Enneads I 3: On Dialectic [The Upward Way]

Plotinus is great, but tricky: I would never have gotten this far without having gone deeply through Sallustius first. Thanks again, boccaderlupo and temporaryreality, for encouraging me to dig deeply into him!

I 3: On Dialectic [The Upward Way]

There are two stages in the journey to the Divine: first, one must cross the threshold from the realm of lower life to the realm of the higher; and second, one must traverse the realm of the higher to its topmost peak. We will set aside the second stage for now and focus on the first.

The tools one uses depend on one's temperament, but in all cases the process is the same: one begins by pursuit of the physical; with training, one continues by pursuit of the abstract; finally, one eventually masters these and comes to the pursuit of the True. (For example, one might proceed from the love of people, to the love of ideals, and finally to Love itself; or one might proceed from practical thought, to abstract thought, and finally to Thought itself.)

The step from the abstract to the True involves Dialectic, which is the method of determining the nature of things and how they relate to one another. It is the essential tool of philosophy, just as arithmetic is the essential tool of engineering. But it is more than mere logic: logic deals only with rules, but Dialectic brings to bear all the faculties of the philosopher (e.g. lived experience, analogy). It works by examining particulars, determining what is common to them, and thereby resolving them into Unity; then it considers how Unity may resolve back into particulars, thereby coming full circle.

The use of Dialectic exercises the virtue of Wisdom. We call Wisdom a higher virtue since its use naturally causes the ripening of all other virtues.

Following On the Gods and the World X, it seems reasonable to describe three broad paths of ascent: the way of Desire (e.g. what Plotinus describes as the ἐρωτικός, "lover"), the way of Reason (e.g. what Plotinus describes as the φιλόσοφος, "philosopher"), and the way of Fight (which Plotinus describes as the μουσικός, "accomplished person"). These are highly reminiscent to me of the three yogas of the Bhagavad Gita and of the three goddesses contending for the apple. I should think, then, that the "higher virtues" are Temperance for a lover, Wisdom for a sage, and Courage for a man of accomplishment.

One thing I have personally been wondering about is how people in Magic Mondays often describe the experience of the Watcher on the Threshold, which is something I've never experienced. But put in these terms, it makes sense: the Watcher is a test of Courage, and since I don't follow an operative path, why should my tests come from that direction?

An Omen

It's after work, and my wife and daughter are out at a play-date, so I figure I might as well take a crack at the next tractate of the Enneads. I'm tired from work, and maybe it'd be better if I just rested instead, but...

So I go out to the hammock in the backyard and lie down, open the Enneads to I 4, and start reading, and I get maybe a couple sentences in when—plop!—a bird swoops over and poops right on the page I'm reading.

Okay, okay, I'll go find something fun to do.