The Complexity of the Soul

The Complexity of the Soul 

9 May 2023

“. . . if a man is able to follow the spirit which is above him, he comes to be himself above, living that spirit’s life, and giving the pre-eminence to that better part of himself to which he is being led; and after that spirit he rises to another, until he reaches the heights.  For the soul is many things, and all things, both the things above and the things below down to the limits of all life, and we are each one of us an intelligible universe, making contact with the lower world by the powers of soul below, but with the intelligible world [nous] by its powers above and the powers of the universe; and we remain with all the rest of our intelligible part above, but by its ultimate fringe we are tied to the world below, giving a kind of outflow from it to what is below or rather an activity, by which that intelligible part is not itself lessened.

(Footnote by the translator A. H. Armstrong: “This sentence shows very clearly how Plotinus thinks of soul as a rich, complex unity capable of existing on many levels and operating in many ways, which can be distinguished but must not be separated.  This was a way of thinking which was quite unacceptable to the later Neoplatonists, with their passion for sharp distinction and separation, and desire to put and keep man in his proper place low down in the elaborate hierarchy of being.  Proclus sharply criticizes this passage of Plotinus in his Commentary on Parmenides . . .”)

“Is this lower part, then, always in body?  No; if we turn, this, too, turns with us to the upper world.  What, then, about the soul of the universe?  Will its (lower) part leave the body when it turns?  No; it has not even inclined with its lower part to the last depth; for it did not come or come down but as it abides the body of the universe attaches itself to it and is, as it were, illumined, not annoying the soul or causing it any worries, for the universe lies in safety.  What, has it then no kind of perception?  Plato says that it has no sight, because it has no eyes either; nor ears nor nostrils either, obviously, nor tongue. [Timaeus]  Well, then, has it an immanent sensation as we have of what goes on inside us?  No, for things which are uniformly in accord with nature are quiet.”

(Plotinus, Ennead III.4: On Our Allotted Guardian Spirit, Translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Plotinus: Ennead III, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967, pages 149-151, 3.15-5.10, ISBN: 9780674994874)

“If. . . the Man is able to follow the leading of his higher spirit, he rises: he lives that spirit; that noblest part of himself to which he is being led becomes sovereign in his life; this made his own, he works for the next above until he has attained the height.

“For the soul is many things, is all, is the Above and the Beneath to the totality of life: and each of us is an Intellectual Cosmos [a nous], linked to this world by what is lowest in us, but, by what is highest, to the Divine Intellect [nous]: by all that is intellective we are permanently in that higher realm, but at the fringe of the intellectual we are fettered to the lower; it is as if we gave forth from it some emanation towards that lower, or rather some Act, which however leaves our diviner part not in itself diminished.

“But is this lower extremity of our intellective phase fettered to body for ever?  No: if we turn, this turns by the same act.  And the soul of the All – are we to think that when it turns from this sphere its lower phase similarly withdraws?  No: for it never accompanied that lower phase of itself; it never knew any coming, and therefore never came down; it remains unmoved above, and the material frame of the Universe draws close to it, and, as it were, takes light from it, no hindrance to it, in no way troubling it, simply lying unmoved before it.  But has the Universe, then, no sensation?  ‘It has no sight’, we read, since it has no eyes, and obviously it has not ears, nostrils, nor tongue.  Then has it perhaps such a consciousness as we have of our own inner conditions?  No: where all is the working out of one nature, there is nothing but still rest . . .”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, Translated by Sephen MacKenna, Ennead III.4, Our Tutelary Spirit, Larson Publications, 1992, pages 211 and 212, ISBN: 9780943914558)

1.  The complexity of the soul is beautifully elaborated in this Ennead, as Armstrong points out in his footnote.  My understanding of how Plotinus views the soul is that the soul is always intimately connected with higher hypostases, but is distracted and tempted by material experiences and sensations.  These distractions keep the soul in the material domain, until there is a ‘turning’ in the soul to higher, non-material, regions of existence.

2.  You could say that the soul resembles still water that reflects what is passing over it.  However, the soul is animate; but as long as the soul is intoxicated by sensory experience it is, in a sense, passively unable to enter into the turning towards higher hypostases.

3.  It has been said by many that you become what you place your attention on.  We could say that the soul is the capacity for attention or, perhaps, attention as such.  If the soul is attentive to material domains it will be consumed by material concerns.  If the soul turns its attention to higher hypostases such as Being and the One, the soul begins the long journey of many lives to the source of all things, the Good and the One.

4.  The turning itself happens, I think, through the operation of grace.  If it were up to individual effort alone, the attractions of the material realm are simply too overwhelming for a turn to take place.  Even if the chains were removed from the prisoners in the Cave, very, very few would understand the opportunity they were given.  

However, the operation of grace upon the soul does not mean that the individual has no part in the ascent to the One.  Having received the grace of turning, the individual needs to enter the spiritual practices that are foundational for the realization of that grace.  These spiritual practices are the ascetic ways that are presented in dialogues like Phaedo; asceticism is the embodiment of the turning that is received by grace.

5.  Plotinus states that when we enter into the turning, the ‘lower part’ of the soul, that which is attracted to sensory experience, is pulled into the ‘upper world’.  What is intriguing here is that though the soul is ‘many things’ it is also a unified presence within us who are not unified in any sense.  This is because the soul is an emanation of the One (it participates in the One) and the soul is always seeking the One as the soul’s true home.

6.  I included the footnote by A. H. Armstrong because I thought it illuminated the difficulty passages like this have presented for people down through the centuries.  The presentation of the soul (both human as well as the world soul) found in passages like this is not easy to understand (and I am not claiming special insight).  In some ways the soul is simple and unified, and in other ways it is complex in its tendencies and potentialities.  Plotinus deftly handles this complexity, answering many questions that naturally arise about the topic.  It is very impressive, but it will likely take more than a few readings for the view Plotinus holds to become part of our own understanding.

7.  Armstrong’s point is that some later Platonists, such as Proclus, sought to make the human soul less complex; they accomplished this by simplifying the soul’s nature so that the soul was innately separate from the One.  My response to this is that the One has three aspects: the everywhere, the everywhen, and the everything.  In other words the One, by its nature, cannot be separated from the human soul because separation is not a part of the nature of the One.  If the human soul is separate from the One, that means the One is a distinct metaphysical territory rather than the ineffable Unity that permeates all of existence.

8.  This quote concludes with a discussion about the world soul and its nature.  The World Soul is the third hypostasis and it is the Platonic understanding that the World, or Cosmos, is a living being (because Being and Life are essential noetic hypostases and therefore all that comes metaphysically after them participate in Being and Life and Mind.  But the World Soul, as the first presence in the material realm of differentiation, has its own characteristics that differ from that of the human soul.  Plotinus clarifies those differences and their meanings.

9.  I find this passage, like so many other passages in Plotinus, inspiring.  It means that the One is everpresent to the soul, it means that eternity is everpresent to the soul, it means that Being, Life, and Mind, are everpresent to the soul.  And this means that it is possible to overcome our attachment to this realm of sorrow, this material dimension, to transcend it, and to find our way on the path of the Ascetic Ideal, to the Good and the One.