1 April 2024
Plotinus on Eternity and the Soul
“Our demonstration that the soul is not a body makes it clear that it is akin to the diviner and to the eternal nature. It certainly does not have a shape or a colour, and it is intangible. But we can also demonstrate its kinship in the following way. We agree of course that all the divine and really existent has a good, intelligent life; now we must investigate what comes next, starting from our own soul and finding out what sort of nature it has. Let us take soul, not the soul in the body which has acquired irrational desires and passions and admitted other affection, but the soul which has wiped these away and which, as far as possible, has no communion with the body. This soul does make it clear that its evils are external accretions to the soul and come from elsewhere, but that when it is purified the best things are present in it, wisdom and all the rest of virtue, and are its own. If, then, the soul is something of this kind when it goes up again to itself, it must surely belong to that nature which we assert is that of all the divine and eternal. For wisdom and true virtue are divine things, and could not occur in some trivial mortal being, but something of such a kind [as to possess them – translator’s addition] must be divine, since it has a share in divine things through its kinship and consubstantiality. For this reason any one of us who is like this would deviate very little from the beings above as far as his soul itself was concerned and would only be inferior by that part which is in body. For this reason, if every man was like this, or there were a great number who had souls like this, no one would be so unbelieving as not to believe that what is soul in men is altogether immortal. But when one considers the nature of any particular thing one must concentrate on its pure form, since what is added is always a hindrance to the knowledge of that to which it has been added. Consider it by stripping, or rather let the man who has stripped look at himself and believe himself to be immortal, when he looks at himself as he has come to be in the intelligible and the pure. For he will see an intellect which sees nothing perceived by the senses, none of these mortal things, but apprehends the eternal by its eternity, and all the things in the intelligible world, having become itself an intelligible universe full of light, illuminated by the truth from the Good, which radiates truth over all the intelligibles; so he will often think that this was very well said: “Greetings, I am for you an immortal god” (Empedocles fr. B 112 Diels-Krans 4) having ascended to the divine and concentrating totally on likeness to it. But if purification causes us to be in a state of knowledge of the best, then the sciences which lie within become apparent, the ones which really are sciences. For it is certainly not by running around outside that the soul “sees self-control and justice”, but by itself in its understanding of itself and what it formerly was, seeing them standing in itself like splendid statues all rusted with time which it has cleaned (Phaedrus 247D5 ff.): as if gold had a soul, and knocked off all that was earthy in it; it was before in ignorance of itself, because it did not see the gold, but then, seeing itself isolated, it wondered at its worth, and thought that it needed no beauty brought in from outside, being supreme itself, if only one would leave it alone by itself.”
(Plotinus, Ennead IV.7.10 – On the Immortality of the Soul, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1984, pages 381-385, ISBN: 9780674994881)
“That the Soul is of the family of the diviner nature, the eternal, is clear from our demonstration that it is not material: besides it has neither shape or colour nor is it tangible. But there are other proofs.
“Assuming that the divine and the authentically existent possesses a life beneficent and wise, we take the next step and begin with working out the nature of our own soul.
“Let us consider a soul, not one that has appropriated the unreasoned desires and impulses of the bodily life, or any other such emotion and experience, but one that has cast all this aside, and as far as possible has no commerce with the bodily. Such a soul demonstrates that all evil is accretion, alien, and that in the purged soul the noble things are immanent, wisdom and all else that is good, as its native store.
“If this is the soul once it has returned to its self, how deny that it is of the nature we have identified with all the divine and eternal? Wisdom and authentic virtue are divine, and could not be found in the chattel mean and mortal: what possesses these must be divine by its very capacity of the divine, the token of kinship and of identical substance.
“Hence, too, any one of us that exhibits these qualities will differ but little as far as soul is concerned from the Supernals; he will be less than they only to the extent in which the soul is, in him, associated with body.
“This is so true that, if every human being were at that stage, or if a great number lived by a soul of that degree, no one would be so incredulous as to doubt that the Soul in man is immortal. It is because we see everywhere the spoiled souls of the great mass that it becomes difficult to recognize their divinity and immortality.
“To know the nature of a thing we must observe it in its unalloyed state, since any addition obscures the reality. Clear, then look: or, rather, let a man first purify himself and then observe: he will not doubt his immortality when he sees himself thus entered into the pure, the Intellectual. For, what he sees is an Intellectual-Principle looking on nothing of sense, nothing of this mortality, but its own eternity have intellection of the eternal: he will see all things in this Intellectual substance, himself having become an Intellectual Cosmos and all lightsome, illuminated by the truth streaming from The Good, which radiates truth upon all that stands within that realm of the divine.
“Thus he will often feel the beauty of that word, ‘Farewell: I am to you an immortal God’, for he has ascended to the Supreme, and is all one strain to enter into likeness with it.
“If the purification puts the human into knowledge of the highest, then, too, the science latent within becomes manifest, the only authentic knowing. For it is not by running hither and thither outside of itself that the Soul discerns Mortal Wisdom and Justice: it learns them of its own nature, in its intellectual grasp of itself and of its primal state, seeing their images deeply impressed upon itself – images which, one mass of rust from long neglect, it has restored to purity.
“Imagine living gold: it flies away all that is earthy about it, all that kept it in self-ignorance preventing it from knowing itself as gold; seen now unalloyed it is at once filled with admiration of its worth and knows that it has no need of any other glory than its own, triumphant if only it be allowed to remain purely to itself.”
(Plotinus, Ennead IV.7.10, The Immortality of the Soul, translated by Stephen MacKenna, Larson Publications, Burdett, New York, 1992, pages 405-406, ISBN: 9780943914558)
1. “Our demonstration that the soul is not a body . . .”
This part of the Ennead appears at the end of a discussion about the differences between the soul and the body, examining a number of arguments. Some of it is rooted in similarly focused discussions in Phaedo, while in others Plotinus seems to be disputing with other traditions, such as Stoicism and Peripatetics, regarding the nature of the soul. Having dealt with these disputes, Plotinus is satisfied that he has demonstrated that the soul is not a body.
2. “. . . makes it clear that it is akin to the diviner and to the eternal nature.”
MacKenna makes the same link between the diviner nature of the soul, that is to say more divine than the body, due to the soul’s kinship, or its familial relationship, to eternity. In other words, the soul is distinct from the body because the body is ephemeral while the soul is eternal.
3. I like to say that the soul is the presence of eternity within the ephemeral individual. ‘Within’ isn’t quite right; elsewhere Plotinus refers to the soul encompassing the body rather than residing ‘within’ the body.
4. When these quotes refer to Intellect, or the Intellectual-Principle, they are referring to the second level, or hypostasis, of reality, Nous. I like to mentally substitute ‘Noetic’ for ‘Intellect’, and the ‘Noetic’, or ‘Noetic Realities’ for ‘Intellectual Principle’. Sometimes I will substitute Mind or Mind-Thought, depending on the context. As I have noted before, I think that ‘Intellect’ and ‘Intellectual’ have become too connected to categorization and analysis in English to convey the meaning of Nous in a clear way. (As an aside, a friend of mind suggested that the use of the words ‘Intellect’ and ‘Intellectual’ come from the Scholastic tradition, but that context has been lost to a contemporary reader and for the most part forgotten by all but specialist scholars.)
Nous has three primary facets: being, mind, and life.
5. This passage uses images of the soul as being in some sense ‘covered over’ by ‘external’ acquisitions consisting primarily of passions and desires. Purification is the slow, step by step, removal of these external coverings. When these coverings are removed the soul’s true nature, the divine and eternal, appears.
This transforms the philosophical practitioner into a divine being, or, rather, reveals the soul as a divine being through its kinship with the divine and eternal themselves. In this condition the soul apprehends eternity by its eternity.
6. I notice that Plotinus seems hesitant to equate this experience of the divine and the eternal with a full and complete realization. Perhaps I am reading too much into this, but when Plotinus says that those who realize the Noetic ‘would deviate very little from the being above’, the ‘very little’ indicates to me that Plotinus think that there is yet more to the journey to complete realization. This would be the ascent from the Noetic to the Good and the One, the fully transcendental, that which is inherently eternal.
The difference, I think, is that with Noetic realities we enter a realm that is eternal by proximity and participation. In contrast, with the Good and the One we enter a realm that is eternal self-referentially, by its own nature, rather than by proximity and participation.
7. Why don’t we realize the truly exalted nature of the soul? Plotinus suggests that this is because the soul of most people is ‘damaged’ or ‘spoiled’ through having accrued coverings, like dirt covering gold, attracted by desires and cravings. It is very rare to meet someone whose soul shines ‘full of light’. It is so rare that many people in modernity simply deny the existence of the soul and, following that initial denial, the transcendental as such. Because we lack any experience of the presence of purified souls it is hard for us to imagine what it is like to experience that purification, even when the purification is incomplete.
8. The solution is to turn within where one can find the pure and undisturbed soul resting in a cradle of light. As Plotinus writes, “. . . it is certainly not by running around outside that the soul ‘sees self-control and justice’, but itself by itself in its understanding of itself and what it formerly was, seeing them standing in itself like splendid statues all rusted with time which it has cleaned.”
9. All of this brings clarity to the relationship between purification, asceticism, the virtues, and realization. The virtues tame desires at a basic level. Purification reveals the transcendental basis of the cosmos and our soul’s intimate connection to that basis. Asceticism teaches us to live a life that is not based on sensory stimulation and this allows us to more deeply practice purification and embody the virtues.
10. This is a passage that nourishes my soul. It radiates the experience of eternity. And it inspires me to continue my journey to the Good, the One, and the Beautiful.
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