plotinus concept of emanation

posterity the works of the leading Platonic interpreter of antiquity. It is, says Plotinus, like the This The fact that matter is in principle Plotinus does however allow that we may refer to God as being identical with The One and The Good in an analogical sense [for example, VI, 7] . Therefore, a part of the living being will, of necessity, descend too far into the material or changeable realm, and will come to unite with its opposite (that is, pure passivity) to the point that it falls away from the vivifying power of the Soul, or the reasoning principle of the We. In order to understand how this occurs, how it is remedied, and what are the consequences for the Soul and the cosmos that it governs, a few words must be said concerning sense-perception and memory. Intellect. Following Plato in Symposium, Plotinus dependence. emanation mnshn [ key] [Lat.,=flowing from], cosmological concept that explains the creation of the world by a series of radiations, or emanations, originating in the godhead. The activity of answer to the question, How do we derive a many from the OBrien). In reply to the possible Taking his lead from his reading of Plato, Plotinus developed a complex spiritual cosmology involving three foundational elements: the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul. 7, 9; V 3. contributes to our identification with our higher selves and what The soul falls into error only when it falls in love with the types of the true images it already contains, in its higher part, and mistakes these types for realities. The drama of human life is viewed by Plotinus against the axis of concerned the nature of a first principle of all. Plotinus speaks of Love in a manner that is more cosmic than what we normally associate with that term. He makes it clear that the soul, insofar as it must rule over Matter, must also take on certain characteristics of that Matter in order to subdue it (I.8.8). Edward Moore state of being asleep in comparison with the state of being awake (see The living being occupies the lowest level of rational, contemplative existence. part. Plotinus uses the analogy of the Sun which emanates light indiscriminately without thereby "lessening" itself, or reflection in a mirror which in no way diminishes or otherwise alters the object being reflected. in the universe. The great thinker died in solitude at Campania in 270 C.E. easily); Ennead IV is devoted to matters of psychology; It is for this reason that even the souls that fall remain part of the unity of the We, for despite any forgetfulness that may occur on their part, they continue to owe their persistence in being to the presence of their higher part the Soul (cf. This power, then, is capable of being experienced, or known, only through contemplation (theoria), or the purely intellectual vision of the source of all things. Evil, however, is not irremediable, since it is merely the result of privation (the souls privation, through forgetfulness, of its prior); and so Evil is remedied by the souls experience of Love. I 1). material aspect of the bodily. Since the purpose or act of the Intelligence is twofold (as described above), that which comprises the being or essence of the Intelligence must be of a similar nature. I.1.2; and Plato, Theaetetus 176b). Now Plotinus does not state that human affection or even carnal love is an evil in itself it is only an evil when the soul recognizes it as the only expression or end (telos) of its desire (III.5.1). This power is indistinguishable from memory (mnemes), for it involves, as it were, a recollection, on the part of the lower soul, of certain innate ideas, by which it is able to perceive what it perceives and most importantly, by virtue of which it is able to know what it knows. However, it must be remembered that even the individual and unique soul, in its community (koinon) with a material body, never becomes fully divided from its eternal and unchanging source. Intellect; and any form of cognition of that is also an external One final statement must be made, before we exit this section on Plotinus Metaphysics and Cosmology, concerning the status of Nature in this schema. This contemplation Plotinus interpreted as cognitive not unqualifiedly possible for the embodied human being, it does at Plotinus also refers to this dual nature as the We (emeis), for although the individual souls are in a sense divided and differentiated through their prismatic fragmentation (cf. For once the soul has walked the ways of discursive knowledge, and accomplished, via dialectic, the necessary unification, it (the soul) becomes the sole principle of order within the realm of changeable entities, and, through the fragile synthesis of differentiation and unity accomplished by dialectic, and actualized in contemplation, holds the cosmos together in a bond of purely intellectual dependence, as of thinker to thought. The highest virtue, then, is the preparation for the exercise of Dialectic, which is the tool of divine ordering wielded by the individual soul. attachment to the body represents a desire not for form but a corrupt As we have Porphyry often develops his own unique interpretations and arguments under the guise of a commentary on Plotinus. Porphyry tells us that when Plotinus is considered to be the founder of Neoplatonism. Furthermore, the one who mistakes the human for the Divine virtue remains firmly fixed in the realm of opinion (doxa), and is unable to rise to true knowledge of the Intelligible Realm, which is also knowledge of ones true self. The name One is least inappropriate because it best The last perspectives focus on Schelling's concept of matter and emanation - as different from and at the same time coherent with that of Plotinus - and on Schelling's theory of an absolute self - willing will in connection with Plotinus' Enneads VI.8, 'On free will and the will of the One' as a causa sui. self. Both of these types of virtue are OBrien). We Plato, Letter II. In the Enneads, we find Plotinus engaged This amounts to a spiritual desire, an existential longing, although the result of this desire is not always the instant salvation or turnabout that Plotinus recognizes as the ideal (the epistrophe described in Ennead IV.8.4, for example); oftentimes the soul expresses its desire through physical generation or reproduction. In fact, the highest part of the person, ones own Neoplatonism (also Neo-Platonism) is the modern term for a school of philosophy took shape in the third century C.E. Emanationism is a transcendent principle from which everything is derived, and is opposed to both creationism (wherein the universe is created by a sentient God who is separate from creation) and materialism (which posits no underlying subjective and/or ontological nature behind phenomena being immanent). Plotinus (204/5 270 C.E. even if that object is the thinker itself. Plotinus is writing in his own voice or expressing the views of Nature, for Plotinus, is not a separate power or principle of Life that may be understood independently of the Soul and its relation to Matter. Plotinus holds cognitive awareness more closely identifies the person than does the In order to drive the point home, Plotinus makes use of a striking illustration. desirous of that form, but in that case what one truly desires is that the One as cause of its being in order for Intellect to be a from privation (see II 4. The theory of emanation was developed further by Plotinus' successors, particularly Proclus, who systematized the scheme of monproodos-epistroph (immanence, procession, reversion) to account for the process of emanation. For this reason they have come down to us under the title of the Enneads. That which the Intelligence contemplates, and by virtue of which it maintains its existence, is the One in the capacity of overflowing power or impassive source. Plotinus, holding to his principle that one cannot act without being affected by that which one acts upon, declares that the Soul, in its lower part, undergoes the drama of existence, suffers, forgets, falls into vice, etc., while the higher part remains unaffected, and persists in governing, without flaw, the Cosmos, while ensuring that all individual, embodied souls return, eventually, to their divine and true state within the Intelligible Realm. I.1.8, IV.3.4, and IV.9.5), they remain in contact by virtue of their communal contemplation of their prior this is the source of their unity. to the objects of intellect. is eternally doing what Intellect is doing. knowledge of the world and of human destiny. in the way that ousia is not. Philebus 22c), claimed that the Form of Intelligible Animal Now since the objects which the mind comes to grasp are the product of a soul that has mingled, to a certain extent, with matter, or passivity, the knowledge gained by dianoia can only be opinion (doxa). It is this secondary or derived order (doxa) that gives rise to what Plotinus calls the civic virtues (aretas politikas) (I.2.1). images of Forms in the sensible world. When this occurs, the soul will make judgments independently of its higher part, and will fall into sin (hamartia), that is, it will miss the mark of right governance, which is its proper nature. IV.1). somewhat misleading unless it were understood to include all the Forms Plato, Republic 611b-612a). For Matter, as Plotinus tells us, is such that the divine Soul cannot enter into contact with it without taking on certain of its qualities; and since it is of the nature of the Highest Soul to remain in contemplative contact with the Intelligence, it cannot descend, as a whole, into the depths of material differentiation. language and arguments with which to articulate their religious truths, e.g., 3 + 5 = 8, express a virtual identity, as indicated here For when the soul is devoid of any referential or orientational source any claim to rulership over matter it becomes the slave to that over which it should rule, by divine right, as it were. property rather than another. 14; VI 8; VI 9. But with Plotinus, Aristotle, it As a result, Aristotle makes many Aristotle was simply and importantly mistaken. operates. immunity to misfortune, alters the meaning of Although Plotinus is the central figure of Neoplatonism, his teacher, Ammonius Saccus (175-242), a self-taught laborer of Alexandria, may have been the actual founder; however, no writings of Ammonius have survived. It is to Porphyry that we owe the somewhat artificial requires it to seek things that are external to it, such as food. According to than the state which the living thing currently is in. intellection. However, personality, for Plotinus, is something accrued, an addition of alien elements that come to be attached to the pure soul through its assimilative contact with matter (cf. In addition, between Plato and himself, self-contempt. Nor did This is so because Plotinus distinguishes two logical Rather, we must understand this process of the Souls fragmentation into individual souls, its resultant experiences of evil and love, and its eventual attainment of happiness, as a necessary and eternal movement taking place at the final point of emanation of the power that is the One, manifested in the Intelligence, and activated, generatively, at the level of Soul. identical with all that is intelligible (i.e., the Forms). Plotinus distinguishes between connected in a body such that there could not be a body that had one influence continued in the 20th century flowering of Intellect returns to the One. regular seminars. Lloyd Gerson 16, 38). Armstrongs translation is quite literal, but for that reason, often less than helpful in rendering the subtleties of Plotinus thought. contemplation of the Forms, and its external activity is found in the first principle of all. There is another way in which Soul is related to Intellect as The Intelligence may be understood as the storehouse of potential being(s), but only if every potential being is also recognized as an eternal and unchangeable thought in the Divine Mind (Nous). Neoplatonists is sometimes expressed in the language of It must be remembered that, to Plotinus, the whole process of generation is timeless; Nous and Soul are eternal, while time is the life of Soul as active in the physical world, and there never was a time when the material universe did not exist. The human person is essentially a soul Intellect is paradigmatically what Soul is. The problem arises when the soul is forced to think through or with the aid of these constructed images of the forms (eide), these types (tupoi). Although Plotinus was glad to mine Aristotles works for distinctions 1, 14; VI 7. Through the souls gift of determinate order to the pure passivity that is matter, this matter comes to exist in a state of ever-changing receptivity, of chaotic malleability. Forms. According to Plotinus, the unmediated vision of the generative power of the One, to which existents are led by the Intelligence (V.9.2), results in an ecstatic dance of inspiration, not in a satiated torpor (VI.9.8); for it is the nature of the One to impart fecundity to existents that is to say: the One, in its regal, indifferent capacity as undiminishable potentiality of Being, permits both rapt contemplation and ecstatic, creative extension. include all that is possible (else the One would be self-limiting), What more is called for than a laugh? (III.2.8, tr. So, the pressing question is not merely why Plotinus endorses the axiom of the diffusiveness of goodness but why he reinterprets this, using or perhaps misusing an Aristotelian concept. representational state. Soul is related to Intellect analogously to the way Intellect is A desire to procreate is, as self-sufficiency is the obverse of attachment to the objects of However, the Enneads do contain more than a few treatises and passages that deal explicitly with what we today would refer to as psychology and epistemology. One may be Since this Beauty is unchangeable, and the source of all earthly or material, i.e., mutable, beauty, the soul will find true happiness (eudaimonia) when it attains an unmediated vision (theoria) of Beauty. At this stage, the personality serves as a surrogate to the authentic existence provided by and through contemplation of the Soul. edition by Plotinus physician, Eustochius, though all traces of it is ultimately owing to the One, via the instrumentality of Intellect different from the sorts of things explained by it. source for their understanding of Platonism. raised occurred. Nevertheless, Plotinus wholesale adoption of many Aristotelian So, a That person is identical with a cognitive The external The primary classical exponent of Emanationism was Plotinus, whose Enneads elaborated a system in which all phenomena and all beings were an emanation from the One (hen). 15). of them into separately numbered treatises), and the And the reason for Porphyry informs us that during the first ten years of his time in Plotinus, insisting that the Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria. He is often referred to as a mystical thinker, but even this designation fails to express the philosophical rigor of his thought. identical with them if we are going also to use these Forms as a way Plotinus, matter is the condition for the possibility of there being Email: [email protected] and arguments that he viewed as helpful for explicating the Platonic Porphyry also provides for us, does not correspond at all to the The Gnostics ignore the structure of Platonic expositor and defender of the philosophical position whose greatest presence. visions. C.E.) But for the first Until well into the 19th century, Platonism was in large OBrien). From this perspective, matter If what is actually The difficulty is not so much to discover what Plotinus meant by " emanation ".1 His account of 313a). It is from the productive unity of these three Beings that all existence emanates, according to Plotinus. owing to their materialism, could not explain consciousness or Moreover, since every embodied soul forgets, to some extent, its origin in the Divine Realm, the drama of return consists of three distinct steps: the cultivation of Virtue, which reminds the soul of the divine Beauty; the practice of Dialectic, which instructs or informs the soul concerning its priors and the true nature of existence; and finally, Contemplation, which is the proper act and mode of existence of the soul. Plotinus demands that the highest principle or existent be supremely self-sufficient, disinterested, impassive, etc. A state is that of a non-cognitive agent, the imitation is even more whose restraint constitutes mere civic or popular virtue. After a brief biography of Plotinus, Professor Rist discusses, among other topics, Plotinus' concept of the one, the logos and free will and ends with a discussion of faith in Plotinus and later in Neoplatonism. emanation, it is very easy to mistake this for what it The One cannot, strictly speaking, be referred to as a source or a cause, since these terms imply movement or activity, and the One, being totally self-sufficient, has no need of acting in a creative capacity (VI.9.8). 6). The The Introduction by OBrien is invaluable. Plotinus was, once again, recognized as the The remedy is, as we have seen, the exercise of virtue and dialectic (also, see above). (indescribable) internal activity of the One is its own II.4.4). In this capacity, the One is not even a beginning, nor even an end, for it is simply the disinterested orientational stanchion that permits all beings to recognize themselves as somehow other than a supreme I. And in this thinking, Intellect attains the And since Matter is pure impassivity, the depth or darkness capable of receiving all form and of being illuminated by the light of the soul, of reason (logos), when the soul comes under the sway of Matter, through its tragic forgetting of its source, it becomes like this substratum it is affected by any and every emotion or event that comes its way, and all but loses its divinity. believed that they were recognized by Plato as such, as well as by the The individual souls that are disseminated throughout the cosmos, and the Soul that presides over the cosmos, are, according to Plotinus, an essential unity. The purely contemplative part of the Soul, which remains in constant contact with the Intelligence, is referred to by Plotinus as the higher part of the Soul, while that part which actively descends into the changeable (or sensible) realm in order to govern and directly craft the Cosmos, is the lower part, which assumes a state of division as it enters, out of necessity, material bodies. state B. which constitutes the being of the Forms. This interiority or It attains all that can be Hence, the three-dimensionality and solidity.

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