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.

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[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.)