From Order to System.

The Neoplatonic Basis of Modern Legal Theory

by Maurizio Manzin
University of Trento, Italy

I wish to report, in necessarily general and brief manner, the partial results of my research on
legal methodology begun in 1999 and discussed in M. Manzin, Alle origini del pensiero
sistematico (2003: a revised version will soon be published). I gave a first account of this research
to the 99 IVR World Conference in New York (the paper was then published in Riv. Ital. Fil. Dir.
1, 2000). My concern at that time was with Isidore of Seville and his conception of the dialectic,
while my studies since then have led to a partial adjustment of my initial conclusions. During
these inquiries, the work of John Scottus Eriugena has struck me as the watershed in that
particular view of the universal order which thereafter extented such great influence on
scholasticism. Indeed, thanks to Eriugena’s translation of Pseudo-Dionysius (5th to 6th century
A.D.), the latter’s complex conception of the hierarchical order became incorporated into
medieval political and legal thought.
My interest then shifted to Neoplatonic philosophy and its formation, for I wanted to
understand the intellectual setting which had produced Dionysian thought. Thus began a course
of inquiry that led me backwards to Plato and the first Neoplatonists. My intent was to
determine the origins and development of the concept of hierarchical order which – via Pseudo-
Dionysius, scholasticism, modern legal rationalism and German dogmatism of the nineteenth
century – persisted until the beginning of the last century and still flourishes today.
In Plato, as we know, ‘order’, ‘justice’ and ‘harmony’ are concepts so closely intertwined that
they seemingly overlap and become interchangeable. Order and all the rest exist when the different
parts of a whole are coordinated by one common principle. Hence in Plato order is closely bound
up with the relationship between unity (as identity of something with itself) and difference. Plato
rejected the Eleatic axiom that “being is and not-being is not” which denied every difference on

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the ground that difference consists precisely in ‘not-being’. His problem was to determine the
logical status of opinions, given that an opinion is not a certain truth, but neither can it be said to
be wholly false. The ‘mixed’ genus of truth and untruth represented by opinions was
unacceptable to Eleatic philosophy, which admitted no alternatives to the true/false dichotomy.
Plato resolved the matter by adopting the formula set out in the Sophist that “being in a certain
sense is not, and not-being, on the other hand, is”, thereby assuming responsibility for the so-
called ‘parricide’. Against the Eleatics he argued that being (as identity of something with itself)
and not-being (as difference of something from something else) are co-original and inseparable.
The crucial point in Plato’s argument is that they are so by virtue of the fact that the one is not
the absolute opposite of the other: if they were, they would be mutually exclusive. As Aristotle
subsequently pointed out, being has various possible modalities, and not-being is always relative
to something.
The conclusions of the Sophist were long studied and discussed by the Neoplatonist school of
the Hellenistic era. They were adapted in the light of the theology set out in Parmenides and
Timaeus, so that the question of the relationship between identity and difference became
substantially that of the relationship between the One and the many. However, from Plotinus
onwards, a markedly positive connotation was given to unity to the detriment of multiplicity: the
One was said to be the truly perfect and divine entity; the many were considered as degradated
forms of being. The idea that the many are imperfect with respect to the One (which sprang from
ambiguities in Parmenides and Timaeus) entailed a dualistic psychology and ethics whereby
mundane reality always fell short of the divine principle – with the consequent belittlement of
material life compared to contemplation and mysticism. Indeed, the great divide between the One
and the many could only be bridged by a mystic impulse that gradually denied every form of
material life and logical thought (which were confined by space and time and therefore necessarily
betrayed the utterly transcendent nature of the One).
This tendency towards asceticism and apophatism – which was perhaps also due to Gnostic
influence – was not particularly pronounced in Plotinus. But it became very evident in his pupil
Porphyrius, to the extent that the Enneads (which were compiled by Porphyrius) bear traces of

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it. This can be deduced from Porphyrius’ declaration in his autobiography that he altered his
notes on his master’s lessons in order to confer greater ‘order’ (taxis) upon them. One may
consequently argue that the development of Neoplatonic thought gave rise to a concept of order
founded on the absolute excellence of unity compared to multiplicity and difference. Indeed, for
the Neoplatonists, order was the supremacy of unity over multiplicity at both logical and
ontological levels. If associated with the radical unpredictability of the One, which condemns
mankind to be constantly exiled from the divine Principle, this idea helps us in understanding
how the world of intelligible and sensible beings were abandoned to the oracular and theurgic
practices manifest from Porphyrius and his pupil Iamblichus onwards.
In my personal view, for which I have not yet found confirmation in other authors, Porphyrius
may have come under the influence of Origenes, whom he had frequented in his youth. Indeed,
this Father of the Church displays a similar ambivalence due, on the one hand, to his penchant for
rigorous and systematic thought (to the point that Grabmann calls Origenes the precursor of the
scholastic method) and on the other to his mystic and ascetic tendencies.
The notion of order as the absolute predominance of identity over difference (which was also
fostered by neo-Pythagorean doctrines) was given brilliant systematization around a century
after Iamblichus in the mathematical thought of Proclus. A sort of Hilbert of the 5th Century
A.D., Proclus sought to apply geometric method to theology by means of strictly mathematical
axioms and proofs. The key aspects of his philosophy were the following:
(a) the ordering of knowledge by means of theorems deduced from “non-contradictory principles
and causes”;
(b) proof that everything originates from and returns to the One (i.e. that every apparent
difference in things is not original and is bound to dissolve);
(c) specification of the techniques that would enable restoration of original unity by progressive
reductions (i.e. so-called ‘theurgy’).
Proclus’ philosophy, therefore, combined mathematism, mysticism and the supremacy of unity
over diversity. It greatly influenced the development of medieval scholastic thought, giving it a
marked causalist, teleological and hierarchical bent, and provided robust rational justification for

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its ascetic radicalism.
The medievals were acquainted with Proclus from two main sources: the Liber de causis (an
Arab-made compendium of his Stoichéiosis), and the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite, especially after their translation by John Scottus Eriugena. With regard to the Liber
de causis, its Neoplatonist devotion to the One and its disparagement of the multiple was
congenial to the pronounced monism of Arab culture. This conditioned both the selection of the
passages from Proclus included in the Liber, and as a consequence, the reflections of scholastic
philosophers on the question of unity. This is well exemplified by Aquinas (whose knowledge of
both Dionysius and the Liber de causis is documented) and his notion that both natural and
human law depend on a divine universal order (the so-called lex aeterna) in which logical as well
as ontological entities ‘descend’ from a single originative principle. The basis for this contention
was the (inductive?) observation that everything that can be experienced is the effect of a
particular cause. This observation was then universalized until the existence of a single, uncaused
and transcendent cause was postulated. (I note in passing that the idea that the One engenders the
many typical of creationism is self-contradictory, because it considers the One, as cause, to be
part of the whole constituted by the cause and the effects. Hence if the One is a part it cannot be
the whole, and therefore cannot be considered a universal principle).
As to the second Proclusian source in the Middle Age – the corpus dionysianum – its main
importance resides in the fact that Dionysius was able to ‘Christianize’ the thought of Proclus so
that it became acceptable to a non-pagan society and its new religion (it should not be forgotten
that in 529 A.D. Justinian decreed the closure of the Neoplatonic School of Athens). I am well
aware that such an authoritative scholar as von Ivanka attributes to Dionysius a certain
originality and autonomy with respect to Proclus. Yet, I submit, the corpus dionysianum reprises
all the fundamental assumptions of the latter’s thought: first the marked deductivism of its logic;
then its orderly and hierarchical description, its resumption of the Neoplatonic scheme of
‘procession-permanence-return’, the gnostic-esque distinction between initiates and non-initiates,
its implicit apophatism; and finally the absolute monism of the One-Principle which like a “fire
that devours all” or “divine darkness” could at any moment annihilate the (deceptiveness of)

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multiplicity and difference – briefly stated, the world. I find it difficult to imagine that there is
space amid such doctrines for the freedom of human subject, as von Ivanka instead contends.
Medieval legal science was obviously an off-shoot of these broad philosophical notions. They
conditioned it mainly after the period of transition between the ‘glossators’ and the
‘commentators’, culminating with Bartholus, Baldus and Cynus. Through philosophers and
jurists, the idea of a rational and knowable universal order influenced medieval jus publicum, and
– consequently – the development of modern legal-political thought (consider Jean Bodin, for
example). Contrary to what one might believe (if inspired by an ideological prejudice) , the
reductio ad unum wrought by political absolutism owes much more to Bartholus and Montaigne
than to the theories of Thomas Hobbes, who was rather ignorant of (and ignored by) the legal
culture of his time. The nation-state and national law are nothing but the application within a
legal-political context of the Neoplatonic concepts of unity, order and hierarchy on which the
multiple beings (“intelligibles” as well as subjects or laws) depend. Indeed, I suggest that the
medieval Latin term superanitas (sovereignity) derived from the binomial super unitas (super
unity), although I fear that philologists will not let me get away with this provocation.
It is beyond doubt, however, that the Dionysian theory of hierarchies reappears in the
principal political doctrines put forward, from Charles the Bald to Boniface VIII, in order to
justify the supremacy of the spiritual power over the temporal one. As I have sought to show
elsewhere (Manzin 1998), the constriction of St Augustine’s political philosophy and his De
civitate Dei so that the ‘city of God’ became the Church and the ‘earthly city’ the Empire largely
came about under the influence of Neoplatonism (and therefore Dionysianism) in the medieval
period.
The fact that secularization subsequently – from the eighteenth century onwards – eliminated
the transcendent character of certain institutions (the Church or the King) did not substantially
alter the terms of the question. Instead, the unity that reigns supreme and from which all entities
emanate was restricted to the purely material dimension (one thinks, for example, of Linnaeus’
classification, the periodic table of the elements, or even Big Bang theory), and then to the solely
formal and linguistic one by neopositivism (i.e. ‘logical’ under a reductive definition of the term).

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 Interestingly, coherence defined as correct connection between the terms of a formal system (so
that given a then b), has been adopted as the maximum ‘formula of certainty’, on analogy with
causal deduction (given cause a then effect b). This adoption, concealed behind a certain
Aristotelianism (but in reality of Neoplatonic origin), dates back to medieval scholasticism
(consider John Buridanus and Nicolas d’Autrecourt, for example) . Modernity made it the
foundation of its science. And still today it holds sway among legal philosophers, despite the
assault made on formalism by the physical-mathematical theories of the twentieth century
(Mach, Einstein, Heisenberg, Gödel and Turing). Any reference to Hans Kelsen, of course, is
deliberate.
The main reason for the formula’s great success is that it guarantees predictability/certainty.
Yet it is increasingly obvious that the maximum of predictability/certainty can only be achieved
in highly formalized, and therefore artificial, systems, ones very distant from the concrete reality
of events. As Einstein said, the more axiomatic theories are exact, the less they have to do with
reality; the more they have to do with reality, the less they are exact. It is consequently of
especial urgency for legal philophers and sociologists of law to conduct critical examination of the
notion of order in the legal, social and political systems derived from the Neoplatonic tradition.
This entails a search for a different and more dynamic concept of order suited for so-called ‘open’
systems (those, therefore, with necessarily low levels of formalization). This endeavour has for
some time been carried forward in the branch of the philosophy of language inspired expecially
by Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations which concerns itself with pragmatics (as regards
the philosophy of law, I cite the work of Dennis Patterson).
Obviously, the problem is the extent to which we are willing to abandon the rigour of logical-
formal procedures in order to address the concrete (and unpredictable) reality of events. Do we
not run the risk of abandoning science, in this case legal, to the dominion of facts, without being
able to distinguish between those that are ethically desirable and those that are not? The risk of
generalized relativism is anything but theoretical in societies dominated by ‘postmodern culture’.
We are all aware that the most perilous reaction to it would be the reduction of law to a mere
technique in the exercise of power, to mere calculation of force.

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 The current state of my researches and the necessarily limited amount of space available here
prevent thorough discussion of all these questions. I shall therefore do no more that point them
out. I would add, however, a final suggestion. If it is true that the roots of the modern concepts of
order and system extend deeply into the history of Western philosophy, then it is that history
which can yield forms of thought alternative and opposite to those concepts. As I have said,
some years ago I had occasion to study the philosophy of St Augustine. I found in some of his
writings (De ordine especially) lines of thought which seemed to lead back to certain pre-Socratic
philosophers, like Heraclitus and Parmenides, or Christian ones like John the Evangelist. Study of
these outstanding representatives of classical thought yielded the crucial finding of the co-
originality of identity and difference. This stands in contrast to the millenary tendency, first
Neoplatonic and then modern, that has given rise to an ‘equality complex’ which – in different
and sometimes aggressive forms – has sought to reduce differences to unities deemed perfect and
desirable. If borne in mind, this finding leads inevitably to a dynamic concept of order open to the
changing manifestations of the ‘Principle of all things’. Thus human reason will express not
dogmatic but problematic theoretical, political and legal constructs – that is, ones open to
constant improvement as the quest proceeds for a truth which is logically undeniable (because of
the Skeptic’s contradiction) and irreducible to a formal system of propositions (according to
Gödel, always “incomplete”). A quest that must take the form of rigorous and constant dialogue
much more than the devising of abstract systems whose cogency must be backed by the use of
force, however well regulated.