Consciousness and Introspection in Plotinus and Augustine (original) (raw)
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PLOTINUS AND THE YOUNG AUGUSTINE ON THE FALL OF THE SOUL: BEYOND O'CONNELL'S THESIS
This article proposes an alternative to O'Connell's thesis regarding the young Augustine's theory of man through a detailed parallel analysis of the Latin text of the De Genesi contra Manichaeos and of the Greek text of the Enne-ads and illustrates Augustine's dependence on and at the same time distance from Plotinus' thought. Through a strictly philological analysis of all the texts under exam the article demonstrates that O'Connell's conclusions, which for years have stirred a heated debate among scholars, cannot be held. Augustine never thought of man in Paradise as disembodied, as O'Connell suggests, but rather as provided with a body that was different from the one man has on earth. In the last forty years of scholarship on the relation between Plotinus and Augustine one of the most controversial questions has surely been that of the understanding of the human soul by Augustine. Did he see human souls, and hence human beings tout court, as fallen from a previous state of bliss in a celestial pre-existence? The scholar who first posed this question, R.J. O'Connell, gave it a positive answer: in his works he sustains that, in his view on human nature and on the origin and ultimate essence of the soul, Augustine did not just sympathize with a theory at odds with the orthodox doctrine of the Church, but openly sustained it. As a base for his speculation Augus-tine used the writings of Plotinus, through which he would have de facto 'platonized' Christianity, introducing an understanding of the faith that results in a falsification of its true message. It is easy to see the deep relevance of such a hypothesis concerning Augustine's speculation: for, if correct, it would completely reshape our understanding of one of the figures that most influenced the development of Western thought, while at the same time it would prompt a re-evaluation of the
BETWEEN AND BEYOND AUGUSTINE AND DESCARTES: MORE THAN A SOURCE OF THE SELF
Augustinian Studies 32:1 (2001): 65-88., 2001
Every Neoplatonist can show that the thinking and willing subject must be self-constituted. No modern, conscious of the diversity and connection of its Western forms, will deny that this self-constitution is historical. Some may not have attended to the central role of Augustine in making the Hellenistic move to the subject a foundation of Latin Christian culture. His unrivaled domination of the formative years of Latin mediaeval intellectual life may not be deemed important for the subsequent developments in which there is wider interest. However, no one who regards Descartes as essential to the construction of the modern self can deny the positive role of Augustine in Descartes’ revolution. Despite the opposition of anti-Modern Christians, and of their postmodern heirs, to finding in Descartes a true successor of Augustine, my colleague Zbigniew Janowski has just published in a single year two books, Cartesian Theodicy. Descartes' Quest for Certitude and Index Augustino-Cartésien: Textes et Commentaire, proving the extent of this dependence even to Jean-Luc Marion. Janowski concludes that before 1630 Descartes had read De Doctrina Christiana, and the De Ordine and De Genesi ad Litteram before 1637. Before 1641 he had read De Immortalitate animae, De Quantitate animae, De Libero Arbitrio, De Trinitate, Confessiones, De Ciuitate Dei, Contra Academicos and De Vera religione. The themes essential to the Cartesian metaphysics as presented in the Meditations which derive from Augustine include the following: the end of philosophy, i.e. knowledge of God and soul, that mathematics is certain whether we are awake or asleep, the evil genius, the cogito, the definition of soul, the notion of extension, the example of the wax, Inspectio mentis, that I am a middle between being and nothing, the explanation of the origin of error, that in intellectual vision there is no error, that understanding judges between the data of the senses, the definition of eternal truths, that God creates by the action of his knowing, and Inneism. Janowski determines: “Whatever the final judgment about the true relationship between Augustinianism and Cartesianism, one can safely conclude that even if Cartesianism is not the most faithful interpretation of the thought of St. Augustine, it is certainly a legitimate one” The affiliation is profound, indeed: “Numerous passages that the Augustinians could recognize in the Meditations must have sounded to their ears as if the Saint himself was speaking.” Moreover, Janowski shows that by means of Augustine, Descartes is transforming the conception of the self inherited from the Scholastics. In consequence, we must not only praise Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self, as many rightly have, for bringing the self to the fore within the Anglo-American philosophical world. In addition, we must recognise that his treatment of the Western self is remarkable in its scope. He has shown the need for a consideration which includes history (or which is, as he says, “analytical and chronological” ). Moreover, in showing us how the modern identity has been made, Taylor has reached back further than many would think necessary. As is required, he has put Augustine at the foundation of Cartesian modernity and of its account of the self. His assertion that “On the way from Plato to Descartes stands Augustine” is more than a chronological fact. It is a significantly true and necessary statement about our construction of ourselves. Nonetheless, Taylor’s sketch of the sources of the western self involves problems, problems which are at the center of many present philosophical, historical and theological treatments of the self. My difficulties are not with what Taylor has written, but rather with what he leaves out. We should not be surprised if in the twelve hundred years between the cogito of Augustine and that of Descartes, subjectivity found and made for itself other sources, shapes and structures. These also make the modern identity and, just as importantly, belong also to its necessary deconstruction. I propose here to trace, as briefly as it can be done, the way from Augustine to them.
eds.), Plotinus and Epicurus: Matter, Perception, Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2016, 236pp., $99.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781107124219.
Reading Neoplatonism: Non-Discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus
Reading Neoplatonism, 2000
In the last chapter, we looked at Plotinus' visionary approach to Plato's Demiurge and wondered if the unitary world of the soul threatened to elide and engulf the ordinary world of objective essences. The question before us is now, how does Plotinus' conception of the soul overcome, so to speak, the temptations of this unlimited enrichment and avoid falling into a solipsistic dream. In what follows, I will explore the limitations of the soul's world and the soul's vision, showing in particular that Plotinus' views on discursive thinking point to a form of knowledge that asks the individual soul to step outside of its own constructions and its own contents. As we will see in the following chapters, because non-discursive thinking ultimately circumvents the intentional structures of thought, the intentional stance cannot be reified in such a way as to substitute for an objective world order. Plotinus' views on method and truth involve a rejection of essentialism and a generally cautionary attitude toward discursive thinking. Some features of his anti-essentialism might lead us to think that he does hold to a kind of subjectivism, but in what follows I would like to suggest that this is not accurate. To clarify the problems with characterizing Plotinus as a subjectivist, I turn to a modern critique of subjectivism. In his book, Subjectivity, Realism, and Postmodernism, Frank Farrell points out the hidden ironies of what amounts to a self-deception implicit within Cartesian epistemology. This selfdeception appears when we contrast ancient and modern Skepticism: Whereas the ancient skeptic recommends withholding judgment about any proposition, his modern counterpart is skeptical about the world in a way 45
Plotinus could not foresee that almost two thousand years later we would still find it difficult to endure his “paradox of thought” (III. 8 [30] 1.8) and that we could not help considering his doctrine of contemplation, as stated by Émile Bréhier’s famous words, “un des paradoxes les plus violents qu’ait jamais produit la philosophie.” Indeed, the idea that contemplation – an “activity”, so to speak, or rather a state, traditionally understood as a placid vision and the highest goal of human being – is also productive and spreads throughout the entire reality, being somehow present even in plants and in our silliest actions (III. 8 [30] 1), is a very strange thing to say. However, it is not only the thesis of a productive contemplation that is a strong paradox: the treatise itself that contains such a doctrine is perhaps as paradoxical as the doctrine it contains. For while the treatise is usually regarded as one of Plotinus’ most characteristic works, the doctrine and the language we find in it seem to be unique in the Plotinian corpus. If the doctrine of productive contemplation seems at first sight to occur only in this treatise, this fact would not necessarily be a problem. Plotinus was not obliged to write down all his doctrines in all his treatises, nor needed he write everything he might have said in his oral lectures. Therefore, we need not see such a thesis as a radically new doctrine, or as an evidence of evolution in Plotinus’ thought – supposing that this doctrine actually occurs only in III. 8 [30]. But if the apparent novelty of the thesis need not be faced as a problem, the fact that Plotinus employs the theōría-vocabulary – and by this I mean the substantives theōría and theṓrēma, and the verb theōreîn – with an accurate and technical sense that is different from any other treatise of the Enneads remains very intriguing. Of course, one can find singular, isolated theses and statements in the Enneads, but all of them are normally expressed in the more or less recurrent and habitual Plotinian language. However, this seems not to be case of the theōría-vocabulary in III. 8 [30]. Thus, in this paper I will do the following: i) I will briefly assess the content of treatise III. 8 [30], picking up its main claims; ii) I will try to show that almost all of Plotinus’ theses in III. 8 [30] can be found outside this treatise too, though expressed in his more conventional language; iii) I will argue that the theōría-vocabulary is not normally employed by Plotinus, outside III. 8 [30], in the same way he uses it in this treatise, that is, to express the same type of contemplation we find in III. 8 [30]; iv) I will suggest that the polished and careful prose of III. 8 [30] insinuates that the treatise was meant to be read by or to a wide audience; and v) I will suggest that the treatise Against the Gnostics (II. 9 [33]) may give us a clue to the reason why Plotinus chose the theōría-vocabulary in III. 8 [30].