Commentary on the Beginning of Damascius' De Primis Principiis

16[36] it may be. Now the def inite determinateness (however abstract) of a contentimplies its being “set against” other contents equally determinate (though, maybe,more or less abstract), just as its self-identity as that determinate content which it is,is the other side of its oth erness from other contents. Thus, evidently,determinateness (alike in contents and in concepts“intending” contents)presupposes a multiplicity one of whose members the particular determinateness inquestion is. Consequently, every proper conception conce ives τὶ τῶν πάντων, as D.says, since it conceives a determinate content, which, just in virtue of its bearing(and consisting in) a definite determinateness, contrasts itself to, ultimately, everyother ontologically available (= subsisting) content.But if this is our mind ’s proper way of conceiving, we can attain to somethinghigher, something of the nature of a principle, by striving towards a διακάθαρσις ofour conceptions. This “thorough purification” consists in trying to lay aside preciselythat afo rementioned definite determinateness which goes together with theconceived content’s being one out of many (co-ordinated in some way or other)contents. This “purging” from our conceptions of the μερισμός, of the division intoparts, which is implicit in our normal understanding of determinateness (and of therealm of reality towards and to which this understanding attaches) leads toconceptions [37] whose intended content (if we may speak of “contents” here)covers the entire field of what was apprehended before the κάθαρσις aspartitioned and divided up into the various determinate contents. Not, of course,that the new, purified conceptions (and the realities corresponding to them) areabsolutely indeterminate; in fact the very plural used in indicating them implies thatthey are distinguished one from another and there cannot be distinction in the totallyindeterminate; it is rather that they are not distinguished, and not determinate, in thefashion of the former ones, not, that is, as a part of a whole is contrast ed to, anddistinguished from, another part of it, but as one and the same whole (i.e. the totalityof everything) is distinguished in accordance with various modes and characters of itssubsistence. But it is premature at this stage to insist further on this point.The validity of the above interpretation of purification (διακαθαίρειν) as appliedto reasoned philosophy is born out, for example by D. ’s remarks on 275.8, 276.9-12.[37a]