A “backward” intellect (III, 8, 9, 29 ff.)

The thought and text of III, 8, 9, 29 and forward are difficult. First, just the idea of an intellect that retreats backward and has to let its hair down, as it were, looks somewhat incongruous. Then too, how can intellect be double-fronted like a

Janus bi-frons? The statue of Janus possesses two faces looking in opposite direc-

tions, a symbol of intelligence in Homer (i.e., to look in front of and behind one- self), and Janus is depicted of prudentia (pro-videntia) in Medieval times. This may therefore be an appropriate image, but how can there be plurality “behind” intellect?101 _{How should we understand this passage?}

Intellect’s retreat, its giving up of itself to what is behind it, and its not being completely intellect intimate a hypernoetic state that Plotinus elsewhere describes as the “pure intellect and the first of intellect” (VI, 9 [9] 3, 26–27), “its own not

101. I shall simplify the textual problems for convenience’s sake here. The ms. kakeina (9, 31) looks suspicious. I have translated it here “and in relation to those things behind it.” Kirchhoff, Bréhier, Cilento, Henry-Schwyzer (1), all thought kakei, “and there,” should be the correct reading. Theiler suggested ekeino, “that,” instead of kakeina. Dodds argued that the kai in kakeina (=kai ekeina) was redundant but that the whole phrase might be con- strued, on the analogy of Numenius’ double intellect (which he saw as an important influ- ence on Plotinus), along the lines of the following: “intellect is double-fronted (in the di- rection of the things that proceed from it) and in the direction of those things (sc. behind it).” But Dodds argues his case partly on the grounds of a text (VI, 9 [9] 3, 33–34) where the ms. reading has been bracketed by Henry-Schwyzer (2) (see also Bussanich, 1988, 99). There are verbal echoes of a Numenian phrase, en diexodôi, “in outward passage,” (fr. 12, 16) in our passage. The passage perhaps also echoes the Chaldean Oracles amphistomos, “double-fronted,” or amphiprosôpos, “double-faced,” but the thought is distinctly Plotinian here (cf. J. Dillon, 1992). Anyway, Henry-Schwyzer (3) (i.e., emendationes probandae at the back of vol. III of Plotini Opera, p. 382) marked kakeina with a dagger to show that we just do not know what to do with it.

The line I take is as follows. Dodds’ suggestion is too unwieldy to support. Theiler’s

ekeino, “that,” does not help. Kakei, “and there,” is possible, but it leaves the problem of

what exactly is the plurality “behind” intellect anyway, and so, again, does not really help. If we can make sense of kakeina in context, as I suggest, then we should retain the ms. reading.

intellect” (tôu heautou mê nôi [V, 5 (32) 8, 22–23]), a loving, or rather “daft intel- lect” (VI, 7 [38] 35, 24), or “the intellect within” (ho endon nous, V, 3 [49] 14, 14–15:). The description is startling because it connotes an experience of letting oneself go into the power of the other, and it looks ridiculous because vulnerabil- ity of this sort is too radical for normal thought (just as the prisoner freed from the cave and blinded either by light or darkness in ascent or return looks foolish to observers[Plato, Republic VII]).102 _{Elsewhere in Plotinus the would-be mystic}

leaves perception, or “the statues in the outer shrine,” “behind to enter more com- pletely into union” (cf. V, 8 [31] 11, 12; VI, 9 [9] 11, 18). But here intellect backs unknowingly, as it were, into that mystery (see also chapter 4, part II, 4–10); and yet instead of pure unity or nothingness, there is highly unified or hyperdetermi- nate plurality in what is a nonintellectual experience of a seedlike origin.

There are parallels. Such a hypernoetic plural occurs in an earlier work (again, in the context of power): “But we must take our report from intellect on the basis of the things for which it has power [hôn dynatai]. And intellect can [dynetai] see its own things and the things before it. The things in it also are pure, but still purer and simpler are those before it—or rather that which is before it” (VI, 9 [9] 3, 32– 36). Other passages appear to contradict this hypernoetic distinctness. For exam- ple, V, 3 (49) 15, 29–32. How did the principle of all things bring them into be- ing? Plotinus asks. “By possessing them earlier. But it has been said that this will make it a multiplicity. But it has them in such a way as not to be distinct [hôs mê

diakekrimena]; they are distinguished in the second principle by logos.” So formal

distinctness, or what Plotinus terms diakrisis, separation, in V, 3, 15, is different from the One’s “possessing them earlier.” What it means to be “possessed earlier” apparently is taken up in Plotinus’ subsequent description of life in outward pas- sage. Even life as the first moment of procession (which must in some sense here correspond to the state of “not being altogether intellect”) has everything accu- rately and unconfusedly; even in the seed-like state, as it were, things are already articulated. Aristotle applies the term adiathrôtôs, “non-articulatedly” in his bio- logical works to the newborn of certain animals (Historia Animalium 579 a 24;

De Generatione Animalium 774 b 15 ff.; Bussanich, 1988, 102), but the real point

here is that we should not conceive of power (dynamis) as an incomplete activity (atelês: cf. 9, 36–7) or inarticulate movement without a goal (telos). Even if the origin is not substance or determinate being in this case, nonetheless the cardinal principle of Aristotle’s biology, that the development or generation of any organ-

102. One may usefully compare here three very different approaches: (a) that of Plato in Rep. VII (the cave analogy); (b) that of Plotinus in VI, 7 (38) 35, cited above; and (c) that of Pseudo-Dionysius (late 5th or early 6th century A.D.—on which see 5.2 below) from

the Divine Names (e.g., 712–13; PG 3, Migne) and—on the Trinity and divine darkness (Mystical Theology, 997 a 6).

ism flows out of its proper nature and does not come about haphazardly, should be applied appropriately in this context above all.103

The thought process in this difficult passage is rather like this: how are we to conceive of the source or first principle as well as the derivation of multiplicity from it if—as in Aristotle’s biology—genesis follows upon and articulates ousia (nature, substance) without any process of deliberation (as earlier in III, 8) or

thought (which is now in question) and without indiscriminate formation but with

the sort of whole-formation of intelligible or physical organisms in which both Aristotle and Plotinus (and Plato in the Timaeus) believe? This presents the same problem of whole-formation from the One that we had at the level of nature and soul before. The answer turns upon the problem of the origin’s nature at 9, 39–54, which implicitly takes up again the “heap” problem about substance (from the end of chapter 8) and seeks to establish the only grounds upon which any whole- formation theory can be based; that is, the nature of the organizing principle.

First, the origin has to be simpler than intellect (9, 42–4). One might argue that “simpler” is a much more promising hypothesis than “more perfect” for two rea- sons: it seems to be able to account for development from less developed to more developed forms; and it forces us to think about the nature of the origin in less de- terminate terms than glory or exercise of power. Proclus would accurately refer to this in his Platonic Theology III, 9, as “the hidden power of the hidden many” (9, 39, 2–13) Second, even if it is somehow simpler and yet coextensive with all things, then either it is each one individually or all together (and we are commit- ted to a form of pantheism) (9, 46–7). On one meaning of “all together,” every- thing makes up a collection of things, so that the elements are prior to their collec- tion. On this view, the One will be later than all the elements of the collection, whereas if the One is earlier, it will be different from them. On a second meaning of “all together,” simultaneous, it will not be an origin, source, or beginning. And if it is each individually, there will be an identity of indiscernibles (i.e., we will not be able to tell the One and the everything apart) which can account for noth- ing and there will be no principle of organization.