Plotinus
1. Biographical Information
2.1. Introduction Plato held that there existed
three "entities" in the intelligible realm.
2.2.1. The First as Origin of All and Basis of All Unity Central to his philosophy is Plotinus' belief in a single principle or cause of all things; all Being ultimately derives from this single principle. This is identical to Plato's Idea of the Good or the One that is beyond Being. Plotinus writes, Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through intervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and tertiaries, in which any second is to be referred to The First, any third to the second (V. 2.1).In this passage, Plotinus calls the originative principle "the First," and says that it is that from which all things derive and to which their existence must be traced ultimately. Plotinus reasons that multiplicity cannot explain itself and must be traced back ontologically to the One, in the same way that every numerical series presupposes the unit, which is one: "Before the manifold, there must be the One, that from which the manifold arises; in all numerical series, the unit is the first" (V. 3.12). In addition, he says that the first principle is a simplex or a unity and that all things exist because of this unity. He continues his discourse on this first principle: Standing before all things, there must exist a Simplex, differing from all its sequel, self-gathered not inter-blended with the forms that rise from it, and yet able in some mode of its own to be present to those others: it must be authentically a unity, not merely something elaborated into unity and so in reality no more than unity's counterfeit (V. 4.1).Plotinus attributes infinity to the Unity or One: "We must therefore take Unity as infinite not in measureless extension or numerable quantity but in fathomless depths of power" (VI. 9.6; see V. 5.11). Being no thing, but the source of all things, the Unity is unlimited in power of production and for this reason is infinite. In another passage, Plotinus explains why that, without this original unity, there could be "no thing." To be some "thing," a thing must have unity or else it could not be one particular and identifiable thing. The unity possessed by a thing derives from the original unity. He writes, It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings. This is equally true of things whose existence is primal and of all that are in any degree to be numbered among beings. What could exist at all except as one thing? Deprived of unity, a thing ceases to be what it is called: no army unless as a unity: a chorus, a flock, must be one thing. Even house and ship demand unity, one house, one ship; unity gone, neither remains thus even continuous magnitudes could not exist without an inherent unity; break them apart and their very being is altered in the measure of the breach of unity. (VI. 9.1; see VI. 9.3)The Unity or One is the basis of all unity encountered in those things which derive from it; without it there would be no thing. Plotinus elaborates on this point in another passage: On the one hand, things could take substantial existence only if they were in their own virtue simplex. On the other hand, failing a simplex, the aggregate of multiples is itself impossible: for the simplex individual thing could not exist if there were no simplex unity independent of the individual, [a principle of identity] and, not existing, much less could it enter into composition with any other such: it becomes impossible then for the compound universe, the aggregate of all, to exist; it would be the coming together of things that are not, things not merely lacking an identity of their own but utterly non-existent. (V. 6.3.) He takes it as self-evident that, for there to be unity and therefore self-identity, there must be a principle of unity, since the collection of individual components as individual cannot account for the fact that a thing is one thing (a compound thing is one thing and named as such). In fact, there could be not individual things from which to form a complex with these parts being themselves unities already. He concludes that there must be a first unity, a first simplex that itself is incomposite and therefore needs no extrinsic principle of unity. It is the first principle of indentity, by which a thing is what it is, one thing.
The Unity or One is above all Being (the things that exist) in the sense that ontologically it is "before" all things, since all things derive from it, and therefore it can be said to be wholly transcendent. It is said to transcend "real being," by which is meant the multiplicity of existents, including Ideas. For this reason the Unity or One cannot be said to be: it is the unity that is not part of the multiplicity. Plotinus writes, And if this [the unity or one] is all things, that must be above and outside of all, so, must transcend real being. And again, if that secondary [intellectual-principle] is all things, and if above its multiplicity there is a unity not ranking among those things, once more this unity transcends real being and therefore transcends the Intellectual-Principle [nous] as well (V. 4.2).The Unity or One is also said to be above the Intellectual-Principle (or Mind [Nous]) even (see below for an explanation of the Intellectual-Principle), since within the Intellectual-Principle are the knower and the known, the subject and the object of its knowledge; this means that there is no ultimate unity in the Intellectual-Principle. It follows that there must be something ontologically beyond the Intellectual-Principle, beyond the distinction between subject and object, the knower and the known: "The Supreme must be an entity in which the two are one" (III. 8.8). This is why Plotinus denies that the Unity or One can be said to be a "thus," a thing with a distinct nature; at most one can say that it is that which empowers every else to be, that which "wills" being to be: A "Thus" is something that attaches to everything in the world of things: standing before the indefinable you may name any of these sequents but you must say This is none of them: at most it is to be conceived as the total power towards things, supremely self-concentred, being what it wills to be or rather projecting into existence what it wills, itself higher than all will, will a thing beneath it. In a word it neither willed its own "Thus"- as something to conform to- nor did any other make it "Thus." (VI. 8.9) The Unity of One is beyond all being, since it is ontologically antecedent to all being, which means that one cannot refer to it as if it were a "thus," a distinct being standing in contrast to other beings. It is inappropriate to say that it made itself what it is, a "thus," and even more inappropriate to say that something else made it what it is. If this first principle is the Unity or One beyond Being, it follows that nothing can be said of it; it is completely indeterminate or qualityless, being "beyond all telling and knowing, except that it may be described as beyond being" (V. 4.1; see III. 8. 9 "beyond all things"; "beyond being"). Plotinus explains further, The Unity, then, is not Intellectual-Principle but something higher still: Intellectual-Principle is still a being but that First is no being but precedent to all being; it cannot be a being, for a being has what we may call the shape of its reality but The Unity is without shape, even shape Intellectual.If all things derive from the One or Unity, then the latter cannot be described in terms of the former. To do so would be to speak untruthfully and even nonsensically. It is even inappropriate to attribute to it some type of intellectual nature, because even an Idea is a being in the sense of being something in distinction to other things, that is, a certain intellectual object. In another place, Plotinus says that the term the Unity or One itself is not a positive attribute, but only the negation of plurality: If we are led to think positively of The One, name and thing, there would be more truth in silence: the designation, a mere aid to enquiry, was never intended for more than a preliminary affirmation of absolute simplicity to be followed by the rejection of even that statement: it was the best that offered, but remains inadequate to express the Nature indicated. For this is a principle not to be conveyed by any sound; it cannot be known on any hearing but, if at all, by vision; and to hope in that vision to see a form is to fail of even that. (V. 5.6; see V. 3.13; V. 5.4) The One is not a true name and therefore does not signify the nature of the One, since it has no nature. It is only a linguistic artifice concocted for the sake of communication. If the One really is absolute simplcity then such a statement must be denied because to affirm that the One is something is also to affirm that it is not something else, which is not true, since the One is ontologially the source of all distinctions and the resultant multiplicity. So when he writes at length about the Unity or One, Plotinus does so with the proviso of the ultimate inadequacy of language as applied to it: "Once more, we must be patient with language; we are forced to apply to the Supreme terms which strictly are ruled out; everywhere we must read 'So to speak'" (VI. 8.13). He also says that the Unity or One should not be called God, for this is to think inadequately; presumably, his understanding of God is that of a definable being (VI. 9.6).
Plotinus insists that one should also not even attribute being to the Unity or One, as if to differentiate it from its existence. In other words, one must not think that what the One is (essence) is separable from its existence. It is not one thing for it to be what it is and for it to exist as what it is. At most, to say that the 'Supreme is' is to state its self-identity: the Supreme (a synonym for the Unity or One) is what it is. (But, of course, the Supreme is not anything.) Plotinus does consent, however, to ascribe Goodness to the Unity or One, but not in the sense that it is a being with the attribute of "goodness." The Unity or One is not a being, but beyond Being, so to call it good is simply to identify it as the Good or Goodness, not to differentiate it from its attribute of Goodness. He writes, And yet this "He Is" does not truly apply: the Supreme has no need of Being: even "He is good" does not apply since it indicates Being: the "is" should not suggest something predicated of another thing; it is to state identity. The word "good" used of him is not a predicate asserting his possession of goodness; it conveys an identification. It is not that we think it exact to call him either good or The Good: it is that sheer negation does not indicate; we use the term The Good to assert identity without the affirmation of Being. Strictly speaking, one should not assign any attribute to the Unity or One. But with respect to Goodness, Plotinus makes an exception; yet he takes care to point out that Goodness is, as it were, merely a synonym for the Unity or One. As the Good, the Unity is the universal object of desire of all that emerges from the Unity or One. All things look to it as the Good, because from it they all derive. In addition, it is called the Good, because it is "the cause of the intelligent," by which he means all intellectual activity, whereby the mind contemplates Being, the Ideas or Forms (V. 5.10; see III. 8.10; VI. 7.16).
Plotinus ascribes a self-existence to the Unity or One. In dealing with the question of whether the Unity or One is a necessary or a free being, whether it must be what it is or has chosen to be what it is, he comes to the conclusion that the Unity or the One is neither and both, because It is self-existent (VI. 8.7-21). The Unity or One did not "happen" to be; its existence is not by chance but is necessary. But this necessity is not imposed from without: If thus the existence is as it must be it does not exist without reason: if its manner of being is the fitting, it is the utterly self-disposing in comparison with its sequents and, before that, in regard to itself: thus it is not "as it happened to be" but as it willed to be: all this, on the assumption that God wills what should be and that it is impossible to separate right from realization and that this Necessary is not to God an outside thing but is, itself, His first Activity manifesting outwardly in the exactly representative form. (VI. 8.18)God, i.e., the Unity or One is necessary and as such is "self-disposing," meaning that God is what he is by virtue of himself, in contradistinction to those beings that derive from it. Moreover, God is not what he is because it is his essence to be thus; this would be a necessity imposed form without; rather God is the principle or cause of his own essence, or to put it differently, God is what God wills to be eternally, but what God wills to be is not arbitrary but what should be. (In this case, Plotinus calls the Unity or One God.) In fact, whatever God wills to be by definition is what should be, since there is nothing external to God to serve as a criterion of what he should will. As Plotinus says elsewhere, "God is cause of Himself; for Himself and of Himself He is what He is, the first self, transcendently The Self" (VI. 8.14). Plotinus seeks to avoid speaking about God as if something else made him what he is, even his own essence.
Plotinus draws the further conclusion that the Unity or One has no intellection, which, in the case the Unity or One, would be self-knowledge, since all things originate from it. To assert that It could know would be to posit diversity within Itself, since it as the subject would require that it know something, an object; but the Unity or One transcends all diversity and therefore distinctions, even that between subject and object, so it cannot be said to know any "thing," even if that "thing" is Itself. Plotinus says, "Nor has it Intellection; that would comport diversity" (VI. 9.6). Plotinus stresses that the unity of the Unity or One precludes the possibility of intellection, since it would be defined by that of which it has intellection, thereby making itself a manifold. This is true even if all It knew was Itself. He writes, There must have been something standing consummate independently of any intellectual act, something perfect in its own essence: thus that in which this completion is inherent must exist before intellection; in other words it has no need of intellection, having been always self-sufficing: this, then, will have no intellectual act....It may be added that, supposing The First to be intellective, it thereby possesses something [some object, some attribute]: at once it ceases to be a first; it is a secondary, and not even a unity; it is a many; it is all of which it takes intellectual possession; even though its intellection fell solely upon its own content, it must still be a manifold. (V. 6.2)In another passage he offers further clarification, "Once there is any manifold, there must be a precedent unity: since any intellection implies multiplicity in the intellective subject, the non-multiple must be without intellection; that non-multiple will be the First: intellection and the Intellectual- Principle must be characteristic of beings coming later" (V. 6.3). Necessarily, intellection implies multiplicity in the knower, since in any act of knowing there is the knower (consciousness) and at least one known (an object of consciousness). It follows that there will be no intellection in the First, i.e., the Unity or One, being non-multiple; intellection will only arise in that which derives from it. Plotinus proposes another reason for denying intellection to the Unity or One. He explains, And again: the multiple must be always seeking its identity, desiring self-accord and self-awareness: but what scope is there within what is an absolute unity in which to move towards its identity or at what term may it hope for self-knowing? It holds its identity in its very essence and is above consciousness and all intellective act. Intellection is not a primal either in the fact of being or in the value of being; it is secondary and derived: for there exists The Good; and this moves towards itself while its sequent is moved and by that movement has its characteristic vision. The intellective act may be defined as a movement towards The Good in some being that aspires towards it; the effort produces the fact; the two are coincident; to see is to have desired to see: hence again the Authentic Good has no need of intellection since itself and nothing else is its good. (5.6.5)He asserts that the being that is multiple (whose essence has multiplicity) seeks its own unity or identity by becoming aware of itself as a manifold in unity. This process requires intellection, a self-knowing, which is a finding of unity in its diversity. But the Unity or One seeks not its unity, "holding its identity in its very essence," so that there is no impulse to self-knowledge; in other words, it is the essence of the Unity or One to be one, which means that there can no seeking for its identity, what it is, in its multiplicity. Thus, It is above all consciousness and intellection, since these presuppose multiplicity. Along the same lines, Plotinus says that intellection is a movement towards the Good, presumably because intellection would seek nothing but the Good; in the case of intellection, to seek the Good is to seek unity in diversity, and that impulse to unity is the movement to the Good, since the Unity or One is the Good. He concludes that the "Authentic Good" has no need of intellection, since it is the Good and does not need to seek any other good. In addition, to say that the Unity or One knows implies that it was ignorant, which further implies a lack; but this is impossible, as Plotinus says, To what could its Intellection be directed? To itself? But that would imply a previous ignorance; it would be dependent upon that Intellection in order to have knowledge of itself; but it is the self-sufficing. Yet this absence of self-knowing does not comport ignorance; ignorance is of something outside- a knower ignorant of a knowable- but in the Solitary there is neither knowing nor anything unknown. Unity, self-present, it has no need of self-intellection: indeed this "self-presence" were better left out, the more surely to preserve the unity; we must eliminate all knowing and all association, all intellection whether internal or external. It is not to be thought of as having but as being Intellection; Intellection does not itself perform the intellective act but is the cause of the act in something else, and cause is not to be identified with caused: most assuredly the cause of all is not a thing within that all. (6.9.6)In addition, in order to preserve the self-sufficiency (and therefore the unity) of the Unity or One, Plotinus denies the possibility of intellection, even knowledge of itself. For the Unity or One to know itself would make the Unity or One dependent upon the act of Intellection for its self-knowledge. This would compromise its self-sufficiency. It is nonetheless wrong to say that Unity or One is ignorant because it does not have self-knowledge. Neither knowing not not-knowing applies to it, because both to know and not to know require an object, "something outside," but there is nothing independent of the Unity or One. Although it does not have intellection, the One or Unity is the cause of all intellection ("is intellection"), in that which originates from it. There cannot be self-intellection in the Unity or the One because the act of self-intellection implies lack: "The wholly simple and veritable self-sufficing can be lacking at no point: self-intellection begins in that principle which, secondarily self-sufficing, yet needs itself and therefore needs to know itself" (V. 3.13). To say that what is self-sufficing knows itself implies that it is not self-sufficing, for it needs to know itself, for otherwise it would be lacking. To deny that the One or Unity knows Itself does not imply, however, the the One is ignorant, because this again implies the distinction between a subject and (a lack of) object. Rather the Unity or One is beyond all such distinctions (see V. 6.2, 4-5).
2.3.1. Emanation from the Unity or One In order to explain how there exists more than simply the Unity and One, Plotinus has recourse to the idea of emanation. The plurality that exists ultimately does so by virtue of emanating from the Unity or One, as Plotinus explains,
First emanating from the Unity or One is the Intellectual-Principle (nous), which Plotinus identifies with the dêmiourgos of Plato's Timaeus (III. 9.1; V. 9.9) and even calls it God (theos) (I.1.8). Plotinus explains that the Unity or One overflowed, as it were, as a result of its fullness, "and its exuberance has produced the new"; this overflow or emanation from the One establishes Being, and its vision of the One, that from which it originated, establishes the Intellectual-Principle. He writes,
It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it: in order that Being may be brought about, the source must be no Being but Being's generator, in what is to be thought of as the primal act of generation. Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and its exuberance has produced the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator and so an Intellectual-Principle. That station towards the one [the fact that something exists in presence of the One] establishes Being; that vision directed upon the One establishes the Intellectual-Principle; standing towards the One to the end of vision, it is simultaneously Intellectual-Principle and Being" (V. 2.1) The source of Being is that which is no Being, but precedes Being. The One, being self-sufficing, effortlessly and without loss "overflows" to give rise to both Being and the Intellectual-Principle. Being is the overflow from the One, but this same overflow looks back to the One, contemplating it, and thereby is the Intellectual-Principle. (Strictly speaking what the Intellectual-Principle contemplates is the overflow from the One, not the One Itself, which cannot be the object of contemplation.) So from the Unity or One first arises (in an ontological sense, not a temporal sense) Being, by which is meant the Ideas, the Authentic Existences, and that which knows Being, the Intellectual-Principle, or universal mind. The Intellectual-Principle is a result of the self-seeing of the Unity or One. Thus, Being and the Intellectual-Principle are one, being two aspects or results of the same emanation. This emanation is a self-presence that is capable of being a multiplicity of Ideas but without forfeiting its unity, insofar as it is the knower and known at once. Plotinus says, "In this conception, the Beings contain the Intellectual-Principle as one and the same with themselves, as their own activity. Thus Being itself is an activity: there is an activity in both or, rather, both are one thing" (V. 9.8.). Being does not precede Intellectual-Principle, nor does Being come after it as its contents; rather there is a unity of Being and Intellectual-Principle, so that the latter knows itself and the former thinks itself. This means that each Idea is ultimately indistinguishable for the Intellectual-Principle itself. The Intellectual-Principle, first contemplates the Unity or One, thereby "first" establishing itself as Intellectual-Principle, as a unity; it also contemplates the contents of its own consciousness, Being or the Ideas. Plotinus says that "The Intellectual-Principle stands as the image of the One" and he adds that "Simply by the fact that in its self-quest it has vision: this very seeing is the Intellectual-Principle" (V. 1.7). What he means to say is that the emanation of the Intellectual-Principle from the One is really the One seeing itself as Itself, as a subject and object in one. In this first emanation from the Unity or One, multiplicity first appears, but it is a multiplicity held in unity. The unity consists in the fact that the multiplicity of Being, the Ideas, are actually the contents of one mind or consciousness, the Intellectual-Principle. For this reason, Plotinus says, "The Intellectual-Principle is a seeing, and a seeing that sees itself" (III. 8.10). He explains further, Again, all that is fully achieved engenders: therefore the eternally achieved engenders eternally an eternal being. At the same time, the offspring is always minor: what then are we to think of the All-Perfect but that it can produce nothing less than the very greatest that is later than itself. The greatest, later than the divine unity, must be the Divine Mind, and it must be the second of all existence, for it is that which sees The One on which alone it leans while the First has no need whatever of it. The offspring of the prior to Divine Mind can be no other than that Mind itself and thus is the loftiest being in the universe, all else following upon it- the soul, for example, being an utterance (logos) and act of the Intellectual-Principle as that is an utterance (logos) and act of The One (V. 1.6.) The fully-achieved or perfect necessarily engenders, by which is meant, emanates something else from itself, as if it cannot contain itself any longer. What the "All-Perfect" (i.e., Unity or One) engenders is the Intellectual-Principle, which Plotinus calls Divine Mind or simply Mind, and is the offspring of that which is prior to it, the One. The Mind looks back, as it were, and "sees the One." Plotinus also describes the Mind as the utterance (logos) and act of the One. It should be noted that contained in the Intellectual-Principle are individual things, not simply the Ideas or Ideas that include many individual things. For example, not only is the Idea of Human Being in the Intellectual-Principle, but every individual person, such as Socrates; in Plotinus' judgment, there are as many Ideas as there are individual beings that differ from one another other than in being deficient in some way (V. 7.1-3). Plotinus describes the emanation of Intellectual-Principle in Pythagorean terms (and Platonic, insofar as Plato was influenced by Pythagoras). In some versions of Pythagoreanism, the Monad gives rise to the Dyad and the two produce One or unit, from which all numbers derive: "The principle of all things is the monad or unit; arising from this monad, the undefined dyad or two serves as material substratum to the monad, which is cause; from the monad and undefined dyad spring numbers" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VIII. 25). Plotinus identifies the Intellectual-Principle as the Dyad, which derives from the Monad, the Unity or One. As the Dyad, it is indeterminate, until the Unity or One (the Monad) acts upon it as a determinant to produce number, presumably by first producing the unit (a lesser One); he identifies these archetypal numbers with the Reason-Principles, as Plato is reputed to have done. He writes, Thus by what we call Number and the Dyad of that higher realm, we mean Reason-Principles and the Intellectual-Principle: but while the Dyad is, as regards that sphere, undetermined—representing, as it were, the underly [or Matter] of the One—the later Number [or Quantity]—that which rises from the Dyad [Intellectual Principle] and the One—is not Matter to the later existents but is their forming-Idea, for all of them take shape, so to speak, from the ideas rising within this. The determination of the Dyad is brought about partly from its object—the One—and partly from itself, as is the case with all vision in the act of sight: intellection [the Act of the Dyad] is vision occupied upon the One. (V. 1.5)The Dyad as emanated from the Unity or One contemplates its source, and is thereby determined by it; this determination produces numbers, i.e., Reason-Principles, which are identical to the Ideas. These numbers function as determinants of all sensible things. The Dyad is the Intellectual-Principle and the numbers produced are the objects of its knowledge, which are really itself as determined by the Unity or One. Plotinus also calls the Intellectual-Principle a God, but a multiple and secondary God that was engendered by the Simplex. The relationship between the Unity or One and the Intellectual Principle is compared to the sun and the light emanating from it. The sun's light is both distinct from the sun but also not separated from it either. It is incorrect to understand the Intellectual-Principle as arising as an act of the Unity or One, for the latter does not act, being self-sufficing, in the same way that the sun does not act to bring forth light, and is in a sense inseparable from its light. Rather, the Unity or One in relation to the Intellectual Realm stands "in repose at its summit as its King" (V. 3.12; see V. 1.7). The Unity or One is eternally contemporaneous with the Intellectual Realm: "We may think...of the One as a light before the light, an eternal irradiation resting upon the Intellectual Realm; this, not identical with its source, is yet not severed from it" (V. 3.12). Using the same metaphor of the sun, Plotinus also says that "this Principle, The Good" is not only the cause of Being and Intellectual-Principle, but also that cause of its being known. Just as the sun is the cause of the sensible-world and of its being seen, so its counterpart, the Good, is the source of Being and Intellectual-Principle "and by the light it sheds upon both makes them objects of intellection" (VI. 7.16).
Plotinus stresses that the Intellectual-Principle is both knower and known at once. There is no duality in it, no separation between subject and object; rather it is both the knowing subject and the object known. He says, Now while these two are coalescents, having their existence in common, and are never apart, still the unity they form is two-sided; there is Intellectual-Principle as against Being, the intellectual agent as against the object of intellection; we consider the intellective act and we have the Intellectual-Principle; we think of the object of that act and we have Being (V. 1.4).Being and Intellectual-Principle form a two-sided unity, a unity of intellective act and its object. The Intellectual-Principle does not know that which is external to it, for, if it did, what it "knew" would not be the Truth. If it "knew" its objects as outside of itself, in the way that one perceives an object external to oneself as perceiver, then the Intellectual-Principle would only "know" some image of the Truth, the authentic existences (nor would it know the authentic existences necessarily and essentially but only contingently). He writes, But the great argument is that if we are to allow that these objects of Intellection are in the strict sense outside the Intellectual-Principle, which, therefore, must see them as external, then inevitably it cannot possess the truth of them. In all it looks upon, it sees falsely; for those objects must be the authentic things; yet it looks upon them without containing them and in such knowledge holds only their images; that is to say, not containing the authentic, adopting phantasms of the true, it holds the false; it never possesses reality. (V. 5.1)The Authentic Existences or Ideas are what the Intellectual-Principle knows, but it knows them not by going outside of itself in order to assimilate them. Plotinus writes, Thus veritable truth is not accordance with an external; it is self-accordance; it affirms and is nothing other than itself and is nothing other; it is at once existence and self-affirmation. What external, then, can call it to the question, and from what source of truth could the refutation be brought? Any counter affirmation [of truth] must fall into identity with the truth which first uttered itself; brought forward as new, it has to appear before the Principle which made the earlier statement and to show itself identical with that: for there is no finding anything truer than he true. (V. 5.2)He explains further how the Intellectual-Principle can be both what knows and what is known: The Intellectual Object is the Intellectual Principle itself in repose, unity, immobility: the Intellectual Principle, contemplator of that object—of the Intellectual-Principle thus in repose is an active manifestation of the same Being, an Act which contemplates its unmoved phase and, as thus contemplating, stands as Intellectual-Principle to that of which it has intellection: it is Intellectual-Principle in virtue of having that intellection, and at the same time is Intellectual Object, by assimilation. (III. 9.1)(Plotinus believes that his teaching of the Intellectual-Principle is found in Plato's Timaeus [III. 9.1].) The Intellectual-Principle has two modes to its being: being in repose and active. When it knows, it is in act, i.e., doing something—in this case knowing or contemplating—and has itself for its object, but, since it knows itself, it is simulaaneously in the other mode of being in repose. Thus it is both in act insofar as it knows itself and in repose insofar as it is known by itself. The objects known by the Intellectual-Principle do not exist before the Intellectual-Principle as that to be known, nor do they come into being as insofar as known. Rather they are eternally co-present to it, so that "the Intellectual and Being are identical" (372). Thus, paradoxically, to know is to be known and to be known is to know; there is no dualism of knowing subject and what it knows (Being). Intellectual-Principle is itself what it knows, the Authentic Existences or the Ideas, being one with its contents. As Plotinus put it, The Intellectual-Principle, therefore, is itself the authentic existences, not a knower knowing them in some sphere foreign to it. The Authentic Beings, thus, exist, neither before nor after it: it is the primal legislator to Being or, rather, is itself the law of Being. Thus it is true that "Intellectual and Being are identical"; in the immaterial the knowledge of the thing is the thing. (V. 9.5)In fact, Plotinus says that Intellectual-Principle knows itself, the multiplicity of its content, at once in an eternal actuality; the act of knowing itself establishes Being, but the Being known establishes Intellectual-Principle: But the Intellectual-Principle is all and therefore its entire content is simultaneously present in that identity: this is pure being in eternal actuality; nowhere is there any future, for every then is a now; nor is there any past, for nothing there has ceased to be; everything has taken its stand forever, an identity well pleased, we might say, to be as it is; and everything, in that entire content, is Intellectual-Principle and Authentic Existence; and the total of all is Intellectual Principle entire and Being entire. Intellectual Principle by its intellective act establishes Being, which in turn, as the object of intellection, becomes the cause of intellection and of existence to the Intellectual-Principle. (V. 1.4)This identification of knower and known leads Plotinus to make the unusual assertion that the Intellectual Objects are the Intellectual-Principle and vice versa. He says that the objects of the Intellectual-Principle are in possession of Intellect (V. 5.1), which implies, presumably, they actually know themselves. He attempts to explain how there can be no division between subject and object in the Intellectual-Principle, with the result that "The Intellectual-Principle entire is the total of Ideas, and each of them is the [entire] Intellectual-Principle in a special form" (V. 9.8). One cannot separate subject and object, so that the Ideas (intellectual objects) are the Intellectual-Principle in a special mode or form of being. Likewise, he says of the Intellectual-Principle that the Beings are its actual content and that intellection, the act of the Intellectual-Principle, is inherent to the Beings: "The Beings contain the Intellectual-Principle as one and the same with themselves, as their own activity. Thus Being is itself an activity: there is one activity, then, or, rather, both are one thing" (V. 9.8). Finally, he writes, "The Intellectual Beings, thus, are multiple and one; in virtue of their infinite nature their unity is a multiplicity, many in one and one over many, a unit-plurality. They act as entire upon entire; even upon the partial things they act as entire" (VI. 5.6). His point is that there is no separation between the Intellectual-Principle and the Ideas, with the result that what is true of the whole is true of the part and what is true of the part is true of the whole.
2.4.1 The Soul as Separation and Plurality The second emanation or hypostasis is the soul (psuchê), but differs from that from which it emanates insofar as it, unlike the Intellectual-Principle, is less unified, so that with the Soul comes separation of what in the Intellectual-Principle is inseparable. Plotinus writes: The entities thus particularized from the unity are products of the Intellectual-Principle which thus would be, to that extent, the separating agent. On the other hand it remains in itself, indivisible; division begins with its offspring which, of course, means with Souls: and thus a Soul- with its particular Souls- may be the separative principle.In Soul the unity inherent in Intellectual-Principle becomes a true plurality, as opposed to a plurality held in unity. In other words, the Authentic Existences or Ideas (manifested as as Reason-Principles in the Soul) are separated from one another and become distinct. This gives rise to discursive thinking, for the thinker, Soul, must now think serially, one Reason-Principle at a time, and no longer comprehends the whole at once as a unity, which is the opposite of discursive thinking, as Intellectual-Principle knows itself (Human beings as souls think discursively when they contemplate the Forms.)
Not only does Soul differ from Intellectual-Principle by being a separative principle, but also insofar as it is a generative of motion. Plotinus explains: This active power sprung from essence [from the Intellectual-Principle considered as Being] is Soul. This image of Soul is Sense and Nature, the vegetal principle. (V. 2.1.)Soul is called an active power that derives from Intellectual-Principle; it is the idea of the Intellectual-Principle, in the sense that Soul has it as its formal principle, and its act in the sense that Soul is the result of its overflow. The key difference between Soul and its origin is the lack of motionlessness in the former. Plotinus says that the Soul "takes fullness by looking to its source," meaning that the Soul is constituted by essence or Being, but does not "hold," as it were, this essence motionlessly. Rather Soul moves downward ontologically and generates an image of itself in the sensible world. Necessarily, this image of itself is a moving and partial image, since it could not be otherwise, since this is the nature of the sensible world. In other words, Soul is the reflection of Being, the eternal in the sensible world, which is the realm of sense and growth. Plotinus is dependent upon Plato's concept of the world-soul in the Timaeus: the cosmos was created by putting a soul into the body of the universe, thereby putting intelligence (regularity and order) into it (29e-30c).
According to Plotinus, the Soul occupies an intermediate position between the Intellectual realm and the sensible; it is the bridge, as it were, between the two realms, communicating the higher to the lower. He says: The outgoing that takes place in the Intellectual-Principle is a descent to its own downward ultimate: it cannot be a movement to the transcendent; operating necessarily outwards from itself, wherein it may not stay inclosed, the need and law of Nature bring it to its extreme term, to soul- to which it entrusts all the later stages of being while itself turns back on its course.The Soul is the emanation from the Intellectual-Principle, the descent of the Intellectual-Principle to "its own downward ultimate." In other words, when the Intellectual-Principle went out of itself as much as it could the result was the Soul. The Soul likewise emanates from itself the sensible universe; it is the next lowest to Soul, whereas its next highest is the Intellectual-Principle, the Authentic Existences, which the All-Soul, as opposed to individual souls, contemplates (More on the distinction between All-Soul and individual souls will be said later). The All-Soul also knows the universe, what is below it ontologically, by inspection, but cleaves to what is above it, the Authentic Existences; there is in fact another Soul that is actually present in the universe. Plotinus distinguishes between two phases of the Soul, one in the intelligible realm and one in the sensible and thereby explains how the Soul creates the universe. Soul is or contains Reason-Principle (Logos), which, as a plurality, is or contains Reason-Principles (Logoi [spermatikoi]) (II. 3.16). The Reason-Principles correspond to the Authentic Existences or Ideas in the Intellectual-Principle; they are emanations from the Intellectual-Principle and are those things whereby things become what they are. The Soul can be differentiated, however, as having two phases. Plotinus speaks of "the total Logos with its two distinguishable phases, first, that identified not as Nature but as All-Soul and, next, that operating in Nature and being itself the Nature-Principle" (III. 8.3). Soul as remaining in the intelligible realm is All-Soul, while Soul as operating in nature causing Matter to be formed according to the Reason-Principles is Nature-Principle (phusis). The higher phase of the soul acts upon the lower phase of the soul, that phase that "is united with Matter and has a generative function" (II. 3.17); the result is that the former communicates to the latter its Reason-Principles, according to which creation occurs. How exactly does Nature-Principle produce the universe? Plotinus explains obscurely that the creative process is by self-contemplation, which is how all the hypostaseis are produced. The Nature-Principle contemplates itself as its object and in so doing produces a Reason-Principle, which is its Essence, a duplicate of itself: "Thus the act of production is seen to be in Nature an act of contemplation, for creation is the outcome of a contemplation which never becomes anything else, which never does anything else, but creates by simply being a contemplation" (III. 8.3). In this way, Reason-Principles bring form to Matter.
With the emanation of Soul comes Time. There is no Time without succession, but there is no succession without movement. Movement exists in sensible realm alone, for in the Intellectual realm there is only eternal identity. The sensible realm and therefore Time came into existence as an emanation from Soul. Plotinus explains: Time at first- in reality before that "first" was produced by desire of succession- Time lay, self-concentrated, at rest within the Authentic Existent: it was not yet Time; it was merged in the Authentic and motionless with it. But there was an active principle there, one set on governing itself and realizing itself [= the All-Soul], and it chose to aim at something more than its present: it stirred from its rest, and Time stirred with it. And we, stirring to a ceaseless succession, to a next, to the discrimination of identity and the establishment of ever-new difference, traversed a portion of the outgoing path and produced an image of Eternity, produced Time.The Soul "chooses" to translate what it saw in the Authentic Realm, to make a replica of Being, "an image of Eternity." It does so and thereby produces the universe, where there is movement and succession and where Soul, as human souls, contemplates the Authentic Existences in succession as Reason-Principles. Both the universe and Time are ontologically dependent on the Soul: If, then, the Soul withdrew, sinking itself again into its primal unity, Time would disappear: the origin of Time, clearly, is to be traced to the first stir of the Soul's tendency towards the production of the sensible universe with the consecutive act ensuing. This is how "Time"- as we read- "came into Being simultaneously" with this All: the Soul begot at once the Universe and Time; in that activity of the Soul this Universe sprang into being; the activity is Time, the Universe is a content of Time. (III. 7.12)The universe is a manifestation of the Reason-Principles, but in succession; thus Time is the content of the Universe, because Time is that succession, that production of sensible replicas of the changeless and eternal Authentic Existences. Plotinus defines Time as "The Life of the Soul in movement as it passes from one stage of act or experience to another." The Life inherent in Soul in the sensible realm manifests itself by producing new beings, new actualizations; in addition, the same Life is manifest in the succession of experiences of the sensible world. Where there is the succession of things and the experiencing of them there is the Life of the Soul in the universe. Life as manifested in universe resembles Life in the eternal, changeless Intellectual realm, but is lower ontologically than it. He explains: Yes; for Eternity, we have said, is Life in repose, unchanging, self-identical, always endlessly complete; and there is to be an image of Eternity-Time- such an image as this lower All presents of the Higher Sphere. Therefore over against that higher life there must be another life, known by the same name as the more veritable life of the Soul; over against that movement of the Intellectual Soul there must be the movement of some partial phase; over against that identity, unchangeableness and stability there must be that which is not constant in the one hold but puts forth multitudinous acts; over against that oneness without extent or interval there must be an image of oneness, a unity of link and succession; over against the immediately infinite and all-comprehending, that which tends, yes, to infinity but by tending to a perpetual futurity; over against the Whole in concentration, there must be that which is to be a Whole by stages never final. The lesser must always be working towards the increase of its Being, this will be its imitation of what is immediately complete, self-realized, endless without stage: only thus can its Being reproduce that of the Higher. (III. 7.11)The two types of Life corresponding to the two phases of the Soul differ insofar as the ontologically lower Life is Life in Time, whereas the ontologically higher Life is Life in eternity.
Plotinus identifies individual souls with the Soul, so that human beings as souls are the Soul and therefore divine. He writes: And how do we possess the Divinity? In that the Divinity is contained in the Intellectual-Principle and Authentic-Existence; and We come third in order after these two, for the We is constituted by a union of the supreme, the undivided Soul- we read- and that Soul which is divided among [living] bodies. For, note, we inevitably think of the Soul, though one undivided in the All, as being present to bodies in division: in so far as any bodies are Animates, the Soul has given itself to each of the separate material masses; or rather it appears to be present in the bodies by the fact that it shines into them: it makes them living beings not by merging into body but by giving forth, without any change in itself, images or likenesses of itself like one face caught by many mirrors. (I. 1.8; see also IV. 3.4) When dealing with the immaterial,
such as the Soul is, multiplicity does not conflict with unity; the
Soul can be both one and many at once (VI. 4.4).
Questions for Discussion
2. How does Plotinus' view of the Unity or One compare to Aristotle's unmoved mover? 3. Are you convinced by Plotinus' argument that there must be an ultimate and first Unity if there are lesser and derivative unities? 4. Is it appropriate to says that the Intellectual-Principle emanates from the Unity or One? Does the idea of "emanation" make sense at all when used non-literally? 5. Is it appropriate to speak of there being more than one "God" insofar as the Unity or One produces the Intellectual-Principle. 6. Does God as Intellectual-Principle contain the Ideas or the "Authentic Beings"? Does such an idea even make any sense?
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Information
on the life of Plotinus comes from Porphyry's The Life of Plotinus.
Traditionally considered the founder of Neo-Platonism, Plotinus was
born in Lykopolis in Upper Egypt in 205. At the age of twenty-eight,
he began to study philosopher, and eventually became a student of a
certain Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria. After eleven years of association
with Ammonius, Plotinus left as part of a expeditionary army of Emperor
Gordianus III that was to march against the Persians. His ultimate aim
as part of this military campaign was to study Persian and Indian philosophies,
about which he had heard from his teacher. (Plotinus obviously noticed
some affinities between his evolving philosophical views and those of
the Persians and Indians.) Upon the death of Gordianus III, Plotinus
withdrew to Antioch in Syria and eventually made his way to Rome, where
he founded a school of philosophy. After ten years in Rome, in 253,
he began to write. The philosophical debt that Plotinus owed to his
teacher Ammonius is unknown, because the latter left no writings; nevertheless,
it is conceivable that this debt was extensive. Plotinus died in 270. His
writings were collected together by his pupil Porphyry and edited into
a work consisting of six enneads, each with nine parts, for a total
of fifty-four treatises. (The Greek word ennea means "nine").
Plotinus' Enneads are long and repetitive at times, but give
a comprehensive account of Plotinus' philosophical views.
There
were, of course, the Ideas (or Forms), in which sensible objects participate
to be what they are. With the Ideas are also found souls, at least
those that were not unfortunate enough to find themselves embodied.
Transcending the Ideas was a particular Idea, that of the Good, about
which Socrates refused to speak in Republic 6. This Idea
of the Good seems to be identical to Being itself, which transcends
the Ideas, in Phaedrus, and it must be noted that Aristotle reports
that Plato taught that the One is identical to the Good and is the cause
of the Forms (Eudemian Ethics 1217b; Metaphysics 1.6).
In Republic 517 b - c, part of the cave metaphor, Plato says
that the Good is the cause in the visible world of light and the source
of light (sun); in the intelligible world, the Good is the cause of
knowledge and truth. Thus, it would seem that Plato thought that
there was more than simply an analogy between the sun and the Good:
the sun is the actual manifestation of the Good in the material world
in addition to being analogous to it in its function. In the Timaeus,
Plato also says that the dêmiourgos created a world soul
from which all individual souls were created; this was distinct from
the Ideas and from Matter, being intermediate between them. Plotinus
takes these strands of Platonic philosophy and weaves them into a coherent
description of the intelligible realm. For him, Reality consists
of three entities or hypostaseis: the Unity or One, the Intellectual-Principle
(Nous) and the Soul.
