Reading Notes Plotinus 1:1:12
Feb. 23rd, 2020 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readoldthingsWelcome back! Last time, we learned more about the Soul, and our relation to it. Today we'll look at Section 12 of Tractate 1 of the First of Plotinus's Enneads. As this is the second to the last section, that means we're almost done with this tractate! Can you believe it's only been... um... two and a half months? At this rate, we'll be done with the first Ennead... sometime in early 2022, if not sooner!
Dear Gods, I have to start doing this once a day, don't I?
Ugh.
Okay, we'll work our way up to that. For now, let's move on to Section 12. From now on, all Plotinus quotes are in bold, while my words are in plain text. The red I was using is hard on my eyes.
...
Now, we see, Plotinus comes to a dilemma:
But if the Soul is sinless, how come the expiations? Here surely is a contradiction; on the one side the Soul is above all guilt; on the other, we hear of its sin, its purification, its expiation; it is doomed to the lower world, it passes from life to life.
If the Soul is sinless, and we are the Soul, then why would we need to spend time in the lower worlds, or reincarnated in lower conditions, to work off our guilt after we die?
We may take either view at will; they are easily reconciled.
But how, Plotinus?
When we tell of the sinless Soul, we make Soul and Essential-Soul one and the same; it is the simple and unbroken Unity.
Ah. That is how. The eternal and unchanging part of us remains always sinless. It is only when we enter into material incarnation that we can do evil. Just as we learned that the eternal Soul doesn't suffer pain when our body hurts, or lust, or rage, or whathaveyou, so presumably it doesn't suffer the pain of being reborn in the Lower World, or in the body of an animal, if that is our fate after death.
...Is that right?
By the Soul subject to sin we indicate a groupment, we include that other, that phase of the Soul which knows all the states and passions; the Soul in this sense is compound, all-inclusive; it falls under the conditions of the entire living experience: this compound it is that sins; it is this, and not the other, that pays the penalty.
...Yes, that is right.
It is in this sense that we read of the Soul: "We saw it as those others saw the sea-god Glaukos." "And," reading on, "if we mean to discern the nature of the Soul we must strip it free of all that has gathered about it, must see into the philosophy of it, examine with what Existences it has touch and by kinship to what Existences it is what it is."
I'm told that "we read" always means Plato. And I'm not sure where in Plato these passages are to be found. So let us read on, and see where this is going.
Thus Life is one thing, the Act is another, and the Expiator yet another. The retreat and sundering, then, must not be from this body only, but from every alien accruement. Such accruement takes place at birth; or rather birth is the coming-into-being of that other [lower] phase of the Soul. For the meaning of birth has been indicated elsewhere; it is brought about by a descent of the Soul, something being given off by the Soul other than that actually coming down in the declension.
This is to say: In the act of death, the lower doesn't only separate itself from the body. It separates, also, from everything which came into being during its time on Earth-- everything that Plotinus has previously described as the lower phases of the Soul, from sensory perception of material objects all the way on down to the impulse to procreate.
Here is a question-- Do the "expiations" after death consist of purifying the soul of everything that accrued to it during life? Is that what is meant by "reward and punishment"?
In the myth of Er in the Republic, Plato describes a place of judgment where we all find ourselves after death. In this place there are two holes in the ground, and two holes in the heavens. One of the holes into ground leads into the Underworld; the other leads back out again. The same with the holes in the heavens-- one leads to Heaven, the other back out. After death, those who have sinned get to take the first hole down into Hell, to undergo punishment. Once they've had enough, they come back up the second hole. At that point they can go back into incarnation. Conversely, the just get to go up to Heaven for a while, via the entrance hole; once they've been sufficiently rewarded, they get to come back down and head back for another earthly life. All except those who have been good enough to merit remaining in the Upper World permanently... and those whose guilt is so great they are stuck in the lower world for good.
For Plotinus, is the upper world the return of the Soul to its proper place among the divine? And is the lower world the expiation of everything nasty and material that is has accumulated during its sojourn on Earth?
Then the Soul has let this image fall? And this declension is not certainly sin?
...That is, isn't it sinful to come down here in the first place?
If the declension is no more than the illuminating of an object beneath, it constitutes no sin: the shadow is to be attributed not to the luminary but to the object illuminated; if the object were not there, the light could cause no shadow.
...Because the Soul isn't really involved in the actions of the Couplement; it only makes those actions possible. We sin, meanwhile, when we direct our attention downward, toward the material world, the body and its urges, without allowing our higher faculties to become involved, as we have seen previously. The question remains, though-- Why has the Soul entered into incarnation at all?
The following is very interesting:
And the Soul is said to go down, to decline, only in that the object it illuminates lives by its life. And it lets the image fall only if there be nothing near to take it up; and it lets it fall, not as a thing cut off, but as a thing that cases to be; the image has no further being when the whole Soul is looking toward the Supreme.
...And it's another instance where a better translation, some notes, or-- perhaps best of all-- the ability on my part to read ancient Greek. What is meant by the phrase "let the image fall"?
For us here below, life consists of being "illuminated," as it were, by something higher than us-- our Soul. We live insofar as the Soul shines its light upon the mass of our bodies. From this, we gain our faculties of perceiving and acting upon the material world.
If there is "nothing near to take up the image" the Soul "lets it fall" as "a thing that ceases to be." The image, then, is the lower soul. When we die, the lower soul ceases to be, and we withdraw to the higher.
But I think there is more to it than that-- spiritual practice in this life consists of turning toward the higher, the whole Soul toward the Supreme.
He illustrates this with an example from legend:
The poet, too, in the story of Hercules, seems to give this image separate existence; he puts the shadow of Hercules in the lower world and Hercules himself among the gods: treating the hero as existing in the two realms at once, he gives us a twofold Hercules.
It is not difficult to explain this distinction. Hercules was a hero of practical virtue. By this noble servicableness he was worthy to be a God. On the other hand, his merit was action and not the Contemplation which would place him unreservedly in the higher realm. Therefore while he has place above, something of him remains below
We learned earlier that those virtues which arise from bodily discipline are things of the Couplement, while those arising only from the Soul are higher virtues. Insofar as Hercules won renown by thrashing about the land killing monsters and the like, he remains a hero of "practical virtue," because his merit is "action" and not "the Contemplation which would place him unreservedly in the higher realm."
It is Contemplation-- note the capital-- which earns us a place in the higher realm, not action or practical virtue.
Dear Gods, I have to start doing this once a day, don't I?
Ugh.
Okay, we'll work our way up to that. For now, let's move on to Section 12. From now on, all Plotinus quotes are in bold, while my words are in plain text. The red I was using is hard on my eyes.
...
Now, we see, Plotinus comes to a dilemma:
But if the Soul is sinless, how come the expiations? Here surely is a contradiction; on the one side the Soul is above all guilt; on the other, we hear of its sin, its purification, its expiation; it is doomed to the lower world, it passes from life to life.
If the Soul is sinless, and we are the Soul, then why would we need to spend time in the lower worlds, or reincarnated in lower conditions, to work off our guilt after we die?
We may take either view at will; they are easily reconciled.
But how, Plotinus?
When we tell of the sinless Soul, we make Soul and Essential-Soul one and the same; it is the simple and unbroken Unity.
Ah. That is how. The eternal and unchanging part of us remains always sinless. It is only when we enter into material incarnation that we can do evil. Just as we learned that the eternal Soul doesn't suffer pain when our body hurts, or lust, or rage, or whathaveyou, so presumably it doesn't suffer the pain of being reborn in the Lower World, or in the body of an animal, if that is our fate after death.
...Is that right?
By the Soul subject to sin we indicate a groupment, we include that other, that phase of the Soul which knows all the states and passions; the Soul in this sense is compound, all-inclusive; it falls under the conditions of the entire living experience: this compound it is that sins; it is this, and not the other, that pays the penalty.
...Yes, that is right.
It is in this sense that we read of the Soul: "We saw it as those others saw the sea-god Glaukos." "And," reading on, "if we mean to discern the nature of the Soul we must strip it free of all that has gathered about it, must see into the philosophy of it, examine with what Existences it has touch and by kinship to what Existences it is what it is."
I'm told that "we read" always means Plato. And I'm not sure where in Plato these passages are to be found. So let us read on, and see where this is going.
Thus Life is one thing, the Act is another, and the Expiator yet another. The retreat and sundering, then, must not be from this body only, but from every alien accruement. Such accruement takes place at birth; or rather birth is the coming-into-being of that other [lower] phase of the Soul. For the meaning of birth has been indicated elsewhere; it is brought about by a descent of the Soul, something being given off by the Soul other than that actually coming down in the declension.
This is to say: In the act of death, the lower doesn't only separate itself from the body. It separates, also, from everything which came into being during its time on Earth-- everything that Plotinus has previously described as the lower phases of the Soul, from sensory perception of material objects all the way on down to the impulse to procreate.
Here is a question-- Do the "expiations" after death consist of purifying the soul of everything that accrued to it during life? Is that what is meant by "reward and punishment"?
In the myth of Er in the Republic, Plato describes a place of judgment where we all find ourselves after death. In this place there are two holes in the ground, and two holes in the heavens. One of the holes into ground leads into the Underworld; the other leads back out again. The same with the holes in the heavens-- one leads to Heaven, the other back out. After death, those who have sinned get to take the first hole down into Hell, to undergo punishment. Once they've had enough, they come back up the second hole. At that point they can go back into incarnation. Conversely, the just get to go up to Heaven for a while, via the entrance hole; once they've been sufficiently rewarded, they get to come back down and head back for another earthly life. All except those who have been good enough to merit remaining in the Upper World permanently... and those whose guilt is so great they are stuck in the lower world for good.
For Plotinus, is the upper world the return of the Soul to its proper place among the divine? And is the lower world the expiation of everything nasty and material that is has accumulated during its sojourn on Earth?
Then the Soul has let this image fall? And this declension is not certainly sin?
...That is, isn't it sinful to come down here in the first place?
If the declension is no more than the illuminating of an object beneath, it constitutes no sin: the shadow is to be attributed not to the luminary but to the object illuminated; if the object were not there, the light could cause no shadow.
...Because the Soul isn't really involved in the actions of the Couplement; it only makes those actions possible. We sin, meanwhile, when we direct our attention downward, toward the material world, the body and its urges, without allowing our higher faculties to become involved, as we have seen previously. The question remains, though-- Why has the Soul entered into incarnation at all?
The following is very interesting:
And the Soul is said to go down, to decline, only in that the object it illuminates lives by its life. And it lets the image fall only if there be nothing near to take it up; and it lets it fall, not as a thing cut off, but as a thing that cases to be; the image has no further being when the whole Soul is looking toward the Supreme.
...And it's another instance where a better translation, some notes, or-- perhaps best of all-- the ability on my part to read ancient Greek. What is meant by the phrase "let the image fall"?
For us here below, life consists of being "illuminated," as it were, by something higher than us-- our Soul. We live insofar as the Soul shines its light upon the mass of our bodies. From this, we gain our faculties of perceiving and acting upon the material world.
If there is "nothing near to take up the image" the Soul "lets it fall" as "a thing that ceases to be." The image, then, is the lower soul. When we die, the lower soul ceases to be, and we withdraw to the higher.
But I think there is more to it than that-- spiritual practice in this life consists of turning toward the higher, the whole Soul toward the Supreme.
He illustrates this with an example from legend:
The poet, too, in the story of Hercules, seems to give this image separate existence; he puts the shadow of Hercules in the lower world and Hercules himself among the gods: treating the hero as existing in the two realms at once, he gives us a twofold Hercules.
It is not difficult to explain this distinction. Hercules was a hero of practical virtue. By this noble servicableness he was worthy to be a God. On the other hand, his merit was action and not the Contemplation which would place him unreservedly in the higher realm. Therefore while he has place above, something of him remains below
We learned earlier that those virtues which arise from bodily discipline are things of the Couplement, while those arising only from the Soul are higher virtues. Insofar as Hercules won renown by thrashing about the land killing monsters and the like, he remains a hero of "practical virtue," because his merit is "action" and not "the Contemplation which would place him unreservedly in the higher realm."
It is Contemplation-- note the capital-- which earns us a place in the higher realm, not action or practical virtue.
