Consciousness

Extended in space and divisible into parts, bodies are by their very nature subject to being scattered (iv.2.1.12–17). Due to the fact that the parts that constitute a body differ from one another and from the whole of which they collectively are parts, bodies possess a limited degree of unity. They are one by continuity, i.e., they are unified to the extent that their parts are contiguous with one another (iv.2.1.60–3). The human body is no different. So how does something that is essentially extended, divisible, and subject to dispersion acquire the unity that is required for impulse-directed movements?⁷ The answer lies with soul, and in particular with two psychic capacities whose role it is to unify the qualified body at the level of nature.⁸

Plotinus holds that animals and embodied human beings share a type of consciousness, which enables them to unify their qualified bodies and function as structured and coherent wholes. The qualified body (to toionde sōma) is the body, which has been informed by the lower soul. However, in the case of human beings the qualified body is not who ‘we’ really are. Plotinus uses the first-personal and reflexive pronoun, ‘we’, to refer both to discursive reasoning and the qualified body when discussing the embodied person. However, properly speaking ‘we’ are discursive reasoning; the qualified body merely belongs to ‘us’, in the way that a tool belongs to a craftsman. Nonetheless, ‘we’ can sink to the level of the qualified body by adopting a way of life that involves acting on the basis of non-rational sources of motivation such as appetite or passion, since the dominant pursuits of our life-activities dictate the level of self at which we live and act.⁹

This type of consciousness is awareness (sunaisthēsis). It differs from sense-perception (aisthēsis) by being directed towards one's own internal parts and activities.¹⁰Awareness is the most general form of consciousness in Plotinus, occurring at all levels of the human self and in each of the hypostases. However, at the level of the qualified body it functions as a form of proprioception or bodily self-awareness that enables living beings to recognise that the parts and activities that constitute themselves are their own, and to activate specific bodily parts over others in order to accomplish specific tasks, such as standing on our feet in order to walk or extending our hands in order to grab.

Closely related to awareness is the notion of sympathy (sumpatheia). Plotinus borrows this notion from the Stoics,¹¹ but significantly modifies it. He agrees with the Stoics that soul unifies the body and provides stability and coherence; however, he disagrees that soul sustains the body by means of the tensile movement of air and fire (or anything physical, for that matter) and that sympathy is a shared affection between soul and body. The basis for his disagreement is his view that soul is incorporeal and, therefore, non-spatial, indivisible and impassible. Interestingly, Plotinus assigns to sympathy the role of unifying the qualified body, but he does so without specifying a physical mechanism such as tensile movement. This may appear to be a shortcoming in Plotinus' view, but it is entirely consistent with his ‘top-down’ approach towards natural phenomena. In so far as souls are unitary substances that occupy a higher level in the hierarchical ordering of reality and organise bodies by delivering formative principles into matter, the unity, structure and coherence that bodies exhibit comes from a higher level.

Accordingly, Plotinus maintains that soul is present to the body as a whole in all the parts of the body, and that this unique mode of presence places all the parts in a community of common feeling with one another.¹² It is this sympathetic relation that living beings have towards themselves that enables them to function as unities despite being composed of a multitude of bodily parts. Thus, awareness and sympathy work together to unify the qualified body that is attached to us and enable the human being to engage in impulse-directed movements. Sympathy provides a unified subject in which awareness can occur; awareness provides the recognition that the bodily parts and activities that constitute this subject are one's own or belong to oneself.

However, in order to achieve higher levels of unity and to progress towards self-sufficiency (autarkeia) and self-determination (autexousios) one must turn inwards and ascend upwards in order to direct one's attention away from the concerns of the lower soul and towards the good of the higher soul (i.1.3.23–7).¹³ Self-sufficiency and self-determination are the normative ideals towards which our embodied efforts are oriented.¹⁴ Their accomplishment involves living according to the noblest part of us, intellect, acting on premises derived from the noblest principle, Intellect, and fulfilling one's nature as a moral and intellectual being by voluntarily striving towards the Good. Realising these ideals enables us to engage in the activity that constitutes our essence without anything external or beyond our control impeding our activity. Moreover, by identifying oneself with one's intellect and shaping oneself towards this end one becomes one's true self. As Pauliina Remes notes, ‘Ultimately there remains one major responsibility, that of self-improvement of the embodied self, that is, realizing aspects of the ideal and autonomous self at the level of ordinary human existence’ (Reference Remes2007: 209).

Now that we have investigated the role that awareness plays at the level of nature, let us turn to the role awareness plays at the level of Intellect. Plotinus treats Intellect paradigmatically, characterising it as the primary thinker and its unique mode of self-thinking as primary thinking, whose being and activity we aspire towards.¹⁵ Intellect is the primary thinker because it is the primary form of life and activity, which process directly from the One and takes part in creating and sustaining the universe through providing essences to all things, including individual intellects (iii.8.8.26–9 and 41–3, iv.7.9.11–15, v.4.2.22–6; Gerson Reference Gerson1994: 57; Horn Reference Horn2012: 215, 217). Intellect's self-thinking is primary because it is a self-contained activity in which the subject is directed towards itself as its own object, which is the simplest form of activity beneath the One (v.3.7.18–20, v.6.1.1–14). For this reason, Intellect is the principle of human intellects, and insofar as discursive reasoning is the intellect unfolded on a lower level, what Plotinus calls the dividing intellect (v.9.8.21–3, vi.5.2.1–7), it serves as the principle of discursive reasoning as well.¹⁶

Awareness plays a crucial role in the generation of Intellect from the One. During the procession Intellect generates the world of Forms by halting and looking back towards its source and, upon doing so, begins to think. Its thinking is directed towards itself since it generates the world of Forms internally and it shares the same actuality with the Forms. Moreover, Intellect becomes aware of itself and its contents the moment it constitutes itself as a definite entity (vi.7.16.19–21, vi.7.35.31–3). Important for my purposes, awareness also plays a crucial role in Intellect's eternal act of self-thinking. Plotinus writes at v.3.13.12–22:

In this passage Plotinus distinguishes between that which is truly self-sufficient and that which is secondarily self-sufficient. The One is truly self-sufficient because it does not stand in need of being completed by anything external to itself and its activity is not impeded by anything outside itself beyond its control, whereas Intellect is secondarily self-sufficient because although it is a purely self-directed and self-contained activity, it nevertheless stands in need of being completed by the One.¹⁷ Moreover, Plotinus claims that in order to be secondarily self-sufficient Intellect must collect its parts (i.e. itself as a subject, act of thinking and the world of Forms with which it is identical as object) through the activity of self-thinking, which he characterises as an ‘awareness of the whole when many parts come together into the same [subject]’. Even though Intellect is the paradigm form of life and activity, it stands in need of being aware of its parts and activities because it is a multiplicity (vi.7.41.17–29). Awareness is playing the same role it does at the level of nature, namely enabling a living being composed of a multitude of parts to unify itself into a structured whole. Intellect is no exception (vi.7.41.17–29).

To return to our intellects, when we ascend to the intelligible world and recognise that our true self is an intellect we become aware of our kinship with intelligible Being and adopt the mode of intellection and self-awareness appropriate to Intellect.¹⁸ This involves thinking the Forms directly and all-at-once, sharing in the actuality of Intellect, Being and the Forms, and becoming aware of our identity with Intellect. Plotinus writes:

It is in virtue of this heightened self-awareness and recognition that our intellect is identical to the intelligible Beings in Intellect that we are capable of determining ourselves. As we will see in the next section, becoming a self-determining agent involves identifying oneself with one's higher soul, acting on premises derived from Intellect, and establishing right reason as the guiding force in one's daily life. Given the fact that Intellect is also in us, the process by which we achieve this autonomy is essentially an inward process that requires a unique mode of consciousness.

Agency

Plotinus develops the concept of agency throughout the Enneads. The most detailed analysis of this concept occurs in iii.8 (treatise 30) On Nature and Contemplation and the One and vi.8 (treatise 39) On Free Will and the Will of the One. However, the set-up for these treatises occurs in the natural-philosophical treatises devoted to providence and destiny, namely ii.3 (treatise 52) On Whether the Stars are Causes, iii.1 (treatise 3) On Destiny and iii.2–3 (treatises 47–8) On Providence (i–ii). The central problem that Plotinus faces in the latter set of treatises is the compatibility of autonomous agency with universal causal determinism, since he holds that autonomous agency consists in being the causal source of one's actions but that destiny appears to fully determine the sensible world in which human beings live and act. Importantly, the Stoics shape Plotinus' understanding of both universal causal determinism and autonomous agency. By the second century ce Stoic compatibilism was a lively topic of debate amongst philosophers of the era (Bobzien Reference Bobzien2001: 358), and Plotinus was eager to stake his position in this debate.

Plotinus attempts to solve the central problem by introducing his view that the higher soul is a principle (archē), which is capable of initiating its own actions. Moreover, he sets up his conception of autonomous agency, which he fully develops in iii.8 (treatise 30) and vi. 8 (treatise 39), by distinguishing between actions based on non-rational sources of motivation deriving from the lower soul and actions based on rational sources of motivation deriving from the higher soul, and establishing that the former actions are subject to destiny but the latter are outside the causation of the physical universe (kosmikēs aitias exō). It is in virtue of the lower soul that human beings are rooted in the sensible world and experience non-rational appetites and passions, whereas it is in virtue of the higher soul that human beings retain a foothold in the intelligible world, occupying a unique place in the intelligible realm and embodying a unique perspective on the intelligible Beings (iv.7.10.8–11, iv.7.10.30–8; Kalligas Reference Kalligas1997: 223–6 and Reference Kalligas2000: 25).

Plotinus follows the moral psychology of Plato and Aristotle in holding that embodied human beings have both non-rational and rational motivations for action (i.1.7.18–25). Moreover, he appears to follow Aristotle in dividing desire (horexis) into rational desire (boulēsis) and non-rational desires (epithumia and thumos), with rational desires being of what is good and non-rational desires being of what appears good.¹⁹ Uniquely, however, Plotinus locates appetite (epithumia) and passion (thumos) in the lower soul²⁰ and willing (boulēsis) in the higher soul.²¹ The former desires are concerned with goods of the soul–body compound, but the latter desire is concerned with the good of the soul or intellect. Importantly, each of these sources of desire is a motivation for action. Consistent with the entire Greek philosophical tradition, Plotinus viewed reason as a motivating force for action (Cooper Reference Cooper2012: 11–16).

Let us now turn to the treatises on providence and destiny in order to understand the set-up to Plotinus' conception of autonomous agency. Plotinus identifies Intellect with the Platonic demiurge since it is ultimately responsible for the generation and organisation of the sensible world, being prior in nature to the sensible world and the model on which the sensible world is based. However, Plotinus often includes the activities of Soul and the world soul within the demiurgic activity since they are needed to carry out the activities of Intellect, on a lower level, by delivering formative principles into matter and establishing the ordering in the All.²² Unlike the creation story of the Timaeus (at least on the literal interpretation) the All does not come into being as the result of rational planning (see iii.2.14.1–5, v.8.7). Rather, it is an eternal image of Intellect that emerges due to the principle of plenitude (iii.2.1.20–7). As an image, the All possesses the features found in Intellect but in a dimmer, less pure form due to its diffusion into space and time and proximity to matter (v.8.7.17–18). For this reason, Plotinus tells us, ‘providence for the All is its being according to Intellect’ (iii.2.1.22–3).

What he means by this is that providence sees to it that the sensible world reflects the beauty of the intelligible realm by producing a universe that is in sympathy with itself, by equipping living things with the parts and capacities they need to flourish, by establishing an inescapable system of karmic justice whereby wrongdoers are punished for their actions in this life or the next, by natural phenomena operating according to causes, and individual causes taking place in a network of causes that are oriented towards the good of the whole. Although providence reaches the sublunary world and even extends towards individuals (see iii.2.6.23–6, iii.2.13.18–20), it is actually destiny that carries out the activities of providence in the sensible world (iii.3.5.15–17).

Soul directs the All according to a rational order (logos) by establishing that all events in the realm of becoming happen according to causes, that individual causes are woven together into a network, and that the network is ordered to the good of the whole. The precise nature of Soul's direction is brought out clearly in chapter 16 of his late treatise, ii.3 (treatise 52) On Whether the Stars are Causes.²³ Herein he develops his own view through critically engaging with three Stoic-inspired determinist positions. The first holds that Soul creates the natural kinds and lets the interweaving and succession of consequences that follow from their interaction with each other occur without playing an additional causal role (lines 6–13); the second holds that Soul creates the natural kinds but effectively causes the interweaving and succession of all consequences that follow (lines 13–15); the third is a middle path between the first two, holding that Soul creates the natural kinds and knows the interweaving and succession of consequences that follow, through its possession of formative principles (logoi), but that it is not the efficient cause of everything that ensues. Crucial to the third option is the idea that

In other words, Soul causes individual things to come into existence and furnishes them with capacities associated with their nature (antecedents); individual things act on each other in ways associated with their natures from their own impulses (consequences); and Soul, in virtue of containing the formative principles derived from Intellect, foresees these events and links the consequences with the antecedents and places them into a harmonious network (iv.4.39.6–18).

Plotinus finds the first view unappealing since he holds that the providential ordering extends to particulars in the realm of becoming and, as such, Soul could not be indifferent to the consequences that follow. He finds the second view unappealing since it entails that Soul is the efficient causal source of everything that happens. This view, perhaps belonging to a Stoic or a Middle Platonist, he argues against in his early treatise iii.1 (treatise 3) On Destiny, on the grounds that a single animating principle that permeates and sustains the cosmos leaves no room for animate beings to act from their own impulses or for human beings to have actions which are their own (iii.1.4.21–30, iii.1.7.13–24).²⁴ However, he does find the third option appealing since it entails that Soul knows the consequences that follow but does not cause them, which leaves open the possibility that animate parts of the whole contribute to the good of the whole from their own impulses (ii.3.13.11–13).

Plotinus is committed to preserving the idea that although animate beings are subject to destiny they are not restricted to reacting mechanically or automatically to external stimuli. Instead, they are conscious of the effect external stimuli have on their bodies and respond in ways that give rise to bodily movements through appetites, desires and, in the case of human beings, voluntary actions through reasoned thoughts, that is, thoughts about what reasons there are for acting and whether the reasons for acting are good reasons. Of course, the Stoics are also committed to preserving this. The late Stoic theory that Alexander of Aphrodisias reports and criticises in his De fato, perhaps belonging to Philopator, holds that although our actions are necessitated and are brought about by fate, nonetheless they occur through impulse and assent, and therefore are ‘up to us’.²⁵ However, Plotinus holds that a corporeal soul embedded in an inescapable network of corporeal causes is not capable of being the causal source of its own actions. Only an incorporeal soul capable of living according to a higher code of laws (nomothesia) can achieve this (iv.3.15.11–25).

Although Plotinus does not subscribe to (his interpretation of) Stoic determinism due to the restrictions he thinks it places on agency, it is worth pointing out how close his view comes to universal causal determinism. For he holds the general causal principle that nothing happens in the sensible world without a cause: ‘as for things which come into being, or which always really exist but do not always act in the same way, we must say that all always have a cause for coming to be; nothing uncaused can be admitted’ (iii.1.1.14–17). The second clause refers to individual souls, who always exist but whose activities change, and the lines that follow make it clear that this principle applies not just to coming into being but to human action in the realm of becoming (lines 16–24). And he appears to hold the further specified causal principle that ensures regularity or uniformity between types of causes and types of effects: ‘when the same things come together, the same circumstances arise, then it is altogether appropriate that the same results should follow’ (ii.3.16.21–3).

Although the appearance of the specified causal principle occurs in a polemical passage, the remaining lines of the chapter, and related comments he makes elsewhere, suggest that he endorses the third view. However, he endorses this view with one crucial qualification: it does not apply to the higher soul or, more precisely, the embodied human being who identifies with the higher soul. Together with his view, in accordance with the Myth of Er, that each individual soul chooses its lot based on its previous life and this choice determines the position in which it is born and the role it plays in the cosmic drama, suggest that the sensible world in which the human being lives is a determined world. However, it is in virtue of the higher soul that we, like actors in a play, can decide whether or not to play our assigned role well or badly.²⁶

In virtue of being informed by the lower soul the embodied human being is subject to destiny in the sensible world. The reason for this is that the soul acquires a vehicle in the heavens in the course of its descent from the intelligible world, which transports it downward through the celestial regions until it reaches earthly bodies. Upon acquiring the soul-vehicle and descending through lower regions of the cosmos, the lower soul acquires the capacity to undergo affections and act on the basis of non-rational impulses and thus becomes a part belonging to the powers of the whole.²⁷ Consequently, Plotinus is willing to grant that ‘more remote causes’ such as the stars do play a limited causal role in our lives, since they contribute to our bodily constitution, bring about changes in our temperaments, and can even foretell our fortunes. However, neither the position of the stars nor the motion of the planets is responsible for our characters or ways of life. These are our responsibility.²⁸ But what does it mean for our actions to be subject to destiny?

As I mentioned above, Plotinus holds that all living beings act on the basis of their own impulses (hormai), but that human beings also deliberate about whether or not it is good to act from certain impulses and decide whether or not to carry their impulses through to action on the basis of their deliberations (iii.1.1.14–24, iii.1.7.13–25). In the case of human beings, impulses can be rational and come from the higher soul or they can be non-rational and come from the lower soul. Actions that are subject to destiny are those committed on the basis of impulses deriving from the lower soul, and can be based either on the soul–body composite or even on a mixture of the soul and the soul–body composite. Take the following example:

1. 1. Eating in order to indulge a craving for some particular food

2. 2. Eating in order to indulge a craving for some particular food but knowing that maintaining a healthy body requires providing it with sustenance

In the case of impulses deriving solely from the composite (case 1), the source of the impulse lies in some pre-existing circumstance in the external world. In the case of impulses deriving from the mixture of soul and the soul–body composite (case 2) the source of the impulse still lies in a pre-existing circumstance in the external world but it also involves making a choice (prohairesis) to act on the impulse, which requires reason. The difference between case 1 and case 2 is that in case 1 I am compelled to act and not in charge of my action, whereas in case 2 I am still compelled to act but I exercise some authority over my action (iii.1.8.11–18). However, in both cases the efficient cause of my action is ultimately the desired food item even though case 2 involves the intermediation of reasoning. Thus, in both cases I am living under destiny since my actions can be traced back to external causes that fully or partially determine them. As we will see below, Plotinus holds that actions that involve reason and the non-rational affections – ‘mixed actions’ – remain subject to destiny because they are not truly in our power.²⁹ While engaged in mixed actions we are agents to the extent that we are a causal source of our actions, but we are not autonomous agents engaged in self-determination since we are the not the sole causal source of our actions.

In virtue of possessing the higher soul the embodied human being can avoid living under destiny. Plotinus writes, ‘now when the soul is without body it is absolutely in charge of itself and free (kuriōtatē te autēs kai eleuthera), and outside the causation of the physical universe (kosmikēs aitias exō); but when it is brought into body it is no longer in all ways in charge, as it forms part of an order with other things’ (iii.1.8.9–12). The higher soul is outside the realm of becoming, and consequently outside the causation of the physical universe. When disembodied it is in charge of its actions and free, and therefore purely self-determining. However, embodiment subjects it to natural necessity and forces it to lose complete authority over its actions, which can result in error or vice (i.1.9.5–16). Although the phrase ‘without body’ in this passage refers to an actual separation of soul from body, the ensuing chapters in which Plotinus develops his view make it clear that human beings can achieve this state while embodied through establishing right reason in charge of its impulses (see iii.1.9.5–17, iii.1.10.4–15). Moreover, related passages make it clear that we achieve this state of being ‘without body’ by turning inwards, ascending upwards, and identifying with our higher soul or intellect (ii.3.15.15–18, ii.3.9.24–32). Thus, when the embodied human being acts on the basis of rational impulses it is fully in charge of its actions, free, and outside the causation of the physical universe. It is no longer a part that belongs to the powers coming from the whole, but an autonomous agent that belongs to itself.

The basis for this conception of autonomous agency is that the higher soul, and not just Soul or the world soul, is a principle (archē). After claiming that embodied human beings can rise above the powers coming from the whole and preserve the ancient part³⁰ of the soul, Plotinus writes:

His view of the soul as a self-subsisting and self-moving entity, with a permanent residence in the intelligible world, leads Plotinus to regard the individual soul as a principle in its own right. By this he means that soul has a nature of its own, has the capacities to engage in its own activities, and is the efficient causal source of its own voluntary actions. Plotinus reiterates this point several times in the treatises on destiny and providence, but it is not until the next treatise in the chronological order after ii.3 that he explains which capacities he means (see i.1.5–13 (treatise 53)). Briefly, Plotinus has in mind rational desire for the good and the capacities of imagination and discursive reasoning in virtue of which we pursue the good of the soul, namely virtue. It is owing to the possession of these capacities that embodied human beings can deliberate over whether or not there are reasons to act and can cause their voluntary actions through decision.

It is important to note that standing outside the causation of the physical universe does not entail that our actions are causeless or that we are not involved in the ordering of the All. Plotinus denies the indeterminist view that actions could occur without causes, on the grounds that acting without causes would render us more compelled than acting on the basis of antecedent causes that determine our actions, since we would be carried around by movements that are uncaused, unwilled and, as a result, would not belong to ourselves (iii.1.1.16–24; cf. iii.1.8.2). Moreover, he claims that providence and the ordering of the whole includes us ‘as the persons we are’, by which he means as the embodied human being who is capable of acting freely and being in charge of his actions (iii.2.10.16–20, iii.3.3.1–4, iii.3.4.6–8).³¹ What it does entail is that we cause our own actions and we contribute to the interweaving of causes as co-authors of the providential ordering (see also Dillon Reference Dillon1996a: 330; Leroux Reference Leroux1996: 310–11). In other words, we are no longer dragged around passively by acting on the basis of impulses stemming from the soul–body composite; rather, we contribute actively to the ordering by acting on the basis of impulses stemming from the higher soul in the intelligible world (ii.3.13.18–32, iv.3.15.11–25).

Once we identify with our higher soul and initiate our own activity we not only pursue our own good but, in doing so, we also contribute to the interweaving of causes that promote the good of the whole since both are oriented towards the Good (iv.4.35.33–5). In keeping with the analogy between the cosmos and a drama alluded to above, we no longer merely play the roles assigned to us by the playwright but we help write the script. As John Dillon notes:

In the early treatise on destiny and the late treatises on providence Plotinus does not explain what he means by being in charge of one's actions or being free.³² His primary concern in iii.1 (treatise 3) is to show that destiny does not exclude human agency, and his primary concern in iii.2–3 (treatises 47–8) is to show that providence is not responsible for evil and that human beings are morally responsible for their actions. The discussion of these issues occurs in the opening chapters of vi.8 (treatise 39) On Free Will and the Will of the One, which I turn to next.

Plotinus departs from Plato and Aristotle by holding that the virtuous life does not consist in moderating the appetites and passions but in completely detaching oneself from them, and attending to them only when necessary and without experiencing their emotional excitement. For the appetites and passions produce an involuntary impulse (to aproaireton) that is compulsory and leads us away from the Good (vi.8.4.15–17, i.2.5.13–22). We are led away from the Good because, when an external object moves the appetitive or passionate powers an impression (phantasia)³³ is produced in the imagination, which informs the soul of the experience the body is undergoing and demands that we should follow along with the impression and obtain the desired object. When this occurs false opinions concerning what should be pursued or avoided and what is good or bad are produced, resulting in ‘us’ falling into a state of perplexity and becoming increasingly ignorant of the Good (iv.4.17.12–20). Plotinus thinks the imagination stores impressions in an emotionally laden way and when the impressions ‘come like a perception and announce and inform us of the experience’ they do so in an emotion-triggering way that has the effect of making demands on the soul (iv.3.32.3–7). Thus, the Plotinian virtuous agent aims to satisfy the needs of the body without sharing in the emotional excitement of the lower impulses since, in doing so, he runs the risk of evaluating the pleasures that result from satisfying the lower impulses as good (i.8.4.8–13) and self-identifying with the soul–body compound (i.4.4.13–18, iv.4.18.16–19).

This is the background Plotinus has in mind when he asks in vi.8.2 how our actions can be said to be up to us if impression and non-rational desires compel us to act? Were we merely to react automatically to our non-rational impulses we would be no different from children, animals or madmen who are carried wherever their impulses lead with nothing under their authority (iii.1.7.13–25, vi.8.2.5–9). However, following the Stoics Plotinus holds that in between impression and impulse there occurs a rational assent that governs our response to non-rational impulses and ensures us ownership of our actions.³⁴ Moreover, this assent of reason constitutes the motivating psychological impulse that impels us to act and carries us through to action (vi.8.2.30–7).³⁵ For which reason, acting on the basis of a rational impulse is a willing. Plotinus employs the Stoic term for assent (sunkatathesis) only once,³⁶ probably because of its association with the Stoic physicalist theory of soul. However, it is clear from his discussion of the relationship between the will and non-rational impressions in vi.8 that he holds this view.³⁷

We are now in a position to see why, in order to be the sole causal source of our own actions, we must act from reason and derive the premises of our actions from Intellect. Let us begin with the notion of the ‘up to us’ (to eph' hēmin). Plotinus reasons that actions that are up to us are not those which are enslaved to impulses that carry us in whichever direction they lead or those constrained by external circumstances that prevent us from accomplishing what we wish to accomplish. Rather, actions that are up to us are those whose efficient cause is our will and those the accomplishment of which depend solely on us willing them. He writes: ‘What is up to us is enslaved to the will (tē boulēsei) and would occur or not depending upon whether [or not] we willed it, for everything is voluntary (hekousion) that is done without force but with knowledge, whereas what is “up to us” is, in addition, what we are in charge (kurioi) of doing’ (vi.8.1.31–4). In order for an action to depend solely on willing it must be more than voluntary in the Aristotelian sense, however. It must also be one that we are in charge of doing or have authority over doing, which, as we will see, requires us to act solely from reason.

Plotinus' characterisation of the voluntary as an action that is ‘done without force but with knowledge’ is an obvious reference to Aristotle, who defines voluntary actions as those which are not forced but originate in the agent and are performed with knowledge of the particulars of a given situation (Eth. Nic. 111a21–4). However, the Aristotelian notion of voluntariness is insufficient for Plotinus since one could act voluntarily without being in charge of what one is doing. For example, if while walking in front of my favourite café and noticing a flaky croissant I suddenly experience an appetitive desire to eat the croissant, and I act on this appetitive desire, I am doing so voluntarily. No one is forcing me to do it, and I am doing it with full knowledge of the particulars of the situation. However, the premises (protaseis) on which my practical action is based originate in the soul–body compound since the motivating psychological impulse is coming from the non-rational desire.

By ‘premises for action’ Plotinus probably has in mind the kind of reasoning employed in the Aristotelian practical syllogism in which the universal premise identifies some good or apparent good (e.g. flaky croissants should be eaten), the particular premise spots the good to be achieved in some present situation (e.g. this is a flaky croissant) and the conclusion results in action (e.g. eat this).³⁸ Even though I am using reason in conjunction with appetite to enter the café and eat, it is ultimately the non-rational desire that serves as the efficient cause and sets the reasoning in motion. Or in Plotinus' terms, ‘reason does not produce the impulse [to act] but the non-rational also has an origin in the premises derived from the affection’ (iv.4.44.5–7). It is only when reason serves as the efficient cause and sets the desire in motion that I am fully in charge of my actions.

The notion of reason Plotinus has in mind is not just any instance of reasoning or calculation, but rather right reason (orthos logos) that belongs to the understanding (epistēmē). Acting on the basis of a right belief, without knowing why one's belief is right, would not count as truly self-determining since the basis for the right belief could be chance or the imagination, which are beyond our control (vi.8.3.2–8). Hence the rational assent that constitutes the motivating psychological impulse must be right (orthos) and the agent must know why what he is doing is right, which requires understanding (epistēmē). But what makes a rational assent right?

Plotinus does not employ the phrase ‘right reason’ often. However, his usage of the phrase and related variants suggest that the orthos logos is inborn, belongs to the purest and most untroubled part of us, is oriented towards the Good, and that when we act according to it we are free and active, but that it becomes weakened and fettered when the appetitive and passionate parts of the soul are in control and impel the person to action.³⁹ Taken with vi.8.3.2–8, this suggests that we know why what we are doing is right and act on right reason, as opposed to right belief, due to the fact that our intellects are activated and in touch with the Forms in Intellect.⁴⁰ This is consistent with Plotinus' view that practical wisdom (phronēsis), the intellectual virtue responsible for deliberating well concerning what is good or bad for a human being, derives its principles from dialectic and is a superior form of reasoning concerned with grasping the universal.⁴¹

This usage of right reason highlights a crucial feature of the Plotinian notion of voluntariness: voluntary actions are those that are naturally inclined towards the Good (vi.8.4.13–20). Hence, for Plotinus voluntary actions are not simply those that stem from within and with knowledge of the particulars, but also with knowledge of the universal (vi.8.1.36–45). Plotinus inserts orientation towards the Good into the notion of voluntariness due to the close relation he sees between voluntariness and self-determination. The more our actions are inclined towards the Good the more they derive from within ourselves, and the less they depend on external factors that are beyond our control and that constrain us from acting the way we rationally desire to act. For which reason, voluntary actions belong only to those who are self-determining. Plotinus writes, ‘We will designate those as self-determining who, owing to the activities of Intellect, are free from the affections of the body. Referring “up to us” to the most noble principle, the activity of Intellect, we will designate as really free the premises that come from there and claim that desires that arise from thinking are not involuntary (ouk akousious)’ (vi.8.3.20–4).

The desire that arises from thinking is voluntary because it originates in the best part of us, intellect, and is concerned with truths contained in the noblest principle, Intellect. Following Lloyd Gerson, I take the ‘thinking’ to be concerned with universal truths found in Intellect and the ‘premises that come from there’ to refer to the universal premises in the kind of reasoning employed in a practical syllogism (Gerson Reference Gerson1994: 161). Taken thusly, Plotinus is saying that the self-determining agent is one whose universal premise of a practical syllogism contains a universal truth that such and such is good, who recognises that the universal truth that such and such is good is also good for oneself, and desires to act with this conformity of our good with the Good in mind. Unlike the above case, the premises on which this action is based originate within our intellect, and the motivating psychological impulse comes from rational desire. With reason serving as the efficient cause and setting desire in motion, we are fully in charge of our actions.

Deriving our premises from Intellect requires more than self-awareness, however. Importantly, it also requires turning inwards and ascending upwards through practising the virtues. Briefly, Plotinus holds that there are three levels of virtue: the civic, the purificatory and the intellectual. The civic virtues are those that impose limit and measure on our non-rational desires of appetite and passion and abolish false opinions arising in the compound (i.2.2.14–20); the purificatory virtues are those that separate the soul from the body by stripping away everything alien to it, thereby enabling it to act independently of the non-rational desires and opinions arising in the compound (i.2.2.11–23); and the intellectual virtues are those possessed by a soul, which, upon being purified from its involvement with the body, realises its nature as an intellect and fully absorbs itself in contemplation of the Forms (i.2.6.7–27; cf i.6.6.1–21). It is only when we have realised our nature as intellects, through purification, that we can derive our premises from Intellect and establish reason as the guiding force in our embodied lives. Crucial to my emphasis on the role of consciousness, this process of purification involves turning inwards, ascending upwards, and consciously shaping ourselves towards our ideal selves (i.6.9.7–16).

This spiritualisation of the virtues has profound implications for Plotinus' concept of autonomous agency. We are self-determining, and therefore in charge of our actions and free, only when we are operating at the level of our intellects. This can be seen from Plotinus' discussion of the civic virtues. These virtues are those that result from habit and training as opposed to thought (i.1.10.12–14), and correspond roughly to what Plato and Aristotle refer to as the moral virtues. When we act in circumstances that require performance of these virtues, for Plotinus, we are not truly free or in charge of our actions. In order to be brave there must be a war; in order to be just there must be injustice; in order to be liberal there must be poverty. In each of these circumstances the virtuous person's actions are constrained by circumstances that he himself would not choose. A truly virtuous person would prefer rather that there not be wars, injustice or poverty in the first place, just as a physician would prefer that her patients not be sick and in need of medical treatment (vi.8.5.7–20). To be truly free and in charge of our actions would involve us acting in circumstances that we ourselves choose and that we would always choose under ideal circumstances, since these choices are oriented towards what is best, namely the Good. This can only occur when we are operating at the level of intellect and we ‘leave behind in actuality’ the civic virtues and engage in the intellectual virtues. However, should the circumstances arise we can perform the civic virtues guided by right reason since we retain them potentially (i.6.9.11–31).⁴²

With this framework of virtue in mind, we can see why Plotinus holds that self-determination is not achieved when ‘we’ engage in practical reasoning or practical actions but when our intellects contemplate the Forms. He writes ‘So, also in actions, that which is self-determining and “up to us” is referred neither to the acting nor to what is external but to the activity of the interior, that is, thinking or the contemplation of virtue itself’ (vi.8.6.20–2). Because practical action constrains us from acting the way our intellect rationally desires to act, Plotinus attributes the ‘up to us’ to the intellect detached from actions, engaged in the contemplation of virtue (vi.8.5.23–37). Due to being external to the soul and other-directed, practical reasoning and action split our attention in multiple directions, rendering us multiple and in need of objects outside ourselves to flourish (in the mistaken way that the soul–body compound identifies). It is only when we have purified ourselves of the non-rational desires and opinions stemming from the compound and contemplate the Forms that our activity is entirely self-directed, our attention is purely focused in the singular direction of what is best, and we are completely self-sufficient. At this level, our will and our intellect coincide and what we know to be good we will to accomplish (see Rist Reference Rist1967: 136–7).

Paradoxically, it turns out that in order to be the causal source of our actions we must not engage in actions associated with the civic virtues but rather engage in activities associated with the intellectual virtues. In what sense then is this a theory of agency? Like much of Plotinus' philosophy his notion of agency is worked out at the ideal level. However, that should not distract us from seeing the effects of the ideal on the mundane realities of daily life. What Plotinus has shown, I think, is that even in a world governed by destiny human beings can initiate their own activity, in varying degrees, depending upon the extent to which they are free and in charge of their actions. However, in order to do this we must strive to attain the freedom and authority belonging to the best part of ourselves, namely our intellects. Although most of our actions are ‘mixed’ due to the demands of the non-rational desires serving the needs of the body, we nonetheless should strive to establish reason as the guiding force in our lives. Doing so results in us achieving self-determination and self-sufficiency and, to the best of our abilities while embodied, approximating the One.

Conclusion

I have argued that in order to engage in impulse-directed movements awareness is required to unify the qualified body. Moreover, to become an agent capable of mixed actions or an autonomous agent capable of self-determination and self-sufficiency, awareness is required to turn inwards, ascend upwards, and establish right reason in charge of our embodied lives. The Plotinian theory of agency requires us not only to ‘look inwards’ and correctly use our impressions along Stoic lines, but also to ‘ascend upwards’ and identify with our higher soul and derive our premises for action from our knowledge of the Forms. I hope to have shown that accomplishing this feat requires a degree of inwardness and a type of consciousness unattested in the earlier Greek philosophical tradition.

Porphyry's concept of free will: the argument of the fragments

The problem as stated in the opening lines of the first fragment (fr. 268.1–33), which clearly comes from the preface of the original work,¹⁰ arose from and remains (at least in the four extant fragments) centred upon the words of Plato in the Myth of Er (Rep. 10.616b–621b). There, Plato had provided a narrative in which souls, already formed by experiences and character traits of their former lives, came to choose their next lives. Their choices were made in order according to lots, and the Fates were involved at every stage: Lachesis gave their allotments, Clotho spun their destiny, and Atropos made it binding. Then, a ‘certain inescapable (anapodrastos)¹¹ daemon’ was assigned to each to hold them to their choice and they were led under the throne of Necessity, drank from the streams of Lethe (‘Forgetfulness’), and descended through the heavenly circuit as they fell into bodies.

There were two key phases in this narrative where the self-determination (autexousios) of the soul was threatened. First, the souls came to their choice of future lives already morally formed and predisposed in particular ways so that it might seem that deterministic forces were in place that hindered a full and open freedom of choice. Second, if Necessity and the Fates were so closely involved before, during and after their choice of lives, then it seemed to allow little room for freedom in their embodied lives. ‘Since these things have been spun out, necessitated and confirmed by the Fates, Lethe and Necessity in this way, and since the daemon attends [us] and guards [our] Fate (heimarmenē), of what are we the masters (kurioi)?’ (fr. 268.28–31).¹² Not only did Plato's narrative inclusion of these forces threaten self-determination and mastery over one's life, but it seemed to contradict Plato's own assertions that sought to protect human moral responsibility: ‘Virtue is free, which each will have more or less by honouring or dishonouring it’ (Rep. 10.617e3–4, quoted with slight modifications at fr. 268.32–3).

Porphyry claims that the problems arising for a notion of freedom in the first phase (before the souls make their choices of future lives) could be left aside since a plausible defence could be made in answer to them. It was the second phase that deserved careful attention. The remainder of this and the other fragments seek to answer these difficulties through sustained attention to details in the Platonic passage. Indeed, the fragments of On Free Will remain ever close to the text of Plato and refuse to provide a systematic account of freedom and human agency, or any detailed criticism on philosophical grounds of causal determinism (for instance, his explicit criticism of the Stoics limits itself to showing that they do not use the term bios with the same range of significations as Plato does). In spite of the lack of a robust systematic account, these fragments nonetheless indicate significant contributions by Porphyry to the ongoing discourse on freedom and determinism in antiquity. In particular, they seem to offer the lengthiest treatment of the Myth of Er within the context of the problem of determinism (at least before the fifth century). The Myth of Er had been invoked in earlier discussions, but not at the length or with the thoroughness of Porphyry's account.

The exegetical argument Porphyry raises in the first fragment runs as follows. One must recognise that Plato uses the term ‘life’ (bios) in two ways, or rather, as designating two levels of specificity.¹³ As just noted, in contrast to the Stoics who posited only a single sense of the word bios as a rational life-form, logikē zōē, Plato had used bios to refer to irrational animals as well, such as swans, lions and nightingales. On the one hand, then, were the generic lives of humans (male and female), dogs and so on; on the other were the lives of hunting-dogs, tracking-dogs, table dogs and guard dogs, or alternatively the lives of a king or soldier.

This second level of ‘life’ was necessarily contingent upon the first, and the choices in a soul's determining a first-level and second-level life were made according to the two phases mentioned above. When the souls were gathered at the time of the pre-embodied allotments the choice of the first-level life was given: at that point a soul could choose to become a dog, a swan, a man or a woman. It was after the entrance into bodies¹⁴ that souls would be faced with the choice of the particular kind of life they would live. Free choice of a second-level life was limited to humans (as rational animals). For non-rational animals, such as a dog, their second-level life depended upon nature or their owner. No allowance for the possibility of choice in animals is discernible in this or the other fragments. In earlier thinkers the faculty of choice was limited to rational animals, that is, humans, and thus it was natural to assume an absence of self-determination in all other animals.¹⁵ For Porphyry, however, animals did possess reason (logos) since they communicated in their own sort of language (logoi). At least this was the argument of the third book of his On Abstinence from Eating Meat.¹⁶ One would like to know whether Porphyry had sought to make allowance for some limited capacity in animals for choice in the original On Free Will, but the fragments give us little indication that he did (though see below).

In a manner similar to animals, the bodily beauty or parents of a human (corresponding to the nature or owners of a dog in his example) could not be chosen. But the acquirement of skills or expertise in various areas of knowledge, or the pursuit of political office, ‘depend on what is in our power, even if some of them, like political offices, tyrannies, and demagogies, are difficult to obtain because they are also bound by external hindrance, for which reason it is difficult to obtain them and not easy to get rid of them’ (fr. 268.69–73). Even if some were attended with difficulties, they depended on a ‘deliberate choice’ (prohairesis) to pursue or practise them or not, though the outcome was not ‘entirely up to us’ (eph’ hēmin: fr. 268.75). It has, however, ‘entirely been granted’ to use these second-level lives in either a good or bad manner (fr. 268.78–9).¹⁷ Porphyry's distinction of first and second levels of particularity in the signification of ‘life’ and the freedom of choice (though not uninhibited in its results) of the second-level life of humans became the means of ameliorating Plato's talk of Necessity and the Fates from any strong sense of fatalism. Necessity and the Fates restricted the embodied soul from changing from the first-level life it had chosen (though that choice was now forgotten): for instance, even if a man acted or dressed like a woman, he would remain a man (fr. 268.90–4). Thus, while one's familial, genetic and bodily traits were not up to the soul (whether in its pre-embodied state or not), the fact that one was a human man or a human woman had been up to the soul (at least initially).

This fragment represents a sort of dual compatibilism (if we can avoid anachronism in the use of such a label).¹⁸ First, elements of embodied life, such as being born a human woman, which seemed entirely out of the control of the person, had been the result of a choice that was, as it turned out, entirely within the control of the person before their embodiment.¹⁹ It was similar to a person who chose to jump off a bridge but was unable to reverse the choice once the action that arose from that decision had been commenced, and indeed, had forgotten that the choice had once been theirs at all.²⁰ Second, the forces of Necessity that ratified the pre-embodied choice were not involved in or responsible for the pursuits and moral quality of the second-level lives, at least of rational humans. Some elements of embodied life (such as one's parents) were the result of external causes or chance, while others (such as pursuing the philosophic life) were up to us for whom there is a ‘free will’ (aneimenon {eleutheron} to ethelousion: fr. 268.98),²¹ which can arrive at ‘self-determined deeds’ (autexousia erga) even in the embodied state (fr. 268.101–4).

Consideration of these last claims, which occur in the final two sentences of the fragment, hint at Porphyry's broader psychology explored in the (probably later) Sentences. The work was something of a series of paraphrases of key passages in Plotinus' Enneads, which nonetheless exhibits a certain independence of thought from the Neoplatonic master.²² In the Sentences Porphyry presents a doctrine of two levels of activity (or of power) of the soul: one persists in its own indivisible existence, while a second is made to ‘subsist’ in bodies through the soul's ‘inclination’ (rhopē, on which see below).²³ Elsewhere these are named ‘life-giving activities’ (zōtikai energeiai) and are arguably identifiable as double ‘lives’ (zōai) of the soul (one ‘in itself’, the other ‘in relation’ to bodies).²⁴ Even though the On Free Will fragment distinguishes two phases for the choice of two levels of lives that ‘map’ onto the soul's relative distance from the embodied state, the dual-bioi interpretation cannot be identified with the dual-zōai approach. Instead, the double-zōai doctrine designates the hypostatic condition of the soul and seeks to protect the ontological unity of the soul even in the midst of the individuation of particular embodied souls. In other words, Porphyry adopts the Plotinian doctrine of the ‘undescended’ soul.²⁵

It would seem that it is precisely this notion that is assumed in his claim in the On Free Will that, in the case of the human soul, qua soul, there is a ‘free will’ (aneimenon {eleutheron} to ethelousion pros men ta tēs psuchēs)²⁶ as it is in itself and not bound by body. At the same time, qua living thing and soul–body composite, the will is ‘loosened’²⁷ since in this respect it possesses impulse (that is, that which executes an action of or through the body) – but it is an impulse ‘appropriate to self-determined acts’. In other words, Porphyry envisions grades of unfetteredness of the will as it is focused upon things of the soul or things of the composite. It seems likely that this passage presumes the broader Plotinian psychology of the complex negotiation of the soul as undescended and as embodied, as Porphyry had expressed it in his Sentences and On the Powers of the Soul. This statement is, at any rate, the clearest claim for freedom of the will in the fragments of the On Free Will. Importantly, it seeks to contextualise the freedom with respect to the soul in itself or in relation to bodies. Its distinguishing of the soul's freedom in relation to bodies would continue to be formulated in the following fragments.

The second rather brief fragment emphasises that the ‘self-determination’ (autexousion) appropriate to a human is in the human's own power. Even if impressions or appearances (phantasiai) bear a high level of persuasiveness upon the soul, it remains in the latter's power to choose ‘to assent’ to these impressions or not, since the impression does not drag it along like a ‘puppet on a string’ (neurospastei, fr. 269.7–11).²⁸ It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that Porphyry may have read Origen's discussion on free will at On First Principles3.1 and is obliquely reflecting the latter's language here. Origen had written: ‘But if anyone should say that the impression from without is of such a sort that it is impossible to resist it whatever it may be, let him turn his attention to his own feelings and movements and see whether there is not an approval, assent and inclination of the governing faculty of the soul towards a particular action on account of some persuasiveness’ (De princ. 3.1.4; trans. Butterworth modified).²⁹ Like Origen, Porphyry adopted the Stoic (Chrysippean) concept of freedom in terms of ‘assenting’ to sensible ‘impressions’ that possessed a sort of persuasiveness, which the soul was nonetheless free to resist or accept.³⁰ Significantly, Origen had applied the term ‘inclination’ (rhopē) to the soul as a means of emphasising that the soul was not passively drawn towards the impressions, but that it had a quality that predisposed it to follow after those impressions. We shall see below Porphyry's inclusion of rhopē to account for a soul's choice of a second-level life. Although he had attacked Origen in his Against the Christians,³¹ it seems that the Christian philosopher may nonetheless have had some influence in the basic formulation of the relation of souls and impressions in Porphyry's otherwise unique two-choice account of lives.

The third fragment confirms the overall picture of different levels of lives and different phases of choices. The disembodied souls are allotted the choice of first-level lives; once they have chosen they are bound to that choice, and subsequent freedom is allowed only at the secondary more particularised level of lives. The range of this subsequent freedom depends upon the constitution of the life chosen. An irrational animal has a singularity of character and only little movement of its self-determination. A human, on the other hand, has ‘much intellect and much movement’ with respect to self-determination (fr. 270.12–15). That which moves a human's faculty of self-determination is its own self, although it may be led ‘according to the desires arising from its constitution (kataskeuē)’ (fr. 270.15–18).³² Again a sort of compatibilism is expressed in these fragments: the body and bodily impulses coexist with a capacity for free will, even as they can mutually impede or overcome the other. The cause of human agency is the human's free will. Even in those instances where the performance or completion of an action is thwarted by external factors, the will or determination to choose between opposing options remain in the soul's power.

As in the first fragment, this third fragment takes for granted that animals are irrational and lacking in a full freedom of choice. The reasons for this are here, however, spelled out more clearly. The souls that have descended now bear a faculty of self-determination (to autexousion) that is ‘appropriate to the constitution’ of the living being they have chosen. At this point the distinction between humans and irrational animals seems to become somewhat less rigid. He states: ‘Having become souls of living things … they bear the faculty of self-determination (to autexousion) related to the condition of the living thing, and in some there is much mental ability (polunoun) and much movement (polukinēton), as in the case of a human; but, in others there is little movement and singleness of character (monotropon), as in the case of nearly all the other living things’ (fr. 270.11–15).³³ Porphyry's language of relative speed of movement and thought (which may recall, though without verbal allusion, the myth of the creation of living things in Plato's Protagoras) allows for some animals to be more like humans in their quickness and intelligence. Thus, Porphyry's compatibilism is formulated as a graduated compatibilism, such as one would expect in the framework of a Platonic ontological hierarchy. Among living things there is an interplay of freedom of decision and action within the restrictions, relative to a range of bodily constitutions and their impulses and desires. It seems that here would be the conceptual mechanism for allowing differing levels of rationality in animals such as was posited in the On Abstinence, though again we can only suggest the possibility since the fragment ends there.

Significantly, in this and the earlier fragment that remarked on the exclusion of free will from animals, Plato's description of the transmigration of souls into animals is taken literally. It may be that the problem for later Platonists of transmigration into animals, in that a rational soul could not easily be conceived as inhabiting an irrational life, was not yet formulated as a problem at all in Porphyry, who possessed a more flexible interpretative approach.³⁴ The fragments of the On Free Will offer a picture of rational souls freely choosing human or animal lives, which could then be lived out with greater or lesser degrees of acuity, depending on their particular ‘constitutions’ and capable of resisting or succumbing to the desires and impulses of embodied life. In any case, Porphyry's adoption of the doctrine of the undescended soul (noted above) would have allowed for such inclusiveness, since that concept allowed for a soul to illumine an animal life without being ‘in’ the animal body.³⁵

While the bulk of the final fragment addresses the issue of astrological determinism, and thus will be discussed later, it offers details relevant for further delineating Porphyry's conception of the levels of freedom allowed for the levels of lives, the choices of which belonged to the different phases of a soul's existence. First, an additional limitation seems to be placed upon the free will of embodied souls because it is tainted by an ‘inclination with respect to one of the lives here when the soul was still outside [the body]’ (fr. 271.16–19).³⁶ It seems, in fact, that Porphyry has forgotten his claim in the prologue that a proper account could be made in defence of free will in the face of Plato's assertion that the souls came to their choice of lives already shaped by their previous lives (fr. 268.9–11). Here, Porphyry seems to grant the assertion as it stands as a valid consideration limiting, or ‘tainting’, the souls' freedom of choice. Indeed, Porphyry identifies the ‘inclination’ (rhopē) of the soul with Plato's term ‘choice’ (hairesis). The inclination here seems to designate a sort of pre-embodied desire or some other motivational factor determining, at least partially, the decision that the soul is about to make.³⁷ It may be significant that Porphyry opts for the vague rhopē and avoids the term prothumia, which elsewhere in the fragments of this work is limited to desires or impulses that occur in the embodied life. Could his description of the ‘tainting’ of the soul's free choice here hint at a larger negotiation with the text of Plato to render it more amenable to a third-century Platonist doctrine of free will?³⁸ We can only suggest the possibility, any examination of which is caught up short by the limits of our fragmentary remains.

Second, Porphyry adopts the so-called hypothetical or conditional conception of Fate, which had been articulated in Middle Platonist accounts, particularly those of Alcinous and Pseudo-Plutarch.³⁹ Evincing no verbal dependence on these thinkers, Porphyry nonetheless conveys close conceptual ties to the parallel they drew between the laws of Fate and the laws governing a state. Just as the laws of a state did not causally predetermine a person's actions but only prescribed proper action and threatened punishment for infractions, so too Fate only prescribed a set of conditionals: if a person does x, then y necessarily will follow. Porphyry provides the example of a soldier. If one chooses the (second-level) life of a soldier, then he will face the things attendant upon that life (presumably long marches, battles and possible death). It was not necessitated that he choose the life of the soldier; the battles and so on only followed necessarily upon the free choice of the person who decided on such a life. The soul could have chosen otherwise.⁴⁰ This hypothetical conception of Fate is parallel to the notion of Fate's ratification of first-level lives noted above: the disembodied soul chose a life to which Fate and Necessity held it. Now, after choosing a second-level life, the embodied soul was seen as being held to its own previously uncompelled choice.

Throughout the fragments Porphyry has developed an argument for a position that we may designate a compatibilist free will approach. The argument posits a freedom of action, which is nonetheless restricted by one's nature or by chance; a freedom of decision, which is nonetheless tainted by one's inclination or impulse; a freedom of will, which is nonetheless active only in a manner appropriate to one's constitution. Furthermore, greater freedom is seen further from the physical world, which was a place characterised by greater impediments to freedom and the threat of becoming enslaved to one's impulses. We cannot be certain that Stobaeus, when referring to Porphyry's work as On What is Up to Us, was reporting the title assigned to the work by Porphyry or was providing his own designation of the content of the work (or at least the portion of the work that mattered to him). If On What is Up to Us was Porphyry's own title, it is clear that he used it as a springboard for discussing more wide-ranging issues of the embodied soul's freedom and responsibility. Importantly, he clearly expresses a notion of the will as a distinct faculty (the unique to ethelousion, or to autexousion, or even, possibly, prohairesis as a faculty that governs choices, haireseis), with greater or lesser grades of limitations placed upon it in accordance with the particular phases of a soul's existence (outside bodies, or within various types of embodied lives).

Freedom under the stars: ‘soft astrology’ and human agency

In addition to Necessity, the Fates, and allotments, Plato's Myth of Er also made mention of the ‘circuit’ of stars, the ‘revolution’ of the heavenly vault, and the eight embedded whorls, which was clearly a model of the planetary orbits. These become a subject of concern for Porphyry only in the fourth fragment. Since he had already allowed for some degree of causation outside the person, which could impede the accomplishment of a person's decision (such as to attain high political office if one had been born into an obscure family), it would have theoretically been possible for him to argue for some causative role of the stars in a human life. After all, even Plotinus had (remarkably) made allowance for such astral causation in a discussion that explicitly recalled the Myth of Er.⁴¹ After criticising notions of ‘hard astrology’ (the modern label for notions of astral determinism) in favour of ‘soft astrology’ (the modern label for notions of astral signification of future events without any causal relation to those events),⁴² Plotinus had remarked on the stars' connectedness to the universal whole in such a way as to allow a sort of astral causation of human events in so far as the stars were intermediate in the ontological hierarchy between the world soul and individuated embodied souls.⁴³ He had already granted stars and planets power over certain physical changes (for instance, the effects of heat and cold);⁴⁴ now a greater range of events seemed to be placed within a causal relationship to the stars through sumpatheia.⁴⁵

If Porphyry had read Plotinus' essay on the stars by the time he composed his On Free Will (a possibility not excluded by chronological considerations, though it was one of Plotinus' last treatises), there is no indication that he followed his master in allowing this sort of astral causation. Instead, he limited himself to the strict adoption of soft astrology in ways that make one wonder if he was not intentionally seeking to improve upon Plotinus' approach. After expounding his concept of hypothetical Fate, Porphyry asks where Plato might have derived his ideas in the Myth of Er. Then follows a sentence troubled by textual difficulties, as may be seen from the emendations recorded in Smith's apparatus criticus for this passage, but whose basic sense seems clear.⁴⁶Plato, in Porphyry's estimation, stood in opposition to the Egyptian belief in astrological determinism. Astral configurations, he averred, did not

The ‘disposition’ (diathesis) of the astral–planetary configuration is not determinative of lives; on the contrary, it was the ‘dispositions’ of the souls themselves (in other words their desires and will apart from astral causation) that was determinative of the souls' lives.⁴⁸ In this Porphyry directly counters the admission of Plotinus that the stars were in charge of both their own dispositions and the dispositions of souls.⁴⁹

Such a ‘soft’ approach to astrology was not new among Platonists, and even the image of the astrological signs being spread across the heavens like an inscribed painting or book had been adopted by thinkers important to Porphyry.⁵⁰ What seems unique in this account is his attempt to explain how the souls' choices and the stars' significations come to correspond to each other. In response to the standard question of sceptics (beginning at least with Carneades)⁵¹ as to how exactly simultaneous births could occur for so many different lives (men, women, dogs and so on), Porphyry described the souls as descending through the heavenly spheres at different rates of speed and veering off to particular degrees of the zodiac in accordance with their choice of lives.⁵² But here his account takes an odd turn, for he claims that these differences in the souls' descents were a result of their being moved ‘in accordance with their desires for certain of the second [level] of lives’ (fr. 271.70–1). The examples he provides are only of first-level lives, and the discussion in the earlier fragments would have led one to suppose that determination of second-level lives would not commence until after the soul had joined its body. Because he then goes on to describe how Justice bears the soul to the degree of the zodiac appropriate to the soul's particular character formation (fr. 271.75–6),⁵³ it would seem that Porphyry has in mind here only those elements of the second-level life that a person would otherwise attribute to ‘chance’, such as the sort of family into which one was born. Porphyry explains: ‘Justice is called Chance (Tychē), since she is a cause undisclosed to human reasoning’ (fr. 271.78–9).⁵⁴ He then remarks on the Egyptian doctrine of beneficent and maleficent degrees of the zodiac; but the comment on Justice's role in the souls' descents is sufficient to show that even those factors seemingly most out of our control, such as family, are also accounted for in terms of choice. Such choices are not free in a random or completely open sort of way, but are freely made within the context of the individual soul's character. Porphyry can conclude:

Necessity is a force not external or contrary to one's faculty of choice, but that which holds the soul to its prior choice.⁵⁵ But how much does Porphyry suppose to be inscribed in the astral configurations? Surely, he does not seem to have in mind the minutiae of daily life. But what of life's larger questions: marriage, children, travel, business, political career? No word on the exact scope of astral significations is offered in the fragments of this work. Several fragments of his Philosophy from Oracles that directly address astrological divination, however, provide some clues. In a discussion exhibiting the claim that the gods (or daemons) who delivered oracles depended upon astrology in making their predictions, a small number of oracles are quoted as evidence. They predict the sex of a baby about to be born (Phil. orac. fr. 333.5–9); a plague (Phil. orac. fr. 333.13–14); either a war or plague (‘ashen evils of black strife’: Phil. orac. fr. 334); a plague that would be fatal to the consulter of the oracle (Phil. orac. fr. 335); the military inclinations of one person, and death in battle of another (Phil. orac. fr. 336).

This does not allow for much elaboration on the range of phenomena that Porphyry took to be appropriate for astral signification, and in any case it is not entirely safe to interpret fragments of one lost work by fragments from another, especially when their composition may have been separate from each other by many years.⁵⁶ But there is nothing in the astrological fragments of the Philosophy from Oracles that appears to be at odds with his specific claims about ‘soft’ astrology in the On Free Will or the general philosophical framework of the latter work. The sex of the human baby fell within the first level of lives. War fell within the second-level lives, as did the military inclinations of the subject of one of the oracles, inclinations that would have prompted the soul to veer off to the corresponding degree of the zodiac during its descent into a body according to the On Free Will. Plagues and other causes of death were not treated in the latter work, but they could have found a place in material that is now lost.⁵⁷

The gods of the oracles were not the causes of the things predicted, but only the readers of astrological signs. In fact, they were themselves said to be ‘under the fates (moirai)’ (Phil. orac. fr. 337.4–5) or even ‘under Fate (heimarmenē)’ (Phil. orac. fr. 342.6–7) when they descended below the stars.⁵⁸ In a final passage at the end of the fourth fragment of the On Free Will Porphyry provides a different set of considerations that would have removed divine culpability from what may have seemed to be the ‘evils’ of human life. The passage is included not so much as a defence of the divine, however, but as an extension of Porphyry's two-level approach to the choices of lives in the text of Plato to that of Homer. The fate that no man, good or bad, could escape once the ‘first things’ should happen (declared by Hector at Iliad6.488–9) applied to the first-level choice of life. For, claimed Porphyry, once chosen the life was inescapable and could not be changed, though it was up to the soul to live ‘with virtue or wickedness’ (fr. 271.107–14).

The second-level life was expressed in the lines of Homer's Odyssey where humans are said to blame the gods for evils, ‘but they too/ have grief beyond their portion for their arrogance’ (Odyssey1.32–4). The words ‘but they too’ showed, for Porphyry, that gods contributed ‘something’ to humans, ‘even if the majority are because of them [humans]’ (fr. 271.119–21). Or, if the gods were to be blamed for providing the archetypes of lives in the first place, this could be resolved by ‘their making the souls free-willed (autexousious) and entrusting to them the choice of lives, but they, because of hastiness [in making their choice]⁵⁹ and ignorance, “have grief beyond their portion for their arrogance”’ (fr. 271.123–6). The instilling of free choice in souls was thus part of a providential means of giving moral responsibility to humans.⁶⁰ This sentiment would recall that of Plato: ‘The fault belongs to the one who chooses; God is blameless’ (Rep. 10.617e4–5).⁶¹

Conclusion

Porphyry's motivation for grappling with the issue of free will was not merely the desire to show the compatibility of Plato's text with a later Platonist doctrinal position. The issue of moral responsibility seems to have lain at the heart of his exegesis. Virtue and moderation were raised in the first fragment (fr. 268.32–3, 77–9), and the avoidance of extremes while aiming at the mean is explicitly advised in the opening lines of the fourth (fr. 271.2–5). Moral responsibility was a common concern in Platonist articulations of the freedom of the soul. Porphyry is noteworthy in formulating a two-life approach that could maintain an exegetical closeness to Plato's Myth of Er and offer fresh insights into how a doctrine of free will could be espoused in the face of the ‘scientific’ claims of contemporary astrology while avoiding Plotinus' slippage into a notion of astral causation. Restricted though we are by the fragmentary state of Porphyry's discussion, we are able to glimpse the sort of distinctive exegetical manoeuvres that he was known for among his peers and later readers as both a philosopher and philologist.

Introduction: individuality and consciousness

Individual organisms, such as Socrates, seem to be real, unified beings if anything is:¹ this struck most ancient philosophers as common sense, despite some metaphysical quarrels.² Already for Aristotle, ὁ τις ἄνθρωπος was the primary exhibit of an οὐσία that exists by nature, displays unity in number, form and function, and is obvious to everybody.³ When Chrysippus⁴ and Plotinus⁵ elaborated hierarchies of compound beings according to a criterion of unity, ranging from armies and artefacts to plants and animals, the coherence of a living, thinking organism crested the ladder. To be a living being or ζῷον appeared to entail a robust, structured unity: one could not be alive without being, in some strong sense, a synchronic and diachronic one.

Ancient philosophers also found a greater degree of unity in specifically human existence and persistence – in ‘personhood’⁶ – than the coherence that might be attributed to a stone, plant, or even another animal. To be a unified person intuitively seemed to demand the capacity for reason, especially the possession of second-order desires and beliefs,⁷ by means of which we might craft a coherent character out of our choices, actions and opinions. Aristotle regarded such self-guided moral action (πρᾶξις) as unique to human beings (Eth. Nic. 6.2, 1139a17–20), who can craft our choices to serve an end with reason or λόγος (Pol. 1332b3–5). The Stoics, elaborating this intuition, treat human reason as a higher form of unity than the natural coherence of a plant or the bare ‘tenor’ of a stone (SVF2.458; Long and Sedley Reference Long and Sedley1987 47pq).

The Neoplatonic tradition, on its face, endorses both of these views: human persons are organic unities, and this unity involves our capacity for self-reflective reason. Proclus, for instance, stresses that every human psyche is a unity that is self-animated, self-constituted and self-reflexive (El. Th. §§ 43, 186, 189). Plotinus remarks that ‘we’, the genuine ἄνθρωπος, are an authentic being possessing unity and presiding over acts of reasoning, belief and attention (Enn. i.1.7–8), and he also argues that individual persons such as Socrates are Forms in Intellect (Enn. v.7; cf. Wilberding Reference Wilberding2006: 47–8). But in this chapter I would like to argue that this natural interpretation of the Neoplatonist view is only provisionally right. Socrates certainly ought to be a conscious individual (and perhaps Socrates himself, as the paradigmatic sage, was exactly that). But he had to work at it first: he was obliged to make a conscious unity of himself through a process that might be described as self-constitution, or self-causation (cf. Proclus El. Th. §§ 44, 83, 189). We don't get our unity for free; unification is a matter of effort, a virtuous achievement. Here, I would like to suggest that Proclus regards this project of self-constitution, or self-unification, as an important source of normativity; thus Proclan ‘metaethics’ might be profitably compared to the recent work of Christine Korsgaard (Reference Korsgaard2009), who, like Proclus, draws on conceptual resources from Plato and Aristotle. But Proclus' project is also interestingly different.

Roadmap

We begin with a brief overview of a recent argument for self-constitution as a moral goal, leading to what Korsgaard has called the ‘paradox of self-constitution’ (Reference Korsgaard2009: 35): how can I create myself unless I am already there in the first place? I suggest in the next part of this chapter that Plotinus' two-storey model of the human person, his division of ‘us’ (ἥμεις) into an undescended soul and a life-form living in the world, furnishes the basic components of a solution (a solution, at least, that could tempt someone who already endorsed the backbone of Neoplatonic metaphysics). The subsequent sections explore a later Neoplatonist development and adaptation of that solution: given the basic framework of the scala virtutum developed by the Neoplatonists after Porphyry, human progress towards the Good can be understood as an ascent on a ladder of unity, where, moreover, the unified self is already there in eternity before its temporal action of self-constitution. Thus Proclus might be seen as an ancient contributor of a constitutivist model of metaethics, one whom we could better understand by comparing the similar views of Korsgaard and others, but one whose picture of selfhood and solution to the ‘paradox’ of self-constitution is deeply intertwined with Neoplatonic metaphysics.

Setting the stage: unity and normativity

Korsgaard argues that ‘to be a living thing is just to be self-constitutive … a living thing is a thing that is constantly making itself into itself’ (Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2009: 41). More broadly:

This kind of agency for self-constitution also helps to explain our persistence through time, our psychological unity or connectedness (cf. Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard1996: 369–77). Moreover, it attempts to offer an account of normativity in human life: just as ‘a house with enough cracks will crumble, and cease to be a house altogether’ (Reference Korsgaard2009: 28), in the same way it follows that ‘bad actions, defective actions, are ones that fail to constitute their agents as the unified authors of their actions’ (Reference Korsgaard2009: 32), which cause us not to be ourselves, to fail to be unified, reasoning human agents. For Proclus too, to find our unity is to find our good (El. Th. §§ 9, 13; In Alc. 1.3–3.2), and to escape from the rending force of multiplicity is to escape our danger (In Alc. 6.12–17.8, 43.7–44.11). But there are also differences from Korsgaard's view, which I will try to illustrate briefly here.

Like Korsgaard (Reference Korsgaard2009: 20), the Neoplatonist ethics of self-constitution faces a puzzle, which Korsgaard calls ‘the paradox of self-constitution’: how can you constitute yourself unless you are already there? Korsgaard herself finds this to be a false dilemma:

On this view, the dilemma only appears when we fail to recognise that self-constitution, and indeed human being, is a process or activity, rather than a state. ‘Being a giraffe is doing something: a giraffe is, quite essentially, an entity that is always making herself into a giraffe’ (Reference Korsgaard2009: 36). That approach rests on Korsgaard's interpretation of Aristotle. Broadly, Korsgaard works within an Aristotelian teleological model. According to this model, ‘to be an object, to be unified, and to be teleologically organized, are one and the same thing’ (Reference Korsgaard2009: 28).

The Neoplatonists accept the foundations of that model, which they also locate in Aristotle, but they attempt to go beyond it. As Proclus puts it (In Alc. 2.1–3), ‘Aristotle asserts’ that ‘both being and the good [or unity, τὸ ἕν] spring from the same hearth and primal spring’. Thus whichever feature explains a thing's existence is also the feature that explains its individuation, unity and good. And thus far, Proclus might agree that Korsgaard has rightly understood Aristotle. But for Proclus, Aristotle only has part of the story. The individuation and good of a being actually spring from a source above and beyond its raw existence (see El. Th. §§ 1–13). Thus Proclus and his contemporaries augment the traditional Aristotelian list of four causes of a teleological process (formal, material, efficient, final) with others, including the Paradigmatic – a cause answering to the function of Platonic forms, the paradigm of the Timaeus (see Simplicius In phys. 3.13, 6.31).

On this new metaphysical model, the truly unified self doing the constituting can be viewed as an eternal paradigm who was there ‘all along’, while the process of constitution and its result, the constituted self, can be viewed as a temporal outcome of that being's action. This framework allows the Neoplatonists to step around the dilemma that Korsgaard calls the ‘paradox’ of self-constitution. For Proclus and the later Neoplatonists we should highlight a distinction between our essence and activity, between character and action. The soul's character – its self – is eternal, but its activity – its persistent work of self-constitution or self-expression – is temporal (El. Th. § 191.3). Eternally or essentially, we have already constituted ourselves: but in temporal activity we are always at work on this project. Our achievement can be measured by the degree of unity, or individuation, that we have achieved, stretched on a spectrum between the divisibility of bodies, on the one hand, and the sheer unity of τὸ ἕν, on the other; the more unified we are, the more successful we have been at the virtuous project of self-constitution, as τὸ ἕν is the goal and agent of our completion (El. Th. §§ 12–13). Thus τὸ ἕν is the ground of our being or essential character, and also the goal of our temporal action: for the Neoplatonist it is the ultimate ground of normativity.

Plotinus' two persons

We might proceed by comparing Plotinus' view of personhood, foundational for later Neoplatonist accounts.⁸ Plotinus employed the plural pronoun ‘we’ (ἥμεις) to indicate the rational soul. And ‘come what may’, Plotinus argued, ‘the soul will be at peace, turned to itself and resting in itself’ (Enn. i.1.9). But ordinary sensations – pleasure and sadness, longing and fear (i.1.1), simply needing food and drink (i.2.5; cf. Aristotle Eth. Nic. 10.8; Sorabji Reference Sorabji2006: 35) – would surely cause us some disturbance. So how would Plotinus explain our ordinary, day-to-day clamours, sensations and wishes: are they really part of us? Should we, like an Epictetan sage, cast many of these affections aside and resist the urge to identify with them (Disc. 3.3.14–19; cf. Sorabji Reference Sorabji2006: 182)? More seriously, we might wonder how we – the real us – might ever be held to account for a mistake (i.1.12), or credited for an achievement.

Plotinus feels these concerns. In response, he picks apart two different descriptions of what ‘we’ are, suggesting that the true human being or ἄνθρωπος remains separate, dwelling safely in the intelligible world as the human animal, the ζῷον, goes about its daily affairs.

Thus there are always two of us: one reasoning being subsisting above in eternity, and a persistent shadow that trudges along in sublunar time, like the shade of Homer's Heracles (Odyssey11.601–2).⁹ The former is genuinely who we are, the fringe of our intellect (Enn. iv.3.32) like the edge of sunlight, the natural self-expression of real, unadulterated unity that is the god in us, the god we truly are (i.2.6). The two souls are like neighbours, with the higher soul exerting a positive moral influence on the lower soul by its proximity and company (i.2.5). It turns out that our experience of ‘ordinary’ or conventional day-to-day affections is a by-product of this higher, rational soul's ‘casting a shadow’ as it gazes downward, or outward, at ordinary life (i.1.12), projecting its values into matter and valuing what is exterior over the interior source of its own projection (v.8.1, v.1.1). As soon as we turn our attention fully upward or inward, and recognise that the source of our values is within us or ‘above’, that shadow simply vanishes. But it takes a kind of work to get ‘up’ to that separate state. In particular, it requires an abandonment of multiplicity and turn to unity.

This ‘turn’ to unity is no small achievement. Plotinus alludes to Republic 10, 611d–612a – where Socrates describes ‘knocking off the encrustrations’ of the sea-god Glaucus to see his essence – to illustrate the process of finding the true or authentic soul within. From the day-to-day point of view it is a struggle, although from the upper soul's vantage point it is simply a matter of shifting attention to the intelligible (Enn. i.1.12.29–32). Philosophers are able to ascend to the intelligible realm and identify with this highest part, through its ‘ultimate fringe … tied to the world below’ (iii.4.3.21–7) by a kind of ‘ascent’ of consciousness (see Chlup Reference Chlup2012: 25). But this movement towards self-unification is framed as a cognitive act, almost instantaneous, and it would seem misleading to frame it as a change of being – rather, it involves a change of mind, a kind of realisation that amounts to noticing what one really is.

Turning upward: later Neoplatonism's ladder of virtues

Later Neoplatonists, following Iamblichus (see De an. 1.7 = Stobaeus Ekl. 1.49.32.78–84), did not subscribe to Plotinus' doctrine of an undescended soul. They held that the human soul descends completely into becoming, though once here we continue to possess innate images of the higher world within (Proclus In Parm. 948.12–30; cf. In Tim. 3.334.10–14 and In Alc. 227.19–21) – a version of the Platonic recollection thesis, explicated by the Neoplatonic rule that ‘all are in all, in a manner appropriate to each’ (Proclus El. Th. § 103). Plotinus had it right that the soul stands on the cusp between multiplicity and unity, between becoming and being, and possesses the capacity to turn its attention to either extreme: we are eternal in essence and temporal in activity (El. Th. § 191.3), perpetually existent yet subject to becoming (§ 192.1–2). Moreover, it remains characteristic of the later Neoplatonist outlook to describe this momentum as one from multiplicity to unity.

Since the Neoplatonists came to regard the soul as a higher being fully descended into the lower cosmos, they naturally emphasised the importance of the ‘turn upward’ or ‘inward’, if anything even more sharply than Plotinus: the soul in the world carries a ‘great cosmic responsibility’ to mediate between the higher and the lower (Chlup Reference Chlup2012: 29). The emphasis fell less on distinguishing two facets or persons within the soul, and recognising which is really us – our real being, namely the ‘ultimate fringe’ or illumination linking us to the world below (Plotinus Enn. iii.4.3.21–7) – and more on bringing the soul's temporal activity into alignment with its essential being.

The soul's temporal activity might be virtuous or non-virtuous, and the ‘turn’ of the soul coincided with the formal beginning of the philosophical curriculum, and a shift from pre-philosophical modes of virtue to authentically philosophical excellence.¹⁰ Following Porphyry's systematic adaptation of Plotinus' treatise On Virtue (Enn. i.2), Iamblichus and his successors developed a complex ‘ladder’ of virtues that talented human beings might climb.

Self-knowledge and the journey from multiplicity to unity: Proclus on the Greater Alcibiades

As the First Cycle of Ten Dialogues above illustrated, at the beginning of the Platonic task of philosophical self-development Iamblichus and Proclus followed earlier Platonists who favoured the Greater Alcibiades as an introduction to philosophy,¹⁴ crediting that dialogue's emphasis on self-knowledge.¹⁵ Proclus, following Iamblichus, adapts this basic story of self-transformation to his metaphysical scheme, beginning with the question of what kind of being we are. He explains the importance of studying the Alcibiades as follows:

It is essential to discover what kind of entity the soul is in order to know what is best for it – how to foster its virtue and bring it to completion. This determination needs to be made against the complex canvas of Proclan metaphysics:

Every soul, in fact, ‘is intermediate between the indivisible principles and those which are divided in association with bodies’ (Proclus El. Th. § 190). This is what we are, and Proclus also argues that Alcibiades can be portrayed as symbolic of ourselves, as the soul experiencing coming-to-be:

This entity, symbolised by Alcibiades, naturally the companion of Socrates but ‘dragged down’ by multiplicity and irrationality like Plotinus' lower soul tempered by its wiser neighbour (Enn. i.2.5), is the rational soul. What is its situation, or ‘misfortune’?

According to the analogy of the extremes we must relate Alcibiades to the rational soul, to which are still attached the emotions and the irrational powers, as it were plotting against the life of reason and like the Titans attempting to rend it; but the intellect, like Athene, is set above, keeping it from sinking in the scale and tending to implication in matter. For it is the function of Athene to preserve life undivided, ‘for which reason Pallas Athene is called “saviour”’, but of the Titans to divide it and to entice it to the process of coming-to-be’ (Proclus In Alc. 43.4–44.4).

This soul can be rescued, and the imagery of this rescue can be portrayed mythologically in a number of idioms. For example, the character of Socrates in the dialogue, as he ‘turns’ Alcibiades to philosophy, can be seen as the soul's saviour:¹⁶

Thus the ‘upper’ soul is unparticipated by multiplicity, and the ‘lower’ soul is participated by multiplicity. The core process of change is one of movement from multiplicity to unity; but now we might see this as less a cognitive process or change of mind (or being), and more a practical process or change of activity, once the mythological language is correctly translated:

We find ourselves as the rational soul suspended between unity, represented by the mind (νοῦς), and multiplicity, represented by the diversity and divisibility of bodies. In the Alcibiades, as the starting-point of the ‘ladder’ of philosophical virtues discussed above, we are invited to pursue civic or πολιτικὴ ἀρετή, to work towards the harmony and coherence of the parts of our soul under the guidance of reason. Alcibiades signifies our own condition; Socrates signifies the mind; Alcibiades' ‘vulgar’ or common lovers represent the divisibility ‘below’ us. Now it is up to us, first, to get control of the diversity of the parts of the soul and bring them under the common banner of λόγος; this is what civic virtue is, what the Alcibiades especially trains students to do,¹⁷ what Plato's Republic4 appears to enjoin, and roughly speaking the inspiration for the kind of constitutive metaethics worked out by Korsgaard. But for Proclus and his contemporaries, as I have suggested above, it is important that this is only the first step in the process of ascent on the ladder of virtues. It is also in our power to shift our gaze away from temporality altogether, ‘upward’ towards greater unity and eternity, and ultimately towards our own causes – towards the inner architecture of νοῦς itself, toward οὐσία. As Damascius puts it, ‘the soul can choose three different ways: of ruling the lower, of finding within itself the principles of its actions, or of looking up towards causes higher than the soul’ (In Phaed. 1.74).

Proclus on unity

So far we have worked with a relatively generic concept of unity, and a loosely described process of ‘unification’ or ἕνωσις that the Neoplatonists prescribe for the soul. I would like to dwell, briefly, on the kind of unity that Proclus has in mind, drawing primarily on the Elements of Theology. The opening propositions of the Elements discuss ‘The One’ (τὸ ἕν), the fount of Neoplatonic metaphysics.¹⁸ This is something that every multiplicity participates (in order to avoid an infinite regress where nothing has unity), but it is not identical with any of its posterior participants, neither groups that it unifies nor more mysterious entities called ‘units’ (henads) (El. Th. §§ 1–6; cf. Siorvanes Reference Siorvanes1996: 167–79; Chlup Reference Chlup2012: 112–18). It is a challenge to get clear about what Proclus' One, or the Neoplatonic One in general, might be: it is beyond being, identical with the Good for all beings, and unnameable. A broad array of vocabulary is used about it, and a great deal of later systematic theological thought in other systems of thought transfer that language to explain the nature of God.

The opening propositions of the Elements suggest that Proclus and his colleagues are not exactly treating ‘The One’ as a thing – there are plenty of really existing ‘ones’ in the universe, the ἐνάδες (§ 2), but they all depend upon τὸ ἕν, the subject of § 1, which might be most cleanly described as a principle of individuation that is not itself any particular individual being. τὸ ἕν is offered as the basic criterion for explaining identity or individuation. As such, it brings Proclus down on one side of the debate whether there is any such thing as a primitive ‘thisness’ of things, apart from their qualitative constitution or description. Proclus thinks that things do have a ‘thisness’, and it ought to be called τὸ ἕν: in a modern doxography he would fall on the former side of the question, with Scotus, Kant and Peirce and against Leibniz, Russell and Ayer (see, e.g., Adams Reference Adams1979: 5).

According to the first proposition of the Elements, what makes a plurality into a unified whole just is τὸ ἕν – ‘participation’ in τὸ ἕν as a principle of individuation is a necessary condition for unity, and τὸ ἕν is the first thing that there is (cf. Proclus In Parm. 696.32 ff., with Dodds Reference Dodds1963: 188): ‘For suppose a manifold in no way participating τὸ ἕν. Neither this manifold as a whole nor any of its several parts will be one; each part will itself be a manifold of parts, and so to infinity; and of this infinity of parts each, once more, will be infinitely manifold’ (El. Th. § 1). By the same token, for Proclus, to be a real, unified individual is not just a matter of possessing a unique bundle of qualities, but of a further feature: bearing a participation relationship to τὸ ἕν. Everything that bears such a relationship can in some sense be ‘picked out’ as a unity; without that relationship, nothing can really be ‘picked out’. Proclus' primary argument that this must be so relies on the intuition that without a principle like τὸ ἕν, reality would be structured around an indefinite infinity of infinities. From this point of view, the intuitive function of τὸ ἕν is to explain how some subject of discourse is definite – how it is something delimited, not ἄπειρον, and something rather than nothing at all (§ 1.10–14). Based on that opening proposition, it might be most promising to treat τὸ ἕν as a principle of individuation: it is what makes this this and not something else, what makes me me and not someone else.

Everything that participates in τὸ ἕν, individuation, is both one and not-one: it cannot be individuation itself, since by definition the participation relationship requires a differentiation of participant from participated (§ 2). But we can trace a hierarchy of degrees of individuality, from the real primary individuals or ἐνάδες (which in Proclus' system answer to the role of the gods), to a range of unified groups (ἑνώμενα). It might be reasonable to treat ἕναδες as ‘individuals’, which are distinguished by their uniqueness or ἰδιότης, which they also communicate to ‘lower’ groups.¹⁹

Entities in Proclus' system, as we have already noticed from the Alcibiades, are ranked according to their degree of participation in individuation. But the role of τὸ ἕν is not just descriptive, but also prescriptive: things are unities, and it's good for them to become more unified until they are fully individuated. The good of human beings is to be completed in this way, and the target of their completion is ἕνωσις, to become authentic unities or fully individuated entities (§ 9): thus τὸ ἕν can also be called ‘the Good’ for all things (§ 13). Now some entities, such as bodies, are entirely dependent on external forces for their unity and individuation (§§ 15, 16); others, such as intelligences (§ 169) and henads (§ 114), are already unities; but souls, as intermediates, are self-sufficient or self-unifying agents (§§ 9, 44, 83, 189, 190). The being or existence of a soul is derived from itself as it reverts upon itself (§ 189), and it constitutes itself in the process, aspiring to itself as its own source of existence (§ 43); thus souls are in a sense self-individuating, although they depend on higher principles of individuation beyond themselves. This ‘individuation’ is the soul's endeavour to make itself ‘complete’, to realise its own unity or Good. In this whole process it is again important to stress that the real unity of the soul, its henadic and intelligible essence and individuality, are always there in eternity, acting paradigmatically and in a sense ‘behind the scenes’ as the soul engages in its work of self-constitution.

Conclusion: self-unification as a moral goal

Korsgaard argues, interpreting Plato, that ‘the kind of unity that is necessary for action cannot be achieved without a commitment to morality’ (Reference Korsgaard2009: xii): the source of normativity for human beings just is our attempt to bring ourselves into unison, like the soul of the Republic, brought into harmony under the aegis of reason. ‘The principles of practical reason serve to unify and constitute us as agents, and that is why they are normative … normative principles are in general principles of the unification of manifolds, multiplicities, or, in Aristotle's wonderful phrase, mere heaps, into objects of particular kinds (Metaphysics 8.6, 1045a10)’ (Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2009: 27). As I suggested above, Proclus would agree with the heart of this claim: normative principles are principles of unification. Hence the One, as the goal of each being's completion (El. Th. § 9), is the Good (§ 13). We can be held to what Korsgaard calls ‘constitutive standards’ (Reference Korsgaard2009: 28), and ‘bad actions, defective actions, are ones that fail to constitute their agents as unified authors of their actions’ (Reference Korsgaard2009: 32). Thus Korsgaard argues that

Again, I think that Proclus would broadly agree, but only to a point. Being a giraffe is not only doing something: that is the activity or ἐνεργεία, but the being has to be distinguished as separate from, and prior to, the activity (see again El. Th. § 191.3). For Proclus the individuality of a thing, its participation in τὸ ἕν, is not identical with its being, but comes before its being. And again, the being of the thing lies before its teleological process of completion – say, the being of the soul and its activity of self-constitution and self-animation. Thus Proclus' system naturally digests the question ‘how can I constitute myself before I exist?’ that Korsgaard introduces (Reference Korsgaard2009: 20, 35), employing the explanation that my being and henadic individuality exist in eternity, before any temporal action or ἐνεργεία occur, while that latter, temporal action is the natural expression or emanation of my real being.

In conclusion, we have found that Proclus regards unity as the ground of the human good – a unity that requires self-reflection, reason and self-constitution. In seeking the ground of normativity in unity (and the explanation of human defects and flaws in the lack of unity), Proclan ethics might, I think, be profitably compared to the constructivist project of philosophers such as Korsgaard, whom I have brought into contrast with Proclus here. Proclus invites human beings, in a nutshell, to ‘create ourselves’ in a sense rather like Korsgaard's. But the difference is also crucial: unlike Korsgaard (and Korsgaard's Aristotle, and for that matter Korsgaard's Plato), Proclus stresses that we are already a unity in one sense, in our eternal being or essential character, and we are only a multiplicity in respect of our temporal action. The soul exists in eternity and acts in time. Moreover, from the later Neoplatonic point of view, its unity and individuation are prior even to its existence.

In this way Proclus' system comes with a built-in metaphysical solution to the ‘paradox of self-constitution’: we are already ‘there’ before the activity of self-constitution begins. This ‘solution’ comes with the implication that souls on earth – each one an embodied expression of a unique and eternal unity – are obliged to do work, the kind of work that Alcibiades is invited to do as he begins to climb the ladder of virtues, in order to become real wholes in action and not only in character. That is what is good for us: that is what brings us to completion. As the passages from the Alcibiades commentary illustrate, Proclus regards the discovery of this fact as the goal of philosophical education, as we may choose to focus the soul's attention on uniting its inner diversity (civic virtue), or withdrawing from diversity altogether (purificatory virtue), or committing its gaze to the unity that pre-exists its project of self-constitution: all three of these activities are, for Proclus, essential for the project of ‘creating oneself’ as a fully fledged person.

Sources of guilt

Adam's trespass, culpable only because it breached a divine prohibition, is represented in the biblical narrative as the cause of human mortality, of woman's pangs in childbirth and of man's unceasing obligation to labour for his own bread. It is not said to be the cause of the ensuing crescendo of sin, which begins with Cain's murder of his brother Abel and culminates in the ruin of Babel and the confusion of tongues. The killing of Abel is prompted by the rejection of Cain's sacrifice, which seems to imply that the pastoral farmer is dearer to God than the tiller of the soil (Gen. 4:5–8). Cain's progeny contribute in no small measure to the increase of sin, for if he (as we must suppose) was the first to employ a tool as a weapon, Tubal Cain was a smith ‘in every work of brass and iron’ (Gen. 4:22; cf. Ginzberg Reference Ginzberg1998: 118), and Lamech the second man to confess a murder (Gen. 4:23). If peace was to be symbolised in the prophets by the beating of swords into ploughshares, it was not forgotten that ploughshares can be beaten into swords (Isa. 2:4; Joel 3:10).

In Genesis 6 the giants appear on earth⁸ at the time when the sons of God take wives from among the daughters of men. According to Philo⁹ and others these sons of God were fallen angels, and in the apocryphal book of Enoch it is these apostates from heaven who sow iniquity on earth by creating the instruments of war and agriculture. The tower of Babel is another overweening work of manual enterprise, a parallel to the storming of heaven which Greek myth attributes to the giants.¹⁰ Noah's ark was a nobler artefact, but this new father of the human race was also unlucky in his children, and the curse that he laid on his second son Ham resulted in the perpetual subjection of Ham's son Canaan to the descendants of his uncles Shem and Japheth (Gen. 9:22–5). While fratricide is not attested between the Flood and the Exodus, the supplanting of the elder by the younger is a common motif in the history of the patriarchs from whom Israel traced her right to the Promised Land. Ishmael is driven out by the mother of Isaac (Gen. 21:9–14); Jacob steals the birthright from his elder brother Esau (Gen. 27); Joseph's dream that his brothers will pay court to him comes true (Gen. 37:7 ff.), and his younger son Ephraim usurps the blessing intended for Manasseh (Gen. 48:13–14), thus ensuring that his name will be given to the northern kingdom of Israel when his descendant Jeroboam breaks away from the hegemony of Judah. Jeroboam, however, is a reprobate who sets up two golden calves in imitation of the one that had been erected, with Aaron's connivance, in defiance of Moses at Sinai (1 Kgs. 12:28; Exod. 32:4). It became a prophetic commonplace to exclaim that each generation, both in Israel and in Judah, had outdone the last in wickedness ever since that first secession in the wilderness. Not before New Testament times, however, do we hear the voice of an Israelite declaring that the patience of God has been abused too often and that his covenants with Abraham and Moses have been annulled.

It would not be impossible, therefore, to reduce the Old Testament to a series of antitypes, opposing Cain to Abel, Ishmael to Isaac, Esau to Jacob, Judah to the sons of Joseph, Ephraim to Manasseh. This binary scheme is applied to the entire history of the world in a Latin romance, the Clementine Recognitions, which assumed its present form at about the time of Augustine's writing of the Confessions. At 8.3 ten contrasting pairs are enumerated: Cain and Abel, the giants and Noah, Pharaoh and Abraham, the Philistines and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Pharaoh's magicians and Moses, the tempter and the Son of Man, Simon Magus and Peter, the nations and the evangelist of the nations, Christ and the Antichrist. The duel of Peter and Simon in Rome, described in other hagiographic writings of the same or an earlier period, can be read as an epitome of the perennial conflict between the kingdom of God and that of this world, as Simon (the favourite of the emperor in this story) was reputedly worshipped as a local deity by the pagans of the capital,¹¹ while the Roman congregation believed that in the body of Peter it possessed the very rock on which the Saviour undertook to build his church.

Pagans had never heard of Cain, but according to Roman legend the blood of Remus sullied, or perhaps cemented, the walls of the rising city after he had accused his brother Romulus of cheating in a trial by ornithomancy. While Livy passes over this crime in haste in his Histories (Ab urbe condita1.7), it is mitigated in Ovid by the introduction of a third party, Celer, who deals the fatal blow in the false belief that he is serving Romulus (Fasti3.391, 4.51). The sixth of Horace's Roman odes begins with an apostrophe to the ‘Roman’, who, though immeritus (undeserving), is doomed to expiate the crimes of his fathers. What the crime is we are not told, and it quickly appears that the Roman is not quite guiltless: he can hope for a clean bill of innocence only when he rebuilds the temples which have been allowed to decay in the fratricidal age of civil wars. At the end of the ode we discover that the penalty of past sins is to go on sinning: ‘our fathers' generation, worse than our grandsires, spawned in us a more evil brood, soon to produce more vicious offspring’ (Odes3.6.46–8). Historians in the imperial and late republican periods sometimes proposed a more recent date for the introduction of poison into the body politic. Perhaps the ancient habits of thrift and industry had been chased out of the city by the spoils that Manlius Vulso brought from Gaul in 187 bce (Livy Ab urbe condita39.6); or perhaps, as Sallust opines, the fall of Carthage in 146 had deprived Rome of a whetstone to martial virtue and moral vigilance (Bellum Catilinae10).

Yet Virgil, in a text better known to Christians of antiquity than any yet cited here, alludes to a curse that is older than Rome and occasioned not by murder but by false dealing. In the new age of abundance, he prophesies, pauca tamen suberunt priscae vestigia fraudis, there will remain a few scars of the ancient perfidy (Eclogue4.31): a new age will ply its oars on the deep and cleave the earth with its ploughshares, a new band of warriors will fill the Argo and a second Achilles will be sent to Troy. Only then will the merchant and the mariner give up their trade and the earth bring forth without the travail of sowing and viticulture (32–41). It should be obvious that the prisca fraus is not the killing of Remus, or even the refusal of King Laomedon to honour his debt to Apollo and Poseidon after they built the walls of Troy: neither of these offences prompted the quest of the Golden Fleece, and it is hard to see why the erasure of their scars would inaugurate a new age of fecundity without tillage. It would seem that the primordial sin is the cause of human sweat and toil upon the reluctant earth, which is itself a further indignity rather than an expiation of the wrong. When Constantine cited Virgil as a herald of the Messiah and a witness to the Fall, this was far from the most perverse reading of the poem that has been offered in ancient or in modern times.

In Virgil's Aeneid a Trojan takes swift vengeance on an Italian who taunts him with effeminacy (9.621–37); in Latin historiography the positions are reversed, and it is the Roman, half a Trojan himself, who imposes civilisation with all its blessings and distempers upon the robust barbarian. The vanquished reply, unanswerably: ‘they make a desolation and call it peace’, exclaims the leader of the Britons in the Agricola of Tacitus (30), and in his Annals Caratacus proves more formidable in speech than he was in arms (12.37). Yet Tacitus will not forgive any emperor who fails to impose the Roman yoke on peoples whom he admits to be superior to the Romans in morality (Annales1.11; Agricola39–40). As Virgil proclaimed (Aeneid6.851), Rome has a duty to rule, though that is no guarantee that she can rule without sin.

Augustine wrote the City of God to explain why God would allow the eternal city to be sacked by an army of professing Christians, abetted by a fifth column of Christian senators who had caused the removal of the Altar of Victory from the forum (see Croke and Harries Reference Croke and Harries1982). It was not enough for Augustine to say, with his friend Orosius, that Christianity had in fact brought about a slight mitigation of the calamities to which the world was subject. Quoting the Sibyl although he has scoffed at Virgil (Civ. Dei18.23; cf. Conf. 1.13.20), he undertakes to follow (and surpass) the poet's example by writing a teleological narrative which incorporates a history of decline. This history, for him as for the Roman censors of Rome, begins with a fratricide, though not the one that survives in their short memories. While venality, luxury and the spread of weapons play their part, his object is to show that these are not the roots of sin but the perennial flowerings of an endemic sinfulness, the origins of which are known to us only by revelation. To the author of this revelation civil strife is merely a symptom of the truceless warfare between two commonwealths, of which the one that is destined to prevail is not coterminous with any visible polity, or even with the church that has been held accountable for the sack of Rome.

In the Confessions Augustine sees the rivalry of twins, each fighting to own the breast that can feed them both, as proof of the congenital transmission of the sinful tendency (1.7.11). He has not yet formulated his infamous doctrine that we also inherit the guilt that Adam himself incurred by sinning, so that even before we have faults of our own to expiate, we are under sentence of eternal punishment for a fault that only the blood of Christ can purge (Pecc. mer. 1.18.23 etc.). He can, however, urge that children are frequently held responsible for the transgressions of their fathers in the Old Testament (Exod. 20:5 etc.). Some opine that this was also the regnant belief in Africa, where, according to John V. Taylor, a missionary would not find it so difficult as in Europe to persuade his audience of the son's liability to the father's punishment (Taylor Reference Taylor1963: esp. 97–8, 124, 188). But whether Augustine was culturally or ethnically an African¹² – or, for that matter, a Berber¹³ – we could not hope to determine even if we could say what both these adverbs signify. By language, education and political allegiance he was a Roman, and we have seen that the Romans saw themselves as a people prone to vice, and all the more so because the gods required them to pay for crimes that they had not perpetrated. It could be argued indeed that Augustine's teaching on original sin is more consonant with the Roman than with the biblical view of history: although Ezekiel urges that the Israelites are all the more sinful because their fathers sinned before them (Ezek. 20), ancestral sin is more commonly invoked to explain why some other people is subject to, or at enmity with, the elect nation of God. The Roman, by contrast, holds that the malediction has fallen on the very people who have received their empire from the gods. Augustine likewise holds that the sin of Adam and the propensity to sin on one's own account are as much the patrimony of the saints as of those who are lost.

Romulus, the son of a Vestal Virgin who at the end of his life rose bodily into heaven after founding an asylum for ne'er-do-wells which its inhabitants extolled as an eternal city, was all too obviously the pagan counterpart of Christ. Yet Romans who know their own history, says Augustine, will perceive that Sallust combines a true diagnosis of Rome's distempers with a fallacious aetiology which presupposes a fall from innocence;¹⁴ at the same time, even the poets have not divined that sin is a universal state, and that even fratricide – even the first, most heinous fratricide – can be only a symptom, not the cause, of moral or political imbecility. Two considerations show that Rome cannot owe her fortune to divine favour. On the one hand, the gods, if they had the power, would reward the virtuous, and would not permit a Regulus to perish in ignominy (Civ. Dei1.24, 5.18); on the other hand, no god who deserved the name would permit his favourites to extend their wealth and power by the conquest of unoffending nations (5.17), and no polity that relies for its survival on coercion and torture can be of divine origin (19.6). Augustine has no quarrel with agriculture, but he says more clearly than anyone before him that Rome's claim to keep the peace of the world by force majeure is illusory so long as violence, camouflaged as justice, is not merely an occasional corollary but the necessary condition of civic peace.

Against his own arraignment of the Roman past, Augustine sets the biblical record in which the histories of saint and sinner are told concurrently. The Mosaic account begins with the creation, not only because that is the custom in barbarian histories, but because unless we grant that the world was created out of nothing, by God's grace and for his glory, we shall not understand the role of sin as a tolerated aberration within the divine economy. Ever since God divided light from darkness, separating his angels from the non-being which is all that we mean by evil, nothing but good has come from his hand, and nothing but evil from the disobedience of his creatures. Satan's sin was the first, but Adam's more deleterious to his human progeny. Its consequence is that no human being is free to do good without the assistance of God, and hence that no-one is saved who is not already chosen. Thus there are now two cities, or rather two types of city, one rising and falling on earth as a fugitive monument to pride and folly, the other growing more populous from age to age in the sight of God alone. Cain, the first rebel, is also the architect of the first city on earth (Civ. Dei15.8), but the city of Abel is destined to outlive it, as we learn from the extinction of Cain's posterity in the Flood (15.8 and 15).

Thus the City of God sets out a comprehensive philosophy of history which at once subsumes and surpasses all its models. The Bible recounts the creation and the first sin, but neither of these expressly accounts for the forking destinies of the brothers who punctuate the line from Adam to Jeroboam. In the Clementine Recognitions this antithetical scheme informs the whole economy of salvation, but there is more dramatic symmetry in the scheme than theological perspicuity. In Roman historiography the ills of the body politic are traced at times to the wrongdoing of a single man and at others to some collective indiscretion, but the vista is never long enough, and it is always falsely assumed that the corruption which is now inevitable could have been avoided by an exercise of freedom in the past.

Ancestral vices

But how is sin inherited if not by imputation? From the Decalogue we learn that God is a jealous God who visits the sins of the parents on the third and the fourth generation (Exod. 20:5); but neither this terrible dictum nor the Psalmist's ejaculation, ‘I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me’ (Ps. 51:7), affords any purchase for scientific reasoning. Some Greek physicians believed in the transmission of acquired blemishes, and Aristotle, though he denies the rule, admits that exceptions have been proved. For Augustine, however, it is not enough to say that all children have in fact sinned because their parents sinned: the law must be not merely an empirical but a necessary one, not merely true in the main but universally binding. His own solution, adumbrated in the City of God and taken up with force in his writings against the Pelagians, is infamous. The cause of Adam's Fall was not the victory of the senses over the intellect but the capitulation of intellect to its own pride. Its consequence is that intellect, in Adam and in his descendants, no longer enjoys a perfect mastery over the sensual appetites, so that we not only sin through ignorance but do evil in the knowledge that it is evil. If this theory implied that sin (as we might say) is part of our genetic inheritance, some proviso would be required to explain the impeccability of Christ. Augustine has no doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary;¹⁵ he does, however, purport to draw a corollary from experience which will account for the universality of sin in every other case while making Christ a necessary exception. The body, he says, carries evidence of the Fall in the fact that, while we can move our other limbs as we please, the genital organ in men answers only to lust, and cannot be aroused by the rational prompting of the will (Civ. Dei14.26). An erection may occur in defiance of a man's resolution; on the other hand, his desire to have children with his lawful wife may be frustrated by his physical impotence. It follows that even Christians duly married, for whom procreation is not merely no sin but a duty, will be unable to conceive without sin:

Post-lapsarian modesty, says Augustine, forbids us to canvass the medical theory that the wife produces her own seed in addition to that of the husband (De nupt. et con. 2.13.26).¹⁶ Since he assumes, however, that the woman also experiences lust in the act of conception, he seems to agree with those doctors who thought it impossible for a woman to conceive unless she had taken pleasure in sexual intercourse (Dean-Jones Reference Dean-Jones1994: 157). Mary's case, however, is a miraculous anomaly: she felt no pleasure because there was no intercourse, and therefore the inexorable law that governs coition did not apply to the fruit of her womb. The argument that birth by insemination entails defilement, and that Jesus therefore owed his impeccability to his virgin birth, had already been stated in Origen's eighth Homily on Leviticus, and it is possible that Gregory of Nyssa anticipates Augustine's teaching more precisely, though his phrasing is obscure (Orat. catech. 16, in Mühlenberg Reference Mühlenberg1996: 47.3–7): ‘If birth itself is not an affliction, neither could anyone call life an affliction. But the affliction of pleasure precedes human birth, and the impulse of living creatures to vice (this is the infirmity of our nature).’ Such reasoning will account for Christ's resistance to temptation – perhaps too well, as the most exacting of Augustine's critics urged, as they seem to entail that he was not even ‘tempted as we are’. It is not clear that they can save Christ from the guilt of the primordial sin, which ought to fall upon anyone whose ancestors were in the loins of Adam.¹⁷ The scope of the present chapter does not require us to vindicate the theology of Augustine or his Christian predecessors,¹⁸ but it does require us to ask how far the science or lore of procreation in his day would support his belief that the character of a child will be affected by the mental state of the parents at the instant of conception. In the book of Genesis – for Augustine as scientific a resource as any other – Jacob causes Laban's ewes to bring forth lambs of the same colour as the rods that he sets before them (Gen. 30:34–43). Jerome, to pre-empt the incredulity of his readers, quotes a corroborative anecdote from Quintilian, in which the birth of a black son to a white queen is explained as a consequence of her seeing a picture of an Ethiopian at the time of intercourse.¹⁹ The novelist Heliodorus, who may have been a contemporary of Jerome and Augustine, inverts the tale in an episode of his Ethiopian Story, in which the queen is African and the child is white (Aethiopica4.8.5). Augustine, however, traces a similar anecdote to Hippocrates (Loc. Hept. 1.93), and appears have drawn another variant of it from Soranus at Retractationes2.62.²⁰ He was exercised throughout his life by the question of the soul's origin (see O'Daly Reference O'Daly1983), though he failed to discover a philosophic doctrine that was equally consistent with his metaphysics and his theory of original sin. His metaphysics told him that the soul is incorporeal, free of colour, shape or magnitude, and acting in the place where it is not. According to his hamartiology sin is transmitted by insemination, as physical characteristics are except where an Ethiopian or a Jacob crosses the mother's line of vision. Can incorporeal properties, or the properties of an incorporeal entity, be passed down by intercourse?

‘Traducianist’ was the ancient name for those who could answer this question in the affirmative; it is the name maliciously given to Augustine himself by Julian of Eclanum, with the purpose of singeing him by association.²¹ Tertullian, the most celebrated Christian proponent of traducianism,²² also held that the soul is a corpus or body, defending this position with agile casuistry and a dossier of quotations from the Stoics. To Augustine he might have been a priceless ally, as he maintains that a vitium carnis, a moral debility of the flesh, is necessarily inherited by all who are born of carnal intercourse.²³ Augustine, however, could not accept that a Christian can also be a materialist, and did not take note of the (cursory and unexplained) distinction between the corporeal and the material which Tertullian draws in On the Soul (De an. 11.2). Nor can he reply without satire to Vincentius Victor, who, if Augustine's paraphrase can be trusted, held that the soul is one of three corpora or bodies which make up the human person, but a body which remains unsullied before its incarceration in the womb (De an. et orig. 1.5.5). Having disposed of Victor to his own satisfaction, Augustine turns from philosophy to the scriptures, laying texts that seem to favour traducianism side by side with those that might be thought to imply a simultaneous creation of the soul and the tangible body. His verdict, as in his earlier work On Genesis according to the Letter, is that the scriptures offer no decisive evidence in favour of either view.

Although the mature Augustine canvasses only two opinions, he implies in letter 166, written to Jerome in 415, that the pre-existence of the soul was a notion worthy of Christian scrutiny.²⁴ Even when he had formally rejected it (or the Platonic variant of it), he was not ashamed to go on reading Porphyry. In his letter To Gaurus, the pagan Neoplatonist had denied that the child in the womb possesses a rational soul, which grows in maturity along with the physical members, since this doctrine seemed to him inconsistent with the Platonic teaching that the rational soul descends from the ‘supercelestial place’ to a body allotted to it in accordance with the merits and demerits of its past lives. He attributes the early signs of animation to the presence of an irrational soul, and, while he concedes that the embryo is capable of appetitive motions, he argues that these originate not in a rational choice of ends, but in affections of the phantastic or imaginative faculty of the mother, which at this stage are directly communicable to her offspring:²⁵

Commenting on Jacob's deception of Laban, Augustine also grants that impressions received by the phantasia of the mother may be transmitted to the seed (Trin. 3.8.15). Nevertheless, he concurred with other Christians, against Porphyry, in holding that the rational soul is present as soon as the mother conceives, notwithstanding the changes that occur in its physical envelope during the ninth months of gestation. Any other opinion would have justified abortion and would have failed to account for John the Baptist's recognition of Jesus when both were in the womb.²⁶ Even if such considerations logically precluded the pre-existence of the rational soul (and perhaps they do not), Porphyry's belief that maternal images can produce appetitive motions in the embryo remained at least as credible as Jerome's story of the Ethiopian.

For Porphyry all such stirrings were perturbations of the lower, or irrational, soul.²⁷ Augustine too distinguishes the anima irrationalis, which we share with beasts, from the ensemble of higher functions which he styles the mens or ‘mind’.²⁸ In the twelfth book of On Genesis according to the Letter Augustine distinguishes three forms of vision, the ocular, the spiritual and the mental (see further Finan Reference Finan1992), of which the spiritual corresponds to the ‘phantastic’ in the vocabulary of Neoplatonism (Gn. litt. 12.7.16). He declines, however, to equate the spirit with the soul in contradistinction to the intellect (12.7.17), and finds authority for his own usage at 1 Corinthians 14:14, rather than in Plato's postulation of the thumos as a part or power of the soul that mediates between intellect and appetite (12.8.19). While his bifurcation of soul and mind may have lent some colour to the charge of Apollinarianism,²⁹ it does not play for him the same role that it plays for Porphyry in accounting for the inheritance of psychic properties. Just as Adam's fall was the result of an intellectual rebellion, rather than of incontinence in the lower appetites, so the transmission of lust by parent to child entails a radical vitiation of at least one of our hegemonic faculties, the deliberative will in contradistinction to mere desire.³⁰

Afterword

To speak of Augustine's theory of the will without reference to its theological foundations is rather like transplanting the Elgin marbles from Athens to London.³¹ On the one hand, it can be argued that the eviscerated structure has ceased to function as a temple, and that the contents are safer in their foreign tabernacle from the attrition of time and unbelief; on the other hand, confinement in a museum exposes an artefact to subtler forms of weathering and a more insidious process of neglect. Just as a full aetiology may require us to look for remote antecedents and latent conditions as well as the manifest causes of a phenomenon, so an examination of Augustine's thoughts on sin and volition may require us to take account of subliminal factors as well as the exegesis and logical reasoning which are all that he himself wishes us to see. The visceral sense that many Christians have of being both powerless and all-powerful in the strength of God does not yield to philosophical analysis; neither did the combination in Roman minds of indelible guilt with a mandate from the gods to rule all nations. Without an effort of historical sympathy we can make nothing of the credulous tales that attached themselves to childbirth in an age when only heaven could decide whether both the infant and the mother would survive. It has been the aim of this chapter to restore the shock of the old – that is, to recover some lost features of the milieu in which Augustine's thought developed – in the hope not so much of rendering it more palatable as of showing that it would not have ceased to be palatable if we were still free to entertain the other beliefs with which it was coupled in Augustine's mind.