“Our concern,” remarks Plotinus, in the course of his treatise On Virtues, which is his chief discussion of the principles of ethics (I.2.6.2-3), “is not to be free of sin, but to be god.” This remark, while not by any means as hybristic as it might appear at first sight, nevertheless points to an important aspect of Plotinus's ethical thought, an aspect which must be addressed at the outset of any discussion of the subject.

To what extent, it must be asked, does Plotinus in fact have an ethical theory? This may seem a silly, even perverse question to ask, but I think we shall see that it has a point. Of course, Plotinus has an ethical stance.

We can derive this from a perusal of Porphyry's Life of Plotinus, and from many remarks scattered throughout his writings. Like most late antique philosophers, especially those of a Platonist or Pythagorean persuasion, he tended to asceticism in his personal life, to celibacy, both heterosexual and homosexual, and even to vegetarianism. 1 He was also, as we learn (Life ch. 9), a kind and caring guardian of orphans, who took his financial and educational responsibilities very seriously and was therefore much in demand in this role. He was also a person of preternaturally powerful psychic powers (ibid. chs. 10-11), which he used for virtuous purposes.

A COMPANION TO PLOTINUS

This volume, like the others in the series, is intended to serve as an aid to the reading of a major Western philosopher. One service that the editor and contributors would be glad to perform is to change the mind of those who cavil at the use of the term “major” or even “philosopher” in reference to Plotinus. Read them and him for yourself and decide. Do not be put off by ignorant detractors or uncritical enthusiasts or by the essentially empty label “Neoplatonist,” which in some circles has become nothing more than a term of abuse.

How best to assist someone who wants to read Plotinus, whose works, regardless of their quality, are intensely difficult, is not easy to determine. First of all, his thought is not simply divisible into the traditional categories of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and so on. And so it would be positively unhelpful to suggest otherwise by offering a tidy package of essays each of which “does” a given subject. Second, Plotinus's writings can hardly be characterized as systematic, although there is a Plotinian system in the sense that there are basic entities, principles of operation, and an effort at a unified explanation of the world. The system, however, does not for the most part cut up nicely into the written works, such that an introductory exposition of a work would provide one of that system's building blocks. Third, Plotinus is a philosopher deeply and selfconsciously rooted in a long and complex tradition. To try to represent his views without some appreciation of this context could only result in grotesque distortions and it would make this book at best a treacherous “companion.”

Freedom belongs to the category of issues that affect the whole of Plotinus's metaphysics. Insofar as they are not merely beings ranged in a hierarchy but also moments in an infinite process by which the One expresses itself and infinitely offers itself as the Good, all aspects of this metaphysics, whether subjective or objective, are brought into play by freedom. Metaphysics must give an account of this process; it must express its dynamic and offer an explanation of its principal stages in narrative form. Consequently, what is at issue is nothing other than the freedom of each being to evolve or act, depending on its nature, within the context of the whole conceived systematically as depending upon and manifestating the One. “Freedom” has the same meaning at every level: that of a being to be what it is. This meaning pertains to the identity of the Good and Being: “It is obvious that the Good is in being, and in being it would clearly be for each individual in himself” (VI.5.1.23-5). One can legitimately ask, therefore, in what sense can we say that freedom is not identical with necessity? Indeed, in what sense is there even a place for freedom in a universal emanationism?

Within the history of philosophy, Plotinus is presented as the founder not only of a school, but of an entire current of thought, which we are accustomed to call “Neoplatonism.” From Hegel onward, the relationship between later thinkers belonging to this current and its founder has been presented as an increasing systematization of a rich and somewhat chaotic thought into a deductive structure. This process is seen as having reached its summit with Proclus, who distinguishes himself from Plotinus precisely insofar as he gives to Neoplatonic philosophy a systematic order. However, many relevant contemporary studies show that this model does not exhaust the complexity of the historical development of Neoplatonic thought.

The first part of this study will deal with the most prominent features of Plotinus's interpretation of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, and it is meant to elucidate the set of basic philosophic tenets issuing from this interpretation, which later Platonic thinkers endorsed as the common inheritance of their philosophy. In the second part I shall try to set out the reasons why, within the development of Neoplatonic thought, Plotinus's representation of suprasensible reality gave way to a more complex picture.

A study of the relationship between Plotinus and Christian philosophy is far less than an investigation of the overall influence of Platonism on Christianity. It treats of the effect on Christianity of a particular Platonist philosopher of the third century a.d.: A task at once more manageable in scope and more difficult to identify precisely. For Platonism had influenced Christian philosophers before Plotinus (particularly Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen) and it was to be influential over hundreds of years on later Christians, many of whom knew Plotinus as just a prominent name in the tradition. However, to discuss the influence of Plotinus on Christianity is not only to discuss those who knew Plotinus at first hand, and liked (or reacted against) what he taught; it is also to consider the thought of those whose understanding of Platonism was affected indirectly by the particular brand of Platonism established as dominant by Plotinus and which in modern times we have learned to call Neoplatonism.

If we have any preconceptions about Plotinus, before looking at him more closely, these preconceptions are likely to include the notion that his world is a “hierarchy,” or “chain of being” stretching from some mysterious transcendent cause, the One, down through a succession of levels to the bottom level, matter. This notion, derived from the doxographic surveys to be read in our manuals of the history of philosophy, influenced also perhaps by our ideas of later ancient and medieval philosophical systems, is likely to strike us as strange and constitute a major obstacle to wishing or being able to understand Plotinus better. For such a hierarchical world-view will be felt to be anachronistic and unacceptable if we stay within the implicit metaphysical materialism of our time, if we adhere to vague social and political feelings about equality, if we find that talk of “degrees of being” is philosophical nonsense, if we insist that it is we who make our (different) world-views.

If nonetheless we try to come to terms with Plotinus's hierarchical world-view, we soon meet with difficulty of another kind. The term “hierarchy” was first coined in the early sixth century a.d. by a Christian author much influenced by the later Neoplatonism of Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius. The term is not found in Plotinus, nor are other expressions (in particular 'chain of being') sometimes used today to refer to Plotinus's view of reality.

Porphyry tells us that he “once went on asking Plotinus for three days about the soul's connection with the body, and [Plotinus] kept on explaining to him. A man called Thaumasius came in who was interested in general statements and said that he wanted to hear Plotinus speaking in the manner of a set treatise, but could not stand Porphyry's questions and answers. Plotinus said, 'But if when Porphyry asks questions we do not solve his difficulties we shall not be able to say anything at all to put into the treatise'” (Life of Plotinus 13.11-18). Porphyry further claims that the works of Plotinus's “middle period” ([22] to [45]), written while Porphyry was with him, were the greatest (Life 6.31-7), but it is difficult to identify any special difference that his questions made (unless that Plotinus wrote at greater length, and yet more tortuously). Plotinus may have reached his convictions by argument, and been prepared to defend them, but what he says at the beginning, in the discourse On Beauty (I.6), is very much what he says at the end, On the Primal Good and the Other Goods (I.7), “When [we] see the beauty in bodies [we] must not run after them; we must know that they are images, traces, shadows and hurry away to that which they image. . . . Shut your eyes and change to and wake another way of seeing, which everyone has but few use” (I.6.8.7-9, 25-7).

PLOTINUS AND HIS PHILOSOPHICAL SOURCES

The problem of the relation between Plotinus and Platonism belongs within the wider context of the connection between Plotinus and his philosophical predecessors.

Plotinus has gathered the legacy of nearly eight centuries of Greek philosophy into a magnificently unified synthesis. The philosophers mentioned explicitly in the Enneads are few enough and include no one outside the Hellenic period. They are Pherecydes, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus. Nevertheless, citations and allusions are far more numerous than direct references, and these, along with biographical material, permit us both to deepen and to broaden significantly our knowledge of Plotinus's sources by tracing the trajectory of speculation through Plotinus's predecessors. (For a proper evaluation of the relation between the citations and allusions it is crucial to recall with Szlezák that if Plato is explicitly mentioned more than fifty times and Aristotle a mere four times by Plotinus, the number of allusions to each, as listed in the Index fontium of Henry and Schwyzer, is far greater, around nine hundred for Plato and five hundred for Aristotle).

Plotinus anticipates Descartes in arguing both that the soul as subject of perception cannot be an extended substance, as well as in arguing that the mind necessarily knows itself. Like Descartes, Plotinus also invokes an introspective or subjective stance within his dialectical procedure. Methodologically, it will be seen, Plotinus shares along with Descartes in a tradition of philosophy of mind that employs thought experiments as a method of persuasion. The special nature of this persuasion is effected through the textual representation of a highly structured subjectivity as if it were immediately available within the reader's own consciousness.

In this chapter, I will be looking at what might be called a Cartesian method of self-representation, that is, at the philosophical appeal to subjective states, and asking whether and how it informs the contemplative pedagogy of Plotinus. In particular, I will concentrate upon Plotinus's use of thought experiments, in order to discuss his views about self-consciousness and subjectivity.

SUBJECTIVITY AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

What does it mean to for someone to be a person-what is the essence of the human self? In the modern, Cartesian tradition, one answer to this question is that the self is the mind, whereas the mind in its turn is a substance uniquely endowed with both reflexive consciousness and with subjectivity. Recently, historicist challenges to this mentalistic conception of personhood have argued that the ancient Greek philosophers managed their psychology and epistemology quite well without the concept of consciousness.

Plotinus describes matter as “evil itself” (I.8.8.37-44; I.8.13.7-14) and as source of evil in the soul (I.8.14). However, those two apparently straightforward statements lead at once to paradox when we learn that matter is nonetheless derived from the One, through the mediation of soul (III.9.3.7-16; III.4.1). And that paradox is only heightened by Plotinus's repeated claim that matter, “primary evil”and “evil per se” (I.8.3.35-40), is also “non-being” (II.4.16.3; II.5.4-5; III.6.7.1-19).

Various attempts have been made to eliminate one or other element in the paradox. Thus Schwyzer claims that matter exists independently of soul and of the One. Rist allows that matter is a product of the soul, but claims that the soul's production of matter is itself an evil act; from which it should follow that at least one evil act is performed by the soul, independently of the presence of matter. While Pistorius claims that matter, according to Plotinus, simply does not exist at all.

None of those interpretations can survive close confrontation with the text of Plotinus. And, conceptually, none of them does justice to the intricacies of Plotinus's thinking.

My own conclusion will be that a production of the non-being that is matter through the agency of one of the lower manifestations of soul is essential to Plotinus's explanation of evil in the world and of evil in the soul. It is true that, here as elsewhere, Plotinus's arguments are highly elliptical, and rely for their cogency on concepts and categories that are alien to modern ways of thinking and that have often only a tenuous relation to the writings of Plato and of Aristotle that are quoted, tacitly or explicitly, in their support.

In the treatise devoted to eternity and time (III.7) Plotinus begins by reflecting on his own style of philosophizing. These reflections are one of the most important sources for understanding Plotinus's method in general, but it is worth considering them closely in the context of this particular treatise and its topic, for an understanding of Plotinus's approach will help us to follow and better evaluate the general direction of his argument. Plotinus presents us with six aspects. We begin our enquiry (1) with the general notions and presuppositions which will have formed in us a concept of time and of eternity. For Plotinus himself one important and central element of this is the linking of eternity with the unchanging and transcendent intelligible world and time with the physical world of becoming. Clearly Plato lies partly behind this. But what influences may have been at work in the formation of this preliminary concept are of no significance at this stage. Now (2) when we look at our ideas more closely we become more and more puzzled as objections and difficulties arise.

In this essay I shall address some philosophical issues that have to do with the relationship between cognition and its objects in Plotinus. This involves inquiring into the connection between Plotinus's epistemology and psychology, on the one hand, and his ontology, on the other. Interesting questions arise with respect to Plotinus's views both as regards the relation between sense perception and the sensible object and that of thinking and the intelligible object. One set of questions concerns realism versus idealism and subjectivism: Is there in general an essential connection between cognition and object in Plotinus such that the mode of cognition in some sense determines the object? This would imply idealism of some sort. One may also ask whether the immediate object of cognition is always something belonging to the subject of cognition as opposed to something extra-mental. Such a subjectivist position would place the extra-mental beyond the direct reach of cognition and might involve radical skepticism about it. Or is Plotinus neither an idealist nor a subjectivist and objects appear to be such and such because they are such as they appear independently of the mode of apprehension? Different stories may of course have to be told about intelligibles and sensibles with respect to these questions. So I shall in fact argue. Still it is interesting to inquire whether there are any common principles underlying Plotinus's views on both sensibles and intelligibles in this regard. This too I shall take up here.

Of the three first principles (archai) or hypostases, One, Intellect, and Soul, the One or Good is the most difficult to conceive and the most central to understanding Plotinian philosophy. It is everything and nothing, everywhere and nowhere. The One is the source (archê) of all beings and, as the Good, the goal (telos) of all aspirations, human and non-human. As the indemonstrable first principle of everything, as transcendent infinite being, and as the supreme object of love, the One is the center of a vibrant conception of reality many of whose facets resist philosophical analysis. Efforts to understand or to define the nature of the One, Plotinus believes, are doomed to be inadequate. We speak about it, but in reality these efforts only amount to “making signs to ourselves about it”; it is not possible for anyone to say what it is (V.3.13.7, 14.1-7). Despite this insistence on the ineffability of the first principle Plotinus talks about it constantly, making radical claims about its universal role in the structure of reality. Only by reflecting on the internal logic of his metaphysics can we recognize the multi-faceted nature of this unitary principle.

TALKING ABOUT THE ONE

Three interrelated factors motivate Plotinus's philosophy of the One: tradition, reason, and experience. Since the influence of his predecessors, especially Plato and Aristotle, on Plotinus is discussed in Chapter 1, here we will examine the contributions made by rational argument and personal experience toward articulating the metaphysics of the One.

An explicit distinction between essence and existence is first attributed to the Arabic philosophers Al Farabi (c. 870-950) and Avicenna (c. 980-1037). The nature or essence of any finite being can be conceived separately from its existence that appears to be a perfection “superadded” or accidental to its nature. Pierre Hadot has traced the roots of this distinction even further back to Boethius, and later Neoplatonism, and in the latter case to two principal sources: (1) the distinction between absolute being and determinate being (respectively being-infinitive, to einai, and being-participle, to on) found in the anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides (ascribed to Porphyry) and in Marius Victorinus. And (2) the late Neoplatonic distinction (of Proclus, Damascius and Victorinus) between pre-existence (huparxis) and substance (ousia), that is, between pure being in its simplicity prior to all things and substance as the determinate subject taken together with all its accidents. I shall argue here that the roots of this distinction are also to be found in Plotinus.

Readers of the Companion who have arrived at this chapter should be well aware of the fact that Plotinus was a Platonist. One might add that in spite of the fact that he has always been regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism, he himself would not have known what the Greek equivalent of that word might have meant, since all the Platonists of late antiquity regarded themselves as Platonists tout simple, and their philosophy as the exposition of the underlying truths of Plato's philosophy which Plato himself sometimes omitted to make explicit. The degree of self-deception involved in this selfconcept is perhaps nowhere clearer than in their discussions of soul and intellect. That is so because, while their conception of soul (psuchê) was fundamentally Platonic and dualist, their explanation of its operations owed much more to Aristotle and other post-Platonic philosophers than it did to Plato himself.

For Plotinus the dualism was as clear, if not as clear-cut. Though he was aware of materialistic theories of the nature of the soul, such as those of the Stoics, he was hostile to them and would have had little time for the great volume of modern discussion which goes under labels like materialism, physicalism, or functionalism. That is equally true for those theories which, under headings like epiphenomenalism and supervenience, allow for other than fully materialist explanations of what Plotinus would have seen as the most important functions of the soul and intellect - the thinking functions of mind.

Plotinus's highest metaphysical principle, the One or Good, is ineffable (V.3.13.1; cf. V.3.14.1-8; V.5.6.11-13; VI.9.5.31-2). Indeed, Plotinus is hesitant to attribute “good,” “is” (VI7.38.1-2), or even “one” (VI.9.5.30-3) to it. If the heart of his philosophical enterprise is to make meaningful statements about this principle, and furthermore our understanding of all else is informed by it, we may well ask why, in the light of this apparent despair of language, he would continue in his quest (his work extends to nine hundred and seventy-four pages of Oxford text).

Of course, in saying that the One is ineffable, Plotinus has already made a statement, albeit negative, about the One. So at least this negative statement is permissible. Further examination of the possibilities of negative language offers more fruitful ways out of the closure apparently imposed by the stricture of ineffability. Before we consider further the question of the One's ineffability, it will be useful to examine the uses that Plotinus makes of negation. Plotinus uses negation to avoid confusion of an incorporeal reality accessible only to the mind or spirit with a corporeal reality perceived by our senses.