NEW PLATONISM.
In New Platonism, the ancient mind made its last and almost despairing
attempt at a philosophy which should resolve the dualism between the
subjective and the objective. The attempt was made by taking on the one
side a subjective standpoint, like the other philosophies of the
post-Aristotelian time (_cf._ § XVI 7); and on the other with the design
to bring out objective determinations concerning the highest conceptions
of metaphysics, and concerning the absolute; in other words, to sketch a
system of absolute philosophy. In this respect the effort was made to
copy the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, and the claim was set up
by the new system to be a revival of the original Platonism. On both
sides the new attempt formed the closing period of an ancient
philosophy. It represents the last struggle, but at the same time the
exhaustion of the ancient thinking and the dissolution of the old
philosophy.
The first, and also the most important, representative of New Platonism,
is _Plotinus_. He was a pupil of Ammonius Saccas, who taught the
Platonic philosophy at Alexandria in the beginning of the third century,
though he left no writings behind him. Plotinus (A. D. 205-270) from his
fortieth year taught philosophy at Rome. His opinions are contained in a
course of hastily written and not closely connected treatises, which,
after his death, were collected and published in six enneads by
_Porphyry_ (who was born A. D. 233, and taught both philosophy and
eloquence at Rome), his most noted disciple. From Rome and Alexandria,
the New Platonism of Plotinus passed over in the fourth century to
Athens, where it established itself in the Academy. In the fourth
century, _Jamblichus_, a scholar of Porphyry, and in the fifth, Proclus,
(412-485), were prominently distinguished among the New Platonists. With
the triumph of Christianity and the consequent fall of heathenism, in
the course of the sixth century, even this last bloom of Grecian
philosophy faded away.
The common characteristic of all the New Platonists is a tendency to
mysticism, theosophy, and theurgy. The majority of them gave themselves
up to magic and sorcery, and the most distinguished boasted that they
were the subjects of divine inspiration and illumination, able to look
into the future, and to work miracles. They professed to be hierophants
as much as philosophers, and exhibited the unmistakable tendency to
represent a Pagan copy of Christianity, which should be at the same time
a philosophy and a universal religion. In the following sketch of New
Platonism we follow mainly the track of Plotinus.
1. ECSTASY AS A SUBJECTIVE STATE.—The result of the philosophical
strivings antecedent to New Platonism had been Scepticism; which, seeing
the impracticability of both the Stoic and Epicurean wisdom, had assumed
a totally negative relation to every positive and theoretical content.
But the end which Scepticism had actually gained was the opposite of
that for which it had striven. It had striven for the perfect apathy of
the sage, but it had gained only the necessity of incessantly opposing
every positive affirmation. Instead of the rest which they had sought,
they found rather an absolute unrest. This absolute unrest of the
consciousness striving after an absolute rest, begat immediately a
longing to be freed from this unrest, a longing after some content which
should be absolutely satisfying, and stripped of every sceptical
objection. This longing after an absolutely true, found its historical
expression in New Platonism. The subject sought to master and comprehend
the absolute; and this, neither by objective knowledge nor dialectic
mediation, but immediately, by an inner and mystical mounting up of the
subject in the form of an immediate beholding, or ecstasy. The knowledge
of the true, says Plotinus, is not gained by proof nor by any mediation;
it cannot be found when the objects known remain separate from the
subject knowing, but only when the distinction between knower and known
disappears; it is a beholding of the reason in itself, not in the sense
that we see the reason, but the reason beholds itself; in no other way
can knowledge come. If any one has attained to such a beholding, to such
a true unison with the divine, he will despise the pure thinking which
he otherwise loved, for this thinking was only a movement which
presupposed a difference between the perceiver and the perceived. This
mystical absorption into the Deity, or, the One, this resolving the self
into the absolute, is that which gives to New Platonism a character so
peculiarly distinct from the genuine Grecian systems of philosophy.
2. THE COSMICAL PRINCIPLES.—The doctrine of the three cosmical
principles is most closely connected with the theory just named. To the
two cosmical principles already received, viz., the world-soul and the
world-reason, a third and higher one was added by the New Platonists.
For if the reason apprehends the true by means of thinking, and not
within itself alone; if, in order to grasp the absolute and behold the
divine, it must lose its own self-consciousness, and go out beyond
itself, then reason cannot be the highest principle, but there stands
above it that primal essence, with which it must be united if it will
behold the true. To this primal essence Plotinus gives different names,
as “the first,” “the one,” “the good,” and “that which stands above
being” (being is with him but a conception, which, like the reason, may
be resolved into a higher ground, and which, united with the reason,
forms but the second step in the series of highest conceptions). In all
these names, Plotinus does not profess to have satisfactorily expressed
the essence of this primal one, but only to have given a representation
of it. In characterizing it still farther, he denies it all thinking and
willing, because it needs nothing and can desire nothing; it is not
energy, but above energy; life does not belong to it; neither being nor
essence nor any of the most general categories of being can be ascribed
to it; in short, it is that which can neither be expressed nor thought.
Plotinus has thoroughly striven to think of this first principle not as
first principle, _i. e._ not in its relation to that of which it is the
ground, but only in itself, as being wholly without reference either to
us or to any thing else. This pure abstraction, however, he could not
carry out. He sets himself to show how every thing else, and especially
the two other cosmical principles, could emanate from this first; but in
order to have a principle for his emanation theory, he was obliged to
consider the first in its relation to the second and as its producer.
3. THE EMANATION THEORY OF THE NEW PLATONISTS.—Every emanation theory,
and hence also that of the New Platonists, considers the world as the
effluence of God, and gives to the emanation a greater or less degree of
perfection, according as it is nearer or more remote from its source.
They all have for their principle the totality of being, and represent a
progressively ascending relation in its several parts. Fire, says
Plotinus, emits heat, snow cold, fragrant bodies odors, and every
organic thing so far as it is perfect begets something like itself. In
the same way the all-perfect and the eternal, in the overflowing of his
perfection sends out from himself that which is also eternal, and after
him, the best, viz., the reason or world-intelligence, which is the
immediate reflection and image of the primal one. Plotinus abounds in
figures to show how the primal one need lose nothing nor become weakened
by this emanation of reason. Next to the original one, reason is the
most perfect. It contains in itself the ideal world, and the whole of
true and changeless being. Some notion may be formed of its exaltation
and glory by carefully beholding the sensible world in its greatness,
its beauty, and the order of its ceaseless motion, and then by rising to
contemplate its archetype in the pure and changeless being of the
intelligible world, and then by recognizing in intelligence the author
and finisher of all. In it there is neither past nor future, but only an
ever abiding present. It is, moreover, as incapable of division in space
as of change in time. It is the true eternity, which is only copied by
time. As reason flows from the primal one, so does the world-soul
eternally emanate from reason, though the latter incurs no change
thereby. The world-soul is the copy of reason, permeated by it, and
actualizing it in an outer world. It gives ideas externally to sensible
matter, which is the last and lowest step in the series of emanations
and in itself is undetermined, and has neither quality nor being. In
this way the visible universe is but the transcript of the world-soul,
which forms it out of matter, permeates and animates it, and carries it
forward in a circle. Here closes the series of emanations, and, as was
the aim of the theory, we have been carried in a constant current from
the highest to the lowest, from God to the mere image of true being, or
the sensible world.
Individual souls, like the world-soul, are linked both to the higher and
the lower, to reason and the sensible; now bound with the latter and
sharing its destiny, and anon rising to their source in reason. Their
original and proper home was in the rational world, from whence they
have come down, each one in its proper time, into the corporeal; not,
however, wholly forsaking their ideal abode, but as a sunbeam touches at
the same time the sun and the earth, so are they found alike in the
world of reason and the world of sense. Our calling, therefore—and here
we come back to the point from which we started in our exhibition of New
Platonism—can only be to direct our senses and aspirations towards our
proper home, in the ideal world, and by asceticism and crucifying of the
flesh, to free our better self from its participation with the body. But
when our soul has once mounted up to the ideal world, that image of the
originally good and beautiful, it then attains the final goal of all its
longings and efforts, the immediate union with God, through the
enraptured beholding of the primal one in which it loses its
consciousness and becomes buried and absorbed.
According to all this, the New Platonic philosophy would seem to be a
monism, and thus the most perfect development of ancient philosophy, in
so far as this had striven to carry back the sum of all being to one
ultimate ground. But as it attained its highest principle from which all
the rest was derived, by means of ecstasy, by a mystical
self-destruction of the individual person (_Ichheit_), by asceticism and
theurgy, and not by means of self-conscious thinking, nor by any natural
or rational way, it is seen that ancient philosophy, instead of becoming
perfected in New Platonism, only makes a despairing leap beyond itself
to its own self-destruction.