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The Ethics and the Enneads on Virtue: the Perfection of Self by a Self-focused Man – Part Two

Posted on by under Aesthetics, Mysticism, Neoplatonism, Philosophy, the aesthetics of self
Michelangelo, ‘David’, marble, 1501-1504, Galleria dell’Accademia (Florence)

Michelangelo, ‘David’, marble, 1501-1504, Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze (Florence)

Where contemplation is the culmination of the Ethics, it is the substance of The Enneads. For both Aristotle and Plotinus, contemplation is the highest and perfect form of activity.19 It is non-discursive and self-contained, but whereas for Aristotle it is an aesthetic and intellectual appreciation by the perfect man20 of knowledge already acquired – the full experience of what it is to be eudaimon, for Plotinus it is the means for the attainment of ‘knowledge’ in the hypostasis of Intellect21 and for the aesthetic perfection of self. For Aristotle, unlike practical activity, nothing is to be gained from contemplation except the pleasure of its own act,22 for Plotinus contemplation, which for him was creative, carries Soul to its source. For both, it is the manifestation of the divine within.23

Aristotle wrote about ‘good’, ‘virtue’, ‘moral’ and the less complete ‘eudaimonia’ in relation to practical life, but these concepts only find their meaning in Plotinus’ system in the shadow of his understanding of contemplation. In The Virtues (I.2) Plotinus equated virtue with attaining likeness to God24 – by ‘becoming just and holy, living by wisdom’. Any possible misunderstanding that this might be in reference to practical life is denied by the conclusion of the first sentence – ‘we must escape hence.’25 He wrote that there are civic and purificatory virtues. The civic virtues (prudence, fortitude, sophrosyny and rectitude) are a principle of beauty in us as long as we remain focused on this life but they are inferior to the purificatory virtues, those same virtues, when they are focused away from this life and on God. As purificatory virtues, they enable the paring away from the Soul of not only the body’s moods and passions but of the body itself.26 His thought on eudaimonia drew the same conclusion.27

In his definition of ‘virtue’ Aristotle used the term ‘rational principle’. Plotinus used the same term, mystically – Soul carries rational-principles (or reason-principles or Forms) from Intellect to the quasi-hypostasis of Nature. Again, production in Nature is the expression of contemplation.

On the subject of contemplation, intellect and reason – even when Aristotle wrote about contemplative intellect, about the contemplation of ‘those things whose first principles are invariable’,28 his use of ‘contemplation’ and ‘intellect’ were not intended to have mystical content. Similarly with his use of the term ‘reason’ – they were all applied to this world – but not so for Plotinus, whose philosophy was based on an antipathy to matter.29

Although the word ‘love’ occurs seven times in the quotation from the Ethics but only twice in that from The Enneads, Aristotle in the Ethics regarded as far superior a life ruled by reason than one ruled by feeling30 – the stronger the emotion, the more critical he was of it. Plotinus was at the other end of the spectrum on this matter – never have the emotions pressed more forcefully against the constraints of reason and rationalisation than in The Enneads.

But there are underlying connections between the person Aristotle and Plotinus most favoured in these books. Not only was the focus of each, in different ways, on the perfection of an individual self, those who could be most eudaimon were recognised as an elite31 who could not contribute to their community’s life with that activity. Further, Kathleen Wilkes wrote ‘The contemplative life is fully attainable only insofar as man (my italics) can become god-like, and the constant and irremovable block to this is that he is biologically an animal.’32

Both Aristotle and Plotinus believed that eudaimonia is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue and that through virtue one can attain the highest good. That attainment for Aristotle was to be in this world, for Plotinus, in the world ‘beyond’.

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Notes

19. Ethics 1177a5-25 ↩

20. Ibid., 1176a10-29 ↩

21. Paul Henry suggested that the hypostases of One, Intellect and Soul should be considered less as entities than as spiritual attitudes. Paul Henry. ‘The Place of Plotinus in the History of Thought’. In The Enneads, op. cit., li ↩

22. Ethics 1177a25-b13 ↩

23. Ibid., 1177b13-33 ↩

24. Plotinus quoted Plato ‘Likeness to God is a flight from this world’s ways and things’, Theaetetus 176AB ↩

25. The Enneads I.I.I ↩

26. Ibid., 1.2.3 Also ‘the man will work for the final Disengagement; he will live, no longer, the human life of the good man – such as Civic Virtue commends – but, leaving this beneath him, will take up instead another life, that of the Gods.’ I.2.7 ↩

27. ‘a life of mingled good and ill…could not be deserved to be called a life of happiness; it misses the Great, both in the dignity of Wisdom and in the integrity of Good. The life of true happiness is not a thing of mixture. And Plato rightly taught that he who is to be wise and to possess happiness draws his good from the Supreme, fixing his gaze on That, becoming like to That, living by That.’ Ibid., 1.4.16 ↩

28. Ethics 1138b35-1139a16 ↩

29. Plotinus, like Plato, confusingly used the term ‘reason’ both in reference to an activity of the physical body and the activity of Soul. For the two, the former activity is concerned with the material world and the latter with contemplation of and in the spiritual. As with the two realms, the first reason is the inferior copy of the latter. Ficino’s contribution to this confusion of reason as a function of matter with (disembodied) spiritual contemplation is exemplary: ‘Reason by itself grasps the incorporeal Reasons of all things…reason investigates heavenly things, and does not have a seat of its own in any part of the body, just as divinity also does not have a particular seat in any part of the world…(followed immediately by) Reason…perceives not only those things which are in the world and the present, as sensation does, but also those which are above the heaven, and those which have been or will be.’ Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, trans. J. Sears. Dallas, Spring Publications, 1985, Speech V Chapter 2, 84-85. ↩

30. Ethics 1168b32-1169a23, 1179b7-1180a15 ↩

31. Aristotle: Discourses on ethical theory ‘are incapable of impelling the masses towards human perfection.’ ibid., 1179b7-29, Plotinus: ‘to those of power to reach, it is present; to the inapt, absent.’ The Enneads VI,9,7. Barnes op. cit. referred to Aristotle’s ‘egoistic eudaimonism’. Ibid., 31 ↩

32. Wilkes op. cit., 352 ↩

The Ethics and the Enneads on Virtue: the Perfection of Self by a Self-focused Man

Posted on by under Aesthetics, Mysticism, Neoplatonism, Philosophy, the aesthetics of self
‘Apollo (of the) Belvedere’, marble, after lost bronze original by Greek sculptor Leochares, c. 350-325BC, Vatican Museum, Vatican City

‘Apollo (of the) Belvedere’, marble, after lost bronze original by Greek sculptor Leochares, c. 350-325BC, Vatican Museum, Vatican City

‘Every craftsman loves the work of his own hands more than it would love him if it came to life. Probably this happens most of all with poets, because they are exceedingly fond of their own poems, loving them as if they were their children. Well, the case of the benefactor is much the same. What he has benefited is his own handiwork; so he loves it more than the work loves its maker. The reason for this is that existence is to everyone an object of choice and love, and we exist through activity (because we exist by living and acting); and the maker of the work exists, in a sense, through his activity. Therefore the maker loves his work, because he loves existence. This is a natural principle; for the work reveals in actuality what is only potentially.’
Ethics Book IX 1167b28-1168a18

‘But how are you to see into a virtuous Soul and know its loveliness? Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.’
The Enneads I.6.9

These two quotations are from equally dense, austere texts which have resonated through Western culture – the former by a man with a passion for this world, the latter by one with equal passion for another, ‘beyond’ it.1

My argument will be that despite the many and sometimes immense differences in their thinking, these men in the two texts from which the quotations have been drawn had focused on the same subject – what a man should do to achieve the perfection of self – for the former, in this world, for the latter, in that ‘beyond’.

As Jonathan Barnes pointed out in his excellent introduction to the Penguin edition of the Ethics, the title ‘ta ethika’ transliterates to ‘The Ethics’ but translates as ‘Matters to do with Character’.2 The translation of the title is well exemplified in Aristotle’s discussion of the benefactor. Aristotle was not concerned with the effects of the benefactor’s actions on the beneficiary (or from the perspective of the Ethics as a whole, particularly with that of the good man’s actions in relation to others), rather it was the character of the virtuous man that interested him. The benefactor’s benevolence is his handiwork, the product of his activity. In crafting his benevolence and loving it, he lovingly crafts his own character, taking it from potentiality to actuality.3

In Book Two of the Ethics Aristotle defined ‘virtue’ as ‘a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational principle’.4 He gave a list of virtues lying between excess and deficiency, magnanimity being the crown.5 But the mean has nothing to do with ‘average’ or ‘mid-way’, even relative to the individual. ‘The mean’, when addressed correctly, offers the potential not just for excellence but towards perfection of character for the man of practical reason – consider the requirements Aristotle placed on its expression – ‘to feel or act towards the right person to the right extent at the right time for the right reason in the right way – that is not easy, and it is not everyone that can do it. Hence to do these things well is a rare, laudable and fine achievement.’6

Writers have criticised Aristotle for incoherence (Ackrill),7 indecision (Nagel)8 or an irreconcilable contradiction (Wilkes),9 by presenting two versions of eudaimonia10 in the Ethics – one based on the employment of practical wisdom (phronesis) the other on the engagement in contemplation (theoria). These criticisms miss the consistency, miss what ties the practical man of The Ethics to the philosopher in Book X – it is that Aristotle was interested throughout in the perfection of character based on reason, first for the practical man then for the philosopher, who represents human perfection and the pinnacle of Aristotle’s study. Wilkes herself noted that the philosopher must apply his practical reason to secure the circumstances in which he can engage in theoria, that the success of his use of his practical reason will be measured by the opportunities it creates for the exercise of theoria.11

Where the majority would choose compulsion and punishment rather than fine ideals12 and could not be encouraged towards perfection,13 the philosopher whose life is related to a fine ideal14 becomes eudaimon in the activity of contemplation, the activity of God.15

Plotinus developed on Plato’s philosophical theology and was not so much influenced by Aristotle (Porphyry wrote that the Metaphysics were condensed in The Enneads) as he adapted what he found useful in his writing to his own purpose.16 His own theorising focused totally on the individual and the ‘world’ within – the final sentence of The Enneads spoke of ‘liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary.’17

The quotation at the top by Plotinus is the heart of The Enneads – the fifty four tractates are built around it. This simile, beautifully expressed in MacKenna’s lyrical translation of The Enneads had its source in Plato.18 In it Plotinus sets out the method by which Soul returns through Intellect to the One (or Good). Where Aristotle’s wise man lovingly crafts his character in its activity, from moral to contemplative – thereby perfecting it – the Soul of Plotinus’ man, energised by a remembrance of the unity-in-multiplicity of the realm of Forms in Intellect and a passionate and rationalised desire (which Plato understood so well) to return to its origin in the ineffable absolute beyond being, sheds the reason of the senses and the world of matter, concentrates on its beauty and in so doing perfects itself.

Part one/to be continued…

 Notes

1. The impact of Plotinus and apophaticism on Western culture is comparable to that of Plato and Aristotle. It is the greatest (and I believe, the most deliberate) failure of philosophers to be ignorant of or to hide and deny this (as did Derrida when asked about it in relation to his philosophy). No area of learning, the practitioners of which pride themselves on their use of reason, has experienced more the influence of revealed knowledge, and the most subjective form of revealed knowledge – apophaticism – than has philosophy. As one example, the philosophy of Nietzsche (that man of ‘god’ who told us God is dead) cannot be understood without an understanding of apophaticism – it suffuses his writing, from his Birth of Tragedy to the final aphorism of The Will to Power which contains a synopsis of The Enneads. Consider ‘What is this Dionysiac exultation that thrills through your being, this straining upwards of all your soul…’ Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna. London, Penguin, 1991 1.6.5. Wherever romanticism, there apophaticism. William Franke’s groundbreaking two volume anthology On What Cannot Be Said, University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 2007 traces the history of apophaticism in the West through the writing of its greats in philosophy, religion, literature and the arts. Mark Cheetham has written on its impact on the visual arts – M. Cheetham, The Rhetoric of Purity, Essentialist Theory and the Advent of Abstract Painting, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1991 ↩

2. Aristotle, Ethics, trans. J.A.K. Thomson, Penguin, London, 1987, 27 ↩

3. ‘…it is right for the good man to be self-loving…’ ibid., 1168b32-1169a23. Aristotle treated friendship in a similar way: ‘a friend is another self…in its extreme form friendship approximates to self-love.’ Ibid., 1166a16-b4. Of self-love: ‘in the whole field of praiseworthy conduct the good man assigns himself the larger share of what is fine.’ Ibid., 1169a23-b11 ↩

4. Ibid., 1106b9-1107a1 ↩

5. Ibid., 1123b35-1124a23 ↩

6. Ibid., 1109a25-b15 On anger: ‘The man who gets angry at the right things and with the right people, and also in the right way and at the right time and for the right length of time, is commended; so this person will be patient, inasmuch as patience is commendable…the excess occurs in respect of all the circumstances; with the wrong people, for the wrong reasons, more than is right, too quickly, and for too long a time…’ 1125b14-1126a24 ↩

7. J.L.Ackrill, Aristotle on Eudaimonia, Oxford University Press, 1974, 4 ↩

8. Thomas Nagel ‘Aristotle on Eudaimonia’ in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed., Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1980, 7 ↩

9. Kathleen V. Wilkes ‘The Good Man and the Good for Man in Aristotle’s Ethics’, ibid., 341 ↩

10. The term ‘happiness’ should never be used for ‘eudaimonia’, least because of the evocation of a smiley face, far more seriously because of its etymology which ties it to luck, fortune and chance – which Aristotle specifically rejected as playing a part. He wrote ‘That the most important and finest thing of all should be left to chance would be a gross disharmony.’ Ethics 1099b21-1100a9. Again ‘…intention is the decisive factor in virtue and character.’ Ethics 1163a19-b7. The eudaimon engages in a most serious intellectual activity – ‘the pleasure proper to a serious activity is virtuous’ Ethics 1175b22-1176a10. Preferably the word ‘eudaimonia’ should not be translated, but if it were to be, ‘fulfilment’ would perhaps come closest in meaning – Aristotle wrote ‘…the full performance of a man’s function depends upon a combination of prudence and moral virtue’ Ethics 1144a3-24 ↩

11. In Oksenberg Rorty op. cit., 350-351, Ethics 1099a7-32, 1178a21-b7 ↩

12. Ethics 1179b29-1180a15 ↩

13. Ibid., 1179b7-29 ↩

14. Ibid., 1179b29-1180a15 ↩

15. Ibid., 1178b7-29 It was only in the concluding six pages of the Ethics that Aristotle discussed the state’s role in education with regard to goodness. ↩

16. Compare Plotinus’ Good with Ethics 1094a1-22 ‘the Good has been rightly defined as “that at which all things aim” ’ and the same One with the Unmoved Mover, to which all things are motivated by desire Metaphysics 1072a-b ↩

17. The Enneads 549. In his translation of the Enneads, A.H.Armstrong referred to this as the ‘flight of the alone to the Alone’. Plotinus, Enneads trans. A.H. Armstrong, in seven volumes. London, William Heinemann, 1966-1988 ↩

18. The shaping the statue at Phaedrus 252d7, the reductive path to true beauty in Diotima’s speech Symposium 209e-211a, also Phaedrus 253d1-256c1. This simile was used as a metaphor in The Birth of Tragedy, is the basis of Nietzsche’s aesthetics and recurs throughout his writing. ↩

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