Episode #015 - Transcript
Thank you for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday, and I hope you love the show.
Remembering the important elements of Plotinus’ philosophy and Neoplatonism as a whole is easy to remember when thinking about it and remembering it in relation to one common question about God. It’s a question that people understandably ask whenever there’s any sort of major tragedy in the news or around the world. And really, of all the arguments people make against the existence of a God, it’s one of the most common and, I think, one of the weakest arguments around. It goes like this: how can an all-powerful, loving God exist and still allow evil to exist in the world? You could think of that question differently with a less narrow conception of what God is, and you could ask, how can evil or bad things arise from a force that’s entirely good, one that possesses no evil to begin with? If we live in an ordered and harmonious cosmos—as the Greeks mostly thought—and goodness is something that seems consistent and important to whatever maintains this order and harmony, then why does evil exist at all?
Well, Plotinus had a really good answer to this. And unfortunately, just explaining how Plotinus would have responded to the question when it was asked to him is not enough. And look, it’s not like his entire philosophy centers around this question anyway. But what I’m getting at here is, if you could remember Plotinus’ response to that question and why he thought it was the truth, then by remembering one question, you could use it to remember the most important contributions Plotinus and the beginning of Neoplatonism made to philosophy as a whole.
Think of all of Plotinus’ philosophy as your entire wardrobe. Where do you keep your wardrobe? Well, hopefully in a closet. I mean, you don’t have it laying in the middle of the floor in a giant mound getting all wrinkly, and you just pull from it as you need it. You have a closet, and it’s all organized. You got your summer wear over here, your winter wear over there. You got your old prom and homecoming dresses in those weird bags behind everything. I don’t know, my wife still does for some reason. The point is, you know where it is, and it makes sense in relation to everything else. This question is a walk-in closet that keeps Plotinus’ philosophy organized. And we’re going to keep referencing it throughout the episode because it’s so effective.
First, let’s set the stage a little bit though. I want to take you guys back to what it was like to live during Plotinus’ time period, because by understanding that, you can understand where Plotinus is coming from. You’d find yourself in the year 250 AD, late antiquity, right during a period of the Roman empire with more disaster and chaos that was out of the average citizen’s control than almost any other time in the history of Rome. This time period is actually commonly known as the crisis of the third century. So just the name gives you kind of an idea of what’s going on. This is a couple hundred years after the Hellenistic age—again, one other example of philosophy making giant strides during times of political and cultural unrest. Life was terrifying for these people—constant war, constant disease. It was killing everybody.
And when it was all said and done, historians think that the population of the time, the people living in that region, was reduced by a third. And that’s not all. The population that survived—even in areas where no war was going on—these people still had to pay for that constant war. Taxes soared. A lot of people were forced to move somewhere else because they just couldn’t afford to be a citizen of Rome anymore. I mean, try to imagine your modern-day government demanding money from you and, when you can’t pay it, they force you to move somewhere else. You just got to walk in one direction for miles. It would be terrifying.
In fact, maybe I’m getting too specific there. Forget that example. Just imagine yourself as someone living in Rome around the year 250 AD during all these problems that are going on, and you have a bone to pick with Plotinus. Let’s say you pride yourself on your ability to think about things. You just had an epiphany. You’re thinking to yourself, how can an all-powerful God exist when there’s so much evil in the world all around us? You think it’s an amazing point. And you’re going to take it to Plotinus—the wisest, most highly respected philosopher-sage around—and say, let’s see what this guy has to say about this question.
Well, forget what Plotinus was like for just one second. Let’s talk about you. And I’m not just talking about you. I mean what it is to be a human being during this time period. Not only was there all this stuff going on at a political level, but you would have found yourself living in a world not long after a massive shift was occurring in how the average person viewed themself as a being in this world. Or more specifically, what does it mean to be a human being? What are you, exactly? I mean, think about it for a second.
When you think of your self, what are you? Would you say that your body is a part of who you are? Some people when they say “me,” they mean their body. “I am sitting in this chair.” Well, if your body is part of who you are, would you say that you’re only a body? Are you made up of only atoms in a universe that’s also made up of only atoms? Some people think differently. Maybe you think this body of yours is just where you’re currently residing right now in this physical existence. So, what are you exactly? Are you a mind that has the ability to reason that’s controlling this body? Are you like the Power Rangers controlling the Megazord or something—you know, something made up of physical stuff controlling something else made up of physical stuff? It’s not a simple question.
Remember way back in, I think, episode two of the podcast? When I started out the show, I did this terrible impression of a pretentious English man asking, “What is philosophy?” I was making fun of how philosophers would ask the question because they sound so pretentious sometimes. And then I think I rounded things out and made sure the entire episode was ruined by doing a terrible impression of Professor Snape, you know? Just for the record, probably my least favorite moment in the history of the show. But look, I think I’ve gotten a little better since then. Well, I’d like to readdress that question for a minute, because I think it's relevant, and I think it can add something to what we’re talking about here.
People use the word “philosophy” in an incredibly loose fashion. In today’s world, it can mean tons of stuff. And because everyone’s definition of it is different, when different people tune into a philosophy show like this one, people have different expectations of what the content is going to be of the show. And look, really, it’s no one’s fault. I mean, people see the word “philosophy” overused all around them. Like, Howard Schultz writes on the back of a Starbuck’s cup, “My philosophy is that everyone deserves a hot, delicious, perfectly brewed cup of coffee.” But obviously that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re moving into a place in the history of philosophy where it starts moving in tandem with the story of religion, most notably in the West with the monotheistic religion of Christianity.
So, if we’re trying to figure out what philosophy is exactly, then it might be a good idea to start with what the experts say it is. And if you’re getting a degree in philosophy from a university or you’re reading an overview of philosophy, not all university curriculums cover Christianity. Not all book overviews see Christianity as a notable part of philosophy. Now, personally, I don’t agree with that. I think they made several very notable ethical contributions. But I agree with the sentiment that they aren’t the same thing. I mean, why would we have two different names for them if they were completely synonymous? They’re obviously not. So, what’s the difference?
Well, there’s a book called A Brief History of Thought by a guy named Luc Ferry. It’s one of those very general, broad-strokes introductions to some of the core concepts in philosophy. It’s by no means comprehensive. Its target audience are people that have little or no experience in philosophy, and it’s just trying to pique your interest or give you a skeleton to work with when you’re moving forward in your education. And now that I think about it, people ask me for further reading all the time over email. Well, here’s one for you. This has to be on Audible. It’s a best seller. Why wouldn’t it be? But I definitely recommend it. And throughout this entire book, he makes the case that philosophy and religion are two very different things that try to address the same issue.
He says that we are humans, and unlike any other animal in the animal kingdom, we have the unique ability to use that prefrontal cortex of our brain and look ahead of us and worry about what terrible things might happen to us in the future. We have the ability to look behind us and regret things that we did or may not have done. This unique ability of humans presents a very unique problem for us. It causes anxiety. It causes fear. Luc Ferry makes the case that what we fear as humans is death. But his definition of death isn’t a narrow definition where he’s only talking about the end of this bodily existence. He thinks that death is better described with the term of irreversibility.
Being humans, we worry about anything bad that might happen to us where existence won’t be the same anymore in the future. It’s irreversible. We might worry about things like our arm getting ripped off by a passing train or a bus, right? You might worry about your girlfriend leaving you. You’re worried that one day you’re going to be looking back and say, “That’s the one that got away.” And you’re going to be lonely for the rest of your life. We fear irreversibility.
Well, both religion and philosophy give us relief from this fear. They just do it in different ways. Religion makes the claim that death is an illusion. And there’s all different ways the various religions put this. But most of them say that death is just the end of this obstacle course that we’re in, and then the true existence begins or re-begins in some higher realm. When seemingly bad things happen, Christianity would say that it’s all part of the providential plan of God, so you shouldn’t worry about it. God is sending you a message through this experience. And ultimately, it’s for your betterment.
Luc Ferry says that philosophy, on the other hand, is salvation without religion. He thinks that philosophy is a way to look at yourself objectively and overcome this fear of death and irreversibility using only the mechanisms given to you as a homo sapien living on planet earth. To come to peace with death and this fear of irreversibility, he says, you don’t need a supernatural God that tells you that death is actually something that you should really be looking forward to. That’s what philosophy is.
And so far we’ve seen a lot of examples of this, right? We have the Epicureans saying that there’s no reason to fear death because all you are is a collection of atoms that will simply cease to exist one day. We have the stoics and the Buddhists saying very similar things about the fact that if you’re to be killed or bad things were to happen to you, all these things are external to you; they’re completely out of your control. So there’s no reason to worry about it. There’s tons of examples like this. Real quick, something you may be wondering is, well, if that’s the goal of philosophy, then why are things like physics and metaphysics important at all? Well, whenever you’re trying to come up with the wisest or best way to act in any one situation, one very important piece of information you need is to know where you are. I mean, the proper way to act in the library is completely different than the proper way to act in a night club or a bowling alley.
Luc Ferry says that we can think of physics and metaphysics as just a way of understanding exactly where we are so that then we can make further inferences to quell this fear of irreversibility. If you see it this way, then philosophy and religion are obviously very different from each other. There are exceptions to this rule that he’s laid out. But by and large, it’s a really good way to categorize information in philosophy. This is the idea behind why so many university curriculums and books don’t consider Christianity or other religions as philosophy. And really, can I just say real quick that, as a nice man, a kind man, that wants nothing but to entertain and empower people with my voice, the idea of doing an episode solely on the founding of Christianity is a recurring nightmare that I wake up to.
Christianity back in the times of Jesus and then the Roman empire was much different than Christianity is today. Plus, because it effects so many people still, there are all kinds of different interpretations of what happened, how it happened, how Christianity made its ascendency to the top, and its relation with government once it was at the top. It’s an absolute nightmare. It’s just asking for people to be offended or for people to defensively offer up another interpretation of what happened. The religion itself is a pretty big part of philosophy over the years. And we will have episodes on philosophers who were Christian that looked at the tenants of Christianity through the lens of philosophy. But to do an episode on the founding of the religion—not really relevant, and not really a good idea.
Just think about any other story we have during this time period or before. I mean, just to give an example, we talked about Seneca in our episode on stoic ethics, remember? He lived a generation after when Jesus would have walked the earth. He was supposedly an important public official. He was supposedly the advisor to the emperor Nero. And we don’t even know for sure that he existed. The signs definitely point to yes, but there is uncertainty there. Maybe people think that his writings may be two or three different people just attributed to one guy they call Seneca for simplicity. On that same note, just think about all the magical and crazy stories we’ve heard about people like Pyrrho or Pythagoras. I mean, today we’re going to talk about Plotinus who lived in 200 AD, and there’s still all kinds of stories of him summoning spirits and countering spells and stuff like that. We’re supposed to immediately discount these stories as though they’re completely untrue and accept the miracles that Jesus performed as fulfillment of prophecy.
The point I’m trying to make is that all the sourcing from this time period is a little shaky and up for dispute. And as a podcast host, I don’t think it would be fair to do a show on the founding of Christianity. And I don’t think I’m qualified to do it anyway. But one thing that you can’t dispute from this time period is the giant surge in popularity of Christianity. And really, it was in line with that shifting of how the average person of the time viewed themselves. Remember, what am I exactly? It’s not like people just started thinking about it right then. There were tons of answers to this question that came before this time period of 250 AD. I mean, pretty much every Greek philosopher before had something to say on the matter. And really, all those guys had the same amount of “real” evidence to make these claims about what we were. They had nothing.
Well, now there was a new thought pattern growing in popularity just like all the other ones. People decided that they weren’t a body or a mind. They thought that they were just a consciousness that controls a body in this physical world. Humans decided that what they truly were was something that closely resembled a spiritual being. Not just a spiritual being, but an imprisoned spiritual being, confined, chained to bodies in this physical realm. Your body belongs to you, but it isn’t you, kind of like your smartphone, you know? It belongs to you; it’s instrumental in how you go about your everyday existence, but your smartphone isn’t you. Your true self is just a consciousness that controls this body.
It's important to note that when all these other Greek philosophers were talking about souls, there were no implications necessarily of this soul travelling to some spirit realm after you were dead. There are very sporadic instances where they mentioned an afterlife of some sort. But for the vast majority of them, the soul was completely compatible with the physical world, many times as much a part of your body as your hands or feet were. You know, if your hands were the part of your body that held things or felt things, then the soul was just the part of your body that reasoned or felt emotions or a number of different things depending on which philosopher was speaking at the time.
Just imagine for a second if you felt that way. The people back then more and more began to see themselves as a consciousness trapped in a flawed physical body, existing in this flawed physical realm that brings you suffering, just dying to return to real existence in this higher realm that has nothing to do with the physical world. I mean, just imagine feeling that way. It had to have been crazy. You’re basically the main character in the movie Planet of the Apes. You crash-land on an alien planet. Actually, spoiler alert, you crash-land on what you think is an alien planet. Your ship is destroyed. You need to replace some of the parts for your ship or find a new ship so that you can get off the planet and fly back to your true existence. But in the meantime, you’re trapped on this hostile alien world just trying to make the best of it.
Well, that would have been your reality living back then. That would have been Plotinus’ reality. So, what started to happen is, people started looking for a way to get some relief from this reality as they saw it—and not to mention the anxiety of death and the irreversibles and all the other problems that you face as a human in this world that we talked about before—and there were several narratives that gained popularity during the time to try to achieve that sense of relief. I mean, it’s no coincidence that it’s during this time that Eastern philosophy starts to grow in popularity a little bit in the West. There were several pagan approaches to it.
But none of these caught much steam because they didn’t immediately improve the lives of the people following them like Christianity did. Plus, Christianity offered a personalized salvation. It was very appealing to people worried about their own mortality and thinking of this world as completely hostile. The most important thing we should understand right now is that during this time that Plotinus lived, there were various attempts at creating a system that would help people cope with this new idea of what exactly being a human is. And most commonly this was done by creating a distinction between existence in this physical world and what they called true existence—you know, turning away from our bodily existence and towards a higher realm of existence. Neoplatonism was one of these systems that aimed to do that.
But let’s go back to our example. You’re living in this time period. You see yourself as a consciousness trapped in this inferior physical realm. And you have this great idea pointing out how God can’t exist because there’s all this evil in the world all around you. And you’re going to ask Plotinus what he thinks about that. Well, based on the stories that we have about him, it’s pretty clear that Plotinus was a interesting guy. He’s alive a little too late to have super extreme stories written about him where he’s practically a god himself. He has kind of a lessened version of the treatment people gave Pythagoras, you know? He ends up sounding a little less like a god and more like the ruler of North Korea. He’ll get stories like he invented the game of basketball, and he scored a thousand points in his first game playing—things like that. He gets stories where he has these really notable achievements that probably aren’t true.
Well, there’s a story of Plotinus when he’s fairly young, and one of his fellow classmates gets really jealous of him and casts a spell on him. He was like an evil magician. And Plotinus gets hit with the spell, and his body gets all stiff. It stiffened up. But because Plotinus had such a powerful spirit protecting him, the spell bounced off of him and was reflected back onto the person that cast it. I mean, basically replace the entire opening sequence of the Harry Potter books with this section of Plotinus’ life. I mean, come on, his mom’s love protected him—the powerful spirit. You know, Voldemort got his spell cast back on him, and he had to get geriatric care for the next 15 years. Look, I’m just saying, let’s not completely rule out the idea that J.K. Rowling was heavily influenced by Plotinus.
What I’m saying is, we have a very limited number of stories about Plotinus to work with. And these kinds of stories recur over and over again. He was seen as a sage in his time. He didn’t eat very much. He didn’t sleep very much. Apparently, he was breast fed until the age of eight. It’s clear that there was at least some sort of reason to believe that he had these sage-like qualities and powers because he had a level of transcendent knowledge that nobody else had. He had encountered something intellectually that made him different from everyone else. He had achieved that sense of relief that everybody was gunning for. And it’s not like he just didn’t experience the feeling of being trapped on an alien planet like everybody else was feeling. He felt that too.
There’s a story of someone wanting to make some kind of likeness of him to be remembered by. They wanted to make a painting of him or one of those statues. And when the guy asked Plotinus about it, he turns to the guy and says, “Is it not enough to have to carry around this image? Must I transmit the image of this image as worthy of attention?” What he meant here is that this body that he inhabits in this physical world—this isn’t the highest form of existence. This body that he’s in is already just an inferior copy of something else. He sees it as just an image. Why should he have a picture painted of this false image of who he is? It’s just an inferior copy of an inferior copy. I mean, it’s like taking a Polaroid picture of a Polaroid picture. What’s the point?
Plotinus was highly respected. And if you asked him, “How can a God exist who is good and powerful and still allow evil to exist in the world? How can that possibly be the case?” he would say that it’s because evil does not exist—at least in the way you think about it, it doesn’t. See, Plotinus would have heard your question and said, how does evil exist in the world? That’s easy. In fact, I’ll do you one better. How does anything bad exist in the world at all? Not just, why does God allow serial killers to exist, but also, why are people born with birth defects? Why do people get cancer? Things like that. Really, Plotinus doesn’t have to challenge you here, but the word he used for evil in Greek is better translated in modern times to anything bad, so just go with it.
He would say that the reason why you’re so confused about evil existing is because you’re looking at it the wrong way. When bad things exist in the world, when evil things happen, that isn’t a presence of evil or badness; that’s just an absence of goodness. Because no matter what it is, if something commits an evil act or has qualities that are bad, those qualities or acts can only exist in relation to something good. We used a Harry Potter example earlier.
Well, let’s take Lord Voldemort for example. We’ve all seen the depiction of him in the movies. He certainly commits his fair share of evil acts. But he wouldn’t be able to commit any of them if he didn’t have a certain level of virility, right? He has a good body. I mean, not a good body like he’s an Abercrombie & Fitch model. I didn’t say that right. His body is good. He has good enough health and mobility to chase Harry Potter around everywhere and try to do evil stuff to him. You can’t be an evil dictator on the level of a Lord Voldemort on a Hoveround, alright?
And there are other examples on Lord Voldemort. He doesn’t really have a nose, for example, at least not like a normal person. It looks like he lost it in a construction accident. But the couple slits that he does have, if we call that his nose, then it still allows him to breathe. And if a good nose is one that performs the functions of a nose well, then there’s at least some good present in relation to this bad nose that he has. Because if there wasn’t, then the nose wouldn’t exist. He would be dead. He wouldn’t be able to breathe. Well, everything evil or bad really should be thought of as goodness not being as good as it has the potential to be. Because if something was completely devoid of any good qualities, it would not and could not exist.
Plotinus says that the physical matter things are made of also plays a big role in this, and a little later we’ll talk about how that works into all this. But the genius of this core concept lies in saying the same thing that he’s saying here in a different way. If you took away the good of something, then the bad is always taken away with it. So bad only exists in relation to something good and is, therefore, just an absence of good. And this begs the question of, why should there even be an absence of good in the first place? Well, this is the crossroads that can be explained by the rest of Plotinus’ philosophy. This is a convenient pivot point because by explaining that absence of good, we thereby explain his largest contribution to philosophy and the philosophical system that allowed him to get relief from being trapped on this alien planet that we’re on.
See, this alien planet is the physical world, just to clarify. And Plotinus’ philosophy begins with asking what seems like kind of a weird question. How do we tell when something is something? What is a quality that everything that is something has? Well, to answer this question, Plotinus looks at a lot of different individual things and tries to figure it out. He says, “It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings. This is equally true of things whose existence is primal and of all that are in any degree to be numbered among beings. What could exist at all except as one thing? Deprived of unity, a thing ceases to be what it is called: no army unless as a unity: a chorus, a flock, must be one thing. Even house and ship demand unity, one house, one ship; unity gone, neither remains thus even continuous magnitudes could not exist without an inherent unity; break them apart and their very being is altered in the measure of the breach of unity.”
So, in case you didn’t catch it, Plotinus says that everything has a certain amount of unity to it. In order to be considered a thing, you need to possess a certain amount of unity. What makes a marching band one marching band? Why isn’t it just a bunch of individual people in really weird costumes that specialize in playing various different instruments? At what point does it become a marching band? It’s that quality of unity that makes them one marching band. If you remember our last episode when we compared the world of forms to IKEA, what makes the bookshelf you just bought a bookshelf as opposed to just a bunch of different parts that you get when you open up the box when you get home? And on that same note, what makes a clock a clock instead of just being a bunch of different individual cogs and levers?
Plotinus says that what all these things have in common is that they possess unity. But they all don’t have the same amount of unity. The level of unity that something has comes down to the idea that Aristotle lays out in his four causes. If you remember, one of those four causes is the efficient cause which, the vast majority of the time, is just the cause of the thing’s existence, what brought this thing into being. Well, the efficient cause of a clock is much different than the efficient cause of a dog. I mean, humans artificially created that clock’s unity, right? We put all the cogs and levers together; some clockmaker did. Living things like dogs have a unity that’s inherent. They were born with it. And it’s because of that that Plotinus says that something like a dog has a greater amount of unity than something like a clock. And marching bands have even less, for obvious reasons.
Following this line of reasoning, Plotinus says that the more unity something has, the more real it is. Well, we’ve already talked about this concept of reality not existing in this physical world, this bodily existence, and that our true existence lies in a higher realm that we’re hoping to return to one day. And for the record, remember, this is Neoplatonism; this is compatible with huge concepts that Plato talked about. Remember his allegory of the cave, that reality as we see it can be thought of as just shadows on a cave wall? Well, those shadows on the cave wall that we see in our bodily existence—the inferior copies of the true forms of everything—this alien planet was what almost every single piece of Greek philosophy before Plotinus tried to make us feel better about.
We can look at the philosophy of this time period as just a means to an end of relieving the suffering of the physical world within the physical world. Greek philosophy that came before focused on achieving happiness in this physical world. But Plotinus tells us to turn away from this bodily existence and towards a higher realm where our true reality is. And this idea of unity is extremely important. This is the part we need to remember for future Catholic philosophy. The most important part of Plotinus’ philosophy is called his chain of being—sometimes referred to as his hierarchy of being, sometimes referred to as other things. But it’s kind of how it sounds. It’s a hierarchical system.
The most common visual people use to describe the way Plotinus looked at this hierarchy is a multi-tiered fountain. And personally, I like the example. Hopefully we’ve all seen a multi-tiered fountain before. It’s one of those things where the water comes out of the top tier, and then it overflows into the second tier; and then it overflows into the third tier, and so on and so forth. You could also, I guess, think of a multi-tiered wedding cake. Well, think of Plotinus’ philosophy as a three-tiered fountain. The top tier of this fountain is unity. Plotinus sometimes calls it the One. Sometimes he calls it the Good as a harkening back to Plato. Many people call it God. But I can’t call it anything. In fact, nobody should really call it anything.
You know how the first rule of Fight Club is that you can’t talk about Fight Club? Well, the first rule of the One is that you can’t talk about the One. It’s beyond description. Plotinus says it’s beyond being. The second you try to categorize it with words and call it something, you’re already wrong. In fact, if the One wasn’t such a huge part of his philosophy, I wouldn’t have even brought it up. See, my only skill as a podcaster is to try to categorize things and make them relatable. But Plotinus has found my kryptonite. The best way for me to even try to convey it in some completely inaccurate way is to compare it to the second and third tiers of the fountain. So, let me just tell you what all three tiers are, and then I’ll explain how they relate to each other.
The top tier is the One. The second tier is the Intellect. And the bottom tier is the Soul, which creates the physical world that we live in. So, things exist in this physical world, right? They all possess different amounts of unity. And much like Plato talked about in his allegory of the cave and his world of forms, we can study things like trees in the physical world. We can look at a million trees and write down all the characteristics about them. But we’ll never find the perfect form of a tree. And part of the reason for that is, what is tree-y-ness? Tree-y-ness is only tree-y-ness. It’s not roundness. If it’s a pine tree that you’re looking at, it isn’t the essence of being green. It’s just tree-y-ness. But we can never find that here in the physical world. Because no matter how hard you look, a tree is always going to have some other forms in relation to it like greenness or roundness. It won’t only be tree-y-ness. But the perfect form of tree-y-ness must exist somewhere even if it’s only in thought.
As we all know by now, this place where these things exist is called the world of forms. Well, that perfect form of tree-y-ness in the world of forms is the most unified, perfect version of a tree. And if the more unified something is the more real it is, as Plotinus thought, then that tree—even if it only exists through intellectual thought—is more real than any of these flawed shadows on the cave wall of the physical world. This is why the second tier of the fountain is called the intellect. This is the world of forms. This is where true existence lies. We are souls that inhabit a physical body. Sure, it may seem like we exist in the sense-able world—not sensible, sense-able, the world that we can sense with our sense organs. But true existence is in the intellect.
And that’s a very important distinction to understand. Just because trees in the physical world look like trees doesn’t mean that they are trees. Plotinus thought of things in the physical world as more of a non-being than a being. Because true being—the unified, perfect forms of everything—existed in tier two, the Intellect. These physical non-beings were shadows on the cave wall, or as Plotinus saw it, reflections of the forms from tier two, cast by the Soul into flawed, terrible matter that distorts and dilutes everything. And that’s the world we live in. The Soul is tier three. That is the function of the Soul, to Plotinus: to create and organize the physical world by being a catalyst between the world of forms and this crude, physical matter that ruins everything.
Now, it’s important to note, to Plotinus, there was a rational soul given to humans that was a little different, and a world soul that did that for, well, everything else. To Plotinus, humans were really just pure intellects with an individual soul. He thought the purpose of an intellect was to think and try to gain understanding about the world of forms. Yeah, we have all these emotions and ambitions and desires that seem really important to us. But really, these don’t make up what it means to be me or us. Those emotions and ambitions are just as much a part of us as our physical bodies are, kind of like the smartphone example from earlier. The true existence for us, and the true existence of most things for that matter, lied in tier two, the Intellect.
So, because of all that, Plotinus concludes that the goal of philosophy, and really what we should all be doing given that we are an intellect, is that we should turn away from this bodily existence in this physical world and towards reality by contemplating and trying to understand the forms. And then eventually we’ll find out how fake the physical world is and that, actually, we were always connected to true existence—tier two. But in this tier two, the world of forms, there exists a perfect form of everything.
Once again, if we think about it as IKEA, there is a perfect form of a bookshelf, the perfect form of the end table, the perfect form of the nightstand. But even all these things have one thing in common. They are all one, single, unified being in themselves. That’s the unity that we talked about before. And because of this, Plotinus thinks they must all rely on something even greater than them, something whose entire being is that unity, that one-ness, something that gives rise to everything. And that’s the first tier of the fountain: the One, the Good, God, whatever you want to call it. Through lots of imagery and storytelling, Plotinus says that the One overflows and gives rise to the Intellect and that the Intellect overflows and gives rise to the Soul, which then shines reflections of these perfect forms into terrible physical matter that makes up the sense-able world—hence the example of the fountain.
Now, it’s not the story of how all this stuff happens that’s important here. Though he does go into a lot of detail. It’s not the nuts and bolts of the method in which the One somehow overflows into the Intellect, and so on and so forth. The important part is what this system means to us as beings living in the physical world. By understanding how far removed we are from the One, by understanding how diluted and imperfect the physical world is due to the fact that it’s created by flawed matter and is the third tier of the fountain—which for all intents and purposes is a super watered-down version of the first tier of the fountain—by understanding all that, we can then understand why evil and bad things can exist, why there can be an absence of good in the first place. Because the world we live in is a Polaroid picture of a Polaroid picture of a Polaroid picture.
So, real quick, this is the closet that organizes Plotinus’ contributions that we talked about before. How can bad or evil exist in a world with an all-powerful God at the helm? The answer is, it doesn’t. Only absences of good do—good things not being as purely good as they could be. And this can be explained because we exist in the physical world, the bottom rung on Plotinus’ hierarchy of being.
Now it’s time for the question of the week. So, having so much overtime at my job recently and struggling to get the show recorded reminded me of the fact that life throws you adversity. And it’s through that adversity that we grow as people. Most of the people I know hold their strongest convictions because of events in their life that led to their own sort of intellectual paradigm shifts. People do this all the time. Tragedy strikes them, and they grow and reorganize their priorities as they’re dealing with it. I once knew a lady who worked in Starbucks, and she got breast cancer. And after beating it, she dedicated the rest of her free time in her life to helping others that are going through what she went through. It changed her entire outlook. That moment in her life fueled one of these intellectual paradigm shifts.
So, philosophize this. What adversity has life thrown your way that developed who you are today? Thank you for your patience with me guys, and talk to you soon.