Philosophy by commentary

As we have seen, a very common style of writing among late ancient philosophers, whether pagan or Christian, was commentary. Especially the Greek-speaking pagan philosophers of the last days of antiquity have left us mostly commentaries, although we cannot be sure if this tells more of the interests of the East-Romans and Arabs curating texts of antiquity. The outlook of these commentators, as with most of the philosophers of late antiquity, could be described as broadly Platonic and often even Neo-Platonic.

A good example is Hierocles of Alexandria, who wrote a commentary of the Golden Verses, a poem attributed to none other than Pythagoras. As is often the case, Hierocles’ commentary is a rather original interpretation of the poem and engages themes that are not that apparent in the poem itself. To put it briefly, Hierocles sees the poem as an instruction how humans can purify oneself from the corporeal life to a life resembling divinities.

First step on this road, Hierocles explains, is to understand the hierarchy of beings, with the top places being occupied by divinities with a constant and unwavering awareness of Creator, the lowest places being occupied by mortal humans, who often fail to remember Creator, and the places in between being occupied by intermediary beings, who are constantly aware of Creator, but in a variable measure. This hierarchy has been assigned by Creator, Hierocles says, because it is proper that there should be beings of all possible levels.

The beings of lower levels should then honour the beings in the higher levels, not by any gifts, but by imitating them in their own life, Hierocles continues. In the case of the divine level, this means relying on the Creator and other gods and respecting the order generated by them. It also means not invoking them too often, but only at appropriate times. In case of the intermediary level, Hierocles adds, this honouring means knowing the internal hierarchy of that level, which reflects the order of the whole hierarchy: nearest to gods are angels, nearer to humans are heroes and between them are demons. It also means trying to imitate the dedication of these intermediary entities in their unwavering thinking of divinity.

Honour should be shown also to some humans, Hierocles notes. The foremost of these are those called in the Golden Verses the terrestrial demons - they are humans (terrestrial), who resemble the beings of higher levels (demons) in their knowledge, Hierocles interprets. In addition, honour is to be given to one’s parents, Hierocles adds, because they connect us through a natural line of generation to higher levels of being. This honouring means doing what our parents ask us to do, except in the case if they command us to break divine laws.

We should also honour our friends, Hierocles says, but we should first take care that we choose only friends who deserve such honouring. When we do have friends, he continues, we should deal with them with the same love as the Creator deals with us. Indeed, we should treat everyone with love, so that the Creator will treat us favourably.

This is what Hierocles has to say about us comporting to all the other entities. In addition, he notes that we should discipline ourselves, restrict our passions and let our reason rule us. Hierocles refers here to the familiar four Platonic virtues – wisdom, courage, temperance and justice – which he sees as different aspects of self-discipline. This self-discipline, he continues, is dependent on our knowing ourselves as immortal and independent of the body – otherwise, we wouldn’t have enough of a motive to resist our bodily impulses. This knowledge will help us to stay determined in our pursuit of a loftier shape of life.

Another motivating point for virtuous life, Hierocles says, is the certainty that the divine order will eventually reward a life of reason and punish a life of unreason. The rewards are not good as such, just like punishments are not true evil - truly good is only good life, just like truly evil is bad life, Hierocles explains. Still, the rewards and punishments can serve as motives for living good. Then again, Hierocles says, no one can blame Creator for misfortunes, since they are ultimately caused by earlier bad actions. Hierocles also notes that this cycle of reward and punishment is relevant only to humans, while irrational animals live only by the rule of the material world.

Motivation for virtue is thus dependent on proper beliefs. This implies, Hierocles notes, that we must be able to distinguish good arguments leading to truth from deceptive arguments that lead to falsities. One key element here, he says, is to recognise that we are first and foremost disembodied entities or souls. Thus, threats against our bodies or even further removed externalities, like our property, should serve as no argument for us.

Furthermore, Hierocles continues, we should not follow the instigations of irrational desires. Instead, we should follow the guidance of our reason and deliberate on our future actions, as well as repent the irrational actions we’ve committed. If we lack enough information to decide, we should refrain from action, but if we do have, we should definitely do the good thing.

One part of a reasonable life, Hierocles tells, is to care for the instrument given to serve us, that is, our bodies. An important part of this care is to keep the body healthy by moderating eating and drinking and by training the body through exercises. Hierocles advises moderation also for life in general: one should not try to hoard goods or be envious to people who have more than us. Furthermore, one should constantly consider one’s actions in order to become aware if one has transgressed some principle of good life.

Guidelines Hierocles have presented this far have been meant to tell us how to live as humans and to distinguish us from animals. Next step, he says, is to make us as divine and as close to the Creator as possible. Here the first thing to do, Hierocles notes, is to admit that one’s abilities are not enough, but one has to pray for divine help to rise from earthly level.

Again, Hierocles continues, one has to understand the position of humans in the hierarchy of being as the least of rational beings, incapable of becoming literally a god - such an attempt would be futile - but different also from mere material beings, like animals and plants - if one tries to imitate an ass, one becomes asinine. One’s condition is then ultimately up to one’s own choice. If one remains bound to the changes of the material world, one is bound to feel the pain inherent in that world. On the other hand, if one chooses to live one’s life in imitation of gods, like a true philosopher, one will not be touched by those pains.

If the first part of philosophy was meant to make us behave like good humans and the second one was meant to give us the knowledge of a philosopher, the final part, Hierocles says, should give the final touch of divinity. Human souls do not just care for a material body, Hierocles insists, but they are also equipped with a luminous body, like stars. Both of these bodies require purification, which is of a ritualistic nature. Thus Hierocles says, a person seeking perfection should train their material body with ever hardening abstinence, but in addition they should train their luminous body with mathematics. Through this purification, the human soul can be admitted to the order of divinities - not as if the human soul would change its natural essence, Hierocles explains, but as an honour bestowed upon the person in question.

Probably the most commented philosopher in late antiquity - or at least the one with most commentaries preserved for us - is Aristotle. There certainly were commentators who placed Aristotle as the highest among philosophers. This is true of Themistius, who at least on occasion was more of a government official than a philosopher - or at least he had to defend himself against accusations of living a life engaged with matters unsuitable for a philosopher. Themistius’ own outlook on what was to be a philosopher focused more on the practical affairs than that of Neo-Platonists, such as how to find and keep friends and even the virtues of farming. It is no wonder then that he favoured Aristotle over Plato.

Themistius’ commentaries were apparently one source of his renown, but he himself considered them to be mere unoriginal summaries of what Aristotle had written. He did try to make the latter’s writings into a continuous course of philosophy, replacing uncertain ponderings with definite dogmas and so constructing a coherent whole out of disparate writings. Thus, Themistius would begin with Aristotle’s logical writings, as they would teach a student the methodology by which the rest of the philosophy would continue. Then, he would move on to the consideration of the ultimate foundation of all that happens in nature in Aristotle’s Physics. This foundation would provide an explanation for all the natural phenomena, but would at first have to be extrapolated from what we know of these phenomena.

Following Aristotle’s lead, Themistius rejects the Eleatic idea that there really is only one changeless being, which would lead to a denial of all natural phenomena we seem to experience, and also Anaxagoras’ suggestion that unlimited kinds of natural stuff consist of small parts of all of these unlimited kinds of natural stuff, since that suggestion would make all explanation pointless. Instead, Themistius and Aristotle preferred the idea of many ancient philosophers who tried to reduce all natural phenomena into two opposites, between which all natural changes occurred.

The correct kernel in this attempted reduction was, according to Themistius and Aristotle, that all natural changes, whether they were generations of completely new things, like birth of an animal, or just changes of a thing’s properties, like the growth of the same animal, moved toward a result from a state, where the result did not yet occur. In addition, something always remained during these changes, even in cases where something new was generated: both a foetus and an animal share some substances.

Of course, what the result or the form and the identical element or the matter is varies according to the change in question. Now, Aristotle had made suggestions that behind all natural changes might be something that always remained the same or prime matter. Themistius takes the existence of prime matter as a given. The prime matter has no features in the sense that it can sustain any feature whatsoever. Yet, it does not lack features in the sense that a beginning of some change does: otherwise, it would be destroyed by the change. Indeed, Themistius suggests, the prime matter strives to structure itself and move to more ordered forms, which also gives the natural changes an intrinsic end. Still, the prime matter is incapable of sustaining these forms indefinitely and it keeps falling to a lack of form, which then could be described as the state of badness.

Themistius’ development of the notion of prime matter is compatible with the general Aristotelian notion that natural things are to be primarily explained by the forms that are the end of natural processes, such as generation of new individuals of a species of animals, although the nature of the matter might hinder the actualisation of these forms (for instance, in the birth of degenerate animals). Here, a number of important points of Aristotelian physics are involved, for instance, that all changes are essentially movements toward actualisation of some potentialities still passively latent before the change and that matter with its potentially infinite parts is given determinate quantitative limits by the very form that makes matter into a complete and finite universe.

Themistius paraphrased also Aristotle’s writings on one particular part of the physical universe, namely, that of ensouled or living things. He follows Aristotle in criticising thinkers who thought that the essence of this soul animating living things would lie in moving constantly: whatever soul is, it is not body and thus cannot be meaningfully said to move or change in the Aristotelian sense. Themistius notes that there might be a lexical confusion involved, because when e.g. followers of Plato appear to say that soul moves itself, they might actually mean that soul is active, for instance, in moving other things, without truly changing into anything.

Themistius also criticises, like Aristotle, thinkers who identify soul with a certain harmonious blend or attunement of the bodily parts: while such an attunement would be dependent on the body, soul should be more like something that causes this harmonious attunement in the body. Themistius even seriously considers the possibility that by soul is just meant a universal vivifying force that spurs bodies of particular kinds into lives of their own kinds.

Themistius follows the official Aristotelian stand that by soul is meant the set of capacities and activities that are peculiar to a living being. These capacities and activities include at least those of sustaining and reproducing oneself, which are common to all living beings.

All animals, furthermore, also have various capacities for sense perception. In sense perception, Themistius continues, sense organs are not really changed, but they receive imprints or likenesses of what is perceived. In addition, sense perception requires some medium, such as air, which transmits the imprint of what is sensed (say, a colour) to the sense organ (here, an eye). This is even true for touch, Themistius interprets Aristotle, since here flesh plays the role of the medium, while the real sense organ is internal to the body.

Themistius follows Aristotle in discerning five different senses - touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing - of which touch is the only one found in all animals. Other commentators had suggested that Aristotle required also yet another sense, which helps to recognise features common to many senses, such as the shape and size of an object, and generally the fact that perceived features belong to the same object (rose being both red and sweet smelling). Themistius criticises this view, because it wouldn’t explain how what is perceived by this “common sense” would then be combined to what is perceived by individual senses. Instead, he suggests that the individual senses, as it were, are themselves linked, so that outputs of each sense are combined into wholes by a single faculty that uses individual senses as means for perception. In the physical body, this link should then be seen as all sense organs connecting to the same pneumatic fluid taking care of sensation.

While sensation is common to all animals, Themistius says, imagination or the ability to consider mental images of things not present is restricted only to more complex animals. It is this imagination that, for instance, creates our dreams. Imagination is also used by many animals for activities that humans use reason for. Especially together with desire, it takes care of animals’ voluntary motions.

Above imagination in Aristotelian philosophy lies intelligence, Themistius points out. Intelligence is for Aristotle, as interpreted by Themistius, an ability clearly separate from sensation and imagination, and unlike either of them, occurs in no other animals, but humans. Intelligence is also the only ability, according to Themistius, without any material base to support it.

In fact, Themistius notes that in Aristotelian philosophy there exists more than one intelligence in human beings. Clearly, we humans do not always think and even less do we always think of the same thing. Instead, our intellect is at times only dormant, waiting for something to activate its thinking. Despite being passive, even this dormant intellect is something separate from our bodies and thus immortal.

That which activates the dormant or potential intellect Aristotle called an active intellect, and the relation of these two intellects was a topic of great debate among his commentators. Themistius compares the active intellect to sunlight, which illuminates our eyes. Just like the sunlight, the active intellect is common to all human beings, while the potential intellect, analogously to an eye, is distinct to each individual. Active intellect is thus even further removed from the human body and of course also immortal.

Somewhat paradoxically, Themistius insists that it is the active intellect, just because of its being the active part of the relation, that should be most identified with ourselves. This does not mean that the active intellect would remember our individual lives after our death. In this particular life, we humans are intellects combined from the active and potential intellect and the various bodily activities, like sensation and imagination. When we die, this particular combination vanishes and with it all our memories.

We humans are thus for Aristotle, as interpreted by Themistius, a people of two realms, bodily and intellectual. Above us lie divine pure intellects. Even these are not completely disembodied - indeed, it is the stars that Themistius is talking about. These stars just do not require the more bodily abilities of humans, like sensations, but manage everything through their intellect. Themistius suggests that even without sensations stars can be aware of one another, just like a mother can be aware of her children without actually perceiving them.

While Themistius placed Aristotle in the highest rank of philosophers, Neo-Platonist commentators, like Syrianus, were of a different opinion: compared to divine philosophers, like Plato, Aristotle was just on the rank of demons or lower spiritual beings. Still, Syrianus found it still worthwhile to read Aristotle’s works and to see where he had gone wrong. Using Aristotle’s list of philosophical problems in his Metaphysics, Syrianus outlines his own idea of the highest kind of knowledge or wisdom.

This wisdom, Syrianus says, describes all causes affecting what things are like, such as the ultimate good. He is adamant that such a science exists and that there is a single science studying all kinds of causes and that it is precisely the highest science that studies them. Syrianus answers the possible objection that a highest science should study eternal things that do not have all kinds of causes, e.g. final causes, by insisting that eternal things must have final causes, because they are good and beautiful.

Wisdom also describes the ultimate principles or axioms, from which to deduce all truths, Syrianus says. For instance, it must know the law of non-contradiction, because it is the basis of all knowledge. The possible objection that axioms like the law of non-contradiction cannot be known by one science, because they are used in all sciences, Syrianus solves by pointing out that wisdom knows these axioms in a different manner, that is, through a direct intuition of ultimate truths.

Although incapable of a proper demonstration, due to being the foundation of all demonstration, Syrianus notes, one can argue for the law of non-contradiction. Thus, he says, a person denying this law cannot really speak, because none of his words have any definite meaning, since e.g. what they call black might as well be called not-black. Indeed, whenever a person actually does something, e.g. flee from danger, they implicitly accept the law, since they think that danger is something definite to flee from. A person denying the principle would thus be reduced to a life of a mere plant.

Syrianus also ponders why some people are willing to reject the law of contradiction. He briefly considers Aristotle's suggestion that the denial of the principle would follow from Protagoras' relativism, but rejects the idea: Protagoras merely supposed that a thing can be something for a person and something else for another person, but not that it would be both for the same person. What the deniers of the law of contradiction are probably thinking, Syrianus concludes, is matter and material objects, which can become e.g. both black and not-black. Even then they forget that they cannot be both at the same time and that amidst all their changes something always stays stable.

Furthermore, he notes that not all axioms endorsed by Aristotle were actually universally applicable. Thus, while the law of non-contradiction holds with everything, the law of the excluded middle doesn’t, Syrianus argues, because the ultimate, primordial unity cannot really be described in any words, whether affirmative or negative.

While Aristotle considered it an essential problem whether there are beings beyond those we can see. Syrianus turns this problem around: true beings are those we cannot perceive, while perceivable things are always changing and so maybe not beings in the primary sense of the word. Despite not physically moving, the universe of imperceptible things is still alive and thus in a sense active.

Furthermore, Syrianus insists that the hierarchy of being has more rungs than just these two, for instance, imperceivable beings having many different subtypes - there is a perfect model of reality in the mind of a Creative Intelligence and an incomplete image of that in human souls, which still is more perfect than the physical world. Aristotle had questioned whether such a multiplication of beings would entail a similar multiplication of sciences dealing with them. Syrianus answers positively: physical land measurement deals with physical entities that only resemble ideal geometric figures considered by pure mathematics.

One could say, Syrianus notes, that wisdom, being the study of both all causes and ultimate principles, concerns all types of being, while particular sciences proceeding from it concentrate on a certain type of being. If one would want to assign a particular realm of being as the object of wisdom, it would have to be something determining the rest of the beings. Thus, like Aristotle had hinted, Syrianus thinks that, for instance, instead of qualities, wisdom is concerned more with what has qualities. In the end, wisdom is for Syrianus especially a study of paradigmatic being or the Creative Intelligence.

Aristotle noted a possible objection that wisdom being concerned with all kinds of beings would mean that it would then study all the essential properties of every being. Syrianus simply points out that this is true, but only if we speak of such essential properties that are common to all forms of being. Wisdom would then use two methods: it would define what is and then demonstrate the properties that what is has. At the highest levels of the hierarchy of being there are beings, which are so simple that there is nothing to define nor to demonstrate in them, but they just have to be apprehended as they are.

Wisdom, Syrinaus continues, is not just concerned with what there is, but also their relations. Everything is derived from primal unity, which creates identities, equalities and similarities among all things. Then again, Syrianus adds, among highest principles there’s also an original duality, which creates divisions and dissimilarities in the classes of things. In addition to these very general relations, which Aristotle admits as a topic to be dealt with in the highest philosophy, Syrianus mentions Platonic notions of motion and rest, which, Syrianus says, also affect all beings, even those we cannot perceive.

For Aristotle, individuals were prior to their genera, which exist only in concrete individuals. Syrianus notes that Aristotle was in a sense right: if by genera we mean abstractions from concrete individuals, then certainly e.g. humanity is something dependent on concrete humans. Then again, Syrianus adds, by genera we can also mean general forces that e.g. create and regulate humans and so are prior to individuals. Such general forces exist, he continues, because material individuals that come and go presuppose, firstly, a formless and eternal matter, and secondly, something that forms individuals out of this matter. This implies, Syrianus concludes, that there is something beyond mere material things - the Platonic forms, as present in the mind of the intelligence fashioning the material world.

Syrianus also attempts to avoid the so-called problem of the third man, which Aristotle used to criticise Plato. Syrianus’ answer is that the problem is not generated, because the forms that determine the material world are of different sort than the things fashioned by them: only one model human is required by the intelligence to form material humans. Still, Syrianus adds, not everything in the material world is determined by these forms, because e.g. there is no Platonic form for ugliness.

Aristotle had also raised the question about the status of the mathematical objects. Syrianus notes that there are several kinds of mathematical objects. The proper numbers of the ideal world, he says, are substantial things determining also the perceived world. Then again, he adds, there are also mathematical objects that are mere abstractions from material objects.

Some of Aristotle’s questions Syrianus finds somewhat inappropriate. For instance, Aristotle had inquired whether principles of everything have some concrete number, just like material elements are numbered four. Syrianus notes that the question is partly meaningless. The Platonic forms determining the material world must have some determinate number, Syrianus admits, but the ultimate primal unity beyond even the Platonic forms is also beyond numbers. Thus, one might say that the primal unity is one, but at the same time it contains in itself implicitly everything. Similarly, Syrianus says, the highest principles are beyond the distinction of universals and particulars and the distinction of action and passion.

The realm of ungenerated beings, Syrianus notes, is determined only by ungenerated principles. The effect of these ungenerated principles, he continues, is not restricted to the ungenerated beings, but they affect even generated beings of the world of perception. Then again, generated beings do have also generated causes, for instance, humans are conceived by humans.

Still, Syrianus says, it is the ungenerated principles that are the more essential causes than the generated ones. Indeed, going against what Aristotle had said, the highest types of being - those directly under the primal unity beyond even being - are not just something that other beings try to imitate but also something that give being to everything else. These are, Syrianus notes, the Empedoclean powers of Love and Strife or the Pythagorean unity and duality, first combining everything into a whole and the second producing innumerable differences. Below these two, Syrianus continues, are the traditional gods in heaven, which are immortal, but still temporal and so have a duty to govern the temporal world.

Like all Neo-Platonists, Syrianus does note that there is something beyond this hierarchy - the primal unity or the ultimate source of goodness, which is beyond all opposition to multiplicity. He finds Aristotle somewhat ambiguous about the existence of such unity. Firstly, Syrianus agrees with Aristotle’s argument that since there are universal forces shaping material entities, there must be unity as the highest universal making everything else unified. Then again, when Aristotle asks how anything else and in general multiplicity could exist beside such a Parmenidean unity, Syrianus counters that multiplicity is nothing only in comparison with the higher type of existence of primal unity and that the the existence of multiple entities are even founded on the primal unity.

Indeed, Syrianus goes expressly against Aristotle's statement that being and unity mean essentially the same thing. Instead, Syrianus insists that while all beings require unity, the primal unity is beyond being as we normally understand it. Thus, while wisdom can reach everything else, it cannot reach the primal unity, because beyond being this unity is also beyond knowledge.

Categorising being

When does a person act freely? An obvious condition appears to be that one must choose to do something without being forced by any external influences. Yet, Plotinus noted, this is not enough, since a person who had not complete understanding of the situation she was in, could not really act freely - thus, a person killing her own mother would not have done this out of free choice, if she did not recognise her mother. Indeed, Plotinus suggested, true freedom humans could experience only by becoming close to the state of intellect, that is, by becoming free from all bodily needs and having a complete understanding of what is truly good. Freedom, for Plotinus, is then not complete random choice of what to aim for - our freedom is not hindered by our aiming for true good.

When we move to the level of intellect, we notice something peculiar. Unlike soul, the intellect has nothing external that can hinder it from aiming toward goodness. Indeed, intellect just could not be otherwise, because of this lack of external influences. Still, intellect can be called free, just because it can freely strive for goodness. Even more obvious this is in case of the goodness or the goal of everything else - the primordial unity. It can be figuratively said to have made itself to what it wills, because it is perfectly good. Yet, this also means that it couldn’t really be otherwise, since it could not fail to make itself what it wants.

Similarly not able to be otherwise is the self-thinking intellect, and indeed, anything non-corporeal. Corporeal things, on the other hand, always change. This is especially true of the earthly bodies, which eventually decay and turn into other bodies. Then again, celestial spheres hold in a sense middle position between non-corporeal and earthly entities. As bodies, celestial spheres change, for instance, by moving. Yet, their movement is circular and maintained by the worldsoul, which makes their movement continuous and eternal. Furthermore, celestial bodies do not decay, Plotinus insisted - although sun is made of fire, it will never exhaust itself.

Just like celestial bodies held a middle position between non-corporeal entities and earthly bodies, souls held in Plotinus’ hierarchy a middle position between intellectual and corporeal world. Soul has the ability to view both intellectual and corporeal entities. This viewing is not something passive, in which, say, a body would imprint its image on the soul through eyes. Instead, Plotinus said, in perception soul actively grasps the object to get a vision of it. This vision, whether of an intellectual or corporeal object, remains a while in the soul, and with enough force, it can actively bring back the vision to consideration.

In its mediating position, soul can use same expressions both of corporeal and intellectual entities - for instance, it can say that there are both corporeal and intellectual substances. Thus, Plotinus noted, such theories of categorising entities, like the one of Aristotle, would have to be doubled, so that different categories would apply to corporeal and intellectual entities. For instance, corporeal and intellectual substances or beings cannot be beings in the same sense - intellectual entities were for Plotinus much more substantial than corporeal entities.

The Aristotelian category of quantities was in Plotinus’ eyes even more clearly not a truly unified class, because it contained such diverse things as numbers, areas and periods of time. Plotinus noted that in a sense, one could say that numbers were the primary example of quantities, while other quantifiable things were just secondarily quantities. Yet, problematic for Plotinus was that he thought numbers also to be substances in a quite essential manner.

Aristotelian category of relation was, according to Plotinus, even more problematic. Clearly there are many types of relations - left and right, father and son, science and its object are all very different things. Furthermore, even the related things can be very different, for instance, science of physics, an intellectual thing, is something very different from corporeal nature. In case of relations it seems then quite likely, Plotinus noted, that they belong just to our subjective outlook on things.

Aristotelian category of qualities was also a conundrum in Plotinus’ opinion, because Aristotle admitted that he included quite diverse things under that title, such as capacities and shapes. Plotinus also noted that negations of qualities provided another problem - could we say that e.g. non-whiteness is a quality in the same sense whiteness is?

Categories of time and place are also problematic, Plotinus said. Aristotle had already classified time as a general process under quantities. Plotinus replied then that specific times, as parts of time, would have to be also included under quantities. Similarly, Aristotle had classified such places as right and left under relations, so one might suggest, Plotinus implied, that no specific category for spaces was required.

Categories of action and passion were an interesting case. Of action Plotinus noted that this truly appeared to be one type of being - or more likely, he wanted to incorporate Aristotelian category of action into a broader category of processes. Plotinus also noted that compared to actions, passions seemed to require no independent category for themselves - for instance, cutting bread was always the same process, whether you regarded it as an activity of knife or a passion suffered by the bread.

Of the last two Aristotelian categories - having and being in position - Plotinus didn’t have much to say. Of having, he noted that having could be taken as a general category, since, for instance, things had qualities and quantities etc. Then again, both having and being in a position could be regarded as types of relations.

The Aristotelian theory of categories was then too haphazard for Plotinus’ taste. The much more simple Stoic theory also failed to satisfy him. For Stoics, the first and in a sense the most primary category of entities was the material substrate, of which everything else in the world was supposed to consist of. Yet, Plotinus noted, matter as such is just a material that could be potentially shaped in various forms and not a really existing entity and is thus not a good candidate for a principle of everything. What was even more condemning in Plotinus’ opinion was that for Stoics divinity was material, that is, dependent on something not really existing. Plotinus remarked that even Stoics shouldn’t accept matter as the principle, because they think perception should be the ground for stating the existence of something, but matter as such cannot be perceived.

The second Stoic category, qualities, seemed for Plotinus a good candidate for immaterial principles that would shape matter to various shapes. The problem was that Stoics talked only about qualified matter. Further Stoic categories - material things with even more accidental determinations and things in relations - don’t really solve this problem either. Furthermore, Plotinus couldn’t really accept the Stoic idea that all these four categories would be just species of one class containing all possible objects whatsoever, because especially the intellectual entities were just so far removed from corporeal entities that they couldn’t form a unified class of beings.

Plotinus then suggested that intellectual and corporeal levels required different types of categorical hierarchies - and beyond all categorisations lied the primordial unity, which was devoid all multiplicity and thus was beyond all classification. What could be classified was the self-thinking intellect, which contained in its unity several aspects. What the intellect thought was something existing, and indeed, existing in the most proper sense of the word, removed from the mere shadowy corporeal existence. As existent or being, intellect was something that could be, but as thinking it had actualised this potentiality and was now acting, which Plotinus described as life or movement of intellect. Finally, in this act of thinking intellect was always thinking itself, which gave then stability to it. These three classes or principles - being, movement and stability - were then for Plotinus aspects of intellect that could be differentiated, and this differentiation or diversity could then be taken as a fourth aspect. Finally, all these different aspects could be seen as aspects of one and the same intellect, giving us then a fifth aspect or sameness.

Plotinus’ system of intellectual categories had a clear Platonic origin. What Plato wasn’t yet forced to do was to argue that this system was complete and no other category or principle had been missed, and this task was left for Plotinus. He firstly noted that unity was no proper category. The most proper unity of them all, the primordial unity, was supposedly beyond all categorisation, while all other unities have almost nothing in common.

While primordial unity was in a sense a lot earlier than five intellectual categories, other possible candidate categories are figuratively later. Being of intellect, activity of its thinking, the stability of its thinking always itself, the difference of these aspects and the identity behind them are all just different sides in one act of self-thinking. Numbers or quantities and further qualities, on the other hand, belong to further level in Plotinian hierarchy, and similar fate is experienced by relations, times, places, having and position. The only Aristotelian categories left are action and passion, which Plotinus thought were just two sides of the category of movement.

Plotinus still had some possible categories to reject. Goodness, just like unity, is in its most proper form outside the system of categories, since the final good for Plotinus was the primordial unity all things tried to emulate. Beauty in its most proper form, on the other hand, belonged according to Plotinus to the harmonious being of the intellect, while knowledge was an aspect of its activity of thinking. Intellect as such was in a sense just a combination of the five primary categories, while virtue was for Plotinus just a particular type of embodied intellect.

Next obvious question would be how all further things follow from the five principal categories. An important mediating element here are numbers. With just few of the first numbers, it is possible to talk about simple geometrical figures, like triangles and quadrangles, and with the notions of sameness and difference, it is possible to go further and discuss circle and other complex figures.

At the level of corporeal entities, another set of categories is then required, because e.g. corporeal beings or substances are completely different from intellectual substances. Corporeal being is not a real being, in comparison with intellectual entity. In some sense, we cannot speak of multiple intellectual entities, because there is only one intellectual entity - the self-thinking intellect - which just has multiple aspects. On the other hand, there are many corporeal entities.

All of corporeal entities share something, that is, they are modifications of indeterminate matter, and they are modified by certain active forces or forms, which shape this matter into various entities. We then have three different types of entities in the corporeal world: the matter, forms shaping it and the concrete entities formed out of these. Plotinus does not at first make it clear whether all these three require a category of their own or whether they could all be grouped under one category, for instance, because they all underlie further characteristics of entities. Then again, Plotinus noted that while forms in question are somehow connected to the intellectual level and true being, matter, in comparison, is a mere weak shadow of being.

In addition to these three types of substances, corporeal world has quantities, which consist of numbers, dividing into odd and even numbers, and magnitudes, dividing into discrete and continuous magnitudes. Space and time, Plotinus said, are not among any of these classes.

Corporeal entities are not divided just by form and by quantities, but also by further qualities, which are, as it were, images of forms, just like forms are images of intellectual level. Just like forms were in Plotinus’ system kind of forces, qualities are also - for instance, green is just a power to cause a certain type of sensation in a person. Plotinus classified qualities primarily into those belonging more to the corporeal world (e.g. colours) and those belonging more to souls (e.g. characteristics of behaviour). He also remarked that further classifications of qualities should be based on the different powers these qualities are - green differs from blue, because blue causes a different type of sensation. Then again, he noted, all differentiations don’t correspond to some qualities, for example, non-white differs from white, but non-white is no individual force that would cause some type of sensation.

Corporeal world also has processes, which differ from intellectual process of self-thinking thought by consisting of truly different states, whereas the activity of self-thinking remains always same. This stability of self-thinking thought is not same as rest in the corporeal sense, which is just lack of processuality. Corporeal processes, Plotinus noted, could be divided into active and passive processes, but he still favoured the Aristotelian division into four kinds: generation/destruction of substances, change of qualities, change of quantities and movement or change of place.

The final category Plotinus admitted into his account of corporeal world was relations. Other Aristotelian categories, he said, reduced to former categories. Thus, space, Plotinus said, was just a system of certain relations between bodies.

The two sets of categories applied to different levels in Plotinian hierarchy: the eternal and the temporal. The eternity of the intellectual level, Plotinus said, is nothing arbitrarily connected with it. Instead, he noted, true being just is by definition stable and never-ending, full and conscious life without any restrictions, with the five categories as aspects that can be differentiated within it.

What then is the time that distinguishes the world of corporeal categories from the eternal? Many earlier philosophers, Plotinus noted, had connected time with the movement of celestial spheres. Yet, he remarked, time certainly couldn’t be movement, because movement was more something happening within time. Even the Aristotelian definition of time as the measure of movement Plotinus found wanting, because he thought time was instead something, parts of which could be measured, but due to its unlimitedness it couldn’t itself be a measure.

Plotinus’ own solution was to connect time with soul. In its natural state, soul would have regarded things in an eternal manner. Yet, it desired to view things originally forming a unity as clearly distinct and one after another. This process of soul viewing things one at a time or the image of eternity seen through the lens of soul’s peculiar way of regarding things then just is what time is in its essence, Plotinus suggested. The movement of the celestial spheres, the most prominent form of temporal movement, is then just something happening within soul. Why then all individual souls seem to exist in the same time, one might ask. Plotinus’s answer was that this just belied the common origin of all souls.

Numbering intellect

Like Aristotle before him, Plotinus placed observation above action. Yet, with Plotinus observation was not completely passive, but rather more active than normal action. For instance, Plotinus noted, nature does not act in the sense of mechanically moving things around and does not even consider how to achieve some end, but merely observes its own perfection and at the same time projects energy, which makes physical world move. The movements and activities of the physical world are then less active than this free letting of energy by nature, but it is the best that this world can do.

This nature was in Plotinus' hierarchy something proceeding from the level of the soul, or energy projected by the world soul. On the level of souls, the hierarchy of observation and action was also present. Thus, Plotinus noted, people who are not capable of observing things in their mind and thus engaging in abstract sciences have to perform manual labour. Furthermore, even when people performed things physically and endeavoured after some end, this end was always some type of observation (for instance, we produce something because we want to see it before our eyes). Hence, the priority of observation was evident in Plotinus’ eyes.

While observation was the highest soul could achieve, it was the very essence of intellect in Plotinus’ hierarchy to observe itself and everything within itself. Of course, Plotinus noted that this wasn’t still the highest point in the hierarchy, because the primordial unity wouldn’t even need observation to be perfect - indeed, to be perfect it couldn’t have any multiplicity required even by self-observation and in no way it could contain all that exists, like the self-observation of intellect, although this primordial unity was the final source of everything.

Although the level of self-perceiving intellect and its ideas wasn’t the highest pinnacle in Plotinus’ hierarchy, it was the pinnacle of beauty. Indeed, he noted, an artist does not make beautiful works by choosing the appropriate matter e.g. for sculpture, but by imprinting a beautiful shape, existing already in her mind, to the material of the sculpture. Similarly, Plotinus thought, nature does not make beautiful things by choosing suitable material, but by projecting a beautiful shape on the material - what material does at most is to hinder the projection and lessen the beauty.

The self-thinking intellect then contains all these beautiful prototypes in a single act of self-thinking, thus being the pinnacle of all beauty. This shows us something important about the level of intellect in Plotinus’ hierarchy. The thinking of the intellect is not what we usually call thinking, that is, silent speaking of thoughts in our mind or an argument moving from premises to conclusion, which inevitably takes some time to occur. Instead, it is more like a momentary vision revealing all that is important in a single glance. Hence, intellect does not need to think all the beautiful prototypes one by one, but it at once has them all in front of mind’s eye. Furthermore, Plotinus thought that intellect also viewed these prototypes truly. Indeed, since they were not anything truly separate from the intellect, but merely aspects of the self-observation of intellect, there could be no room for false or incorrect observation of them.

Because of its beauty and truth, Plotinus called self-thinking intellect a god. Indeed, he compared it with Chronus, who held the middle place between his son Zeus (soul) and his father Uranus (primordial unity). According to Plotinus, this middle position made intellect unique and different from both soul and unity in the sense that only intellect found its complete perfection in observation. For “Zeus” or soul mere observation wasn’t enough, but it also regulated the world around it, while “Uranus” or primordial unity did not really need this observation for being perfect.

This primordial unity was something that defied all human characterisations. It had no limits, but it was equally wrong to call it infinitely large. It wasn’t contained in anything, although it in a sense potentially contained everything that ever was actually. One clear characteristic of this unity was its perfection or goodness, which was then something higher than mere beauty. In fact, Plotinus remarked, everything in the world strives for goodness, even when they sleep, while beauty interests only those who can observe things.

Three levels above corporeal world was enough for Plotinus: primordial unity, self-thinking intellect and soul. He was especially against gnostic teaching, where the number of entities was expanded beyond any need. For instance, beyond intellect one did not need any further entity conscious of intellect, because this role in the hierarchy was filled already by intellect itself, which could observe itself.

Gnosticism was to be rejected for other reasons also, although Plotinus noted that many of his friends had been lured by the ideas of gnostics. He was especially against the idea that corporeal world had been created through a mistake and that it was clearly evil in comparison with the spiritual world. Indeed, Plotinus noted that corporeal world was the best possible image of the best possible prototype, necessarily proceeding from the energy of this prototype.

Furthermore, while gnostics regarded the souls of gnostics as the only element of goodness in the corporeal world, Plotinus stated that many things were good and beautiful in it. For instance, stars and planets were in Plotinus’ eyes divinities, which were unencumbered by their bodies and could thus always observe the spiritual prototypes of the world. Even the unconscious nature was full of purpose and goodness and was guided by soul-like unconscious activity of nature.

Plotinus finally noted that gnostic ideas gave no guidelines how a person could improve herself - one was just born as spiritual or as corporeal and there was no escape from one’s fate. Indeed, gnostic could not care less about the fate of the body his soul inhabited, because it was a prison for the soul. Plotinus himself, on the other hand, did not regard embodiment of soul in such a low esteem, but as a necessary step in the development of the soul. Thus, by living with the body soul was meant to learn indifference toward material objects and thus rise to the level of stars.

Gnostics weren’t the only school of thought Plotinus engaged with. He was also quite interested of the Pythagorean question of the status of numbers in the hierarchy of existence. Plotinus noted that one could not simply identify numbers with other things, which we would do, for instance, if we placed existent things in an order and called first thing “one”, second “two” and so on. Such an identification would fail because number like “three” could be used of many things, not just of the third thing in that ontological order. Indeed, numbers had to precede all of these existent things, because one had to have e.g. a prototype of ten that could be applied to all combinations of ten things.

If Plotinus thought numbers were independent of things, he also though they were independent of any acts of calculation. Indeed, this was just a particular application of a general principle that something was in Plotinus’ opinion always prior to thinking of this something - e.g. the existence of movement was prior to thinking about the movement. This was even true of the self-thinking intellect, which contained all ideal prototypes within its act of self-thinking. Indeed, one could distinguish within this act various levels - the self-thinking intellect was e.g. living, but more essentially it was thinking and even more essentially existing. Numbers, then, Plotinus concluded, belonged to the level of existence of intellect. In fact, while primordial unity was for Plotinus something preceding in a sense existence, numbers preceded, according to him, the multiplicity of existents - one could say that while primordial unity had created all existence, numbers divided existence into separate entities.

A problem for this Plotinian understanding was provided by the seeming endlessness of all numbers. Because the ideal world of prototypes included in the act of self-thinking intellect contained numbers, there would have to be some perfect number containing all the existent prototypes of the ideal world. How could such a number exist if the number of numbers themselves couldn’t be pinned down? Plotinus appeared to suggest that such an imperfection concerned only souls in the material world. When we counted things, we could always find further and further numbers and no proper ending in the series. Similarly, while prototype of a line would have definite boundaries, lines in the corporeal world could apparently be extended as long as one liked.

Plotinus also noted that unlike in the intellectual level, where the numbers and quantities properly belonged, in the corporeal world things might often be numbered or quantified only accidentally. For instance, while a tree or an animal is naturally a unity, something like an army is a unity only accidentally, because the persons making up the army have no intrinsic connection to one another.

This possibility of an accidental quantification provided Plotinus with a possible answer for a question important in ancient philosophy: why do things far away from us seem smaller? Plotinus suggested as one alternative solution that from a distance we can gain information only of the essence of a visible object - in other words, its colour - while more accidental information, like the proper size of the object, are not properly transmitted to us.

Another topic, in which Plotinus noted the accidentality of quantity, was happiness. If we are happy now, this happiness is not diminished if it lasted only for a day. Indeed, even if we were happy for all eternity, the intensity of this happiness would not change in any manner. Otherwise, eternally happy entities, like stars, would never be completely happy, because they would be always becoming more and more happy.

Because quantities were part of the intellectual world, matter as such could not be quantitative, Plotinus concluded. This could even be empirically verified when a piece of papyrus was moistened by water - the whole papyrus became mixed with water, but the moist papyrus still took as much space as before. Plotinus explained this through the idea of featureless matter being formed by basic forces deriving from the intellectual level, such as forces making matter into watery or paper-like. The most central of these forces was the one involved in quantifying a piece of matter and giving it a certain volume. It was only this quantifying force that divided matter into individual bodies.

The intellectual level contained then numbers, but did it contain anything resembling corporeal entities? For instance, we know that Plotinus admitted the existence of a prototype of human beings, but would such a prototypical human sense anything? Yes, indeed, Plotinus would have answered, since even in the prototypical word of intellect one could perceive what the world is like, even if this perception was completely different from perception in corporeal world. Indeed, perception was not even the lowest activity at the intellectual level. Self-thinking intellect would think all types of beings in its self-thinking - even animals and plants - although these ideas of animals and plants would differ from corporeal animals and plants by being more prototypical and harmonious, both in themselves and in their mutual relations.

The prototypical nature of intellectual ideas requires some metaphorical light to be seen, Plotinus noted. This light, giving being to self-thinking intellect itself, derived of course from the primordial unity, which was then also the ultimate source of goodness. It was higher than mere intellect and it thus required something quite different from regular thinking to see it. Indeed, all it takes, Plotinus noted, is to immediately observe the unity, without thinking about it, but more like being swallowed by this unity. Indeed, Plotinus noted, since the primordial unity does not think, it cannot even consider things like “this is good”. Thus, one could just name this primordial unity good, reflecting the actual simplicity of primordial unity.

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.

Traveling soul

Certain persons in philosophy of history are sort of hinge figures. After them, philosophy gets a completely different flavour and direction and their influence can be seen long after their actual lives. Plotinus is one of such hinge figures, whose effect will be felt in several different strands of philosophical history - in Christian, Islamic and Jewish philosophy.

The starting point of Plotinus’ thinking lied in another hinge figure, Plato. In his earliest treatise Plotinus began with quite a Platonic question: what makes things beautiful? Plotinus tried to avoid the notion that the experience of beauty would have something to do with the mere material constituents of a thing or their structure. Thus, symmetry of parts of a thing could not be the only beautiful aspect in things, because firstly, some beautiful things, like coloured surfaces, have no separable parts. Furthermore, a symmetrical thing made out of ugly parts would not be beautiful.

If beauty lies then not in the material parts or their structure, Plotinus said, it must be found somewhere else, for instance, in a divine force, which configures material parts into something beautiful. In case of such simple things as colours, this divine force occurred in Plotinus’ opinion in a concrete natural phenomenon of light, which made things visible to everyone.

Just like Plato, Plotinus thought that true beauty was not to be found in material things, but more in actions of human beings. Indeed, a beautiful action, Plotinus said, is beautiful just when it is done independently of material considerations. In consequence, a person is more beautiful, depending on how well she has managed to purify herself from all bodily influences.

Yet, even human activities and personality behind them are not the highest example of beauty for Plotinus. High above them lies what makes even beautiful personalities beautiful - that is, the mystical source of all that is good and beautiful. Like all talents, seeing this source of beauty requires practice, and ordinary human beings would probably not understand why it is called beautiful - indeed, they couldn’t even understand why an action of a person can be beautiful. It is just this purification of oneself from material influences - making oneself beautiful - which makes one resemble the divine source of goodness and thus able to view the source.

Because the true beauty of human things lied in Plotinus’ opinion not in matter, it is just to be expected that he would hold the essence of humanity to be found in something else than body. This something else was that which made human being alive, which gave it the power to perceive and the ability to think. This something could not be material, since no matter as such was alive - matter couldn’t even shape itself into different forms without an external force, so how could it move itself? Furthermore, mere material body could not perceive anything - perception required not just copying likenesses of things, but also combining various features perceived into a single unity, which was impossible to matter that was always divisible and never a true unity. Finally, thinking was especially something mere matter couldn’t achieve, since many things we think, such as beauty as such, were not material.

Even if this something - soul - wasn’t just matter, one might suppose that it still is something connected to matter. Thus, Plotinus considered the Pythagorean idea of soul as harmony and the Aristotelian idea of soul as an internal activity of living, perceiving and thinking humans and found them both wanting. Harmony as such could not be soul, because soul was more of an instigator and creator of harmony. Then again, it could not be just a peculiar activity in a body, because then sleep would instantly kill a human being.

If matter and all things pertaining to it were divisible and thus destructible, soul, on the contrary, was for early Plotinus indivisible and indestructible. Indeed, as the source of all life, soul could never truly be dead. Plotinus even described soul as divine and hence immortal. An individual soul had had a desire to control things and it had thus attached itself to a body, but still some aspect of this soul remained unattached to body.

In a quite Platonian manner, Plotinus divided the realm of existence into two different parts. First was the unchanging, immaterial world, in which everything depended on a unifying principle, which in turn depended on nothing else. Second was the ever-changing, material world. In the world of change, things also appeared to depend on other things, for instance, human beings depended on their parents, who had produced them.

Plotinus noted that many philosophers had tried to find the ultimate things, on which all the beings of the world of change depended on, but they had often hit on incorrect candidates. Epicurean atoms could not be behind it all, because Epicurean idea of random movements of atoms would mean that future could not be predicted - something Plotinus was convinced we surely could do. Furthermore, if all was just movement of lifeless atoms, we couldn’t be said to even live, let alone decide things for ourselves. For the latter reason, Plotinus wouldn’t also accept that the faith of all things in the material world would be decided by a world soul, using individuals as mere puppets of its great plan.

Since predictability of future events and especially the possibility to read them from e.g. movements of stars was something Plotinus accepted, one might think that he would have endorsed the idea of stars determining the events of the material world. Indeed, he did think that stars were at least signs of certain cosmological influences - season and climate had their say on how things in the world went. Yet, if one wanted to accept the idea of personal choices - and Plotinus surely wanted - he could not accept that stars, or indeed any causal factors, would completely determine the actions of human beings. Instead, Plotinus said, the human soul - this immaterial aspect of human life - was in part free to decide what to do. Indeed, like we have seen, the better a soul, the more independent it was of material influences.

Soul then lied somewhere between the world of change and the eternal world, and it was Plotinus’s next task to determine its exact position in relation to them. His suggestion was to describe it in terms of divisibility/multiplicity and indivisibility/unity. Material things were, Plotinus said, inherently divisible and multiple - nothing intrinsic kept a mere lump of matter together. Eternal world, on the other hand, depended on something indivisible and inherently unified, which could not be divided in any sense.

Soul lied in a sense between these two extremes. Yet, it wasn’t the only thing to do so. One could also say that a colour like whiteness was a unity - whiteness is whiteness, whether it is in snow or sugar. Still, despite this unity of being the same colour wherever it occurred, whiteness did not make white things into a unity, but snow and sugar remained different substances. Soul was also in a sense both multiple and unified, but it differed in Plotinus’ eyes from colours in that soul actually unified things in which it dwelled to a peculiar combination. This could be seen in the aforementioned ability of soul to unify perceptions occurring in different parts of the body into a coherent whole.

Although soul was higher than material world, Plotinus also thought that it wasn’t the highest possible thing. While souls had a tendency to meddle with the material world, there had to be something completely immaterial, which could be seen as the source of the souls. This source Plotinus called nous or intellect - it should be some type of thinking. In a quite Aristotelian manner, Plotinus said that this intellect could not be dependent on something beyond itself and could not thus think of something foreign to itself. Thus, it had to think just itself.

Plotinus did not mean that intellect could not think anything other than itself. Instead, this intellect contained in itself, like a seed, kernel or essence of everything that existed. The restriction to intellect itself, excluded only certain non-essential or imperfect features of things from the purview of intellect. Hence, it could think of stable characteristics of the world, such a geometric shapes, but not any haphazard event, and activity of soul in so far as it was harmonious and not ruled by bodily impulses, but not its disturbance by these impulses. In other words, intellect thought in Plotinus’ view the ideal prototypes of worldly things and souls. Thus, he at least in his early phase concluded, intellect could not think of individuals. Intellect didn’t so much create these prototypes by thinking them, but they were more like eternally contained in a state of intellect knowing them. Furthermore, the prototypes were prototypes of actual world and actual souls and not of any possible and non-actual world or souls.

Plotinus quite quickly came to the conclusion that the travel of soul from that immaterial world of ideal prototypes to material and less than ideal world was not just negative. Indeed, it was in a sense just a necessary process, in which ideal prototypes of the ideal world became materialised. Many souls, such as the world soul governing the movement of the whole world and the souls regulating the movement of stars, ruled their portion of the matter with complete freedom and thus their contact with matter could not break their contact with the ideal prototypes - they could think these without any effort. Human souls were in a more lowly state, because they had isolated themselves from the communion with other souls and the ideal prototypes and required then more effort to return back to their origin. Yet, this cycle of apparent fall and gradual rising was also a necessary process. Souls could learn to see even the material world as an image of the ideal world, while the experience of the uglier parts of the material world would make them appreciate the ideal prototypes even more.

Although the ideal world - or better, the intellectual process of thinking various prototypes of embodied world - was more fundamental than the material world and souls governing it, it still wasn’t the ultimate source of everything in Plotinus’ view. Thinking is still dependent, Plotinus said, because there can be no thinking without something to think. This first source of everything would then be no thinking, but at least in this phase of Plotinus’ development, pure awareness containing potentially everything, which thinking contained actually. This pure awareness or potentiality was still not completely passive, but it had a tendency to produce something, and what it produced was the act of thinking itself, which formed the ideal world of prototypes. Since only at the stage of thinking itself we can speak of things existing, the primordial pure awareness cannot be described even as existing, but only as a source of all existence.

The primordial source of everything was thus a unity without any multiplicity, while everything derived from it was also in a sense a multiplicity. Intellect thinking itself contained already many ideal prototypes in itself, while souls became pluralised in their contact with the material universe. Interestingly, Plotinus said that these many souls formed still in a sense a unity. Indeed, one could say that all individual souls were only one soul taking on different shapes, just like one seed divides into various parts of a plant and one science develops into different branches. This did not mean that all souls would e.g. have the exact same feelings, although one could experience their underlying unity, for instance, in a feeling of compassion towards other living things.

Quite quickly Plotinus started emphasising how utterly removed the original unity was from everything else, which in addition to unity always contained some multiplicity. Indeed, while existing things usually were unities made out of something multiple or at least one out of many existent things, the original unity could not be called existent. Indeed, this unity defied all description: you couldn’t measure it in any sense or place it in space or time, you couldn’t say it was good for something, because it existed for sake of nothing else and was thus beyond mere goodness, and even words like “one” were just inadequate pointers toward it.

Despite is seeming transcendence, the original unity was in Plotinus’ opinion always quite close to everyone, because it in fact was the original unity making everything what it was.The trick in getting closer to the unity was not to try to view the unity as something differing from oneself. Indeed, Plotinus advised one to return to oneself and to free oneself from all external disturbances in order to get to a state of mind in which one was completely one with itself. In this divine state of self-peace, a human being found the soul underlying all souls and in a sort of analogy experienced how great the even more undisturbed and non-multiple original unity was.

At this stage the basic levels of Plotinus’s metaphysics were clear. Above everything corporeal lies, firstly, soul, which governs the material world and the movement of bodies, combining them into a unified cosmos. Soul is already divine, because of its power over matter. Still, soul experiences everything in time, and in a sense, it is just energy flowing from a higher plane of existence to the temporal world.

This higher plane is the timeless intellect, which thinks itself eternally. In this self-thinking, intellect does at the same time many different acts. It recognises itself as an active thinker and as a passive object of thinking; it separates these two aspects, but also identifies them as aspects of same intellect; it sees itself as active, because it thinks, but still as peaceful, because it never changes to something else; it counts the number of different aspects of itself and knows their distinct qualities.

Intellect has then many sides and is therefore dependent on the highest plane of existence, the primordial unity. Plotinus had become increasingly confident that the unity was not conscious of anything, not even of itself, because such consciousness would imply multiplicity.. Although the primordial unity might be said to contain potentially everything that exists in itself, it is not the sum of everything, but everything in general and intellect in particular is more like generated out of the unity. Still, the unity has not created intellect in the Christian sense of the word, because as the ultimate perfection it has no need to do anything. Intellect is then again like uncontrollable flowing of the energy of unity, just like soul was flowing of the energy of intellect.

Plotinus tried to express this necessary flowing of unity into an intellect in a more detailed manner. This flowing of energy of unity is like an act of unity becoming conscious of and thinking itself. In other words, one could say that intellect is the original unity, when it has started to think itself. One just has to remember that temporal phrases are here inappropriate. Act of self-thinking is more like an eternal manifestation of the original unity or a state of awareness of an original power.

This aware or conscious state then, in a sense, shapes its original power into various forms or different possible existents. Although intellect is not a complete unity without any multiplicity, it still resembles the unity in necessarily dissipating its own energy to a further level of existence. The power that this eternal thinking of possibilities holds is then manifested in world soul’s temporal power over embodied existents.

The world soul produces finally all the individual souls, and while the world soul is non-spatial, individual souls can exist in space. Following Aristotle, Plotinus said that in addition to humans also animals and plants are souls, that is, living entities controlling material bodies. In animals, souls attain a level of awareness, but human beings reflect even the higher echelons of existence. That is, a human being can on occasion rise completely above its bodily frame and just think all the same perfect thoughts as the self-thinking intellect does. Finally, every human being is not just thinking, but also the object of such a perfect thinking or one modification of the primordial power.

One important element of Plotinus’ cosmology was still left untouched, namely, matter. Or actually, Plotinus said, there are two types of matter. In the intellectual level there is multiplicity of different thoughts, such as thinking, being thought, being same, being different, being multiple and being of some kind. In general, the intellectual level should contain several perfect prototypes of the corporeal world. All of these prototypes could then be seen as modifications of one matter. This intellectual matter is not, Plotinus clarified, the primordial unity, but something in the intellectual level under this unity - while original unity should be beyond everything, intellectual matter is more like something which intellect uses in producing its various thoughts. Intellectual matter is also something dependent on the original unity - it is the inexplicable capacity to differentiate various thoughts and is in a sense generated in the eternal act of self-thinking. In one intriguing passage Plotinus suggested that this intellectual matter might be nothing else than the soul, which looked upon intellect and was molded into different shapes by its activity.

Just like the existence of many thoughts required Plotinus to suppose an intellectual matter, similarly the perpetual change of corporeal things required the supposition of another type of matter, of which corporeal things were modifications. Since this corporeal matter was a basis, from which corporeal things were formed, it itself could not be a corporeal thing. Indeed, it had no distinguishing characteristics, not even shape nor size. Just like intellectual matter, corporeal matter is also just an endless capacity to form different things - here, different corporeal things. Plotinus noted that one could not really think of corporeal matter, because there was nothing to think about it - one could just picture everything determined taken away from a corporeal thing, and still something hazy would be left behind. In fact, the essence of corporeal matter was to be just such a lack of all characteristics and limits, which doesn’t even really exist, except in comparison with the intellectual prototypes which shape the matter into various forms.

The main points of Plotinus’ worldview were thus in place, but some points were still unclear. For instance, how could world soul at the same time be non-spatial and still cause movement of the whole material world? To this problem Plotinus suggested that the movement caused by the world soul - the circular movement of world around its center - was in a sense no movement at all, since it continuously returned to its point of origin. Indeed, it was the attempt of the material world to emulate the ability of the world soul to be everywhere at the same time - this does not mean that world would have intentions of emulating the soul, but more like it had to do so by its nature. Just like world soul, also souls governing stars caused their bodies to rotate around their centre point. Still, this was not true of all souls, since e.g. human souls were also moved by external impulses.

Just like there was a downward flow of energy starting from the primordial unity and leading through intellect to soul, Plotinus thought this flow continued within the level of soul - reasoning soul guiding humans at their best gave energy to perceiving soul common to animals, which in turn gave energy to the lowest type of soul, present even in plants, which controlled processes of nutrition and reproduction. And, Plotinus continued, this flow of energy did not end there, because plants finally gave energy to the inorganic objects of Earth.

This downward flow of energy, Plotinus said, was embodied as a concrete shape in the phenomenon familiar from the life story of Socrates, that is, in the idea of being from a higher level of existence guiding one’s life. The higher the person herself in the hierarchy of existence, the higher also this spiritual guide. True philosophers would be guided by their acquaintance with intelligence or even with the primordial unity.

Part of the Platonic legacy of Plotinus’ philosophy was the idea that we could journey through different levels of this hierarchy in several lives. If a person was guided by sensual desires, she would be born as an animal or even as a mere plant in next life. Then again, people practicing good life and acquainting themselves with the higher forms of existence could become souls guiding stars or even become completely unified with the harmonious community of souls forming the world soul.

Even though death does then hold a possibility of a person moving to a higher state of existence, Plotinus was far from suggesting that people should take their lives. Indeed, he insisted, if a soul is to truly become disentangled from bodily needs, the separation of soul and body should happen naturally.

Plotinus was also interested of the place of sensible qualities in his hierarchical system - what made, say, warmth of fire different from all the prototypical characteristics of the intellectual level? His suggestion was that there are actually many different types of qualities. The lowest type are the mere effects of things on other things, such as the sensation of warmth we get when we go close to a fire. Such qualities are ephemeral and vanish as soon as the arbitrary interaction stops. These accidental qualities are then based on more substantial properties of things, namely, their activities by which they cause such ephemeral qualities - for instance, warmth as an activity of fire, which produces the sensation of warmth. These activities are not accidental, but instead belong to the very essence of things, that is, they make the thing what it is. These activities, in their turn, are then just embodiment of the prototypical characteristics of the intellectual level, which should also be then described as activities.

Plotinus did not add just prototypes of substantial properties to the intellectual level of the hierarchy. In his engagement with the souls, he had become certain that all individual souls must have an intellectual prototype. This was a novel idea compared to the usual Platonic doctrine that only species, like humans in general, had ideal prototypes. Plotinus was convinced that different persons had so diverse and still so beautiful capacities and characteristics that these couldn’t be explained just by the difference in their matter, which could explain only decadent characteristics falling short of the prototype. Thus, all souls had to have ideal prototypes, Plotinus concluded. To the objection that intellectual world would then be populated by innumerably many new entities Plotinus answered, firstly, that all the multiple prototypes were contained in the single self-thinking intellect, just like we’ve seen intellect containing prototypes of various characteristics in one act. Furthermore, Plotinus noted that time of the physical cosmos moved around in a circle and thus there would be only a finite number of types of personalities arising time and again in the course of the cycles.

The inclusion of prototypes of human souls in intellect suggested the problem whether such marks of good living in a society like just behaviour toward fellow citizens and moderate following of one’s superiors could be characteristics of the self-thinking intellect. A simple answer would seem to be that such characteristics could not belong to intellect, which did not live in any society. Problem was that Plato had seemingly said that such characteristics made humans move toward higher echelons of existence and become like gods. Plotinus’ solution was that Plato had spoken of characteristics similar to these virtues of society, but of a higher nature - for instance, harmonious justice within society was analogical to harmony within human soul, so that while wise people were meant to rule other classes, soul and wisdom were meant to rule bodily impulses. These higher virtues were essentially virtues of an individual and could be followed without the society of other persons - they were habits for purging oneself of everything chaining oneself to the material world. By becoming less held back by corporeal needs, the more one resembled self-thinking intellect. Yet, a certain gap always remained, since souls always had a tendency to fall toward matter and they thus had to resist the demands of the body, while intellect was eternally in possession of perfection.

The road toward this perfection could thus be described anew. Humans were usually not forced to start their journey towards intellect from a completely clean slate, because their experiences were of some use in ascending. People who appreciated music knew already harmonies, and now they had to just hear harmonies in an intellectual level. Similarly, lovers had to learn to see beauty also somewhere beyond physical level. But the best equipped for the journey was a person acquainted with philosophy, because she was already on her way to higher echelons. All she had to do was to learn mathematics and Platonic dialectics, which give human being a map away from sensuousness and a map within world of ideas.

The role of dialectics appears to be especially important for Plotinus. For him, it is not just logic or methodology of reasoning, but more like an ontological study of the basic concepts and their ideal prototypes - it is a study by which one knows what truly exists and what is really good - and furthermore, also a study of the intellect as a thinker of these categories. It even implies that some mysterious unity lies behind the intellect. With the aid of mathematics, it can describe the general contours of physical world, and when applied to human affairs, it can be used to show how we should live. Thus, dialectics implicitly contains all the parts of philosophy in itself, Plotinus said.

Soul thus had a road away from the level of separate personalities to an intellectual level where souls are intrinsically connected. A next problem to be explained was then how all the separate souls could also form a unity and how such a unity could appear in the form of distinct souls.