Simple, instantaneous awareness (III, 8, 9, 16–24)

So we have to seek a power that “has passed beyond the nature of intellect”: a simple instantaneous awareness (epibolê athroa) (9, 19–22) (“per quale improv-

visa intuizione,” Cilento; “durch welche plötzliche Intuition,” Theiler; “par quelle

98. Cf. V, 6 (24) 2.

99. On these questions generally see Corrigan, 1984, 1987 (a and b, for references); Beierwaltes, 1967, 1991; J. Bussanich, 1988; Schroeder, 1986.

sorte d’impression,” Bréhier; “by what sort of simple intuition,” Armstrong). Epibolê indicates some form of direct apprehension, a “throwing upon” or casting

off toward. Athroos means “all-at-once,” “together,” “concentrated” (see LSJ). My translation tries to convey simplicity and all-at-onceness as a form of immedi- ate perception. I avoid “intuition” because of its unfortunate philosophical over- tones and because the Latin root of the English word, intueor, implies a distinct object.

Epibolê perhaps reflects Epicurean usage (cf. Rist, 1967, 49–50) and is related

to the comprehensive apprehension of images in the mind and of sense-data (Vlastos, 1955, review of F. M. Cornford, Principium Sapientiae, Gnomon 27,70– 1; cf. Diogenes Laertius X, 35). The phrase epibolê tês dianoias is used of the simple mental apprehension of matter in II, 4 (12) 10, 4–11. Epibolê athroa, com- prehensive apprehension, is used of soul at IV, 4 (28) 1, 20 and 8, 6: “what pre- vents soul too from having this unified grasp of all its objects at once (tautên tên

epibolên athroan athroôn)?” But epibolê (and prosbolê too) is chosen perhaps for

its reference to simple direct perception (internal or external), but more obviously still for its nontechnical simple “material” force, as in III, 8, 10, 32–5: “throwing [balôn] yourself upon it” and “knowing it by simple contact [têi prosbolêi

syneis].” So in VI, 7 (38) 35, intellect is said to have one power for thinking, by

which it looks at the things in itself, and one by which it looks at what transcends it “by a simple awareness and reception” (epibolêi tini kai paradochei [19–22]. Receptive awareness also characterizes III, 8, 9, 29 below.

The power in question connotes the directness of material impact or contact, as in perception (but without the medium, as it were), and the inclusion of every- thing simultaneously in unity, as in the later injunction, “When you see him, look at him whole [holon]” (V, 5 [32] 10, 9) or as in the description of the direct ap- prehension of the medium of light “by an instantaneous immediate perception [athroai prosbolei]” (V, 5 [32] 7, 8). Prosballein and cognates are used by Plato, for example, of perception. Given the immediacy in question, Plotinus even uses

epibolê of the One itself. In VI, 7 (38) 39, 1–4 he argues that since nothing else is

present to it (it rather is present to everything else) “there will be a simple aware- ness in it in relation to itself [haplê tis epibolê autôi pros auton], but since there is no distance or difference in relation to itself, what could its activity of awareness to itself be [to epiballein heautôi] except itself?”

Plotinus’ language, then, very carefully links (a) two different sorts of capac- ity or power, one in intellect and one beyond intellect, (cf. VI, 7, 35, 19–22); (b) hyperdeterminacy (hyperbebêkos, “What has passed beyond” at line 21; again, a simple material image of walking); (c) immediate perception or awareness; and (d) receptive power (“by setting to it what is able to have it . . . you will receive all the voice and yet again not all of it” [25–28]). The curious appropriateness of these material images ensures that terms such as epibolê will continue to be used

of intellect’s mystical apprehension of the One by later Neoplatonists, as by Pro- clus for example (In Parm. VII, 92 and J. Bussanich, 1988, 95).

We should note here how at the summit of direct mystical apprehension Plot- inus draws attention to the supreme responsibility of any authentic Platonism to point the way (sêmainein) in conversation or dialectic for others: “We shall say to the person to whom we must indicate how it is possible, that it is by virtue of what is similar in us” (22–3).100 _{Care of the soul and care for others are dialectically re-}

lated for Plato since we cannot really care for others unless we have ourselves been liberated from the cave and turned the “eye” of the soul to the Good in liv- ing, philosophical conversation. We risk our lives, as Socrates points out, if we return to the cave to free our fellow prisoners (Republic VII 517 a), but the re- sponsibility to do so is so fundamental that Socrates even envisages the possibility of having to compel the philosopher to return. This Platonic duty evidently makes Plotinus think again of one of his favourite passages, namely, that in “fleeing” from here to the Good we should become as like to god as possible (Theaetetus 176 b:

homoiôsis theôi; compare “what is similar in us,” homoios, 9, 23). But he goes on

to make the following concrete precisions: “For there is something of it in us too [ti kai par’hêmin]” or rather, because we are really in it: “there is nowhere where it is not for the things that participate in it” (9, 23–4). This linking of the intensive and extensive omnipresence of the One is again fundamental to later Neoplaton- ism. At the end of his commentary on the First Hypothesis of Plato’s Parmenides preserved in William of Moerbeke’s Latin translation, Proclus argues that we know the One by virtue of an interior understanding of unity in ourselves (54, 3– 14, Klibansky-Labowsky). Does this mean that the One is purely subjective? No, it is present in us in an unnameable way because it also extends to and beyond everything: “And much less does everything participate in life or intellect or rest or movement. But in unity, everything.”