Plotinus's ethics of disinterested interest

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Volumn 44, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-23

  Remes, Pauliina ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI   (Finland)

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EID: 60950168588     PISSN: 00225053     EISSN: 15384586     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2006.0006     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. For example in the introduction of a rather recent history of Greek literature, Plotinus is said to have mutilated Plato by removing the political side of his philosophy and by making the control of reason an end in and for itself. Suzanne Saîd and Monique Trédé, eds., A Short History of Greek Literature (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 145.
2. Paul Plass, "Plotinus' Ethical Theory," Illinois Classical Studies 7 (1982): 241-59, 253, 255;
3. John Dillon, "An Ethic for the Late Antiquity Sage," in Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 315-35;
4. Margaret R. Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty (Oxford and Maiden: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 124.
5. Andrew Smith, "The Significance of Practical Ethics for Plotinus" ["Practical Ethics"], in Traditions of Platonism: Essays in Honour of John Dillon, ed. John J. Cleary (Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate, 1999), 227-36;
6. Alexandrine Schniewind, "Quelles conditions pour une éthique plotinienne? Prescription et description dans les Ennéades" [Éthique plotinienne], in Études sur Plotin, ed. Michel Fattal (Paris and Montréal: L'Harmattan, 2000), 47-73.
7. Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
8. For a defence of the more traditional view, Nicholas D. Smith, "Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics. By Nicholas White. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, " (review) Ancient Philosophy 23 (2003): 215-23.
9. Schniewind, "Ethique plotinienne," 47ff.
10. E.g., Lloyd P. Gerson, Plotinus (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 201-2;
11. John Dillon, "Plotinus, Philo and Origen on the Grades of Virtue" ["Grades of Virtue"], in Platonismus und Christentum, eds. Horst-Dieter Blume and Friedhelm Mann (Münster Westfalen: Aschendorff, 1983), 92-105.
12. See also Dillon, "An Ethic for the Late Antique Sage";
13. For a discussion of internalized virtues already in Plato, see Eyjólfur K. Emilsson, "Plato on Virtue in the Republic," forthcoming.
14. Richard Sorabji, The Philosophy of the Commentators 200-600 A. D. Vol. 1, Psychology (with Ethics and Religion) (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2003), 340.
15. Gerson, Plotinus, 202;
16. Dillon, "An Ethic for the Late Antiquity Sage," 320;
17. Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty, 124;
18. see also Julia Annas, Platonic Ethics. Old and New [Platonic Ethics] (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999), 68-69.
19. See David Sedley, "The Ideal of Godlikeness," in Plato 2. Ethics, Politics, Religion and the Soul. Oxford Readings in Philosophy, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 309-28;
20. and Annas, Platonic Ethics, ch. 3.
21. E.g., Tim. 31b. In relation to the Timaeus, I am indebted to Sarah Broadie's lecture on 'Nature and Divinity in Plato's and Aristotle's Physics,' University of Oxford, February 2003.
22. For the Platonic background, see Smith, "Practical Ethics," 227
23. and John Rist, Plotinus. The Road to Reality [Road to Reality] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 166;
24. on the double role of the soul, see Paul Kalligas, "Living Body, Soul, and Virtue in the Philosophy of Plotinus," Dionysius 18 (2000): 25-38.
25. By nature, these things are servile and hindered. It has been suggested for instance by A. Graeser in his Plotinus and the Stoics: A Preliminary Study (Leiden: Brill, 1974) that Plotinus knew Epictetus's work.
26. See Christian Wildberg, "Pros to telos: Neuplatonische Ethik Zwischen Religion und Metaphysik" ["Pros to telos"], in Metaphysik und Religion. Zur Signatur des Spätantiken Denkens. Akten des internationalen Kongresses vom 13-17. März 2001 in Würzburg, eds. Theo Kobusch and Michael Erler (München and Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 2002), 261-78. Wildberg's emphasis is on the religious and mystical experience rather than intellectual progress, perhaps because his subject is Neoplatonic ethics in general and thus also the post-Plotinian developments. For articulating the relations between metaphysics and ethics his article is very rewarding.
27. This echoes an old Academic challenge to the Stoics: Anthony A. Long and David Sedley, eds., The Hellenistic Philosopheis. 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 64 and the commentary.
28. For the intelligible source, see Wildberg, "Pros to telos," 263.
29. For the term, see Frederic M. Schroeder, "Synousia, Synaisthësis and Synesis: Presence and Dependence in the Plotinian Philosophy of Consciousness," Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 36.1 (1987), 677-99.
30. See e.g., Eyjólfur K. Emilsson, "Remarks on the Relation Between the One and Intellect in Plotinus," in Traditions of Platonism: Essays in Honour of John Dillon, ed. John J. Cleary (Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate, 1999), 271-90.
31. For the metaphysics of the One, see John Bussanich, "Plotinus' Metaphysics of the One," in Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 38-65.
32. White, Individual and Conflict, 198-208.
33. Schniewind, "Éthique plotinienne," 68.
34. See, e.g., O' Meara, Platonopolis, 59-60.
35. There are different ways of interpreting noēsis. Some scholars emphasize its differences from ordinary thought, maintaining that it is a sort of mystical experience, or a principle of intuition. See John Bussanich, "Non-Discursive Thought in Plotinus and Proclus," Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 8 (1997): 191-210, at 198-99;
36. Marc R. Alfino, "Plotinus and the Possibility of Non-Propositional Thought," Ancient Philosophy 8 (1988): 273-84;
37. Sara Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism: Non-Discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus and Damascius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), part I passim. Although this emphasis opens highly interesting vistas upon Plotinus's philosophy, in extreme form it runs the risk of conflating the Intellect with the One.
38. Pauliina Remes, "S. Rappe: Reading Neoplatonism: Non-Discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius, Cambridge, 2000," online Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2002.07.33, at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2002/2002-07-33.html.
39. In his "The Mind of Plotinus," Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1988): 333-58, John Dillon calls the Intellect a matrix of formulae for the things that are projected onto matter.
40. See David T. Runia, "A Brief History of the term kosmos noētos from Plato to Plotinus," in Traditions of Platonism. Essays in Honour of John Dillon, ed. John. J. Cleary (Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate, 1999), 151-71. Runia argues that the term refers to the Timaeus with its interest in physics, order and rationality of the cosmos.
41. see also Gábor Betegh, "Cosmological Ethics in the Timaeus and Early Stoicism" ["Cosmological Ethics"], Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 24 (2003): 273-302.
42. What kind of fate is just or unjust depends also on the virtuousness of one's previous lives. See Rist, Road to Reality, 160-61.
43. Rachel Barney, "A Puzzle in Stoic Ethics." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 24 (2003): 303-40.
44. Sen. Epist. 41;
45. For the agent-neutral reading see, e.g., Martha C. Nussbaum, "The Worth of Human Dignity: Two Tensions in Stoic Cosmopolitanism," in Philosophy and Power in the Graeco-Roman World. Essays in Honour of Miriam Griffin, eds. Gillian Clark and Tessa Rajak (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 31-49;
46. and White, Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics, 311-26.
47. It has also been argued by Pierre Hadot, in his Philosophy as a Way of Life. Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 238-50, that exercises of detaching oneself from the body, from emotions, and from individuality were known in all philosophical schools, especially in Platonism, Stoicism and Epicureanism.
48. See Betegh, "Cosmological Ethics."
49. as well as her The Morality of Happiness (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 159-79.
50. For a similar modern view that proposes reflexive detachment, see Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action (London: Chatto and Windus, 1959).
51. See Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana Press and Collins, 1985), 111.
52. John Bussanich, "Invulnerability of Goodness," 164-66, operates with a slightly similar division into an individual point of view and what he calls a "view from nowhere." In his reading the latter is not primarily an intellectual vision of the rational order of the universe, but rather, a realization of the unreality of human lives, their nature as roles in the cosmic play. In his view, the two points of view are in irreconcilable tension, not the useful double-strategy I have tried to put forward.
53. I hope to discuss this idea fuller at some later date. For now, see Bussanich, "Invulnerability of Goodness," 178.