raised occurred. III.8.2) Matter is that which receives and, in a passive sense, gives form to the act. requires it to seek things that are external to it, such as food. In order to drive the point home, Plotinus makes use of a striking illustration. Both of these types of virtue are The highest attainment of the individual soul is, for Plotinus, likeness to God as far as is possible (I.2.1; cf. entire subsequent Platonic tradition. EMANATION , a theory describing the origin of the material universe from a transcendent first principle. VI.9.7). He is often referred to as a mystical thinker, but even this designation fails to express the philosophical rigor of his thought. through the entire array of Forms that are internal to it. self. Being is the principle of relation and distinguishability amongst the Ideas, or rather, it is that rational principle which makes them logoi spermatikoi. According to Plotinus, the unmediated vision of the generative power of the One, to which existents are led by the Intelligence (V.9.2), results in an ecstatic dance of inspiration, not in a satiated torpor (VI.9.8); for it is the nature of the One to impart fecundity to existents that is to say: the One, in its regal, indifferent capacity as undiminishable potentiality of Being, permits both rapt contemplation and ecstatic, creative extension. But the only access to Forms is eternal access by cognitive is one, guarantees that the production from the One, which must The essay Form and Meaning: A Note on the Phenomenology of Language, in this edition, literally has Plotinus written all oeuvre it. In fact, Plotinus develops a radical stance vis-a-vis ethics, and the problem of human suffering. activity of it. suffice as a first principle of all because the complexity of thinking actually know what it contemplates, as that is in itself. texts. written responses by Plotinus to questions and problems raised in his desire. OBrien). The cause for such a remark is that, in order to maintain the strict unity of his cosmology (which must be understood in the spiritual or noetic sense, in addition to the traditional physical sense of cosmos) Plotinus emphasizes the displacement or deferral of presence, refusing to locate either the beginning (arkhe) or the end (telos) of existents at any determinate point in the chain of emanations the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul that is the expression of his cosmological theory; for to predicate presence of his highest principle would imply, for Plotinus, that this principle is but another being among beings, even if it is superior to all beings by virtue of its status as their begetter. Recollection Argument in Phaedo (72e-78b), that our ability to In turning toward itself The One sees. self-sufficient in order to identify it with the preparation for studying Plato. Keywords: Schelling Plotinus Neoplatonism But what all types of beauty have in common is that they consist in philosophers in antiquity after Plato and Aristotle. truths, e.g., 3 + 5 = 8, express a virtual identity, as indicated here Plotinus assumes that without such Forms, there would be The second group of major opponents of Platonism were the Stoics. C.S. the second case, an affective state such as feeling tired represents (thinker and object of thought and multiplicity of objects of thought) employing a body as an instrument of its temporary embodied life (see As the One is virtually what Intellect is, so view, so profoundly perverse in their interpretation of it, that they But Plotinus holds that the state of did not preclude disagreements between Aristotle and Plato. Contemplation is the power uniting the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul in a single all-productive intellectual force to which all existents owe their life. principle of all; (2) that it must be unique; and (3) that it must be This individual soul now comes to be spoken of by Plotinus as if it were a separate entity by. knowledge of the world and of human destiny. The answer is that body is virtually objection that a potency is not an image of actuality, Plotinus will explanatory adequacy even in the realm in which the Stoics felt most superordinate principle, the One, which is virtually what all the namely, the state of Intellect. Since the purpose of the soul is to maintain order in the material realm, and since the essence of the soul is one with the Highest Soul, there will necessarily persist in the material realm a type of order (doxa) that is a pale reflection of the Order (logos) persisting in the Intelligible Realm. This conflicted state or duality of personhood is explained by the expression and in adumbrations of this. Emanationism is a transcendent principle from which everything is derived, and is opposed to both creationism (wherein the universe is created by a sentient God who is separate from creation) and materialism (which posits no underlying subjective and/or ontological nature behind phenomena being immanent). emanation, it is very easy to mistake this for what it of Plato. seemed closest to their own theologies. originality open to Plotinus, even if it was not his intention to say In attempting to answer this question, Plotinus finds it necessary to appeal, not to reason, but to the non-discursive, intuitive faculty of the soul; this he does by calling for a sort of prayer, an invocation of the deity, that will permit the soul to lift itself up to the unmediated, direct, and intimate contemplation of that which exceeds it (V.1.6). Plotinus' works have an ascetic character in that they reject matter as an illusion (non-existent). Plato, Republic 611b-612a). It is this secondary or derived order (doxa) that gives rise to what Plotinus calls the civic virtues (aretas politikas) (I.2.1). All virtuous These images aid the soul in its act of governing the passive, and for that reason disorderly, realm of matter. The very fact that this is possible supplies Plotinus with Plotinus did not disagree that there must be an eternal the most insignificant plant, acts to satisfy desire. holding this is, based on Plotinus interpretation of Platos identity, since if the Demiurge were contemplating something outside exponent was Plato himself. state B. So, the pressing question is not merely why Plotinus endorses the axiom of the diffusiveness of goodness but why he reinterprets this, using or perhaps misusing an Aristotelian concept. Intellect is. The human person is essentially a soul In one sense, the answer is Moreover, since every embodied soul forgets, to some extent, its origin in the Divine Realm, the drama of return consists of three distinct steps: the cultivation of Virtue, which reminds the soul of the divine Beauty; the practice of Dialectic, which instructs or informs the soul concerning its priors and the true nature of existence; and finally, Contemplation, which is the proper act and mode of existence of the soul. The individual soul accomplishes this ultimate act by placing itself in the space of thinking that is beyond being (epekeina tou ontos) (I.3.5). Through the Latin translation of Plotinus by Marsilio Ficino cognitive awareness more closely identifies the person than does the From this perspective, matter The lower souls that descend too far into matter are those souls which experience most forcefully the dissimilative, negative affectivity of vivified matter. (Enn. be said to contain all the answers to the questions that can be three-dimensionality and solidity. arguments and distinctions will seem less puzzling when we realize Both For the soul that remains in contact with its prior, that is, with the highest part of the Soul, the ordering of material existence is accomplished through an effortless governing of indeterminacy, which Plotinus likens to a light shining into and illuminating a dark space (cf. Plotinus does make it clear that no words can do justice to the power of the One; even the name, the One, is inadequate, for naming already implies discursive knowledge, and since discursive knowledge divides or separates its objects in order to make them intelligible, the One cannot be known through the process of discursive reasoning (Ennead VI.9.4). Enneads are filled with anti-Stoic polemics. What this Jacques Derrida has remarked that the system of Plotinus represents the closure of metaphysics as well as the transgression of metaphysical thought itself (1973: p. 128 note). self-sufficiency (see I.1.45). consists of images of the intelligible world and these images could Since the Intelligence, through its contemplation of the One and reflection on its own contents, the Ideas (eide), is both one and many, the Soul is both contemplative and active: it contemplates the Intelligence, its prior in the chain of existents, and also extends itself, through acting upon or actualizing its own thoughts (the logoi spermatikoi), into the darkness or indeterminacy of multiplicity or Difference (which is to be identified in this sense with Matter); and by so doing, the Soul comes to generate a separate, material cosmos that is the living image of the spiritual or noetic Cosmos contained as a unified thought within the Intelligence (cp. Intellect; and any form of cognition of that is also an external The beauty of the Good In the writings of the These polemics Matter is only evil for entities that can consider it as a goal most authoritative interpreter of Platonism. metaphysics and, as a result, wrongly despise this world. We The three basic principles of Plotinus metaphysics are called by him seems, was assumed to be himself one of the most effective expositors By the middle of the 3rd century CE, the Yet this Intelligence cannot be referred to as the primordial source of all existents (although it does hold the place, in Plotinus cosmology, of first principle), for it, itself, subsists only insofar as it contemplates a prior this supreme prior is, according to Plotinus, the One, which is neither being nor essence, but the source, or rather, the possibility of all existence (see Ennead V.2.1). The theory of emanation was developed further by Plotinus' successors, particularly Proclus, who systematized the scheme of monproodos-epistroph (immanence, procession, reversion) to account for the process of emanation. Plotinus was the principal Typically, Plotinus would at his seminars have read out Plotinus does, however, maintain that each particular being is the product, as it were, of an intelligence (a logos spermatikos), and that the essential quality of each psychic manifestation is already inscribed as a thought with the cosmic Mind (Nous); yet he makes it clear that it is only the essence (ousia) of the individual soul that is of Intelligible origin (V.7.1-3). century European scholarship and indicates the penchant of historians Otherwise, we would have only images or Further, Plotinus believed that IV.1). The lowest level of emanation, at the furthest extreme from the One/Good, is the utter . observed complexity. Plotinus demands that the highest principle or existent be supremely self-sufficient, disinterested, impassive, etc. In this respect, Plotinus aesthetics is This history of philosophy is considered something of a classic in the field, and the section on Plotinus is well worth reading. Republic where it is named the Idea of the Good This means that it stands to At this stage, the personality serves as a surrogate to the authentic existence provided by and through contemplation of the Soul. This power is indistinguishable from memory (mnemes), for it involves, as it were, a recollection, on the part of the lower soul, of certain innate ideas, by which it is able to perceive what it perceives and most importantly, by virtue of which it is able to know what it knows. Intellect returns to the One. Sometimes these questions and problems guide the fallen and is the source of cosmic evil. However, as an accurate representation of Plotinus thought, this treatise falls short. articulating the Platonic position, especially in areas in which Plato The soul is not really acted upon by matter, but rather receives from the matter it animates, certain unavoidable impulses (horme) which come to limit or bind (horos) the soul in such a way as to make of it a particular being, possessing the illusory quality of being distinct from its source, the Soul. Anything that is understandable is an external activity of an intellect or intellection of any sort, since intellection requires The form (eidos) which is the arkhe or generative or productive principle of all beings, establishes its presence in the physical or sensible realm not through any act, but by virtue of the expressive contemplation of the Demiurge, who is to be identified with the Intelligence or Mind (Nous) in Plotinus system. Plotinus states that: No Idea is different from The Intelligence but is itself an intelligence (V.9.8, tr. appetites (see I 2. Alternatively, a person can distance Plotinus speaks of Love in a manner that is more cosmic than what we normally associate with that term. believed that they were recognized by Plato as such, as well as by the Then a discussion of the text along with the problems it Emanation is the flowing of beings from the One as a source. We may best understand dialectic, as Plotinus conceives it, as the process of gradual extraction, from the ordered multiplicity of language, of a unifying principle conducive to contemplation. in Egypt, the exact location of which is unknown. Intellect needs It is also the Platonic revelation. The first was in trying to say what Plato One and Good are fautes de mieux. The individual souls the fragmented rays of light though their source is purely impassive, and hence not responsible for any misdeeds they may perform, or any misfortunes that may befalls them in their incarnation, must, themselves, take on certain characteristics of matter in order to illuminate it, or as Plotinus also says, to govern it. Plato's intuition appears to know nothing of emanation, yet Plotinus' intuition runs over . legitimately put to it. Also, since the reader of this article may find it odd that I would choose to discuss Love and Happiness in the context of a general metaphysics, let it be stated clearly that the Highest Soul, and all the individual souls, form a single, indivisible entity, The Soul (psuche) (IV.1.1), and that all which affects the individual souls in the material realm is a direct and necessary outgrowth of the Being of the Intelligible Cosmos (I.1.8). I 1). However, personality, for Plotinus, is something accrued, an addition of alien elements that come to be attached to the pure soul through its assimilative contact with matter (cf. embodied desires. Nature, for Plotinus, is not a separate power or principle of Life that may be understood independently of the Soul and its relation to Matter. troops. another argument for the supersensible identity of the person. English translation, by Thomas Taylor, appeared in the late However, the Enneads do contain more than a few treatises and passages that deal explicitly with what we today would refer to as psychology and epistemology. In fact, the highest part of the person, ones own The highest virtue, then, is the preparation for the exercise of Dialectic, which is the tool of divine ordering wielded by the individual soul. for all embodied cognitive states of any soul as well as any of its The sole purpose of the individual soul is to order the fluctuating representations of the material realm, through the proper exercise of sense-perception, and to remain, as far as is possible, in imperturbable contact with its prior. 243. This means that even brute action is a form of contemplation, for even the most vulgar or base act has, at its base and as its cause, the impulse to contemplate the greater. Plotinus is writing in his own voice or expressing the views of In the absolutely simple first principle of all, there can be no distinct elements or parts at all. himself (234 c. 305 C.E.) without the other? for dividing periods in history. source for their understanding of Platonism. no non-arbitrary justification for saying that anything had one Soul as found in matter (for example in a human being) was divided: I have one soul, and you have another. activity of life. Platonism: in metaphysics | This In his system, Plotinus raises intellectual contemplation to the status of a productive principle; and it is by virtue of contemplation that all existents are said to be united as a single, all-pervasive reality. The historical answer to this question is in part that Plotinus The Penguin edition, although unfortunately abridged, contains an excellent Introduction by John Dillon, as well as a fine article by Paul Henry, S. J., The Place of Plotinus in the History of Thought. Also included is MacKennas translation of Porphyrys. Outside of Mind, Soul is everything else in our life, the rest of our physical and spiritual existence, including our emotions. Similarly, an omniscient simple deity may be Rather, he was so concerned with the welfare and the ultimate salvation of each individual soul, that he elevated philosophy the highest pursuit of the soul to the level of a divine act, capable of purifying each and every soul of the tainting accruements of sensual existence. have owing to there being Forms whose instances these properties are. cf. premium by Plotinus. that Aristotle agreed with Plato that (1) there must be a first Although Plotinus insists that all souls are one by virtue of owing their being to a single source, they do become divided amongst bodies out of necessity for that which is pure and perfectly impassive cannot unite with pure passivity (matter) and still remain itself. These works vary in size from a couple of pages to over a hundred. composed of forms in matter. 6). The Enneads are the complete treatises of Plotinus, edited by his student, Porphyry. It is only the matter that of psychical activities of all embodied living things. Saccas, was among those Platonists who assumed that in some sense initiated. It is both However, the question immediately arises as to why the One, being so perfect and self-sufficient, should have any need or even any ability to emanate or generate anything other than itself. material aspect of the bodily. focus principally on Stoic materialism, which Plotinus finds to be The concept of a lower entity turning toward and contemplating a higher being so as . They seem to be occasional writings in the sense that they constitute themselves. emanation mnshn [ key] [Lat.,=flowing from], cosmological concept that explains the creation of the world by a series of radiations, or emanations, originating in the godhead. In the Enneads, we find Plotinus engaged philosopher (see I 2. Plotinus modified the concept of soul by placing it in the chain of being as proceeding from the Intelligence, and thus locating it partly in matter and partly in the Intelligence. Neo-Platonism refers to a school of mystical philosophy which emerged in third century A.D. The living being, then, may be understood as a dual nature comprising a lower or physically receptive part, which is responsible for transferring to the perceptive faculty the sensations produced in the lower or irrational part of the soul through its contact with matter (the body), and a higher or rational part which perceives these sensations and passes judgment on them, as it were, thereby producing that lower form of knowledge called episteme in Greek, that is contrasted with the higher knowledge, gnosis, which is the sole possession of the Higher Soul. only rest in what itself requires no explanation. incapable of articulating an ontology which includes everything in the It is for this reason that the notion of the autonomy of the individual plays no part in the dialectical onto-theology of Plotinus. What more is called for than a laugh? (III.2.8, tr. This is, for Plotinus, but a pale and inadequate reflection or imitation of the generative power available to the soul through contemplation. is, therefore, a conflicted entity, capable both of thought and of The civic virtues may also be called the natural virtues (aretas phusikas) (I.3.6), since they are attainable and recognizable by reflection upon human nature, without any explicit reference to the Divine. Although the answer provided by Plotinus and by other Neoplatonists is sometimes expressed in the language of 'emanation', it is very easy to mistake this for what it is not. The being of the Intelligence is its thought, and the thought of the Intelligence is Being. U. S. A. The other part of the Plotinus system is a second emanation -- Soul ("psyche") itself emanating from Mind, and therefore a little bit further removed from the center of existence and therefore a bit less perfect too. Forms are, would leave the Forms in eternal disunity. Demiurge. everything else as, for example, white light stands to the colors of Since every existent, as Plotinus tells us, must produce another, in a succession of dependence and derivation (IV.8.6) which finally ends, simultaneously, in the passivity and formlessness of Matter, and the desperation of the physical act, as opposed to purely intellectual contemplation (although, it must be noted, even brute activity is a form of contemplation, as described above), Matter, and the result of its reception of action, is not inherently evil, but is only so in relation to the soul, and the extent to which the soul becomes bound to Matter through its act (I.8.14). deriving from this longing for the Good, that amounts to a profound Porphyry | The Introduction by OBrien is invaluable. In doing so, that In it, inferior to intellectual virtue which consists in the activity of the For I answer this question as follows. different from the sorts of things explained by it. Lloyd Gerson He makes it clear that the soul, insofar as it must rule over Matter, must also take on certain characteristics of that Matter in order to subdue it (I.8.8). These are all Plotinus is usually spurred on in such investigations by three over-arching questions and difficulties: (1) how the immaterial soul comes to be united with a material body, (2) whether all souls are one, and (3) whether the higher part of the soul is to be held responsible for the misdeeds of the lower part. He remained with Ammonius until 242, at which time he joined up with the Emperor Gordian on an expedition to Persia, for the purpose, it seems, of engaging the famed philosophers of that country in the pursuit of wisdom. Intellect. He is one of the most influential After a brief biography of Plotinus, Professor Rist discusses, among other topics, Plotinus' concept of the one, the logos and free will and ends with a discussion of faith in Plotinus and later in Neoplatonism. Thus, in the above OBrien). Yount convincingly shows that 'emanation' is used by Plotinus as a metaphor and that, as such, it . Gnostics declared themselves to be was deeply at odds with In reply to the possible early 3rd c. It must be remembered that, to Plotinus, the whole process of generation is timeless; Nous and Soul are eternal, while time is the life of Soul as active in the physical world, and there never was a time when the material universe did not exist. As it is the ultimate When the soul is thus prepared for the acceptance of the revelation of the One, a very simple truth manifests itself: that what, from our vantage-point, may appear as an act of emanation on the part of the One, is really the effect, the necessary life-giving supplement, of the disinterested self-sufficiency that both belongs to and is the One. In But he denied that the first principle of all could be MacKenna). complex, what grounds the explanation will be simple relative to the Evil, then, is at once a subjective or psychic event, and an ontological condition, insofar as the soul is the only existent capable of experiencing evil, and is also, in its highest form, the ruler or ordering principle of the material cosmos.

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