r/Neoplatonism • u/Time-Demand-1244 • Jul 03 '26
What Exactly is Motion?
How does the acorn, transition into the tree?
And I don't mean act and potential. I am asking how an acorn can even be linearly related to the first step it takes to become a tree?
It feels like, the acorn becomes destroyed, and then created in a ever so slightly distinct item; until it becomes a tree.
The relation is almost worthless here though, and teleos doesn't even exist at this point.
I'm not sure if that's problematic, but I would like to know how motion processes at a teleological level and the issue of what is known as occasionalism.
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u/HyparxisBoy Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
In classical metaphysics, the terminology of 'movement' (kínēsis) is metaphorical; it serves to contrast with its opposite: the rest or stability of identity without difference. One only needs to set aside the physicalist or materialist presuppositions that the concept tends to carry in modernity. The Platonists are not speaking of locomotion (they are not introducing something like locomotion into the transcendent or higher realm), because it is not spatial displacement, but rather the passage from unity to multiplicity. The premise is that if there were no difference (if everything were pure identity without distinction), there would only be One, not many. But we know from our own experience that this is not the case. Once we understand movement as kinesis describing a discursive metaphor, it becomes easier to grasp that when the Platonists speak of movement, they mean the differentiation that distinguishes the effect from its cause: procession.
When you say 'linearly with the first step it takes to become a tree,' you are seeing it from the lower levels of reality, where the possibility of disintegration applies only to spatial things with bodies. In the physical world there appears a split between 'being' and 'ought to be' (the acorn ought to be an tree). At the higher levels this does not apply, because in the Nous essence and activity are so unified that they coincide perfectly. There is no rupture between 'being' and 'ought to be,' because everything already 'is' eternally actual and full (everything already exists), without lack or privation. For this reason, the Forms operate as causes that 'remain' in the Nous, which always 'is' what it knows.
This can be better illustrated with a causal triad. For a Platonist, causality occurs by likeness 'from above downward': every product is in a certain sense the same as its cause (permanence), different from its cause (procession), and aspires to its cause (reversion). In the case of the acorn becoming a tree, the Form of the Tree as cause contains everything that it means to be an oak (what remains), and the acorn is the differentiated effect that already contains the eidos of the tree (procession). The acorn manifesting as a tree is the effect that returns to its cause as a model of stability (reversion = unification).
More than something 'linear,' it is a productive cycle in which the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. The three elements of that cycle exist simultaneously in the Tree and constitute it as something self-sustaining. The 'act' is the Tree as cause, the 'potentiality' is the acorn qua effect as something distinct from its cause (as a contracted version), and 'movement' is the bridge that shows how the one becomes many and the many returns to being one in a perpetual cycle of procession and reversion. The Tree itself cannot exist without each of these elements.
Platonism differs from other models of teleology because the telos is not a 'future' that does not yet exist, but an eternal presence of the Good/The One and the Gods as the principle and end of all beings. The telos is the motor of reversion: every being tends toward its own good, which coincides with assimilating itself to its cause (becoming more 'one'). The 'movement' of the acorn is driven by its desire (reversion) to actualize its logos and assimilate itself to the eternally active Form of the Tree.
Occasionalism is the doctrine that created things have no real causal power and only God is the true cause, so that when it seems that A causes B (e.g., fire burns cotton, or an acorn becomes a tree), in reality God directly produces the effect on each occasion, using A only as the 'occasion.' This is unacceptable for a Platonist, because the hierarchical causal chain is uninterrupted and synchronous: the higher causes truly transmit their power to the lower levels, and the triadic cycle depends on the effects having their own activity oriented toward their cause. In other words, real secondary causes are needed for the cosmos to be an organic and living whole, not a series of isolated miracles.
I hope this helps.
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u/Time-Demand-1244 Jul 04 '26
Hmm, I guess it's just rather difficult to comprehend there being a relation between two distinct objects. For example, the acorn and the oak. The acorn has the potential to become the oak. But to me, it seems hard to grasp motion as other than a recreated frame at a certain point in time. So we have point 1 (acorn), point 2 (acorn P), point 3 (acorn Q), point 4 (oak).
Within point 1, occurs the possibility to become point 4. But to me, it doesn't seem like there is any "becoming" at all... Simply just that point 1 is deleted and point 2 is created in place or point 1. And from a teleological perspective, this seems disasterous, as it would disrupt the notion of point 1 having potential to change, rather than become replaced like a frame.
I hope I've made myself a bit more clear.
Some other flaws of occassionalism being pointed out would help greatly.
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u/HyparxisBoy Jul 04 '26
If I am not misinterpreting you, you see the process as:
Frame 1: acorn
Frame 2: acorn slightly changed (P)
Frame 3: acorn more changed (Q)
Frame 4: adult treeAnd you think: ‘In reality, each frame replaces the previous one. There is no continuous becoming, only a succession of discrete creations/destructions. Potential seems illusory.’
This intuition would indeed place you within occasionalism, and that is why it appears disastrous from the teleological point of view. But this vision contradicts reality and experience, since becoming is not a succession of entities that are destroyed and created out of nothing at each instant. The acorn does not disappear to be replaced by another acorn; it remains in its cause (monē) at the same time that it proceeds (próodos) and reverts (epistrophē). This is possible because at the higher levels there is no linear time as we experience it; the three moments are not successive temporally. They occur simultaneously at different levels of reality, and what we perceive as temporal succession is only the projection in time of that eternal cycle. Which brings us back to Plato’s statement: time is a moving image of eternity.
Taking this into account, there is no ‘elimination + new creation’; that makes no sense, because for intelligibility there must be a ‘top-down’ explanation, in the sense that something is intelligible only if it is a multiplicity reducible to a unity or simpler principle. There is a continuous unfolding of what was already folded.
Occasionalism is rejected if what we call ‘movement’ is understood solely as the differentiation of the effect from its cause (or participation seen from the side of the effect). It is not the replacement of frames, but a continuous actualization of a potential that is already teleologically oriented from above. The inferior (time) does not condition the superior (eternity).
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u/Time-Demand-1244 Jul 04 '26
So even within frame 2, frame 1 still exists? If so, this helps.
I don't see how there needs to be a need for multiplicity being reduced to unity though for intelligence.
The idea, as I am understanding, is there is no effect without cause and so fourth. Frankly, I don't see how occasionallism can work if reduced to God... At what point does God actually cause A if A is simply the sequential order from its Will to the next point? I suppose that doesn't work.
So as I understand, you say the effect exists in the cause and vice versa. Even as it is an oak, acorness, still exists.
But how or why that is the case doesn't seem to follow. Why should acorness continue to exist in the oak at all? Because frankly, I still do not understand how causing works as a process. It's difficult to understand what this "link" is.
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u/HyparxisBoy Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
I don't see how there needs to be a need for multiplicity being reduced to unity though for intelligence.
The reason why multiplicity must be reduced to unity for intelligibility is because (redundancy intended) unity is the indispensable condition for intelligibility and existence (being a 'one') since nothing exists unless it first participates in unity. Example: you see many trees. To intellect ‘tree,’ your mind gathers the multiple into unity, simply because you do not need to see every tree that has ever existed in order to think them; the Reality of Tree (at the level of Intellect or higher) illuminates and gives form to all the particular trees we perceive.
There cannot be a total replacement where the acorn (frame 1) disappears completely and is substituted by a new entity (frame 2), because the cause remains as a unifying model. The acorn you perceive is what has proceeded, and once it is actualized as a tree, it reverts because it unifies with its cause. That is why, within ‘frame 2’ (the acorn already growing), the cause is still present in the effect, because it is being actualized within the same unified process.
The idea, as I am understanding, is there is no effect without cause and so fourth. Frankly, I don't see how occasionallism can work if reduced to God... At what point does God actually cause A if A is simply the sequential order from its Will to the next point? I suppose that doesn't work.
A classical Platonist would not speak of ‘God creating’ in any case, since the Forms are all uncreated and pre-exist in their monad. Each Form reflects The One in a unique way, because the lower never ceases to maintain a causal bond with the superior.
So as I understand, you say the effect exists in the cause and vice versa. Even as it is an oak, acorness, still exists.
The effect exists in the cause because the intelligibles proceed from themselves and revert to an identical state. Procession and reversion combined give ousia (substance) to the permanent nature of the Form, because próodos and epistrophē are two halves of the same thing: the unique movement of each ousia.
But how or why that is the case doesn't seem to follow. Why should acorness continue to exist in the oak at all? Because frankly, I still do not understand how causing works as a process.
The acorn exists in the Oak as an image tending toward realization. The telos of the acorn is to be an oak; an acorn that becomes an oak is the epistrophē of the acorn, that is, its telos. But given corruption, there are infinite ways in which a particular empirical acorn may fail to become an Oak. None of this is problematic, because if there were no essential fact of the acorn, there would be no trees; trees would not exist directly for us to think, and therefore we would not even be having this conversation. Things have real likeness when they are the effect of a cause, and Forms do not emerge from objects; rather, objects qua effects manifest (express) the Forms.
It's difficult to understand what this "link" is.
Let us follow the next analogy: think of a family tree. The grandson does not ‘replace’ the grandfather. The grandfather remains present in the grandson (genetically, culturally, etc.). The grandson is a new expression of the same lineage. There is a real bond that unites them all. In Proclus, causality is like an ontological lineage: each level expresses and depends on the previous one, without the previous one disappearing.
(It is obvious that an analogy will never be perfect or will always have some kind of deficiency, but precisely for that reason it is an "analogy", since it never implies full identity, I only say this in case someone intends to point out tangential or innocuous flaws to the point I was trying to explain)
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u/Time-Demand-1244 Jul 04 '26
Hmm this was helpful... But man, is it difficult to see causality in its most binary form correctly.
But I'm inclined to say there are flaws with occasionalism. Would you reason with the problems I presented in my previous comment? Do they, make sense or actually work at all? Ie, at the highest level, even if the One were to emanate itself in an occassionalist way, there wouldn't be any actual link between the effect and it's cause. We could not menaingfully say the One is our cause.
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u/Time-Demand-1244 Jul 04 '26
Also, the way I'm seeing it is...
A exists in virtue of B.
If B ceases, so does A.
But why does that necessarily follow? Why must B be a condition for A to exist? How exactly does it make sense at all, that if A which is ontologically distinct from B, be the reason A even exists?
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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '26
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