Aphrodite in Iliad V: Conclusions [Part 4]

From a perspective grounded in the Aphroditology of the later Platonists, I have presented in the previous posts a symbolic exegesis of the lifting of Aeneas from battle and the wounding of Aphrodite by Diomedes in Iliad V. This reading firstly identifies Aeneas and Aphrodite with the individual and universal Soul, respectively, through a Plotinian psychology-as-thealogy. Then, it recognizes the wounding of Aphrodite as a theurgic symbolon, in the manner Proclus understands this term in his Commentary on Plato’s Republic: a symbol which communicates higher, ineffable and transcendent realities through their opposite. The contradictory nature of the symbolon is where its anagogic power lies, by the tension between the symbol and that which is symbolized propelling us to contemplation. Thus, the wounding of Aphrodite, in the perspective of late Platonic Aphroditology, communicates both the union of the individual soul with her and her transcendence, being within the Proclean anagogic triad. 

With all of this said, it seems to me very apt for Van Kooten to compare the figure of Christ in the Gospel of John with that of Aphrodite in Iliad V. Both Aphrodite and Christ play a crucial role in the soul’s salvation, and the scene of their wounding carries soteriological significance. However, Van Kooten compares them in a manner which abstracts both the Homeric episode from the longue durée of the allegorical tradition of reading Homer (cf. Lamberton 1986, 10-44 for the archaic, Presocratic precursors to the Neoplatonic authors discussed in this series) and the theology of Aphrodite and Eros from the whole Platonic corpus. 

Concerning this latter point, he contrasts the divinity of the Johannine Christ with Eros as characterized in the speech of Diotima in Symposium (Van Kooten 2023, 648-654), where he appears as an intermediary daimon and not a God. He essentializes this as the definitive view of Plato on Eros, when he writes that “in comparison with Plato’s view of the semi-divine, intermediary, daimonic status of Love, John’s insistence on the full, unrestricted divinity of the god of Love – that the god is love – is really revolutionary and is a conscious modification of Platonic thought” (Van Kooten 2023, 650).

The primary issue with this reading of Plato presents itself in Phaedrus 242d9, where Socrates and Phaedrus affirm that Eros is a God and is the son of Aphrodite. This section of Phaedrus is directly quoted by Plotinus (En. III.5.2.1-4), deepening the primary aporia of his treatise on Eros (“Concerning Eros, whether he is some God or a daimon or some affection of the soul, or some God or daimon on the one hand and an affection of the Soul on the other, and each in what manner – concerning this, it is worth examining …” En. III.5.1.1-3, my translation). Van Kooten quotes from Phaedrus 242e (Van Kooten 2023, 649), but ignores the preceding affirmation, whereas Plotinus aims to offer an interpretation of Platonic Eros which holds both Phaedrus and Diotima’s speech in Symposium as authoritative.

Rather than locate the axis of disagreement between the Platonic tradition and Gospel of John in the question of whether Eros is (a) God, given the exegesis of Iliad V which I have provided, I would highlight the differences in soteriology. These differences are a direct consequence of Platonic Aphroditology and Erotics. This primary difference follows the Platonic understanding of the relationship between individual Soul and the Gods: the disincarnate Aphrodite is a feature, not a bug, of Platonic theology.

Ancient authors seem to have been aware that the manifestly polytheistic tradition of Platonic Erotics stood as an alternative to a Christian theology of love. Tuomo Lankila, for instance, notes that Proclus’ Hymn to Aphrodite addresses her as the Erōtotokos, or the Eros-Bearer; “it would be tempting to think that with this epithet Proclus is intentionally echoing and developing a parallel to the evolving Christian doctrine of Mary [as Theotokos]” (Lankila 2009, 23, footnote 8). Furthermore, Christian authors such as Evagrius and Theodoret appear to have attacked traditional Greek religion because of its overt erotic symbolism. They singled out Aphrodite, among all pagan divinities, as especially objectionable: “from the Christian point of view, such as that of Theodoret and his contemporaries, every aspect of the enemy was concentrated in the archetypal figure of Aphrodite” (Lankila 2012, 28-38).

But beyond simply the prevalence of sexual imagery and metaphor in the myths and ritual practices associated with Aphrodite and Eros, I will argue that a deeper soteriological difference between the Neoplatonic and Christian views here lies in the identification of Aphrodite with the Soul. What makes Aphrodite a savior (σώτειρα) in the reception of Iliad V within the Hymns of Proclus is her identity with the Soul of the Cosmos and the causal connection this establishes between her and individual souls, whereby souls proceed from and revert to her. She is able to play the anagogic role she does because of this identification. This is made more explicit in Plotinian Aphroditology, because he directly identifies the individual Soul as a daimonic Aphrodite (En. III.5.4.18-25; cf. VI.9.9.31), which is never disconnected from the omnipresent cosmic soul, Aphrodite Pandemos, and therefore also always united with the hypostatic and undescended Soul, Aphrodite Ourania. 

It is this essential connection with a higher hypostasis (“for she [the soul] is connected to the Soul in the Intelligible World and is from that Soul”; En. III.5.3.36-38, my translation) which makes possible the ascent to the first principle. This connection is indeed mediated by daimonic Eros (cf. Phaedrus 252d-253c concerning leading-gods within the chariot procession and erotic longing), which Van Kooten identifies in Symposium, but the metaphysical framework for this mediation is the unbroken connection to and identity with the Heavenly Aphrodite and thereby with her son, Eros as a God (“This Eros leading each soul towards goodness would be the god born of the Soul above, always united with the Soul in the intelligible world, while the daimon is born of the mixed soul,” En. III.5.4.23-25). 

Because each and every soul is Aphrodite and therefore ‘births’ their own Eros which pushes the soul to revert back to the first principle (En. III.5.3.36-38), the cause of the ascent to the Good is present in each and every individual Soul. This cause, Eros, is also identified by Plotinus with the One/Good itself (En. VI.8.15.1-2).

When we compare this psychology to Plotinus’ statements on Eudaimonia, what emerges as a consequence of his Aphroditology and Erotics is a theory of universal salvation:

This passage has a number of correspondences to Plotinus’ views of the ascent to Beauty via Eros. Firstly, the characterization of the “perfect life” as transcending perception and moving up to “genuine intellect” mirrors the Plotinian reception of the ladder of Diotima (ascent from sensible beauties to intellectual beauties and finally, in I.6.6-9, the primary Beauty identical to the Good). This ladder also corresponds to the rungs of the Platonic divided line of Republic 509d-511e, which ranks “calculative reasoning and a genuine Intellect” higher than belief (pistis); contrast this with John 20:31:  

Secondly, for someone who has completed this ascent and attained the perfect life, the Good is “for him, what he possesses. And the transcendental cause of goodness [is] in him in one way, [and] present to him in another.” This identification with and presence of the Good within oneself is a perfection of desire, as “one who is like this does not seek anything else”.

The strong claim here, however, which I think is fair to characterize as a response to the theology of Love as propounded in the Gospels, is that to be a human being is to have “in potency [or] in actuality, where we actually locate happiness”. When set in erotic terms, this is to say that each soul either potentially can reach the Good through their Eros, the activity [energeia] of their Soul, or actually has done so (cf. En. I.6.8.25-27; Smith 2019, 79 on Plotinian “optimism”). Recalling that the Platonic conception of the soul is of an eternal, immortal, transmigrating, self-moving essence, there is a clear outline here for a Plotinian universalist soteriology grounded in the erotic ascent to the divine, an ascent made possible by Aphrodite Erōtotokos and potently, theurgically symbolized through her wounding in Iliad V.

Contrast this with, again, John 20:31: καὶ ἵνα πιστεύοντες ζωὴν ἔχητε ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι αὐτοῦ. The subjunctive nature of the verb gives it the sense of ‘may’ or ‘might’. The addressee of John’s writing ‘may have life in his name’, while the “we” of Plotinus’ I.4.4 has the perfect life already, either actually or potentially. In his treatise “On ‘Potentially’ and ‘Actually’”, En. II.5, Plotinus argues that any potentiality is grounded in a prior actuality. Plotinus identifies (II.5.3.30-41) the prior actuality for all potentiality of the soul – including that of eudaimonia through the perfection of our Eros, the activity of the Soul longing for the Good – to be the higher soul which remains in the intelligible world. In other words, Aphrodite Ourania is the actuality of true and everlasting eudaimonia.

The historical reception of the Gospel has generally rejected universalist forms of soteriology. On the other hand, the Plotinian erotics affirms it unambiguously. Because Eros is a God (contrary to Van Kooten’s prioritizing Symposium over Phaedrus) and through our identity with his Mother Aphrodite Ourania – an identity which rests on the fact that we are, essentially, immaterial souls not distinct from her as the transcendent hypostasis, Soul – each and every one of us is eternally capable of reaching eudaimonia and sōteria: the actuality of these things already exists in the hypostasis from which all souls proceed and to which all souls revert. 

We are, in a sense, already in this final state because of the undescended Soul. Hence, Plotinus tells us in I.6.9.15-25, after telling us to ‘never stop working on our statues’ or pursuing virtue:

To return where we and Van Kooten started, the debate in Contra Celsum was concerning Iliad V:340 affirming Gods do not bleed blood and John 19:34 affirming blood flowing from the side of the crucified Christ. From the Plotinian perspective, “a beautiful body comes to be through its association [koinōnia] with a principle having come from divinities [theiōn]” (I.6.2.27-28); the Gods are not themselves made of flesh. The immateriality of the individual soul, its difference from body and matter, makes possible the koinōnia with higher realities, of which a beautiful body is an effect. In Plotinus’ view, one cannot have any eternal, lasting koinōnia with a being made of flesh and blood: Celsus’ objection and reference to Homer stands, because for Plotinus the fact that the Gods did not incarnate as a mortal man makes it possible for mortal, embodied souls to ascend to their higher causes.

References

Gerson, Lloyd P. (ed.) (2018), The Enneads. Boys-Stones, George; Dillon, John M.; Gerson, Lloyd P.; King, R.A.H.; Smith, Andrew; Wilberding, James (trs.). (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Homer (1920), Homeri Opera in five volumes. (Oxford, Oxford University Press)

Lamberton, Robert (1986), Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonic Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition. (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Lankila, Tuomo (2009), “Aphrodite in Proclus’ Theology”. Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture: 3.21-43.

Lankila, Tuomo (2012), “Proclus, Erototokos and ‘The Great Confusion’: Neoplatonist Defense of Polytheistic Piety in Early Byzantine Athens”. (Doctoral Dissertation: University of Jyväskylä).

Van Kooten, George (2022), “Bleeding Blood, Not Ichor – Christ the ‘Gottmensch’: A Comparison of the Johannine Incarnate God of Love with Homer’s Aphrodite, Plato’s Daimōn of Love, and Modern Discourse” in Dochhorn, Jan, Hirsch-Luipold, Rainer and Tanaseanu-Döbler, Ilinca (Eds.), Über Gott: Festschrift für Reinhard Feldmeier zum 70. Geburtstag. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck).

Wilson, Emily (Tr.) (2023), The Iliad. (New York: W.W. Norton).