10 November 2022

The Three Levels of Reality

“It has been shown that we ought to think that this is how things are, that there is the One beyond being, of such a kind as our argument wanted to show, so far as demonstration was possible in these matters, and next in order there is Being and Intellect, and the nature of Soul in the third place.  And just as in nature there are these three of which we have spoken, so we ought to think that they are present also in ourselves.”

(Plotinus, Ennead V.1.10, On the Three Primary Hypostases, Plotinus: Ennead V, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1984, pages 45-47.)

 

This is a wonderfully succinct description of the metaphysical structure of traditional Platonism.  One of the things I have found helpful in this quoted passage is that Plotinus refers to the second level, the ‘next in order’ after The One, as ‘Being and Intellect’.  I have persistently had difficulty with the word ‘intellect’ because of its contemporary meanings related to being smart, as in ‘he’s an intellectual’, and the relationship the word has these days to a kind of analysis that separates things rather than unifying them.  There is even the phrase ‘an intellectual analysis’.  In this quote, however, Plotinus explicitly links Intellect with Being, implying, I think, that this is a region of unification from the perspective of the material world; Intellect and Being are not as unified as The One, but from the perspective of someone starting out on the Platonic Way, it is a movement towards the unity of The One. 

I don’t know Greek so I can’t enter into issues of translation.  I don’t know if there is a ‘better’ word than ‘Intellect’ to use.  Sometimes I think the word ‘mind’ might be better, but, as I say, I don’t know enough to argue articulately for that.  I have found, though, that keeping passages like this in mind helps me to understand ‘Being and Intellect’ more clearly.