopher, b. Constantinople. He studied at Alexandria and at Athens, where he was a pupil of the Platonist Syrianus, whom he succeeded as a teacher. As a partisan of paganism he was forced to leave Athens, but he returned at the end of a year. A synthesizer of Neoplatonic doctrines, Proclus gave the philosophy its most systematic form. He kept the elements of Plotinus, but introduced a principle of triadic development in the series of emanations; the three stages are an original, an emergence from the original, and a return in a lower form to the original. Proclus differed from Plotinus in regard to the origin of matter, which he held to emerge from the first emanation rather than from the plastic forces. Among his writings are commentaries on several Platonic dialogues and two treatises, On Plato's Theology and Institutes of Theology. See Neoplatonism .

Bibliography: See Fragments of the Lost Writings of Proclus (ed. by R. Navon, tr. by T. Taylor, 1987).

Proclus (410 or 412–85), Neoplatonist philosopher. He spent most of his life in Athens, first as a student and later as head of the Academy. His writings are the main source of our knowledge of late Athenian Neoplatonism. His philosophy is a systematization of the thought of Plotinus, combined with an appreciation of the effectiveness of the pagan religious cult as a way of establishing contact with the Divine. His works include the Elements of Theology, a concise summary of Neoplatonic metaphysics, and his more elaborate Platonic Theology.

Proclus (c.410–85). Neoplatonic philosopher. His many works expound a systematization of the form of Neoplatonism derived from Plotinus via Iamblichus and Syrianus. In line with this tradition, he set considerable store by theurgy (‘divine action’), a kind of white magic that exploited the sympathy between elements and processes underlying the unity of the cosmos, to further the ascent of the soul to the One.