Armstrong on Plotinus

1 January 2024

Armstrong on Plotinus

Happy New Year to everyone.  May 2024 bring you much peace, insight, and wisdom as you travel the path that leads to the Good and the One.

I have started my 2024 reading of the Enneads of Plotinus.  As I previously have mentioned, as part of my spiritual practice, I take a year to read the Enneads from cover to cover.  There are four complete translations of the Enneads into English and I cycle through all four translations which generates a four-year cycle of reading.

This year I am reading the translation by A. H. Armstrong, published by the Loeb Classical Library.  There is a ‘Preface’ by Armstrong where Armstrong explains his basic understanding of Plotinian metaphysics and spiritual practice.  I always appreciate it when translators give us this information because it helps in reading their translation with understanding.  Here is a quote from the ‘Preface’ that I found particularly illuminating:

“Plotinus, like his contemporaries, believed in a great hierarchy of gods and spirits inside and outside the visible universe.  But he does not appear to attach much religious importance to the beings in the lower ranks of this hierarchy (though he insists, as against the Gnostics, on proper respect being paid to the high gods of the visible universe, the sun, moon, and stars); nor does he consider that external religious rites are any help to the ascent of the soul.  He takes a sacramental view of the view of the visible universe, in that he regards it as a sign, or sacrament in the large sense, of the invisible; but there is no room for sacramentalism in his religion.  The process of return is one of turning away from the external world, of concentrating one’s powers inwardly instead of dissipating them outwardly, of rediscovering one’s true self by the most vigorous intellectual and moral discipline, and then waiting so prepared for the One to manifest His presence.”

(A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus, Porphyry on Plotinus, Ennead I, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966, page xxvi, ISBN: 9780674994843)

1.  Armstrong suggests that Plotinus ‘does not seem to attach much importance’ to the lower ranks of gods.  I see this as an indication that Plotinus thought of these gods as sharing the same status (ontological status) as other living things in the third hypostasis.  I mean that these ‘lower ranks’ of gods are like trees and creeks and hawks and bears and waterfalls; that is to say they are simply part of the natural world. 

2.  Armstrong suggests that Plotinus takes a ‘sacramental’ view of the world.  Armstrong uses the term ‘visible world’, but I wouldn’t quite put it that way.  There are many living beings in the third hypostasis that we human beings cannot access through our senses; they are invisible, but not because they dwell in a higher hypostasis, but simply because our sensory apparatus is not tuned to receive impressions of them.  There are many examples of this, such as magnetic waves that human beings are unable to perceive.  In other words, the gods of these ranks are living beings dwelling in the third hypostasis, but not beings that the human sensory structure can register, at least not under normal circumstances.  The point is, these gods are not transcendent or ontologically of a different status than the other things that populate our realm.

3.  When Armstrong refers to Plotinus viewing the world as a kind of sacrament, I think this is best understood in those Enneads where Plotinus unpacks the Platonic understanding of beauty.  The things of this world are often imbued with beauty which makes them attractive and for many people this presence of beauty makes life worthwhile.  When these displays of beauty are understood to be signs of the source of beauty, when these displays of beauty are seen to be instantiations of the source of beauty, then they are taken in a sacramental sense.  The beauty of the world around us becomes transformative for our lives and leads beyond the display of beautiful things to beauty as such, the source of beauty, to the Good and the One.

4.  Armstrong suggests that Plotinus does not have much of an interest in religious rites.  Instead Plotinus is focused on wisdom and purification.  I think this is what Armstrong means by ‘vigorous intellectual and moral discipline.’  ‘Intellectual discipline’ refers to a gradual deepening of our understanding of how the cosmos works and our place in it.  This is accomplished through study that lasts a lifetime.  ‘Moral discipline’ refers to the cultivation of ascetic practices and virtues.

5.  It is interesting that at one point Armstrong uses the phrase ‘his religion,’ meaning the way that Plotinus details in his Enneads.  This indicates that Armstrong, at some level, considers Plotinus to be a religious teacher, or a teacher of religion.  I think this is true but I admit that the truth of an assertion like this depends on how one understands ‘religion.’  Religion and philosophy are often understood to be opposed and I have, at times, written from that point of view.  But it is possible to understand religion and philosophy as sharing certain essential features the most important one, in this context, being the existence of the transcendental.  I think it is from the perspective of the transcendental that it makes sense to speak of ‘his religion’ when talking about Plotinus.

Another way of looking at this, is that philosophy and religion are means for accessing that which is eternal.  From the perspective of eternity it makes sense to think of ‘his religion’ when considering Plotinus and his writings.

6.  Armstrong writes that the process of return to the One is accomplished by turning away from the things of the material world, what Socrates in Phaedo refers to as separating the soul from the body as far as it is possible to do so while still having a body.  Armstrong then concludes that following this turning away from the things of the world, the practitioner of this Way enters into waiting for the presence of the One to appear.  This simple waiting arises from a sense of acceptance and patience.  The One has all the time in the world and will appear when it does so, on its terms.  As Plotinus writes, this patient waiting resembles waiting for dawn, for the first light of the sun that disperses the darkness that we thought was real.