Enneads V 6: What Being has Intellection Primarily and What Being has It Secondarily

[sdi]

Several eternities ago, when I was in Sunday School—I must have been nine or ten—the church elder instructing us mentioned that the doctrine of the Trinity was not to be found in the Bible. I raised my hand and, when called upon, asked him, "By what authority do you teach something that doesn't come from the Bible? Also, if the Trinity doesn't come from the Bible, where does it come from?"

Of course, he told me to shut up.

Since then, I've always wondered where the doctrine came from, since it always seemed bizarre to me. I still don't have the "where," but at least Plotinus is good enough to tell us "why" with his usual logical rigor.

V 6: That the Principle Transcending Being has no Intellectual Act. What Being has Intellection Primarily and What Being has It Secondarily.

1. There is an Intellect.

2. Intellection implies duality (of subject and object).

3. Unity precedes multiplicity.

4. Therefore, there is something unitary prior to Intellect, something primarily Intellective (e.g. the subjective Intellect), and something secondarily Intellective (e.g. the objective Intellect; e.g. the Soul).

5. Being prior to Intellect, the First is not intellective.

6. If we consider the First to be Good, the Second is only Good to the degree it is intellective of the First, and the Third is only Good to the degree it is intellective of the Second, and so on.

Point 6, above, is of course why Plotinus considers matter to be evil: something can only be good in participating with that which is above it. Don't look down!

Plotinus gives us a very elegant analogy in §4: the One is light, the Intellect is the sun (something giving off light), and Soul is the moon (something reflecting light).

Incidentally, most modern commentators describe Plotinus as advocating a trinitarian view; I don't believe this is so! While he only proves the top three here, both he and Porphyry frequently refer to the four highest beings: the One, the Intellect, Soul, and Nature. (Unless I am much mistaken, Plotinus likens these to the Hesiodic Ouranos, Kronos, Aphrodite Ourania, and Eros, respectively.) What's more, it's hard not to see the Pythagorean one-two-three-four and the Empedoclean fire-air-water-earth in these. (One might think this sequence can continue indefinitely, but Plotinus explicitly says it does not: beyond this, the creative power is spent and too weak to continue further; all that remains is to play with every possible combination of principles within these.)

While playing around with these notions, I found a neat geometric correspondence. If one wishes to produce a tetractys with circles alone, it takes six circles, to wit:

Note how we are given two points to begin the construction with. We might as well assign these to the dyadic Intellect, right?—since where else would we assign them? But this is kinda like how Plotinus proves the whole structure also beginning with the Intellect.

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

The Trinity is indeed a curious concept, but that's how it goes, I guess. Not familiar enough with Plotinus to say one way or another whether you're right on your hunch.

Great geometric association!!