Reading Notes: Plotinus 1:1:7
Dec. 26th, 2019 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readoldthingsHave you heard of the Watcher at the Threshold? That's the thing that turns up every time you start a new project-- running or meditating every day, finally writing that book, drinking less coffee, whatever it is. At some point, you make it one day, the next, the third day, and then, there he is. He's the thing that says, "Maybe I just won't do it today. I'll get to it tomorrow." And then tomorrow comes and you're like, "But I already didn't do it yesterday, so why today?" Eventually it's a week later, and you say to yourself, "I guess I don't do it after all," and so you stop.
This is a new project for me, so it's not surprising that the Watcher turned up. Of course, he was greatly assisted by the unbelievable level of busy-ness of my life lately. But these little posts don't take that long, and so, with all due respect to Mr. Watcher, let's jump right back in.
In this section, Plotinus begins to wind up his argument about the soul. He starts by telling us what's really going on here:
The truth lies in the Consideration that the Couplement subsists by virtue of the Soul's presence.
This, however, is not to say that the Soul gives itself as it is in itself to form either the Couplement or the body.
No; from the organized body and something else, let us say a light, which the Soul gives forth by itself, it forms a distinct Principle, the Animate; and in this principle are vested Sense-Perception and all other experiences found to belong to the Animate.
Are you following, so far? In Plotinus's view, the Soul remains beyond physical incarnation, in the way (I think) that redness remains beyond a specific red object. So the Soul isn't present to the body the way that it is all by itself-- instead it's like something comes forth from it. He uses the metaphor of a light-- in this case, it would be as if a wall were illuminated by a lantern. The illuminated wall is the "Couplement" of wall and light. The lantern remains a separate thing, in a separate place, but the light on the wall is only possible through it.
Are you reminded of those modern thinkers who describe consciousness as akin to a radio signal that is received by the brain?
More:
But the "We"? How have We Sense Perception?
By the fact that We are not separate from the Animate so constituted, even though certanily other and nobler elements go to make up the entire many-sided nature of Man.
In the same way that the lantern is not separate from the wall it illuminates, we are not separate from the body, or, rather, the complex of body and Soul. But:
The faculty of perception in the Soul cannot act by the immediate grasping of sensible objects, but only by the discerning of impressions printed upon the Animate by sensation: these impressions are already Intelligibles while the outer sensation is a mere phantom of the other [of that in the Soul] which is nearer to Authentic-Existence as being an impassive reading of Ideal-Forms.
....And this is one of those moments where I wish either that I read ancient Greek, or else that the editor of this volume had bothered to include notes to explain his choice of English words, including Capitalizations. In the absence of these, much of this is gobbledy-gook. That said, let's unpack what we can.
Since the Soul is beyond embodiment, it can't grasp the objects of perception directly. Light enters the eye, and you see an image of a computer screen. In the material world, that's all that is happening; the image produced is something else, and is not material. For Plotinus, the image that is created in the mind (as we would say) is more real than the light entering the brain. After all, in the mind the image becomes an image of a computer screen, or the color red-- and this is touches on the world of permanent forms.
And by means of these Ideal-Forms, by which the Soul wields single lordship of the Animate, we have Discursive-Reasoning, Sense-Knowledge and Intellection. From this moment we have peculiarly the We: before this there was only the "ours"; but at this stage stands to WE (the authentic human-principle] loftily presiding over the Animate.
I've got to tell you, I am not at all sure why this should be so.
Let's accept it as a premise for now. It's worth keeping in mind that Plotinus was writing in an era that was utterly sick of living in the material world. He was only slightly less extreme than the Gnostics, and only because he didn't believe that the Creator God was actually an evil demon. For now, we have the idea that the Soul, because it is outside of embodiment and capable of reason, and of perceiving Ideal-Forms (in part by means of sense-objects), presides loftily over the body.
There is no reason why the entire compound entity should not be described as the Animate or Living-Being-- mingled in a lower phase, but above that point the beginning of the veritable man, distinct from all that is kin to the lion, all that is of the order of the multiple brute. And since The Man, so understood, is essentially the associate of the reasoning Soul, in our reasoning it is this "we" that reasons, in that the use and act of reason is a characteristic act of the Soul.
At its highest, the Soul of man is above embodiment, and above both sense perceptions and the urges of nature that govern "the multiple brute." Indeed, it is the task of philosophy to raise human beings to the level of true human beings, not mere beasts in clothes. As our later author from the same tradition writes, "He alone is perfect who attains the highest level of knowledge, and delights in and loves that level of knowledge. They were called 'philosophers' in Greek, and in Latin this word is properly interpreted 'lovers of knowledge.' Whoever does not strive for knowledge is defective and weak in authority, and therefore ought not to be called human, despire having the name, form, and figure of a human being."*
*Picatrix Bk 1 Ch 6, Greer and Warnock trans.
This is a new project for me, so it's not surprising that the Watcher turned up. Of course, he was greatly assisted by the unbelievable level of busy-ness of my life lately. But these little posts don't take that long, and so, with all due respect to Mr. Watcher, let's jump right back in.
In this section, Plotinus begins to wind up his argument about the soul. He starts by telling us what's really going on here:
The truth lies in the Consideration that the Couplement subsists by virtue of the Soul's presence.
This, however, is not to say that the Soul gives itself as it is in itself to form either the Couplement or the body.
No; from the organized body and something else, let us say a light, which the Soul gives forth by itself, it forms a distinct Principle, the Animate; and in this principle are vested Sense-Perception and all other experiences found to belong to the Animate.
Are you following, so far? In Plotinus's view, the Soul remains beyond physical incarnation, in the way (I think) that redness remains beyond a specific red object. So the Soul isn't present to the body the way that it is all by itself-- instead it's like something comes forth from it. He uses the metaphor of a light-- in this case, it would be as if a wall were illuminated by a lantern. The illuminated wall is the "Couplement" of wall and light. The lantern remains a separate thing, in a separate place, but the light on the wall is only possible through it.
Are you reminded of those modern thinkers who describe consciousness as akin to a radio signal that is received by the brain?
More:
But the "We"? How have We Sense Perception?
By the fact that We are not separate from the Animate so constituted, even though certanily other and nobler elements go to make up the entire many-sided nature of Man.
In the same way that the lantern is not separate from the wall it illuminates, we are not separate from the body, or, rather, the complex of body and Soul. But:
The faculty of perception in the Soul cannot act by the immediate grasping of sensible objects, but only by the discerning of impressions printed upon the Animate by sensation: these impressions are already Intelligibles while the outer sensation is a mere phantom of the other [of that in the Soul] which is nearer to Authentic-Existence as being an impassive reading of Ideal-Forms.
....And this is one of those moments where I wish either that I read ancient Greek, or else that the editor of this volume had bothered to include notes to explain his choice of English words, including Capitalizations. In the absence of these, much of this is gobbledy-gook. That said, let's unpack what we can.
Since the Soul is beyond embodiment, it can't grasp the objects of perception directly. Light enters the eye, and you see an image of a computer screen. In the material world, that's all that is happening; the image produced is something else, and is not material. For Plotinus, the image that is created in the mind (as we would say) is more real than the light entering the brain. After all, in the mind the image becomes an image of a computer screen, or the color red-- and this is touches on the world of permanent forms.
And by means of these Ideal-Forms, by which the Soul wields single lordship of the Animate, we have Discursive-Reasoning, Sense-Knowledge and Intellection. From this moment we have peculiarly the We: before this there was only the "ours"; but at this stage stands to WE (the authentic human-principle] loftily presiding over the Animate.
I've got to tell you, I am not at all sure why this should be so.
Let's accept it as a premise for now. It's worth keeping in mind that Plotinus was writing in an era that was utterly sick of living in the material world. He was only slightly less extreme than the Gnostics, and only because he didn't believe that the Creator God was actually an evil demon. For now, we have the idea that the Soul, because it is outside of embodiment and capable of reason, and of perceiving Ideal-Forms (in part by means of sense-objects), presides loftily over the body.
There is no reason why the entire compound entity should not be described as the Animate or Living-Being-- mingled in a lower phase, but above that point the beginning of the veritable man, distinct from all that is kin to the lion, all that is of the order of the multiple brute. And since The Man, so understood, is essentially the associate of the reasoning Soul, in our reasoning it is this "we" that reasons, in that the use and act of reason is a characteristic act of the Soul.
At its highest, the Soul of man is above embodiment, and above both sense perceptions and the urges of nature that govern "the multiple brute." Indeed, it is the task of philosophy to raise human beings to the level of true human beings, not mere beasts in clothes. As our later author from the same tradition writes, "He alone is perfect who attains the highest level of knowledge, and delights in and loves that level of knowledge. They were called 'philosophers' in Greek, and in Latin this word is properly interpreted 'lovers of knowledge.' Whoever does not strive for knowledge is defective and weak in authority, and therefore ought not to be called human, despire having the name, form, and figure of a human being."*
*Picatrix Bk 1 Ch 6, Greer and Warnock trans.
