Enneads I v: Can Well-Being Increase With Time? (Revised)

Re-reading Enneads I v "Can Well-Being Increase With Time?" I think my previous summary is fine and I have simply edited that post with different nomenclature (e.g. changing "happiness" to "well-being," following the reasoning I outlined yesterday).

I would like to flag a few sight-seeing points that stood out to me this time around, though:

• In §4, Plotinos agrees with (and elegantly subsumes) Aristotle's definition of well-being: if one equates well-being with the ability to exercise free will, then they are simply accepting Plotinos's position, for the soul has free will according to its nature, while the body has none.

• In §7, Plotinos makes the case that eternity isn't merely the sum of all times, but is beyond time. (This echoes Proklos's and Taylor's distinction of "perpetual" and "eternal.") Thus something which is eternal is better than something which is perpetual, and therefore eternal good is better than perpetual good, and therefore the well-being of the soul is more to be desired than even perpetual pleasure of the body.

• In §10, Plotinos makes a cute distinction between well-being and well-doing, which echoes Plato's "world of being" and "world of becoming." I think this neatly describes the functions of each: the intellect essentially is, but a soul only accidentally is, thus the intellect can only be, but a soul can be well or be poorly. The soul essentially moves, but a body only accidentally moves; thus the soul can only do, but a body can do well or do poorly. That is to say: something that essentially possesses some quality simply embodies that quality, but something that accidentally possesses it may have it to a greater or lesser degree.

An Omen (Revised)

Okay, so while I just revised Enneads I iv, it seems I might as well revise the joke that went with it. Perhaps you recall how I was tired after work, but since I'm a burning-the-candle-at-both-ends kind of person, forged ahead to study this particular essay, but a bird flew overhead and pooped on the page I was reading, an obvious omen to just give it a rest already.

My daughter was asking me about my angel today, as I mentioned how they have a very playful personality. She asked for examples, and so I told her a number of my angel stories. I got to this one, and while she was laughing about it, I was telling her how that page of the Enneads is still kinda messed up since of course I had to wash the poop off. She fetched the book from the shelf and asked me to show her which page it was, so I turned to the beginning of Enneads I iv and pointed to the worn-out section near the top of the page.

As I did so, I realized that I had missed the joke's punch line!

See, in the edition of the Enneads I was reading, the essay on True Happiness starts halfway down the page; the top half of the page is the last part of the prior essay on Dialectic. Here is the relevant section, with where the poop landed (which is now half-erased from being scrubbed clean) highlighted:

And while the other virtues bring the reason to bear upon particular experiences and acts, the virtue of Wisdom [...] is a certain super-reasoning much closer to the Universal; for it deals with correspondence and sequence, the choice of time for action and inaction, the adoption of this course, the rejection of that other [...].

The bird didn't just poop on my book, it literally pointed out that it would have been wise for me to rest. Lorna Byrne says somewhere that "angels find it easier to move minds than physical objects," but it seems to me that they're plenty capable of fine movements when need be...