A power for all things (III, 8, 10, 1–26)

Only if the One is a transcendent power for all things, Plotinus concludes, is there any basis for the complex articulate organization of biological, cosmic, and psy- chic life (10, 1–26). Here Plotinus bites the bullet on the hyperdeterminate multi- plicity issue: not only, in his view, is there articulate multiplicity in the highest unity of life in outward passage. Even in the unity of all things together with their source, there is still a kind of individual identity in each and even a kind of in- stinctive knowledge. According to the remarkable image in 10, 5–10, the foun- tainhead gives all of itself to rivers and yet is unconsumed by them, remaining

quietly itself: “and those that have gone forth from it, before each of them flows in their different directions, are still together with each other, but already each knows, as it were, where they will let their streams flow to.”

What a strange passage and image this is! The basic image can be found in Macrobius’ Dream of Scipio: “A fountainhead . . . which is a principle of water in such a way that since it procreates rivers and lakes out of itself, it is said to be born from no one” (16, 23) and applies to the soul104_{; and in Numenius, fr. 3, 11–}

12, of matter and the indefinite dyad: “matter is a headlong and quickly turning river, in depth and breadth and length indefinite and endless.” But nothing here is quite like the image in Plotinus. Rivers in normal experience (even ancient phi- losophical experience) do not generally know their future courses, yet they cer- tainly may be described as possessing a fairly good knack of finding the most fa- vourable water courses even if they have to move their beds a few hundred miles to the east or west over a hundred years or less to find them. In other words, from one perspective rivers know nothing, but from another perspective in which they are connected symbiotically with everything else, their power is simply divine. As T. S. Eliot so aptly put it: “I do not know much about gods, but I think the river is a strong, brown god” (Four Quartets). For Plotinus, of course, neither water nor any other elemental force is simply inanimate (cf. VI, 7 [38] 11, 4–10, 48–49). He is fully aware too of the metaphorical force of his words; the “as it were” (hoion) at 10, 9 makes this clear. But in such power, natural instincts (even, as here, im- ages of matter in traditional thinking) achieve their proper focus, and pure future- tensed possibilities are knowable, according to Plotinus’ peculiarly appropriate way of speaking about the One.

3.28.1 A theory of henads

Plotinus’ arguments for a unified hyperdeterminate multiplicity are the source of Proclus’ (or Syrianus’) later development of a doctrine of divine “henads” (or “unities” beyond being, life, and intellect).105 _{The term “henads” comes from}

Plato (Philebus 15a), but Plotinus uses it in his treatise on numbers in the context of a purely unified being that serves as a kind of preliminary sketch or outline for determinate beings “like unities [henades] keeping a place for the beings that will be founded upon them” (VI, 6 [34] 10, 1–4; cf. 9, 29–30). Again, the future tense characterizes the perspective of power. But if such henads are for Plotinus a logi- cal result of the One’s organizing power that can unite opposites, embrace the maximum and the minimum, and provide a dialectical path back to itself through the unities in nature, soul, and intellect (by virtue of power: “you take in each case

104. Macrobius: “fons . . . qui ita principium est aquae, ut cum de se fluvios et lacus procreet, a nullo nasci ipse dicatur.”

105. See Proclus, The Elements of Theology, propositions 113–27, ed. E. R. Dodds, 1963, and commentary, 257 ff.)

what is most powerful” [10, 25–26]), then for later Neoplatonism too it seems to have made that power too close for comfort, everywhere and anywhere “accessi- ble to anyone” (V, 5 [32] 12). Thus it has risked its transcendence, for Iamblichus and Damascius will take the further decisive step of positing an absolutely un- knowable, unspeakable One beyond the One itself to ensure its inaccessibility. Imagine: two supreme Ones in order to prevent insidious forms of language and image encroaching upon the supreme principle! Yet in this, Iamblichus and Dam- ascius remain true to the fundamental speech-skepticism of Plato and Plotinus.106

3.29. Negative theology and dialectic (III, 8, 10, 26–35)

Chapter 10, lines 26–35 pose several difficulties. Line 28 has to mêden twice, which I have translated in each case as “the nothing.” Ficino deleted the second to (“the”), so that one would read as in VI, 9 (9) 7, 1: “certainly it is none of those things.” There is no extra significance here in Plotinus’ use of this phrase. No hint of a “divine darkness” (as in later mystical writings) or of a Heideggerian “das Nichts” (the Nothing). The fear for the soul, Plotinus tells us elsewhere, as she moves towards the formless but is not able to get a grasp on the One and be de- fined and so “slips away,” is that “she may have nothing at all” (VI, 9 [9] 3, 1–6). In context, the precise force of “But if you grasp it by removing being from it . . .” (10, 31) is difficult to see since “being” has already been removed, but the sentence does move to a new thought. What has been removed at line 30 is, first, “being” in the sense of the whole substance of intellect (ousia). What Plotinus proposes at line 31 is removing “the to be” (to einai); that is, any sense of infiniti- val “to be.” This may seem to the modern reader like splitting hairs, but it is clearly important for any negative theology. The participle “removing” (aphelôn) and other forms of the verb are frequent in the Enneads, and the most well-known instance is at the end of V, 3 (49) 17, 38: when asked how we see the One’s light that is also the soul’s means of seeing, Plotinus replies, “Take away everything” (aphele panta).

Lines 10, 32–5 are striking. In 10, 33, the phrase “within it” (“taking your rest within in”) is an emendation proposed by Henry-Schwyzer (2) and adopted by Armstrong for the manuscripts’ en tois autou, “taking your rest in its things,” which may mean no more than “reposez-vou en lui” (Bréhier), “nella sua di-

mora” (Cilento), or “dass du in seinem Bereich zur Ruhe kommen kanst” (Beut-

ler-Theiler) (and by analogy with V, 8 [31] 10, 10: “all those who have the power to see look to him and to what belongs to him (to autou)”). So Bréhier, Cilento, and Beutler-Theiler retain the manuscript reading, and I should also prefer to re- tain en tois autou, “in what belongs to him,” as I would also on the grounds not

106. For Plato see especially Phaedrus 277 d ff. and the Seventh Letter 344 c ff.; for Plotinus see also IV 3 (27) 18, 13–20). For Iamblichus and Damascius see Damascius, De

simply of V, 8, 10, 10, but of the several hyperdeterminate plurals in the chapters above (and the comprehensive extent of the One).

The “with” (syn-) prefixes in 10, 32–5 are virtually untranslatable, so I have tried to emphasize them, where possible, since they are striking enough: “meditate more deeply in company with it [synnoei mallon],” “knowing it [syneis],” “bring- ing together into one view [synorôn].” Two points should be made: (1) The verb

anapauesthai, to rest, is the last word in Plato’s Symposium. Socrates finally goes

home after all the day’s activities and rests, followed by his disciple, Aristode- mus, who wants to know everything he says and does. Socrates’ rest, in the con- text of Alcibiades’ speech and its subsequent events, is not the slumber of the rich and famous but the symbol of contemplative thought “standing seeking,” which Plotinus, I think, has in mind here in his use of this verb. (2) The verb synoran, to see together, is conspicuously Plato’s verb in the Republic for what dialectical conversation should do, though syn- prefixes are striking too in the Symposium’s corresponding discussion (cf. 211 d8, 212 a 2). This is not just the image of dia- lectic that grasps the kinship in all sciences and pursuits, as earlier in the soul here in III, 8, but a living dialectic that is able to see by virtue of the good or the beau- tiful itself. Plotinus also emphasizes the reflexive dependent character of all things at line 34; they “exist after it, but through it.” Living dialectic brings everything (oneself included) together in the living medium of vision. The verb tychôn, “at- taining to it,” seems here to describe simple, mystical contact (as opposed to 11, 16 and 24, where it includes the whole range of intellect). The imagery from the

Republic (509a) is picked up again in 11, 16, and following: knowledge and truth are good-formed by virtue of the Good’s light, and this light creates intelligible and sensible beauty (11, 26 ff.). This anticipates the theme of the next dialectical enquiry into intelligible beauty (V, 8 [31]).107