A being exercises its proper activities, its being, not in isolation but in relation to other beings. Hence, as Dionysius says, the love of all things for God, which is their reversion, their participation in him, and hence their very being, consists in their love for each other, according to the proper rank of each: ‘To all things, then, the Beautiful and Good is desired and beloved and cherished; and through it and for the sake of it also the lesser love the greater revertively, and those of the same sort … their coordinates communally, and the greater the lesser providentially … and all things, by desiring the Beautiful and Good, do and wish all things that they do and wish’. The higher being’s love for or participation in God, its being, then, is its providence to the lower, and the lower being’s love for or participation in God is its reversion, or receptivity, to the higher. Providing to the lower and reverting to the higher is the very meaning of occupying a given position in the hierarchical structure of the whole. Dionysian hierarchy, therefore, has nothing to do with domination and subservience, but only with love, the love of all things for one another which is the love of God in them all.” (Perl, p.77).
There is an endnote (#26) here, which reads: “Dionysius’ doctrine of hierarchy could thus be read as an elaboration of Matthew 20:25-27: ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave.’ The higher any being is in the order of reality, the more it is in the service of — in Dionysius’ terms, providentially proceeds to — all that is below it.”
“In Dionysius’ metaphysics, then, there is no such thing as an individual, a being conceived as a closed, self-contained unit which extrinsically enters into relations with other beings. Because the principle of reality is pure Openness or Giving, the very identity, the being of each thing, God-in-it, is its giving to and receiving from others. Each thing, indeed, is nothing but is relations to others, its place within the structure of immediate mediation. Hierarchy is thus, as its name signifies, the principle of sacredness, which is to say of being. Nothing could be farther from the supposed ‘immovability’ of Dionysian hierarchy than this vision of being as περιχώρησις, as the Great Dance in which all beings are only in and through each other ”. (p. 80)
“Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite"
