Neoplatonism in 5×5×5 Words

[sdi]

Every thing pursues that which is good to it. This means that each thing's good must exist prior to the thing itself, since otherwise it could not depend on it. From this basic principle, we extrapolate various levels of being based on what lives there and what qualities they possess:

• The World of Matter: Humans lack contentment, and so pursue it.
• The World of Imagination: Daimons are inherently content, but not self-sufficient, and so pursue self-sufficiency.
• The World of Soul: Angels are inherently self-sufficient, but are bounded by their respective natures, and so pursue unboundedness.
• The World of Spirit: God is unbounded, but not universal, and so pursues universality.
• The All: Goodness is universal. Being universal, it has no pursuits, and so the process terminates.

Comments

[sdi]

125 words isn't very many, so here are some explanatory footnotes:

Everything that exists at a given level has a counterpart in a higher level. (That is, humans have an angelic part; humans and angels have a soul; humans, angels, and souls all exist in Spirit, hence we say "all is one;" and all things are good.)

By "contentment," I mean not continually needing external input to maintain one's existence. (E.g. humans have needs to meet in order to survive, angels do not.)

"Imagination" is the level above matter because you need to imagine something before you can make it. (The Neoplatonists consider this true of all things, not only things made by human craft.)

By "self-sufficient," I mean not depending upon some other existent to exist. (E.g. angels have composite natures and depend on the gods for their existence, while the gods have primal natures, not dependent upon any others.)

When I say Spirit is unbounded, I mean that it's effectively infinite: it continually conceives all things that are conceivable.

The reason Good is universal is because of our axiom: every thing pursues that which is good to it. This is a universal axiom—it discusses all things that exist—and so the principle of universality must be the Good. Since the Good is universal, it lacks nothing, and so it can pursue nothing.

[k_a_nitz]

So contentment is sort of an immortality?

[sdi]

Hm! I think that they would say that it's a method of attainment, or a key, to immortality rather than the immortality, itself—a human's angelic part is always at least potentially immortal, but it needs to realize its essential contentment through the body's practice of material contentment. (Neoplatonists disagree on the best way to get there—some favored contemplation, some favored magical practices, and to these I would add devotion as a viable path.)

[sdi]

Another footnote: it's worth noting that most Neoplatonic authors lump the first two worlds I mentioned (matter and imagination) together into a single world (the "natural," which is subject to time—even if immortality exists in it, the immortal things are immortal because they live forever, not because that are atemporal, like souls are). I separate them because I think it's important to note how one ascends the chain: by developing the capacity of the next level up.

Hence Porphyry calls the virtues of the material world, the "civic virtues;" the virtues of the imaginative world, the "purificatory virtues;" the virtues of the psychic world, the "contemplative virtues;" and the virtues of the Spirit itself the "paradigmatic virtues" (as it is the pattern for all others). (Goodness doesn't have virtue since it doesn't have distinctions at all.)

[sdi]

I have modified the original post to use terminology that I now favor: the world of Earth contains humans, the world of Water contains daimons (previously I wrote "angels"), the world of Air contains angels (previously I wrote "gods"), the world of Fire is God (previously I wrote "Spirit"), and the Good is beyond everything.