Plotinus in My Life

18 June 2023

Plotinus in My Life

1.  I have been rereading Ennead VI.9, On the Good, or the One, in the McKenna translation this time around.  I don’t know how many times I have read it before.  But each time I read it, it feels fresh, uplifting, sublime.  This has led me to want to post a few brief thoughts about Plotinus; thoughts that don’t lend themselves to becoming an essay, or even a single blogpost, by themselves; but nevertheless observations about Plotinus that I think are worth sharing.

2.  A few years ago, maybe more, I wrote a haiku about Plotinus:

 

One thousand pages --

A year spent with Plotinus

And other sages.

I wrote this at the end of a year, probably late December.  For years I would read a few pages of Plotinus every day and in this way read through the Enneads in one year.  I would cycle through the available translations.  When I first started this practice there were three complete translations: Sylvan Guthrie, Stephen McKenna, and A. H. Armstrong so the cycle of readings would take three years.  There is now a fourth translation done by a committee headed by Lloyd Gerson leading to a four year cycle. 

I didn’t keep a notebook with me while reading the Enneads, though sometimes I would underline or write comments in the margin.  I would use the reading as a prelude to contemplation.  By ‘prelude’ I mean that after reading a section from the Enneads I would put it aside and enter into inner contemplation, often interior silence.  In this way the teachings of Plotinus would have a chance to sink into my consciousness and they gradually became a dominant part of my mental landscape.

Things got complicated in my life; I retired in 2022 and moved to a new location.  I had to put a lot of energy into moving and this cycle of devotional reading fell away, though I continued to pick up Plotinus and read a random Ennead, or part of an Ennead, now and then.  I hope to restart this cycle of reading again in 2024.

3.  My spiritual journey has been a complex one, with lots of twists and turns as I journeyed through many spiritual traditions.  One result of this is that I have read broadly from many of the world’s spiritual and religious traditions.  There is a lot out there that is inspiring and uplifting, but I slowly came to the conclusion that there is no work more lofty, more clear, more sublime, than the Enneads of Plotinus.  Now, there is a lot I have not read.  And I realize that claims like this are made for many spiritual works.  That is true, and yet I find myself willing to stand by this claim.  If you are skeptical, all I can say is to read the Enneads and then come to your own conclusion.  It might diverge from mine; fair enough.  But each time I read the Enneads, or an Ennead, I only become more secure in this perspective.

4.  There is a lot of writing done by Platonists over the centuries; the Dialogues (of course), and then there are people like Plutarch, and Maximus of Tyre, and Porphyry, et al.  I have learned a huge amount from the vast legacy of Platonism and I am immeasurably grateful for their insights.  But if I were forced to pick just one work from the Platonist tradition, it would be the Enneads of Plotinus.  I could read them, and contemplate them, until the end of time.

5.  One of the things I like about Plotinus is how he treats other philosophers with whom Plotinus disagrees.  A good example is Plotinus’s critique of Aristotle’s categories.  Plotinus spends a lot of time laying out Aristotle’s perspective; I think of this as ‘steel manning’ his opponent’s arguments.  It is only after this that Plotinus then puts forth his own view.  I think there is something spacious about this method.

6.  I also like the clarity with which Plotinus talks about the One which is fully transcendental and beyond conceptual understanding, yet at the same time it is the source for all our conceptual understanding.  Plotinus doesn’t just state that the One is beyond name and form, beyond affirmation or negation, he articulately explains why that is the case and then elaborates on the relationship between the transcendent and that which can be named and has form.  In some spiritual traditions I sometimes get the impression that the idea that there is something beyond name and form, beyond affirmation and negation, is used to dodge, or deflect, an inquiry.  I have, over time, become suspicious of those who too quickly resort to this kind of strategy.

When Plotinus speaks of the One, what I like to call the ultimate otherness, and its relationship to the world of name and form, and to the material world, my sense is that Plotinus is speaking as someone who is familiar with the One, has experienced the One; in fact, it feels to me like Plotinus more often dwelled in the One than he did in the material world in which we ordinary people dwell.  That is why Plotinus is able to unpack the relationship between the One and its emanations.

7.  Plotinus (204 C.E. to 270 C.E.) did not write anything until he was about 50.  In other words, his writings are all mature works.  His hesitancy to write was part of the Platonist tradition at that time.  Socrates did not write anything.  And the direct teacher of Plotinus, Ammonias Saccas, did not write anything either.  Plotinus and other students of Ammonias agreed not to put the teachings into writing, but subsequently, one by one, they changed their minds.  I suspect that there was a sense among the students of Ammonias that if the teachings weren’t written down, they would simply be lost and in a way, they saw putting them down in writing as a kind of duty to their teacher.

Whatever the reason, it is our good fortune that Plotinus did eventually decide to write his essays.

8.  The asceticism of Plotinus is well known.  He ate little and was likely a vegan.  He was devoted to contemplation.  Famously, Plotinus was ‘ashamed’ of having a body; a view that is consistent with the Platonic tradition going back to Plato, but profoundly at odds with modernity.  Plotinus lived the life of philosophy; that is to say a life devoted to purification and the cultivation of the virtues.  Plotinus’s life embodies what it means to be a philosopher in the material world.  And the Enneads are part of that embodiment.

9.  I don’t recall when I first encountered Plotinus.  I didn’t have a ‘lightning strike’ moment of realization while reading the Enneads.  Instead, a section, or even just a phrase, would speak to me and, based on that, I would return to the Enneads and each time I did so the process would repeat.  Looking back, this is a kind of cultivation, the cultivation of wisdom.  This type of cultivation requires patience; for example, if during a first reading you don’t understand something you simply accept that and go on.  Perhaps at the next reading, or the one after that, it will become clear.

Such an approach to reading the Enneads means having a sense of trust in Plotinus that, again, is built up slowly over time.  That is to say that Plotinus is viewed as the source of wisdom, insight, and spiritual, and transcendental, understanding. 

My own view is that spiritual understanding happens step by step, gradually; I like to say ‘glacially.’  That is why reading and rereading Plotinus makes sense; each time you read the Enneads a few more steps are taken on the path to the Good and the One.