The Enneads of Plotinus, Volume 1

A Commentary

Paul Kalligas

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781400852512
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Philosophie ancienne et classique

The first volume in a landmark commentary on an important and influential work of ancient philosophy This is the first volume of a groundbreaking commentary on one of the most important works of ancient philosophy, the Enneads of Plotinus—a text that formed the basis of Neoplatonism and had a deep influence on early Christian thought and medieval and Renaissance philosophy. This volume covers the first three of the six Enneads, as well as Porphyry's Life of Plotinus, a document in which Plotinus's student—the collector and arranger of the Enneads —introduces the philosopher and his work. A landmark contribution to modern Plotinus scholarship, Paul Kalligas's commentary is the most detailed and extensive ever written for the whole of the Enneads.For each of the treatises in the first three Enneads, Kalligas provides a brief introduction that presents the philosophical background against which Plotinus's contribution can be assessed; a synopsis giving the main lines and the articulation of the argument; and a running commentary placing Plotinus's thought in its intellectual context and making evident the systematic association of its various parts with each other.

Third Ennead

III 1 [3]. On Destiny

Synopsis

1	Introductory: General observations on causality:
	Everything, apart from principles, has some cause; consequently, no becoming is without cause.
	Fourfold division of immediate causes: deliberation, art, chance, nature.
2	Philosophy seeks ultimate causes.
	Critical section: Four philosophical theories concerning the role of Destiny (heimarmenē): the Epicurean (T1), the Stoic-Middle Platonic (T2), the Astrological (T3), and the Stoic (T4).
3	Critique of T1.
4	Critique of T2.
5–6	Critique of T3.
7	Critique of T4.
8	Theory: The individual soul as an independent causal factor.
9	Relations between the soul and corporeal necessity.
10	Summary and Review: Thoughtlessness may be accounted for by the prevalence of Destiny, while practical wisdom is a spontaneous manifestation of the pure soul.

Introduction

The notion of natural necessity came very early on to be associated with that of the orderliness and cohesion of the universe. The “inseverable bond” (arrēktos desmos) of “Necessity” (anankē) represented, in the thought of the Presocratic philosophers as much as of the early poets, the guarantee that all natural phenomena were subject to the operation of a unitary and incontrovertible law to which not only all men, but even the gods themselves were obliged to submit.¹ Nevertheless, while this bondage was at first regarded as a welcome limitation to the arbitrariness of the unpredictable and uncontrollable will of the gods or to the blind violence of impersonal natural forces,² from the moment that divine action came to be accepted as inherently benevolent,³ any limitation imposed on the efficacy of such action began in some cases to appear as an obstacle to the enactment of divine Providence, and hence—potentially, at least—as malevolent. The emergence of this new way of thinking about the role of necessity is especially evident in the late work of Plato. Whereas in the Republic (X 616c ff.) the function of the cosmic “spindle” of Necessity is fully integrated into the providential arrangement of the universe, in the Timaeus, anankē is made to appear as a force opposed to the action of “Intellect” (nous), which must overcome its resistance by means of “persuasion” (peithō).⁴ The action of anankē is shown as possessing an even greater degree of autonomy in the cosmological myth of the Statesman, where the “destined and innate desire” (heimarmenē te kai sumphutos epithumia) of the cosmic body is able on its own to set it into the reverse motion from that imposed by the cosmic “pilot,” whenever the latter abandons the direction of the universe and retires “to his observation post.”⁵

The Stoics were the ones who brought the problem of necessity, in its cosmic dimensions, to the forefront of philosophical research.⁶ For them, Destiny represented the inexorable succession of natural causes,⁷ and as such it was identified with “the Rational Principle (logos) according to which the course of the world is detemined,” as well as with “Providence” (pronoia) and “Nature” (phusis).⁸ Chrysippus sought to overcome the difficulties entailed by Zeno’s initial, inflexibly fatalistic position, and to this end he proposed a division of the “causes” (aitiai) that bring about any given outcome into those that are “self-sufficient” or “complete” (autoteleis: for Cicero, perfectae et principales) and those that are “preliminary” or “auxiliary” (prokatarktikai: for Cicero, adiuuantes et proximae). According to the explicit testimony of Plutarch as well as Cicero, Chrysippus maintained that only the latter were subject to Destiny; see SVF 2:974, 997; and cf. Cic. Top. 59.⁹ This implies that although for certain events the existence of certain exogenous (and consequently “predestined”) causes constitutes a necessary precondition, these same causes are not capable of actually bringing about on their own the specific result, but only of contributing toward it. Thus, for example, an optical impression might constitute a necessary precondition for the formation of a given “representation” (phantasia), but the latter cannot come into being without the intervention of another, independent cause, “assent” (sunkatathesis), which is “up to us” (eph’ hēmin), that is, depends on the will of the subject.¹⁰

The opacity, however, of the Chrysippean theory with respect to the nature of this will and its degree of independence from external factors¹¹ led on the one hand to the exercise of scathing criticism on the part of Carneades,¹² and on the other to the creation of a schism within the Stoa itself: for while Panaetius attempted to promote human nature as an entirely autonomous principle, not subject in any way to the determinations of Destiny,¹³ Posidonius seems to have reverted to the radically fatalistic stance of the early Stoics, reinforcing it with a wealth of arguments drawn from divination and astrology, at the same time as he systematized his theory of causality by breaking it down into three levels on the basis of the tripartite schema of “god” (theos), “nature” (phusis), “destiny” (heimarmenē).¹⁴

These developments undoubtedly made a decisive contribution to the shaping of Middle Platonic views on Destiny. We find an anticipation of the latter in Cicero’s De fato,¹⁵ where the sweeping determinism of the natural world is presented as being compatible with the autonomy of the individual will, itself wholly independent of Destiny: “as to matters that are in our power (quae in nostra potestate sint), from these Fate is absent (ab his fatum abesse)….” Progressively, these views came to be systematized and consolidated into a complex theoretical construct with a strikingly hierarchic and “eclectic” character. What it proposed is that Destiny may be approached from two angles, either as an “activity” (energeia) or as a “substance” (ousia). As an activity it is to be identified with the “ordinance” (thesmos) of Adrasteia, which, according to Plato’s Phaedrus (248c2 ff.), regulates the embodiments and disembodiments of souls. It has the form accordingly of an irrefragable “civic law” (politikos nomos) that operates hypothetically and defines the necessary consequences of every choice, without, however, also predetermining the choice itself, for which the soul “that has no master” (adespotos) is responsible, divine Providence being “without responsibility” (anaitios: cf. Pl. Resp. X 617e4) in the matter. The view may therefore be taken that all things occur “within [the framework of] Destiny” (en heimarmenēi), without for all that being determined “according to Destiny” (kath’ heimarmenēn). As a substance, on the other hand, Destiny is to be identified with the cosmic Soul, which mediates the providential will of the first god in the universe and is apportioned among three nested spheres: that of the fixed stars, that of the planets, and that of the subcelestial regions. To each of these correspond in due succession the three Fates, Clotho, Atropos, and Lachesis,¹⁶ but also three types of “Providence” (pronoia), each of which “is subsumed” (perilambanetai) within its predecessor.¹⁷

In spite of its systematic character, however, this finely wrought synthesis still left several important questions unanswered: how is one to correlate—or, again, how is one to differentiate—chance and “[the power of] self-determination” (to autexousion, to eph’ hēmin) when both are said equally to fall within the range of Destiny?¹⁸ What scope does the soul have to manifest its freedom of action within a universe so implacably regulated by Destiny? And above all: to the operation of what law is the rational will of the otherwise unfettered soul ultimately obedient? Attempts appear to have been made to answer at least some of these questions even within the bounds of Middle Platonism,¹⁹ but the most interesting proposals were to come from the ambit of Aristotelianism.

The Peripatetics had long been the most severe adversaries of the Stoic view of Destiny and the most consistent defenders of human self-determination. For although they too accepted the identification of Destiny with “the proper nature of each thing” (oikeian hekastou phusin),²⁰ they did not regard it as a binding and irrefragable law, but as a simple causal factor that may contribute, along with others, to the realization of some outcome, without determining it absolutely. Of the other factors that collaborate with Destiny or that may possibly, on occasion, override it, the more usually mentioned are the trio “necessity” (anankē), “chance” (tuchē), and “art” or “science” (technē).²¹ The most complete exposition we possess of this Peripatetic analysis is of course the one to be found in the corpus of works attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias.²² The view maintained there is that Destiny does indeed constitute an efficient cause, but one with a specific teleological direction—it belongs to “the things that come to be for the sake of something” (en tois heneka tou ginomenois: Fat. 5, 169.2)—and is nothing other than the “proper nature” (oikeia phusis) of each individual, the sum total, that is, of their “natural constitutions and dispositions” (phusikai kataskeuai kai diatheseis), which determine, up to a point, people’s actions and mode of life (Fat. 6, 169.18–20, 170.9–27; cf. De an. mant. 185.11–19). Nevertheless, its dictates are neither necessary nor unavoidable; they are merely usual or “for the most part” (hōs epi to polu: Fat. 6, 169.28–170.9, 170.19–21), and they may be overridden by the remaining causal factors, and principally by the free human will. For man’s self-determination does not consist in the unhindered pursuit or satisfaction of his innate “impulses” (hormai), but in his capacity to effect a “deliberate choice” (prohairesis) between opposing practical possibilities open to him both “of doing” (tou practhēnai) and “of not doing” (tou mē prachthēnai) (Fat. 12, 180.4–15; cf. De an. mant. 172.25–173.3) by “rationally weighing” (bouleuesthai) the alternatives, which will allow him to choose the one that does not merely seem good, but that in his judgment actually is (Fat. 14, 184.3–20).

A somewhat different version is ascribed to Aristotle himself by the Platonist Atticus (fr. 8.11–16). In it, we find a broad statement referring to just three causes: “Destiny” (heimarmenē), which concerns the celestial bodies “that are always in the same way and all the same”;²³ “Nature” (phusis), which concerns “sublunar things”; and “practical wisdom” (phronēsis), which concerns “human things.” The context is unfortunately insufficient to provide any clarification as to how these causal factors combine or conflict with each other, but we can supplement the picture we have with the help of the testimony of Bardaisan, who, in his dialogue Peri heimarmenēs (“On Destiny”),²⁴ seems to rely on a comparable schema. According to this, the fundamental necessity pervading the natural world is the natural constitution and predisposition of things, their ‘nature’

.²⁵ But the latter can be hindered from manifesting itself (or, conversely, assisted in doing so) by contingent factors that fall under the (astrologically determined) control of fate.²⁶ On the other hand, “as we have seen that fate can disorder nature, so we can also see how man’s liberty forces back and disorders fate.”²⁷ In other words, we find Destiny here occupying an intermediate position between, on the one hand, the purely natural predispositions of man, and, on the other, his power of self-determination unfettered by natural necessities, and thus representing in essence merely the external and contingent influences of the environment.

Nevertheless, Destiny was not only a philosophical term, it was also a concept with a broader appeal to the consciousness of people living in the Greco-Roman world, who frequently approached it from a more religious angle. First of all, it was brought early on into connection with astrological views, in order to designate the inescapable necessity that the planetary configurations eit...