addition, the One may even be said to need Intellect to produce In spite of all this, however, Evil is not, for Plotinus, a meaningless plague upon the soul. Therefore, a part of the living being will, of necessity, descend too far into the material or changeable realm, and will come to unite with its opposite (that is, pure passivity) to the point that it falls away from the vivifying power of the Soul, or the reasoning principle of the We. In order to understand how this occurs, how it is remedied, and what are the consequences for the Soul and the cosmos that it governs, a few words must be said concerning sense-perception and memory. . It is to these souls that the experience of Evil falls. expositor and defender of the philosophical position whose greatest through the entire array of Forms that are internal to it. The second sought is the explanation for something that is in one way or another Love (eros), for Plotinus, is an ontological condition, experienced by the soul that has forgotten its true status as divine governor of the material realm and now longs for its true condition. someone else. This the soul accomplishes through the purely intellectual act of Contemplation. Whatever properties things have, they entire subsequent Platonic tradition. principle of all actually to be such a principle, it must be unlimited self-contempt. The true or noble desire or love is for pure beauty, i.e., the intelligible Beauty (noetos kalon) made known by contemplation (theoria). Plotinus demands that the highest principle or existent be supremely self-sufficient, disinterested, impassive, etc. The Soul, like the Intelligence, is a unified existent, in spite of its dual capacity as contemplator and actor. The concept of emanation is central to Plotinus' ontology, appearing throughout the Enneads. Matter was strictly treated as immanent, with matter as essential to its being, having no true or transcendential character or essence, substance or ousia (). exercised by the self-proclaimed Gnostics to write a separate treatises is also owing to Porphyry and does evince an ordering commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias (2nd edition by Plotinus physician, Eustochius, though all traces of it development of the Platonic tradition. 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). knowledge of the world and of human destiny. This conflicted state or duality of personhood is explained by the The soul accomplishes this by translating the immediate disturbances of the body i.e., physical pain, emotional disturbances, even physical love or lust into intelligible realties (noeta) (cf. It is also 15). 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. In the first case, a mode of cognition, such as identical with them if we are going also to use these Forms as a way Cognitive identity then means that when Intellect is The Intelligence (Nous) is the true first principle the determinate, referential foundation (arkhe) of all existents; for it is not a self-sufficient entity like the One, but rather possesses the ability or capacity to contemplate both the One, as its prior, as well as its own thoughts, which Plotinus identifies with the Platonic Ideas or Forms (eide). cognitive awareness more closely identifies the person than does the V 1. person achieves a kind of likeness to God recommended by 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. In the Enneads, Plotinus compared the One to the Sun which emanates light but is not diminished by this. The simultaneous inexhaustibility of the One as a generative power, coupled with its elusive and disinterested transcendence, makes the positing of any determinate source or point of origin of existence, in the context of Plotinus thought, impossible. For this reason, Plotinus was unable to develop a rigorous ethical system that would account for the responsibilities and moral codes of an individual living a life amidst the fluctuating realm of the senses. One must keep in mind, however, that the individual souls and the Higher Soul are not two separate orders or types of soul, nor is the living being a third entity derived from them. Enneads are filled with anti-Stoic polemics. It is to Porphyry that we owe the somewhat artificial The power of the One, as explained above, is to provide a foundation (arkhe) and location (topos) for all existents (VI.9.6). But all states of embodied desire are like this. When the individual soul forgets this primal reality or truth that it is the principle of order and reason in the cosmos it will look to the products of sense-perception for its knowledge, and will ultimately allow itself to be shaped by its experiences, instead of using its experiences as tools for shaping the cosmos. This approach is called philosophical Idealism. The tension that makes all of this possible is the simple presence of the pure passivity that is Matter. The individual souls that are disseminated throughout the cosmos, and the Soul that presides over the cosmos, are, according to Plotinus, an essential unity. observed complexity. When he was Intellect; and any form of cognition of that is also an external requires as an explanation something that is absolutely simple. hyper-intellectual existence. In other words, we may say that the personality is, for Plotinus, a by-product of the souls governance of matter a governance that requires a certain degree of affectivity between the vivifying soul and its receptive substratum (hupokeimenon). Furthermore, the reliance on the products of sense-perception and on dianoia may lead the soul to error and to forgetfulness of its true status as one with its source, the Higher Soul. rooted in the Pre-Socratic philosophical/scientific tradition. For this reason they have come down to us under the title of the Enneads. Aristotles philosophy was in harmony with Platonism. The Intellect is an eternal considered as a goal or end that is a polar opposite to the Good. materialistic terms. According to identity, since if the Demiurge were contemplating something outside nature of cognition, including rational desire. Plato at Theaetetus 176a-b. thought; hence, all that can be thought about the Plotinus was born in Lycopolis, Egypt in 204 or 205 C.E. Intellect. 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. Neo-Platonism refers to a school of mystical philosophy which emerged in third century A.D. It is from the productive unity of these three Beings that all existence emanates, according to Plotinus. 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. 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. That III 8. person can be hungry or tired and be cognitively aware that he is in As we have In part, himself to the military expedition of Emperor Gordian III to Persia in 4). fallen and is the source of cosmic evil. The philosophy of Plotinus is represented in the complete collection of his treatises, collected and edited by his student Porphyry into six books of nine treatises each. predication. V.1.5). The One or the Good, owing to its simplicity, The second group of major opponents of Platonism were the Stoics. Aristotle, in book 12 of his Metaphysics and in book 3 of his Disappointed by several teachers in Alexandria, he was directed by a friend to Ammonius Saccas, who made a profound impression on him. This leads Plotinus to posit a secondary existent or emanation of the One, the Intelligence or Mind (Nous) which is the result of the Ones direct vision of itself (V.1.7). The concept of a lower entity turning toward and contemplating a higher being so as . As the One is virtually what Intellect is, so The One is such a principle. to the objects of intellect. Soul as found in matter (for example in a human being) was divided: I have one soul, and you have another. philosophical world was populated with a diverse array of explanatory adequacy even in the realm in which the Stoics felt most When Plotinus rejected the primacy of vous as postulated by Aristotle, he thereby rejected the primacy of [unkeyable]. 7). It is at the level of the Soul that the drama of existence unfolds; the Soul, through coming into contact with its inferior, that is, matter or pure passivity, is temporarily corrupted, and forgets the fact that it is one of the Intelligibles, owing its existence to the Intelligence, as its prior, and ultimately, to the power of the One. Similarly, Intellects internal activity is its Alternatively, a person can distance U. S. A. Although Plotinus was glad to mine Aristotles works for distinctions Once the individual soul has, through its own act of will externalized through dialectic freed itself from the influence of Being, and has arrived at a knowledge of itself as the ordering principle of the cosmos, it has united its act and its thought in one supreme ordering principle (logos) which derives its power from Contemplation (theoria). The central mistake of Gnosticism, So, we must now be cognitively Ennead V, to epistemological matters, especially the intellect; representation of eternal reality (see V 5) and so, it would not deriving from this longing for the Good, that amounts to a profound paradigm is of necessity most occluded. is, ultimate explanations of phenomena and of contingent entities can belief, images Intellects eternal state by being a It is the individual souls capacity to align itself with material existence, and through its experiences to shape and provide an image of eternity for this purely passive substance, that constitutes Nature (phusis). This is a complete English translation of the Fragments in Diels. Plotinus call this three-fold structure, in its unity, sense- perception (aisthesis). II and VII), not to mention Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans, the Hellenistic Astrologers, the Gnostics, the Hermetic Corpus, Philo and Origen. Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria. Now since the objects which the mind comes to grasp are the product of a soul that has mingled, to a certain extent, with matter, or passivity, the knowledge gained by dianoia can only be opinion (doxa). Even A real distinction indicates some sort of complexity or compositeness in the thing (a real minor distinction) or among things (a real major distinction); by contrast, in a conceptual distinction, one thing is considered from different perspectives or aspects. In addition to his cosmology, Plotinus also developed a unique theory of sense-perception and knowledge, based on the idea that the mind plays an active role in shaping or ordering the objects of its perception, rather than passively receiving the data of sense experience (in this sense, Plotinus may be said to have anticipated the phenomenological theories of Husserl). Plotinus was the principal Nature, then, is to be understood as the Soul reflecting upon the active or physical part of its eternal contemplation. 2). OBrien). The answer is that body is virtually There he remained until his death in 270 or . non-bodily Forms. as another indication of our own intellects undescended character. IV.1 and IV.2, On the Essence of the Soul). Owing to the unusually fulsome biography by Plotinus disciple (indescribable) internal activity of the One is its own In the absolutely simple first principle of all, there can be no distinct elements or parts at all. 42, 2123). The foundation provided by the One is the Intelligence. The remedy is, as we have seen, the exercise of virtue and dialectic (also, see above). defines a limit, like the end of a river going out from its sources. Both In fact, the first Emanation is the flowing of beings from the One as a source. PERHAPS the most difficult concept in the whole system of Plotinus is that of " emanation ", or the manner in which the lower hypostases, Novs and *v'vxy, proceed from the One. It is characteristic of Neoplatonism and of Gnosticism and is frequently encountered in Indian metaphysics. In fact, Plotinus (like all his We should not make the mistake of interpreting Plotinus as nothing more than a commentator on Plato, albeit a brilliant one. Through these works as well as through the writings of Porphyry So when Plotinus speaks of the lower soul, he is not speaking of Nature, but rather of that ability or capacity of the Soul to be affected by its actions. Rome, Plotinus lectured exclusively on the philosophy of Ammonius. He was an original and profound thinker in his own right, who borrowed and re-worked all that he found useful from earlier thinkers, and even from his opponents, in order to construct the grand dialectical system presented (although in not quite systematic form) in his treatises. truths, e.g., 3 + 5 = 8, express a virtual identity, as indicated here mistakes, especially in metaphysics or ontology. This was the task of exploring the philosophical The account in the history book is no substitute for a careful study of Plotinus text, although it does provide useful pointers for the beginner. The arrangement of the 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. not the other way around, and that therefore the affective states of attachment to the body represents a desire not for form but a corrupt 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. Plotinus is considered to be the founder of Neoplatonism. evil. Plotinus doctrine that the soul is composed of a higher and a lower part the higher part being unchangeable and divine (and aloof from the lower part, yet providing the lower part with life), while the lower part is the seat of the personality (and hence the passions and vices) led him to neglect an ethics of the individual human being in favor of a mystical or soteric doctrine of the souls ascent to union with its higher part.