Reading Notes Plotinus 1:1:10

And so do we resume our long, slow, slog through the Enneads of Plotinus, with the 10th section of the first tractate of the first Ennead. The last entry can be read here. If you'd like to follow along, you can do so here.

Last time, we saw that the soul does not share the blame for our sins, because it stands apart from the Couplement of Soul and body. When we fall into lust, wrath, and similar states, it is because we have turned our attention only to the body, without involving or invoking our Soul and our higher faculties. Sinful behavior, then, is like an illusion which fools the eyes before the rational mind can overcome it.

It will be objected-- says Plotinus, in the opening to Section 10-- that if the Soul constitutes the We [the personality] and We are subject to these states then the Soul must be subject to them, and similarly that what We do must be done by the Soul.

This was my objection on first reading this. My initial assumption was that the Soul is what, in Hindu philosophy, is called the "observer"-- the True Self that experiences bodily and mental states, and is otherwise simple, and contentless. In Hindu thought, it is this that persists from one life to the next. That view has always made sense to me, and I had assumed Plotinus was using "Soul" in the same sense. That leads to a bit of confusion, though, because he clearly is not. For Plotinus, the total person is something more like a series of beads on a string, with the highest representing the soul, the lowest the body, and the rest the faculties that lie in between.

In this way of looking at things, the observing faculty is able to range up and down the length of the system, from the lowest reaches of the Couplement-- that's where those nasty generative faculties are found-- up to the Soul itself. Indeed, the task of the philosopher, for Plotinus, seems to be to withdraw from the Couplement to the greatest extent possible.

He goes on:

But it has been observed that the Couplement, too- especially before our emancipation- is a member of this total We, and in fact what the body experiences we say We experience. This then covers two distinct notions; sometimes it includes the brute-part, sometimes it transcends the brute. The body is brute touched to life; the true man is the other, going pure of the body, natively endowed with the virtues which belong to the Intellectual-Activity, virtues whose seat is the Separate Soul, the Soul which even in its dwelling here may be kept apart. [This Soul constitutes the human being] for when it has wholly withdrawn, that other Soul which is a radiation [or emanation] from it withdraws also, drawn after it.

Notice that line, "before our emancipation." In the Phaedo, Plato has Socrates compare the work of the philosopher to death. The philosopher is the lover of wisdom, and he does his best work when he is not attending to the body's needs, nor encumbered by its deficiencies.

In death, we are freed from the need to eat and drink, from the urges toward sex or wealth or anger. Is Plotinus using the term "our emancipation" specifically to refer to death, or to refer also to the work of transcending the body and uniting with the higher soul in this life?.

In either case, according to Plotinus's reasoning, the Soul remains blameless of our bad behaviors and disordered states, in the same way that the lantern that shines its light on the wall is uninvolved with the events of the wall itself. And when the lantern's shutter is closed, the light withdraws, and the wall is as it was before.

This is interesting:

Those virtues, on the other hand, which spring not from contemplative wisdom but from custom or practical discipline belong to the Couplement: to the Couplement, too, belong the vices; they are its repugnances, desires, sympathies.

The Virtues, for the ancient and medieval world, are particular excellences which human beings can achieve. Plotinus here suggests that those virtues which arise from discipline belong to the Couplement.

Now, the case could certainly be made that the ability to sit down every morning and enter into meditation is a practical discipline, and yet it is this practical discipline that allows us to attain the kinds of higher faculties that belong to the Soul. This suggests that, even on a Plotinian account of the world and the human being, we reach the highest things by starting with lower things.

He leaves us with the following:

And Friendship?

This emotion belongs sometimes to the lower part, sometimes to the interior man.

It is interesting to reflect on this. Which friendships belong to the lower part, which to the interior man? I suppose the answer must be, it depends upon the motive behind the friendship. Is it the sort of friendship that leads to the cultivation of the life of the Soul, or is it the sort of friendship that arises from our lower nature? 

Well, which friendships arise from our lower nature? I suppose-- those which are similar to the sorts of friendships animals make, which amount to displays of play or submission to higher-ranking members of their group, or to their parents. How many of our friendships amount to the same thing? 

Consider the typical American high school. How many "friendships" are based on either general "popularity" or membership in a particular "clique"? 

And, having been entrained by so many years of that, and not being trained at all in the cultivation of the life of the mind, how many of us continue these patterns all throughout our lives?