Enneads I ii: On Virtue (Revised)

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that, while Plotinus spends a lot of time refining his metaphysics, it's all in the service of the question, "So what should we actually do about it?" I think he lays it all out very clearly and concisely in this particular essay. I may fault Porphyry, on the other hand, for putting it so early in the collection: he arranged by difficulty, and indeed this essay is, indeed, easy to understand in isolation, but the problem is that one needs to understand all of the complicated and difficult metaphysics first. Since I hadn't gotten there last time I read this essay, my original summary is a big, fat mess and I decided to rewrite the whole thing.

I ii: On Virtue [Revision of my original summary.]

Plato tells us [Theaetetus 176A–B], "we ought to try to escape from earth to the dwelling of the gods as quickly as we can; and to escape is to become like God, so far as this is possible; and to become like God is to become righteous and holy and wise," and, in short, to become virtuous. But is God really virtuous? Surely, for example, He can't be courageous, since what is there to frighten Him? Neither can He be temperate, since what can He desire that He doesn't already possess? So if God isn't virtuous, how does becoming virtuous make us like Him?

By way of analogy, consider a fire: if you come near it, you become warm. But a fire doesn't need to come near to some other fire to become warm, because it is intrinsically warm. In the same way, virtue is the process of "coming near" some higher power, but the higher power has no need of "coming near" to itself; rather it intrinsically possesses whatever those virtues attain to. So if we practice the "civic" virtues [Republic IV 427E–434D], we make society more orderly and harmonious, which reflects, in a very small way, the Order and Harmony which God intrinsically possesses.

It is all well to live in an orderly society, but how does one become like God? The "purificatory" virtues for doing so are similar to the civic virtues, but consist of the withdrawal of the soul from the body: instead of being courageous in the face of danger, one ceases to worry over the body; instead of being temperate in one's enjoyment of bodily pleasures, one ceases to regard them; in short, one endeavors, so far as is possible, to submit one's body to reason and never act involuntarily.

These, too, are modeled on the virtues of the soul, which consist of, so far as is possible, in turning itself towards contemplation, since this is what the Intellect intrinsically possesses. And so everything has it's own virtues, all leading up, step-by-step like a ladder, to the Source.

In both my summary and Plotinus' original, "God" refers to the first and greatest soul, the "World Soul," and not "God" in a monotheistic sense. (In the quote of Plato's, I think it merely refers to divinity generally.)

Porphyry's summary of and commentary on this essay is in Sentences XXXIV. (I recommend reading it since he's rather clearer than Plotinus is.) I, myself, summarize it very briefly here.

While re-reading this essay, I had a moment of clarity as to why I have such a problem with the Christianity I was raised with, and Plotinus elegantly and diplomatically sums it up in a mere sentence in §6: "in all this there is no sin—that is only a matter of discipline—but our concern is not merely to be sinless but to be God." I realized, reading this, that the doctrines of sin and Satan and demons and hell and so on are like Christianity's version of the civic virtues: a way of teaching one how to live in the world! But if one is beyond that step, and working on the purificatory virtues, then such things are only a hindrance. The Sufi says, "Citizens of the country of Love have a religion apart from all others, for God alone is their religion." We citizens of that higher Country should, rather than growing frustrated with such dualisms, peacefully leave those of earthly countries to practice the civic virtues, since it is good to them. (And sometimes, when circumstances grow hard, those civic virtues require the eviction of citizens of other countries—but so much the better for us, I suppose, as doing so merely hastens us on our way!)

Last time I missed a crucial point at the end of §7, and I wish to call attention to it: "to model ourselves upon good men is to produce an image of an image: we have to fix our gaze above the image and attain Likeness to the Supreme Exemplar." That is, you can only rise as high as you aim. Socrates said that "the gods need nothing, so those men whose needs are fewest are most like the gods;" hence we have Diogenes living in a jar and smashing his begging bowl and hugging marble statues in winter: he was modeling himself on the gods rather than any human example, thereby purifying himself. Who are you modelling yourself on?