Plotinus

Qu'est-ce que l'Absolu ? Dieu existe-t-il ?

The One, beyond being and thought, can only be spoken of by negation

L'innommableIl le dit expressément

For Plotinus the principle of all is the One, or the Good, from which Intellect and Soul proceed without it being diminished. Precisely because it is the principle of all things it is none of them: it is beyond being, form and thought, and does not even think itself. Hence the name “One” describes nothing: it is a negation of multiplicity, and Plotinus warns that we do not say what it is but what it is not. We speak of it from what comes after it, and only union, when the soul is alone with it, reaches it. The last sentence of treatise V 3 sums up the method: take away everything.

Qui suis-je ? Existe-t-il un vrai soi ?

A part of the soul never descended: we remain above, in Intellect

Le Soi est l'AbsoluIl le dit expressément

For Plotinus what we call “we” is stretched between two levels. The compound of body and lower soul feels, suffers and desires; but the true human being is the reasoning soul and, higher, the Intellect in which it shares. In the treatise on the soul's descent he holds, against the common Platonist view, that not all of our soul has come down: a part always remains in the intelligible. He himself recounts that he often woke to himself out of the body and saw a marvellous beauty. To know oneself is to climb back from the scattered self to that undescended part and, from there, to union with the One.

Pourquoi souffrons-nous ?

Souls forgot their father through the audacity of wanting to belong to themselves

La séparation d'avec DieuIl le dit expressément

Treatise V 1 opens by asking what has made souls forget their father, God, and be ignorant of themselves and of him. The answer is audacity: the wish to belong to themselves, the pleasure in moving on their own account, which took them so far from their origin that they ended up admiring things here and despising themselves. Elsewhere Plotinus places the origin of evil in matter, the absolute privation of good, towards which the soul inclines in descending. Suffering is thus distance: that of a soul that has turned outward and forgotten itself. The remedy is return, and the image summing it up is Odysseus going back to his beloved homeland.

Que se passe-t-il après la mort ?

The soul is immortal, and what we truly are never left the intelligible

Ce que je suis ne naît ni ne meurtIl le dit expressément

One of Plotinus' earliest treatises argues against Stoics and Epicureans that the soul is neither a body nor the harmony of a body, and therefore cannot perish: it belongs to the nature of the divine and eternal. What dies is the compound, the living being that feels and suffers. Since a part of the soul has never descended, death does not affect what we truly are. Plotinus also admits, following Plato, that souls that have identified with the lower are reborn in human or animal bodies according to their life. Porphyry relates that his last words were an effort to raise the divine in us to the divine in the all.

Comment atteint-on la libération ou le salut ?

Return to oneself, be purified and ascend to union with the One

Par la connaissance directeIl le dit expressément

Plotinus describes an ascent in several stages. The civic virtues order life; the purificatory virtues separate the soul from the body's passions; dialectic raises it to Intellect, where it knows itself as part of the intelligible. In the treatise on beauty, the watchword is to turn inward and carve one's own statue until the radiance of virtue shines, because the eye does not see the sun without becoming like it. But the final step exceeds knowledge: union with the One is not seeing an object but coinciding with it, and Plotinus compares it to two centres touching. Porphyry states that he attained it four times while Porphyry was with him.

Faut-il un maître ?

Teaching only shows the road; the vision belongs to whoever wants to see

Le maître est à l'intérieurIl le dit expressément

Porphyry relates that Plotinus, at twenty-eight, searched in vain among the schools of Alexandria until, on hearing Ammonius Saccas, he exclaimed that this was the man he was looking for, and stayed with him eleven years. The teacher was thus decisive in his life. But in the Enneads teaching has a precise limit: we speak and write to point towards the One and to wake from reasonings to vision, like someone showing the road to one who wishes to travel; the contemplation itself is the task of whoever wishes to see. What is sought is not outside: the One is present to all, and whoever turns inward finds it. The teacher points; the true guide is the divine in the soul.

Le monde est-il réel ?

The visible world is the last level of a procession from the One

Des plans d'existenceIl le dit expressément

Plotinus conceives reality as a hierarchy. From the One proceeds Intellect, where the intelligible forms are; from Intellect, Soul, which animates the cosmos; and at the extreme, matter, which in itself is nothing and receives forms like a mirror. The sensible world is real as image and work of Soul: in the treatise against the Gnostics he defends its beauty and order against those who despise it, and calls it the best possible image of the intelligible. But authentic being lies above, and each lower level is a weaker contemplation of the higher. The visible is one plane of a graded reality, upheld in its entirety by the One.

Qu'est-ce que l'amour ?

The soul loves the Good as a lover; in union, two become one

Le désir ardent et l'unionIl le dit expressément

For Plotinus everything that proceeds from the One keeps the desire to return to it, and in the soul that desire is love. The treatise on love interprets Plato's Eros as the activity of the soul tending towards the good. In the treatise on the Good or the One he compares the soul to a maiden who, separated from her father by earthly marriages, returns to him and knows true love; when she reaches him, nothing stands between them, and they are no longer two but one. Treatise VI 7 describes the soul receiving an outflow from the Good and seized by burning love. Love is the movement of return to the origin.

Sommes-nous libres ou tout est-il déterminé ?

We are free when we act from intellect, not from passions

Un libre arbitre réelIl le dit expressément

Plotinus rejects astrological and Stoic determinism in his treatise on fate: if everything were fixed by external causes, it would not be we who act. But his notion of freedom is demanding. In treatise VI 8 he asks what depends on us and answers that it is not enough to do what we want: whoever acts carried away by passions or ignorance is not free. Only the soul acting from intellect and towards the good is, because it then acts according to its own nature. And freedom in the full sense belongs to the One, which is what it wills to be. In the treatises on providence he also admits a justice fulfilled across several lives.

Pourquoi méditer ou prier ?

Return to yourself and look: prayer is reaching out alone to the Alone

Revenir à la source du jeIl le dit expressément

For Plotinus the way to the divine is a return inward. In the treatise on beauty the watchword is to return to oneself and look, and to keep carving one's own statue until it shines. In V 1 he explains that the soul must gather itself, turn its gaze from the external and listen to the voices from above, like someone awaiting a beloved voice. Before speaking of the supreme principle he invokes God, not with spoken words, but stretching the soul in prayer towards him, alone to the Alone. The goal is to find the source: the centre of the soul coincides with the centre of all, and whoever sees himself in his purity meets the One.

La raison peut-elle connaître l'ultime ?

The One is beyond thought: it is reached by presence, not by science

L'ultime est au-delà du mentalIl le dit expressément

Plotinus grants reason enormous reach: Intellect knows all that is intelligible, and the reasoning soul can rise to it. But the supreme principle lies beyond: the One is not an object of thought, because all thinking implies a duality between the thinker and the thought. Hence, he says in VI 9, the apprehension of the One comes not through science or intellection, like that of other intelligibles, but through a presence superior to science. We speak of it to orient, but we do not state it; dialectic and virtue prepare, and the last step is to leave even thought behind. The watchword closing V 3 sums it up: take away everything.

Se retirer du monde ou le transformer ?

Present at once to himself and to others, without slackening contemplation

La contemplation dans l'actionIl le dit expressément

Plotinus' doctrine places contemplation above everything: action is a weakened contemplation, a detour for those unable to contemplate directly. But his life, as Porphyry tells it, was that of a man in the world. He taught in Rome, acted as arbiter in disputes, was guardian to orphans whose property he managed scrupulously, and even asked the emperor Gallienus for a city in Campania to govern by Plato's laws. Porphyry stresses that, while attending to others, he never interrupted his inner attention: he was present at once to himself and to others. The heart turned to the essential does not exclude service.