From reading commentaries, I'm already familiar at least one discrepancy between Plotinus and Proclus: Plotinus considers the soul immaculate and unable to descend into corporeality (requiring an intermediary, which he calls "the lower soul" and which Porphyry calls "the pneumatic vehicle" and which I've glossed as "the spirit," for this purpose), while Proclus instead apparently considers the soul able to lose it's original home in the Intellectual and needing to regain it. This isn't an abstract notion! For Plotinus, this is exactly why we are essentially divine and means we can incarnate as more or less anything (even an animal, even a plant, even a stone), while Proclus and most other late Neoplatonists reject this and say that humans have "human souls" and cannot incarnate as anything else except through an intermediary as a divine prerogative (e.g. as punishment or something). I'm of two minds on the topic, myself: I'm inclined to trust Plotinus, but my angel urges a middle ground between the two. But because of this, I imagine they may disagree on other things, too.
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Date: 2023-06-07 08:23 pm (UTC)From reading commentaries, I'm already familiar at least one discrepancy between Plotinus and Proclus: Plotinus considers the soul immaculate and unable to descend into corporeality (requiring an intermediary, which he calls "the lower soul" and which Porphyry calls "the pneumatic vehicle" and which I've glossed as "the spirit," for this purpose), while Proclus instead apparently considers the soul able to lose it's original home in the Intellectual and needing to regain it. This isn't an abstract notion! For Plotinus, this is exactly why we are essentially divine and means we can incarnate as more or less anything (even an animal, even a plant, even a stone), while Proclus and most other late Neoplatonists reject this and say that humans have "human souls" and cannot incarnate as anything else except through an intermediary as a divine prerogative (e.g. as punishment or something). I'm of two minds on the topic, myself: I'm inclined to trust Plotinus, but my angel urges a middle ground between the two. But because of this, I imagine they may disagree on other things, too.