Plotinus

Platonism as a System

Proclus, in his Platonic Theology, avers that Plotinus is the greatest exegete (ἐξηγητής) “of the Platonic revelation” (τῆς Πλατωνικῆς ἐποπτεíας).1 The coupling of the term ‘exegete’ with the term ‘revelation’ indicates that Proclus is talking about more than a commentary on the dialogues or an explication de texte. As Plotinus himself says in the course of his presentation of the three fundamental ‘hypostases’ of Platonism:

These statements of ours are not recent or new, but rather were made a long time ago, though not explicitly. The things we are saying now are exegeses of those, relying on the writings of Plato himself as evidence that these are ancient views.2

Plotinus, like Numenius, has no doubt that the principles of the Platonic system have been grasped by others long before Plato. But Plotinus, like Proclus, is certain that Plato has revealed these in an incomparable way. This passage tells us three things: Plotinus does not consider himself an innovator or an original philosopher; the exegete is tasked with making explicit what is only implicit; and Plato, too, is not original, at least in his expression of fundamental metaphysical principles. Among the ancients that Plotinus goes on to claim dimly saw the truth are Parmenides, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, and Empedocles. Of Aristotle’s unequivocal commitment to this “chorus,” Plotinus is in some doubt. Those especially who regard Plotinus as an innovator, perhaps malgré lui-même, will hardly be persuaded by the inclusion of Pre-Socratics among those who were ‘Platonists’ before Plato.

In this regard, one may perhaps contrast Aristotle’s survey of his predecessors’ treatment of causality and his conclusion that, although all of these have touched on the four causes in some sense, none of them have done so in an adequate manner.3 Neither Aristotle nor Plotinus seems to have any difficulty in attributing to their predecessors views that are only ‘implicit’ in the texts. The reason for this is clear: both assumed that their predecessors, like themselves, were focused on the truth, which serves as the criterion for exegesis. If, for example, the four causes are the logically necessary and sufficient framework for scientific explanation, then anything that the Pre-Socratics say that shows that they were, however dimly or partially, aware of this, can be attributed to their approach to wisdom. As for Plotinus, it is not that he does not have what he regards as textual support for his claim that his system is identical to Plato’s. We have already referred in a number of places to some of these texts as they were cited by earlier Platonists. But the deeper point is that his focus, like Aristotle’s, is on the truth. And again, like Aristotle, he believes the truth is attainable independently of the exegesis of any of one’s predecessors. As Plotinus says, there are numerous arguments one could employ to show the existence of a first principle of all. His citation of Platonic texts is always in support of the conclusion, never as a substitute for independent arguments for that conclusion. I suppose that this is at least part of what Proclus means when he speaks of the ‘Platonic revelation.’ On the matters for which Plato does argue, namely, for particular consequences of his fundamental principles, Plotinus is usually either silent or else he offers an interpretation that he believes to be most consistent with fundamentals. Often enough, Plotinus is dealing with matters that have arisen over the course of philosophy in the six hundred years or so between Plato and himself and on which Plato does not speak directly. In such cases, Plotinus will defend a position that he thinks anyone committed to the fundamental principles must take.4

We can also observe in Plotinus’s appeal to ‘ancient wisdom’ and in his use of the Platonic material that UP is a deep underlying assumption. As we will see presently, the postulation of the three basic principles or hypostases of Plotinus’s Platonism can be inferred immediately from the conjunction of the tenets of UP. Thus, if materialism, mechanism, nominalism, relativism, and skepticism are false, then the ultimate explanations of the phenomena that are implicitly affirmed in the face of the falsity of these positions—the existence of immaterial entities, of life as not supervenient on bodies, of intelligible reality, of universal truths, and of knowledge—will have a conclusion in the three hypostases. Without the One or Good, Intellect, and Soul, suitably arrayed hierarchically in terms of explanatory scope, there can be no explanation for, say, the existence of rationality, virtue, love, or evil.5 For a particularly vexed question, such as the relation between an immaterial person and his living body, Plotinus will bring to bear all three hypostases. That is, we need to understand how Soul is related to Intellect, how Intellect is related to the One, and, conversely, how the One employs Intellect and Soul, in order to give an adequate account of what a human being is. In the remainder of this chapter, I am going to offer an explication of the Plotinian system independently of its putative Platonic basis. In the following two chapters, I will turn to Plotinus as an exegete of Plato and to his reasons for believing that he is faithful to the master’s vision.

The First Principle of All

The term ‘hypostasis’ (ὑπὀστασις) is not a particularly felicitous one in representing the principles of Plotinus’s system. Plotinus will frequently use the term to refer to the existence, that is, roughly, extramental existence, of things like love, time, motion, numbers, and so on.6 Generally, he does not suppose that there is any question about the existence of such items, but rather that the accounts of their existence, by non-Platonists especially, are defective. By contrast, the claim that there are three fundamental hypostases or existents is, of course, controversial. Porphyry gives as a title to the treatise V 1 “On the Three Primary Hypostases,” which nicely indicates their privileged status as principles. But it is the claim that these three must exist in a hierarchical arrangement that is most important and controversial. Their status as categories of understanding or of explanation is secondary.

So we need to begin with the proof of the existence of a first principle of all, variously, though diffidently, called by Plotinus ‘the Good’ or ‘the One.’7 In V 4, 1, Plotinus argues as follows:

If there is something after the First, it is necessary that that which comes from that does so either immediately or else it has its ascent back to it through intermediaries, and that there be an ordering of things second and third,8 with the second ascending to the first and the third to the second. For there must be some simple prior to everything, and this is different from everything after it, being by itself, not mixed with the things that come from it, all the while being able to be present to other things, having what those other things have in a different manner, being truly one, and not with its being different from its oneness, in which case it would be false that it is one,9 and of which there is no “account or knowledge” of it;10 it is in fact said to be “beyond essence”11—for if it is not simple, beyond all combination and composition and not truly one, it would not be a principle—most self-sufficient by being simple, and first of all. For that which is not first12 needs that which is prior to it, and that which is not simple is in need of the simples in it in order that it should be made out of them.

That which is like this must be unique. For if there were something other like this, both of these would be one. For we are not speaking about two bodies or saying that the One is the first body. For a body is not simple, and a body is generated, and it is not a principle; “the principle is ungenerable,”13 not being bodily, but truly one, that would be the First. If, therefore, there would be something different after the First, that would no longer be simple. That, therefore, will be a one-many.14

Let us begin by noting that Plotinus is here giving an argument for what he takes to be the existence of the Idea of the Good from Republic. In addition, he assumes that the Idea of the Good is identical with the One, whose being and oneness are not distinct. This is the One of the first hypothesis of the second part of Parmenides. I leave until next chapter the interpretative basis for this identification.15 Here, we need to concentrate the argument that is being advanced. Plotinus argues for two conclusions: (1) the existence of every composite or complex entity requires an unqualifiedly simple entity as its explanans; (2) there is at most one such entity.16

Let us next focus on the reasoning leading to the assertion of (2). This is essentially a reductio ad absurdum proof.17 If there were more than one absolutely simple entity, each would be one, yet different from the other.18 That wherein they would supposedly differ would, therefore, be distinct from each entity itself. Suppose that the second ‘One,’ call it B, had a property f, namely, the property in virtue of which it was different from the first One, which we may call A. So we seem committed to the truth of ‘B is f.’ But this proposition purports to supply us with two pieces of information: B exists and it is f.19 If, though, this is the case, then there is a minimal complexity in B, the complexity consisting of the existent B and its property f. Even if B were a ‘bare particular,’ this complexity would be unavoidable. This is precisely what Plotinus denies of the One, which is “beyond all combination and composition.” Stated in Platonic terms, if B exists it must have some οὺσία or nature that is really distinct from it, the existing thing.20 If B were not really distinct from its οὺσία, it would be indistinguishable from A, counter to the original hypothesis.

If, then, there can be no more than one absolutely simple entity, we ask next why he thinks that there must be at least one such entity. In the above passage, Plotinus just seems to assume that this entity exists. But there is an argument for this conclusion at the beginning of the treatise VI 9. The treatise begins with the assertion “all beings are beings by that which is one.”21 That is, the unity of a composite—the minimal unity arising from the minimal complexity of the existent and its οὺσία—is not owing either to the existent or to the οὺσία that it has. The examples that Plotinus gives here of a complex unity are an army, a chorus, and a flock of animals. But it would be a mistake to focus on the artificiality of these examples; none of these exist by nature. His point is that these composites would not exist if they were not unified as an army or chorus or flock and the unified whole would not exist without the parts. Yet the unity of the whole is not self-explanatory.22 To put this intuitively, consider a set of sheep, say all the sheep in New Zealand. They do not become a flock until they are ‘unified’ and caused to be such. Nothing in any of the individuals provides this unity. It follows that since there can be no more than one absolutely simple in the universe, anything—whether its unity is that of an individual soldier or that of an army, say—we can think of with any nature or property is a whole as opposed to a mere sum.23

The point is generalizable. The One is necessary to explain the existence or being of any composite whatsoever, including the minimal composite of an entity with an οὺσία.24 The οὺσία that such a minimal being has could not constitute its identity, for that identity is the identity of a composite, not of the οὺσία alone.25 Nor, of course, could the existent itself explain its existence, for the existent has no logical or causal priority to its οὺσία, that is, its existence is always existence as something having this οὺσία. If it were to explain its own existence as an entity with this οὺσία, there would be something about it that would make it an explanans. But there is nothing about this existent, that is, no property in it, that does not belong to its οὺσία. Consequently, nothing that is composite or whose unity is over and above its being and its essence could be autoexplicable. And since we have already shown that there can be no more than one absolutely simple principle, the proof that there must be some autoexplicable principle to explain all the heteroexplicable composites is a proof of the existence of an absolutely simple autoexplicable principle.26 That is, the One is self-caused (αί’τιον έαυτοῦ).27

It is, of course, open for one to object that any assumption of heteroexplicability begs the question. Even if there is no more than one absolutely simple entity, in which case everything else must be composite, at least minimally so, this does not entail the heteroexplicability of these composites. Perhaps they are just inexplicable. But maintaining this position is, one would think, rather costly. As a blanket assertion, it simply abolishes explanations, at least for the existence of anything. It abolishes the distinction between necessary and contingent existence, since a contingent existent would seem, by definition, to be contingent on something that explains its existence. If one foregoes the autoexplicability of the first principle, then one must as a consequence forego the heteroexplicability of everything else, which is as much as to say that everything becomes inexplicable.28

At this point, the Plotinian task is to show that this absolutely simple first principle of all really does explain the existence of everything else.29 Perhaps the most puzzling claim that Plotinus repeatedly makes in this regard is that the One is “the power of all things” (δύναμις τῶν πάντων).30 Plotinus explicitly denies that this means that the One is potency, as is matter.31 For matter is passive, whereas the sense in which the One is δύναμις is the opposite of passivity.32 This clarification has led many to suppose that Plotinus is claiming that the One is the active potency of all things, following the distinction Aristotle makes in book Theta of his Metaphysics.33 Perhaps this interpretation is reinforced by Plotinus’s evident reference to Republic where the Idea of the Good is said to be “beyond οὺσία by exceeding it in seniority and in power [δυναμέι].”34 There are, I believe, insurmountable objections to this interpretation. First, for Aristotle, active or agent potency is potency nevertheless, distinct from actuality (ένέργεια).35 But as we will see in a moment, the primary ‘operational’ property of the One is that it is ένέργεια. Like Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, in which even a distinction between thinker and thinking is rejected because this would imply potency in it, so in the One there is no complexity or compositeness at all because this would undermine the requisite simplicity of the first principle of all.36 If the One has or is an active potency, then there is an actuality of it outside of it or other than it. Then it would obviously be incomplete, something Plotinus unequivocally denies.37 Second, if the One is an active potency, then it is the active potency of all things, as the text maintains. Its actuality would be those things. If this were so, the One’s explanatory role—that which it is postulated to fulfill in the first place—would be obliterated, since in actualizing its potency it would just be those things whose existence needs explaining. How, we may ask, is the power to be all things an explanation of these things? But if the putative active power is the power to make all things, then we are not elucidating the explanatory role of the One when we say this, for it is not the possibility of the existence of all things that is in need of an explanation but their actual existence. Finally, if the actuality of the One’s active potency is in something other than it or is outside of it, then a real relation between the One and this other thing would be erected or, perhaps, presupposed. But the One is not really related to anything; if it were, it would have to have the complexity of an entity that stands in relation to something different from or other than it.38

What, then, is Plotinus claiming when he calls the One δύναμις τῶν πάντων? As we saw in the last chapter, Numenius, in trying to explain the causality of the first principle, says that it would be impious to say that it is eminently all things, that is, that it is the paradigm of all the Forms. This is the role of the Demiurge, who makes all things according to the model with which he is cognitively identical. But the Good is ‘he who is,’ which, I am supposing, Plotinus glosses as δύναμις τῶν πάντων. To be absolutely simple and ‘being itself’ (αὺτοὸν) is to be virtually all things in the sense in which ‘white’ light is virtually all the colors of the spectrum and a function is virtually its domain and range.39 The One is virtually all things because all things exist by participating in an οὺσία, which is really distinct from themselves. The One is above οὺσία, but yet the postulated cause of all the composites with οὺσία.40 It is virtually all of them in the sense that it is what the cause of composites of εἶναι and οὺσία would have to be if it is to have the nature to explain the being of such things.41

The identification of the One, cause of the being of all things, with the Idea of the Good entails a causal role for the latter. That is, the goodness and the being of everything are distinct only insofar as this goodness and being belong to that which has οὺσία, which is various. It is not the case that being is univocally attributable to everything, but goodness is not. Being and goodness are both equivocal in their attribution. Goodness is the One insofar as it is an ultimate end or goal of desire. That the Good is unlimited in its causal power may be glossed by the principle bonum est diffusivum sui.42 In Plotinus, this principle is expressed in terms of the ‘two activities.’ Soul is the “activity external to the essence of Intellect” (ἐνέργεια ἐκ τῆς οὺσίας), as Intellect is the external activity of the One. This is distinct from the “internal activity of the essence” of each principle (ἐνέργεια τῆς οὺσίας).43 Of course, the One does not have an essence, nor does it, properly speaking, have an activity, though it can be said to be activity.44 Because the One is perfect activity, it is diffusive of itself. The goodness of anything is precisely what is diffused. One may say, accordingly, that to be good is to be caused to be by the One.

The proof that goodness is essentially self-diffusive relies on the self-evident multiplicity of intelligible forms in the universe. That the knowledge of intelligible reality necessarily produces true virtue is one expression of the necessary production of intelligible form from the Good. The Good must love itself if in the achievement of its desire it necessarily produces. Since it necessarily produces, and since production is the work of love of the Good, the perfect self-possession of the Good that is present in the first principle of all must result from its self-love.45 The self-love of the first principle is expressed by Plotinus as a sort of gloss on the fact that the first principle is autoexplicable. Anything other than the first principle is, accordingly, heteroexplicable.46 Whatever has its causality outside of it is, then, the product or work of the self-love of the One. Since love is always for the Good, the products of the One’s self-love are not loved by it.47 But at the same time, production by the One ensures that whatever is capable of desire loves the One or the Good.

The self-causality of the One is also, remarkably, described as “[making] itself from nothing.”48 Since there are no real distinctions whatsoever within the One, its being and its activity are indistinguishable. Its being is the activity of self-love. What, then, is the difference between the making that belongs to the One’s ‘self-making’ and the making that results in the One’s products? Stated otherwise, how can the self-making of the absolutely simple first principle of all result in something other than that first principle? The answer is that what is not the One is also not made from nothing; nor is it identical with the One. The One is virtually what everything else is.

It is worth emphasizing at this point that whatever Plotinus does in fact mean by attributing δύναμις to the One, he is saying what he says as an explication of the central idea of Platonism, one that he believes Plato embraces, even if it is obscurely expressed in the dialogues. In the next chapter, we will look more closely at Plotinus’s reasons for attributing to Plato the view that I am attributing to Plotinus.

Intellect

If the absolutely simple first principle of all is virtually all things in the above sense, it cannot be eminently all things, too. For if it were, its simplicity would be destroyed. That is, it cannot be the multitude of οὺσίαι that constitute the paradigms of all intelligible reality.49 Like Numenius and many others, Plotinus takes the Demiurge to fulfill this role.50 That the Demiurge so conceived must exist as distinct from the One follows from (1) an argument that Forms must exist and (2) an argument that these Forms, though each is a distinct οὺσία, must be somehow the same. Let us leave (1) aside for the moment and concentrate on (2). When I say that the Forms must be the same, I mean that they must be various expressions of a unity such that it makes it possible to explain the existence of necessarily true predicative judgments. For example, that horses are animals and not plants or that four is half of eight are, for Plotinus, unquestioned necessary truths. To assume that there are Forms of horse and animal and four and eight and one-half is not sufficient to make these propositions true. Roughly, we could say that what makes them true is that horse is one of the things that animal is, and that half of eight is one of the things that four is. But, of course, the nexus of Forms providing the basis for necessarily true propositions is infinite. It is the Demiurge or Intellect that is supposed to be that which unifies all the Forms such that there is an ontological basis for the kind of identification that Plotinus thinks is presumed in the assertion of necessary truths.

To speak of a kind or, worse, a degree of identity makes little sense in a contemporary context in which identity is a purely formal notion. But for Plotinus, the One, which is virtually all things, and uniquely self-identical, is the source of all identities.51 Everything that exists is one, but nothing is absolutely or perfectly one except the One. Hence, for him, a distinction between a predicative judgment and an identity statement rests on an ambiguity that, taken in one way, offers a false dichotomy. On the one hand, to say what something is, is to state its identity; on the other, to say that something is just what it is and nothing else is not to preclude its possessing a compositional, and hence compromised, identity. What Plotinus is doing is, in effect, drawing out some of the consequences of antinominalism. Thus, a proposition stating what a Form is or what its properties are is an identity statement of a particular sort. And yet metaphysically graded identity does not preclude formal identity, that which one claims when one asserts that each Form is “itself by itself what it is.” We must be clear that, for Plotinus, to maintain that the elephant is a mammal is not to claim that being a mammal is a property of the Form of Elephant any more than to say that Justice is a virtue is to claim that Justice is virtuous.52 If this is the case, whence the necessary metaphysical identity that explains the necessity of necessarily true propositions?

Intellect (νοῦς) fulfills this role. As Plotinus says,

It is, then, perhaps foolish to seek to discover if Intellect is among real things even if some would contend that it is not.53 It is better to ask if Intellect is such as we say it is, and if it is something separate, and if this is the real beings, that is, if the nature of Forms is there.54

Intellect is metaphysically identical with all the Forms.55 That is why Plotinus dubs it a “one-many.”56 But this is not quite adequate to the task, for Intellect could just be the one entity that, say, contemplates all the Forms, in which case, their identity is, so to speak, extrinsic. They would only be one in the sense that they are being contemplated by one entity. Plotinus, like Aristotle, however, is firm in holding that the highest mode of cognition, that which Intellect exercises, consists in an identification of the subject and the object.57 As Plotinus puts it, “Whenever something thinks itself, this is thinking in the primary sense.”58 So the qualified identity that Intellect possesses is the identity of all intelligibles.59

Necessarily true propositions represent Intellect, but they do so not by stating a supposed fact, like a contingent state of affairs made up of what the subject and the predicate “stand for.” Necessarily true propositions represent that actual states of affairs produced by Intellect or, in Platonic language, the Demiurge.60 Thus, if, per impossibile, the Demiurge did not produce this orderly universe, a copy or image of the Living Animal, it would still be the case that what would make ‘the elephant is a mammal’ true would exist, but the proposition would have no referential meaning. That is, there would be no elephants to refer to in claiming for them mammality. And to say that the proposition is ‘true of Intellect’ is exceedingly feeble since it is the identical Intellect of which it is also ‘true’ that ‘the whale is a mammal.’ All that one could say in this counterfactual circumstance is that Intellect’s identity is that of the fullness of intelligible reality, a reality that is accessible to us as embodied intellects principally via our sensible experience.61 Thus, for Plotinus it follows that whereas the One is virtually all things, Intellect is eminently all things. That is why it is a ‘one-many.’ It is both, paradoxically, minimally complex and maximally complex since it is cognitively identical with all possible Forms. It is the eternal guarantor of the necessarily complex intelligible realm.62

The ‘division of labor’ between One and Intellect does not preclude a hierarchical ordering. In fact, Intellect is an instrument of the One, and Soul (the third hypostasis) is an instrument of Intellect and thereby an instrument of the One.63

Since Soul depends on Intellect and Intellect on the Good, in this way all things depend on the Good through intermediaries, some of these being close and some of these beings neighbors of those things which are close, and sensibles at the farthest distance being dependent on Soul.64

In what respect do all things depend on the One?

What, then, are “all things”? In fact they are those things of which the One is the principle. But how is the One the principle of all things? Is it because by making each of them to be one it preserves them? In fact, it is also because it made them exist. But how did it do this? In fact it was by having them prior to their existence. But has it not been said that in this way it will be a multiplicity? So, therefore, we must say that it had them, in a way, so as not to be distinct, whereas the things in the second principle are distinguished by reason, for this is at once actuality, whereas the One is virtually the totality.65

If the One is virtually all things and Intellect is eminently all things, then the straightforward, though highly misleading, deduction would be that οὺσία depends on Intellect and εἶναι depends on the One. This, however, cannot be the division of labor. For the One is virtually all οὺσίαι. And as the canonical passage from Republic has it, “the Good is that which provides εἶναι and οὺσία to the things that are knowable.” So we are left to conclude that the One is virtually not just all the essences with which Intellect is cognitively identical, but that it is virtually all that is. It is virtually the being or existence as well as the essence of everything.

The instrumentality of Intellect is crucial here. For it is often supposed that the causality in Plotinus’s metaphysical hierarchy is a per accidens series, in which the One causes Intellect, and Intellect causes Soul.66 Thus is emanation construed, something like the segmented unfolding of entities inchoately contained in the first. But apart from how we analyze instrumentality, this cannot be the case because if the One were to cease its productive activity with Intellect, it would be limited in a very specific way: it would not have the power to produce anything else. But since the One is infinite in power and unlimited, it is false to claim that there could be any limitation whatsoever in its productive activity.67 Whatever has being must ultimately depend on the One.68 The term “ultimately,” of course, presumes intermediacy or instrumentality.69

If the One is the per se cause of everything, that is because it is virtually everything. But it is not, therefore, eminently everything. That there are in this sensible realm elephants and whales and virtuous people requires that there be eternal paradigms of these. Such paradigms exist unequivocally, but their eternal existence is eternally caused by the One, which is virtually all of them. As we have seen, this multiplicity of Forms is what Intellect is. Anything that partakes of a Form has some sort of being ultimately caused by the One with the instrumentality of Intellect. But anything that so partakes is diminished in reality in relation to that paradigm. The most important consequence of this—one that will loom large in Plotinus’s interpretation of a number of Platonic texts—is that a ‘return’ to the One amounts to a ‘reconnection’ with Intellect in some way. This achievement of unity or the unification of the person happens via an active identification with Intellect, something that needs to be explored in the next chapter.

Soul

The activity of Intellect is thinking or intellection (νὀησις). Plotinus follows Aristotle precisely in identifying intellect as the paradigm of life.70 So, on the one hand, the One is the ultimate cause of life, but on the other, Intellect is the instrumental or ‘relatively ultimate’ cause of life. How, then, is life supposed to be related to soul (ψυχή)? Just as the paradigmatic cause of being must be distinct from that of which it is the paradigm, so the paradigmatic cause of life must be distinct from it.71 The activity of Intellect is participated in in two ways: by psychical activity and by nonpsychical, though intelligible being. Soul is the principle of psychical activity. Its causal ‘scope’ is narrower than that of Intellect, whose scope includes all that is in any way intelligible. And the causal scope of Intellect is narrower than the causal scope of the One, whose scope includes all being.

Soul is the principle of embodied life, whether this be the life of an individual living thing or the life of the universe.

Soul is another principle that should be added to real things. Not just the soul of the universe, but also that of each individual, as a nontrivial principle, to weave all things together, not itself coming to be like other things from seeds, but being a principal cause of activity.72

That Soul is not from “seeds” means that it is not itself supervenient or epiphenomenal; it is the starting point for the explanation of a particular kind of phenomenon. What is this?

Soul is the principle of the motions that originate in desire for the Good.73 Plotinus takes the phrase “desire for the Good” to be ambiguous. It means either a desire directly for the Good or a desire for that which is good, that is some kind of thing that is good and so a manifestation of the Good. It is only Intellect that eternally and directly possesses that which it desires.74 Soul is the principle of the desires of embodied living things that pursue the Good via particular goods.75 Only embodied animals with intellects can aspire to have the kind of direct experience of the Good that Intellect has.

For the moment, let us focus on the two types of activity in relation to Intellect and Soul. The external activity is an image or representation of the internal.76 Soul is not just a product of Intellect, but inferior to it in the manner of a Platonic image.77 So psychic activity images intellectual activity. For individual human souls, the imaging constitutes the life of embodied persons, who live rational lives.78 That is, they operate according to discursive reasoning applied to the satisfaction of rational desires. For individual nonhuman souls, the imaging operates differently.

Nature, Plotinus tells is, is the lowest part of the soul of the universe.

For nature is an image of intelligence, and since it is the limit of soul, has the limit of λὀγος, which shines in it, just as in a thick lump of wax, a stamp impresses itself through to the surface of the other side, and is clear on the upper side, but only leaves a weak trace below.79

The λὀγος that nature is or has produces “nonrandomized movement” (κίνησις τίς οὺκ εὶκῇ).80 The motion produced by nature is bodily, as distinct from the “motion of intellect” (κίνησις νοῦ) belonging to Intellect and the higher part of the embodied soul.81 The variety of nonrandomized bodily motions are expressions of Soul-Intellect-One analogous to the way that a solid geometrical shape is an expression of a plane geometrical figure, which in turn is a ‘projection’ of an algebraic formula, which in turn is an expression of the principle of number. This analogy, however, is defective in that it does not consider the property of conscious desire in Soul. The digestive system in an animal, say, or a tropism in a plant are nonconscious expressions of the desire for the only true object of desire, namely, the Good.82

The hierarchy of instrumental causality is evident in the way Plotinus represents the operation of nature. Plato employs instrumental causality in explaining how the sensible world acquires intelligibility: beautiful things are beautiful by means of beauty; large things are large and small things are small by means of largeness and smallness.83 Since Forms do not in themselves operate as efficient causes, some instrumentality must come into this picture. The correct way to represent the precise configuration of instrumentality, including the World Soul, the Demiurge, and, ultimately, the Idea of the Good or the One, is, of course, the principal interpretative battleground among Platonists. If the Demiurge wanted to make a horse, then the horse must ‘already’ exist eternally. I take it that this ‘wanting to make’ is to be analyzed according to the hierarchy of wanting in the One, Intellect, and Soul. Ultimately, it is because of what the One ‘wants’ that the World Soul wants to provide the horse with a suitable body. Intellect alone cannot explain why an animal looks the way it does. Intellect can explain only what is unequivocally intelligible, whereas the ‘look’ of an animal is owing in part to its embodiment. Soul alone cannot explain why the animal looks the way it does because the way it looks follows from the exigencies of its eternal nature. Soul, then, becomes the necessary instrument of Intellect, which in turn is the necessary instrument of the One.84

Nature is perhaps best described as the expression of Soul that determines matter, that is, determines the anatomy or shape of living things and the fundamental reproductive or nutritive properties.85 According to nature, living things grow and reproduce in kind. If one were to remove in thought the ultimate ‘shape’ of the living thing, one would arrive at matter.

Matter

The antimaterialist Platonist maintains that things other than bodies and their properties exist. Further, he maintains that bodies and the matter of which they are composed are ontologically posterior in the hierarchy of being. So he is perhaps particularly obliged to explain the place of matter in the universe. Although the word ὕλη is not used as a technical term in Plato’s dialogues, later Platonists had no doubt that Plato did have a view about what Aristotle called ‘material causality.’86 Aristotle himself is confident that when in Timaeus Plato is speaking of the ‘receptacle of becoming,’ he means matter or a material principle.87 Plotinus’s primary problem is not with Aristotle’s interpretation, but with accounting for matter given the refined role of the One or the Idea of the Good as ‘virtually all things.’ For if the Good is in any sense the explanation for matter, then matter, like everything else the Good produces, bears a trace of goodness. Later Platonists, like Proclus, did not shrink from this implication, arguing, rather, that matter cannot be evil.88 Plotinus, however, has argued for a linear hierarchy of being. That is, the Good is one terminus on this ‘line’; its opposite is the other.89 An embodied human being, finding himself somewhere on this line, either moves in the direction of the Good or in the opposite direction.90 Since the Good is virtually all that is, and as we have seen, all that is partakes of οὺσία, it is by identification with intelligible being that the Good is approached and by the loss of intelligible being that someone distances himself from it. For Plotinus, that matter is to be identified with the terminus opposite to the Good, or evil, is a conclusion of an argument, not the premise. The premise is that the hierarchy of intelligible being comes to an end with nature.91 Beyond that is a principle of unintelligibility. And that is what matter is supposed to be. There can be nothing ‘after’ matter. So, since the Good is one terminus of the hierarchy, evil is the other terminus and this can be nothing else but matter.92 But the problem still remains: How can the Good or the One be its cause?

In order to understand this, we need to focus first on a distinction Plotinus makes between “A generates B” and “A is the cause or principle of B.” This is in effect a distinction between an instrumental and an ultimate cause. Thus, Intellect in some sense generates Soul.93 It is also the case that it is even possible to say that the One in a sense generates Intellect.94 So it might seem rather straightforwardly that the lower part of Soul, that is, nature, would be the generator of matter. The principal, and indeed, perhaps the only text supporting this claim is in the treatise on evil.

And this is the fall of the soul: to come in this way into matter and to be weakened, because all of its powers are not present in the activity, matter preventing their presence by occupying the region that soul inhabits and in a way makes it “contract itself”95 and what it seized in a way by theft it makes evil, until soul would be able to lift itself up again. Matter, then, is the cause of weakness in the soul and the cause of vice. Therefore, it is prior evil, that is, the first evil. For even if the already affected soul itself generated matter, and if it associated with it and became evil, matter is the cause of that by its presence. For soul would not have come to be in it if it were not by the presence of matter that soul came to be generated.96

The ambiguity in the words “for even if the already affected soul itself generated matter” need mean nothing more than that Plotinus is considering a possibility that soul generated matter. It is difficult to take these words, as O’Brien does, and in the absence of any other passage that unambiguously says that soul generated matter, to indicate Plotinus’s own view. On the other hand, that matter is generated is beyond doubt; that is, it is not a principle coextensive with the One. If that were the case, Plotinus would seem to be contradicting the monism that he constantly affirms. It is clear in the cases of Intellect and Soul that their generation is not ex nihilo. But Plotinus is also insistent that matter, though it is generated, exists always and necessarily.97 The reason for this, which is especially relevant to the question with which we are now dealing, is that the ‘divine principles’—that is, One, Intellect, and Soul—operate necessarily. So, if matter exists owing to prior principles, it necessarily exists. There was no time when it did not exist after which it did. This is true despite the fact that it was generated. So the causality of Intellect and the One and the part of Soul that is not nature, far from being set aside by the generation of matter, is implicated. The phrase ‘A generates B’ indicates that A, owing to its own nature, causes B to receive whatever of A it is able to receive. Thus, Intellect can receive the One only as essence, or οὺσία; Soul can receive Intellect only as the image of essence contained in the different kinds of embodied souls. Soul, as nature, is the last vestige of intelligible reality. This vestige has a kind of indefiniteness within sensible form that is different from the total indefiniteness that is matter.98 It is the former that is given to body. This is the bodily shape referred to above. But for there to be a receiver of bodily shape, there must be that which is without shape altogether. And that is matter, which is unqualified privation of all form.99

To say that matter is generated is to conceive of it as the condition for the possibility of embodied life.100 The proof that there must be such a condition is simply that embodied life exists and, without matter, it could not. Since the operations of the three principles are eternal and necessary, anything that does exist, insofar as it is dependent on these principles, must exist. The insistence on distinguishing matter from body follows from the Aristotelian argument that all body, insofar as it is capable of change of any sort, is a composite of matter and form. But this account hardly completes the explanation of the being of the sensible world or of matter in particular. As Plotinus puts it,

How, then, does a plurality come from a one? It is because the One is everywhere. For there is nowhere it is not. It, then, fills all things. Then, it is already many, or rather, it is all things. If it were only everywhere, it would be all things. But since it is also nowhere, all things come to be owing to it, because it is everywhere, but are other than it because it is nowhere.101

The One or Good is thus the explanation of the being of everything that is, even the absolute formless ‘nonbeing’ of matter. It does this by being virtually all things. ‘Generation’ is just the name of the instrumental causality for the diffusion of the Good. So the existence of matter is, ultimately, a condition for the possibility of the unlimited diffusion of the Good. And why must the diffusion be unlimited? This must be so simply because the Good is beyond limitation. If its diffusion were to cease short of the existence of a material world that we know is a possibility, this would indicate a defect in the Good, and this is impossible.

Again, if we say that that nature [the One] is unlimited—for it is indeed not limited—what would this mean other than that it will not be defective? But if it is not defective, does that mean that it is present to each thing? If it were not able to be present, it will be defective and there will be somewhere that it is not.102

Admittedly, it is odd, if not paradoxical, to say that the Good or One is present to the sort of nonbeing that is unqualified privation. But the privation is of Form, and so the nonbeing is not absolute nothingness, but rather the admittedly peculiar nonbeing of that which is, though it is no sort of thing.

Plotinus acknowledges that we do approach somewhat closer to paradox when we consider how that which does not participate in form in any way can, after all, participate in being.

Since it is not possible for that which is in any way apart from being not to participate in being—for it is the very nature of being to produce beings—and since that which is totally nonbeing cannot combine with being, a marvelous thing occurs, that is, how that which does not participate participates, and how it has in a way something from its neighbor even though by its own nature it is incapable of being stuck to it.103

Here, matter is clearly distinguished from absolute nonbeing.104 The sort of being of which it partakes does not turn it into anything other than what it is. That is, insofar as it is pure potency and privation, the presence of form to it does not actualize it. Matter is, in Plotinus’s vivid phrase “a decorated corpse” (νεκρόν κεκοσμημένον).105 The manner in which matter participates by not participating is by being unqualified privation of form. It can receive the form that produces body, but it is not actualized by this at all. Presumably, it has the being of a receptacle, which means both that it has a kind of being and that it is other than the being of anything that it could conceivably receive. What it receives are the traces of nature that comprise the intelligible shapes or forms of bodies. Because matter has a kind of being, it has a kind of compositeness, consisting of itself and what we might as well call the quasi-οὺσία that privation is. Matter must have this compositeness for two reasons. First, the One is uniquely simple. Second, if matter were not composite, it could not be divisible, that is, it could not be the matter of a plurality of bodies.

There is another difficult passage, which actually seems to embrace the paradox that matter, which is evil, does partake of the Good.

The nature of matter, then, either existed forever, and it was not possible for it, since it existed, not to partake of that which grants to all things as much of the Good as each is able to have; or else, the generation of it followed by necessity from the causes prior to it, and as such it did not have to be separate for the reason that that which gave it being in a way as a gracious gift stood still before coming to it owing to a lack of power.106

The puzzles in this passage are numerous. If the first alternative (“it existed forever”) applies to matter, then it seems to partake of the Good. But if one wants to deny this, then presumably one would want to deny that the words “existed forever” do not apply to it, since it seems to be implied that because it existed forever it partakes of the Good.107 If we can somehow get over this, and we embrace the second alternative (“the generation of it followed from prior causes”), it still seems that matter is in some way not separate, presumably from the Good. Further, if it followed necessarily from the causes prior to it, this hardly counts as a denial of its existing forever; indeed, it seems to be an implicit claim to such existence. If matter is not separate from its causes, it does then seem somehow to participate in the Good without “really” participating.

And yet, in one of Plotinus’s latest treatises where the problem of matter and evil is most extensively discussed we read,

But when something is absolutely deficient—which is what matter is—this is really evil, having no share of good.108 For matter does not even have being, which would have allowed it to partake of good to this extent; rather we say that it has being in name only, so that the true way to speak of it is as nonbeing. Deficiency, then, is not being good, but evil is absolute deficiency.109

Putting these two passages together, it seems that matter as such is thought by Plotinus to have nothing of the Good in it, yet not to be separate from its causes, which includes, ultimately, the Good.110

The resolution of this problem is, I believe, as follows. Matter, as we have seen, is a necessary condition for the possibility of a sensible world that imitates the intelligible world. In this imitation, there is all manner of derived goodness. Matter is not separate from its causes just in the sense that it is this necessary condition. Matter, though, is evil when it is pursued as an end.111 Since everything desires that which is good, to pursue the opposite is, as it were, to be oriented in the most perverse way possible. It is to do more (or less) than to take the apparent good as the Good itself. For, according to Plotinus, apparent goods will have a measure of the Good in them insofar as they have any semblance of an intelligible nature. In fact, it is not obvious that the successful pursuit of evil as such is anything other than a theoretical possibility for Plotinus.112 What is, however, all too real is vice (κακία). The distinction between evil and vice is, says Plotinus, the distinction between that which is unqualified privation of form or measure and that which is a particular sort of lack of measure, such as injustice.113 By contrast, virtue is not the Good, but a good, which enables us to dominate matter.114 The reason why injustice, for example, is a vice is that it constitutes an orientation in the sensible world in the ‘direction’ of evil, that is, away from the Good. It does this by one directing one’s desires to the body as if its good were the Good. The goods of the body do appear to be the Good because body is not without intelligible form. But to take the goods of the body merely as apparent goods without deception would be not to desire them other than as images of the intelligible reality that they imitate.115

This interpretation is supported by the claim made by Plotinus that certain gods and certain men, though having bodies, are not inclined to evil.116 It is not the presence of matter alone that produces any vice. So to call matter ‘evil’ is to indicate matter operating in a certain condition or circumstance. This circumstance is the embodied life of a soul that has a certain weakness.117 At least part of the explanation of the weakness is the occlusion of personal identity owing to embodiment. Thus, a person on being embodied discovers embodied desires, or ο’ρέξεις. He does not merely discover them; he discovers the self that is their subject. But no subject of bodily desires can be the true self, that which is identical with a disembodied intellect.118 The difficulty of discerning one’s true self amid its pretenders is the weakness embodied humans experience. Without a firm sense of one’s true self-identity, the nonnormative use of reason as servant of one’s desires competes often quite effectively with the normative use of reason that, when operating properly, judges desires according to whether or not they instantiate the Good.119 Those fortunate gods and men not inclined to evil are evidently so well aware of their own true identities that they can scarcely desire other than that which their intellects tell them is really good.

In this chapter, I have tried to provide a sketch of the Plotinian system without much attention to its foundation in the Platonism of Plato. Even those who regard Plotinus as something of an eccentric innovator must concede that he did not consider himself to have innovated at all except in the special sense of having applied Platonic principles to the solution of particular contemporary problems. He may also in a way be said to have innovated in his particular articulation of the metaphysics principles underlying Platonism. In the next two chapters of this book, I would like to develop the case that Plotinus was correct to see himself as faithful heir to a tradition going back to Plato and perhaps even beyond to Pythagoras. The key claim on which this case rests is that the philosophy of Plato is itself based on UP in the precise sense that it aims to be a positive construct in response to UP that is maximally consistent and complete. Of course, consistency alone is a minimal criterion of success and completeness here is an open-ended concept. Nevertheless, both consistency and completeness are held by Plato to be attainable only within the correct metaphysical structure. Plato’s response to all his opponents is, ultimately, a metaphysical one. It is his hierarchical metaphysics that guides his research and shapes his solutions to the full range of philosophical problems of his day, including practical ones. In his embrace and articulation of these principles Plotinus was—so I will argue—no innovator.

1. Proclus, PT 1.1.16ff. Saffrey-Westerink. In second rank of exegetes are Plotinus’s disciples Porphyry and Amelius; in the third rank are Iamblichus, Theodore of Asine, and unnamed others. In modern times, at the polar opposite to Proclus’s evaluation of the accuracy of Plotinus’s exegetical prowess, is the far more frequently made assessment of Shorey 1938, 36, who held that generally “Neo-Platonic ideas are persistently and mistakenly attributed to Plato himself.” This is done according to a “pseudodialectical exegesis” (39).

2. Plotinus, Enn. V 1, 8.10–14: Καὶ εἶναι τοὐς λὀγους τούσδε μὴ καινοὺς μηδὲ νῦν, ἀλλὰ πάλαι μὲν εὶρῆσθαι μὴ ἀναπεπταμὲνως, τοὺς δὲ νῦν λὀγους ἐξηγητὰς ἐκείνων γεγονέναι μαρτυρίoις πιστωσαμένους τὰς δὀξας ταύτας παλαιὰς εἶναι τοῖς αὺτοῦ τοῦ Πλάτωνος γράμμασιν.

3. See Meta. A 7, 988a18ff.

4. Dörrie and Baltes (1993, 3:155–61) list the names of more than 160 “berühmten” Platonists almost exclusively from the ‘Middle Platonic’ period. Another 180 or so are added in the period after Plotinus and before the end of antiquity. Many of these are to us just names, but undoubtedly many are also authors of works known to Plotinus. As we learn from Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus, he was immersed in the contemporary philosophical literature.

5. See O’Meara 1975, 105–8, 116–19.

6. On love, see III 5, 3.1; on time, see III 7, 13.49; on motion, see VI 6, 16.41; on numbers, see VI 6, 5.17.

7. The diffidence follows from Plotinus’s insistence that since the first principle has no predicates, a genuine name for it would be misleading at best. See III 8, 10.29–35; V 4, 1.5–13; VI 9, 5.38–46. See Meijer 1992, 181–92, on the problem of naming the One and various strategies for “approaching” it, including negation and analogy.

8 . See Plato (?), Second Ep. 312E3–4.

9 . See Plato, Parm. 142B5–C2.

10. See ibid., 142A3–4.

11. See Plato, Rep. 509B9. See Charrue 1978, 246–47, for discussion of the roughly thirty places in the Enneads in which the phrase “beyond essence” is cited and commented on by Plotinus. As Charrue notes, one of Plotinus’s key interpretative moves is to argue that whatever is “beyond essence” is also “beyond intellect” as well.

12. Reading τὸ γὰρ τοι μὴ with Igal, instead of the reading of the majority of mss., τὸ γὰρ τὸ μὴ.

13. See Plato, Phdr. 245D3.

14. V 4, 1.1–21: Εἵ τι ἔστι μετὰ τὸ πρῶτον, ἀνάγκη ἐξ ἐκείνου εἶναι ἢ εὐθὺς ἢ τὴν ἀναγωγὴν ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνο διὰ τῶν μεταξὺ ἔχειν, καὶ τὰξιν εἶναι δευτέρων καὶ τρίτων, τοῦ μὲν ἐπὶ τὸ πρῶτον τοῦ δευτέρου ἀναγομένου, τοῦ δὲ τρίτου ἐπὶ τὸ δεύτερον. Δεῖ μὲν γάρ τι πρὸ πάντων εἶναι\p=m-\ἀπλοῦν τοῦτο\p=m-\καὶ πάντων ἕτερον τῶν μετ’ αὺτὀ, ἐϕ’ έαυτοῦ ὄν, οὺ μεμιγμὲνον τοῖς ἀπ’ αὺτοῦ, καὶ πάλιν ἕτερον τρὀπον τοῖς ἄλλοις παρεῖναι δυνάμενον, ὄν ὄντως ἕν, οὺχ ἕτερον ὄν, εἶτα ἕν, καθ’ οὑ ψεῦδος καὶ τὸ ἕν εἶναι, οὑ μὴ λόγος μηδὲ ἐπιστὴμη, ὃ δὴ καὶ ἐπέκεινα λέγεται εἶναι οὺσίας\p=m-\εὶ γάρ μὴ ἁπλοῦν ἔσται συμβάσεως ἔξω πάσης καὶ συνθέσεως καὶ ὃντως ἕν, οὺκ ὃντωςν ἀρχὴ εἵη\p=m-\αὺταρκέστατὀν τε τῷ ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ πρῶτον άπάντων⋅ τὸ γὰρ <τoι> μὴ πρῶτον ἐνδεὲς τοῦ πρό αὺτοῦ, τὀ τε μὴ ἁπλοῦν τῶν ἐν αὺτῷ ἁπλῶν δεὀμενον, ἵν’ ἧ ἐξ ἐκείνων. Τὸ δὴ τοιοῦτον ἕν μόνον δεῖ εἶναι⋅ άλλο γὰρ εὶ εἵη τοιοῦτον, ἓν ἂν εἵη τὰ ἂμϕω. Οὺ γὰρ δὴ σώματα λέγομεν δuὀ, ἢ τὸ ἕν πρῶτον σῶμα. Οὺδὲν γὰρ άπλοῦν σῶμα, γινὀμενὀν τε τὸ σῶμα, ἀλλ’ οὺκ ἀρχ ή⋅ ἡδὲ ἀρχὴ άγένητος⋅ μὴ σωματικὴ δὲ οὐσα, ἀλλ’ ὄντως μία, ἐκεῖνο ἂν εἵη τὸ πρῶτον. Εὶ ἄρα ἕτερὀν τι μετὰ τὸ πρῶτον εἵη, οὺκ άν ἕτι άπλοῦν εἵη⋅ ἕν άρα πολλὰ ἔσται. Cf. V 3, 11.27 on the absolute simplicity of the One; and Plato, Parm. 144E5.

15. Many scholars have supposed that if Plotinus’s interpretation of the first hypothesis in the second part of Parmenides is implausible, then his One cannot be identified with the Idea of the Good, and that, further, this somehow undermines Aristotle’s testimony about the identification of the Good with the One. See, e.g., Cornford 1939, 131–34; Armstrong 1940, 116; Rist 1964, 43; Allen 1983, 189–95, et al. Plotinus, however, typically adduces passages from Parmenides in support of his own arguments and in the light of his interpretation of all the dialogues, the Aristotelian testimony, and the oral tradition. I do not think that his interpretation of Parmenides has for Plotinus a unique or even crucial role to play.

16. At V 5, 3.23–24 Plotinus identifies the external actuality of the One as the ὐπόστασιν οὺσίας(the existence of essence). This seems to be a fairly clear affirmation of Plotinus’s existentialist metaphysics. Of course, like the Idea of the Good for Plato, the One is the cause of both the existence of essence and of essence itself.

17. This is a slightly revised version of the analysis in Gerson 2008 103–5.

18. It is important that this proof be understood as a reductio, starting from a premise that Plotinus does not accept and in fact thinks impossible. The counterfactual condition in which there was something other than the One that was absolutely simple and hence an ‘additional’ one, does not imply that the One is numerable or that it is a ‘unit’ of some sort.

19. In this case, we need not, of course, worry about a true proposition without existential import since our hypothesis is that B exists.

20. I am for now leaving it ambiguous as to whether that which is distinct from the ο ὺσία of B is the existence of B or the existent B itself.

21. See VI 9, 1.1: Πάντα τὰὄντα τῷ ένί ἐστιν ὄντα. See Meijer 1992, 94–106, who provides an extensive argument that τὸ ἕν is probably to be understood here as unity in general and is not a direct reference to the One. So Fronterotta in Brisson and Pradeau 2002–10, vol. 2, ad loc. This appears to be how Proclus understood the claim. See ET Prop. 1. Supporting this interpretation are claims such as are found in V 5, 6.26–37 and VI 9, 5.29–33, 38–40 to the effect that ‘one’ is not a predicate or name of the One. Cf. Parm. 141E10–11: Oὺδ’ ἄρα oὕτως [τὸ ἕν] ἔστιν ὥστε ἔν εἶναι· εἵη γὰρ ἢδη ἅν καὶ oὺσίας μετέχον. (Therefore, the One is thus not one so as to make it one being; for it would then straightaway be and also partake in essence.) The central point is that, though the One is ultimately the cause of the being of that which is one, it is not the One’s oneness that is the cause, as if the One were paradigmatically one. That the One cannot be one does not mean that it does not exist.

22. Cf. Aristotle, Meta. Ζ 17, 1041b11–33, who argues that a composite is unified by form, which is not an element in the composite. Plotinus is generalizing Aristotle’s argument: the cause of the unified composite is other than it. Plotinus will elsewhere argue that the unifying cause cannot be form, basically because if it were, the form would have to exist, in which case its own unity would require an explanation.

23. I leave aside any discussion of the criteria for wholeness that for Plotinus will vary according to whether the putative whole exists by nature or not. In any case, if the argument for the need for the explanation of the being of a minimally complex individual whose wholeness consists entirely of its existence and its essence works, that argument is a fortiori applicable to anything more complex.

24. See V 3, 15.11–13; V 3, 15.28; V 3, 17.10–14; VI 7, 23.19–25. Plotinus, V 1, 8.22–28, cites Soph. 245A8–9, Plato’s criticism of Parmenides for positing a One that is in fact not absolutely simple because it contains parts. In the text, these parts seem to be extended, but in Parm. 141E10–11 the One would have parts just because it partakes of οὺσία.

25. Take an οὺσία, say, horse. Horse cannot be identical with an existing horse, or else there could be only one of them. So the unity possessed by an existing horse is not owing to the οὺσία in which it partakes. We may observe that this argument depends on the truth of the antinominalistic element of UP.

26. See III 1, 1.1–8.

27. VI 8, 14.41–42. This is the first appearance of this phrase in the history of philosophy so far as we know. It is a good example, I think, of Plotinus trying to make explicit what is implicit in Plato’s writings. See Beierwaltes 1999 on the One as causa sui.

28. See V 8, 7.45. This is essentially the Aristotelian argument of Metaphysics Alpha Elatton that lines of explanation must terminate. Either A is autoexplicable or if A is explained by B, then there must be some X that explains A and is itself autoexplicable, whether this be B or something else. Cf. Phys. A 5, 188a27–28: δεῖ γὰρ τάς ἀρχὰς μήτε ἐξ ἀλλήλων εἶναι μήτε ἐξ ἄλλων, καὶ ἐκ τούτων πάντα (for the principles must neither come from each other nor from other things, and everything comes from them).

29. See Beierwaltes 1985, for a magisterial study of how, especially in late Platonism, the very idea of metaphysics is indissolubly bound to Denken des Einen.

30. See V 5, 3.15.33. Cf. III 8, 10.1; V 1, 7.9–10; V 3, 16.2–3; V 4, 1.24–25, 36; V 4, 2.38; V 5, 12.38–39; VI 7, 32.31; VI 7, 40.13–14; VI 9, 5.36–37.

31. Krämer 1964a, 340, argues that the One is the pure potency of all things and holds its consequences amorphously and latently in itself. This seems to me an impossible interpretation for that which is perfect and absolutely simple.

32. See V 3,15.33–35.

33. See Meta. Θ 1, 1046a16–19: παλιν δ’ αὗται δυνὗμεις λέγονται ἢ τοῦ μὀνον ποιῆσαι ἢ παθεıν ἢ τοῦ καλῶς, ὥστε καὶ ἐν τοῖς τούτων λόγοις ἐνυπάρχουσί πως οἱ τῶν προτέρων δυνάμεων λόγοι (again, these are said to be potencies either by merely acting or being acted upon, or by acting or being acted upon well, so that even in the accounts of the latter the accounts of the former potencies are somehow present).

34. Rep. 509B9–10.

35. See Meta. Θ 6, 1048a30–32: ἔστι δὴ ἐνέργεια τὸ πρᾶγμα μὴ οὔτως ὣσπερ λέγομεν δυνάμει (now actuality is the existence of the thing, but not in the way we say it is in potency).

36. See Meta. Λ 9, 1074b28–35.

37. See V 6, 2.13; V 1, 6.38. The One is perfect (τέλειον) because it is self-sufficient (αὺτάρκης). Further, because the One is perfect, it produces. Its perfection is not achieved as the result of any production.

38. See VI 8, 8.12–13: Δεῖ δὲ ὃλως πρὸς οὺδὲν αὺτὸν λέγειν. (We should say that it [the One] is altogether related to nothing.) Cf. Proclus, In Parm. 1135.17–21; In Tim. 1.304.6–9, who clearly grasped this crucial point.

39. That the One or Good is virtually all things is an interpretation to be firmly distinguished from that according to which it is the Form of all the ‘formal’ properties of the Forms, that is, all the properties they have qua Forms. For this view, see Santas 2002; Ferrari 2003b, 305–17, and 2007a, 192–94. On this interpretation, the δύναμις of the Good refers to its causal power, that is, the power to produce the general attributes of Forms qua Forms. Ferrari thinks this causality is efficient and argues that Santas thinks it is purely formal. But the absolute simplicity of the first principle would be compromised if it were, for example, the paradigm of both the distinct properties of eternality and immateriality. For this reason alone, the One or Good cannot be eminently anything. Ferrari’s comparison (2003b, 318–22) of the Good with Aristotle, Meta. α 1, 993b23–31, according to which fire is eminently hot because it is the cause of hotness in hot things, is inapt. If the Good had any predicates, it could not be absolutely simple. See Fronterotta 2006, 431–36, who also points out the inaptness of Ferrari’s comparison, though Fronterotta appears to think that the Good, as participatable, is eminently all its effects.

40. See VI 8, 13.6–7 and 14.39, where the ἐνέργειαι of the One are said to be οἶον (“in a way”) its οὺσία and that it is οἶον the παράδειγμα of all things. The qualification ‘in a way’ indicates that the One cannot be really or literally a paradigm of anything. The real paradigms are the Forms. Cf. V 5, 6.17–20, which focuses on the analogy between the One and Forms, on the one hand, and Forms and sensibles, on the other. The One is ‘in a way’ the ‘Form’ of ‘Forms’ but only qua cause; it itself transcends intelligibility, which is why it is not really a paradigm.

41. Aubry (2006, 223) misconstrues my previous account of virtuality as potentiality of some sort, citing V 3, 15.32–35 and V 3, 12.26–33 as evidence that Plotinus eliminates all potentiality from the One. Aubry, however, reverts to an interpretation of the δύναμις of the One as “puissance active” (229) or “puissance productrice” (234).

42. See Kremer 1987; Miller 2007, 338.

43. See V 1, 6.30–39; V 3, 7.23–24; V 9, 8.13–15; VI 8, 18.51–52.

44. See VI 8, 20.9–15.

45. VI 8, 15.1–2. I will return to this passage below.

46. Cf. Iamblichus, De communi mathematica scientia, chap. 4.16–19: τὸ ἕν ὅπερ δὴ ούδὲ ὄν πω δεῖ καλεῖν, διὰ το ἁπλοῦν εἶναι καὶ διὰ τὸ ἀρχὴν μὲν ὐπάρχειν τῶν ὄντων, τὴν δὲ ἀρχὴν μηδέπω εἶναι τοιαύτην οἶα ἐκεῖνα ῶν ἐστιν ἀρχή (one should say that the One is somehow non-being because it is simple and because, since the principle of all things exists, that principle must never be such as is that of which it is a principle).

47. V 5, 12.40–49.

48. VI 8, 7.53–54: αὺτὸ αύτὸ ποιεῖ, καὶ έαυτῷ καὶ οὺδενός. Cf. 15.9.

49. See V 1, 7.21–22, where Plotinus argues that if the One were identical with all οὺσίαι, it would be something like the ‘sum’ of them all (τῶν πάντων).

50. See V 1, 8.5: δημιουργὸς γὰρ ὁ νοῦς αὺτῷ [Plato]. Plotinus takes the ‘Living Animal’ in Timaeus, which contains all intelligibles within it as parts, as cognitively identical with the Demiurge. See III 9,1.12–13: ἕν εἶναι ἄμϕω [νοῦς and εἵδη], διαιρούμενα δὲ τῇ νοήσει (both [Intellect and Forms] are one, though distinguished in thought). He is all the Forms he is thinking because in thinking the thinker becomes identical with the objects of thought. The two passages in Timaeus he reads together are 29E3 and 30D2. See Halfwassen 2000, 51–62. Pépin (1956, 48) may well be correct that the Timaeus passages are not the direct source of Plotinus’s identification of Intellect and Forms. It is possible that, based on independent arguments such as those found in V 5, he was led to interpret the Timaeus passages in the way he does. If, indeed, the Demiurge and the Living Animal are thus identified, Aristotle’s otherwise puzzling remark at Meta. Α 6, 999a7, namely, that Plato introduced only two causes, the material and the formal, becomes clearer. For the Demiurge, who seems to be both an efficient and a final cause, is then apparently being ‘conflated’ with the formal cause. Thus, efficient and final causality are, in a way, ‘reducible’ to formal causality as Aristotle himself recognizes. See Phys. B 7, 198a24–25: ἔρχεται δὲ τὰ τρία [τὸ εἶδος, τὸ κινῆσαν, τὸ οὑ ἕνεκα] εὶς [τὸ] ἕν πολλάκις. (the three causes [form, moving, and final] often amount to one).

51. Strictly speaking, Plotinus follows Plato, Parm. 140E3–4, in maintaining that the One is not self-identical, because self-identity implies the possession of οὺσία, although in a sense its existence (ὑπόστασις) is ταὺτόν with its will (βούλησις) and its ‘sort of’ (οἵoν) οὺσία. See VI 8, 13.6–8, 55–59.

52. See I 2, 6.14–18: Κἀκεῖ μὲν οὺκ ἀρετή, ἐν δὲ ψυχῆ ἀρετή. ’Eκεῖ οὗν τί; ’Eνέργεια αὺτοῦ καὶ ὅ ἐστιν· ἐνταῦθα δὲ τὸ ἐν ἄλλῳ ἐκεῖθεν ἀρετή. Οὺδὲ γὰρ αὺτοδικαιοσύνη καὶ έκάστη ἀρετή, ἀλλ’ οἶον παράδειγμα· τὸ δὲ ἀπ’ αὺτῆς ἐν ψυχῇ ἀρετή. (And in the intelligible world, there is not virtue; virtue is in the soul. What, then, is in the intelligible world? Its own activity, that is, what it really is. But here, when virtue comes from the intelligible world, it is in another. For neither justice in itself nor each other virtue in itself is a virtue, but rather a paradigm. That which comes from it when in the soul is a virtue.)

53. Perhaps an allusion to Epicureans and Stoics whose materialism prevents them from recognizing the sort of immaterial entity that intellect must be.

54. V 9, 3.4–8: ’´Iσως μὲν οὗν γελοῖον ζητεῖν, εὶ νοῦς ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς οὗσι· τάχα δ’ ἄν τινες καὶ περὶ τούτου διαμϕισβητοῖεν. Μᾶλλον δέ, εὶ τοιοῦτος, οἶόν ϕαμεν, καὶ εὶ χωριστός τις, καὶ εὶ οὑτος τὰ ὄντα καὶ ἡ τῶν εὶδῶν ϕύσις ἐνταῦθα.

55. See V 3, 5.22–23: καὶ τὸν νοῦν ταὺτὸν εἶναι τῷ νοητῷ· καὶ γάρ, εὶ μὴ ταὺτὀν, οὺκ ἁλήθεια ἔσται (intellect must be identical with the intelligible; if it is not identical, there will be no truth). Cf. Aristotle, Meta. Λ 9, 1075a4–5: ἡ νὀησις τῷ νοουμένῷ μία.

56. IV 8, 3.10; V 1, 8.26; V 3, 15.11, 22; VI 2, 2.2; VI 2, 10.11; VI 2, 15.14; VI 2, 21.7, 46–47; VI 2, 22.10; VI 5, 6.1–2; VI 6, 8.22; VI 6, 6.13; VI 7, 8.17–18; VI 7, 14.11–12; VI 7, 39.11–14.

57. See Aristotle, DA Γ 4, 429b5–9; Γ 5, 430a19–20; Γ 7, 431a1–2, b17.

58. V 3, 13.13–14: ὅταν αὺτό τι έαυτὸ νοῇ, ὅ δὴ καὶ κυρίως ἐστὶ νοεῖν. Cf. V 3, 5.22–23, 42–43; II 9, 1.50–52: ‛´Ωστε ἐν τῷ πρώτως νοεῖν ἔχοι ἂν καὶ τὸ νοεῖν ὅτι νοεῖ ὡς ἕν ὅν· καὶ οὺδὲ τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ ἐκεῖ διπλοῦν. (So that in it [Intellect] as primary thinking, it would have the thinking that it is thinking as one being and so it is not double there even in thought.) Cf. III 8, 6.15–17, which makes the same point with the important addition that “identification with the object cognized” (εὶς ἕν τῷ γνωσθέντι ἔρχεται) is a process or activity, indicating that identification is not equivalent to identity understood as a formal property.

59. See Emilsson 2007, 141–70, for a comprehensive discussion of the identity of Intellect and all intelligibles; and Szlezák 1979b and O’Meara 1993, 32–37, on the roots of Plotinus’s account of intellect in Plato and Aristotle.

60. See I 3, 5.17–19, where Plotinus distinguishes between knowing the truth and having cognition of (necessary) propositions. Intellect does not know the latter since knowledge is not of propositions; it knows the truth that the latter express by being identical with it. The truth is ontological, which is prior to semantic truth.

61. Plotinus’s preferred way to express the claims made in this paragraph is to argue that the being of, say, a particular living thing in its identitative complexity is, ultimately, a λὀγος of a Form, meaning what the Form is when found at a ‘lower level’ of reality. Cf. III 2, 2.15–18. But this is as much as to say that it is a λὀγος of Intellect.

62. Plotinus follows Plato’s description of Forms as “uniform” (μονοειδές, Symp. 211B1) and “units” (μονάδες, Phil. 15B1; Parm. 132A1–4). And yet the identity of each Form is necessarily complex. Each is what it is, ultimately, in relation to all the other Forms.

63. We recall that Numenius explicitly deploys a hierarchy that operates instrumentally. See fr. 15 Des Places and Des Places’s note, 110, n. 3. It should be added, however, that for Numenius the instrumentality is occasioned by the fact that the Good or One is ἀργὀς (fr. 12 Des Places), whereas for Plotinus the first principle of all is limitlessly active.

64. VI 7, 42.21–24: ’Aνηρτημὲνης δὲ ψυχῆς εὶς νοῦν καὶ νοῦ εὶς τἀγαθὀν, οὕτω πάντα εὶς ἐκεῖνον διὰ μέσων, τῶν μὲν πλησιὀν, τῶν δὲ τοῖς πλησίoν γειτονούντων, ἐσχάτην δ’ ἀπόστασιν τῶν αὶσθητῶν ἐχόντων εὶς ψυχὴν ἀνηρτημένων. Cf. IV 3, 12.30–32; III 2, 2.15–18. Cf. Proclus, ET Prop. 57.8–16, which formalizes the point. Dodds (1933; 2nd ed., 1963, 231) thus seems to me mistaken in maintaining that this is a “post-Plotinian development.”

65. V 3, 15.26–33: Τίνα οὐν πάντα; ’`H ὧν ἀρχὴ ἐκεῖνο. Πῶς δὲ ἐκεῖνο ἀρχὴ τῶν πάντων; ’Aρα, ὅτι αὺτὰ σῷζει xἕν ἔκαστον αὺτῶν ποιήσασα εἶναι; ’`Η καὶ ὅτι ὑπέστησεν αὺτά. Πῶς δή; ’`Η τῷ πρότερον ἔχειν αὺτά. ’Aλλ’ εἵρηται, ὅτι πλῆθος οὕτως ἔσται. ’Aλλ’ ἄρα οὕτως εἶχεν ὡς μὴ διακεκριμένα· τὰ δ’ ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ διεκέκριτο τῷ λὀγῳ. ’Eνέργεια γὰρ ᾕδη· τὸ δὲ δύναμις πάντων. Cf. II 4, 5.25–26; III 8, 10.1–2; IV 8, 6.1–6; V 3, 17.10–14; V 5, 4.4–7; VI 7, 23.19–25; VI 7, 42.11; VI 9, 1.1–2.

66. See Gerson 1993 for further discussion on per accidens and per se causality in Plotinus’s creation metaphysics.

67. See V 5, 9.1–18, a particularly lucid explanation of this principle. Also, V 8, 9.24–25. At V 5, 11.1–2, Plotinus says, “Further, this [the One] is unlimited by being not more than one, and it has nothing in relation to which something that comes from it will have a limit.” (Καὶ τὸ ἄπειρον τούτῳ τῷ μὴ πλεὀν ένὸς εἶναι μηδὲ ἔχειν πρὸς ὅ ὁριεῖ τι τῶν έαυτοῦ.) Plotinus here seems to reject the theories found within the Platonic tradition according to which the One imposes limit on the Indefinite Dyad, thereby producing the Forms or Numbers. But the One could not be a principle of limitation. The One produces the Indefinite Dyad, which is just Intellect in its logically first phase. Limitation is produced then by Intellect itself when it turns to the One. The denial of the One as a principle of limit follows from Plotinus’s rejection of dualism of any sort, especially that which makes the Indefinite Dyad an irreducibly first principle of unlimitedness, thereby requiring the One to be a coordinate principle of limit.

68. See I 7, 2 and VI 5, 4.13–20, where the converse of the instrumental hierarchy is explicitly expressed: things partake of the One by variously partaking of Soul, and through Soul, Intellect, and through Intellect, the One. Apart from Intellect, however, the partaking is always in an image of the One, not directly of the One itself.

69. Cf. V 1, 7.1–4, where Intellect is said to be the same as the One, though inferior to it. So, too, Soul is the same as Intellect, though inferior to it. Therefore, Soul is the same as the One, though inferior to it. Accordingly, if Intellect is implicated in the generation of that which is the same as it, namely, Soul, so is the One. Cf. V 2, 1.14: Οὗτος οὖν [Intellect] ὢν οἶον ἐκεῖνος [the One] τὰ ὅμοια ποιεῖ. But the One cannot directly produce anything other than that which is “closest” to itself. Intellect is the instrumental cause of that which Intellect alone cannot produce, that is, the being of Soul as a unity. At VI 7, 23.19–20, the instrumentality of Intellect in the production of Soul seems to be indicated, though it is admittedly odd that Plotinus uses the genitive here, ἐκ τούτου [that is, Intellect].

70. See Aristotle, Meta. Λ 7, 1072b26–28: καὶ ζωὴ δέ γε ὐπάρχει· ἡ γὰρ νοῦ ἐνέργεια ζωή, ἐκεῖνος δὲ ἡ ἐνὲργεια· ἐνέργεια δὲ ἡ καθ’ αὐτὴν ἐκείνου ζωὴ ἀρίστη καὶ ἀϊδιος (and life belongs to [the Unmoved Mover]. For the actuality of intellect is life, and it is activity. And the activity is in virtue of itself the best life and eternal). Cf. VI 9, 9.17: τὸ δὲ ἐκεῖ ζῆν ἐνέργεια μὲν νοῦ. The word ἐκεῖ is Plotinus’s normal term for the realm of Intellect and the One.

71. See I 4, 3.33–40: Οτι δ’ ἡ τελεία ζωὴ καὶ ἡ ἀληθινὴ καὶ ὄντως ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ νοερᾷ ϕύσει, καὶ ὅτι αί ἄλλαι ἀτελεῖς καὶ ὶνδά λματα ζωῆς καὶ οὺ τελείως οὺδὲ καθαρῶς καὶ οὺ μάλλον ζωαὶ ἢ τοὺναντὶον, πολλάκις μὲν εἵρηται· καὶ νῦν δὲ λελέχθω συντὀμως ὡς, ἔως ἂν πάντα τὰ ζῶντα ἐκ μιᾶς ἀρχῆς ᾶ μὴ ἐπίσης δὲ τὰ ἄλλα ζῇ, ἀνάγκη τὴν ἀρχὴν τὴν πρώτην ζωὴν καὶ τὴν τελειοτάτην εἶναι. (It has been said many times that the perfect life and the true and real life is in that intellectual nature and that the other sorts of life are imperfect and reflections of life and do not exist perfectly or purely, and are no more lives than the opposite of this. And now let it be said summarily that so long as all living beings are from one source and they do not have life in the same way that it does, it is necessary that the source is the primary life, that is, the most perfect life.)

72. III 1, 8.4–8: Ψυχὴν δὴ δεῖ ἀρχὴν οὗσαν ἄλλην ἐπεισϕέροντας εὶς τὰ ὄντα, οὺ μὀνον τὴν τοῦ παντὀς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν έκάστου μετὰ ταύτης, ὡς ἀρχῆς οὺ σμικρᾶς οὔσης, πλέκειν τὰ πάντα, οὺ γινομένης καὶ αὺτῆς, ὥσπερ τὰ ἄλλα, ἐκ σπερμάτων, ἀλλὰ πρωτουργοῦ αὶτίας οὔσης. Our souls and the soul of the universe are “sisters.” Cf. II 9, 18.16; IV 3, 6.13. On the distinction between the hypostasis Soul and the soul of the universe or World Soul, see IV 9, 4.15–20; IV 9, 1.10–13; IV 3, 2.50–59.

73. See I 7, 1.13–19; III 5, 9.40–41. Cf. Plato, Lg. 892aff. for the priority of soul to body in cosmic explanations.

74. IV 4, 16.26–27.

75. Often Plotinus uses the term ἔϕεσις for the individual soul’s desire for the Good and the term ὄρεξις for the soul’s desire for the goods relative to an embodied living being. See, e.g., I 4, 6.17–21. In this same passage, Plotinus distinguishes between “will” (βούλησις) in the principal sense (κυρίως) and “will” when the term is used for cases where, for example, we want some bodily good to be present or some bodily ill to be absent. The former sense is roughly equivalent to ἔϕεσις and the latter to ὄρεξις.

76. IV 5, 7.15–17; V 4, 2.27–30.

77. The Platonic provenance of the production of soul by an intellect is, of course, Tim. 35A, 41D, where the Demiurge makes the World Soul and then the immortal part of individual souls. To this passage, we then must add the identification of the Demiurge with Intellect, which seems to follow from 47E4, a reference to the “things crafted by intellect” (τᾶ διᾶ νοῦ δεδημιουργημένα).

78. ‘Rational’ here is ambiguous between (1) the nonnormative rationality that is constitutive of any ὄρεξις of a human being even just insofar as the state of desiring has to be conceptually categorized in order for there to be action; and (2) the normative rationality belonging to ἔϕεσις. With (2), a human being is cable of making normative judgments in regard to his own ὄρέξεις, that is, judging whether the apparent good that is desired really is a good.

79. IV 4, 13.3–7: ἵνδαλμα γὰρ ϕρονήσεως ἡ ϕύσις καὶ ψυχῆς ἔσχατον ὄν ἔσχατον καὶ τὸν ἐν αὺτῇ ἐλλαμπὀμενον λὀγον ἔχει, οἶον εὶ ἐν κηρῷ βαθεῖ διικνοῖτο εὶς ἔσχατον ἐπὶ θάτερα ἐν τῇ ἐπιϕανείῇ τύπος, ἐναργοῦς μὲν ὄντος τοῦ ἄνω, ἵχνους δὲ ἀσθενοῦς ὄντος τοῦ κάτω.

80. III 2, 16.19–20.

81. V 2, 2.9–11.

82. Cf. III 2, 3.33–37; III 3, 2.3–6; and Plotinus’s dependence here on Aristotle, Meta. Λ 7, 1072b13–14 and 10, 1075a18–22.

83. See Euthyd. 301A1–4; Phd. 100D–E. I take τῷ καλῷ, μεγέθει, and σμικρὀτητι as instrumental datives. Cf. VI 6, 14.27–30, where Plotinus appeals to the Phaedo passage in his explanation of the causality of number.

84. Thus, Plotinus answers Aristotle’s objection to Forms at Meta. Α 9, 991a8–11 (cf. Μ 5, 1079b12–15; GC B 9, 335b18–21), to the effect that if Forms are eternal then their causal effects should be continuous. Forms cannot, it seems, explain change. Plotinus’s answer is that Soul is, in its aspect as nature, the instrumental cause of Intellect and Forms. See VI 5, 12.1; VI 5, 9.1–13. A good discussion of this point can be found in Lee 1982, 95–101.

85. See I 1, 8.15–23; III 4, 1; IV 4, 13.19–22; IV 4, 14.9–11, which makes clear that the shape is distinct from nature itself. In identifying nature, broadly speaking, as that which explains nutrition and reproduction, Plotinus is following Aristotle, DA B 4, 415a23–b7.

86. There are two passages in Plato where the word ὕλη does seem to be used in other than its ordinary use for ‘wood.’ These are Tim. 69A6, where the word is used metaphorically for the ‘building blocks’ of his cosmology, namely, the principles of reason and necessity; and Phil. 54C2, where ‘raw materials’ may be the correct sense. In the latter passage, we may be witnessing the technical meaning in the process of being created. Plutarch, De def. or., 414F4–415A1, claims that Plato discovered the idea of matter, though the actual term was introduced later.

87. See Phys. ∆ 2, 209b11–16. Cf. GC B 1, 329a23. So, too, Theophrastus, fr. 48 Wimmer, who seems to be referring to intra-Academic discussions, not to any dialogue. See Gerson 2005, 102–17, for further discussion of how the Platonic tradition uses Aristotle’s interpretation of Plato’s account of material causality. For a recent defense of Aristotle’s account of the receptacle as matter, see Ferrari 2007b. Also, see Reale 1997, 369–90, esp. 385–86. That the receptacle appears as a principle (51E–52D) must be balanced by the reference to the untreated ‘principle or principles’ at 42C2–6. Thus, the fact that the receptacle is independent of the Demiurge does not mean that it is independent of the first principle of all, the One.

88. See ET Props. 57, 72; In Parm. 1064.7–10; In Tim. 1.356.5–7; 384.19–385.13, for the generation of matter ultimately from the One. Cf. Rep. 379C5–7, where responsibility for evils is disallowed for divinity. See Narbonne 2007 for the evidence that, though Proclus denies that matter is evil, he does not attribute to Plotinus the view that matter is not generated ultimately from the One. Also, Opsomer 2001; 2007b, 169, n. 20.

89. See I 8, 7.19–20 where matter is said to be the ultimate limit (τὸ ἔσχατον) in the descent from the One. It is the limit in the sense that is comes ‘after’ the least intelligible product of the hierarchy, which is, in fact, the physical shape or form of a body. It is also said in this passage that there is nothing further generated after, implying that matter itself is generated.

90. See V 1, 1.7: τὴν ἐναντίαν δραμοῦσαι (running in the opposite direction), a metaphorical description of human beings who separate themselves from the Good.

91. That there cannot be an indefinite diminution of intelligible being such that we would never arrive at the absolutely unintelligible, that is, at matter, follows from (1) that derivation is always from a higher to a lower, and (2) that the kinds of being derived must be finite in number because the One is uniquely unlimited or infinite. See V 1, 6.38–39: τὸ δὲ ἀεὶ τέλειον ἀεὶ αἵδιον γεννᾷ.καὶ ἔλαττον δὲ έαυτοῦ γεννᾷ (that which is eternally perfect generates an everlasting reality, and it generates something inferior to itself). See O’Meara 2005 for an analysis of the argument. Cf. Opsomer 2007b, 167–68.

92. See I 8, 6.36–41, where Plotinus argues against Aristotle that, in a sense, substance does have a contrary. That is, what stands ‘furthest apart’ from the first principle of all—which is in a sense substance—is its contrary. On matter as explicitly identified with evil, see I 8, 7.21–23; VI 7, 28.12.

93. See V 1, 3.15–16; V 1, 7.42.

94. See V 2, 1.7.

95. See Plato, Symp. 206D6.

96. I 8, 14.44–54: Καὶ τοῦτό ἐστι πτῶμα τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ οὕτως ἐλθεῖν εὶς ὕλην καὶ ἀσθενεῖν, ὅτι πᾶσαι αἱ δυνάμεις οὺ πάρεισιν εὶς ἐνέργειαν κωλυούσης ὕλης παρεῖναι τῷ τὸν τόπον ὃν κατέχει αὺτὴ καταλαβεῖν καὶ οἶον συσπειραθῆναι ποιῆσαι ἐκείνην, ὃ δ’ ἔλαβεν οἶον κλέψασα ποιῆσαι κακόν εἶναι, ἕως ἂν δυνηθῇ άναδραμεῖν. ‛´Yλη τοίνυν καὶ ἁσθενείας ψυχῇ αὶτία καὶ κακίας αὶτία. Πρότερον ἄρα κακὴ αὺτὴ καὶ πρῶτον κακόν· καὶ γὰρ εὶ αὺτὴ ἡψυχὴ τὴν ὕλην ἐγέννησε παθοῦσα, καὶ εὶ ἐκοινώνησεν αὺτῇ καὶ ἐγένετο κακή, ἡ ὕλη αὶτία παροῦσα· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἐγένετο εὶς αὺτὴν μὴ τῇ παρουσίᾳ αὺτῆς τὴν γένεσιν λαβοῦσα. Cf. III 9, 3.7–16; III 3, 4.1; V 1, 7.47–48; V 2, 2.29–31. Although these texts do not explicitly say that matter is thus generated, the language employed perhaps creates a presumption that this is the case. For example, in III 4, 1, the product of nature is that which is totally unlimited (παντελῆ ἁοριστίαν, 11-12, 13), no longer a form (οὺ ἔτι εἶδος, l.11), and a receptacle (ὑποδοχή, 15). See O’Brien 1971, 1991, and 1996, who argues at great length for the generation of matter by the vegetative part of soul or nature. Against this view, Phillips (2009) argues that the direct product of nature is not matter but rather the “trace-soul” (ψυχῆς τι ἵχνος). This is a sort of image of soul that is inseparable from the body, unlike the ‘higher’ soul. According to Phillips, the descriptions of the product of nature in the passage from III 4, 1 above are all intended to apply to the trace-soul, not to matter. O’Brien (2011) replies to Phillips. See Narbonne 2006 and 2007, 130–41, who argues against O’Brien, that the generation of matter by soul is impossible. Narbonne bases his argument principally on the following texts: II 9, 2.31–44; I 6, 5.31–34; IV 7, 10.11–12; I 8, 5.17; I 8, 8.20; I 8, 14.24. All of these passages seem to affirm that evil is something external to the soul. And, indeed, if matter is straightforwardly identical with evil, then soul generates evil if it generates matter.

97. See Plato, Symp. 206D6.

98. See II 9, 3.12–21: Οὺ τοίνυν ἐγένετο, ἀλλ’ ἐγίνετο καὶ γενήσεται, ὅσα γενητὰ λέγεται· οὐδὲ ϕθαρήσεται, ἀλλ’ ἢ ὅσα ἔχει εὶς ἅ· ὃ δὲ μὴ ἔχει εὶς ὅ, οὺδὲ ϕθαρήσεται. Εὶ δέ τις εὶς ὕλην λέγοι, διὰ τί οὺ καὶ τὴν ὕλην; Εὶ δὲ καὶ τὴν ὕλην ϕήσει, τίς ἧν ἁνάγκη, ϕήσομεν, γενέσθαι; Εὶ δὲ ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι ϕήσουσι παρακολουθεῖν, καὶ νῦν ἀνάγκη. Εὶ δὲ μὀνη καταλειϕθήσεται, οὺ πανταχοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἔν τινι τὀπῳ ἀϕωρισμένῳ τὰ θεῖα ἔσται καὶ οἶον ἀποτετειχισμένα· εὶ δὲ οὺχ οἶὀν τε, ἐλλαμϕθήσεται. (Things that are said to have come into being did not just come into being, but always did and always will come into being. Nor will things be decomposed, apart from those things that have something to be decomposed into; but what does not have anything into which it can be decomposed, will not do so. If someone says that things will be decomposed into matter, why is this not the case for matter, too? But if he will say that this is so for matter, we will say, what necessity was there for it to come to be? But if they will say that it is necessary for it to follow from [other principles], it is necessary now. But if matter is left alone, the divine principles will not be everywhere, but limited to being in one place, and in a way they will be walled off from it. But if this is not possible, it will be illuminated by them.) By contrast, the general Middle Platonic position was that matter is not generated, but an independent principle. See Narbonne 2007, 123, n. 1, for references to the Middle Platonic authors who denied that matter is generated in any sense.

99. See III 4, 1.12–17: Εὶ μὲν γὰρ κἀν τοῖς προτέροις ἡ ἀοριστία, ἀλλ’ ἐν εἵδει· οὺ γὰρ πάντη ἀὀριστον, ἀλλ’ ὡς πρός τὴν τελείωσιν αὺτοῦ· τὸ δὲ νῦν πάντη. Τελειοὐμενον δὲ γίνεται σῶμα μορϕὴν λαβόν τὴν τῇ δυνάμει πρὀσϕορον, ὑποδοχὴ τοῦγεννήσαντος καὶ ἐκθρέψαντος· καὶ μόνον τοῦτο ἐν σώματι ἔσχατον τῶν ἄνω ἐν ἐσχάτῳ τοῦ κάτω. (Even if there is unlimitedness in the things before it [soul], it is unlimitedness in form; for it is not absolutely unlimited, but is so in relation to the completion of it. What we are concerned with now is absolutely unlimited. When it is completed it becomes a body, receiving the shape appropriate to its potentiality, a receptacle for that which produced it and nourished it; and only this shape in the body is the ultimate representation of the things from above in the ultimate things below.) See Narbonne 2006, 57–60, with n. 33, who rightly claims that the words “when it is completed it becomes a body” cannot refer to matter. They must refer to the elements. But this does not show that matter itself is not generated.

100. See II 4, 16.3–4: Διό καὶ μὴ ὄν οὕτω τι ὄν καὶ στερήσει ταὺτὀν, εὶ ἡ στέρησις ἀντίθεσις πρός τὰ ἐν λὀγῳ ὄντα. (For this reason, though it is non-being, it has some being in this way, and is identical with privation, assuming privation is the opposite of the things that are in an expressed principle.) Cf. Plato, Parm. 158C5–6, on the “nature” (ϕὐσις) that is in itself other than form. Plotinus is specifically opposing Aristotle, Phys. Α 9, 192a3–8, who distinguishes matter and privation, arguing that Platonists fail to do this in positing the Indefinite Dyad, which serves as matter, though it is evidently indistinct from privation as a principle of change.

101. III 9, 4.1–6: Πῶς οὐν ἐξ ένὸς πλῆθος; ‛´Oτι πανταχοῦ· οὺ γάρ ἐστιν ὅπου οὔ. Πάντα οὖν πληροῖ· πολλὰ οὖν, μάλλον δὲ πάντα ᾕδη. Αὺτὸ μὲν γὰρ εὶ μόνον πανταχοῦ, αὺτὸ ἂν ἧν τὰ πάντα· ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ οὺδαμοῦ, τὰ πάντα γίνεται μὲν δὶ αὺτὀν, ὅτι πανταχοῦ ἐκεῖνος, ἕτερα δὲ αὺτοῦ, ὅτι αὺτὸς οὺδαμοῦ. Cf. III 6, 14.1–2: Μὴ οὔσης οὺδὲν ὑπέστη ἄν; ’`Η οὺδὲ εἵδωλον κατὀπτρου μὴ ὄντος ᾕ τινος τοιοὐτου. (If matter did not exist, would nothing have come to exist? No, and there would be no image if there were no mirror or some such thing.) Cf. I 8, 7.1–7, where Plotinus argues that matter as underlying subject is a necessary condition for the presence of any good thing, that is, anything put into order by the Demiurge. Also, VI 3, 7.4–5. Proclus, De mal. subst. 34.1–6, argues, too, that matter is a necessary product of the One, but that in itself it is neither good nor evil. My view is that Plotinus’s argument is not as different from Proclus’s as the latter believes. Opsomer (2001, 169, n. 20, and 2007b) defends the difference between the views of Plotinus and Proclus, arguing from O’Brien’s position that for Plotinus nature generates matter, whereas for Proclus matter is generated by the One. See In Tim. 1.385.1–5.

102. VI 5, 4.13–17: Πάλιν δέ, εὶ ἄπειρον λέγομεν ἐκείνην τὴν ϕὐσιν—οὺ γὰρ δὴ πεπερασμένην—τί ἂν ἄλλο εἵη, ἢ ὅτι οὺκ ἐπιλείψει; Εὶ δὲ μὴ ἐπιλείψει, ὃτι πάρεστιν έκάστῳ. Εὶ γὰρ μὴ δὐναιτο παρεῖναι, ἐπιλείψει τε καὶ ἔσται ὅπου οὔ.

103. III 6, 14.18–23: ’Eπεὶ γὰρ οὺχ οἶὀν τε τοῦὀντος πάντη μὴ μετέχειν ὅ τι περ ὁπωσοῦν ἔξω ὄν αὺτοῦ ἐστιν—αὔτη γὰρ ὄντος ϕὐσις <εὶς> τὰ ἵντα ποιεῖν—τὸ δὲ πάντη μὴ ὄν ἄμικτον τῷ ὄντι, θαῦμα τὸ χρῆμα γίγνεται, πῶς μὴ μετέχον μετέχει, καὶ πῶς οἶον παρὰ τῆς γειτνιάσεως ἔχει τι καίπερ τῇ αὑτοῦ ϕὐσει μὲν οἶον κολλᾶσθαι ἀδυνατοῦν.

104. Cf. VI 9, 11.35–38, where absolute nonbeing (τὸ παντελὲς μὴ ὄν) is distinguished from the nonbeing (τὸ μὴ ὄν) that is evil or matter. Also, I 8, 3.6–7; I 8.15.1–3, where “the necessity of the existence” (τὴν ἀνάγκην τῆς ὑποστάσεως) of matter is affirmed. Cf. Plato, Soph. 238C8–10, 258A11–B3, on the distinction between absolute and relative nonbeing. Cf. O’Brien 1996, 181; 2012, 40–45.

105. See II 4, 5.18. Cf. III 3, 8.24–34, where the “corpse” is not matter itself but matter along with its visible form or shape, i.e., the “adorned corpse.”

106. IV 8, 6.18–23: Εἵτ’ οὖν ἦν ἀεὶ ἡ τῆς ὕλης ϕὐσις, οὺχ οἶὀν τε ἦν αὺτὴν μὴ μετασχεῖν οὖσαν τοῦ πᾶσι τὸ ἀγαθόν καθὀσον δὐναται ἕκαστον χορηγοῦντος· εἵτ’ ήκολοὐθησεν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἡ γένεσις αὺτῆς τοῖς πρό αὺτῆς αὶτιὀις, οὺδ’ ὣς ἔδει χωρὶς εἶναι, ἀδυναμίᾳ πρὶν εὶς αὺτὴν ἐλθεῖν στάντος τοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι οἶον ἐν χάριτι δὀντος. See III 6, 11.37–38: ἁλλ’ ὄτι μὲν ἀναγκαῖὀν ἐστι μεταλαμβάνειν άμῃ γέπῃ μεταλαμβάνει ἕως ἂν ῆῇ (but because it is necessary for it to participate, it participates in some way as long as it is). The subject of the phrase is matter. Plotinus goes on to say (41–43) that if matter really participated, it would not be absolute evil and it would be altered by the Good. O’Brien (1981, 110–11) argues that because matter does not participate “really,” it does not participate. It seems more accurate to say, based on the text, that matter participates in a unique manner, that is, without its participation causing it to be identified with or actualized by form in any manner. Cf. II 4, 13.22–24; II 5, 5.20–22, where matter is said to be “incapable of being informed” (μορϕοὐσθαι μὴ δυνάμενον).

107. See O’Brien 1981, 114–15, who argues that the first alternative refers to intelligible matter and only the second to sensible matter. But it seems that the reason for holding this, namely, that participation in the Good should be barred for sensible matter though not for intelligible matter, is gainsaid in the second alternative.

108. Note that at line 21 in the above passage the second alternative has matter coming into being as a necessary consequence of its causes. The plural, I take it, indicates the hierarchical pattern of instrumental causality. Cf. II 9, 12.44: ὥστε ἐπὶ τὰ πρῶτα ἡ αὶτία (so that the causality goes back to the first principles). The principles here are said to be the cause of “darkness” (τὸ σκὀτος, 40), evidently equivalent to matter. But it is not clear that Plotinus is himself drawing this conclusion or maintaining that it follows for the Gnostics from their own account of the generation of matter by soul.

109. I 8, 5.8–13: Αλλ’ ὅταν παντελῶς ἐλλείπῃ, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἡ ὕλη, τοῦτο τὸ ὄντως κακόν μηδεμίαν ἔχον ἀγαθοῦ μοῖραν. Οὺδὲ γὰρ τὸ εἶναι ἔχει ἡ ὕλη, ἵνα ἀγαθοῦ ταὐτῃ μετεῖχεν, ἀλλ’ ὁμώνυμον αὺτῇ τὸ εἶναι, ώς ἀληθὲς εἶναι λέγειν αὺτὸ μὴ εἶναι. ‛H οὖν ἔλλειψις ἔχει μὲν τὸ μὴ ἀγαθόν εἶναι, ἡ δὲ παντελὴς τὸ κακὀν·

110. Cf. Plato, Phil. 20D1, 54C10, 60B4.

111. But see I 8, 6.33–34: ἥτις ἐστὶ κακοῦ ϕὐσις καὶ άρχή· ἀρχαὶ γὰρ ἄμϕω, ἡ μὲν κακῶν, ἡ δὲ ἀγαθῶν (it [matter] is the nature and principle of evil; for both [matter and the Good] are principles, the one of evils and the other of goods). Speaking of matter as the principle of evils sounds like an admission of dualism. But if matter is caused to be, it is not a principle like the One, but like other principles (Intellect, Soul) whose qualified status as principles do not compromise Plotinus’s monism. Proclus, De mal. subst., chaps. 31–33, argues that it is necessary to sever matter from evil, while retaining the dependence of matter on the Good. See Hager 1987, 34–60, for an account similar to mine of how Plotinus recognizes the existence of evil while remaining a monist. Also Rist 1965.

112. Schaefer (2004) has a similar argument, though he goes too far, I think, in maintaining that matter is not evil. According to Schaefer (277–84), matter is not intrinsically evil; it is evil only in its effects. But it seems fairly clear from the texts both that Plotinus identifies matter with evil and that matter would not have evil effects if it were not the principle of evil.

113. Cf. O’Brien 1971, 145: “But in Plotinus’ philosophy, where everything, even the quasi non-existence of matter, depends ultimately on the One, we might well suppose that there is no room for what is intrinsically evil.”

114. See I 8, 5.14–17.

115. See I 8, 6.19–20. Cf. I 8, 13.5–7.

116. See I 8, 8.1–28 and I 8, 9, where Plotinus contrasts an accurate and a deceptive appraisal of form in bodies. For bodily evils like sickness or ugliness, see I 8, 4.1–2; I 8, 14.10–13; V 9, 10. Cf. IV 4, 44.30–32: τὸ γὰρ οὺκ ἀγαθόν ὡς ἀγαθόν διώκειν έλχθέντα τῷ ἐκείνου εἵδει ἀλὀγοις ὁρμαῖς, τοῦτὀ ἐστιν ἀγομένου ὅπου μὴ ᾕθελεν οὺκ εὶδὀτος (pursuing what is not good as good, having been attracted by the appearance of it through irrational impulses, belongs to someone who is being led, in ignorance, where he does not want to go).

117. See I 8, 5.30–34. See O’Brien 1971, 129–30, on the textual difficulties in this passage.

118. See IV 8, 4.1–24. Cf. V 1, 1.1–17, where birth itself for most people is the occasion for regarding matter as attractive and so in fact evil. The cause of the descent into bodies is called by Plotinus “daring” (τὀλμα) and “primary otherness” (πρώτη έτερὀτης, 5). Whether this weakness is intellectual or moral and why Plotinus thinks that some persons have this weakness and others do not are questions that cannot be treated here.

119. See IV 7, 13. Cf. Rep. 612A3–6. See also VI 4, 15.32–40: Τοῦτο δὲ καὶ ἀνθρώπου κακία αὺ ἔχοντος δῆμον ἐν αὐτῷ ἡ δονῶν καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν καὶ ϕὀβων κρατησάντων συνδὀντος έαυτὸν τοῦ τοιοὐτου ἀνθρώπου δήμῳ τῷ τοιοὐτῳ· ὄς δ’ ἂν τοῦτον τὸν ὄχλον δουλώσηται καὶ ἀναδράμῃ εὶς ἐκεῖνον, ὅς ποτε ἦν, κατ’ ἐκεῖνὀν τε ζῇ καὶ ἔστιν ἐκεῖνος διδοὺς τῷ σώματι, ὅσα δίδωσιν ὡς έτέρῳ ὄντι έαυτοῦ· ἄλλος δέ τις ὁτὲ μὲν οὕτως, ὁτὲ δὲ ἄλλως ζῇ, μικτὀς τις ἐξ ἀγαθοῦ έαυτοῦ καὶ κακοῦ έτέρου γεγενημένος. (This is also the vice of humans; he, too, has a populace of pleasures and appetites and fears which gain control when a human being of this sort gives himself over to a populace of this sort. But whoever subdues a mob of this sort and runs back to the being he once was, lives according to that and is that and gives to the body such things as belong to something other than himself. Someone else at one time lives this way and at another lives another way, having become something mixed from his own good and the evil of the other). This passage is essentially a commentary on Lg. 689A5–E3. Cf. Phdr. 256B2–3. The words “lives according to that and is that” indicate that the embodied intellect is only ideally identical with the disembodied undescended intellect. To live according to that undescended intellect is to strive for the ideal. But the ideal would be vacuous or arbitrary if that ideal were not really what each of us is.