Likeness and Virtue in Plotinus

7 January 2024

Likeness and Virtue in Plotinus

“The perceptible house is not the same thing as the intelligible house [the noetic house – my comment], though it is made in its likeness; the perceptible house participates in arrangement and order, but There, in its formative principle, there is no arrangement of order or proportion.  So then, if we participate in order and arrangement and harmony which come from There, and these constitute virtue here, and if the principles There have no need of harmony or order or arrangement, they will have no need of virtue either, and we shall all the same be made like them [noetic realities] by the presence of virtue.  This is enough to show that it is not necessary for virtue to exist There because we are made like the principles There by virtue.  But we must make our argument persuasive, and not be content to force agreement.

“First then we must consider the virtues by which we assert that we are made like, in order that we may discover this one and the same reality which when we possess it as an imitation is virtue, but There, where it exists as an archetype, is not virtue.  We should note that there are two kinds of likeness; one requires that there should be something the same in things which are alike; this applies to things which derive their likeness equally from the same principle.  But in the case of two things of which one is like the other, but the other is primary, not reciprocally related to the thing in its likeness and not said to be like it, likeness must be understood in a different sense; we must not require the same form in both, but rather a different one, since likeness has come about in this different way.”

(Plotinus, Ennead I.3, On Virtue, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus: Porphyry on Plotinus, Ennead I, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966, pages 131-133, ISBN: 9780674994843)

1.  The theory of virtue in Platonism is that the practice of the virtues such as courage and temperance and so forth, will make us like the higher realities found in nous, or the noetic realm.  Through the practice of the virtues we become more like the noetic.

The concern of Plotinus is that people will see this relationship of  ‘likeness’ in material terms.  I’ve often heard this expressed in talk among friends about what a Platonic form or idea is.  For example, I’ve heard musicians offer that there is a Platonic ‘perfect performance’ of a concerto to which musicians strive to embody; and this is understood, as I said, in material terms.  This is supported by metaphors for material reality that suggests that material reality is a bad copy of the noetic reality from which the material reality is derived.

Plotinus is suggesting that the relationship between noetic realities and material realities differs from this kind of understanding.  Material likeness arises due to the material content of the comparison.  For example, we might say that two houses are like each other, but one is smaller than the other.  In other words, material likeness depends on the functioning of sameness and difference. 

The likeness of a material reality to a noetic reality is not based on sameness and difference.  It is based, instead, on causation.  Noetic realities are the generative force from which material realities arise.  Returning to the musical example I just mentioned, the noetic reality of music is not a sound, has no rhythm, and has no parts.  Yet it is the source from which music in the material realm emerges and upon which all music depends.

This can be difficult to grasp, but consider that even in the material domain itself, causal origins do not have to resemble the material realities that they nourish.  For example, printed music is silent, and it has no rhythm, nor does it possess the tone colors of various instruments.  Yet printed music functions as the source for a performance of the sonic reality known as music.

2.  The perceptible house is like the noetic house in that the perceptible house depends on the noetic house for its existence, but the reverse is not true.  In contrast, material likeness is reciprocal.

3.  Plotinus is steeped in the tripartite scheme of Platonic emanation and is concerned with preserving the distinct features of each hypostasis, while at the same time showing how likeness functions between the hypostases, in this case between the noetic and the material.  Plotinus does this by distinguishing likeness between material objects, which are derived from the same principle; like two houses based on the same blueprint, or two performances of a song based on the same music.  In contrast, the likeness between noetic realities and material realities differs because the relationship has a different foundation. 

4.  One way I look at this is that material realities are instantiations of noetic realities that do not have any material content (this lack of material content in noetic realities is the primary reason why noetic realities differ from material realities.)  The easiest example of this, I think, are numbers.  Even in material reality numbers lack content and that is why they can be used in multiple material contexts.  Consider that the noetic reality of number has no numbers; rather it is the uninstantiated possibility of differentiation as such that gives rise to numbers when that possibility enters into the material domain.

5.  As an aside, the way Plotinus distinguishes two types of likeness is a very good example of the virtue of wisdom.  I like to say that wisdom functions by making distinctions guided by reason (reason understood in the broad Platonic usage of that term.)  This is exactly what Plotinus does in this passage; it is a wonderful demonstration of the virtue of wisdom and how it functions.

6.  It may seem odd to say that ‘There’, in the noetic, there is no virtue.  If we think of virtues as purifications our tendency would be to see the process of becoming more virtuous as, at the same time, becoming more noetic.  But Plotinus suggests otherwise.

Cultivating virtues aligns us with noetic realities because virtues are causally connected with noetic ‘archetypes’.  It is the alignment which is the likeness in this case.  Think of how all life on earth is aligned with the sun; aligned in the sense of relying on the sun for life, growth, and nourishment.  But living things on earth are not stars and they do not become stars through this process of alignment.  They are like the sun in that they also can nourish and generate life, but their capacity to do so is derived, not a shared principle.

7.  The clarity of the wisdom of Plotinus is inspiring.  Coming across passages like this helps me to understand the Platonist vision of reality and deepens my own understanding of the journey that Platonism illuminates.