The Embodied Soul and the Noetic Soul

15 March 2024

The Embodied Soul and the Noetic Soul

“In the intelligible world is true being; Intellect is the best part of it; but souls are There too; for it is because they have come Thence that they are here too.  That world has souls without bodies, but this world has the souls which have come to be in bodies and are divided by bodies.  There the whole of Intellect is all together and not separated or divided, and all souls are together in the world which is eternity, not in spatial separation.  Intellect, then, is always inseparable and indivisible, but soul is inseparable and indivisible There, but it is in its nature to be divided.  For its division is departing from Intellect and coming to be in a body.  It is therefore properly said to be ‘divisible in the sphere of bodies’ because it departs and is divided in this way.  Then how is it also ‘indivisible’?  Because the whole of it did not depart, but there is something of it which did not come [down here – translator’s addition] which is not naturally divisible.  So then ‘from the indivisible and that which is divisible in the sphere of bodies’ is equivalent to saying that soul is composed of the part which is above and that which is attached to that higher world but has flowed out as far as these parts, like a line from a centre.  But when it has come here in this part, see how in this way it preserves in this very part the nature of the whole.  For even here it is not only divisible, but also indivisible; for that of it which is divided is indivisibly divided.  For it gives itself to the whole body and is not divided in that it gives itself whole to the whole and is divided in that it is present in every part.”

(Plotinus, Ennead IV.2, On the Essence of the Soul II, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1984, pages 21-23, ISBN: 9780674994881)

“In the Intellectual Cosmos dwells Authentic Essence, with the Intellectual-Principle (Divine Mind) as the noblest of its content, but containing also souls, since every soul in this lower sphere has come thence: that is the world of unembodied souls while to our world belong those that have entered body and undergone bodily division.

“There the Intellectual-Principal is a concentrated all – nothing of it distinguished or divided – and in that Cosmos of unity all souls are concentrated also, with no spatial discrimination.

“But there is a difference:

“The Intellectual-Principle is for ever repugnant to distinction and to partition.  Soul, there without distinction and partition, has yet a nature lending itself to divisional existence: its division is secession, entry into body.

“In view of this seceding and the ensuing partition we may legitimately speak of it as ‘divided among bodies’.

“But if so, how can it still be described as indivisible?

“In that the secession is not of the Soul entire; something of it holds its ground, that in it which recoils from separate existence.

“’Formed from the undivided essence and the essence divided among bodies’; this description of Soul must therefore mean that it has phases above and below, that it is attached to the Supreme and yet reaches down to this sphere, like a radius from a centre.

“Thus it is that, entering this realm, it possesses still the vision inherent to that superior phase in virtue of which it unchangingly maintains its integral nature.  Even here it is not exclusively the partible soul: it is still the impartible as well: what in it knows partition is parted without partibility; undivided as giving itself to the entire body, a whole to a whole, it is divided as being effective in every part.”

(Plotinus, Ennead IV.1, On the Essence of the Soul (1), translated by Stephen MacKenna, Larson Publications, Burdett, New York, 1992, page 292, ISBN: 9780943914558)

1.  The Armstrong translation considers this very short Ennead to be IV.2, while the MacKenna translation considers it to be IV.1.  The Armstrong translation informs us that there are different textual traditions regarding the exact placement of this Ennead.  It is suggested that Ficino may have switched the two Enneads, IV.1 and IV.2; but regardless of how this came about, it is textual variants that has given rise to the alternative placements. 

2.  This Ennead focuses on how the soul manifests in the different levels, or hypostases.  The specific issue is how the soul can simultaneously manifest in a way that is divided in the material world, while at the same time being unified in the Noetic realm, here referred to as the realm of Intellect.

In the Noetic Realm, aka the Realm of Intellect, aka the Realm of Mind, the soul is undivided and has no material body.  In the material realm the soul appears to be divided among differentiated bodies.  How is this to be explained?

3.  Plotinus uses the metaphor of a circle from whose center lines are extended; the center of the circle is the Noetic soul, each line is a differentiated and embodied soul. 

Another metaphor that might be helpful is how moonlight appears in countless bodies of water ranging from a drop of rain to one of the Great Lakes.  The moonlight remains a constant reality ‘There,’ in the lunar domain or sphere, while the light of the moon is a scattered presence in all bodies of water.  The light in the bodies of water is itself not a body, but simply the presence of light.

A third metaphor would be the presence of sunlight that is inferred in all earthly manifestations, even at night when the sun itself cannot be seen.

4.  It was the view of Plotinus that the embodied soul, from the world soul to the human soul, is not completely separated from the Noetic soul, or the soul that resides in the realm of Intellect/Mind.  There is always something of the soul that remains in the realm of the Noetic.  It is this part of the soul that allows for, and facilitates, the turning of the embodied soul from fixation on material stimulation.  If the embodied soul were not connected to the soul in the Noetic, the embodied soul would have no way of knowing that reality There, that transcendental reality from which the embodied soul is derived.

5.  Later Platonists argued against this view that Plotinus held regarding the partial descent of the soul into materiality. Instead, they argued that the soul fully descended into materiality and was totally cut off from the Noetic, and, further, from the reality of the First Principle; the Good, the One, and the Beautiful.

What interests me here is that Plotinus takes the time to write about the eternal reality of the undescended soul and how it fits in with the metaphysical cosmology of Platonism at a time that precedes those whom we know argued for a fully descended soul, such as Proclus, who came centuries later.  I think that implies that the idea of an fully descended soul was likely an idea put forth by at least some Platonists, or perhaps put forth by other philosophical traditions; but Plotinus, as is his usual procedure, does not tell us whom he is disagreeing with or what tradition he might be taking issue with.

6.  Personally, I find the view of Plotinus, the view that the soul is only partially descended into materiality, to make more sense.  I say this because I think this view that Plotinus articulates clarifies why the practices of purification, and ascetic commitments, work, as well as why they are necessary for the ascent to the Noetic, and from there to the One.