Plotinus 1:1:4
Dec. 10th, 2019 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readoldthings Welcome back to everybody/anybody still following along.
This post will deal with chapter 4 of Tractate 1 of the first of Plotinus's Enneads. If you'd like to follow along online, the text I'm using can be found here.
So far, Plotinus has told us that we're dealing with the nature of the Soul, and with the question of experience. Just who or what is it that experiences pain or pleasure, desire or aversion?
Last time, he considered what the relationship between the Soul and body might be, and gave five different possibilities. There might be a coalescence between the soul and body; the Soul might be interwoven through the body; the Soul might be an Ideal-Form, detached from the body; the Soul might be an Ideal-Form, governing the body as a pilot governs a ship; or the Soul might consist of two parts, one attached to the body, the other separate from it. In the chapter that follows, Plotinus is going to consider each of these hypotheses.
Well, with no further ado, let's see what old Plotinus is going next. As always, quotes from Plotinus are in red, just like the words of Jesus in the Bible.
Let us consider, then, the hypothesis of a coalescence.
Now, if there is a coalescence, the lower is ennobled, the nobler degraded; the body is raised in the scale of being as made participants in life; the Soul, as associated with death and unreason, is brought lower. How can a lessening of the life-quality produce an increase such as Sense-Perception?
We're one paragraph into this chapter and, as is so often the case, there is a lot to unpack before we can move on. This, by the way, is why I wanted to do this project this way. My tendency when reading is to skim over the bits that I don't understand, with the assumption that they'll make sense later on, or will prove not to matter. What I'm finding is that when it comes to stuff like Neoplatonic philosophy you absolutely cannot do that. You skip a bit, and nothing that comes after it ever makes any sense. So, let's unpack this paragraph, one bit at a time.
First, we need to understand what he means by "lower and higher," "ennobled and degraded." By being intertwined with the body, the soul is degraded; by being intertwined with the soul, the body is ennobled. What is he talking about?
It's tempting to just see this as a hatred of material existence, pure and simple, of the type found in many religions. And I think that that is, indeed, part of it. Plotinus is writing in the late days of his civilization, and there you find a world-weariness and disgust with embodiment in contemporary writers from many different traditions. But, I also think that he is using these terms in a more technical way.
Remember that he keeps suggesting that the Soul, if it's immaterial, is an "Ideal-Form." And the example that I keep coming back to to describe this is the color red. A red candle has redness; a bulb on a Christmas tree has redness; a red book cover has redness; a red sentence has redness. In order for all of these to have redness, redness must exist apart from them all. Earlier, also, Plotinus said that if the soul is an Ideal-Form in this way, it cannot be affected by things lower than it, like the body, in the same way that the color red cannot be affected by the experience of a red object. On the other hand, the Soul could be affected by something higher than it on the scale of being. I illustrated this by the example of "color," which is something that proceeds "red," and that red shares in common with green, blue, and purple.
On that view, when Plotinus talks about the body being "ennobled" by contact with the soul, he isn't, or isn't just, making a value judgment. He's being literal-- even if the value judgment is also there. It's as if I said "I spend half my time in Cleveland, which degrades me, but ennobles Cleveland." I might be making a value judgment, but I'd also be making a literal description of where I spent my time.
And notice how the body, by being brought into contact with the soul, is mad a "participant in life," while the soul in contact with the body participants in "death and unreason." This again reinforces this idea-- Souls as ideal forms are beyond time; therefore, beyond change; therefore, immortal. Bodies are born and die. Therefore, the Soul, brought into contact with the body, is lowered, and brought into contact with death.
But if this is the case, then how is it possible for this to result in sense perception, which is necessarily an increase, since we don't perceive anything without our bodies? Can a lowering of the soul result in an increase of its powers?
No: the body has acquired life, it is the body that will acquire, with life, sensation and the affections coming by sensation. Desire, then, will belong to the body, as the objects of desire are to be enjoyed by the body. And fear, too, will belong to the body alone: for it is the body's doom to fail of its joys and to perish.
Ok. It may be that this is challenging for me just because I'm resisting it. Is it really that I don't understand what Plotinus is saying? Or do I just keep trying to revert to my own way of thinking?
I simply can't imagine how you can have two things, a Soul and a Body, and the Soul not experience what the body experiences. But that would, indeed, be the case, wouldn't it, if the body had "Soul" in the same way that a red candle has "Red."
Then again, we should have to examine how such a coalescence could be conceived: we might find it impossible: perhaps all this is like announcing the coalescence of things utterly incongruous in kind, let us say of a line and whiteness.
See? Plotinus knows this is hard to follow. Here he says as much-- if bodies and souls are that different, then it makes as much sense to see them as intertwined as it does two equally different things, like a line and whiteness. So, it may be that a coalescence is as impossible as it seems to me that it must be. Now, he's going to consider other possibilities:
Next for the suggestion that the Soul is interwoven through the body: such a relation would not give woof and warp community of sensation: the interwoven element might very well suffer no change: the permeating soul might remain entirely untouched by what affects the body-- as light goes always free of all it floods-- and all the more so, since, precisely, we are asked to consider it as diffused throughout the entire frame.
Under such an interweaving, then, the Soul would not be subjected to the body's affections and experiences: it would be present rather as an Ideal-Form in Matter.
Do you want to hear something somewhat embarrassing? I had to google the term "woof and warp," which I've certainly heard countless times throughout my life, but have never really understood. Plotinus-- or his translator-- is being comically literal here. In weaving, the "warp" refers to those threads which move vertically, the "woof" to those which run horizontally (or maybe it's vice versa.) Either way, in this case you can see the body as the horizontal threads of a tapestry, the soul as the vertical threads. In which case, the Soul might remain unaffected by the body-- here Plotinus switches metaphors, and notes how light is unaffected by the spaces that are lit. If this were the case, then, the Soul would still not be affected by the body, but would, again, be an Ideal-Form. Like red.
Next, Plotinus is going to consider two possibilities regarding the Soul as an Ideal-Form. In the last chapter, he described these as "an Ideal-Form detached," and an Ideal-Form governing the body like a pilot governs a ship.
Let us then suppose Soul to be in body as an Ideal-Form in Matter. Now if-- the first possibility-- the Soul is an essence, a self-existent, it can be present only as separable form and will therefore be all the more decidedly be the Using-Principle [and therefore unaffected.]
Suppose, next, the Soul to be present like axe-form on iron: here, no doubt, the form is all important but it is still the axe, the complement of iron and form, that effects whatever is effected by the iron thus modified: on this analogy, therefore, we are even more strictly compelled to assign all the experiences of the combination to the body: their natural seat is the material member, the instrument, the potential recipient of life.
Now, this is where either a working knowledge of ancient Greek language, a more formal education in ancient Greek metaphysics, or, best of all, both, would really come in handy. Lacking either of these, I have to do a bit of guess-work and deduction here in order to figure out what the difference is between these two possibilities.
The second possibility first. Here, the Soul is like the form of an axe, into which iron is shaped. The form of the axe is not the iron. The axe itself is the combination both of the shape-- Form Of Axe-- and the material-- the iron. If this is the case, then it is the body that has experience and affection, in the same way that, when you split a log with an axe, you do it with an axe, this axe-- not with the form of axes in general.
What, then, is the first possibility? Here, I suppose, Plotinus is recalling his earlier suggestion that the Soul might be something even higher than the form of an axe, or redness, which a material body can possess. It might be something more like Soul-Kind. The translator renders the words for this kind of thing as "essence" and "self-existent." I don't think I can get more precise than that-- for now, I think it's best to understand it as "something even more removed from the material world than a color or a shape can be."
Plotinus concludes this chapter in the following way:
Compare the passage where we read [in Plato] that "it is absurd to suppose that the Soul weaves"; equally absurd to think of it as desiring, grieving. All this is rather in the province of something which we may call the Animate.
The Soul, then, cannot grieve, or desire, anymore than it can weave. The translator I'm working with has helpfully chosen not to tell us what passage in Plato Plotinus might be referencing, and my attempts to pinpoint it so far only lead me back to Plotinus. So we'll have to leave it aside for now. Next, Plotinus is going to start telling us about something called the Animate. What is that? Again, assuming the translator is being a bit literal, it must mean "the blend of body and soul" or "the thing that has a soul." But what is that? Tune in next time, and maybe we'll find out!
This post will deal with chapter 4 of Tractate 1 of the first of Plotinus's Enneads. If you'd like to follow along online, the text I'm using can be found here.
So far, Plotinus has told us that we're dealing with the nature of the Soul, and with the question of experience. Just who or what is it that experiences pain or pleasure, desire or aversion?
Last time, he considered what the relationship between the Soul and body might be, and gave five different possibilities. There might be a coalescence between the soul and body; the Soul might be interwoven through the body; the Soul might be an Ideal-Form, detached from the body; the Soul might be an Ideal-Form, governing the body as a pilot governs a ship; or the Soul might consist of two parts, one attached to the body, the other separate from it. In the chapter that follows, Plotinus is going to consider each of these hypotheses.
Well, with no further ado, let's see what old Plotinus is going next. As always, quotes from Plotinus are in red, just like the words of Jesus in the Bible.
Let us consider, then, the hypothesis of a coalescence.
Now, if there is a coalescence, the lower is ennobled, the nobler degraded; the body is raised in the scale of being as made participants in life; the Soul, as associated with death and unreason, is brought lower. How can a lessening of the life-quality produce an increase such as Sense-Perception?
We're one paragraph into this chapter and, as is so often the case, there is a lot to unpack before we can move on. This, by the way, is why I wanted to do this project this way. My tendency when reading is to skim over the bits that I don't understand, with the assumption that they'll make sense later on, or will prove not to matter. What I'm finding is that when it comes to stuff like Neoplatonic philosophy you absolutely cannot do that. You skip a bit, and nothing that comes after it ever makes any sense. So, let's unpack this paragraph, one bit at a time.
First, we need to understand what he means by "lower and higher," "ennobled and degraded." By being intertwined with the body, the soul is degraded; by being intertwined with the soul, the body is ennobled. What is he talking about?
It's tempting to just see this as a hatred of material existence, pure and simple, of the type found in many religions. And I think that that is, indeed, part of it. Plotinus is writing in the late days of his civilization, and there you find a world-weariness and disgust with embodiment in contemporary writers from many different traditions. But, I also think that he is using these terms in a more technical way.
Remember that he keeps suggesting that the Soul, if it's immaterial, is an "Ideal-Form." And the example that I keep coming back to to describe this is the color red. A red candle has redness; a bulb on a Christmas tree has redness; a red book cover has redness; a red sentence has redness. In order for all of these to have redness, redness must exist apart from them all. Earlier, also, Plotinus said that if the soul is an Ideal-Form in this way, it cannot be affected by things lower than it, like the body, in the same way that the color red cannot be affected by the experience of a red object. On the other hand, the Soul could be affected by something higher than it on the scale of being. I illustrated this by the example of "color," which is something that proceeds "red," and that red shares in common with green, blue, and purple.
On that view, when Plotinus talks about the body being "ennobled" by contact with the soul, he isn't, or isn't just, making a value judgment. He's being literal-- even if the value judgment is also there. It's as if I said "I spend half my time in Cleveland, which degrades me, but ennobles Cleveland." I might be making a value judgment, but I'd also be making a literal description of where I spent my time.
And notice how the body, by being brought into contact with the soul, is mad a "participant in life," while the soul in contact with the body participants in "death and unreason." This again reinforces this idea-- Souls as ideal forms are beyond time; therefore, beyond change; therefore, immortal. Bodies are born and die. Therefore, the Soul, brought into contact with the body, is lowered, and brought into contact with death.
But if this is the case, then how is it possible for this to result in sense perception, which is necessarily an increase, since we don't perceive anything without our bodies? Can a lowering of the soul result in an increase of its powers?
No: the body has acquired life, it is the body that will acquire, with life, sensation and the affections coming by sensation. Desire, then, will belong to the body, as the objects of desire are to be enjoyed by the body. And fear, too, will belong to the body alone: for it is the body's doom to fail of its joys and to perish.
Ok. It may be that this is challenging for me just because I'm resisting it. Is it really that I don't understand what Plotinus is saying? Or do I just keep trying to revert to my own way of thinking?
I simply can't imagine how you can have two things, a Soul and a Body, and the Soul not experience what the body experiences. But that would, indeed, be the case, wouldn't it, if the body had "Soul" in the same way that a red candle has "Red."
Then again, we should have to examine how such a coalescence could be conceived: we might find it impossible: perhaps all this is like announcing the coalescence of things utterly incongruous in kind, let us say of a line and whiteness.
See? Plotinus knows this is hard to follow. Here he says as much-- if bodies and souls are that different, then it makes as much sense to see them as intertwined as it does two equally different things, like a line and whiteness. So, it may be that a coalescence is as impossible as it seems to me that it must be. Now, he's going to consider other possibilities:
Next for the suggestion that the Soul is interwoven through the body: such a relation would not give woof and warp community of sensation: the interwoven element might very well suffer no change: the permeating soul might remain entirely untouched by what affects the body-- as light goes always free of all it floods-- and all the more so, since, precisely, we are asked to consider it as diffused throughout the entire frame.
Under such an interweaving, then, the Soul would not be subjected to the body's affections and experiences: it would be present rather as an Ideal-Form in Matter.
Do you want to hear something somewhat embarrassing? I had to google the term "woof and warp," which I've certainly heard countless times throughout my life, but have never really understood. Plotinus-- or his translator-- is being comically literal here. In weaving, the "warp" refers to those threads which move vertically, the "woof" to those which run horizontally (or maybe it's vice versa.) Either way, in this case you can see the body as the horizontal threads of a tapestry, the soul as the vertical threads. In which case, the Soul might remain unaffected by the body-- here Plotinus switches metaphors, and notes how light is unaffected by the spaces that are lit. If this were the case, then, the Soul would still not be affected by the body, but would, again, be an Ideal-Form. Like red.
Next, Plotinus is going to consider two possibilities regarding the Soul as an Ideal-Form. In the last chapter, he described these as "an Ideal-Form detached," and an Ideal-Form governing the body like a pilot governs a ship.
Let us then suppose Soul to be in body as an Ideal-Form in Matter. Now if-- the first possibility-- the Soul is an essence, a self-existent, it can be present only as separable form and will therefore be all the more decidedly be the Using-Principle [and therefore unaffected.]
Suppose, next, the Soul to be present like axe-form on iron: here, no doubt, the form is all important but it is still the axe, the complement of iron and form, that effects whatever is effected by the iron thus modified: on this analogy, therefore, we are even more strictly compelled to assign all the experiences of the combination to the body: their natural seat is the material member, the instrument, the potential recipient of life.
Now, this is where either a working knowledge of ancient Greek language, a more formal education in ancient Greek metaphysics, or, best of all, both, would really come in handy. Lacking either of these, I have to do a bit of guess-work and deduction here in order to figure out what the difference is between these two possibilities.
The second possibility first. Here, the Soul is like the form of an axe, into which iron is shaped. The form of the axe is not the iron. The axe itself is the combination both of the shape-- Form Of Axe-- and the material-- the iron. If this is the case, then it is the body that has experience and affection, in the same way that, when you split a log with an axe, you do it with an axe, this axe-- not with the form of axes in general.
What, then, is the first possibility? Here, I suppose, Plotinus is recalling his earlier suggestion that the Soul might be something even higher than the form of an axe, or redness, which a material body can possess. It might be something more like Soul-Kind. The translator renders the words for this kind of thing as "essence" and "self-existent." I don't think I can get more precise than that-- for now, I think it's best to understand it as "something even more removed from the material world than a color or a shape can be."
Plotinus concludes this chapter in the following way:
Compare the passage where we read [in Plato] that "it is absurd to suppose that the Soul weaves"; equally absurd to think of it as desiring, grieving. All this is rather in the province of something which we may call the Animate.
The Soul, then, cannot grieve, or desire, anymore than it can weave. The translator I'm working with has helpfully chosen not to tell us what passage in Plato Plotinus might be referencing, and my attempts to pinpoint it so far only lead me back to Plotinus. So we'll have to leave it aside for now. Next, Plotinus is going to start telling us about something called the Animate. What is that? Again, assuming the translator is being a bit literal, it must mean "the blend of body and soul" or "the thing that has a soul." But what is that? Tune in next time, and maybe we'll find out!
