Class Synopisis April 6th

We began talking about Plotinus' critique of discoursive reasoning. Discoursive reasoning poses a significant problem for talking about The One, because we always think in a subject-object distinction. Thinking isomorphically is impossible for us. Even when thinking ourselves, we always refer to ourselves as an object. Plotinus gives us the example of a sphere. We are asked to place ourselves in the sphere. Plotinus argues that we cannot imagine this without becoming the sphere (something that I find particularly hard to imagine). Now this is related to Plotinus' ethics: happiness is freedom from objects of thought.

With all this cynicism (modern use) towards objects of thought, there seems to be a danger of denying the goodness of matter. This sort of principle, as my Aquinas professor will contend, crops up every hundred to two hundred years. In Plotinus' time it was the Gnostics (in other times it is the Manicheans, the Albigensians , or some sects of the Reformation). Plotinus contends that creation is not entirely bad and the world is not providential. Furthermore, salvation is not something waited for, it is something in us.

We moved on to talking about the Intellect. The Intellect is out of time, and likewise experiences no change (for time is a measure of change). We are discrete particulars of this Intellect. A question naturally arises: How do I not have knowledge of discrete particulars? The answer would be that this sort of knowledge is not a virtue. But there is perhaps major critique of this: this is imperfect knowledge. Not knowing everything, discrete or not, is still not knowing everything.

Next we posed the problem: How do we get to the One? There is an overwhelming significance to ritual in this conception. There is also an acceptance of all religions, but puts their gods at the level of the Intellect. This is particularly troubling for the Jewish/Christian/Muslim tradition, which describes their God analogously to the One (although that may be because of their influence from Neo-Platonism, especially the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. Earlier though, we said that Plotinus denied providence, a particularly central concept to many religions.