Enneads I ix: On Suicide (Revision)

[sdi]

I feel I did a disservice to Plotinus on my first pass through the Enneads, owing to my lack of understanding. But I've now made a full pass over his work, and also have the advantage of Porphyry's fragmentary commentaries and Taylor's copious footnotes; so I intend to sporadically revise my summaries as I go back over Plotinus with these advantages. These will be done in no particular order and on no particular schedule, just as I feel inclined to do so.

I'm starting with On Suicide because my body is not working well lately—it is the summer allergy lockdown season again—and I am in need of consolation.

I ix: On Suicide [Revision of my original summary.]

The oracle tells us, "Dismiss not the soul, lest it bear something away with it..."

The body is the reflection of the soul: the soul binds itself to a body, and the body to a soul, because they have a similitude for each other. A soul will not normally detach from a body that it is in harmony with, nor will it remain bound to a body that it is out of harmony with. So if a body loses its physical integrity, it no longer a good match for its soul and the soul will go off and generate a new body for itself; conversely, if a soul has become especially angelic, bodies in general are no longer a good fit for it, and it will release its body, never to return.

So if a body is in a disagreeable condition, it is only because that condition is appropriate to its soul: if one gives in to passion and kills themselves, they haven't resolved the desire in their soul, and they'll just end up with the same condition in a new body; with, as the oracle says, the karma of giving in and violence thrown in for good measure.

But what of dementia or insanity or the like? As we've said, the soul remains bound to the body while they're in harmony: we must presume there is some value in sticking it out until the soul decides it's time.

Porphyry's fragmentary summary of this essay is in Sentences 7–9.

That oracle (#151 in Cory, #166 in Majercik) is interesting. Taylor says it's from the Chaldean Oracles (which are known only from fragments); Majercik summarizes the scholarship on it, makes a case that it is unlikely to be from the Chaldean Oracles, and tentatively suggests its an oracle chronicled by Porphyry in his Philosophy from Oracles; however, I think this is unlikely, too, since this essay was complete some time before Plotinus and Porphyry even met. So it's source is a mystery!

Comments

[sdi]

See also Olympiodorus' and Taylor's commentary on the Phædo.