Plotinus 1:2:2

Welcome back to our ongoing read-through of the Enneads of Plotinus!

Today we'll be looking at Ennead 1, Tractate 2, Section 2. As always, you can follow along online here. The first post in this series is here.

First, then, let us examine those qualities by which we hold Likeness comes, and seek to establish what is this thing which, as we possess it, in transcription, is virtue but as the Supreme possesses it, is the nature of an exemplar or archetype that is not virtue.

 

That sentence is a bit of a mouthful. Referring back to what we previously said, the virtues will lead us to the higher realm of the Gods, but those virtues are not useful there. God has nothing to be afraid of, and so doesn't need courage; he has no lower faculties to keep in line, and so has no need of temperance. But, in the Platonic world, Likeness never means "coincidental resemblance," as it does for us. If two things are Like one another, they share a quality which has a reality which might be higher than either of the two things in question. If the practice of a virtue will allow us to attain Likeness to God; but the virtue itself doesn't exist in the divine world; then the virtue that we experience must be a manifestation of a substance or process which is higher than the virtue as we know it.

Make sense? 

Well, let's keep reading anyway. 

We must first distinguish two modes of Likeness. 

There is the likeness of demanding an identical nature in the objects which, further, must draw their likeness from a common principle; and there is the case in which B resembles A, but A is a Primal, not concerned about B and not said to resemble B. In this second case, likeness is understood in a distinct sense: we no longer look for identity of nature, but, on the contrary, for divergence since the likeness has come about by the mode of difference.

Another way of saying this would be to talk about Horizontal and Vertical Likeness. A red book, a red candle, and a red coffee cup set beside one another are Like one another Horizontally. That is, they all share in common the color red, which is the same in each of them. On the other hand, their Likeness to Red Itself is Vertical. The cup has Red, but Redness Itself is unrelated to a cup. All of the cups in the world could be smashed to pieces or painted green, and red would be unaffected. Red is a Color, and it has that in common with Green, Blue, and Yellow. Color is a sensory quality, like texture, smell or weight. Sensory Quality could be compared with Non-Sensory Quality, such as Age or Durability. All of this is Plotinus's second mode of Likeness, which I'm calling Vertical Likeness. 

What, then, precisely is Virtue, collectively and in the particular? The clearer method will be to begin with the particular, for so the common element by which all the forms hold the general name will readily appear.

This is like starting with red and green to understand color, rather than starting with color in general.

The Civic Virtues, on which we have touched above, are a principle of order and beauty in us as long as we remain passing our life here: they ennoble us by setting bound and measure to our desires and to our entire sensibility, and dispelling false judgement-- and this by sheer efficacy of the better, by the very setting of the bounds, by the fact that the measured is lifted outside of the sphere of the unmeasured and lawless.

So: The civic virtues of justice, courage, temperance and wisdom set boundaries to our behavior. In doing so, they allow our behavior to be measured against a standard. Because of this, they lead to order. Order is a superior thing to chaos, and that which is bounded and measurable is superior to the unmeasurable. They limit the rule of our desires, which Plotinus has already described as being the lowest faculties of the soul, which ensnare us in matter.

It should probably be kept in mind here that the creation of the universe in the Platonic tradition is really a creation of order in the universe. The Demiurgos creates by taking the formless chaos and imposing structure upon it. By imposing structure on the chaos of our lives and our desires, we imitate the creator of the universe. 

And, further, these Civic Virtues-- measured and ordered themselves and acting as a principle of measure to the Soul which is as Matter to their forming-- are like to the measure reigning in the over-world, and they carry a trace of that Highest Good in the Supreme; for, while utter measurelessness is brute Matter and wholly outside of Likeness, any participation in Ideal-Form produces some corresponding degree of Likeness to the formless Being There. And participation goes by nearness: the Soul nearer than the body, therefore closer akin, participates more fully and shows a godlike presence, almost cheating us into the delusion that in the Soul we see God entire. 

This is the way in which men of the Civic Virtues attain Likeness.

This is what I said above. Notice, too, that the Virtues act on the Soul as God acted on Matter in the forming of the world. Analogy is also critically important in Platonic thinking. Here, God:Matter::Virtue:Soul. In an analogy, there is a likeness between the alternating terms; thus, by practicing Virtue, we produce a likeness of God within us. 

Again, and critically, the Analogy is not a mere coincidence or random resemblance of two disparate things. Not in Platonism. Here, Analogy is a timeless pattern of meaning and therefore one of the formative principles of the universe itself. Thus, Plotinus is being completely literal by saying that the Civic Virtues carry "a trace of that Highest Good in the Supreme." To be like something is to share a quality with something. By practicing the Civic Virtues we can become like God to such a degree that we can almost believe "that in the Soul we see God entire."