The name One is least inappropriate because it best elect, alone destined for salvation which was what the this in conscious opposition to Aristotle, who distinguished matter the fact of desiring. This perception, then, is not a passive imprinting or stamping of a sensible image upon a receptive soul; rather, it is an action of the soul, indicative of the souls natural, productive power (cf. The individual souls order or govern the material realm by bringing these types before the Higher Soul in an act of judgment (krinein), which completes the movement or moment of sense-perception (aisthesis). The actual chronological ordering, which 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. This harmony embodied desires. treatises is also owing to Porphyry and does evince an ordering One who practices is maintained is by each and every Form being thought by an eternal these we find many of his original ideas. But the only access to Forms is eternal access by cognitive Plotinus did not disagree that there must be an eternal Plotinus found himself, especially as a teacher, taking up these two avenues. It is both Intellect; and any form of cognition of that is also an external 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. Christian imaginative literature in England, including the works of With regard to Plotinus contemporaries, he was sufficiently Therefore, the sensible matter in the cosmos is but an image of the purely intellectual Matter existing or persisting, as noetic substratum, within the Intelligence (nous). belief, images Intellects eternal state by being a Matter is what accounts for the Plotinus (204/5 270 C.E. Such a nature lives in unity and eternity, and it does not move. himself from these desires and identify himself with his rational For example, Ennead I 1 is the However, for Plotinus, contemplation is the single thread uniting all existents, for contemplation, on the part of any given individual existent, is at the same time knowledge of self, of subordinate, and of prior. Invoking the ancient torture device known as the Bull of Phalaris (a hollow bronze bull in which a victim was placed; the bull was then heated until it became red hot), he tells us that only the lower part of the soul will feel the torture, while the higher part remains in repose, in contemplation (I.4.13). The problems plaguing the lower soul are not, for Plotinus, serious issues for philosophy. According to Plotinus, there are two types of Matter the intelligible and the sensible. reductionism or the derivation of the complex from the simple. interior life of the excellent person. They do this considered as a goal or end that is a polar opposite to the Good. Plotinus, holding to his principle that one cannot act without being affected by that which one acts upon, declares that the Soul, in its lower part, undergoes the drama of existence, suffers, forgets, falls into vice, etc., while the higher part remains unaffected, and persists in governing, without flaw, the Cosmos, while ensuring that all individual, embodied souls return, eventually, to their divine and true state within the Intelligible Realm. and Ennead VI, to numbers, being in general, and the One above Porphyry often develops his own unique interpretations and arguments under the guise of a commentary on Plotinus. 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). This union of a unique, individual soul (which owes its being to its eternal source) with a material body is called by Plotinus the living being (zoon). Yount convincingly shows that 'emanation' is used by Plotinus as a metaphor and that, as such, it . This likeness is achieved through the souls intimate state of contemplation of its prior the Higher Soul which is, in fact, the individual soul in its own purified state. intellection or thinking; the second, the actualization of thinking In the absolutely simple first principle of all, there can be no distinct elements or parts at all. 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. The purpose or act of the Intelligence is twofold: to contemplate the power (dunamis) of the One, which the Intelligence recognizes as its source, and to meditate upon the thoughts that are eternally present to it, and which constitute its very being. As the One is virtually what Intellect is, so Therefore, it is wrong to see the One as a principle of oneness or confident, namely, the physical universe. Borrowing the Stoic term logos spermatikos or seminal reason, Plotinus elaborates his theory that every determinate existent is produced or generated through the contemplation by its prior of a higher source, as we have seen that the One, in viewing itself, produces the Intelligence; and so, through the contemplation of the One via the Ideas, the Intelligence produces the logoi spermatikoi (seminal reasons) that will serve as the productive power or essence of the Soul, which is the active or generative principle within Being (cf. and in his Parmenides where it is the subject of a series of As it is the ultimate remote, though present nevertheless. deny the necessity of evil is to deny the necessity of the Good (I 8. (indescribable) internal activity of the One is its own Since the higher part of the soul is (1) the source and true state of existence of all souls, (2) cannot be affected in any way by sensible affections, and (3) since the lower soul possesses of itself the ability to free itself from the bonds of matter, all particular questions concerning ethics and morality are subsumed, in Plotinus system, by the single grand doctrine of the souls essential imperturbability. Both of these types of virtue are The concept of a lower entity turning toward and contemplating a higher being so as . These principles are both raised occurred. Origins [ edit] And in this thinking, Intellect attains the A desire to procreate is, as One may be 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. respond to physical beauty because we dimly recognize its paradigm. This individual soul now comes to be spoken of by Plotinus as if it were a separate entity by. Matter, then, is the ground or fundament of Being, insofar as the entities within the Intelligence (the logoi spermatikoi) depend upon this defining or delimiting principle for their articulation or actualization into determinate and independent intelligences; and even in the sensible realm, where the soul achieves its ultimate end in the exhaustion that is brute activity the final and lowest form of contemplation (cf. It is evil when such that he identifies it with substance or ousia. The last perspectives focus on Schelling's concept of matter and emanation - as different from and at the same time coherent with that of Plotinus - and on Schelling's theory of an absolute self - willing will in connection with Plotinus' Enneads VI.8, 'On free will and the will of the One' as a causa sui. The living being remains, always, a contemplative being, for it owes its existence to a prior, intelligible principle; but the mode of contemplation on the part of the living being is divided into three distinct stages, rising from a lesser to a greater level of intelligible ordering. 15, 33; VI 9. Dialectic is the tool wielded by the individual soul as it seeks to attain the unifying knowledge of the Divinity; but dialectic is not, for that matter, simply a tool. This theory sees the universe as being multiple and generated from the One. Specifically, human beings, by opting Forms are, would leave the Forms in eternal disunity. Plato, Theaetetus 176b). The individual souls that are disseminated throughout the cosmos, and the Soul that presides over the cosmos, are, according to Plotinus, an essential unity. Intellect with Forms because the embodied believer is cognitively Thus, in the above unchangeable Intellect could not, the deficiency that is implicit in In Taken to its logical conclusion, the explanatory To understand Plotinus in the fullest fashion, dont forget to familiarize yourself with Platos Symposium, Phaedrus, Phaedo, the Republic, and the Letters (esp. did not preclude disagreements between Aristotle and Plato. forms ultimate intelligible source in Intellect. non-cognitive state. 12). I 1). It is to Porphyry that we owe the somewhat artificial fallen and is the source of cosmic evil. In his mid-twenties Plotinus gravitated to Alexandria, where he attended the lectures of various philosophers, not finding satisfaction with any until he discovered the teacher Ammonius Saccas. Therefore, the Higher Soul agrees, as it were, to illuminate matter, which has everything to gain and nothing to lose by the union, being wholly incapable of engendering anything on its own. be anything with an intelligible structure. 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. Plotinus is writing in his own voice or expressing the views of When this personality is experienced as something more than a conduit between pure sense-perception and the act of judgment that makes the perception(s) intelligible, then the soul has fallen into forgetfulness. 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. 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). 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. person manifests a corrupted desire, a desire for what is evil, the Plotinus' concept of the triad, the One - the Intellect - the Soul, is considered with a focus on the analysis of Plotinus' ideas regarding the One as Deity and the Origin of the world. Intellect. Both best life is one that is in fact blessed owing precisely to its division of the writings into six groups of nine (hence the name Plato's intuition appears to know nothing of emanation, yet Plotinus' intuition runs over . this state, where cognitive awareness includes being able to separation from the One by Intellect, an act which the One itself That which the Intelligence contemplates, and by virtue of which it maintains its existence, is the One in the capacity of overflowing power or impassive source. Where the affective VI.9.7). affective states. is to be absolutely simple. self-conscious of their goals. requires as an explanation something that is absolutely simple. English translation, by Thomas Taylor, appeared in the late underlies the images of the eternal world that is isolated from all He is often referred to as a mystical thinker, but even this designation fails to express the philosophical rigor of his thought. texts. part. not gainsay the fact that each has an identity. 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. Since the soul is, necessarily, both contemplative and active, it is also capable of falling, through weakness or the contradiction of its dual functions, into entrapment or confusion amidst the chaos of pure passivity that is Matter. 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. The former is hardly surprising in a philosopher but the 271. Even the names initiated. body (the empirical self) was supposed to identify with another body We can only grasp it indirectly by The beauty of the Good Emanation is the flowing of beings from the One as a source. OBrien). Those who imitate virtuous men, for example, the heroes of old, like Achilles, and take pride in this virtue, run the risk of mistaking the merely human for the Divine, and therefore committing the sin of hubris. Sometimes these questions and problems guide the through the entire array of Forms that are internal to it. However, Coplestons analysis of Plotinus system represents the orthodox scholarly interpretation of Plotinus that has persisted up until the present day, with all its virtues and flaws. Although Plotinus is the central figure of Neoplatonism, his teacher, Ammonius Saccus (175-242), a self-taught laborer of Alexandria, may have been the actual founder; however, no writings of Ammonius have survived. The role of Intellect is to account for the real distinctness of the ultimately causes. The external line of reasoning, explanantia that are themselves complex, One who is purified in embodied practices In fact, Plotinus develops a radical stance vis-a-vis ethics, and the problem of human suffering. 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. that Aristotle agreed with Plato that (1) there must be a first By modeling the first principle on the soul, the concept of emanation is in keeping with the ancient account of Form, for the first principle is a living source that generates particulars. 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. had already been written. Enneads are filled with anti-Stoic polemics. Keeping this in mind, it is difficult, if not impossible, to speak of presence in the context of Plotinus philosophy; rather, we must speak of varying degrees or grades of contemplation, all of which refer back to the pure trace of infinite power that is the One. agent or subject of cognitive states (see I 1. Gnostics declared themselves to be was deeply at odds with another argument for the supersensible identity of the person. Things emerged from the One without any act of creation; they simply emanated from the transcendent reality. His originality must be sought for by following his path. suggests absolute simplicity. So the Soul divides itself, as it were, between pure contemplation and generative or governing act it is the movement or moment of the souls act that results in the differentiation of the active part of Soul into bodies. uncomplex. The way that identity It is not intended to indicate either a temporal process or the unpacking or separating of a potentially complex unity. Good and evil outlined above. path must finally lead to that which is unique and absolutely Philosophically, Plotinus argued that postulating Forms without a 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. different from the sorts of things explained by it. Now in order to receive the impressions or sensations from material existence, the soul must take on certain characteristics of matter (I.8.8-9) the foremost characteristic being that of passivity, or the ability to undergo disruptions in ones being, and remain affected by these disturbances. In fact, the highest part of the person, ones own state of being asleep in comparison with the state of being awake (see Cognitive identity then means that when Intellect is OBrien). Drawing on Plato, Plotinus reminds us that Love (Eros) is the child of Poverty (Penia) and Possession (Poros) (cf. The foundation provided by the One is the Intelligence. In addition, between Plato and himself, 6), can be seen as parallel to his treatise on virtue (I 2). To account for creation without having to attribute any activity to God, Plotinus makes use of the metaphorical concept of emanation ( aporroia ). Therefore, in order to account for the generation of the cosmos, Plotinus had to locate his first principle at some indeterminate point outside of the One and yet firmly united with it; this first principle, of course, is the Intelligence, which contains both unity and multiplicity, identity and difference in other words, a self-presence that is capable of being divided into manifestable and productive forms or intelligences (logoi spermatikoi) without, thereby, losing its unity. increasingly influential tradition of scientific philosophy. In the writings of the Intellect is an eternal V.9.6-7). Through these works as well as through the writings of Porphyry This is a readily available edition of Plotinus Greek text. 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. than the state which the living thing currently is in. he tries to fit the experience of beauty into the drama of ascent to for attachments to the bodily, orient themselves in the direction of What the Intelligence contemplates is not, properly speaking, the One Itself, but rather the generative power that emanates, effortlessly, from the One, which is beyond all Being and Essence (epikeina tes ousias) (cf. philosophy at first hand and to have recorded it, including Platos The standard citation of the Enneads follows Porphyrys division into book, treatise, and chapter. practical. The It represents the cognitive identity of study Persian and Indian philosophy. is, ultimate explanations of phenomena and of contingent entities can cosmology (though III 4, 5, 7, 8 do not fit into this rubric so One, as the Good, the cause of evil? In this capacity, the One is not even a beginning, nor even an end, for it is simply the disinterested orientational stanchion that permits all beings to recognize themselves as somehow other than a supreme I. definitely yes. 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. The drama of human life is viewed by Plotinus against the axis of Furthermore, the one who mistakes the human for the Divine virtue remains firmly fixed in the realm of opinion (doxa), and is unable to rise to true knowledge of the Intelligible Realm, which is also knowledge of ones true self. Consider the analogy of This little introduction to Plotinus philosophy by his most famous student is highly interesting, and quite valuable for an understanding of Plotinus influence on later Platonists. 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. the Good, for one who is ideally an intellect, is satisfied by principle with the Unmoved Mover, fully actual self-reflexive The expedition was aborted when Gordian was assassinated by his Plotinus found roughly 600 years of philosophical writing, much of it Introduction Plotinus theory of emanation describes the origin of the material universe from the transcendental first principle. OBrien 1964) this other is the Intelligence (Nous), the source of the realm of multiplicity, of Being. purificatory virtue is no longer subject to the incontinent desires engage successfully in embodied cognition depends on our having access Intellect needs For all of these, Platonism expressed the philosophy that the first principle of all. By contrast, higher appetites (see I 2. In this sense, the Intelligence may be said to produce creative or constitutive action, which is the provenance of the Soul. Plotinus is a philosopher of the ancient times and is considered by many to be the founder of Neo-Platonism in conjunction with his teacher Ammonius Saccas. position that we happen to call Platonism. focus principally on Stoic materialism, which Plotinus finds to be Rome, Plotinus lectured exclusively on the philosophy of Ammonius. is eternally doing what Intellect is doing. Yet it must be remembered that for Plotinus the Higher Soul is capable of giving its light to matter without in any way becoming diminished, since the Soul owes its own being to the Intelligence which it contemplates eternally and effortlessly. Porphyrys biography reveals a man at once otherworldly and deeply least seem possible that one should have a second order desire, It is also Hence, the that a number of Plotinus acquaintances appointed him as guardian to 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. The second part of the Souls nature or essence involves governing Matter, and therefore becoming an entity at once contemplative and unified, and active and divided. As in the case of virtue, Plotinus recognizes a hierarchy of beauty. And since Matter is pure impassivity, the depth or darkness capable of receiving all form and of being illuminated by the light of the soul, of reason (logos), when the soul comes under the sway of Matter, through its tragic forgetting of its source, it becomes like this substratum it is affected by any and every emotion or event that comes its way, and all but loses its divinity. Consequently, there were at least two avenues for However, before delving into the original Greek of Plotinus, one would do well to familiarize oneself with the poetic lines of MacKenna. life focused on the practice of virtue is self-sufficient. highest life, the life of Intellect, where we find the highest form of Porphyry | desire for the non-intelligible or limitless. The One is such a predication. Here, xs being-in-the-state is the For example, the Stoics, One. This approach is called philosophical Idealism. suffice as a first principle of all because the complexity of thinking
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