Abstract
Plotinus’ philosophical project includes an important Socratic element. Plotinus is namely interested in both self-knowledge and care of soul and self. In this study I examine how through his interpretation of three passages from Plato (Timaeus 35 a, Phaedrus 246 band Theatetus 176 a-b), Plotinus develops an account of the role of care in his ethics. Care in Plotinus’ ethical thought takes three forms. First of all, care is involved in maintaining the unity of the embodied self. Secondly, situated in a providential universe, our souls – as sisters to the world soul - take part in the providential order by caring for ‘lower’ realities. Finally, Plotinus develops an ethics of going beyond virtue, a process which involves care for the higher, potentially divine, self.
Highlights
At the very centre of Plotinus’ philosophical preoccupations is a concern for understanding who we really are
It abandons its image if there is nothing at hand to receive it; and it abandons it not in the sense that it is cut off but in that it no longer exists; and the image no longer exists when the whole soul is looking to the intelligible world
I have attempted to show how the multilayered Plotinian self is cared for by the adoption of a certain directionality plotted against the background of the levels of Plotinus’ metaphysical system
Summary
Plotinus understands the embodied self as characterized by multiple levels. 3 Drawing on Plato’s account of the creation of soul in the Timaeus, Plotinus formulates a position according to which soul – while remaining fundamentally unified – is the level of reality where multiplicity is most apparent. In IV 3 (27) he paints the following picture borrowing the image from Homer: “For they did not come down with Intellect, but went on ahead of it down to earth, but their heads are firmly set above in heaven.” (IV 3 (27), 12, 4-5)[14] In III 6 (26) Plotinus elaborates his doctrine of the impassibility of soul in dialogue with the Stoics He develops a theory of the soul as fundamentally unaffected even though sensation and thought do involve process and change relating to a world which transcends the individual.[15] Here Plotinus draws on the Aristotelian idea of the soul as a form, and combines it – clearly departing from Aristotle – with the Platonic idea of the soul as self-moved.[16]. I look at Plotinus’s account of the power of soul and how in certain contexts this power manifests itself as power to care
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