i. Plotinus on the Stoic hēgemonikon and the self

The Stoics asserted that the highest part of the soul is the hēgemonikon.Footnote ⁸ It represents a ‘core’ of self, which can be distinguished from other parts of the self that are less truly one’s own.Footnote ⁹ Viewing the self as multilayered and characterized by no such identifiable centre, Plotinus vehemently rejects the Stoic understanding of the hēgemonikon.Footnote ¹⁰ In IV.2 (4).2Footnote ¹¹ he writes, ‘To say that the ruling principle [hēgemonoun] is a part of the soul is to speak without critical reflection: for how will they [i.e. the Stoics] divide the soul, and say that one part is different from another, and one is the ruling principle [hēgemonoun]?’ (IV.2 (4).2.12–16). He proceeds to mount a number of arguments, largely concerned with the nature of perception, to show why he thinks the Stoic notion of the ‘ruling part’ does not work. Plotinus concludes with an explicit rejection of the idea that the soul is to be understood as located at a ‘centre’ (kentron), writing, ‘If the soul was altogether one, in the sense of being altogether indivisible and a self-contained unity, and altogether escaped from multiplicity and divisibility, then nothing which soul took hold upon would ever be ensouled as a whole: but soul would set itself, so to speak, at the centre [kentron] of each living being and leave the whole mass of it as soulless’ (IV.2 (4).2.35–39). Plotinus does sometimes use language that suggests the existence of different parts of the soul, but he is more often concerned with providing arguments for the unity of soul. I suggest that we should avoid as much as possible talking about a ‘centre’ or ‘core’ of the self in Plotinus’ thought.Footnote ¹²

Plotinus’ ambiguity concerning Stoic oikeiōsis can be better understood against the background of his rejection of the Stoic notion of the hēgemonikon. Although attracted to the powerful altruism in the Stoic model, Plotinus ultimately cannot endorse the Stoic position on oikeiōsis because he does not accept the Stoic account of the nature of the self centred around a hēgemonikon. Stoic oikeiōsis takes for granted a clearly defined centre around which one builds relations. In the absence of such a centre, the Stoic model breaks down.

ii. Plotinus’ reading of Plato’s oikeion

Plotinus’ encounter with the Stoic theory of oikeiōsis is entangled with his reception of Plato’s discussions of the oikeion (that which is ‘proper’, ‘appropriate’ or ‘fitting’) in the Lysis, the Symposium and the Republic. Plotinus finds in the Stoic notion of oikeiōsis a sophisticated theory that he brings to bear on his reading of Plato.

In the Lysis, Socrates questions two youths, Lysis and Menexenus, about friendship. Towards the end of the dialogue he asks them:

As is typical of early Platonic dialogues, the reader does not know if Plato himself endorses this argument or not.Footnote ¹³ It is left to the reader to evaluate the question concerning the role of the oikeion in love and friendship.

The Symposium provides further indications of Plato’s view on a similar theme. The oikeion arises in the speeches of both Aristophanes and Agathon, to which Diotima responds.Footnote ¹⁴ Although she does not reject the possibility that the oikeion plays some role in love, Diotima accounts for love as the offspring of Poros (Plenty) and Penia (Poverty). She indicates that love cannot simply be accounted for in terms of the oikeion. Love involves desire for that which one lacks; that is, for that which does not ‘belong’ to one. If indeed the oikeion does play a role in love, then it certainly does not provide an exhaustive account of it.

The oikeion appears at the end of Republic book 1, returns in book 3, plays an important role in book 4 and continues to echo in book 10. It is decisive in the account of justice developed in the Republic.Footnote ¹⁵ As Charlotte Murgier has pointed out, the central importance of the oikeion in the Republic is already in place by the end of book 1.Footnote ¹⁶ His initial account of justice refuted, Thrasymachus turns his argument around, claiming that injustice serves one better than justice. Justice, he complains, makes one lose one’s belongings (oikeia); so, in his view, it is injustice that serves better to protect the self (344c4–6). Socrates undermines Thrasymachus’ argument by showing via analogy that what truly ‘belongs’ to one is the proper function of the soul in virtue:

This argument forms the basis for the further development of the notion of justice in book 4.

Plato addresses the oikeion in his discussion of the education of the guardians in books 2 and 3 of the Republic. Education in music and poetry has a place in the curriculum of the guardians insofar as it grounds our feeling of ‘kinship’ for the good:

Here Plato, sounding almost Stoic, gives oikeiōsis an unambiguously positive role (unlike in the Lysis). However, the suggestion that aesthetic appreciation serves as a propaedeutic to rational ethics proper is foreign to Stoic thought.Footnote ¹⁸

The oikeion figures prominently in the concept of justice elaborated in Republic book 4. Plato coins the term oikeiopragia (‘doing one’s own’: 434c) to capture the way that parts of a whole relate to one another so as to promote the Good.Footnote ¹⁹ Overall, the Republic, in contrast to the Lysis and the Symposium, gives a positive role to the oikeion. However, when in book 4 Plato develops the oikeion in justice in terms of ‘doing one’s own’ and contrasts it with ‘meddling’ (polupragmonein), he generates a context very different from that surrounding Stoic oikeiōsis. This is reflected in contrasting approaches to political and social theory: where Plato’s asks, ‘How do we make a whole function better?’ the Stoics ask, ‘How do wholes emerge from dispersed elements?’

Plotinus considers himself a Platonist primarily because he adopts what he takes to be Plato’s account of the Good. As we will see, the crux of the disagreement between Plotinus and the Stoics on the question of oikeiōsis lies precisely in their divergent accounts of the Good. The differences between Platonic and Stoic accounts of the Good have decisive implications for their accounts of selfhood. Where for Stoics oikeiōsis plays a key role in their model of a centralized self, one which can through oikeiōsis expand its realm of concern and attachment to encompass all of humanity, the Plotinian self is fundamentally de-centred. For Plotinus, the Good, which is ultimately beyond the self, is also simultaneously the true centre of the self.

iii. Oikeiōsis in Stoic thoughtFootnote ²⁰

The term oikeiōsis, derived from the Greek root oikos meaning ‘house’, refers in Stoicism to processes of making things one’s own. Stoic oikeiōsis is associated both with fundamental attachments to self and the capacity to broaden one’s range of attachments to others. These relations can extend so far as to embrace all of humanity and even the cosmos. Although relevant textual sources are distressingly sparse, oikeiōsis clearly plays a crucial role in Stoic ethics and philosophy of the self. Some scholars have argued that oikeiōsis provides the very foundations for Stoic ethics and political philosophy.Footnote ²¹

If the adjective oikeion in its common, non-technical sense means ‘belonging to’, ‘familiar’ or ‘proper, suitable and appropriate for’, oikeiōsis refers to the process by which things come to be such.Footnote ²² We can thus translate oikeiōsis as ‘coming to belong’, ‘familiarization’ and, of course, ‘appropriation’.Footnote ²³ In Stoic thought, oikeiōsis serves to explain how one relates to one’s self and to the surrounding world including other human beings.

At a basic level, oikeiōsis is an innate and preconscious attachment to the embodied self. Stoics invoke this level of oikeiōsis to explain certain normal animal behaviours, such as the instinct to protect one’s body. A useful summary is found in Cicero’s On Moral Ends:

In Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius outlines the relationship between oikeiōsis and allotriōsis (‘alienation’, ‘estrangement’ or ‘rejection’):

I refer to the innate and preconscious level of Stoic oikeiōsis as ‘personal oikeiōsis’. Although it does involve self-love, personal oikeiōsis also includes a tendency to socialization.Footnote ²⁴

The transition between self-love in personal oikeiōsis and love for others in social oikeiōsis is most obvious in parenthood, Cicero explains:

Personal oikeiōsis is, then, completed in the mature Stoic by a second level of oikeiōsis involving a conscious and deliberate process of modifying one’s view of the world and one’s relationships to others. This second level of oikeiōsis, constituted by philosophical practice aiming to overcome egotism, exclusive self-love and chauvinistic attachment to close kin, is ‘social oikeiōsis’.Footnote ²⁵

Hierocles offers a vivid illustration of social oikeiōsis.Footnote ²⁶ He invites readers to imagine themselves at the centre of a set of concentric circles. These circles represent one’s relations to self and others such as family, friends, countrymen and, ultimately, humans in general. The distance of the circles from the centre is in inverse relation to the strength of the attachments to self and others. That is, smaller circles are ‘stronger’ than larger ones. Family, for example, is represented by a small circle close to the self. Our task in the exercise of social oikeiōsis is to bring more distant circles inward by, amongst other practices, changing the way we address others.Footnote ²⁷

Social oikeiōsis is at play in Stoic cosmopolitanism.Footnote ²⁸ Yet Stoics also understood oikeiōsis to be a means by which to realize the imperative to ‘live in accordance with nature’.Footnote ²⁹ In fact, relations formed in both personal and social oikeiōsis are ‘natural’. Social oikeiōsis is grounded in the more obviously ‘natural’ personal oikeiōsis. Footnote ³⁰ Nevertheless, the rational capacity by which in social oikeiōsis the Stoic reworks immediate attachments produced by primary oikeiōsis is also ‘natural’. Hence, Stoic ethics can be considered a variety of ‘ethical naturalism’.Footnote ³¹ In sum, Stoic thinkers use the term oikeiōsis to refer both to a primary and unconscious attachment to the self that is present even in non-rational animals (personal oikeiōsis) and to the conscious rational process of rearranging attachments (social oikeiōsis).Footnote ³²

The notion of oikeiōsis is central to Stoic ‘philosophy of the self’.Footnote ³³ For Stoics, oikeiōsis is simultaneously the manifestation of a natural order grounding the self and a key moment in prescriptive ethics. The prescriptive element in social oikeiōsis clearly permits us to talk about self-constitution in Stoic thought concerning the self.Footnote ³⁴ I suspect that this aspect of Stoic oikeiōsis theory was particularly attractive to Plotinus, given his interest in self-constitution and ‘sculpting the self’.Footnote ³⁵

iv. Middle Platonic thought on oikeiōsis

Plotinus’ critique of Stoic oikeiōsis probably represents a further development of earlier Platonist thought. Certain Middle Platonic thinkers associate oikeiōsis with appetite.Footnote ³⁶ And we find an explicit critique of Stoic oikeiōsis in the Anonymous Commentary on the Theaetetus.Footnote ³⁷ The author writes:

The anonymous commentator seems to rehearse a school argument when he writes: ‘In the cases of both craft and virtue, the difference of a single number suffices to annihilate one or the other. This is why Plato did not derive justice from oikeiōsis, but rather from “assimilation to god”, as we shall demonstrate’ (VII.9–20). The commentator’s point seems to be that the bonds of oikeiōsis are too uneven to ground the Good of the Platonists, which, on this analysis, should be universal in an unqualified sense. Although Plotinus would certainly be sympathetic to this argument, it is not found in his work. On the other hand, the reference to Plato’s Theaetetus finds echo in Plotinus’ treatment of oikeiōsis.

Middle Platonic thinkers rejected accounts of the Good based on oikeiōsis. George Boys-Stones sees this rejection as coinciding with an effort to ground the virtues in an account of the Good.Footnote ³⁹ Plotinus agrees that without reference to the form of the Good, oikeiōsis cannot account for ethical value (this is precisely the point he makes in VI.7 (38), examined in section III.iv below). However, Plotinus’ discussions of oikeiōsis do not make significant reference to the notion of virtue.Footnote ⁴⁰

This brief foray into Middle Platonic thought reveals that by Plotinus’ day there was significant discussion of oikeiōsis amongst Platonists. The fact that there is little overlap between Plotinus’ discussion of oikeiōsis and that of his Middle Platonic predecessors indicates that what Plotinus does say about oikeiōsis is original and the result of careful deliberation. Plotinus seems to be much more receptive to Stoic thought than his Neoplatonic predecessors (a fact which could contribute to explaining the nature of the comment by Simplicius cited at the beginning of this paper).

v. Alexander of Aphrodisias on oikeiōsis

Plotinus used the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias in his courses.Footnote ⁴¹ Although Alexander, a Peripatetic, frequently criticizes the Stoics, he is also, like Plotinus, heavily indebted to them. In his Ethical Problems, Alexander scrutinizes Stoic oikeiōsis in light of the Stoic position according to which life is an indifferent (adiaphoron), not a good.Footnote ⁴² Alexander argues that the Stoic oikeiōsis doctrine is inconsistent with the view that life is an indifferent:Footnote ⁴³

There is an echo of this discussion in Plotinus IV.4 (28), examined below. However, Plotinus takes issue with precisely the position that Alexander implicitly defends, namely, that the life to which we are attached by personal oikeiōsis is a good. Alexander’s suggestion that the Stoics did not assume the full consequences of their own doctrine of oikeiōsis may have contributed to Plotinus’ understanding of the philosophical issues related to oikeiōsis.

Moreover, it is plausible that Plotinus’ critique of the Stoic hēgemonikon draws on Alexander. In a long investigation of the way in which the soul is said to be ‘in’ the body (IV.3 (27).9–23), Plotinus entertains that it is like a pilot in the ship (IV.3 (27).21). Plotinus writes: ‘For the steersman as a voyager would be present incidentally in the ship, but how would he be present as a steersman? Nor is he in the whole of the ship, as the soul is in the body’. He is clearly following Alexander of Aphrodisias.Footnote ⁴⁴ The model of the pilot seems to represent, at least in Plotinus’ view, the Stoic account of the hēgemonikon.

i. The paradox of affection: oikeiōsis as assent (III.6 (26))

Plotinus introduces the term oikeiōsis when articulating the main problem of III.6 (26) ‘On the Impassibility of Things without Body’. Plotinus asks how an ethical theory aiming to maintain the self free of affections can make sense if the soul is already by nature impassive (apathēs). He announces the question expressis verbis at the beginning of chapter 5: ‘Why, then, ought we to seek to make the soul free from affections by means of philosophy when it is not affected to begin with?’ Plotinus responds to this paradox with two strategies: (1) by demonstrating that change (alloiōsis) in the soul is caused by the soul itself rather than something outside of it and (2) by showing that what appears to be change in the soul is in fact change in the body.

The central question of the treatise is predicated on a Stoic model of epistemology and moral psychologyFootnote ⁴⁶ and other elements of Stoic thought show up throughout the text. Plotinus insists on the importance of judgement (krisis) in relation to sense perception (aisthēsis) in the first line of the treatise and continues to use Stoic concepts throughout the work: he discusses pathē ‘affections’ in terms of phantasiai ‘presentations’ which can produce doxa ‘opinion’ and produce tarakhē ‘disturbance’ in the soul.

Although he does not think that it accounts for all aspects of moral life, Plotinus does find the Stoic model of moral psychology eminently compelling.Footnote ⁴⁷ He frequently uses the terms pathos and phantasia in ways consistent with Stoic usage (particularly in his late treatises). Yet, remarkably, the key Stoic term sugkatathesis ‘assent’ occurs but once in the Enneads (I.8 (51).14.4).Footnote ⁴⁸ This conspicuous absence is decisive for the arguments Plotinus develops in III.6 (26), because here oikeiōsis bears roughly the same meaning that sugkatathesis has in the Stoic model of moral psychology. Since this is an extraordinary twist in usage, I provide a detailed reading to support it. Plotinus writes:

Plotinus here uses a Stoic model of moral psychology in the context of the Platonic understanding of the soul composed of higher and lower parts. I read the final sentence of this passage as a hypothetical answer to the question posed in the second sentence. That is, Plotinus suggests that the higher soul consciously chooses to accept or reject affections. Evidently, Plotinus regards Stoic moral psychology as particularly apt to account for conscious states of the soul.

This hypothesis contains several components. First, Plotinus suggests that what we take to be affections are in fact oikeiōsis and allotriōsis. He uses the term oikeiōsis in tandem with an antonym, allotriōsis (‘othering’, ‘alienation’ or ‘rejecting as alien’)Footnote ⁵⁰ and continues to do so consistently throughout the treatise. But where the Stoics talk about oikeiōsis and allotriōsis with respect to external objects, including people, Plotinus uses these terms with reference to what could be called internal objects, that is, feelings, emotions and so on, which the Stoics generally categorize as phantasiai. The result of this shift is that the meaning of oikeiōsis in this context is very close to the Stoic term sugkatathesis. Accordingly, allotriōsis should mean something like ‘refusal of assent’ or ‘rejection’.

Plotinus thinks the subject of this oikeiōsis and allotriōsis is the higher soul. By suggesting that one can ‘perform’ an oikeiōsis of pleasure, pain and so on, all pathē ‘affections’, internal states which in Stoic moral psychology are subject to a procedure leading to ‘assent’ (sugkatathesis), Plotinus implies that he endorses the Stoic idea that affections are the product of a rational process of dealing with experiences. By reading Stoic oikeiōsis as equivalent to sugkatathesis ‘assent’, Plotinus (at this point in his argument only hypothetically) ‘internalizes’ the oikeiōsis theory. He appears to be fully conscious that he is reinterpreting the Stoic theory of oikeiōsis.Footnote ⁵¹ But whereas for the Stoics it is the hēgemonikon that is the subject of sugkatathesis, or as Plotinus would have it here, oikeiōsis, Plotinus carefully avoids this aspect of the Stoic model.

In the third chapter of III.6 (26) Plotinus returns to the question formulated at the opening of the work. He again provides a list of emotions and desires that the soul experiences and indicates that oikeiōsis and allotriōsis can account for a wide range of soul states. Having mentioned pleasure and pain, anger, envy, jealousy and lust in the first chapter, here in chapter 3 Plotinus evokes shame (aiskhunē), fear (phobos), pleasure (hēdonē), pain (lupē) and lust (epithumia). The passage reads as follows:

With a hint at what had become a trope starting with Aristotle’s De anima,Footnote ⁵⁴ Plotinus indicates that the subject of oikeiōsis cannot simply be the soul. First, according to Plotinus, the soul has multiple parts. Second, some experiences that seem to affect the soul are in fact located in the body. Third, in the last line of the passage, the relationship between soul and body is represented as one between active and passive principles. The soul is active while the body is a place in which the activities of the soul become manifest. Plotinus avoids evoking the Stoic hēgemonikon. Rather, he carefully applies Platonic psychological categories (soul and body, higher and lower soul).

Plotinus further distinguishes his account from that of the Stoics when he attacks the key Stoic moral psychological notion of mental presentation (phantasia). For the Stoics, phantasia is precisely the object of judgement and assent. Plotinus writes:

Plotinus alludes to Plato’s account of justice as ‘doing one’s own work’ (the oikeiopragia of Republic 433a–b discussed above) when he writes ‘but the activity of each part is its life according to nature (hē kata phusin zōē), which does not go outside it’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Plotinus argues that if the life functions of the soul involved genuine alteration then the Platonic principle according to which the parts of the soul ought to do nothing but their own task would be violated. This amounts to Platonizing the Stoic notion of ‘life according to nature’: the soul’s life accords with nature precisely insofar as its parts perform their own proper function. Plotinus insinuates that oikeiōsis has something to do with oikeiopragia, suggesting that the soul can accept feelings as appropriate when they involve the right soul part doing the right thing. Plotinus elaborates this argument in order to reinforce his refutation of the idea that the soul undergoes any real ‘alteration’ and maintaining that the soul has its principle of motion inside of itself (referring to the definition of soul as ‘self-moved’ in Plato’s Phaedrus 245c–e). Plotinus suggests that certain activities of the soul might appear like affections to a Stoic who does not recognize that the activities of the soul manifest themselves differently in different soul parts conceived according to the Platonic division.

Although one might justifiably qualify III.6 (26) as an anti-Stoic work,Footnote ⁵⁶ Plotinus also subtly appropriates and remodels Stoic doctrine. He adopts the idea that affection and disturbance result from opinions and judgement, and shows how the Stoic conception of oikeiōsis contributes to a better understanding of the self.Footnote ⁵⁷ The concept of life, generally problematic in ancient Greek philosophy, surfaces at several points in the treatise and is treated in extenso in chapter 6. Plotinus draws on a Platonic conception of life to correct what in his view are the shortcomings of the Stoic account of oikeiōsis.Footnote ⁵⁸ The true oikeion is to be identified with the life of the soul rather than with appropriation of or assent to something external.

By reading oikeiōsis as sugkatathesis in III.6 (26), Plotinus reveals that he thinks that oikeiōsis is situated at the very heart of Stoic moral psychology. He thoroughly Platonizes the notion; yet there is no hint of Middle Platonic critiques of oikeiōsis. Plotinus proves to be a subtle and creative interpreter of Stoic thought here. In fact, his reading of Stoic oikeiōsis prefigures certain 20th-century understandings of authenticity.Footnote ⁵⁹

ii. Oikeiōsis, magic, emotions and self-preservation (IV.4 (28))

At the beginning of chapter 44 of IV.4 (28) Plotinus asserts that ‘Contemplation (theōria) alone remains incapable of enchantment (agoēteutos)’.Footnote ⁶⁰ His account of magic and enchantment is more or less naturalistic, embedded as it is in a conception of cosmic sympathy, the general outlines of which he shares with the Stoics. However, for Plotinus even everyday experiences of anger, fear and desire can be understood as ‘enchantment’. When discussing magic and enchantment here, he clearly assumes that the reader has knowledge of the Stoic account of oikeiōsis.

The passage below represents the conclusion of a long discussion of magic (goēteia) that is undertaken in chapter 40 of IV.4 (28). Having pointed out how actions (praxeis) motivated by (1) the passionate spirit (thumos), (2) fear of suffering (phobos) and (3) ‘carnal desire’ (epithumia)Footnote ⁶¹ are all in some way a product of ‘enchantment’, Plotinus writes:

In this passage Plotinus is concerned with praxis, that is, ethically significant actions, and their relation to contemplation (theōria). Are these ethically significant actions, he wonders, subject to ‘enchantment’ as are the activities undertaken simply to satisfy basic necessities of biological life? Stoics see the latter as motivated by personal oikeiōsis since they involve a preconscious necessary drive to preserve the self common to both human and nonhuman animals. Plotinus expresses the notion of necessity by the concepts of ‘force’ (bia) and ‘attachment’ (which A.H. Armstrong finds, correctly I believe, in the notion of oikeiōsis). He takes pains to show that the practical life of noble actions can transcend oikeiōsis which is, he suggests in this context, equivalent to an attachment to biological life. He traces a fine line between two ways of carrying out the very same actions: one can perform them either (1) with an awareness that they do not represent the ultimate horizon for human life (bios), or (2) with a deep attachment to biological life (zoē).

Plotinus asserts that the ‘nature of humanity’ can effectively be a cause of enchantment. At the heart of human nature as Plotinus understands it here is the oikeiōsis (‘attachment’) to life (zēn).Footnote ⁶² So Plotinus rejects any straightforward ‘humanism’, if we understand ‘humanism’ as a theory which puts the human at the centre of concern. Here Plotinus associates oikeiōsis with the activities of the lower soul. In more modern terms, we might say that Plotinus is suggesting that oikeiōsis is based on biological determinism and thus violates human freedom.

In this passage of IV.4 (28), Plotinus represents oikeiōsis as a narrowing and lowering of one’s concern. This is contrary to the broadening of attachment that Stoic social oikeiōsis recommends. Is Plotinus deliberately and uncharitably misinterpreting Stoic doctrine by conflating primary oikeiōsis with social oikeiōsis? A charitable reading of the Stoics would not reduce oikeiōsis to an unambiguous and instinctive ‘oikeiōsis for life’, as Plotinus does here.

Availing himself of two distinct Greek terms for ‘life’, bios and zoē, Plotinus associates life at a biological or ‘survival’ level (zoē, zēn) with oikeiōsis, while connecting the more properly ‘human life’ (bios) with the ability to look beyond the biological life. At the end of the passage he suggests that suicide, permissible in certain cases according to the Stoics, may be motivated precisely by oikeiōsis! In other words, a narrow attachment to a certain kind of life could ultimately lead one to forfeit one’s life. Plotinus takes this to be a problematic consequence of the Stoic account.Footnote ⁶³

In the remainder of IV.4 (28).4 Plotinus steers the discussion towards a reconsideration of the good. His basic point will be that only a complete understanding of the good guarantees freedom from ‘enchantment’, including the attachment to one’s biologically determined self. Having equated Stoic oikeiōsis with an instinctive tendency towards self-preservation, Plotinus must assert not only that oikeiōsis fails as an account of the good, but that it undermines one’s capacity to orient oneself by the true Good.

Plotinus’ approach to Stoic oikeiōsis in IV.4 (28) is entirely critical and negative. The oikeiōsis we encounter here is hardly better than unenlightened self-interest. Plotinus effectively asserts that Stoic oikeiōsis is incompatible with a Platonic understanding of the Good, since the motivations of oikeiōsis correspond to the motivations which in Platonic psychology belong to the lower soul. The structure of IV.4 (28).44, moving from a discussion of oikeiōsis to a discussion of the Good, reinforces Plotinus’ argument that the Stoic conception of oikeiōsis is incongruous with a Platonic account of the Good. In IV.4 (28) Plotinus suggests that it is not possible to expound the Good in terms of oikeiōsis.Footnote ⁶⁴ Here he seems uncharitable in his treatment of Stoic oikeiōsis.

iii. Oikeiōsis and contemplation (III.8 (30))

In III.8 (30).6 Plotinus discusses the nature of the contemplative activity of the individual soul. He discusses how the soul often engages in contemplation in an oblique or circuitous manner, proceeding through action (praxis) back to contemplation. Here Plotinus develops the radical thesis according to which all living beings, including even plants, contemplate and aspire to contemplation as a good in itself. Behind the rather complex formulation of the theme of the treatise, Plotinus’ central concern is simply to understand how knowledge is possible. The Parmenidean principle according to which ‘to be and to think are the same’Footnote ⁶⁵ serves as the foundation for Plotinus’ main argument in this treatise.

Plotinus in III.8 (30).6 argues that knowing can be understood in terms of the ‘assimilation’ (oikeiōsis) of a logos. The logos (‘rational principle’ or ‘rational form’) serves as a bridge between being and thinking. Logos in Plotinus designates essentially the same thing as does eidos (‘form’), but refers to it in its dynamic aspect, that is, insofar as it comes into or is abstracted from something. Plotinus asserts that for a logos to be effective in the soul it must become one with the knower. Subject and object of thought must in some sense be the same thing:

The fact that he accounts for the relationship between knower and known in terms of logos suggests that Plotinus believes that the content of knowledge, even if it is not necessarily simply propositional, has at least some linguistic or quasi-linguistic structure.Footnote ⁶⁶ When writing of logos siōpōn (‘silent rational form’), Plotinus certainly has in mind Plato’s notion of thought as an internal dialogue developed in the Theaetetus. Footnote ⁶⁷ Plotinus attributes to the ‘silent rational form’ an active function in contemplation that extends beyond simple judgement. And it is precisely by way of a process that Plotinus calls oikeiōsis that the logos becomes active in the soul. The fact that this logos remains ‘silent’ and ‘calm’ permits it to function as Plotinus would have it in contemplation. So, at one level, Plotinus’ use of the term oikeiōsis here is consistent with the usage in III (26): it means something like ‘assent’ (sugkatathesis). Moreover, this resonates with the passage of the Theaetetus where Plato has doxazein mean something similar to Stoic ‘assent’.

Plotinus contrasts what appears to be a total assimilation between subject and object in the oikeiōsis of contemplation (theōria) with a much looser relationship between subject and object in ‘men of action’. The less intimate connection between subject and object is referred to in terms of ‘harmonization’ (epharmottei). Plotinus argues that the more complete unification of subject and object produced in contemplation explains why the contemplative soul is ‘quieter’ (hēsukhaitera) than the soul inclined towards praxis.Footnote ⁶⁸

In III.8 (30) Plotinus turns to Stoic concepts, logos and oikeiōsis, as he recasts the Aristotelian notion of ‘contemplation’ (theōria). In both III.8 (30) and III.6 (26) oikeiōsis designates a kind of specific judgement. However, in III.8 (30) Plotinus takes this notion of judgement into a field of concepts that is foreign to Stoicism. His use of the concept of oikeiōsis in III.8 (30) contains no hint of his critique of the Stoic notion in III.6 (26). Rather, oikeiōsis turns out to be a useful concept for explaining what in Platonism is the heart of philosophical activity. In III.8 (30) Plotinus understands ‘contemplation’ (theōria) in terms of oikeiōsis.

In developmental terms, III.8 (30) marks the beginning of Plotinus’ attempts to apply the concept of oikeiōsis, which the Stoics had used to explain physical and social relations, to the explanation of how the self relates to the intelligible world of Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics. But III.8 (30) does not yet contain a fully Platonized theory of oikeiōsis as does the very late III.5 (50).

iv. Oikeiōsis and the Good (VI.7 (38))

In VI.7 (38).15–42, Plotinus discusses his understanding of the Good. This section of VI.7 (38) reads largely as a commentary on Plato’s Republic 508e–509b and Symposium 211d–212c. When he introduces the term oikeion into his argument, Plotinus clearly has Aristophanes’ speech from the Symposium (189d–193d) in mind. But as the argument proceeds Plotinus nuances his treatment of the oikeion and reveals that his view of oikeiōsis relies on interaction with the Stoic account. He thinks that, when they invoke the oikeion and oikeiōsis, Plato and the Stoics are proposing answers to one and the same question: what is the Good? Plotinus concludes his discussion of oikeiōsis in VI.7 (38) with a decisive rebuttal of the Stoic account of oikeiōsis. It cannot, he thinks, provide an adequate account of the Good.

The style of VI.7 (38).21, where Plotinus introduces the concept of the oikeion,Footnote ⁶⁹ gives some indication of the importance he attributes to it. He passes abruptly from an aporetic to a self-consciously affirmative tone. He writes, ‘let us dare’ (tetolmēsthō) and continues rather elliptically:

Plotinus’ goal here is to outline and examine accounts of how the oikeion and the Good are related. According to him, the oikeion does not ground the Good. That which belongs to something (in other words, is oikeion to it) is not necessarily good. Plotinus explains what he takes to be the source of a misunderstanding in the Stoic position: the Stoics affirm that the Good is the oikeion.Footnote ⁷² At the beginning of his discussion of the Stoic position on oikeiōsis Plotinus entertains it as a hypothesis: it is possible that the soul’s attraction to the intellect and the intelligible life should be explained as the pursuit of the oikeion.Footnote ⁷³ According to this hypothesis, the soul recognizes the intellect as its own (oikeion) because the soul comes from and returns to the intellect.

However, Plotinus provides two counter-arguments to undercut the hypothesis that the oikeion is the Good. First, the soul may in fact flee what is its own. Second, Plotinus adds, the soul can experience an intense love for things that are not its own.Footnote ⁷⁴ The oikeion does not suffice to account for the Good. Nevertheless, although it may not be the cause of a thing’s goodness, Plotinus admits that the oikeion coincides with certain elements of the Good.

In VI.7 (38).27 Plotinus revisits the argument contra the oikeion as the Good, outlined in chapter 20. The densely argued passage reads as follows:

Since these are some of the most important and clearly formulated claims regarding the oikeion that we find in all of Plotinus’ writings, it is worth looking at the structure of the argument in detail.

Rather than simply asking, ‘What is the prosēkon for each thing?’, Plotinus’ question is convoluted: ‘But what is it by the coming of which to each one it has what is fitting (prosēkon) for it?’ The awkwardness of the sentence seems to be due to the fact that Plotinus is preparing the conceptual structure that underlies the conclusion of the passage; there he discusses the good as transcendent to the thing in question. The convoluted formulation already suggests this answer. However, in the second sentence of the passage, Plotinus asserts that a thing’s form is its prosēkon. He provides two reasons to support this claim: (1) form is the oikeion for matter and (2) virtue is form for soul.

In the next line Plotinus arrives at the crux of the problem: ‘But is this form good for that which has it by belonging (oikeion) to it and is its desire directed to what belongs to it?’ No, he responds, citing a Platonic principle from the Symposium: desire has as its object something that it does not possess. The position that the oikeion and the desirable are not the same thing provides the basis for further arguments against the idea of the oikeion as the Good.

In the last sentence of the passage cited above, Plotinus makes a conditional concession with an argument a fortiori:Footnote ⁷⁶ ‘even if a thing is a good for itself, its perfection (teleiotēs) and its form and what is higher than it would much more be a good’. The conditional part of this sentence (‘if a thing is a good for itself’) reveals an important aspect of Plotinus’ approach to the oikeion. In this sentence, he does not talk about the oikeion as something belonging to something else. Rather, he talks about a thing being a good for itself. In other words, Plotinus reads the notion of the oikeion as tautological. He seems to collapse the oikeion and that to which it is the oikeion into one another.

The contrast with Stoic thought could not be more striking. For a Stoic the oikeion, insofar as it implies sociality in both personal and, more obviously, in social oikeiōsis, points to something pertaining to the self that is not a priori included in the notion of self. For Plotinus (at least in this context) the oikeion represents the self in its narrowest sense, the self without relation to any larger social or metaphysical structure. Plotinus goes so far as to associate the oikeion with need and insufficiency: it indicates an absence of perfection and characterizes that which is disconnected from the whole.

However, as I have indicated above, in this last sentence of the passage Plotinus is, at least hypothetically, making a concessive argument. It involves a real concession, since Plotinus does in fact endorse the position formulated in the conditional clause.Footnote ⁷⁷ He concedes that the oikeion is a good. But it is not the good.

Plotinus outlines his own position in positive terms stating that there is something better than the oikeion: ‘its perfection (teleiotēs) and (kai) its form and (kai) what is higher than it would much more be a good’. It is not entirely clear if we should understand the two instances of kai as explicative (and thus translate ‘its perfection, or in other words, its form, that is, what is higher than it’). I suggest that they are indeed explicative but serve also an additive function. That is, each of the three terms in the sentence, perfection, form and what is higher, takes us further away from the thing in question insofar as it can be conceived without reference to its intelligible structure.Footnote ⁷⁸ The third term, ‘what is higher’ is decisive because the comparative ‘higher’ suggests that there is some element of a thing’s form that transcends the thing itself. Not surprisingly, Plotinus will indeed affirm that the ultimate perfection of a thing is not its own form but the form of the Good.

Having shown that the oikeion is not the Good, Plotinus considers the question whether something, on account of oikeiōsis to itself, might be good for itself. He does admit that a thing can be a good for itself, but not on account of oikeiōsis. Apparently Plotinus wishes to exclude the possibility that, even granted the existence of a transcendent Good, one might assert a level apart from it at which things have a particular goodness in relation to self. Although he concedes that something can be a good for itself, Plotinus is convinced that all goodness in relation to self is dependent on a relation to the transcendent Good.

Plotinus moves finally from the vocabulary of oikeion through the superlative of the term (oikeiōtaton) to the notion of oikeiōsis itself. The passage reads as follows:

Here Plotinus unambiguously rejects the possibility that oikeiōsis accounts for why a thing is a good for itself (his reading of the Stoic position) and asserts instead a Platonic account of the good. He claims that a thing is a good for itself insofar as it has a ‘portion’ (moira) of good. Hence, oikeiōsis is only a relative good: it is good only as a consequence of the real (transcendent) Good. Plotinus thus reverses the order of explanation inherent in the Stoic account. According to Plotinus, the (transcendent) good explains how and why oikeiōsis occurs, and why it can be understood as good, not the other way around.

Plotinus’ argument here aims to undermine the very question concerning a thing’s goodness in relation to itself. Plotinus asserts that it is ‘absurd to enquire why a thing which is good is good for itself, as if it would have as regards itself to get out of its own nature and not be content with itself as good’. The question is superfluous, in Plotinus’ view, since to have a nature, that is a form, is precisely to be a good for oneself. So, an answer formulated in terms of oikeiōsis is useless. Plotinus suggests that oikeiōsis might nevertheless serve as a label for certain relations. But it cannot qualify as an explanation for the grounds of such relations. Plotinus has discovered that it is indeed possible to provide a rough sketch of his account of the good in terms of oikeiōsis. However, when he aims for maximal precision, Plotinus seems concerned that the concept of oikeiōsis only occasions confusion.

At the very end of the passage, Plotinus pushes the notion of oikeiōsis to its limits: ‘when something is simple we must consider this question, whether, where in no way there is in it one part and another, there is coming to belong to itself (estin hē oikeiōsis pros auto), and if it is a good for itself’. Since the One and to a lesser extent the Intellect are characterized by simplicity, Plotinus asks whether it can make any sense to attribute to them a self-relation qualifying as oikeiōsis. Curiously, he does not explicitly reject or affirm this suggestion.

Hadot’s commentary on this Ennead sums up concisely what is at play here:

Since the true self in Plotinus transcends the apparent self, oikeiōsis, if taken seriously, can only represent a paradox. There is no leading part (hēgemonikon) in the soul for Plotinus. The self in Plotinus is de-centred. Its best ‘part’ lies beyond it. For Plotinus, the Aristophanes of Plato’s Symposium, who suggests that love is a search for the restitution of an ‘original nature’ (hē arkhaia phusis, 193d4), which, if still worldly, transcends the self, is closer to the truth than the Stoics. The Plotinian subject is ultimately less self-sufficient than the Stoic subject.Footnote ⁸² Plato’s account of love as the offspring of Poros and Penia (Symposium 203b ff.) underlines how need is an essential moment in subjectivity. Only if oikeiōsis can be reconciled with ‘need’ (penia) can Plotinus find a place for it in his thought.

v. Platonic appropriation: oikeiōsis and erōs (III.5 (50))

In the late treatise ‘On Love’ (Ennead III.5 (50)) Plotinus provides a sustained philosophical account of love developed through the interpretation of two myths drawn from Plato’s Symposium and with substantial reference to Plato’s Phaedrus. The very first line of the treatise suggests that serious hermeneutic effort will be required in order to understand how love can be referred to variously as a god, a demon and a passion (pathos) of the soul. Here Plotinus uses the notion of oikeiōsis in his efforts to bridge the chasm between love as divine and complete, on the one hand, and love as human and wanting, on the other. This takes place against the more general problem of Platonic metaphysics that involves reconciling the intelligible and sensible realms. So oikeiōsis appears here in coordination with terms such as mimēsis (‘imitation’), eikōn (‘image’), anamnēsis (‘recollection’) and metekhein (‘to participate’).

Having identified three possible ways of understanding love, as god, demon or passion, Plotinus turns first to passion. The term pathos signals that Plotinus will begin by dealing with love in psychological terms and, what is more, one in which Stoic conceptuality furnishes the lexicon. Plotinus uses a number of terms cognate to oikeiōsis before introducing the term itself.Footnote ⁸³ Let us look at the first passage in this treatise related to oikeiōsis:

There are, Plotinus says, two ways that love as passion (pathos) can be expressed. This is essentially the distinction between ‘platonic’ and sexual love.Footnote ⁸⁵ Plotinus introduces terminology related to oikeion/oikeiōsis to explain the nature of the higher passionate love. He uses oikeioō, a verb that literally means ‘to make oikeion’, to designate the nature of the relationship between temperate people and beauty itself (esti para sōphronōn auto tō kallei oikeiōthentōn).Footnote ⁸⁶ In effect, then, Plotinus asserts that the appropriate relationship with the Good is one of oikeiōsis. This is remarkable not only because Plotinus is giving a positive spin to oikeiōsis, but also because he situates it at the very heart of Platonic thought.Footnote ⁸⁷

Plotinus further explains how this process unfolds: ‘if anyone delights in something and is akin to it (esti suggenēs), he becomes close (ōkeiōtai) also to its images (eikonas)’.Footnote ⁸⁸ If we read this together with the passage discussed above (and in light of the overall programme of Plato’s Symposium), oikeiōsis to the Good takes place through oikeiōsis to the images (eikones) of the good. According to this interpretation, oikeiōsis is not simply a condition for love but is the very process that is love.

Support for this reading is to be found in the lines that follow the passage cited above. Plotinus explains further what he means by ‘kinship’ (suggeneia):

In this passage, the terms suggeneia and oikeiōsis are closely related. Armstrong translates the substantive suggeneia and the adjective suggenēs by ‘kinship’ and ‘akin’.Footnote ⁹⁰ No doubt Plotinus intends that his reader hear the resonance of the roots of this term: the terms suggeneia and suggenēs appear immediately after the term genna ‘generate’. It is in terms of suggeneia that Plotinus reinterprets Plato’s account of love in the Symposium as ‘the desire to generate in beauty’ (206c5). The term suggeneia had in the Greek of Plotinus’ day taken on a broad range of metaphorical meanings relevant to metaphysics. Of particular interest here is the fact that suggeneia often refers to various kinds of spiritual kinship.Footnote ⁹¹

The verb oikeioō appears in an aorist passive form (ōkeōthē) only once in Plotinus’ oeuvre, here in his treatise on love and in the context of the myth of the birth of Love from the marriage of Aphrodite and Kronos (or the latter’s father, Ouranos):Footnote ⁹²

In this passage the notion of oikeiōsis figures in the middle of a trio of terms which lead to the birth of Love: (1) activity (energeia) towards Kronos (which represents the intellect), (2) oikeiōsis and (3) passionate love (erōs). Oikeiōsis results from an activity directed towards the intellect, or a ‘turning towards’ the intellect which could be understood in the standard Neoplatonic language of epistrophē (‘turn’ or ‘conversion’). Oikeiōsis becomes the term mediating between the moment of epistrophē (understood by Plotinus in this context as a reorientation of energeia) and the actual experience of love on the part of the soul. Oikeiōsis gives birth to love, a substance emerging from this looking towards the intellect. Love is, Plotinus explains still interpreting Plato’s Symposium, ‘intermediary between desiring and desired’.

Since in this passage oikeiōsis (expressed in the verb ōkeiōthē) immediately precedes passionate love, it might seem that the affinity felt for the oikeion represents the condition for the possibility of love, or even the grounds of love. This interpretation is supported by Plotinus’ assertion in the first passage from III.5 (50) that we looked at (chapter 1.10–28), where he wrote, ‘if someone assumed that the origin of love was the longing for beauty itself which was there before in men’s souls, and their recognition of it (epignōsin) and kinship (suggeneian) with it and unreasoned awareness that it is something of their own (oikeiotētos alogon sunesin), he would hit, I think, on the truth about its cause (tou alēthous tēs aitias)’ (III.5 (50).1.14–19). In these lines at the very beginning of the treatise, Plotinus tersely and tentatively expresses the work’s main thesis: rather than a mere affection, a disturbance initiated from the outside, love is the product of the spontaneity of the soul as it encounters the intelligibility of that which is close and akin to it, and to which the soul can come closer by way of oikeiōsis. This represents, however, a perfectly Platonized form of oikeiōsis. Oikeiōsis ultimately plays a role in what is most characteristic of Platonic thought: the return to the Good. Plotinus has come full circle. Having criticized Stoic thought on oikeiōsis, he completely appropriates the theory to a Platonic context.

In Plotinus’ estimation, love itself, including the love involved in sexual relations, can only be adequately accounted for in terms of a broader intelligible context. To better understand why this is so, it is worth dwelling on the expression ‘unreasoned awareness that it is something of their own (oikeiotētos alogon sunesin)’. The term sunesis is polyvalent. What kind of ‘awareness’ is Plotinus thinking of here? S unesis is sometimes associated with consciousness.Footnote ⁹⁴ Indeed, it has been thought to play a key role in Plotinus’ important contribution to the understanding of consciousness (and self-consciousness).Footnote ⁹⁵ On the other hand, sunesis can also mean ‘comprehension’, such that Plotinus might mean it to indicate a kind of experience that is not necessarily characterized by reflexivity, which is at least implicit in a translation by ‘consciousness’. The reading of sunesis as ‘comprehension’ is supported by the idea of epignōsis ‘recognition’ that figures prominently in this passage.

Plotinus gives us some indication of what he means by ‘awareness’ (sunesis) when he qualifies it as ‘unreasoned’ (alogon): he excludes the possibility that love proceeds by conscious mental exercise (as in Stoic social oikeiōsis). In Plotinus’ account, love does not emerge from a careful and explicit survey of our relations to self and others. On the contrary, the awareness that ultimately explains love arises alogon, ‘without reckoning’ or we might gloss ‘without any intellectual effort’. The term alogon serves, then, to explain how the experience of love, which might appear to be a mere ‘affection’, is in fact an expression of the unmediated affinity with the object of love.

In this context epignōsis, which can simply mean ‘recognition’, must point to something stronger, as it commonly does in patristic thought, for example, ‘knowledge’ or even ‘divine knowledge’.Footnote ⁹⁶ Here Plotinus uses the term epignōsis to unpack the concept of anamnēsis: recognition is an effect of recollection. But epignōsis refers to the rediscovery of a relation that already exists, rather than the establishment or development of some new relationship as oikeiōsis suggests.

Although in this paper I put forward a developmental account of Plotinus’ thought on oikeiōsis, I would like to highlight the fact that behind the development in his thought there is remarkable consistency. A clearer picture of the development in Plotinus’ thought emerges when we identify those elements that remain stable throughout his works. Compare the passage we looked at in III.5 (50) to a passage from the early treatise I.6 (1) ‘On Beauty’, where Plotinus writes:

The vocabulary of sunesis and epignōsis in Plotinus’ very first treatise is exactly the same as in the treatise III.5 (50). But what Plotinus had expressed in I.6 (1) with some qualification in terms of ‘adaptation’ or ‘harmonization’ (hoion sunarmottetai), is expressed in III.5 (50) without qualification in terms of oikeiōsis. Oikeiōsis seems to provide a technical term that had been wanting in Plotinus’ philosophical vocabulary since early on.

Several lines down in the second chapter of I.6 (1) Plotinus returns to the vocabulary of suggeneia:

Immediately after these lines, Plotinus asks about the likeness between the intelligible and sensible beauty. The word he uses for ‘likeness’ is homoiotēs. At the risk of stretching the interpretation, we might remark that the homoiotēs in I.6 (1).2 could be understood in relation to the homoiōsis theō of Plato’s Theaetetus. If this is so, then the replacement of homoiotēs of the early treatise by the term oikeiōsis in III.5 (50) suggests that Plotinus intends oikeiōsis to mean something like Platonic homoiōsis. There are of course further differences between the account of the soul’s relation to intellect in I.6 (1) and that of III.5 (50) (where oikeiōsis comes into play), differences that might, once again, suggest some evolution in Plotinus’ thought. It seems that in III.5 (50) he turns to the concept of oikeiōsis in search of a less self-centred and more subtle psychological account of the soul’s relation to intellect.

According to Plotinus, love is distinct from the kind of relationships that emerge through Stoic social oikeiōsis. For Plotinus, love is not, in its most fundamental form, something intentionally cultivated. It is not a ‘practice’. In fact, according to the account Plotinus develops in III.5 (50), love, at least in its primary sense, is not necessarily present at a conscious level of human experience. Love precedes consciousness (and philosophy). Yet it is present to humans in experience. Even before love is brought to consciousness it reveals fundamental metaphysical structures of reality, structures which can be understood in part by uncovering a certain kind of oikeiōsis at work in love.

In III.5 (50) we encounter what is ultimately a radical revision in Plotinus’ approach to the notion of oikeiōsis. Plotinus, as it were, fuses the two levels of Stoic oikeiōsis, the unconscious attachment to self (which can be understood to coincide in some sense with self-love)Footnote ⁹⁷ with the movement outward in social oikeiōsis. Love, a spontaneous and often unconscious movement outward, is for Plotinus attachment to the Good itself; it is, therefore, more primordial than any attachment to self. In III.5 (50) Plotinus gives to oikeiōsis what could, with reference to its Platonic background, be called an ‘erotic’ turn. Where for the Stoics oikeiōsis goes from philosophy of the self to politics, in Plotinus oikeiōsis goes from philosophy of self to love.Footnote ⁹⁸ In the end, oikeiōsis in III.5 (50) explains the very capacity of the self to be directed towards the Good.