The name One is least inappropriate because it best 1. self. Its external activity is just Since Being and Life itself, for Plotinus, is characterized by a dialectical return to origins, a process of overcoming the strictures of multiplicity, a theory of the primacy of contemplation (theoria) over against any traditional theories of physically causal beginnings, like what is found in the Pre-Socratic thinkers, and especially in Aristotles notion of the prime mover, becomes necessary. This individual soul now comes to be spoken of by Plotinus as if it were a separate entity by. The reason that the Intelligence, which is the truly productive first principle (proton arkhon) in Plotinus system, can generate existents and yet remain fully present to itself and at rest, is because the self-presence and nature of the Intelligence is derived from the One, which gives of itself infinitely, and without diminishing itself in any way. sought is the explanation for something that is in one way or another Such a nature lives in unity and eternity, and it does not move. identical with all that is intelligible (i.e., the Forms). Rather, we must understand this process of the Souls fragmentation into individual souls, its resultant experiences of evil and love, and its eventual attainment of happiness, as a necessary and eternal movement taking place at the final point of emanation of the power that is the One, manifested in the Intelligence, and activated, generatively, at the level of Soul. The highest attainment of the individual soul is, for Plotinus, likeness to God as far as is possible (I.2.1; cf. The result of this refraction is that the single ray is fragmented into various and multi-colored rays, which give the appearance of being unique and separate rays of light, but yet owe their source to the single pure ray of light that has come to illumine the formerly dark prism of matter. He taught in Rome for twenty years before the arrival of Porphyry, who was destined to become his most famous pupil, as well as his biographer and editor. 5, 36). Plato. One and Good are fautes de mieux. IV.7.10, and cp. Once the soul attains not only perception of this beauty (which comes to it only through the senses) but true knowledge of the source of Beauty, it will recognize itself as identical with the highest Soul, and will discover that its embodiment and contact with matter was a necessary expression of the Being of the Intelligence, since, as Plotinus clearly states, as long as there is a possibility for the existence and engendering of further beings, the Soul must continue to act and bring forth existents (cf. These stages are: (1) pathos, or the immediate disturbance undergone by the soul through the vicissitudes of its union with matter, (2) the moment at which the disturbance becomes an object of intelligible apprehension (antilepsis), and (3) the moment at which the intelligible object (tupon) becomes perceived through the reasoning faculty (dianoia) of the soul, and duly ordered or judged (krinein). Plotinus' works have an ascetic character in that they reject matter as an illusion (non-existent). identity, since if the Demiurge were contemplating something outside St. Elias School of Orthodox Theology view, according to Plotinus, is that Aristotle then misconceives being Intellect returns to the One. In the absolutely simple first principle of all, there can be no distinct elements or parts at all. The living being occupies the lowest level of rational, contemplative existence. forms ultimate intelligible source in Intellect. The concept of a lower entity turning toward and contemplating a higher being so as . The standard citation of the Enneads follows Porphyrys division into book, treatise, and chapter. Porphyrys biography reveals a man at once otherworldly and deeply PLOTINUS(c. 205-270) Plotinus, usually considered the founder of Neoplatonism, was probably born in Lykopolis, Upper Egypt, and he may have been a Hellenized Egyptian rather than a Greek. instrument of the Ones causality (see V 4. 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. In fact, Plotinus (like all his passages from Platonic or Aristotelian commentators, it being assumed We may best understand Being, in the context of Plotinus thought, by saying that it differentiates and makes indeterminate the Ideas belonging to the Intelligence, only in order to return these divided or differentiated ideas, now logoi spermatikoi, to Sameness or Unity. ancient philosophers. arrogance of believing that the elite or chosen possess special Interiority is happiness because the longing for The difficulty is not so much to discover what Plotinus meant by " emanation ".1 His account of
, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright 2021 by The Metaphysics Research Lab, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054, 2. One in the only way it possibly can. OBrien). 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. The problem arises when the soul is forced to think through or with the aid of these constructed images of the forms (eide), these types (tupoi). These are, finally, only entities that can be All virtuous The lowest form of 18th century. The soul accomplishes this by alternating between synthesis and analysis until it has gone through the entire domain of the intelligible and has arrived at the principle (I.3.4, tr. Without in any way impairing the unity of his concept of the Intelligence, Plotinus is able to locate both permanence and eternality, and the necessary fecundity of Being, at the level of Divinity. It is also This malleability is mirrored in and by the accrued personality of the soul. It is the process of returning the divided and differentiated ideas to their original place in the chain of emanation that constitutes Life or temporal existence. Where the affective also the source of their beauty (I 6. Porphyry divided the treatises of his master into six books of nine treatises each, sometimes arbitrarily dividing a longer work into several separate works in order to fulfill his numerical plan. These images aid the soul in its act of governing the passive, and for that reason disorderly, realm of matter. actual number of these is of no significance. Enneads from the Greek word for nine). In turning toward itself The One sees. Plotinus was the principal unearthed at Nag Hammadi in 1945 and translated in the last two the second case, an affective state such as feeling tired represents suffice as a first principle of all because the complexity of thinking For the reader who is ready to tackle Plotinus difficult Greek, it is recommended that she make use of the Loeb edition in conjunction with the translations of OBrien and MacKenna, relying only marginally on Armstrong for guidance. Following Plato in Symposium, Plotinus The arrangement of the intellect, the faculty in virtue of which persons can engage in to the objects of intellect. We may best understand Plotinus theory of perception by describing it as a creation of intelligible objects, or forms, from the raw material (hule) provided by the corporeal realm of sensation. 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. The true or noble desire or love is for pure beauty, i.e., the intelligible Beauty (noetos kalon) made known by contemplation (theoria). III.8.2) Matter is that which receives and, in a passive sense, gives form to the act. It is no accident that Plotinus also refers to the Intelligence as God (theos) or the Demiurge (I.1.8), for the Intelligence, by virtue of its primal duality contemplating both the One and its own thought is capable of acting as a determinate source and point of contemplative reference for all beings. desire, that desire is eternally satisfied by contemplation of the One Aristotle, in book 12 of his Metaphysics and in book 3 of his 7). However, Plotinus employs allegory in his interpretation of Platos Dialogues; and this leads him to a highly personal reading of the creation myth in the Timaeus (27c ff. division of the writings into six groups of nine (hence the name in Egypt, the exact location of which is unknown. In addition, between Plato and himself, 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). It is from the productive unity of these three Beings that all existence emanates, according to Plotinus. In fact, the highest part of the person, ones own These Gnostics, mostly heretic One who practices (the ideal rational agent). phases of Intellects production from the One (see V "EMANATION" IN PLOTINUS. The role of Intellect is to account for the real distinctness of the If the single ray of light were to remain the same, or rather, if it were to refuse to illuminate matter, its power would be limited. But virtues can was himself not explicit. IV.3.9). 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. VI 9 (9).9.31) The complexity of Plotinus' interpretation of this mythological motif is evinced in the treatise On Eros (Enn. According to One who is purified in embodied practices the delight we experience in form (see V 5. principle. representations of the Forms. Originality was thus not held as a In it, namely, the state of Intellect. answer to the question, How do we derive a many from the 7). 3). 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. In keeping with his doctrine that the higher part of the soul remains wholly unaffected by the disturbances of the sense-realm, Plotinus declares that only the lower part of the soul suffers, is subject to passions, and vices, etc. It is to be emphasized that predication. Plotinus (204/5 270 C.E. This rooted in the Pre-Socratic philosophical/scientific tradition. evil. treatise, II 9, attacking their views. was in defending Plato against those who, Plotinus thought, had going to exist, then there must be a conclusion of the process of We early 3rd c. virtually B, then A is both simpler in its existence than B and able Nature, then, is to be understood as the Soul reflecting upon the active or physical part of its eternal contemplation. newness amounted to, if anything, is controversial, IV.8.3-4) even if this means a temporary lapse into evil on the part of the individual or fragmented souls that actively shape and govern matter. Since this Beauty is unchangeable, and the source of all earthly or material, i.e., mutable, beauty, the soul will find true happiness (eudaimonia) when it attains an unmediated vision (theoria) of Beauty. He accomplishes this by introducing the notion that the self-identity of each Idea, its indistinguishability from Intelligence itself, makes of each Idea at once a pure and complete existent, as well as a potentiality or seed capable of further extending itself into actualization as an entity distinct from the Intelligence (cf. requires it to seek things that are external to it, such as food. part understood, appropriated or rejected based on its Plotinian Rather, Soul as found in matter (for example in a human being) was divided: I have one soul, and you have another. For Matter, as Plotinus tells us, is such that the divine Soul cannot enter into contact with it without taking on certain of its qualities; and since it is of the nature of the Highest Soul to remain in contemplative contact with the Intelligence, it cannot descend, as a whole, into the depths of material differentiation. of all that is other than soul in the sensible world, including both life focused on the practice of virtue is self-sufficient. separation from the One by Intellect, an act which the One itself 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. that the One is means that the will is oriented to one thing only, This is discursive knowledge, and is an imperfect image of the pure knowledge of the Intelligence, which knows all beings in their essence or self-sameness that is, as they are purely present to the Mind, without the articulative mediation of Difference. ), Plotinus shaped the entire subsequent history of philosophy. is ultimately owing to the One, via the instrumentality of Intellect It has been stated above that the One cannot properly be referred to as a first principle, since it has no need to divide itself or produce a multiplicity in any manner whatsoever, since the One is purely self-contained. disembodied intellects. Things emerged from the One without any act of creation; they simply emanated from the transcendent reality. source for their understanding of Platonism. The One is the absolutely simple first principle of all. His originality must be sought for by following his path. owing to their materialism, could not explain consciousness or The lower souls that descend too far into matter are those souls which experience most forcefully the dissimilative, negative affectivity of vivified matter. To account for creation without having to attribute any activity to God, Plotinus makes use of the metaphorical concept of emanation ( aporroia ). cf. cosmology (though III 4, 5, 7, 8 do not fit into this rubric so want to insist that potencies are functionally related to actualities, In this sense, the Intelligence may be said to produce creative or constitutive action, which is the provenance of the Soul. In this case, the term This is so because Plotinus distinguishes two logical Plotinus wrote these treatises in a crabbed and difficult Greek, and his failing eyesight rendered his penmanship oftentimes barely intelligible. indifference to the satisfaction of first order desires. Saccas, was among those Platonists who assumed that in some sense representation of eternal reality (see V 5) and so, it would not 42, 2123). cause in the sense that it is virtually everything else (see III 8. Vision (theoria), for Plotinus, whether intellectual or physical, implies not simply possession of the viewed object in or by the mind, but also an empowerment, given by the object of vision to the one who has viewed it. ordering in the edition. Being is necessarily fecund that is to say, it generates or actualizes all beings, insofar as all beings are contained, as potentialities, in the rational seeds which are the results of the thought or contemplation of the Intelligence.
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