To Whom Plotinus Wanted to Speak

23 January 2023

To Whom Plotinus Wanted to Speak

“Whoever thinks that reality is governed by chance and accident and held together by bodily causes is far removed from God and from the idea of the One, and our discourse is not directed to these people but to those who posit another nature besides bodies and have gone up as far as soul.”

(Plotinus, Ennead VI.9.5, Plotinus: Ennead VI.6-9, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988, page 319, ISBN: 9780674995154)

 

“Those to whom existence comes about by chance and automatic action and is held together by material forces have drifted far from God and from the concept of unity; we are not here addressing them but only such as accept another nature than body and have some conception of soul.”

(Plotinus, Ennead VI.9.5, translated by Steven MacKenna and B. S. Page, various editions 1917 to 1935, quoted from online edition at sacred-texts.com)

 

Here Plotinus tells us something about to whom he is speaking, how he understands his audience.  I find that helpful to know.  Here are a few comments:

1.  Plotinus is not speaking to everyone.  He is speaking to those who already have a sense of the reality of soul. 

2.  This passage has a modern feeling to me.  I am thinking of contemporary atheists and materialists.  It has often been remarked that it is almost impossible to have a conversation with contemporary atheists; the gap is simply too great.  It is difficult to find common ground or a place to start.  In reading this I think that Plotinus felt the same way about the materialists of his own day. 

The difference for Plotinus and us is that in Plotinus’s lifetime materialists were a small minority.  Today materialists dominate the culture; even if they do not represent the majority of people living today, they are in positions that control what is acceptable and unacceptable in philosophical matters.  Often they accomplish this by declaring what is meaningful and what is not; declaring ideas like soul, and metaphysics in general, to lack meaning.  This is why it is so difficult to have a conversation with people who hold such views.  To offer an analogy, suppose you met someone who told you that music was not meaningful?  It would be difficult to talk to such a person about music.