endymions_bower | Comments on some articles by E. Viveiros de Castro

Some Comments on "Perspectival Anthropology and the Method of Controlled Equivocation" by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (https://www.academia.edu/49762936/Perspectival_anthropology_and_the_method_of_controlled_equivocation)

Expanding the scope of "transpecific personhood" to apply as well to Gods, who ground conceptual universes in and among Themselves, establishes a ground of personhood underneath the impersonal, translatable Ideas of the "monocultural" space. This impersonal space, as opposed to the personal topoi or places embodied by pantheons, the "worlds" of VdC's "multinaturalism", is akin to the liminal theoretical space "between" pantheons in which I have argued that Proclus' Elements of Theology, and the potential polytheistic philosophy of religion founded on it, is located. The Elements, as such, can be seen as a sort of speculative statement of VdC's proposed anthropological method.

"The aim of perspectivist translation …is not that of finding a 'synonym' (a co-referential representation) … Rather, the aim is to avoid losing sight of the difference concealed within equivocal 'homonyms'…". The remarks about translation and equivocation in this essay demonstrate the importance of a critique of the unlimited and univocal translatability presumed by Jan Assmann's conception of a universal "cosmotheism" and its pantheistic erasure of polytheism(s).

"perspectivism supposes a constant epistemology and variable ontologies"—This is what I mean when I say that Platonism is not itself an ontology, but rather a method for the analysis of ontologies; one could just as well say that Platonism is an epistemology, rather than an ontology.

"Two partners in any relation are defined as connected in so far as they can be conceived to have something in common, that is, as being in the same relation to a third term … The Amazonian model of the relation could not be more different … since Amazonian ontologies postulate difference rather than identity as the principle of relationality." Compare these remarks to Proclus' analysis of relations among henads, as I have discussed often (e.g., Dionysius 23 (2005)). The relation between two henads is not a third thing, aRb, but rather the power of b in a, on the one hand, and the power of a in b, on the other, which are productive of R on a lower ontological plane. Henadology is thus the expression of the fundamentally perspectival nature of being.

"The opposite of difference is not identity but indifference". Compare this with the issue of conflict between Gods, as I and some interlocutors were discussing recently (gathered here: https://endymions-bower.dreamwidth.org/59662.html). The conflict between Gods has as its opposite, not Their affinity, but rather the lack of engagement between Gods who do not feature in any myths together.

Notes on "The Crystal Forest: Notes on the Ontology of Amazonian Spirits" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/23614989)

I think that the concept of "background molecular humanity" in this discourse is better understood as a fundamental, non-specific personhood.

"This pre-cosmos, very far from displaying any 'indifferentiation' or originary identification between humans and nonhumans … is pervaded by an infinite difference … internal to each persona or agent, in contrast to the finite and external differences constituting the species and qualities of our contemporary world."

This distinction between the "infinite" difference of each agent and the "finite" difference among class-properties of every sort is particularly amenable to being formulated in henadological Platonic terms, where the unique is precisely the infinitely different, infinitely othering itself from what would determine it, which is precisely the source of its productivity or creativity. This is why Gods are creators, because They are unique.

"the originary transparency or infinite complicatio where everything seeps into everything else bifurcates or explicates itself … into a relative invisibility (human souls and animal spirits) and a relative opacity (the human body and the somatic animal 'clothing')…" We can see this as the Platonic procession from the all-in-each of the henads to the dialectical opposition of "form" and "matter".

"each mythic being differs infinitely from itself, given that it is posited by mythic discourse only to be substituted, that is, transformed". That is, each henad, as an absolute agency and absolutely unique individual, is capable of any eidetic variation in principle.

"It is this self-difference which defines a spirit, and which makes all mythic beings into spirits too." For "spirits" here, one could simply read henads. "Self-difference" is not normally how we would expect to speak of henads, but from the perspective of ontology it makes sense, because of Their radical freedom relative to ontic identity.

"The supposed indifferentiation between mythic subjects is a function of their radical irreducibility to fixed essences or identities, whether these are generic, specific, or individual." The individuality rejected here is not of the sort which pertains to the proper name, which is a "who-ness" unconstrained by any "what-ness".

"where transformation is anterior to form, relation is superior to terms"—Transformation is anterior to form in that form is produced in the first place through the henadic activity presented to us through mythic narrative; this is "transformation". "Relation is superior to terms" not in the sense of ontic relations, which are precisely constitutive of the "fixed essences or identities" to which he has just said that mythic subjects are radically irreducible. Rather, the relations in question have to be the unique relations of unique agents, which is all that we see in myths.

"The generic notion of 'invisible nonhumans' would seem to unify adequately enough the internal diversity of this 'category'; yet the problem remains that these nonhumans possess fundamental human determinations, whether at the level of their basic corporeal form, or at the level of their intentional and agentive capacities." That is to say, they are "persons", designated as "who" and not "what" (at least, not in any way that determines Them rather than being determined by Them, by their activity and agency).

"By the same token, what defines an 'image' is its eminent visibility: an image is something-to-be-seen, it is the necessary objective correlative of a gaze, an exteriority which posits itself as the target of an intentionally aimed look; but the xapiripë are interior images, inaccessible to the empirical exercise of vision. Hence, they must be the object of a superior or transcendental exercise of this faculty: images that are as the condition of the species of which they are the image."

Clearly this is not "image" in any derivative sense, but much more like the Greek eidos or even better, symbolon or sunthēma. Every such entity has a series of participants which it "illuminates".

"non-representational images, 'representatives' that are not representations … the xapiripë do not look like animals, but in the mytho-shamanic context, animals do look like them," i.e., are their intellective emissaries or angeloi.

"less an object than an event"—cp. Trouillard's unfortunate characterization of henads as "events of participation" in the One.

"Aside from their dazzling luminosity, the xapiripë, as percepts, display two other determining features, tiny-ness and innumerability"—both of which correspond to Thales' "all things are full of Gods".

"superabundance of being: 'when I was younger, I used to ask myself whether the xapiripë could die like humans. But

today I know that, though tiny, they are powerful and immortal'." This eliminates one of the typical reasons why people deny that the term "Gods" should be used of some class of entities, namely that they are not immortal or insufficiently powerful.

"Ontological exponentiation"—cp. hyperousios, "supra-essential", as said of the henads or Gods.