Plotinus: the One, the soul and the experience of cohesion

A late-ancient thinker in a Greek tradition

Plotinus lived in the third century AD, studied in Alexandria and later taught in Rome. His pupil Porphyrius arranged his discourses in six groups of nine: the Enneads. The order of that collection is not simply the order in which all texts are written.

The usual term neoplatonism is a later term. Plotinus saw himself within a tradition in which Plato had a decisive place. Yet he is not just an interpreter who repeats the same sentences. He develops his own systematic vision of origin, thinking, soul and world, from questions that live in his own time.

Why the first principle should be simple

A composite case seems to depend on something that brings its parts together or explains why they are so organized. Plotinus therefore seeks a first principle that does not itself consist of parts again. One can't be a thing besides other things, because then the relationship to those other things would ask for explanations again.

That makes speaking difficult. Once you list properties, the principle seems to become a carrier of several characteristics. The thought that the One is beyond being ordinary and thinking, tries to answer that difficulty. That is not an ambiguity that can be solved by a more beautiful image; it is part of the question whether language can describe its first origin in the same way as ordinary objects.

Thinking and soul aren't pieces that break down from something.

Plotinus distinguishes the One, the Intellect or Nous and the Soul. Those dependency relationships should not be read as a timeline in which an object is first alone and then loses pieces of itself. A commonly used representation of radiance can help to understand dependence, but is an image and not a physical process.

Also an image with light that is reflected in different bowls remains a metaphor. It can show how much is referring to one source. She can't prove how Plotinus pulverized metaphysics works. The distinction between a helpful representation and a valid argument is important in a visually strong subject.

Beauty as a trigger for reversal

In his treatise on beauty, Plotinus investigates what makes us recognize something beautiful in various things. The attention can shift from a visible object to the forming coherence and to the activity of the soul. Thus, aesthetic experience has a philosophical meaning: it can be a beginning of learning to look differently.

An own comparison is a piece of music that first speaks through loose sounds and later because of the coherence you hear in it. More understanding does not necessarily destroy the experience; it can change her. With that, the music is not yet proof for the One. The comparison only makes it possible to imagine how an experience can open up a demand for a deeper principle.

The world isn't simply worthless.

Plotinus' utterances about soul, body, matter and evil are complicated and cannot be compressed into one call to despise daily life. He also defends the beauty and order of the observable cosmos against views that radically reject the world. At the same time, his appreciation of transcendental reality remains highly hierarchical.

For a critical reader, the question arises as to what a focus on the higher does with concrete care. Does it make more attention to coherence, or does it invite itself to withdraw from vulnerable bodies? The answer must be examined in terms of passages and arguments. A touching experience of unity is not necessarily all ethical questions.

Think on for yourself

Take a moment when many loose impressions seemed to form one connection. First describe the experience without attaching a theory. What philosophical explanation would fit? What other explanation remains possible? In the knowledge universe, Plato's cave, the Symposium, music and atomism join to compare precisely those different ways of explaining.