The Good and the One and Their Relationship to the Noetic

4 April 2026

The Good and the One and Their Relationship to the Noetic

“But then, someone will say, why do we not stop at Intellect and postulate this as the Good?  For both soul and life are traces of Intellect, and soul desires it (Intellect).  Soul judges and thereby desires Intellect, judging justice better than injustice, and putting every form of excellence before every form of vice, and it honours the identical things it chooses.  But if it (soul) desires only Intellect, it would presumably need more argument to show that Intellect is not the ultimate thing; and while not everything desires Intellect, everything desires the Good.

“And even among things without intellect, not all try to come to possess it, and those who do have it do not stop there but go on to look for the Good; they look for Intellect on the basis of calculative reasoning, whereas they look for the Good prior to reason as well.

“But if they desire life and eternal existence and activity, then the object desired is not desired as Intellect, but as Good, as deriving from the Good and leading to the Good; for that is the way life is.”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, Ennead 6.7.20, How the Multiplicity of the Ideas Came to Exist, and on the Good, translated by Lloyd Gerson et al, Cambridge University Press, Second Edition, 2025, pages 831-832, ISBN: 978009604970)

“Why then, someone will say, do we not stop at Intellect and posit this as the Good?  For soul and life are traces of Intellect, and it is this Intellect that soul desires.  And so in its judgements also it desires Intellect, judging righteousness better than unrighteousness, and preferring each form of virtue to the [corresponding] form of vice, and judging more valuable the same things which it chooses.  But if it only desires Intellect, perhaps it might be in need of further reasoning to show that Intellect is not the ultimate and that not all things desire Intellect but all things desire the Good.  And not all of the things which do not have intellect seek to gain possession of it, and the things that have intellect do not stop there, but again seek the Good, and they seek Intellect from their reasoning, but the Good even before reason.  And if they also seek life, and everlasting existence and activity, what they desires is not Intellect in so far as it is Intellect, but in so far as it is good and from the Good and directed to the Good: since this is so also with life.”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, Ennead VI.7.20, The Forms and the Good, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988, page 153, ISBN: 9780674995154)

“Why not halt, then – it will be asked – at Intellectual-Principle and make that The Good?  Soul and life are traces of Intellectual-Principle; that principle is the Term of Soul which on judgement sets itself towards Intellectual-Principle, pronouncing right preferable to wrong and virtue in every form to vice, and thus ranking by its choosing.

“The soul aiming only at that Principle would need a further lessoning; it must be taught that Intellectual-Principle is not the ultimate, that not all things look to that while all do look to The Good.  Not all that is outside of Intellectual-Principle seeks to attain it; what has attained it does not halt there but looks still towards good.  Besides, Intellectual-Principle is sought upon motives of reasoning, The Good before all reason.  And in any striving towards life and continuity of existence and activity, the object is aimed at not as Intellectual-Principle but as good, as rising from good and leading to it: life itself is desirable only in view of good.”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, Ennead VI.7.20, The Multiplicity of Ideal Forms, translated by Stephen MacKenna, Larson Publications, Burdett, New York, 1992, page 655, ISBN: 9780943914558)

1.  This quote from the Enneads is one of the clearest, perhaps the clearest, statement from Plotinus why the divine ascent transcends even the Noetic (what the translators refer to as Intellect or Intellectual-Principle.  I have mentioned this before, but I think it is worth repeating, and that is that I would prefer the use of the word ‘mind’ or ‘Mind’ for nous rather than Intellect.  It’s not that I think ‘Intellect’ is wrong; there is a long tradition of translating nous that way and that is a consideration that carries weight.  But over time I think the word intellect has taken on meanings that are primary that undermine its usage in the context of the Enneads.  That context is that ‘intellect’ is often a synonym for someone who is ‘smart’ as in ‘he’s an intellectual’ and therefore lives primarily through applying his brain to analytical approaches to problems.  In contrast the word ‘mind’ has a broader base of meaning, particularly when comparing its usage to non-Western spiritual literature.  It’s not a big deal, but it is a point I like to bring up when I have an opportunity to do so.

2.  “. . . not everything desires Intellect but everything desires the Good.” (Gerson et al)  That’s an interesting contrast.  You could put it that all things desire the One; all things desire to return to the One. 

2.1  It’s remarkable that the word ‘desire’ is used in this context.  I say this because overcoming desire is the basis for ethical restraints, asceses, in Platonism.  This is explicitly stated in Phaedo and The Republic.  But in the context of the One desire is seen as that which propels the philosopher to that transcendental and ineffable realm.

This suggests that it is not desire as such that is the problem, or that Platonism is advocating for the end of desire (or as Buddhists would say ‘the cessation of desire.’)  Rather, the philosopher needs to distinguish between those desires that need to be overcome (broadly speaking, bodily desires) and those desires that assist the philosopher on the path to awakening to the presence of eternity.

2.1.1  Those kinds of differentiations are a function of the noetic in the sense that it is at the level of nous where differentiation first appears.  Mind is the instantiation of, or the presence of, nous in the human being.  It is Mind that both makes these kinds of differentiations (and differentiating between desires that need to be overcome and desires that assist the philosopher on the path is a subtle process) and guides the philosopher as to the application of those differentiations; that is to say how such differentiations will impact the life of the philosopher.

2.1.2  I have to admit (this is a bit of a personal confession) that the idea that all things desire the Good and the One is a difficult one for me to accept.  It does not seem to me that when I watch and try to understand the activity of living beings, or even just human beings, that their activity is in some sense directed towards the ineffable One.  Alas, that is not what I observe.  Instead, I observe, among many, perhaps among most, a desire to increase fragmentation, a desire to cultivate separation in the sense of acting as if we do not have a common source or a shared life and destiny. 

Perhaps I am a bit of a philosophical pessimist in this regard (I’m thinking of philosophers like Schopenhauer).  Perhaps this inclination of mine is due to my age; I was much more willing when I was younger to think of all human beings as in some sense good and well-intentioned.  But I no longer think this is the case.

How does that impact my reading of this passage?  I tend to read it as suggesting that the ascent to the One, the Good, to the Eternal, is always available to all beings.  But that availability is a choice that only a very small number of living beings will take.  I’ve come to the view that there is nothing wrong with this way of looking at living beings.  For example, every human being (who is not deaf) has musical capacity, but only a small number become composers.  Every human being has mathematical capacities, but only a very small number become mathematicians.  And so forth.  I look at spirituality and living in accordance with the demands of spirituality, in a similar way.

Partly this is a difference between a universal vision of spirituality and a restricted view of spirituality.  There is a strong view that spiritual traditions should be universal in their application.  This is a legacy of traditions like Christianity and Buddhism.  But, ironically, this is not a view that is universally held.  For example, in Jainism it is the view, as I understand it, that only a very small number of people, the number is so small you could easily count them, attain moksha, liberation.  For the vast majority of living beings simply continue cycling through samsara, life after life after life. 

But regardless of whether or not all beings desire the Good, if someone is such a being, a being who desires the Good, the guidance of Plotinus is assuredly helpful and nourishing to accomplish the task of returning to the One.

3.  It is stated that people look for Intellect (Nous, Mind) through reason, but the Good is ‘prior to reason.’  My understanding of this is that eternal objects in the Noetic realm are differentiated.  I understand differentiation to be foundational for reason which suggests that the cultivation of reason (broadly speaking) is necessary for experiencing Nous, even if the technique for doing so is contemplation (because it is reason that will guide the philosopher to contemplation). 

The Good is ‘prior to reason’ because the Good is the complete unity of the One.  And in complete unity there is no differentiation and therefore the Good does not reason.  Differentiation flows out of the Good and generates reason in the way that the light of the sun flows out of the sun and illuminates our world.

4.  I’m not sure how to interpret the closing sentence, the one about the desire for life, eternal activity and existence.  At first glance the sentence suggests to my mind something close to what heaven in Christianity might be described.  That doesn’t fit the context of this Ennead.  So we need to shift gears.

4.1  In thinking about this sentence perhaps Plotinus is referring to the eternal overflowing of the Good and the One into the Noetic, and the eternal overflowing of the Noetic into the material world.  This eternal overflowing (a kind of generating process) is a kind of activity, an eternal activity.  Again, it is like the light of the sun understood as an overflowing of the sun’s presence.  Or it is like the way beauty flows from a mountain landscape.  I think what Plotinus is suggesting is that part of the reason we desire to return to the One is to be a part (though ‘part’ is in some ways a problematic word in this context) of this eternal activity found in the Good and the One.  I mentioned that ‘part’ is a problematic word in this context because it might be suggestive of individuated existence in the One, whereas I see the Good and the One, and unifying with the Good and the One, as the dissolution of individuation which is an illusion in itself, and the source of many other illusions and misunderstandings.  But I can’t figure out a clearer why of referring to what I think is being suggested in this closing sentence.

4.1.1  This eternal process that Plotinus seems to refer to contrasts with the view that the Good and the One are unchanging.  I think the resolution to this can be found by thinking of process as an ultimate category so that what is unchanging is the process of eternal overflow of the presence of the Good and the One, the overflow of that which is eternal into the realm of time.  (If I were still a Buddhist I might put it this way: “Change does not differ from eternity, eternity does not differ from change.  Change is eternity, eternity is change.”  But this is a topic for another time.)

5.  Reading Plotinus is endlessly rewarding.