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Lesson 3.4: Not of this World (Pt. III)
10 Plays1 month ago
Plotinus believed Plato’s dialogues concealed a map for the soul’s ascent—inward, upward, and beyond. You are not a body reaching for the heavens, but a soul fallen from them, a forgotten god recalling a home you never truly left.
Topics discussed:- How Plotinus reimagines Plato’s philosophy as a mystical roadmap for the soul’s return to its divine origin
- The metaphysical structure of reality: The One, Divine Intellect (Nous), and Soul—and the process of emanation and return
- The soul’s ascent through three levels of virtue: civic, purificatory, and contemplative
- Neoplatonism’s vision of truth as otherworldly, self-authenticating, and hidden beneath the surface of rational argument
- The transformation of philosophy into a spiritual practice—preparing the soul not merely to reason, but to remember
For more, go to theluxuryofvirtue.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to Platonism
00:00:02
Speaker
Today we look once more at one of the most influential systems of thought ever developed. I'm speaking of course of Platonism. Now Platonism has already had its twists and turns in our story.
00:00:17
Speaker
Let me tell you how it went down more or less from the beginning to catch us up to the direction that we're going in today.
Founding of Plato's Academy
00:00:25
Speaker
Now, Plato, the historical figure, the actual Plato, opens up his academy in the 380s BCE.
00:00:34
Speaker
And of course, during that time period, we explored some ways of looking at what he was teaching and what he was thinking. And we looked at six different ways or six different perspectives on Plato. Now, the truth is, it was probably a little bit of all of them.
00:00:52
Speaker
But, you know, maybe you want to emphasize one part more than another. um and any case, Plato was a complicated man and his teachings were deep and complex and rich.
00:01:03
Speaker
And so there was a lot there.
Shift to Skepticism in the Middle Academy
00:01:05
Speaker
But over time, about 100 years after Plato opens up his academy, and The academy actually turns s skeptical.
00:01:17
Speaker
There is a new scholarch. There's been a series of scholarchs, heads of the academy. And now one named Arsus Elias decides that what Plato really meant was that we should all be skeptics.
00:01:31
Speaker
So that was around 266 BCE. e And yes, that is the Skeptical Academy. The more proper term for it is the Middle Academy.
00:01:43
Speaker
We actually have mentioned this before. It was from this Skeptical Academy that one Anusedemus broke off from, and he is the one that revived Pyronian skepticism. So we briefly talked about that in the lesson on Pyronian skepticism.
00:02:03
Speaker
And we actually covered the philosophy of sexist empiricus in that lesson. In any case, the academy goes skeptical and it stays skeptical for quite a bit. In fact, we actually saw um that Cicero was an academic skeptic. So that's how long it was, you know, almost 300 years.
00:02:25
Speaker
And then the academy ceases to function in the 80s
Closure of the Academy and Philo's Flight
00:02:30
Speaker
BCE. Now that is some 300 years after it was opened up for the first time. This happened due to the Mithridatic War. This is a one of the many wars between Greeks and Romans. And it was essentially the death nail on any hope for Greek independence from Rome.
00:02:53
Speaker
And during this time period, of the Roman general Sulla besieged Athens and, well, the academy was destroyed and there was no heir, right? So Philo of Larissa fled Athens during that time period. He was the scholarch of the academy at the time. And then after that, no one really took up the mantle.
00:03:15
Speaker
Of course, Platonism as a philosophy, as a worldview was still around. There just wasn't a school. And we also talked about this because during this time period, in any case, during the Roman imperial era,
00:03:29
Speaker
Philosophy became more mobile. It just happened to be the case that you no longer had to be linked to a specific place to be a member of a school.
00:03:40
Speaker
Really, as long as you had access to the texts and you had some other people to engage these ideas with, then you were a Platonist or a stoic whatever school of philosophy you wanted to be.
Revival of Dogmatic Platonism by Antiochus
00:03:53
Speaker
Right around this time period when the Romans were taking over the Greek world, the Hellenic kingdoms, there was one person who really didn't like this idea that Plato, what he really wanted from us is to be skeptics.
00:04:11
Speaker
And what he wanted to do was to return to ah more traditional, what what he considered a more traditional kind of Platonism. Sometimes we call this dogmatic Platonism.
00:04:22
Speaker
Basically the view that Plato had all kinds of doctrines, explicit doctrines about the forms, about recollection, about how it is that we come to know the forms, basically all these different views, right? He disagreed with skepticism, he disagreed with relativism.
00:04:41
Speaker
These are Plato's doctrines. And this person, Antiochus of Ascalon, wanted Platonism to return to this kind of thing, right? So what he did is revived this approach to Platonism. This, by the way, is sometimes called Middle Platonism.
00:05:00
Speaker
Now, this kind of and obnoxious because the middle academy is the skeptical academy, but middle Platonism is dogmatic Platonism.
00:05:11
Speaker
So go ahead and wrap your mind around that. It's just something that you should, you know, need to look up. You don't need to memorize this or anything, but these are some helpful labels maybe for understanding the history of Platonism.
00:05:25
Speaker
And by the way, this dogmatic kind of Platonism, the one revived by Antiochus, this was the winner in a sense, because the last great maybe representative of skeptical Platonism was Cicero.
00:05:42
Speaker
And after Cicero died, it looks like middle Platonism, this dogmatic Platonism was more so, you know, the norm, right? The sole survivor of all the different flavors of Platonism.
00:05:55
Speaker
Only this dogmatic Platonism was around for a little bit, beginning, let's just say, in the second half of the first century BCE, right? So 50 BCE-ish,
00:06:10
Speaker
until we get to the 200s CE.
Plotinus and the Birth of Neoplatonism
00:06:15
Speaker
So now, about two centuries later, Platonism was once again reconceived and it had a different flavor to it. It was definitely more mystical, but it also had elements from Aristotle and Stoicism melded into it.
00:06:35
Speaker
And this was done by a man named Plotinus. By the way, I've heard his name pronounced Plotinus, Plotinus, Plotinus. I'm going to go with Plotinus here because that is what I think it's what Americans seem to call him. And I have heard some British people call Plotinus.
00:06:57
Speaker
But so let me tell you about the philosophy of Plotinus. Now, this is typically referred to as Neoplatonism. Sometimes it also gets referred to as Esoteric Platonism.
00:07:12
Speaker
And this is a deeply mystical brand of philosophy. Essentially, take everything that Plato taught about the forms, but make it if possible, even more abstract.
00:07:26
Speaker
And then engage in a bunch of practices that will lead you to have mystical experiences such that, you know, not only the forms, but that which is behind the forms, what Plotinus calls the one, is revealed to you.
00:07:47
Speaker
So this is literally... a kind of monotheism where there is something called the one behind all the forms and you can have a mystical experience, basically a religious experience where you are in communion with the one, let's say.
00:08:08
Speaker
So we're getting into some pretty ah interesting, fascinating, weird territory maybe. be Let's ask a couple of questions about this before you know we do a deep dive into all of this.
00:08:21
Speaker
Is this really new? That's a first good question. Wasn't Plato always a mystic? Well, Plotinus would say, this is not new at all. This goes back to Plato. In fact, even before that, this all goes back to Pythagoras.
00:08:40
Speaker
So if you ask Plotinus, This is what Plato always really meant. We just kind of lost it along the way, but this is what Plato was really all about.
00:08:52
Speaker
He wanted us to have, i don't know what you want to call these self-authenticating experiences, like literally feel and see and come to grips with the one.
00:09:05
Speaker
you you know It's hard to describe what this really is. but Even Plotinus has a hard time describing it. Although apparently, according to a student, Porphyry, ah he did experience this four times in his life. But, you know, he says, you want to know what it is to experience the one? Take away everything else.
00:09:24
Speaker
and that's That's his description. So we're getting into ineffable territory, right? It's very, I mean, literally, it's indescribable. And if this has a religious feel to it, absolutely. There is a scholar named Andrew Luth, I think that's how you pronounce his last name, who kind of gives us the trajectory of Christian mysticism, but he sees it as originating like basically all scholars of this time period.
00:09:56
Speaker
Andrew Luth sees that Christian mysticism begins with Plato. Plato was a mystic and then, you know, some of his followers were mystics and then eventually you get to Christian mysticism.
00:10:07
Speaker
So if this has a religious feel to it, yes, you're absolutely correct here. In fact, Andrew Luth says that Plato's dialogues were like Plotinus' is scripture.
00:10:19
Speaker
So there's a real, you know, kind of sacred writing element to this too. You have to read Plato in a particular way and try to have a spiritual experience. So that's what Neoplatonism is about.
00:10:34
Speaker
It is very trippy territory. And if you ask Plotinus, it was what Plato meant all along. It's not really new. Most scholars, however, do call it Neoplatonism, suggesting, of course, that what Plotinus was doing here is a little novel.
00:10:53
Speaker
And even if it isn't, you know, entirely new, after Plotinus, Neoplatonism does take a very non-Platonic turn. So maybe the label Neoplatonism is adequate, if only in the sense that this tradition does sort of grow in a new direction after Plotinus.
00:11:14
Speaker
So there's something new about it. that That's true. Although it might be the case that there's also something very old about it, very Platonic, very even Pythagorean about it. Quick sidebar here because I've sort of already foreshadowed this.
00:11:29
Speaker
It is unclear where Plotinus got his ideas from, but it is very likely, not only possible, but likely that he was influenced by the writings of Philo of Alexandria.
00:11:43
Speaker
We did talk about Philo in a prior lesson. And maybe it was direct, maybe it was indirect through some other person who read his writings. In any case, there is definitely some philo in here.
00:11:57
Speaker
To be more precise, there is an idea of infinite powers that Philo introduces that was simply just not in Plato. And these ideas are pretty crucial for Plotinus and Neoplatonism in general. So Philo, cool little you know factoid here, Philo is key to Neoplatonism. Maybe it wouldn't have happened the way it did, exactly the way it did without Philo.
00:12:24
Speaker
With that preamble out of the way, let's ah let's talk about a couple of different things here. um Let's begin with, you know, I'll nutshell for you, Plotinus' is a you know career, also Neoplatonism kind of in a nutshell, and then afterwards we'll dive deeper into Neoplatonist metaphysics, and of course, where would we be if we didn't cover ethics?
Mysticism and the Enneads in Neoplatonism
00:12:50
Speaker
So let's begin with a little bit of background on Plotinus. So here are some biographical details on Plotinus.
00:13:02
Speaker
I couldn't get a good date for when Plotinus was born. However, we do know when he began writing what eventually would be called the Aeneids.
00:13:13
Speaker
And that was around 253 CE. ce like We're now in the Common Era. And this was in Rome and he finished around the year 270. So this is a you know two decades of work that to you know he put into these ideas.
00:13:31
Speaker
And 270, by the way, also the year of his death. Prior to that time period, Plotinus had spent some time in Alexandria studying Greek philosophy. And just so you know, some of the other details here that are fairly important, he didn't actually get to publish his work.
00:13:49
Speaker
It was a student Porphyry, who collected and published the writings of Plotinus some 30 years after his master's death.
00:14:00
Speaker
He also gives us a little bit of a biography of Plotinus. That's where we find out that on four occasions, he did have these mystical experiences. Again, if you were to ask Plotinus where he got his ideas from, he would just say, this is straight out of Plato and Plato got it from Pythagoras, right?
00:14:19
Speaker
Now one thought that might arise is that maybe Plotinus got his ideas not from Plato but from Christians, right?
00:14:32
Speaker
Now this is a type of monotheism but we know that the Greeks had their own flavor of monotheism. i talked about that maybe a little too much in the lesson on Stoicism.
00:14:43
Speaker
So what I could say here is that, first of all, Plotinus never mentions any Christians whatsoever. And he does not shy away from attributing all his ideas to Plato and Pythagoras, right? So ah he personally never mentions Christians.
00:14:59
Speaker
And as we will learn in subsequent lessons, he Christians during this time period were, um I guess the word would be disorderly.
00:15:10
Speaker
I'm not sure. ah Not only were they relatively small sect still in the 200s when Plotinus was still alive, But there wasn't any uniformity of doctrine in Christianity. It was kind of a mess, to be honest, as you will see in the very next lesson, actually.
00:15:30
Speaker
So these ideas are a distinct kind of monotheism. And in fact, It's even a distinct kind of mysticism. So when Plotinus experiences, you know, the one, it isn't the personal God of the Christian. So when the Christian mystics come onto the scene, it's a, you know, it's a different experience. So we'll talk about that a little bit later, but there is no, as far as we can tell, there's no connection here. This is a separate strand of Greek monotheism.
00:16:05
Speaker
That does not overlap too much with the ah Christian
Integration of Stoic and Aristotelian Ideas
00:16:10
Speaker
brand of monotheism. Last detail um about Plotinus that I want to share with you is that, you know, even a student, Porphyry, admits that his writings are full of concealed Stoic and Peripatetic or Aristotelian doctrines.
00:16:30
Speaker
So you would not get, I think, Neoplatonism Without a few centuries of debate between the schools, right, you needed it needed to get Stoicism into the mix and Aristotelianism into the mix in the way that they appeared to Plotinus before you can get this kind of Neoplatonism. So I'll give you two examples here.
00:16:54
Speaker
This one' very, very Stoic. So the human good can consist only in acts of thinking, right? Who who says that? that it's thoughts that are either right or wrong. well Those are the Stoics, right? So you could not get this this emphasis on thought prior to the Stoics hammering that point you know home for a couple of centuries.
00:17:19
Speaker
So that's one thing. Emotional disturbances are to be avoided. That's not only very stoic, also very Aristotelian. Don't forget, Aristotle wants you to shoot for the golden mean, right? Right in the middle. Not too much passion, not too little. So too much passion would be, of course, emotional disturbance.
00:17:37
Speaker
So that's, you know, a couple of things that, um, that Neoplatonism borrows from other schools of philosophy. I could go on, uh, but, uh, that, you know, just so you know, it seems like Neoplatonism could not have come without the, some of the Hellenic thought that happened, uh, between 323 and, this time period. So,
00:18:02
Speaker
What I wanna do now is I wanna nutshell Neoplatonism for you because it's such a weird you know philosophy that I kinda need you to have a ah zoomed out take on it first and then we'll kinda zoom in and go through the details but it really is you know sort of ah peculiar. So let me try to do this for you. ah According to Plotinus,
00:18:29
Speaker
We are fundamentally not animals, right? We're not social beings like Aristotle says. We're actually pure intellects.
00:18:40
Speaker
Our essence, in other words, lies in pure intellectual thinking. By the way, thinking that we engage in all the time, even without us knowing it.
00:18:53
Speaker
So what we really fundamentally are, are thinking things. And we're thinking even when we don't think we're thinking. So that's kind of peculiar.
00:19:05
Speaker
But that is what Plotinus believes. We are basically thinking souls. That's all we really are. Thus, Our happiness lies in becoming as self-conscious of this fact as possible. Basically, we want to endeavor to remember our actual nature, to become conscious of what we fundamentally are, a thinking spiritual thing, not an animal.
00:19:38
Speaker
We identify way too much. with our animal body. In fact, we should identify zero with our animal body. We are non-physical thinking souls.
00:19:51
Speaker
We ought to constantly focus our minds upon pure intellect and in so doing by basically always thinking about pure intellect.
00:20:02
Speaker
We will lift ourselves out of the physical world and into a world of pure thought, pure intellectual thinking.
00:20:13
Speaker
This world, just like Plato said, it's a cheap copy of the forms. And even you know above that for Plotinus, it goes beyond the forms. And what we need to do ah separate ourselves from it, distance ourselves from this world. We are not of this world.
00:20:34
Speaker
We're from a higher realm and we need to get back there. And once we're there, we will realize that in this true realm, the realm of being, that's where our true life has been all along.
00:20:49
Speaker
Let me not show this even more.
00:20:55
Speaker
Everything that we ordinarily take to be real is just a misleading copy of the objects in a higher realm, ah realm of true being.
00:21:06
Speaker
We are fundamentally immaterial spirits and we share our nature with this realm of being. We are, put it as pithily as possible,
00:21:20
Speaker
We're already divine. We just forgot. And what we have to do is remember. Okay, two things here.
00:21:32
Speaker
This is full-blown, unadulterated mysticism. What he's trying to tell you is that you're already divine. you just need to do a bunch of practices, meditate, think, you know develop your attentional autonomy, and you will realize this. You will have an experience that, you know, you yeah you're divine. You you will reunite with the one that is at the top of the forms. We'll get into that in a second.
00:22:06
Speaker
ah But yeah, I mean, the the only other thing that I can compare this to is whatever experience you have when you take LSD, that, you know, you are having a crazy dissociative experience.
00:22:21
Speaker
And that's what Plotinus says is what you want to get to so you can realize your true nature. That's one thing I wanted to say. This link to psychedelic drugs, I don't want to harp on it to too much, but that's the sort of experience I think people are having, right? And and there's a little bit of empirical work on this.
00:22:43
Speaker
And so here's the way maybe a secular would, would here's a secular take on this basically. Having these kinds of dissociative experiences is possible. It's something that our brains can do.
00:23:03
Speaker
And it looks like people in the ancient world were trying to do this fairly regularly.
Mystical Experiences vs Modern Psychedelics
00:23:11
Speaker
I mean, I think now tech bros try to do this, but a lot more people in the ancient world had this tug towards having these kinds of experiences, but they didn't have LSD.
00:23:23
Speaker
So they had to find other ways to have these experiences, like a whole lot of you know attention training and meditation, and maybe only eat once a day, and maybe get a little bit of sleep deprivation, maybe a lot of solitude. And then you have these kinds of experiences.
00:23:40
Speaker
So your brain on this secular take, your brain can fly, your brain can take you here. You just, you know, forgot how to flap your wings and your brain wings, I guess.
00:23:51
Speaker
And LSD could take you there if you, you know, are around today. But in the ancient world, they had to do these other practices. I don't recommend, by the way, you take LSD just to see this. Okay.
00:24:02
Speaker
For the record, no, no LSD is being promoted here. So that's just one thing I wanted to say, kind of the link to LSD and and what this experience might seem like.
00:24:16
Speaker
A second thing I wanted to say is like, why would you someone want to do this, right? That's a weird question, I guess. But what is the appeal here? i don't know. To be honest, I don't know.
00:24:28
Speaker
um My only thought here is that I know some people today who are interested in having these experiences. And, you know, some people just have this pull towards transcendental esoteric experiences. They they have like... um I don't know what to call it, it's like a spiritual yearning or or an appetite for, you know, experiences beyond the the terrestrial realm.
00:24:57
Speaker
So, you know, people have always been like this, maybe. We still have them now. We had them back in the ancient world. And so this is maybe not for everyone, but some people really do feel this attraction to this kind of thing.
00:25:12
Speaker
So, you know, maybe it's not for you, but some people definitely do feel this need. I guess, let me say one more thing before we leave this, you know, zoomed out perspective.
Spiritual Fulfillment in Neoplatonism
00:25:27
Speaker
This is strange. I mean, this is definitely a different kind of movement, but because if you think about the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Pyronian skeptics, Aristotle, all of them, what they were trying to do is develop a philosophy for living in the here and now, for living you know on on this planet, for flourishing on this planet.
00:25:54
Speaker
None of them, far as I can tell, and I have some scholars here that back me up, one book that I'm using for this is the a book by John Cooper called Pursuits of Wisdom.
00:26:05
Speaker
And he says, yeah, no other philosophical movements. We're really trying to go for a non-worldly kind of flourishing. So this is definitely different, at least from what other schools are doing.
00:26:20
Speaker
Maybe not new, maybe Plato meant this too, but the other schools weren't talking about this in particular. And I should also note that this is completely and utterly contrary to the historical Socrates as best we know. He didn't say any of these things.
00:26:39
Speaker
We can mention maybe one more thing here. The only kinds of movements that we're talking about some kind of, you know, non-worldly reward were the mystery religions. Now we've talked about those before.
00:26:56
Speaker
And of course, the Christians. And maybe there's some ties there. i don't want to get into that right now. But it looks like Neoplatonism was competing not with the traditional schools of philosophy, but with religious movements.
00:27:13
Speaker
And so there's sort of like a marketplace of ideas here. And Neoplatonism was sort of appealing to a different crowd the than you know Aristotle School, right? The people that were interested in Aristotle School weren't also interested in Neoplatonism. There's like different needs here being met.
00:27:33
Speaker
So that's just another comment that I wanted to say before we get into the really deep stuff here. So let's move here towards Neoplatonist metaphysics.
00:28:12
Speaker
Okay, let's move into the metaphysics of Neoplatonism and we'll do a brief ah kind of a general overview of his ethics, the ethics of Plotinus.
00:28:24
Speaker
So the starting point for Neoplatonist metaphysics is, of course, Plato's forms. From what I read, i didn't get through all of Plotinus, but it seems like at no point does he defend Platonism. It's just basically the starting point. It's taken for granted.
Unity through 'The One'
00:28:43
Speaker
So let's just kind of remind ourselves of what Plato talked about. For Plato, the most important thing that you have to understand is that there's this realm of the forms, the realm of being, and it is this realm which is ultimate reality.
00:29:04
Speaker
In fact, everything that we see here on earth is just a cheap copy based off of the real thing in the realm of the forms.
00:29:15
Speaker
Sometimes, by the way, this is called platonic heaven. And one very famous analogy for this is the allegory in the cave or allegory of the cave.
00:29:27
Speaker
And basically, you know you have to really labor and learn mathematics and and deepen your understanding of reality to stop seeing the physical reality that we inhabit as a real thing and train yourself to realize that the real reality, the realer than real, that's in a more um abstract, higher realm.
00:29:52
Speaker
Okay, that's a starting point for Plotinus. But for Plotinus, even in the realm of the forms, there is still duality.
00:30:05
Speaker
What he really wants is unity. And this goes back to, you know, always looking for the RK, right? That word that we learned so long ago, this first principle that explains everything else, Plotinus is looking for that too.
00:30:23
Speaker
And he notices that in the realm of the forms, there's still duality. right There's still the knower, that would be us, our souls, and the known, the forms.
00:30:35
Speaker
There's still two things there. That's too much. We need unity. Unity is very important for Plotinus. So he says... There's gotta be an RK. Well, he doesn't say that particular word, but there's gotta be unity.
00:30:50
Speaker
So then there must be what he calls the one. The one is absolutely simple beyond any duality whatsoever.
00:31:03
Speaker
you actually can't even say anything about it. It's just unity. It is literally the thing from which everything else comes. And that's all you know, basically.
00:31:16
Speaker
So very ineffable here. And so that's the first thing that Plotinus really kind of stresses. There is the one. But the very existence of the one implies the existence of something else still.
00:31:34
Speaker
There must also be the divine intellect. Sometimes this is called nous or universal intellect. Lots of different labels for this.
00:31:47
Speaker
I will basically stick to the divine intellect. So why must this thing exist? Well, he says the forms exist. Okay. We take that as our starting point.
00:32:00
Speaker
And so they must imply the existence of the divine intellect. Because to be a form, in some sense, implies to be thought of, right? So I have here a quote from John Cooper. Again, his book is called Pursuits of Wisdom. I'm going just read it for you here and try to summarize it afterwards. But here is Cooper summarizing why the forms imply the existence of the universal or divine intellect.
00:32:31
Speaker
Speaking of the forms, quote, they are not merely capable of being understood. Their existence includes, or even in some sense, is their being understood, being grasped intellectually through pure thought.
00:32:48
Speaker
Hence, Platonists think we must conceive this organized system of beings, the forms, as in their very natures, constant objects of thought.
00:33:02
Speaker
They are the contents of an intellect whose whole existence is reciprocally to be thinking the forms and understanding them in a full and total grasp of their individually and systematically connected natures.
00:33:20
Speaker
End quote. Did you get that? Yeah, me neither. Not the first time. So let me paraphrase that for you. Basically, the existence of the forms requires that they are constantly being thought of.
00:33:34
Speaker
And so there must be some intellect that is always thinking of the forms. it just It's a part of their existence. It is implied by their existence. So, ergo, the divine intellect has to exist.
00:33:49
Speaker
But wait, there's more. Not only do the forms depend on their systematic unity on on the one, that entity, and they also imply the existence of the divine intellect.
00:34:03
Speaker
But on top of that, there's something called soul. And this soul with a capital S. All right. So this is kind of a big deal. And what soul does is it serves as the link between the realm of the forms and the physical realm.
00:34:21
Speaker
So basically the forms are hanging out in this higher realm. The one accounts for their unity. The divine intellect is the one that keeps them in existence, I guess, because it's always thinking about them.
00:34:37
Speaker
And soul is the thing that, the way I think about this is that it's the implementer. It is the link to the physical realm. It does does the work basically.
00:34:49
Speaker
And Plotinus talks about the functions of the soul. I won't give you those details because it's fairly complicated here. But the idea here is that that's how we get the cheap copies that we have here in reality. It's all through Seoul. So that's how it goes. so Let me say one kind of interesting thing here about soul.
00:35:13
Speaker
Apparently for Neoplatonists and Plotinus, there are no additional spirits beside soul. so So for example, we are just distinct and distinguishable ways that soul with a capital S operates upon the world.
00:35:36
Speaker
So we're all part of the same capital S soul. The way that Plotinus explains this is that we are a projected image into animal bodies. So so soul...
00:35:52
Speaker
launches this image into our animal bodies and that's what animates our animal bodies and of course according to Plotinus we're not supposed to identify with our animal bodies we're supposed to remember that what we really are is this thing in this divine realm right so we really have to remember somehow that we are this capital s soul
00:36:16
Speaker
The point basically is that we are only fully alive when we are actively thinking about the forms, when we go back to that higher realm.
00:36:29
Speaker
Let me say one other thing here, actually scratch that, let me say two things here ah to kind of round out our discussion of Neoplatonic metaphysics.
00:36:42
Speaker
General comment number one, it's really helpful here I think to consider an analogy from Plato called the divided line analogy, where you kind of, you know, map out the different realms of, of being and becoming and all that. So at the very bottom, there's,
00:37:03
Speaker
reflections, then there's physical objects, then there's mathematical objects, then there's the forms, then there's the good. So Plotinus accepts all this, but he also adds some specifications about what's at the very top.
00:37:21
Speaker
So it's not just the good, but it is the one, the divine intellect and capital S soul. One other thing here, the second general comment I wanna make here is that this is very interesting because there is unity, right? there Ultimately, this is a form of monotheism because those three hypostases, that's what they're called, the one divine intellect and soul, these are actually just one thing fundamentally.
00:37:58
Speaker
Three functions maybe, but one thing. There is unity in three. Do you see what I'm getting at?
00:38:11
Speaker
Well, this will become very, i should be careful about which words I use here. This will be very relevant. And also very useful, philosophically speaking, when Christians are deciding upon their doctrine.
00:38:31
Speaker
So again, at this point in Christianity, it is a mess. There's a ton of beliefs that will eventually be called heresies going around. And there is no official, this is what we believe, all right? There's no creed yet.
00:38:46
Speaker
And even when there is a creed, most people are not going to actually follow it. So it is still a mess right now, but eventually Platonism of this brand, Neoplatonism,
00:38:58
Speaker
will get adopted into Christianity to serve as the, you know, intellectual backbone, you want to kind of say. And so maybe I'm already speaking too much here, but and want to plant that seed for later on.
00:39:46
Speaker
Let's now get into Neoplatonist ethics.
Perspectives on Creation in Neoplatonism
00:39:51
Speaker
When we see that for Plotinus, we have basically two ways of looking at reality. You can look...
00:39:59
Speaker
from the bottom up, right? That's the way we're not supposed to be looking at it. We identify with our animal bodies and we're looking up towards the one. That's one way.
00:40:11
Speaker
Or eventually, when you get to the top, when you reach this sort of enlightenment experience, you can look from the top down and you can see, oh, here's the whole of the creation, right? And and this is the way it works.
00:40:25
Speaker
Oh, everything is good after all. So when you're at the bottom, you're sort of like, trying to alienate yourself from your body. So you almost want to say the material world is not good and you're looking up and that's where the good is.
00:40:39
Speaker
But then once you're at the top, you can see actually everything really is good. But yeah, so it's kind of you know conflicting, not contradictory, but it's just there's two ways of looking at things.
00:40:51
Speaker
You and i I, mean, I'm guessing you're not an enlightened neoplatonist. So we're at the bottom, we identify with our animal bodies. I have a mosquito bite, it annoys me. you know I'm definitely feeling like I am my material body.
00:41:05
Speaker
And so I have to choose now. Do I want to keep looking down, right? To keep, you know, thinking that I am an animal body? Or do I want to look upwards toward pure intellect?
00:41:19
Speaker
Well, I mean, you know, the lesson would be cut short if I didn't choose the latter. So let's look upward. Like all the ancient ethical theorists that we've covered,
00:41:32
Speaker
and even some that we haven't covered, the virtues are key to achieving eudaimonia for Plotinus. But Plotinus gives us different sets of virtues because we have to do this in stages. Basically, first, we have to get our animal body under control. If it's too riled up and wild,
00:41:56
Speaker
None of the rest is gonna work. So we have to first kind of tame ourselves and then we purify ourselves and then we ascend. So there's three tiers of virtues. And of course you wanna get to the top, but you have to work your way up from the bottom.
00:42:14
Speaker
So let's look at the bottom virtues first. Let's call this like level zero, I guess. I don't know. These go by many names. We can call them civic virtues or political virtues or social virtues.
00:42:30
Speaker
But these are basically the same virtues that you can find in Plato's Republic, right? Justice, courage, moderation, wisdom, the same things that we've been talking about ah in this class for some time.
00:42:44
Speaker
What's interesting about these is that Plotinus says, of course, these are just to regulate our animal bodies. to help maintain harmony in ourselves and in society.
00:42:58
Speaker
So you have to do these to control and order your lower faculties. Your irrational desires have to be kept in check. And you know you're still engaging with the material world. do You have to act in certain ways toward other people. You have to act with justice.
00:43:18
Speaker
But you're beginning to at least, you know, structure things. You are restraining yourself from excess desire and beginning to work towards, you know, letting go of bodily attachments, right? So it's a little Epicurean mixed with a little atomism maybe from Democritus and some other people. Basically, you want harmony in society.
00:43:44
Speaker
That's also Pythagorean. And you want harmony in yourself. And that has to do with getting rid of some empty desires maybe. Here is a passage from Plotinus that sort of sends this message.
00:43:58
Speaker
These political virtues are a kind of purification, but they do not entirely liberate the soul. They set in order the disorderly movements of the soul's desires and impulses and bring them into agreement with reason.
00:44:17
Speaker
So this is like the starting point. You have to just kind of get your house in order before you can really move up and build upon it. That's sort of the key takeaway here.
Stages of Virtues
00:44:28
Speaker
Let's move on then into the really purificatory virtues, right? The higher virtues, right? So we're talking level one now. With this set of virtues, you are learning to detach yourself from bodily concerns.
00:44:47
Speaker
You are preparing yourself, in other words, for only conceiving of yourself as inhabiting the intelligible realm or the divine realm, the realm of being with a capital B.
00:45:01
Speaker
So now you're shifting your focus from external actions, right? for The external actions are for maintaining harmony in society, ah maintaining harmony in yourself. But now you're moving towards inner purification.
00:45:14
Speaker
You're freeing yourself for good from passions and distractions. You are becoming more of a pure intellect. Instead of just controlling desires,
00:45:27
Speaker
These virtues are supposed to basically extinguish the lower desires entirely. Just that's it. They're gone. Because again, you're not an animal body, says Plotinus. So stop thinking of yourself as such.
00:45:43
Speaker
Here is some Plotinus to get yourself a feel for this. The virtues which bring purification make a man like a being from the intelligible realm. They do not merely moderate the passions but uproot them, making the soul untroubled and undisturbed, ready to rise beyond the concerns of the body.
00:46:10
Speaker
so you are getting here into some pretty deep contemplative moods, right? You are no longer thinking about food, sex, status, wealth, forget all that.
00:46:23
Speaker
You are now more so a contemplative. You're ready basically to take on some next level contemplative exercises because you've been able to essentially eliminate the control that emotions and desires have over us, right? So now you're ready for the kind contemplative virtues.
00:46:45
Speaker
So these are sometimes called the divine virtues. It makes perfect sense. These are the ones where you really are gonna transcend your worldly concerns. You are beyond that stuff.
00:46:59
Speaker
By the way, just because I thought about right now, it's even the case that at this stage, You transcend the other virtues, specifically the moral virtues or the civic virtues, the social virtues. Those don't matter anymore because those are for the animal body. But at this point, you're beyond the animal body. You are now level two, right? The highest virtues.
00:47:24
Speaker
At this level then, your soul exists in harmony with the divine intellect. ah You are not flashing with it, you are not conflicting with it, you are basically engaging in pure intellectual thinking, maybe all the time, maybe a majority of the time.
00:47:44
Speaker
In fact, you're not even engaging in effort. It is sort of an effortless thought of the you know fundamental structure of reality, right? You're engaging with the forms almost in a natural way. It's flowing from you.
00:48:02
Speaker
And rightfully so. This is the final stage before you know getting into union or communion or whatever you want to call it with the one.
00:48:14
Speaker
Basically, the soul no longer sees itself as separate from divine reality. Let me get you a quote here from Platinus. The soul that has become fully like the divine does not merely practice virtue, but is virtue itself. It has become wisdom and no longer needs moral effort for it moves naturally in accordance with the divine order.
00:48:42
Speaker
So we are getting quite mystical here. You have become divine wisdom itself. If you have reached this stage, you have fully united yourself with the higher realm of being.
00:48:57
Speaker
So now I wanna say a couple of things ah about the mysticism of Plotinus because this to some people sounds, I'm not sure what it sounds like, maybe preposterous, maybe impossible, maybe ah little woo.
00:49:18
Speaker
ah Yeah, probably, it's all of those things maybe. But let me go back to something that I said earlier. and by the way, you can read about this. There's this great book called Language and Mysticism edited by a scholar named Katz, K-A-T-Z.
00:49:37
Speaker
And there's, you know, it's more than I can possibly talk about here. But one thing that's really important about it is that it, you know, basically says what I said earlier. Mystical experiences is something that the brain can do.
00:49:53
Speaker
But the way we experience these is affected by our beliefs and the language that we use to express those beliefs. So basically what people like Katz are saying is that you can do these things and depending on whether you're a Platonist or a Buddhist or a Christian, you will have different mystical experiences.
00:50:21
Speaker
Our beliefs inform these dissociative states or whatever you want to refer to them as. And so when Plotinus has these experiences and he's been steeped in Platonic philosophy, he's going to feel like he's in the realm of the forms and he's in communion with the one and that kind of stuff.
00:50:46
Speaker
This is a purely secular explanation. And after all, when we're covering history, There's not much else we can do. We can't just say, okay, well now Plotinus discovered that Platonism is real through one of these experiences.
00:51:01
Speaker
We have to be as, I think, neutral as possible. And the secular take is fairly neutral here. This is something that brains can do. And the experiences we will have are shaped by the beliefs that we hold.
00:51:17
Speaker
Makes me wonder what a skeptical mystical experience would look like without any beliefs. But in any case, what I want to do here is talk about the vantage point of Plotinus because this is pretty important for understanding his view.
Emanation and Return to 'The One'
00:51:32
Speaker
Let me give you some jargon real quick and then we'll jump into that. So the three hypostases, the one, divine intellect, and soul, these are related to each other by a process that Plotinus calls emanation and return.
00:51:48
Speaker
Emanation is basically the one unfolding its simplicity. So it's from the top down. It's the one turning into divine intellect and soul, turning into the forms, turning the forms into physical reality, right?
00:52:04
Speaker
Top down. when it's coming back, right, that's called return. So when we ascend back up to the one, we call that return. And that's the one or the good drawing everything to itself.
00:52:20
Speaker
Everything, of course, strives for the good. That's what, you know, moral intellectualism and and all these different ideas that we've been exploring say. And so all of us long to return to the good or the one So from our vantage point, because we have not yet transcended, you know, our physical realm, the material world is bad. It's something that we want to dissociate from.
00:52:49
Speaker
We want to detach ourselves from it. But from the point of view of someone having achieved communion with the one, looking down, you know, sort of from the top, if you want to say it that way, it doesn't really make sense to say it that way, but whatever.
00:53:03
Speaker
We can see that all creation is good from the top. So the good, bad stuff, it just depends on your perspective. And I think that's pretty important for understanding Plotinus.
00:53:13
Speaker
He's not necessarily a world hater. Although, you know, we definitely should not identify with it. So there's a sense in which he is pushing it away, but he doesn't necessarily say it's bad. All right. So it just depends on the the vantage point, I guess.
00:53:34
Speaker
So that's one point that I think is very important for understanding the mysticism of Plotinus. Let me say let me at least one other thing here. Let me let me say this for sure.
00:53:49
Speaker
Mystical union with the one is not something that the soul can achieve. It's not like striving gets you there. So there's a sense that it's non-striving.
00:54:04
Speaker
But to be more precise, what happens is that The union comes upon the soul. That's how it goes down. I have a quote here from Andrew Luth, where he says, quote, strictly speaking, in this ascent, the soul does not become nous, nor does nous become the one.
00:54:30
Speaker
It passes out of itself into the other, right? So this idea of return, There is a there's a sense in which the old you dissolves, right? It's not you that goes into the one, but just return happens so that there's no more duality. It's just unity.
00:54:54
Speaker
So if that sounds like it doesn't make any sense to you, that yes, I guess is the answer. This is the kind of thing that you can't communicate.
00:55:06
Speaker
You must experience. There is, if we're going to be secular about it, we're going to assume that it's you know not actually happening. What's going on here is that there's a sense in which you feel like you are dissolving. Your sense of self is completely evaporated in this mystical experience.
00:55:26
Speaker
So it seems like what sometimes today we call dissociative states. I know some people call it ego death, right? you don't You no longer feel any kind of boundaries to the self.
00:55:40
Speaker
So it's that sort of experience. Not that I can really communicate what that means, but, or what that feels like. But I do want to stress this because this is not Christian mysticism, right? In Christianity, or at least in some kinds of Christian mysticism,
00:56:00
Speaker
There is, you know, Moses sees God face to face, right? and It's not like Moses feels like he stopped existing. there's ah There's a contact there. um But in Plotinus' is mysticism, there is a non-self going on.
00:56:18
Speaker
So that's a point that I wanted to make here. And maybe it helps you understand the sort of experience that Plotinus was having. Of course, there's a you know a limit to how far we can take our understanding of these kind of things without it actually happening to us.
00:56:34
Speaker
But I think that's important to say. i suppose if we want to juxtapose it with varieties of Christian mysticism, I'll say two more things here.
00:56:45
Speaker
When we're coming into communion with the one, the one is unaware that people seek it, that people are getting transcended into it,
00:56:58
Speaker
that any of this is happening because the one is not a person. So this is a point worth stressing. This is completely distinct from Christianity. In Christianity, God is a person.
00:57:13
Speaker
At least in this time period, he still considered that. I know some later Christians will say otherwise. But in this time period, It is totally a person. But the one for Plotinus is non-agentive, I guess is the technical term. not Not a person, all right?
00:57:30
Speaker
No will, no desire, doesn't know that you're being dissolved into it. So that's one thing. i do have one more thing here to say that will help us juxtapose it with Christianity. But this condition, says Plotinus, this of of becoming one with the one,
00:57:50
Speaker
is supposed to be permanent. So let me give you here a quote once again from John Cooper. Plotinus maintains, once a person has reached that state of final human perfection, they can and will engage in that activity at every moment thereafter.
00:58:12
Speaker
They will be doing this no matter what else they are doing at the time. In this respect, they will be multitasking at every moment. They will be actively and deeply contemplating the complete system constituting the nature of things, even if they are asleep or have gone mad and cannot think straight.
00:58:34
Speaker
and quote So the reason why I wanted to mention that is because, first of all, this idea of human perfection, you do see that in Christianity, but you don't always see this idea of permanence.
00:58:49
Speaker
By the time that we get to some later Christian theologians, you could lose it at any moment. You can actually sin at some point and you are damned to hell.
00:59:01
Speaker
So there is something different here about Plotinus' mysticism from later, you know, mystical, Christian mystical experiences too. So wanted to mention that quickly.
00:59:15
Speaker
So to wrap up some comments on the mysticism of Plotinus, The soul has forgotten that it came from the one, but by practicing the different tiers of virtues, it slowly begins its ascent back to the one, its return.
00:59:33
Speaker
And it begins by not focusing on our animal bodies, then purifying ourselves and separating ourselves from our desires and our emotions. Ultimately, we engage in a lot of contemplation until boom, we have that mystical experience where we feel a dissolution of self and become the one or we move out of ourselves into the one, I guess is a more precise way of saying this.
01:00:35
Speaker
Let's close off this lesson by discussing what happens after Plotinus.
Evolution and Religious Influence in Neoplatonism
01:00:41
Speaker
So of course we're labeling this kind of view Neoplatonism and that might be problematic if we limit ourselves to just thinking about Plotinus and maybe his student Porphyry, but After these two, Neoplatonism definitely takes a different trajectory than what Plato would have probably been comfortable with.
01:01:07
Speaker
So there's key figures that I should mention here. One of them is Numinous and a very important person is Iamblichus. These are representatives of what is sometimes called Syrian Neoplatonism, which is a subcategory of Neoplatonism in general.
01:01:27
Speaker
And what's going on here now in the years, you know, the is that Numinus and Iamblichus begin to fuse these ideas of Plotinus with other religious practices of the time, pagan religious practices for the most part.
01:01:48
Speaker
Iamblichus is actually really key here and we have some of his writings. So let me begin by saying this. I think you can tell that the route that Plotinus takes is not for everyone. It requires a lot of, you know, purification and solitude and contemplation and very complicated theories. And it's tough, right? It's it's not for everyone.
01:02:16
Speaker
But doesn't everyone want salvation? Yes, i get I think is the answer. And so what Iamblichus does is he begins to fuse Neoplatonism with religious practices that are just easier for the masses to engage in, right? So for example, he added ritualistic utterances, right?
01:02:41
Speaker
And what this essentially does is, you know, it's kind of like a mantra that you repeat over and over again. And this is an easier way to get into some of these mystical practices.
01:02:54
Speaker
So you could do the really intellectual route that Plotinus takes or start with something simpler like these utterances or other elements of pagan religious magic, right? So there's all all these other things that you can do.
01:03:10
Speaker
And there's something called the theurgy where Iamblichus basically lists a bunch of different ways that you can begin to get the gods to work for you, to help you in this process of ascent, right? So what he's essentially doing is he's lowering the bar for us. And what Iamblichus says is that we need this.
01:03:37
Speaker
According to Iamblichus, we were damaged in our descent to the material world. So when we were in Platonic heaven, we were very wise and everything was awesome, but we were thrust down to the material world.
01:03:52
Speaker
And in this process, we just kind of lost some of our intellectual capacities. So now our our intellectual means alone are just not up to the task to get us back to the one. And so what we need to do is engage in these pagan magic practices and rituals and sacrifices and all that to begin to garner the help of, you know, the gods basically and get some of their magical abilities to help us along the way back towards the one in our ascent towards the one.
01:04:33
Speaker
So there seems to have been bit of a battle between Iamblichus and Porphyry, who was, I guess they were both ah the students of Plotinus.
01:04:46
Speaker
But Porphyry had very much the the Platonism or the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, whereas Iamblichus took it in this other more you know paganistic direction.
01:04:59
Speaker
And the winner was Iamblichus. It seems that that's the route that Neoplatonism really ended up going in. And so here is what happened.
Coexistence with Gnosticism and Christianity
01:05:11
Speaker
Essentially by the fourth century, by the middle of the fourth century, three hundred there are slightly overlapping and competing versions of mystical monotheism.
01:05:27
Speaker
So there is Neoplatonism, which we've been covering. There's also something called Gnosticism. Now we will get into that in the next lesson.
01:05:39
Speaker
And there's also Christianity. And so many of the Christians of this time period were out in the deserts having mystical experiences And so now there's three different kinds of monotheism with some slight overlaps that all are routes to personal salvation.
01:06:04
Speaker
And so you can only imagine that there is going to be some conflict, ideologically speaking, coming up pretty soon. And let me just tell you one more part of this story here that will really set us up for the next lesson.
01:06:22
Speaker
So for this part, I have to back up a little bit. to But even before this time period, couple of centuries earlier, as the Roman takeover of the Hellenic world began, there was a growing pessimism about city-states.
01:06:41
Speaker
In the days of Aristotle and Plato, It really was the case that citizens saw their well-being as linked inextricably to the city-state that they are from, to their police, right?
01:06:57
Speaker
This is very clear, actually, in Aristotle. But as city-states began to be gobbled up by different empires, right?
01:07:07
Speaker
It starts with Philip the Barbarian, then Alexander the Great, then Rome. You know, it just wasn't feasible to have an independent and autonomous city-state.
01:07:21
Speaker
collectivist practices like democracy and collectivist approaches to building ah your society just didn't seem practicable in the face of empire. How are you going to run a democracy if you have to basically do whatever Rome tells you to do?
01:07:40
Speaker
And so during this time period, beginning again with Philip the Great or Philip the Barbarian, whatever you want to call him, up until the Roman imperial era, we see the beginning of a kind of individualism, but a bad kind of individualism.
01:07:58
Speaker
One where your inner peace is far more important than the well-being of the city-state. You can see this in Epicureanism, you can see this in skepticism, maybe even also in Stoicism.
01:08:13
Speaker
What's going on in the political arena is so beyond you, you can't do anything about it. Maybe you feel like that nowadays, right? What's going on, we have no say. Wars, climate change, artificial intelligence, new technologies, you don't have a say in any of that.
01:08:31
Speaker
And so people turn inward, right? It's, you know, let me just focus on me. Let me just get some inner peace at least. And so even though I didn't tell this story before, you can really see a gradual progression from people that are very collectivist, like Plato and Aristotle, to people that were beginning to think in more individualist terms. First, the skeptics and Epicureans and the Stoics.
01:08:58
Speaker
By the time that you get to Cicero, who is in the first century BCE, He's one of the first people to start talking about the true self, right? In more individualistic terms.
01:09:10
Speaker
Epictetus, who was around a little bit after that, also runs with this idea and he starts talking about, you know, the notion of a will, right? We ah get a lot of our language about free will from Epictetus.
01:09:23
Speaker
Now, some people say that Epictetus was the one who invented the notion of a real free will. um Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but there's something to that, right? It's becoming more important to speak in these individualistic ways, to have a language for discussing this newfound individualism.
01:09:48
Speaker
If I can punchline this for you. People were really starting to think about individual salvation during the Roman imperial era. And so now let's weave all of this together.
01:10:04
Speaker
Now there's various kinds of popular mystical religions and or philosophies and they are invoking other worldly truths, right?
01:10:17
Speaker
a realm beyond the one we live in. And this is all coupled with a greater emphasis on individual salvation.
01:10:28
Speaker
There's like ah like a marketplace of ideas competition going on here for philosophies of salvation. And so these ideas eventually spread throughout the empire.
01:10:44
Speaker
including, of course, Neoplatonism. And once Neoplatonism got infused with pagan magic in the work of Iamblichus, it really just looked like just another religious movement. It didn't really look like philosophy anymore.
01:11:01
Speaker
And this was the kind of Platonism that was growing ever more popular. In fact, this is the kind of Platonism that Augustine of Hippo came into contact with as he was toying with the idea of converting to Christianity.