Plotinus

@Fairbanks,

Quote:

Its halt and turning towards the One constitutes being, its gaze upon the One, Nous. Since it halts and turns towards the One that it may see, it becomes at once Nous and being. Resembling the One thus Nous produces in the same way, pouring forth a multiple power. Just as That, Which was before it, poured forth its likeness, so what Nous produces is a likeness of itself.

What do you make of this part? Is this conceptualization imposed upon an infinite source? Or what?

@Fairbanks,

I think that is exactly what it is - but what does it mean? We're dealing with spiritual philosophy with Plotinus. It is not at all dissimilar, as I mentioned, to Vedanta or Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. So to 'de-construct' conceptual thinking is actually to engage in deep contemplation beneath the level of discursive thought - meditation, as we were saying a little earlier.

---------- Post added 06-03-2010 at 03:03 PM ----------

the source I referred to begins with

Quote:

For Plotinus, man "is in some sense divine, and the object of the philosophic life is to understand this divinity and restore its proper relationship with the divine All and, in that All, to come to union with its transcendent source, the One or Good"

But it is also important to remember that he was not a Christian, although he had enormous impact on Christianity, mainly through Augustine, who took many of his ideas and assimilated them into Christian doctrine. Have a look at

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;172378 wrote:

I think that is exactly what it is - but what does it mean? We're dealing with spiritual philosophy with Plotinus. It is not at all dissimilar, as I mentioned, to Vedanta or Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. So to 'de-construct' conceptual thinking is actually to engage in deep contemplation beneath the level of discursive thought - meditation, as we were saying a little earlier.

---------- Post added 06-03-2010 at 03:03 PM ----------

the source I referred to begins with But it is also important to remember that he was not a Christian, although he had enormous impact on Christianity, mainly through Augustine, who took many of his ideas and assimilated them into Christian doctrine. Have a look at

Thanks! How do you think this relates to Plato's Form of the Good? Did Plotinus edit Plato much?

In my mind, the reason one examines the concept is too transcend it or not be trapped by it. To see around it or put it aside. That's why this fascinates me. I feel that it's likely that there is a universally available experience that humans like Plotinus and others achieved and tried to express. I can definitely see the Greek influence in Christianity. Smile

@Fairbanks,

I am sure there is - but this is a spiritual discipline. Hence what I said a few posts back about 'sitting meditation'. I don't want to get too fixated on the outward form, but it definitely takes a 'sadhana' which means, learning it means becoming a sadhu. (I know I am mixing Greek and Indian philosophy here but as I said, I learned about Plotinus through books on Buddhism.)

This is what a spiritual philosophy really looks like. It has been reduced to words on a page, to abstractions, as you have noticed. But these are only meaningful to a certain point - as meaningful as the map is in relation to the territory....

You see where this is going, don't you? If you can actually tap into this, it is the source of everything...as Plotinus says. But it takes some doing.

@Fairbanks,

I wonder if this has anything to do with having a heart full of love and a sense of being immersed in pure beauty, pure "miracle." "God" is a flux of beauty in whom we dwell, always new, and yet always unified. I have had this experience, but perhaps there are greater intensities of this, or something qualitatively different.

@Fairbanks,

NO that it pretty well it. It's all the other stuff we humans have to deal with that is the problem.

---------- Post added 06-03-2010 at 03:46 PM ----------

Most of which, of course, we have created ourselves.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;172392 wrote:

I wonder if this has anything to do with having a heart full of love and a sense of being immersed in pure beauty, pure "miracle." "God" is a flux of beauty in whom we dwell, always new, and yet always unified. I have had this experience, but perhaps there are greater intensities of this, or something qualitatively different.

I think for some it is a blinding experience a sudden mystical union or insight that alters their view of the world forever.

I think for others it is a cultivated way of viewing the world. Particularly in the modern age where materialism and determinism are so dominant it is difficult. I purposely focus on seeing the world as experiential,perceptive and responsive to its core as opposed to seeing inert insensate matter as the basis of reality. Experience or process not matter is ultimate reality.
In the ancient world of course the notion that nature was inert and insensate as opposed to imbued with spirit and experience would have been considered a very irrational notion indeed but somehow in the modern age it has become the dominant and default view (a souless universe composed of dead matter and vacous actualities).

@prothero,

prothero;172399 wrote:

I think for some it is a blinding experience a sudden mystical union or insight that alters their view of the world forever.

I think for others it is a cultivated way of viewing the world. Particularly in the modern age where materialism and determinism are so dominant it is difficult. I purposely focus on seeing the world as experiential,perceptive and responsive to its core as opposed to seeing inert insensate matter as the basis of reality. Experience or process not matter is ultimate reality.
In the ancient world of course the notion that nature was inert and insensate as opposed to imbued with spirit and experience would have been considered a very irrational notion indeed but somehow in the modern age it has become the default view.

How about a fusion of the two? An intense experience that comes and goes but which leaves an insight into the barrenness of materialism?

I agree completely that the world is made of experience, which is process or flux. I think sensation and emotion are continuous. We impose/abstract concepts on/from this flux. Including "matter" which too few humans recognize as an abstraction in my opinion. I think you are right about how irrational this would seem in the ancient world. At least their myths featured living beings and not dead abstractions. This was closer to our "existential situation." It seems that modern man lives outside himself, looking at himself through the smoke of abstraction. His life loses its vividness. He takes mathematical descriptions for explanations. And because these descriptions are largely static, perhaps he misses the flow of life. Because he thinks the world is explained, he loses his sense of wonder. Life is a burden, not a gift. A duty and not a privilege. He is so used to looking at the world through the universal objective lens that he forgets his embodiment, his particularity.

As always, a pleasure sharing thoughts with you, sir. Smile

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;172400 wrote:

How about a fusion of the two? An intense experience that comes and goes but which leaves an insight into the barrenness of materialism?

I agree completely that the world is made of experience, which is process or flux. I think sensation and emotion are continuous. We impose/abstract concepts on/from this flux. Including "matter" which too few humans recognize as an abstraction in my opinion. I think you are right about how irrational this would seem in the ancient world. At least their myths featured living beings and not dead abstractions. This was closer to our "existential situation." It seems that modern man lives outside himself, looking at himself through the smoke of abstraction. His life loses its vividness. He takes mathematical descriptions for explanations. And because these descriptions are largely static, perhaps he misses the flow of life. Because he thinks the world is explained, he loses his sense of wonder. Life is a burden, not a gift. A duty and not a privilege. He is so used to looking at the world through the universal objective lens that he forgets his embodiment, his particularity.

As always, a pleasure sharing thoughts with you, sir.

In our effort to be completely objective and completely rational we develop a metaphysics which is not "liveable" and which does not represent "our experience" or for that matter the experience of the world.
.

@prothero,

prothero;172401 wrote:

In our effort to be completely objective and completely rational we develop a metaphysics which is not "liveable" and which does not represent "our experience" or for that matter the experience of the world.
.

Well said. An implicit metaphysics that pretends like it isn't there...I dare say:)

@prothero,

prothero;172401 wrote:

In our effort to be completely objective and completely rational we develop a metaphysics which is not "liveable" and which does not represent "our experience" or for that matter the experience of the world.
.

Actually my take on the 'metaphysic of modernism' is 'the flight into insentience'. All of this preoccupation with science, mastery over nature, material possessions and material wellbeing, masking this deep unease about the unavoidable transience of it all. And the substitute for any real spirituality then becomes the cult of stardom, the worship of fame and money, and the pursuit of pleasure.

Humans have always had this tendency, at least in part, but now they have made it the state religion.

---------- Post added 06-03-2010 at 05:39 PM ----------

prothero;172399 wrote:

I think for some it is a blinding experience a sudden mystical union or insight that alters their view of the world forever

Plotinus himself is said to have had two or three experiences of 'mystical union' in his life. I presume these are what the Hindus refer to as 'nirvikalpa samadhi' which is an intense trance state. I am sure these states to lead to changes in your outlook and maybe even changes in your neurophysiology.

I have been sporadically engaged in Buddhist meditation for a long while. I shouldn't speak about it, because I am really not very committed and very stop-start. But I do know that if you persist with it, while seemingly nothing happens on the surface level, the nature of your awareness does change on a deep level. So, in a sense these things are both sudden and gradual. After all, what you are seeing through all of this is, as one teacher put it, what is always already the case. It is 'realizing how things really are' which can nevertheless arise as a sudden insight.

@Fairbanks,

Just a couple of quick questions about Plotinus's relationship to Gnosticism. (1) He rejected the Gnostics' conception of the Demiurge as evil. How did he himself conceive of evil? (2) In the Gnostic pantheon of Ptolemy and Colorbasus (according to Wikipedia), Nous and Aletheia are fourth generation emanations of the One, followed in the fifth generation by Anthropos and Ecclesia, and in the sixth by Logos and Zoe. It was wondering about Zoe yesterday (in connection with Reconstructo's 'tiger' image, in another thread) that caused me to look this stuff up, but not specifically in connection with Plotinus. Does Zoe occur in his system?

---------- Post added 06-03-2010 at 12:19 PM ----------

Reconstructo;172363 wrote:

Maybe part of the darkness of this night is that it doesn't feel spiritually meaningful. Perhaps that's its essence, that all meaning is mocked, that the intense suffering involved is utterly profitless, and this only adds to the suffering, completes the suffering......

Absolutely. (Sorry to have dragged the thread off course a bit. Off course, but not down, I hope!)

@Fairbanks,

I don't know the answer to those questions, although our new contributor might be able to cast light. I think that Plotinus opposed gnosticism mainly on the grounds they thought the world and matter an active evil. His view was that matter was evil only in the sense that it was devoid of being, which is the sole good. So it is more like evil as the privation of good, rather than evil as actively malevolent. But I will defer to anyone with expert knowledge in the matter.

That particular cosmology of the gnostics is probably much more elaborated than Plotinus. He was fairly stricly monist, as I understand it. Mind you, it is also misleading to speak of 'the Gnostics' as an heterogenous spiritual movement, as there were many gnostic schools with very diverse teachings. I don't have a lot of knowledge about them, but many of the gnostic cosmologies do sound interesting.

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;172427 wrote:

I think that Plotinus opposed gnosticism mainly on the grounds they thought the world and matter an active evil. His view was that matter was evil only in the sense that it was devoid of being, which is the sole good.

Insofar as I understand it, I'd be inclined to agree with him on that. The asceticism of the Gnostics makes me uncomfortable; on the other hand, I see something real in the idea of the Demiurge as a kind of pseudo-Creator; so I'm looking for some system of ideas which has something like the latter, but nothing too much like the former.

@Fairbanks,

My goodness, you folks do keep late hours. Lots of interesting comments and questions in the wee small hours, and I'd like to share some reactions, but there's really too much to go point-by-point. I'm in general agreement with the overall tendency of what everyone's been saying, so if I may be allowed to offer a sort of general summary reaction:

Nous is one of those tough-to-translate words. Most modern translators opt for "Intellect," but I think that's misleading. For most people, "intellect" implies "rationality," but in Plotinus rationality is a property of Psyche, specifically the "rational soul," or dianoia, while Nous is what one might call "super-rational" or "meta-logical." Hadot and the older translaters, such as Thomas Taylor, opt for "spirit," but I think that's confusing, too, because it connects etymologically with the "breath-spirit" (pneuma), which is also a property or function of Psyche.

The way I look at it is to focus first on the rational soul, dianoia, and note that it implies dualistic thinking. In fact, rationality by definition is dualistic: "ratio," as in mathematics, denotes a comparison or relationship between two things. This aspect is further highlighted by Plotinus' assertion that the "content," so to speak, of Psyche is the logoi. Among the many meanings of logos in ancient Greek is "a proportion," which again is a relationship or comparison between two things. So the rational mind obtains knowledge (or at least "true opinion") through processes of comparing and ranking things, and mainly verbally. Hence the importance of dialectic in the Platonist tradition.

The "content" of Nous, on the other hand, is the Forms, which Nous "has" directly and absolutely. I think this is what Plotinus is getting at with the notion that Nous "thinks itself" and that this is its "active actuality." Jeepr's comparison of this state to that of Eastern meditation is correct insofar as we're talking about non-verbal, non-imagistic, non-dualistic forms of meditation, such as zazen. This is what the Greek/Western tradition refers to as "contemplation," distinguishing it from meditation conceived of as "discursive," i.e., "meditating on" something. Marcus Aurelius provides an outstanding example of this view of meditation.

So I'd prefer to translate Nous with a phrase like "Objective Mind." I'd opt for "Intuition" if that word didn't mean something like "gut feeling" to so many people, which to me refers to a function of the lower, "irrational" soul. What I have in mind is more like Jung's definition of intuition (one of the four psychic functions in his system) as a sort of immediate grasp of the whole of a situation.

In general, I think the Platonic school's emphasis on mastery of dialectic and "rationality" is precisely to enable the student to go beyond that process. Diotima's famous speech about the mysteries of love in the Symposium expresses this. It's a sort of step-by-step process meant to lead the student "upward" from the world of transitory appearances to the truly real world of absolute and eternal being. The Enneads contain numerous famous "ascents to the One."

I'll mention, also, that I think Jeepr's comments on gnosticism were right on target.

That doesn't cover everything I've read here that I found interesting, but enough is enough, and maybe already too much.

@Fairbanks,

Mad Mike, I am grateful you are here, friend. Excellent information!

@Reconstructo,

Hi Mike,
Thanks for joining the forum; we may have similar interests (the issue of constancy and change). I look forward to your views and comments. Several months ago I picked up Pierre Hadot's book "Plotinus the Simplicity of Vision" as recommended by Jeeprs, very interesting perspective (thanks Jeeprs). I also picked up a small collection of Plotinus work called "The Essential Plotinus". I think I am now ready and interested enough in Plotinus that I would like to get a full collection of the Enneads. Do you have a recommendation for a decent translation of the collected works?

I have been very interested in Plato/Socrates over the years and I would assume that Plotinus is a continued commentary on Plato/Socrates. I would think that one could use the two works to help illuminate each another.
Jay

@Jay phil,

Jay;172554 wrote:

Hi Mike,
Thanks for joining the forum; we may have similar interests (the issue of constancy and change). I look forward to your views and comments. Several months ago I picked up Pierre Hadot's book "Plotinus the Simplicity of Vision" as recommended by Jeeprs, very interesting perspective (thanks Jeeprs). I also picked up a small collection of Plotinus work called "The Essential Plotinus". I think I am now ready and interested enough in Plotinus that I would like to get a full collection of the Enneads. Do you have a recommendation for a decent translation of the collected works?

I have been very interested in Plato/Socrates over the years and I would assume that Plotinus is a continued commentary on Plato/Socrates. I would think that one could use the two works to help illuminate each another.
Jay

Thanks, I liked Hadot's Plotinus book, too. I also recommend his What Is Ancient Philosophy?, which emphasizes the fact that in the ancient world, philosophy was at least as much a way of life as a system of thought, and usually more so.

The only modern English translation of Plotinus is A.H. Armstrong's, which is available as a seven-volume set in the Loeb Classical Library. That's not as massive as it sounds; the volumes are about the size of a standard paperback, and they include the Henry-Schwyzer critical edition of the Greek text. I've forgotten the exact cost, but as I recall I paid about $150 for the full Monty.

I'd also recommend The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. It's a collection of chapters by various authors and so is a bit uneven, but I found it helpful. The Cambridge Companion to Late Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy is also useful, especially for placing Plotinus' thought in context.

The relationship between Plotinus' thought and Plato's is somewhat controversial. My own view is that Plotinus was not a Neoplatonist, but the last Platonist. I base this on the fact that it was only after Plotinus that people like Porphyry and Iamblichus introduced the Chaldaean Oracles, theurgy and a proliferation of trinities into the discourse, justifying the "neo."

Armstrong helpfully footnotes many of the passages in the Enneads where Plotinus quotes directly from Plato, so it's easy to see where he's following the Master and where he's stretching a point. Where he "deviates" from the strict sense of Plato's dialogues sometimes is a reflection of Plato's unwritten doctrine, sometimes an "adjustment" in light of criticisms leveled at Plato by Aristotle or the Stoics. I don't think any of that constitutes the kind of innovation that would deserve the "neo" label, but lots of people disagree.

@Mad Mike,

Mad Mike;172477 wrote:

My goodness, you folks do keep late hours. .

Thanks so much Mike, it is great you have joined. My knowledge of the matter is fragmentary but I am glad you feel I am heading in the right direction. It is a subject I intend to keep studying as, to me, these are the roots of real philosophy in a world where much else is fake.

BTW my odd hours are at partially due to my time zone which is in Sydney.

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;172756 wrote:

BTW my odd hours are at partially due to my time zone which is in Sydney.

Whereas my odd hours are just due to me being odd. Smile

(Well, actually, they are also due to noisy neighbours.)

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