Plotinus and Neoplatonism

Historical Origin

Alexandria Egypt 3rd century CE

Roman philosopher Plotinus 204 – 270 CE

Synthesis of the tradition of Greek philosophical inquiry, especially Plato’s metaphysics

Iamblichus and Porphyry succeeded Plotinus and transmitted Plotinus’ neoplatonist system to

subsequent generations. Porphyry edited Plotinus’ writings into six books called the Enneads.

Two Main Theses of Neoplatonism

Absolute Transcendence

The One

Emanationism

The Many

God is the One Beyond Being

Finitely BoundCharacter of

Being

Unity of God

Via Negativa

“Being” is derived from and applies to things of sense experience: the realm of finite, individual, changing things. God is necessarily above the finite things of sense experience and so must be above being.

Since multiplicity is a feature of finite things, God must be one. God is the One, since God is not a single or individual thing, nor can God be divided into parts.

Nothing can be positively predicated of God since this would entail multiplicity (substance and properties). We can only deny of God things that are true of finite things. Immaterial = not material; one = not many; eternal = not temporal, etc.

Emanationism

God’s transcendence implies that God cannot be part of the universe. Pantheism is rejected.

God cannot freely create the universe through an act of will. Theistic creationism is rejected.

If God is part of the universe or freely creates the universe, then God undergoes change.

Why does Plotinus reject these options?

Plotinus’ Third Option

The universe proceeds from God by necessity and by a chain of various intermediaries.

The Metaphysical Principle

It is necessary that the less perfect proceed from the more perfect.

Nous (Mind)

World Soul

Individual Souls

Physical Universe

The One

Nous has the One and itself as the object of immediate apprehension. Nous contains the Forms.

The World Soul is the link between Nous and the sensible world.

Individual Souls

Physical Universe

The One

Sun Analogy

. As the rays of the sun co-exist with the sun but emanate necessarily from it, so also the cosmos co-exists with the One but emanates necessarily

from it.

The cosmos must be eternal. Order never comes into existence. It has always existed.

The cosmos is eternally dependent on the One via the ontological intermediaries.

As the rays of the sun get further away from their source, the sun, they

lose their brilliance.

Eventually, the rays fade into darkness.

As intermediaries get further away from the One they become more

imperfect.

Evil is the absence of the good, an imperfection in things.

Purpose of Plotinus’ Emanationist Scheme

To explain the existence of the cosmos, the physical universe characterized by plurality and change, without involving God – the One – in

any kind of plurality and change

That which ultimately explains something x must not itself raise the same causal questions. The explaining

principle must be distinct from and beyond the features it tries to explain.

From Neoplatonism to Christian Philosophy

Dionysius (6th century)Origen (2nd-3rd Century)Clement of Alexandria (2nd-3rd Century)

Early Christian Neo-Platonist, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, prolific author, and foundational thinker for western Christendom.

Converted to Christianity under the influence of neo-platonism after a decade as a Manichean, a gnostic religion competing with Christianity and which tried synthesizing elements of ancient Persian religion, eastern thought, and Christianity.

Augustine’s account of his journey to the Christian faith is in his Confessions (circa 397).

Saint Aurelius Augustine (354-430)

• Aims to show that the Christian revelation is superior to Greco-Roman philosophy.

• Achieves a creative synthesis of Christian doctrine and Greco-Roman Thought.

• Formulates a theology (doctrine of God) based on the Bible and neoplatonist philosophy.

• Augustine “personalizes” Plotinus’s One.

Characterizing Augustine’s Christian Philosophy

• Based on the Bible, St. Augustine affirms the personal nature of God. God is a self-aware being with intentions, will, knowledge, and who freely creates the world ex nihilo (out of nothing) and providentially guides it.

• Humans can enter into a personal relationship with God.

Personal Nature of God

The Attributes of God

Augustine affirms that God is . . .

immaterial

all powerful (omnipotent)

all-knowing (omniscient)

all-good (omnibenevolent)

everywhere present (omnipresent)

unchanging (immutable)

Augustine’s Conception of Divine Transcendence

Augustine draws on neoplatonism to form a

strong doctrine of divine transcendence, which strongly affirms the otherness of God in

relation to the created order.

• God is immutable in the strong sense: nothing about God ever changes.

• God is timeless. God lacks all temporal location and extension. The divine mind is not subject to past-present-future. Hence, there is no succession of thoughts in God’s mind.

• God has exhaustive foreknowledge of everything future to creatures as an immutable knowledge of what is timelessly present to God.

Metaphysics of Creation

• Augustine takes the view that creation involves the creation of the universe (matter, space, and time) out of nothing.

• God creates the universe according to divine ideas, patterns of perfection eternally existing within the divine mind. Cf. Plato’s Timaeus.

• Creation is therefore a mirror that reflects the being of God, which allows us to see, experience, or infer God from the world.

Creation and Time

• Since time came into existence with the universe, there was no time before creation. God’s being the creator therefore requires that God exists outside time.

• It makes no sense to ask what was God doing before God created the universe. (Book 11 of Augustine’s Confessions)

The One: Plotinus vs. Augustine

• Like Plotinus’s One, Augustine’s One is absolutely immutable and timeless. Radical creator/creature distinction.

• However, unlike Plotinus’s One, Augustine’s One is a personal being (with attributes) who wills the universe into existence and has exhaustive knowledge of the world.

Potential Theological Problems

• Augustine’s God chooses to create the universe, but can an immutable and timeless being choose to create anything?

• Augustine’s God knows the world of time and change, but can an unchanging, timeless God know a changing, mutable world?

• Augustine’s God ostensibly interacts with the world, but how can a timeless, immutable being interact with the world?

Augustine’s dilemma seems to be his personalizing of Plotinus’s One.

While Plotinus’s metaphysics sanctions a very strong doctrine of transcendence, it

seems ill-equipped to handle the immanent features of God in Augustine’s biblically based idea of God as a personal being,

interacting with the world.

The Origins Paradox

How can we posit anything as the ultimate explanation of the world?

Unless there is some resemblance between God and the world, God can’t

explain the world.

Unless God is fundamentally unlike the world, God won’t provide an ultimate

explanation.