Are the souls Forms?

[sdi]

I think I may have made an error in understanding Plotinus' system!

See, I had been assuming that the Intellect contains its Ideas, and that souls were the reflection of the Ideas upon the edge of that level of reality. But as I'm slowly digesting the Phædo, I think this may be an error. Plato seems to imply—and a cursory look over some of the most relevant passages of Plotinus at least does not seem to conflict with it—that the Ideas are, themselves, souls. (To put it another way, souls don't participate in Forms, rather they are Forms and therefore participate directly in the Intellect.)

Assuming as such, besides greatly simplifying the whole contraption, makes some of Plotinus' conclusions very explicit and obvious. Why is soul inherently divided? Because each Idea is inherently distinct. Why are all souls one? Because they spring from the same source—the Intellect—sharing in a small piece of it's great Life. Why are bodies many? Because they spring from many disparate sources. Why is each level of existence different? Because the One is one only; the Intellect is one containing many; souls are many ones (e.g. are indivisible at root); and bodies are many only (e.g. are infinitely divisible).

Going so far makes the Pythagoreanism latent in the system (e.g. Enneads VI vi) more obvious. The One is. The Intellect is the number one, itself unitary but containing all other numbers latent within it. (One is a number, but a weird one, being neither even nor odd, neither prime nor composite, etc.) The Ideas—souls—are each the expression of a particular number greater than one, primes being gods (since they are indivisible) and composites being lesser beings (since they are divisible, and inherently made up of the primes). (One wonders if the relation of a human to its dæmon is that of a multiple, containing exactly the same primes but compounded upon themselves.)

An example of how this helps is that it makes explicit what Plotinus was talking about when he said that bodies participate in Beauty, but not souls, since the beauty of a soul is wisdom (e.g. participation in the Intellect).

As I go back over Plotinus, I'll have to weigh this against other options. Certainly Proclus is no help here, since he is pretty happy to multiply entities in order to explain every different facet of the system—but the objections he is responding to are certainly real ones, so I'll have to pay attention to this as I go through him, too. I'm also starting to put together something of a reading list of Pythagorean texts—Plato's Timæus, Nichomachus' Introduction to Arithmetic, Pseudo-Iamblichus' Theology of Arithmetic, Taylor's Theoretic Arithmetic, etc.—I imagine studying those will be similarly illuminating in this regard.

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

Timaeus is a fascinating read, for sure. Some aspects of it are more mysterious than others, but the entire thing is worth a go.

I think you are on to something here, especially with regard to the relationship of the (local) intellect(s?) and its participation in Intellect, at least at Plotinus sees things.

[sdi]

Yup, I'm sure of it, souls are Forms.