philosophy beginning with the work of Plotinus and ending with the
closing of the Platonic Academy by the Emperor Justinian in 529 CE.
This brand of Platonism, which is often described as 'mystical' or
religious in nature, developed outside the mainstream of Academic
Platonism. The origins of Neoplatonism can be traced back to the era
of Hellenistic syncretism which spawned such movements and schools of
thought as Gnosticism and the Hermetic tradition. A major factor in
this syncretism, and one which had an immense influence on the
development of Platonic thought, was the introduction of the Jewish
Scriptures into Greek intellectual circles via the translation known
as the Septuagint. The encounter between the creation narrative of
Genesis and the cosmology of Plato's Timaeus set in motion a long
tradition of cosmological theorizing that finally culminated in the
grand schema of Plotinus' Enneads. Plotinus' two major successors,
Porphyry and Iamblichus, each developed, in their own way, certain
isolated aspects of Plotinus' thought, but neither of them developed a
rigorous philosophy to match that of their master. It was Proclus who,
shortly before the closing of the Academy, bequeathed a systematic
Platonic philosophy upon the world that in certain ways approached the
sophistication of Plotinus. Finally, in the work of the so-called
Pseudo-Dionysius, we find a grand synthesis of Platonic philosophy and
Christian theology that was to exercise an immense influence on
mediaeval mysticism and Renaissance Humanism.
1. What is Neoplatonism?
The term 'Neoplatonism' is a modern construction. Plotinus, who is
often considered the 'founder' of Neoplatonism, would not have
considered himself a "new" Platonist in any sense, but simply an
expositor of the doctrines of Plato. That this required him to
formulate an entirely new philosophical system would not have been
viewed by him as a problem, for it was, in his eyes, precisely what
the Platonic doctrine required. In a sense, this is true, for as early
as the Old Academy we find Plato's successors struggling with the
proper interpretation of his thought, and arriving at strikingly
different conclusions. Also, in the Hellenistic era, certain Platonic
ideas were taken up by thinkers of various loyalties — Jewish,
Gnostic, Christian — and worked up into new forms of expression that
varied quite considerably from what Plato actually wrote in his
Dialogues. Should this lead us to the conclusion that these thinkers
were any less 'loyal' to Plato than were the members of the Academy
(in its various forms throughout the centuries preceding Plotinus)?
No; for the multiple and often contradictory uses made of Platonic
ideas is a testament to the universality of Plato's thought — that is,
its ability to admit of a wide variety of interpretations and
applications. In this sense, Neo-Platonism may be said to have begun
immediately after Plato's death, when new approaches to his philosophy
were being broached. Indeed, we already see a hint, in the doctrines
of Xenocrates (the second head of the Old Academy) of a type of
salvation theory involving the unification of the two parts of the
human soul — the "Olympian" or heavenly, and the "Titanic" or earthly
(Dillon 1977, p. 27). If we accept Frederick Copleston's description
of Neoplatonism as "the intellectualist reply to the … yearning for
personal salvation" (Copleston 1962, p. 216) we can already locate the
beginning of this reply as far back as the Old Academy, and
Neoplatonism would then not have begun with Plotinus. However, it is
not clear that Xenocrates' idea of salvation involved the individual;
it is quite possible that he was referring to a unified human nature
in an abstract sense. In any case, the early Hermetic-Gnostic
tradition is certainly to an extent Platonic, and later Gnosticism and
Christian Logos theology markedly so. If an intellectual reply to a
general yearning for personal salvation is what characterizes
Neoplatonism, then the highly intellectual Gnostics and Christians of
the Late Hellenistic era must be given the title of Neoplatonists.
However, if we are to be rigorous and define Neoplatonism as the
synthesis of various more or less 'Platonistic' ideas into a grand
expression of Platonic philosophy, then Plotinus must be considered
the founder of Neoplatonism. Yet we must not forget that these
Platonizing Christian, Gnostic, Jewish, and other 'pagan' thinkers
provided the necessary speculative material to make this synthesis
possible.
2. Plotinian Neoplatonism
The great third century thinker and 'founder' of Neoplatonism,
Plotinus, is responsible for the grand synthesis of progressive
Christian and Gnostic ideas with the traditional Platonic philosophy.
He answered the challenge of accounting for the emergence of a
seemingly inferior and flawed cosmos from the perfect mind of the
divinity by declaring outright that all objective existence is but the
external self-expression of an inherently contemplative deity known as
the One (to hen), or the Good (ta kalon). Plotinus compares the
expression of the superior godhead with the self-expression of the
individual soul, which proceeds from the perfect conception of a Form
(eidos), to the always flawed expression of this Form in the manner of
a materially derived 'personality' that risks succumbing to the
demands of divisive discursivity, and so becomes something less than
divine. This diminution of the divine essence in temporality is but a
necessary moment of the complete expression of the One. By elevating
the experience of the individual soul to the status of an
actualization of a divine Form, Plotinus succeeded, also, in
preserving, if not the autonomy, at least the dignity and ontological
necessity of personality. The Cosmos, according to Plotinus, is not a
created order, planned by a deity on whom we can pass the charge of
begetting evil; for the Cosmos is the self-expression of the Soul,
which corresponds, roughly, to Philo's logos prophorikos, the logos
endiathetos of which is the Intelligence (nous). Rather, the Cosmos,
in Plotinian terms, is to be understood as the concrete result or
'product' of the Soul's experience of its own Mind (nous). Ideally,
this concrete expression should serve the Soul as a reference-point
for its own self-conscious existence; however, the Soul all too easily
falls into the error of valuing the expression over the principle
(arkhê), which is the contemplation of the divine Forms. This error
gives rise to evil, which is the purely subjective relation of the
Soul (now divided) to the manifold and concrete forms of its
expressive act. When the Soul, in the form of individual existents,
becomes thus preoccupied with its experience, Nature comes into being,
and the Cosmos takes on concrete form as the locus of personality.
a. Contemplation and Creation
Hearkening back, whether consciously or not, to the doctrine of
Speusippus (Plato's successor in the Academy) that the One is utterly
transcendent and "beyond being," and that the Dyad is the true first
principle (Dillon 1977, p. 12), Plotinus declares that the One is
"alone with itself" and ineffable (cf. Enneads VI.9.6 and V.2.1). The
One does not act to produce a cosmos or a spiritual order, but simply
generates from itself, effortlessly, a power (dunamis) which is at
once the Intellect (nous) and the object of contemplation (theôria) of
this Intellect. While Plotinus suggests that the One subsists by
thinking itself as itself, the Intellect subsists through thinking
itself as other, and therefore becomes divided within itself: this act
of division within the Intellect is the production of Being, which is
the very principle of expression or discursivity (Ennead V.1.7). For
this reason, the Intellect stands as Plotinus' sole First Principle.
At this point, the thinking or contemplation of the Intellect is
divided up and ordered into thoughts, each of them subsisting in and
for themselves, as autonomous reflections of the dunamis of the One.
These are the Forms (eidê), and out of their inert unity there arises
the Soul, whose task it is to think these Forms discursively and
creatively, and to thereby produce or create a concrete, living
expression of the divine Intellect. This activity of the Soul results
in the production of numerous individual souls: living actualizations
of the possibilities inherent in the Forms. Whereas the Intellect
became divided within itself through contemplation, the Soul becomes
divided outside of itself, through action (which is still
contemplation, according to Plotinus, albeit the lowest type; cf.
Ennead III.8.4), and this division constitutes the Cosmos, which is
the expressive or creative act of the Soul, also referred to as
Nature. When the individual soul reflects upon Nature as its own act,
this soul is capable of attaining insight (gnôsis) into the essence of
Intellect; however, when the soul views nature as something objective
and external — that is, as something to be experienced or undergone,
while forgetting that the soul itself is the creator of this Nature —
evil and suffering ensue. Let us now examine the manner in which
Plotinus explains Nature as the locus of personality.
b. Nature and Personality
Contemplation, at the level of the Soul, is for Plotinus a two-way
street. The Soul both contemplates, passively, the Intellect, and
reflects upon its own contemplative act by producing Nature and the
Cosmos. The individual souls that become immersed in Nature, as
moments of the Soul's eternal act, will, ideally, gain a complete
knowledge of the Soul in its unity, and even of the Intellect, by
reflecting upon the concrete results of the Soul's act — that is, upon
the externalized, sensible entities that comprise the physical Cosmos.
This reflection, if carried by the individual soul with a memory of
its provenance always in the foreground, will lead to a just governing
of the physical Cosmos, which will make of it a perfect material image
of the Intellectual Cosmos, i.e., the realm of the Forms (cf. Enneads
IV.3.7 and IV.8.6). However, things don't always turn out so well, for
individual souls often "go lower than is needful … in order to light
the lower regions, but it is not good for them to go so far" (Ennead
IV.3.17, tr. O'Brien 1964). For when the soul extends itself ever
farther into the indeterminacy of materiality, it gradually loses
memory of its divine origin, and comes to identify itself more and
more with its surroundings — that is to say: the soul identifies
itself with the results of the Soul's act, and forgets that it is, as
part of this Soul, itself an agent of the act. This is tantamount to a
relinquishing, by the soul, of its divine nature. When the soul has
thus abandoned itself, it begins to accrue many alien encrustations,
if you will, that make of it something less than divine. These
encrustations are the 'accidents' (in the Aristotelian sense) of
personality. And yet the soul is never completely lost, for, as
Plotinus insists, the soul need simply "think upon essential being" in
order to return to itself, and continue to exist authentically as a
governor of the Cosmos (Ennead IV.8.4-6). The memory of the
personality that this wandering soul possessed must be forgotten in
order for it to return completely to its divine nature; for if it were
remembered, we would have to say, contradictorily, that the soul holds
a memory of what occurred during its state of forgetfulness! So in a
sense, Plotinus holds that individual personalities are not maintained
at the level of Soul. However, if we understand personality as more
than just a particular attitude attached to a concrete mode of
existence, and rather view it as the sum total of experiences
reflected upon in intellect, then souls most certainly retain their
personalities, even at the highest level, for they persist as thoughts
within the divine Mind (cp. Ennead IV.8.5). The personality that one
acquires in action (the lowest type of contemplation) is indeed
forgotten and dissolved, but the 'personality' or persistence in
intellect that one achieves through virtuous acts most definitely
endures (Ennead IV.3.32).
c. Salvation and the Cosmic Process
Plotinus, like his older contemporary, the Christian philosopher
Origen of Alexandria, views the descent of the soul into the material
realm as a necessary moment in the unfolding of the divine Intellect,
or God. For this reason, the descent itself is not an evil, for it is
a reflection of God's essence. Both Origen and Plotinus place the
blame for experiencing this descent as an evil squarely upon the
individual soul. Of course, these thinkers held, respectively, quite
different views as to why and how the soul experiences the descent as
an evil; but they held one thing in common: that the rational soul
will naturally choose the Good, and that any failure to do so is the
result of forgetfulness or acquired ignorance. But whence this
failure? Origen gave what, to Plotinus' mind, must have been a quite
unsatisfactory answer: that souls pre-existed as spiritual beings, and
when they desired to create or 'beget' independently of God, they all
fell into error, and languished there until the coming of Logos
Incarnate. This view has more than a little Gnostic flavor to it,
which would have sat ill with Plotinus, who was a great opponent of
Gnosticism. The fall of the soul Plotinus refers, quite simply, to the
tension between pure contemplation and divisive action — a tension
that constitutes the natural mode of existence of the soul (cf. Ennead
IV.8.6-7). Plotinus tells us that a thought is only completed or fully
comprehended after it has been expressed, for only then can the
thought be said to have passed from potentiality to actuality (Ennead
IV.3.30). The question of whether Plotinus places more value on the
potential or the actual is really of no consequence, for in the
Plotinian plêrôma every potentiality generates an activity, and every
activity becomes itself a potential for new activity (cf. Ennead
III.8.8); and since the One, which is the goal or object of desire of
all existents, is neither potentiality nor actuality, but "beyond
being" (epekeina ousias), it is impossible to say whether the striving
of existents, in Plotinus' schema, will result in full and complete
actualization, or in a repose of potentiality that will make them like
their source. "Likeness to God as far as possible," for Plotinus, is
really likeness to oneself – authentic existence. Plotinus leaves it
up to the individual to determine what this means.
i. Plotinus' Last Words
In his biography of Plotinus, Porphyry records the last words of his
teacher to his students as follows: "Strive to bring back the god in
yourselves to the God in the All" (Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 2, my
translation). After uttering these words, Plotinus, one of the
greatest philosophers the world has ever known, passed away. The
simplicity of this final statement seems to be at odds with the
intellectual rigors of Plotinus' treatises, which challenge — and more
often than not vanquish — just about every prominent philosophical
view of the era. But this is only if we take this remark in a mystical
or ecstatic religious sense. Plotinus demanded the utmost level of
intellectual clarity in dealing with the problem of humankind's
relation to the highest principle of existence. Striving for or
desiring salvation was not, for Plotinus, an excuse for simply
abandoning oneself to faith or prayer or unreflective religious
rituals; rather, salvation was to be achieved through the practice of
philosophical investigation, of dialectic. The fact that Plotinus, at
the end of his life, had arrived at this very simple formulation,
serves to show that his dialectical quest was successful. In his last
treatise, "On the Primal Good" (Ennead I.7), Plotinus is able to
assert, in the same breath, that both life and death are good. He says
this because life is the moment in which the soul expresses itself and
revels in the autonomy of the creative act. However, this life, since
it is characterized by action, eventually leads to exhaustion, and the
desire, not for autonomous action, but for reposeful contemplation —
of a fulfillment that is purely intellectual and eternal. Death is the
relief of this exhaustion, and the return to a state of contemplative
repose. Is this return to the Intellect a return to potentiality? It
is hard to say. Perhaps it is a synthesis of potentiality and
actuality: the moment at which the soul is both one and many, both
human and divine. This would constitute Plotinian salvation — the
fulfillment of the exhortation of the dying sage.
d. The Achievement of Plotinus
In the last analysis, what stands as the most important and impressive
accomplishment of Plotinus is the manner in which he synthesized the
pure, 'semi-mythical' expression of Plato with the logical rigors of
the Peripatetic and Stoic schools, yet without losing sight of
philosophy's most important task: of rendering the human experience in
intelligible and analyzable terms. That Plotinus' thought had to take
the 'detour' through such wildly mystical and speculative paths as
Gnosticism and Christian salvation theology is only proof of his
clear-sightedness, thoroughness, and admirable humanism. For all of
his dialectical difficulties and perambulations, Plotinus' sole
concern is with the well-being (eudaimonia) of the human soul. This
is, of course, to be understood as an intellectual, as opposed to a
merely physical or even emotional well-being, for Plotinus was not
concerned with the temporary or the temporal. The striving of the
human mind for a mode of existence more suited to its intuited
potential than the ephemeral possibilities of this material realm,
while admittedly a striving born of temporality, is nonetheless
directed toward atemporal and divine perfection. This is a striving or
desire rendered all the more poignant and worthy of philosophy
precisely because it is born in the depths of existential angst, and
not in the primitive ecstasies of unreflective ritual. As the last
true representative of the Greek philosophical spirit, Plotinus is
Apollonian, not Dionysian. His concern is with the intellectual
beautification of the human soul, and for this reason his notion of
salvation does not, like Origen's, imply an eternal state of objective
contemplation of the divinity — for Plotinus, the separation between
human and god breaks down, so that when the perfected soul
contemplates itself, it is also contemplating the Supreme.
i. The Plotinian Synthesis
Plotinus was faced with the task of defending the true Platonic
philosophy, as he understood it, against the inroads being made, in
his time, most of all by Gnostics, but also by orthodox Christianity.
Instead of launching an all-out attack on these new ideas, Plotinus
took what was best from them, in his eyes, and brought these ideas
into concert with his own brand of Platonism. For this reason, we are
sometimes surprised to see Plotinus, in one treatise, speaking of the
cosmos as a realm of forgetfulness and error, while in another,
speaking of the cosmos as the most perfect expression of the godhead.
Once we realize the extent to which certain Gnostic sects went in
order to brand this world as a product of an evil and malignant
Demiurge, to whom we owe absolutely no allegiance, it becomes clear
that Plotinus was simply trying to temper the extreme form of an idea
which he himself shared, though in a less radical sense. The feeling
of being thrown into a hostile and alien world is a philosophically
valid position from which to begin a critique and investigation of
human existence; indeed, modern existentialist philosophers have often
started from this same premise. However, Plotinus realized that it is
not the nature of the human soul to simply escape from a realm of
active engagement with external reality (the cosmos) to a passive
receptance of divine form (within the plêrôma). The Soul, as Plotinus
understands it, is an essentially creative being, and one which
understands existence on its own terms. One of the beauties of
Plotinus' system is that everything he says concerning the nature of
the Cosmos (spiritual and physical) can equally be held of the Soul.
Now while it would be false to charge Plotinus with solipsism (or even
narcissism, as one prominent commentator has done; cf. Julia Kristeva
in Hadot 1993, p. 11), it would be correct to say that the entire
Cosmos is an analogue of the experience of the Soul, which results in
the attainment of full self-consciousness. The form of Plotinus'
system is the very form by which the Soul naturally comes to know
itself in relation to its acts; and the expression of the Soul will
always, therefore, be a philosophical expression. When we speak of the
Plotinian synthesis, then, what we are speaking of is a natural
dialectic of the Soul, which takes its own expressions into account,
no matter how faulty or incomplete they may appear in retrospect, and
weaves them into a cosmic tapestry of noetic images.
3. Porphyry and Iamblichus
Porphyry of Tyre (ca. 233-305 CE) is the most famous pupil of
Plotinus. In addition to writing an introductory summary of his
master's theories (the treatise entitled Launching-Points to the Realm
of Mind), Porphyry also composed the famous Isagoge, an introduction
to the Categories of Aristotle, which came to exercise an immense
influence on Mediaeval Scholasticism. The extent of Porphyry's
investigative interests exceeded that of his teacher, and his
so-called "scientific" works, which survive to this day, include a
treatise on music (On Prosody), and two studies of the astronomical
and astrological theories of Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 70-140 CE), On the
Harmonics, and an Introduction to The Astronomy of Ptolemy. He wrote
biographies of Pythagoras and Plotinus, and edited and compiled the
latter's essays into six books, each containing nine treatises, giving
them the title Enneads. Unlike Plotinus, Porphyry was interested
primarily in the practical aspect of salvific striving, and the manner
in which the soul could most effectively bring about its transference
to ever higher realms of existence. This led Porphyry to develop a
doctrine of ascent to the Intellect by way of the exercise of virtue
(aretê) in the form of 'good works'. This doctrine may owe its genesis
to Porphyry's supposed early adherence to Christianity, as attested by
the historian Socrates, and suggested by St. Augustine (cf. Copleston
1962, p. 218). If Porphyry had, at some point, been a Christian, this
would account for his belief in the soul's objective relation to the
divine Mind — an idea shared by Origen, whom Porphyry knew as a youth
(cf. Eusebius, The History of the Church, p. 195) — and would explain
his quite un-Plotinian belief in a gradual progress toward perfection,
as opposed to the 'instant salvation' proposed by Plotinus (cf. Ennead
IV.8.4).
Iamblichus of Apamea (d. ca. 330 CE) was a student of Porphyry. He
departed from his teacher on more than a few points, most notably in
his insistence on demoting Plotinus' One (which Porphyry left
unscathed, as it were) to the level of kosmos noêtos, which according
to Iamblichus generates the intellectual realm (kosmos noêros). In
this regard, Iamblichus can be said to have either severely
misunderstood, or neglected to even attempt to understand, Plotinus on
the important doctrine of contemplation (see above). This view led
Iamblichus to posit a Supreme One even higher than the One of
Plotinus, which generates the Intellectual Cosmos, and yet remains
beyond all predication and determinacy. Iamblichus also made a
tripartite division of Soul, positing a cosmic or All-Soul, and two
lesser souls, corresponding to the rational and irrational faculties,
respectively. This somewhat gratuitous skewing of the Plotinian noetic
realm also led Iamblichus to posit an array of intermediate spiritual
beings between the lower souls and the intelligible realm — daemons,
the souls of heroes, and angels of all sorts. By placing so much
distance between the earthly soul and the intelligible realm,
Iamblichus made it difficult for the would-be philosopher to gain an
intuitive knowledge of the higher Soul, although he insisted that
everyone possesses such knowledge, coupled with an innate desire for
the Good. In place of the vivid dialectic of Plotinus, Iamblichus
established the practice of theurgy (theourgia), which he insists does
not draw the gods down to man, but rather renders humankind, "who
through generation are born subject to passion, pure and unchangeable"
(On the Mysteries I.12.42; in Fowden 1986, p. 133). Whereas "likeness
to God" had meant, for Plotinus, a recollection and perfection of
one's own divine nature (which is, in the last analysis, identical to
nous; cf. Ennead III.4), for Iamblichus the relation of humankind to
the divine is one of subordinate to superior, and so the pagan
religious piety that Plotinus had scorned — "Let the gods come to me,
and not I to them," he had once said (cf. Porphyry, Life of Plotinus
10) — returns to philosophy with a vengeance. Iamblichus is best known
for his lengthy treatise On the Mysteries. Like Porphyry, he also
wrote a biography of Pythagoras.
a. The Nature of the Soul
In his introduction to the philosophy of Plotinus, entitled
Launching-Points to the Realm of Mind, Porphyry remarks that the
inclination of the incorporeal Soul toward corporeality "constitutes a
second nature [the irrational soul], which unites with the body"
(Launching-Points 18 [1]). This remark is supposedly a commentary on
Ennead IV.2, where Plotinus discusses the relation of the individual
soul to the All-Soul. While it is true that Plotinus often speaks of
the individual soul as being independent of the highest Soul, he does
this for illustrative purposes, in order to show how far into
forgetfulness the soul that has become enamored of its act may fall.
Yet Plotinus insists time and again that the individual soul and the
All-Soul are one (cf. esp. Ennead IV.1), and that Nature is the Soul's
expressive act (see above). Irrationality does not constitute, for
Plotinus, a "second nature," but is merely a flawed exercise of
rationality — that is, doxa untempered by epistêmê – on the part of
the individual soul. Furthermore, the individual soul, which comes to
unite with corporeality, governs and controls the body, making
possible discursive knowledge as well as sense-perception.
Uncontrolled pathos is what Plotinus calls irrationality; the soul
brings aisthêsis (perceptive judgment) to corporeality, and so
prevents it from sinking into irrational passivity. So what led
Porphyry to make such an interpretative error, if error it was? It is
quite possible that Porphyry had arrived at his own conclusions about
the Soul, and tried to square his own theory with what Plotinus
actually taught. One clue to the reason for the 'misunderstanding' may
possibly lie in Porphyry's early involvement with Christianity. While
Porphyry himself never tells us that he had been a Christian,
Augustine speaks of him as if he were an apostate, and the historian
Socrates states outright that Porphyry had once been of the Christian
faith, telling us that he left the fold in disgust after being
assaulted by a rowdy band of Christians in Caesarea (Copleston 1962,
p. 218). In any case, it is certain that he was acquainted with
Plotinus' older contemporary, the Christian Origen, and that he had
been exposed to Christian doctrine. Indeed, his own spirited attack on
Christianity ("Fifteen Arguments Against the Christians," now
preserved only in fragments) shows him to have possessed a wide
knowledge of Holy Scripture, remarkable for a 'pagan' philosopher of
that era. Porphyry's exposure to Christian doctrine, then, would have
left him with a view of salvation quite different from that of
Plotinus, who seems never to have paid Christianity much mind. The
best evidence we have for this explanation is Porphyry's own theory of
salvation — and it is remarkably similar to what we find in Origen!
Porphyry's salvation theory is dependent, like Origen's, on a notion
of the soul's objective relation to God, and its consequent striving,
not to actualize its own divine potentiality, but to attain a level of
virtue that makes it capable of partaking fully of the divine essence.
This is accomplished through the exercise of virtue, which sets the
soul on a gradual course of progress toward the highest Good.
Beginning with simple 'practical virtues' (politikai arêtai) the soul
gradually rises to higher levels, eventually attaining what Porphyry
calls the paradeigmatikai arêtai or 'exemplary virtues' which make of
the soul a living expression of the divine Mind (cf. Porphyry, Letter
to Marcella 29). Note that Porphyry stops the soul's ascent at nous,
and presumably holds that the 'saved' soul will eternally contemplate
the infinite power of the One. If Porphyry's concern had been with the
preservation of personality, then this explanation makes some sense.
However, it is more likely that the true reason for Porphyry's
rejection of the radically 'hubristic' theory (at least to pietistic
pagans) of the nature of the individual soul held by Plotinus was a
result of his intention to restore dignity to the traditional religion
of the Greeks (which had come under attack not only by Plotinus, but
by Christians as well). Evidence of such a program resides in
Porphyry's allegorical interpretations of Homer and traditional cultic
practice, as well as his possibly apologetic work on Philosophy from
Oracles (now lost). Compared to Plotinus, then, Porphyry was quite the
conservative, concerned as he was with maintaining the ancient view of
humankind's relatively humble position in the cosmic hierarchy, over
against Plotinus' view that the soul is a god, owing little more than
a passing nod to its 'noble brethren' in the heavens.
i. The (re)turn to Astrology
One of the results of Porphyry's conservative position toward
traditional religious practice and belief was the 'return' to the
doctrine that the stars and planets are capable of affecting and
ordering human life. Plotinus argued that since the individual soul is
one with the All-Soul, it is in essence a co-creator of the Cosmos,
and therefore not really subject to the laws governing the Cosmos —
for the soul is the source and agent of those laws! Therefore, a
belief in astrology was, for Plotinus, absurd, since if the soul
turned to beings dependent upon its own law — i.e., the stars and
planets — in order to know itself, then it would only end up knowing
aspects of its own act, and would never return to itself in full
self-consciousness. Furthermore, as we have seen, Plotinian salvation
was instantly available to the soul, if only it would turn its mind to
"essential being" (see above); because of this, Plotinus saw no reason
to bring the stars and planets into the picture. For Porphyry,
however, who believed that the soul must gradually work toward
salvation, a knowledge of the operations of the heavenly bodies and
their relation to humankind would have been an important tool in
gaining ever higher levels of virtue. In fact, Porphyry seems to have
held the view that the soul receives certain "powers" from each of the
planets — right judgment from Saturn, proper exercise of the will from
Jupiter, impulse from Mars, opinion and imagination from the Sun, and
(what else?) sensuous desire from Venus; from the Moon the soul
receives the power of physical production (cf. Hegel, p. 430) — and
that these powers enable to the soul to know things both earthly and
heavenly. This theoretical knowledge of the powers of the planets,
then, would have made the more practical knowledge of astrology quite
useful and meaningful for an individual soul seeking to know itself as
such. The usefulness of astrology for Porphyry, in this regard,
probably resided in its ability to permit an individual, through an
analysis of his birth chart, to know which planet — and therefore
which "power" — exercised the dominant influence on his life. In
keeping with the ancient Greek doctrine of the "golden mean," the task
of the individual would then be to work to bring to the fore those
other "powers" — each present to a lesser degree in the soul, but
still active — and thereby achieve a balance or sôphrosunê that would
render the soul more capable of sharing in the divine Mind. The art of
astrology, it must be remembered, was in wide practice in the
Hellenistic world, and Plotinus' rejection of it was an exception that
was by no means the rule. Plotinus' views on astrology apparently
found few adherents, even among Platonists, for we see not only
Porphyry, but also (to an extent) Iamblichus and even Proclus
declaring its value — the latter being responsible for a paraphrase of
Claudius Ptolemy's astrological compendium known as the Tetrabiblos or
sometimes simply as The Astronomy. In addition to penning a commentary
on Ptolemy's tome, Porphyry also wrote his own Introduction to
Astronomy (by which is apparently meant "Astrology," the modern
distinction not holding in Hellenistic times). Unfortunately, this
work no longer survives intact.
(For more on this topic, see Hellenistic Astrology.)
b. The Quest for Transcendence
The philosophy of Plotinus was highly discursive, meaning that it
operated on the assumption that the highest meaning, the most profound
truth (even a so-called mystical truth) is translatable, necessarily,
into language; and furthermore, that any and every experience only
attains its full value as meaning when it has reached expression in
the form of language. This idea, of course, placed the One always
beyond the discursive understanding of the human soul, since the One
was proclaimed, by Plotinus, to be not only beyond discursive
knowledge, but also the very source and possibility of such knowledge.
According to Plotinus, then, any time the individual soul expresses a
certain truth in language, this very act is representative of the
power of the One. This notion of the simultaneous intimate proximity
of the One to the soul, and, paradoxically, its extreme transcendence
and ineffability, is possible only within the confines of a purely
subjective and introspective philosophy like that of Plotinus; and
since such a philosophy, by its very nature, cannot appeal to common,
external perceptions, it is destined to remain the sole provenance of
the sensitive and enlightened few. Porphyry did not want to admit
this, and so he found himself seeking, as St. Augustine tells us, "a
universal way (universalem viam) for the liberation of the soul" (City
of God 10.32, in Fowden, p. 132), believing, as he did, that no such
way had yet been discovered by or within philosophy. This did not
imply, for Porphyry, a wholesale rejection of the Plotinian dialectic
in favor of a more esoteric process of salvation; but it did lead
Porphyry (see above) to look to astrology as a means of orienting the
soul toward its place in the cosmos, and thereby allowing it to
achieve the desired salvation in the most efficacious manner possible.
Iamblichus, on the other hand, rejected even Porphyry's approach, in
favor of a path toward the divinity that is more worthy of priests
(hieratikoi) than philosophers; for Iamblichus believed that not only
the One, but all the gods and demi-gods, exceed and transcend the
individual soul, making it necessary for the soul seeking salvation to
call upon the superior beings to aid it in its progress. This is
accomplished, Iamblichus tells us, by "the perfective operation of
unspeakable acts (erga) correctly performed … acts which are beyond
all understanding (huper pasan noêsin)" and which are "intelligible
only to the gods" (On the Mysteries II.11.96-7, in Fowden, p. 132).
These ritualistic acts, and the 'logic' underlying them, Iamblichus
terms "theurgy" (theourgia). These theurgic acts are necessary, for
Iamblichus, because he is convinced that philosophy, which is based
solely upon thought (ennoia) — and thought, we must remember, is
always an accomplishment of the individual mind, and hence discursive
— is unable to reach that which is beyond thought. The practice of
theurgy, then, becomes a way for the soul to experience the presence
of the divinity, instead of merely thinking or conceptualizing the
godhead. Porphyry took issue with this view, in his Letter to Anebo,
which is really a criticism of the ideas of his pupil, Iamblichus,
where he stated that, since theurgy is a physical process, it cannot
possibly translate into a spiritual effect. Iamblichus' On the
Mysteries was written as a reply to Porphyry's criticisms, but the
defense of the pupil did not succeed in vanquishing the persistent
attacks of the master. While both Porphyry and Iamblichus recognized,
to a lesser and greater extent, respectively, the limitations of the
Plotinian dialectic, Porphyry held firm to the idea that since the
divinity is immaterial it can only be grasped in a noetic fashion —
i.e., discursively (and even astrology, in spite of its mediative
capacity, is still an intellectual exercise, open to dialectic and
narratization); Iamblichus, adhering roughly to the same view,
nevertheless argued that the human soul must not think god on its own
terms, but must allow itself to be transformed by the penetrating
essence of god, of which the soul partakes through rituals intended to
transform the particularized, fragmented soul into a being that is
"pure and unchangeable" (cf. On the Mysteries I.12.42; Fowden, p.
133).
i. Theurgy and the Distrust of Dialectic
According to the schema of Plotinian dialectic, the 'stance' of the
individual soul is the sole source of truth certainty, being a judging
faculty dependent always upon the higher Soul. From the perspective of
one who believes that the soul is immersed in Nature, instead of
recognizing, as Plotinus did, the soul's status as an intimate
governor of Nature (which is the Soul's own act), dialectic may very
well appear as a solipsistic (and therefore faulty) attempt on the
part of an individual mind to know its reality by imposing conceptual
structures and strictures upon the phenomena that constitute this
reality. Iamblichus believed that since every individual soul is
immersed in the 'bodily element,' no soul is capable of understanding
the divine nature through the pure exercise of human reason — for
reason itself, at the level of the human soul-body composite, is
tainted by the changeable nature of matter, and therefore incapable of
rising to that perfect knowledge that is beyond all change (cp. Plato,
Phaedrus 247e). Dialectic, then, as the soul's attempt to know
reality, is seen by Iamblichus as an attempt by an already fallen
being to lead itself up out of the very locus of its own
forgetfulness. Now Iamblichus does not completely reject dialectical
reason; he simply requests that it be tempered by an appeal to
intermediate divinities, who will aid the fallen soul in its ascent
back towards the Supreme Good. The practice of ritualistic theurgy is
the medium by which the fallen soul ascends to a point at which it
becomes capable of engaging in a meaningful dialectic with the
divinity. This dependence upon higher powers nevertheless negates the
soul's own innate ability to think itself as god, and so we may say
that Iamblichus' ideas represent a decisive break with the philosophy
of Plotinus.
4. Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius
Proclus (410-485 CE) is, next to Plotinus, the most accomplished and
rigorous of the Neoplatonists. Born in Constantinople, he studied
philosophy in Athens, and through diligent effort rose to the rank of
head teacher or 'scholarch' of that great school. In addition to his
accomplishments in philosophy, Proclus was also a religious
universalist, who had himself initiated into all the mystery religions
being practiced during his time. This was doubtless due to the
influence of Iamblichus, whom Proclus held in high esteem (cf.
Proclus, Theology of Plato III; in Hegel, p. 432). The philosophical
expression of Proclus is more precise and logically ordered than that
of Plotinus. Indeed, Proclus posits the Intellect (nous) as the
culmination of the productive act (paragein) of the One; this is in
opposition to Plotinus, who described the Intellect as proceeding
directly from the One, thereby placing Mind before Thought, and so
making thought the process by which the Intellect becomes alienated
from itself, thus requiring the salvific act in order to attain the
fulfillment of Being, which is, for Plotinus, the return of Intellect
to itself. Proclus understands the movement of existence as a
tripartite progression beginning with an abstract unity, passing into
a multiplicity that is identified with Life, and returning again to a
unity that is no longer merely abstract, but now actualized as an
eternal manifestation of the godhead. What constituted, for Plotinus,
the salvific drama of human existence is, for Proclus, simply the
logical, natural order of things. However, by thus removing the
yearning for salvation from human existence, as something to be
accomplished, positively, Proclus is ignoring or overly
intellectualizing, if you will, an existential aspect of human
existence that is as real as it is powerful. Plotinus recognized the
importance of the salvific drive for the realization of true
philosophy, making philosophy a means to an end; Proclus utilizes
philosophy, rather, more in the manner of a useful, descriptive
language by which a thinker may describe the essential realities of a
merely contingent existence. In this sense, Proclus is more faithful
to the 'letter' of Plato's Dialogues; but for this same reason he
fails to rise to the 'spirit' of the Platonic philosophy. Proclus'
major works include commentaries on Plato's Timaeus, Republic,
Parmenides, Alcibiades I, and the Cratylus. He also wrote treatises on
the Theology of Plato, On Providence, and On the Subsistence of Evil.
His most important work is undoubtedly the Elements of Theology, which
contains the clearest exposition of his ideas.
a. Being — Becoming — Being
We found, in Plotinus, an explanation and expression of a cosmos that
involved a gradual development from all but static unity toward
eventual alienation — a moment at which the active soul must make the
profound decision to renounce autonomous existence and re-merge with
the source of all Being, or else remain forever in the darkness of
forgetfulness and error. Salvation, for Plotinus, was relatively easy
to accomplish, but never guaranteed. For Proclus, on the other hand,
the arkhê or 'ruling beginning' of all Life is the 'One-in-itself' (to
auto hen), or that which is responsible for the ordering of all
existents, insofar as existence is, in the last analysis, the
sovereign act or expression of this primordial unity or monad. The
expression of this One is perfectly balanced, being a trinity
containing, as distinct expressions, each moment of self-realization
of this One; and each of these moments, according to Proclus, have the
structure of yet another trinity. The first trinity corresponds to the
limit, which is the guide and reference-point of all further
manifestations; the second to the unlimited, which is also Life or the
productive power (dunamis); and the third, finally, to the 'mixture'
(mikton, diakosmos), which is the self-reflective moment of return
during which the soul realizes itself as a thinking — i.e., living —
entity. Thought is, therefore, the culmination of Life and the
fulfillment of Being. Thought is also the reason (logos) that binds
these triadic unities together in a grand harmonious plêrôma, if you
will. Being, for Proclus, is that divine self-presence, "shut up
without development and maintained in strict isolation" (Hegel, p.
446) which is the object of Life's thinking; this 'object' gives rise
to that thinking which leads, eventually, to understanding (nous),
which is the thought of being, and appears (ekphanôs), always, as
'being's begetter'. When the circle is completed, and reflected upon,
logically, we are met with the following onto-cosmological schema:
thought (noêtos, also known as 'Being') giving rise to its "negative"
which is thinking (Hegel, p. 393) and the thought 'it is' (noêtos kai
noêros), produces its own precise reflection — 'pure thinking' — and
this reflection is the very manifestation (phanerôsis) of the deity
within the fluctuating arena of individual souls. Being is eternal and
static precisely because it always returns to itself as Being; and
'Becoming'is the conceptual term for this process, which involves the
cyclical play between that which is and is not, at any given time.
"[T]he thought of every man is identical with the existence of every
man, and each is both the thought and the existence" (Proclus,
Platonic Theology III., in Hegel, p. 449). The autonomous drive toward
dissolution, which is so germane to the soul as such, is wiped away by
Proclus, for his dialectic is impeccably clean. However, he does not
account for the yearning for the infinite (as does Plotinus) and the
consequent existential desire for productive power falls on its face
before the supreme god of autonomous creation — which draws all
existents into its primeval web of dissolution.
b. The God Beyond Being
Very little is known about the life of the so-called Pseudo-Dionysius.
For many centuries, the writings of this mystical philosopher were
believed to have been from the pen of none other Dionysius, the
disciple of St. Paul. Later scholarship has shed considerable doubt on
this claim, and most modern scholars believe this author to have been
active during the late fifth century CE. Indeed, the earliest
reference to the Dionysian Corpus that we possess is from 533 CE.
There is no mention of this author's work before this date. Careful
study of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings has uncovered many parallels
between the theurgical doctrines of Iamblichus, and the triadic
metaphysical schema of Proclus. Yet what we witness in these writings
is the attempt by a thinker who is at once religiously sensitive and
philosophically engaged to bring the highly developed Platonism of his
time into line with a Christian theological tradition that was
apparently persisting on the fringes of orthodoxy. To this extent, we
may refer to the Pseudo-Dionysius as a 'decadent,' for he (or she?)
was writing at a time when the heyday of Platonism had attained the
status of a palaios logos ('ancient teaching') to be, not merely
commented upon, but savored as an aesthetic monument to an era already
long past. It is important to note, in this regard, that the writings
of Pseudo-Dionysius do not contain any theoretical arguments or
dialectical moments, but simply many subtle variations on the
apophatic/kataphatic theology for which our writer is renowned.
Indeed, he writes as if his readers already know, and are merely in
need of clarification. His message is quite simple, and is manifestly
distilled from the often cumbersome doctrines of earlier thinkers
(especially Iamblichus and Proclus). Pseudo-Dionysius professes a God
who is beyond all distinctions, and who even transcends the means
utilized by human beings to reach Him. For Pseudo-Dionysius, the Holy
Trinity (which is probably analogous to Proclus' highest trinity, see
above) serves as a "guide" to the human being who seeks not only to
know but to unite with "him who is beyond all being and knowledge"
(Pseudo-Dionysius, The Mystical Theology 997A-1000A, tr. C. Luibheid
1987). In the expression of the Pseudo-Dionysius the yearning for the
infinite reaches a poetical form that at once fulfills and exceeds
philosophy.
5. Appendix:`The Renaissance Platonists
After the closing of the Neoplatonic Academy in Athens by the Emperor
Justinian in 529 CE, Platonism ceased to be a living philosophy. Due
to the efforts of the Christian philosopher Boethius (480-525 CE), who
translated Porphyry's Isagoge, and composed numerous original works as
well, the Middle Ages received a faint glimmer of the ancient glories
of the Platonic philosophy. St. Augustine, also, was responsible for
imparting a sense of Neoplatonic doctrine to the Latin West, but this
was by way of commentary and critique, and not in any way a systematic
exposition of the philosophy. Generally speaking, it is safe to say
that the European Middle Ages remained in the grip of Aristotelianism
until the early Renaissance, when certain brilliant Italian thinkers
began to rediscover, translate, and expound upon the original texts of
Platonism. Chief among these thinkers were Marsilio Ficino (1433-1492)
and Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494). Ficino produced fine Latin
translations of Plato's Dialogues, the Enneads of Plotinus, and
numerous works by Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius, and
many others. In addition to his scholarly ability, Ficino was also a
fine commentator and philosopher in his own right. His brilliant essay
on Five Questions Concerning The Mind is a concise summary of general
Neoplatonic doctrine, based upon Ficino's own view that the lot of the
human soul is to inquire into its own nature, and that since this
inquiry causes the human soul to experience misery, the soul must do
everything it can to transcend the physical body and live a life
worthy of the blessed angels (cf. Cassirer, et. al. (ed) 1948, p.
211-212). Giovanni Pico, the Count of Mirandola, was a colorful figure
who lived a short life, fraught with strife. He roused the ire of the
papacy by composing a voluminous work defending nine-hundred theses
drawn from his vast reading of the Ancients; thirteen of these theses
were deemed heretical by the papacy, and yet Pico refused to change or
withdraw a single one. Like his friend Ficino, Pico was a devotee of
ancient wisdom, drawing not only upon the Platonic canon, but also
upon the Pre-Socratic literature and the Hermetic Corpus, especially
the Poimandres. Pico's most famous work is the Oration on the Dignity
of Man, in which he eloquently states his learned view that humankind
was created by God "as a creature of indeterminate nature," possessed
of the unique ability to ascend or descend on the scale of Being
through the autonomous exercise of free will (Oration 3, in Cassirer,
et. al. (ed) 1948, p. 224). Pico's view of free will was quite
different from that expressed by Plotinus, and indeed most other
Neoplatonists, and it came as no surprise when Pico composed a
treatise On Being and the One which ended on Aristotelian terms,
declaring the One to be coincident with or persisting amidst Being — a
wholly un-Platonic doctrine. With Ficino, then, we may say that
Platonism achieved a brief moment of archaic glory, while with Pico,
it was plunged once again into the quagmire of self-referential
empiricism.
6. References and Further Reading
Cassirer, Ernst; Kristeller, Paul Oskar; Randall, John Herman Jr.
(editors) The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (University of Chicago
Press 1948).
Cooper, John M. (ed.), Plato: Complete Works (Hackett Publishing 1997).
Copleston S.J., Frederick, A History of Philosophy (vol. I, part II):
Greece and Rome (Image Books 1962).
Dillon, John (1977), The Middle Platonists (Cornell University Press).
Eusebius (tr. G.A. Williamson 1965), The History of the Church (Penguin Books).
Fowden, Garth, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach To The Late
Pagan Mind (Cambridge University Press 1986).
Hadot, Pierre (tr. M. Chase), Plotinus, or The Simplicity of Vision
(University of Chicago Press 1993).
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (tr. E.S. Haldane and Frances H.
Simson), Lectures on the History of Philosophy (vol. II): Plato And
The Platonists (Bison Books 1995).
Jaeger, Werner, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Harvard
University Press 1961).
Layton, Bentley (1987), The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday: The Anchor
Bible Reference Library).
O'Brien S.J., Elmer (1964), The Essential Plotinus: Representative
Treatises From The Enneads (Hackett Publishing).
Origen of Alexandria, Commentary on John, tr. in The Ante-Nicene
Fathers, vol. X. (Eerdmans 1979, reprint).
Origen of Alexandria, On First Principles [De Principiis], tr. in The
Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. IV. (Eerdmans 1979, reprint).
Philo of Alexandria (tr. F.H. Colson and G.H. Whitaker), On the
Creation of the World [De Opificio Mundi], in vol. 1 of The Loeb
Classical Library edition of Philo (Harvard University Press 1929).
Plotinus (tr. A.H. Armstrong), The Enneads, in seven volumes (Loeb
Classical Library: Harvard University Press 1966).
Porphyry (tr. K. Guthrie), Launching-Points to the Realm of Mind [Pros
ta noeta aphorismoi] (Phanes Press 1988).
Porphyry (tr. A. Zimmern), Porphyry's Letter to His Wife Marcella
Concerning the Life of Philosophy and the Ascent to the Gods (Phanes
Press 1986).
Porphyry (tr. A.H. Armstrong), Life of Plotinus [Vita Plotini], in
volume one of the Loeb Classical Library edition of Plotinus (Harvard
University Press 1966).
Proclus (tr. T. Taylor), Lost Fragments of Proclus (Wizards Bookshelf 1988).
Proclus (tr. T. Taylor), Ten Doubts Concerning Providence, and On the
Subsistence of Evil (Ares Publishers 1980).
Pseudo-Dionysius (tr. C. Luibheid 1987), Pseudo-Dionysius: The
Complete Works (Paulist Press).
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