Earthly life

At the end of his life, Plotinus turned his attention from intellectual sphere to the affairs of human life, beginning with the old question of what it meant to live well. The problem Plotinus found in e.g. Aristotelian definition of good life as full actualisation of life was that it applied even to animals and even plants, which certainly actualised their own specific life goals. Plotinus’ solution was to suggest that there was a hierarchy of different types of life and only the form involving higher intellectual awareness was truly perfect. Thus, gods and even humans could be said to live well, but not mere animals or plants.

An important part of Plotinus’ understanding of good life was that it concerned only the mental side or personality of a human being. Body, he said, was no true part of human being and therefore had no effect on how good one’s life was. Thus, poverty, bad health or old age were no obstacles for good life, according to Plotinus. Even the lack of awareness was nothing to care about, since mere existence of good soul was enough for good life - after all, a good general is a good general, even when she is asleep.

A natural question is then why corporeal world is needed at all and equally natural suggestion is that it is just as mistake or even a creation of some malignant entity. Yet, Plotinus was not willing to move in that direction. Instead, he thought that the corporeal world is at least partly due to necessity - intellectual world cannot be the end of the development, but its energy is so great that it must produce something beyond itself. This product is undoubtedly lesser than its origin, Plotinus said.

Despite its imperfection, world still has beauty in itself, and it is governed by an entity, which should be an image of self-thinking intellect and non-corporeal soul. Plotinus compared this world governing entity to a dramatist, using both light and dark colours to create the drama of the world. In this drama, all persons have an important part, whether they are heroes or villains. And it is just a drama, in the sense that humans just move through it, assuming other roles at other times, which makes death and worldly sufferings nothing truly serious.

This world plan does still not take away human responsibility, Plotinus noted. Indeed, the true personality or soul of a human being belongs to a level above the plan of the world. Thus, a human soul is not completely under the world plan and is therefore accountable for her actions.

Once again, then, Plotinus emphasised the mediating role of human soul. Soul, for Plotinus, is characterised by logos, something mediating between perception, awareness of things outside oneself, in the corporeal world, and awareness of oneself. This self-awareness is actually twofold, Plotinus noted. Firstly, soul is aware of itself as logos, that is, as something directed to both outside and within itself. Secondly, it can also become aware of itself as a mere pure self-awareness. At this moment soul actually becomes one with the higher level in hierarchy, the intellect. Soul can so become aware of itself as being dependent of this pure self-awareness - as a sort of reflection of its light.

Pyrrhonists had argued that self-awareness was in a sense impossible - the self that was aware was always something different of what it was aware of and thus both of them were just parts of the whole self. Plotinus denied this and forcefully stated that pure self-awareness must be a simple unity, in which the whole intellect knows the whole intellect, even though this simple self-awareness does then have many aspects within it.

Since pure self-awareness has this aspect of differentiation and multiplicity in it, pure unity, as we should know by now, was then for Plotinus something above all self-awareness. Indeed, one could really not say anything about it, since a statement like “primordial unity is something that exists” still assumes a sort of distinction, when it distinguishes existence from this unity. Despite not being characterised by anything, it is still the source of everything - the original light, which the soul can reach only by losing everything else and merging itself with it.

Just like in the beginning of his career, Plotinus was still interested of the Platonic idea that love serves as a mediator leading individual soul to these higher levels of the hierarchy. In addition, Plotinus was interested of Plato’s mythological notion that, firstly, this love appeared in the form of a divine or daemonic entity, Eros, and secondly, that like Afrodite, Eros appeared also in two forms, as divine and earthly Eros. Plotinus suggested that Afrodite in this myth referred to soul - either the pure or embodied soul - and that there really were concrete entities serving as a connecting links between individual souls and intellectual world.

Although his gaze was always directed to what is good and what might be even more perfect than goodness, Plotinus admitted also that badness is also necessary. The primordial unity projects self-thinking intellect, intellect projects souls and souls finally project matter, which is the ultimate source of badness in the world. Matter exists in a sense, but only as a mere shadow of what properly exists. When souls become enamoured of this shadow existence, their powers diminish. Badness of souls is still not ultimate badness, because they still retain the capacity to clear themselves from the clutches of matter. Even embodied souls can find some of their powers and be able to resist the lure of matter. Still, such a virtuous life is not the ultimate perfection for soul, because it presupposes the fallen state of the soul.

Individual human being, Plotinus said, is then partly just a link in the corporeal, but also living universe. As such a link, an individual is open to the influence of corporeal objects, such as stars - and this is partly why astrology works, Plotinus thought. Yet, he also emphasised, individual is partly able to affect his own destiny and to make one’s own fate either better or worse. This duality of freedom and necessity is reflection of essential duality of what humans are. Firstly, we are pure souls, at most using bodies as tools, but secondly, we are also animals, or animated bodies. In other words, by invigorating body and making it alive, something new is created - first, perceptions, and then, organic processes.

One task of souls in Plotinian hierarchy was then to enliven the otherwise inert matter and connect it with the higher levels of the hierarchy. In this sense, embodied life was good, and there was no need to get rid of it. Indeed, Plotinus noted, true perfection on every level arose not from any striving toward some goal, but out of stillness and from mere existence as such. By this Plotinus did not want to say that e.g. dying is a bad thing. Instead, he pointed out that death was a liberation of soul from its corporeal duties and return to a pure state, from which it had descended.