1. Biographical Information

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's Enneads are long and repetitive at times, but give a comprehensive account of Plotinus's philosophical views.
 

2. Philosophical Views

2.1. Introduction

Plato held that there existed three "entities" in the intelligible realm.  There were, of course, the Forms or Ideas, in which sensible objects participate to be what they are.  With the Forms or Ideas are also found souls, at least those that were not unfortunate enough to find themselves embodied.  Transcending the Forms or Ideas was a particular Form, that of the Good, about which Socrates refused to speak in Republic 6.  This Form of the Good seems to be identical to Being itself, which transcends the Forms, 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.  In the Timaeus, Plato also says that the demiurgos created a world soul from which all individual souls are created; this was distinct from the Forms 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 and the Soul.

2.1. The Unity or the One:  The First Principle

2.1.1. The First as Origin of All and Basis of All Unity

Central to his philosophy is Plotinus's belief in a single principle or cause of all things; all Being ultimately derives from this single principle.  This is identical to Plato's Form 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).

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 (Enneads, V. 4.1).

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)

It may be suggested that its existence takes substantial form only by its being resident among outside things: but, at this, it is itself no longer simplex nor could any coherence of manifolds occur. 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.)

2.1.2.  The Transcendence of the Unity or One

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.  Plotinus writes,

And if this is all things, that must be above and outside of all, so, must transcend real being.  And again, if that secondary 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).

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, 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.

Generative of all, The Unity is none of all; neither thing nor quantity nor quality nor intellect nor soul; not in motion, not at rest, not in place, not in time: it is the self-defined, unique in form or, better, formless, existing before Form was, or Movement or Rest, all of which are attachments of Being and make Being the manifold it is. (VI. 9.3)

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)

2.1.3. Goodness

Plotinus does ascribe Goodness to the Unity or One, but not in the sense that it is a being with the attribute of "good."  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.  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.

2.1.4. Self-Existence

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)

2.1.5. The Unity or One as without Intellection

Plotinus draws the further conclusion that the One or Unity 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 to posit diversity within Itself, since It as the subject would require to 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)

    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)

    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.

2.2. The Intellectual-Principle (Nous)

2.2.1. Emanation from the Unity or One

Emanating from the Unity or One is the Intellectual-Principle (nous), which Plotinus identifies with the demiurgos of Plato's Timaeus (III. 9.1; V. 9.9).   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, "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).  From the Unity or One first arises (in an ontological sense, not a temporal sense) Being, by which he means the Forms or Ideas, the Authentic Existences, and that which knows these, the Intellectual-Principle.  Thus being and the Intellectual-Principle are one, being two aspects or phases of the same emanation.  In this first emanation from the Unity or One does multiplicity first appear, but it is a multiplicity held in unity.  The unity consists in the fact that the multiplicity of Being, the Forms or Ideas, are actually the contents of one mind or consciousness, the Intellectual-Principle.  The Intellectual-Principle, therefore, contemplates not only the Unity or One, thereby "first" establishing itself as Intellectual-Principle, but itself, which is to say the contents of its own consciousness, Being.  It should be noted that contained in the Intellectual-Principle are individual things, not simply the general Forms or Ideas that include many individual things.  For example, not only is the Form or Idea of Human Being in the Intellectual-Principle, but every individual person, such as Socrates; in Plotinus's judgment, there are as many Forms or 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 (see 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)

2.2.2. The Identity of Knower and Known

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).

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)

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)

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)

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)

"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)

2.3. Soul

2.3.1 The Soul as Separation and Plurality

The second emanation or hypostasis is the soul (psuche), 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.

This is what is conveyed where we are told that the separation is the work of the third Principle and begins within the Third: for to this Third belongs the discursive reasoning which is no function of the Intellectual-Principle but characteristic of its secondary, of Soul, to which precisely, divided by its own Kind, belongs the Act of division.

2.... For in any one science the reduction of the total of knowledge into its separate propositions does not shatter its unity, chipping it into unrelated fragments; in each distinct item is talent the entire body of the science, an integral thing in its highest Principle and its last detail. (III. 9. 1-2)

2.3.2. Soul and Motion

Not only does Soul differ from Intellectual-Principle by being a separative principle, but also insofar as generative of motion.  Plotinus explains:

This active power sprung from essence [from the Intellectual-Principle considered as Being] is Soul.

Soul arises as the idea and act of the motionless Intellectual-Principle- which itself sprang from its own motionless prior- but the soul's operation is not similarly motionless; its image is generated from its movement. It takes fulness by looking to its source; but it generates its image by adopting another, a downward, movement.

This image of Soul is Sense and Nature, the vegetal principle. (V. 2.1.)

2.3.3. Soul as Intermediate

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's operation is similar: its next lower act is this universe: its immediate higher is the contemplation of the Authentic Existences. To individual souls such divine operation takes place only at one of their phases and by a temporal process when from the lower in which they reside they turn towards the noblest; but that soul, which we know as the All-Soul, has never entered the lower activity, but, immune from evil, has the property of knowing its lower by inspection, while it still cleaves continuously to the beings above itself; thus its double task becomes possible; it takes thence and, since as soul it cannot escape touching this sphere, it gives hither. (IV. 8.7)

    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 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.

2.3.4. Time

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.

For the Soul contained an unquiet faculty, always desirous of translating elsewhere what it saw in the Authentic Realm, and it could not bear to retain within itself all the dense fullness of its possession. (III. 7.11)

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)

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)

2.3.5. Soul and Souls

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)