Jul. 30th, 2023

sdi: Oil painting of the Heliconian Muse whispering inspiration to Hesiod. (Default)

Yes, to Plotinus, souls are Forms.

Re-reading Enneads I i, the only way that the soul can be a unitary thing of itself—not a thing of parts, and unaffected by the clamoring of the body—is that it is an Idea residing in the Intellect with its own peculiar mode of action, separable from the body's action. Plotinus thus states that the nature of the soul itself (which he calls the "higher soul") is reason; the nature of the body is sensation; and the nature of the "lower soul" (which I have called, in my summaries, the "spirit" connecting soul to body—the thing we normally call our "mind" in English) is the juxtaposition of reason and perception, the ability to think and form opinions and feel. This "lower soul" bridges the divide between the eternal soul proper and the sensible body and is what can sin and make errors, and is why, to Plotinus, the soul itself remains divine and beautiful and untainted by the body.

He even states that our soul possesses Forms in two ways: it possesses those Forms that inherently compose it (what I have called gods and analogized as the prime numbers), and it also possesses all Forms via its participation in the Intellect (hence "all things are in all, but each in a manner consonant with the essence of each"), which is a nice little confirmation of what I had been pondering.

Alas, I couldn't find a quick-and-easy pull-quote here. But after re-reading the essay, I'm confident of it, since his reasoning requires it.

(Also, I can tentatively recommend A. H. Armstrong's translation of the Enneads. It's better in some ways and worse in some ways than MacKenna's, but it's consistent and clear so far.)

June 2025

S M T W T F S
123 4567
8 91011121314
151617 18192021
22232425 262728
29 30     

Page Summary