Antilepsis and the Middle Soul in Plotinus

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Apprehending Our Happiness: Antilepsis and the Middle Soul in Plotinus, "Ennead" I 4.10Author(s): H. S. SchibliSource: Phronesis , Vol. 34, No. 2 (1989), pp. 205-219Published by: Brill

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Apprehending Our Happiness

Antilepsis and the Middle Soul in Plotinus, Ennead I 4.101*

H.S. SCHIBLI

In Ennead I 4 [46] (HEQ'L EVbczaqovLag) Plotinus squarely locates the good life (r6 E tfv) in the noetic realm. The perfect, true, and real life is of an intellectual nature (I 4.3.33-34), and when a man has passed over into the perfect life, in other words, into nous, he actually 'is' this perfect life (I 4.4.14-15).) This is the life which is higher soul perpetually enjoys in its

conformity with intellect.2 It is a life wholly self-sufficient and unaffected by pleasures, pains, and all the fortunes of Priam that affect the compound

* I would like to thank Lawrence Schrenk and Zeph Stewart for reading a draft of this paper. Their comments and suggestions were most helpful in preparing the present version. I am further indebted to the Editor for a number of corrections.

The following works will be cited by the author's name alone: A.H. Armstrong (trans.), Plotinus I (The Loeb Classical Library; London and Cambridge 1966); M. Atkinson (comm. with trans.), Plotinus: Ennead V. 1 (Oxford 1983); 0. Becker, Plotin und das Problem der geistigen Aneignung (Berlin 1940); H.J. Blumenthal, Plotinus' Psychology (The Hague 1971); E.K. Emilsson, Plotinus on Sense-Perception: A Philo- sophical Study (Cambridge 1988); R. Baine Harris (ed.), The Significance of Neo- platonism (Albany 1976); P.O. Kristeller, Der Begriff der Seele in der Ethik des Plotin (Tubingen 1929); G.J.P. O'Daly, Plotinus' Philosophy of the Self (Shannon 1973); A. Richter, Die Psychologie des Plotin (Halle 1867; repr. Aalen 1968); J.M. Rist, Human Value: A Study in Ancient Philosophical Ethics (Leiden 1982); A. Smith, 'Unconscious- ness and Quasiconsciousness in Plotinus', Phronesis 23 (1978) 292-301; M.F. Wagner, 'Plotinus' World', Dionysius 6 (1982) 13-42; R.T. Wallis, Neoplatonism (London 1972); E.W. Warren, 'Consciousness in Plotinus', Phronesis 9 (1964) 83-97. l At the end of his penultimate treatise, Enn. I 1 (On What is the Living Being and What is Man), Plotinus asks who it was that carried out the investigation in the previous

chapters; he ascribes this activity to the superior life of the soul, v6qoi5, and concludes: 'For this [nous] is also part of us and to this we ascend' (13.7-8). Cf. n. 2, below. 2 See I 4.4.6-8, 1 1.9, VI 7.35.4-5, and further citations in Wallis, 72, n. 5. It may still need to be emphasized that the soul has the perfect life through its conformity with the transcendent intellect, the true nous (voi)g &qOLv6g, I 4.4.7f., cf. V 8.1.2, V 9.2.21f., VI 7.18.23), and not merely by its possession of the rational element (koyL0si6g) or discursive reason (&(ivoLa); with these the soul judges and orders the external world in its hegemony over it. Confusingly, Plotinus sometimes refers to these latter faculties as nous. On the two senses of nous, see Blumenthal, 43, 101-105.

Phronesis 1989. Vol. XXXIV12 Accepted Februari 1989) 205




being.3 Plotinus discusses at some length the impregnability of our true

happiness (I 4.5-8). The crowning stroke is that eudaimonia is ours even when we are asleep or unconscious (' 3tagaxokouOEtv). A good man, Plotinus argues, need not be conscious that he is wise, because wisdom is his

substance (as opposed to a quality); as such it is ever active.4 Similarly, we do not apprehend by sense experience the activity of our physical growth.

But what which grows, Plotinus quickly adds, is not really us. We are the

'actuality of intellect' (l . . TOi3 voovWTog Mv'QyEta), so that when intellect is active, we are active (I 4.9).5

Although we need not be conscious of the noetic activity that constitutes

our happiness,6 Plotinus in the following section (I 4.10.1-21) does in fact allow us an awareness or apprehension (&vTLXkq lg) of the activity of 3 Without the ascent or transition to nous one remains the animated being, the living beast, which Enn. I I shows to be a joint entity of the body and the reflection of the lower

soul ('reflection' when applied to the soul in the body does not connote its lack of realness

but rather its subordination to higher principles; see Blumenthal, 15; see also n. 22, below). In this kind of life one cannot be happy nor even truly a man. For Plotinus makes

it clear, in both Enneads I 1 and I 4, that man, especially the oubov&aoS, the good man, is not a auvacz1p6TrQov, a complex or sum of body and lower soul. See especially I 1.10, I 4.14, I 4.16.9; cf. I 1.6.8-9, 'the life of the compound will not be the life of the (higher)

soul' (T6 ToO o1uva> poxfiou tiv ov' "g 'Vuxfl; gocraL); on the compound and its affections, see also IV 3.26 and Blumenthal, 20f., 59ff., Emilsson, 31ff. In sections 3-4 of

Enn. 1 4 Plotinus makes it axiomatic that 'life' is an equivocal term, since it can be applied

equally to rational and non-rational creatures. But the good life, which is happiness, cannot be attributed to plants and animals but only to man who alone has the potential to

live the life of intellect. The multivalence of 'life' established in Enn. I 4 obtains throughout the later treatise I 1. 4 Though only a part of the good man, whose life is fully integrated with his higher self or

nous, will be unaware of that activity: Xav0dvoL 6' tv aO'ni i Mvt:yeta ovx acztbv

ndivta, &Xd nT pkQoS anrroO. (9.24f.). Smith, 293, remarks: 'Therefore, some other part of us does notice. In that case some form of awareness is, after all, involved in our

relationship to our higher self. This awareness is precisely that self-knowledge or internal consciousness which we have of our higher self when we have gone over to the level of our

higher self or nous.' Our present discussion, however, will not focus on the awareness or

self-knowledge (such as uvaQLa3oLs or O'VEOwL) that we possess on a higher level, but rather a lower, transient form of awareness that occasionally may grasp the happiness of our higher self. s Some of the inherent difficulties of I 4.9 are approached by J.M. Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge 1967) 146ff.

6 Indeed towards the end of the next section (10.21ff.) Plotinus claims in effect that in a number of ordinary activities we are most happy when we are least conscious of it. Thus, to take a suggestion from Plotinus himself, I can say I have spent many happy hours

reading Plotinus, though not aware at the time that I was happy. On the state of consciousness attending acts of concentration, see Becker, 35, Warren, 84f., 95f., but cf. Smith, 294f.

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intellect. But given that our true identity is the 'actuality of intellect', we may legitimately ask, first, who or what part of us or our soul has this faculty of apprehension, and, secondly, of what consequence is it, within the confines of Plotinus' discussion about happiness, to identify apprehension. Both questions are at heart questions concerning the self in Plotinus. The

first approaches the self from the static point of view by isolating the apprehensive self from other levels of self. In the second we see the self under its dynamic aspect in that 'we' turn out to be 'identical with the level to which we give most attention.'7 It is crucial that there be a realization of

the self at a level where we do not merely apprehend happiness but actually are happy.

In pursuing these questions we will draw upon and compare previous studies of Plotinian psychology, consciousness, and perception, in which, however, discussion of the self and apprehension within Plotinus' ethical treatises is not paramount. Understandably, the bulk of scholarly attention has gone to those treatises that deal explicitly with the complexities of the soul and its perceptive faculties (especially Enn. IV 3-6). The limited aim of the present paper is not so much to redress the balance but rather to work towards an understanding of what it means to be happy according to the Plotinian view of the person and thereby to encourage further studies and

possibly debates on the self in the specific context of eudaimonia.

In Ennead I 4.10.1-16 Plotinus explains that operation by which an apprehension of our higher, intellectual life reaches us:

Perhaps it [the activity of intellect] goes unnoticed because it is not concerned with any sensible object; for it is by means of sense perception as an intermediary that

intellect appears to be active in regard to sensible objects and to think about them. But why should not intellect itself be active and with it the soul that exists before sense perception and any sort of apprehension? For there has to be an activity prior to apprehension if indeed 'to think and to be are the same'. It seems that apprehen-

7 See Wallis, 72, to whom I owe the useful distinction of 'static' and 'dynamic' for the posing of our initial questions (cf. Warren, 92). The extent to which we will be able to maintain this distinction in the course of this paper is another matter, since in Plotinus' discourse the self (expressed as 'we' in the continuum of the soul, see below, n. 14) is often a slippery term to which our taxonomies do not always adhere. On the 'problem' of the self, see below, notes 24, 28, 29. There is a summary of literature in W.Dense,

Untersuchungen zur mittelplatonischen und neuplatonischen Seelenlehre (Wiesbaden 1983) 127.

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sion exists and comes to be when thought is bent back and that which is active in the life of the soul is as it were thrust back again, just as in a mirror when it is calm and clear and still. Now under such conditions when a mirror is present an image may come to be, but when a mirror is not present, or not in the proper state, that of which there would have been an image is in actuality [still] present. In the same way as regards the soul when that kind of thing in us, in which the images of reasoning and intellect are reflected, is undisturbed, these [images] are seen and as it were

sensibly known, together with the prior knowledge that intellect and reasoning are active (translation adapted from Armstrong).8

Plotinus first supposes that the activity of intellect escapes our notice because it is not concemed with sensible objects.9 Intellectual activity is ultimately directed at objects perceived through our senses but only be-

cause sense perception is like an intermediate faculty (between sense objects and our mental apprehension of them). The point, however, that Plotinus aims to make is that intellectual activity does not depend on any

kind of sense experience, 10 as can be seen from the question that immediately follows: 'why should not nous itself be active (independently of sense

perception) and with it the soul that exists before sense perception and any sort of apprehension?' It is significant here that the soul is said to exist

before (3Q6) not only sense perception but also apprehension; this can only refer to the higher soul that is directed to nous and therefore intellectually

8 Enn. I 4.10.1-16 (numbers in brackets refer to the line numbers of the Oxford Classical Text, edd. P. Henry and H.-R. Schwyzer): Aav0dVEL 6U EO(O T43 ' 7tCEQ( 6OLOV)V Tl()V aLa&r"t6)V' b6L& Y&Q Tfl aM100'Oe(Og (DOnEQ i4O11 JrEQL tau"ta NE(yEZV 6OXEZ xai nEL: toVTwv. ah0T6 6* 6 voOg b1& TL O1?Xfx (VEQytd'OEL xaL 1 lVuXf nEQL aYrE6v 1 nLQ6 aaOafrEw xac L6XWA &V`TiewtE; [5] 6?E? yQ 16 nJQ6 &vTLXte1w M(Qyt1la dEvaL, eLTrr) T6 ak6 T6 VOE'V xai EtvaL [Parm. B3]. xai lOtxEV fA &vTX&qVt elvaL xaL yLvEaOaL &vaxaur- TOVT0 TOi voafo T ao;g xaL TO vE(YOVTOg TO XaT& t6 tfv Tfj vnuXf O;OV &AUwoOV- TOg rdXLV, 0d)o7reQ tV XaT6TQp nED' T6 E'Lov xaiw kaPLnQ6V [10] fjoXidtov. do oOv ?v TOL;g TOLOITOL naQ6vTog ,A6v toO xaT6nTQDoU ytveTo T6 EtbwXov, i naQ6vTog 6b i

gi OUTS XOVTOv VeQYELDYL 3UiQEOtLV Oi T6 ?68wov tjV 6V, oMtW xai Jte( tVxAv ouXLav PLV 6YOVTO oOI IV Ai'jV TOLOl5TO-, 4 lWaL'VcTat T'a Tfg bLavoLag xa ToO VOID eixovCwlLaTa, [15] IvoQaTaL TaDTa xaL otov atOTCTiT yLVwEaL RETa -Mg n3o0T6ag yvdew;Eo, 6TL 6 voOg xaiL ^ 6LdVoLa &FVQyeL. 9 Sensations occur to the body which forms the living being in conjunction with an image or trace of the soul (in short, the lower soul, cf. n. 3, above); sense experience thus falls

predominantly within the domain of our lower faculties (cf., e.g. I 1.7.5, IV 3.26.1-9 and IV 4.19.5ff.), though the perception of sensations and their translation into intelligible entities require, as we will see, the median and higher faculties of the soul. For a detailed

account of sense perception (a100-9aLg) see Blumenthal, 42f., 67-79, Emilsson, esp.chs. III-IV. 10 In contrast to Aristotle, see n. 31, below. Sense perception as a model for intellection is rejected in detail in V 5. [32] 1; cf. Emilsson, 117ff. The self-directed activity of nous is

brought out well in V 3 [49].

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active. As Plotinus establishes next, there must be activity (MveQyr,ca) prior to apprehension (for apprehension to have something to appre-

hend).11 How then does apprehension come about? 'It seems that apprehension exists and comes to be when thought (v6&t[a) is bent back and that which is active in the life of the soul is as it were thrust back again, just as in a mirror when it is calm and clear and still' (6-10). The activity in the life of the soul is the intellectual life of our superior soul when nous acts upon us. 12 The following lines continue the mirror-analogy to the effect that regardless of the state of the mirror, the source of the image would still exist (10-12). The analogy is then explicitly applied to the soul: 'In the same way as regards the soul when that kind of thing in us, in which the images of reasoning and

intellect are reflected, is undisturbed, these (i.e. images) are seen and as it were sensibly known, together with the prior knowledge that intellect and reasoning are active' (12-16).

The part of our soul that receives, i.e. apprehends, the images of nous cannot be the higher soul because, as we observed above, the higher soul exists prior not only to sense perception but even to apprehension.13 More- over, as we have also seen, the higher soul is intellectual activity and thus with nous which it attends a source of the images in the mirror; it cannot accordingly be both the mirror and the source of the reflections in the

mirror. On the other hand, it is not the lower soul that is aware of noetic images since it is occupied with the sense impressions on the living being

(see n. 9, above). Our aporia then concerns the locus of apprehension, that part of ourselves which seems to be identified with neither the higher nor

the lower soul, but 'in which the images of reasoning and intellect are

reflected' (d, 4t(paLvFtaL Tla tfg 6LtavoLag xaL toiV vovu Fxovo,aRavra, 13f.).

" Plotinus has recourse to Parmenides, DK 28B3, which he understands as supporting his own equation of nous and being (in the second hypostasis). Some scholars have concurred with Plotinus' interpretation, while others understand Parmenides to mean

that only existing things can be objects of thought; see D. Gallop, Parmenides of Elea (Toronto 1984), p. 8 and notes 22 & 23, p. 57, cf. A.H. Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides (Assen/Maastricht 1986), p. 181. On Plotinus' use of Parmenides here and elsewhere, see Atkinson, 193 (ad V 1.8,15-18).

12 Cf. I 1.13.5-7: xat A v6iiaL; bt ^ui)v o06TW, 6&L xaL voe4Qa A wvxih xai lw^ XQ(ELtTW v VY6Tq , xCi' 6oav 1vflA vofi, xWL 6Tav voiO iveyfi ELg &. 13 Of course any level of soul is ontologically prior to the exercise of its powers, but Plotinus is saying more in I 4.10 than simply that the soul and nous exist before they are related by apprehension. That which apprehends is part of a self that, it is true, exists before it apprehends (the static self); but it is also subordinate to a higher self of which it can only be aware through apprehension. This subordinate self (viewed dynamically) can

receive modifications (e.g., a peaceful disposition) and has the potential to become truly happy.

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Since a bipartite conception of the soul does not suffice to answer the query

of what in us can apprehend the blissful life of our higher faculties, it is necessary to ascribe to apprehension a median function or place in the soul

similar - but not identical - to that bestowed upon sense perception in the

same text ( "w)r(y? RE', 10.2).'4 Here we may adduce Enn. I 1.11.1-8 with profit: 'When we are children

the principles of the compound (body and lower soul) are active, and only a

few of the principles from above illuminate it. When they (the higher soul and nous) do nothing regarding us, they are active towards the principle above (the One). They are active towards us when they come unto the

middle. What then? Are we not also what is before this?' Plotinus means are we not also what is above the middle part and the answer is of course yes,

but, as he goes on to say, there also has to be an apprehension of the higher activity. Apprehension occurs in the middle part which can in fact be directed both ways: 'For we do not always use what we have, but we do when we order the middle either to the principles above or their opposites, or to as many things as we bring from potency or state to actuality'. 15

14 Throughout the Enneads Plotinus fluctuates between speaking of two and three divisions (or functions) of the soul, and he may resort to even more complex schematiza-

tions (e.g., a fourhold division of a pure thinking soul, opining soul, sensory soul, and generative soul in V 3. [49] 9.28-34); see Wallis, 73f. Neither of the two tripartite models given by Wallis corresponds precisely to the one proposed here. (Cf. also the threefold dimension of the soul vis-A-vis 1) nous, 2) itself, i.e. the domain of imagination, memory, understanding, will, and 3) nature in the - apparently now rather neglected - work of Richter, 61ff. [repr. 417ff.1). These fluctuations warn us against assuming canonical divisions of the soul in Plotinus. It should further be clear by now that our discussion is not concerned with the Platonic schema of a rational, spirited, and appetitive part of the soul, which Plotinus on occasion incorporates, but rather with Plotinus' version of an Aristotelian division of faculties (see Blumenthal, 21). Of course, for Plotinus the soul is fundamentally one and undifferentiated; commentators are fond of calling it a conti-

nuum (especially on the strength of V 2.2.26-9); cf. E.R. Dodds in Entretiens V, Les sources de Plotin (Fondation Hardt, Geneva 1960) 385 (quoted in n. 24, below), Blu- menthal, 26, 66, n. 48.

15 raL&ov bE 6vUwV FVEQYE V T'a tX TX0 t OVOm tou, 6XMya bt MdElL3EL ?x Txv Wvw dt5 aMTo 6Tav a' &QYn EL(3 f , tVEQYEL nQ6g T6 rVw- dq hFs 6i NFy((e', &Eav RkXQL TOO vou fhxln. TL oiv; o?X lj.LEg xaaL 7Q6 TovUou; &X' &rv%TLtv bEZ yEVOOaLOV o y6Q, 6ova (XoQV, tOlJTOL; XQ0LEO0a &Li, dcX 6TaVcT6 x oOV T6tLoV ^ 3 Xi6g T&tVW ( zv 6g T?L tvavTua, ^ 6oa &t6 bovdjrwg ; E ewg Fig MQyeLav tyoiev. The 'we' who orders (t&Wp"v) the middle part and brings (dyojLev) things from potency to actuality is the higher soul which thus functions in a manner corresponding to the world-soul (cf. IV 7.2.20ff., IV 3.7.14-15, IV 4.16.11ff.; the world-soul is called tEQYya1oMkV1 in

VI 7.7.13; thereto see O'Daly, 38f.). With this passage O'Daly, 48, compares V 1. [101 12.5ff., in which the recognition (T6 yvwQLlELV) of the soul's activities at each level depends upon transmission (IAT6boaLt) and apprehension; in turn, apprehension (of

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Plotinus illustrates this double orientation of the soul's middle part in an earlier passage of the same treatise (I 1.7.9-18), in answer to the question

how it is 'we' who perceive when aisthesis actually belongs to the living being, the ovvaRLp6tEQov. Besides the fact that we are not entirely free from the living being, Plotinus observes 'the soul's power of sense percep-

tion need not be of sense objects, but rather it must be an apprehensive

(&vTLX1qnrxL 'v) power of the impressions occurring to the living being from sensation; these (impressions) are already intelligibles. So extemal sense perception is a likeness of this (apprehensive power), but it (the soul itself), being in its essence truer, is unaffectedly a contemplation of the forms alone. From these forms then, from which the soul now receives

alone its hegemony over the living being, come reasonings and opinions and intellections. It is at this point where we are most of all. What comes before"6 these is ours; we, having authority over the living being, are from this point upwards.'17

External sense perception in this passage refers to the experience of the

lower soul in its compounded state with the body, in short, the living being; the lower soul experiences the affections to the body that come to it from an external source (the sense objects). But the lower soul itself does not have

the proper cognitive faculty to interpret its sense experience without the

the activities of the three hypostases) only becomes actualized when the apprehensive part is made 'to turn inwards'. This is another way of expressing how 'we order the middle part to the principles above', whereby we bring what we are potentially into actuality. As Becker, 23, succintly put it, 'Der Weg des Aufstiegs ffihrt ins Innere .. .'. On Et9 16 rE'lAw tnauQ&petv, see besides Becker, 23f., Kristeller, 19; Atkinson, 248f.; see also n. 33, below.

'before' (nQ6) in this instance has the meaning of 'below'; see Armstrong's note ad loc. 17 drv& 'gV iu xflao aOOdvEOOaL bi,vatuv or ItGv aLoOiT6)VEtvaL &EL, T'cdv -rf aloOiawg (tyyvo>vwv -to t(q TUnov &TV17tTLxlV etvat pt&ov- voqt?& Y&Q ^6iy rai)tcr .wb ?v aro?loLv ?v Iw edbuwov dvaL avi'Mg, ixe?vrv i &Xt0Eotiav

0tf oita,a otoav e.&iv ptvwv &na06i; etvaL OEwQCav. &3? bh ToiiVrwV -tv E6G)V, &q' 6v puXh 4byj naQabfxE?at pq6Av riov toOo fjyeItovciav, t6votat bh xat b86at xaL vofoaug NvOa 6i fIaEj P5LtXLOa. tr'xi nQ6 TOiTwv hftTEQa, hl4Lg bh r6 l vEucOOV &vw 9xpsovix6te;'uj- 14xp.

On this passage, see further, Emilsson, 114-117. While I concur with Emilsson (116) that Av . . . toO a;O0dvEoOaL &valAuv is a power of apprehension that 'belongs to the soul without any involvement of the body' in contrast to the kind of sense perception proper to the body (contra Blumenthal, 71-2, who distinguishes here between conscious perception, meaning regular sense perception, and mere sensation), I maintain the translation 'sense perception' (instead of 'perception', as Emilsson in this passage), purely for the sake of consistency. As Emilsson himself points out, aco&qoL; and

aWO6vEOaL have meanings that range from sense perception to various kinds of mental apprehension (116, see also 8f.).

2




power of apprehension being operative."8 At this juncture the middle soul

exercises its double function: looking below it registers the impressions on the living being; it apprehends these as intelligibles (vorla') by looking above itself, where the higher soul is in contemplation of the forms, and it is the forms which make phenomena, including sense impressions, intelligible as such.19 From the forms come our reasonings, opinions, and processes of thought 20

Now admittedly Plotinus makes no explicit mention here of a middle part, only of lower faculties under the hegemony of the higher soul. The definition of us (ii, E't, i.e. the true 'we'), 'from this point upwards', begins

with the activities of bLavoLtu, 866at, and vooELg.21 But below this level 18 In III 6. [26] 3 Plotinus says sense perception knows (tyvw, 22) certain affections, though he does not base his explanation on antilepsis. One reason for this omission may stem from the particular orientation of this treatise: Plotinus' aim here is to demonstrate the impassibility of the soul and its freedom from bodily and emotional affections, while in Enn. I 1 his concern is to explain the relation of the self to its various faculties, powers, and principles (e.g., to sense perception in 1.7, to intellect and God in 1.8); cf. Blumen- thal, 'Plotinus' Adaptation of Aristotle's Psychology' in Harris, 46. In IV 4. [281 19, allthough Plotinus here again speaks of sense perception's knowledge of pain without mention of antilepsis, he does introduce apprehension further on when he turns to the

perception of sense objects (4.23). For Plotinus' treatment of the affections in III 6 and IV 4, see Blumenthal, 45-66 and now also Emilsson, 67-93, who discusses the affections under the aspect of sensory assimilation.

19 Cf. Wagner, 41: 'Our sense impressions "tell" us nothing about the objects of our perceptions. To discover anything about the objects of our perceptions we must reflect on our discernments of them; but our discernments are images of intelligibles, and so when we become aware of the contents of our discernments we are in fact becoming aware of images of intelligibles . . .' It is Wagner's thesis that intelligibles and perceptibles are not separate entities at all, but only to be distinguished as objects of different modes of apprehension. He takes Enn. 1 1.7 (ibid. 36f.) to show that sense objects are perceptibles only accidentally, since they are in a truer sense already intelligibles, and

that as a result of their being identified with the external causes of our sense impressions, our sense impressions too may be (dis-)regarded 'as wholly accidental and fortuitous bases for our conceptual activities' (36). 2 Plotinus in the next section states that we possess the forms themselves in two ways: 'in the soul, unfolded, so to speak, and separated (otov EVELXLyRVa. . . xai XEX oQO- va), in nous, all together (6o&oi) T'a nr6va)', I 1.8.6-8. On the role of the forms in perception see Emilsson, 71f. and 133ff.; Emilsson (136ff.) proposes the view that the separated forms for Plotinus account for propositional thinking in the embodied soul as opposed to 'the intuitive grasp of the interconnections between notions' in nous, where the forms, as we noted, are all together. An incidental point to add here is that by making our apprehension of sense impressions dependent upon the forms, Plotinus insures our

knowledge of those impressions, in response to the Sceptics' doubt of how accurately our impressions reflect the external objects that caused them (cf. also V 5.1-2; Wallis, 26). 21 In I 1.9.18-20, Plotinus explains that our reasoning (&6uvoLa) renders judgement on

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we cannot immediately posit the lower (sensitive) soul compounded with the body. Without forcing categories upon Plotinus, we still have to maintain a middle domain of the soul where antilepsis exercises its pivotal function. Aisthesis is its lower likeness (Eb6wXov), while above it the higher soul engages in intellection.22

If one fails to posit a middle region of the soul for apprehension, one will be led to say that it is our 'true selves' who perceive or apprehend.23 Although this may not ostensibly contradict the present passage, it hardly

seems reconcilable with our original passage, I 4.10.4-5, in which the higher soul exists before apprehension. The problem ultimately stems from Ploti-

nus' own fluid treatment of the self, which is reflected in his double use of

hRFutst to denote our true, transcendent self as well as our embodied self (cf, e.g., I 1.10.5f., II 1.5.18-21).24 In regard to I 1.7.9-18 (quoted above,

the impressions arising from sensation, yet all the while reasoning contemplates the forms and does so by a kind of self-perception (olov ovvaLo0icoeL). To leave no doubt that he is referring to the higher part of the soul, he adds that this contemplative reason

properly belongs to the true soul (tt~v yF x-oQL'w) tiS Vuxi5'g 65 -q06oi &dvolav, 20-21). Cf. V 3.3.35f.; O'Daly, 45, 47, Blumenthal, 1 10f. The inclusion of 866aL in I 1.7 as part of the higher self is somewhat odd, but in V 3.9.29f. opinion comes directly after the pure thinking soul and has at least a higher function than sensation and generation.

There is also a kind of opinion that belongs to a mental image in the soul in contrast to a derivative quasi-opinion that belongs to an 'uncriticized image' (&v&rLxQLTog qxavTaoLa) (III 6.4.19ff.). Generally, though, opinion closely attends sense perception (e.g., VI 9.3.31). In III 6.2.54, opinions are likened to acts of vision, apparently as part of an argument 'aimed at showing that the soul is not altered by having opinions' (Emilsson,

132). Blumenthal lists opinion as a faculty of the sensitive soul (43, cf. 53f.). On A[tE;, see also notes 24 and 28, below.

' Plotinus generally uses Ebwokov as well as ELxbv (or Erx'6vLo(ja, which only occurs at 1.4.10.14) to designate an image of something prior in the ontological hierarchy (cf. Emilsson, 119); so here apprehension is prior to aisthesis, in I 4.10.11 thought is prior to its image in the apprehensive soul, and in V 3.4.21 Intellect is prior to the (higher) soul

which is called e6xo'w voi. On the two-fold orientation of apprehension towards sensibles and intelligibles, cf. also IV 8.8 and Warren, 84-88 passim. 3 So Blumenthal, 72 (sim. O'Daly, 47f.), but also see n. 24, below. 24 Blumenthal, 109-111, is acutely aware of the these fluctuations in Plotinus (cf., by the

same, Gnomon 50 [1978] 408). Regarding the identity of the self (Attet@) he suggests that the 'we' be understood 'as the focus of conscious activity that can shift as such activity shifts' and quotes Dodds, Entretiens V 385f.: 'Soul is a continuum extending from the

summit of the individual V-ox ' whose activity is perpetual intellection, through the normal empirical self right down to the EtwAov, the faint psychic trace in the organism; but the ego is a fluctuating spotlight of consciousness' (110 and n. 25). This view of the ego has virtually become the opinio communis. Cf. Smith, 293: 'It is important . . . to

distinguish the higher self ... and the empirical self from a vague "we", a sort of floating ego, which determines the particular level of being which we may choose to dominate in

2 3




n. 17), a compromise may be reached by allowing a distinction between

EvOa and tvTiEOev: 'we' are here in the realm of our higher, reasoning selves, which state, however, begins from the (pivotal) point of apprehension upwards - &TrEIUOEv 'avw. Thus if one hesitates to be so specific as to assign apprehension to the middle soul, it would be acceptable to understand antilepsis as the point or line of demarcation between our higher and lower self (and in any case the dividing line is only approximate, cf. 19f., T6 &i &TEI3OEv 6 avOQonOg ; &Xrji r aXe60v).25

To return to Ennead I 4.10, we may continue our observations in light of the passages examined in the interim. The mirror, that which reflects ra

Tl &bavoiag xaot Toi vov ?Nxovoia[tTa, is our middle soul. The images of reasoning and nous are seen and known in the middle soul 'in a way parallel to sense-perception' (Armstrong's translation).26 The parallelism may be explained in that apprehension functions as a link between sense perception and the soul's intellectual activity, while aisthesis, itself a lower ?,bwXov of antilepsis, correspondingly occupies a median role between external sense

impressions on the body and the higher faculty that apprehends these (apprehension complementing sense perception by translating its impressions into intelligibles)." Along with images of reasoning and nous, the

our lives.' See also Emilsson, 28f., cf. Warren, 92, Atkinson, 246f.

2 Insofar as apprehension is also the domain of imagination (qpavtaczoa - thereto, see below, n. 31), it is pertinent to note Smith's comment, 301, n. 18: '. . . it is not surprising that qpavtCiaLa (whether connected explicitly with btLvoLa or not) is sometimes seen as the central pivot of the individual and that the human being splits in the middle of this

faculty (cf. Blumenthal ibid. [Plotinus' Psychology] 99 n. 27 . . .'. In IV 7. [2] 6.11-15 Plotinus likens the apprehensive part of the soul to the single center of a circle at which the different perceptions converge just as lines drawn from the circumference of a circle

(on the larger context here - the unity of perception based upon an incorporeal soul - see Emilsson, 101ff.). While this early treatise rests on an overall dualistic conception of

body and soul, in which the one part, i.e. soul, is 'the ruling part and the man himself (t6 6 xuQLwdTaxov xaL al ;6g66vOQwnog, 1.22-3) or simply 'the self' (^ tvU aatT6, 1.24-5), the equation of the antileptic faculty with a central part of man already foretokens a more

complex structure of the soul in its relation both to body and higher intellect. Cf. O'Daly,

21, 29, 30. Even the simple statement, 'in either way the soul is the self' (1.24-5), just

referred to, brings us 'au probl6me de l'aWt6g et de I'Ataig (P. Henry in Entretiens V [n. 14, above] 435); on this problem, see n. 28, below.

26 Armstrong translates voQ&dTaL and yLvdW'oETaL in line 15 as 'we see and know them'. But since this level of our soul is not where 'we' in the true sense are to be found, there may even be a hint of this absence in the impersonal verbs. On the other hand, given Plotinus' loose usage of the first person plural elsewhere (cf. n. 28, below), I would not

want to press the point. ' Thus apprehension belongs to the definition of sense perception in IV 7.8.24: T6

a a06veo6aa IATL T6 OW7LQt Xr(0o0XQwvtRv Av ivXuv &vtLXaR06LvFos0aL -tv

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middle soul receives the knowledge, from an ontologically prior state

(hence 3oQoThQag yvwo;xs), that nous and reason are active.

I I

What we have identified as the middle soul in Enn. I 4.10 is nothing other than our ordinary consciousness, part of the historical, individual self - in modern parlance, the 'person'.8 A resident between the intelligible and the sensible,29 the middle soul has an amphibious life, living both the life 'there' and the life 'here' (IV 8.4.31-33). Considering then that the middle soul has the capacity to receive the knowledge of the activities of intellect, this means that on the level of our ordinary consciousness30 we can know something of our true happiness operating on a higher level. The appended proviso to our original passage (I 4.10) is that the 'mirror' remain calm, 'for when it is shattered because the harmony of the body is disturbed, reason-

ing and nous think without an image and intellection is then without a representation ((pavtaoLa)'.A' Turmoils arising from the body naturally

aczaO,l6v. See Blumenthal, 70. In IV 4.23 the role of apprehension in sense perception allows the soul to apprehend the quality attaching to bodies (Plotinus goes on to develop sensory affection as an assimilation of the sense organ to the quality of the perceived object; on the details of this process, see Emilsson, 67ff.). ' See chapter 2, 'The Self and the Soul' in O'Daly, to which we have made numerous references already. If O'Daly, after admirably elucidating the various stages of the self within Plotinus' ontological hierarchy (of the three hypostases), nonetheless may be said

to have failed to define the Plotinian self as such and in toto (cf. J.P. Schiller, JHPh 15 [1977] 466f.), the fault, so to speak, may lie with Plotinus. As Blumenthal points out (Gnomon 50 [1978] 408), Plotinus' 'very inconsistent use of philosophical language', as in

his (fluid) usages of tRetZ and aru`6g, is a fair indication that he did not 'set himself the philosophical task of formally defining the self .' Cf. O'Daly's own reservations con-

cerning a Plotinian 'single, all-embracing formula' or 'concept' of the 'self (48, 89f.). Rist, 100, in speaking of the self prefers to use Plotinus' terms of the 'outer' man to identify the 'we', and the 'inner' man for the upper soul; this differentiation disappears in the perfected self, when we identify with the upper soul. But cf. n. 36, below. 2 Cf. Richter, 77 (repr. 433): 'Wir sind der mittlere Theil der Seele zwischen zwei Extremen: der reinen Sinnlichkeit und dem reinen Denken.' See further, O'Daly, 30f., 40ff. As a recipient both of sense-perceptions and noetic images, the middle soul is often

termed the empirical self by modern scholars (cf. Smith, 293). On the relation of the empirical self to empirical consciousness ('das empirische BewuBtsein' in Kristeller, 14f. and passim), see O'Daly, 49. On the middle soul as the seat of the imagination, cf. below, n. 31. 3 'Antileptic activity is the center of normal human activity' so Warren, 88.

31 )oyXXQa8atog 6T toutou bLta A V ot owi a-crog TaQacrolit-Mv &ic&ovL'av &veu

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with it (GrvFcpEXX15oaGOaL T6 giaov). In these circumstances in which the mirror of our soul is shattered or possibly not even present (as when it is dragged down with our inferior soul), the principles of our superior soul and nous nonetheless continue to be active, but we no longer find a reflection of their activity in us.33 As Plotinus says elsewhere, 'we always think, but we do

3 This may have to do with our lack of will at this level. Cf. Smith, 295: 'What prompted him to add the idea of the mirror's absence may have been the consideration that

pavraaoa might not be operating together with the will in such a way as to secure a perception (as opposed to a sensation).' Smith (298) draws an example from IV 4.8 where Plotinus observes that the sensation of our parting the air when we move may enter our imaginative faculty (and hence our memory), but since the sensation is

incidental and stirred up involuntarily (d&JQoaLQ#uow, 10), it is imperfectly retained and we only have a quasi-consciousness of it (cf. Blumenthal, 98). But perhaps more pertinent as an illustration of the inter-relationship of will, imagination, and apprehension in regard to eudaimonia is 1 4.11. Here Plotinus plainly states that the good man's

happiness has to do with his turning his will (POVAIX1oL) inwards (16-17). This inward- turning, as noted above (n. 15), is the prerequisite for apprehending the activities of Intellect. Thus insofar as both antilepsis and boulesis are to be turned inward, it appears that for our imaginative faculty to be able to grasp images of our true happiness (such intimations may be said to serve as an impetus for the ascent to the perfect life), our will

has to be properly directed. After all, as Plotinus declares earlier, the happy life must be a

desideratum (6bi bi ouiXIi6V T6v riV8aL4ova I3LOV rtvat, I 4.5.8-9). If, on the other hand, it is our will to be involved with externals, there is no 'mirror' in which noetic images can be reflected (in that the mirror is deliberately turned away), and therefore intellectual activity goes on dvEv q)avTaoia; (I 4.10.19). Rist (Plotinus [n. 5, above] 148-9) characterizes the will in I 4 in part as 'a force which engenders happiness and is outside the control of the conscious personality'. Although, as Rist correctly goes on to say (ibid. 149), will may ultimately be associated with the first cause of everything, the One, it is difficult to reconcile the view of the will as lying outside our conscious control with our interpretation that it is 'we' in our ordinary, middling state of consciousness who bear the responsibility for directing our will to its proper object. This would be supported

by VI 8. [39] 3 where Plotinus describes a negative type of cpavtaoLa that arises from bodily affections and is not within our power, but Plotinus is emphatic that we are nonetheless free to act according to nous and not according to inferior imaginations. Therefore while some imaginations may be involuntary, freedom of action, 'what is

within our power' (T6 6xp' f tRv), is not dependent upon these but upon our will (3ou'Xii- OLg). Rist's discussion, it is only fair to add, involves other factors as well to which we cannot do full justice here. (See also Rist's later essay, 'Plotinus and Moral Obligation' in Harris, 217-233, which does much to clarify our role as free agents showing that moral obligation is meaningful only when applied to us at a level where we are not entirely free, or, as Rist says in Human Value, 108f., the soul's direction to the intelligible world depends on an act of will that 'is not entirely possible for man's empirical self'. On the same topic, see Kristeller, 78-89, who distinguishes between the 'actual freedom' of our metaphysical consciousness, i.e. our higher self, and the 'freedom of choice' of our empirical consciousness, i.e. our ordinary self and actions; the latter is the arena of 'sittliches Handeln' and corresponds exactly to what Rist calls our 'everyday moral

217




not always apprehend' (xa't vooiRv ?iEV &E, &vTLXQagav6fE0a 6 OVX &et, IV 3.30.14-15), which in the present context means we do not always apprehend our happiness.

If we wish to apprehend our happiness, we must guard the life of our soul

here against bodily and psychic disturbances.' In a passage referred to earlier (V 1.12.13-15, see n. 15, above), Plotinus exhorts us to turn our apprehensive faculty inwards and make it keep its attention there (NE). This inward-turning involves a process of purification: 'so also here (ivtcau-

Oa) it is necessary to let the sounds of sense go . . . and keep the power to apprehend pure and ready to hear the voices from above' (V 1.12.17-21).35

This part of us, however, which must purify its apprehensive power or

lose apprehension of happiness altogether is not our true self. As we observed at the beginning of this paper, we are 'the actuality of intellect'.

The activities of our life 'there' may or may not be reflected in us 'here',

depending upon the state of our middle soul, but even if they are not, the

behaviour' where we are at best 'semi-free' [in Harris, 223]). For now the observation must suffice that while a doctrine of the will does not seem to be clearly articulated in

Plotinus (cf. Richter, 77f. (repr. 433f.), what he does say on po15kqoL, P1oUAEMOaL etc. still needs to be studied systematically and, as far as possible, comprehensively presen- ted. (On the possible circumstances surrounding the composition of Enn. VI 8, in which

Plotinus examines human will vis-A-vis the will of the One, see Rist, 106ff.). Although this is uncertain terrain, it may yet be excusable in view of the proposed connection of phantasia and the will in Plotinus to recall that Aristotle, De anima 427bl7-18, partially defines the imagination as an 'affection that lies in our power whenever we wish' (in most circumstances, that is, but not for instance in dreaming); thereto, see the helpful discussion by Schofield (n. 31, above), 102, 110, 121-23, 126 f.; but cf. Wedin (n. 31, above) 74ff.

3 It is not so much the life of the body itself but rather the care and concern we bestow upon the body that keeps us from an abiding awareness of our higher self and its true happiness there. Cf. P. Hadot, Plotin ou la simplicitM du regard (Paris 1973) 33: 'Ce qui nous empeche d'avoir conscience de notre vie spirituelle, ce n'est pas notre vie dans le

corps ... mais c'est le souci que nous prenons du corps. La vraie chute de l'ame, c'est celle-l3.'

35 otYW TOL xai tvaiOa &6i T&z >v aLoOia'g dxo5aOEL et ta. . . Tv g t Vu e,; T6 &vTLkaXQP4VEOal 6Ovajuv uvk6?TTELv xa0a(a'v xat hoItwv exo1Urtv p86yywv TOv &vW. Cf. III 6. [26] 5, where purification is largely a matter of not heeding images and their resultant affections and separating the passible soul from any imagination (rpav- raaLa) from below (see further, Blumenthal, 55f.). The schematization of the soul - a higher, impassible soul and a lower, affective soul - is here plainly dualistic. Even so, we may recognize the pivotal self (cf. above, p. 213 and n. 25) in that part which turns from the things below to those above and thus becomes identified with the higher soul that is independent of the body; this is then its purification: eL bC En' 06&eQca Tcza &V) &A6 Tdv x&rw, nuS ov' xOaQQOLg xai XwL)tatO6 ye 7rQ6g T11 tVUX^ 1% IX&L ev aTL ylyvOsVT1g (1)g iXvou E?LvaL .. .; (19-21).

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higher soul remains unaffected and noetic activity continues unabated. So we (there) remain happy even though we (here) no longer apprehend it. The failure to apprehend does not detract a whit from our true bliss. For our

everyday selves in our ordinary states of consciousness this is carrion comfort indeed. But Plotinus does not leave it at that. Although we should

aspire to 'hear the voices from above' even here, our final goal is to transcend the middle soul and its state of variable apprehension altogether,

in order not simply to possess eudaimonia as part of ourselves but, as the

authentically happy man in I 4.4.12-15, actually to be happiness. Thus we have come full circle in our discussion. Plotinus demands nothing less than

the radical divestment of the ordinary self, the 'becoming, as it were, of the

wholly other' (otov dXXo; navTa aOL yEv6[tEvog, I 4.15.13).

Saint Anselm College and Center for Hellenic Studies

3 As we learn from V 3. [49] 4.10-14, only the higher soul is drawn completely into the intellectual realm: 'and by that Intellect he thinks himself again, not any longer as man, but having become altogether other (navEXLAg 6L%ov yev6ytvov) and snatching himself up into the higher world, drawing up only the better part of soul, which alone is able to be winged for intellection . . .' (Armstrong's translation). This is in effect a return to our original, unfallen selves, prior to our entering the realm of coming-to-be in time: 'there we were other men . . . pure souls and intellect joined to Being as a whole' (bxrt

SVoLQwoL &XXot 6v-re; ... VuXaL xaOacQat xat voO; ouviqtzvog tfl cunao oviv, VI 4. [221 14.18-20). See Blumenthal, 111; R. Bodeuis, 'L' autre homme de Plotin', Phronesis 38 (1983) 256-59 (curiously Bodeus does not cite V 3.4 to bolster his argument). I may add that this radical otherness which Plotinus calls for does not seem, in my estimation, to allow for the interpretation of an 'integrated personality' as developed by Rist, 100ff. Certainly, for Plotinus the perfected self is no longer a heterogeneity of inner self and outer self, but not because all levels of self and the activities at each level have been completed and consciously integrated at the highest level of man; on the contrary, the outer man and his concerns have been consciously and willingly put off and left behind, effecting the becoming, not of an integrated personality, but of the 'wholly other man'. Plotinus' prescription for happiness is not integration, but separation.

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Antilepsis and the Middle Soul in Plotinus

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