Plotinus lived about a century before St. Augustine. He was one of the first of what are known as Neo-Platonists.
A (ridiculously short) summary of Plato:
Plato was a hard dualist: He believed that there existed two aspects of reality, the physical (what we perceive with our senses) and the ideal (what we perceive with our minds). The Ideal realm existed in the mind of God, and consisted of the Forms—the Ideal man, the Ideal horse, the Ideal circle, and so on. These Ideals existed before individual people, horses, or circles could ever come into existence.
Matter and Form were united by a Prime Mover, but only Form subsists on its own. Because matter is ontologically separate from God, it’s subject to change, death, and evil; life and the ultimate good emanate from the divine to inhabit and give order to chaotic matter.
(If all this sounds familiar, it’s because Thomas Aquinas converted Plato to Christianity, in a way! Aquinas was also a precursor of Renaissance Humanism.)
***
Plotinus renewed and expanded Platonic thought and in a way made it his own. He may have actually edged out of dualism into a complex, many-shaded monism.
In Plotinus’ view, the ultimate source of existence was the One, or the Good, loosely corresponding to an impersonal theism. The world came to be through a series of emanations—not in time, but in levels of reality.
One stage “below” the One is the Intellect. This is pure mind, pure reason, unconnected with physical reality. The job, so to speak, of the Intellect is to contemplate the One; through this contemplation, Plato’s Forms are created.
Below Intellect is Soul. This is a tricky concept, because modern Westerners think of Soul as an animating principle of sorts. Another way to describe it might be something like the Will of German Idealism. Plotinus’ Soul is nothing more than the nature of desire. Soul desires the Intellect, just as the Intellect contemplates the One. When we find beauty in things, that’s Soul at work. (It’s also Soul at work when we’re hungry, horny, or acquisitive!)
Each principle that “emanates” from the One has an internal and external activity. The One’s internal activity is the Intellect, while its external activity is emanation itself. The Intellect both contemplates, and therefore produces, the Forms. Soul both desires, and produces, the sensible world. In this way everything that exists, whether physically, mentally, or spiritually, exists in a chain of reality constantly moving in and out from the One to the world and back again.
Plotinus can be thought of as a moral dualist--it's matter's separation from the One that leads to change, death, and evil. But he's also a sort of monist, in that everything springs from, and ultimately returns to, the One.
***
Compare all this to Spinoza’s thought:
Spinoza thought that nature and God were synonymous. The term “pantheism” was actually coined specifically to describe his theology.
He was also a monist (monism, the idea that everything shares the same substance or existence, stands in opposition to dualism, the idea that the world has two separate natures)—specifically a substance monist.
In the Ethics, Spinoza begins by explaining the substance at the base of all existence. This way of conceiving of things goes all the way back to the early Greeks, much of whose natural philosophy and metaphysics was occupied with the question of what, exactly, was the “substance” (literally, “standing under”) that made up the universe. The Greek conception of substance included the traditional elements: earth (solidity), air (rarity), fire (warmth), and water (moisture); the argument among many natural philosophers was which of these primordial elements was the first.
Spinoza skipped that argument and simply said that the primordial substance was, well, Substance. Because Substance was the only thing that existed—in fact, it was the very definition of existence—Substance was God.
He then proceeded to explain the properties of Substance. Substance must have the attribute of infinity—after all, if more than one substance existed, then they would cancel each other out. So there’s only one Substance. Because there’s only one Substance, its attributes include everything—matter and mind being the most important for his theories (they were, to him, two sides of the same coin).
So out of Substance, attributes are formed, similarly to Plotinus’ Intelligence emanating from the One.
From these attributes, modes are then created. These modes are like the Forms—each mode being the Ideal of every physical thing. The end point of Substance, attributes, and modes is the world around us, but everything consists of the same Substance: everything was made up of God.
The most important attribute of God, in Spinoza’s theory, is Mind (which loosely corresponds both to Plotinus' Intelligence and the Stoic divine Reason). Because God has both the attribute of infinity and the attribute of mind, God can be thought of as Infinite Mind, or Infinite Reason.
This in turn goes back to the Stoic tradition of Greek and Roman philosophers; Spinoza shares much of their ethical theory of acceptance (which itself bears a striking resemblance to Buddhist nonattachment). More on Stoicism later.
Because Mind or Reason is the same thing as Will, God could also be thought of as Infinite Will. This idea of Will being active as a part of universal existence pops up again in the thought of German Idealists like Arthur Schopenhauer and Johann Fichte. Fichte’s essays were one of the inspirations of German National Socialism.
The history of pantheistic thought is not all roses. I’ll talk about Fichte’s ideas of the self/Self and how it led into some very dark history in a different post.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
What is this pantheism stuff, anyway?
Pantheism is a religious view which states that the universe and everything in it--from galaxies to guinea pigs--is part of what philosopher and author Michael P. Levine calls an "all-inclusive divine Unity." I prefer to think of it as the universal Being, or God. The God of pantheism has some major differences with the traditional theistic deity, though.
In classical theism the God or gods are divine Persons. They exhibit traits commonly associated with humans: anger, jealousy, compassion, love, and forgiveness, among others. The common Western view of God is that of a benevolent father figure who watches over the faithful, actively intervenes in human affairs, and promises everlasting life to believers.
The God of pantheism, however, is first and foremost not a Person. Anthropocentrism is as much a sin for a pantheist as idolatry is for a Christian--and for similar reasons. To view God as a Person is to invite the worship of one's own opinions and tastes; to imagine that the Universe operates at the orders of something like a human (only made grandiose and powerful) not only supports a destructive anthropocentric pride, it ignores the basic truth of a universal Being--that no one person, idea, or opinion could ever encompass the enormity and mystery of the Divine. To make God a Person is to make God too small.
If the pantheist's God is not a Person, though, wouldn't that pantheist simply be a glorified atheist? Atheists also feel reverence for the natural world, are filled with awe at life and existence, and often sense something sacred in everyday life.
But again, there is a difference.
The quick and easy answer to the question, "What does a pantheist believe?" is also a shallow one. Pantheism is not simply the view that "nature is divine." If reverence for nature were all it took to be a pantheist, then most Americans would define themselves so. After all, it's easy to look at a sunset, or a quiet grove of trees, or a mountain view and be filled with religious awe. It's quite another to see poverty, disease, natural disaster, and extinction as also belonging to a divine pattern. Where the atheist sees order brought to a random universe through the laws of physics, a pantheist sees these "laws" themselves as something that could be described as the mind of God. (I use the term "mind" reluctantly; but human reason and divine Logos have a long causal relationship together in pantheistic thought.)
Most of us are familiar with the classical pagan and Christian views of divine Persons. Throughout Western theistic philosophy, though, pantheism remains a quiet shelter from angry, warring gods and fallen, sinful men. The world was not made for us, but we for it; we are part of something greater than ourselves, and connected to each other and to the natural world we have reshaped for ourselves. This ontological connection is deeper and more complex than most could ever have thought possible, but it is there at the heart of pantheism.
Scientific evidence points to the Universe being a cold, meaningless place. But we are a part of it. Despite what science describes as a random cosmos, we owe our deepest moral and spiritual impulses to our own evolutionary beginnings, which in turn are intimately tied to the laws of nature which exist within a universal Being of which we are a tiny, but hopeful, part.
In classical theism the God or gods are divine Persons. They exhibit traits commonly associated with humans: anger, jealousy, compassion, love, and forgiveness, among others. The common Western view of God is that of a benevolent father figure who watches over the faithful, actively intervenes in human affairs, and promises everlasting life to believers.
The God of pantheism, however, is first and foremost not a Person. Anthropocentrism is as much a sin for a pantheist as idolatry is for a Christian--and for similar reasons. To view God as a Person is to invite the worship of one's own opinions and tastes; to imagine that the Universe operates at the orders of something like a human (only made grandiose and powerful) not only supports a destructive anthropocentric pride, it ignores the basic truth of a universal Being--that no one person, idea, or opinion could ever encompass the enormity and mystery of the Divine. To make God a Person is to make God too small.
If the pantheist's God is not a Person, though, wouldn't that pantheist simply be a glorified atheist? Atheists also feel reverence for the natural world, are filled with awe at life and existence, and often sense something sacred in everyday life.
But again, there is a difference.
The quick and easy answer to the question, "What does a pantheist believe?" is also a shallow one. Pantheism is not simply the view that "nature is divine." If reverence for nature were all it took to be a pantheist, then most Americans would define themselves so. After all, it's easy to look at a sunset, or a quiet grove of trees, or a mountain view and be filled with religious awe. It's quite another to see poverty, disease, natural disaster, and extinction as also belonging to a divine pattern. Where the atheist sees order brought to a random universe through the laws of physics, a pantheist sees these "laws" themselves as something that could be described as the mind of God. (I use the term "mind" reluctantly; but human reason and divine Logos have a long causal relationship together in pantheistic thought.)
Most of us are familiar with the classical pagan and Christian views of divine Persons. Throughout Western theistic philosophy, though, pantheism remains a quiet shelter from angry, warring gods and fallen, sinful men. The world was not made for us, but we for it; we are part of something greater than ourselves, and connected to each other and to the natural world we have reshaped for ourselves. This ontological connection is deeper and more complex than most could ever have thought possible, but it is there at the heart of pantheism.
Scientific evidence points to the Universe being a cold, meaningless place. But we are a part of it. Despite what science describes as a random cosmos, we owe our deepest moral and spiritual impulses to our own evolutionary beginnings, which in turn are intimately tied to the laws of nature which exist within a universal Being of which we are a tiny, but hopeful, part.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
A soul by any other name...
According to Plato, the soul is split into three parts.
1. Animal: This is your basic survival guide. Not only does this bit of soul drive you to find enough to eat and drink, find shelter, and find a mate, but is also responsible for the appreciation of wealth and (physical) beauty. When the soul is weighted toward this part, the person is likely to be someone who loves (perhaps a bit too much) food, drink, sex, money, and other sorts of fun stuff. The animal part of the soul was the least developed, the farthest away from perfection. In Plato's Republic, merchants were considered to be the lowest ranking class of his imaginary utopia. They were also the only ones allowed private property, as their greed served the city's economy.
2. Courage: The Greeks had a thing for courage. It went so far that Homer himself, the ultimate Greek, penned a heroic epic that, in between the gore-fest, quietly asked listeners/readers if this hero stuff wasn't maybe more trouble than it was worth. For modern Americans, courage is seen as the ability to operate despite fear; we love our soldiers and our heroes, but we'd probably be shocked at the Greek version. Our heroes tend to be outwardly humble; not so characters like Achilles. Heroism was intimately tied up with the driving need to be famous for one's deeds. In Plato's imaginary city, soldiers were the second class of citizens. Their need to be recognized for their valor served the city's need for protection.
3. Wisdom: Naturally, a philosopher thinks other philosophers are the cream of the crop. No doubt if potters wrote dissertations on government, they would want the pottery guild running things. Wisdom, of course, is the need for knowledge. True happiness--and true virtue--are tied up in knowing the reality of the world. (Just look at physicists' unending search for the unified field theory!) Wisdom is the "ruling principle" of the soul; in a well-balanced soul, it keeps the other two parts under control. If you are wise, your appetites can't control you; likewise, a wise person understands the better part of valor. In Plato's dream world, philosophers were the top dogs. (He had very strict ideas about what the ruling class could or could not do, however. Philosopher kings would be forbidden to marry or own property!)
In Plato's view, this tripartite soul was the explanation for the many different sorts of people in the world. Most of us, with our consumer society and obsession with fame, he would probably consider terribly out of balance. And the idea of a government run only by those specially selected for their personality type, who by their very natures would not enjoy rulership, is briefly tempting. But even Plato acknowledged that his utopia was not completely realistic.
***
Another picture of the soul is brought to us by the Stoics--among them Marcus Aurelius (yes, the old emperor from Gladiator), an actual philosopher king.
The Stoics specifically stated that the soul is a unified whole. There is no difference between appetite, courage, and reason. (There was not even a substantive difference between the individual soul and the "pneuma" or cosmic soul.) In fact, the choice to, say, binge on a pack of Oreos is itself an act of reason. The difference between a wise person and a "slave" (i.e., someone who never gives things a second thought) is the ability to understand this. When we mindlessly (so to speak) munch on cookies, we are "assenting" to a choice or impression (that eating cookies is a good thing). This assent is what makes each choice we make--consciously or unconsciously--an act of reason.
There would probably be no Stoics doing Nutri System.
The trick here is that even opinions and feelings can be assented to. Marcus "the Golden" reminded himself frequently in his Meditations that the idea that other people drank too much is an opinion that he assented to far too often. He repeatedly chastised himself that he could not change other people, only his opinions about them--and that he himself was no better than they.
This idea of being able to change only the self, and nothing else, is a very important part of Stoic theory. They were determinists, but not fatalists. It's a hair-thin difference, but it's there.
Fatalism is the idea that everything that happens has been "fated" to happen since the beginning of time. If I trip on my shoelace tomorrow, I was always going to trip on my shoelace, even if shoelaces weren't invented yet. Think predestination.
Determinism is a sort of materialism that says that everything that happens, happens because events from the beginning of time played out that way. Sort of a cosmic domino effect. If the Big Bang had resulted in one less hydrogen atom, the universe as we know it might have been very different. Action and reaction, motion and rest. But we are conscious things: we can't change what the gods will do, but we can change how we react to it.
***
Oddly enough, Plato the ultimate theist maybe winds up being the one with a lower opinion of humanity. Your destiny and choices in life depend on what kind of soul you were born with. (We might say that our DNA determines our personality.)
But the deterministic Stoics, who denied a substantive difference between nature and the divine, had more faith in the human spirit. They demanded much more out of their own character, but had high hopes that they could achieve a sort of existential freedom.
Both these theories wound up influencing Spinoza in some way. Plato's theories were recast in Neoplatonism as put together by Plotinus. More on him in another post, as he'll take quite a bit of explaining.
The Stoics were, of course, pantheists similar to Spinoza, and he agreed with their system of limited determinism and the personal ethics that went along with it.
Other philosophical relations to the Stoics include Jean-Paul Sartre (who took the Stoic idea of assenting to a whole new level), and Lao Tzu (whose Tao te Ching eerily mirrors the Meditations in its philosophy and subject matter).
1. Animal: This is your basic survival guide. Not only does this bit of soul drive you to find enough to eat and drink, find shelter, and find a mate, but is also responsible for the appreciation of wealth and (physical) beauty. When the soul is weighted toward this part, the person is likely to be someone who loves (perhaps a bit too much) food, drink, sex, money, and other sorts of fun stuff. The animal part of the soul was the least developed, the farthest away from perfection. In Plato's Republic, merchants were considered to be the lowest ranking class of his imaginary utopia. They were also the only ones allowed private property, as their greed served the city's economy.
2. Courage: The Greeks had a thing for courage. It went so far that Homer himself, the ultimate Greek, penned a heroic epic that, in between the gore-fest, quietly asked listeners/readers if this hero stuff wasn't maybe more trouble than it was worth. For modern Americans, courage is seen as the ability to operate despite fear; we love our soldiers and our heroes, but we'd probably be shocked at the Greek version. Our heroes tend to be outwardly humble; not so characters like Achilles. Heroism was intimately tied up with the driving need to be famous for one's deeds. In Plato's imaginary city, soldiers were the second class of citizens. Their need to be recognized for their valor served the city's need for protection.
3. Wisdom: Naturally, a philosopher thinks other philosophers are the cream of the crop. No doubt if potters wrote dissertations on government, they would want the pottery guild running things. Wisdom, of course, is the need for knowledge. True happiness--and true virtue--are tied up in knowing the reality of the world. (Just look at physicists' unending search for the unified field theory!) Wisdom is the "ruling principle" of the soul; in a well-balanced soul, it keeps the other two parts under control. If you are wise, your appetites can't control you; likewise, a wise person understands the better part of valor. In Plato's dream world, philosophers were the top dogs. (He had very strict ideas about what the ruling class could or could not do, however. Philosopher kings would be forbidden to marry or own property!)
In Plato's view, this tripartite soul was the explanation for the many different sorts of people in the world. Most of us, with our consumer society and obsession with fame, he would probably consider terribly out of balance. And the idea of a government run only by those specially selected for their personality type, who by their very natures would not enjoy rulership, is briefly tempting. But even Plato acknowledged that his utopia was not completely realistic.
***
Another picture of the soul is brought to us by the Stoics--among them Marcus Aurelius (yes, the old emperor from Gladiator), an actual philosopher king.
The Stoics specifically stated that the soul is a unified whole. There is no difference between appetite, courage, and reason. (There was not even a substantive difference between the individual soul and the "pneuma" or cosmic soul.) In fact, the choice to, say, binge on a pack of Oreos is itself an act of reason. The difference between a wise person and a "slave" (i.e., someone who never gives things a second thought) is the ability to understand this. When we mindlessly (so to speak) munch on cookies, we are "assenting" to a choice or impression (that eating cookies is a good thing). This assent is what makes each choice we make--consciously or unconsciously--an act of reason.
There would probably be no Stoics doing Nutri System.
The trick here is that even opinions and feelings can be assented to. Marcus "the Golden" reminded himself frequently in his Meditations that the idea that other people drank too much is an opinion that he assented to far too often. He repeatedly chastised himself that he could not change other people, only his opinions about them--and that he himself was no better than they.
This idea of being able to change only the self, and nothing else, is a very important part of Stoic theory. They were determinists, but not fatalists. It's a hair-thin difference, but it's there.
Fatalism is the idea that everything that happens has been "fated" to happen since the beginning of time. If I trip on my shoelace tomorrow, I was always going to trip on my shoelace, even if shoelaces weren't invented yet. Think predestination.
Determinism is a sort of materialism that says that everything that happens, happens because events from the beginning of time played out that way. Sort of a cosmic domino effect. If the Big Bang had resulted in one less hydrogen atom, the universe as we know it might have been very different. Action and reaction, motion and rest. But we are conscious things: we can't change what the gods will do, but we can change how we react to it.
***
Oddly enough, Plato the ultimate theist maybe winds up being the one with a lower opinion of humanity. Your destiny and choices in life depend on what kind of soul you were born with. (We might say that our DNA determines our personality.)
But the deterministic Stoics, who denied a substantive difference between nature and the divine, had more faith in the human spirit. They demanded much more out of their own character, but had high hopes that they could achieve a sort of existential freedom.
Both these theories wound up influencing Spinoza in some way. Plato's theories were recast in Neoplatonism as put together by Plotinus. More on him in another post, as he'll take quite a bit of explaining.
The Stoics were, of course, pantheists similar to Spinoza, and he agreed with their system of limited determinism and the personal ethics that went along with it.
Other philosophical relations to the Stoics include Jean-Paul Sartre (who took the Stoic idea of assenting to a whole new level), and Lao Tzu (whose Tao te Ching eerily mirrors the Meditations in its philosophy and subject matter).
For my first trick...
This is the part where I tell anyone who's reading about myself.
- Star Wars fan
- Philosophy geek
- Pantheist
- No formal college education. No plan of study or research. This is specifically for fun, and to satisfy my own crazy desire to understand the history of ideas, on my own terms.
When I was eight years old, sitting in a restaurant with my grandmother, I said, "I think God is nature." After I cleared the brimstone smoke out of my ears, I shut up about it for a very long time.
I never forgot that day, and that simple belief stuck with me. After I eventually left the church, I rediscovered my inner pantheist, and have been exploring the history of pantheism ever since.
Step one: Discover a guy named Benedict Spinoza.
Step two: Acquire Spinoza's Ethics from Half-Price Books.
Step three: Realize what deep shit I've gotten myself into.
So lately I've been living on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, reading Early Greek Philosophy, and falling in love with people like Empedocles and Plotinus. I'm starting to see links between the thought of the Greeks and Spinoza's theories, and my mind is spinning away.
This blog will be a record of my explorations, discoveries, and random ramblings. There will probably be no particular order to my thoughts, except as they relate to my central interest in Spinoza.
- Star Wars fan
- Philosophy geek
- Pantheist
- No formal college education. No plan of study or research. This is specifically for fun, and to satisfy my own crazy desire to understand the history of ideas, on my own terms.
When I was eight years old, sitting in a restaurant with my grandmother, I said, "I think God is nature." After I cleared the brimstone smoke out of my ears, I shut up about it for a very long time.
I never forgot that day, and that simple belief stuck with me. After I eventually left the church, I rediscovered my inner pantheist, and have been exploring the history of pantheism ever since.
Step one: Discover a guy named Benedict Spinoza.
Step two: Acquire Spinoza's Ethics from Half-Price Books.
Step three: Realize what deep shit I've gotten myself into.
So lately I've been living on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, reading Early Greek Philosophy, and falling in love with people like Empedocles and Plotinus. I'm starting to see links between the thought of the Greeks and Spinoza's theories, and my mind is spinning away.
This blog will be a record of my explorations, discoveries, and random ramblings. There will probably be no particular order to my thoughts, except as they relate to my central interest in Spinoza.
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