Matter and soul

One of the most perplexing problems in Plotinus’ worldview was the relation of unity and multiplicity in the levels between the primordial unity and the material world. Corporeal world and all the bodies in it are divisible into multiple parts, still, a soul governing either an individual body or the whole world should be indivisible. Furthermore, individual souls should be somehow separate, yet, they also form a unity. In addition to soul, the intellectual level of Plotinus’ hierarchy showed a similar dilemma. Its prototypes - such as the highest prototype of being itself - has many individual instances, yet, being remains a unity in itself, even though there are many beings. Finally, the intellectual level has many prototypes and still forms a unity.

The multiplicity of souls and ideal prototypes was the least worry for Plotinus. The unity of souls, for instance, does not cancel their multiplicity, because it means more that all individual souls are modifications of one force of living and can even experience their connection with other souls. Similarly, in intellect all the different prototypes are contained in the one act of self-aware intellection.

It was thus the relationship of material world to both soul and ideal prototypes (being as such) that seemed most problematic in Plotinus’ eyes. His first solution was to present an analogy with light. A single ray could enlighten a whole transparent ball and still remain undispersed, because its power consisted of making the matter around it more lighted. Similarly, soul could instill life to all parts of body, even though it wasn’t divided by this process of making something alive. The only thing wrong with this analogy, Plotinus said, was that light can still be said to occupy a place within the transparent ball, while soul shouldn’t even be situated in space.

In a further explanation Plotinus answered how such a non-corporeal, non-divisible and non-spatial entity like soul could interact with corporeal, divisible and spatial matter. Plotinus noted that the simplest solution is to deny that soul would somehow be incorporated into a body, as we might think the connection happens - soul is not any “astral body” occupying the same place as the corporeal body. Instead, soul is this immaterial source of of energy, of which the body in a sense takes part. That is, when body becomes alive, it contacts soul and becomes alive through its continued interaction with the soul. The soul retains thus some independence of the body, although we can in a sense say that there is a “second soul”, that is, the life energy produced by the original soul in the body. While soul is connected to a body, it feels this bond as a bondage or as a loss of its own energy, and when the bond is broken, this energy produced by or the image of the original soul is returned to the unified soul.

Just like soul did not occupy body and was thus not divided into different parts of body, according to Plotinus, similarly the intellectual prototypes did not occupy the beings they characterise. For instance, being as such was for him not some passive material divided up among different beings, but more like a place, which gives existence to all things within it - or like an activity of thinking mind, giving existence to all the things that happen to enter its consciousness. Similarly, all the prototypes were activities, which mold individual things into their likeness - i.e. prototype of human would be such that makes individuals into humans, without losing its own identity in the process. Plotinus especially did not want to make the impression that intellectual level would be like a realm completely removed from the corporeal world and only reflected in it. Instead, he insisted that intellectual level had an active role in shaping the material world, although it still remained completely independent of the material world.

Despite its multiplicity, Plotinus thus said, everything in existence formed a unity, because of the common source of their existence, namely, the self-thinking intellect. All existent things formed a unity even in a stronger sense than just by being existent, because there was a common force or life going through everything and shaping effects of all intellectual prototypes into a unified whole. This unity was for Plotinus something humans could become aware of, just as long as they could regard things in their correct light and not be deceived by their apparent distinctness.

Although self-thinking intellect unified then in a sense the whole existence in his eyes, Plotinus had still not forgotten the primordial unity, which was above even the intellect. Despite all its unity, intellect still had multiplicity in it - for instance, although it thought of itself, we could still distinguish between it as the thinker and it as the object of thought. Multiplicity, on the other hand, was always dependent on unity, according to Plotinus. Thus, there had to be some ultimate unity, which then didn’t think at all. Now Plotinus even emphasised that the original unity couldn’t have any sort of consciousness and it certainly required nothing outside itself. On the contrary, it was the ultimate goal of everything, which all entities tried to emulate, even if they appeared to have various distinct goals. Indeed, Plotinus even suggested that the level just below the one - the self-thinking intellect - was in a sense awakened to existence by its desire to become like the ultimate unity.

Of earlier philosophers, Plotinus respected Plato most, but he was willing to borrow terminology from Aristotle also. Thus, he used the concepts of potential and actual and incorporated them to his hierarchy of levels, so that in the hierarchy, up to the level of self-thinking intellect, the higher levels were more actual in the sense of being more active, while lower levels were potential and required instigation of energy from the higher levels. Thus, at the level of self-thinking intellect everything was eternally actual. At the level of individual souls, there was already more room for mere potentiality - a person could become a scientist, but she still required years of training to become one, and even then she wouldn’t be constantly in the role of scientist.

In the corporeal world, the potentiality went even further. A person could not become another person, but she would always retain her identity, even if she gained some new talents or engaged in some new activities. In the corporeal level, on the other hand, Plotinus thought that a piece of stone could undergo a process, in which it would lose its nature of stoneness and become, say, a watery substance. Something remained throughout all corporeal processes, but this material substance was for Plotinus a mere shadow of existence - mere potentiality that would turn into actual entities only through some external energy.

Since matter was mere potentiality, Plotinus concluded that it was completely free of all foreign influences. In other words, only actual corporeal objects could affect one another - for instance, fire could warm water and water could quench fire. Indeed, such influences worked through opposites, Plotinus said, hotness eradicating coldness and vice versa. Matter, on the other hand, had no such opposites and indeed was without any qualities, so it would always remain as it was. Matter was for Plotinus just a canvas, on which the primordial forces projected images (the corporeal objects) - whatever happened to the images, the canvas remained unaffected.

Just like matter, soul was also free of corporeal influences, Plotinus said, but for a completely different reason - souls were some of the forces producing corporeal objects. This was somewhat difficult viewpoint from the standpoint of ethics, since in the contemporary discussion bodily influences on human personality were regarded as a possibility, and indeed, as something to be avoided in perfect human life. Plotinus noted that what was actually affected in strong emotional states was human body or the projection of human soul into the material plane. Furthermore, when one was advised to avoid affections caused by corporeal objects, what was really suggested, according to Plotinus, was that one should avoid material realm altogether.

The further Plotinus thought about the soul, the more he became convinced that individual souls were not just parts of the soul giving life to the whole corporeal universe. Instead, both the world soul and all the individual souls were modifications of one primordial prototype of soul, which could never have any direct relation to corporeal world, unlike world soul. World soul was still higher in the hierarchy of things than other individual souls, since other souls governed merely parts of the universe. World soul, on the other hand, was like a ball of energy, which eternally projected its effects on the canvas of matter, thus in a sense creating the corporeal world.

The world soul regulated the processes of the corporeal world and made it run in a never-ending and ever-returning cycle. During these immeasurable cycles, some bodies - stars and planets - existed eternally and required for their movement guidance from some souls. At times, the process of the world gave rise to individual bodies on the more material parts of the world that would require souls to govern them. At the same time as the need for a soul governing a body arose, some individual soul would have an innate urge to take control of this very body, entering in a sense the material world and lowering itself to the heavens or even to Earth. This urge was not expressed consciously, like embodied souls would do, using a kind of internal speech, but it would be just felt in a pre-linguistic manner, in which disembodied souls experienced everything.

After the life of the body ends, soul feels again an urge to continue its journey, either toward its original disembodied state or toward another body. Plotinus also suggested that this new urge was in harmony with the way in which soul had lived its previous life. Thus, one could regard the new life of a soul as a reward or punishment for the previous life.

An individual embodied human soul has then various functions governing different parts of the body, Plotinus said, yet, its primary function or thinking remains untouched by body, because corporeal world would only hinder it. Since this primary function regulates all the other functions, individual soul remains unified, although in another sense embodied soul can be divided into various faculties. As we have already seen, Plotinus did not think that a complete individual soul was located in the body. Still, its various faculties could have localised effects - e.g. perceptions occurred through brain and nerves, while more animal impulses and emotions happened through heart, liver and veins.

Between the disembodied thinking and clearly embodied perceptions, emotions and animal impulses, Plotinus conceived an intermediary level of conceiving, in which memories both from the immaterial and material world could interact. His reason for supposing the existence of such an intermediate level was that memories come to embodied souls from both directions, but they could occur neither in perceptions/impulses/emotions nor in pure thinking. Pure, disembodied thinking as such would have no memories, since it understood everything timelessly - on the other hand, memory of a perception could not be perception of a perception, but something different.

Since this intermediary level of phantasms or memories had two sources, it could be divided into two parts, depending on whether the memories concerned the higher or the lower parts of the soul. Concerning the first type, memory of the thinking of ideas or even of primordial unity is not thinking as such, Plotinus said. In higher form of thinking we essentially forget ourselves and completely immerse ourselves in the object of our thinking, as it were, becoming this object. Only when we return from this state of mystical immersion into an object, we become aware of ourselves and at most remember that we thought of e.g. primordial unity.

The second type of memory, Plotinus thought, could occur, just as long as a human soul was connected to some body. Thus, if after its death human soul acquired a new heavenly, spherical body, its memories of its former life might fade, especially if they concerned bad actions. Then again, this soul could recognise friends from its former life in their new heavenly bodies by their characters.

Now, memory of any sort is required only by souls who change their state. Souls governing stars and world soul, on the other hand, do not need memories, Plotinus emphasised. Indeed, like self-thinking intellect, these higher souls conceived everything timelessly and had no need to remember past things nor to plan for future. In other words, their own life was timeless, although they controlled and even created a temporal world. This corporeal world or nature is then in a sense image of this timeless conceiving of soul in the sense that it has no memories nor does it plan for the future, but everything in it happens effortlessly and without consideration - then again, nature is, of course, not soul and does not conceive in any sense. Human souls, at least when embodied, then, are in a sense between celestial souls and nature. They conceive of things, but temporally and therefore need memories and have to plan for the future.

When a soul takes control over a human or animal body, it in a sense projects itself on the body and so becomes aware of what happens to that body. In a sense, then, these things do not touch the soul. For instance, when a body is cut, this is something that happens to the body and the pain, which can be localised somewhere in the body, belongs to the body itself. Soul then merely has the awareness of that pain, Plotinus suggested, without itself being affected by the cutting. Of course, we still could say that the animal as the combination of soul and body has and is aware of pain.

Just like experience of pain arises only from combination soul and body, in Plotinus’ philosophy, this is true also of desires. Body as such has drives toward certain materials it requires for sustaining itself, say, toward something moist. Soul then becomes aware of such a drive as a bodily desire. Because desires are then ultimately just perceptions of some bodily conditions, these desires can change depending on the nature of the body - for instance, when a body becomes old, the sexual desires become less urgent.

While desires all derive from body, emotions, like anger, are a more complex case, because a person can be angered also e.g. by evil actions. Now, while a person is angered by bodily influences, this anger causes some disturbance in her body - perhaps in blood, Plotinus suggested - and the soul perceives this disturbance. Then again, when a person is angered by evil actions, the state of her soul projects a similar effect on blood as in the case of bodily induced anger, which the soul then perceives as a similar state.

Plotinus had come to the conclusion that plants probably would not have individual souls, but they were governed by the soul of the Earth. Yes, Earth itself was a living entity in Plotinus’ eyes and could perceive what happened on its surface, just like all celestial bodies. Thus, Earth could know what happened to its denizens and take care of them. And like celestial bodies, it wouldn’t have any memories nor would it plan for the future, but it would perceive everything timelessly.

Now, Plotinus had already considered the problem of astrology, but at this stage of his thought he returned to this question with new insights. He was convinced that astrology could work, but he didn’t want to say that celestial bodies directly affected humans. Instead, Plotinus noted that everything in the world formed a harmony and therefore the movements of the celestial bodies could correspond to certain stages in human life. Through this universal sympathy of all things could one also magically control other beings. Yet, Plotinus noted, the more a person lived in the intellectual level, the more one was separate from the corporeal world and the less one could be influenced by such magic.

Plotinus even suggested that at least seeing and perhaps even hearing was based more on the harmony between worldly objects than on mechanical use of air as a medium. True, he admitted, soul always requires a body for sensations, but air is at most just a space through which energy of light moves toward the eye and at worst hinders this movement. In order that a vision reaches us, there is no need for light to affect air, as can be seen in dark nights, when we can clearly see stars, even if the surrounding air is not lighted, Plotinus argued. Since an essential ingredient in this act of seeing was the sympathy between an object seen and the seeing soul, Plotinus suggested that anyone living outside the world could not see the world or anything it, just because this sympathy would not exist.