Intro to Plotinus Enneads

O’Meara, Dominic J. Plotinus: an Introduction to the Enneads. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.

9 BEAUTY

The Experience of Beauty (Ennead I.6[1])

…great interest to Plato is the experience of beauty….not only perceptual beauty (the beauty of nature and art that we see and hear), but also non-perceptual or immaterial beauty such as that of the virtues of soul and of intellect (Symposium, 210ac)

…sketched by Plotinus as follows: ‘the beautiful occurs mostly in sight, but is found also in hearing, in groups of words, and it is in all [kinds of] music…for those who progress upwards from sense-perception, beautiful pursuits and actions and states of character and sciences and the beauty of the virtues’…

Is it a question of individual taste, of cultural preferences? Beauty then would not actually exist in things as a particular property: it would be ‘in the eye of the beholder’…

…it is described by Plato, an experience whose power, the power of love, seizes us, throws us into confusion, and transforms our lives.

…Beautiful because they participate in a form, the form of beauty…

Beauty is therefore a Form, distinct form other Forms, in which some things participate and therefore become beautiful….reaction of the soul to the presence of Beauty…lover to the beauty of his love (Phaedrus, 249d-252a; Symposium, 210a-211c).

…recollection of the Form of beauty seen by the soul of the lover in a previous existence.

Phaedrus (251a-256e)…recognition, remembrance, and desire of a higher existence underlie the aesthetic experience whose intensity is increased by the confusion and pain of the soul seeking to possess a beloved who is a mere image of the beauty that is sought.

A more prosaic approach,…popularized by the Stoics.

Plotinus summarizes…good proportion of the parts in relation to each other and to the whole, with the addition of the factor of good color, which makes visual beauty.

the One as the ultimate goal of the lover of beauty.

Hence the aesthetic judgment is described as follows: ‘The power [of the soul] ordered to it knows it, a power which is most competent for judging what pertains to it…or perhaps [the rest of the soul] speaks, adjusting to the Form in it [the soul], and using it [the Form] in its judgment, as a ruler [is used for judging straightness]

II. Intelligible Beauty (Ennead V.8)

…intelligible being is considered from the aspect of the unity of intellect and its object…

…as correctives to a fundamental Gnostic error, as Plotinus sees it: ignorance of the true nature of intelligible being…

…might contemplate the beauty of intellect and its world…

…serve to lead soul to pure intellection and hence to intellect…

10 THE RETURN OF THE SOUL: PHILOSOPHY AND MYSTICISM

I. The Goal of Life

100

…deriving from divine intellect, we are souls whose nature it is, as expressions of the One, to organize and perfect material existence. Our love of the One (the Good), from which everything of value comes, may however be overlaid by infatuation with our works, with material things, which causes us to forget ourselves, to become ignorant, evil, and unhappy. Release from vice and misery comes by turning our attention back to the One and reaching it as far as possible.

101

Plato…happiness…one hand he follows Socrates in thinking of it as …social and political life: it is participating in the life of a city in which all action is based on real knowledge of ethical principles…

…other hand…Phaedo,…happiness lies in escape from the body and blissful vision of the Forms in a higher existence. These two conceptions come together in the Utopia of the Republic…

..future leaders of the ideal city…on the basis of their knowledge of the Forms…Form of the Good…

…rulers who know and are guided by the Forms…

Aristotle’s…happiness is similar:…correct functioning of human nature and of the political structures it produces…rejects Plato’s Forms…

…no question of ‘escape’ from the body to contemplate the Forms…

Virtues…known by observing human nature as it functions well…

…in considering intellect to be a divine element in man, Aristotle…saying that the greatest happiness, the highest good for man, is the life of contemplation (Nichomachean Ethics, 10.7-8)

…Stoics and the Epicureans the good life is also…functioning in accord with nature…conceptions of nature diverged…

Stoics…obeying the order imposed on the world by the immanent rational god.

Emerging in a work of unstable conglomerates of atoms, Epicurean man could at most hope to preserve his nature as far as possible, protecting it form disturbance and destruction, living the sober, relatively painless life…

102

This life is divine since it approximates…perfect life enjoyed (between the worlds) by the compounds of fine atoms that are the gods.

…Plotinus identifies the human good, the goal of life, as divinization, as ‘assimilation to god’ (Plato, Theatetus, 176b, quoted by Plotinus)…

Plotinus’ original idea that part of us remains in the intelligible (an ideal generally rejected by the Platonists who came after him) suggests that we are permanently linked to a sort of transcendent consciousness which can be hidden by our present preoccupation. The return to the life of divine intellect is always available to us.

…soul as an activity and contemplation (through intellect) of the One…

II. The Return to the One

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(1) the return to one’s true self as soul; (2) attaining the life of divine intellect; (3) union with the One.

1. …in control of our bodily passions, a control achieved through the practice of what Plotinus calls the ‘civic’ virtues…

…wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice as defined by Plato in the Republic…

…allows us to detach ourselves mentally from material preoccupations…

Phaedo, 69bc…we discover our selves as soul…independent of body and prior to it, which makes body and gives it its goodness and beauty.

104

2.…arguments lead us even further. They not only show soul what it is; they also lead it to see that the knowledge it has…derives from a higher form of thinking, the divine intellect which, unlike it, does not need to work through long logical processes, but possesses knowledge in a different and superior way…

…bringing soul to self-discovery…

Plotinus…’then going down from this position in the divine, from intellect down to discursive reasoning, I a m puzzled how I could ever, and now, descend, and how my soul has come to be in the body. Enneads (IV.8[6].1. 1-10)

105

Many readers (ancient and modern) have taken this text to refer to an experience of union with the One that Plotinus would have experienced a number of times.

Transformation of our lives that comes with becoming intellect is facilitated by philosophical arguments, these arguments must also be left behind: they make use of logical processes and are not required in the perfect knowledge of intellect. The reader of the enneads must put these arguments aside on outgrowing their use.

The reasoning that brings us to self-knowledge as souls and points the way to becoming intellect can play no role in the ultimate step of union with the One.

…the One is beyond all knowledge and language…

106

Enneads (VI. 7. 36. 6-12)Now leaving behind all learning, educated up and established in the beautiful, in which he is, up to this stage, he thinks. But carried out by the wave, as it were, of intellect itself, lifted up high by it as it swells, so to speak, he suddenly saw, not seeing how, but the sight, filling the eyes with light, does not make him see another through itself, by the light itself was the sight seen.

As compared for example with the experience of Christian mystics, union with the one might be thought to entail annihilation of the self…

Plotinus himself does not think that the total union of the self with the One entails the annihilation of the self (see VI.7.34).

III. Philosophy and Mysticism

…vocabulary, imagery, and methods that appear later in the writings of great Christian mystics, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Meister Eckhardt, John of the Cross, Jacob Boehme…

IV. The Ethics of Escape and the Ethics of Giving

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In pursuit of union with the One Plotinus advocates a rather ascetic, otherworldly attitude: we must turn away and escape from this material world, withdrawing ourselves from any involvement with it so as to be able to lead a transcendent life…

…not faithful to Plato.

Republic and in the Laws…Plotinus’ ethics of escape leaves no room for politics.

109

The soul…coming to be in the vision of it [the One], being with it, and having been sufficiently in company, as it were, with it, must come to tell, if it can, to another the life together there…

The vision of the One (the Good) may (but need not) lead to the desire to communicate the Good and this can be done both on the political level (lawgiving and the image of the Good) and on the individual level through the example of wisdom and virtue…

EPILOGUE

PLOTINUS IN WESTERN THOUGHT

111

…in England and North America…this century to dismiss Plotinus as an irrational mystic…now changing…

…restrictive and intolerant philosophical stance which can allow no room for anything that appears to be metaphysical.

Modern research…shown that Plotinus’ philosophy is of considerable importance to the history of Western culture.

I. Elements of a History of the Enneads and Their Influence

…Plotinus’ school in Rome did not survive his death….Porphyry did his best to promote the works of his teacher…

112

…Porphyry’s pupil Iamblichus…school in Syria, vigorously criticized both Porphyry and Plotinus.

Iamblichus inspired a school of philosophers in Athens…Proclus (…485)

…Athenian school was eventually silenced in 529 by what had long been a Christian imperial state,…now thought…school tradition well into the Muslim era in the border town of Harran.

…Alexandrian Neoplatonists…teaching beyond 529 for another century.

…vitality and diversity of the Neoplatonic schools of Syria, Athens, And Alexandria.

…sources of inspiration…Plotinus, his coherent and compelling interpretation of Plato, his successful appropriation of Aristotelian and stoic ideas, his achievement of a synthesis

Through these schools Plotinus influenced the birth of philosophy in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds and in the Latin West of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Plato and Aristotle were read in the form in which they had been incorporated in the curriculum of the Neoplatonic schools and as accompanied by Neoplatonic commentaries.

113

…most well-educated Christian theologians were familiar with the work of the dominant philosophical movement, Neoplatonism, and of its founder, Plotinus. The Enneads were read and quoted by leading theologians writing in Greek such as Eusebius of Caesarea, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nyssa…Latin, Ambrose and Augustine.

…reading changed Augustine’s life: it opened the way for his conversion to Christianity…

Plotinus’ influence: the strong emphasis on the incorporeality of the divine and its immaterial omnipresence …; the stress on man’s soul, man’ inner self, and on return to one’s self and to God through an internalizing moral and mental ascent; the explanation of evil as a lack of good, as a turning away from the good.

…he did not share central doctrines of faith: the Trinity, the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ, the necessity of grace…

Plotinus was read by many prominent intellectuals in Byzantium…

114

…but it was Italian humanists who profited from the Greek manuscripts (including Plotinus) collected by Pletho’s pupil Bessarion when he settled in Italy after the council of Florence (1438)…

Arabic paraphrases of Enneads IV-VI…’Theology of Aristotle’…Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, and Avicenna…

…medieval Western thinkers had no direct knowledge of the Enneads…before the fifteenth century.

…available in the form of references, quotations, excerpts, and adaptations in the writings of Ambrose, of Augustine,…Macrobius.

Thus medieval thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas were aware of Plotinus’ identity and importance

…strengthened by the popularity in the Middle ages of two late antique Christian authors inspired by the Neoplatonic schools of Athens and Alexandria, Boethius and the mysterious Christian pupil of Proclus…’Pseudo-Dionysius’. By reading these authors, …John Scotus Eriugena had indirect access to Plotinian ideas…

Marsilio Ficino…1460’s…Latin translation of Plato…read the Enneads (he regarded Plotinus as a Plato redivivus)…

…impulse to do this came from Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

His Latin translation of the Enneads, accompanied by a commentary, was printed in 1492.

Ficino was proposing to his contemporaries a philosophy which he felt was compatible with Christianity in a way that Aristotelianism was not.

…intensified study of Aristotle inspired challenges to the Christian doctrines of the beginning of the world and the survival of the human soul after death. Ficino’s Plotinus was very well received by humanists in Italy, France, Spain, and England.

116

In 1580 the first printed edition of the Greek text of the Enneads was published. The international success of Ficino’s revival of Platonic philosophy in the sixteenth century was followed in the next two centuries by a decline in which Plotinus shared. Among the factors responsible for this were the growth of secular rationalism (Ficino had linked Plotinus to Christian religion); theological rejection of the Platonizing of Christian faith; and scholarly rejection of the Neoplatonic approach to reading Plato. Plotinus found favor, however, in some quarters: his works were read and used in the seventeenth century by the Cambridge Platonists Ralph Cudworth and Henry More.

II. Plotinus’ Presence

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In thinking about the two worlds of Platonism, the sensible and the intelligible worlds, Plotinus invites us to discover intelligible being as within soul, as within us. The fundamental structures and sources of reality are to be sought in our innermost nature.

…the world is in soul, as soul is in intellect and intellect in the One.

118

….interest in the limitations of thought and language. He is acutely aware of how human rationality and its expression in language are limited with respect to some of the realities under investigation.