Plotinus and the Gnostics Author(s): Joseph Katz Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.

15, No. 2 (Apr., 1954), pp. 289-298 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2707773 . Accessed: 27/01/2012 05:27
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of Pennsylvania Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the History of Ideas.

http://www.jstor.org

PLOTINUS AND THE GNOSTICS

BY JOSEPH KATZ

Plotinus' essay against the Gnostics (Ennead II ix) 1 has often been commented upon. Due acknowledgment has been made of the polemical sharpness with which Plotinus attacked what he regarded as the arrogant myth-making and the dialectical imprecision of the Gnostics. But a much more important fact seems to have escaped the interpreters. For it is amazing that almost all of the ideas that Plotinus finds objectionable in the Gnostics have been asserted by himself too in one form or another. The polemic against the Gnostics, consequently, turns out to reveal a vital tension in Plotinus' own system, rather than a mere external differentiation of his doctrines from others. To see Plotinus as in some sense a Gnostic manque is to discover an important aspect of his many-faceted philosophy. In the essay against the Gnostics Plotinus, who usually is very restrained, permits himself a large amount of emotive invective. This too suggests that we are touching upon a vital nerve of Plotinus' thought. The avowed purpose of the essay against the Gnostics is to oppose those who assert that the world of sense or its originating source are evil. Plotinus declares that whatever the deficiencies of the world of sense, it is a copy of the intelligible world and thus exhibits the order and beauty appropriate to it. It is the best possible world, given its inevitable spatial and temporal character. Plotinus even goes so far-and it is going far for a Platonist-as to say that surely those who have had the experience of intelligible beauty and harmony will not fail to be touched by their sensuous copies. " Would any musician who had once heard the intelligible harmonies not also be moved by those of sense? "2 Plotinus even permits himself, something exceedingly rare in him, a moralistic censure, reproaching the Gnostics with unconcern for virtue and declaring solemnly that
1 The title of the essay as given in sections 5 and 16 of Porphyry'sLife of Plotinus is "Against the Gnostics." In section 24 it is " Against those who say that the maker of the world is evil and that the world is evil." The titles are not due to Plotinus and in the body of the essay neither the names of particularthinkersnor the genericname " Gnostics" occur. In section 10 Plotinus refers to " friends who had come across these doctrines [the doctrinesattacked in Enn. II ix] before becomingfriends of ours and who, I do not know how, still perseverein them." The brevity of Plotinus' statement of the doctrineshe attacks and the incompleteness of our sourcesmake it very difficultto determinewhich specificmen Plotinus had in mind. Given the nature of Plotinus'problemin Enn. II ix it will be permissible in this article to use the term " Gnostics" in a genericsense-and it may well have had just such generic significance Plotinus too. for For a discussionof the problemwhich specificmen and doctrinesPlotinus may have had in mind, see Carl Schmidt,Plotins Stellung zum Gnosticismus und kirchlichen Christentum,Texte und Untersuchungenzur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur,new series, vol. 5, fasc. 4 (Leipzig, 1901), especiallypp. 13ff., 30ff., 48ff., 82ff. 2 Enn. II ix 16. All translationsin this article are my own. 289

290

JOSEPH

KATZ

"without true virtue god is only a name." 3 Yet the Plotinus who wrote this essay is the same man who is fond of and often elaborates on the TheMtet's 4 passage which asserts that evils necessarily exist here below and that the best thing is to flee from here to a holier region.5 It is the same Plotinus who says that even the destruction of one's native city will hardly affect the wise man, that one must look upon murder and death and the sack of cities as if they were no more than mere stage spectacles,6 that ascent to the One leads far " beyond even the choir of virtues," 7 and that as compared with union with the One, all other experiences, power, riches, art, science are as nothing.8 In order to show more specifically this balance of opposing ideas in Plotinus, it will be necessary to turn to the main arguments of the essay against the Gnostics. Plotinus argues at some length against the notion of a " fall." 9 In part his argument deals with an issue on which he has been uncompromising: an eternalistic conception of existence which regards novelty as an imputation of potentiality and hence imperfection to the highest source of things.10 But there are other imperfections which according to Plotinus the notion of a "fall" introduces into the intelligible world, such as an anthropomorphic desire for honor, or deliberative reasoning." In general, the notion of the fall of the psyche seems self-contradictory, given the perfectionist definition of the psyche and the absence of body, the prime source of limitation, in the intelligible world. Indeed, Plotinus occasionally speaks as if he thought that it is not the psyche itself, but only a reflection of it caught in matter, that we find in the sense world and that constitutes the composite of psyche and body called man.'2 But this assertion does not represent Plotinus' usual position. His usual view is that the psyche is a member at once of this world and of the intelligible world. Even in the essay against the Gnostics he does not forsake it, even though it weakens his argument. For he can now ascribe only to the universal soul, not to individual souls, the capacity of fulfilling the cosmological function of administering the body of the world without directly descending into it.13 But this assertion, obviously, hardly solves the problem, but only shifts it somewhat. For if it exempts the universal soul from the " fall," it does not do so for the individual souls. At first, even on this issue Plotinus is not without resources to bar a too 5 Enn. I viii 6-7. 7 Enn. VI ix 11. 8 Enn. VI vii 34. 9 Enn. II ix 4ff. 10In Christianity,in contrast, the creation of the world, as against its eternal existence,is taken to exalt God above the world. See also St. AugustineDe civitate Dei X. 31, where St. Augustineobjects to the notion of an eternal pre-existenceof the soul on the ground that change in or of the soul, admitted by Neoplatonists, contradictsthe eternalist thesis. See also X. 30 where he shows the difficulty of maintainingthe Neoplatonistthesis of the fall (or of the transmigration)of a soul conceivedas pre-existenton a superiorlevel of reality. 11Enn. II ix 4. 12Enn. I i 12. 13 Enn. II ix 4, 6, 7, 8.
3

Enn. II ix 15.

4 Plato Theaetetus176a.

6 Enn. I iv 7, III ii 15.

PLOTINUS

AND THE

GNOSTICS

291

literal understandingof a favorite metaphorof his, the Phaedr metaphor of the soul's loss of wings.14 Accordingto a device he frequently uses, the psyche consists of hierarchically arranged faculties, the highest of which never descends, so that ascent or descent becomes a matter of the shifting awarenessof the human self.15 He suggests in addition that the descentof the psyche does not spring from a flaw, but rather from the power of superabundant perfection which, in the absence of a counter-power,exhausts itself in all degrees of being.18 Yet these constructionsand the often tortuous dialectic they require half imply and half defend themselves against a quite differentconceptionof the psyche. In some contextsthis conception too finds explicit statement. The fall of the soul is then derived from discontent and overbearing. Her fall is a withdrawal from the whole into an individualistic separateness.l7 The fall is a self-assertion. Plotinus even goes so far as to declare on occasion that the fall stems from the soul's " arrogance."18 These passages illustrate well how close Plotinus, too, is to " acosmism,"how he is willing to violate cosmologicalorder, and dialectical rigor, for the sake of a drama of rebellion and redemption. Plotinus strongly objects to the Gnostics' insistence on their speciallyprivilegedplace in the universe,their insistenceon beingthe childrenof god, better than other men and deities.19 There is a rationalistic and a sociological aspect to his argument. He is irked that "men without station," members of the " vulgar crowd,"should claim such distinction, and more emphatically,that the way to salvation should flagrantlybypass dialectic and the stern intellectual and moral disciplineit requires.20But these reservations do not imply immunity to the serpent's temptation: eritis sicut Deus. In Plotinus' system too identificationwith the One is the ultimate goal of human endeavor. The self in its upwardflight does not stop at the level of nous in a mere contemplationof the highest existence-as do the redeemedin Christianity. Plotinus too holds somethinglike the Gnostic notion of the divine spark when he says, in more Aristotelianlanguage, that ascent to and union with the One means the reawakeningof the psyche's potentialities,21 or when he declares that the supremepart of the psyche Plotinus' " acosmism" is of course more mitigated than the Gnostics'. Accordingto Gnostic doctrine,this world is the productof an evil demiurge, and men of the divine pneuma owe no allegiance either to this creator god or to his world.23 Plotinus finds it particularlyobjectionable this doctrine in
14Pato Phaedrus246c, Enn. II ix 4. ' Enn. II ix IV viii 8. 2, 1 Enn. II ix 3, 8, of. Vii 2, VI vii 8. 7 Enn. IV viii 4. 1, 18 Enn. V i 1. Often there is an attempt to minimizethe flaw that initially inheres in the psyche and also to shift at least part of the responsibilityupon the obtrudingpresence of a body. See Enn. III ii 4. Such passagesbetray Plotinus' uneasinesswith the more Gnostic implicationsof his thought. 19Enn. II ix 9, 16, 18. 20 Enn. II ix 9.
e1 Enn. VI ix 1I, IV viii 1. 22 Enn. II ix 2. 2SCf. Enn. II ix 15ff.

is forever united with the One.22

292

JOSEPH

KATZ

that it assigns to man a rank higher than to the celestial realm whose beauty and order are in such marked contrast with terrestrial life. According to Plotinus, the sun and the stars possess not only immortality, but a wisdom and a freedom from passion superior to those of men born only recently and subject to lust, pain, and the fits of temper.24 A striking vindication, even a glorification, of the world of sense occurs in Ennead III viii, which Plotinus puts in the form of a hypothetical speech by the cosmos itself: I was made by god and as I stem from the realm beyond, I am perfect containing all living things. I am self-sufficient and independent, in want of nothing, because in me there is everything, all plants, animals, all that is born, the plurality of gods, the tribes of demons, excellent souls, and men happy through the quality of their life. The earth is not alone adorned by the whole gamut of plants and all the varieties of animals, nor does the power of the soul extend to the sea omitting the air, ether, or heaven; but there are found beyond the earth souls, and excellent souls only, which give life to the stars and to the well-ordered and eternal round of heaven that in imitation of the intelligible world wisely describes a circular path around the same center forever, without the need for deviation. All things that exist within me aspire towards the Good, but each realizes it according to its capacity; for the whole heaven depends on it, all that I possess of soul, the gods that exist in my parts, all animals, plants, and all that is in appearance inanimate. The latter seem to participate in existence alone, of the others some participate in life alone, some also possess sensation, some even reason, and some universal life. For one must not ask that unequals be equal. One must not ask of a finger to see, but of the eye. Of the finger one must ask, I suppose, to fulfill its proper function of a finger.25 What Plotinus says in such contexts implies no special exaltation of man. It seems only a short step to the Stoics' submission to nature or even to Aristotle's notion of mortal man reaching only a temporary immortality in the study of the eternal patterns of nature. No notion of man's supernatural character seems to break in to require the union of two incommensurable orders of existence. But such subordination of the psyche holds for Plotinus only when he views it in its state of association with the body, or in its cosmological function as a hypostasis mediating between the intelligible and the sensible worlds. Ultimately, for Plotinus too, the psyche transcends both the sensible and the intelligible worlds.26 It leaves behind sun, stars, and the other divinities.27 Plotinus' conception of man never reaches the boldness of the Gnostic conception of man the redeemer, but neither does it rest content to assign man the function of a " part " in a universal whole. Union with the One is as all-devouring ontologically as solipsism is epistemologically. Be it noted, moreover, that ascent is accomplished neither by grace nor prayer, but through the adoption of Plotinian philosophy. 24Enn. II ix 5, 13. 25Enn. III ii 3; cf. II ix 8. 26Enn. VI ix 11, IV viii 1. When united with the One, the psyche "is raised above all the other intelligible beings." 27Plotinus maintains the existence of deities, but they are to him of inferior rank than the One. The plurality of gods exhibits the abundantpower of the One (Enn. II ix 9).

PLOTINUS

AND THE

GNOSTICS

293

There seems to be one respect in which Plotinus is profoundly different from the Gnostics, and that is in his painstakingly rationalistic way of arguing. At the very beginning of his essay against the Gnostics28 he charges the Gnostics with needlessly multiplying the number of hypostases. What he has in mind is the multiplicity of entities, half-conceptual and halfmythical, that spring from the fertile Gnostic imagination. To Plotinus the dramatic evolution of the Gnostic world destroys the perfection of the One by introducing potentiality into it.29 Similarly, to Plotinus the Gnostic division of nous into an intelligence at rest and an intelligence in motion, or into thought and awareness of thought, seems to ignore the capacity for interpenetration and unification that immaterial existence possesses and to lead to an infinite regress (awareness of awareness of thought becomes a superior hypostasis and so forth).30 These arguments are representative of Plotinus' approach in general. A disciplined logic underlies Plotinus' method. He himself is quite aware of this when he charges the Gnostic constructions with not being " Greek." 31 Nevertheless, Plotinus cannot be called a rationalist without major reservations. For Plotinus' system too rests on myth. He is, of course, unaware of this, and on the surface pushes rationalism so far that he will usually accept the traditional Greek myths only on the assumption that they are metaphorical, and in particular always translates their temporal form into his eternalistic concepts. The break in Plotinus between a rationalist method and a mythical background is discernible at a juncture in his system that, on the surface, seems to furnish a model of consistency: the relationship of the One to nous. In Plotinus' system, nous generated by the One is the first reflection of ultimate simplicity. On the level of nous the One's richness splits up into manifoldness, but as the realm of nous is immaterial, its multiplicity is compatible with togetherness and eternity. Nevertheless, the apparent smoothness of the transition from the One to nous is one of the triumphs of Plotinian dialectic. It hides the conflict between the rationalist method and the mythical background. As one might expect, discussions of nous imply the former, discussions of the One imply the latter; but the division is not really clear-cut, since the conception of nous is not without a rather full share of myth (as, for instance, in the identification of nous and Being), and since much logic enters into the definition of the One (as, for instance, in deriving some of the logical implications of unity). Plotinus' discussions of nous are often a more or less hypostatized description of the rationalist approach. Most characteristically this is asserted
30 Enn. II ix 1. 29Enn. II ix 1, 6. ix 1. Enn. II ix 6. Plotinus is neverthelessled to remark that the Gnostics with of an appearance justice derivesome of their doctrinesfrom Plato (Enn. II ix 6, 17). He might have added other Greek sources, particularly the Pythagoreans. But rather than admit the "impurity" of the Greek tradition, Plotinus prefers to chargethe Gnosticswith an impure interpretation. When he charges the Gnostics with unfitting elaborationsof the ancient doctrines and when he speaks of the "deceit" capturing mankind, one gets a good idea of the bitterness with which Plotinus faced not only the Gnostics,but also, in all likelihood,Christianity.
28 Enn. II
31

294

JOSEPH KATZ

in Ennead III viii, where he declaresthat not just rational beings, but all nature aspires towards contemplation. "Begetting means to producesome form; and this means to spread contemplationeverywhere."32 Practical activity, the mechanicalarts are attempts to get hold of ideas and express them in actions or artefacts characteristicof men who cannot more purely hold them in mind.33 "All life is some sort of thought ... The highest life and perfectthought are one and the same thing."34 In other words,it is in being understoodthat things reachtheir fulfilment. For this Plotinus quite properly might claim the "Greek" tradition-with reservations,for how should one term his reification of the intellectual function? Moreover, Plotinus'having all naturesubservethe design of contemplativefulfilmenthow like the Gnostics it is in its anthropocentric egotism!35 It is a quite differentmannerof being and a quite differentexperience that Plotinus understandsunder the name of the One. It is so little intellectual that Plotinus denies even self-awarenessto the One.36 In the descriptionof the One the terms of his system forsake him, and occasionally he even says that the One is not to be called the One37 or that the Good is not to be called good.38 There are dialectical reasonsfor this via negativa, given the conceptionof levels of reality and the view that the properreferent of discursivelanguageis sense existence. But Plotinus has a more definite notion of the One, and forgettinghis negative strictureshe refersto it in the metaphorsof joy,39of love,40of light,41even of intoxication.42 The soul is in such a state then [when unified with the One] that it has must have (1) the power of intelligencewhich gives it the vision of what is containedin itself and (2) the powerof graspingthat which is beyond itself by a direct apprehension.... The first vision is that of intellectualnous, the
32Enn. III viii 7. In Plotinus the Trational principles (logoi) of nature are understoodat once in an ontic and an epistemicsense. 33Enn. III viii 4; see also Enn. IV iv 44 where Plotinus asserts that only contemplationis free from the magicalinfluencesto which action is necessarilysubject. 34Enn. III viii 8. S5Nevertheless, Plotinus' identificationof nous with Being creates strong ambiguities, even to the point of an anti-intellectualistconceptionof the intelligible world. Plotinus' usual objectionto the notion of providenceis that it ascribesdeliberation to the intelligible world, which in his view creates rather by its being what it is (Enn. III ii 3, VI vii 1, II ix 8). In Enn. II ix 2 Plotinus asserts that the world soul governs not "by deliberation," but "by its contemplationof the world above it." The contrast of "deliberation" with " contemplation" mirrors the ambiguity of the identificationof nous with Being. OccasionallyPlotinus goes so far as to assert the quite modern-sounding idea that knowing,even the knowing of nous, springsfrom want (for instance,Enn. III viii 11). Plotinus also tends to a conceptionof consciousness which makes it a product of incomplete absorption in activity (for instance,Enn. I iv 10). 36Enn. VI ix 6. 37Enn. V v 6, 13. 38 Enn. VI ix 6. 39Enn. VI vii 34. 40 Enn. VI viii 15, VI ix 9. 41Enn. VI ix 9. 42Enn. VI vii 35. contempt even for thought, which before has given it much joy.... Nous

PLOTINUS

AND THE

GNOSTICS

295

otherthat of nous which loves. For when nous ceases to be rational and is drunk with nectar, it becomes nous which loves and achieves the unity which gives happinessthroughits fullness. Such drunkennessis better for it than a sobrietythat is above such drunkenness.43 Salvation in the One is very much more than intellectual fulfilment. The metaphorsdescribingthe One, the metaphorsof the ascent to the Alone, of the fall, of the arroganceand self-assertionof the psyche, of the treacherous black magic of matter,44 describea reality that is rich and imaginative. all One need only expand what Plotinus says, let the imagination run more freely, give it appropriateexpressionin rite and acts, and one has full blown Gnosticism. Even as it is, Plotinus' system may be taken as one vast hymn to inexhaustible seminal fertility.45 In his world everything emanates from the highestpowerby cosmologicalnecessity, and yet this necessity involves it in pain and longing.4" The whole universe is endowed with the qualities of psyche. Not only man but everything longs to return to, even to be extinguishedin the One.4T All being constitutes the vast spectacle of bitter necessity and sweet salvation. Moder readershave been puzzledabout the existential referenceof Plotinus' system. But his system is at least existential in its referenceto psychic reality-of course frequently in symbolic rather than literal terms. But Plotinus shrinks from the full implications of his own thought. Somethinglike Gnosticism is implied by half of his thought, and yet he is blind to it to the extent of ignoringthat almost all of the ideas he finds objectionablein the Gnostics can nearly be matched by ideas of his own. But he knew the Gnostictemptationfromthe inside. The very vehemenceof his essay against them is one moretestimony to the fact that the bitterest battles are always against one's own unacknowledged impulses. It might perhapsbe said that Plotinus could have integratedhis thought better, had he had at his disposal the Christian distinction between faith and reason or the distinctionbetweennon-discursiveand discursivesymbolism. But no mere conceptualdistinctionwould have helped Plotinus48 (as it helped little many Christian thinkers who soon involved their revealed God in the most intricatedialectical contextsor asked pseudo-physicalquestions about him). Plotinus' integration of the discordant elements in his system was dialectical,and he succeededat it so well that he might be called
seminalcult see Epiphanius Panarion26. There is much of the libidinousin the Gnostic imaginationin general. 46Enn. IV viii 5, VI ix 9. 4T Enn. VI viii 13. 48Phrases like Porphyry's "the unreasonedand unreasonablefaith" (alogos pistis) of the Christiansindicate how much such a distinctionlay outside the Neoplatonists'orbit in their insistence on at least the form of rational demonstration. New Testament passages They are hence genuinelypuzzledby certain characteristic whichpromisesalvationthroughother mear, than philosophicknowledge. 44Enn. IV iv 43, 44. 48 Enn. VI vii 35. 45 For the extremesto whichthe Gnosticscarriedthe

296

JOSEPH

KATZ

the master of those who aim at consistency. The often-praisedarchitecture of Plotinus' system is really analogous to a Gothic facade over a modern structureof steel and concrete. The emanationof the One into nous hides a major discrepancy. Again, the third hypostasis, the psyche, comes close to being a superfluous reduplication,and the reconciliationof its cosmological with its ethical function is hardly possible.4 On the level of sense Plotinus never fully overcomesthe discrepancybetween a substantial and
a privative conception of matter and evil50 (just as St. Augustine never fully shed his Manicheanism). Plotinus' chain of being, on the surface an unbroken continuum of all degrees of power, hides a mass of conflicting tendencies and assumptions. Yet such was Plotinus' dialectical power that even if the post-Enlightenment reader has difficulty finding the existential referents of his thought, some variant of his system has up to the nineteenth century served as the best rational yardstick of reality.51 The preceding discussion also throws some light on the problem of Plotinus' mystical experience. Plotinus himself in a few passages seems to lay claim to such an experience.52 Still, he hardly dwells on the experience 49To Plotinus nous is not only "vision " but also true Being and Life. Hence once nous is endowedwith Life, the psyche seems to lose its most specific function and the world of senses could have been derived immediatelyfrom nous. There is indeed in Plotinus' system an isomorphismbetween nous and the sense world. Both contain in their differingways-the one in immutableand nonmaterialsameness, the other in space and time-the totality of things. The psyche, if Plotinus were fully consistent, should follow the same pattern of "horizontal" plenitude. Instead the psyche, in one sort of context, has a "vertical" plenitude,being associated with the various levels of reality. In other contexts it shrinks from this sort of plenitudeto a more univocal agent whose function is mediation and which is a mobile being capable of ascent and descent. Either "vertical" plenitude or mobility bring the One within reach of man, that is, of man who has undergonethe philosophicdiscipline. There are other possibleimplicationsto the distinctionbetweennous and psyche, such as its standingfor the male and female principle respectively,as is suggested, for instance,by the fact that in Plotinus the male deities of traditionalmyths tend to be identifiedwith nous, the female ones with psyche. Cf. Rene Arnou,Le Desir de Dieu dans la philosophicde Plotin (Paris, 1921), appendixA, 296ff. The absence of an explicitly femalepersonfrom the Christiantrinity shouldbe noted, while with the Gnostic divinitiesthe feminineis usuallywell represented. (Note also the quite positive evaluation of the Biblical Eve and women in general with the Gnostics.) 50Enn. II v 4, 5, II viii 1lff. 51 It might be noted that it has been a recurrent method in philosophyto bridge thought sysby dialectic or metaphor or both the gap between incommensurable tems or betweenthought and experience. One finds this, for instance,in the Monadology, where Leibniz attempts to reunite geometry with physical reality. Or one finds it in the many attempts to solve the mind-body " problem,"a problem due in many of its formulationsto the improperoppositionof two sets of abstractions. More recentlythis method has been exemplifiedin the dialecticalexercisesof those who have put values beyond the reach of scientificmethod and yet wish somehow to relatevalues to this world. 52 Enn. IV viii 1, VI ix 9.

PLOTINUS

AND THE

GNOSTICS

297

itself. The experience is the indicated goal, but Plotinus describes the structure of the One, as well as that of nous, in logical rather than experiential terms. The present discussion, nevertheless, has uncovered some strong mythical undercurrents in Plotinus. The answer suggests itself therefore that Plotinus' thought in its non-logical aspects was not so much oriented on a single or rare mystical experience, but rather on those unconscious or half-conscious impulses that find expression in myth. If Plotinus is to be given a name, he should be called a " mythic " rather than a mystic.53 Plotinus is to be regarded as in a sense a Gnostic manque, and to see him as such is a major clue to his thought.64 Plotinus seems to be launched
53 The distinctionbetween the two is sometimesa fine one, but in mystical experience,one might say, the symbolic is given active sensory expression,in myth it is more intellectualized(which fits in well with Plotinus' rationalism). Myth can be so attenuatedthat, as in some theologians,for instance," God " is not much more than a logical term. There is, as some scholarshave noted (for instance,R. Arnou, op. cit., 276-278), much parallelismbetween the ritual of the mystery religionsand the metaphorsdescribingthe mystic experience,including for instance the central significanceof light. (In the ceremonythe climax is reached when the statue of the god is revealed in a blaze of light.) Plotinus seems to have been acquainted with the ritual of the mystery religions (see Ennead VI ix 11) and this has to be taken into account when one looks for the referents of Plotinus' statements concerning supersensibleexperience. Myth, mystery ritual, mystic experienceare of courserelatedexpressions psychic striving. E. Brehierin his book La Philosophie of de Plotin (Paris, 1928), chapter 7, has argued that the idea, often prominentin existenceis not Greek in Plotinus, of the self's absorptionin a largernon-conscious origin,and attempts to deduceit from Indian sources. Whateverthe possible relations of historicalinfluence,the emotionalroots of the idea of the absorptionof the individualin a larger whole should be given full consideration. It is interestingto note that the " Western" (Plotinus'" Greek") mind, in the face of certain psychic projections,readily resorts to the epithet "Eastern" or some equivalent. Thus the tendency of the essay against the Gnosticsto separate intellectuallyfrom one's self certain of one's psychic strivings is rather general. It is one of the forms of self-alienation. 54 Hazel E. Barnes,in an article on " Neo-Platonismand AnalyticalPsychology," The Philosophical Review, LIV (1945), 558-577, states on the first page that Plotinus "to a large extent presented in religious metaphysics what they [the Gnostics] were saying by means of elaboratereligioussymbolisms." The body of the article is devoted to another topic than the direct substantiationof this assertion. It should be noted that it is the claim of the present article that Plotinus, rather than presentinga philosophicalversion of Gnosticism,presents a much restricted view when comparedwith Gnosticism. E. Brehier,op. cit., has called attention to the dual orientation of Plotinus' thought. He says (35), "We find in Plotinus a double presentationof reality: on the one hand a presentationakin to

of rationalthought." On p. 8 Brehier declaresthat for all of Plotinus' attachment to the rationalmethod of Greek philosophy,"the problemswhich he puts himself are problemswhich Greekphilosophynever envisaged. They are problemsthat are properly religious." It seems to the present writer that " religious" may be too specific a term to denote the psychic factors implied in Plotinus' thought. On the resemblanceof Plotinian and Gnostic ideas concerningthe highest existence, see

the myth of the soul. . . . On the other hand, the universe . . . can be the object

298

JOSEPH

KATZ

on a path that he does not dare to pursue to its end. His use of reason does not lead back to " Greek " science, and yet it bars a frank acknowledgment of its mythical motivations. As compared with contemporary Gnostics and Christians, there is something peculiarly unfinished and thwarted about Plotinus' philosophy. The ascent to the One is a more jungle-like journey, stirring more monsters in the soul and awakening more longings than Plotinus allowed. Both Gnostics and Christians saw this much better. In the case of Plotinus too, Dionysos is playing his tricks on another sober son of Apollo. It should finally be said that Plotinus' philosophy is properly compared with Gnosticism, rather than Christianity. The development of what was to become Christianity was controlled by the limitations, both positive and negative, of a mass movement and an eventual state religion. Both Plotinus' and the Gnostics' are essentially minority creeds with no hope of mass following and without the penalty of dilution. Both separate mankind into classes, considering only a small group with special attainments as the redeemed: Their minority status is not due to accident, but to the fullness of their expression of certain special impulses which society at large considers dangerous or impractical and from which it shrinks into conformism. Plotinus, had he known of it, would have been sympathetic to the rebellious interpretation the Gnostics gave of the serpent's advice in Eden. To acquire knowledge of good and evil is an inspiration from the highest God, prohibition of it the work of a fallen deity. In the way they interpreted the serpent's advice Plotinus and the Gnostics differed. The gnosis of Plotinus tends to be knowledge by discursive symbol, that of the Gnostics knowledge by myth and even acquaintance; in Ennead IV viii 7 (cf. Enn. IV viii 5) Plotinus goes as far as to say that experience of evil may have the value of enhancing the psyche's appreciation of good, but, he adds characteristically, only for those who need to learn by experience rather than by science. Neither Neoplatonism nor Gnosticism ever became genuine alternatives to Christianity, because they were both more partial and in some respects more perfect. Both of them continued their careers as tacit or open heresies under Christianity (Gnosticism, for instance, in the guise of alchemy). The temptation of intellect and the temptation of myth are as omnipresent as Plotinus held his One to be. They lurk furtively in the very soul of the conformist whose vaunted realism is often not much more than a defense against such divine madness. Vassar College. E. Br6hier's introduction to Ennead VI viii in his edition of Plotinus (Plotin, Enneades VI2 [Paris, 1938], 121). See also Hans Jonas, Gnosis und spdtantiker Geist, Forschungenzur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments, new series, fasc. 33 (Gottingen, 1934), 251. Jonas' entire discussion of Gnostic acosmismand its relationto "Greek" thought is relevantto the problemshere discussed. Some of the problemstouchedupon in the present article have found more explicit treatmentin my Plotinus'Searchfor the Good (New York, 1950). But the body of the article is an addition to and in some respects a revision of what I say in chapter 2, entitled "The nature of Plotinus'' mysticism."