| Phi 220 Spring 2016 |
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Again I’ve assigned a full tractate together with a selection from a second. Porphyry reports that V 8 was written immediately after III 8; the two are part of a larger group of related tractates. A synopsis of V 8 follows, and the passages we will focus on are listed below that.
The beauty of art consists in living form, originating in the intelligible world, to which the mind of the artist has direct access (ch. 1). The beauty of nature is also due to form, and so to a still higher degree is moral beauty (ch. 2). How to rise to contemplation in Intellect, through the contemplation of the purified soul, or, better, of the gods (ch. 3). The heaven of the intelligible gods displayed in all its glory, its perfect unity and its endless living moving diversity, a universe of supremely real beings, not of theorems and propositions (chs. 3-4). The higher wisdom of Intellect which knows realities more like images than propositions (ch. 5). Egyptian hieroglyphics as an example of the expression of non-discursive thought (ch. 6). The unplanned immediate spontaneity with which Intellect creates its image, this visible cosmos (ch. 7). The beauty of the intelligible world (ch. 8). The method of dematerializing our contemplation of the visible cosmos so that we see the intelligible (ch. 9). The true, godlike contemplation of the intelligible world from within (chs. 10-11). Kronos and Zeus as symbols of the intelligible and sensible worlds; necessity of the eternal existence of the sensible image of the intelligible (ch. 12). Further exposition of the way in which Ouranos, Kronos, Zeus and Aphrodite symbolise the Three Hypostases. All beauty comes from the world of Intellect. Transition to V. 5 (ch. 13). (A. H. Armstrong, tr., Plotinus, vol. 5, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984, pp. 234f.)
• Beauty in the Form or Idea
• Ennead V, 8.1, HK 151f. Ask yourself what point Plotinus is making with the example of the two blocks of stone at the beginning of the selection. Also, pay special attention to the discussion of imitation at the end.
• Ennead V, 8.2 (from “In all these …” to “… upon the presented form”), HK 152f. Here Plotinus extends the ideas of the last section to argue for his account of beauty in the case of natural beauty (see the opening of 8.2).
• Wisdom and representation
• Ennead V, 8.3 (to “… Intellect in them”), HK 153f. Our interest is not the point about the soul that Plotinus makes here but instead the discussion of representation by which he makes it.
• Ennead V, 8.4-6 (from “If we have failed …” to “… can be so excellent”), HK 156f. You might think of Plotinus as here building on the discussion of representation in the last selection to provide something comparable to Plato’s distinction of grades of knowledge in Republic, X. Think about three distinctions Plotinus makes: between wisdom that is a manifold and wisdom that is a unity, between a principle that is “a stranger in something strange to it” and one that is not, and between discursive writing forms and pictorial ones like hieroglyphs.
• Contemplation and production
• Ennead III, 8.4 HK 169f. Notice especially the longer paragraph on HK 170, with its account of production as the substitute for contemplation that is required by duller beings like us.
There are two rather different sorts of issues to think about in preparation for discussing this material:
• First, think about Plotinus’s claim (on HK 152f) that the beauty of a work of art is less than the beauty in the soul of the artist and that artists improve on the beauty of nature.
• Also, think about the several sorts of representation discussed in V, 8.3 and 8.5-6—specifically, the idea of representation by samples (HK 153f) and the claim that representation by images is more fundamental than discursive verbal representation (HK 156f).