From the Alien to the Alone: A Study of Soul in Plotinus 0813234514, 9780813234519

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From the Alien to the Alone

From the Alien to the Alone A Study of Soul in Plotinus

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Gary M. Gurtler, SJ

The Catholic University of America Press Washington, D.C.

Copyright © 2022 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. ∞ Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8132-3451-9

in memoriam Charles and Alice Gurtler Qui timet Deum honorat parentes et quasi dominis serviet in his qui se generaverunt. Ecclesiasticus 3:8

Contents

Contents 6  Omnipresence and



Acknowledgments   ix



Transcendence 187

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Introduction 1

1  Beauty and the Good 24

2  Forgetting the Self  3  Matter as Indefinite

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I ncorporeal Soul and Incorporeal Matter 205

Conclusion 246 Selected Bibliography   257

and Incorporeal  78

4  Two Selves and Three Souls 119

5  Omnipresence and

Index of Passages   267 Subject Index   269

Incorporeality 141

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Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Dermot Moran for his impetus to bring this project of many years to completion. I am very much indebted to Arthur Madigan, SJ, for his careful reading of the text and for countless suggestions for improvement. There is hardly a page that has not been improved as a result. Maxwell Wade, my research assistant, has helped in proofing the text and compiling the various indices. In addition, Boston College on many occasions over the years has provided support for sabbaticals during which work on the manuscript was begun and moved forward. My colleagues in the Philosophy Department at Boston College have been a constant encouragement since my arrival in 1992. In addition, I would be remiss not to mention colleagues in the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies and the Ancient Philosophy Society who have over the years heard parts of this book as a work in progress; their critical feedback, suggestions, and encouragement have always been appreciated.

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From the Alien to the Alone

Introduction

" Introduction From the Alien to the Alone Readers of Plotinus are familiar with the phrase “from the alone to the Alone,” which describes the soul’s ascent to and union with the One. My title attends to that first alone, of the soul’s movement to itself, the precondition for its movement toward the One. The soul must first move from its initial forgetfulness of itself, its ignorance, and its perilous moral status to recover its identity in an initial ascent at once intellectual and moral. The soul begins as isolated in the body, deriving its knowledge from the senses that it activates within the body. Its first move is to recognize those sensations that awaken its inner nature and lead it from its isolation in the body to a union with other souls human, astral, and cosmic. Plotinus uses “being alone” to describe the soul’s discovery of its own nature and its deep connection with other souls. Human souls are together in bodies and move to construct a community of diverse endeavors that seek to engage their common need in a world that appears at once as welcoming and supportive but also on occasion threatening and hostile. The

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powers of the soul to know thus help to forge various forms of knowledge, revealing the reach of the soul to the cosmos as a whole and its identification with the world soul. The soul’s initial ignorance, however, reveals an ambiguity peculiar to the human soul, with the moral dilemma of using its knowledge and action to recapture its unity with other souls, or furthering its isolation by sinking more deeply into the grasp of the corporeal division of the sensible cosmos. This captures the human situation that Plotinus seeks to understand as he builds on the work of previous philosophers, Plato and Aristotle most especially, to give an account of who we are and where we seek to go. I emphasize this because not a few presentations of Plotinus’s thought start from different vantage points that obscure or misunderstand what he is doing. Students often complain of being lost in his treatises without some external key that ostensibly can be used to make sense of them in easy schematic form. Scholars have indulged them with a variety of such keys that are designed to accommodate Plotinus to modern philosophy and its method. On the side of method, there is a desire to present Plotinus’s “system” in a neat and comprehensive way. This inevitably starts with the One and shows how Plotinus deduces everything from it: intellect, soul, and the sensible cosmos. The difficulty is that rarely does Plotinus begin a treatise with a consideration of the One. Invariably he begins with some puzzle about human experience and develops his thought to account for it. His method, in other words, is not deductive, so this deductive key actually leaves out what for Plotinus is central, the human soul in its puzzling relation to the sensible cosmos and the higher levels of reality needed to make sense of its experience. This systematic key distorts because it looks at Plotinus’s thought from the outside, presenting an abstract, theoretical schema that does not correspond to Plotinus’s more empirically engaged method, nor to

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the kind of dynamic system that would be consistent with it. Another key attempts to find Plotinus as a precursor of current philosophical assumptions. In his treatment of the soul, for example, scholars frequently turn to presumed parallels to Descartes’s subject. This is especially the case in dealing with Plotinus’s emphasis on the nature of the soul and its relation to the body and the sensible world. The difficulty is that Cartesian assumptions split mind and body into two independent substances, with the need to overcome the gap between them to explain the interaction of sensing and knowing. For Plotinus, however, soul and body are not two independent substances, but rather body is a manifestation of soul, albeit not just the human soul, at a lower level. This means that the soul is independent of the body, but not the reverse. Plotinus’s problem is showing how the soul can be the source of activities in the body without losing its independence, a much different problem from the Cartesian need to overcome the gap between the two.1 Helpful keys can actually be found in the works of Plotinus, but need to be made explicit. From this study of a selection of early treatises, three major assumptions are pervasive: the first envisions the cosmos as a single living thing, working from Timaeus 30d–31a; the second uses the highest genera of Sophist 254d–255e as the means for structuring each level of reality within itself and in relation both to its source and to what comes from it; and the third uses the principle of two acts, implicit in the simile of the sun in Republic VI, 508a–509c (among other places), to introduce a causality different from Aristotle’s. Plotinus does in fact use Aristotle’s theory of change in terms of act and potency and the four 1. Leech (in Gersh 2019, 127–45), notes that the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More, uses the resources of Plotinus to argue against Cartesianism, with its much different understanding of the human soul and its relation to the body, an ironic commentary on the assumptions of recent scholarship.

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causes, but transforms them rather thoroughly to fit his more Platonic approach. He will also reinterpret Aristotle’s notion of genus and species to function outside the realm of logic. These assumptions emerged in the course of studying the treatises included here, but it will be of great help to the reader to have them in mind from the start, for understanding both these treatises and Plotinus’s writings in general. These assumptions also go against the grain of some contemporary interpretations of Plotinus and the assumptions in modern philosophy upon which such interpretations depend. These interpretations keep Plotinus’s own assumptions occluded, so explaining them clearly becomes an important task in gaining access to his highly consistent account of human experience and the account of the world that serves as its foundation.

A Single Living Thing The most basic assumption that forms the background on which Plotinus develops his thought is the nature of the sensible cosmos, our world of experience, as a single living thing. This he shares with most of the Greek philosophical tradition, Plato and Aristotle as well as the Stoics. It is also quite opposed to the reigning assumption of modern philosophy, which tends to see the world as discontinuous, spatially and temporally, with the mind given the task of providing any unity. While philosophers such as Kant deal specifically with the tension between assuming that bodies are discontinuous or continuous in providing an adequate physics, the tendency in philosophy has been to assume discontinuity. Plotinus, however, is one of the most articulate in making the counter assumption of cosmic continuity explicit on several different levels. He begins with Plato’s Timaeus 30d3–31a1, which describes the All as a single living thing that surrounds all the living things within it. As living, the unity of the whole cos-

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mos implies a single source, the cosmic soul that enlivens and unifies the sensible cosmos as indeed one living thing. This is perhaps the feature that strikes the modern reader as strangest, as the view of the cosmos as a vast and empty space, with life a rare and insignificant exception, seems more natural. Plotinus is not, however, content to take the unity of the cosmos as simply given by this cosmic soul. He also reconfigures Aristotle’s matter and Plato’s receptacle to provide unity from the point of view of the material cause. In this instance, he insists that prime matter does not function as the principle of individuation, as Aristotle takes it, but rather teases out its nature as the common substrate of all bodies, providing the cosmos with its unity as a single body, whether alive or not. The treatises examined here show how this idea of a single living thing is assumed and also explained. The early treatise On Beauty (I.6[1]) is a short text where the unity of the cosmos operates as an assumption, with the soul initially captivated by the beauty of nature which casts a spell that keeps the soul in a forgetful and alienated state.2 This beauty resides in the unity of the cosmos as presented to the senses and is able to keep the soul from identifying with its own internal unity that brings it first toward the cosmic soul and then to intellect and the One. The treatise On the Good and the One (VI.9[9]) refers to the demiurge of the Timaeus as the source of the unity of the sensible cosmos and all the beings within it. Unity here comes to the fore as from the soul; it cannot be identified with body, as body is essentially divisible into parts. Unity is beyond what has parts, with its origin in the simplicity of forms and souls as incorporeal sources that make bodies a “this” and “one” at the same time. In VI.9[9].9, he also introduces the image of the dance, a favorite for expressing both the unity and individuality among souls, illustrated in the kinds of uni2. See Gurtler in Plotinus 2015c, 85–94 and 184–229, for a text and discussion of the way nature functions as casting a spell on the soul in IV.4[28].40–45.

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ty that the soul experiences in its ascent, as described by Plato in his Symposium and elsewhere. The treatise On the Three Primary Hypostases (V.1[10]) makes the distinction between world soul and hypostasis soul explicit. The human soul is defined as of like form with the world soul, which Plotinus takes as the ground for its ascent to the three hypostases (soul, intellect, and the One). Where previous treatises related soul to the sensible cosmos, V.1[10] shifts to the soul’s own nature as one and as having within it access to the higher hypostases, explaining both its initial state of alienation and its resources for overcoming it. The treatise On Matter (II.4[12]) argues in great detail about the nature of matter as the common substrate of the sensible cosmos, the basis on which bodies come to be in relation to one another and form together a single corporeal world. Drawing out the consequences of earlier thinkers, prime matter is itself incorporeal, analyzed explicitly as the principle of possibility for bodies and their interrelation as parts of a single thing. Matter in this sense functions as an a priori condition, not space and time as experienced but the conditions for such space and time and the bodies that occur within them. The treatise On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole I (VI.4[22]) presents a complementary analysis of the role of soul in the formation of bodies. While matter remains only a condition of possibility, soul is a cause that remains transcendent to the body, whether a single body or the cosmos as a whole, and yet because of its incorporeal transcendence it is omnipresent to the body. In sum, matter provides for the corporeal continuity of the sensible cosmos, that bodies are related to one another temporally and spatially. The soul as form provides for its unity as a living thing, allowing these bodies to have activities that derive from their natures as enlivened by forms in varying degrees. The unity of soul allows sensible bodies to interact be-

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yond mere corporeal juxtaposition, as living bodies of various kinds with activities richly diverse, from forming composites of great complexity to forming living beings displaying life in its vegetative, sensitive, rational, and intelligible variety.

The Five Highest Genera To make his vision of the sensible cosmos as a single living thing work, Plotinus needs some structural mechanisms. He finds such a mechanism in the five highest genera of Plato’s Sophist: being, rest, motion, sameness, and difference. As in Plato, these genera allow for the forms to be and to relate to one another, as they all share in different ways in these five highest kinds. They function like the axioms and principles of a science in relation to the forms as theorems.3 They allow being, in this case intelligible being, to be one and many and thus overcome the split represented by Parmenides’s One and the many of the natural philosophers, neither of which could ground knowledge or the discourse in which it is expressed. These genera accomplish the interweaving of the forms, as described in the Sophist, working through motion and rest, and sameness and difference, to emphasize the fundamentally active nature and individual identity of the forms. In addition to its function as genus paired with sameness, otherness has a further role in generating being and becoming, already present in the Sophist. Plotinus explains this thoroughly, stating that otherness is the distinguishing feature of everything derived 3. See Caluori 2015, 80, with his nod to Emilsson (in n37) for this distinction, although I use it in a very different sense from them. They see these genera as outside the science, or in the present case as outside the world of forms, structuring the theorems, or forms, as its contents. I see both these genera and the theorems they structure as parts of the science, with the external cause as separate, relying in part on the principle of two acts. The genera in turn have a causal relation as higher to the species as lower, articulating the principle of two acts to explain the interweaving of the forms. Caluori and Emilsson, understanding genus and species from Aristotle’s logic, see them as descriptive, occluding this causative role.

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from the One, ending with the complete otherness of matter itself, whether described in terms of Aristotle’s substrate or Plato’s receptacle. Otherness in this sense will be crucial in articulating the principle of two acts. With the treatise On the Good or the One (VI.9[9]), Plotinus introduces this use of otherness to distinguish the unity peculiar to the One from the otherness of everything else. He states in VI.9[9].6 that the One has no otherness, with the consequence that the One is before motion and thought and so does not have knowledge, which is precisely defined as one thing knowing another. There is then a contrast between the One and intellect, and all the beings within it. Intellect and each of its beings are different from one another, so that thinking is first of the other and each being must move toward knowing the other to come to know itself. The One has no otherness at all. It thus does not have nor need knowledge of itself, as knowledge is defined by Plotinus as knowledge of the other. In addition, the One neither has nor needs knowledge of intellect and the beings within it, as such knowledge would mean it was no longer the One. Intelligible beings and souls, by contrast, are defined by otherness and motion. In fact, intellect, because it is other than the One and is defined by its dual motion of departing from and returning to the One, knows, or tries to know, the One as the object of its thought. The One, however, cannot be an object of thought, so intellect’s attempt to know the One remains incomplete, producing instead the multiplicity of beings. Intellect seeks the One’s presence because intellect is other than it, but the One does not seek intellect precisely because the One has no otherness, as Plotinus states in VI.9[9].8. In describing our knowledge of the One, Plotinus further states that we move beyond being and knowing, so the One is not experienced as other. More is said about this later, especially in VI.5[23] in relation to the One’s omnipresence.

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In V.1[10].1, Plotinus begins with the primal otherness of the soul as the explanation for its alienation and ignorance, but moves in V.1[10].4 to a full discussion of the highest kinds from the Sophist, when he turns to examine intellect. First, thinking is defined in terms of otherness and sameness, distinguishing intellect from the total lack of otherness characteristic of the One. This thinking, however, must be traced back to motion and rest as the conditions for thinking: thinking as essentially a motion, and rest for this thinking to remain the same. Otherness is then introduced so that there can be thinker and thought, with these objects of thought needing also to be different from one another. Finally, sameness so that intellect can be one in itself and also common to all thoughts as together one. Plotinus stays close to the Platonic vocabulary, but reveals his own interest not so much in the necessity of these genera for speech, but for the very constitution of the intelligible cosmos. It is interesting that he retains the priority of rest and motion to difference and sameness, which seems slightly out of step with modern philosophy, where logical priority dominates over the ontological.4 In the treatise On Matter, Plotinus explores the relation of otherness and motion to matter, whether of the intelligible or sensible world (II.4[12].5). He describes these two genera as the shared principle of matter, what makes it possible. In this way, matter can be traced back to that first motion coming from the One, a motion that is also described as otherness. In addition, the matter of the sensible cosmos is in curious ways identified with otherness and yet strongly distinguished from it (II.4[12].13). Matter is not identified with otherness as a genus, nor with sameness, for matter cannot be qualified in any way or share in these genera even as minimally as bodies. 4. See Halper 2018, 31–60, on the relation in Aristotle of the truth of a syllogism not just to its validity (the view of modern logic), but the correspondence of its premises to things in nature.

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Finally, at II.4[12].16, 1–3, matter is identified with that part of otherness opposed to all being, even at the minimal level of the corporeal. It captures just the emptiness and possibility of otherness before it turns back to the forms and becomes bodies. Unlike intelligible matter, it is not being but other than it. This status as other than being, in turn, does not mean that matter is nothing in the absolute sense, but rather that it draws near to being and by so doing allows for the world of becoming. The difficulty faced in VI.4[22] is how intellect and especially soul are related to body. At the core of his analysis is the different relation that body has to the highest genera. These genera define intelligible being, but have a somewhat extrinsic role in relation to the corporeal, due to its divisible and partitive nature. Forms, for instance, have two very different modes of relation to bodies. In VI.4[22].3, immanent forms are identified with the qualities of bodies. Qualitative forms, accidents in Aristotle’s terms, are possessed by the body in piecemeal fashion. The same form can be possessed by different parts of the body, but is numerically different in each part. This means that one part of the body can lose this form while another does not. These forms share the essentially divided nature of the body, with the body providing only an accidental unity that lasts as long as the body stays together. The soul, however, as form of the body, does not relate to it in this piecemeal fashion but is present to the body as a whole and is cause of the body’s unity and activities as living. It is the soul, then, that brings the highest genera to bear in the divided world of bodies, and it does so in a way that contrasts with qualitative forms. First, soul is not possessed by the body, keeping its difference; it is also present as a whole to the whole body and each of its parts, putting sameness into play. Soul remains at rest in the intelligible, and yet exercises activities while in the body, or while the body is in it, as

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Plotinus states more precisely. In this way, there is no Cartesian gap to overcome, because the soul is precisely the kind of thing that can be present to a body qualified to receive it. Plotinus understands this interaction in terms of the soul’s transcendence of, and immanence in, the body, both of which are applications of the highest genera in the more divisible realm of the corporeal (VI.4[22]).

The Principle of Two Acts The principle of two acts is already implicit in Plotinus’s understanding of the nature of otherness, as otherness comes from a source on which it depends totally, while the source remains completely independent. Scholars have been aware of this principle for some time, but it is still not given its rightful role in the articulation of Plotinus’s thought.5 Part of the reason for this is the strong tendency to take Aristotle’s theory of act and potency as the paradigm for understanding any theory of action among ancient philosophers. Act and potency, however, are concerned with explaining change in sensible objects, Aristotle’s primary substances. Act and potency thus concern the generation and corruption of living things, where a particular substance produces something like itself, with the same form coming into being and passing away. Form is the active cause, and matter of an appropriate kind is the potential cause. This theory of act and potency also serves as the foundation for Aristotelian hylomorphism, that form and matter are co-principles of sensible substances, the principles that make each thing one. The relation of act and potency in this scheme is horizontal, as it were: the two principles are 5. Rutten 1956, 100–106, presents one of the earliest discussions of Plotinus’s principle of two acts and its relation to Aristotle’s discussion of act and potency. More recently, in Plotinus 2015a, Arruzza gives a thorough discussion of this principle and its articulation in her translation and commentary on the short treatise where Plotinus discusses this topic directly.

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used to explain the generation and unity of sensible things. Plotinus is adamantly against this part of Aristotle’s project, with a different understanding of substance and the unity at its base. In the principle of two acts, he looks not at change but at the nature of anything, with the first act as the activity that constitutes the thing’s nature and the second act as the external image of the thing. The first act is thus identified with the unity inherent in a thing. The second act, as the image of the thing, is necessarily multiple or less unified in relation to the higher, more unified first act. As a consequence, the soul as form of the body is not a co-principle of the sensible substance, nor is it the entelechy of the body, but soul itself is the substance, whole and complete, that unifies the body while remaining separate from it. The reason is already apparent from the discussion of the highest genera: the soul remains transcendent and it is this transcendence which allows it to unify the body and exercise activities in and through it. This combination of transcendence and unity stands behind the articulation of the theory of two acts and its pervasive importance for understanding Plotinus’s project and its internal coherence. This is not about change at the sensible level, but rather about the presence of what is one and whole to something other and less unified. This emphasis on unity also entails simplicity, as the activity inherent in a thing cannot strictly speaking be composed of parts. Plotinus’s assimilation of unity and simplicity implies that a source is different from its product, and that any activity can be shared in varying degrees, as a higher principle in relation to its lower manifestations. We can see this in VI.9[9].1, which starts precisely with the discussion of unity, where the principle of two acts is the most adequate explanation for unity of any kind. Plotinus’s preliminary examples (an army, a choir, a house, plants, animals) highlight the external nature of the source of unity.

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The commander is distinct from the army, the director from the choir, the architect from the house. In each of these cases, emphasis is placed on the distinction between the source of unity and the things unified. There is also, at this point, an implicit assumption that the source and these things are not reciprocally related, with the source being independent, and so not among the objects unified. The inclusion of plants and animals moves to Plotinus’s more direct attack on Aristotle’s theory of act and potency, which assumes that the unity in them is the immanent work of the soul as form, while Plotinus argues that the soul as source of unity must also be transcendent and external. Plotinus’s model and concern are not change, but the kind of unity necessary to make the separate components of corporeal things actually one. From these modest beginnings, the argument shifts to soul and intellect, and finally to the One. However much more soul and intellect are unified in comparison with the bodies of the sensible cosmos, they are still too complex to be the final ground of unity. The One then is first distinguished from everything that comes from it, so that intellect as the duality of thinking and being entails that the One is beyond both. As a corollary, in VI.9[9].3, the nature of the One as cause says nothing about the One, but rather about what comes from it.6 He uses in VI.9[9].4 a common image to illustrate this causality, the relation of a science with its many theorems. Sciences are traced to intellects, thinkers who are neither sciences nor theorems, but their cause precisely as able to produce things different from themselves. Another common image is also mentioned in this treatise: the circle with its center, radii, and circumference as an 6. See Gurtler 2017b, 293–94, where the causal role of the One in relation to intellect in the later treatise, VI.8[39].18, 41–43, carefully keeps the One from generating intellect by chance or by something like choice, but intellect emerges from it as “fitting and proper.” Intellect has the nature it has as coming from such a source.

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image of the One’s causality. While this image has a visual or spatial root, its geometric nature does not. The One is in no way active as an actual point, but indicates that what comes from it is multiple, the radii, and still unified, as indicated by the common circumference. Plotinus is throughout beginning with the Platonic form as cause of the instances that imitate it and then draws out the implications for higher and more perfect causes, intellect, and the One. This is a causality different from Aristotle’s and distinguishes the more absolute unity and independence of the cause from the multiplicity and radical dependence of the things caused. V.1[10].2 returns to the distinction between the world soul and the hypostasis soul as an example of a unifying power in relation to the multitude that derives from it and is dependent on it. The context seeks to explain the similarity of the human soul and the world soul, given that both bring unity to the sensible cosmos. With his understanding that the cause of unity needs to be independent, the hypostasis soul is introduced to accomplish this task for souls by establishing a soul that is not among the class of souls being unified but is in fact their higher source of unity. V.1[10].3 then describes that soul’s presence in and relation to intellect, where it curiously functions as intelligible matter. Subsequently intellect itself needs to be traced back to a unity more simple than its own. Plotinus analyzes this in terms of intellect’s “seeing,” alluding to the simile of the sun in the Republic. This is one of the Platonic texts most associated with Plotinus’s principle of two acts. The sun, with fire as its internal activity, is the source of another activity, light, that is dependent on it but which leaves the sun completely unchanged. The emergence of light from the sun also has what Plotinus considers a crucial feature: it does not emerge by plan or design, but as it ought to, given the sun’s fiery nature. Finally, the One is described as “beyond being,” just as the Good is described in this section of the Republic.

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In his discussion of the virtues in I.2–3[19–20], Plotinus highlights another crucial feature of the principle of two acts, namely, the nonreciprocal nature of the relation of the higher to the lower. Reciprocal likeness is true of things at the same level of reality, where one thing can be used to explain another. It is the kind of likeness operative in Aristotle’s account of act and potency, where things actually dissimilar are brought from being potentially similar to being actually similar. Two languages, for example, that appear initially unintelligible to one another can achieve a mutual intelligibility by means that are not outside their own resources, such as matching words that refer to the same things and show similar grammatical structures. Nonreciprocal likeness, however, cannot be based on some similarity of form, but functions differently, as Plotinus explains in I.2[19].2. This involves the Platonic relation of instances to their form, as first, the primal cause of these instances or images. When dealing with similar things, Aristotle’s theory holds that they are like one another as sharing the same form. In the Platonic scheme, similar things are alike as instances of a common form and so are like the form itself, but the form as the paradigm is not like these instances because it is not itself an instance with them, which would lead to an infinite regress, the accusation against the forms in the Parmenides and in Aristotle’s writings. Plotinus illustrates this in terms of the topic of the treatise, the virtues that the human soul acquires in making its ascent. These virtues are not like their paradigms in the intelligible, which do not need to be acquired (the gods do not acquire but are their virtues), so that the likeness is different, where virtues express the reality of the paradigm in a lesser and weaker way. The central case in this text, at I.2[19].5–6, introduces Plotinus’s theory of the two selves; one self is only like its intelligible counterpart while the other is just this higher self. Here we see the principle of two acts at the very

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center of Plotinus’s account of the human soul, and as necessary for understanding its peculiar situation in the sensible world where it continues to have access to the higher levels of reality. The difference in virtues, civic or purifying, turns on the nature of the activity involved. Civic virtues are activities of the lower self and are merely like the virtues of the higher self. These higher, purificatory virtues are activities that indicate the nature of the higher self. While the civic virtues allow the lower self to become like the higher self, when the self reaches a state where there is no impediment to the activity of the higher virtues, the lower self disappears and the two selves become functionally the same; the soul is then alone. Plotinus needs to make one more distinction, between the activities of these higher virtues in souls and the corresponding states in the intelligible. Even higher souls have virtues, wisdom for example, as something they receive from the intelligible, but wisdom in the intelligible is not acquired as if from the outside but just is what the intelligible is. All of these distinctions both illustrate and depend on the theory of two acts. A lower act is always inferior to and dependent on the higher; the higher can be relatively first, as in the case of the two selves in relation to the soul, or it can be essentially higher, as in the case of the soul’s relation to the intelligible, which possesses the activity precisely as its own. In VI.4[22], Plotinus continues this analysis of the relation of soul and intellect to the sensible, but here in terms of transcendent powers that are sources of activities at the sense level. The powers are activities of higher beings that flow out and are present to the sense world, while remaining totally dependent on the higher. He uses some examples drawn from ordinary experience to illustrate his point in VI.4[22].6–9. The hand, for example, has the power to pick up an object and perhaps even to throw it some distance. The power in the hand is omnipresent in the object, but it is unlike the quali-

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tative attributes in the object which are immanent and possessed by the object in piecemeal fashion. The hand’s power is not so possessed or immanent, but it is present to all parts of the object all at once and is present precisely as an activity that comes as an external power independent of the object. To explain the soul’s similar presence to and activity in the body, this example needs a slight correction: while the power of the hand is present to the whole object, the hand itself has corporeal limits and is clearly physically external to the object. The soul, as incorporeal, is present not as external to the body but as thoroughly internal, without at the same time losing its complete transcendence and independence from the body. The other images in this section of the text concern light as the second activity of a fiery source, a clear allusion to Plato’s discussion of light in the Parmenides and Republic and Plotinus’s own clearest expression of the principle of two acts in his discussion of light in IV.5[29].6–7.7 In the preceding overviews, III.6[26] was not cited, but not for want of supporting evidence for these Plotinian assumptions. It does, however, present two intriguing clarifications of the principle of two acts. The first concerns the relation of soul and body particularly in light of the strong independence that earlier treatises gave to the soul. The dilemma Plotinus faces is his constant claim that the soul is impassible, the particular theme of this treatise. If it is impassible, what then is the status of the so-called affections of the soul and, more to the point, what does the soul’s purification end up meaning? Part of the answer comes in III.6[23].3, where Plotinus argues that what are called “affections” are the soul’s if they are indeed identifiable as activities, with corresponding changes or alterations located in the body. Such activities include such things as ways of life, desires, and memories. These can be 7. See Gurtler in Plotinus 2015c, 106–12 and 272–89, for a translation and discussion of this text.

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seen as aspects of soul as form, unchanging in themselves but taking on a certain structure in the body as the matter configured by these activities. Thus, one may have a regimen of health that in the soul is an idea or plan but gets translated into a diet on the one hand and physical exercise on the other. In III.6[23].4, he tackles the nature of bodily affections, such as fear, to indicate from this perspective the same kind of configuration, soul functioning as the form either configuring or responding to the configuration in the bodily affection. He develops a threefold structure for this, fear as a quasiunderstanding (οἷον σύνεσιν) in the part of the soul that fears that is derived from a quasi-opinion (οἷον δόξα) or quasiimage (οἷον φάντασμα) that in turn derives from the body in its state of agitation. Interestingly, music has a similar structure, the melody as in the soul, the musician who mediates between the melody, as form, and the instrument, whose plucked strings embody the melody in the production of the sound. In all these cases, he is applying the principle of two acts in the precise case of activities of a living thing that can be traced to soul but are expressed through the body. In III.6[26].11–14, there is a curious discussion of the nature of matter in which Plotinus seems to hold that even matter in its peculiar way displays the twofold activity, that activity by which a thing is what it is and that activity that comes from it. In the case of matter, these cannot be seen as activities at all, but are mere shadows of such activities. What matter is as evil and ugly maintains its nature as unalterable, as incapable of receiving the forms that appear in it. If it should receive any form in any way, it would cease to be matter. Nonetheless, though it remains evil, it would still desire the good (11, 32). Thus, matter preserves its escape from being (13, 21) and never becomes being but is only other, ugly in contrast to the beauty of being (16, 24). Matter has a strange and shadowy way of manifesting a resistance to form, and yet a desire for it as well.

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In this way, matter illustrates the general principle that the lower always seeks the higher, a mysterious sort of claim that causes Plotinus to wonder: Since it is impossible that any being whatever, that is in any way, even being outside it, does not participate at all in being—for the nature itself of being is to make beings—but what is not at all being is unmixed with being, the thing becomes a wonder, how not participating it participates and how it has something as if from its nearness, even though by its own nature it is unable, as it were, to adhere. (III.6[26].14, 18–23)

The principle of two acts is then a versatile tool that Plotinus can employ across the various levels of his system, from the One to matter. It is well adapted to this role, as it is precisely designed to explain how these different levels can interact with one another and yet keep their differences. If one fails to take full notice of it, then much of what Plotinus is doing throughout the Enneads is escaping one’s attention.

Alienation The above principles structure how intelligible being and sensible becoming function in diverse but consistent ways. Alienation emerges in the context of the human soul and its embodiment, and seems to bring about two possible modes, one conforming to the rest of reality and the other strangely at odds with it. To begin, alienation is paired with difference or otherness, one of the highest genera, and is used by Plotinus to understand the peculiar nature of the soul’s existence and experience. Alienation is thus a peculiar instantiation of otherness in the human soul. Plotinus develops its meaning in ways that go beyond the Platonism he inherited and which inaugurate several new ideas in the history of philosophy. It is clear, moreover, that Plotinus is well aware of the innovations he is making.

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One major innovation concerns the nature of the One, or God. Otherness, as the defining characteristic of being, is the precise way it is distinct from the One. There is no otherness in the One, as mentioned above. From this comes a new understanding of the nature of God and a new method to articulate it, subsequently denominated as “negative theology.” At the other extreme, matter is just otherness, with no admixture of anything else, particularly the complementary categories that define being. Matter is thus formless, nonbeing, the other nature that is absolute evil and source of evil. The intelligible and sensible worlds fall in between, combining the otherness which makes them different from the One with the unity that roots them in the One. This primordial otherness and unity are the grounds of being and knowing, extending from the perfection of the intelligible to the more limited perfection of the sensible cosmos. Soul is the particular agency that links these two worlds, serving as the midpoint in Plotinus’s scheme of things. It is this ontological situation that provides the context in which the particular alienation of the human soul is possible and, furthermore, comprehensible, without the negativity often associated with it. He uses the two words, ἀλλότριον and ἑτερότης, to describe the nature of the soul’s alienation and how this alienation fits into the larger scheme of his system. In addition, he uses οἰκεῖον, one’s own, as their opposite. Alienation (ἀλλότριον) stems from the soul’s departure from the intelligible world and presence in the sensible world, where the human soul, unlike any other soul, is capable of two opposite kinds of movements. One movement reunites the soul with its own intelligible nature, while the other causes it to sink so deeply into the sensible world that it becomes alienated from itself. Alienation thus indicates the way in which the human soul has activities that are unique: it can act morally or immorally, experience the beautiful or the ugly, and judge

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truly or falsely. In fact, all the soul’s powers and activities are expressions of its alienation as well as the means to overcome it. This situation is quite problematic, not the least for the dualism of soul and body and the depreciation of the sensible that is often seen as its consequence. More fundamentally, however, it places the human soul in a special category, with functions and activities different from those of other souls in relation to intellect and the One. This intersection between the inner alienation of the soul and the ontological otherness of matter and being is already present in the earliest treatises. I.6[1] focuses on the alienation of the soul that makes the aesthetic distinction between the beautiful and the ugly possible. There is a surprising passage in I.6[1].7, however, where Plotinus identifies the alien with all that is not the One, including both the sensible and the intelligible worlds. VI.9[9] considers unity and traces it back to the One in such a way that both being and knowing have an otherness totally absent from the One, with difficulties both in experience of and language about the One. V.1[10] begins with the alienation of the soul as the problem to be discussed and seeks to resolve it with an intricate analysis of the nature of soul, individual, world, and hypostasis. The two treatises on matter, II.4[12] and III.6[26], have a central role in elaborating the nature of otherness as the condition of possibility for the sensible cosmos. II.4[12] focuses particularly on the Aristotelian terminology for the material cause, with the words “matter” and “substrate” carefully defined. III.6[26], however, explores the equivalent (for Plotinus!) Platonic language in the Timaeus and Symposium. In examining these dialogues Plotinus pinpoints the precise way in which he sees the matter of the sensible cosmos as evil and ugly, as completely without form. Alienation in the human soul has this character of matter as the condition for moral evil and falsehood, though the alienation is not directly caused by mat-

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ter, but rather by the human self as embodied. I.2–3[19–20] explore the nature of the self, examining the virtues, moral and intellectual, that are at the soul’s disposal for its ascent to the intelligible and escape from the state of alienation. Finally, VI.4–5[22–23] describes the different ways that soul moves out from the intelligible and brings its power to the sensible. This emphasizes the positive nature of soul’s care of the universe, with the specific role of the human soul in bringing the beauty of the sensible cosmos to fuller expression. Alienation, then, provides us with Plotinus’s attempt to describe the Platonic view that the human soul is somehow not quite where it should be, alienated in some strange way that still preserves its impassibility, and to ground this alienation in a radical reformulation of the first principles of a Platonic ontology. Plotinus’s ability to tie together the very loose ends of Plato’s philosophy, at times only suggested in the Platonic corpus, comes through with astonishing clarity.

Method Plotinus’s own method is an intriguing mix. He often starts with problems, from disagreements among his philosophical predecessors to puzzles deriving from the consequences of his own position. In this instance, he follows in the aporetic tradition of Plato and Aristotle. He also has a remarkable ability for observing and describing the intricacies of the human situation, giving him an anticipation of phenomenological method. His arguments are crisp and clean and he can draw out the consequences of a position with tenacious exactness. He consciously uses images and analogies with care and facility. It is the presence of all these elements together that gives his writing both its vibrancy as well as its occasional obscurity, especially for those not attentive to the intertwining of these different modes even within a single treatise.

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My own attempt at sensitivity to his various methods, further, has dictated the strategy of this work. Plotinus’s methods work together to foster a pedagogical goal, gradually unfolding the structure of his philosophy in order to bring his listener to a fuller self-understanding and thence to a more adequate knowledge of the soul and reality in all their complexity. This philosophical investigation of a small group of treatises from his earliest period is not a philological commentary on the treatises involved, for which there are now happily some examples, but a commentary centered on a few key ideas and how they function as Plotinus invites us to reflect on our experience. All translations are my own. Plotinus is one of those figures where translation needs to be done over and over again. Initial translations allow the reader access to his philosophy, but have often been based on imprecise understanding of his thought. Further translations can correct these imprecisions and thus more fully express what he is actually trying to say. I have also attempted not to overtranslate the passages and have generally put words not in the Greek text in brackets. This is to facilitate the reader’s own comparison of the translation with the original. I have also discovered many passages where I found the current translations wrong or misleading. Usually a simpler translation proved to be more accurate as well. I have not presented his arguments by taking passages from several places to elaborate a single topic or thesis. Instead, I have developed an understanding of his argument by analyzing each passage within the context of the treatise in which it is found and how it contributes to the overall argument of that treatise. With this as a foundation, I have attempted to develop a cumulative understanding of his philosophical position by seeing how different treatises depend on and amplify one another.

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Beauty and the Good

1

"

Beauty and the Good On Beauty (I.6[1]) This very early work illustrates Plotinus’s ability to follow closely the account of beauty in Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, and yet seamlessly to bring in an entirely new dimension that explodes its limitations. Plotinus identifies beauty with form, but understands form in a radically novel way. Central to this transformation is the problem of the soul’s alienation. His account of beauty introduces an analysis of ugliness to explain the nature of beauty and the soul’s unique ability to perceive it, where the soul seeks the beautiful as its own and flees the ugly as alien. In moving to the beauty of soul, Plotinus again draws deeply from the Platonic tradition, with the list of virtues necessary for the soul’s purification. With its flight from the alien, moreover, the soul not only ascends once more to its own in the intellectual realm, but Plotinus brings it directly to the One, as

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alone, single, simple, and pure. These words are rooted in the vision of beauty itself in Plato’s Symposium (210e1–211b5), but the presence of the One is startlingly new and already fully expressed, even in this earliest of works. Plotinus begins with the Greek tradition, but does not hesitate to stretch beyond it, using whatever hints it may offer in the process.

Soul’s Own Beauty (I.6[1].1–6) The first chapters trace out Plotinus’s explanation of beauty in terms of the soul. Plotinus begins I.6[1]­­, however, with an almost scholastic description of beauty in the Greek tradition, beauty in sight and hearing, and in human activities such as knowledge and virtue, echoing closely the ascent of the soul in the Symposium. The assumption of these first lines is that this is how we experience beauty, but this experience of beauty raises for the philosopher a whole series of questions on the nature of beauty, its origin, the connection among the different kinds of beauty, and its inherent or accidental character, with its apparent presence or absence in the same objects.1 Plotinus asks: can all these be reduced to a single principle? He then examines a common account, especially among the Stoics, that proportion is this single principle for the beauty of bodies. Plotinus shows that proportion cannot account for the beauty of bodies, much less of souls and the intelligible, primarily because it concerns the complex and leaves the simple out of the picture, so to say. This is hardly a definitive argument against proportion as the principle of beauty, but it does alert us to the underlying assumption of such theories that explain beauty solely in terms of its appearance in objects without addressing how it is possible for us to 1. Some works on I.6[1] and aesthetics in general in Plotinus include my article, Gurtler 1989, 275–84, and two books, Alexandrakis and Moutafakis 2002 and Perl 2007b.

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experience beauty in the first place. This initial chapter also illustrates Plotinus’s method of beginning with experience, of pointing out limitations in current accounts of a topic, and of using these to lead to his own philosophical explanation. In the present context, Plotinus moves from trying to define beauty by examining the objects perceived, to examining the soul itself, as the perception of beauty is peculiarly human. Such a move, however, puts him in tension with his sources, including Plato. Plotinus begins the argument again with the simple statement that the beauty of bodies comes from the soul itself. Let us then take up [the discussion] again, and state what the primal beauty among bodies really is. For it is something that becomes perceptible even at first glance, and the soul speaks as if understanding, welcomes as if recognizing, and is conformed [to beauty], as it were. But, in stumbling upon the ugly, the soul recoils, refuses and turns away from it since the soul is not in harmony with but alienated [from the ugly].2

Plotinus begins with our experience of beauty as immediately recognizable; the soul is attracted to it without hesitation but with understanding and familiarity. What is more, to clarify that experience he immediately adds the opposite experience of the ugly, which the soul flees with equal immediacy and determination. He is expanding an element only implicit in the Platonic discussion of beauty, the soul’s affinity with the beautiful and alienation from the ugly. This distinction, however, shifts the focus of attention from the object perceived to the soul, whose reactions are given in great detail. To explain this shift, Plotinus notes the relation of the 2. I.6[1].2, 1–6: πάλιν οὖν ἀναλαβόντες λέγωμεν τί δῆτά ἐστι τὸ ἐν τοῖς σώμασι καλὸν πρῶτον. ἔστι μὲν γάρ τι καὶ βολῇ τῇ πρώτῃ αἰσθητὸν γινόμενον καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ ὥσπερ συνεῖσα λέγει καὶ ἐπιγνοῦσα ἀποδέχεται καὶ οἷον συναρμόττεται. πρὸς δὲ τὸ αἰσχρὸν προσβαλοῦσα ἀνίλλεται καὶ ἀρνεῖται καὶ ἀνανεύει ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ οὐ συμφωνοῦσα καὶ ἀλλοτριουμένη.

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soul to the intelligible world, grasping at any trace in the sensible world that brings the intelligible to awareness. The soul is in a situation where it is alienated from its own intelligible nature, and beauty serves as a first step in the ascent to the intelligible.3 This is, so far, typically Platonic, but Plotinus does not stop there. While Plato is interested in the goal of the soul’s ascent, the vision of the beautiful itself, Plotinus lingers (as it were) on the process and a more complete delineation of the soul’s present alienation. He thus brings into focus the ambiguity in the soul’s situation that is crucial for understanding the consequences—aesthetic, moral, and intellectual—of the soul’s embodiment. Even when he shifts back to the analysis of the beautiful object, Plotinus necessarily brings in the role of the soul. He identifies beauty with form, the ontological link between sensible things and their intelligible models. This is an excellent Platonic move, until Plotinus launches into a discussion of the nature of ugliness to explain it. He begins with absolute ugliness, which is completely without form. Unfortunately, it is also without being, and so is not directly relevant to our perception of ugliness.4 He then describes a relative ugliness, where form is present but does not totally dominate the matter by ordering it into a single whole. Beauty, by contrast, indicates that a thing, whether complex or simple, is unified by nature or art in a strikingly holistic way. There is something very peculiar about this. It looks as if it is a straightforward 3. In his later treatise, I.3[20], Plotinus describes the three kinds of soul—musician, lover, and philosopher—capable of making the ascent, beginning with the Platonic premise that beauty is the route most widely available. See chapter 4, below. 4. Matter as absolutely ugly is alluded to here, but is developed at length in two later treatises, II.4[12] and III.6[26], that discuss matter fully, first in Aristotelian terms (II.4[12]) and then in Platonic terms derived from the Timaeus. These are discussed later, in chapter 3 on II.4[12] and chapter 7 on III.6[26]. See also my article, Gurtler 2005b, 197–214, esp. 213n7, which summarizes recent literature on matter as evil in relation to the good; I argue that it is not opposite to the Good itself, but only the good of the forms nearest to it.

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discussion about the nature of sensible things, but that cannot really be the case. All sensible objects are dominated and unified by form. The difference is in our perception that some objects appear more unified than others and hence appear beautiful to us, while others appear ugly. His examples of beauty, when one perceives the unity of a house or a stone (I.6.1.3), alert us to the subject’s more central role in identifying beauty. A house has no more unity than, say, a parking garage, but we do not talk of beautiful garages.5 Similarly, a clump of dirt is not all that different from a stone. Plotinus then states explicitly that it is a power of the soul that recognizes beauty by fitting the external thing to the forms within it. Sense perception brings the object as dispersed in matter to unity within the soul itself. In his next example, the sage’s perception of a trace of virtue in the young similarly brings a delight that is centered within the sage’s self-knowledge. In all these cases, the unity of form is present and appreciated primarily in the soul itself and not in the object as independent of the soul’s unifying action. The aesthetic criteria that Plotinus specifies in this context also underline the role of the soul in recognizing beauty: for visual beauty, incorporeal light, logos, and form (φωτὸς ἀσωμάτου καὶ λόγου καὶ εἴδους, 3, 18), and for the melodious nature of music, mathematical measure (μετρεῖσθαι ἀριθμοῖς, 3, 33). Light, as the most incorporeal of the elements, is almost pure form, and harmony in music resides in the formal element riding imperceptibly on the air. In both cases, such beauty rests on the quasiincorporeal character of fire and air, floating above the grosser elements of water and earth. Further, the corresponding human senses, sight and hearing, have the most plasticity in 5. At least most of us do not; I have heard college administrators, and perhaps there are others with similar perspectives, wax eloquent over the beauty in such structures that seems hidden from the rest of us.

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relation to form, and therefore they are especially open to the transformations of human art and an aesthetic appreciation that goes beyond perception as mere information.6 These criteria thus emphasize the psychic nature of beauty, even physical beauty, for Plotinus, and provide his alternative to proportion as an account for beauty in terms of sight and sound as peculiarly open to form. In summary, Plotinus has used Plato’s erotic ascent and the language associated with it, but transformed them by putting everything into the context of his own notion of the soul’s alienation. Thus, sensible beauty reminds the soul not merely of Plato’s forms but more crucially of what is its own. The soul’s alienation, moreover, allows him to distinguish the appreciation of the beautiful and the flight from the ugly. This is a curious move, as any sensible object is in some way dominated and brought to unity by form (I.6[1].2). When Plotinus explores the soul’s capacity to recognize and judge this Platonic form and unity, his rationale is clarified. The beauty of the object is achieved within the soul and sensible beauty is especially related both to sight and hearing as the clearest of the senses and to their two related elements, fire and air, as most open to artistic transformation (I.6[1].3). Fire as the source of light is nonreciprocally related to the other elements, which are colored by its light, while fire retains color within it. It is this nonreciprocity that makes fire like form. As within the sensible, some fires do not master completely, but can fail, losing their light and thus also their beauty, because they are not themselves the form of color but only participate in it.7 6. Aristotle’s distinction between use and enjoyment captures this idea as well. As ordered to the needs of the body, the senses give us information, he reminds us in Metaphysics I.1, but as ordered to the soul, we enjoy them for themselves. Plato’s distinction between heavenly and earthly eros serves a similar function, as we shall see below. 7. This simple statement about different instances of light has proved a puzzle

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When he turns from physical beauty to beauties of the soul, Plotinus moves from the appreciation of physical beauty as dependent on having the requisite senses to seeing the beauty of human custom, of different kinds of knowledge and virtue as dependent on the soul having these activities within itself (I.6[1].4–5). Following the lead of Plato, Plotinus holds that the possession of these activities cannot be abstract or merely verbal, but is essentially erotic. They must, that is, be felt deeply and our delight in them must recognize them as our own, with the alien rejected just as emotionally as not our own. The distinction between the beautiful and the ugly thus continues to play a role in his explanation of the soul’s beauty. Ugliness of soul has distinctly moral overtones in this section, emphasizing the confusion, disturbance, and sinking into the material that characterize moral evil for the Greeks. Echoing his account of physical beauty, this ugliness keeps light from the soul, which is “ever being dragged toward the external, the below and the dark,” an allusion to Plato’s allegory of the cave.8 Ugliness is not, however, essentially about the sensible as such, but rather about the soul’s mode of comportment while in the sensible world. Plotinus has brought himself to the edge of a dilemma: does the soul itself become ugly in this process? As we will see later in discussing III.6[26], his language indicates the soul’s dangerous proximity to matter, but, as a Platonist, Plotinus also holds that the soul is impassible and thus immune to corruption of any kind. His dilemma, then, is holding on to the soul’s impassibility, while equally firmly holding the individual morally responsible for his actions. In the present confor translators. Armstrong has a lengthy note indicating that what the Greek states can scarcely be what Plotinus means (Plotinus 1966, 1:242n1). He seems to assume that light can only be the light of the sun, but Plotinus clearly states that some fires do not have complete mastery, but can fail, losing their light and thus also their beauty, as they are not themselves the form of color but only participate in it. 8. I.6[1].5, 38–39: τῷ ἕλκεσθαι ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ ἔξω καὶ τὸ κάτω καὶ τὸ σκοτεινόν.

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text, his solution is to describe this ugliness of the soul as like sinking into mud and mire.9 Underneath, the body remains intact, but its beauty can no longer be seen. So also for the soul of each one: “Ugliness thus comes to him by the addition of the alien, and the task, if he will be beautiful again, is to wash himself clean and purify himself in order to be what he is essentially.”10 The alien is described as an addition in order to preserve the impassive nature of the soul. Moral evil, however powerful, is merely an addition that disfigures by hiding the nature of the soul, and Plotinus immediately discusses the need to get rid of this addition and so overcome the alienation.11 This point, then, marks the transition to the second part of the treatise, concerned more explicitly with purification and the subsequent ascent of the soul. It is important to note carefully that this purification is not about the soul’s presence in the body as such, and thus not about the body as itself evil, but about an excess in the soul’s association with the body, where it sinks into it too deeply. He ends with the exhortation that the soul abide alone, a phrase related to the purifying of gold and indicating the removal of the dross, the ugliness from the other nature.12 The other nature is matter, which provides the matrix in which the soul becomes confused and is put into the dark about its own nature and beauty. While this may be occasioned by being in the body, the difficulty concerns the soul’s ability to see itself and what is its own. Plotinus understands the process of purification in terms 9. I.6[1].5, 43: πηλὸν καὶ βόρβορον. 10. I.6[1].5, 45–47: ᾧ δὴ τὸ αἰσχρὸν προσθήκῃ τοῦ ἀλλοτρίου προσῆλθε καὶ ἔργον αὐτῷ, εἴπερ ἔσται πάλιν καλός, ἀπονιψαμένῳ καὶ καθηραμένῳ ὅπερ ἦν εἶναι. 11. See my article, Gurtler 2006, 57–66. Plotinus faces the dilemma of accounting for human responsibility while taking evil, even moral evil, as conditioned by matter and thus essentially external to the soul; St. Paul sees evil not in relation to matter but to oneself, as accepting or rejecting the love of God and thus essentially internal to the soul. 12. I.6[1].5, 57: τὸ αἰσχρὸν τὸ παρὰ τῆς ἑτέρας φύσεως.

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of the virtues of self-control (σωφροσύνη), courage (ἀνδρεία), greatness of soul (μεγαλοψυχία), and wisdom (φρόνησις), comparing them to the purificatory rituals of the mystery cults (I.6[1].6). These virtues do what the mysteries signify, separating the soul from the things of the sensible world. This is a marked change from the function of these virtues in Plato, where their realm of action continues to be the city and the wars it wages to protect its borders or to extend them. Plotinus’s vision of the virtues shifts from the arena of the polis to that of the soul, with the battles very much within oneself. This seems to give credence to the charge that Plotinus is spelling out a contemptus mundi. His claim that the soul’s descent into the world is good and has the mission of bringing more beauty into it thus seems hard to sustain, insofar as the goal of its struggle is rather to discover itself as form and reason.13 That is, as it becomes bodiless, intellectual, and divine, it recaptures its own nature and increases in beauty and being. “Intellect and the things of intellect [are] the soul’s beauty, its own and not alien, because then it is really just soul.”14 Plotinus adds significantly that when the soul becomes good and beautiful it is becoming like God. What it really is has some connection with God, and the rest of this treatise gives some preliminary and surprising hints at exactly what this means. The soul finds itself poised between God as the principle from which all goodness and beauty come, and matter, the other nature (ἑτέρα φύσις), which is ugly and primary evil.

The One Alone (I.6[1].7–9) We have reached the point of intersection where Plotinus’s careful psychological analysis is placed within the context of 13. I.6[1].6, 14: εἶδος καὶ λόγος. 14. I.6[1].6, 17–18: νοῦς δὲ καὶ τὰ παρὰ νοῦ τὸ κάλλος αὐτῇ οἰκεῖον καὶ οὐκ ἀλλότριον, ὅτι τότε ἐστὶν ὄντως μόνον ψυχή.

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his ontological hierarchy, stretching from the One, through intellect, soul, and the sensible cosmos, and reaching finally to matter itself. What does this intersection reveal about the soul and its perception of beauty and ugliness? A simplistic reading might take it as confirming suspicions that Plotinus is positing a blatant dualism of spiritual good and material evil. Keeping the psychological and ontological aspects in proper tension, however, shows a much richer account of the interaction between the two. From this vantage, the extremes of his ontological system take on a more symbolic role, illustrating possibilities for the center of the soul’s attention and character. Beauty and goodness are thus differentiated from ugliness and evil not as ontological categories, but as descriptions of the soul’s own movements toward or away from these ontological extremes. What is proper (οἰκεῖον) to it brings beauty and goodness more and more into the sensible world, while what is alien (ἀλλότριον) causes it to be mastered and dominated by what has less value than itself. This does not make the sensible world evil or ugly, but rather allows the soul to lose its own identity and to become alienated from itself by falling under the spell of the material.15 Breaking this spell and regaining what is the soul’s own occupies the rest of the treatise. Plotinus begins with an account of the goal (I.6[1].7) before turning to the way or method to be used to reach it (I.6[1].8–9). At the beginning of I.6[1].7, in fact, the descent itself appears for the first time as part of the alienation and not merely as its condition of possibility. [The Good] is desirable as good and desire is for this [good], but the fulfilment of [reaching] it is for those who ascend on high, are turned around and strip off what we put on in descending—just as 15. See Gurtler in Plotinus 2015c, 90–92 and 208–17, for a discussion of nature’s role in bewitching the soul in its presence in the body, especially by giving the soul the urge for self-preservation, using the Stoic term οἰκείωσις.

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those who go up to the sacred precincts of temples are purified and put aside their garments before they go in naked—until, by the ascent, one passes by all that is alien to God, and sees by himself alone that alone, single, simple and pure, upon which everything depends and to which everything looks and is and lives and thinks, for it is cause of life and intellect and being.16

In the first part of the treatise (I.6[1].1–6), Plotinus is careful to distinguish the alienation of the soul from the mere fact of its descent into the body. The change in the present passage thus demands explanation. The image of the mysteries flows naturally from the previous chapter and so does not appear to offer an insight into this potentially serious change. Plotinus there discussed the ascent in its partial phase of leading to the intelligible world, where its nature as life, intellect, and being increases as the soul draws closer to the One. The crux of the present passage, however, is that the alien is identified with all that is not God and not exclusively with the soul’s presence in the sensible world. When the soul is most itself, most alone as Plotinus puts it, it is most like God and stripped of everything alien.17 Consequently, the whole descent, with its life, intellect, and being, is now described as putting on alien garb and losing what is single, simple, and 16. I.6[1].7, 3–12: ἐφετὸν μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἡ ἔφεσις πρὸς τοῦτο, τεῦξις δὲ αὐτοῦ ἀναβαίνουσι πρὸς τὸ ἄνω καὶ ἐπιστραφεῖσι καὶ ἀποδυομένοις ἃ καταβαίνοντες ἠμφιέσμεθα· οἷον ἐπὶ τὰ ἅγια τῶν ἱερῶν τοῖς ἀνιοῦσι καθάρσεις τε καὶ ἱματίων ἀποθέσεις τῶν πρὶν καὶ τὸ γυμνοῖς ἀνιέναι· ἕως ἄν τις παρελθὼν ἐν τῇ ἀναβάσει πᾶν ὅσον ἀλλότριον τοῦ θεοῦ αὐτῷ μόνῳ αὐτὸ μόνον ἴδῃ εἰλικρινές, ἁπλοῦν, καθαρόν, ἀφ’ οὗ πάντα ἐξήρτηται καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸ βλέπει καὶ ἔστι καὶ ζῇ καὶ νοεῖ· ζωῇς γὰρ αἴτιος καὶ νοῦ καὶ τοῦ εἶναι. This translation appeared in Gurtler 2005a. Several other translations in the first four chapters also appeared in this paper: VI.9[9].3, 10–13; 6, 42–50; 8, 29–36; 10, 18–21; V.1[10].4, 33–43; 11, 10–13; I.2[19].4, 25–29 (portions of the analysis of this last translation also appear here). 17. This relation of the soul and God, or the One, will be examined in a special way in VI.5[23], where the self as one finds its source in the One itself. See Chapter 6 as well as my articles, Gurtler 2005a, 113–29, which discusses I.6[1] and other early treatises, and Gurtler 2007, 137–52. See also Schroeder 1998, 1–22, for a discussion of VI.5[23] and its relation to Platonic themes, especially in the Symposium.

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pure, words borrowed from Symposium 211e1. This radical notion of alienation bursts on the scene like a silent but lethal bomb. Such alienation could not be more different from the alienation in the earlier part of the treatise, which deals with movements within the soul itself as embodied. It is as if, once the soul comes into contact with the One, a whole new dimension of reality explodes upon the scene that makes everything else alien by comparison. All that has gone before is merely a shadow, given this radical sense of the alien. Everything, even intellect itself, is transformed into the dross that is burned away in the passion of union with the One. Everything is external addition, a mixture derived from the One. In this union with the One, Plotinus at last reaches the goal of the quest for beauty, and everything else is eclipsed by its splendor. In the final section of the treatise, I.6[1].8–9, Plotinus outlines the process for preparing oneself for such an experience of beauty. First, one needs to leave behind all that one has found as beautiful in the realm of the senses, for that can at most only point to the One, and clinging to sensible beauty merely causes the soul to sink down into the depths of darkness and frustrate the desire for beauty itself. Second, quoting Homer, we must fly to our dear country, and we do so by awakening the inner vision of the soul. Plotinus returns once more to Plato’s dialogues, especially the Phaedrus and the Republic, for images of this inner ascent of the soul, but he changes Plato’s action of the lover sculpting the soul of the beloved to the soul itself sculpting the statue of its own perfection. The beauty revealed, moreover, goes beyond Platonic vocabulary and is expressed as without measure and limit (ἀμέτρητον, ἀπειρία, I.6[1].9, 18–21). Form is no longer understood as limit, but breaks the bonds of the embodied soul so that it sees all at once the transparent multiplicity of the intelligible world. Here indeed is the realm of beauty,

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beckoning the soul on to God as the Good beyond this beauty and veiled by it from all profane glance (I.6[1].9, 37–39). Here indeed is an aesthetic vision that advances beyond the categories of classical Greek culture and philosophy. Beauty is no longer defined by form as limit, but is articulated in terms of an infinite that goes beyond form to its root and perfection in the One.18 This early treatise presents us with two visions of the soul’s alienation. One is firmly rooted in the Greek tradition, especially Plato’s account of the ascent of the soul in terms of beauty. The other begins where that classical tradition stops and presents a kind of alienation that is wholly new, though still using the erotic vocabulary of Plato. The first continues to be true as delineating the soul’s inner life, especially while embodied. Alienation denotes a turning of the soul away from its own nature and task, and becoming more and more constricted by its presence in the body. While the body is clearly the occasion for this, it is nonetheless true that the alienation is centered in the soul. The second alienation looks at the soul, as it were, from the outside, not in relation to the extremes of its inner movement, but in its lovesick abandoning of all else once it touches the One. This makes its prior alienation seem utterly foolish and the struggle to overcome it, hard as that might be for some souls, fades into insignificance.

On the Good or the One (VI.9[9]) The alien character of all that is not God comes under full scrutiny in VI.9[9], but in this context under the more sober rubric of otherness (ἑτερότης). Plotinus begins, as is his custom, with a discussion of sensible things, their unity and its source in the soul (VI.9[9].1–5), before turning to the thicket 18. Clarke 1952, 167–94, is one of the first to articulate this radical change in the Greek understanding of limit and to trace the change to Plotinus.

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of problems that arise both in naming and in experiencing the One (VI.9[9].6–11).19 Given the ontological framework of the discussion, otherness assumes the importance that alienation had in the more psychological context of I.6[1], but the two terms are in fact not all that different in meaning. This treatise therefore presents a complementary analysis of the relation of the One to the beings that come after it and of the nature of the soul as once more intermediary, but mediating here the unity it receives to sensible bodies.

Unity and Being (VI.9[9].1–5) Plotinus begins the treatise with an analysis of unity and being. The analysis of unity goes deeper than that of form in I.6[1], as it is much more fundamental in Plotinus’s system. Plato’s Sophist stands in the background, with its discussion of the genera of being, rest, motion, sameness, and difference. Unity attempts to go beyond these Platonic genera to their source in the One, which has here its first clear articulation as his ultimate principle. He begins, however, more modestly with a series of different kinds of unities drawn from our experience: armies, choruses, a house, continuous magnitudes, plants and animals, the health and beauty of a body, the virtue of a soul, and finally soul itself. Soul is the immediate cause of the unity of all these things, shaping and combining them to be what they are. These comments are grounded in Plato’s Timaeus, where the soul is the demiurge forming the whole sensible cosmos. As with Plato, moreover, the demiurgic soul is not the ultimate principle of unity, but looks to a model beyond it. Thus, the soul is not the source of unity, but only transmits what it has also received.20 19. See Ousager 2008, 125–51, which analyzes how Plotinus’s notion of the Good or the One draws out the implications of central Platonic texts, such as Republic 509b. 20. See Chiaradonna 2005, where some of the early treatises between I.6[1]

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Rather, just as when [the soul] provides other things to bodies, it is not itself that it gives, but things other than itself, such as shape and form, so it is necessary to think, if it also gives unity, that it gives something other than itself and that it looks toward unity to make each thing one, just as [it looks] toward man [to make] man, including with man the unity in him. For of things said thus [to be] one, each is one inasmuch as it also has what it is, so that things having less unity are less, and things [having] more [are] more. And soul especially, since it is other than unity, has more unity in proportion to existing more really.21

Sensible body is constituted by a number of factors, which Plotinus summarizes as form, defining what a thing is, and unity, different both from the thing and from what it is. Unity, moreover, varies in degree in proportion to the being a thing has, with soul having more being than any sensible body. It is important to see how Plotinus understands unity as essential for the constitution of a body and yet as external to it. An army, chorus, or house is forged by the effort and intelligence of a commander, conductor, or builder; plants and animals live and breathe as parts of a larger organic environment, in turn dependent on factors such as the sun that are outside it, as in the simile of the sun in Republic VI, 509b; the health and beauty of a body are traceable to the values and lore of a culture specifying the means for attaining such states. In each case, a specific unity is traceable to some principle or agent outside it. The soul indeed has a privileged place and VI.9[9] are discussed, with particular attention to the incorporeal nature of the soul, with its openness to being and becoming, its indivisibility, and its relation to the problem of unity as found in VI.9[9]. 21. VI.9[9].1, 20–30: ἢ ὥσπερ τὰ ἄλλα χορηγοῦσα τοῖς σώμασιν οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτὴ ὃ δίδωσιν, οἷον μορφὴ καὶ εἶδος, ἀλλ’ ἕτερα αὐτῆς, οὕτω χρή, εἰ καὶ ἓν δίδωσιν, ἕτερον ὂν αὐτῆς νομίζειν αὐτὴν διδόναι καὶ πρὸς τὸ ἓν βλέπουσαν ἓν ἕκαστον ποιεῖν, ὥσπερ καὶ πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἄνθρωπον, συλλαμβάνουσαν μετὰ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ ἕν. τῶν γὰρ ἓν λεγομένων οὕτως ἕκαστόν ἐστιν ἕν, ὡς ἔχει καὶ ὅ ἐστιν, ὥστε τὰ μὲν ἧττον ἔχειν τὸ ἕν, τὰ δὲ μᾶλλον μᾶλλον. καὶ δὴ καὶ ψυχὴ ἕτερον οὖσα τοῦ ἑνὸς ‹τὸ› μᾶλλον ‹ἓν› ἔχει κατὰ λόγον τοῦ μᾶλλον καὶ ὄντως εἶναι. Text as in Plotinus 1964.

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as the principle of the unity pervading sensible bodies and the sensible world as a whole, with its cosmic sympathy. Although this language of soul and cosmic sympathy may strike us as quaintly archaic, the intent is not all that different from the way the four forces in contemporary physics (gravity, electricity, the strong and weak forces) explain how everything from subatomic particles to vast galaxies is held together. In both cases, the bonds of unity are different from the bodies being unified. Plotinus goes on, however, to say that even soul—even these cosmic forces—is still not simply one, as it has many different powers, and needs to be unified just as much as bodies and choruses, atoms and galaxies, need to be unified. The underlying issue concerns the interplay between unity and multiplicity, the strength of the bond needed to keep a multiplicity together. His assumption is that sheer multiplicity cannot account for unity on any level, and further that multiplicity as such is unintelligible; only what is one can be and can be known. Absolute multiplicity, in fact, is identified with the matter mentioned in I.6[1].2 as absolute ugliness and evil, but is implicit in the present context more neutrally as the receptacle or pure possibility that Plato and Aristotle posit behind even the four elements and the bodies composed from them, issues to be explored in II.4[12] and III.6[26], respectively. Matter has neither form nor unity and thus is in no way a being, but is not quite absolute nothingness, as it is the condition of possibility for the bodies of the sensible world. It thus functions something like space and time, but not space and time as we experience them, which assume the existence of bodies and their relation to one another in a time and space that can be measured, but rather the preconditions for such spatial and temporal quantification.22 Matter as such then is 22. See Gurtler 2005b, 212n1, for a brief discussion of matter as condition of possibility for space and time, on the analogy of Kant’s a priori intuitions. For Plotinus,

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the complete antithesis of unity, though it serves as the condition of the possibility for the limited kind of unity found in bodies as quantified or measured. The cosmos cannot consist in the mechanical interaction of objects existing discretely in a fixed spatiotemporal grid, a sheer multiplicity with no principle of unity, no bond to hold things together. Further, because bodies are radically contingent and, at root, only accidentally one, Plotinus argues that the intelligible world is primarily substance (οὐσία) and being (τὸ ὄν), because it is one (τὸ ἕν) in a more perfect way (VI.9[9].2). He does this by identifying Aristotelian substance (οὐσία) with Platonic being (τὸ ὄν), following his middle Platonic predecessors in equating the being (τὸ ὄν) of the Sophist with Aristotle’s thought-thinking-itself as the primary substance (οὐσία) of the Metaphysics. Plotinus, like these middle Platonists, slips Plato’s forms into that thinking self, turning the solitary Aristotelian God into the intelligible world of Neo-Platonism. While some middle Platonists were content to make this modified intellect the ultimate principle of their systems, Plotinus finds even intelligible multiplicity in need of unity, forcing him back to a more ultimate principle.23 The One, to use the words of I.6[1].7, 11, is alone, single, simple, and pure, and that upon which everything that has intellect, being, and life depends. These words are now analyzed more fully as Plotinus indicates why unity cannot be grounded in intellect. This section ends with an argument establishing that the inherent duality of substance or being is mirrored in the duality of intellect as a knower. It knows not only its own content, the forms as transparently present to one another, but also looks toward its own prior principle, the One. Thus, however, these conditions of possibility do not pertain to the understanding but to the sensible world of becoming. 23. See Dillon 1977, which explores the roots of many of Plotinus’s positions on unity, intellect, and its content, and negative theology in these middle Platonist philosophers.

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in knowing itself or in knowing the One it is essentially dual. In turning to talk of the One in VI.9[9].3, moreover, Plotinus has stumbled upon the realm of negative theology: that is, speaking of a God who is beyond speech. Plotinus is fully conscious of the innovation of this position and the difficulty in articulating it adequately. He first reminds us of the difficulty already present in coming to an understanding of form and being, as the history of Greek philosophy amply testified, especially in relation to Parmenides and the ancient pluralists whom he opposed, and in the controversies surrounding the nature of the forms in the works of Plato and Aristotle. He thus recognizes that introducing something formless and beyond being compounds the problem, both for speaking and for experience. Because the One is beyond form, no language can apply to him; because the One is beyond being and substance, experience of the One brings the implications of this otherness into central focus as the soul loses all its bearings and fears it has reached nothing at all.24 “When the soul, however, wants to see by itself, since it only sees by co-being and is one by being one with the [One] itself, it does not think that it already has what it is seeking, because [the One] is not other than what is being thought.”25 Plotinus is attempting to describe an experience where the distinction between the soul and the One can no longer be made as if they were still subject and object. He uses the simplest form of awareness (i.e., seeing) to describe this experience, and he further identifies the soul’s being one as from the One itself. The otherness that defines the soul’s separation from the One is transcended, but this means that the soul is fundamentally unaware that it has actually reached the end 24. VI.9[9].3, 6: μὴ οὐδὲν ἔχῃ. 25. VI.9[9].3, 10–13: καθ’ ἑαυτὴν δὲ ἡ ψυχὴ ὅταν ἰδεῖν ἐθέλῃ, μόνον ὁρῶσα τῷ συνεῖναι καὶ ἓν οὖσα τῷ ἓν εἶναι αὐτῷ οὐκ οἴεταί πω ἔχειν ὃ ζητεῖ, ὅτι τοῦ νοουμένου μὴ ἕτερόν ἐστιν.

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of its search. The soul’s thought or awareness no longer has the distinction between subject and object that characterizes even the purity of thought in the intelligible world. In a telling aside, Plotinus states that these are the conditions for philosophizing about the One. Plotinus continues with a description of the ascent of the soul similar to that in I.6[1], but with an emphasis now on identifying with the intellect as nearest to the One. Whatever intellect is as summing up all categories of the intelligible world, the One is not, precisely because it is their cause. The move here is familiar, because it follows exactly the relation of a Platonic form to its sensible instances, which will be explored with exacting precision in VI.4–5[22–23]. As the form is other than its instances, so the One is not to be identified with anything generated from it, because they are other than it. Even referring to him as cause does not predicate anything of him, but rather of us. In VI.9[9].4, Plotinus adds that speaking and writing about the One do not have their usual function of informing us about something, but of encouraging us in our approach toward him, described once more in the erotic language borrowed from Plato. What in us is like the One needs to be cultivated, and this is nothing more than that each of us is one. The ascent presupposes the minimal acceptance of the soul as immaterial. Plotinus’s notion of unity already implies this, but his comments at the beginning of VI.9[9].5 look more concretely to the audience before him, not all of whom, he admits, share his assumption. If they do, however, he takes them from the rational activities of the soul to their source in intellect, from reasoning to what makes reasoning possible. “After these things, however, they must take intellect [as] other than what is called reasoning and calculation, [since] reasonings [are] already disparate and in motion, and sciences, accounts in the soul, [are] of such kind as already having become manifest, be-

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cause intellect is present in the soul as the cause of sciences.”26 Plotinus looks at reasoning as a process producing the various branches of knowledge, and thereby dependent on something that is neither a process nor a science, but the cause of them in the soul. A way of capturing this is in the distinction between any given language and the power of speech itself.27 A language is divided into separate words and these words are in turn related by a grammatical structure to form units of meaning; the power of speech, however, is not so divided in either content or structure, but exists completely, as it were, in the human capacity to speak. Likewise, intellect has its content all at once, not in the piecemeal fashion of reasoning as running from one separate idea to another, and as a whole, not structured as the different explanations of particular sciences (see VI.9[9].10, 5–10, treated below). Earlier in the treatise, he had argued that sensible objects have their unity from an external principle and now develops a similar argument for reasoning and scientific knowledge as activities of the soul. If human reasoning is able to come to a conclusion and sciences are unified bodies of knowledge, whatever tentative unity this implies does not come from the multiplicity of sensible input or from the soul as a merely immanent principle of unity within the sensible cosmos. Soul must itself be immaterial, and dependent for these activities on a kind of unity that goes completely beyond sensible divisibility. The soul, as the principle of sensible unity in a variety of ways, is itself unified by the presence of intellect within it. 26. VI.9[9].5, 8–12: μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα νοῦν λαβεῖν ἕτερον τοῦ λογιζομένου καὶ λογιστικοῦ καλουμένου, καὶ τοὺς λογισμοὺς ἤδη οἷον ἐν διαστάσει καὶ κινήσει, καὶ τὰς ἐπιστήμας λόγους ἐν ψυχῇ τὰς τοιαύτας ἐν φανερῷ ἤδη γεγονυίας τῷ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ γεγονέναι τὸν νοῦν τῶν ἐπιστημῶν αἴτιον. 27. Plotinus generally expresses this in terms of the relation of a science and its theorems, but he understands them in a dynamic sense that may no longer be as obvious as it was to his immediate audience; thus I use the analogy of language to capture this, where language is taken precisely as an activity and not as some kind of static knowledge.

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From the immateriality of the soul, Plotinus thus argues to the necessary existence of intellect, as the divided motion and separation within the soul point toward a silent and undisturbed motion and a multiplicity that is all-together. Intellect’s very multiform unity, however, means that it cannot be the first, which is simple and the principle of all things.28 Otherness, as the defining characteristic of everything but the One, is precisely the loss of that absolute simplicity characteristic of the One. It is division and “somehow [intellect’s] having dared to depart from the One.”29 Plotinus also uses this daring to describe the departure of the soul from intellect, which brings in evil and the forgetfulness of the soul’s own nature in the next treatise, V.1[10].1, 4, harking back to the psychological sense of alienation present already in I.6[1]. Although Plotinus does not press the point and will qualify it in several contexts, the description of intellect’s bold apostasy marks the tremendous gulf between the One and even the relative perfection of the intelligible world. Otherness and alienation are close cousins, and indicate a loss that I.6[1] and VI.9[9] both see as the dividing line between the One and even the perfection of the intelligible world.

The One and the Other (VI.9[9].6–11) On this side of the divide, however, the difficulty is finding words for the One (VI.9[9].6). The ancients usually see names as indicating the nature of a thing, but even using “one” for this simple source of all things is fraught with difficulty. It could seem to imply merely one as the beginning or end of a series. The One, however, is outside any series, not “a being” and thus not one among the beings that come from it. Plotinus also mentions that calling it One might induce compar28. VI.9[9].5, 24: ἁπλοῦν . . . καὶ ἡ πάντων ἀρχή. 29. VI.9[9].5, 29: ἀποστῆναι δέ πως τοῦ ἑνὸς τολμήσας (sc. νοῦς).

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ison with the arithmetical unit or geometrical point, an abstract principle posited for understanding beings as the unit or point are posited for understanding quantifiable bodies.30 The One, however, is not what is left over when everything else is mentally taken away from beings, but is the infinite power from which they come. This is a novel sense of infinity in the Greek world, the opposite of the formless infinity of matter as pure possibility. The One is a formless infinity that exceeds form as generative power, rather than falling short of it as pure possibility. The One is self-sufficient, whereas form is needy: of being, of substance, of unity, of the good as its source. Even intellect is so caught up in otherness that it can only know the One by knowing what is other than the One, its own content. Attempting to imagine the One as a principle and cause that needs nothing goes against the grain of even our most intellectual knowledge. Otherness so permeates knowing that knowing is simply defined as one thing knowing another. Such is not the case with the One, or with any real knowledge of him. But [he has] no thought, because [he has] no otherness; nor [does he have] motion; for [the One is] before motion and before thought. For what indeed will he think? Himself? In that case, before thought he will be ignorant, and will need thought that he may know himself, the self-sufficient in himself. It is thus not the case, because he does not know nor think himself, that he will be ignorant about himself; for ignorance is of what is other, when one thing is ignorant of another; but the [One] alone neither knows, nor has some [other] which he does not know, but being one and co-being with himself he does not need thought of himself.31 30. VI.5[23].1 and 4 argue that the One is fundamentally the principle of all things. See chapter 6 below and my article, Gurtler 2007, 137–52, which shows how the One is first principle for knowing and is omnipresent more pervasively than intellect and forms. 31. VI.9[9].6, 42–50: Οὐδὲ νόησις, ἵνα μὴ ἑτερότης· οὐδὲ κίνησις· πρὸ γὰρ κινήσεως καὶ πρὸ νοήσεως. τί γὰρ καὶ νοήσει; ἑαυτόν; πρὸ νοήσεως τοίνυν ἀγνοῶν ἔσται, καὶ νοήσεως δεήσεται, ἵνα γνῷ ἑαυτὸν ὁ αὐτάρκης ἑαυτῷ. οὐ τοίνυν, ὅτι μὴ γινώσκει μηδὲ

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Plotinus verges on sarcasm in this passage in his attempt to show that the self-sufficient One does not need even self-knowledge and that otherness defines not only being but knowing. Otherness is the precondition for both: to be or to know is to be in relation to something else. As the One has no otherness, it neither is nor knows, although it is the source of both. Knowledge is correlative with ignorance as being is correlative with nonbeing, a dualism that does not apply in the case of the One. The One is rather the object of our thought as its cause, defining our need but needing nothing himself (as explored in VI.5[23]). This makes our approach to him rather peculiar, because as we get nearer and nearer our knowing becomes more and more undefined (VI.9[9].7). We are inclined to experience this vertiginously as loss, but Plotinus assures us that such feelings should not deter our progress toward the One. Instead of fearing this absence of form, he encourages us to embrace it, as the more we think of some form the more distracted we are from thinking the One. Following Plato, he encourages us to turn inward, not even stopping at the self but going beyond it as we seek to contemplate the One. It is, however, not so much that we go beyond the self as find the center of the self precisely in the One, the center of all things (VI.9[9].8). It is this coincidence of centers that Plotinus uses to sketch in some slight way one’s experience of the One, where there is no barrier between oneself and the One. For bodies block bodies from sharing with one another, but bodiless things are not separated by bodies; accordingly, they are not cut off from one another by place, but rather by otherness and difference. So whenever otherness is not present, these not-others are present νοεῖ ἑαυτόν, ἄγνοια περὶ αὐτὸν ἔσται· ἡ γὰρ ἄγνοια ἑτέρου ὄντος γίγνεται, ὅταν θάτερον ἀγνοῇ θάτερον· τὸ δὲ μόνον οὔτε γιγνώσκει, οὔτε τι ἔχει ὃ ἀγνοεῖ, ἓν δὲ ὂν συνὸν αὑτῷ οὐ δεῖται νοήσεως ἑαυτοῦ.

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to one another. That One then, not having otherness, is always present, but we [are present to the One] when we have no [otherness]. That One, further, does not desire us, so as to be around us, but we [desire] that, so that we [can be] around him.32

Plotinus describes the limit of otherness implied by bodies, where one body can block contact with another. Transcendence within this corporeal model is inevitably looked at in terms of distance, with intervening bodies only serving to block off contact with the presumed transcendent object. Thus, if the One were transcendent by being, as it were, located spatially outside the sensible cosmos, such transcendence would make the One totally other and unreachable. Such is not Plotinus’s notion of transcendence. Transcendence does not imply that the One is distant from anything, but rather that the One is completely omnipresent. If the One were not present to some existing thing, such a thing would cease to exist. The One is uniquely not blocked off from anything. We are blocked off when we are so focused on the object at hand that we cannot see more than it. We recognize this when someone near us is cut off from others by being absorbed in some object or activity, but for Plotinus this limited focus only points to the great danger of being so lost in our own otherness that we forget both the One and ourselves. The remainder of the treatise (VI.9[9].9–11) is very reminiscent of the last part of I.6[1], a prolonged meditation on how the soul goes about approaching the One by overcoming the divisive isolation of its own otherness. The circumstances of the soul’s closeness to the One are emphasized in three ways: the part it has in the choral dance, the life it shares with intellect, and the love that is at the root of its search for 32. VI.9[9].8, 29–36: σώμασι μὲν γὰρ σώματα κωλύεται κοινωνεῖν ἀλλήλοις, τὰ δὲ ἀσώματα σώμασιν οὐ διείργεται· οὐδ’ ἀφέστηκε τοίνυν ἀλλήλων τόπῳ, ἑτερότητι δὲ καὶ διαφορᾷ· ὅταν οὖν ἡ ἑτερότης μὴ παρῇ, ἀλλήλοις τὰ μὴ ἕτερα πάρεστιν. ἐκεῖνο μὲν οὖν μὴ ἔχον ἑτερότητα ἀεὶ πάρεστιν, ἡμεῖς δ’ ὅταν μὴ ἔχωμεν· κἀκεῖνο μὲν ἡμῶν οὐκ ἐφίεται, ὥστε περὶ ἡμᾶς εἶναι, ἡμεῖς δὲ ἐκείνου, ὥστε ἡμεῖς περὶ ἐκεῖνο.

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the One. The dance emphasizes the soul’s constant contact with the One from whom it is never cut off, but shows how the soul can lapse and not look at the choreographer around whom it is moving. The life of intellect features all those movements of the soul that bring it toward an awareness of its own identity, its beauty and virtue, and consequently its closeness to the One. Plotinus develops the aspect of love by looking more deeply at Plato’s Symposium and the account of the heavenly and earthly Aphrodite.33 He begins with a bold statement of the authentic love the soul has for the One simply because of its nature. “For since that [soul] is other than God, but comes from him, it loves him necessarily.”34 The two versions of Aphrodite are then introduced to indicate the two directions in which the soul can move, toward what is most true and noble or what is most deceiving and shameful. This doubling in the soul returns us to the early chapters of I.6[1], where the soul’s alienation is described in terms of the contrary movements that characterize the embodied soul. These contrary movements manifest the doubling of the soul that recurs throughout Plotinus’s discussion of the soul and its approach to its objects and, ultimately, the One. The soul oscillates between identification with its object and allowing itself to reemerge from that kind of reverie (VI.9[9].10). In the present treatise, he has taken great pains to spell out the totality of its union with the One, where otherness and difference disappear, and the soul has transcended even the intellectual difference between subject and object. “For even here when [the centers] come together they are one, but two when separate. This is also the way we now speak [of the One as] other. For this reason the vision is very hard to 33. This illustrates the point of Schroeder 1998, that Plotinus examines in holistic fashion the different speeches of Plato’s Symposium, in this instance retrieving that of Pausanias. 34. VI.9[9].9, 26–27: ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἕτερον θεοῦ ἐκείνη, ἐξ ἐκείνου δέ, ἐρᾷ αὐτοῦ ἐξανάγκης.

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explain. For how could anyone report [the One] as other, not seeing [the One] there, whenever he saw, as other, but as one with himself?”35 To understand this kind of experience, one needs to look not to rational discourse but to analogies in the arts, whether they be the plastic arts, music, or literature, where beauty is able to lift the soul out of its rational isolation and urge it toward a union with the object.36 Anything where the sense of time and separation seem suspended is apt for illustrating this experience of the soul. In it, the subject is so absorbed in the object of contemplation that the distinction between the two is momentarily overcome. Plotinus himself, as he did in I.6[1], appeals to taking part in religious mysteries and entering sacred precincts in order to give some ready content to that encounter with the One that all these things point to and depend on. His point, therefore, is not to introduce the esoteric, but rather something common to human experience, still present despite the transformations wrought by a more secular worldview. Unity and otherness are thus in dialectical tension in this short treatise. The center of this tension is the soul, for the soul is constituted by unity and otherness. Otherness allows it to exist, to be something, to be different from the One, from intellect, from other souls, from sensible objects. If it were only other, however, it would have the same character as matter, namely, mere possibility. Otherness is constantly circumscribed by unity, luring it back toward the One and giving it the actuality of being what it is. Unity gives it beauty and life, allows it to shape the sensible world and the things in it, and brings it to know and love itself, that center of unity 35. VI.9[9].10, 18–21: καὶ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα συνελθόντα ἕν ἐστι, τό τε δύο, ὅταν χωρίς. οὕτω καὶ ἡμεῖς νῦν λέγομεν ἕτερον. διὸ καὶ δύσφραστον τὸ θέαμα· πῶς γὰρ ἂν ἀπαγγείλειέ τις ὡς ἕτερον οὐκ ἰδὼν ἐκεῖ ὅτε ἐθεᾶτο ἕτερον, ἀλλὰ ἓν πρὸς ἑαυτόν. 36. See my article, Gurtler 1989, esp. 278–79 and 282, which gives, so to speak, a phenomenological description of our interaction with an object of art.

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wherein it touches the One. The interplay of otherness and unity constitutes the categories of the intelligible world, the being, otherness, sameness, motion, and rest of Plato’s Sophist. Otherness, as we shall see in chapters 3 and 4, is identified with motion and, ultimately, matter. The movement of return to the One constitutes sameness and rest when a thing comes to its own unity and identity and is most like the One. For Plotinus, then, unity is much more than a category of being, but is rather that power of the One that allows for the categories of being by making the initial movement from the One an otherness completed by sameness, and not the empty otherness of matter.

Conclusion Plotinus’s discussion of unity in VI.9[9] continues his development beyond the classical Greek notion of form as limit in I.6[1]. Form is what a thing is, the definition or essence that makes each thing different from all others. Unity, however, does not function like form at all. It does not define what a thing is, but attempts to integrate three different ideas: that unity that makes each thing to be particularly itself, that unity by which all things are connected with one another, and that unity that makes each of them like the One. Plotinus is forced to invent new analogies and images to cover these divergent tasks, illustrating his method of starting with experience and using it with imaginative skill to explain his ideas. In VI.9[9], he uses both the idea of a common center and of the self in an attempt to shade in this elusive sense of the relation between the One as cause of all things and those things as being different from the One by their otherness and yet like it by their unity. While he finds hints of this in the language of Plato, especially in the Republic, and in the One of Parmenides, his un-

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derstanding depends on assumptions quite contrary to those of earlier Greek philosophers. Already in relation to I.6[1], we have seen that he has an understanding of form that introduces an infinity different from pure possibility, identified with matter in classical Greek thought. The infinity of form, as not cut off from other forms while still retaining its own integrity, is only a step in understanding the radical infinity of the One as beyond form completely. This infinity seems closer in definition and in experience to the negative infinity of matter itself; its mirror image, as it were. Plotinus sees them both as completely formless, but matter is formless by its utter lack of form while the One is formless by a fullness that goes beyond form and is in fact its cause. Already in these early treatises he has begun to work these ideas out in rather complete fashion, and consciously so. In VI.9[9], he recognizes that his account of the One does not occur in earlier thinkers, and admits the innovation of positing a principle beyond form, with the complications involved in talking about such a principle and in experiencing it. In the next treatise, V.1[10], he becomes somewhat defensive, using the foreshadowings of his position in his predecessors to bolster his argument. The reason for this change is simple to detect. Plotinus is speculating no longer simply about the One, but about soul and intellect as well, areas that in principle earlier philosophers have covered already.

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Forgetting the Self

2

"

Forgetting the Self On the Three Primary Hypostases (V.1[10]) This short treatise presents new dimensions in alienation, beginning with the soul’s forgetfulness and ignorance. Alienation is thus developed in terms of different kinds of human awareness, filling out the more ontological categories dominant in VI.9[9] and the aesthetic interest of I.6[1]. In addition, Plotinus sets forth two complementary approaches to the soul’s situation, one by which it identifies with the world soul (V.1[10].2), leading directly to the three hypostases— soul, intellect, and the One (3–7)—and the other in which the individual soul is parsed to indicate how its own higher parts connect it inwardly with these hypostases (10–12). Thus Plotinus distinguishes for the first time the world soul and individual souls from the hypostasis soul, drawing out distinctions implicit in earlier treatises. In the midst of this, Plotinus presents a digression in which he finds traces of these

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hypostases in the Greek philosophical tradition, the natural philosophers, Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle, with pride of place given to Plato (V.1[10].8–9).

World Soul and Hypostasis Soul (V.1[10].1–4) In V.1[10].1, Plotinus depicts the stark results of soul’s alienation, its forgetfulness of God and ignorance of self, explicitly identified as evil. The principle of evil for souls is: first, daring, becoming, primal otherness, and then wanting to belong to themselves. Inasmuch as they appeared as already delighted with their own freedom, used to moving very much on their own, running the opposite way and making the most complete departure, they were even ignorant that they themselves were from there; just as children taken immediately from their parents and raised far away for a long time know neither themselves nor their parents.1

Daring, becoming, and primal otherness relate to themes already present in VI.9[9]. Plotinus maintained there that intellect “dared somehow to depart from the One,”2 distinguished the One from intellect as “not having thinking, so as not to have otherness,”3 and excluded otherness from the One at 8, 29–36, as cited above. There is, however, a marked difference in tone. In VI.9[9], these terms are used of intellect as generated from the One, and there is no hint of the evil and ignorance that dominate V.1[10].1, where the plight of 1. V.1[10].1, 3–11: ἀρχὴ μὲν οὖν αὐταῖς τοῦ κακοῦ ἡ τόλμα καὶ ἡ γένεσις καὶ ἡ πρώτη ἑτερότης καὶ τὸ βουληθῆναι δὲ ἑαυτῶν εἶναι. τῷ δὴ αὐτεξουσίῳ ἐπειδήπερ ἐφάνησαν ἡσθεῖσαι, πολλῷ τῷ κινεῖσθαι παρ’ αὑτῶν κεχρημέναι, τὴν ἐναντίαν δραμοῦσαι καὶ πλείστην ἀπόστασιν πεποιημέναι, ἠγνόησαν καὶ ἑαυτὰς ἐκεῖθεν εἶναι. ὥσπερ παῖδες εὐθὺς ἀποσπασθέντες ἀπὸ πατέρων καὶ πολὺ χρόνον πόρρω τραφέντες ἀγνοοῦσι καὶ ἑαυτοὺς καὶ πατέρας. 2. V.1[10].5, 29: ἀποστῆναι δέ πως τοῦ ἑνὸς τολμήσας. 3. V.1[10].6, 42: οὐδὲ νόησις, ἵνα μὴ ἑτερότης.

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the soul is recounted in graphic terms. The difference is that souls, and he means individual human souls in this context, depart from their own nature among the higher realities in a way markedly different from intellect’s departure from the One. This is indicated in the first three terms, where daring retains the neutrality characteristic of intellect’s daring, but soul’s entry into the world of becoming indicates a further level of multiplicity, associated with body and the primal otherness of matter. This situation provides a kind of freedom in which souls can isolate themselves and run toward what is inferior as if that alone were real and true. It is these secondary movements that actually induce the soul’s forgetfulness and ignorance, which Plotinus proposes to attack in a twofold manner: (1) by demonstrating that the things the soul now honors are unworthy and (2) by presenting the soul’s true nature and real value.

The Status of the Sensible Cosmos Commentators claim that Plotinus seems not to take up (1), the critique of the sensible world promised at V.1[10].1, 26, and focuses instead on (2), the prior task of recounting what is the soul’s own as the best way to extricate it from its alienated state.4 A more careful reading of his comments about this reevaluation of the sensible world, both at V.1[10].2, 44–51, and 7, 47–49, reveals briefly the contents of this critique in the text of V.1[10] itself, thereby shedding light on 4. Atkinson, in Plotinus 1983, 17, notes that several different treatises are cited as possible references: II.4[12], III.4[15] (in Plotinus 1964), VI.4[22], and III.6[26] (in Plotinus 1956). Igal, in Plotinus 1998, 3:22, mentions I.3[20]. All are relatively early treatises and four (except for III.4[15]) are examined in subsequent chapters. They are concerned with the nature of the soul and its relation to matter and the corporeal. While Atkinson takes this multiplicity as evidence that Plotinus has no particular work in mind, it seems instead to indicate that Plotinus returned to this particular theme in a number of ways in his early period. That he might mean other parts of this treatise seems to have escaped notice.

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the structure of the treatise. He states, in the present passage, that once the second task of clarifying the soul’s own nature is done, the critique will be obvious.5 The second task, clarification of the soul’s own nature, begins at V.1[10].2 with his exhortation of the individual soul to identify itself with the world soul in its demiurgic role of bringing life to the dead body of the world or light to the darkness of matter itself, roles that reveal the soul’s power and nature vis-à-vis the sensible world. The final lines of V.1[10].2 then give a brief evaluation of the sensible world in light of the soul’s similarity to the world soul. These lines present a contrast between the derived nature of the bodily and the inherent value of the soul itself. But our soul is also of like form, especially when you inspect it without its additions, grasping it as already purified. You will find the honorable itself, which is soul, even more honorable than all that is in any way bodily. For [the many say:] all [bodies are] earth. But if [someone says all bodies are] fire, what would be the power to kindle it? And [what is the power to generate] so many [bodies] as composites from these [two], especially if you added water and air to them? But if [the cosmos] is pursued because it is ensouled, why does anyone, disregarding himself, pursue that other?6 Admiring the soul in the other, admire yourself.7 5. V.1[10].1, 27: ὃς πρότερός ἐστιν ἐκείνου καὶ σαφηνισθεὶς κἀκεῖνον δηλώσει. 6. A careful reader of an earlier version pointed out that the phrase in ll. 50–51 is masculine, which necessitated a change, but also a thorough reconsideration of the whole passage. Plotinus argues that the elements by themselves are incapable of forming or explaining the cosmos; only soul has this power. In the background, then, is the discussion in the Timaeus of the demiurge in relation to the elements as the foundation for human sensing, with the purpose of seeing the celestial order leading to philosophy (Timaeus 47a–e), the core of what Plotinus finds admirable in the case of each human soul. 7. V.1[10].2, 44–51: ὁμοιοειδὴς δὲ καὶ ἡ ἡμετέρα, καὶ ὅταν ἄνευ τῶν προσελθόντων σκοπῇς λαβὼν κεκαθαρμένην, εὑρήσεις τὸ αὐτὸ τίμιον, ὃ ἦν ψυχή, καὶ τιμιώτερον παντὸς τοῦ ὃ ἂν σωματικὸν ᾖ. γῆ γὰρ πάντα· κἂν πῦρ δὲ ᾖ, τί ἂν εἴη τὸ καῖον αὐτοῦ; καὶ ὅσα ἐκ τούτων σύνθετα, κἂν ὕδωρ αὐτοῖς προσθῇς κἂν ἀέρα. εἰ δ’ ὅτι ἔμψυχον διωκτὸν ἔσται, τί παρείς τις [τι in l. 50 in Plotinus 1964 is correctly τις in Plotinus 1951] ἑαυτὸν ἄλλον διώκει; τὴν δὲ ἐν ἄλλῳ ψυχὴν ἀγάμενος σεαυτὸν ἄγασαι.

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Plotinus is unusually cryptic in this passage, with polemical allusions to early Greek philosophers on primacy among the elements indicated by little more than a word. He begins with earth, not explicitly favored by any of the natural philosophers, but oddly so because, as Aristotle notes, the common opinion is that “everything is earth” (Metaphysics I.8, 989a9–10). Next comes fire, the choice of Heraclitus (Diels-Kranz B 96) and the Stoics, with Plotinus’s objection that it leaves without explanation how fire is cyclically reignited. At this point, he turns to bodies as composites of these two elements which, with water and air added to the mix, yields all the bodies that make up the sensible cosmos. Without stating it explicitly, Plotinus merely poses the question that the processes tracing back to the elements need an external agent, a soul to start a presumed cycle and to mix the elements, all four, to form the cosmos and the bodies within it. For Plotinus this power is traceable to the world soul as sufficient both to generate and mix them.8 The elements by themselves are of no use; even fire, the purest of the elements for Plotinus, has no power without soul. On the contrary, earth, fire, water, and air have value only in the compounds that the presence of soul brings to them, ordering and adorning them to form the cosmos in all its array. Thus, the cosmos is pursued only as ensouled.9 8. Fronterotta, in Plotinus 2003a, 179nn44–46, discusses the sources and purpose in Plotinus’s allusions. Based on the cosmological background in Heraclitus and the Stoics, with fire being alternately extinguished and kindled, he rightly argues against Atkinson, in Plotinus 1983, 44, who substituted “beauty” (τὸ καλόν) for the “kindling power” (τὸ καῖον) in the text. That is to say, Fronterotta recognizes that the cosmological context for understanding the passage is crucial. This passage also foreshadows the discussion in V.1[10].8–9, where Plotinus gives a retrieval of Parmenides and the natural philosophers in the different context of the three hypostases. Finally, at 179n48, Fronterotta notes that the final imperative is phrased precisely to evoke the command of the Delphic oracle: know yourself. 9. Stamatellos 2007, 144–45, points out that, in the discussion of Empedocles’s theory of the four elements in II.4[12].7, Plotinus holds that they must be composites of matter and form, so that they cannot exist, in the terms of the present passage, without the presence of soul as the bearer of form.

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In his conclusion, this work of the world soul finds its analogy in the individual soul, so that one’s soul is equally worthy of pursuit. In its embodied state, this divine status may perhaps be hidden to the human soul, but what hides it is the soul’s attention to the beauty of the cosmos as a whole. Having pursued the ensouled cosmos and admiring its soul, he thus exhorts us not to neglect ourselves as also ensouled. The point of this final comment has proven elusive to translators and commentators, but actually underlines the dominant project of V.1[10].2. It refers first to the world soul, admired as present in the other, the body of the cosmos. It implies secondly that each of us is a soul, also present to body, and so the imperative is twofold: to move from the cosmos (and its soul) and also from our own body, to admire our own soul. The human soul has the same honor and dignity as the cosmic soul, its sister soul. The second evaluation, at V.1[10].7, 47–49, occurs in the context of chapters 3–7, the more radical consideration of the three hypostases (soul, intellect, and the One), leaving the individual soul aside for the moment. He concludes that the hypostasis soul, as the offspring of intellect, united to it completely on one side as its logos, generates on its other side things inferior to soul, “about which it is necessary to speak later.”10 I suggest that V.1[10].10–12 is in fact this later discussion, where the individual soul is once more urged to identify itself with the three hypostases, moving away from the sense world inferior to it to those realities within it, and ending with an explanation of how it is possible for the soul to have forgotten such great realities that are always present to it. 10. V.1[10].7, 48: περὶ ὧν ὕστερον λεκτέον. Atkinson, in Plotinus 1983, 183–84, notes similar confusion on where this discussion might be found, and voices a similar doubt about its determination. In this case, finding the discussion in other parts of V.1[10], here chapters 10–12, takes Plotinus to be cross-referencing within this treatise rather than searching far afield for similar passages. This also helps to bring out the structure of this treatise, which has occasionally eluded scholarly interpretation.

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Soul’s Value and Nature Given this clarification of the structure of the treatise, I return to V.1[10].1, where Plotinus first seeks to justify the possibility of the second task of establishing the soul’s high birth and value. For the soul is what investigates, and it investigates what is necessary for it to know, that it may learn about itself first, if it has the power of investigating such things and if it has such an eye, so as to see, and if it is proper [for it] to investigate. For if the objects were alien, what could it do? But if they are akin, it is both proper and able to find [them].11

This justification is prior because it concerns the soul’s power to investigate and thus the soul’s own nature and ability to find and know the kinds of objects Plotinus posits as akin to the soul. If one does not share Plotinus’s assumptions, this move may perhaps appear as begging the question. We have seen already in VI.9[9], however, that Plotinus regards any knowledge the soul has to be unified in such a way as to indicate the soul’s spiritual or incorporeal nature. On this basis, the objects proposed for investigation here cannot be alien, because unity is the link that establishes the kinship, based on the principle that like is known by like. Plotinus moves in V.1[10].2 to what is closest to the individual soul, the great soul responsible for the whole sensible cosmos: earth, sea, and the heavens, in the cosmology of the day. He shows this soul as pouring life into, adorning, and ordering the elements of this complex cosmos. In a word, it is the world soul that makes the cosmos one despite the spatial separation of the corporeal, because this soul is more essentially one than the cosmos and is present throughout the 11. V.1[10].1, 31–35: τὸ γὰρ ζητοῦν ἐστι ψυχή, καὶ τί ὂν ζητεῖ γνωστέον αὐτῇ, ἵνα αὑτὴν πρότερον μάθῃ, εἰ δύναμιν ἔχει τοῦ τὰ τοιαῦτα ζητεῖν, καὶ εἰ ὄμμα τοιοῦτον ἔχει, οἷον ἰδεῖν, καὶ εἰ προσήκει ζητεῖν. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἀλλότρια, τί δεῖ; εἰ δὲ συγγενῆ, καὶ προσήκει καὶ δύναται εὑρεῖν.

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sensible cosmos to make it one. The description of the world soul and its influence in the cosmos also illustrates Plotinus’s method, using vivid imagery as well as argumentation to express his ideas. His argument is that the world soul and the individual soul are of the same form, and he attempts to persuade the reader of this similarity by inviting the individual to imagine and thereby identify with the work of the world soul. As human knowledge does in its own way reach to the limits of the cosmos, it follows that the human soul has in fact the same extent as the world soul, however different is its mode of operation. With this imaginative grasp of the unity of the sensible cosmos and its source in the world soul, Plotinus is ready to take, as he says in V.1[10].3, 4, the few steps needed to reach the three hypostases of soul, intellect, and the One in V.1[10].3–7. He begins by showing the closeness of soul and intellect, distinguishing the activities of the hypostasis soul, as within intellect and having thought as its own nature, from those inferior activities that come from elsewhere and belong more appropriately to an inferior soul, the world soul of V.1[10].2. This is one of the first instances where Plotinus makes an explicit distinction between soul as hypostasis, at rest in intellect, and the world soul, the demiurgic agent in the generation of the sensible world. Further, soul and intellect differ, but only as other. Intellect then makes soul still more divine both by being its father and by being present to it; for there is nothing between them, except being other, precisely as in succession, the one as recipient and the other as form; beautiful indeed is the matter of intellect which is simple and of intelligible form. As for intellect, it is also clear for this very reason that it is superior to soul that is such as this.12 12. V.1[10].3, 20–25: νοῦς οὖν ἐπὶ μᾶλλον θειοτέραν ποιεῖ καὶ τῷ πατὴρ εἶναι καὶ τῷ παρεῖναι· οὐδὲν γὰρ μεταξὺ ἢ τὸ ἑτέροις εἶναι, ὡς ἐφεξῆς μέντοι καὶ ὡς τὸ δεχόμενον, τὸ δὲ ὡς εἶδος· καλὴ δὲ καὶ ἡ νοῦ ὕλη νοοειδὴς οὖσα καὶ ἁπλῆ. οἷον δὲ ὁ νοῦς, καὶ ταὐτῷ μὲν τούτῳ δῆλον, ὅτι κρεῖττον ψυχῆς τοιᾶσδε οὔσης.

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These lines present a remarkable definition of the hypostasis soul as the matter of intellect. Soul is thus to the intelligible world what absolute matter is to the sensible world, with important differences. Matter, as he said earlier, is dark and nonbeing,13 completely without form, while soul is simple and has intelligible form. Both are recipients for form, the bodily elements and the whole array of the sensible cosmos for absolute matter and the multiplicity of intelligible forms for the hypostasis soul. Thus, while matter is itself sterile, soul is profoundly fecund. From a state of rest in the intelligible come forth the world soul and individual souls, with all the activities that bring this intelligibility to bear at the level of the sensible. In V.1[10].4, intellect receives initial definition as the archetype of soul and the sensible all. Plotinus gives a curious exegesis of the myth of Kronos devouring his children to illustrate the more compact unity of the intelligible world, reversing the spatial and temporal motion and separation of the sensible. In a more philosophical vein, he takes up the genera of Plato’s Sophist, alluded to in VI.9[9], but now explicitly sketched in. The context for this discussion is the identification of intellect and being, the duality that needs a cause other than these two, a further allusion to the role of the Good beyond being in Plato’s Republic, where the Good or the sun is the cause of both being and knowing, or becoming and seeing. For there would be no thinking if there were neither otherness nor sameness. Intellect is then the primary [genera]: being, otherness, and sameness, but it is also necessary to include both motion and rest: first motion, if it thinks, and then rest, that it [think] the same thing. Next, otherness, that there may be thinker and thought. Or else, if you take away otherness, [intellect] will fall silent in being one, and it is also necessary for the objects of thought to be other to one another. Finally, the same, to be one in itself and something 13. V.1[10].2, 26: σκότος ὕλης καὶ μὴ ὄν.

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common in all; and otherness to be the differentia. As these [genera] are many, however, they produce number and quantity; but the individuality of each of these [produces] quality, out of these as principles the rest [are produced].14

His account begins with the nature of thinking as dependent on these Platonic genera for its possibility. This complements the emphasis of VI.9[9].5 on the duality of being as dependent on otherness and sameness. Thinking as an activity implies motion, but rest is then necessary to keep this from being pure flux and to allow thought to have a stable object, a glance at the problem raised by Heraclitus and the pluralists. Otherness parallels motion and has the task of overcoming the silence imposed by Parmenides’s solitary One and also guaranteeing the difference among intellectual objects. Sameness functions in exactly the opposite way, reaffirming the unity of intellect, both in itself and in its objects, not a Parmenidean solipsistic unity but a unity that is a differentiated many. Number and quantity15 describe the sheer multiplicity of the intelligible, but these derivative categories cannot establish that multiplicity; they can only count what is already differentiated by otherness. Individuality, on the contrary, grounds the notion of quality, rooted in the sameness of each being and intellect with itself. Finally, from these few principles, the whole complexity of the intelligible world can be generated. The relation of number and being returns in V.1[10].8, where Plotinus examines the one of Parmenides and its reconfiguration by Plato. 14. V.1[10].4, 33–43: οὐ γὰρ ἂν γένοιτο τὸ νοεῖν ἑτερότητος μὴ οὔσης καὶ ταὐτότητος δέ. γίνεται οὖν τὰ πρῶτα νοῦς, ὄν, ἑτερότης, ταὐτότης· δεῖ δὲ καὶ κίνησιν λαβεῖν καὶ στάσιν. καὶ κίνησιν μέν, εἰ νοεῖ, στάσιν δέ, ἵνα τὸ αὐτό. τὴν δὲ ἑτερότητα, ἵν’ ᾖ νοοῦν καὶ νοούμενον. ἢ ἐὰν ἀφέλῃς τὴν ἑτερότητα, ἓν γενόμενον σιωπήσεται· δεῖ δὲ καὶ τοῖς νοηθεῖσιν ἑτέροις πρὸς ἄλληλα εἶναι. ταὐτὸν δέ, ἐπεὶ ἓν ἑαυτῷ, καὶ κοινὸν δέ τι ἓν πᾶσι· καὶ ἡ διαφορὰ ἑτερότης. ταῦτα δὲ πλείω γενόμενα ἀριθμὸν καὶ τὸ ποσὸν ποιεῖ· καὶ τὸ ποιὸν δὲ ἡ ἑκάστου τούτων ἰδιότης, ἐξ ὧν ὡς ἀρχῶν τἆλλα. 15. V.1[10].4, 41–42: ἀριθμὸν καὶ τὸ ποσόν.

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Intellect and the One (V.1[10].5–7, 10–12) Plotinus takes a brief glance back at the individual soul at the beginning of V.1[10].5, emphasizing soul’s presence in this multiple, intelligible world, unless it wants to depart.16 The context of alienation remains, but the task continues to be the discussion of those realities to which the soul is akin. In V.1[10].5–7, Plotinus once more analyzes the One, but now in relation to intellect. As he has already used otherness, departure, and daring in the more negative context of souls’ movement away from intellect at V.1[10].1, 3, he now employs different terms to discuss intellect and the One. Intellect is indefinite (ἀόριστον) in relation to the One as definer (ὁριστήν, 5, 8). The indefinite takes the place of otherness and is defined as the dyad or substrate17 in which number and form come to be. He assumes the development of intellect as multiple, as number, in relation to the One as simple, prior to the multiple, cause of its being, and maker of number. By describing intellect as the dyad (5, 6–7), he shows that it is initially indefinite, being defined by looking back toward the One. By introducing this seeing, Plotinus indicates the nature of intellect as an activity defined by itself and the One as its source, “for intellection is a sight that sees, and both are one.”18

Intellect and the One Next, in V.1[10].6–7, Plotinus expands this account of intellect as a kind of sight and seeing, again echoing vocabulary used in VI.9[9].3, 10–13, and 10, 1–21, about the soul’s relation to intellect. The problem he takes up makes explicit a puzzle about intellect’s relation to the One. Keeping in mind Plato’s simile of the sun, intellect is the power of sight and an actu16. V.1[10].5, 2: εἰ μὴ ἀποστατεῖν ἐθέλοι. 17. V.1[10].5, 14: ἡ δυὰς τῷ οἷον ὑποκειμένῳ. 18. V.1[10].5, 19: ἔστι γὰρ ἡ νόησις ὅρασις ὁρῶσα ἄμφω τε ἕν.

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al seeing that derives from the One, but cannot actually see the One.19 He asks how it sees and whom it sees, because by its seeing it becomes the intelligible world as the multitude of forms that substitutes for seeing the One. This shifts the focus of attention to the ancient and perennial question of why the One, given that he is as we say he is, produces anything else instead of remaining by himself. Plotinus urges us to seek the answer first by silent prayer: “with the soul we stretch ourselves in prayer to him, being enabled in this way to pray alone to the alone.”20 He continues by using once more the image of a temple, which stands for the intelligible world and the God hidden within it. The end of the quest is to go into this temple and dwell in the presence of the One, but the One himself has no such end. He remains perfectly at rest in himself, at the center. Intellect is, consequently, generated from him not in a temporal sense, but in the sense that the One is the cause. Like the sun, the One radiates what is other, a power for sight that sees by turning back toward the One. Each thing produced by this radiation seeks its prior and by so doing comes to its own perfection. The mode of causality thus includes a productive phase from the source in combination with a returning phase in which it constitutes itself in taking its prior as final cause, as it was for Plato and Aristotle, with each substance repeating the process, until the empty otherness of absolute matter is reached where no further production is possible. Soul and intellect, further, are drawn closer together in 19. While Republic VII, 516b, records that on being dragged out of the cave to the world above, one finally is able to see the sun, not images reflected in things like water, but the sun itself in its proper place in the sky, Phaedo 99d emphasizes the blindness that results from looking at the eclipsed sun. Plotinus uses this divide to make a different point. Intellect is not “blinded” in its looking toward the sun, but rather contact with the One is a seeing that goes beyond sight. 20. V.1[10].6, 10–12: τῇ ψυχῇ ἐκτείνασιν ἑαυτοὺς εἰς εὐχὴν πρὸς ἐκεῖνον, εὔχεσθαι τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον δυναμένους μόνους πρὸς μόνον.

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this account, sharing the same need to look to their prior, both driven by love toward him and separated only by otherness from him. The personal nature of this union between generator and generated is captured in the Greek by the word “alone,” which is masculine plural (μόνοι). Plotinus is not talking of a love between principles as such, source and product, but those principles as most deeply selves, and selves constituted by this relation.21 “Everything yearns for its progenitor and loves this [one], especially when progenitor and progeny would both be alone; but if the progenitor were also the best, it is with him from necessity, so as to be separated only by otherness.”22 This love and yearning for the One alludes to the notion of self already present in VI.9[9] to indicate the relation of soul and the One. The self is rooted not in the subject as knower but goes beyond the distinction of knower and known, subject and object, to that unity which derives from and returns to the One as the cause of all. The One, further, is beyond being and knowing, the very duality that makes intellect secondary and other.

Center, Line, and Circle Finally, the image of line, circle, and center occurs, however obscurely, as Plotinus ends his discussion of the three divine hypostases in V.1[10].7.23 This image illustrates the way in which intellect and soul seek to know the One, echoing VI.9[9].8, 29–36, and 10, 17–21, where the notion of the center 21. This explains why in this passage and others in this chapter the One is referred to on occasion as “him.” In contexts where the personal nature of the relation is to the fore, this appeared the best way to capture Plotinus’s intention. Elsewhere, the One is referred to using “it.” 22. V.1[10].6, 50–53: ποθεῖ δὲ πᾶν τὸ γεννῆσαν καὶ τοῦτο ἀγαπᾷ, καὶ μάλιστα ὅταν ὦσι μόνοι τὸ γεννῆσαν καὶ τὸ γεγεννημένον· ὅταν δὲ καὶ τὸ ἄριστον ᾖ τὸ γεννῆσαν, ἐξ ἀνάγκης σύνεστιν αὐτῷ, ὡς τῇ ἑτερότητι μόνον κεχωρίσθαι. 23. See Plotinus 2015c, 312 and 324–25, on IV.1[4].1 for my discussion of this image in different contexts.

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was used to describe this unusual relationship, given the nature of the first principle as beyond form and being. By identifying with the circular motion of intellect, the soul is also able to approach the One as the object of its desire. With his minimalist wording, Plotinus is nonetheless alluding to the image of the charioteer and the two horses of the Phaedrus, following the heavenly circuit that allows the soul a glimpse of really existing being,24 with the changes in perspective that come with Plotinus’s own more precise distinction between intellect as being and the One as beyond being. In this context, the straight motion that represents sensation indicates a falling out of this orbit into the corporeal embrace of the sensible world, what is inferior to the soul, with the second allusion to a critique of the soul’s alienated state in the sensible world that Plotinus promises to speak about later (V.1[10].7, 48). If this second critique is found in V.1[10].10– 12, as I suggested above, Plotinus begins by summarizing the position he has attempted to establish in V.1[10].5–7. We ought to think, he says, that the One is beyond being,25 with being and intellect next in succession,26 and the nature of soul third.27 He turns then to show that just as they are in nature, so it is necessary to think they are in ourselves as well, with a cryptic explanation of what this means. I do not mean [that the three are in us as] sensible things—for these [three] are separate—but [that they are] upon [us insofar as we are] outside sensible things, and in the same way that “outside” [is said] of those [three] as outside the whole heaven; thus they also belong to man, the interior man as Plato says. In this way, our soul 24. Phaedrus 247c7: οὐσία ὄντως οὖσα. 25. V.1[10].10, 2: τὸ ἐπέκεινα ὄντος. 26. V.1[10].10, 3–4: ἐφεξῆς τὸ ὄν καὶ νοῦς. 27. V.1[10].10, 4: τρίτη δὲ ἡ τῆς ψυχῆς φύσις. Only after arguing from what we are as soul, with its ascent to Intellect and finally to the One does Plotinus then give the reverse description of the descending order, from the simplicity of the One to the duality of the intellect and the multiplicity of soul in the sensible cosmos.

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is also something divine and of the other nature, the same sort as the whole nature of soul, even the perfect [soul] having intellect.28

Plotinus argues first that the three hypostases are related to each of us as they are to the whole sensible cosmos, as separate from and outside of the sensible. Plotinus emphasizes the independence of the hypostases in their being separate and outside, because the lower sensible realm cannot exist without them, but they are in no way dependent on the lower. In the case of man, however, the imagery is switched around, with the outer man among sensible things but the inner man open to the three hypostases. Thus, in relation to the human soul, this means that these hypostases are inside, or rather that the soul is inside them, especially as having intellect. Plotinus then articulates the two modes of intellect’s presence to the soul, as actually reasoning or as having the capacity to reason.29 The part of the soul that is actually reasoning needs no bodily organ and so can safely be said to be separate and not mixed with body, but located in the first intelligible world. This is the part he wants us to identify with in separating ourselves from the sense world, and he adds a clarification that “outside” does not refer to place, as this is not a spatial separation from the sensible, but a recovery by the soul of its own nature in the intelligible. But the exhortation to separate [ourselves] is not said spatially— this part [of the soul] is naturally separated—but [is said] in our not inclining nor having images but precisely in our alienation from 28. V.1[10].10, 7–13: λέγω δὲ οὐκ ἐν τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς—χωριστὰ γὰρ ταῦτα—ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς αἰσθητῶν ἔξω, καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον τὸ “ἔξω” ὥσπερ κἀκεῖνα τοῦ παντὸς οὐρανοῦ ἔξω· οὕτω καὶ τὰ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, οἷον λέγει Πλάτων τὸν εἴσω ἄνθρωπον. ἔστι τοίνυν καὶ ἡ ἡμετέρα ψυχὴ θεῖόν τι καὶ φύσεως ἄλλης, ὁποία πᾶσα ἡ ψυχῆς φύσις· τελεία δὲ ἡ νοῦν ἔχουσα. Atkinson, in Plotinus 1983, 216, argues that if the ἐπὶ τοῖς αἰσθητῶν is changed to ἐπὶ τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς the sense of Plotinus’s distinction becomes clear. Given Plotinus’s elliptical phrasing in this passage, it seems more appropriate to keep the phrase as it is in the text. 29. V.1[10].10, 13–15: νοῦς δὲ ὁ μὲν λογιζόμενος, ὁ δὲ λογίζεσθαι παρέχων.

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the body, granting there were a way that someone could make the remaining form of soul ascend and could bring along upward that part of soul set fast here below, which alone is the demiurge and fashioner of body and has dealings with regard to this [cosmos].30

It is significant that alienation in this passage has the obverse meaning of taking the body as alien to the soul, but even in this context body is not itself singled out as evil. The presence of soul in body, as demiurge and fashioner, is a radiation that belongs rightly to the work of soul, and thus something it would be good to bring back up as the soul ascends. If this is impossible, it is not so much a critique of body as evil, but that anything sensible is too multiple to be carried up except in the form of the soul’s own proper activity of knowing. Finally, he finds that as discursive reasoning has its source in a reason that is not discursive, so there must “be the principle, cause, and God of intellect.”31 Plotinus returns to the image of the circle and its center to indicate the affinity of soul and intellect with the One. The notion of self, moreover, receives striking confirmation in this section, where Plotinus describes the abiding of the One, which is contemplated by all who come after. “He is contemplated by each one who is able to receive him as another self, just as the center is by itself, but each of the [lines] has its point in it and the lines bring what is their own to it.”32 The self is that center of unity that makes us most like the One, and from which comes the manifold activities that allow the self to navigate in the intelligible and sensible worlds as it seeks the One. This notion of self is 30. V.1[10].10, 24–31: καί ἡ παρακέλευσις δὲ τοῦ χωρίζειν οὐ τόπῳ λέγεται—τοῦτο γὰρ φύσει κεχωρισμένον ἐστίν—ἀλλὰ τῇ μὴ νεύσει καὶ ταῖς ‹μὴ› φαντασίαις και τῇ ἀλλοτριότητι τῇ πρὸς τὸ σῶμα, εἴ πως καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν ψυχῆς εἶδος ἀναγάγοι τις καὶ συνενέγκαι πρὸς τὸ ἄνω καὶ τὸ ἐνταῦθα αὐτῆς ἱδρυμένον, ὃ μόνον ἐστὶ σώματος δημιουργὸν καὶ πλαστικὸν καὶ τὴν πραγματείαν περὶ τοῦτο ἔχον. 31. V.1[10].11, 8: εἶναι δὲ καὶ τὴν νοῦ ἀρχὴν καὶ αἰτίαν καὶ θεόν. 32. V.1[10].11, 10–13: θεωρεῖσθαι καθ’ ἕκαστον τῶν δυναμένων δέχεσθαι οἷον ἄλλον αὐτόν, ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ κέντρον ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ ἐστιν, ἔχει δὲ καὶ ἕκαστον τῶν ἐν τῷ κύκλῳ σημεῖον ἐν αὐτῷ, καὶ αἱ γραμμαὶ τὸ ἴδιον προσφέρουσι πρὸς τοῦτο.

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quite different from anything like a Cartesian thinking substance, a Kantian member of a kingdom of ends or center of consciousness, although aspects of those notions may indeed have derivative analogies in Plotinus’s account of the soul. His account of the self needs to be understood in terms of the two ascents of the soul that form the core of this treatise and define the nature of the soul, giving those features of the self a much different locus of importance and value. The first ascent, which he describes in V.1[10].2, is an imaginative identification with the world soul in its demiurgic activity. What is crucial for Plotinus is that the sensible world is constituted neither in thought nor in consciousness, but by the soul in cooperation with other souls in an outward, generative movement. Similarly, the second ascent in V.1[10].3–7, which is specifically described as an inner ascent of the soul, reaches first the intelligible world of forms, not all that different from Kant’s kingdom of ends, except that it is not rational in the discursive sense of the term nor reason abstractly defined, but is that being and knowing that constitutes itself in turning toward the One and then touching the One in a union of selves. The center of the self, therefore, is reached in touching or seeing the One, moving beyond the distinction of subject and object. The self is because it comes from the One and returns to him. On the basis of this radical relationship, it is able to relate to itself and to others, whether as beings together in the intelligible world or as embodied in the sensible cosmos. The self is thus not defined by its content or its activities, but by its relationships. The modern emphasis on defining the self in terms of the contents of thought, consciousness, understanding, or memory is radically incomplete from Plotinus’s point of view, leaving out the unity that makes all of these states possible. Next, Plotinus shifts (in V.1[10].12, 1–3) from indicating the soul’s natural divinity to consider why we lack awareness

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(οὐκ ἀντιλαμβανόμεθα) of these great possessions and do not generally exercise (ἀργοῦμεν) these activities, with some not exercising them at all (οὐδ’ ὅλως ἐνεργοῦσιν). This returns to the initial description of the soul’s forgetfulness and ignorance, the principle of evil with which Plotinus begins the treatise. Only now does Plotinus offer an explanation of how this evil is possible by differentiating the parts of the soul and giving a precise account of what is needed for us to be aware of all the soul’s activities. For not all that is in soul is already sensed, but it comes to us whenever it enters into sensation; but whenever each power is exercised, by not transmitting to the sensible power, it has not yet come through the whole soul. We then do not yet recognize it insofar as we are with the sensible part and are not a part of the soul but the whole soul. And further each part of the soul, as always alive, is always exercising its own power by itself; but recognizing [this comes] whenever this transmission and awareness occur.33

The empirical self is the center of our awareness, because the soul functions as a whole even when it is with the body. This means that powers and their activities may well be within us, but we are not conscious of them until they reach the sensing part of the soul. To be aware of the higher powers of the soul and their activities, then, it is necessary “to turn the power of awareness toward the inside and have it put its attention there.”34 This second discussion of the critique of the soul’s involvement with the sensible is quite helpful for understanding Plotinus’s position. He explains the soul’s forgetfulness 33. V.1[10].12, 6–12: οὐ γὰρ πᾶν, ὃ ἐν ψυχῇ, ἤδη αἰσθητόν, ἀλλὰ ἔρχεται εἰς ἡμᾶς, ὅταν εἰς αἴσθησιν ἴῃ· ὅταν δὲ ἐνεργοῦν ἕκαστον μὴ μεταδιδῷ τῷ αἰσθανομένῳ, οὔπω δι’ ὅλης ψυχῆς ἐλήλυθεν. οὔπω οὖν γιγνώσκομεν ἅτε μετὰ τοῦ αἰσθητικοῦ ὄντες καὶ οὐ μόριον ψυχῆς ἀλλ’ ἡ ἅπασα ψυχὴ ὄντες. καὶ ἔτι ἕκαστον τῶν ψυχικῶν ζῶν ἀεὶ ἐνεργεῖ ἀεὶ καθ’ αὑτοῦ τὸ αὑτοῦ· τὸ δὲ γνωρίζειν, ὅταν μετάδοσις γένηται καὶ ἀντίληψις. 34. V.1[10].12, 14–15: τὸ ἀντιλαμβανόμενον εἰς τὸ εἴσω ἐπιστρέφειν, κἀκεῖ ποιεῖν τὴν προσοχὴν ἔχειν.

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and evil not by imputing these disorders to the body and the sensible cosmos, but by developing a rather sophisticated account of human consciousness, including for the first time in Greek thought an articulation of the unconscious. While the soul’s presence in the body is the occasion for this new form of awareness, it is nonetheless the soul itself that is turning its attention in the wrong direction and thus blocking its awareness of its own interior powers.35 It is also clear that he does not see the soul’s presence in the body as wrong, but rather that the soul needs to recognize that the part that senses and the part that thinks are both necessary for its proper comportment, as the soul is whole and not merely one of its parts. Plotinus ends with a final plea that the soul make itself quiet and remove itself from external distraction to be open, as he says, “to hear voices from on high.”36

Conclusion: Retrieval of the Philosophical Tradition (V.1[10].8–9) The self and the center represent a convergence of imagery in VI.9[9] and V.1[10] that points to Plotinus’s continuing effort to articulate the One as an ultimate principle beyond form and being, and thus beyond what can be found explicitly in the Greek philosophical tradition before him. It is clear throughout the text, however, that Plotinus is constantly alluding to the works of his predecessors, as noted in passing. Here in V.1[10].8–9, he explicitly attempts to find the roots of the three hypostases in Plato, with additional consideration of Parmenides, the natural philosophers, and Aristotle. It is 35. Gurtler 1988a, 148–50, discusses V.1[10].12 with attention to the development in Plotinus of various levels of consciousness, including the unconscious, highlighted here with reference to sense perception on the one hand and the higher intelligible parts of the soul on the other. 36. V.1[10].12, 20–21: ἕτοιμον ἀκούειν φθόγγων τῶν ἄνω.

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worth noting that Plotinus’s citations and allusions to the Presocratics have not been taken seriously by either Presocratic or Plotinian scholars, even when Plotinus is the earliest source for a fragment.37 My comments will take this criticism into account and may also serve as an incentive to investigate the argument of Plotinus more fully. I will focus particularly on citations of Parmenides and Plato to illustrate his care with his sources and his own independence as a thinker. The digression begins at V.1[10].8, 1–15, with a rapid catalogue of phrases from Plato’s Epistles II and VI, the Timaeus, the Phaedo, and the Republic that show the One as the first principle beyond being; intellect as the second principle, identified with being and form in relation to the One but also identified with the demiurge as cause in relation to soul; and soul as the third principle and lesser image of intellect. These opening comments conclude with a statement of his purpose. He refers to these texts of Plato to show that his own position is not new, but was known from ancient times, and makes the further claim that his interpretation of the Platonic texts only serves to make their meaning explicit. At this point, he introduces Parmenides, who has a special place among these ancient witnesses, reaffirming the reverential attitude of Plato himself. References to Parmenides occur consistently throughout the Enneads. There are fourteen allusions to fragment 3 alone, of which Plotinus is one of the earliest witnesses. Four of these are direct citations,38 giving the text of Parmenides’s fragment 3, τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι, as established by current scholarship. Among these, V.1[10].8, 14–22, is cen37. Stamatellos 2007, 65–80, notes this neglect, indicating that it includes both philosophers and classicists. In this section and later in chapter 3 on II.4[12], I follow his lead in giving a more nuanced and accurate account of Plotinus’s retrieval of the Presocratics. His text presents a systematic study of Plotinus’s allusions to and comments about these philosophers. 38. V.9[5].5, 26–32; V.1[10].8, 14–22; III.8[30].8, 6–8; I.4[46].10, 5–6.

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tral for determining his accuracy as a source for the text and as an interpreter of what it means. First Parmenides, prior to Plato, also touched on such an opinion insofar as he brought together being and thinking, and did not place being among sensibles, saying “for the same thing is for thinking and for being.” And then he says it is “unmoved”—even though adding thinking—excluding all bodily motion from it, so that it may remain ever the same, comparing it to a sphere in mass, so that it has all things gathered around and so that thinking is not outside, but in itself. But though he says in his own writings that it is one, he can still be accused of having this one found as many.39

Careful examination of this passage indicates that Plotinus is precise both in understanding what Parmenides means and in quoting what he actually wrote. Two imperfect verbs introduce the text, ἥπτετο and συνῆγεν (8, 14; 15), indicating first that Parmenides has not come to the full expression that Plato provides by introducing the forms and second that thinking and being are only “brought together” or “connected,” the understanding of the phrase found in Clement rather than in Proclus, where they are identified with one another more completely. In addition, Plotinus cites the phrase exactly, keeping the γάρ, which is not grammatically necessary in this context and suggests that he had access to more of Parmenides’s text than he quotes and was also aware of the poem’s meter. In the second part of the passage, marked by δὲ in line 18, Plotinus offers a critique of Parmenides for excluding motion from being and for his inconsistency in referring to it as one. Despite these criticisms, however, Plotinus takes Parmenides quite seriously as a source for his own 39. V.1[10].8, 14–23: ἥπτετο μὲν οὖν καὶ Παρμενίδης πρότερον τῆς τοιαύτης δόξης καθόσον εἰς ταὐτὸ συνῆγεν ὂν καὶ νοῦν, καὶ τὸ ὂν οὐκ ἐν τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς ἐτίθετο “τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστί τε καὶ εἶναι” λέγων. καὶ ἀκίνητον δὲ λέγει τοῦτο—καίτοι προστιθεὶς τὸ νοεῖν—σωματικὴν πᾶσαν κίνησιν ἐξαίρων ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ, ἵνα μένῃ ὡσαύτως, καὶ ὄγκῳ σφαίρας ἀπεικάζων, ὅτι πάντα ἔχει περιειλημμένα καὶ ὅτι τὸ νοεῖν οὐκ ἔξω, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἑαυτῷ. ἓν δὲ λέγων ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ συγγράμμασιν αἰτίαν εἶχεν ὡς τοῦ ἑνὸς τούτου πολλὰ εὑρισκομένου.

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ideas, and examining his brief comments in more detail yields a surprisingly more positive appreciation than scholars have suspected.40 The importance of Parmenides has a long history in Greek philosophy, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, who already found him an inspiration for their own philosophical ideas. With them, Plotinus first notes that Parmenides, unlike many of the natural philosophers, distinguishes being and thinking from sensible objects and perception, the point that leads him to quote fragment 3. When he qualifies Parmenides’s opinion as having “touched on” and “brought together” being and thinking, he is also indicating that he regards Plato as perfecting Parmenides’s insight by introducing the forms as both the proper objects of thinking and as beings in a stricter sense. Thus, Parmenides’s thesis begins the path that comes to fruition in the Platonic position even if it has not quite arrived at Plato’s clarity of expression. The second part of the passage lists a number of issues from other parts of Parmenides’s work that Plotinus finds fruitful in the development of Plato’s ideas as well as his own. The first issue is Parmenides’s claim that being is unmoved. This is correct as excluding all bodily motion from being and as connecting thinking and being, but Plotinus notes that this does not fit with the claim that being is unmoved. This criticism, as both VI.9[9] and V.1[10] have made clear, is based on Plotinus’s reading of Plato’s Sophist, which recognizes that some kind of motion is necessary in being if thought is to take place at all. The genera of the Sophist combine the rest of Parmenides with the motion of the pluralists and the sameness of Parmenides with their otherness. By reshuffling the 40. Stamatellos 2007, 70–72, establishes that Plotinus is both more positive and more accurate, in a twofold way, by a careful examination of his words, noting the imperfect verbs, for example, and by comparing his text with parallels in both Clement and Proclus.

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terms in this way, Plato allows for the possibility of discourse in a way that neither position could do on its own, given the silence imposed by Parmenides and the radical instability of the pluralistic flux and any knowledge of it. Plotinus, as did Aristotle before him, saw the wisdom in this attempt to reconcile the pluralism of the majority of the natural philosophers with the monism of Parmenides. When he mentions that Parmenides likens the sameness in being to a sphere in mass, his evaluation is actually fairly positive. This image attempts to show that being holds all things in its circumference, or together, as Plotinus prefers to say, and indicates further that its thinking is not external, but within itself, another Plotinian note for being as identical with intellect. The image, further, is not taken as if Parmenides had in mind a corporeal sphere, but his language is attempting to speak of the indivisibility and timelessness of being.41 Plotinus’s correction, or adaptation, of the image can be seen in his use of the center and circumference to refer to the relation of soul and intellect to the One here in V.1[10] and in VI.9[9], where there is no reference to a sphere or its mass, although it is still necessary for us to excise any sense of spatiality in this image of the circle and its center. The last comment concerns Parmenides’s inconsistency in calling this being one, as he has actually described something that is many, at least the minimal duality of being and knowing. Plotinus indicates that Plato has improved on Parmenides by indicating the plurality of being or intellect in terms of the forms and by indicating, in the citations at the beginning of V.1[10].8, that the One is beyond being and knowing. Plotinus’s debt to Parmenides, however, is obvious even here, as he uses Parmenides’s term to name his own ultimate principle. The review of past philosophers in V.1[10].8–9 has deep 41. Compare with Stamatellos 2007, 107–8, for this insight into Plotinus’s purpose.

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roots in Greek philosophy, familiar from the works of Plato and Aristotle and the later doxographical tradition, but it is also important to see why and how Plotinus engages in a similar retrieval. One reason for this is that scholars have questioned whether Plotinus is accurate in citing his sources and whether he takes them seriously, especially the Presocratics, given his criticism of their limitations and the brevity of his allusions. Plotinus is accused, for example, of having a dismissive attitude toward the Presocratics and Parmenides, claiming that he thinks they are wrong, confused, or obscure, especially when comparing Parmenides with the Platonic Parmenides in the next text cited (8, 24–27).42 A more careful reading of Plotinus’s actual words as well as attention to his purpose, however, indicate that this criticism is off the mark. He states only that Plato’s Parmenides speaks more accurately (ἀκριβέστερον λέγων, 8, 25) in distinguishing the first “One” (τὸ πρῶτον ἕν), the second “one-many” (ἕν πολλά), and the third “one and many” (ἕν καὶ πολλά). Plotinus is not saying that Parmenides is wrong or confused, but that Plato’s distinctions are more precise. Implicit in this discussion, moreover, is Plotinus’s conviction that Parmenides is indeed the most direct source of Plato’s position. Further, the confusion and obscurity attributed to the Presocratics is no more severe than similar charges he often levels against Plato himself, and indicates that these philosophers attempted to reach the truth and encourage their readers to do the same precisely by not giving them all the answers.43 This sensitivity to what he actually says about the early philosophers has been sorely lacking in current evaluations of Plotinus’s references to his Presocratic sources. Nonetheless, part of Plotinus’s agenda is to defend an authen42. See Armstrong, in Plotinus 1987, 52–43n. 43. Stamatellos 2007, 77–78, notes this as a common method among ancient philosophers.

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tic understanding of the ancient and Platonic traditions from its misuse, especially among the Gnostics. In the case of Plato, finally, although Plotinus is concerned to show that he is only interpreting what is not explicit in the Platonic text, he is also ready to indicate where his own position differs from Plato’s. Thus, the “One,” “one-many,” and “one and many” of the Parmenides parallel Plotinus’s account of the One, intellect, and soul. This is by no means a hypostasizing of the Parmenides, but rather a locus where Plotinus finds distinctions and terms that he can put to use in his very different, ontological program, much as Plato did before him with Parmenides and the natural philosophers. Indeed, the early treatises examined so far contain many indications that Plotinus is scrupulous in distinguishing his sources from his own ideas and distinctions, which at times are scarcely implicit in the original. The present text, in sum, provides a rare look into Plotinus’s method and self-understanding as a philosopher. We can note his desire to see his continuity with the tradition of Greek philosophy, even when he recognizes that his own thought diverges from his predecessors. We have, for example, seen that Plotinus’s development of the One goes beyond the classical notion of form and being to establish a first principle that is clearly understood as simple and singular. The development of intellect, similarly, derives from the Platonic discussion of the world of forms and particularly the account of being in the Sophist, especially as cross-fertilized by the middle Platonists with Aristotle’s self-thinking thought.44 In these areas, Plotinus shows his mastery of the tradition and his ability to think through the implications of immateriality so as to make the nature of the One as first principle coherent and relate 44. The contrast with Aristotle helps to pinpoint what is important for Plotinus. He finds Aristotle’s substitution of the series of unmoved movers for Plato’s world of forms probable where it conforms to his notion of the immaterial, but questions even that probability when it is shown not to provide the requisite unity for the sensible cosmos.

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it clearly to intellect as a secondary principle identified with form and being. He does not make as explicit in V.1[10].8–9 the background of the third hypostasis, soul, although there are allusions in other parts of V.1[10] to Plato’s Timaeus, where there are hints of the world soul, as I discussed above in examining V.1[10].2, 44–51. Throughout ancient philosophy, moreover, the nature of soul as the principle of life is commonplace. There is, however, nothing like Plotinus’s hypostasis soul, whose appearance in V.1[10].3, 20–25, as the matter of intellect begs for an explanation. Everything about this soul is elusive. It is, for instance, the matter of intellect in a very precise sense as an outer limit, and not that from which the intelligible forms are generated, which is more intellect itself in its inchoate state. This perhaps echoes Aristotle’s De Anima III.5, 430a10–14, where the human soul is also seen as matter for intelligible forms. Soul is thus parallel to matter as such, the limit of possibility for Plotinus’s system. It is, however, unlike matter because it is alive and fruitful whereas matter is dead: coming from it are the world soul and individual souls, which take its intelligible content and apply it in the generation of the sensible world. As a hypostasis, Plotinus states here that it is the limit of the divine, a position that seems rather empty, merely duplicating the role and nature of intellect. In relation to the souls that come from it, however, its importance begins to emerge. He is seeking to establish a soul that is the source of unity for all souls without giving any soul, or in particular the world soul, a position that makes it essentially different from other souls. Individual souls are not thus aspects or modes of the world soul, which would imply a kind of monopsychism, but species with it of the hypostasis soul. In this way, Plotinus seeks to emphasize the fundamental individuality of each human soul, with the same nature and range of powers as the world soul, however qualified by the narrow limits of its bodily activity.

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Matter as Indefinite and Incorporeal

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Matter as Indefinite and Incorporeal On Matter (II.4[12]) In the two treatises on matter, II.4[12] and III.6[26], we can see Plotinus applying to Plato and Aristotle the principles that he adumbrates in V.1[10].8–9 concerning Plato’s response to Parmenides and the natural philosophers. If Aristotle is indefinite about the nature of prime matter as the substrate and if Plato’s images of the receptacle lack a certain rigor of expression, Plotinus investigates with unrelenting precision the nature of matter as one of the principles of body and the world of becoming. In II.4[12], he subjects Aristotle’s technical vocabulary, matter as substrate and privation, to minute analysis in terms of his premise that any account of matter cannot be consistent unless it demonstrates that matter must be essentially incorporeal and so cannot be some kind of

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body, however vaguely described. In this way, he goes beyond what Aristotle actually wrote to indicate how matter is the condition of possibility for the corporeal without being corporeal itself, and how matter in this specific sense does not function as the principle of individuation, as it does for Aristotle, but as the condition of possibility both for the corporeal distinction of sensible things and for the unity of the sensible cosmos where all these distinct bodies share in a common substrate. In III.6[26], which I will examine later, he performs a similar kind of analysis for the series of images that Plato conjures up to illustrate the nature of matter as the receptacle, mother, and nurse of all becoming, and as the place, seat, and locus of forms. In this instance, Plotinus analyzes Plato’s underlying image of matter as the mirror in which things appear, showing repeatedly with one analogy after another that matter needs to be distinguished from an actual mirror. Matter, though it is like a mirror in allowing things to be reflected, is totally unlike a mirror as it always remains pure possibility and is never something definite. Plotinus’s argument extending over the two treatises has a single goal, demonstrating quite forcefully that Plato and Aristotle can be internally consistent only if they maintain that matter is totally incorporeal, which Plotinus argues is only drawing out the consequences of their positions. One of these consequences is particularly ironic, as it holds that their disagreement, or rather Aristotle’s critique of Plato, is unfounded. Plotinus uses both Aristotelian and Platonic vocabulary to accomplish this convergence of their two positions in a way similar to Plato’s use of terms deriving from Parmenides and the pluralists in constructing a solution to their mutually exclusive accounts of nature. Plotinus’s method, then, synthesizes the ideas of the two philosophers and uses that synthesis to express consequences that they were unable to formulate in

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their own writings. In addition to reworking the highest genera of Plato’s Sophist, Plotinus supplements Aristotle’s notion of act and potency with the principle of two acts, adding to Aristotle’s account of sensible change a more Platonic explanation of how the higher can generate the lower. This move is particularly important for understanding both II.4[12] and III.6[26], although hints of it are already present in earlier treatises, where Plotinus develops the resources of Plato and Aristotle to establish his own new philosophical synthesis, derived very much from them and yet going beyond them in remarkable ways.1

Intelligible Matter as Simple, Eternal, and One (II.4[12].1–5) Plotinus begins, in II.4[12].1, with the identification of matter with the Aristotelian substrate and the receptacle of Plato’s Timaeus.2 His argument is directed against the Stoics, who hold that beings and substance3 are only bodies, so everything in the cosmos is merely an affection of this one corporeal substance. Plotinus’s theory of matter, by contrast, combines the otherness and motion of Plato’s Sophist with Aristotle’s prime matter as substrate. His discussion resumes themes from earlier treatises, especially V.1[10], and specifies the relation between matter and otherness implicit in those contexts. It is stated in neutral, ontological terms, which makes the identification of matter with evil and ugliness devoid of the moral connotations that still linger in the earlier treatises.4 He adds that some of those, like himself, who hold 1. This chapter is a revised and expanded version of Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, 2005, “Plotinus: Matter and Otherness, ‘On Matter’ (II 4[12]),” Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 9, no. 2 (Spring): 197–214. 2. II.4[12].1, 1: ὑποκειμενόν τι καὶ ὑποδοχή. 3. II.4[12].1, 7: τὰ ὄντα . . . καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν. 4. Plotinus also specifies the problem of matter as ugly and evil in III.6[26].11.

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matter to be incorporeal also argue for two kinds of matter, what underlies bodies and what underlies forms as incorporeal substances. It is to this intelligible matter that he first turns his attention in II.4[12].2–5. Plotinus begins with those characteristics of the sensible and intelligible worlds that would seem to argue against intelligible matter by affirming the origin of the term as the explanation for sensible change. This position implies that matter itself is something undefined and shapeless,5 which seems to preclude its presence in the world of forms, where every being is simple6 rather than composite, the opposite of the case with sensible beings, where matter is the component that allows for becoming and change. “Matter is needed both for things that become and for things made from other things, from which indeed the matter of sensible things was [first] thought, but for things that do not become it is not [needed].”7 In this view, the intelligible world does not need matter precisely because things there do not become nor is there change from one thing to another, as all intelligible beings are eternally the same. In addition, this objection continues, if there were composite beings in the intelligible world, this combination of form and matter would yield bodies, as it does in the sensible. All three objections thus assume Aristotelian premises that matter is both the principle of individuation and the explanation for change in the sensible world. He examines the impassibility of matter, indicating the meaning of ugly and evil as precisely without form. Insofar as matter is impervious to form it is ugly and evil, but because it is not completely nonexistent, it simultaneously moves toward form, allowing for the corporeal, and away from form, allowing for the instability that is the evil or ugly among corporeal things, Plato’s errant cause (Timaeus 48a). Matter thus mimics the double movement, outward and return, of everything after the One. 5. II.4[12].2, 2–3: ἀόριστόν τι καὶ ἄμορφον. 6. II.4[12].2, 5: ἁπλοῦν. 7. II.4[12].2, 6–8: καὶ γινομένοις μὲν ὕλης δεῖ καὶ ἐξ ἑτέρων ἕτερα ποιουμένοις, ἀφ’ ὧν καὶ ἡ τῶν αἰσθητῶν ὕλη ἐνοήθη, μὴ γινομένοις δὲ οὔ.

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Plotinus does not hold either of these assumptions and will thus develop an understanding of the role of matter that is at best implicit in the discussions of Plato and Aristotle. His own assumption, already operative in earlier treatises, is based on the absolute simplicity of the One and thus the relative complexity of everything else. Finally, the three objections presented here can be summarized in a triad of notes about the intelligible as simple (2, 5), eternal (2, 10), and not body (2, 12), with the corresponding need to show that intelligible matter has all three characteristics. His counter-argument begins, however, with a complicated sketch (“discussion” seems an overstatement) of how soul relates in two quite distinct ways to matter of two quite different varieties. He begins with soul and its relation to intellect and reason,8 based on the principle that the lower is always shapeless and undefined relative to its higher and reiterating the identification of soul with the matter of intellect in V.1[10].3, 20–25. First, soul remains within the intelligible, so it takes on, as it were, a better form9 in this action of intellect and reason. Second, intellect and reason are singular, expressing the higher level of unity essential to the intelligible. Intellect is form and brings form with it; reason, or perhaps “reason principle,” is the generative cause, producing form in soul as matter. He then concludes that “the composite [appears] differently among intelligible objects, not as bodies.”10 These brief comments seem to mean that the intelligible objects are indeed composite and result from the combination of intellect as form with the hypostasis soul as matter, where these intelligibles manifest the multiplicity of intellect, but do so without losing its intrinsic unity, because soul serves as the common substrate that keeps their individuality from 8. II.4[12].3, 4: πρὸς νοῦν καὶ λόγον. 9. II.4[12].3, 5: εἰς εἶδος βέλτιον. 10. II.4[12].3, 5–6: ἔν τε τοῖς νοητοῖς τὸ σύνθετον ἑτέρως, οὐχ ὡς τὰ σώματα.

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becoming separate. Thus, whereas bodies are separate from one another and opaque in varying degrees, intelligibles in contrast are not separate and so are completely transparent to one another. Soul as substrate, further, does not provide the multiplicity, already latent in intellect, but instead the connection that keeps them all together in the intelligible cosmos.11 So far, then, intelligible matter remains simple and is composite in a noncorporeal way. The argument shifts abruptly to examine reasons and nature as they are actualized toward the production of sensible bodies. These bodies are then examined in terms of their matter, with clear differences from intelligible matter, summed up in a series of conclusions. Since [seminal] reasons are composites, they also make the nature actualizing into form actually composite. But when [nature actualizes] toward one [form] and [departs] from another, it is even more [composite]. The matter of generated things, moreover, is always susceptible of one form after another, while the [matter] of eternal things is always the same and [has] the same [form]. Thus matter [is] easily otherwise here, for here it is all [forms] in turn and only one [form] at a time, therefore no [composite] is permanent, as one [form] pushes out another, and therefore the [composite] is never the same. Intelligible [matter], however, is all [forms] together, therefore there is nothing into which it could turn, for it already has all [forms].12 11. Background from the Sophist may provide some insight, as we saw in V.1[10].4, 33–43, and will see at II.4[12].5, 28–35. Being is multiple in terms of the highest genera, sameness, otherness, motion, and rest. Applying this in the present context allows us to see that intelligibles are already multiple by sharing in motion and otherness; they are not physically distinct, as are bodies, but are distinct nonetheless as parts, so to speak, of the intelligible world. Later, in IV.5[29].7, light as an activity appearing on the surface of an object parallels intellect as the intelligible light that becomes visible in meeting the otherness of soul as not form but as becoming form by the agency of intellect. See my discussion in Plotinus 2015c, 107–11, and esp. 282–83. 12. The ellipses in the argument are extreme, even for Plotinus. Beginning with τάχα δὲ (3, 10), I have changed the punctuation to indicate the continuity of the argument more clearly. Some details: παρὰ μέρος, Liddell-Scott 1958, qv, A II 2,

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The players in this scenario are different and their relation to one another is described more briefly, leaving very few hints for the interpreter. In the previous lines, intellect and reason bring soul to form, producing all the intelligibles together. The two here, reasons and nature, are from the beginning more complex. Reasons, I take it, are equivalent to seminal reasons, not the productive power of the reason just linked with intellect, and nature is the lower soul present in earth, source of the living things that flourish on it in tandem with these seminal reasons.13 These reasons are already composites, immanent in nature as a whole. Nature is described as doubly composite, first because it has all the seminal reasons already in it, and then because those things in it that lose one form in actualizing another are also composite. These are bodies, the living things coming to be through the process of generation and corruption characteristic of the sensible realm, things that go from one form in order to actualize another, each with its own seminal reasons.14 “in turn, by turns”; διό (3, 12–13) is used three times in quick succession to give the conclusions drawn. II.4[12].3, 6–14: ἐπεὶ καὶ λόγοι σύνθετοι καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ δὲ σύνθετον ποιοῦσι τὴν ἐνεργοῦσαν εἰς εἶδος φύσιν. εἰ δὲ καὶ πρὸς ἄλλο καὶ παρ’ ἄλλου, καὶ μᾶλλον. ἡ δὲ τῶν γιγνομένων ὕλη ἀεί ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο εἶδος ἴσχει, τῶν ἀιδίων ἡ αὐτὴ ταὐτὸν ἀεί. τάχα δὲ ἀνάπαλιν ἡ ἐνταῦθα. ἐνταῦθα μὲν γὰρ παρὰ μέρος πάντα καὶ ἓν ἑκάστοτε· διὸ οὐδὲν ἐμμένει ἄλλου ἄλλο ἐξωθοῦντος· διὸ οὐ ταὐτὸν ἀεί. ἐκεῖ δὲ ἅμα πἀντα· διὸ οὐκ ἔχει εἰς ὃ μεταβάλλοι, ἤδη γὰρ ἔχει πάντα. 13. See IV.4[28].11–16 for a discussion of nature and seminal reasons as related to the demiurge as the higher soul. Nature, in contrast to art, has its reasons within it, and these reasons form a unity with nature as one whole, but each living thing comes to be also with its seminal reasons already containing all its parts as well as all its stages, though they emerge differently spatially and temporally. The present text can thus be understood as giving the bare outline of what is elaborated in the later treatise concerning nature and the reasons within it. Reason or the reason principle in the intelligible is not like these seminal reasons. It captures the vertical causality of higher in relation to its lower, whether soul or the sensible cosmos. Seminal reasons by contrast are immanent causes already in nature or particular living things as wholes that unfold in time and space. 14. Igal, in Plotinus, 1982, 1:415nn12–14, identifying “nature” with the lower soul and “reasons” with Stoic seminal reasons, goes on to say that the “other” it is active toward is matter. Dufour, in Plotinus 2003b, 264nn16–17, makes similar identifications,

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At this point, Plotinus turns to the matter of these generated bodies. This matter is always of one thing at a time, the opposite of intelligible matter, which is all the eternal things together. The matter of sensibles entails a serial multiplicity, while intelligible matter supports a multiplicity of eternal things that is always the same. The rest of the passage draws out conclusions about these two different kinds of matter. Matter here is essentially unstable, with two consequences that no form is permanently in it, as another form can displace it, and that any composite is inherently unstable. Intelligible matter, by contrast, has all the forms at once, with the consequence that there is no possibility left for it to change into something else.15 Finally, in contrast to sensible flux (which the matter of the sensible world underlies), intelligible matter, as all things but notes that it is sensible things that are produced. I take it that sensible things are bodies, and not matter as such. 15. The route to this translation of the passage has been long and tortuous. As an indication, I review here a few key phrases, especially at the beginning. The λόγοι (at 3, 6) has been variously identified and seems, as punctuated in the critical text, to be connected with the πρὸς νοῦν καὶ λόγον of the previous section (3, 4). That logos is clearly a higher productive principle assisting in the production of intelligibles (νοητοῖς, 3, 5), which are composite beings, but not in the same way that bodies are composites. Without much indication, Plotinus shifts to the logoi that are related to nature rather than intellect. In Plotinus 1966, 2:111, Armstrong translates it as “forming principles,” which does not demarcate it decisively from that earlier logos. In Plotinus 1982, 1:415, Igal translates it as “las razones mismas,” which also seems to nod in the same direction, but in 415n12 he clearly identifies it with “razones seminales.” It is as if the identification in the note is muted in the translation itself, in a rare display of caution on his part. In Plotinus 2003b, 157, Dufour translates it as “les raisons,” but in 216n17 describes these reasons in great detail, their source in the higher soul and presence in nature, with the example of a grain as illustrating the role of nature as well as the reasons contained within it and its products. My own recent study of passages in IV.4[28].11–16 clarified the work of these seminal reasons as different from the reason principle in intellect. Seminal reasons are not external and higher principles or causes, but immanent causes, present as a whole in nature as well as in particular living things. With this further clarification, the puzzle of the rest of the passage, given its ambiguous references, can be resolved in a way that is closer to the sense of the Greek text as it stands and thus illustrative of Plotinus’s intent in this particular argument.

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at once, is eternally the same. From this, he concludes that matter “there is then never shapeless, since even [matter] here is not, but each of them [has shape] in different ways.”16 Intelligible matter has shape in terms of the beings that are always actualized in it, whereas the matter of the sensible world has shape by means of nature and seminal reasons that generate the multiplicity of bodies in the sensible cosmos, a process already described in V.1[10].2. He begins this passage with soul as what is shapeless and undefined relative to intellect, emphasizing the receptivity of matter, but concludes that matter, whether of the intelligible or sensible world, is in fact always shaped by form, emphasizing in this context its role as substrate. In this way, he first indicates the way in which matter as lower relates to its higher and then the different ways it functions at particular levels of being. The argument concludes, moreover, with diverse consequences for the two kinds of matter, the constant flux of the sensible and the changeless serenity of the intelligible, answering the third objection on its eternal nature. In II.4[12].4–5, Plotinus approaches the issue from the point of view of form rather than matter. He first assumes, for the sake of argument, that there are many forms. Of necessity, this means there is something common (κοινόν, 4, 3) to them as well as something individual (ἴδιον, 4, 4). The unique element is described as shape (μορφή, 4, 5), that form that makes each intelligible being what it is. If there are many forms, different from one another, then there must be something that is shaped, a matter that receives shape, and this is the substrate.17 Plotinus is proposing an original understanding of matter and form, where form appears explicitly 16. II.4[12].3, 14–16: οὐδέποτ’ οὖν ἄμορφος οὔδε ἐκεῖ ἡ ἐκεῖ, ἐπεὶ οὐδ’ ἡ ἐνταῦθα, ἀλλ’ ἓτερον τρόπον ἑκατέρα. See Plotinus 1982, 1:416n15, where Igal refers back to the different ways that form is related to matter in the sensible and intelligible worlds. 17. II.4[12].4, 7: τὸ ὑποκείμενον. See II.5[25].3, 11–12, on soul as matter.

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as the principle of individuality for what it generates, the dual role of intellect and reason as well as of reasons and nature, while matter provides the unity for all forms taken together in its role as the common substrate. This unifying function, applying to both the intelligible and sensible worlds, is central in his analysis of matter throughout the remainder of the treatise and is the basis for the next step in his argument, the parallel between the intelligible cosmos (κόσμος νοητὸς, 4, 8) and its image, the sensible cosmos. Whatever is in the image must be, a fortiori, in the archetype. The argument highlights the something common that all forms share, that they are ordered (κόσμον, 4, 10), and such ordering keeps them from being just individual, in which case there would be no intelligible world at all, only isolated forms. What is common among them, making them a world, is the substrate on which they are imposed. This position seems to intrude parts into the intelligible world, which is “itself wholly and absolutely partless, but in a kind of way parted.”18 The statement is a typical Plotinian paradox. It describes the intelligible based on, but correcting, the sensible. Sensible partition implies real separation, a cutting and tearing apart, while the intelligible is a many which remains nevertheless partless (πολλὰ ὂν ἀμέριστον, 4, 14). Oddly, it is matter that gives unity to this many, an undefined unity that is varied by the imposition of forms, but remains prior to them as shapeless and is none of those that are on and in it. The oddity is that unity, in previous treatises, came exclusively from the One and was mediated by form, so the kind of unity meant here needs careful examination and must also be traceable, ultimately, to the One. It is therefore not surprising that this unity has a different purpose from the unity conveyed by form, examined already in VI.9[9], be18. II.4[12].4, 11–12: ἀμερὲς μὲν γὰρ παντελῶς πάντη αὐτό, μεριστὸν δὲ ὁπωσοῦν.

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cause it gathers together all beings in the intelligible or sensible worlds into a common unity, as all share in the same substrate. Hints of this can be found in V.1[10].4, 42, which also speaks not only of the unity of each being but also of the common unity shared by all of them. Returning to the point made at the end of II.4[12].3, that intelligible matter is never shapeless, Plotinus entertains an objection. Because this matter always has these forms together, they are in fact one and hence there is no intelligible matter. He answers that this rules out the matter of the sensible world as well, which is also never without shape, that of composite body.19 In answering this objection, Plotinus once more examines the three notes that matter needs to have if it is to be intelligible, that it be (1) simple, (2) not body, and (3) eternal. First, intellect discovers its composite duality, for it keeps dividing “until it comes to something simple, which can itself no longer be dissolved.”20 This something simple is intelligible matter, which lacks the ability to be a form and must thus settle for being combined with forms more obscurely. Its simplicity is thus much different from the simplicity of the One, which is the productive source of intellect’s divisions. Intelligible matter is, moreover, similar to absolute matter as having depth and darkness, which means one always encounters and sees the form, but one is led to what is under it as dark, as below the light, as gotten to by inference. This describes quite well the ambiguous, and at times almost invisible, role that the hypostasis soul plays in Plotinus’s system. It is given divine status, but seems not to enjoy the privileges that normally accrue to that station. 19. See the discussions below of VI.4[22].2 on the relation of the intelligible and sensible worlds and of III.6[26].4–5 on the relation of soul and body in terms of sensation and its resulting emotions. 20. II.4[12].5, 5–6: ἕως εἰς ἁπλοῦν ἥκῃ μηκέτι αὐτὸ ἀναλύεσθαι δυνάμενον.

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Second, the difference between the two kinds of matter lies, moreover, in how they combine with forms: in receiving its form, divine matter has a defined and intelligent life (ζωὴν ὡρισμένην καὶ νοεράν, 5, 16), while the matter of the sensible world becomes something defined (ὡρισμένον), but is neither living nor thinking (οὐ μὴν ζῶν οὐδὲ νοοῦν, 5, 17). He continues to compare the results. Sensible shape is only a reflection (εἴδωλον, 5, 18), and so also the matter underlying it, which he compares to a decorated corpse (νεκρὸν κεκοσμημένον, 5, 18). Intelligible shape, however, is true shape and so what underlies it is also true. It is in fact substance (οὐσία, 5, 22), so the Stoics would have been right if only they had been talking about matter in the intelligible world (5, 20–23). In a word, intelligible matter does not underlie body, but substance; or rather this intelligible, composite whole is illuminated substance. Finally, Plotinus considers how this matter is eternal. As in earlier treatises, he distinguishes two kinds of origination: the intelligible is originated as having a principle, a cause outside itself, but is not originated as not having a beginning in time. He concludes by tracing the origin of matter precisely to the otherness that comes from the One. For otherness is always there, which produces matter, for this is the principle of matter, as is primary motion. Therefore even this [motion] is called otherness, because motion and otherness are simultaneous outgrowths. Both motion and otherness as from the first are undefined, need that to be defined, and are defined when they turn toward it. Before [they turn] matter is indeed undefined, as other and not yet good, still unenlightened by that [first].21 21. II.4[12].5, 28–35: καὶ γὰρ ἡ ἑτερότης ἡ ἐκεῖ ἀεί, ἣ τὴν ὕλην ποιεῖ· ἀρχὴ γὰρ ὕλης αὕτη, καὶ ἡ κίνησις ἡ πρώτη· διὸ καὶ αὕτη ἑτερότης ἐλέγετο, ὅτι ὁμοῦ ἐξέφυσαν κίνησις καὶ ἑτερότης· ἀόριστον δὲ καὶ ἡ κίνησις καὶ ἡ ἑτερότης ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ πρώτου, κἀκείνου πρὸς τὸ ὁρισθῆναι δεόμενα· ὁρίζεται δέ, ὅταν πρὸς αὐτὸ ἐπιστραφῇ· πρὶν δὲ ἀόριστον καὶ ἡ ὕλη καὶ τὸ ἕτερον καὶ οὔπω ἀγαθόν, ἀλλ’ ἀφώτιστον ἐκείνου. Igal in Plotinus 1982, 1:418n27, indicates that otherness has various meanings, with two distinguished in this

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Otherness is that which defines everything not the One. Significantly in this instance, it is not otherness as the intelligible genus opposite to sameness, but rather inchoate intellect itself as the primal otherness that comes from the One and that is indefinite or undefined until it turns back to the One, when it comes into contact with soul as other than itself and matter of the intelligible world. This productive moment of intellect emphasizes its closeness to the One by making it the principle generating the matter that comes from it. Plotinus has thus connected his discussion of intelligible matter with points already made about the relation of intellect and the One (V.1[10].5–6) as well as about intellect and soul (V.1[10].3).22 The discussion also clarifies how soul is the matter of intellect. It is an otherness produced by intellect as the intelligible matter in which individual forms come to be as substances and come to be all together in one intelligible world. Soul’s otherness provides the underlying common unity for the multiplicity of individual forms, while its motion continues the process of generation by establishing the souls that produce the sensible world and its matter. Soul, as it were, allows the forms to remain different without losing their unipassage, the primal otherness from the One and otherness as one of the highest genera. He then identifies the indefinite dyad with intelligible matter. It seems to me more consistent to identify the indefinite dyad with intellect as inchoate (the primal otherness) and thus the causative principle for intelligible matter as the hypostasis soul. See the following note and the discussion below of soul in relation to absolute matter on II.4[12].11, 27–38, in the context of Aristotle’s critique of that indefinite as great and small. 22. In IV.5[29].6–7, Plotinus describes this process of generation in terms of the principle of two acts, the primal act of a substance and the secondary act coming from it. In that context, he uses the sun as an example of a substance with a fiery nature, from which comes a secondary act, light itself. Light, however, is described as in a way inchoate or, in this case, invisible, until it reaches an object, or matter, that it illuminates with colors latent in itself. This clarifies what he is describing here about intellect as inchoate, just otherness until it reaches a limit, what is no longer intellect but matter for it, the hypostasis soul in which that inchoate intellect spreads out into the multiplicity of the intelligible world, structured by the five genera of the Sophist. The image of light is present in this passage as well, continued in 5, 35–37.

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ty with one another as parts of the same intelligible world. As integrally within the intelligible, moreover, soul has the status of a hypostasis. There are also some hints, perhaps appropriately dark and obscure, of the sources behind Plotinus’s understanding of the hypostasis soul as intelligible matter. They seem to be Aristotelian.23 De Anima III.5, 430a10–15, describes soul as like matter, as it is potentially all things, with intellect as the power that produces all things in it. Aristotle’s context could not be more different from that of this treatise, as he has in mind a discussion of knowing in the case of human beings. Plotinus, however, takes his formulation as a general principle, which indeed is one of Aristotle’s intentions, and applies it to the case of the Platonic intellect, which has suffered its own mutation by being merged with Aristotle’s divine mind (Metaphysics XII.9, 1074b17–1075a5). The result is a rather peculiar identification of soul as the matter of this divine mind, and as a consequence the differentiation of the hypostasis soul that functions as the matter of intellect from the species souls that have the very different function of generating the sensible cosmos. In the rest of II.4[12], Plotinus turns to a consideration of the matter of this sensible realm, which has its own set of problems in relation to soul and form.

Absolute Matter as Simple and One (II.4[12].6–16) The discussion of the matter of the sensible world illustrates Plotinus’s method in discussing a complex topic, using the vocabulary of his predecessors but examining it within the 23. In Plotinus 2003b, 181n59, Fronterotta traces soul as matter of intellect to De Anima III.4–5, with multiple occurrences in Plotinus: V.9[5].4, 10–15; VI.9[9].7, 10–15; V.1[10].3, 20–25; III.9[13].5; II.5[25].3, 14. In Plotinus 1982, 1:54–55 and 415, Igal also traces the discussion of soul as intelligible matter to Aristotle, but it is not clear how explicitly he understands this as a specific role of the hypostasis soul.

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context of his own principles. His discussion is divided into three sections. In the first section (II.4[12].6–8), Plotinus argues that matter cannot be identified with any of the four elements, with atoms, or with any corporeal quality, even figure and magnitude; interestingly, he does not rule out Anaximander’s unlimited. In the next section (II.4[12].9–12), Plotinus takes the quantitative dimensions of magnitude and mass, and shows that they are traceable to form, but that matter somehow allows these quantitative dimensions to appear in body, though matter itself cannot be identified with them. A related problem is how the soul comes to know matter, which is without form but also more than an empty concept. Finally, in the last section (II.4[12].13–16), Plotinus investigates three terms: privation, the unlimited, and otherness. They have their roots in different philosophers, Aristotle, Anaximander, and Plato, but undergo changes when applied to matter as incorporeal. All three sections face the difficulty of defining matter, given that definitions are generally based on form, but matter is the total lack of form. The threads of the argument thus emphasize that it is absolutely indefinite, drawing out the consequences that necessarily follow for understanding its relation to the corporeal.

Matter and the Elements (II.4[12].6–8) He begins in II.4[12].6 by returning to the opening lines of II.4[12].1, which refer to matter as both receptacle and substrate, but now as underlying bodies rather than forms. By this Plotinus retrieves the Aristotelian analysis of change, whereby the substrate is different from the bodies it underlies, which he specifies is obvious from the change of the elements into one another. In this change, the destruction cannot be complete, as otherwise a substance would be totally destroyed and the newly generated being would come from absolute

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nonbeing, so the change must be from one form to another. Because something must receive the generated form and lose the one destroyed, it is clear that destruction is of a composite (συνθέτου, 6, 9), and if this is so, then each of the elements is composed of matter and form. The nature of a composite and its role in explaining change can be shown in two ways, by induction and by reduction. Induction moves from instances to a general principle and thus in the direction of the formal principle, while reduction takes a particular case and traces it to its ground or material principle. With this distinction, the argument in II.4[12].6, 12–19, consists of a reduction, using the example of the cup reduced to gold and of gold to water, and “water destroyed demands something analogous.”24 Plotinus thus moves quickly to the elements themselves—earth, water, air, and fire—where the problem is determining exactly how they can be composites. He reviews the options briefly: the elements may be form, prime matter, or composites of matter and form. They cannot be form, “for how without matter could they be in mass and magnitude?”25 The mention of mass and magnitude in relation to matter is consistent with Plotinus’s emphasis on quantitative division as what essentially distinguishes corporeal things from incorporeal forms. He next excludes prime matter, as the elements can be destroyed, while prime matter as the substrate cannot. Earth, water, air, and fire are thus composites, though of a strange variety, as they are composed of form, from which they derive their quality and shape, and prime matter, as the indefinite substrate that lacks all form. Bodies are also composed of form and matter, but in their case, by contrast, the matter is not the indefinite substrate, but rather some body or other having its own form, such as gold in the case of a cup, reduced ultimately to one or another of the four elements. 24. II.4[12].6, 13: καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ δὲ φθειρόμενον τὸ ἀνάλογον ἀπαιτεῖ. 25. II.4[12].6, 15–16: πῶς γὰρ ἄνευ ὕλης ἐν ὄγκῳ καὶ μεγέθει.

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The argument uses Aristotelian technical language, but Plotinus has introduced some subtle changes that indicate his own interests. First, he focuses immediately on the elements, the tougher case and the one that his predecessors, even Aristotle, left somewhat aside and therefore somewhat ambiguous. Plotinus argues that the elements must be composites, just as bodies are composites, but they are composites of form and prime matter, which means they are quite different from bodies, more like qualities (as it seems also in the Timaeus) and perhaps akin to subatomic particles in modern physics.26 Second, when he discusses the form and matter of these composites, he makes some significant additions. Thus, when he rules out that the elements can be form or prime matter alone, he alludes to two of the issues that dominate his discussion of prime matter, that it is absolutely indefinite (II.4[12]) and that it is impassible (III.6[26]). As it is not related to form, matter could be taken as an empty concept, as he notes at II.4[12].11, 13, and 12, 22, perhaps a logical convenience, but with no real meaning. Plotinus emphasizes, therefore, its necessary role in explaining that aspect of the corporeal that cannot be traced to form. Matter is the curious condition that makes the appearance of mass and magnitude possible, without itself becoming either magnitude or mass, which are in fact due to form, but form operating on body as already having received magnitude because of matter. 26. In Plato 1888, 172 (Timaeus 49c), 192 (Timaeus 54c), 204 (Timaeus 56e–57a), Archer-Hind treats of the interchangeability of the elements, the processes involved (condensing, rarifying, expanding, inflaming), Plato’s introduction of difference in size to explain differences in qualities, and an understanding of matter as space ruled by the geometrical law that explains the four basic elements, and the geometrical shapes that in their conflict produce perpetual changes of form. Friedländer 1973, 246–60, presents a fascinating chapter on the relation of the Timaeus to contemporary physics, especially that of Heisenberg and Bohr, with the claim that the transformation of the elements into each other and of regularly divisible atoms (257) was incomprehensible during the dominance of classical mechanics, but this Platonic mathematical myth can now be looked at more favorably as a precursor for current theories about subatomic particles and their indeterminacy.

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This particular conundrum is one that Plotinus explores here in II.4[12].9–12 and revisits in III.6[26]. In both places he is drawing out consequences of the nature of prime matter that are at most implicit in the tradition before him. Finally, and more importantly, the elements cannot be prime matter—the mistake of the early natural philosophers criticized already by Aristotle, but having a tenacity that no amount of argument seems able to overcome. Here the nature of prime matter as an indefinite substrate, totally without form, is central, especially in opposition to the elements as necessarily having form. This topic also looms large in II.4[12].13–16 as well as in III.6[26], which shows, one might almost say obsessively, the indefinite and impassible nature of matter. The very late treatise I.8[51] confirms the nature of matter’s causal role in comparison with the One as the principle (ἀρχή) of all things, with matter as the opposite principle. Plotinus is careful to make sure that this principle is not in any way productive nor in any way source of positive content, as a form would be. Whatever work is attributed to matter cannot compromise its indefinite and incorporeal state nor can it function as other than a material cause. At this point, however, Plotinus leaves these two problems for later and presents a short review of the natural philosophers in II.4[12].7 to indicate that the elements cannot be absolute matter, whether together or separately. Plotinus’s comments have been taken as merely repeating an Aristotelian critique, but they actually express his own philosophical perspective and his citations, however brief, have been neglected as a source for both the text and meaning of these early philosophers.27 Plotinus divides the natural philosophers in terms of the distinction between the elements and prime matter that he has made explicit at II.4[12].6, 14–19. Thus he is critical of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the atomists for 27. See Stamatellos 2007, 138–56.

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understanding matter as some kind of stuff, generally one of the elements, while his comments on the unlimited of the unnamed Anaximander prove much more intriguing. But for the one positing the unlimited, let him say what in the world this can mean. If [it means] simply the unlimited, as inexhaustible, know that there is no such thing among beings, neither the unlimited itself nor [the unlimited] in another nature as an accident of some body; this is evident for the unlimited itself, because any part of it would necessarily be unlimited, and for the [unlimited] as an accident, because that to which it is attributed could not be infinite in itself, so not simple nor even less matter.28

This passage shows that Plotinus is aware that Anaximander’s term had a variety of interpretations.29 His goal therefore is to exclude those interpretations that are inconsistent and contradictory, thus preparing the term for his later definition of matter itself as the unlimited,30 in the sense of being the indefinite substrate. Though these interpretations are mentioned in his usual abbreviated style, the pattern just examined in II.4[12].6, 14–19, is still discernible, so that the unlimited cannot be confused with matter (of the proximate variety), form, or the composite. Thus, the first meaning is excluded as identifying the unlimited with some kind of inexhaustable stuff. It makes the same mistake as the natural philosophers, who identify matter with one or more of the elements, all of which are composites. Any composite as body cannot exist in an unlimited way as it must in fact be something definite, while absolute matter is simple and unlimited as incorporeal. The next two 28. II.4[12].7, 13–20: ὁ δὲ τὸ ἄπειρον ὑποθεὶς τί ποτε τοῦτο λεγέτω. καὶ εἰ οὕτως ἄπειρον, ὡς ἀδιεξίτητον, ὡς οὐκ ἔστι τοιοῦτόν τι ἐν ποῖς οὖσιν οὔτε αὐτοάπειρον οὔτε ἐπ’ ἄλλῃ φύσει ὡς συμβεβηκός σώματί τινι, τὸ μὲν αὐτοάπειρον, ὅτι καὶ τὸ μέρος αὐτοῦ ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἄπειρον, τὸ δὲ ὡς συμβεβηκός, ὅτι τὸ ᾧ συμβέβηκεν ἐκεῖνο οὐκ ἂν καθ’ ἑαυτὸ ἄπειρον εἴη οὐδὲ ἁπλοῦν οὐδὲ ὕλη ἔτι, δῆλον. 29. See Stamatellos 2007, 140. 30. II.4[12].15, 17: αὐτὴ τοίνυν τὸ ἄπειρον.

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meanings analyze the unlimited as if it were a form. In the first case, the unlimited itself is taken as substantial form, but the problem is that such a form is not receptive like matter but productive, and further that its participants would necessarily be composite, repeating the contradiction that an essentially limited composite would have to be unlimited at the same time. In the second case, the unlimited as an accident is taken as an accidental form, as if it were a quality or attribute of a body, which is also composite and limited, unlike matter. It is this second case that receives extensive treatment in the next part of the treatise, where Plotinus argues that the various quantitative qualities of bodies cannot be identified with matter. In the present context, however, both cases involve form, so it is clear (δῆλον) that the unlimited itself and the unlimited as accident cannot be simple (just form) or matter (οὐδὲ ἁπλοῦν οὐδὲ ὕλη ἔτι). By removing these contradictory understandings of the unlimited, Plotinus clears the ground, so to speak, to use Anaximander’s term later in a very precise sense for matter as absolutely indefinite, capitalizing on its difference from the elements of the other natural philosophers. Thus, the nature of matter as the substrate excludes confusion with proximate matter as a composite having form and with any kind of quality of such a composite, and thus emphasizes its indefinite and simple nature. The final comment on the atomists, II.4[12].7, 20–28, moreover, introduces another specifically Plotinian idea, that their position entails discontinuity, making the formation of the sensible world impossible. Continuity both within a body and within the sensible cosmos is a central tenet of Plotinus’s understanding of the function of matter, already implicit in his discussion of the unifying function of intelligible matter in II.4[12].4–5. In II.4[12].8, Plotinus connects this assumption of continuity with the function of matter as the substrate having no quality and falling outside any categorial attribu-

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tion. For matter to have quality, it would have to be a body. To explain this, he explores further the Peripatetic distinction between prime matter and proximate matter in II.4[12].8, 1–10. Proximate matter is only matter with respect to particular sense objects. The clay used by potters, for example, is ambiguously matter. In relation to the object made by the potter, it is matter, but, as indicating a body of a certain type, it is already a composite of matter and form. As prime matter is spoken of in relation to all sense objects, it can have nothing observed in those objects and thus nothing can properly be attributed to it nor can it have any qualities, especially those defined as opposites. Prime matter is thus necessarily incorporeal, while proximate matter is always body. Among the qualities that he excludes from matter are those that relate to shape and magnitude. In any particular body, these qualities are determined by its form, but such qualities cannot occur without being received by matter. In some strange way, then, these qualities depend on prime matter, which in the strictest sense is only simple and one,31 even though “the one who gives shape will give a shape different from matter itself, as it were bringing [to matter] both magnitude and all [qualities] from beings.”32 In the case of living things, this means that the magnitude of a plant or animal is determined by its form, as are all its other qualities. If this were not the case and somehow matter determined the magnitude and shape of a plant or animal and not its formal structure or nature, the result would be that two instances of the same species could be radically different in magnitude. The difficulty with this hypothesis, therefore, is that it takes matter as if it were a productive cause, but in fact form is the productive cause, and so quantity, including both the mag31. II.4[12].8, 13: ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἕν. 32. II.4[12].8, 14–16: καὶ ὁ μορφὴν διδοὺς δώσει καὶ μορφὴν ἄλλην οὖσαν παρ’ αὐτὴν καὶ μέγεθος καὶ πάντα ἐκ τῶν ὄντων οἷον προσφέρων.

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nitude and shape of a thing,33 derives as does any quality from the form, for as quality is a logos, so quantity is as well, being form, measure and number.34 Plotinus has shown that matter cannot be confused with the elements on one side and form, whether substantial or accidental, on the other. Finally, the incorporeal nature of matter makes discussion and definition of it difficult, as its lack of form allows no real content for knowledge. Matter is thus only known indirectly, by examining those qualities of the corporeal that seem closest to matter or most revelatory of its nature. In the next sections, therefore, Plotinus concentrates his efforts on the nature of magnitude and mass as the quantitative qualities that distinguish corporeal nature from the intelligible as incorporeal, and finally attempts to give some account of matter as the substrate through the ideas of privation, the indefinite, and the unlimited as different ways to express the otherness of this substrate.

Matter as Magnitude and Mass (II.4[12].9–12) The next sections examine those qualities most closely associated with body as such and thus most easily confused with the nature of matter. These qualities are positive, the quantitative qualities of magnitude (μέγεθος, discussed in II.4[12].9–10) and mass (ὄγκος, in II.4[12].11–12), in contrast to the more negative predicates of the unlimited, the indefinite, and privation35 that illustrate the otherness of matter, discussed in the final section on II.4[12].13–16. By addressing these two areas, Plotinus seeks to provide the most exact definition of the matter of the sensible world and to show how this matter can be known, given its total lack of form. 33. II.4[12].8, 21–22: μέγεθος . . . καὶ σχῆμα. 34. II.4[12].8, 29–30: οὐδὲ τὸ μὲν ποιὸν λόγος, τὸ δὲ ποσὸν οὐκ, εἶδος καὶ μέτρον καὶ ἀριθμὸς ὄν. 35. II.4[12].15, 1–3: τὸ ἄπειρον καὶ τὸ ἀόριστον . . . στέρησις.

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Plotinus begins with this problem of knowing matter by asking how one grasps something that is, but has no magnitude (II.4[12].9, 1). He begins by defining magnitude in terms of quantity: anything without quantity will by that fact have no magnitude. This covers all bodiless things, with matter included among them, however different it is from soul and intellect as incorporeal. The difference springs from the nature of quantity in relation to bodies. Quantity functions as a form, something in which things can participate, so that quantity itself cannot be a quantity, but comes to the corporeal as a form or logos (or ratio, in the mathematical sense). Plotinus argues that as logos determines the various colors in an animal, so it will determine its magnitude. “So also what makes [something] so big is not itself so big, but size or logos make it a certain size. Does the size coming near unfold matter into magnitude? No way! For matter was not shrunk together in a small space, but the magnitude, not there before, gave [matter magnitude], as the quality, also not there before, [gave quality to matter].”36 Magnitude gives magnitude to bodies and also to matter. In giving magnitude to matter, however, it does not expand it, as if matter already had some condensed or shrunken sort of magnitude, but it gives something that was not already present in matter. In addition, this presence of magnitude to matter does not make it large or small, as he will argue shortly in II.4[12].11, 33–36, and thus does not take away its total lack of magnitude. In II.4[12].10, the problem of knowing matter is introduced in terms of what one thinks in thinking matter as unextended, or anything at all as without quality. The problem 36. II.4[12].9, 10–15: οὕτω καὶ τὸ ποιοῦν τὸ τηλικόνδε οὐ τηλικόνδε, ἀλλ’ αὐτό τι πηλίκον ἡ πηλικότης ἢ ὁ λόγος τὸ ποιοῦν. προσελθοῦσα οὖν ἡ πηλικότης ἐξελίττει εἰς μέγεθος τὴν ὕλην; οὐδαμῶς· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐν ὀλίγῳ συνεσπείρατο· ἀλλ’ ἔδωκε μέγεθος τὸ οὐ πρότερον ὄν, ὥσπερ καὶ ποιότητα τὴν οὐ πρότερον οὖσαν. In Plotinus 1982, 1:410n4, Igal notes his emendation, reading αὐτό τι πηλίκον instead of αὖ τὸ “τί πηλίκον” in Plotinus 1964.

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is reminiscent of the one he addressed earlier in thinking about God as formless (VI.9[9].3–4), but with peculiarities rooted in the nature of matter. Using the principle that like is known by like, Plotinus applies this to matter by indicating that we know the indefinite by the indefinite.37 “An account [logos] about the indefinite may be defined, but the intuition concerning it remains indefinite.”38 In other words, reasoning can formulate a concept or definition of matter, by which to distinguish it from other concepts, but the intuition of it remains indefinite, or empty. We know things generally both by reasoning and by thinking, but in this case reason can state what it states about matter, whereas what seeks to be a thought about matter is not a thought, but “a kind of ignorance, a rather bastard appearance of it that would not be genuine,”39 an allusion to the “bastard reasoning”40 of Plato’s Timaeus 52b2. Matter thus can be defined in terms of its indefinite nature, but it cannot actually be an object of thought, as there is in fact no form to think, but only an appearance produced by imagination. Plotinus does not merely appeal to Plato’s Timaeus for this explanation, but also analyzes the soul to indicate the status of this peculiar kind of thinking that is more like ignorance. In the different modes of the soul’s knowledge, one can distinguish between complete ignorance, which says nothing because it has no object, and a positive statement, which nonetheless seems to have no content. By comparing this situation with sight, a middle region emerges between absolute blindness, seeing nothing at all, and actually seeing colors: the state of seeing darkness, the matter in which colors 37. II.4[12].10, 4: ἀορίστῳ τὸ ἀορίστον. 38. II.4[12].10, 4–5: λόγος μὲν οὖν γένοιτο ἂν περὶ τοῦ ἀόριστου ὡρισμένος, ἡ δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸ ἐπιβολὴ ἀόριστος. 39. II.4[12].10, 8–9: οἷον ἄνοια, μᾶλλον νόθον ἂν εἴη τὸ φάντασμα αὐτῆς καὶ οὐ γνήσιον. 40. II.4[12].10, 11: νόθῳ λογισμῷ.

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can occur. It is precisely a potential state that can be determined by actual colors, and, further, the actual state cannot occur without this potentiality. Thus, the soul, when it actually thinks nothing, keeps silent, but when it thinks matter, it is as though it received an impression. It does this by thinking the whole object, the composite of matter and form, thinking or sensing the form clearly, but the matter or substrate dimly or darkly, as it thinks it without the benefit of a form. As with the approach to the One in VI.9[9].3, the soul is distressed and fearful in this situation, but here not without some justification, given Plotinus’s identification of matter with the evil and ugly, as we have seen already in I.6[1]. The discussion continues in II.4[12].11 with the substitution of mass41 for magnitude. An objector describes mass as what receives magnitude and all other qualities. If magnitude and the other bodily qualities derive from form, they all stand in need of something to receive them. Mass seems to satisfy this demand as one might assume that magnitude as quantity measures the object, with mass as the content or bulk that is measured. This substitution indicates the tenacity of the opinion that what receives form need only be proximate matter. The objection appeals further to the evidence that actions, productions, times, and motions exist in things that are, but without the need to have matter underlying them, thus providing a parallel for the idea that the bodies and their qualities do not need matter either. In a word, prime matter is merely an empty name.42 Plotinus argues in response: for a mass to receive anything it must already have received magnitude. He compares matter with the soul to indicate how two things that are open to receive all forms nevertheless differ essentially in their reception. On the one hand, the soul receives all things, and does so all 41. II.4[12].11, 3: ὄγκος. 42. II.4[12].11, 13: ὄνομα κενόν.

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together, but if soul had magnitude as an attribute, it would receive each thing with its proper magnitude. On the other hand, matter accepts whatever it receives in extension (ἐν διαστήματι) because it is first receptive of extension.43 Plants and animals, however, show a parallel growth in quantity and quality; magnitude and other features thus develop together in them and, Plotinus argues, this indicates that the matter for such things is not simply matter, but matter of a particular kind. Consequently, proximate matter already is endowed with a certain magnitude, and increase or decrease is of this already present magnitude. Following the objector’s analogy, matter also seems to have magnitude already present, but Plotinus argues in response that “it is necessary that what is simply matter has even this [magnitude] from something else, so that what will receive form must not be a mass, but together with becoming a mass it will also receive the other quality.”44 He turns once more to soul’s knowledge of such matter, arguing that mass is a kind of appearance45 of matter, where its capacity appears as if it were a capacity for mass, an empty mass without any other qualities, giving rise to the claim that matter is the same as the void. But this appearance of mass has roots in the soul’s particular way of knowing. Thus, when the soul attempts to discuss matter, it arrives at indefiniteness,46 neither being able to circumscribe it nor to come to a point. As a consequence, one cannot call matter “great” or “small” separately, as in itself it remains neither and is, as it were, receptive of both. Thus, Plato’s language about matter does not mean that there are two indefinites, one great and one small, as Aristotle had interpreted Plato’s position in 43. II.4[12].11, 18: διαστήματος. 44. II.4[12].11, 24–27: τὴν δ’ ἁπλῶς δεῖ καὶ τοῦτο παρ’ ἄλλου ἔχειν. οὐ τοίνυν ὄγκον δεῖ εἶναι τὸν δεξόμενον τὸ εἶδος, ἀλλ’ ὁμοῦ τῷ γενέσθαι ὄγκον καὶ τὴν ἄλλην ποιότητα δέχεσθαι. 45. II.4[12].11, 27: φάντασμα. 46. II.4[12].11, 31: εἰς ἀοριστίαν.

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Physics 203a15–16,47 but that there is for Plato only one indefinite, which is at once great-and-small.48 This is the sense in which matter is a mass and yet without magnitude, so that, when a mass expands or contracts from small to great or great to small, matter runs through all of these as if a mass. Its indefiniteness is in fact a mass of this sort, as the receptacle49 of magnitude within itself. For the soul, in imagination,50 however, it seems otherwise. This is because imagination follows the nature of soul and intellect, which are also without magnitude, but for soul and intellect forms are present all together and not blocked off from one another, so that what the concept of mass signifies is in no way in them. Matter, on the contrary, as indefinite and brought to every form, becomes everything by underlying sensible bodies and in this way appears to have the nature of mass. While not itself mass or magnitude, matter allows for things to appear separately and as blocked off from one another; it thus provides the distance in which mass and magnitude can be the attributes positioning bodies in relation to one another. As only the receptacle of these attributes, one might ask what contribution matter can make to bodies, as all their qualities come from the form. Plotinus states that the forms of bodies do not come to be with magnitude, but rather with what has already been given magnitude.51 What does it mean that matter has already received magnitude? In an earlier discussion of VI.9[9], I argued that matter is something like space and time as a priori conditions, the matrix in which bodies can appear, and this helps give some sense to 47. Namely, δύο τὰ ἄπειρα, τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν. 48. II.4[12].11, 33–34: μέγα καὶ μικρόν. In Plotinus 1982, 1:428n35, Igal notes Plotinus’s correction of Aristotle on this point. 49. II.4[12].11, 37: ὑποδοχή. 50. II.4[12].11, 38: ἐν φαντασίᾳ. 51. II.4[12].12, 2–3: περὶ δὲ μέγεθος οὐκ ἂν ἐγένετο ταῦτα, ἀλλ’ ἢ περὶ τὸ μεμεγεθυσμένον.

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what Plotinus is after in the present discussion. There is the movement from space and time as the conditions of possibility for bodies, to actual space and time in which bodies begin to make their appearance, by the formation of the elements, their position in the cosmos, and their readiness to be shaped into more complex sensible objects. Magnitude and mass, then, are ways of articulating how it is that matter allows the forms that come to appear in it to be spread out in space and time, which is perhaps captured most clearly in the continuity that matter provides for the sensible world. The magnitude of a particular thing, therefore, is determined by its form, for example, that of man or bird (II.4[12].8, 27), but it cannot come to be merely because the form so determines it, but only in combination with matter, and matter as already spread out, so to speak, to allow this form to bring its proper magnitude to realization. Without matter as extended, he argues, as spread out in space and time, the forms would remain “unextended and insubstantial, rather they would only be reasons—but these are in soul—and would not be bodies.”52 Finally, like intelligible matter, the matter of the sensible cosmos makes its contribution also in terms of unity, the continuity of the sensible cosmos. “Here below then the many [forms] must be connected in something one; this has already been given magnitude but is other than magnitude.”53 Matter, whether of the intelligible or sensible worlds, contributes the unity in which substances or bodies come to be formed and interact with one another as an ordered whole. Further, it is this unity that makes magnitude in matter different from the magnitude of a body, so that Plotinus can describe matter as having been given magnitude and at the same time as oth52. II.4[12].12, 4–5: ὁμοίως ἂν ἀμεγέθη καὶ ἀνυπόστατα ἦν ἢ λόγοι μόνοι ἂν ἦσαν— οὗτοι δὲ περὶ ψυχήν—καὶ οὐκ ἂν ἦν σώματα. 53. II.4[12].12, 6–7: δεῖ οὖν ἐνταῦθα περὶ ἕν τι τὰ πολλά· τοῦτο δὲ μεμεγεθυσμένον· τοῦτο δὲ ἕτερον τοῦ μεγέθους.

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er than magnitude. If the form produced its own magnitude in taking on body, then a similar isolation of one body from another would occur and there would be no sensible cosmos at all. Only at this point does Plotinus introduce the idea of place (τόπου, 12, 11), but as derivative from both matter and bodies. Once bodies are situated in matter, as having received form and magnitude, the place of those bodies can be determined, which is space and time as we experience them. Plotinus returns to the initial objection at II.4[12].11, 8, and explains how actions and productions can be immaterial, while bodies must be material. Bodies are composites of form and matter, while actions are not composites. In a sense, the agent or doer is matter as substrate for his actions, but clearly does not want his action to become something separate, either from himself or from the product. Running, for example, is for the benefit of the body, but is not something in itself, nor does the potter want his production of a vessel to be separate from the vessel and its matter. Plotinus thus answers the objection and shows that matter is not just an empty name, however indefinite and paradoxical it may be. He closes by reminding us that matter is known not by the senses, but by reasoning, and not by a reasoning based on intellect, in which case it would be about a form, but by a bastard reasoning about something formless and indefinite, with the aid of the imagination. Even its magnitude and mass point to this formless and indefinite character, as they are not at all like the magnitude and mass of a corporeal object, but the conditions that make such corporeal qualities possible.

Matter as Privation, the Unlimited, and Otherness (II.4[12].13–16) In the last section, II.4[12].13–16, Plotinus discusses three terms—privation, the unlimited, and otherness—in an at-

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tempt to articulate in some way the nature of matter. In all three cases, the terms do not present a quality that is characteristic of matter nor a form that indicates its essence, but rather that matter is completely devoid of quality and form (II.4[12].13–14), is itself the unlimited (II.4[12].15), and is just otherness, with no sameness at all, leaving it both evil and ugly (II.4[12].16). Plotinus begins by first asking if the substrate common to each of the elements is some quality. His initial response is that a quality cannot be a substrate, as the substrate is related to matter, while a quality of any kind relates to the form. The objection is then refined to say that perhaps matter participates in a quality different from all other qualities, a kind of privation of them. His response remains unequivocal. “But it is absurd to make qualified what is other than qualified and not qualified. But if [matter] is qualified, because it is other, if it is otherness itself, it is not as qualified, since quality is not something qualified. But if it is only other, it is so not by itself, but other by otherness and same by sameness.”54 The premise of the objection makes everything a quality, even privation, and Plotinus answers that privation and quality are mutually exclusive, so that privation is a lack, whether of a quality or something else, while a quality is a positive attribute, so that matter has none of the attributes of being and form not by some quality but rather simply by being other. But what does it mean that matter is other? If it is other by otherness itself, then it is not being qualified by a quality, because otherness itself, as a form, cannot participate in itself, and even less can matter be identified with it as a form. If it is only other, in the way that one thing differs from another, then it follows that it shares in both otherness and sameness, 54. II.4[12].13, 17–20: γελοῖον δὲ τὸ ἕτερον τοῦ ποιοῦ καὶ μὴ ποιὸν ποιὸν ποιεῖν. εἰ δ’, ὅτι ἕτερον, ποιόν, εἰ μὲν αὐτοετερότης, οὐδ’ ὧς ποιόν· ἐπεὶ οὐδ’ ἡ ποιότης ποιά· εἰ δ’ ἕτερον μόνον, οὐχ ἑαυτῇ, ἀλλ’ ἑτερότητι ἕτερον καὶ ταυτότητι ταὐτόν.

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the two genera of the Sophist, with the result that it is composite and not just matter. In both instances, the otherness of matter cannot be otherness as a form or participation in otherness as a quality, but a more radical absence of all otherness and sameness, formally construed. Otherness describes, therefore, its peculiar relation to form and being. Thus, being other is not some addition to matter, as a quality would be, nor is it some “thing” that only happens to differ from all other things, but matter is just otherness, or, to indicate its indefiniteness, “others” (ἄλλα, II.4[12].13, 31), a phrasing designed to keep it from being some other in a unitary way (ἄλλο ἑνικῶς, 13, 31) and thus some definite thing. Plotinus next examines, in II.4[12].14, the proposition of Aristotle that privation and matter as the subject of privation are one in the substrate but two in definition. He lists three possibilities for understanding how there are two definitions: that neither is contained in the definition of the other, that each is contained in the definition of the other, or that only one is contained in the definition of the other. None of these possibilities proves satisfactory because they all treat privation and matter as if they were things capable of being defined in terms of forms. Aristotle’s distinction applies to bodies, so Plotinus reasons that the definitions of privation and matter must be analyzed to reveal if one or the other is still being treated as if it were a form or had a formal quality. Thus, he points out that privation signifies, not that something is present, but that it is absent, so that privation means, as it were, a denial of beings.55 Privation in this sense is not the lack of some quality or form, but introduces the relative nonbeing of the Sophist, so that matter is not absolutely but relatively nonexistent, relative to beings, as the text puts it. Still, Plotinus continues, the two definitions are distinct: matter refers to the substrate and privation to its relationship to other 55. II.4[12].14, 19–20: καὶ οἷον ἀπόφασις ἡ στέρησις τῶν ὄντων.

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things,56 with the tacit assumption that the indefiniteness of the substrate is somehow different from the relationship to other things. But perhaps, he counters, it is matter that indicates the relationship to other things,57 as the substrate, and so privation makes clear that matter is indefinite,58 with the indefiniteness distinguishing it from everything else and capturing, if it were possible, what matter is in itself. In this case, the two definitions still only partially coincide, as privation continues to look like a form. Plotinus’s own position, stated in tentative form in the last lines of this chapter, collapses the two into one. “If indeed the definition for something essentially indefinite, unlimited, and unqualified is the same definition as for matter, how are there still two definitions?”59 He then examines whether the unlimited, the indefinite, and privation60 are accidental predicates of matter. The unlimited is retrieved from the earlier discussion about Anaximander in II.4[12].7, and is now given a precise definition. The unlimited is first contrasted with what is outside infinity,61 that is, numbers and ratios, for they are finite precisely as measures and arrangements, and even the arrangement within different things is in terms of these mathematicals. Next, what sets in order is different from what is ordered. What sets in order is limit, measure, and ratio,62 and what is ordered and defined is essentially unlimited.63 It is agreed, further, that matter is ordered, as is everything participating in it or taken for it. The conclusion follows: matter is the unlimited (15, 10). A brief clarification follows to show that this cannot 56. II.4[12].14, 24: τὴν πρὸς τά ἄλλα σχέσιν δηλῶν. 57. II.4[12].14, 25: πρὸς τὰ ἄλλα. 58. II.4[12].14, 26: τὸ ἀόριστον. 59. II.4[12].14, 28–30: εἰ μέντοι τῷ ἀορίστῳ εἶναι καὶ ἀπείρῳ εἶναι καὶ ἀποίῳ εἶναι τῇ ὕλῃ ταὐτόν, πῶς ἔτι δύο οἱ λόγοι. 60. II.4[12].15, 1–3: τὸ ἄπειρον καὶ τὸ ἀόριστον . . . στέρησις. 61. II.4[12].15, 4: ἀπειρίας ἔξω. 62. II.4[12].15, 7: τὸ πέρας καὶ ὅρος καὶ λόγος. 63. II.4[12].15, 8: τὸ ταττόμενον καὶ ὁριζόμενον τὸ ἄπειρον εἶναι.

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be a case of accidental attribution. First, an accidental attribute is a kind of ratio,64 but the unlimited has been just defined as not a ratio; second, matter is not really a subject of attribution, as it is neither a limit nor limited, as would be proximate matter as something ordered and numbered. Simply put, matter is not a proper subject for attribution nor is the unlimited a proper attribute. Once more, Plotinus concludes with their identification: matter therefore is the unlimited.65 This identification covers both kinds of matter, but with intelligible matter produced from the infinity or power or eternity of the One,66 with the proviso that such infinity not be taken as in the One, but as produced by it. Plotinus rushes on to compare the two kinds of matter, but leaves the reader curious as to what the infinity, power, or eternity produced by, but not in, the One might be. As later discussion will make clear (II.4[12].16), it is the otherness behind all his discussions of matter, and, in this case, the primal otherness that is intellect itself in its inchoate state. The unlimited67 is double, relating both to the sensible and to the intelligible, but with a perfectly consistent reversal, as the matter of the sensible world is in fact more unlimited than intelligible matter. If we remember that intelligible matter is the hypostasis soul, the following discussion becomes immediately clear, for Plotinus begins with the matter of the sensible world as having fled being and truth and consequently as less in the good and more in evil.68 “So there the reflection though unlimited [has] more being; but here [it has] less, by however much it flees being and truth, and sinking deeper into the nature of a reflection is more truly unlimited.”69 64. II.4[12].15, 12: λόγον. 65. II.4[12].15, 17: αὐτὴ τοίνυν τὸ ἄπειρον. 66. II.4[12].15, 19: ἐκ τῆς τοῦ ἑνὸς ἀπειρίας ἢ δυνάμεως ἢ τοῦ ἀεί. 67. II.4[12].15, 21: τὸ ἄπειρον. 68. II.4[12].15, 23–25: πεφευγὸς τὸ εἶναι τὸ ἀληθές, . . . ἧττον ἐν τῷ ἀγαθῷ μᾶλλον ἐν τῷ κακῷ. 69. II.4[12].15, 25–28: τὸ ἐκεῖ οὖν μᾶλλον ὂν εἴδωλον ὡς ἄπειρον, τὸ δ’ ἐνταῦθα

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The soul is indeed unlimited as a reflection in which beings appear, and so precisely as not cut off from the being and truth of the intelligible nature. Absolute matter, however, is unlimited as a reflection only in the sense that things appear in it without giving it any share in being or truth. The appearances in the world of becoming are a reflection of the world of being, but matter sinks to the point of allowing those appearances without ever becoming anything at all. Plotinus concludes this contrast by comparing the unlimited with the essence of the unlimited.70 That is, does the term “unlimited” have a proper definition? This returns to the earlier discussion about whether matter is somehow still a composite of matter and form. He argues that where there is reason71 and matter, as in the case of intelligible matter, the unlimited and its essence are different, thus giving the hypostasis soul a composite structure, as he argued already in II.4[12].5, 16. But where there is only matter, there is no essence of the unlimited, and matter is merely unlimited with no relation to reason72 and nothing more: thus matter is unlimited of itself, with no other referent. Finally, in II.4[12].16, Plotinus addresses otherness as the characteristic common to both kinds of matter, as we saw in II.4[12].5, exploring directly the relationship between matter and otherness: “is [matter] then the same thing as otherness? No, but with a part of otherness which is set against beings in the strict sense, which indeed [are] reasons.”73 Otherness includes all that is not the One: intellect, with soul as its matter, and the sensible world, with what is matter and nothing ἧττον, ὅσῳ πέφευγε τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ ἀληθές, εἰς δὲ εἰδώλου κατερρύη φύσιν, ἀληθεστέρως ἄπειρον. 70. II.4[12].15, 29: τὸ ἄπειρον καὶ τὸ ἀπείρῳ εἶναι. 71. II.4[12].15, 29: λόγος. 72. II.4[12].15, 34: πρὸς τὸν λόγον. 73. II.4[12].16, 1–3: ἆρ’ οὖν καὶ ἑτερότητι ταὐτόν; ἢ οὔ, ἀλλὰ μορίῳ ἑτερότητος ἀντιταττομένῳ πρὸς τὰ ὄντα κυρίως, ἃ δὴ λόγοι.

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more. This ultimate matter is characterized by otherness in the sense that it is opposed to the composite complexity of all being and becoming; it is thus opposed to reasons, as the formal element, and is that part of otherness which is nothing more than otherness. Although it is not a being, because it lacks form, it is being in some sense, more like privation, if privation is also understood as opposed to beings with an account.74 One final objection emerges: if matter is privation, is it destroyed by coming toward that of which it is the privation? He returns to the idea of the receptacle:75 the receptacle is of a state and not a state itself, but a privation; or it is of a limit, neither what is limited nor the limit, but the unlimited, inasmuch as it is unlimited. In other words, privation points to the completely potential status of matter, and thus it is not destroyed by the coming of limit, but rather brought to actuality and completion,76 as darkness is brought to actuality when light brings colors with it. Again, only if it were unlimited in some qualitative way implying composition would it be destroyed by contact with another limit, as a quality is a ratio or proportion defined by two limits or terms. In closing, Plotinus describes this matter as completely bereft of the goodness and beauty of form, with the result that it is evil and ugly not in some relative degree, but absolutely, and thus not morally or ontologically, but in a privative sense only. In this way, it is also different from intelligible matter. “That matter there is being, for what is before it is beyond being. But here, what is before matter is being. Thus this [matter] is not being, since being is other, [so matter is ugly] in contrast to the beauty of being.”77 Intelligible matter, 74. II.4[12].16, 4: ἐν λόγῳ. 75. II.4[12].16, 6: ὑποδοχή. 76. II.4[12].16, 12–13: εἰς ἐνέργειαν καὶ τελείωσιν. 77. II.4[12].16, 24–27: ἐκείνη δὲ ἡ ὕλη ἡ ἐκεῖ ὄν· τὸ γὰρ πρὸ αὐτῆς ἐπέκεινα ὄντος. ἐνταῦθα δὲ τὸ πρὸ αὐτῆς ὄν. οὐκ ὂν ἄρα αὐτή, ἕτερον ὄν, πρὸς τῷ καλῷ τοῦ ὄντος.

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as other than the One, constitutes being and all the beauty of the forms that go with it, but matter, as other than intelligible being, allows for the becoming of the sensible world by its own nature as not-being, which is not total nonexistence, but an otherness that draws near to being, as we will see in III.6[26]. The implications of this otherness underlie Plotinus’s arguments in this section that the essential indefiniteness of matter precludes any attribution of form or quality to it, so that whatever terms are used to talk about it, whether magnitude, mass, privation, the unlimited, or otherness, need to be defined with a precision that distinguishes them from their usual modes of attribution to bodies, where they capture the formal element in the composite. They all emphasize the indefiniteness of matter and yet its role in providing the unity to sensible bodies as part of a single cosmos.

Conclusion Plotinus’s project in II.4[12] has often been misinterpreted. He has been taken as attempting to impose Aristotle’s notion of matter on Plato. I argued the converse in a previous analysis of this treatise, that he is fitting Aristotle to his Platonic notion of matter.78 These counter-interpretations, however, ignore his actual project, which is to show, from as many angles as possible, that matter must necessarily be incorporeal. To do this, he will take the language and arguments of his philosophical predecessors and forge a synthesis that overcomes their oppositions and ambiguities by drawing out the consequences of prime matter as an indefinite substrate that can have no attributes at all. He alerts us to this project in the opening lines of the treatise, when he states that those who 78. Gurtler 2005b, 197–214, argues that matter and the receptacle are recast in terms of the otherness in Plato’s Sophist. Here I argue more explicitly that Plotinus is actually critical of both traditions.

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have a concept of matter already disagree in investigating further “what this underlying nature is, how it is receptive, and of what things.”79 In holding that the nature of this substrate is incorporeal, Plotinus has two major tasks: to indicate how it is similar to and different from the other incorporeal beings, soul and intellect, and to differentiate it at every turn from confusion with body. Both of these tasks rely on the notion of the indefinite as the traditional term for understanding the substrate, which Plotinus fine-tunes to indicate that the substrate remains without form and thus not a composite body, and is also indefinite in an absolute sense and thus not incorporeal like soul or intellect. As he uses the vocabulary and distinctions of the philosophical tradition to construct his case, Plotinus also traces this indefinite character of matter to its roots in the otherness that characterizes everything other than the One, showing a rather remarkable consistency in the structure of reality and our ability to know it. He begins his argument, however, by analyzing the admittedly rarer notion of intelligible matter. The first hurdle he faces is showing how this matter can be indefinite, as the indefinite had been used to describe matter as substrate of bodies and, consequently, the explanation for corporeal change. His solution begins with the extension of the indefinite to include the relation of any lower to the higher that shapes and perfects it. Plotinus now has a way of clarifying how his two different kinds of matter relate to the forms they receive, with intelligible matter all things at once, and with the matter of the sensible one thing after another. Next, Plotinus looks at the lower precisely as the receptacle, illuminating a different role for matter that brings unity and continuity to the intelligible and sensible worlds. This unity, in fact, is the major idea that allows him to alter the notion of the substrate from its Aristotelian role in the process of change to that com79. II.4[12].1, 4–6: τίς δέ ἐστιν αὕτη ἡ ὑποκειμένη φύσις καὶ πῶς δεκτικὴ καὶ τίνων.

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mon something shared by all forms and thus allowing them to coexist in the same world. Plotinus is making explicit an assumption of both Plato and Aristotle, that discontinuity results in atomistic entities, whether intelligible or sensible, where each form or body would be isolated from every other, unknowing and unknowable. Finally, in finding the principle of matter in the otherness and motion that comes from the One, Plotinus indicates that the indefiniteness of matter is not arbitrary and unique, but is itself in continuity with the rest of reality. This detour into the defense and nature of intelligible matter allows Plotinus to explain the unity and multiplicity of the intelligible world and to domesticate this Aristotelian term for his analysis of the matter of the sensible world, which occupies the rest of the treatise. In the case of the matter of the sensible world, Plotinus’s desire to distinguish matter from the corporeal leads him to discuss prime matter in its dual roles of receptacle of bodies and indefinite substrate devoid of all form. In the first role, matter cannot be identified with any of the elements, all of which are composites of matter and form and thus somehow corporeal. In the second role, matter as the indefinite substrate must be one, continuous, and devoid of quality, emphasizing its function as the material cause. Even the qualities most associated with body, magnitude and mass, come from the form as productive cause. Plotinus insists on this point to counter the tendency to turn matter into a productive cause in some sense. Because it is these quantitative characteristics of bodies that define the corporeal as such, Plotinus shows how soul and matter cannot have them, but function as the formal and material causes respectively. Soul receives, as it were, magnitude and mass as reasons or logoi, but without the distinction that makes bodies separated and cut off from one another. In other words, soul receives them solely as ideas or forms. Matter,

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the objection claims, is assumed to have magnitude and mass prior to their reception in bodies, but this is to make matter a productive cause and thus somehow a form. Instead, Plotinus argues that matter receives them without becoming them, but as the substrate in which forms receive magnitude and mass in coming to be the particular bodies separated in space and time that constitute the parts of the sensible world. If this is the case, Plotinus must explain how matter is known. Plotinus is precise: matter cannot be sensed or thought, as without form. Thus, he begins by reminding us that we always know the form, but infer the matter indirectly and darkly. It is therefore never an object of thinking or sensing, simply speaking. Because sense and intellect are restricted to forms, Plotinus shows how reason and imagination can be used to formulate and define a concept for matter even though it has no form that can be sensed or thought. Reasoning about it is grounded in the general principle that like is known by like, which here is the indefinite known by the indefinite. We can, therefore, formulate a logos or definition of matter, a concept by which to distinguish it from other concepts, but in this instance the concept is spurious, as is the reasoning by which we formulate it, as there is no object to grasp. A further problem lies in the fact that human knowing is accustomed to produce an appearance in imagination that represents the object of the concept in its absence. Such an appearance thus refers to an object, intelligible or sensible, but Plotinus argues that in the case of matter this appearance or representation misleads one into thinking that matter is indeed some kind of thing, the mistake at the root of misunderstanding its nature. This role of imagination can include all kinds of things, whether the elements, some inexhaustible kind of stuff, or magnitude and mass, that have infiltrated the accounts of matter and invariably turned it into some kind of stuff or body.

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A related problem concerns the predicates and definitions used to describe matter as privation, the unlimited, and the indefinite. The mistake continues to be taking these predicates in the usual sense of describing some quality or attribute of matter, which becomes the subject or substrate for predicates. Plotinus argues that this cannot be the case. Privation cannot be some kind of strange quality, the privation, as it were, of all qualities, as this implies that matter has a quality and privation is a form in some sense. Matter is just other, and not so as if it were a quality or participated in a quality. In examining Aristotle’s dictum, that privation and the subject of privation are two in definition but one in the substrate, Plotinus indicates that it rests on a distinction that no longer applies in the case of matter. This principle covers all three terms: privation, the unlimited, and the indefinite. The definitions of any of these and the definition of matter as the substrate are not two; in fact, all these definitions say the same thing, that matter is other. In this analysis, Plotinus is applying to statements and definitions what he had done immediately before in showing how matter can be known by reasoning and imagination. Because matter cannot be the subject of attribution, and because privation, the unlimited, and the indefinite cannot be attributes, they cannot be distinguished as if matter had a composite structure. Instead, Plotinus indicates that all these terms merely highlight different ways in which reasoning can indicate the indefiniteness and incorporeal nature of matter and how they are rooted in the otherness that characterizes everything that comes from the One. Matter, in conclusion, is a constant shadow that accompanies the knowledge of any intelligible or sensible object as a composite of matter and form. It is also implicit in all knowledge of the forms as sharing a common substrate, as a kind of indefinite unity that is known indefinitely behind

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all the forms. The indefinite character of matter means that knowledge of it remains itself indefinite, and thus there is the constant need to resist the strong tendency to turn matter into something definite, assimilating prime matter to its proximate cousin. Plotinus uses all his skills in argument to forestall taking matter as something definite, repeatedly pointing out the inconsistencies that arise when this happens. Even the designation of matter as evil and ugly is not meant to give it any positive character, but to specify as strongly as possible the complete lack of quality and form in matter. Matter is thus not a productive cause of the evil or ugly, but those terms express the ultimate material cause for the presence of the evil and ugly in corporeal things as not completely dominated by their forms. While this is expressed quite neutrally here, these negative designations for matter play, nevertheless, a major part in Plotinus’s explanation of the peculiar kinds of alienation open to the human soul, whether moral, aesthetic, or intellectual.

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Two Selves and Three Souls

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Two Selves and Three Souls On Virtue (I.2[19]), On Dialectic (I.3[20]) The two brief treatises On Virtue and On Dialectic have a style distinct from the treatises considered so far, using rhetorical persuasion rather than demonstrative argument and analysis, with the intent to motivate rather than to convince. This is evident in the opening words of I.2[19], which describe the evils of this earthly place and the soul’s desire to flee from them. It continues by examining virtue as the way the soul accomplishes this task. Unlike other early treatises, there is a shift from examining the realities to which the soul is akin to a discussion of the various virtues the soul needs in order to make possible its ascent to those realities. I.2[19] presents the division of the virtues into civic and purifying, corresponding to the two selves, empirical and intelligible, around which

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the soul’s activities are centered. I.3[20] adds the threefold division of types of soul and the common need for an ascent whose moral and intellectual dimensions merge in an erotic identification with the intelligible. While alienation is the rubric under which Plotinus examines the peculiar evils that beset the human soul, the philosophical life, including both intellectual and moral virtues, is the chosen means to overcome the alienation and regain the aloneness, or purity, of the soul’s true identity. The two selves as (1) the real self, descended from and still at home in the intelligible, and (2) the other self, centered in the sensible experience of the embodied soul, capture this alienation with psychological precision.

Virtue and the Two Selves (I.2[19].1–7) By quoting Plato’s Theaetetus 176ab, Plotinus identifies virtue as the traditional means for becoming godlike, which immediately entails several aporiai. The first set of these comes from within classical philosophy, whether virtue, which makes us like the divine, is also possessed by the gods, and whether there are virtues in the intelligible that correspond to the virtues here. The second set of aporiai derives from the desire to understand ancient philosophers, in this case whether Plotinus’s account confuses or reconciles the positions of Plato and Aristotle, and, finally, whether his notion of virtue implies contempt for sensible reality and our experience within it. Plotinus’s first aporia seems to accept without question Aristotle’s definition of virtues as habits acquired by action, characteristics rooted in the embodied state of the human soul. Given the unchanging state of the divine, the gods do not need and could not have such virtues. While the explicit statement of this principle can be traced to Aristotle, Plotinus is right, however, to see it as a thoroughly Platonic problem, with echoes elsewhere in the Theaetetus itself. For instance,

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when Socrates argues against the identification of perception with knowledge (161b–163a), he uses two absurdities to undermine Protagoras’s notion that man is the measure. The first points out that if knowledge is the same as perception then one might as well take the baboon as the measure. The second rightly identifies knowledge as eternally true, but this kind of knowledge is in fact the preserve of the gods. Neither extreme is acceptable, given the mixed character of actual human knowledge. Plotinus captures this human situation forcefully in describing the soul as acting either under alien influence or alone, in terms of our own nature. Human virtue and knowledge express at the same time the alienation inherent in our situation as well as the means we have for overcoming it and acting according to what is our own, a theme already present in V.1[10] with its discussion of the soul’s forgetfulness. He begins once more with the role of the world soul, echoing V.1[10].2, where the soul’s imaginative identification with the world soul prepared it for the consideration of the higher hypostases: soul, intellect, and the One. With regard to virtues, Plotinus indicates swiftly that the world soul is not in fact the paradigm for the virtues. It does not need to be bravely self-controlled,1 as there is nothing it does not already have which could produce pleasure and its consequent appetite (ἐπιθυμία, 1, 14), nor anything outside the cosmos to frighten it. Although it does not need virtues, the world soul does have a desire (ὄρεξις, 1, 14) for intelligible objects. This desire matches our desire and thus makes clear that our virtues also have their source in the intelligible. Can virtues in any sense, however, be attributed to the intelligible world? The aporia receives Plotinus’s precise articulation, no longer about the gods but about the nature of the intelligible world itself, emphasizing his more Platonic context. 1. I.2[19].1, 12: σώφρονι ἀνδρείῳ.

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Plotinus notes first that Plato’s civic virtues (see Phaedo 82ab and Republic IV, 430c) cannot be candidates for intelligible virtues, as Plato and Aristotle both see these virtues of practical wisdom, courage, self-control, and justice2 as dealing with parts or faculties of the soul as embodied, whether rational, emotive, or appetitive. In their place he proposes the greater (τὰς μείζους, 1, 22) or purificatory (καθάρσεις, 3, 9) virtues, which have the same names but much different definitions. Nevertheless, the civic virtues do seem to have some role, at least as preparatory means to the higher virtues, so the task becomes twofold, to determine their relation to those higher virtues and to establish the basis for any likeness between them. This second issue entails the more general question of the kind of likeness the sensible world has to its intelligible source. Plotinus, as is his custom, uses analogies to determine how virtues can make us like what does not have virtue. One kind of analogy, illustrated by heat or fire making things hot, where such things are heated by something already heated or by the presence of the fire (I.2[19].1, 31–35), implies that fire and heated things are both instances of heat.3 In this analogy, virtue is extrinsic and adventitious to the soul, as they are related to one another reciprocally and derive from the same principle. They are like qualities present in bodies under certain conditions, defined in terms of a ratio between two extremes. The other kind of analogy, comparing the house built in the sensible world to the house existing in thought (1, 42–43), implies that virtue is not the same as its principle but is nonetheless like it. In this case, they are not reciprocally related. The physical house, for example, is like the intelligible 2. I.2[19].1, 16–18: φρόνησιν . . . ἀνδρίαν . . . σωφροσύνην . . . δικαιοσύνην. 3. In Plotinus 2003b, 278n132, Dufour mentions that in II.6[17].3, 14–20, Plotinus discusses the relation of fire and heat in discussing the nature of privation in Aristotle. See also Plotinus 2003c, 392 and 400n58, where Lavaud makes a similar claim in relation to II.6[17].3 on qualities.

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one in order and adornment,4 but there is nothing like this adornment, order, and arrangement in the intelligible.5 In the case of reciprocal likeness, things that are alike share the same form and are on the same level of reality, accounting in this way for analogy and metaphor, where one object or phenomenon can be used to explain or elucidate another. In the case of nonreciprocal likeness, however, the situation is vastly different. “Among those things, however, where one is like the other, but the other is first, not reciprocally related to that nor said to be like it, here likeness must be taken in a different sense not requiring the same form, but rather another, since it is like [that] in some other way.”6 Plotinus implied this nonreciprocity in earlier treatises, using both otherness, to establish the difference between a higher principle and the lower reality generated from it, and unity, to ground the likeness between them as not based on form but rather on the causal role of the prior principle in its unity and the turn of the lower toward the higher, by which it becomes one.7 His present comments make the nonreciprocal nature of this ontological relationship explicit and extend it to language about such relations. The analogy, in this instance, is the linguistic manifestation of the causal relation existing between a prior source and its instances. Like the sensible house, the civic virtues adorn and order matter, but the “matter” turns out to be the activities of the lower soul, with the virtues delimiting and 4. I.2[19].1, 43–44: καὶ τάξεως δὲ καὶ κόσμου. 5. Similarly, in I.6[1].3 (discussed in chapter 1), Plotinus points out that the beauty of a house or stone is not so much in them but in the more unified form present to them. 6. I.2[19].2, 6–10: ἐν οἷς δὲ τὸ μὲν ὡμοίωται πρὸς ἕτερον, τὸ δὲ ἕτερόν ἐστι πρῶτον, οὐκ ἀντιστρέφον πρὸς ἐκεῖνο οὐδὲ ὅμοιον αὐτοῦ λεγόμενον, ἐνταῦθα τὴν ὁμοίωσιν ἄλλον τρόπον ληπτέον οὐ ταὐτὸν εἶδος ἀπαιτοῦντας, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἕτερον, εἴπερ κατὰ τὸν ἕτερον τρόπον ὡμοίωται. 7. See VI.9[9].1 (on soul as demiurge), 5 (on intellect as other than the One), and 6 (on the lack of otherness in the One), as background for the soul’s ascent to the One (discussed in chapter 1). V.1[10] develops this in more detail in soul’s relation to intellect and intellect’s to the One (chapter 2).

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measuring its appetites and passions as well as taking away its false opinions. Because the soul is nearer and more akin to the intelligible than either matter, which is totally unmeasured, or body, which only partially yields to measure, it comes much closer to that divine nature, even capable, Plotinus observes wryly, of deceiving itself into thinking it is a god. Such deception is quickly unmasked by Plotinus’s comparison of the civic virtues to the greater virtues discussed in I.2[19].3–7. These purifying virtues (see Phaedo 69c) establish a different kind of likeness, which Plato referred to as a “flight to God” (Theaetetus 176b1). This likeness is not an ordering of the soul, as with the civic virtues, but rather with these purifications we become most like God.8 Plotinus uses the contrast between good and evil in the soul to clarify this difference. The civic virtues leave the soul mixed with the body, sharing its passions and having its opinions, while the purifying virtues allow it to act alone.9 This is the same language used in I.6[1].5–6 about the purification of the soul, and it has the same implication about the soul’s activity, rather than presence, in the body. The soul is good when it acts alone, according to its own nature, and it is evil when it acts in accord with what is alien to its own nature, the body and its various states. The redefinition of the purifying virtues indicates what it means for the soul to act alone: to think and to be wise (νοεῖν τε καὶ φρονεῖν, 3, 15), lest the soul share the body’s passions; to be self-controlled (σωφρονεῖν, 3, 16), lest it fear being separated from the body; to be courageous (ἀνδρίζεσθαι, 3, 17), that it may be led by reason and intellect; and this is justice (δικαιοσύνη, 3, 18). The divine nature as pure activity, moreover, cannot be characterized by these virtues as states or habits. The divine, however, covers all three hypostases, the One, intellect, and soul, and Plotinus is careful to 8. I.2[19].3, 11: μάλιστα ὁμοιούμεθα. 9. I.2[19].3, 15: μόνη ἐνεργοῖ.

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differentiate those activities that soul and intellect share from the pure, simple act of the One. Thus, soul thinks differently from intellect, while the One does not think at all. Further, thinking is not a common name for two disparate states in soul and intellect, but they are related as lower to higher, as the complex to the simple. As in other early treatises, the close link uniting soul and intellect can be more fully articulated than their common difference from the One, which goes beyond being and knowing and consequently is inexpressible. I.2[19].4 seeks to clarify further the relationship between the results of the purification (κάθαρσις, 4, 1), the nature of virtue (ἀρετή, 4, 2), and the good (ἀγαθόν, 4, 6) as different from both states of the soul. The whole chapter focuses on the distinction between what is exclusively within the soul and what identifies soul with intellect. He begins by delineating two phases of virtue, becoming purified and having become purified,10 with the former remaining imperfect and the latter already achieving a kind of perfection. The difference is between the effort of the soul to acquire virtue and the resulting virtuous state, identifying it with intellect. That the result is only a kind of perfection indicates that further distinctions need to be made. He first splits the purification into its negative and positive moments. “Having become purified, however, is the removal of everything alien, but the good is other than that.”11 The good that results from the purification is not just the removal of the alien, but something positive in its own right. The good in the soul, however, is not identical with the good itself, whether as manifest in intellect or as in the One, because the soul does not by nature remain in that transcendent good, as its movements wander in both worlds (4, 13). Taking up language from earlier treatises, the 10. I.2[19].4, 3: ἐν τῷ καθαίρεσθαι ἡ ἀρετὴ ἢ ἐν τῷ κεκαθάρθαι. 11. I.2[19].4, 5–7: ἀλλὰ τὸ κεκαθάρθαι ἀφαίρεσις ἀλλοτρίου παντός, τὸ δὲ ἀγαθὸν ἕτερον αὐτοῦ.

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soul is good when it is with its own kind and evil when with its opposites. To be with its own kind it must be purified. This purification is constituted in its first moment not merely by the negative removal of the alien, but by a positive turning, not yet described. The second moment looks to the soul, where the soul puts into operation a vision and impression of what is seen, much as sight does in relation to the visible object. First, Plotinus raises the question regarding whether the soul does not already have and recollect these objects, especially given its kinship with them. As he has repeated often enough in earlier treatises, how is it possible for the soul to forget or not be aware of its own, true nature? He answers that the soul does have these objects, but not actively; they are, as it were, hidden away in the dark and the soul needs to thrust itself toward the light in order to shed light on them and know that they are within it. It will then be in a position to compare its impressions with the objects themselves as they are in the intellect. Finally, he reminds us that the problem here belongs entirely to the soul, in turning toward or away from intellect, which nonetheless remains always present to the soul. “But perhaps it can be said to have [them] in this way, that intellect is not alien and is especially not alien when [soul] looks toward it; but if the soul is not [looking toward it], it would be alien even when present. For so it is even with the sciences, if we were not acting according to them at all, [they would be] alien.”12 Intellect is not itself ever alien to or cut off from the soul, but when the soul is not looking toward it but turned toward the sensible, it might as well be alien, as its presence no longer benefits the soul. This clarifies the nature of the soul’s alienation directly, 12. I.2[19]. 4, 25–29: τάχα δὲ καὶ οὕτω λέγεται ἔχειν, ὅτι ὁ νοῦς οὐκ ἀλλότριος καὶ μάλιστα δὲ οὐκ ἀλλότριος, ὅταν πρὸς αὐτὸν βλέπῃ· εἰ δὲ μή, καὶ παρὼν ἀλλότριος. ἐπεὶ κἂν ταῖς ἐπιστήμαις, ἐὰν μηδ’ ὅλως ἐνεργῶμεν κατ’ αὐτάς, ἀλλότριαι.

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articulated in the rest of On Virtue in terms of two different selves. In I.2[19].5–6, Plotinus looks once more at the virtues he has been discussing, but with an explicit attribution to two selves: the real self that is at home in intellect and the other self that is lost in the sensible world.13 The problem is to make clear the soul’s likeness (ὁμοίωσις) and sameness (ταὐτότης) to the divine, likeness referring to the soul’s movement toward 13. Hutchinson 2018 develops the thesis that Plotinus actually has three selves, or more precisely, three levels of self, with the third as the trace of soul that makes the body so qualified a living thing. He indicates, however, that Plotinus is confusing about this trace, as a number of souls may be its source: “the world soul, the earth soul, the individual soul, and the Hypostasis Soul” (47). Hutchinson seems to assume that the trace of soul can be related to only one of these souls at a time, but it is not clear to me that this is the case. First, however, I would argue that Plotinus excludes the hypostasis soul from this list, as remaining in intellect and thus not descending into the sensible (a confusion perhaps from Caluori 2015). This leaves three souls, but their presence is not mutually exclusive, as Hutchinson’s own analysis gives evidence. The qualified body has claims made on it, as it were, by these souls simultaneously, and as long as the living thing is alive. Sympathy expresses the claim of the world soul, as the body forms an integral part of the sensible cosmos and is thus open to influence from it; the basis for sensation, for example. Desire and magic express the claim of the earth soul. Desire is discussed by Hutchinson in the subsequent chapter concerning IV.4[28].18, where Dillon, in Plotinus 2015b, 381, also finds Plotinus confusing, as the trace seems to migrate from the individual soul in that chapter to nature in IV.4[28].20. My quibble is that making this underappreciated trace of human soul the sole proprietor and thus another level of self is counterproductive, precisely because it misses Plotinus’s point that the body is simultaneously one’s own and yet not totally so; it is mine but not me (see Hutchinson 2018, 75). Desire, or pre-desire in Dillon’s translation, is disposed by nature, but not in such a way that specific desires are not my own and partially redirected by the presence of my soul and its choices, as Plotinus makes clear, for example, later in IV.4[28].44–45 (as mentioned in the following note), where nature and human choice can collaborate or clash. I suspect Plotinus does have a third level of self that lurks in the background, but it lies more in the opposite direction, in the root of the self in the unity it has from the One, a unity that makes possible the other levels of self—intelligible, sensible, and their permutations—as expressions of one and the same thing. Evidence for this can be found in previous chapters in commenting on I.6[1].7 as well as VI.9[9].3, 10–15, and 6, 42–58, which also challenges Hutchinson’s (and Caluouri’s) thesis that knowledge in intellect begins with self-knowledge; knowledge for Plotinus is always of the other, with intellect itself turning first to the One as prior in order to “know” itself and its content, a move which also emphasizes that its unity comes from the One. This will be revisited in the chapter on VI.5[23] on the omnipresence of the One.

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the divine and sameness denoting its kinship within the divine nature. He begins by indicating the role of the purifying virtues in the soul’s separation from things of the body, first in terms of its pleasures and pains, where the soul acquires an indifference that reduces their role to the minimum of not impeding its proper activities. For anger, fear, and appetite, however, the goal remains to get rid of such states completely, but each of them has an involuntary (ἀπροαίρετον, 5, 14; 16; 19) element that does not affect the soul, but the other part (ἄλλου, 5, 13), the irrational part (ἄλογον, 5, 22), the worse part (χεῖρον, 5, 29), which the soul seeks to purify as much as possible. If the soul is successful, even this worse part actively supports the purified soul, disgusted at any involuntary movement and rebuking such weakness. Soul in this context is the real self, while the other self is its lower, irrational part. Returning to the distinction between the negative and positive moments of the purification, Plotinus rephrases it in I.2[19].6 in terms of the difference between any activities of the lower self, including not sinning and right action, and the real goal of becoming god. This situation is explicitly described in terms of the two selves. In the one case, where there is still something involuntary lurking in the areas of anger, fear, and appetite, the individual is double, god and daemon at once: the lower self with his civic virtues remains actively present. This self is like the divine, but only as much as is possible. In the other case, where there is nothing involuntary remaining, the individual is only god, the real self that is indeed the same as the divine and not just like it. This real self, in coming into the sensible, dwells with that lower self and seeks to make it like himself, unshaken by the disturbances that come from the body or at least without doing anything that the real self as master considers unseemly.14 14. See Gurtler in Plotinus 2015c, 90–94, for my discussion of the soul’s proper activity in the body, especially in IV.4[28].44–45, where Plotinus contrasts a life of

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Plotinus finally describes the greater virtues of this higher self and distinguishes them, in turn, from their corresponding states in intellect. Thus, the Platonic sense of wisdom (σοφία μὲν καὶ φρόνησις, 6, 12) is contemplation of those things which in intellect are held by immediate contact. For the soul, wisdom is a virtue, as it is the nature of virtue to come from elsewhere and the soul possesses it precisely because it is other, but for intellect, wisdom cannot be a virtue, as wisdom is not something other but rather intellect’s own activity, what it is. There is, in other words, a distinction in the soul between what it is and the activity of wisdom, but in intellect there is no such distinction, as intellect’s wisdom is not derived from another but is identical with itself. The same is true for justice itself and each of the others: they are not virtues, but paradigms, as virtue is a derivative state present in the soul. Virtue belongs to someone, but the paradigm, as it were, is itself and does not belong to anyone. At this point Plotinus fills in the notion of justice, mentioned so cursorily in the earlier redefinition of the virtues. Starting with Plato’s definition that justice is “minding one’s own business” (Republic IV, 434c8), he shows how it characterizes in different ways intellect and soul. In both cases, justice is concerned with unity, which seems to make it apt for the multiple parts of the soul, but inappropriate for the partless nature of intellect. Thus, justice orders the parts of the soul so they function together as a unity. For intellect, however, justice is its more perfect unity, as one part is not divided from another. Plotinus turns the objection around by making the higher unity of intellect the contemplation with the practical life, indicating how one can construct a self that acts according to principles from the soul’s true nature rather than have one’s reason determined by external factors: the pleasure, pains, and affections arising in the body. Plotinus insists not only on following these higher principles, but in doing so with indifference about the outcome, the move depicted here in terms of the difference between acquiring virtue and the actual consequences of identification with the intellect as divine.

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paradigm for the lesser unity achieved by justice as a virtue in the soul. The higher virtues, to sum up, are all defined as the soul’s movement toward intellect and away from the passions of the lower self. The relation of justice to the other virtues, in intellect or in soul, leads directly to the defense in I.2[19].7 of the common opinion that the virtues also mutually imply one another. Finally, Plotinus considers the relation of the greater and lesser virtues; whoever has the greater has the lesser necessarily, at least potentially, but whoever has the lesser need not develop the greater. The reason for this has been explained in considering the two selves. The real self wants to share its virtues with the lower self and does so first through the virtues that order the passions and appetites of the lower self. Having those civic virtues, however, is not sufficient for the active presence of the higher virtues. It consists of the negative moment of eliminating evil, and so doing what is right, but possessing these virtues cannot, of itself, achieve the positive moment of becoming divine. He concludes with the different ways likeness can occur, as discussed earlier in 2, 1–10: reciprocal likeness, where things alike share the same form on the same level of reality, and nonreciprocal likeness, where likeness is not based on the same form but on effects that relate differently and nonreciprocally to their cause. In the present context, Plotinus is contrasting the virtuous life shared among those with civic virtues, where their goodness is related reciprocally among them all in terms of the same kind of life, and the higher virtues, which concern a different life entirely, that of the gods, to which they are not related reciprocally. “The likeness for these [good men] then is such that [their likenesses] are copies made like one another from the same [thing], but the [likeness to the gods] is for some-

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thing different, precisely for the exemplar itself.”15 This movement toward the divine continues to receive attention in the different context of Platonic dialectic discussed in the next section on I.3[20].

Dialectic and the Three Souls (I.3[20].1–6) The treatise On Dialectic is a short companion to On Virtue. In it, Plotinus supplements the discussion of the virtues and the double self with an examination of those capable of making the ascent and the kind of training they need. He presumes the moral development of I.2[19] and concentrates on the intellectual training for the musician, lover, and philosopher, the three types who make the ascent. They all need to be led upward, but the native philosopher needs only minimal assistance. While Plotinus examines these three as if they were different individuals, some ambiguity can also be detected. First, he indicates that the musician can develop into the lover and then into the philosopher. Further, in the context of On Virtue, where the lower stages are necessary for the emergence of the higher, hints of a similar dependence are not entirely absent from I.3[20]. In all cases, however, the ascent has the same two phases analyzed in I.2[19] concerning moral virtue, the progress upward and the subsequent presence in the intelligible. The description of the ascent from Plato’s allegory of the cave in Republic VII is clearly in the background, with Plotinus adapting it not only to indicate the movement toward the intelligible but also from one’s first, halting steps 15. I.2[19].7, 28–30: ὁμοίωσις δὲ ἡ μὲν πρὸς τούτους, ὡς εἰκὼν εἰκόνι ὡμοίωται ἀπὸ τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἑκατέρα. ἡ δὲ πρὸς ἄλλον ὡς πρὸς παράδειγμα. See Plotinus 1982, 1:219, where Igal translates εἰκών as copy, and Plotinus 2003d, 443 and 465n163, where Flammand provides the reference back to I.2[19].2, 6–10, and the distinction between reciprocal and nonreciprocal likenesses. Both suggestions help to clarify Plotinus’s usual elliptical style, which demands spelling out more thoroughly the import of these concluding lines to the treatise.

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in the intelligible to the point of reaching its pinnacle, the preparation for the goal of contact with the Good. In I.3[20].1–3, Plotinus quickly differentiates the characteristics of the three types and what must be done to guide them. The passage is cluttered with the verbal adjective of necessity, ending in -τέος,16 with the guide as the understood subject who must lead and teach, in turn, the musician, the lover, and the philosopher. (1) The guide must lead the musician beyond rhythm and figure, with their intervals and harmonics (αἱ ἀναλογίαι καὶ οἱ λόγοι, 1, 30) to the beauty which is separate from their sonic matter, and must further teach him that his sensible excitement comes from intelligible harmony and its beauty, which is universal and not particular. In addition, the guide must drill the arguments of philosophy into him, from which he must lead him to confidence in what he has in his soul but does not yet recognize. (2) With the lover, not only is there a change from sound to sight, but from sensing to memory, underlining the higher stage that the lover represents in the movement toward the intelligible. What the lover has in common with the musician, however, is not grasping beauty as separate, but being excited and captivated by its visible manifestation. Following Plato’s Symposium, the guide must teach this initiate not to cling to one body and must lead him, again by argument, to see all bodies as beautiful and then to see beauty as other than bodies, by grasping first the beauty of customs and laws and then the beauty of arts, sciences, and virtues. Finally, the guide must teach him that these beauties must be made one, in conformity with the unity from which they came. He refers to the discussion of I.2[19] by mentioning the role of the virtues in ascending to the intelligible, thus linking the moral virtues to the soul’s intellectual development, highlighting the holistic character of the ascent, and offering some qualification to a 16. Smyth 1980, #358, 2b.

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radical distinction of the three types as separate individuals. But the discussion of the philosopher represents the real test in this regard. (3) Plotinus describes the philosopher as ready by nature for the ascent to the intellectual and not needing to be separated, both of which make his case different from that of the musician or lover. Nevertheless, the philosopher is still puzzled and needs a guide. Here, however, the guide must show the way and free this individual, who both wants this ascent and has been naturally free long since to make it. The guide accomplishes this task by imparting mathematics and dialectic. Mathematics trains the philosophical soul about the nature of the immaterial. Plotinus brings in once more the role of the virtues, which the guide must lead the philosopher to perfect as part of the preparation for being trained in dialectic and the final ascent. Thus, while the philosopher is disposed by nature for this moral and intellectual journey, Plotinus states explicitly that his native virtues need to be brought to perfection and, at a minimum, hints that the philosopher has somewhere along the way also absorbed the lessons of the musician and lover about beauty as immaterial. If we recall I.6[1], the trajectory of beauty leads right to the intelligible and involves the erotic dimension that makes presence there alive with delight. Such intelligible beauty does not lure the musician and lover alone, but identifies all three with the transcendent beauty of the intelligible realm. After discussing the musician, lover, and philosopher in I.3[20].1–3, Plotinus drops the hortatory language and turns instead to an analysis of the nature of dialectic in I.3[20].4–6. In 4–5, Plotinus sketches a typically Platonic understanding of dialectic, its object, method, and principles, before ending with a discussion of the relationship between dialectic and philosophy, distinguishing it from logic and, switching terminology, identifying it with Aristotelian first philosophy. Dis-

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cussing the object of dialectic first, Plotinus emphasizes both the search for definition and a kind of table of opposites: beings and nonbeings, good and not good, eternal and not eternal, knowledge and opinion. The goal here is to come to rest in the truth of the intelligible, no longer wandering in the sensible world and the falsehoods that can spring up from it in the soul (4, 1–12). For the method of dialectic, Plotinus uses Plato’s combination and division, applied first to essences and then to the primary genera, so as to traverse the whole intelligible world, bringing one’s knowledge of that world synthetically together and then analyzing the resulting unity into its structural components. The goal is once more to come to rest, quietly gazing at intelligible unity and leaving logic behind (4, 12–23). Dialectic, finally, has its principles in intellect, quoting Plato’s definition of dialectic (Philebus 58d6–7) as “the purest part of intellect and wisdom.”17 Plotinus uses this definition to make the same distinction found in I.2[19].6 between intellect and virtue. Wisdom is a habit (ἕξιν) of soul concerned with being (περὶ τὸ ὄν), while intellect is concerned with what is beyond being (περὶ τὸ ἐπέκεινα τοῦ ὄντος, I.3[20].5, 6–8), echoing Republic 509b9. From this point on, Plotinus considers the relation of philosophy and dialectic (I.3[20].5, 8 to 6, 24). The first difficulty comes from an objection that assumes Platonic dialectic to be equivalent to Aristotelian logic. Plotinus distinguishes dialectic from logic in several ways: it is not a tool (ὄργανον), nor theorems and rules (θεωρήματά ἐστι καὶ κανόνες), but is about actual things (περὶ πράγματα) and has beings as its subject matter (οἷον ὕλην ἔχει τὰ ὄντα, 5, 10–12). Because it deals with beings directly, it knows truth essentially. “But it knows falsehood and specious argument incidentally, as the doings of another, judging falsehood as alien to the truths in itself, knowing, if someone were to bring it up, that something is 17. I.3[20].5, 4–5: τὸ καθαρώτατον νοῦ καὶ φρονήσεως.

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contrary to the rule of truth.”18 It is, of course, the lower part of the soul where falsehood and specious argument occur, as that is where propositions (προτάσεως, 5, 16) are constructed and, generally, all the movements of the soul—varieties of affirming and denying in thought and action—that serve for this construction. The real self in the intelligible, on the contrary, grasps its objects directly, as do the senses here below, making both of them different from the operations of reason with its need for logic. Plotinus situates dialectic in the Aristotelian philosophical taxonomy by identifying Platonic dialectic with Aristotle’s first philosophy, which assists both physics and ethics as their higher science. Aristotle’s intellectual virtues thus have their principles from dialectic, and are concerned with the universal rather than the particular. Aristotle’s practical reason (φρόνησις, 6, 10) is more universal than the other moral virtues, but is still concerned with what must be done and is thus distinct from dialectic and theoretical wisdom (ἡ δὲ διαλεκτικὴ καὶ ἡ σοφία, 6, 12–13), which are the source of its universal and immaterial principles. With this identification of Platonic dialectic and Aristotelian theoretical wisdom, Plotinus ends with a brief note on the relationship between these higher and lower virtues. The lower virtues can be present in an individual without the higher, but they are then incomplete and defective. The treatise On Virtue made the same point about the civic virtues, which are necessary but not sufficient for the actualization of the higher virtues (I.2[19].7). On Dialectic poses the reverse question in an interesting way: can one be wise and a dialectician without the lower virtues? His response is in his usual elliptical and elusive style and needs some careful study, 18. I.3[20].5, 13–17: τὸ δὲ ψεῦδος καὶ τὸ σόφισμα κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς γινώσκει ἄλλου ποιήσαντος ὡς ἀλλότριον κρίνουσα τοῖς ἐν αὐτῇ ἀληθέσι τὸ ψεῦδος, γινώσκουσα, ὅταν τις προσαγάγῃ, ὅ τι παρὰ τὸν κανόνα τοῦ ἀληθοῦς.

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especially because it bears directly on the question of how different the native philosopher actually is from the musician and lover. His first statement is curious; he says merely that it would not happen.19 This seems to be an admission that, considered theoretically or logically, wisdom and dialectic as such do not depend on the lower virtues, but that it is nonetheless impossible, in practice, for someone to be wise and a dialectician without having the lower virtues. He continues that the lower virtues either precede (in the case of the musician or lover) or grow along with the higher virtues (in the case of the philosopher). At this point the complications begin, so I will start with what Plotinus says in the last few lines of I.3[20].6 where he articulates the connection between the two kinds of virtue. Someone may perhaps have natural virtues, out of which, when wisdom is present, the perfect [virtues develop]. Thus if wisdom follows after the natural [virtues], then it would perfect moral character. Or, if someone has natural [virtues], are both [wisdom and moral character] actually developed and perfected together? Rather, as the one advances, it perfects the other: for natural virtue generally has an undeveloped eye for moral character, and the principles are the most important thing for both [kinds of virtue], as the means by which we have [them].20

The virtues present by nature include both intellectual and moral virtues, to use Aristotelian terminology, and both kinds need to be developed and brought to perfection, moved from potency to act. In Nicomachean Ethics VI, 1144b–1145a, Aristotle distinguishes between moral qualities in us by nature and virtue in the strict sense, with its principles in intellect 19. I.3[20].6, 17: ἢ οὐδ’ ἂν γένοιτο. 20. I.3[20].6, 18–24: καὶ τάχα ἂν φυσικάς τις ἀρετὰς ἔχοι, ἐξ ὧν αἱ τέλειαι σοφίας γενομένης. μετὰ τὰς φυσικὰς οὖν ἡ σοφία· εἶτα τελειοῖ τὰ ἤθη. ἢ τῶν φυσικῶν οὐσῶν συναύξεται ἤδη ἄμφω καὶ συντελειοῦται; ἢ προλαβοῦσα ἡ ἑτέρα τὴν ἑτέραν ἐτελείωσεν· ὅλως γὰρ ἡ φυσικὴ ἀρετὴ καὶ ὄμμα ἀτελὲς καὶ ἦθος ἔχει, καὶ αἱ ἀρχαὶ τὸ πλεῖστον ἀμφοτέραις, ἀφ’ ὧν ἔχομεν.

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and right reason and which are acquired by habit. In Republic VI, Plato describes the virtues in the philosopher by nature but completed by education and age (487a3–5). Moral character is, in turn, perfected by the presence of wisdom, which includes both practical and theoretical dimensions. When Plotinus describes natural virtues as not having a mature eye for moral character, he also is including experience and education as the means to see their proper objects clearly and to be directed to them effectively. Thus the difference between the natural and the mature state is that perfect virtues operate on the basis of principles from the intelligible, whether the wisdom which knows the truth or the prudence which informs the moral virtues by applying these principles to the particular.21 Thus, one might be a philosopher by nature, but that is not the same as being wise and a dialectician, which come as one is guided toward and acquires the life of philosophy morally and intellectually. The philosopher may begin with natural advantages over the musician and the lover, but his natural virtues still need to be perfected. Plato in Republic VI is particularly eloquent in pointing out that even the most nobly endowed soul may not become wise and good. Plotinus nowhere demurs, and his comments here are entirely consistent with that Platonic assumption, resting both on his own distinction of two phases in the virtues, the process of acquiring them and the emergent state of perfection, and on his notion of the double self, the lower self that is perfected in relation to one’s sensible experiences and the higher in touch with and deriving its principles directly from the intelligible.

21. Once more, see Plotinus 2015c, 90–94, for my discussion of this topic in the context of IV.4[28].44–45 and the life of the sage.

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Conclusion These two treatises provide a more detailed understanding of the soul’s alienation for Plotinus. This is particularly apparent in the distinction between the two selves, if we keep in mind some caveats about a dualistic reading of Plotinus, with a strict cleavage between the sensible and intelligible worlds. It is important not to be deceived by his language. He writes, for example, that the lower, worse, or irrational self is evil in contrast to the real self, which is good. The contrast is not, however, moral or even ontological, but regards whether the self in question is acting in response to the body and its passions or is identified with the pure soul acting alone as akin to the intelligible. Further, because it is the lower self that possesses the civic virtues, not committing evil but doing what is right, this cannot be a description of someone who is morally evil. The real self, moreover, possesses the purifying virtues, preconditions for the ascent to, presence in, and union with the intelligible. While Plotinus contrasts these two selves as good and evil, he is not making a moral distinction, as the civic virtues are seen as necessary for someone who has the higher virtues. His contrast of the two kinds of virtue as good and evil is thus not a moral judgment, nor a contemptus mundi, but part of his hortatory agenda (here shared with Plato and Aristotle) not to be satisfied with a morally good life, but to seek a higher kind of perfection that recovers the divine element in the human soul. The alienation of the soul is thus not essentially a contrast between the virtuous and the vicious, but between two levels of human experience, one circumscribed by its relation to the body and its experience, and the other finding itself in the intellect, with a deepening freedom from the constriction of sensible experience. If we look at the virtues appropriate for each self, we can also appreciate what Plotinus means by alienation as con-

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cretely defined in terms of human experience. In relation to pleasure and pain and the opinions derived exclusively from them, Plotinus sees the virtues as an indifference that reduces the influence of these essentially physical states to a minimum. One can see at this level his nod to Stoic ἀπάθεια, with its freedom from affection, and his indication of the appropriate sphere of its operation. Moving upward in his anthropological scheme, anger, fear, and appetite need also to be excised from the soul. Here the difference in virtues becomes Aristotelian and Platonic. For the civic virtues as described by Aristotle, these states are not to be eliminated but controlled; one is to reach the mean where their expression is not excessive, and thus morally evil, but appropriate, and thus doing what is right, as Plotinus phrases it in I.2[19].6. For the purifying virtues on the Platonic side, however, something much different is needed. These virtues imply a more thorough turning away from anger, fear, and appetite so that the soul has removed everything alien and has identified itself solely with the good. In this case, the soul does indeed overcome all alienation and achieves a self-unity that reveals its own divine nature. This goal is not ἀπάθεια, but the erotic embrace of intelligible beauty at the center of the Platonic ascent. Taking the parallel track of intellectual development in I.3[20], Plotinus shows how sensible beauty reminds the soul, under proper guidance, of intelligible beauty, with the need, as the soul progresses, to appreciate more and more clearly the nature of the immaterial. Mathematics and dialectic become the methods most apt for inculcating this sense of the immaterial and the beauty of the intelligible. Together with the soul’s moral progress, they bring the soul to union with the intelligible, not to a dry, abstract logical system, but to the living, dynamic beauty of the intelligible itself. Alienation then is not essentially a moral category, but an indica-

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tion of the soul’s situation as embodied. Plotinus emphasizes that this alienation is not defined so much in terms of the soul’s negative embrace of evil, but paradoxically a positive failure of the soul to reach its good, a good inherent to its higher nature.

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Omnipresence and Incorporeality On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole I (VI.4[22]) Alienation receives its specification in this double treatise, VI.4–5[22–23], in strictly ontological categories. As the title of the treatise indicates, the challenge of the Parmenides concerning the nature of the forms and the meaning of participation dominates the argument. The first part, VI.4[22], focuses on the contrast between the quantitative and corporeal assumptions of the opponents of participation and the incorporeality at the heart of its defense. Plotinus distinguishes between immanent and transcendent forms, with immanent forms the qualities or accidents of bodies and transcendent forms bringing unity, life, and being to the sensible. The incor-

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poreality of transcendent forms means that they are present as a whole to sensible objects, unifying them in a way that goes beyond mere material juxtaposition. While Plotinus plays with phrases from the Parmenides, there is nothing mystical in his approach, but a Platonic explication of the relation of form to its instances, whether that of intellect to soul or of soul, in turn, to body.1 Alienation emerges as the consequence of the otherness at the root of the generation of a lower from a transcendent reality. This is consistent with Plotinus’s position in all the treatises examined thus far, but now looked at from the perspective of the attack on participation, whether in the Platonic form presented in the Parmenides or that of Aristotle with his different understanding of substance and accidents.

Separation and Presence (VI.4[22].1–5) Plotinus begins in VI.4[22].1 with a series of questions about the relation of soul and body. He is seeking to answer the challenge to the theory of forms presented in the Parmenides and Aristotle’s writings that the separation of the forms makes their relation to bodies incoherent. Instead, Plotinus clarifies how different kinds of forms relate to bodies differently. Some forms are indeed not separate, but dependent on body, and thus share in its size and quantitative nature. Other forms, however, remain independent of body, relating to it as a whole. Dependent forms are qualities, affections of body, 1. The portions of this chapter that address VI.4[22].3 and VI.4[22].9 are based on Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, 1992, “Plotinus and the Platonic Parmenides,” International Philosophical Quarterly 32, no. 4 (December): 443–57. The article dealt with the charge of E. R. Dodds, F. M. Cornford, and others that Plotinus’s interpretation of the Parmenides was mystical, by which they seem to mean that it is based on some kind of nonrational experience. Recently Ousager 2003, 219–40, and 2008, 125–51, has argued that the interpretation of Plato, identifying the Good of the Republic and the One of the Parmenides, is Plato’s intent and Plotinus’s articulation of it is essentially rational. This chapter adds support to Ousager’s argument.

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which are the same in form but different in number. For example, white cannot exist without body and the white of one part is numerically different from the white of another. It follows from this that if one part of the object undergoes change (e.g., loses its whiteness), that does not entail that some other part changes along with it. Anyone who has painted a house knows how resistant some bodies can be to changing their qualities all at once. Soul, on the contrary, is both formally and numerically the same throughout the body. In this case, what happens to one part affects the whole body, with Plotinus mentioning perceptions to indicate this kind of unity (1, 26). Stepping on a nail or touching something hot causes a reaction in the whole body and not just in the foot or hand. There is nothing mystical about these experiences, and in VI.4[22].2–8 Plotinus attempts to explain why bodies are divided into parts, but souls are not so divided and are thus present everywhere, no matter what size the body. It is thus important to note that Plotinus begins with experience and that omnipresence and transcendence first emerge to explain the particular relation of soul and body.2 In VI.4[22].2, he immediately shifts to the general relation of the intelligible and sensible worlds, the context for his careful analysis of omnipresence and transcendence in the key text of this section, VI.4[22].3. To test his thesis, he takes the case of the largest body, the whole sensible cosmos, and its relation to the intelligible all that informs it. First, the sensible cosmos is defined in terms that undercut the objections that the sensible and intelligible are both separate from one an2. In two short notes, IV.1[4] and IV.2[21], Plotinus already articulated distinctions being made here. In IV.1[4].1, he distinguished between souls’ relation to bodies and that of qualities to bodies, and in IV.1[4].2 used that distinction to argue against the Stoic account of sensation. Both of these notes also consider the nature and relation of the intelligible to the sensible, with IV.2[21] rehearsing in terms of the Timaeus themes explored at great length in VI.4–5[22–23] in terms of the Parmenides. In Plotinus 2015c, 299–343, I translate and discuss these two intriguing notes.

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other and thus mutually independent and in no way related. Plotinus maintains instead that the sensible world cannot exist without the intelligible world, nor even continue or move without it. The dependence of the sensible on the intelligible is a necessary first step in his argument, the prelude for the much harder task of indicating how the intelligible can be the source of the sensible and yet remain completely on its own or transcendent. They are, in the terms of On Virtue (I.2[19].1–2), nonreciprocally related. The intelligible world is both first and being,3 but the sensible cosmos is something other4 and not-being.5 The reason for this is that being cannot be in not-being, but only not-being in being. The intelligible is an all that is defined as a being equal to itself, so that, despite being all, it is not torn away from itself, but is everywhere, because it is always in being. Everywhere6 is thus equated with several other phrases: in being and in itself,7 for it is already in unity.8 Whatever is in being is not cut off from other beings; it is thus everywhere, as it shares the nature of being itself. However many beings are in this all, they are not separated from one another and thus all are in unity. These phrases indicate the ways in which Plotinus understands the nature of the incorporeal, as it is in itself and as first in relation to the sensible cosmos. From II.4[12].5, 32, and I.2[19].2, 7, we have seen that the designation of a prior as first signifies the way in which a lower level is generated from a higher as both other and nonreciprocally related to it. This means that the sensible is set firm in, participates in, coincides with, and draws strength from the intelligible, without dividing the intelligible or having it go 3. VI.4[22].2, 14: καὶ πρῶτον καὶ ὄν. 4. VI.4[22].2, 17–18: τι . . . ἄλλο. 5. VI.4[22].2, 22: τὸ μὴ ὄν. 6. VI.4[22].2, 24–28: τὸ πανταχοῦ. 7. VI.4[22].2, 26: ἐν τῷ ὄντι καὶ ἐν ἑαυτῷ. 8. VI.4[22].2, 26–27: ἤδη . . . ἐν ἑνί.

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outside of itself; to repeat, not-being is in being and never the reverse. Our language, however, tends to obscure this relation, as we apply the terms “being” and “everywhere” to the sensible objects of our experience, which are not strictly being nor are any of them everywhere. Understanding the intelligible from this confusing sensible perspective is, for Plotinus, the root cause of objections to participation in the forms, especially the attack in the Parmenides against the presence of the form everywhere. In conclusion, at VI.4[22].2, 34–49, Plotinus argues that the approach of the sensible toward the intelligible has definite consequences, closely related to the discussion of unity in On Matter (II.4[12].4–7; 12). The sensible cosmos does not seek to be spread out beyond itself, but to be in the intelligible all. Because it is not able to achieve this, it settles for the second rank of being around or neighboring the intelligible. That is, the sensible cosmos seeks unity rather than the complete division of matter as its substrate. He describes the movement that this relation to the intelligible engenders in the sensible cosmos as circular, as its desire for the intelligible causes it to turn (2, 41) until it achieves the relative perfection and unity of the heavenly sphere. By contrast, if the relation of the sensible and intelligible were spatial, the movement of the sensible would be in a straight line (2, 44), from where it is to where the intelligible is, with part of it touching only part of that. As it is, the sensible, by turning completely, is in each of its parts bordering on the intelligible as a whole. Plotinus thus understands the cosmology of his day as reflecting his ontology. In VI.4[22].3, Plotinus begins to unravel the way in which the intelligible is present to the sensible. The point at issue is whether the intelligible itself is present or only powers that go out from it, and if the latter, whether this implies that the intelligible is not, in fact, really present, but only the souls

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radiating from it. Thus Plotinus seeks to preserve the separate and independent nature of the intelligible together with its presence in sensible things and to demonstrate how unity and multiplicity are possible at each level.9 “Are we to say the [intelligible being] is present itself, or, rather, that it exists by itself, but powers go from it to all things and in this way it is said to be everywhere? They mean in this view that souls are like rays, so that it is set fast in itself, but they, as sent forth, become one living thing after another.”10 Plotinus uses the word “power” to show how souls come from the intelligible to living things, adding that these souls are like rays. This language is analogous to the simile of the sun in the Republic 508a–509b, where the recurrence of power (δύναμις, 508a1, b6, e2, 509b3, 9), is identified as an outflow (ἐπίρρυτον, 508b7) from the sun.11 Power allows him to preserve the transcendence of the intelligible as well as its presence as a whole to living things. This presence to living things, however, seems to put at risk presence as a whole, as the difference and separation of the sensible seems contrary to the unity and wholeness of intelligible presence. The rest of VI.4[22].3 seeks to resolve these issues. Rather, on the one hand, the one over these [living things], by not preserving the whole nature which is in that intelligible itself, makes 9. This chapter of VI.4[22] was translated and analyzed in my article, Gurtler 1992, 446–49 (as noted earlier); the analysis here is new and the translation has been modified for clarity and exactness. 10. VI.4[22].3, 1–6: ἆρ’ οὖν αὐτὸ φήσομεν παρεῖναι, ἢ αὐτὸ μὲν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ εἶναι, δυνάμεις δὲ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ ἰέναι ἐπὶ πάντα, καὶ οὕτως αὐτὸ πανταχοῦ λέγεσθαι εἶναι; οὕτω γὰρ τὰς ψυχὰς οἷον βολὰς εἶναι λέγουσιν, ὥστε αὐτὸ μὲν ἱδρῦσθαι ἐν αὑτῷ, τὰς δ’ ἐκπεμφθείσας κατ’ ἄλλο καὶ κατ’ ἄλλο ζῷον γίγνεσθαι. 11. For βολάς (3, 4), Plotinus 1964 compares ἀκτῖνι in Plutarch, De facie 28 (943d), and ἀκτῖνες in Nag Hammadi Library, cod. i. 4 (45.31); Nemesius 2 (111). These more immediate sources are perhaps useful for fitting Plotinus in the general Platonic discussion of the relation of the intelligible and sensible worlds. For the last lines, 5–6, Plotinus 1964 refers to Phaedo 113a4–5, the myth of the afterlife and the context of living creatures coming to birth again.

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power present here just12 to what it is present; but this is not [to say that] that [intelligible] is not wholly present, since even then that [intelligible] is not cut off from its own power, which it gave to that [sensible thing], but the recipient is able to take only so much of all that is present.13

First, these powers do not bring the whole nature of the intelligible world with them. Each power is a “one over many,”14 the classic formulation of the relation of a Platonic form to its sensible instances, and each is thus some specific nature and not the intelligible as a whole. Plotinus argues, however, that this does not mean that the intelligible is not completely present,15 as it is not cut off from these emergent powers. The limitation comes instead on the side of the recipient,16 which is able to receive only so much. The intelligible as incorporeal cannot be divided and is thus completely present to the powers, which could not continue to exist if they were cut off from it. The meaning of this cutting off becomes the crucial topic analyzed later in VI.4[22].9, where power itself undergoes full examination. In the next few lines (3, 11–17), further, Plotinus distinguishes the ways in which form (εἶδος, 3, 13) and being (ὄν, 3, 12 as αὐτὸ; 15) are present to particulars. On the other hand, where all the powers [are present], being itself is clearly present, though still separate. For, if it became form of a particular, it would depart from being whole and from being in itself everywhere, and would even accidentally belong to the other. But being, in its wishing to belong to nothing which would wish for it, 12. Liddell-Scott 1958, qv, αὐτοῦ, Adv., prop. gen. of αὐτός: just there or just here. 13. VI.4[22].3, 6–11: ἢ ἐφ’ ὧν μὲν τὸ ἕν, τῷ μὴ πᾶσαν τὴν φύσιν ἀποσῴζειν τὴν οὖσαν ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκείνῳ, ἐνταῦθα δύναμιν αὐτοῦ ᾧ πάρεστι παρεῖναι· οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ὧς ἐκεῖνο μὴ ὅλως παρεῖναι, ἐπεὶ καὶ τότε οὐκ ἀποτέτμηται ἐκεῖνο τῆς δυνάμεως αὑτοῦ, ἣν ἔδωκεν ἐκείνῳ· ἀλλ’ ὁ λαβὼν τοσοῦτον ἐδυνήθη λαβεῖν παντὸς παρόντος. 14. VI.4[22].3, 6: ἐφ’ ὧν μὲν τὸ ἕν. 15. VI.4[22].3, 8–9: μὴ ὅλως παρεῖναι. 16. VI.4[22].3, 10: ὁ λαβών.

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as far as it is able draws near, not becoming [form] of that particular, since that desires it, nor even less belonging to the other.17

It is clear, on the one hand, that Plotinus is using “form” here in Aristotelian fashion, like the qualities in VI.4[22].1.18 Form thus specifies the particular so completely that it becomes dependent on it and is possessed by it, but is actually nothing of itself (1, 20). It even becomes accidentally dependent on body, designated simply as “the other.” Throughout this treatise in fact form is consistently used only in conjunction with body (VI.4[22].1, 23; 3, 38; 8, 15; 9, 6; 10, 9), conforming to Aristotle’s hylomorphism.19 Being, on the other hand, has an entirely different relationship with something sensible, capturing the separate form or idea appropriate to Platonic participation. To begin, being is not related to an object reciprocally: the object may wish for it, but it does not wish to belong to anything. It is the object that draws near in desiring it (ἐφιεμένου αὐτοῦ, 3, 17), just as the sensible cosmos seeks to border upon the intelligible all in VI.4[22].2, 34. It is interesting to note that being thus functions as a final cause, attracting the sensible object to itself. The productive aspect of this causality is conveyed by the term “power,” functioning in a decidedly non-Aristotelian sense. Being is, therefore, not like qualitative form and does not become dependent on the particular or belong to that other. Being thus functions like a first and is, therefore, separate and 17. VI.4[22].3, 11–17: οὗ δὲ πᾶσαι αἱ δυνάμεις, αὐτὸ σαφῶς πάρεστι χωριστὸν ὅμως ὄν· γενόμενον μὲν γὰρ τοῦδε εἶδος ἀπέστι ἂν τοῦ τε πᾶν εἶναι τοῦ τε εἶναι ἐν αὑτῷ πανταχοῦ, κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς δὲ καὶ ἄλλου. μηδενὸς δὲ ὂν τοῦ θέλοντος αὐτοῦ εἶναι, ὃ ἂν αὐτῷ ἐθέλῃ, ὡς δύναται πελάζει οὐ γενόμενον ἐκείνου, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνου ἐφιεμένου αὐτοῦ, οὐδ’ αὖ ἄλλου. 18. Place and size in 2, position in 8, and time in 14. 19. Already established by Igal 1979, 315–45, concerning Plotinus’s use in VI.4[22].6, 11, of the qualified body of Aristotle in his own anthropological scheme (329).

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not a quality of a body. Being is present in all sensible things in the same way, as it is in no one of them as belonging to it alone. Other consequences follow in the subsequent lines, where, for example, omnipresence, the particular term provoking his investigation, explicitly refers to the relation of soul to body and finally of intellect’s relation to the sensible all. It is then not surprising that it is in all of them in this way, because it is in no one of them so as to belong to them. In conclusion, speaking thus accidentally that the soul is in sympathy with the body, is equally not absurd, if it were to mean that the soul is itself by itself, not becoming dependent on matter or body, but that it illuminates, as it were, the whole body according to its whole self.20

Soul has the same relation to bodies as being, as it is by itself and does not belong to matter or body, but illuminates the whole body. Also, the intelligible all is not in place, but is nonetheless present to everything in place, in the dual sense that it is present to the whole sensible cosmos and to each thing in it. In the last lines of the chapter, the powers are finally specified as life, intellect, and being,21 none of which are qualities or accidents that belong to bodies, but more accurately the activities that constitute sensible objects as living things. Plotinus is contrasting physical division, which is quantitative, from participation in these powers, which is not quantitative, however much participating in them might vary from one living thing to another. If participation were looked at quantitatively, then life, or intellect, or being, as belonging to the whole (the intelligible realm), could not belong to the part (the sensible cosmos). This is, of course, the position of the Parmenides that the sensible particular only captures a quan20. VI.4[22].3, 17–22: θαυμαστὸν οὖν οὐδὲν οὕτως ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι, ὅτι αὖ ἐν οὐδενί ἐστιν αὐτῶν οὕτως ὡς ἐκείνων εἶναι. διὸ καὶ τὸ κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς οὕτω λὲγειν συμπαραθεῖν τῷ σώματι καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν οὐκ ἄτοπον ἴσως, εἰ αὐτὴ μὲν ἐφ’ ἑαυτῆς λέγοιτο εἶναι οὐχ ὕλης γενομένη οὐδὲ σώματος, τὀ δἐ σῶμα πᾶν κατὰ πᾶν ἑαυτοῦ οἱονεὶ ἐλλάμποιτο. 21. VI.4[22].3, 31–34: τὴν ζωήν, τὸν νοῦν, τὸ ὄν.

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tifiable part of the intelligible form and thus cannot be an instance of it as a whole. In the Parmenides, the nonreciprocity runs in both directions. Plotinus argues instead that life is wholly present both in the intelligible and in the sensible, however restricted by the capacity of the sensible to receive it. Finally, he affirms the position of the Parmenides with reference to bodies, holding that body cannot participate in body. Plotinus points out that a divided body does not have parts that are bodies of the same type, as division is of the quantitative as such and not of body as such. Thus when a body of a particular size is divided, miniatures of that body are not spun off, but different bodies having their own forms (see II.4[12].7). That is, when the sorcerer’s apprentice wields his ax, he should get shavings and splinters and not a nightmarish proliferation of brooms. Plotinus’s battle with the Parmenides is not quite over. He has shown that the intelligible must be a unified whole in opposition to the divided many of the sensible, but in VI.4[22].4 he has the task of explaining how soul is whole, like intellect and being, and yet goes out from them to be present in separate bodies.22 Plato’s statement that the soul of the all and other souls are different (Timaeus 41d5–8) seems contrary to the argument of VI.4[22].1–3 that the world soul and other souls relate in the same way to their respective bodies. On the one hand, the weight of sensible experience makes it difficult and unconvincing to see one soul as everywhere, because the division of bodies seems more determinative. On the other hand, the unity of being, intellect, and soul is numerical as well as formal, whereas similar sensible objects are formally 22. This discussion is also anticipated in the two earlier notes, IV.1[4] and IV.2[21], the latter immediately preceding this treatise in the chronological order. Instead of the Parmenides, the Timaeus is key for these treatises, which explore the levels of indivisibility and divisibility, Plotinus adding a secondary divisibility to correspond to qualitative forms, the background for his comments in VI.4[22].1–3. See my discussion of these notes in Plotinus 2015c, 309–43.

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one but numerically separate. Souls, however, seem to have both characteristics, present everywhere as a whole, but to numerically separate bodies. Plotinus needs to explain how this paradoxical situation is possible, but first he draws out the implications of taking the world soul and other souls as different. “For it may be better [to say] that dividing thus in no way diminishes the whole [of being] from which the division is generated, or that generating from it, that we may use even better terms, thus allows the [whole, the world soul,] to exist because of it, but [allows] those coming to be as parts, souls, to fill up all things already [existing].”23 In this view, the soul of the all is identified as a whole derivative from the whole of being, with individual souls divided off as its parts, implying a kind of monopsychism in which individual souls are no longer wholes but merely parts of the world soul. The first part of the sentence removes all taint of division from being, but only to relocate the problem in relation to souls, with the world soul present throughout the sensible cosmos and individual souls distributed in all its parts as if they were the qualities of a single body. The next few lines indicate that this cannot work. “But if that being remains by itself, because it seems to be incredible that something altogether whole is present everywhere, the same argument will apply to souls. For they will not be in those bodies they are said to be in as wholes in wholes, but either they will be divided or, remaining wholes, they will give their power to some part of the body.”24 23. VI.4[22].4, 7–11: βέλτιον γὰρ ἴσως μερίσαντα τὸ ὅλον ὡς μηδὲν ἐλαττοῦσθαι ἀφ’ οὗ ὁ μερισμὸς γεγένηται, ἢ καὶ γεννήσαντα ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ, ἵνα δὴ βελτίοσι χρώμεθα ὀνόμασιν, οὕτω τὸ μὲν ἐᾶσαι ἐξ αὐτοῦ εἶναι, τὰ δ’ οἷον μέρη γενόμενα, ψυχάς, συμπληροῦν ἤδη τὰ πάντα. 24. VI.4[22].4, 11–16: ἀλλ’ εἰ ἐκεῖνο μένει τὸ ὂν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ, ὅτι παράδοξον εἶναι δοκεῖ τὸ ἅμα ὅλον τι πανταχοῦ παρεῖναι, ὁ αὐτος λόγος καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ψυχῶν ἔσται. ἐν οἷς γὰρ λέγονται σώμασιν ὅλαι ἐν ὅλοις εἶναι, οὐκ ἔσονται, ἀλλ’ ἢ μερισθήσονται ἢ μενουσαι ὅλαι που τοῦ σώματος δύναμιν αὑτῶν δώσουσιν.

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Plotinus argues that individual souls are present to their bodies as wholes, that is, as different from accidental forms or qualities. Even if souls are distinguished from their powers, such as life, intelligence, and the various sensory powers, both souls and their powers relate to bodies as wholes and the same problem recurs for both, of a whole everywhere. The alternative is that some part of body will have soul and some other only a power, but then such division will prevent perceptions from occurring (see VI.4[22].1, 24–29), as the activities of soul or its powers must be activities of the whole organism and not some part in isolation. In this initial foray, soul of any kind is one both formally and numerically, so that the soul of the all and individual souls are not essentially different. It is, however, not yet clear how individual souls end up in numerically separate bodies. Plotinus repeats the initial statement: how are there many souls and many intellects, and being and beings (VI.4[22].4, 18–19)? The argument so far has tried to show that keeping unity, wholeness, and being at one level and multiplicity at another does not solve the problem: being as a whole is one, the world soul is one, the soul in each body is one, but body is divided relative to powers, powers relative to soul, individual souls relative to the world soul, and the world soul relative to being. The model of sensible division dominates this view, but the problem is not where division is first introduced but whether multiplicity is independent of division. Plotinus uses the terms “otherness” and “number” to show that souls are many even before their presence to bodies. First, he notes that the souls that go out do so as numbered rather than as having size. That is, number identifies souls as many already within the intelligible, but the problem of how they fill the sensible all remains and, more specifically, how they relate to bodies having size. “Thus we find out nothing toward a solution from a plurality that goes out in this way, since we also

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concede that being is many by otherness, not by place. For being is all together, and would be multiple in this way; for being draws nigh to being and is all together, and intellect is multiple by otherness, not by place, but is all together.”25 Souls are like being or intellect, many by otherness rather than by place. As a consequence, soul is undivided by nature, as otherness does not entail spatial division, but soul is said nonetheless to be divided in the sphere of bodies (Timaeus 35a2–3; see IV.1[4].1, 41). Plotinus attempts to resolve this seeming contradiction by distinguishing how size functions in terms of the quantitative division of bodies (see On Matter, II.4[12].9–10) and how soul functions as undivided with respect to bodies so divided. He admits that, to whatever extent these bodies are divided, the nature of soul is reflected in every part and thus it is easy to think that soul is also divided in connection with bodies. The division of bodies, however, is quantitative and related to size as a form that inheres qualitatively in the body and not as a numerical unity. Soul is not a quality of body, and is thus not related quantitatively to body, so the size of a body is irrelevant to the soul’s presence. This means that the soul is not distributed piecemeal to the parts of the body, but is present everywhere as a whole, making its unity and indivisibility apparent. Plotinus reminds us that it is not so much that the undivided nature of soul is present to bodies but, more properly, bodies, with their size, come to be in soul. This differentiates soul both from the rest of the intelligible world and from the division of bodies. Like the intelligible, it always remains present to body as a whole, but, unlike the intelligible, it appears divided in the realm of bodies because each soul is present to a distinct body. 25. VI.4[22].4, 21–26: οὐδὲν οὖν ἡμῖν παρὰ τοῦ πλήθους οὕτω προϊόντος ἐξεύρηται εἰς εὐπορίαν· ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ ὂν πολλὰ συγχωροῦμεν εἶναι ἑτερότητι, οὐ τόπῳ. ὁμοῦ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ ὄν, κἂν πολὺ οὕτως ᾖ· ἐὸν γὰρ ἐόντι πελάζει, καὶ πᾶν ὁμοῦ, καὶ νοῦς πολὺς ἑτερότητι, οὐ τόπῳ, ὁμοῦ δὲ πᾶς. See Parmenides, frag. B 8.25 and 8.5.

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Plotinus summarizes this section with a series of conclusions. First, the fact that the soul is one does not do away with many souls, just as being does not do away with beings; in the true all, unity and multiplicity are not in conflict (VI.4[22].4, 34–36). It is easiest to understand this one soul as the hypostasis and the many souls as including both the world soul and individual souls, according to the distinction already made in V.1[10].3 between the hypostasis and other souls. The argument for this in the present context rests on Plotinus’s effort to qualify the position quoted from Plato’s Timaeus that the world soul and individual souls are not different from one another. They are not different precisely as many and as going out to order the sensible cosmos, which distinguishes them from the hypostasis soul as one and wholly within the intelligible. The next conclusions deal with the relation of these multiple souls to sensible multiplicity: the powers, such as life, that souls bring do not need to fill up bodies as do bodily qualities, by being themselves divided, nor is the multiplicity of souls due to bodily size, as souls are both many and one before they flow into bodies (VI.4[22].4, 36–39). Plotinus is making two complementary points: the multiplicity of souls does not derive from their presence in different bodies and each soul is present to a particular body as a whole and not like a quality that is numerically distinct in each part of a body. Finally, souls are differentiated from bodily qualities as actual rather than potential (4, 39–42). Having established that being and soul are separate and incorporeal, Plotinus must also find a principle of differentiation that will operate on that incorporeal level. In the sensible realm, the quantitative itself, as the principle of division, can be the principle of differentiation. In the intelligible, a principle of differentiation is needed that is not quantitative at all but allows for plurality without sacrificing its essential unity. He finds such a principle in “otherness” (ἑτερότης, 4, 23; 25–26).

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For the many are already in the whole not potentially, but each one actually; for neither does the one and whole hinder the many from being in it, nor do the many hinder the one: for they are separate without being separated and present to one another without being alien. For they are not made discontinuous by boundaries, as neither are the many sciences in one soul, and one [soul] is such that it has all [souls] in itself. Therefore, such a nature is unlimited.26

In this text, Plotinus indicates a second type of infinity that goes beyond the infinity of primary matter posited by Aristotle. It is the infinity of forms precisely as expressing their Platonic interweaving through sameness and difference. This infinity also needs to be distinguished from the potential infinity of numbers, leading exactly to the problem of the relation of substance and number. The argument thus shifts to the second deduction of the Parmenides, with Plotinus defending Plato against the identification of substance and number assumed in both the Parmenides (142de, 144be) and Aristotle’s Metaphysics I.6 and 9. Souls then share in the mutual openness of all things existing at the intelligible level. Souls are separated as many, but not in the sense that they are separated from one another as bodies are from one another. They are thus mutually present to one another, not sharing in the more radical difference associated with bodies. The one soul, the hypostasis, has all the souls in itself because it is indeed different from them as not the soul of any particular body, which makes it different even from the world soul. The hypostasis thus shares in the kind of infinity characteristic of the intelligible realm, an infinity defined as the absence of division or barriers among intelligible beings. Plotinus thus ends VI.4[22].4 with a reminder 26. VI.4[22].4, 39–46: ἐν γὰρ τῷ ὅλῳ αἱ πολλαὶ ἤδη οὐ δυνάμει, ἀλλ’ ἐνεργείᾳ ἑκάστη· οὔτε γὰρ ἡ μία καὶ ὅλη κωλύει τὰς πολλὰς ἐν αὐτῇ εἶναι, οὔτε αἱ πολλαὶ τὴν μίαν. διέστησαν γὰρ οὐ διεστῶσαι καὶ πάρεισιν ἀλλήλαις οὐκ ἀλλοτριωθεῖσαι· οὐ γὰρ πέρασίν εἰσι διωρισμέναι, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ ἐπιστῆμαι αἱ πολλαὶ ἐν ψυχῇ μιᾷ, καὶ ἔστιν ἡ μία τοιαύτη, ὥστε ἔχειν ἐν ἑαυτῇ πάσας. οὕτως ἐστὶν ἄπειρος ἡ τοιαύτη φύσις.

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that souls in their very nature do not share in the separation and alienation that come from association with the quantitative division of the sensible world, and will address later how embodied souls can indeed be cut off and alienated not only from one another but from their own true nature. As with multiplicity, the greatness of soul, discussed in VI.4[22].5, is not to be understood in terms of mass (ὄγκος), referring back once more to the discussion in On Matter, II.4[12].11–12. When something is subtracted from mass, it tends as quantitative toward nothing, hence it is little (μικρόν, 5, 2) in comparison with the truer greatness of soul, from which nothing can be subtracted, because the soul does not depart (ἀποστατῇ, 5, 4) from anything. This term “departing” occurred before in the context of both soul’s departure from intellect (V.1[10].1, 8) and intellect’s from the One (VI.9[9].5, 29), the process by which each is generated from its prior. The context here must turn on another meaning, which relates to the soul’s presence to body. Plotinus is countering two common opinions, that the soul departs from the body, as if that is something spatial and due to the soul itself, and that the incorporeality of the soul makes it seem smaller than the mass of a body. He establishes first the nature of soul as in the intelligible all and as never departing or flowing from it. In saying that soul does not flow, Plotinus indicates that it cannot lose its nature or status in the intelligible. It is a first act that remains itself, while a second act flows from it to a body. In addition, because it is greater than the nature of body, it would thus give something small (ὀλίγον, 5, 9) to the sensible all, that is, “whatever that is able to bear of it.”27 What soul gives, however, cannot be less (ἔλαττον, 5, 11). This ambiguous phrase can bear multiple meanings: soul cannot give “less” than itself, as it always gives the whole of itself, and even 27. VI.4[22].5, 10–11: ὅσον δύναται τοῦτο αὐτοῦ φέρειν.

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though it appears “less” in mass (5, 12) than the bodily, it is still greater, as quantity and measure do not apply to it. The problem again is using language designed to deal with the quantitative character of sensible experience and transferring it to the much different context of the incorporeal soul. The greatness of soul, and evidence that it occurs outside quantitative categories, can be seen when the mass of something becomes greater and the same soul28 continues to extend to all of it. This finishes Plotinus’s initial comments on the incorporeal nature of the soul, establishing that it is not divided, as are bodies, and that its greatness is not quantitative, but of a higher kind of being that is not a mere quality or affection of bodies but makes intelligible powers present to the sensible. In the next section, VI.4[22].6–8, Plotinus tackles some of the issues related to the soul’s presence in the body, given the unity of all souls and yet the individuality of their experience when embodied.

Experience and Power (VI.4[22].6–8) If souls are by nature one and present to one another, certain aspects of human experience need explanation.29 In VI.4[22].6, 1–21, Plotinus raises four questions about soul and body that immediately alert us to very different assumptions about the soul.30 First, why does the soul in one body not come to another (6, 1)? Second, is the soul in one body 28. VI.4[22].5, 20: τὴν αὐτὴν ψυχήν. 29. Used with permission of Brill Academic Publishers, from Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, 2008, “Plotinus on the Soul’s Omnipresence in Body,” International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 2, no. 2: 113–27; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. 30. The four questions pose different problems from those of classical modern thought. They assume a relation between soul and body that turns on the body as divisible rather than extended and on the soul as active power, rather than a thinking thing. See Gurtler 1997, 221–34, for a fuller discussion of these contrasting assumptions, arguing against Dillon 1990, 19–31, and Emilsson 1991, 148–65.

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actually the same as in another (6, 3–4)? Third, why is the same soul in the foot and hand of one body, but not the same in different parts of the sensible all (6, 5–6)? And finally, why is one soul not conscious (οὐ συναισθάνεται, 6, 13) of another’s judgment (6, 13–14)? These questions make explicit the consequences that come from Plotinus’s earlier distinction, in VI.4[22].1–3, between qualitative forms as divisible in body and souls as powers that are not divisible, but present to the body everywhere as a whole. In addition, souls are in one sense all the same, so Plotinus has to show why a soul is present in one body rather than another. Finally, because all souls are unified at the level of intellect, Plotinus needs to explain how they can have distinctive or individual experience at the sensible level. Plotinus’s puzzle, thus, is to explain how experience can be individualized in relation to the embodied soul, and why embodied souls are not aware both of their higher selves and their common unity. In responding to these questions, Plotinus delimits the roles of body and soul in human experience in such a way as to ground both the individuality of experience and the power of the soul that makes sharing this experience with one another possible. His discussion of the first three questions provides reminders of positions developed elsewhere in VI.4[22] or in other early treatises. Thus, it is not the soul that goes in search of a body (question 1), but rather the body is the seeker (as in 3, 17). This position preserves the independence of being as a higher reality and the nonreciprocal relation between this intelligible being and sensible becoming. For the next two questions, Plotinus indicates an element of tension in his theory of ensoulment. On the one hand, no two bodies share the same soul (question 2), even though they are all parts of the one body of the universe, and, on the other hand, all the parts of a single body do share the same soul (question 3).

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Theoretically, the two positions are not radically dissimilar, and Plotinus’s brief comments here depend on his analysis in VI.4[22].3 of souls as active powers going out from intellect. Souls vary in power and thus relate to the sensible cosmos to varying degrees. Conversely, certain bodies attract different souls. Because these distinctions are not part of the Cartesian or Kantian notion of soul or mind, they may seem bizarre or irrational, further evidence of Plotinus’s mystical imagination. Let me propose an analogue to contemporary wave theory, giving a context to understand what Plotinus might mean and thus making his position surprisingly plausible. If we compare the active powers of souls to radio waves or fields and bodies to radio receivers, we have an image that is both simple and clear. This comparison illustrates how things that are everywhere the same, the waves, can be received by different things and in varying degrees, depending on the tuning and the quality of the radio. It is an image very much at home with Plotinus’s view of the soul as an activity, as we shall see in examining VI.4[22].7, and yet is immediately accessible to us. Assuming its plausibility, we can attempt to tie Plotinus’s comments into the larger discussions to which they allude. The restriction that only one soul comes to be possessed by a body derives in part from the nature of bodies as divided and thus as blocking out another body from sharing the same soul, and in part from the nature of souls as already different at the intelligible level.31 Each body is thus qualified in such a way that it is apt to receive only one particular soul. This principle is, of course, borrowed from Aristotle, but Plotinus is not always comfortable with it, as his arguments against the 31. In VI.9[9].8, 29–36, Plotinus makes a contrast between the separation and cutting off of bodies by place and the otherness that makes bodiless things both plural and transparent to one another, especially at the intelligible level. In the present context, Plotinus is articulating what happens when the separation due to bodies is in tension with the openness of one soul to another as sharing in the intelligible.

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soul as entelechy amply prove.32 Finally, that foot and hand share the same soul is the easier position to defend, as it is the very purpose of soul in going out from the intelligible to bring unity to the sensible and to be present to it as a whole. With these initial clarifications, I turn now to the fourth question, and consider the consequence Plotinus draws from the fact that two separate souls are present in two bodies, and differ by the additions or circumstances (ταῖς προσθήκαις, VI.4[22].6, 5), as he puts it. Plotinus argues that if the sensations (αἰσθήσεις) are different, it must be said that the experiences (πάθη, 6, 7) occurring with them are also different. These are the different circumstances judged by each individual, leading to the distinction between the soul’s power of judging and the content judged. “Various then are the things judged, not the judging; but the one judging becomes the same judge for one experience after another, and yet is not himself affected, but the nature of such a body is. It is thus possible [to say] that the same [self ] judges both our pleasure in the toe and pain in the head.”33 Judging remains a power residing in the soul, while sensations and experiences are ways in which a certain kind of body is acted upon. The self thus deals with one affection after another but remains unaffected because these affections occur in a body so configured by nature. This independence of the self from affection is further emphasized by indicating that while different parts of the body can simultaneously undergo opposite affections, such as pleasure and pain, the self 32. Igal 1979, 315–46, discusses Plotinus’s use of Aristotle’s “the qualified body” for the first time in the present context and later in III.6[26].1, 3 (329), and yet he rejects the soul as entelechy in IV.7[2].8 which is associated with the qualified body in Aristotle (331). 33. VI.4[22].6, 8–13: ἄλλα οὖν ἐστι τὰ κρινόμενα, οὐ τὸ κρίνον· ὁ δὲ κρίνων ὁ αὐτὸς δικαστὴς ἐν ἄλλοις καὶ ἄλλοις πάθεσι γινόμενος· καίτοι οὐχ ὁ πάσχων αὐτός, ἀλλ’ ἡ σώματος τοιοῦδε φύσις· καὶ ἔστιν οἷον εἰ αὐτὸς ἡμῶν καὶ ἡδονὴν κρίνει τὴν περὶ τὸν δάκτυλον καὶ ἀλγηδόνα τὴν περὶ τὴν κεφαλήν.

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can judge them both as not affected by either. This judging power is the same in each soul, yet particular judgments differ not as acts of the soul alone, but as dependent on the additions arising from corporeal affections of the different bodies. Plotinus is making a careful demarcation between the roles of body and soul in order to establish both the differences in experience between one individual and another and how such experiences can nonetheless be shared through the judgments made about them. This second point is the next topic raised by the fourth question, namely, why we are not conscious of one another’s judgments. Here, in addition to different selves in different bodies, the different levels of the self come into play. The higher self is always unified with other souls in full knowledge of the intelligible, while the lower self unifies a particular body by its presence and its judgments are specified in relation to that body and are not shared with others, at least not directly.34 Why then is one [soul] not conscious of the judgment of another? Precisely because it is an act of judging, but not an experience. Further the soul itself having judged does not say “I have judged,” but it only judged, since even sight in us does not say to hearing [“I have judged”], although both judged, but reasoning is over both, but is itself different from both. Even then, reasoning in many ways saw the judgment in another and had an understanding of the other’s experience.35 34. In I.2–3[19–20], the treatises on virtue and dialectic, Plotinus discusses the two selves. In I.2[19], the discussion begins with the relation of virtues here below and what corresponds to them at the intelligible level. Plotinus articulates quite clearly the difference between reciprocal relations at the same level and the nonreciprocal relation between different levels, also operative in VI.4[22]. In I.2[19].5–6, this distinction is applied to the two selves, the real self at home in intellect and the other self lost in the sensible world. I.3[20] continues this distinction in terms of the knowledge acquired for the ascent of the soul to the intelligible. It is interesting that both treatises assume that individuals interact with one another at different levels, with interaction between levels operating differently. 35. VI.4[22].6, 13–19: διὰ τί οὖν οὐ συναισθάνεται ἡ ἐτέρα τὸ τῆς ἑτέρας κρίμα; ἢ ὅτι κρίσις ἐστίν, ἀλλ’ οὐ πάθος. εἶτα οὐδ’ αὐτὴ ἡ κρίνασα “κέκρικα” λέγει, ἀλλ’ ἔκρινε

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The consciousness under dispute implies in the case of empirical judgments something close to the literal meaning of the etymological roots, that one individual would actually co-sense the judgment of another. Plotinus, in what at first might seem an odd move, states that such co-sensing does not occur because an act of judging is involved rather than a sensory experience. Such judging, he argues, is neither sufficiently external to be sensed directly by another nor sufficiently internal to be shared automatically on the intelligible level. Judging is, to be sure, an act of soul, and thus not something the body undergoes or something that affects the body as do the sensations and experiences that are judged. It is, however, not an act of the soul alone about what is akin to it,36 but an act of soul about the experiences of its body. This act of the soul, further, is not self-reflective, any more than vision or hearing are (none say “I have judged”). Self-reflection is identified rather with reasoning, or perhaps more precisely with the one who reasons, the lower self in this instance. It is in reasoning that empirical consciousness is centered, and this consciousness is open to the consciousness of another in the same way it is open to self-consciousness, through reasoning. It can see another’s judgment and can understand another’s experience by reasoning from words or actions to the judgment or experience that motivates them, exactly as it knows itself on the empirical level. In VI.4[22].7, Plotinus looks at the presence of the same over all (ἐπὶ πάντα, 7, 1), returning to issues mentioned already at VI.4[22].3, 2, and 3, 6, where powers go out from intellect μόνον· ἐπεὶ οὐδὲ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἡ ὄψις τῇ ἀκοῇ λέγει, καίτοι ἔκριναν ἄμφω, ἀλλὰ ὁ λογισμὸς ἐπ’ ἀμφοῖν· τοῦτο δὲ ἕτερον ἀμφοῖν. πολλαχῇ δὲ καὶ ὁ λογισμὸς εἶδε τὸ ἐν ἑτέρῳ κρίμα καὶ σύνεσιν ἔσχεν ἑτέρου πάθους. 36. Plotinus indicates in I.6[1].6, 17–18, that intellect and the things of intellect are the soul’s own, and not alien to it as are its experiences in relation to the body. As the soul is more completely identified with what is its own, it is at the same time able to bring more order and beauty into the sensible world, which is the reason for its descent.

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to one living being after another. In the present context, he expresses it as how each of the many sensible things is not without a share of the same while situated in diverse places. There is an element of ambiguity in these statements. The problem in the earlier context is the presence of the same intelligible power in numerically distinct bodies, while here it is the soul’s numerically singular presence in the many parts of one body. Both versions of the problem, however, deal with the same underlying issue, the presence of soul everywhere as a whole. He continues with conclusions that have already been established. (1) The same is not divided up in the many, but the divided many are brought back up to that unity (VI.4[22].3, 15–17), and (2) our opinion that the same has been taken apart, he suggests, comes from the scattered character of these many (VI.4[22].4, 1–5), “as if one were to divide that which lays hold of and joins together into parts equal to that which is held.”37 Plotinus specifies that the nature of presence as a power (δύναμις) is to dominate and unify an object without losing its own unity. The images he uses to elucidate this power are decidedly physical: bodily strength in a hand,38 a small luminous mass,39 and finally the light of the sun.40 In each case, the image illustrates the presence everywhere of an undivided power, but then each one is corrected to remove the physical aspect of the image so the incorporeal nature of the soul’s presence to the body can shine forth. These images are thus designed to add persuasive force to earlier arguments that the soul’s presence to the body is not as a quality that is essentially divisible in quantity, but rather as an activity that is present as a whole throughout the body. 37. VI.4[22].7, 8–9: οἷον εἴ τις τὸ κρατοῦν καὶ συνέχον εἰς ἴσα τῷ κρατουμένῳ διαιροῖ. 38. VI.4[22].7, 8–23: κράτος ἐν τῇ χειρί. 39. VI.4[22].7, 23–29: φωτεινὸς μικρὸς ὄγκος. 40. VI.4[22].7, 39–47: φῶς τοῦ ἡλίου.

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The first image (7, 8–23) is of a hand grasping an entire body, a long plank, and something else (7, 10). The text does not specify, so the grasp may be upon all the objects taken together or each one considered separately. Let’s assume that the body is a ball. A hand grasping a ball surrounds it more completely than one grasping a plank, where the grasp tends toward the midpoint for balance. The strength in the hand has varied effects: the ball can be thrown and the plank carried. Alternatively, someone might be attempting to hold all the objects at once. Plotinus claims that the grasp in the hand is not divided up into parts equal to those of the objects grasped, but the difficulty is determining what he means. In comparing the grasp of ball and plank, there is a contrast between a grasp that surrounds an object more or less completely and one that holds on to no more than a small portion of its total length. In neither case, however, is it necessary or possible to have parts of the hand touching all the parts into which an object can be divided. What happens is that through this contact of hand and object, the strength in the hand becomes a force or control permeating the object. This control extends in undivided fashion throughout the entire ball or plank: when the ball is thrown, the force propels it completely, and when the plank is carried, the force extends to the untouched parts of its length and not only the small portion firmly in one’s grip. The relationship of the hand’s strength to this control or force in the object is non-reciprocal, but not entirely. “As the hand touches [a body], so much is its power, it seems, circumscribed, but still the hand is defined by its own quantity, not by that of the body it raises and grasps.”41 This illustrates well how a higher power (strength in the hand) is present in something 41. VI.4[22].7, 12–15: καθόσον ἐφάπτεται εἰς τοσοῦτον περιγραφομένης, ὡς δοκεῖ, τῆς δυνάμεως, ἀλλ’ ὅμως τῆς χειρὸς ὁριζομένης τῷ αὑτῆς ποσῷ, οὐ τῷ τοῦ αἰωρουμένου καὶ κρατουμένου σώματος.

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lower (its control over or force in the object), but also that the bodily character of this relationship needs qualification, because the hand is itself physical, and thus both quantitatively limited and external to the object. The first part of the statement indicates that the control from the hand extends throughout the object, which serves as the boundary of its operation, in the same way that souls were described in VI.4[22].6 as dwelling one to a body.42 The force is received (as it were) by the object and does not go beyond it. The force is clearly present in the object lifted, but remains centered in and dependent on the strength of the hand, which is external to the object in a way that the soul is not external to the body. The object does not become alive or possess this force on its own, no matter how much strength the hand exerts. The real limit on what the hand can do, moreover, comes from the quantity of the hand itself, how much strength it has. It is at this point that hand and soul part company in their relation to body. The quantitative nature of the hand needs to be corrected when applied to the soul’s presence: take away the bodily mass, but leave the power (δύναμιν) intact. This power permeates the whole object with all its parts. The soul is unlike the hand, which is a quantity itself and external to the object, as the soul and its power are present in a body in the same pervasive way the force is present in an object, with the body acting as the boundary of its operation. The incorporeality of the soul allows it to be present much more intimately, manifest in making the body alive with its own power. Nevertheless, the separation between hand and object also plays an important role, indicating not a physical separation, but soul’s radical independence from the body. 42. In preparing Gurtler 2009, revisiting Clarke 1952, I discovered that this passage is perhaps the clearest expression in Plotinus of the limitation of act by potency, which the more accurate translation indicates more clearly. Norris Clarke’s thesis thus has direct textual support in Plotinus himself.

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One can accurately say that the soul is present to matter in Plotinus’s scheme in such a way that matter hardly seems changed at all, however much the presence of soul comes to it, and that soul never really belongs to body. The second image continues this reflection (7, 23–39). Plotinus imagines a small luminous mass within a large, transparent sphere, so that the light from this small center fills the whole sphere, whose shell is opaque in such a way that no light from outside the sphere can shine within it. Thus, the transparent space inside the sphere is wholly filled by the light that comes from this luminous center. His notion that light is incorporeal emphasizes the distinction made in the previous image between the force or control in the object and the strength in the hand. Here, however, it is the luminous mass that comes off the poorer, as the light that fills the sphere is far superior. If that mass is removed, light permeates the sphere perfectly, so that no point of origin can be imagined, but just the presence of light everywhere. This flips the point of view of the previous image around. We are no longer on the outside, looking at a power going out of the hand to some object, but Plotinus, as it were, has moved us inside the object itself. The soul is present in us much as light is present in the sphere, without a point of origin that can be identified and with the same result of amazement about a power present everywhere in this way. Wherever we look, light and soul are equally present. The last image applies the previous one to the case of the sun shining and lighting the air around us (7, 39–47). This application presents a crucial point of contact with the major text lurking behind this whole treatise, Parmenides 131b3–4, where Parmenides confuses the young Socrates about the nature of the forms by using the image of day and sail to illustrate how a form is present to multiple bodies. Plotinus, in correcting the image, substitutes the sun, as the one source of

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light, for the day used by Parmenides. The light, as the activity produced by the sun, lights the air everywhere and is not itself divided. Where objects block it or cut it off, they do so only on the side away from the sun, indicating that the light permeates the air thoroughly, as the activity of one cause. He comments further that the image is still in need of refinement to fit the relation of souls or ideas to bodies. Here too, the analogy is shown to limp precisely because the sun, as the origin of light, must be located at some definite place. If this introduction of the spatial were eliminated, then the parallel would be exact: a pure power that could not be localized, but is present everywhere as one and the same.43 Plotinus continues in VI.4[22].8 to explore the nature of the incorporeal as different from light. He argues that light comes from a body and that body necessarily involves place. The incorporeal, however, does not need body, because it is prior to body, and is set firm in itself or, even more strictly, does not need to be set firm at all. Plotinus is revisiting two earlier passages. In the first, VI.4[22].2, 18, the sensible cosmos is set firm in the intelligible, and in the second (3, 4), the intelligible is set firm in itself, with souls like rays of light shining out from it. The second context is very much like the present discussion in VI.4[22].7–8, where light also radiates from a source. In one sense, then, the incorporeal is set firm in itself, like the intelligible in VI.4[22].3, 4, but, because being set firm is more accurately said of the relation of the sensible to the intelligible, as in VI.4[22].2, 18, its use for the incorporeal or the intelligible is not completely appropriate. The present discussion thus refines the earlier remarks, as it is designed to differentiate more exactly the nature of 43. See my chapter 3 above, which explores the careful analysis Plotinus gives to Aristotle’s prime matter in relation to the corporeal. His distinctions about the relation of the corporeal to various forms are the background for his work here on the relation of soul and body.

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the corporeal and that of the incorporeal, and to redress the confusion that comes from using terms derived from sensible experience to describe the incorporeal. Plotinus presses the argument by excluding place from the incorporeal. “Since the [incorporeal] thus has the kind of nature that does not have a point of origin from where it could start either as being from some place or from some body, how will you say that part of it is here and another there?”44 A point of origin (ἀρχή) presumes some spatial location, as in the case of light flowing from a luminous mass into the surrounding air. The incorporeal, however, does not have spatial location and thus cannot relate to objects in the external way that light proceeds from its source, or even force from a hand. A number of conclusions follow from this: because it cannot be localized, the incorporeal cannot belong to a body, and thus cannot be divided up in the parts of a body. Plotinus introduces participation, Plato’s term for the relation of a form or idea to its instances, as the alternative to the way that a luminous source or a hand’s strength relate to objects. Participation seeks to retrieve the side of these images that is like the incorporeal and thus speaks of the incorporeal as operating “with the power of the whole.”45 The participant, like the plank or surrounding air of VI.4[22].7, possesses this whole insofar as it can, while the incorporeal whole remains unaffected, neither becoming this other nor being divided in it. As in VI.4[22].1, there is a contrast between how a quality relates to a body and how, in the present case, the incorporeal relates to a body. A quality which has body46 is like an affection or form.47 As affection, it can change, and as form, it is 44. VI.4[22].8, 5–8: τοῦτο δὴ τὸ τοιαύτην ἔχον φύσιν οὐκ ἔχον ἀρχὴν ὅθεν ὁρμηθείη οὔτε ἔκ τινος τόπου οὔτε τινὸς ὂν σώματος, πῶς αὐτοῦ τὸ μὲν ὡδὶ φήσεις, τὸ δὲ ὡδί. 45. VI.4[22].8, 10: τῇ τοῦ ὅλου δυνάμει. 46. VI.4[22].8, 12: τῷ σῶμα ἔχοντι. 47. VI.4[22].8, 14–15: πάθος ἢ εἶδος.

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numerically divisible in the parts of the body. In other words, the quality of an object, its whiteness, can be influenced by another quality, such as size. It is thus divisible, changing in some parts but not in others. The incorporeal, on the contrary, as that which belongs to no body,48 though body wishes to belong to it (repeating a phrase from 3, 15), is impervious to other bodily affections and cannot be divided. The incorporeal relates to a body in a more primary sense and as a whole. The paradox here is due to the limitations of language, but can be easily illustrated by considering the image of the plank. The control of the hand affects the plank as a whole, but neither as a quality itself nor as dependent on any quality, whether the color, shape, or size of the plank. The plank can be painted different colors or given a different shape, but the control is present so long as it remains numerically one. Affection refers both to the qualities a body can have and to something like the control affecting the body as such and as a whole. In this latter case it refers to the Platonic transcendent form in which bodies participate as a whole, while in the former case it refers to Aristotelian immanent forms, qualities received in bodies in relation to size as divisible.49 Plotinus denotes this difference by identifying substance with intelligible forms and accidents with sensible qualities. Body and not-body are thus differentiated as being divisible or indivisible, which Plotinus seeks to clarify through the idea of size. What has size can participate in what does not have size, but it does so without in any way dividing the sizeless; thus, participation is a nonreciprocal relationship. Division and size, on the contrary, are mutually reciprocal, 48. VI.4[22].8, 15: ὃ μηδενὸς σώματος. 49. Chapter 3 discusses II.4[12].9–10 and 12, about the relation of size and other such qualities, as immanent forms, in relation to the corporeal; see also Gurtler 1992, 445–48.

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so that, if the incorporeal were to be divided by what participates in it, it would automatically need to have size. How then is an incorporeal one present in the many things that are divided from one another? The affection is in the many, Plotinus says, and the many are being fitted to the one when it is seen in them. Perhaps shifting images might clarify what this means. In recording a concert, only one event is the cause, the concert itself, but an indefinite number of recordings can be produced. All of them are of the same event, even if they vary in quality, with any difference due to defect or limitation in the medium of the recording and not at all to the concert itself (which may indeed have defects in performance, equally present in all recordings). The event, moreover, is reducible neither to a recording nor to the totality of recordings, but is something in itself. The difference for Plotinus is that while a concert is an event that also shares in the transitory character of the sensible, like the strength in the hand, the incorporeal has a similar independence as cause, but none of the limits of an event in the sensible world, so that it is just itself and never departs from itself. This is true whether one is considering discrete living things or the sensible cosmos as a whole. The incorporeal does not grow or diminish in size to deal with the whole cosmos or only one atom within it: it has no size and the quantitative in no way applies to it. Plotinus mentions some attributes at this point that are connected with the corporeal and which therefore do not apply to the incorporeal: so much (τοσοῦτον), such a quality (τοιοῦτον), where (ποῦ), and here and there (ἐνταῦθα καὶ ἐνταῦθα, 8, 32–34). These attributes are of the bodily as divisible and as in place. Division includes both the idea of size, as a body is potentially divisible into units, and of quality, as a body can have qualities of different kinds in its various parts. For place, moreover, the idea of somewhere includes the idea of here and there, because “where something is” presupposes

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“where it is not.” Division thus tends to express for Plotinus not only the quantitative but also the qualitative character of a body. Division, further, seems reducible to place, as it situates one body or its parts in relation to others, the necessary condition for the presence of quantity and quality. Both ideas involve affection or change, bringing in the idea of time. The incorporeal, on the contrary, is first defined as having no “here,” as not in place and thus as indivisible, because the fundamental distinction of part from part is impossible, thus eliminating the possibility of quantity and quality alike. As the incorporeal does not have part distinct from part, the many that desire to participate in it50 desire it as a whole,51 with any limitation coming from their side as recipients, repeating the point made at 3, 17, where being is desired. Plotinus further clarifies the nonreciprocal nature of participation, because the many participate in the incorporeal as a whole insofar as they can, but as if not participating in it, a point made previously at VI.4[22].3, 30. They participate in it insofar as they are like it, but they do not participate in it insofar as it does not belong to them. Using our example, the recordings are like the concert, but at the same time they are not the concert at all. Only in this way does Plotinus consider it possible for the incorporeal to remain whole both in itself and in the objects that participate in it. He ends by saying that if it is not whole, it is not itself, nor on the contrary will participation be of what the many desire,52 but of something else, of which there was no desire.53

Substance and Number (VI.4[22].9) We have seen how Plotinus looks more deeply at the difficulty of explaining the soul’s relation to the sensible cosmos 50. VI.4[22].8, 38: τὰ πολλὰ ἐφίεται αὐτοῦ. 51. VI.4[22].8, 39: ὃλου ἐφίεται αὐτοῦ. 52. VI.4[22].8, 44: οὐδ’ αὖ οὗ ἐφίενται. 53. VI.4[22].8, 45: οὗ ἡ ἔφεσις οὐκ ἦν.

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and particular bodies within it (VI.4[22].7–8). He began with a critique of the metaphors used in illustrating the soul’s presence to body (VI.4[22].7), and reinforces the difference between the corporeal and the incorporeal with a list of its paradoxical consequences (VI.4[22].8). He turns now to investigate soul’s relation to the intelligible cosmos, where he is faced with the difficulty of showing how the soul is different from intellect, and yet intellect is present to it as a whole and souls are not cut off from it. He uses substance (οὐσία) and powers (δυνάμεις) in this most intriguing and complex part of the treatise (VI.4[22].9), as he had used being (τό ὄν) and power in his distinction of immanent forms from omnipresent souls in VI.4[22].3. Quantitative division was central in VI.4[22].3 for indicating the formal unity but numerical distinction of immanent forms in bodies. In VI.4[22].9, however, substance must be completely distinguished from anything related to number and its implied division to fend off the attack of the Parmenides and Aristotle on the theory of forms and participation. In the foreground for the first time, therefore, is the numerical division that is the premise behind the second deduction of the first hypothesis at Parmenides 142de, the text analyzed in VI.4[22].9. He begins with a paraphrase of Parmenides 142de (the first sentence below) and his own concise objection to it.54 “For if the part generated in each is whole, and each is same as the first—each always cut off from it—the firsts are many and each is first.” Then, for these many firsts: what would be the separator, so that they would not be one all together? Certainly not their bodies, for it is impossible that these are the forms of bodies, if we say they are alike and the same as that first from which they come.55 54. VI.4[22].9 was translated and analyzed in Gurtler 1992, 450–55, as noted at the beginning of this chapter; once again, the analysis has been thoroughly reworked and the translation modified for clarity and exactness. 55. VI.4[22].9, 1–7: καὶ γὰρ εἰ τὸ μέρος τὸ γενόμενον ἐν ἑκάστῳ ὅλον ἦν καὶ αὐτὸ ἕκαστον οἷον τὸ πρῶτον—ἀποτετμημένον ἀεὶ ἕκαστον—πολλὰ τὰ πρῶτα καὶ ἕκαστον

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In the Parmenides, the second deduction of the hypothesis, “if unity is,” becomes the duality of unity and being [τὸ ἓν καὶ τὸ ὄν], the “is” distinguished from the “unity.” From this initial duality, it is a short step to an unlimited multitude of “firsts,” because each of the initial units can be further divided for the same reason, generating the unlimited multitude of numbers.56 Plotinus sees this numerical generation as quantitative division, yielding a multiplicity that is formally the same and numerically distinct, each cut off from one another and the source, although all are supposedly identical to that first. This unlimited numerical multitude has characteristics opposite to the relation of souls to intellect. These units are all firsts, the same as the first, yet cut off from it. The difficulty is that there is no principle of differentiation, called simply “the separator,” so they actually collapse into one, only potentially many. This pinpoints the inconsistency of the second deduction, taking numerical division as the principle of intelligible differentiation. His second statement, that bodies cannot be the cause of difference, rests on the distinction that souls are not forms of bodies, the qualitative forms of VI.4[22].3, but are alike and the same as intellect, which is the cause from which they are said to come. In a word, Plotinus has to show how they are the same and not cut off from intellect, but without being firsts themselves. He therefore returns to the idea of power as the way to explain both their incorporeal unity at the πρῶτον. εἶτα ταῦτα τὰ πολλὰ πρῶτα τί ἂν εἴη τὸ διεῖργον, ὥστε μὴ ἓν ὁμοῦ πάντα εἶναι; οὐ γὰρ δὴ τὰ σώματα αὐτῶν· οὐ γὰρ τῶν σωμάτων οἷόν τε ἦν εἴδη αὐτὰ εἶναι, εἴπερ ὅμοια καὶ ταῦτα ἐκείνῳ τῷ πρώτῳ ἀφ’ οὗ. 56. This account of the generation of being in the Parmenides, where each being is a “first” as cause of an ensuing series, is perhaps the origin of Plotinus’s use of the term for any such cause. It also relates, with necessary changes, to Aristotle’s notion of a “first” for each of the four causes. Plotinus also designates the many resulting in this hypothesis as “firsts,” which is not in Plato’s text, but emphasizes the inherent equality and sameness of all the units generated. Plato in the Parmenides also uses οὐσία and εἶναι for being, which Plotinus can exploit for his own purposes.

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level of intellect as well as their presence in living things distinct in place. “But if they are its powers, these so-called parts which are present in many things, first, is each one no longer a whole, but then how did they come, being cut off and leaving it behind? For if they have indeed left it behind, clearly they left it somewhere as they were going.”57 Plotinus argued in VI.4[22].3, 6–11, that the powers are whole in sensible particulars and not divided like immanent forms. Now he attempts to articulate what it means that powers are whole in relation to the intelligible. First, if they were not whole then they would be “cut off ” from the source, the separation or independence assumed by the Parmenides and Aristotle. This separation or “cutting off,” however, is necessarily dependent on a quantitative understanding of the intelligible, so being cut off from the source implies spatial separation: they leave it somewhere. Next, he focuses on the question regarding whether the presence of these powers in the sense world means they are no longer in intellect, or, alternatively, how these powers can be at the same time in the source and in sensible objects, the crux of the problem. First, he shows the absurdity involved if they are no longer in the source. It is then still a question whether or not these powers, which have come to be in the sense world, are still in that source. For if they are not, it is absurd that (1) that [source] be made less and become disempowered, being deprived of those powers which it had at first, and (2) besides how would it be possible for the powers to be apart from their own substances, or cut off [from their source]?58 57. VI.4[22].9, 7–11: εἰ δὲ δυνάμεις αὐτοῦ τὰ λεγόμενα μέρη τὰ ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς, πρῶτον μὲν οὐκέτι ὅλον ἕκαστον· ἔπειτα πῶς ἦλθον ἀποτμηθεῖσαι καὶ καταλείπουσαι; εἰ γὰρ δὴ καὶ κατέλιπον, δηλονότι κατέλιπόν που ἰοῦσαι. 58. VI.4[22].9, 11–16: εἶτα πότερα ἔτι εἰσὶν ἐν αὐτῷ αἱ δυνάμεις αἱ ἐνταῦθα ἐν τῷ αἰσθητῷ γεγενημέναι ἤ οὔ; εἰ μὲν γὰρ μή εἰσιν, ἄτοπον ἐλαττωθῆναι ἐκεῖνο καὶ ἀδύναμον γεγονέναι ἐστερημένον ὧν πρότερον εἶχε δυνάμεων, χωρίς τε τὰς δυνάμεις εἶναι τῶν οὐσιῶν ἑαυτῶν πῶς ἂν οἷόν τε ἢ ἀποτετμημένας.

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The resulting absurdity about the source, which would be lessened or expend itself in giving away its powers, depends on taking it as corporeal or quantitative. It would be like a teacher who would become more and more devoid of knowledge the more successful he was in imparting his wisdom to his students. In relation to the powers themselves, however, two problems emerge. First, what is the relation of these powers to their substances and, second, to their source? The introduction of “their substances” alerts us to the fact that these powers are not accidents of bodies but come to them as substances, another allusion to the analysis in VI.4[22].3, and as substances they also remain within the intelligible. But if they are both in that and elsewhere, either wholes or parts of them will be here. If parts, the remaining parts are there. If wholes, (1) either these very wholes are there and here not divided, and again it will be the same, everywhere and not divided; 2) or, since each whole became many, the powers will also be like one another, so that power will be with each substance; (3) or only one power will be with substance, and the others [will] only [be] powers; but this is not possible: as substance without power, so neither power without substance. For power there is reality and substance, or greater than substance.59

If the powers are present in both, Plotinus quickly eliminates presence as parts and turns to the crucial issue of their presence as wholes, which is considered in terms of three points. The first, introduced by ἤτοι, mentions his position that they will be present as wholes in both as not divided, repeating what was already established in VI.4[22].3. The next 59. VI.4[22].9, 16–25: εἰ δ’ ἐν ἐκείνῳ τέ εἰσι καὶ ἄλλοθι, ἢ ὅλαι ἢ μέρη αὐτῶν ἐνταῦθα ἔσονται. ἀλλ’ εἰ μέρη, κἀκεῖ τὰ λοιπἀ μέρη. εἰ δὲ ὅλαι, ἤτοι αἵπερ ἐκεῖ καὶ ἐνταῦθα οὐ μεμερισμέναι, καὶ πάλιν αὖ ἔσται τὸ αὐτὸ πανταχοῦ οὐ μεμερισμένον· ἢ πολλὰ γενόμενον ὅλον ἕκαστον αἱ δυνάμεις καὶ ὅμοιαι ἀλλήλαις, ὥστε καὶ μετὰ τῆς οὐσίας ἑκάστης ἡ δύναμις· ἢ μία μόνον ἔσται ἡ συνοῦσα τῇ οὐσίᾳ, αἱ δ’ ἄλλαι δυνάμεις μόνον· καίτοι οὐχ οἷόν τε, ὥσπερ οὐσίαν ἄνευ δυνάμεως, οὕτως οὐδε δύναμιν ἄνευ οὐσίας. ἡ γὰρ δύναμις ἐκεῖ ὑπόστασις καὶ οὐσία ἢ μεῖζον οὐσίας.

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two points concern the nature of this wholeness in reference to the powers themselves as substances, as well as the living things that participate in them. The second point makes three claims: each is whole, each became many, and all are alike, with the result that each power is with substance.60 This indicates that wherever a power is here in the sensible world, it is here as a substance. The alternative in the third point confirms this and gives the reason why. This alternative seems to have in mind that perhaps only the power of intellect as a whole is a substance, establishing the whole sensible cosmos, with everything else merely powers, but not actually substances. If this were true, they would be like the immanent forms of VI.4.[22], 3, formally and numerically distinct, but not substances, and each will not be present as a whole nor will all be alike. This amounts to presence as parts, the first alternative passed over in silence at 9, 17–18, which Plotinus now explains is impossible, because power and substance are completely reciprocal in the intelligible, and are rooted in the nature of intellect as a hypostasis, which, if anything, is greater than substance. It is this last part that allows Plotinus to accept the terminology of the Parmenides, describing sensible participants as substances (οὐσίαι). The rest of the argument explores more fully the relation between the powers and their source, and especially the link between power and substance. It begins with an allusion to the otherness used earlier to distinguish the source and its participants at VI.4[22].3, 11–17, and 4, 23–26, and continues with two series of consequences, one dealing with the powers and their sensible participants and the other with the source. But if the powers from that are other as less and dim, just as light from a light is the dim from the brighter, and even more if substanc60. See Plotinus 1998, 3:342n10, where this short phrase at ll. 20–21 is parsed out in this threefold way. The note does not seem to come from Igal, but in its own way calls attention to what unites these three phrases, the equivalence of power and substance spelled out in the rest of the chapter.

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es are with these powers, so that power cannot come to be without substance, it follows: first, in the case of these powers, since they come to be completely of like species to one another, it is necessary to grant either that the power itself is everywhere, or, if not everywhere, but still in every direction at the same time as a whole, at least not divided, as in one and the same body. But if this is so, why not in the whole universe? But if [these powers were divided], [it is necessary] that each be divided to infinity, and [each power] will no longer be whole by itself, but powerlessness will come from the division. Then, though one power is present in one part and another in another, it will not bestow consciousness.61

The introduction of this complicated section summarizes the conclusion of the previous argument where power and substance were shown to go together. It is necessary now to demonstrate that this does not imply an identity between the source and the participants, accomplished by denoting them as other than the source. We have at last a discussion of the reason why the powers cannot be firsts, as they are actually other than the first. The otherness of VI.4[22].4 is thus clarified by the image of light coming from a source of light. Plotinus then interposes the problem of division implied by their presence in particular sensible living things and in the sensible universe as a whole. Because the sensible universe is both one whole and divided into parts, these powers can be present to the whole or to parts within it. If they are present to the whole, they are indeed everywhere, but if they are not everywhere but only in a part, then they can still be present to that part as undivided, under the condition that they are present to it as a whole, repeating the point made at the end 61. VI.4[22].9, 25–36: εἰ δ’ ἕτεραι ὡς ἐλάττους καὶ ἀμυδραὶ δυνάμεις αἱ ἐξ ἐκείνου, οἱονεὶ φῶς ἐκ φωτὸς ἀμυδρὸν ἐκ φανοτέρου, καὶ δὴ καὶ οὐσίαι συνοῦσαι ταῖς δυνάμεσι ταύταις, ἵνα μὴ γίνηται ἄνευ οὐσίας δύναμις, πρῶτον μὲν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν τοιούτων δυνάμεων ἀναγκαῖον ὁμοειδῶν πάντως πρὸς ἀλλήλας γινομένων ἢ τὴν αὐτὴν πανταχοῦ συγχωρεῖν εἶναι, ἢ καὶ, εἰ μὴ πανταχοῦ, ἀλλ’ οὖν πανταχῇ ἅμα τὴν αὐτὴν ὅλην, οὐ μεμερισμένην, οἷον ἐν ἑνὶ καὶ τῷ αὐτῷ σώματι· εἰ δὲ τοῦτο, διὰ τί οὐκ ἐν παντὶ τῷ ὅλῳ; εἰ δέ, μεμερίσθαι ἑκάστην εἰς ἄπειρον, καὶ οὐκέτι οὐδ’ αὑτῇ ὅλη, ἀλλὰ τῷ μερισμῷ ἔσται ἀδυναμία. ἔπειτα ἄλλη κατ’ ἄλλο οὖσα οὐ καταλείψει συναίσθησιν.

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of VI.4[22].3. If a power, on the contrary, were divided, as is the case in the second deduction, then such division goes on to infinity. The disastrous consequence is that the power itself is no longer whole, but becomes as powerless as matter (see VI.4[22].3, 35–40). In this case, the power would be present like the immanent form discussed in VI.4[22].1–6, dispersed part by part in the object and incapable of any kind of awareness. The contrast between substance and accidents emerges clearly in these lines, indicating the tight connection between this argument and the analysis in VI.4[22].3. At this point, Plotinus moves to the second set of consequences, which relate a hierarchical series of participants to their source. He expands on the image of a light and its source. The importance of this image is apparent from its implicit allusion to the image of the sun in the Republic as well as to the correction of Socrates’s youthful substitution of the day for the sun at Parmenides 131b3–4, already mentioned at VI.4[22].7, 39–47. Indeed, it is so crucial that merely stating it is enough to complete Plotinus’s argument, as the central thesis of the chapter and treatise flows naturally from it. Secondly, then, just as the appearance of something, like a weaker light, cut off from that from which it is, would no longer exist, and in general anything having its reality from another is an appearance of that, and cannot possibly make things cut off in reality to exist, neither would these powers which came from that exist having cut themselves off from that.62 But if this is so, where these powers are, 62. These lines have presented major difficulties to translators, but the solution to such puzzles is often frustratingly simple. First, I construe πᾶν τὸ with ἔχον, and ἴνδαλμα with ὂν ἐκείνου, rather than construing πᾶν τὸ with ἴνδαλμα. Second, respecting the voice and number of the participles clears up the remaining ambiguities. Thus, ἀποτέμνοντα must be an active neuter plural, indicating what an appearance cannot do, if it is cut off or if what it makes is cut off. Finally, ἀποτετμημέναι is a middle perfect feminine plural, meaning the powers would not exist if they had cut themselves off, with the corollary unstated, that they would therefore not be able to make sensible living things. The resulting translations are in italics. Thus the argument Plotinus has been building in VI.4[22].9 falls neatly into place.

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there also will be that from which they are generated at the same time, so that once again it will itself be everywhere, at the same time, an undivided whole.63

The consequences stated in this concluding remark are brief but among the most important in the whole treatise. First, the relationship between the powers and their source cannot be reciprocal. They cannot continue to exist cut off from it, nor could they produce further products if they cut themselves off from that reality, but they are from the source as weaker and always dependent on it, like the image of a light and its rays and indeed of the universe itself in VI.4[22].3. Second, Plotinus extends the argument to include the relation of sensible living things to the universe as a whole, ruling out the possibility of the independent existence of the sensible world that Aristotle posited in attacking the Platonic forms. The sensible universe as a whole and all the living things within it are all dependent on a common transcendent source. Nevertheless, these sensible living things are substances, as the powers from which they come cannot fail to bring the reality of the source with them. The source itself, however, must necessarily remain transcendent if it is to continue to give to its participants. Thus, the specific premise of the second deduction in the Parmenides, of a numerical division that severs atomistically, cannot be sustained, and Plotinus can confidently reinstate the Platonic forms as “being present everywhere at the same time as a whole.”

63. VI.4[22].9, 37–45: ἔπειτα δέ, [εἰ] καθάπερ τὸ ἴνδαλμά τινος, οἷον καὶ τὸ ἀσθενέστερον φῶς, ἀποτεμνόμενον τοῦ παρ’ οὗ ἐστιν οὐκέτ’ ἂν εἴη, καἰ ὅλως πᾶν τὸ παρ’ ἄλλου τὴν ὑπόστασιν ἔχον ἴνδαλμα ὂν ἐκείνου οὐχ οἷόν τε ἀποτέμνοντα ἐν ὑποστάσει ποιεῖν εἶναι, οὐδ’ ἂν αἱ δυνάμεις αὗται αἱ ἀπ’ ἐκείνου ἐλθοῦσαι ἀποτετμημέναι ἂν ἐκείνου εἶεν. εἰ δὲ τοῦτο, οὗ εἰσιν αὗται, κἀκεῖνο ἀφ’ οὗ ἐγένοντο ἐκεῖ ἅμα ἔσται, ὥστε πανταχοῦ ἅμα πάλιν αὐτὸ οὐ μεμερισμένον ὅλον ἔσται.

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Conclusion: Objections and Replies (VI.4[22].10–16) In these last few sections, Plotinus examines some objections to his position, and defends the images he utilizes to express it, giving his replies and clarifications. As his major points have already been made, these chapters can be summarized more briefly. In VI.4[22].10, Plotinus introduces some objections about the nature of an image, using εἴδωλον and εἰκών. The objection states that a likeness can exist in the absence of the original in art, and in nature heat continues in an object after the fire has left. In reply, he points out that, in the case of art, the cause of the likeness is the painter, not the object painted, and it is in the disposition of colors and not the causal activity of the object, as in mirrors and pools. Even clearer is the case of lingering heat: the heat is not a likeness and in fact fades away. The objection, finally, turns on attempting to eliminate intermediate causes, reducing everything back to the One, but Plotinus counters that the power of the One keeps intellects and souls indestructible and immortal, referring to earlier works such as IV.7[2] and V.2[11]. The next objection brings up once more the puzzle that, if the intelligible is present everywhere as a whole, why all things do not participate in it as a whole, and then adds a new issue: why there are firsts, seconds, and thirds.64 Plotinus reminds us first that what is present is so according to the capacity of the receiver and then turns immediately to describing these receivers as firsts, seconds, thirds, “in order, power, and differences, but not in places.”65 He illustrates this by two kinds of examples. First, those that relate to intellect and soul, like types of knowledge, major and minor (μείζους καὶ ὑφιεμένας, 64. For a discussion of firsts, seconds, and thirds, see Plotinus 2015b for Dillon’s translation (64–65 and 67) and commentary (202–3 and 209) of IV.4[28].6, 27–34, and 8, 11–13, where Plotinus is commenting on Timaeus 41d and the three levels of soul’s activity, intellect, reason, along with the lower faculties. See note 67 below for his application to intellect as from the One. 65. VI.4[22].11, 10: τάξει καὶ δυνάμει καὶ διαφοραῖς, οὐ τόποις.

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11, 13), and then those that relate to bodies, where different senses perceive different features, like color and scent, that are united together in one body and do not exist as separate beings. But then, after asking and affirming that intellect can be varied and many, because the varied can be simple and the many one, he explains how this is possible in terms of the nature of intellect as logos and being. “For logos is one and many, and all being is one. For the other in itself and otherness belong to [being], for they could not belong to non-being.”66 This passage alludes to the Sophist, where logos or language is possible only because of the presence of otherness in being, and this otherness does not threaten the unity of being because it does not intrude nonbeing into being. In the following lines, unity is not separated from being, so that where being is, unity is present to it because unity is in itself being. In contrast, presence among sensible things, or between sensible things and intelligible things and souls, does imply separation, as corporeal division does not entail the unity of the intelligible.67 Plotinus continues to give analogies of things that are everywhere as a whole, such as hearing and seeing. Thus a word spoken in the air is received entirely by the ear, and if there is another ear in between, that will hear the whole word as well. 66. VI.4[22].11, 16–18: λόγος γὰρ εἷς καὶ πολύς, καὶ πᾶν τὸ ὂν ἕν. καὶ γὰρ τὸ ἕτερον ἑαυτῷ καὶ ἡ ἑτερότης αὐτοῦ· οὐ γὰρ δὴ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος. 67. Firsts, seconds, and thirds derive ultimately from Plato, but serve here to counter the kind of generation assumed in the Parmenides. Thus, at VI.4[22].9, 1–5, the units generated from the first principle are all called “firsts,” with each unit exactly the same and repeating the generative process to infinity. Plotinus, having argued against this sense of “firsts,” substitutes the hierarchical relation captured here as firsts, seconds, and thirds. In VI.5[23].4, 17–24, the One also relates to intellect and its multiplicity as firsts, seconds, and thirds (see Second Letter 312e). The image employed is that of a sphere with lines radiating from a center, frequent in his writings, going back to IV.1[4].1, 24–28, where it explains the relation of intellect to its own content in the context of an exegesis of Timaeus 35a about substance as indivisible and divisible. At VI.4–5[22–23], Plotinus switches from substance to the power or activity coming from it, that remains whole and the same everywhere, the essence of his response to Parmenides 131b1–2 and 144c8–d1.

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Looking at an object also has the same feature that many eyes look toward the same thing and all are filled with the sight of it as a single form. Nonetheless, sight and sound are distinguished as related to different organs, illustrating his method of using analogies drawn from experience but always correcting them.68 He occasionally draws out the comparison with soul in relation to bodies able to receive it, but dwells much more on a phenomenological description of the experience of sound, as if his listeners, even at this advanced stage, are not fully convinced about the nature of soul. He even proposes that there is a certain likeness (ὁμοιότητα κατά τι, 12, 29) between sound and the soul, although they are not the same (ταὐτότητα, 12, 28), giving another glimpse at his method. The likeness, of course, is that sound, especially in words or music, is an activity that derives directly from the activity of the soul in the body and thus is most apt for capturing the nature of the soul itself as an activity. The next chapter, VI.4[22].13, considers the soul’s magnitude or being stretched out over the whole heaven and living things. This is not so much an objection as a figure of speech that needs precision when discussing the nature of the soul more critically, a further instance of the tendency of language to rely on sensation uncritically with the constant need for correction. We see the things participating in soul as stretched out and so are drawn to assume that soul itself is stretched out. Plotinus reminds us that what is participated in does not participate in itself. It just is itself. Not only Plotinus’s contemporaries but readers today often have a problem appreciating how this is so, substituting determinate and static ideas for the thoroughly active character that 68. Although sound has preeminence in this passage, Plotinus, for different reasons, emphasizes sight as containing the whole object in IV.5[29].3, 32–38. In IV.5[29].6, 13–23, further, Plotinus defines light as an activity of a luminous body, which is not at all unrelated to his discussion here of how lower activities relate to higher ones.

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Plotinus assumes souls and intelligible forms and ideas necessarily have. Activities can be participated in, but body cannot participate in body. In a way each body just is itself too, but for a different reason. It has its various qualities, which relate to the substrate and not other bodies, and these qualities are in the body as divisible, points that the arguments of the Parmenides and Aristotle used against participation. Plotinus turns this argument against them to show that participation is only possible if it involves something incorporeal, formulating a rule for how a body can participate in something else. “If then what is distributed and extended so far is going to participate in another kind or in another at all, it is necessary for that in which it participates to be neither distributed nor extended, nor to be in any way something quantitative.”69 The consequences of this exclusion of extension summarize briefly the points Plotinus has been making all along, that it will be present everywhere as a whole, without parts. Just to be sure, however, he describes how being without parts does not mean it is small, because if it were actually small it would be divisible and could not grow as the body grows. Further, it cannot be like a point, because a mass has an infinite number of points and so its presence would be infinitely many points with the result that it would be discontinuous rather than everywhere as a whole. VI.4[22].14–16 shift once more to the question covered in 6–7 concerning the unity and differentiation of souls, adding good and evil to the mix. Plotinus begins with the nature of intellect as sufficient to explain both the unity and diversity not only of souls but intellects as well. Infinity plays a role here different from that just mentioned in VI.4[22].13, where it entails discontinuity and the substrate as potential. 69. VI.4[22].13, 15–18: εἰ οὖν τὸ διειλημμένον καὶ τὸ ἐκτεταμένον εἰς τόσον ἄλλου γένους μεταλήψεται ἢ ὅλως ἄλλου, δεῖ τὸ οὗ μεταλαμβάνει μήτε διειλημμένον εἶναι μήτε ἐκτεταμένον μήτε ὅλως ποσόν τι εἶναι.

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In intellect, infinity is that transparent character of individual souls and intellects that allows them to be all together while remaining distinct. As intellect and souls, we are all united there, but, as Plotinus puts it rather dramatically, another, later man approaches that intelligible man, winding around and attaching himself to that. We are now, Plotinus avers, both together, not the self we were before but at times the self we added later, when that prior is inactive and in a way not present. To explain how the higher self can be inactive, he first investigates how the lower self is able to approach it by its fitness, which opens it to receive all soul but only to the degree that it is able. When a living thing comes to be, it has soul present to it from being, and so because of that [soul] it is already attached to the whole of being. It is also present to a body, not empty of nor without a share in soul, since it was not placed in something formerly soulless, but, as coming to be very much nearer by its fitness, it became no longer just a body but a living body. By its very proximity it even benefited from some trace of soul, not a part of that [soul] but something like a warming or illumination coming from it. The origin of desires and pleasures and pains grew up in it, as the body was not alien from the living thing that has come to be.70

The living thing on one side is related to the whole of being through its soul, but on the other side it has a body, one most fit to receive soul and thus not alien to the living thing. The body, however, is the source of desires, pleasures, and pains, which can disturb the soul’s innate tranquility. Plotinus uses 70. VI.4[22].15, 8–18: γενομένου δὴ ζῴου, ὃ ἔχει μὲν παροῦσαν αὑτῷ ἐκ τοῦ ὄντος ψυχήν, καθ’ ἣν δὴ ἀνήρτηται εἰς πᾶν τὸ ὄν, παρόντος δὲ καὶ σώματος οὐ κενοῦ οὐδὲ ψυχῆς ἀμοίρου, ὃ ἔκειτο μὲν οὐδὲ πρότερον ἐν τῷ ἀψύχῳ, ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον οἷον ἐγγυς γενόμενον τῇ ἐπιτηδειότητι, καὶ γενομένου οὐκέτι σώματος μόνου, ἀλλὰ καὶ ζῶντος σώματος, καὶ τῇ οἷον γειτονείᾳ καρπωσαμένου τι ἴχνος ψυχῆς, οὐκ ἐκείνης μέρους, ἀλλ’ οἷον θερμασίας τινὸς ἢ ἐλλάμψεως ἐλθουσης, γένεσις ἐπιθυμιῶν καὶ ἡδονῶν καὶ ἀλγηδόνων ἐν αὐτῷ ἐξέφυ· ἦν δὲ οὐκ ἀλλότριον τὸ σῶμα τοῦ ζῴου τοῦ γεγενημένου.

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the image of an assembly (15, 35–40) with two parts, the elders in quiet thought and the crowd in disorder, making demands and complaining. If, however, the crowd can quiet down and listen to one of the wise, order is restored, but if not, the better part keeps quiet and the worse cannot hear the word from above. This is the vice of the city and assembly, and so also of the man. An individual can, as it were, shut out the higher self completely, or live now one way and now the other, becoming a mix of good and evil. Finally, in VI.4[22].16, Plotinus addresses Plato’s stories about the punishment of souls, their descents and ascents, the judgments on them and their entry into other animals. The point of contention is that this seems to contradict the nature of soul as impassible and immortal, so Plotinus does not want to interpret these stories literally, but to conclude that evil causes the soul’s activity to be no longer directed to the whole but to the partial. The whole remains, but as it were in potency. This moral alienation of the soul is, however, not essentially a contrast between virtue and vice, but between two levels of human experience, one circumscribed by its relation to the body and the other finding itself in a deepening freedom from that constriction.71 In this treatise, it is a short footnote to a long and profound reflection on the nature of the soul as incorporeal, parsing out how the soul interacts with the body in such a way as to allow for human experience, from simple sensation to knowledge of the soul’s continued presence in the intelligible world. Plotinus’s goal is a self-knowledge that allows the soul to unify its experience ever more comprehensively. His method 71. See Gurtler 2006, where I argue that the Greeks, including Plotinus, see evil in terms of confusion and ignorance, as evil must remain extrinsic to the soul. St. Paul sees evil as sin, a break in the relationship with God that affects all relationships, as intrinsic to the soul. The Platonic tradition wants to take evil and moral responsibility seriously, but cannot articulate it without making the experiences of this life seem paradoxically of no real value.

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is rich in using images and analogies from our experience, especially when the analogies themselves capture something of the essence of the soul itself as an activity. Deeper, however, is his thorough engagement with the texts and ideas of Plato and Aristotle. Plotinus presents succinctly where he finds Aristotle accurate in his own account of immanent forms for the qualities in bodies. For souls, however, as Platonic substances, he reconfigures Aristotelian act and potency as the means to articulate Platonic participation and the incorporeality he sees at its core. In VI.4[22], this is done without any reference to the One or mystical experience, but rather with constant use of sensation and its dependence on the unity of soul for its possibility.

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Omnipresence and Transcendence

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Omnipresence and Transcendence On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole II (VI.5[23]) It is always a source of amazement that fundamental distinctions in philosophy can sometimes be lost.1 This is peculiarly true in the case of Plotinus where his position is often obscured and he is accused of being opaque and reveling in irrational mysticism, while the actual difficulty is the loss of one of his major distinctions. Plotinus’s discussion of the 1. Used with permission of Brill Academic Publishers, from Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, 2007, “Plotinus: Omnipresence and Transcendence of the One in VI 5[23],” in Reading Ancient Texts, Volume II: Aristotle and Neoplatonism: Essays in Honour of Denis O’Brien, ed. Suzanne Stern-Gillet and Kevin Corrigan, 137–52 (Leiden: Brill); permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. This chapter is a slightly revised version of that article.

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One’s omnipresence is a case in point where this kind of misunderstanding remains particularly prevalent. Plotinus does not see God as totally other, transcendent in such a way as to have no relation at all to the universe.2 This brief excursus of VI.5[23], the second part of the treatise under consideration in this chapter, is designed to bring into relief the fundamental ideas that Plotinus uses to root all forms of immanence and omnipresence in a properly understood transcendence. In VI.4[22], as we have seen, Plotinus shows that forms, which he equates with Aristotelian accidents, are immanent in corporeal things and are transcendent only in awareness, sensible or rational; souls, equated with Aristotelian substances, are omnipresent to bodies and transcendent as remaining independent and within the intelligible; intellect and its powers are similarly omnipresent and transcendent. To bring into play the transcendence and omnipresence of the One with its particular differences, a detailed analysis of VI.5[23].1 and 4, 1–13, is necessary.

God, One, and the Same (VI.5[23].1) Plotinus begins with something that appears to recent commentators as an unusual appeal to common human experience, but has been taken recently as no longer possible in the modern Western world.3 “A certain common notion says 2. See, for example, Otto 1978, V.4, 25–30. It is interesting that in this chapter Otto quotes Augustine, Confessions XI.9.1, that he is “a-shudder, in so far as I am unlike it, a-glow in so far as I am like it” (28n1). Augustine has it right, we are other; Otto switches it around, so that God is other. Not surprisingly, Otto’s analysis of the numinous, the presence of the divine, keeps it “as objective and outside the self ” (11). Transcendence and omnipresence have become divided into a synthetic attribute in the one case and a feeling in the other; one cannot imagine a position further from that of Plotinus. 3. Armstrong, in Plotinus 1988, 6:326–27n1, writes: “This is one of Plotinus’ rare appeals to the common experience of mankind as a good starting-point for a philosophical investigation (III.7.1 may be compared, though ‘we’ there probably means ‘philosophers’ rather than ‘mankind in general’). The way in which he expresses this

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that the one and the same in number is everywhere present as a whole, whenever all are naturally moved to call the God in each of us as one and the same.”4 This common notion, with its Stoic echo,5 places the examination of omnipresence in a context different from that in VI.4[22], which is restricted to the relation of soul, as the power from intellect, to bodies in the sensible world. In Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3.2–12, Sextus Empiricus presents a discussion of God, with the common notion of God occurring in paragraphs 3, 6, and 11, where he describes what the “dogmatist” needs to admit in arguing for the existence of God and what Sextus then sees as the contradictions that inherently follow. Plotinus’s argument can thus be analyzed as addressing these objections in terms of his own understanding of the nature of incorporeality and its consequences for understanding the nature of God as transcendent and omnipresent. On the one hand, there is a similarity between the presence of soul and intellect to the sensible world (or some one of its parts) as a whole, and the presence of God to all human beings. On the other hand, there will be intriguingly different implications to the omnipresence of God, awareness of which is peculiarly human as this passage indicates. As we shall see soon, Plotinus is not restricting the omnipresence of God to human beings, but instead is using this general human recognition as the point of departure for understanding all lesser modes of general consent may remind us of how much the centuries of Christianity and antiChristianity have changed the common thinking of our own world. What he says here would probably still be true in India.” Armstrong’s comments seem overly hasty and do not do justice to the careful argument Plotinus presents in VI.5[23].1, and its reprise at the beginning of VI.5[23].4, 1–13. It is hasty to say that Plotinus is appealing to common experience without clarifying the precise thrust of his argument, and the reference to Christianity and India obscures the specific philosophical provenance of the contrast between modern and premodern philosophy. 4. VI.5[23].1, 1–4: τὸ ἓν καὶ ταὐτὸν ἀριθμῷ πανταχοῦ ἅμα ὅλον εἶναι κοινὴ μέν τις ἔννοιά φησιν εἶναι, ὅταν πάντες κινούμενοι αὐτοφυῶς λέγωσι τὸν ἐν ἑκάστῳ ἡμῶν θεὸν ὡς ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτόν. 5. Sextus Empiricus 1933, 1:325–33, and Inwood and Gerson 1988, 219–22.

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omnipresence. What has already been examined in VI.4[22] in the technical language of philosophy, “the one and the same in number that is present everywhere as a whole,” is here identified with the prephilosophical and unreflective notion of all human beings, not merely philosophers, in naming the God in each of us as one and the same. Plotinus first pinpoints the philosophical character of this common notion precisely as the foundation of all thought, and then answers the challenge of someone like Sextus Empiricus by returning to philosophical principles articulated by Plato and Aristotle to explain it. “And if someone were not to ask them how, nor want to examine their opinion rationally, thus they would affirm and, this being active in their reason, thus they would come to rest, firmly set somehow on the one and the same, and they would not want to be cut away from this unity.”6 The problem is that the questions of Sextus function as if this common notion were like any opinion or idea that human beings formulate from their experience. Plotinus indicates, on the contrary, that this notion is fundamental, so that Sextus, and those like him, are confusing two distinct orders of discourse. Plotinus’s critique is that Sextus takes explanation and rational analysis as if they were themselves the foundation and beginning of thought.7 Plotinus counters with the claim that philosophical reflection is designed to elucidate the meaning of a more primordial truth already contained at the pre-reflective level. In fact, this 6. VI.5[23].1, 4–8: καὶ εἴ τις αὐτοὺς τὸν τρόπον μὴ ἀπαιτοῖ μηδὲ λόγῳ ἐξετάζειν τὴν δόξαν αὐτῶν ἐθέλοι, οὕτως ἂν καὶ θεῖντο καὶ ἐνεργοῦντες τοῦτο τῇ διανοίᾳ οὕτως ἀναπαύοιντο εἰς ἕν πως συνερείδοντες καὶ ταὐτόν, καὶ οὐδ’ ἂν ἐθέλοιεν ταύτης τῆς ένότητος ἀποσχίζεσθαι. 7. For a recent expression of the same sort of concern, Macmurray 1957 and 1961 examine how religion constitutes the primordial mode of human knowledge, with other modes derivative from it and dependent on it. Eliade 1969 and his other works examine the structure and significance of this prelinguistic thought. Langer 1957 has a similar project in tracing the origins of language and its unique appearance among human beings.

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notion is already active in reason and is the ground on which all human knowledge rests, so much so that no one would want to be cut off from it. The a priori claim asserted in these initial phrases becomes the subject of examination in the rest of the chapter. Plotinus continues not by arguing for this claim as if it were an opinion brought about arbitrarily by some human artifice, but by describing, phenomenologically one might say, how it expresses the nature of the case. The next lines present us with these first distinctions. “And this is the most certain principle of all, which our souls shout, as it were, not summed up from particulars, but coming before all particulars and before that [principle] which affirms and states that all things desire the good.”8 That God is one and the same is the most certain principle of all and our souls do not need to be persuaded of this nor learn it, but it is present naturally or spontaneously, as Plotinus phrases it at the beginning of the chapter. In these lines, he states first that it is a principle not known by a process of abstraction or induction, based on moving from particulars to the general. It is thus not at all like an explanation or theory about the nature of things, as would be true with the kinds of explanations to be found in arts or sciences. It is, in a word, not a concept, idea, or hypothesis put forward by the human mind to make sense of the cosmos, but is somehow a priori, to use Kant’s phrase. His reference to Aristotle’s Metaphysics IV.4, 1005b11–12, 18, “this most certain principle,” indicates that Plotinus considers this a first principle, “which,” as Aristotle says, “it is necessary to have for one who understands anything about beings and is not an assumption; and what is necessary to know for one who knows anything, one must have come already having [it]” 8. VI.5[23].1, 8–12: καὶ ἔστι πάντων βεβαιοτάτη ἀρχή, ἣν ὥσπερ αἱ ψυχαὶ ἡμῶν φθέγγονται, μὴ ἐκ τῶν καθέκαστα συγκεφαλαιωθεῖσα, ἀλλὰ πρὸ τῶν καθέκαστα πάντων προελθοῦσα καὶ πρὸ ἐκείνης τῆς τοῦ ἁγαθοῦ πάντα ὁρέγεσθαι τιθεμένης τε καὶ λεγούσης.

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(1005b15–17). In Plotinus’s argument, this effectively establishes God as the first principle of all knowledge, a rephrasing as well as the ground for Aristotle’s principle of noncontradiction.9 Plotinus states all this with incredible brevity, but his point is nevertheless clear that the first principle of knowledge and also of being, as will be evident later on, must be one and the same thing. The desire of all things for the good switches from an Aristotelian to a Platonic context, with Plotinus stating that God is prior to the good as an object of desire. It is still a matter of God as a priori, but as prior to all other goods or principles of goodness, especially the soul and intellect examined in VI.4[22]. He begins by describing how the good ordinarily functions as an object of desire, particularly in terms of the unity that is the goal of all such desire. “For that [principle] would be true in this way, if all things were tending to unity and were a unity, and the desire were of this [unity]. On the one hand, this unity in going forth to other [unities], as far as it is possible for it to advance, would appear and even in a way be many.”10 Plotinus states that things desire the good as an external unity toward which they are directed. This kind of good is also characteristic of human production or art, where different things are fitted together or blended to form a new unity that is ready to serve some purpose of the human agent. Modern philosophy tends to construe all desire for an end as inevitably reducible to this human desire and intention, with 9. Plotinus alludes to and is following Aristotle’s argument for the principle of noncontradiction. No proof of it can be given, but objections can be answered, especially in the sense that the objector must be using the very idea that is being attacked in order to formulate the attack. In the present context, the notion of God precedes and is the basis for all subsequent thought. Once Plotinus has formulated these principles, he can deduce their consequences, as he does for intellect and soul in VI.5[23].2–3 and 5–12. 10. VI.5[23].1, 12–16: οὕτω γὰρ ἂν αὕτη ἀληθὲς εἴη, εἰ τὰ πάντα εἰς ἓν σπεύδοι καὶ ἓν εἵη, καὶ τούτου ἡ ὄρεξις εἵη. τὸ γὰρ ἓν τοῦτο προϊὸν μὲν ἐπὶ θάτερα, ἐφ’ ὅσον προελθεῖν αὐτῷ οἷόν τε, πολλὰ ἂν φανείη τε καί πως καὶ εἴη.

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the claim that all teleology is necessarily anthropomorphic. The context in this passage, however, is not in the least anthropomorphic, and there is in fact no allusion to human production. Instead, the locus classicus for understanding this desire for the good is found in the Republic and other works where Plato attempts to articulate the various kinds of unities derivative of the forms and especially the form of the good. These unities include that of the sensible cosmos, of the forms themselves, and of various unities that occur within them with varying degrees of stability. Plotinus agrees that this kind of good indeed yields a sort of unity, but too many of them, as is already apparent in Plato. Plotinus thus recognizes that there is no single external unity toward which all things tend, but rather there are a multiplicity of such unities, no one of which is necessarily the good for all the others.11 External goods or unities may be subordinated or coordinated, but cannot ultimately be reduced to one unity, even the form of the good, and thus this good as the object of desire cannot be identified with God. Put in terms of unity, not everything in the cosmos is or needs to be directed toward the same end or unity, but each unity advances toward or includes others only to the degree possible. Plotinus continues this passage with an explicit contrast of this derivative desire of the good with one more ancient and natural, a desire of the good that is of itself rather than of something else.12 “On the other hand, the ancient nature and 11. His discussion of nature and the sensible cosmos in IV.4[28].30–39 examines the overall unity of the cosmos as well as the relative independence of its parts, especially those with souls of their own. Plotinus seeks to show that all things can be coordinated into a unity without everything having or desiring the same end. See Gurtler in Plotinus 2015c, 115–84, for a discussion of this text. 12. Ousager 2003, 219–40, uses various principles formulated by Leibniz to shed light on the very careful distinctions about the nature of the One that Plotinus articulates elsewhere in the Enneads. As in the present context, Plotinus identifies the One with the Good beyond being of Republic 509b, and thus distinct from the form of the good dependent on that Good. In VI.5[23].1 and 4, Plotinus takes three terms

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the desire of the good, the very thing which is of itself, really leads to unity, and every nature tends to this [unity], to itself. For this is the good for this one nature, to be of itself and to be itself: but this is to be one.”13 The phrase “the ancient nature” emphasizes the Platonic character of this discussion and how this good is different from the good as an external end. Plato uses it, as the Henry-Schwyzer notes in Plotinus 1964 indicate, in Symposium 192e9, where Aristophanes refers to the original, unsplit human condition of wholeness; in Republic 611d2, where the soul is compared to the sea god, Glaucus, with the contrast between the original and present conditions of each; and in Timaeus 90d5, where the intelligent part of the soul is to be brought to the likeness of its proper intelligent object according to its ancient nature. The good in the present context is thus something original and given, and not the product of any kind of activity or achievement. The differences are striking: this kind of good leads to real unity, not the accidental unities that derive from external goods. Further, real unity is effectively rooted in the unity of God, so that the unity of the thing is to be of itself and to be itself. God is thus in no way an external good, different from the good of the thing itself. Such an account actually makes sense of classical teleology, the way in which all things imitate and desire the divine (unity, the good, and being) and applies them to the One, with transformations in their meaning that correspond to Ousager’s analysis in relation to the transcendent One. Here, however, they are examined in relation to the One’s omnipresence, undergoing a similar fundamental change, moving from the external to the internal cause of things. Ousager hints at this in distinguishing between cause and reason (αἴτιον καὶ αἰτία), but does not consider explicitly the omnipresence of the One in his analysis. Schroeder 1998, 1–22, discusses this passage from VI.5[23].1, emphasizing also how God is “before the first motion of argument,” “the good most palpable to our pre-ontological awareness,” and “is ourselves in the sense that it is the ground of our identity” (6–7). 13. VI.5[23].1, 16–20: ἡ δ’ ἀρχαία φύσις καὶ ἡ ὄρεξις τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, ὅπερ ἐστὶν αὑτοῦ, εἰς ἓν ὄντως ἄγει, καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦτο σπεύδει πᾶσα φύσις, ἐφ’ ἑαυτήν. τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι τὸ ἀγαθὸν τῇ μιᾷ ταύτῃ φύσει τὸ εἶναι αὑτῆς καὶ εἶναι αὐτήν· τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ τὸ εἶναι μίαν.

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and perfect, as Aristotle puts it. They do not desire God as something external, but in the very way in which they desire to be themselves. This is not a desire correlated to the sensitive soul, human or animal, and its needs, but is that kind of desire that constitutes the very being of the thing.14 Primordially, then, God does not and cannot function as an external good productive of unity, but through his omnipresence is that internal good by which each thing is, and desires to be, what it is. The particular distinctions on which this kind of teleology is based were lost in modern philosophy and necessitate careful recovery and retrieval. Consequently, the criticisms of teleology in modern philosophy have not been directed at this teleology, which Plotinus here carefully and explicitly distinguishes from a desire for some external good. The desire for God is, therefore, in no way a desire for something external, a teleology modeled on human art and consequently appearing and being multiple rather than one. This ancient and natural teleology, based on desire of the good itself, is radically internal. Each thing desires the good by desiring itself and desiring itself is precisely desiring its own unity. 14. Shaw 2006 argues that Aristotle’s analysis of the nutritive capacity illuminates what he means by the final end or good. Growth is the end relative to the body and nourishment the end relative to the soul, but generation indicates the precise way the nutritive power shares in the eternal and divine by reproducing something like itself. This desire of the nutritive soul is distinguished from the desiring faculty of the sensitive soul and the desires produced by it. Nutritive desire is an essential aspect of the being of a plant, something continuous and beyond the plant’s control, unlike the desires of the desiring power, which come and go as they are satisfied or not. The benefit of the particular context Shaw examines is that teleology cannot have the peculiar anthropomorphic characteristics it is alleged to have by its critics, but serves to highlight certain assumptions about the nature of the cosmos that reveal a more striking difference between modern and premodern thought. The ancients and their medieval successors saw the cosmos as continuous, as alive, with similarities abounding among its most diverse parts. In other words, they saw it in terms of nature and not human artifact. The moderns and their postmodern successors see the cosmos as discrete, as dead, functioning like a machine, constructed by human consciousness. The irony is rich indeed. The innate workings of nature, however inscrutable, have been replaced with a thoroughgoing anthropomorphic machine, all the more dangerous for not being admitted or recognized as such.

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The omnipresence of God thus accounts for a teleology that is rooted in the natural desire of everything to be itself and to be one.15 In the final lines of VI.5[23].1, Plotinus confirms these findings in terms of being, τὸ ὄν, with the changes needed when this term is used to cover the omnipresence of God in all things. Previously, unity and the good were identified; now being is shown to coincide with that good and unity, but in a way radically different from Plotinus’s usual understanding of being. “In this way the good is correctly said to be one’s own: therefore it is not necessary to seek it outside. For where would it be, having fallen outside of being? Or how could one discover it in non being?16 First, Plotinus draws out the consequence of the previous section, that the good is one’s own, as constitutive of one’s most original state or condition, and not something which one seeks as an end and therefore as something external. The text implies both one’s own good and particular unity and God as the good and source of this unity. Further, our understanding of this good does not come by an investigation of what is external to oneself, which, in this context, can only be nonbeing in an absolute sense. This good and being coincide and one cannot find them apart. In the different context of VI.4[22], good and being can be separate, as they both come from soul or intellect and thus may be present more or less effectively in sensible bodies, which are in fact a mixture of being and nonbeing. Intellect, moreover, 15. This, I would argue, has a better chance of being a level of self beyond the lower self and the higher self that Hutchinson 2018 argues for in terms of the qualified body as the physical “self,” particularly in the identification of this real unity from the One with the self, not casually but essentially so identified, confirming points from VI.9[9] and V.1[10]. Hutchinson 2018, 25, actually mentions something like this unity when he discusses each thing as having its own perspective or point of view, borrowing from Crane 2001. 16. VI.5[23].1, 20–23: οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὸ ἀγαθὸν ὀρθῶς εἶναι λέγεται οἰκεῖον· διὸ οὐδὲ ἔξω ζητεῖν αὐτὸ δεῖ. ποῦ γὰρ ἂν εἴη ἔξω τοῦ ὄντος περιπεπτωκός; ἢ πῶς ἄν τις ἐν τῷ μὴ ὄντι ἐξεύροι αὐτό.

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is always the duality of being and knowing, so that the being mentioned here has a different meaning, spelled out subtly in these few lines. The relation of God to all things is thus different, such that being in this case is not something more or less present to the thing, but is identified completely with the thing as its own good and unity. If being in this latter sense were not present, the thing would not exist. Plotinus does not state this in terms of existence, as we tend to do, but in terms of the nature of this good. “But clearly it is in being since it is not itself nonbeing. But if that [good] is being and in being, the [good] for each thing would be in itself. We have then not departed from being, but we are in it, nor has it [departed] from us: so all beings are one.”17 That this good is in being is obvious. But his phrasing is ambiguous, as he says literally that the good is in “the being,” and is not “nonbeing.” This is not the being of intellect or the sensible world that is many, τὰ ὄντα, and mixes with nonbeing, but rather it is always only τὸ ὄν, the being at the center of each thing that is, which is at the same time the being of God. In the second sentence, the good is defined as being and in being, arguing in reverse, as it were, by using this peculiar meaning of being to show that the good for each thing is in itself. Plotinus had already stated this when he said that the good is “the very thing which is of itself ” (1, 17) and that it is one’s own and cannot be sought outside (1, 21), but he confirms it now in terms of being. His language continues to say two things at once, that we have not departed from being nor being from us. There is at the same time coincidence and distinction, omnipresence and transcendence, and the same difficulties that make Plotinus’s discussion of the One paradoxical are replicated in his discussion of the relation of 17. VI.4[22].1, 23–26: ἀλλὰ δηλονότι ἐν τῷ ὄντι οὐκ ὂν αὐτὸ μὴ ὄν. εἰ δὲ ὂν καὶ ἐν τῷ ὄντι ἐκεῖνο, ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἂν εἴη ἑκάστῳ. οὐκ ἀπέστημεν ἄρα τοῦ ὄντος, ἀλλ’ ἐσμὲν ἐν αὐτῷ, οὐδ’ αὖ ἐκεῖνο ἡμῶν· ἓν ἄρα πάντα τὰ ὄντα.

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the One to all things (see Parmenides 160b2). The conclusion adds something new: all beings are one. Earlier, the good that is in and is each nature makes it one nature (μίαν). Now, this being makes all beings one thing (ἕν), a unity. This is not a unity that needs to be achieved, a good toward which we are directed, but a unity already always given, that allows the God in each of us to be called the one and same.

God, Everywhere the Same (VI.5[23].4) Plotinus revisits the common notion of God as everywhere one and the same in VI.5[23].4, explicitly raising the question of polytheism and its bearing on the argument. This move underlines his distinction between any kind of human reflection and rational elaboration and the nature of the divine that is at its base. “But look, if you please, also at this: we do not say that God is in some one place and not in another. For it is proper to say among all who have a notion of gods, not only about that One, but even about all the gods, that they are present everywhere, and the argument says that it is necessary so to affirm.”18 Whereas his earlier argument concerned the priority of this common notion of God in terms of the most certain principle for knowledge and then in terms of the coincidence of unity, being, and the good, this reprise focuses more on what it means to be “everywhere.” This change allows the sense of transcendence to receive its proper articulation, as the earlier chapter emphasized the omnipresence of God in such a way that there was an identity between the goodness and unity of the thing and God as good and source of unity (even this phrasing makes a distinction that is not literally in 18. VI.5[23].4, 1–5: ἰδὲ δέ, εἰ βούλει, καὶ τόνδε· τὸν θεὸν οὐ πῇ μὲν εἶναι, πῇ δ’ οὐκ εἶναί φαμεν. ἔστι γὰρ ἀξιούμενόν τε παρὰ πᾶσι τοῖς ἔννοιαν ἔχουσι θεῶν οὐ μόνον περὶ ἐκείνου, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ πάντων λέγειν θεῶν, ὡς πανταχοῦ πάρεισι, καὶ ὁ λόγος δέ φησι δεῖν οὕτω τίθεσθαι.

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the text). Further, the sense of “everywhere” has not only the brute sense of place, but also the diversity of human belief that can affirm many things about the divine, even that there are many gods and not just one. Plotinus nonetheless maintains that the underlying nature even of many gods remains consistent: they are always seen as present everywhere and this affirmation is necessary. Perhaps one can think of Plato’s account in the Republic II–III, which discerns under the various stories about the gods the nature of the divine as good, simple, unchanging, and true. The argument turns immediately to an examination of the meaning of “everywhere,” which is standard in Plotinus and has been thoroughly examined in VI.4[22], the first part of this treatise. “If then everywhere, he cannot be divided, for he would no longer be everywhere, but each part of him will be this here and that there, and he will no longer be one, as if some magnitude were cut into many parts, it will be destroyed and all the parts will no longer be that whole; but in addition to these things, he will even be a body.”19 In this section, Plotinus returns to the text that underlies the whole treatise, VI.4–5[22–23], from Plato’s Parmenides. Plotinus summarizes here his analysis of three terms: everywhere, the one (or unity), and the whole. This analysis is the foundation for his understanding of the relation of forms, soul, and intellect to the sensible world, and in the present context the nature of God and the relation of God to every nature, intelligible and sensible. His efforts to understand the Parmenides have earned Plotinus the scorn of recent thinkers who dismiss them as irrational mysticism and an abandonment of classical Greek thought.20 This is the opposite of 19. VI.5[23].4, 5–10: εἰ οὖν πανταχοῦ, οὐχ οἷόν τε μεμερισμένον· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἔτι πανταχοῦ αὐτὸς εἴη, ἀλλ’ ἕκαστον αὐτοῦ μέρος τὸ μὲν ὡδί, τὸ δὲ ὡδὶ ἔσται, αὐτός τε οὐχ εἷς ἔτι ἔσται, ὥσπερ εἰ τμηθείη τι μέγεθος εἰς πολλά, ἀπολλύμενόν τε ἔσται καὶ τὰ μέρη πάντα οὐκέτι τὸ ὅλον ἐκεῖνο ἔσται· πρὸς τούτοις δὲ καὶ σῶμα ἔσται. 20. See Dodds 1928, 129–42, and Gerson 1994, 231–32n5, for a discussion of

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the case, but to show that this is so, one needs to bring out the different way he reads the Parmenides. One can take that great dialogue as yielding no more than aporiai, puzzles that swirl about these three terms in particular and that Plato seems to leave unresolved and perhaps unresolvable. Plotinus instead examines these aporiai by indicating that the puzzles come from applying division and partition to these terms, consequently shifting the problem to human language and its proper application in different contexts. Both moves are thoroughly Platonic and rational, though not necessarily made by Plato in the explicit and thorough way that Plotinus makes them. Plotinus uses the paradoxes and contradictory arguments of the Parmenides about the meaning of “everywhere,” “unity,” and “the whole” to indicate and clarify the difference between the incorporeal and the corporeal. In brief, the incorporeal does not admit of division, but division is the very essence of the corporeal. Thus, Plotinus constantly maintains that division and being everywhere, or one, or whole, are mutually exclusive. The underlying problem is that our language is developed in relation to the sensible world, with corporeal division as its most general, ingrained prejudice. When we speak of unity, for example, we speak firstly of some one thing that can be sensed, or some way of grouping sensed objects together, but in examining the nature of unity itself, division is left behind and unity becomes more clearly identified with what is absolutely partless, the incorporeal as such. Thus if something is really everywhere, it cannot be body, as body is the recent literature on Plotinus’s interpretation of the Parmenides. My article, Gurtler 1992, mentioned at the beginning of chapter 5, has been taken to support this critique; if that is the case, I hereby recant. I would argue, however, that the article tried to indicate that the question of the Parmenides as the source of Plotinus’s three hypostases is not the issue, and sought to establish the rational pedigree of what Plotinus was arguing in VI.4[22] about texts that are indeed from the Parmenides. Ousager 2003 shows the rational principles that Plotinus uses and how they can be used to interpret the hypotheses of the Parmenides as indeed indicative of the three hypostases. I find this in agreement with my intent in that article.

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divisible, with one part here and another there. A body simply cannot be everywhere. Thus being everywhere, or one, or whole excludes being a magnitude or body. This is at the root of understanding transcendence, whether the relative transcendence of a form, examined in VI.4[22], or the absolute transcendence of God, investigated in VI.5[23]. It is this absolute transcendence which serves as the condition of possibility for any other. Finally, he reaffirms the conclusion reached in VI.5[23].1, that God is one and the same. “But if these things are impossible, what is not believed has again reappeared in acknowledging at once that God is within every nature of man and is at the same time everywhere the selfsame whole.”21 The disbelief arises from the introduction of reason with its questions and desire for explanation, as was first mentioned in VI.5[23].1, 4–8. Plotinus has shown, however, that such questions, rather than conflicting with unreflective belief, lead inevitably to the same conclusion. One side of his argument concerns human nature, the possibility of human knowledge, and the role and limits of asking questions and reasoning in any way, especially as involving language with its inherent limitations. We have seen Plotinus draw on both Plato and Aristotle to support this position. The other side is the equation of God with the one and same. Plotinus has relied more completely on Plato in articulating both the problem and its solution, involving both an analysis of desire for the good and the three terms crucial in this last section, being everywhere, one, and whole. 21. VI.5[23].4, 10–13: εἰ δὴ ταῦτα ἀδύνατα, πάλιν αὖ ἀνεφάνη τὸ ἀπιστούμενον ἐν πάσῃ φύσει ἀνθρώπου ὁμοῦ τῷ θεὸν νομίζειν καὶ πανταχοῦ τὸ αὐτὸ ἅμα ὅλον εἶναι. I want to thank Jean-Marc Narbonne of Laval University and Ronald K. Tacelli, SJ, of Boston College for pointing out some inadequacies in an earlier translation of this passage. The result corresponds to neither of their versions, so any continuing infelicity is solely my own. I construe τῷ with νομίζειν, and εἶναι as governing the two beliefs at the center of the arguments of VI.5[23].1 and 4, that God is within every human nature and is everywhere the selfsame whole.

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Conclusion In VI.4[22], Plotinus describes the presence of soul and intellect to sensible things as something external and resists Aristotle’s notion of the soul as entelechy precisely to keep the soul independent and free of being possessed by the body. We see also in VI.5[23] that the desire for the good, whether for soul or intellect, continues to be seen as something external to sensible things, as desiring a unity that they do not presently have. In this scheme, the transcendence of soul and intellect is preserved, and their presence to one thing or another can be explained. The desire for the One, however, is different from both points of view. The One is more completely transcendent than soul or intellect, and yet because of that the One’s omnipresence is also more complete. The One is not present to anything, sensible or intelligible, as if outside or different from the thing. This does not compromise the One’s transcendence and independence from the thing, because the One’s presence makes the thing what it is and gives the thing its own identity, but the thing does not, for all that, somehow possess the One. The One thus gives things their own goodness as well as their own unity and being. Soul, on the contrary, gives something to body that body does not have— life and various other powers—which are not the thing’s own, but reflections of the soul. Forms, souls, and intellect thus are present externally and in a defined way. The One, however, is present internally, giving what most primordially constitutes the thing as such, and its giving is not defined in this way or that, or as if from the outside. We have seen also three areas where the particular distinctions that he makes clash with assumptions in modern thought, still prevalent today. The first concerns teleology, which has been criticized as hopelessly anthropomorphic. If one defines an end or good as the result of thought or de-

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liberation, it is indeed anthropomorphic. Plotinus, however, distinguishes other modes of teleology that do not fit this model. Two are mentioned in the text under consideration, the external good operative in nature and due to the influence of soul and intellect, and the internal good identified with God. The first kind of teleology is the only one similar to the anthropomorphic model, but even that has qualifications in Plotinus’s account that prevent these two from being identified or confused with one another. It does not, for example, imply a single, unifying good toward which all other goods are necessarily directed. Plotinus is also careful, especially in other treatises, to indicate that these natural goods in no way involve planning or deliberation of any kind.22 The second kind, articulated most clearly in the text here, indicates that God functions as a good in an entirely different way, as prior and internal. The next area concerns being and the fact that Plotinus seems to attribute it to both God and things indiscriminately. The language of this chapter is certainly unusual, as Plotinus tends not to apply being, τὸ ὄν, to the One at all, adhering rather carefully to the statement in the Republic that the supreme Good is not being but beyond being (οὐσία in that context). In the first part of the present treatise, VI.4[22], being (τὸ ὄν) is the preferred term for the intelligible world, while being (οὐσία) refers to the sensible cosmos, perhaps as distinguishing Platonic intelligible forms from Aristotelian sensible substances. Nevertheless, in his discussion in VI.5[23].1, being, as given by God, is presented with very different characteristics, especially in contrast to the being of intellect. Being here does not come to things from the outside, is not dual as in relation to form, and is identified with the good and unity 22. See my article, Gurtler 2002, 99–124, for a discussion of Plotinus’s exclusion of planning or deliberation from the operations of intellect and nature in the generation and providential care of the sensible world.

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internal to the thing itself. What this shows is the willingness of Plotinus to go beyond the limitations of his own technical language to clarify a point. Lastly, of course, is the discussion of the concepts of everywhere, the one (or unity), and the whole, which are at the center of Plotinus’s interpretation of the Parmenides. The distinction Plotinus is making concerns the difference between the incorporeal and the corporeal and he establishes the distinction by analyzing the role of division and partition in generating the conflicts and contradictions of that dialogue. There is nothing mystical or mysterious about this, but a rational drawing out of the consequences of partition and division and a clear definition of the incorporeal nature of unity as such, and its basic characteristics as whole and everywhere. What is intriguing is not whether these distinctions are clear or rational in nature, but how they could have been lost or misunderstood at the advent of modern thought.

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Incorporeal Soul and Incorporeal Matter

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Incorporeal Soul and Incorporeal Matter On the Impassibility of Incorporeals (III.6[26]) In III.6[26], Plotinus takes up the task of examining the consequences of the incorporeality of matter and the soul. Because matter and the soul are so close to the corporeal, it almost seems that their incorporeality is necessarily compromised. Plotinus shows, however, that their incorporeal nature keeps them free of the alteration and affection associated with body, but for very different reasons. After a brief look at the difficulties involved in the relation of soul and body, most of the treatise is spent on the matter of the sensible world and relies more centrally on examining Platonic texts, especially from the Timaeus. This approach marks a contrast with his earlier treatise, II.4[12], where he attempted to rethink the theory of matter

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by combining the otherness and motion of Plato’s Sophist with Aristotle’s prime matter and the receptacle of the Timaeus. II.4[12] presents a comprehensive discussion of matter, retrieving Aristotelian terms against the background of Plotinus’s own Platonic assumptions. This results in the duplication of matter in the intelligible and sensible worlds and the consequent need to clarify their similarities and differences. In rethinking Aristotle’s position, he indicates how the notions of privation and substrate have a different meaning when applied to the absolute matter of the sensible realm, based on his reflection on the completely incorporeal nature of matter. III.6[26] continues the discussion by applying the conclusions of the earlier treatise to the exigencies presented by the relation of soul to body or of any form to matter and the corporeal. The central issue in dispute is the impassibility of soul and of the matter of the sensible world, both of which in different ways seem so close to bodies that escaping from affection or alteration seems counterintuitive, if not impossible. Plotinus’s arguments, therefore, are helpful in clarifying the nature of body precisely by differentiating it from its nearest incorporeal neighbors, matter below it and soul above it. While both treatises indicate his profound understanding of the Greek philosophical tradition, especially Plato and Aristotle, the distinctions Plotinus makes became the common heritage of the philosophical schools throughout the medieval period, but need rather careful retrieval for accurately understanding them in our own day.

Soul as Impassible (III.6[26].1–5) Before turning to the more lengthy discussion of the matter of the sensible cosmos in III.6[26].6–19, Plotinus begins with a brief account of the relation of the human soul and body in III.6[26].1–5. He is concerned with three areas where the link

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between soul and body seems particularly pronounced, the cases of sensations and perceptions, of virtues and vices, and of the affective part of the soul with its passions and appetites. His analysis falls into two parts, one centered on the higher parts of the soul that the Platonic tradition more clearly identified as incorporeal (1–3), and the other concerned with the so-called affective part of the soul where more precise distinctions are used to combat Stoic materialism in accounting for this part of the soul (4–5). The discussion about the higher part of the soul begins with the problems to be faced, even from this point of view. For how is it unalterable, either the part before the affective faculty or that before sensation, or in general any part whatever of the soul, when evil is engendered in it, and false opinions and ignorance? [These states are] attractions or aversions of the soul feeling pleasure and pain, anger, envy, jealousy, or desiring, never at all being brought to rest, but with each of these things befalling it, [the soul is] being set in motion and stirred up.1

While Plotinus specifies the higher parts, his generalization already admits that every part of the soul is really under consideration, even if he will delay until later precisely how to establish the sensitive and affective parts as unalterable. The rest of the passage could not put the problem more succinctly. Evil, falsity, and ignorance are all states of the soul, and they play out in emotions that similarly have their point of origin or terminus in the soul. Whether they are alien in the case of the negative states or the soul’s own in the case of positive ones, the soul has no peace but is in a constant state of agitation. Plotinus articulates the alternatives: if the soul is a 1. III.6[26].1, 18–25: πῶς γὰρ ἄτρεπτον καὶ τὸ πρὸ τοῦ παθητικοῦ καὶ τὸ πρὸ αἰσθήσεως καὶ ὅλως ψυχῆς ὁτιοῦν κακίας περὶ αὐτὴν ἐγγινομένης καὶ δοξῶν ψευδῶν καὶ ἀνοίας; οἰκειώσεις δὲ καὶ ἀλλοτριώσεις ἡδομένης καὶ λυπουμένης, ὀργιζομένης, φθονούσης, ζηλούσης, ἐπιθυμούσης, ὅλως οὐδαμῇ ἡσυχίαν ἀγούσης, ἀλλ’ ἐφ’ ἑκάστῳ τῶν προσπιπτόντων κινουμένης καὶ μεταβαλλούσης.

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body with magnitude, then it can in no way be impassible or unalterable, but if the soul is a substance without magnitude, then none of these states can be attributed to the soul. In this latter case, the affections and irrationality remain in the body, with something analogous to them present in the soul.

Virtues, Vices, and Affections (III.6[26].2–3) In III.6[26].2, Plotinus considers virtue and vice as characteristics whose very nature is to be taken away from or developed in the soul, implying once again that change or alteration is involved. The difficulty is that these virtues are actually attributes of parts of the higher soul, as understood by Platonists, so their presence or absence needs to be explained without compromising the impassibility of the higher soul. He describes these changes in terms of the movement from potentiality to actuality, borrowing from Aristotle to solve this Platonic problem. This kind of movement is neither alteration nor affection in the strict sense, as the soul remains what it is but either does or does not exercise one of its capacities. He notes at the end, however, that what sometimes passes for virtue or vice may in fact refer to a state of the body, thus preserving the soul from any hint of accretion and change. He is alluding here to his own distinction between the lower, civic virtues and their higher counterparts when the soul has ascended to the level of the intelligible. With this distinction in mind, he returns in III.6[26].3 to the soul’s passions and affections, seeking to determine whether they are the soul’s own or are alien to it. “But how are these attractions or aversions [present]? Pains, angers, pleasures, also desires and fears: how are they not moods and affections present in the soul and moving it? It is clearly necessary to make distinctions about them here.”2 The need to 2. III.6[26].3, 1–4: τὰς δ’ οἰκειώσεις καὶ ἀλλοτριώσεις πῶς; καὶ λῦπαι καὶ ὀργαὶ καὶ

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make distinctions comes from the obvious fact of these alternating states and the strong perceptions we have of them. Plotinus is not interested in denying experience, but his analysis seeks to indicate with precision where exactly the change or alteration is taking place. By examining these various states, he shows how they can be brought about by the soul, but occur in the body as structured in a certain way to be moved by the soul, for example in terms of the flow of blood, which flushes the face in shame or turns it pale with fear. From this, he draws conclusions about those things that belong to the soul alone as opposed to strictly bodily affections. “If we grant that activities, lives and desires are not alterations, and that memories are not imprints stamped upon something, nor are imaginations impressions as in wax, then it must be granted absolutely in all so-called affections and movements that the soul remains invariable in its substrate and substance.”3 All these things, as activities properly speaking, belong to the soul without introducing alteration into it. Memories and imaginations, for example, are not static things that undergo alterations of some kind or other, but particular activities whose exercise does not take up room no matter how many or how extensive their content may be. They relate to bodily states, therefore, not like qualities such as hot or cold, but are present in opposite ways in soul and body. In a way, the body is attuned to receive from or send to the soul without any change taking place in the soul itself, as a radio can receive a signal without affecting the nature or source of that signal.

ἡδοναὶ ἐπιθυμίαι τε καὶ φόβοι πῶς οὐ τροπαὶ καὶ πάθη ἐνόντα καὶ κινούμενα; δεῖ δὴ καὶ περὶ τούτων ὧδε διαλαβεῖν. 3. III.6[26].3, 27–32: εἰ τὰς ἐνεργείας καὶ τὰς ζωὰς καὶ τὰς ὀρέξεις οὐκ ἀλλοιώσεις συγχωροῦμεν καὶ μνήμας οὐ τύπους ἐναποσφραγιζομένους οὐδὲ τὰς φαντασίας ὡς ἐν κηρῷ τυπώσεις, συγχωρητέον πανταχοῦ ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς λεγομένοις πάθεσι καὶ κινήσεσι τὴν ψυχὴν ὡσαύτως ἔχειν τῷ ὑποκειμένῳ καὶ τῇ οὐσίᾳ.

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The Affective Part of the Soul (III.6[24].4–5) When Plotinus turns to the second part of his analysis in III.6[26].4, about the affective part of the soul, he reminds us again that he has in fact already dealt with it in the section just concluded, but needs to clarify what Stoics and others who hold for such a part actually mean. They define it as the part in which affections come together and from which pleasure and pain derive, using the words of Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics II.5, 1105b21–23. In some instances, affections come about from opinion, while in others they seem to produce opinion. In both cases, the Stoics distinguish opinion as residing in one part of the soul and the affection in another, but Plotinus argues that the distinction is really between the soul itself and the body as qualified in a particular way, using once more an Aristotelian distinction to explain his Platonic position. Plotinus examines fear to illustrate what he means. Fear begins with opinion, which provides a quasiunderstanding (οἷον σύνεσιν, III.6[26].4, 15–16) to the socalled part of the soul that fears. The part that fears, however, possesses a quasi-opinion (οἷον δόξα, 4, 21), the imaginative image that produces, in turn, the disturbance in the body. This disturbance in the body is already something sensed, manifest in trembling and shaking or in turning pale and inability to speak. Plotinus uses this threefold structure of opinion (a quasiunderstanding), imaginative image (a quasi-opinion), and the resulting bodily disturbance to argue against Stoic materialism. He reasons that only the bodily disturbances are corporeal and that they cannot be in the affective part of the soul with its quasi-opinion, an imaginative image that may produce reactions in the body but is not itself corporeal. If it were corporeal, it could not do its work as it would already be overcome by the disturbances it presumably causes in the body. Plotinus rests his argument on the distinction between

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matter and form. He lists all the parts of the soul that produce effects in the body: the desiring part and the part that divides into the functions of nutrition, growth, and generation. All these, like the affective part, act as forms relative to the body as matter. Plotinus understands these Aristotelian terms in a distinctly Platonic way, but not without solid grounding in Aristotle’s own theory. As forms, these psychic parts are essentially immaterial and active; as matter, the body or its parts are organized to be affected by them in a certain way: to grow, to increase, or to be moved. The soul remains the principle of these motions without undergoing the corporeal motions themselves. If this were not the case, the soul as growth principle, for example, would itself grow rather than cause growth in the body. So far this is in complete agreement with Aristotle. The difference is that Plotinus maintains a Platonic separation for the soul, so that it is never the co-principle or entelechy of a composite substance, but the soul alone is the substance while the body, however organized in relation to soul, remains external. He ends the chapter with an analogy he frequently uses, taken from the realm of music and used to illustrate the point already expressed in philosophical terms. The analogy has three parts, the melody (ἁρμονία), the musician (μουσικός), and the strings (χορδή) (4, 43–52). Beginning with the easy part, the strings are the material component that, when plucked in the proper way, produce the desired sounds. The melody itself is the form that determines how the strings are to be plucked to produce a certain effect and is thus like the quasi-understanding that remains unchanged, and yet indicates exactly how the strings should be moved. The musician, lastly, is the direct cause of the motion in the strings, functioning like the quasi-opinion or image that translates the melody into the actual sound. In order to play a particular melody, the musician is thus at the service of the melody, plucking the

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strings more or less as the melody dictates; that is, transferring the melody through the proper motions of parts of the body, such as the hands, to the strings properly plucked. The last section emphasizes the importance of the middle term he has just introduced in order to clarify the precise sense in which the soul is free of affection. He begins with a common objection to the Platonic position. If the soul is entirely free from affection, why speak of freeing the soul of affections that it cannot suffer in the first place, as Platonists are accustomed to do? His answer begins with an analysis of the quasi-image (οἷον φάντασμα, 5, 3) which penetrates to the so-called affective part of the soul, but also produces the consequent affection, disturbance, and likeness of the anticipated evil. Because this image and the disturbance in the body occur together, an account (λόγος, 5, 6) can elide them both into the affection, effectively eliminating the image from consideration. This elision gives rise to the conclusion that the affection is only in the body and is not allowed to occur in the soul, because if it does, the soul would not be well, and if it does not, the soul will then be free of affection. The argument preserves the impassivity of the soul, but sacrifices the role played by the quasi-image as the likeness that causes the disturbance in the body. Plotinus maintains, however, that the cause of the disturbance is a seeing (ὁράματος, 5, 9) on the part of the soul. That is, fear, in this example, cannot be a corporeal event only, but occurs precisely because of the causal activity of the soul. The aspect or activity of the soul involved cannot be that of the higher soul, at rest in the intelligible, but must be that of the lower soul capable of informing or configuring the body in a particular way. This lower soul is related to the body precisely as form, as he just argued in the previous section, and if it is removed from the account of fear as an affection,

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then Plotinus compares it to removing the images in dreams by waking up the sleeper. The images disappear, but so does the soul’s role as cause of the images in the dream, taking these affections of the soul to be as if things seen outside.4 This waking up, in other words, leaves the soul completely unaffected, but necessarily excludes any meaning for the purification of the soul. Plotinus uses the analogy of waking up to resolve the problem of the soul’s purification in the final section of III.6[26].5, but with a different meaning entirely. But what would the “purification” of the soul be if it were in no way stained, or what is its “separation” from the body? Either the purification would be to leave the soul alone [by itself ] and not among other things, or not looking toward something else nor at all having alien opinions, whatever the character of the opinions, or of the affections, as was said, neither seeing images nor fashioning affections from them.5

The use of the words “purification” and “separation” indicate the Platonic roots of the problem, as described in Phaedo 64c–69e. Plotinus repeats his constant position that purification indicates that the soul is alone and not mixed with anything else. In the present context, he specifies the “anything else” as not looking at sensible objects or not having opinions or affections about them. It does not matter whether the opinions are positive or negative, true or false, nor does it matter whether the affections give rise to images or are produced by them. The passage continues with the description of how the soul comes to be alone, by turning away from the things below to those above, which are not alien to the soul but bring 4. III.6[26].5, 13: τὰ ἔξωθεν οἷον ὁράματα παθήματα λέγων τῆς ψυχῆς εἶναι. 5. III.6[26].5, 13–19: ἀλλὰ τίς ἡ κάθαρσις ἂν τῆς ψυχῆς εἴη μηδαμῆ μεμολυσμένης ἢ τί τὸ χωρίζειν αὐτὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος; ἢ ἡ μὲν κάθαρσις ἂν εἴη καταλιπεῖν μόνην καὶ μὴ μετ’ ἄλλων ἢ μὴ πρὸς ἄλλο βλέπουσαν μηδ’ αὖ δόξας ἀλλοτρίας ἔχουσαν, ὅστις ὁ τρόπος τῶν δοξῶν, ἢ τῶν παθῶν, ὡς εἴρηται, μήτε ὁρᾶν τὰ εἴδωλα μήτε ἐξ αὐτῶν ἐργάζεσθαι πάθη.

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it to what is its own. This is purification and separation. It is, further, not a matter of leaving the body, but of being in it without belonging to it, of being flooded with light rather than having what little light one has obscured as if by mud (Plotinus here and at the end of the chapter seems to contrast muddied waters with clear, dry air, reminiscent of Heraclitus, frag. 118). In this analysis, the purification does refer to the lower, affective part of the soul and can indeed mean a waking up, not by eliminating its role in causing images, but by not focusing on such images as inappropriate, and the separation means not inclining too much toward nor having images of things below. Purification thus does not exclude the lower activity of the soul that relates to states in the body, but refers to the soul’s independence from those activities and states and, positively expressed, the presence of its own proper activities, uniting it to the intelligible. The passage ends with an alternative sense of purification, as taking away the things associated with the muddied breath or spirit, weighed down by gluttony and impure flesh, and instead being with the dry and clean spirit upon which one can be borne peacefully aloft. As at the end of III.6[26].2, regarding the lower, civic virtues, so here purification can have a meaning that is concerned not with the presence of the soul’s higher activities, but with the condition of the body itself that may interfere with the soul’s activities, especially those directed toward the proper care of the body.

Matter as Impassible (III.6[26].6–19) After showing that soul, like the intelligible, is incorporeal and is therefore unaffected, Plotinus turns to the case of matter, which for very different reasons is also without body, as II.4[12] had shown, and is likewise impassible and unaffected. This is a particular application of the earlier treatise, where he had argued that matter must necessarily be without any

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quality or attribute. The organization of this section of the treatise is rather straightforward. Plotinus begins with an account of his ontology, based on the Sophist, where real being is intelligible and the corporeal world and matter are gradations of not-being (III.6[26].6). From the nature of matter so defined, Plotinus deduces the consequences for understanding its character (7–10), and then shows how this understanding of matter conforms to a proper exegesis of Plato’s Timaeus and Symposium (11–15), and finally deals with two particular problems, the distinction of matter from magnitude (16–18) and, from the Timaeus, the inappropriateness of the image of matter as mother (19). In contrast to II.4[12], which showed that Aristotle’s account of matter must in fact agree with Plato’s, the present treatise makes a similar point about Plato’s own understanding of matter, especially in terms of the proper exegesis of the Timaeus. In this Plotinus is firmly rooted in the Peripatetic and Platonic traditions and their common opposition to the Stoics.

The Case for Impassibility (III.6[26].6–10) Plotinus begins with an account of being and becoming that is familiar from Plato’s Sophist. As noted, he uses terminology both from Platonic and Peripatetic sources, so he discusses “the nature of being, substance and existence,”6 as Armstrong translates them. The discussion, however, is thoroughly Platonic, showing that real being (ὄντως ὄν, 6, 11) necessarily is and lacks nothing. It is, moreover, characterized by life and intelligence. In the present context, this means that it is limited and defined, eternal and unreceptive of anything, and finally must be all things together and all of them are one. Plotinus emphasizes how real being is different from bodies as well as matter by describing it as limited and defined, terms 6. III.6[26].6, 8–9: ἡ τοῦ ὄντος φύσις καὶ ἡ οὐσία καὶ τὸ εἶναι.

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which he does not always use about the intelligible, but employs here to distinguish being from the indefinite and unlimited nature of matter as pure possibility and the changing nature of the sensible world as corporeal. He also lists these characteristics because matter will have exactly the opposite characteristics in the following discussion. Similar to his discussion of soul, Plotinus begins with the commonsense objections to understanding bodies and matter as not-being, citing the solidity of mountains and rocks and of earth in general. The characteristics that seem to count against their nonbeing are their resistance and force of impact as opposed to the apparent weakness and invisibility of the supposed real beings. Among the elements themselves, earth seems more stable and carries more weight than the lighter elements of air and, more tellingly, fire. Plotinus easily turns the objections around by arguing that the weight and fall of earthy bodies indicates the limited movements they can have even relative to the lighter elements, especially fire which he customarily sees as close to the incorporeal in its nature and activity. Next, he points out the difference between inanimate things, whose sharp blows and impacts can cause great damage to other things around them, and animate beings, which benefit the things around them, especially as they share more in life. This last comment, of course, illustrates the premodern view that human beings are part of nature and have the task of bringing nature to greater perfection and beauty. There is nothing here of Descartes’s power and dominance over nature as a machine to be controlled for human advantage. Plotinus concludes that the commonsense view is the one from which we must awake, not relying on brute sense perception and the bodies that are its objects, but awakening truly to the reality open to the soul. In this, he captures in a few words the import of Plato’s allegory of the cave. In III.6[26].7–10, Plotinus presents several considerations

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for the impassibility of matter. The first explores matter as the substrate for body and thus as incorporeal, because body is posterior and composite. Nevertheless, matter only shares the name “incorporeal” with soul, intellect, life, form, logos, limit, and power. This is due to its indefiniteness (ἀπειρία, 7, 8), which makes it truly not-being (ἀληθινῶς μὴ ὄν, 7, 12–13). To draw out the implications of what this means in the subsequent discussion, I translate Plotinus’s terms εἴδωλον καὶ φάντασμα (7, 13) as reflection and appearance instead of Armstrong’s ghosts and phantoms, which only serve to confuse the meaning of the text. The term “reflection” attempts to describe the nature involved, with “appearance” describing its content. Thus, reflections have no reality in themselves, but are inherently unstable, showing opposite appearances and having no control over these appearances. Reflections are false, and multiply themselves, reflections within reflections, as Plotinus phrases it. The root of his comments can be seen in the nature of a mirror, where something which is located in one place seems to appear someplace else (ἀλλοχοῦ φανταζόμενον, 7, 25–26). He quotes Timaeus 50c4–5: “Imitations of beings go in and go out” of matter, like reflections into a formless reflector. Through its formlessness matter seems to make them to be seen in itself, but actually it makes nothing. The rest of the chapter plays with the Greek verb for seeing one thing in another (ἐνορᾶν), with the implication that none of them have any real being, but are merely appearances, false and weak, like things in a dream, or water, or a mirror. The conclusion is that matter is necessarily unaffected. Plotinus does point out, however, that, in the case of mirrors, there is in fact a likeness (ὁμοίωσις, 7, 43) of the things seen on a mirror’s surface to the things seen by these reflections. In short, a mirror shares more in being than matter itself, which always remains just beyond being’s grasp.

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Plotinus next, in III.6[26].8, considers that affections are qualities or powers that depend upon opposites, using Aristotle’s doctrine of act and potency. Qualities such as hot and cold or dry and moist are present in a substrate in which the change from one quality to another takes place according to a certain ratio. Affections are like qualities, and thus occur only within a specified range, defined by the form relative to some specific matter as the substrate. Falling outside the definition can entail destruction of that particular capacity, as bright lights or loud sounds can either temporarily or permanently destroy the capacity to see or hear, and may also include destruction of the underlying substrate, such as the eye or ear. This model for accidental change, as Aristotle argued, applies as well to substantial change, but with a precise difference in the case of matter itself. When fire, one of the four elements, is destroyed, for example, it is that element which is affected, not the underlying matter. The reason that matter cannot be destroyed is that it cannot be limited to any particular quality but is open to receive all of them. The language of destroying and receiving is therefore not strictly accurate, as matter is not some kind of thing that could be destroyed nor could it actually receive a quality. It is used, however, to indicate the difference of matter from any possible body whatever, and yet to indicate the precise role matter plays in the composition of bodies. In sum, this passage indicates two further, interrelated reasons for the impassibility of matter: it cannot be defined by contrary qualities and therefore it cannot be destroyed by the coming in or going out of any quality. Before moving on to the next argument, Plotinus reminds us, at the beginning of III.6[26].9, of the diverse ways one thing can be present in another. In the case of bodies, change takes place when the presence of one thing substitutes for another; in the case of souls, however, different things can be present or active without any change in the soul. The situa-

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tion of matter is similar to that of the soul, but for different reasons and with different consequences, as matter can actually receive no particular quality. Plotinus will employ distinct metaphors or analogies to describe what he means. The first takes up the image of mirrors and transparent things, used already in III.6[26].7. He makes explicit here the underlying assumption of the earlier discussion, that mirrors are not in fact changed or affected by what is reflected in them. The colors and shapes on the surface of the mirror are clearly present, but one merely needs to move the mirror or turn off the light to have different things present or nothing at all. Plotinus adds, expanding on 7, 43–44, that “the things in matter are reflections, but matter is even more impassible than mirrors.”7 Qualities like hot and cold are in matter, but neither heat nor cool it; matter remains completely unaffected. This is particularly relevant to the relation of the four elements to matter, as they share the strange status of having matter as their material component. These elements, in both the Platonic and Peripatetic traditions, are able to change into one another and seeing them more as qualities than bodies allows that to be understood more easily. The elements, in various ratios, form bodies in greater and greater complexity.8 The second image explores how the different qualities present in matter can interact with one another while leaving the underlying matter unaffected. Plotinus begins with our experience of different qualities relative to the same object: its fragrance, flavor, color, and shape. They can all be present in the same thing without any trouble at all. Trouble begins when opposites are present, one opposite effectively pushing out the other. In the case where there are no opposites, being 7. III.6[26].9, 18–19: εἴδωλα γὰρ καὶ τὰ ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ, καὶ αὕτη ἔτι μᾶλλον ἀπαθέστερον ἢ τὰ κάτοπτρα. 8. Archer-Hind, in Plato 1888, 186–97, on Timaeus 52d–53c (on the generation of the cosmos), 53c–55c (on solid bodies and their geometric shapes), and 55c–56c (on the unity of the cosmos).

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affected is impossible. Matter as simple cannot be affected, as only composites or the presence of many things allow for affections and change, as only composites entail opposites. Plotinus uses the example of people fighting in a house. They may injure one another, but the house and the air around them remain unaffected. No doubt, Plotinus is imagining a situation where the fighting does not get so out of hand as to affect even the house. The last two issues, in III.6[26].10, concentrate on the nature of the alteration or change. First, Plotinus distinguishes between matter and qualified matter (ὕλη . . . ποιὰ ὕλη, 10, 4–5). If matter were a body, it would receive some quality and then later receive another. This second quality, however, would not affect matter as such, but precisely qualified matter. In this case, one is not dealing with matter but with something else, such as the corporeal. Plotinus, as he had to do constantly in II.4[12], is reminding us that our understanding of matter derives from our experience of the corporeal, so we expect matter to behave somehow like a body, a stuff of some kind, but it does not, and only constant and careful attention alerts us to the differences. Here then the indestructibility of matter involves as well that it is always the same and any introduction of alteration means that the discussion has moved to something other than matter, with body as the usual suspect. The second part of the chapter takes up the nature of alteration in relation to matter. Plotinus considers two possibilities. If matter is altered, either it will cease to be itself or it will not cease to be itself, an allusion to Timaeus 50b7–8. In the first case, one is no longer talking about matter and, in the second, one is no longer talking about alteration. Matter, then, as the substrate, cannot be altered insofar as it is matter; only in this way can it remain the substrate for all corporeal change. The mutually exclusive nature of matter and alteration sets the problem for the next section, the heart of the

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treatise where he interprets key texts from Plato’s Timaeus and Symposium.

Confirmation from Plato (III.6[26].11–12) Plotinus begins III.6[26].11 by repeating the line from Plato’s Timaeus 50c4–5 that he had quoted earlier in III.6[26].7, “imitations of beings go in and go out.”9 His claim will be that Plato said this deliberately to indicate the manner of participation of matter in the forms. Most commentators, Plotinus avers, take the problem as regarding how the forms come into matter. He means Platonists before him, but his complaint might not be that far off the mark even for contemporary commentators. He deliberately rephrases the problem to say how the forms are in matter.10 He admits that it is a cause for wonder that forms are present to matter but leave it the same and unaffected, although these same forms affect one another. He is articulating the almost irresistible tendency to regard matter as if it were some kind of stuff, as if it were in fact corporeal. He has shown that this cannot be so and seeks to confirm his position by exegesis of Platonic texts. Matter neither gains nor loses anything by the coming or going of the forms, because it always eludes their grasp. He introduces at this point his examination of the nature of matter as ugly and evil, precisely because it is without form. First, he sketches what beauty and order accomplish. “But if there were a need for being adorned in things only lacking adornment and order, the adornment could then happen without co-alteration, as with those we dress up; but if someone were to be so adorned as to be connaturally so, it will be necessary that what was ugly before be altered and 9. The next three sections (pp. 221–34, 7.3.2, 7.3.3, 7.3.4) appeared in an earlier version in Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, 2013, “Imitations of Beings Enter and Exit: Plotinus on Incorporeal Matter in Plato: III 6[26] 11–15,” Philosophy Study 3, no. 2: 123–30. 10. III.6[26].11, 7–8: τὸ πῶς ἔρχεται εἰς αὐτήν, ἀλλἀ μᾶλλον πῶς ἔστιν ἐν αὐτῇ.

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become other, since that which is so adorned is the beautiful from the ugly.”11 The distinction Plotinus is making between an adornment that is without co-alteration, to play with the etymology of the strange locution, μεταλλοίωσις, and one that is connaturally so is actually key for understanding what follows. The contrast is very precise, as his illustration makes clear. When we dress someone up, this changes neither the individual nor the clothes; that is, there is no co-alteration, but merely the extrinsic proximity of two things remaining what they were. In the alternative case, where someone is adorned connaturally, there must be an intrinsic change from what was ugly to what is beautiful. The individual needs to become something different. In applying this to matter, if it is adorned by the presence of the forms, either it will remain ugly or it will have to be changed from the ugly to the beautiful. From what Plotinus has already argued in III.6[26].7–10, the case against matter changing at all is rather clear. Why, however, does Plotinus describe matter as ugly and, in the following lines, as evil? He is not speaking of an accidental attribute, but is indicating the very nature of matter as essentially ugly and evil in the absolute sense. This position is first expressed in the treatise On Beauty (I.6[1]), where Plotinus traces beauty to the presence of form, with the ugly as either the relative or absolute absence of form. This way of speaking has engendered its own controversy and confusion, with accusations that Plotinus has an essentially negative attitude toward the sensible world or that his system is dualistic, with matter as evil opposed to the One as good.12 Neither of these charges has any merit, and the present context provides clear evidence why this is so. 11. III.6[26].11, 18–24: τοῦ δὲ κεκοσμῆσθαι τοῖς μὲν κόσμου καὶ τάξεως δεομένοις εἴη ἂν χρεία, καὶ ὁ κόσμος δὲ γένοιτο ἂν ἄνευ μεταλλοιώσεως, οἷον οἷς περιτίθεμεν· εἰ δὲ οὕτω τις κοσμηθείη ὡς σύμφυτον εἶναι, δεήσει ἀλλοιωθὲν ὃ πρότερον αἰσχρὸν ἦν καὶ ἕτερον γενόμενον ἐκεῖνο τὸ κεκοσμημένον οὕτω καλὸν ἐξ αἰσχροῦ εἶναι 12. For a summary of this controversy among Plotinian scholars, see Carroll 2002.

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Matter is ugly and evil relative to form as good, particularly the forms that come to be present in it. The ugly and evil character of matter, further, is not moral or even ontological in character, but indicates the incapacity of matter to receive form in any real sense, ontological or otherwise. If it did really receive form, it would cease to be matter. Plotinus shows this by indicating that, though matter is evil, it would still desire the good.13 By remaining evil and ugly, it remains itself and is not altered, even though it participates in the good. Its participation, therefore, is different from that of bodies, which more or less receive and are thus altered by the forms present in them. Matter, however, participates in form without receiving the forms into itself and thus without changing and ceasing to be evil. He ends by saying that calling matter evil is true in the sense that it is unaffected by the good, which is just another way of saying that it is completely unaffected.14 In III.6[26].12, Plotinus argues that this is Plato’s position, especially as expressed in the Timaeus 47e–53c, concerning The major source of confusion is taking matter as opposite the One. In Plotinus’s hierarchical system this is not accurate. Matter is related to what immediately precedes it, the forms that produce the variety of sensible bodies. Since the eighteenth century, emanation has frequently been interpreted in a monistic fashion, as if everything is merely the One at a lower level. This is not the case, as the primary break for Plotinus is between the One and everything else as other than it. Matter, the ultimate instance of otherness, has no sameness at all, but even here we see that it includes the two movements of emanation, the going out and the return, fleeing the forms and yet seeking them. See Dubray, Wallace, and Gurtler 2013, 438–40, where confusions about the nature of emanationism led to my rather drastic revision of the article as originally written by Dubray and Wallace. 13. III.6[26].11, 32: πῶς οὖσα κακὴ ἐφίοιτο ἂν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ. 14. III.6[26].11, 44–45: εἰ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἀπαθῆ λέγοι· τοῦτο δὲ ταὐτόν ἐστι τῷ ὅλως ἀπαθῆ εἶναι. The good here is not the One but any form. The good is coterminous with form, so the One is actually good in a supereminent way, as Plotinus makes clear already in VI.9[9].3, one of the first instances where he articulates the One as beyond being and form. Matter, as impassible to any form as good, is evil. This is not cosmological evil, where one part of the cosmos can interfere with, and even destroy, another, nor moral evil, whose domain is human action, but matter is evil as the precondition for these kinds of evil.

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the nature of the third kind.15 Plato, he argues, differentiates between form as present in a substrate, where it gives shape to one composite thing after another, and form as present to matter, where matter remains unaffected in receiving the forms. Plato, of course, does this by employing a different kind of language, the receptacle and the various images used to describe it as unaffected and unaltered. Plotinus admits that Plato treats the term “alteration” equivocally, because in relation to bodies it can have the sense of change of shape, although it is properly used only of qualitative change. In relation to matter, however, which has neither shape nor size,16 alteration cannot have an equivocal sense, even for Plato. Plotinus therefore concludes this section by noting that Plato is clear about the impassibility of matter and the seeming presence in it of reflections that are not really present.17 At this point, Plotinus makes explicit his method of noting and correcting our ordinary mode of speech. He says in effect that our ordinary way of speaking necessarily (ὡς χρή, 12, 29) leads us to the belief that matter is affected. In other words, we cannot talk about it without using words from our ordinary experience, as Plato does here in describing it as receiving the shapes of air and water (Timaeus 52d5–6). The context allows us to see that Plato is not speaking of matter as having been shaped in the sense of becoming itself air or water, but that these shapes have come into it, so to speak. Similarly, when he says that matter is being set on fire, this is not said strictly, but only that it has become fire. Matter is not some kind of stuff that can be set on fire, but fire is one of the things it can become, or better that can appear or be reflected 15. See Armstrong in Plotinus 1967, 3:256n1, and Gurtler, in Plotinus 2015c, 299–343, on the four kinds, adding Aristotelian qualities to the three kinds of Plato’s Timaeus 35a1–3. 16. III.6[26].12, 19–20: οὐδὲν σχῆμα ἐχούσης οὐδὲ μέγεθος. 17. III.6[26].12, 26–27: τῆς ἀπαθείας καὶ τῆς οἷον εἰδώλων οὐ παρόντων δοκούσης παρουσίας.

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in it. Matter always remains incomposite, but fire, or anything else that comes to be present in it, is always composite, and thus always a body.

On the Timaeus (III.6[26].13) The next section, III.6[26].13–15, seems to move from his attack against the Stoics to Platonists who use the Timaeus to argue that matter is subject to affections.18 Plotinus argues that such an interpretation cannot make sense of Plato’s phrase that matter seeks to escape from form (φεύγειν αὐτὴν τὸ εἶδος, 13, 2). The place where this phrase occurs, Timaeus 49e2, has a different context, but the idea remains implicit in Timaeus 50b–e, alluded to subsequently in 13, 9–10.19 For Plato, this is a way of indicating the constant change in the sensible world, where different forms come and go in matter. Plotinus argues that this constant flux makes sense only if one takes matter itself, the underlying substrate of all change, as that which by its own nature is always fleeing from form, precisely in the sense that it remains unaffected. At this point he introduces all the different terms that Plato uses to describe matter: the receptacle and nurse of all becoming,20 that in which each thing appears when it becomes and again leaves from there,21 the place (χῶρα, so famous in Continental circles), the seat (ἕδραν), and the locus of forms (τόπον εἰδῶν, Timaeus 52a8–b4). All these images serve the same purpose, to indicate in various ways the indefinite nature of matter, which Plotinus defines in all of III.6[26] as indicating that it remains unaffected. Plotinus sees, in ways that the contemporary partisans of an enigmatic and ineffa18. See Armstrong in Plotinus 1967, 3:260–61n2. 19. As Igal points out in Plotinus 1985, 2:176n103. 20. Timaeus 49a5–6: ἡ δὲ ὑποδοχὴ καὶ τιθήνη γενέσεως ἁπάσης. 21. Timaeus 49e7–8: τὸ ἐν ᾧ ἐγγινόμενον ἕκαστον φαντάζεται καὶ πάλιν ἐκεῖθεν ἔξεισι.

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ble χῶρα do not,22 that Plato is not involved in some kind of hieratic or oracular revelation, but is using a variety of images and figures of speech to make a very specific point. Plotinus expresses this point, once more, in his own complex, but nevertheless un-oracular, fashion. Since it is necessary that this nature being discussed is not at all among beings, but that it has escaped from the whole substance of beings and is wholly other—for those [beings] are logoi and real beings—it is necessary that by this other[ness] it guards itself, which preservation it had as its own portion—it is necessary that it is unreceptive not only of beings, but also, if there is some imitation of them, that it have no share even of this for its own. For in this way it would be wholly other; or else, bringing into itself some form, becoming something else with that, the “place” of all things would lose being “other” utterly, and would not be the “receptacle” of anything whatever.23

Plotinus argues here for the complete otherness of matter. First, it cannot share in being, substance, or reason, covering Platonic as well as Peripatetic accounts of reality. Instead, its own task, which it must guard with particular interest, is to keep itself not only from beings but even from making the imitations of being that appear in it from becoming in any way its own. 22. Sallis 1999, 98–113, discusses many of the problems with the interpretation of the Platonic text among a variety of commentators from the 1950s on. Sallis notes the complaint of Derrida 1993 that interpretations of χῶρα from antiquity have always given it form. This is precisely what Plotinus is attempting to exclude, with the strategy that Plato’s several images point to the same linguistic problem about matter. Χῶρα for Derrida seems to take on a unique role, with everything and everyone else losing Plato’s essential insight, recently rediscovered by him. 23. III.6[26].13, 21–29: ἐπειδὴ τὴν λεγομένην ταύτην φύσιν οὐδὲν δεῖ εἶναι τῶν ὄντων, ἀλλ’ ἅπασαν ἐκπεφευγέναι τὴν τῶν ὄντων οὐσίαν καὶ πάντη ἑτεραν—λόγοι γὰρ ἐκεῖνα καὶ ὄντως ὄντες—ἀνάγκη δὴ αὐτὴν τῷ ἑτέρῳ τούτῳ φυλάττουσαν αὑτῆς ἣν εἴληχε σωτηρίαν—ἀνάγκη αὐτὴν μὴ μόνον τῶν ὄντων ἄδεκτον εἶναι, ἀλλὰ καί, εἴ τι μίμημα αὐτῶν, καὶ τούτου ἄμοιρον εἰς οἰκείωσιν εἶναι. οὕτω γὰρ ἂν ἑτέρα πάντη· ἢ εἶδός τι εἰσοικισαμένη μετ’ ἐκείνου ἄλλο γενομένη ἀπώλεσε τὸ ἑτέρα εἶναι καὶ χώρα πάντων, καὶ οὐδενὸς ὅτου οὐχ ὑποδοχή.

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Second, he emphasizes that it is wholly other (pace Otto!), so that taking into itself some form and becoming by that some form, the place of all things (χώρα πάντων) would lose being other, this absolute otherness of matter, and with that could not be the receptacle of anything at all. Only as completely other can it fulfill the function Plato describes in various ways in the Timaeus. This is not a compromise of the essential indefiniteness of matter feared by some contemporary critics, but a rather forceful defense of that indefiniteness, given not in some kind of ineffable and oracular pronouncement, but by Plotinus’s own multiple arguments and analogies that matter as incorporeal must be essentially unaffected. Any compromise of this freedom from affection means matter has been identified with some particular stuff, however indefinitely described, and as a consequence can no longer fulfill its role as the substrate and receptacle that makes body of any kind and thus the whole sensible cosmos possible. Plotinus returns to the words of Plato, that matter must remain the same when forms come into it and stay the same when they leave, the phrase used both at the beginning of this section at III.6[26].11, 2–3, and earlier when he first introduced the discussion of the mirror and the reflections seen in it at 7, 27–28. He returns now to examine more fully the falsity mentioned in that earlier context. The reflections are not only false, but, as having no part in truth, do not truly come into matter at all. Plotinus illustrates this by examining once more and in greater detail the nature of a mirror and reflections in it to confirm his understanding of the nature of matter as unaffected. His analysis is divided into three parts, each examining an aspect of how mirrors work and then comparing and contrasting that with matter. The first section is not without textual confusion, but the general sense is clear enough. “Does it then come falsely to falsity and does it come to be nearby as in a mirror, where reflections of the things

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appearing could be seen only as long as they appear in it?”24 In the case of matter, what is reflected in it are the real beings of the intelligible, and if those beings were removed none of the objects we perceive with our senses would ever appear. The second move involves a series of contrasts between a mirror and matter: the mirror itself can be seen, as having its form, but matter has no form at all and so cannot be seen. If this were not the case, matter, like the mirror, could be seen before any forms came to appear on it. As an illustration, Plotinus likens matter to air, invisible whether illuminated or not. Finally, the things reflected are believed not to be or to be less than the mirror, as the mirror can itself be seen and remains when they depart, but matter, on the contrary, cannot be seen whether it has things in it or is without them, so the question is whether the things reflected in matter have the same relation of being less than it, or whether this case is different. If, Plotinus proposes, we could see the reflections in mirrors but not the mirrors, we would not deny that these things were truly seen. We thus have two alternatives. Either something is in mirrors, so similarly there will be sense objects in matter, or if it only appears to be in the mirror, then the sensibles must be said to appear in matter, although caused by real beings as substances. The real beings will always really participate in substance, but those that are not real will not really participate. It is this second alternative, the harder case, which describes the situation of the sense world, where we really see appearances that nonetheless cannot have the same real being as their intelligible causes but are more real than the matter in which they appear. 24. III.6[26].13, 34–36: ἆρα οὖν ψευδῶς εἰς ψεῦδος ἔρχεται καὶ παραπλήσιον γίνεται οἷον καὶ εἰς τὸ κάτοπτρον, εἰ ὁρῷτο τὰ εἴδωλα τῶν ἐνορωμένων καὶ ἕως ἐνορᾷ ἐκεῖνα. Taking the neuter plurals, τὰ εἴδωλα and ἐκεῖνα, as governing verbs in the singular (Smyth 1980, #960).

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On the Symposium (III.6[26].14–15) III.6[26].14 echoes the challenge that occurred in II.4[12].12, 23–37, where Plotinus indicated the contribution that matter actually makes, given an analysis that excluded one role after another. Here, he asks directly: if matter were not, would nothing come to exist? This question is strange, as he has just argued that the reflections would not appear if not for the real beings of the intelligible. Now he reminds us that reflections cannot exist unless in a mirror or something similar. He says, in fact, that “this is the nature of an image, being in the other.”25 The next passage provides a somewhat convoluted transition that contrasts something going away from the real beings that make it but without its “being in the other.” That is, these things going out must remain with the makers, and, if they will have an image in something else, then that other thing must be, and must also “supply the seat for what does not come.”26 This “seat” is the last term deriving from Timaeus 52a8–b1, and serves as the transition to the consideration of the Symposium and Plotinus’s interpretation of the figure of Poverty (Πενία) as matter and, in the context of III.6[26], precisely the matter of the sensible world. He begins with a series of characteristics for what this other thing as “seat” seeks to do: it wants to grasp form forcefully by its presence and boldness, that is, by its begging poverty, as it were. It is foiled by not grasping, so that its poverty may always remain and always be begging. Plotinus now turns to the myth, indicating briefly and rapidly his interpretation. Plato depicts matter’s rapacious nature as a beggar woman, bereft of the good. Because the beggar cannot ask for what the giver has but is pleased with whatever she may grasp, the myth implies that what appears in matter is other than form as the cause. The name Poverty shows matter as never filled, and being 25. III.6[26].14, 4: τοῦτο γὰρ φύσις εἰκόνος τὸ ἐν ἑτέρῳ. 26. III.6[26].14, 7: ἕδραν παρέχον τῷ οὐκ ἐλθόντι.

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paired with Resource shows that it is not paired with the being or plenitude of the intelligible, but Resource has a certain savoir faire (τινι πράγματι εὐμηχάνῳ, 14, 16–17), but with only apparent wisdom. Plotinus is arguing, on the one hand, that Plato’s position is not confined to the Timaeus alone nor even to matter alone, but concerns the general relation of lower to higher that can be applied analogously in different situations, as one can see from his own use of the same myth in discussing intelligible matter in III.5[50].6–9. On the other hand, the myth allows him to bring out the notion that the nonbeing of matter does not mean absolute nonexistence, as his subsequent gloss on the interpretation indicates. Since it is impossible that any being whatever, that is in any way, even being outside it, does not participate at all in being—for the nature itself of being is to make beings—but what is not at all being is unmixed with being, the thing becomes a wonder, how not participating it participates and how it has something as if from its nearness, even though by its own nature it is unable, as it were, to adhere.27

The nature of participation of lower in higher entails of its very nature a relation to being even for something like matter that cannot have being in any definite sense, as that demands, from Plotinus’s perspective, participation in form. It is a cause for wonder in a very precise sense, as it cannot be defined, although it can be described and illustrated with a degree of consistency, which is nonetheless always at risk of betraying the character of matter by giving it a form it cannot have or making it an empty notion, devoid of objective meaning. Plotinus insists, on the contrary, that matter, however undefinable, is a necessary constituent of the sensible cosmos and 27. III.6[26].14, 18–23: ἐπεὶ γὰρ οὐχ οἷόν τε τοῦ ὄντος πάντη μὴ μετέχειν ὅ τι περ ὁπωσοῦν ἔξω ὂν αὐτοῦ ἐστιν—αὕτη γὰρ ὄντος φύσις τὰ ὄντα ποεῖν—τὸ δὲ πάντη μὴ ὂν ἄμικτον τῷ ὄντι, θαῦμα τὸ χρῆμα γίγνεται, πῶς μὴ μετέχον μετέχει, καὶ πῶς οἷον παρὰ τῆς γειτνιάσεως ἔχει τι καίπερ τῇ αὑτοῦ φύσει μὲν οἷον κολλᾶσθαι ἀδυνατοῦν.

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closes this section of the treatise with three more analogies in his attempt to assist us in understanding the causal necessity of matter, however qualified it may be. The first analogy moves from seeing to hearing, taking the images seen in matter as bouncing off it like echoes from smooth flat surfaces. Here, although the surface cannot absorb the sounds, they seem to come from it; similarly, matter is so alien in nature to the images that they cannot remain in it but seem nonetheless to appear there and even to be there. He argues further that if matter could participate and receive, as some would think worthy, then whatever came near would be swallowed up and sink into it, as if it were a black hole, so to speak. This is the opposite of what appears, where what approaches is not swallowed up, but matter, because it receives nothing remains the same and, as seat (ἕδρα, 14, 30), blocks what approaches by repelling it and, as receptacle (ὑποδοχή, 14, 31), allows the things coming to it to mingle among themselves. Plotinus’s return to the vocabulary of Plato’s Timaeus signals his attempt to articulate the peculiar causal role of matter, illustrating it with another analogy, of polished objects able to produce fire from the rays of the sun by hindering them from entering and so concentrating them outside. It is in this restricted manner that matter is the cause of coming to be (αἰτία τῆς γενέσεως, 14, 34–35), and that the things that are concentrated outside it are so concentrated. As with the mirror, Plotinus points out the same qualification for these polished objects that concentrate the rays of the sun, that the objects and the sun’s light are both perceptible. Further, the rays that are concentrated are outside and next to them, and nearby and touch them; in other words, each of them has a limit. In the case of matter, however, the logos upon it has a different way of being outside. For the otherness of its nature is sufficient with no need of a double limit, as [matter] is much more alien to any limit: having no mixture

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by the otherness of its substance and by lack of any kinship. This is indeed the cause of matter remaining in the same state, so that something coming in does not benefit from it nor does it from what enters. But just as opinions and imaginations have not been blended in the soul, but each goes away again as being what it is alone, neither dragging off nor leaving anything behind, because it has not been mixed [with the soul]. As for the outside: much less does [a logos] rest upon [matter], from which it is other not by sight, but argument affirms it.28

The last statement reiterates that the analogies, whether mirrors or the polished objects, are things where the difference between what appears in them or, in the present case, outside them can be seen, as all the elements in the analogies refer to sensible objects or phenomena. Matter, however, can never be seen, and thus its causal role can only be affirmed by argument. Plotinus also introduces an explicit comparison between matter and the soul, retrieving in the present context the discussion of the soul from III.6[26].1–5. Soul, as it were, functions like matter, but in a very restricted sense, relative to the opinions and imaginations that come and go in it, as the forms come and go in matter. His next lines give a rather careful account of this, which is not always translated with accuracy. In this case, since imagination is a reflection, while the nature of the soul is not a reflection, and since it even seems much of the time to lead [the soul] wherever it wants to lead it, nonetheless it needs the soul as its matter or something analogous; by no means however does it hide [the soul], since it is often thrust out by the activities of 28. III.6[26].15, 6–16: ἡ γὰρ ἑτερότης τῆς φύσεως ἀρκεῖ οὐδὲν πέρατος διπλοῦ δεομένη, ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον παντὸς πέρατος ἀλλοτρία τῇ ἑτερότητι τῆς οὐσίας καὶ οὐδαμῇ συγγενείᾳ τὸ ἀμιγὲς ἔχουσα· καὶ τὸ αἴτιον τοῦ μένειν ἐπ’ αὐτῆς τοῦτο, ὅτι μή τι τὸ εἰσιὸν ἀπολαύει αὐτῆς, οὐδ’ αὐτὴ τοῦ εἰσιόντος· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ αἱ δόξαι καὶ αἱ φαντασίαι ἐν ψυχῇ οὐ κέκρανται, ἀλλ’ ἄπεισι πάλιν ἑκάστη ὡς οὖσα ὅ ἐστι μόνη οὐδὲν ἐφέλκουσα οὐδὲ καταλείπουσα, ὅτι μὴ ἐμέμικτο· καὶ τὸ ἔξω, οὐχ ὅτι ἐπέκειτο, καὶ ἐφ’ ᾧ ἐστιν οὐχ ὁράσει ἑτερον, ἀλλ’ ὁ λόγος φησίν.

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the soul, nor does it make the soul, not even if it would come with all its force, to be hidden and [thus make] it to appear to be something else, for soul has within it activities and contrary arguments by which it repels things approaching it.29

Matter, Plotinus continues, is much weaker than soul. Soul has its proper activities, which can resist the presence in it of opinions and imaginations, with all their force, such as it is. Soul, therefore, cannot be hidden or made to appear to be something else by what comes and goes in it. Matter, on the contrary, hardly has any power at all. Thus it has nothing of beings, either true or false, as properly its own; it has nothing by which it can appear, as empty of all things; and, though it is the cause by which other things appear, even so it cannot say, “Here I am.” Alluding to Plato’s bastard reasoning (Timaeus 52b2 and Heraclitus, Diels-Kranz B45), Plotinus concludes that if there is a serious argument that can uncover anything about matter from other beings, it will find that it is abandoned by all beings, even by those that seem to be later than it, where it stretches itself into all things to accompany them as it seems, but in the event does not accompany them at all. It looks like matter is nothing more than a conjuror’s trick of smoke and mirrors. Plotinus would no doubt delight in the comparison, as long as one made the necessary qualification that there is in fact no smoke or mirrors in this little trick, but merely the fake appearance of reflections in what is not there and has no form. It is a delicate balance, where precise argument is bolstered by and subsequently critiques each of his carefully constructed images, analogies, and metaphors. 29. III.6[26].15, 16–23: ἐνταῦθα μὲν οὖν εἴδωλον ὂν ἡ φαντασία οὐκ εἰδώλου τὴν φύσιν οὔσης τῆς ψυχῆς, καίπερ πολλὰ δοκοῦσα ἄγειν καὶ ὅπῃ θέλει ἄγειν, χρῆται μὲν αὐτῇ οὐδὲν ἧττον ὡς ὕλῃ ἢ ἀνάλογον, οὐ μέντοι ἔκρυψε ταῖς παρ’ αὐτῆς ἐνεργείαις πολλάκις ἐξωθουμένη οὐδὲ ἐποίησεν αὐτήν, οὐδ’ εἰ μετὰ πάσης ἔλθοι, κεκρύφθαι καί τι αὐτὴν φαντάζεσθαι· ἔχει γὰρ ἐν αὐτῇ ἐνεργείας καὶ λόγους ἐναντίους, οἷς ἀπωθεῖται τὰ προσιόντα.

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Matter cannot be a kind of stuff, however indefinite, but at the same time it has some tenuous link to being and thus a causal role in the appearance of corporeal things that makes it more than a merely conceptual conceit.

Pending Problems: Matter as Size and Mother (III.6[26].16–19) Plotinus dealt with matter and size in his earlier treatise, II.4[12].9–10, but in that context he argued that matter as substrate cannot be identified with shape, size, or mass, as the most primitive qualities of bodies. In the context of III.6[26], size serves as another instance of form that is outside matter, supporting once more the central argument here that the matter of the sensible world is completely impassible. He begins, however, with the main point of that earlier argument. So, when some logos comes near and enlarges [matter] as much as it itself wants, it makes matter a size, clothing it with size from itself, since matter had no [size], nor does it even become this [size]: for the size upon it was the form size. If then someone were to take away this form, the substrate is no longer nor does it appear a size, but if what comes to have size is a man or horse and with the horse came the size of the horse, when the horse departs its size also departs.30

Matter is here preserved from being or becoming size in distinction from something corporeal, such as a horse, whose form brings with it a specific size. There is a connection between the form of the horse and its size that does not occur in the case of matter. The form of size comes near matter only as a logos, which participates in the form without implying that 30. III.6[26].16, 1–8: καὶ μέν τις ἐλθὼν λόγος ἀγαγὼν εἰς ὅσον αὐτὸς ἤθελεν ἐποίησεν αὐτὴν μέγα παρ’ αὐτοῦ τὸ μέγα περιθεὶς αὐτῇ οὐκ οὔσῃ, τοῦτο δὲ οὐδὲ γενομένῃ· τὸ γὰρ ἐπ’ αὐτῇ μέγα μέγεθος ἦν. ἐὰν οὖν τις τοῦτο ἀφέλῃ τὸ εἶδος, οὐκέτ’ ἐστὶν οὐδὲ φαίνεται τὸ ὑποκείμενον μέγα, ἀλλ’ εἰ ἦν τὸ γενόμενον μέγα ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἵππος καὶ μετὰ τοῦ ἵππου τὸ μέγα τοῦ ἵππου ἐπελθόν, ἀπελθόντος τοῦ ἵππου καὶ τὸ μέγα αὐτοῦ ἀπέρχεται.

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matter also participates in the form. Matter is merely clothed with size, without being or becoming a particular size, the form merely hovering over it, so to speak. The contrast is then spelled out. What remains when the form of the horse departs is a mass of a certain size, that is, something bodily that is no longer a horse but those components out of which the horse was constituted. Size, shape, and mass are characteristics of body as quantitative and thus rely on the form that makes a body to be what it is. For bodies, then, the loss of form means that one body has been changed into another, with the constituent parts transformed from the size, shape, and mass of one body to those of another. The case of matter, however, is different, and Plotinus analyzes the contrasting relation of the four elements to matter as their substrate to illustrate the difference. Thus, if a mass (ὄγκος, 16, 11) is of fire or earth, for example, when the fire or earth departs, so too does its size. Matter, Plotinus explains, enjoys neither shape nor size; if it did, it could not change from fire to something else, specifically one of the other elements. Thus, remaining fire it would become not fire, which is a contradiction both at the level of the corporeal and of matter, the very characteristic that differentiates the two of them from the mutual presence of the intelligible. But matter is also unlike body in the sense that it is never something actual, but is purely potential. As a consequence, matter is capable of supporting all bodies indifferently, even extending to the whole cosmos in its vast size. Plotinus notes, however, that if heaven and everything in it stopped, with all these things the size, all of it,31 will vanish from matter, along with all other qualities, leaving it just as it was and keeping none of the things formerly so near it. It is not as if matter collapses like a burst balloon, but that it is shown not to have ever been really affected even by the vast appearance of the whole cosmos with all its rich variety. 31. Armstrong’s apt translation in Plotinus 1967, 3:275.

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Plotinus states once more that something that can be affected keeps something of what has affected it even when it departs, while what cannot be affected keeps nothing, using air as an illustration. When light departs from air, it leaves no traces in the air itself. The difference from matter, however, is that air is something with a form, and therefore can receive another form, such as light. Matter presents a perplexing situation. It seems to have size (μέγα), but not the form of size (μέγεθος, 16, 25). But this is true of all the qualities that appear in it, such as heat without it being hot. Plotinus reminds us that size and all such qualities are in fact immaterial (ἄυλον, 16, 27). Matter can therefore participate in them without becoming or being them. That is, matter can (and must) participate in them precisely as not a body. It is the nature of bodies, because they are composite, to have size along with other qualities, and thus size is not separated from a body, as it is part of its definition. “But in matter there is not even ‘something not separated,’ since it is not a body.”32 That is, matter as not a body can have no qualities, even size, as they cannot be part of its definition. Plotinus turns next from size as in bodies to consider size itself, which is also not a body and thus also not receptive in the way bodies are. Nor will [matter] be size itself. This size is a form, but is not receptive; it is moreover size in itself and not size in some way. But since it, being at rest in intellect and soul, wishes to be a size, it gives to those those things that, as it were, want to imitate it by desiring it or by a motion toward it [the power] to insert their affection into the other. Then size, running with the unfolding of its appearance and making the smallness of matter to run with it toward this size itself, has made it by this extension, though not filled, to seem to have size.33 32. III.6[26].16, 31–32: ἐν δὲ τῇ ὕλῃ οὐδὲ τὸ οὐκ ἀφωρισμένον· οὐ γὰρ σῶμα. 33. III.6[26].17, 1–10: οὐδ’ αὖ μέγεθος αὐτὸ ἔσται. εἶδος γὰρ τὸ μέγεθος, ἀλλ’ οὐ δεκτικόν· καὶ καθ’ αὑτὸ δὲ τὸ μέγεθος [. . .], οὐχ οὕτω μέγεθος. ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ βούλεται ἐν νῷ

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The size in bodies is particular and essentially receptive. It can become larger or smaller, but the form “size” is not receptive, like matter, but for the different reason that it is the source from which participants in size have the power to imitate it and bring size near to matter. These participants are described as in a continuous outward motion, both spatially and temporally, and they make matter seem to have size along with them. Thus size as it can be experienced is neatly sandwiched between two things that cannot themselves be receptive of size, the form of “size” and matter as seeming to have “size,” in running with the corporeal. Their contrast continues, however, because the form of size is true size, while matter is false size. “This is false size, when by not having real size, being stretched toward that, it is extended by the stretching out.”34 The rest of III.6[26].17 uses arguments and images from earlier in the treatise to indicate the roles of the form of size itself and actual size in the whole cosmos and in bodies in the unfolding of false size in matter. Matter only appears to be as large as the cosmos or some body within it, but only they have size, with matter having a false size that affects it not at all, making it neither larger nor smaller. Plotinus reminds us first that “all beings make their reflective image in other things or the other, making [their images] each as is its size and the whole as in that case is its size.”35 Several ideas are packed into this sentence. The contrast between other things and the other is ambiguous, but seems to capture the contrast between the size of particular beings in their corporeal images ἢ ἐν ψυχῇ κείμενον μέγα εἶναι, ἔδωκε τοῖς οἷον ἐθέλουσι μιμεῖσθαι ἐφέσει αὐτοῦ ἢ κινήσει τῇ πρὸς αὐτὸ τὸ αὐτῶν πάθος ἐνσείσασθαι εἰς ἄλλο. τὸ οὖν μέγα ἐν προόδῳ φαντάσεως θέον εἰς αὐτὸ δὴ τοῦτο τὸ μέγα συνθεῖν ποιῆσαν τὸ μικρὸν τῆς ὕλης, πεποίηκεν αὐτὸ τῇ παρατάσει οὐ πληρούμενον δοκεῖν εἶναι μέγα. 34. III.6[26].17, 10–12: τὸ γὰρ ψευδῶς μὲγα τοῦτὸ ἐστιν, ὅταν τῷ μὴ ἔχειν τὸ μέγα ἐκτεινόμενον πρὸς ἐκεῖνο παραταθῇ τῇ ἐκτάσει. 35. III.6[26].17, 12–14: ποιούντων γὰρ πάντων ὄντων εἰς τὰ ἄλλα ἢ τὸ ἄλλο τὴν αὐτῶν ἐνόπτρισιν [Liddell-Scott 1958, qv, representation as in a mirror, reflection, with this passage cited] ἕκαστόν τε τῶν ποιούντων ὡς αὐτὸ ἦν μέγα, τό τε πᾶν ἦν ἐκείνως μέγα.

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and size as a whole that is reflected in matter as the other. In either case, Plotinus is emphasizing the fact that even size comes from the side of being, although its reflective image can only be in matter and the world of becoming. His explanation continues: “Each logos made something of a certain size, such as a horse or anything whatever, with size itself [making the whole]. The whole [reflective image in matter] became illuminated in accord with size itself and each part with its particular size. Thus all things appeared together from the whole form, from which size comes, and from each particular form.”36 In these comments, size goes along with the other forms that make the particular things in the sensible cosmos and the sensible cosmos itself, but, as we shall see, size is considered here in its particular relation to matter as well. It is a form and is present in the various logoi in terms of the size of sensible objects, but it is also related to the magnitude that matter in its negative way makes possible not just for particular bodies but for the cosmos as a whole. Plotinus next addresses this magnitude, if not more clearly, at least more explicitly. [Size in matter] had as it were stretched itself along toward the whole form and toward all forms and was compelled to be this [size] in form and in mass, however much the power had made what was nothing itself to be all things. As by its very appearing color is from what is not color, quality from what is not quality, having been named from those [forms], so also size is from what is not size or rather of the same name as those things seen between matter itself and form itself. Thus, [size] appears because it is from there, but is false because that in which it appears is not.37 36. III.6[26].17, 15–19: συνῄει οὖν τὸ ἑκάστου λόγου μετὰ τό τι μέγα, οἷον ἵππου καὶ ὁτουοῦν ἄλλου, καὶ τὸ μὲγα αὐτό· καὶ ἐγίγνετο πᾶσα μὲν μέγα πρὸς αὐτόμεγα ἐλλαμπομένη, καὶ ἑκάστη δὲ μοῖρα μέγα τι· καὶ ὁμοῦ πάντα ἐφαίνετο ἐκ παντὸς τοῦ εἴδους, οὗ τὸ μέγα, καὶ ἐξ ἐκάστου. 37. III.6[26].17, 19–27: καὶ οἷον παρετέτατο καὶ πρὸς πᾶν καὶ πάντα, καὶ ἐν εἴδει τοῦτο ἀναγκασθεῖσα εἶναι καὶ ἐν ὄγκῳ, ὅσον ἡ δύναμις πεποίηκε τὸ μηδὲν ὂν αὐτὸ πάντα

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Size introduces something that, for Plotinus, distinguishes the sensible cosmos from the intelligible, in that sensible things appear separate from one another in magnitude, which has spatial and temporal aspects. The sensible cosmos is also different from matter, in which it appears, because matter allows it to be extended and thus have size without at the same time having size itself. Matter is the precondition for magnitude in the particular sensible objects that have magnitude as this size or the whole sensible cosmos that has its own complete magnitude. It is this magnitude and separation that allows for colors and other qualities to be associated with the variety of sensible objects as corporeal. “Each of these sensible bodies being drawn out takes on size by the power of being seen in and of making for themselves a place, and they are drawn out upon all things to be the all not by force but by matter.”38 Plotinus alludes here to his earlier discussion of the mirror, where one thing is seen in another, and of place, one of the terms from Plato’s Timaeus used to describe the role of matter in the becoming of the universal all (see II.4[12].12, 1–6). In addition, they are not forced together in the all by something extrinsic, as would be the case with artifacts, but rather by the fact that all things share matter as their common substrate. The last lines of the chapter continue to spell this out, but the text is not always easy to construe, especially given Plotinus’s sensitivity to the paradoxical nature of matter. Each thing, then, draws out according to the power which it has, but it has it from there. So what makes matter a size, as it seems, comes from the very reflection of size and this [size] is what has been reεἶναι· οἷον αὐτῷ τῷ φαίνεσθαι καὶ τὸ χρῶμα τὸ ἐξ οὐ χρώματος καὶ ἡ ποιότης ἡ ἐνταῦθα ἡ ἐξ οὐ ποιότητος ἔσχε τὴν ὁμωνυμίαν τὴν ἀπ’ ἐκείνων, καὶ τὸ μέγεθος ἐξ οὐ μεγέθους ἢ ὁμωνύμου μεταξὺ θεωρουμένων ἐκείνων καὶ αὐτῆς τῆς ὕλης καὶ τοῦ εἴδους αὐτοῦ. καὶ φαίνεται μέν, ὅτι ἐκεῖθεν, ψεύδεται δέ, ὅτι οὐκ ἔστι τὸ ἐν ᾧ φαίνεται. 38. III.6[26].17, 27–30: μεγεθύνεται δὲ ἕκαστα ἑλκόμενα τῇ δυνάμει τῶν ἐνορωμένων καὶ χώραν ἑαυτοῖς ποιούντων, ἕλκεται δέ ἐπὶ πάντα οὐ βία τῷ ὕλῃ τὸ πᾶν εἶναι.

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flected, the size here. But matter, upon which everything together is compelled to keep pace, everywhere submits itself, for matter is both of this [size] and not this [size]. What is not something of itself, is able to become the opposite through the other, but having become the opposite it is not even that, for then it would be brought to a standstill.39

Plotinus thus indicates how size is reflected in bodies and the sensible cosmos is the reflection of real size and at the same time the source of the kind of false size that seems to be present in matter. Matter can only borrow size as reflected in the sensible cosmos. The paradoxical relation of matter and body is expressed as strongly as possible in the next sentence, where everything is compelled to keep pace on top of matter, which nonetheless submits itself everywhere to this appearing in it of form. Matter’s submission, however, does not change its impassible state, only allowing one thing or its opposite to appear in it without changing its nature. III.6[26].18 concludes his consideration of size in matter with a much different kind of image. Plotinus asks us to suppose that someone has the thought of size and that this thought has the power to exist not only in the soul, but outside as well. This is not a strange or outlandish exercise that Plotinus is asking us to do, but something that occurs in any work of fiction. His comments have roots in Plato’s description of poets as like the demiurge, able to make all things, in Republic X, and of philosophers themselves in constructing the city, in Republic V. Of all the different kinds of fiction, however, the one that seems most relevant to the present con39. III.6[26].17, 30–37: ἕλκει δὲ ἕκαστον κατὰ τὴν αὐτοῦ δύναμιν ἣν ἔχει· ἔχει δὲ ἐκεῖθεν. καὶ τὸ μὲν ποιοῦν μέγα τὴν ὕλην, ὡς δοκεῖ, ἀπὸ τῆς ἐμφαντάσεως [Liddell-Scott 1958, qv, has “imagination,” but “reflection” seems better at capturing how size has its reflection in matter rather than its presence in imagination; ἐμφαντασθέν, aorist passive participle, is from the cognate verb] τοῦ μέγα καὶ τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ ἐμφαντασθέν, τὸ ἐνταῦθα μέγα· ἡ δὲ ὕλη, ἐφ’ ἧς ἀναγκάζεται συνθεῖν, ὁμοῦ πᾶσα καὶ πανταχοῦ παρέχει ἑαυτήν· ὕλη γάρ ἐστι καὶ τούτου καὶ οὐ τουτί· ὃ δὲ μή ἐστί τι παρ’ αὐτοῦ, δύναται γενέσθαι καὶ τὸ ἐναντίον δι’ ἄλλο καὶ γενόμενον τὸ ἐναντίον οὐδὲ ἐκεῖνό ἐστιν· ἔστη γὰρ ἄν.

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text of the nature of matter and sensible bodies is reminiscent of contemporary science fiction, where whole worlds can be imagined, with their own material properties and development into wholes with a wide variety of life, including the complexity of intelligent life. All of the particulars in these imagined worlds would have their size determined by their definitions, their forms as Plotinus would call them, but that is not what he finds interesting. If these worlds were to exist, they must also have matter, and he reviews quickly the characteristics that such matter must have. Rather since it derives from a father of size, the other cannot make space for size, but will have it as self-reflecting. Thus for something not so fortunate in size as to be a size itself, the only thing left is to appear to have size in its parts as much as it can. This means not falling short, not being scattered all over the place, having the parts in itself related, and being absent from nothing.40

Plotinus establishes that matter is not identified with size, in distinction from any of the things that exist or that can be imagined, but is still necessary for those things with size to appear. Thus, as an author (the “father” in the passage) continues to build the story of a world and expands it from scene to scene, with all the objects that continue to fill them with their proper size, Plotinus maintains that matter makes this expansion possible. It never falls short, for another room or another universe can always be supported. It is not scattered, because however much the world expands, the parts do not become isolated from one another, but matter is elastic enough to keep them together. 40. III.6[26].18, 7–13: ἤ, ἐπειδὴ παρὰ μεγάλου πατρός ἔρχεται, οὐ δύναται τὸ ἄλλο χωρῆσαι μέγα, τοῦτο δ’ ἕξει ἐμφανταζόμενον. τῷ δὴ μὴ οὕτως εὐτυχήσαντι τοῦ μεγάλου ὡς αὐτὸ μέγα εἶναι ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῦ καθ’ ὅσον οἷον τε μεγάλῳ φαίνεσθαι λοιπόν ἐστι. τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ μὴ ἐλλείπειν καὶ τὸ μὴ ἐπὶ πολλὰ πολλαχοῦ καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ τὰ συγγενῆ ἔχειν μέρη καὶ ἀπολείπεσθαι μηδενός.

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Everything, in fact, is related to everything else by means of matter, which is nowhere absent. In other words, one has a world where things can influence one another and change into one another, rather than existing in solitary splendor, isolated from one another like Cartesian ideas. Plotinus is pointing out that the particular sizes of things are always defined, however outlandishly in the writer’s mind, but if the writer wants such objects to form a world together, the undefined nature of matter is always and everywhere going to be there as what allows such objects with their sizes to appear. He ends this section with further comments on how the object, as an image, has an inbuilt instability as it seeks, so to speak, to be size itself, only able to give size to that which cannot have size: matter. Repeating earlier imagery, matter only has such size as a kind of garment that it puts on; it does not stay with matter, which remains the same as it was, only appearing to have size. In the last part of III.6[26].18, soul and matter are once more contrasted. Plotinus personifies them, giving a certain dynamism to these metaphysical principles. When the sensible world and all the objects within it approach soul, “it does not put up with receiving them in their plurality, but sees them stripped of their mass.”41 Matter, on the contrary, “having nothing that resists, for it has no activity, but is only a shadow, waits to undergo whatever the maker would wish.”42 Thus, soul and matter both remain unchanging and impassive, but for opposite reasons. Soul retains the initiative as the source of sensibles, their formal and generative cause that holds them all undivided in itself; but matter has no initiative at all but can only wait passively as the primal material cause that receives them as extended and divided. Plotinus ends by 41. III.6[26].18, 27–28: οὐκ ἀνέχεται μετὰ πλήθους δέχεσθαι, ἀλλ’ ἀποθέμενα τὸν ὄγκον ὁρᾶ. 42. III.6[26].18, 29–31: οὐδὲν ἔχουσα τὸ ἀντικόπτον, οὐ γὰρ ἔχει ἐνέργειαν, οὖσα δὲ σκιά, ἀναμένει παθεῖν ὅ τι ἂν ἐθέλῃ τὸ ποιῆσον.

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referring back to the Timaeus, that matter is the locus (τόπον, 18, 38) for all things, coming to them precisely as extension (διάστημα, 18, 39), but not caught in extension itself. Finally, one form coming to matter does not prevent others, though in the case of bodies forms can and do prevent other forms entering, at least at the same time. Plotinus reasons that there is no first form, unless it is the form of the cosmos as a whole, with the other forms each entering into its own part. In III.6[26].19, Plotinus finally deals with the phrase from Timaeus 50d3 and 51a4–5 that refers to matter as mother (μητέρα, 19, 1). Perhaps this is added as a counterpart to the description in III.6[26].18, 7, of size as coming from a father. In any case, Plotinus takes the image as present among the ancients as well as Plato, and seeks to show what it must mean relative to matter. He deals first with the opposites in 19, 1–8. The opposites are defined in terms of their forms and battle each other, but not the substrate, which remains impassive, neither harmed nor benefited. He refers back to the beginning of III.6[26].8, where what is affected has powers and qualities opposite to what overcomes it. The battle of opposites, in other words, necessarily implies the corporeal, where form can oppose form, but cannot affect matter as the substrate without form. Similarly, in the case of living things, in 19, 8–14, the affection is in the body, where the alteration is once more in terms of its qualities and immanent powers, with only the most extreme of affections reaching the soul, recalling the distinctions of III.6[26].4–5. Matter, however, remains unaffected when cold departs and heat enters in, as they are neither friend nor foe. Thus, Plotinus summarizes his constant position in these few lines, that matter as the substrate is not to be found in the table of opposites and that what enters and leaves in no way affects matter by its appearance. The rest of his comments apply this principle to the ancient and Platonic description of matter as mother, in-

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dicating how it may have originated and how much it needs to be qualified. He begins with the claim that “receptacle” and “nurse” (Timaeus 49a5–6) are more proper, as the term “mother” implies that matter gives something of itself to what is brought forth. Plotinus does not indicate, but his discussion alludes to the table of opposites,43 where male and female occur, leading earlier philosophers to see form in terms of the father, as Plotinus himself does in III.6[26].18, and thus matter, its opposite, as mother.44 Plotinus has argued at great length and with everything at his disposal that matter cannot be opposite to anything and that opposites always imply the corporeal. He further accounts for the use of the term by focusing on the receptive nature of the mother, but even here his qualifications are so complete as to make the choice of this term clearly regrettable, as confusing the nature of matter with some kind of stuff or independent principle. A mother, he points out, does not merely contribute food, but must contribute form, because “only form produces offspring, but the other nature is sterile.”45 The vehemence of his argument comes not from an anachronistic desire to defend the female and the role of the mother in producing offspring, but in eliminating any possible confusion that allows matter a role or nature that he argues consistently and relentlessly it cannot have. The rest of III.6[26].19 is his attempt to indicate that the ancients in the riddles of the mystery cults were actually making this very point, where the erect Hermes indicated the intelligible logos and the Great Mother and her court of eunuchs the permanent sterility of matter. Even Plotinus admits that deriving 43. See Metaphysics I.5, 986a22–b2, with allusions to Pythagorean sources as well as Alcmaion of Croton. 44. Igal, in Plotinus 1985, 2:189n150, indicates Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals 763b30–33, as the source for this theory of natural philosophers such as Anaxagoras. 45. III.6[26].19, 24–25: μόνον γὰρ τὸ εἶδος γόνιμον, ἡ δ’ ἑτέρα φύσις ἄγονος.

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this latter point by his interpretation of the cult is farfetched, but nonetheless drives home the point that an accurate investigation demonstrates that matter is sterile and not at all female, but only resembling the female as receptive.

Conclusion By examining III.6[26] carefully, one can see that Plotinus has a consistent theory of the nature of matter as incorporeal, with each part of the treatise addressing different aspects of its nature. While II.4[12] centers on clarifying Aristotelian terms, such as substrate and privation, to indicate that matter can have none of the qualities that can be attributed to bodies, the underlying concept that governs the present treatise is the Platonic notion of otherness, extended by Plotinus to cover not only otherness as one of the highest genera of the intelligible world, described by Plato in the Sophist, but also the principle that explains the nature of everything other than the One. Matter is analyzed as that kind of otherness that is just otherness, with no admixture of sameness or unity at all. Matter is that pure possibility, that pure plurality that can have no quality at all. III.6[26] continues this account of matter as without quality of any kind by analyzing the impassibility of matter as incorporeal. In contrast to the impassibility of soul, which is active and alive, matter must be kept free from all affection in such a way as to preserve it from any possible admixture with form. Matter cannot be any kind of stuff, but remains entirely incomposite: evil and ugly, in the words Plotinus uses to describe this strange state. Plotinus acknowledges the constant tendency of language to speak of matter as if it were something and uses this to explain the variety of images Plato uses in the Timaeus to indicate the indeterminate nature of matter and its absolute freedom from affection.

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Conclusion

" Conclusion This work has been the product of many years. I have enjoyed feedback in two different venues, presenting small sections at conferences and subsequent publications and writing reviews of works on Plotinus where insights from this study found articulation in conversation with other interpretive schemes that often missed some aspect or other that came to light in my investigations. There are three areas where this has been most apparent to me, one from examining the writings of Plotinus in chronological order, another from understanding passages in the context of the particular treatise in which they occur, and lastly his fluid use of terminology from one treatise to another. They are in a special way the fruits of long years of wrestling with the Enneads.

Chronological Order Investigating Plotinus’s writings in chronological order was suggested to me as I was beginning research on my first book in the mid–1980s. I found it so helpful that I have used it ever since. This advice seems to go against the grain of Plotinian

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scholarship. Thus, the truism is that Plotinus’s writings presuppose his whole thought, with the consequence that one will not find development in his thought as one moves from early to late treatises. Not unsurprisingly, analyzing them in chronological order sustains this judgment, but with an enriched appreciation of how the treatises complement one another in expressing his thought. My earlier book was organized around specific terms in Plotinus’s psychology, tracing the use of each term in separate chapters precisely by following the chronological order of the treatises where the terms occurred. The advantage was seeing how the context illuminated the meaning of the term and how the same term could have different meanings, depending on the context. In the present work, by contrast, I selected a few of the early treatises and investigated them in chronological order. A glimpse at the titles of the treatises indicates that they do not seem to yield an obvious thematic unity as Plotinus moves from one topic to another without much apparent thought about how they might fit together. It is curious, however, that Plotinus often reveals patterns of intelligibility where the parts fall into place even when the initial selection seems random. The first section begins with three short treatises where Plotinus is beginning to articulate his understanding of the soul. He starts in I.6[1] with the fact of the human soul’s alienation and the experience of beauty that initiates the ascent to recognize the alienation and overcome it. Unity forms a major part of his argument, whether the formal unity of the beautiful object or of the soul in perceiving it. His precise understanding of unity is incompatible with the corporeal and thus rooted in the soul itself as transcending the body. It is a short move, then, to intellect and the One. VI.9[9] takes up the analysis of unity in relation to being, emphasizing his dynamic sense of reality that gives anything that is really one a strong causative power. V.1[10]

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returns to consider the nature of the soul, with the clear capacity to overcome its forgetfulness and realize its own proper unity and thus its natural unity with higher souls and the three primary hypostases. The second section follows with an examination of matter in II.4[12], where Plotinus is concerned to show its indefinite nature as the substrate for corporeal things. In this, he is explaining how matter functions as setting up the condition for human alienation in the previous treatises. He moves away from Aristotle’s principle of individuation to define matter as the common substrate that must be essentially incorporeal. As without form, it is on the one hand not body, but being incorporeal does not on the other hand make it like soul or intellect, which are also incorporeal but not formless. He thus specifies the nature of the material cause as the precondition of bodies, but completely devoid of any of their qualities, which are based on form. This is matched, somewhat oddly, with a discussion of the two selves in I.2–3[19–20], where the alienation of the soul examined earlier is made explicit as two selves. The lower self comes with soul’s embodiment and thus we start in alienation from the higher. Plotinus gives several paths for overcoming this alienation, which disappears once the soul moves from this duality to the active unity of lower and higher self. While these first two sections center on the ascent of the soul, needed because of its alienation, with matter as the precondition for that alienation, the next two sections look at the descent of the soul and its relation to the body and matter. VI.4–5[22–23] is concerned with how any higher relates to something lower than itself. This is partially an application of the nonreciprocal relation between higher and lower developed in describing the two selves in I.2–3[19–20], but now examined in terms of soul in relation to the sensible cosmos, intellect in relation to soul, and finally the One in relation to

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what is other than it, reversing the path of the ascent in I.6[1]. Transcendence and omnipresence are the key issues, yielding different ways that form is present in bodies. Some forms are possessed by bodies, corresponding to Aristotle’s accidents, but any form that is also a first or substance, like the soul, is both present in the whole and in every part and so retains its independence or transcendence. Plotinus provides striking images to convey the active presence of soul while preserving its impassibility, images that feature the active nature of the soul’s presence as a power. The final treatise, III.6[26], explores this impassibility with relentless rigor. Soul’s presence to body is now assumed and the analysis turns to the activities it shares with the body. From sensing to consciousness of another, the soul activates the body in unique ways, and yet remains impassible. If it were itself affected by sensing or other affections of the body, it would not be able to react or know. There would just be corporeal interaction. As it is, the soul is impassible in a completely different way from matter, so that the body, as occurring between soul and matter, is thus delineated in more detail. Matter makes it possible for body to receive the soul, but at the cost of becoming lost and forgetful. Soul makes it possible for body to be alive and active, but with a certain ambiguity that is expressed in its alienation. The human body, as occurring between these two very different instances of impassibility, depending formally on the one and materially on the other, has a unique status that is not possible for any other kind of being. While the specific topics of these treatises differed widely, the assumptions and principles used in their analysis overlap considerably. These assumptions were made explicit in the introduction: the cosmos as a single living thing, the role of the highest genera, and the principle of two acts as keys for understanding the treatises examined in the subsequent

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chapters. Plotinus, as the dictum states, has all of these in mind all the time, but his articulation of them is not all at once, nor could it be. The presence of these systematic assumptions is most often between the lines. Even within this limited selection of treatises, however, I began to notice that what was assumed in one treatise or another all of a sudden emerged with explicit clarification, sometimes in a context that seemed irrelevant. Take, for example, the principle that the higher and lower are nonreciprocally related. Plotinus does not discuss this where we might want, in analyzing the relationship between the One and intellect in VI.9[9], or even between intellect and soul in V.1[10], but in the mundane discussion of the higher and lower virtues in the short treatise on the virtues, I.2[19].2. He distinguishes between things that are similar as existing on the same level of reality and things on different levels, where one is like the other, but not vice versa. His explanation in terms of this causal relation is relatively unimportant in this particular context, but its application ontologically is the very core of the nature of the hypostases and their relation to one another. I realized further that the accidental and extrinsic character of my selection revealed an intrinsic and necessary insight into the deep links that connected these treatises organically, so to speak. One might counter that this is also available from a thematic study of the Enneads; true enough, but this would fail to illuminate the depth of interconnection latent in Plotinus’s unfolding of his thought. One gains access to the inner workings of his philosophy as he focuses on problems as they arise. A further advantage is that we have a hermeneutical tool for dealing with puzzles that arise when Plotinus uses ideas from one area in a context where they do not at first seem to fit.

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Passages in Context This second area is a corollary of the first. It has particular traction in this book, where each passage is examined as part of the treatise in which it occurs. This departs from those studies of Plotinus’s thought that develop a particular account of some idea by accumulating a host of passages from different treatises and sifting through them to determine his take on one idea or another. This is an understandable approach and has had benefits in elucidating the meaning of the Enneads, but some things inevitably get neglected or obscured in the process. The previous chapters give manifold examples of the illumination that the surrounding context can add to our understanding of a passage. I want to mention here a couple other benefits that come from focusing on the treatises themselves. First, this approach brings to the fore the integrity of each treatise, with the possibility of appreciating its singular completeness. We can illustrate this with a look at V.1[10].1, 26, where Plotinus sets the two tasks for the treatise, a critique of the sensible world as the cause of the soul’s forgetfulness and an account of the soul’s true nature as the way of overcoming its alienation. As noted, scholars have invariably looked to other treatises for this critique, as if there is nothing relevant in the present treatise at all. Given the nature of his writing, I looked to the text for this critique and found hints both at V.1[10].2, 44–51, and 7, 47–49. In the first, Plotinus refers to the four elements as works of soul from which they receive the beauty of form. If these works of soul are thus beautiful, he asks, how much more the soul within each of us. In the second, Plotinus alludes to the “fall” of the soul out of intellect, in the context of his image of the center and the circular motion around it, with straight motion capturing its alienation in the sensible. Examining this hint is actually de-

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layed by the digression at V.1[10].8–9, where he traces some of his ideas to their roots in the Presocratics. He returns in V.1[10].10–12 to explore how the soul uses reason to connect with intellect, separating itself from the sensible, and how the notion of the “self ” roots the soul in both intellect and the One, as expressing a unity akin to theirs. With some attention to the presence of these two tasks, the elusive unity of the treatise comes into focus and provides a key to its structure. Second, treatises on similar topics can be compared as giving different contexts for common ideas. An important instance concerns the two treatises on matter, II.4[12] and III.6[23]. The first deals with the issue in terms of Aristotle’s terminology, matter and substrate, while the second is grounded in Plato’s Timaeus, with the receptacle and related terms. In this case, not only is the context different but his sources are different—Aristotle and Plato, respectively. Plotinus nevertheless shows that despite the different terminology and apparent disagreements between them, they must be in fundamental agreement. The alternative is stark; each account would be inherently inconsistent on its own terms. Plotinus is showing here his acumen in understanding these two predecessors and their different aims, but also their common effort to overcome the same puzzles they inherited from Parmenides and the natural philosophers. His claim is not necessarily that they each understood what they were doing as he does, but that any alleged difference between them necessarily introduces contradictions or inconsistencies in their own accounts. This also prepares for the last area to be considered, his fluid use of terminology. In these two treatises, he shows that the different terms used by Plato and Aristotle for matter must be talking about the same reality and thus have similar meanings, notwithstanding their differences, nor implying that each account is reducible to the other.

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Fluid Use of Terms A colleague asked me not too long ago if I thought there were terms that Plotinus used in univocal fashion, terms that were in essence technical in the strongest sense. Terms, for example, that could or could not be applied to the One. I replied that I did not think this was the case, as I found places where Plotinus in fact used terms that seemed in the context of almost all other treatises to be excluded as inappropriate. This sheds considerable light on the method Plotinus uses from one treatise to another, and initially led earlier scholars to accuse him of confusion or contradiction. In this instance, however, Plotinus shows the remarkable character of his method and its application, that his philosophy is not tied to any particular philosophical vocabulary. This is most visible in the passages from VI.5[23] on the omnipresence of the One. Plotinus here applies being (τὸ ὄν) to the One that, it is fair to say, almost every other treatise seems to exclude, but the context of this treatise necessarily demands it. Usually being is understood in dyadic relation to intellect or as one of the five highest genera, where its association with plurality is emphasized, and the very basis for its exclusion in the case of the One. In addition, when Plotinus describes the relation of the hypostasis intellect to intelligible beings, there is a distinction between them that their overall unity does not overcome. In VI.5[23], however, Plotinus defines being in precise terms that identify it with the One as good and a unity that precludes multiplicity even in terms of the One’s relation to the beings that come from it. The unity of any being in this case is identified with the unity of the One and is entirely interior to that thing as well as to the One. We are here confronted with the paradoxical situation of the One and this being as unified and yet distinct and not identical.

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Plotinus is making a distinction here in his use of terms that is not unique to this case but common to a multitude of other philosophical terms as well. I have already alluded to his use of the term “matter.” He identifies Aristotle’s matter with Plato’s receptacle. He does this by emphasizing matter as substrate rather than principle of individuation. As a Platonist, he does not need matter to function as individuating, so the role of the substrate as common fits the role of the receptacle in Plato, as that in which all particulars appear. Not adverting to this distinctive role of matter involves a minor misunderstanding of Plotinus’s philosophy. Far more serious is to understand the word “matter” with its modern meaning as physical or corporeal. For Plotinus, matter is incorporeal, and he would argue that both Plato and Aristotle agree with him. Only proximate matter can be taken as corporeal. These are instances where his own use of a term does not radically alter its meaning elsewhere in Greek philosophy. There are other instances, however, where he changes the meaning of terms he inherited, but where recent scholarship tends to insist on their original meaning, causing not a little confusion in interpreting Plotinus. I will mention only two examples, where he gives Aristotelian terms a completely different meaning from what scholars expect. Act and potency, for example, refers to change in its Aristotelian setting, and this remains true for Plotinus in the context of accidental change. When act and potency are used, however, to talk about the intellect and intelligible beings, or any substance (even soul) from a Platonic perspective, act and potency have a meaning that necessarily excludes change. Plotinus holds, for example, that intellect is actually itself and potentially all its members, and similarly that each intellect is actually itself and potentially the whole. This in no way involves any potentiality or possibility of change in either, as intellect and its members are eternally the

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same. Plotinus intends instead to convey how incorporeal wholes and parts are always already transparent to one another. The same is true for genus and species, which form part of Aristotle’s logical vocabulary. Following the precedent of the Sophist, Plotinus transmutes the terms to the ontological level where genus refers to a higher reality in relation to the lower levels that derive from it, as in the case of the hypostasis soul in relation to individual souls (world, stellar, and human). It denotes, therefore, an ontological relation of subordination, where the species share in a common nature derived from, but different from, their genus. In the case of soul, the hypostasis soul, as the genus, is not soul of any body, whereas all other souls, from the cosmic soul to the human soul, as species, are precisely such as being souls of bodies. The genus in this instance is ontologically causal in relation to the species, rather than expressing the logical relation denoted in the Aristotelian usage. Other examples are plentiful, but the point is the same. Plotinus is not concerned with how his predecessors, much less his successors, define terms. He will take whatever terms are presented by the tradition or a particular argument and use them to articulate his own account of reality. This is rooted in his Platonic sense that words are in some sense always approximations, never capturing anything, much less important philosophical meaning, in a determinative way. The advantage of his approach is that he can take any position and show how, with a precise meaning assigned to the terms, it can yield something true.

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———. 2007b. Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite. Albany: State University of New York Press. Remes, Pauliina. 2007. Plotinus on Self: The Philosophy of the ‘We.’ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Riley, Mark. 1987. “Theoretical and Practical Astrology: Ptolemy and His Colleagues.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 117: 235–56. Rist, John M. 1962. “The Indefinite Dyad and Intelligible Matter in Plotinus.” Classical Quarterly 12, no. 1: 99–107. ———. 1974. “Plotinus and Augustine on Evil.” In Plotino e il Neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente, atti del convegno internazionale: Roma, 5–9 ottobre 1970, 495–508. Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Rutten, Charles. 1956. “La Doctrine des deux actes dans la philosophie de Plotin.” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 146: 100–106. Sallis, John. 1999. Chorology: On the Beginning of Plato’s “Timaeus.” Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Santa Cruz de Prunes, M. I. 1970. “Materia y mal en la filosofía de Plotino.” Cuadernos de Filosofía 10: 353–64. Santayana, G. 1913. “Dr. Fuller, Plotinus and the Nature of Evil.” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 10: 589–99. Schroeder, Frederic M. 1992. Form and Transformation: A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. ———. 1998. “Prophecy and Remembrance in Plotinus.” In Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 12, edited by John J. Cleary and William Wians, 1–22. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. Schwyzer, H.-R. 1960. “ ‘ Bewusst’ und ‘Unbewusst’ bei Plotin.” In Les Sources de Plotin, Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique, Tome V, 21–28 August 1957, 343–70. Genève: Fondation Hardt. ———. 1973. “Zu Plotins Deutung der sogenanntent platonischen Materie.” In Zetesis: Album amicorum aangeboden aan E. de Strycker, 266–80. Utrecht: De Nederlandsche Boekhandel. Shaw, Michael. 2006. “Teleology and Nutrition in De Anima B. 4.” Proceedings for the Ancient Philosophy Society’s Sixth Annual Independent Meeting, DePaul University, April 20–22, 2006. ———. 2014. “Unqualified Generation in Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy.”

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In Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 29, edited by Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, and William Wians, 77–106. Leiden: Brill. Simons, John. 1985. “Matter and Time in Plotinus.” Dionysius 9: 53–74. Smyth, Herbert W. 1980 [1920]. Greek Grammar. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Solmsen, Friedrich. 1961. “Aristotle’s Word for ‘Matter.’ ” Didascaliae: Studies in Honor of A. M. Albareda, O. S. B., edited by S. Prete, 392–408. New York: B. Rosenthal. Stamatellos, Giannis. 2007. Plotinus and the Presocratics. Albany: State UnIversity of New York Press. Stern-Gillet, Suzanne. 2013. “When Virtue Bids Us Abandon Life (Ennead VI 8 [39] 6, 14–26).” In Plato Revived: Essays on Ancient Platonism in Honour of Dominic O’Meara, edited by Filip Karfík and Euree Song, 182–98. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Sumi, Atsushi. 2002. “The Omnipresence of Being, the IntellectIntelligible Identity and the Undescended Part of the Soul.” In Neoplatonism and Indian Philosophy, edited by Paulos Mar Gregorios, 45–70. Studies in Neoplatonism: Ancient and Modern 9. Albany: State University of New York Press. Timotin, Andrei. 2017. La prière dans la tradition platonicienne, de Platon à Proclus. Turnhout: Repolls. van Winden, J. C. M. 1959. Calcidius on Matter: His Doctrine and Source. Leiden: Brill. Wagner, M. F. 1986. “Plotinus’ Idealism and the Problem of Matter in Ennead VI, 4 and VI, 5.” Dionysius 10: 57–83. Warren, Edward W. 1961. “The Concept of Consciousness in the Philosophy of Plotinus.” PhD diss., The Johns Hopkins University. ———. 1964. “Consciousness in Plotinus.” Phronesis 9, no. 2: 83–97. Yount, David J. 2017. Plato and Plotinus on Mysticism, Epistemology, and Ethics. New York: Bloomsbury.

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Index of Passages

Index of Passages

I.2[19].2, 6–10: 123 I.2[19].4, 5–7: 125 I.2[19].4, 25–29: 126 I.2[19].7, 28–30: 130–31 I.3[20].5, 13–17: 134–35 I.3[20].6, 18–24: 136 I.6[1].2, 1–6: 26 I.6[1].5, 38–39: 30 I.6[1].5, 45–47: 31 I.6[1].5, 57: 31 I.6[1].6, 17–18: 32 I.6[1].7, 3–12: 33–34 II.4[12].1, 4–6: 114 II.4[12].2, 6–8: 81 II.4[12].3, 6–14: 83–84 II.4[12].3, 14–16: 86 II.4[12].4, 11–12: 87 II.4[12].5, 5–6: 88 II.4[12].5, 28–35: 89 II.4[12].6, 13–16: 93 II.4[12].7, 13–20: 96 II.4[12].8, 13–16: 98 II.4[12].8, 29–30: 99 II.4[12].9, 10–15: 100 II.4[12].10, 4–11: 101

II.4[12].11, 24–27: 103 II.4[12].12, 2–3: 104 II.4[12].12, 4–7: 105 II.4[12].13, 17–20: 107 II.4[12].14, 28–30: 109 II.4[12].15, 19–28: 110 II.4[12].16, 1–3: 111 II.4[12].16, 24–27: 112 III.6[26].1, 18–25: 207 III.6[26].3, 1–4: 208 III.6[26].3, 27–32: 209 III.6[26].5, 13–19: 213 III.6[26].9, 18–19: 219 III.6[26].11, 7–18: 221 III.6[26].11, 18–24: 221–22 III.6[26].13, 21–29: 226 III.6[26].13, 34–36: 227–28 III.6[26].14, 18–23: 230 III.6[26].15, 6–23: 231–33 III.6[26].16, 1–8: 234 III.6[26].17, 1–10: 236 III.6[26].17, 10–14: 237 III.6[26].17, 15–27: 238 III.6[26].17, 27–30: 239

III.6[26].17, 30–37: 239–40 III.6[26].18, 7–13: 240 III.6[26].18, 27–31: 242 III.6[26].19, 24–25: 244 V.1[10].1, 3–11: 53 V.1[10].1, 31–35: 58 V.1[10].2, 26: 60 V.1[10].2, 44–51: 55 V.1[10].3, 20–25: 59 V.1[10].4, 33–43: 61 V.1[10].5, 19: 62 V.1[10].6, 10–12: 63 V.1[10].6, 50–53: 64 V.1[10].8, 14–23: 72 V.1[10].10, 7–15: 66 V.1[10].10, 24–31: 67 V.1[10].11, 8–13: 67 V.1[10].12, 6–15: 69 V.1[10].12, 20–21: 70 VI.4[22].3, 1–6: 146 VI.4[22].3, 6–11: 146–47 VI.4[22].3, 11–17: 147–48 VI.4[22].3, 17–22: 149

267

VI.4[22].4, 7–16: 151 VI.4[22].4, 21–26: 153 VI.4[22].4, 39–46: 155 VI.4[22].6, 8–13: 160 VI.4[22].6, 13–19: 161 VI.4[22].7, 12–15: 164 VI.4[22].8, 5–8: 168 VI.4[22].9, 1–7: 172 VI.4[22].9, 7–16: 174 VI.4[22].9, 16–25: 175 VI.4[22].9, 25–36: 176–77 VI.4[22].9, 37–45: 178–79

268 

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VI.4[22].11, 16–18: 181 VI.4[22].13, 15–18: 183 VI.4[22].15, 8–18: 184 VI.5[23].1, 1–4: 188–89 VI.5[23].1, 4–8: 190 VI.5[23].1, 8–12: 191 VI.5[23].1, 12–16: 192 VI.5[23].1, 16–20: 193–94 VI.5[23].1, 20–23: 196 VI.5[23].1, 23–26: 197 VI.5[23].4, 1–5: 198

 Index of Passages

VI.5[23].4, 5–10: 199 VI.5[23].4, 10–13: 201 VI.9[9].1, 20–30: 38 VI.9[9].3, 10–13: 41 VI.9[9].5, 8–12: 42–43 VI.9[9].5, 24; 29: 44 VI.9[9].6, 42–50: 45 VI.9[9].8, 29–36: 46–47 VI.9[9].9, 26–27: 48 VI.9[9].10, 18–21: 48–49

Subject Index

Subject Index

Alienation (ἀλλότριον), 6, 9, 19–31, 33–37, 44, 48, 52, 53, 62, 66–67, 118, 120–21, 126, 138–42, 156, 185, 247–49, 251, 261 Alexandrakis, A., 25, 258 alone (μόνον), 1, 16, 25, 31–34, 40, 45, 54, 63–64, 67, 71, 94, 120–21, 124, 133, 138, 149, 161–62, 209, 211, 213, 230, 232, Anaxagoras, 95, 244 Anaximander, 92, 96, 109 appearance (φάντασμα), 25, 77, 94, 101, 103, 105, 111, 116, 178, 190, 217, 228, 233–36, 243, Archer-Hind, R., 94, 219, 257 Aristotle, 2, 4, 5, 9n4, 22, 39, 41, 53, 56, 63, 70, 73–75, 76n44, 78–80, 82, 91n23, 92, 95, 103, 104n48, 108, 113, 115, 120, 122, 136, 138, 192n9; De Anima, 77, 91, 264; On Generation of Animals, 244n44; Metaphysics, 29n6, 40, 56, 91, 155, 191, 244n43; Nicomachean Ethics, 136, 210 Armstrong, A. H., 29n7, 75n42, 85n15, 188n3, 215, 224n15, 225n18, 257, 258 ascent, 1, 6, 15, 22, 25–31, 34–36, 42, 65n27, 68, 119–20, 123n7, 131–33, 138–39, 161n34, 185, 247–49

Atkinson, M., 54n4, 56n8, 57n10, 66n28, 257 atomists, 95, 97 beauty, 24–29, 35–38, 49, 112–13, 123, 132–33, 139, 216, 221–22, 251; of the cosmos, 5, 22, 57, 162n36; of the soul, 30–32, 48, 247; ugliness, 18, 33 becoming, 7, 10, 19, 37n20, 39n22, 53–54, 60, 78–81, 111–13, 158, 215, 225, 238–39, being, 7–8, 10, 13–14, 18–21, 32, 34, 37–38, 40–41, 45–46, 50, 60–61, 64–65, 68, 70–77, 83n11, 107, 110–13, 125, 134, 141, 144–54, 158, 171–73, 181, 184, 192–93, 196–98, 202 body, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10–12, 17–18, 21, 29n6, 31, 33n15, 34, 36, 38, 54–57, 66–67, 70, 78, 82, 88–89, 92, 94, 96, 98–99, 106, 114–15, 124, 127n13, 142–43, 148–67, 169, 172, 183–84, 200–214, 217, 220, 227, 235–36, 240, 247–49, Caluori, D., 7n3, 127n13, 259 Carroll, W., 222n12, 259 cause: efficient, 170, 180; formal, 6, 10–11, 14–15, 115; final, 46, 148; generative, 7, 11–13, 42, 45, 53, 55–57, 59,

269

cause: generative (cont.) 61, 63–64, 68, 77, 80, 82–87, 90–93, 123, 142, 144, 151, 156, 172–73, 179, 181n67, 203n22, 219n8, 242; intellect, 42, 71, 82, 173; material, 5, 11, 21, 80n4, 87, 95, 115, 231, 242, 248; paradigmatic, 15, 121, 129–30; principle, 3, 5–9, 11–12, 14–15, 17–19, 25, 32, 37–40, 43–45, 51, 53, 65, 67, 69–71, 74, 76–77, 79–82, 84n13, 85n15, 87, 89–90, 93, 95, 115, 122–23, 154, 173, 181n67, 191–92, 211, 244–45, 248–50, 254; soul, 6, 10, 14, 37, 211, 213, 233, 242. See also emanation; genus; nature; One; otherness; participation; seminal reasons; two acts change, 3, 11–13, 80–81, 85, 92–93, 94n26, 114, 143, 168, 171, 208–9, 218–20, 222, 224–25, 235, 242, 254. Chiaradonna, R., 37n20, 259 Clarke, N., 36n18, 165n42, 259 Clement of Alexandria, 72, 73n40 Cornford, F., 142n1, 259 Corrigan, K., 187n1, 259, 261 continuity, 4, 6, 97, 105, 114–15; discontinuity, 4, 97, 115, 183, cosmos, 2–7, 9, 13–14, 20–22, 33, 37, 40, 43, 47, 54–61, 64–70, 76n4, 79–80, 83–91, 97, 105–6, 113, 121, 127n13, 143–45, 148–51, 154, 159, 167, 170–72, 176, 191, 193, 195n14, 203, 206, 219n8, 223n14, 227, 230, 235, 237–40, 243, 248–49, demiurge, 5, 37, 55, 59, 67, 68, 71, 84n13, 123n7, 240 Derrida, J., 226n22, 260 Descartes, R., 3, 216 Dillon, J., 40n23, 127n13, 157n30, 258, 260 division, 44, 93, 134, 145, 149–56, 169–79, 181, 200, 204

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 Subject Index

Dodds, E. R., 142n1, 199n20, 260 Dubray, C. A., 222n12, 260 Eliade, M., 190n7, 260 emanation, 222n12 Emilsson, E., 7n3, 157n30, 260 Empedocles, 56n9, 95 emptiness, 10 eros, 29, 30, 36, 42, 120, 133, 139 evil, 18, 20, 21, 27n4, 30–33, 39, 44, 53, 67, 69–70, 80, 102, 107, 110, 112, 118, 124, 126, 130, 138–40, 183, 185, 207, 212, 221–23, 245 flight, 124–26 forgetting, 24–52 form, 6, 10–15, 18, 21, 24, 27–32, 35–46, 50–51, 55–56, 59–60, 62, 65, 67, 70–71, 76–77, 81–118, 123, 130, 142–43, 145, 147–50, 153, 166, 168–69, 178, 182, 192–93, 201, 203, 206, 211–12, 217–19, 221–30, 234–38, 240, 243–45, 248–49, 251, 255 four elements, 28–29, 39, 55n6, 56, 58, 60, 92–99, 105, 107, 115–16, 216, 218–19, 235, 251 Friedländer, P., 94n26, 260 Fronterotta, 56n8, 91n23, 258 genus, 4, 9; five highest genera, 7, 90; genera as causal, 255 Gerson, L., 189n5, 199n20, 257, 260, 263 Gnostics, 76, God, 20, 31n11, 32, 34, 36, 40–41, 48, 53, 63–67, 101, 124, 128, 185n71, 188–203 Gurtler, G., 5n2, 13n6, 17n7, 25n1, 27n4, 31n11, 33n15, 34nn16–17, 39n22, 45n30, 49n36, 70n35, 80n1, 113n78, 128n14, 142n1, 146n9, 157nn29–30, 165n42, 169n49,

172n54, 185n71, 187n1, 193n11, 199n20, 203n22, 221n9, 222n12, 224n15, 258, 260, 262, 263, 265 Halper, E., 9n4, 262 Heraclitus, 61; DK B45, 233; DK B96, 56; Fr. 118, 214 hierarchy, 33 Hutchinson, D. M., 127n13, 196n15, 262 hypostasis, 6, 14, 21, 52, 57, 59–60, 77, 82, 88, 89–90nn21–22, 91, 110–11, 127n13, 154–55, 176, 253, 255 Igal, J., 54n4, 84n14, 85n15, 86n16, 89n21, 91n23, 100n36, 104n48, 131n15, 148n19, 160n32, 176n60, 225n19, 244n44, 257, 262 ignorance, 1–2, 9, 45–46, 52–54, 69, 101, 185n71, 207 image (εἰκών), 5, 12–14, 34, 51, 63, 64–67, 71, 74, 79, 87, 90n22, 159, 163–69, 177–180, 181n67, 185, 210–12, 215, 219, 229, 237–38, 240, 242–43, 251 imagination (φαντασία), 101, 104, 106, 116–17, 159, 232, 240n39 imitation, 217, 221, 226 impassibility, 22, 30, 80n4, 206, 208, 217–18, 224, 245, 249 individuation, 5, 79, 81, 248, 254 infinity (ἀπειρία), 35–36, 45, 51, 109–10, 155, 177, 181n67, 183–84; the unlimited (τὸ ἄπειρον), 92, 96–99, 107, 109–13, 117, 155, 173, 216 intellect, 35, 40–45, 47–54, 57–67, 71, 74, 76, 86–91, 100, 104, 106, 110–11, 114, 121, 123n7, 124–27, 129–30, 142, 149–50, 156, 158–59, 172–74, 176, 188–89, 192, 196, 202–3, 217, 247–48; duality, 13, 60, 62, 64, 77, 82, 88; intellectual realm, 83–84, 127, 133, 138, 153, 161–62, 181, 183, 197,

199, 236, 253–54; seeking the One, 65, 90, 127n13, 180, 250–52 Inwood, B., 189n5, 257, 262 justice, 122, 124, 129–30 Kant, I., 4, 39n22, 68, 159, 191 knowledge, 1–2, 7–8, 23, 25, 28, 30, 43, 45–46, 58–59, 74, 99, 101, 103, 117–18, 121, 127n13, 134, 161,175, 180, 185, 190n7, 191–92, 198, 201 language, 21, 29–30, 39, 41–43, 50, 74, 94, 103, 113, 123–25, 133, 138, 145–46, 157, 169, 181–82, 190, 197, 200–204, 218, 224, 245 Langer, S., 190n7, 262 life, 5, 7, 17, 34, 36, 40, 47–49, 55, 58, 77, 89, 120, 128n14, 129, 137–38, 141, 149–54, 185n7, 202, 215–17, 241 light, 14, 17, 28–30, 54–55, 83n11, 88, 90n22, 112, 126, 163, 166–68, 176–79, 182, 193, 214, 219, 231, 236, 246, 253 likeness (ὁμοίωσις), 15, 122–24, 127, 130, 131n15, 180, 182, 194, 212, 217 Leech, D., 3n1, 262 logic, 4, 7n3, 9n4, 133–35 logos, 28, 57, 85n15, 99–101, 116, 181, 217, 231–34, 238, 244 Macmurray, J., 190n7, 262 magnitude, 92–94, 98–106, 113, 115–16, 182, 199, 201, 208, 215, 238–39 mathematics, 133, 139 matter, 5–6, 8–11, 239–45, 248–49, 252, 254 mirror, 51, 79, 217, 219, 227–29, 231, 237n35, 239 modernity, 2, 4–5, 9, 14, 68, 94, 157n30, 188, 192, 195, 202, 204, 254 motion and rest, 7, 9–10, 19, 37, 50, 59– 63, 73, 83n11, 134, 190, 207, 212, 236 Moutafakis, N., 25n1, 258

Subject Index 

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  271

music, 18, 27n3, 28, 49, 131–37, 182, 211 myth, 60, 94n26, 146n11, 229–30 nature as a principle, 83–87, 127n13, 160, 193n11, 195n14, 203, 216 O’Brien, D, 263 omnipresence, 8, 127n13, 143, 149, 157n29, 187n1, 188–90, 193n12, 195–98, 202, 249, 253 One, 1–6, 19, 33, 40, 52, 59, 75–76, 82, 121, 124, 156, 197, 247, 252–53; beyond being, 13, 62, 65, 70–71, 74, 188, 203; cause, 13–14, 22, 34–35, 38, 42, 44–45, 47, 50–51, 53, 60, 63, 67, 88–90, 95, 110, 180–81, 248, 250; experience of the One (as not other), 21, 34, 36–37, 41, 46, 48, 68, 102, 186; ground of unity, 20, 42, 50, 87, 127n13, 196–97; having no otherness, 6–9, 20, 112–15, 117, 123n7, 245; self–sufficient, 46; the Good, 24, 64, 67, 125, 193n12, 202, 222, 223n14; unable to be an object of thought, 41, 45, 49, 63, 101 ontology, 22, 145, 215 otherness (ἑτερότης) and sameness (ταὐτότης), 7–11, 19–21, 36–37, 41, 44–50, 53–54, 60–64, 73–74, 80, 83n11, 89–90, 92, 99, 106–8, 110–15, 117, 123,127–28, 142, 152–55, 173n55,6, 176–77, 181, 206, 222n12, 223, 226–27, 231–32, 245; as generative, 59, 90, 123, 142, 159n31, 173 Otto, R., 188n2, 227, 263 Ousager, A., 37n19, 142n1, 193n12, 199n20, 263 Parmenides, 41, 50, 53, 56n8, 61, 70, 72–79, 252; Fr. 3, 71–73; Fr. B 8.25, 8.5, 153n25 participation, 108, 141–42, 145, 148– 49, 168–72, 183, 186, 221–23, 230

272 

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 Subject Index

Perl, E., 25n1, 263 Plato, 2, 4, 6–7, 22, 26–27, 30, 32, 36–39, 41–42, 46, 50, 53, 61, 63, 65, 70–76, 78–82, 92, 94n26, 104, 113, 115, 120, 122, 124, 137–38, 155, 173n56, 181n67, 186, 190, 193–94, 200–201, 206, 219n8, 221, 224–29, 243, 245, 252, 254; allegory of the cave, 30, 131, 216; dialogues: Parmenides, 15, 17, 75, 76, 141–42, 143n2, 145, 149, 150, 155, 166–67, 172–74, 176, 178–79, 181n67, 183, 198–200, 204, 258–59; Phaedo, 63n19, 71, 122, 124, 146n11, 213; Phaedrus, 24, 35, 65; Republic, 3, 14, 17, 35, 37n19, 38, 50, 60, 63n19, 71, 122, 129, 131, 134, 137, 142n1, 146, 178, 193–94, 199, 203, 240; Sophist, 3, 7, 9, 37, 40, 50, 60, 73, 76, 80, 83n11, 90n22, 108, 113n78, 181, 206, 215, 245, 255; Symposium, 6, 21, 24–25, 34n17, 35, 48 132, 194, 215, 221, 229; Theaetetus, 120, 124; Timaeus, 3–5, 21, 27n4, 37, 55n6, 71, 77, 80, 94, 101, 143n2, 150, 153–54, 180n64, 181n67, 194, 205–6, 215, 217, 219n8, 220–21, 223–25, 227, 229–31, 233, 239, 243–45 Platonic forms, 179 potency, 3, 11, 13, 15, 80, 136, 165n42, 185–86, 218, 254 prayer, 63 presence, 6, 8, 12, 14, 17, 20, 22, 25, 31, 33n15, 34, 36, 43, 56, 62–63, 66–67, 70, 81, 85n15, 100, 118, 122, 124, 126– 27, 131, 133, 137–38, 145–46, 152–57, 161–66, 171–72, 174–77, 181, 183, 185, 188n2, 189, 202, 208, 214, 218, 220, 222, 224, 229, 233, 235, 240n39, 249–50, 252 Proclus, 72, 73n40, Protagoras, 121 purification, 16–17, 24, 31–32, 34, 55, 122, 124–28, 213–14

quality, 61, 92–93, 97–103, 107–8, 112– 13, 115, 117–18, 149, 153–54, 157, 159, 163, 168–71, 215, 218–20, 238, 245 reason, 32, 66–68, 82–87, 101, 116, 124, 128n14, 135, 137, 180n64, 190–91, 194, 201, 226, 252; seminal reasons, 83–87 receptacle, 5, 8, 39, 78–80, 92, 104, 112–15, 206, 224–27, 231, 244, 252, 254 reflection (εἴδωλον), 89, 110–11, 162, 166, 202, 216–17, 219, 224, 228–29, 232–33, 237n35, 239–40 Rutten, C., 11n5, 264 Sallis, J., 226n22, 262, 265 Schroeder, F. M., 34n17, 48n33, 193n12, 264 science, 7, 13, 43, 135, 241 self, 15–16, 22, 34n17, 40, 46, 50, 53, 64, 67–70, 76, 149, 160–62, 188n1, 252; double self, two selves, 15–16, 69, 120, 127–31, 135, 137–39, 161–62, 184–85, 196n15, 248 sensation, 65, 69, 88n19, 127n13, 143n2, 182, 185–86, 207 Sextus Empiricus, 190; Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 189, 258 Shaw, M., 195n14, 264 simplicity, 5, 12, 44, 65n27, 82, 88 single living thing (ζῷον ἕν), 3–5, 7, 249 Smyth, H. W., 132n16, 228n24, 265 soul: activities, 21–22, 26, 30, 37–38, 42–43, 58, 67, 69, 120–25, 156, 159, 161, 182, 209–10, 214, 233; alienation, 5, 9, 19–20, 24, 27, 29, 31, 33, 36, 53, 121, 126, 138, 185, 247; cosmic soul, 52, 55–57, 242; higher and lower, 52, 66, 84, 123, 127, 207, 212, 248; hypostasis soul, 6, 57–60, 82, 88–91, 110– 11; immateriality, 17, 42–44, 100,

114, 165–67, 207–9, 217, 245, 249; movement, 1, 33, 35, 41, 44, 48, 62, 65, 68, 126, 130; the soul’s ignorance, 52–53, 69, 101, 134–35, 161, 248, 251; types, 6, 14, 21, 52, 57, 77, 120, 150, 255; unity between souls, 57, 59, 150–55, 157–58, 183, 191, 199; source, 3, 5, 11–14, 17, 20, 29, 34n17, 36–37, 42, 44–46, 59, 62–64, 67, 71–77, 84–85, 88, 95, 121–23, 127, 135, 144, 166–68, 173–79, 184, 187, 196, 198, 200, 209, 222n12, 237, 240–42; space, 5–6, 39, 84n13, 94n26, 104–6, 116, 166, 241; species, 4, 7n3, 77, 91, 98, 177, 255 Stamatellos, G., 56n9, 71n37, 73n40, 74n41, 75n43, 95n27, 96n29, 265 Stern-Gillet, S., 187n1, 265 Stoic, 4, 25, 33n15, 56, 80, 84n14, 89, 139, 143n2, 189, 207, 210, 215, 225 substance, 11–12, 40–41, 45, 63, 68, 80, 89–90, 92, 142, 155, 169, 172, 175–78, 181n67, 208–11, 215, 226, 228, 232, 249, 254 substrate, 5–6, 8, 21, 62, 78–83, 86–88, 92–99, 102, 106–9, 113–17, 145, 183, 206, 209, 217–20, 224–27, 234–35, 239, 243, 245, 248, 252, 254 Sumi, A., 265 sympathy, 39, 127n13, 149 teleology, 193–96, 202–3 time, 6, 39, 49, 84n13, 89, 104–6, 116, 148n18, 171, 177, 179, 201 the one and the many, 7 transcendence, 6, 11–12, 17, 47, 143, 146, 188, 197–98, 201–2, 249 two acts, principle of, 3, 7n3, 8, 11–19, 80, 90n23, 249 unity, 1, 8, 10, 12–13, 20–21, 28–29, 37–38, 40–45, 49–50, 58, 60–61, 64, 82, 123, 127n13, 129–30, 132, 134,

Subject Index 

�

  273

unity (cont.) 141, 144, 150, 152, 154, 163, 173, 181, 190, 192–200, 202–4, 252–53; from the soul, 5–6, 13–14, 28, 36–37, 39, 43, 59, 67–68, 77, 84n13, 139, 143, 153, 157–60, 183, 186, 247–48; from matter, 40, 79, 87–90, 105, 113–15, 117, 245; of the cosmos, 4–5, 76n44, 145–46, 219n8 unlimited, the, 92–93, 96–99, 106–13, 117, 155, 173, 216. See also infinity

274 

�

 Subject Index

virtue, 15–16, 22, 24, 32, 119–24, 127, 129–33, 135–39, 161, 207–8; civic, purifying, 119, 128, 136, 214, 250 vision, 7, 25, 27, 32, 35, 36, 48, 126, 162 Wallace, W. A., 222n12, 260 wisdom, 16, 32, 74, 122, 129, 134–37, 175, 230

" From the Alien to the Alone: A Study of Soul in Plotinus was designed in Jensen Pro and composed by Kachergis Book Design of Pittsboro, North Carolina. It was printed on 55-pound Natural Offset and bound by Maple Press of York, Pennsylvania.