Enneads V 5: On the Nature of the Good

[sdi]

My copy of Thomas Taylor's translation of Plotinus arrived in the mail; it appears that Taylor translated fully half of the essays that make up the Enneads (twenty-six completely and one in paraphrase, out of 6×9=54 total). After some consideration, I've decided to keep going with MacKenna for now: if I added in cross-referencing against Taylor and his extensive footnotes and commentary, I'd never finish! No, I will complete a first pass of Plotinus tabula rasa, and use Taylor for the second pass.

This has made me consider what I will do after I complete the Enneads: shall I immediately go back over Taylor's? Probably not right away, since it would be good to get some more breadth before I go deeper. Shall I proceed to Porphyry? Ha, who am I kidding, I couldn't restrain myself: I've already read almost all of Porphyry and indeed went over the Sentences four or five times. (Incidentally, Porphyry is just so easy to read. What a masterful writer he is!) No, I tentatively think my next step shall be Proclus' Elements, and maybe I'll do a series on it here, too.

It's interesting; I spent my early spiritual life going deep on the Taoists, but that's not hard as there's very, very little in English. For want of material, I moved on to Zen, filling my shelves with the masters of that great tradition. When I moved a couple years ago, though, I had to sacrifice all of my books. Therefore, I've had to refill my shelves again from scratch. As a nod to my "Taoist phase," I repurchased the Tao Te Ching; as a nod to my "Zen phase," I repurchased Zen Flesh, Zen Bones; but the rest of my "spirituality shelf" is presently filled with the Pythagorean tradition from Empedocles to Proclus. "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven" [NB: video link].

Enough. Let's proceed:

V 5: That the Intellectual Beings are not Outside the Intellectual-Principle: and on the Nature of the Good

The One is indefinable, illimitable: we cannot say what it is; we can only what it is not. The Intellect is Being, so the One (being above It) neither exists nor is nonexistent. The Intellect is Truth, so the One can neither be true nor false. The Intellect is Form, so the One is neither beautiful nor ugly. Indeed, the only way to speak about the One is to remain silent.

If you wish to step beyond Body and contemplate the Soul, you must lay aside sensation, for the Soul transcends it. Similarly, if you wish to step beyond Soul and contemplate the Intellect, you must lay aside reason, for the Intellect transcends it. Further, if you wish to step beyond Intellect and contemplate the One, you must lay aside definition, for the One transcends it.

As such, those few who glimpse Intellect are awed by Its beauty and become obsessed with Its pursuit; but those who glimpse the One think nothing of it, for how could they?—It is always with them! By this we can safely judge that the Intellect is later than the One, since it requires more sophistication to appreciate.

Some miscellaneous thoughts as I went through this tractate:

• It occurs to me, again and again, that the genius of Plotinus' system is how he has elegantly set up his definitions and axioms such that it makes it not only possible but convenient to prove so much about the nature of higher realities. (One must accept his axioms, of course, but they are quite reasonable if one accepts mysticism at all.) One wonders to what degree his mysticism informed his logic, and to what degree his logic informed his mysticism.

• Plotinus here says the Intellect is the definition of limit, and has previously compared the Intellect to Kronos (that is, Saturn, the astrological lord of limit).

• So much of this tractate reminds me of the Zen teachings I've studied. In §6: "If we are led to think positively of The One, name and thing, there would be more truth in silence" sounds so much to me like Gutei's Finger; "for [the One] is a principle not to be conveyed by any sound; it cannot be known on any hearing" sounds so much to me like The Sound of One Hand Clapping; the process of walking back from the body, to the Soul, to the Intellect, and finally to the One is so similar to the Ten Bulls; and the beginning of §8 reminds me of the haiku of Basho: "Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."

• §13 nicely summarizes the entire tractate.