Plotinus 1

Dec. 5th, 2019 12:07 pm
[personal profile] readoldthings
I've decided to begin re-start proper with Plotinus. 

Who Was Plotinus?

Plotinus "is generally regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism. He is one of the most influential philosophers in antiquity after Plato and Aristotle." I got that from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I'm interested in Plotinus because Neoplatonism is the foundation of the Western magical tradition. From Picatrix to the Golden Dawn, if you're working with Western esoteric philosophy, you're working with Neoplatonism. 

...And therein lies the trouble, for me, because Neoplatonism is damned hard to understand!

Why Start Here?

I've had Plotinus's Enneads on my shelf for some time. The book is almost at eye-level, and I can see the title out of the corner of my eye.

Mocking me.

The thing is... Plotinus is hard. I mean really hard. I've made several attempts at the Enneads, and I've always slunk away in failure. So now I'm going to make another attempt. Right here, in public. Why? I'm not sure, but there are two possible reasons:

1. I love to suffer.

2. I'm hoping that someone who is smarter than me will wander in here, see me flailing about trying to understand this stuff, and explain to me why I'm wrong!

With all that said, let's start with 
  • The Enneads
  • The First Ennead
  • First Tractate
  • Chapter 1

(Yeah, we're taking this one slowly. If you'd like to follow along, the translation I'm using is online here.)
 
"Pleasure and distress," opens Plotinus, "fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat? Clearly, either in the Soul alone, or in the Soul as employing the body, or in some third entity deriving from both.

And for this third entity, again, there are two possible modes: it might be either a blend, or a distinct form due to the blending."

And so we begin. Our subject, then-- apparently-- is a question. Where do experiences happen? Is it in the body, or the soul, or some third thing? And, if a third thing, is it a mix of body and soul, or a true third thing arising from that mixing?

For what it's worth, I am coming to Plotinus with my own answer to this question. Or, rather, with several answers, one of which I came to on my own, and the others of which I've learned. What Plotinus's own answer is, I have no idea. So let's go on and find out!

He tells us next, "what applies to the affections applies to whatsoever acts, physical or mental, spring from them."

What does this mean?

Well. He has listed "courage" as one of the affections. Suppose I am possessed of courage in a particular setting. I'm hiking in the woods with my family, and we see a mountain lion on the trail. Instead of running away, though, I raise my arms and scream and run toward the mountain lion. In my mind, I am thinking, "I want to protect my family;" in the material world, I'm running toward the lion, screaming and flailing. These are mental and physical acts. So, for Plotinus, these acts, then, are rooted in whichever of the three possible locations the affections have their seat. 

Or is that what he's saying?

Because he next tells us that "We have to examine discursive reason and the ordinary mental action upon objects of sense, and enquire whether these have the one seat with the affections and experiences, or perhaps sometimes the one seat, sometimes another."

So it may be the case that mentation has a different source than affection, at least sometimes. 

"And we must consider also our acts of Intellection, their mode and their seat. 

And this very examining principle, which investigates and decides in these matters, must be brought to light.

Firstly, what is the seat of Sense-Perception? This is the obvious beginning, since the affections and experiences either are sensations of some kind or at least never occur apart from sensation."

So we have a whole bunch of different terms that we're looking at in this work. And each of these terms is a different state of being, that we all experience, including:

Affection (meaning a disposition like pleasure, fear, or desire.)
Experience
Mental action
Physical action
Sensation
The very capacity to observe, act, and decide

To return to what we said before, Plotinus's goal is to discover where these things "have their seat." And our four possibilities are: The Soul, the Body, A Mix of the Two, A Third Thing Resulting from the Mix of the Two. 

Concluding

...And that's all for now. Like I said, I'm taking Plotinus very, very slowly.

I'm finding that just by the act of reading and breaking down this little bit, I understand this work better than I ever have. I'm serious; I've read this first page a half-dozen times before now without figuring out what Plotinus is even talking about. But now I understand-- or I think I do; maybe that guy who's a lot smarter than me that I mentioned above will come in here and tell me I'm wrong. But if I'm right, Plotinus is starting with what is, to my mind, the most interesting philosophical question of all: The question of experience. What is this thing that, when electricity and chemicals move through neurons in the brain, sees the color "red"? 

Come back next time, and maybe we'll find out!

Date: 2019-12-06 01:53 am (UTC)
deansmith: (Default)
From: [personal profile] deansmith
Hmmm, what a fascenating question. I've tried to sense or pay attention to that very part of myself in meditation...the closest I have gotten is sensing that everything else seems to be a rickety mess on top of it. I'm going to have to get the Enneads now and follow along here. Another book purchase here I come!

Profile

readoldthings

December 2024

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
1516 17 18192021
22232425262728
293031    

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 11th, 2025 02:27 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios