In Chapter 1 we saw Aristotle introduce the Internal Principle of Change Principle (IPCP), but it remained rather abstract and we did not see how Aristotle applies it to actual cases. In this chapter I discuss his use of the principle in his accounts of elemental motion and alteration. This develops the notion of an Internal Principle of Change (IPC) and, I argue, leads him to the view that things need not always possess all their essential properties, though they must by nature be disposed toward possessing them. We can think of this as a principle of essentialist generosity, balancing his tendency to a restricted and elitist essentialism mentioned in the Introduction. (On the one hand, some plebeian things do not have essences; on the other, things that have essences get credit for trying, even if they fail.) In Chapter 5 I return to this theme.

Aristotle's Elements

In On the Heavens III, 3, Aristotle gives the following definition: “An element … is a body into which other bodies may be analyzed, present in them potentially or actually … and not itself divisible into bodies different in form” [302a16–18]. He then goes on to say that fire and earth are potentially present in flesh and wood, for they can be drawn out of flesh and wood, but that flesh and wood are neither potentially nor or actually present in fire, for they cannot be drawn out of fire.

The Unity of Definition

Nominal Essences

We saw in Chapter 1 that, in On Interpretation and in the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle wonders how the differentia and the genus make up a unity and questions Plato's method of division. When one is asked whether man is a terrestrial or nonterrestrial animal, the method of division leads one to answer that man is a terrestrial animal. But, asks Aristotle, “what prevents all this from being true of man yet not making clear what a man is or what it is to be a man?” Man is a terrestrial animal, but the method of division gives us no reason to think that being a terrestrial animal is part of man's essential nature. Mere truth is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a formula's expressing an essential nature; there must be something more, but what? Some interpreters have thought that the missing element must be meaning-equivalence: that if “man” means “terrestrial animal,” then “man is a terrestrial animal” states the essence of man. But Aristotle has something else in mind. In a previous article I called his answer to this problem “the doctrine of proper differentiae.”

In the Metaphysics VII, 4, Aristotle says that “the essence of each thing is what it is said to be in virtue of itself [kath' hauto]. For being you is not being musical; for you are not musical in virtue of yourself. What, then, you are in virtue of yourself is your essence.”

I know twenty or thirty people who, given the chance, could come up with a vastly improved Aristotle. I count myself among this group, and if we had ever formed a committee to do the job, I know the assignment I would have wanted: inserting texts in which Aristotle says that as a given thing can survive without a certain characteristic, the characteristic is not essential to the thing.

Aristotle does, from time to time, invoke the survivability criterion, or what amounts to the same thing – most typically, in claiming that living things and their parts are essentially animate. And in the Metaphysics VII, 15, he criticizes those who would define the sun as “going round the earth”: “they err … by adding attributes after whose removal the sun would still exist.” On their view, if the sun were to stand still, it would no longer be the sun – a strange consequence, “for ‘the sun’ means a certain substance” [1040a28–33]. Outside of a biological context this sort of statement is rare, and at crucial junctures where a quick invocation of the survivability criterion would seem appropriate, Aristotle refrains.

In Metaphysics VII, 4, he addresses the question of whether an essence corresponds to “pale man” by asking whether “pale man” involves one thing's being said of another. How much easier it would have been to point out that, if the pale man spends some time in the sun, he will tan: that paleness is an attribute loss of which people survive each summer.

Plotinus adheres to the classical Greek tenet that we understand and explain something's nature by knowing and articulating its causes, and he articulates the order of causes which explains physical reality as a metaphysical procession whose first principle is his One. Here, though, I shall focus on some main features of Plotinus's analysis of physical reality which prepare the way for relating it to his metaphysical principles.

Plotinus thinks of physical reality, first and foremost, as the domain of coming-to-be (genesis). His analysis of coming-to-be focuses on the coming-to-be of particular things - for example, particular plants or animals or human beings and, in so doing, he intends to continue Plato's project of assuring and explaining the real existence of those particulars and of their comings-to-be. Plotinus does so, in part, by incorporating into his analysis the notion of substance (ousia), which Aristotle introduced to denote the proper subject)s) for assertions of real existence or ascriptions which presuppose real existence; but he considers the notion of substance to be by itself insufficient for his explanatory task.

“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.