The critique brings Proclus' image of the soul into focus, as it disentangles the knot of his immortality argument. Critical remarks must sprawl across four wide-ranging chapters before regrouping into the preparatory conclusion of Chapter 7. Many readers may imagine the critical material to be unnecessary, or even pointless. Only, here especially I must beg for the reader's patience and trust. We take up the seamed volume.
Leather opens to paper, paper opens to words.
The text of Proclus' Elements consists of two hundred and eleven Neoplatonic propositions, organized by a method similar to that which mathematicians use in the construction of mathematical proofs. Those axioms are foundational, in the sense that they are uncontroversial and accepted as authoritative by the mathematical community. In the same spirit Proclus starts at first principles, intuitively. He proceeds to build increasingly abstract propositions on top of this foundation, citing his foundational propositions as the authorities for subsequent arguments. Proclus may have chosen his method with a mathematical structure in mind.