Eric D. Perl

Recent continental philosophy often seeks to retrieve Neoplatonic transcendence, or the Good, while ignoring the place of intellect in classical and medieval Neoplatonism. Instead, it attempts to articulate an encounter with radical transcendence in the immediacy of temporality, individuality, and affectivity.On the assumption that there is no intellectual intuition (Kant), intellectual consciousness is reduced to ratiocination and is taken to be “poor in intuition” (Marion). In this context, the present paper expounds Plotinus’ phenomenology of intellectual experience to show how intellect, for Plotinus, is rather the richest mode of intuition, coinciding with the intelligible content of reality. This content, however, cannot be ultimate, but is the manifestation and apprehension of the transcendent Good as the condition of intelligibility. The Good, therefore, can be encountered only through the ascent to intellectual apprehension, and the visionof the Good is a transcendent moment within the intellectual apprehension of being, not a repudiation of or alternative to it.

The distinction between persons and things reflects the opposition between reason and nature that is characteristic of modern thought: persons are constituted by rationality, self-consciousness, free will, and moral agency; things are taken to be merely natural or material beings, devoid of reason and the products of entirely mechanistic forces. Persons, as ends in themselves, alone deserve moral consideration; things (including all plants and animals) deserve no moral consideration. Accordingly in much modern thought, nature, including the human body, becomes a mere object to be manipulated for human use. This paper challenges this narrowly anthropocentric idea by outlining a view, grounded in classical philosophical and Christian thought, called the “analogy of personhood.” This view offers a hierarchical but non-dichotomous approach to reality that rejects any radical opposition between reason and nature. The philosophical basis of this approach is developed as found in Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, and finally, the Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius.

DISCUSSIONS OF THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS of Plato’s forms too often take for granted that immanence and transcendence are opposed to each other: if the forms are in instances then they are not separate from them, while if the forms are separate then they are not in instances. This assumption is sometimes associated with the theory that there is a change in Plato’s thought between the early or Socratic dialogues, in which forms are regarded as immanent, and the middle dialogues and Timaeus, in which they are seen as separate. I will argue, however, that immanence and transcendence are not opposed but that, on the contrary, the former implies the latter. That is to say, precisely in that the forms are present in their instances, they are ipso facto also separate from them in all the senses which Plato claims. The idea of sensibles as images of the forms, in turn, is an expression not of transcendence alone, but rather of the conjunction of immanence and transcendence: the paradigm is at once transcendent to and immanent in the image. The movement from the early to the middle dialogues, then, is not the rejection of one position and the adoption of another, but simply the express articulation of what was implicit in the original position. Thus we find, not a fundamental change in Plato’s thought from one period to another, but a single consistent and coherent theory of forms which is developed throughout these dialogues.

This paper defends Plotinus’ reading ofSophist248e-249d as an expression of the togetherness or unity-in-duality of intellect and intelligible being. Throughout the dialogues Plato consistently presents knowledge as a togetherness of knower and known, expressing this through the myth of recollection and through metaphors of grasping, eating, and sexual union. He indicates that an intelligible paradigm is in the thought that apprehends it, and regularly regards the forms not as extrinsic “objects” but as the contents of living intelligence. A meticulous reading ofSophist248e-249d shows that the “motion” attributed to intelligible being is not temporal change but the activity of intellectual apprehension. Aristotle’s doctrines of knowledge as identity of intellect and the intelligible, and of divine intellect as thinking itself, are therefore in continuity with Plato, and Plotinus’ doctrine of intellect and being is continuous with both Plato and Aristotle.

This is a translation of the third edition of Hadot's Plotin ou la simplicité du regard. As the translator explains, Hadot "did not wish his Plotinus to be a work of scholarship". It is rather "a spiritual biography of Plotinus--not an analysis of all the details of Plotinus' system--and it is as a spiritual biography that it should be read". Chapters 1-5 present Plotinus' spiritual teachings, and chapters 6-7 discuss his biography in their light. The work is not primarily philosophical in nature, and describes Plotinus' vision of human experience without presenting the rational grounds which establish its truth. Hence it is most valuable to those who are already familiar with Plotinus' philosophical argumentation.

The distinction between persons and things reflects the opposition between reason and nature that is characteristic of modern thought: persons are constituted by rationality, self-consciousness, free will, and moral agency; things are taken to be merely natural or material beings, devoid of reason and the products of entirely mechanistic forces. Persons, as ends in themselves, alone deserve moral consideration; things (including all plants and animals) deserve no moral consideration. Accordingly in much modern thought, nature, including the human body, becomes a mere object to be manipulated for human use. This paper challenges this narrowly anthropocentric idea by outlining a view, grounded in classical philosophical and Christian thought, called the “analogy of personhood.” This view offers a hierarchical but non-dichotomous approach to reality that rejects any radical opposition between reason and nature. The philosophical basis of this approach is developed as found in Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, and finally, the Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius.

In addition to the complete Enneads and Porphyry's Life of Plotinus, this republication of the fourth edition of MacKenna's Plotinus includes a brief foreword from the publisher, extracts from MacKenna's "Explanatory Matter in the First Edition", and two appendices: an essay titled "A Suggestive Outline of Plotinian Metaphysics," and a concor dance of the chronological and systematic orders of Plotinus' works. It also provides, at the conclusion of each treatise, selected brief passages in other translations, including MacKenna's first edition, Armstrong, Guthrie, and Taylor.

Recent continental philosophy often seeks to retrieve Neoplatonic transcendence, or the Good, while ignoring the place of intellect in classical and medieval Neoplatonism. Instead, it attempts to articulate an encounter with radical transcendence in the immediacy of temporality, individuality, and affectivity.On the assumption that there is no intellectual intuition (Kant), intellectual consciousness is reduced to ratiocination and is taken to be “poor in intuition” (Marion). In this context, the present paper expounds Plotinus’ phenomenology of intellectual experience to show how intellect, for Plotinus, is rather the richest mode of intuition, coinciding with the intelligible content of reality. This content, however, cannot be ultimate, but is the manifestation and apprehension of the transcendent Good as the condition of intelligibility. The Good, therefore, can be encountered only through the ascent to intellectual apprehension, and the visionof the Good is a transcendent moment within the intellectual apprehension of being, not a repudiation of or alternative to it.