Plotinus on the Relationships between the Three Hypostases

10 April 2024

Plotinus on the Relationships between the Three Hypostases

“And all things when they come to perfection produce; The One is always perfect and therefore produces everlastingly; and its product is less than itself.  What then must we say about the most perfect?  Nothing can come from it except that which is next greatest after it.  Intellect is next to it in greatness and second to it: for Intellect sees it and needs it alone; but it has no need of Intellect; and that which derives from something greater than Intellect is intellect, which is greater than all things, because the other things come after it: as Soul is an expression and a kind of activity of Intellect, just as Intellect is of the One.  But soul’s expression is obscure – for it is a ghost of Intellect – and for this reason it has to look to Intellect; but Intellect in the same way has to look to that god, in order to be Intellect.  But it sees him, not as separated from him, but because it comes next after him, and there is nothing between, as also there is not anything between soul and Intellect.  Everything longs for its parent and loves it, especially when parent and offspring are alone; but when the parent is the highest good, the offspring is necessarily with him and separate from him only in otherness.”

(Plotinus: Ennead V.1, On the Three Primary Hypostases, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1984, page 33, ISBN: 9780674994898)

“Again, all that is fully achieved engenders: therefore the eternally achieved engenders eternally an eternal being.  At the same time, the offspring is always minor: what then are we to think of the All-Perfect but that it can produce nothing less than the very greatest that is later than itself?  This greatest, later than the divine unity, must be the Divine Mind, and it must be the second of all existence, for it is that which sees The One on which alone it leans while the First has no need whatever of it.  The offspring of the prior to Divine Mind can be no other than that Mind itself and is the loftiest being in the universe, all else following upon it – the Soul, for example, being an utterance and act of the Intellectual-Principle as that is an utterance and act of The One.  But in soul the utterance is obscured, for soul is an image and must look to its own original: that Principle, on the contrary, looks to the First with meditation – thus becoming what it is – and has that vision not from a distance but as the immediate next with nothing intervening, close to the One as soul to it.

“The offspring must seek and love the begetter; and especially so when begetter and begotten are alone in their sphere; when, in addition, the begetter is the highest Good, the offspring (inevitably seeking its good) is attached by a bond of sheer necessity, separated only in being distinct.”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, V.1 The Three Initial Hypostases, translated by Stephen MacKenna, Larson Publications, Burdett, New York, 1992, pages 428-429, ISBN: 9780943914558)

1.  This quote is a summary of the relationship between the three hypostases as understood and experienced in Plotinus’s contemplations.  As with a lot of philosophical Greek, the antecedents of pronouns isn’t always clear and I have found it is worthwhile to mentally substitute the antecedent for the pronoun; we don’t always have to do that, but it is helpful at some point in our studies to make that effort.  After some time with this way of writing you get used to it.

2.  Plotinus writes that all things in their perfection ‘produce’, MacKenna uses the word ‘engender.’  This is an explanation for why the One begins the process of emanation, instead of remaining enclosed in itself.  To produce is a sign of perfection and since the One is the most perfect, the One is ceaselessly producing.

3.  You might say that ‘producing’ or ‘engendering’ is another divine name for the One, like the Good and the Beautiful; you could add the Engendering, or the Creative.

4.  It is kind of an axiom in Platonism that those things which are produced are in some sense lesser than that which produces those things.  This is not always clear because if we compare this view with our experiences in the material world it doesn’t always seem to match our experience.  For example, a fine human being can be born from two parents who have serious flaws.  And it is difficult to see how an acorn is lesser than the oak from which it was produced or how a house built by following a blueprint is lesser than the blueprint.

What is being referred to, I think, is ‘lesser’ (or as MacKenna says ‘minor’) in a metaphysical sense which means something like ‘derivative’ or ‘dependent upon.’  And this relationship is only one way.  Intellect (the Noetic, or Mind) is dependent on the One,  but the One is not dependent upon the Noetic.  Looked at in this way, you can also see how this works in the material realm; the house is dependent upon the blueprints, but not the other way around.  Children are dependent for their existence upon their parents, but the parents would exist, though not as parents, if they did not have children.  It is this kind of inherently hierarchical relationship that is being highlighted.

5.  “Soul is an expression and a kind of activity of Intellect, just as Intellect is of the One.”

The One, through its ‘activity’ of producing emanates the Noetic.  The Noetic through its activity of producing emanates Soul. 

The Noetic looks to the One as its source and its completion.  Soul looks to the Noetic as its source and its completion; but the Soul’s full completion means journeying through the Noetic and returning to the One itself.

6.  Soul is the ‘ghost’ of Intellect, the ghost of the Noetic.  That’s a powerful image.  It indicates how deficient material existence is in comparison to the Noetic.

7.  There is nothing between Soul and the Noetic.  There is nothing between the Noetic and the One.  This indicates that the outpouring from the One, and the subsequent outpouring of the Soul from the Noetic, is seamless.  How does that work?  It is like the seamless effulgence of the sun whose light pours out continuously.  It is like water emerging from a mountain spring that ceaselessly nourishes the plants that receive the spring’s water. 

There is no strict wall of separation between these levels, or hypostases; but it is helpful to think of these levels as metaphysical regions.  Think of how a prairie becomes a desert, or how a forest becomes a prairie.  There is no strict separation line between the two; yet a forest and a prairie differ.  In a similar way, you can think of the Noetic as a kind of region in a metaphysical ecology that becomes Soul, which is another ecological region of Platonic metaphysics.

8.  Plotinus’s statement that there is nothing between these realms or hypostases differs from how subsequent Platonists have treated these levels.  I can think of two examples: the first is how the Theurgists inserted a hypostasis between the One and the Noetic which they called the Henads (which means something like ‘the Ones’).  They argued that this is where the Gods of Olympus and other deities, existed.  From this perspective the Gods transcend Being.  This reconfiguration of the levels of existence was necessary to support their theurgic program; the argument was that soul was completely separate from higher levels and was incapable of transcendence.  Therefore it was necessary to ceremonially approach deities of various kinds to enact such a journey, which is why it was necessary to inject a hypostasis between the One and the Noetic. 

A second example is contemporary; some scholars argue that Nature is a fourth level, or hypostasis, or that you can deduce that Nature functions like a fourth hypostasis that is beyond Soul.  A recent example of this is found in The New Cambridge Companion to Plotinus (the 2022 edition; there is also The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus published in 1966; both were edited by Gerson so it is easy to confuse them.)  In this collection there is an essay “Nature: Plotinus’ Fourth Hypostasis?” by James Wilberding.  Wilberding writes that this idea of Nature as a fourth hypostasis has been around for a long time, but seems to have been given a boost among contemporaries by no less a person than A. H. Armstrong.  Others have strongly disagreed. Those who are interested in this topic might want to start with this essay.

I have spent a lot of time becoming familiar with Platonic metaphysics and how the levels are presented.  First, it is my view that this way of speaking about metaphysics is based on contemplative experience rather than deductive analysis of some kind.  In other words, Plotinus is reporting on the nature and structure of the cosmos from a contemplative perspective.  I don’t see Plotinus as presenting this structure to justify a particular spiritual or religious inclination, whereas I do think that kind of thing is what motivates the theurgist’s reconfiguration as well as the contemporary idea of Nature as a fourth level, or hypostasis.

From another perspective, you can think of the hypostases as a teaching device, a way of communicating contemplative understanding to those who have not yet had that experience and may not be familiar with contemplation at all.  It both offers the practitioner a map for the spiritual ascent, and, as well, an explanatory tool for recognizing where one is in the spiritual journey.

Personally, I am satisfied with the experiential basis, and the clarity of presentation, found in Plotinus.  I recall reading, or was it a lecture I heard on Youtube, I don’t remember right now, that the very late Classical Platonists had a kind of obsession with creating divisions and categories.  I think that is mimicked in analytic philosophy today, which has had a wide influence even beyond the analytic tradition.  Even if you view the three hypostases as nothing more than a tool of explanation, as opposed to contemplative experience, I think the three levels are sufficient.  When I say the three levels are sufficient I mean that I do not see any problem in Platonic metaphysics that needs to be solved, or can only be solved, by adding additional levels, or hypostases.

8.1  A friend of mine suggested a third example of multiplying hypostases, or levels; the Gnostics.  In Ennead II.9, "Against the Gnostics", Plotinus strongly criticizes the Gnostics for creating unnecessary complications by taking from Plato the Platonic cosmology and then adding levels and aspects and other types of additions.  I think my friend is right about this; in fact, I suspect Plotinus might have been sensitive to this because of the presence and influence of Gnosticism in the Roman world of that time.  (As an aside, I wonder if the Theurgic addition of the Henads is derived from one or more of the Gnostic systems circulating at this time.)  

9.  Ennead V.1 is stunningly beautiful.  Ennead V.1 is like the stars on a clear winter night where each star is an illumination of the transcendental.