Russian Studies in Philosophy
ISSN: 1061-1967 (Print) 1558-0431 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mrsp20
Plotinus's Critique of Gnosticism
T. Iu. Borodai
To cite this article: T. Iu. Borodai (2003) Plotinus's Critique of Gnosticism, Russian Studies in
Philosophy, 42:1, 66-83
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/RSP1061-1967420166
Published online: 09 Dec 2014.
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T.Iu. BORODAI
Plotinus’s Critique of Gnosticism
The ninth treatise of Plotinus’s second Ennead (no. 33 in chronological order) is devoted to a critique of the Gnostics and is titled Against Those Who
Ajinn the Creator of the Cosmos and the Cosmos ltself to Be Evil. In it
Plotinus refutes the following propositions of the Gnostics: that the sensible
world is formless and bad; that the creator of this world is evil; that the world
was created and will eventually perish; that the original cause of the creation
of the world was the fall of one of the divine hypostases-Sophia or the
World Soul; that there are more than three divine hypostases; that the individual soul of the human person chosen for salvation is the sole spark of
divine fire in this world; and that direct comprehension of the supreme deity
and reunification with it are accessible to such a chosen soul and to it alone.’
It is hard to establish exactly with which of the many Gnostic sects and
schools Plotinus is polemicizing. Attempts have been made to identify
Plotinus’s opponents with the Valentinians or the Orphites, with Christian or
pagan Gnostics, and to define them as under the influence of the Gnosticism
of the followers of Philo or Nemenius.* But first, the specific sect whose
members Plotinus had in mind is perhaps not known to us from other sources.
Second, the doctrinal propositions against which Plotinus inveighs are common to almost all known tendencies of Gnosticism. We may assume with a
great degree of confidence that Plotinus deliberately did not specify his opponent. He is not exact about Gnostic terms (“some use such and such a
name, others such and such”). What is important is not the exact name but
English translation 0 2003 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text 0 2000 the h e sidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences.“Kritika gnostitsizmau Plotina,” Voprosy
filosofii. 2000, no. 10, pp. 128-39. A publication of the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences.
Tat’iana Iur’evna Borodai is a candidate of philological sciences and a leading
research associate at the Institute of World Culture at Moscow State University.
66
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SUMMER 2003 67
that they all boast of being personally acquainted with the highest deities and
demonstrated their familiarity with them in order to enhance their reputation
and bewilder gullible listeners. On many questions Plotinus cites several different opinions current among Gnostics. (“Some of them multiply the One,
others the intellect, yet others the soul.” What is important is that they all
multiply the hypostases of the truly real, introducing into it multiplicity, and
even change, which are inherent in the sensuous world.)
Thus it is easier for us to refrain from attempting to identify Plotinus’s
Gnostics historically and regard Plotinus’s objections to the Gnosticism of
his day as objections to a kind of invariant core always present in all modific a t i o n ~True,
. ~ when one is dealing not with a definite doctrine, or even better with texts, but with such a generalized Gnostic doctrine, there arises a
difficulty of another kind: the boundaries between it and, for instance,
Neoplatonism or Christian doctrine are easily blurred. Thus, for example,
Plato and all the Platonists teach that the body is the prison and fetters of the
soul; that the soul is immortal and divine; that the salvation of the soul lies in
knowledge, and that true knowledge can be attained by purifying the soul
and liberating it from the body; that like is known by like, so that in knowing
god the soul unites with him, for it is by nature kin to him; that god is one,
unutterable, and immutable; that the sensuous world is merely a shadow of
the intelligible world and of true being, and that the soul is not at home in the
sensuous world; and that the path to perfection lies in fleeing from the body
and the sensuous world toward science, knowledge and, in the final reckoning, to the homeland of the soul-the purely spiritual world, closer to God.
All these propositions are also indispensable components of any Gnostic
doctrine of late antiquity. Most of these elements can be found both in
Valentinus and in Origen, as well as in newly discovered Gnostic papyri.
Hans Jonas, who laid the basis for contemporary research into Gnosticism as a general phenomenon, sees it as the dominant spiritual movement
of late antiquity, which left its mark on all manifestations of the intellectual
and religious culture of Hellenism. As for Neoplatonism, that is, first of all
Plotinian philosophy, Jonas considers it simply a Gnostic doctrine dressed
up in rational form in deference to Hellenistic taste. According to Jonas, the
rebirth of Platonism in the third century is “nothing but. . .a Hellenized form
o f . . . what we call the Gnostic movement of the world of late antiquity; . . .
an epiphenomenon of a process the center of which lay far to the east.”4
Jonas points out that the formulas and concepts of Platonism were used to
express intuitions that were, properly speaking, Gnostic in character and,
“in the final reckoning, it was precisely gnosis, the transformed Gnostic myth,
that gave Plotinus the deepest impulse” to construct a new interpretation of
Plato and that lies at the foundation of the Plotinian metaphysical system?
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Moreover, in Jonas’s opinion, this may be a matter not so much of the direct
“influence” of concrete Gnostic works on Plotinus as of the general intellectual mood of the epoch, the “intellectual climate,” or “a common spirit and
the same starting assumptions.” Ever since Philo’s time there had been a
“crypto-Gnostic process” in Greek philosophy that reaches its culmination
in Plotinus. Their common character, Jonas thinks, is rooted in “the same
will to universal systematization.” This is not a formal characteristic but a
substantive one, for “not just any content can be system-forming, but some
contents require a system or, to be more precise, already constitute an
unelaborated system.”6A common feature of Plotinus and the Gnostics is the
“ontological schema of top and bottom, one and many, and vertical hierarchical ~ r d e r . ”In~ Gnosticism the will to system appeared earlier; from this
point of view, Neoplatonism is a secondary phenomenon. Gnosticism may
be called the basic, mythological form of gnosis, and Plotinus’s system its
mystical-philosophical form. Here Jonas starts from the general premise of
the history of philosophy that the mythological form of any system precedes
its mystical and rational forms. This serves for him as additional proof that
the rational-mystical Platonism of Plotinus emerged from Gnostic myth, not
the other way around (as Plotinus supposed).*
If we follow Hans Jonas, we have to presume that Plotinus’s critique of
the Gnostics must be either, first, formal, that is, directed against the mythological objectification of metaphysics or, second, narrowly partisan, that is, a
polemic over particular questions on which there are disagreements in the
context of a common system or, third, extraphilosophical-a rivalry between
schools over popularity and numbers of pupils.
There really is a formal critique in Plotinus: he rebukes the Gnostics for
reasoning and polemicizing “ in a nonphilosophical fashion” (6.47) and, in
general, for not obtaining the necessary philosophical education and training
(6.54; 13.10). But this is reflected not in the fact that they represent the intelligible zones of Pleroma in the form of married couples and other mythological figures, but in their inability to think consistently, to understand
philosophical arguments, and to present their ideas clearly. In laying claim to
direct communication with the supreme deity, the Gnostics set themselves
above the intellect, but turn out to be below it, below even everyday human
understanding. They replace rigorous reasoning with tragic pathos; and
Plotinus calls upon them to “cease the tragic howling” (13.10), as contemplation of the intelligible world requires spiritual tranquility.
Plotinus is inclined to understand myths allegorically in the Alexandrian
fashion and has no objection to clothing thought in mythological images.
The Platonic myths do not perturb him. He himself often writes of Zeus,
Prometheus, and Cybele as representations of intellect, logos, and matter
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respectively. What is important is not the form but the content of the myth.
The simple Hegelian schema of the ascent of the human spirit from myth to
logos does not apply to the third century C.E., just as it does not apply to the
fifth century B.C.E. The first Presocratic philosophers criticized mythology,
but not because they had outgrown the fable form or undifferentiated mythological thinking. Xenophantes, in deliberating about the elements, calls them
in the old way Zeus or Poseidon; but he cannot reconcile himself to Homer
and the traditional Olympian cult because the gods there appear malicious,
envious, dissolute, and mutually hostile; because half of the sacred rituals
and sacrifices are performed for the purpose of propitiating the gods-to
mitigate their envy, greed, and unmotivated rage. But in fact the gods are
superior to human beings because they are good and free of human vices.
The earliest Greek philosophy arose not from a formal critique of myth but
from a fundamental, substantive divergence between two religious orientations. The same is true of Plotinus: what perturbs him is not that the Gnostics
interpret the gods mythologically, but that some of their gods are malicious,
envious, boastful, ignorant, full of the same passions as people, and even
worse than p e ~ p l e . ~
The second aspect of Gnostic mythology that Plotinus finds unacceptable
is the introduction into the spiritual world of drama, change, and history.
Instead of eternal, serene tranquility, the Gnostics’s divine first principles are
involved in catastrophes and tragedies. Plotinus admits the mythological
objectification of metaphysics; what is more, he recognizes together with
Plato that some thoughts cannot be expressed in any other way; but he likens
spiritual essences to motionless divine emanations. To describe them as historical personages is blasphemy in his opinion.
The Gnostics held a special place among Plotinus’s opponents. Only to
them did he devote a separate work; only to them did he address so much
emotional invective and indignation. Plotinus polemicized with virtually all
the significant schools and philosophers of his time. Many treatises in the
Enneads were written “for a particular occasion”-in connection with texts
that were analyzed at the school. Plotinus refuted specific doctrines of the
Stoics, the Peripatetics, the neo-Pythagoreans, and Aristotle; sometimes he
criticized Plato too. But he always remained within the bounds of purely
rational disputation, demonstrating the falsity of one or another thesis or
conclusion that may be drawn from it. With the Gnostics it was another matter. The doctrine as such was unacceptable to Plotinus. He emphasizes that it
is useless even to argue with them, as they do not listen to the opponent and
do not themselves start from rational, demonstrable propositions. Plotinus
addressed his treatise not to the Gnostics, nor to those of his listeners who
had already accepted the truth of Gnostic doctrines, but to those of his
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followers who were still loyal, for the danger of succumbing to the Gnostic
temptation threatened them all: “Yet imbeciles are found to accept such
teaching. . . .A man once modest, restrained, and simple hears, ‘You, yourself, are the child of God; [none of] those men whom you used to venerate
. . . are His children; you without lifting a finger are nobler than the very
heavens’ ” (9). The Gnostics appeal not to the intellect and logos in man but
to his pride, for their denial of the world is based on the certainty that they
deserve a much better dwelling place. Their means of convincing novices
and their entire system are in essence extraphilosophical. When in the course
of the polemic Plotinus formally addressed the Gnostics themselves, he began each time with a reservation, such as “one would have to say to them
thus, if they were capable of listening to reason” or “if rational arguments
meant anything to them,” or “if they were able to carry on a philosophical
dispute,” or “if they had been taught in childhood to reason logically.” The
logical arguments that followed were intended evidently for those of Plotinus’s
pupils who had not yet been tempted. The moral and emotional criticisms
were intended for the Gnostics themselves.1° By all means available to him
Plotinus demonstrated his rejection of Gnosticism as a general intellectual
mood, as an orientation toward the world, God, and man and man’s mission.
This mood is false, seductive, and dangerous. By merging with the truest of
metaphysical systems (Plotinus is dealing with Gnostics who rely on Plato)
it distorts this system at the root. It deprivesman, first, of the ability to understand and grasp reality, dooming him to endless empty daydreams with no
hope of escape, and, second, of the freedom and ability to perfect himself in
virtue, dooming him to enslavement to his passions.
As is clear from the title that Porphyry gave Plotinus’s polemical treatise,
the dispute concerns first of all two theses of the Gnostic doctrine: that the
world in which we live is bad, and that it was created by an evil deity.
“The Gnostics assert that creation is the work of the Soul after the failing
of its wings. . ..But we assert its creative act to be proof not of fall but rather
of its steadfast hold. Its fall could consist only in its forgetting the Divine: but
if it forgot, how could it create? Whence does it create but from the things it
knew in the Divine [that is, in the Intellect that contains the ideal prototype
of the cosmos]? But it creates the world, therefore, it recalls and, therefore,
has not deviated from its striving for the divine; otherwise it could not see
anything clearly” (4).
Altogether Plotinus adduces nine rational arguments against the thesis of
the fall of the Soul or Sophia (chapters 4 and 1l),but for him the most important argument is, apparently, a nonrational one: to suppose the possibility of
a fall or change-in the final reckoning, of sin, evil, and catastrophe-in
divine essences is sacrilege. Plotinus returns to this motif throughout the
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whole treatise, as he examines each of the propositions of Gnostic doctrine:
they all lead to conclusions that insult the supreme deity.
“Anybody who censures the order of the universe cannot be right!” (8).
The Gnostics pointed to the imperfection of the world. Plotinus objected:
“We cannot but grant that this world is of unhappy origin because there are
many defects in it. Such a judgment would rate it too highly, treating it as the
same with the intelligible realm and not merely its reflection” (4). “They
believe that the sensuous must in no way differ from the transcendent” (13).
The Gnostics make excessive demands of the universe and, as a consequence,
they cannot be content with reality. The reason is, first, that they suppose
themselves or, more precisely, their souls to be perfect in the sense in which
God-the First and the One-is perfect; they consider themselves by nature
to be identical with God. The second and deeper reason, which also supports
the first, lies in their rejection of the hierarchical arrangement of being.
According to Plotinus, each successive level of the ontological hierarchy-in descending order-manifests a decrease in goodness, being, and
rationality: such is the Intellect in relation to the One, the Soul in relation to
the Intellect, and the inspired Body in relation to the Soul as such (“to the
whole Soul,” in Plotinus’s expression, that has not undergone division in
bodies). But this decrease is necessary and natural (each successively lower
level is not created on purpose by someone, but is produced by the very
nature of the hypostasis above it). What is more, it is good, for it serves the
greater glory of God (if there were nothing below God, Plotinus argues, He
would not be the highest; the same applies to the Intellect and the Soul). The
downward emanation of being is also good from another point of view: each
higher hypostasis creates a lower one out of an excess of goodness, so that
something apart from itself should benefit from this goodness. This is generous and selfless beneficence. The higher shares its goodness, its being, and
its intelligibility without stint, ready to give away however much the lower is
able to absorb, in proportion to its nature-“for the gods do not know envy”
or greed. The Gnostics see evil in the very hierarchical arrangement of being: the world is bad merely on account of the fact that it is not God. According to Plotinus, by contrast, each level of being is perfect in its own
way. The perfection of each hypostasis consists in its completely fulfilling
its nature and not in its acquiring a different, albeit higher, nature. At each
level there is a perfect whole, the totality of that level of being. Individual
corporeal beings and things are imperfect, but the universe as a whole is
irreproachable. That which comes ontologically after the Soul cannot be
better than our cosmos. The partial, embodied soul is imperfect; but the
whole World Soul is completely perfect. As for the Intellect, it is not imperfect at all, inasmuch as it does not exist in parts.
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This All that has emerged into life is no amorphous structure-like those
lesser forms within it that are born night and day out of the lavishness of its
vitality. The Universe is a life organized, effective, complex, all-comprehensive, displaying an unfathomable wisdom. How, then, can anyone deny that
it is a clear image, beautifully formed, of the Intelligible Divinities? . . .
Since there is no Universe nobler than this, is it not clear what this must be?
. . . [This cosmos is] a representation carrying down the features of the Intelligible Realm. This Earth of ours is full of varied life-forms and of immortal
beings; to the very heavens it is crowded. And the stars, those of the upper
and the under spheres, moving in their ordered path, fellow-travelers with
the universe, how can they be less than gods? (8)
Plato in the Timaeus calls the corporeal world becoming as opposed to
true being-the spiritual world. All that is accessible to our senses “is born
and perishes” but never has real existence,for it is never self-identical.Plotinus
permits himself not to agree with Plato: the corporeal world as a whole is
not subject to becoming; it was not born and will not perish; it exists just as
much as its prototype-intelligible reality, and always remains equal to
itself and immutable as a whole.” True, Plato in the Timaeus makes the
reservation: the world was created by God before time, that is, from the
temporal point of view it has existed always; and it will never perish, although by its nature it is subject to decay, for this is not what the good God
wishes.
Having spoken out against the Gnostics, Plotinus makes his first definite
break with Platonic creationist cosmogony. The world was not created at all,
if creation is to be understood as deliberate action, the realization of a definite wi11.12The world could not not be-just as light cannot not radiate around
its source if there are no obstacles in its path.13 Just as the Intellect with
ineluctable necessity emanates around the One, so the Soul emanates around
the Intellect and the corporeal world emanates around the Soul. The world is
not the Soul’s concern; the Soul does not create it by its own will or design;
the Soul does not care about it in any way. The existence of our world is a
necessary consequence of the nature of the Soul.l4
The Gnostics, according to Plotinus, incorrectly interpret Plato’s doctrine
of the creation of the world and the Creator-Demiurge. If we take literally
what is written in the Timaeus; namely, that God once wanted to create the
world and created it, then, first, we shall have to admit that God is subject to
change (that is, according to the concepts of Platonism, He does not belong
to true being). Second, the creation of the world is either natural for God or it
is unnatural for Him. If it is natural, then the world exists always-not only
in time but in reality in general. If it is not, then we shall have to admit
something unnatural in God and in the intelligible world: either violence or
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some kind of pressure from without, or some contradiction in His own nature; but this is ~nthinkable.’~
And so the Gnostics are not right in considering our world imperfect: it is
absolutely perfect in its kind, that is, at the given level of being. (Let us recall
that if, according to Plotinus, the sensuous cosmos were to jump out of its
own level of the hierarchy onto a higher level, then the Soul would cease to
be the Soul, the Intellect to be the Intellect, and God to be God. Thus, to
demand that corporeal nature change into spiritual nature is not simply irrational and presumptuous but plainly blasphemous-it is to belittle God.) Nor
are the Gnostics right when they deny the beauty of everything corporeal and
regard love as unworthy.
“According to their teachings, the Gnostics know nothing beautiful in this
world,” nothing worthy of striving and love. “They pursue quite another goal.
For the ‘already enlightened,’ as they glorify themselves, it is allegedly not
difficult to go beyond the limits of this world and aim straight for the set
goal, and, having striven, to reach it immediately, for they are ‘arrivals from
the divine nature’ ” (15). It is good, of course, Plotinus remarks, if their
denial of corporeal beauty restrains them from loving women and young
boys. But this denial conceals within itself a danger: if a man has not seen
and loved beauty in the sensuous world, then he cannot understand and love
spiritual beauty. Beauty in the corporeal world and in man is first of all order
and virtue, justice, courage, self-restraint, mercy, and honor. The Gnostics,
by jumping across the levels of the ontological hierarchy, reject all this. “This
school, in fact, is convicted by its neglect of all mention of virtue: any discussion of such matters is missing utterly: we are not told what virtue is or
under what different kinds it appears; there is no word of all the numerous
and noble reflections upon it that have come down to us from the ancients;
we do not learn . . . how it is acquired, how the soul is tended, how it is
cleansed” (15). As a result, the Gnostic is not only not closer to God but
farther from Him than the ordinary man who reveres virtue and restrains
himself so far as he is able from the sinful passions. “For to say ‘Look to
God’ is not helpful without some instruction as to what this looking imports: it might very well be said that one can ‘look’ and still sacrifice no
pleasure, still be the slave of impulse, repeating the word God but held in
the grip of every passion and making no effort to master any” (1 5). And
inasmuch as the Gnostic imagines himself as already superior to everything earthly, at the apex of the spiritual world, he is deprived of the chance
of ever having second thoughts and understanding the real state of affairs.
“We may not set ourselves alone next after the First in a dream-flight that
deprives us of our power of attaining identity with the Godhead in the measure possible to the human soul” (9).
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Not to love beauty on Earth is not only dangerous but also impious. “Besides, in this slighting of the mundane gods and the world, the honor they
profess for the gods of the Intelligible Sphere becomes an inconsistency.
Where we love, our hearts are warm also to the kin of the beloved; we are not
indifferent to the children of our friend.” And our world is the child and
likeness of the spiritual world. “Where there is contempt for the lun of the
Supreme the knowledge of the Supreme itself is merely verbal” (16). “Of
those that advance these wild pretensions, who is so well ordered, so wise, as
the Universe? The comparison is laughable, utterly out of place; to make it,
except as a help toward truth, would be impiety. The very question can be
entertained by no intelligent being but only by one so blind, so utterly devoid
of perception and thought, so far from any vision of the Intelligible Universe
as not even to see this world of our own” (16).
It is only by learning to see and love the beautiful and good here that we
can for the first time know or recall something of the higher world. The
Gnostic is deprived of this sole chance.
For who that truly perceives the harmony of the Intelligble Realm could
fail, if he has any bent toward music, to answer to the harmony in sensible
sounds? What geometrician or arithmeticiancould fail to take pleasure in the
symmetries, correspondences, and principles of order observed in visible
things? Consider, even, the case of pictures: those seeing by the bodily sense
the productions of the art of painting do not see the one thing in the one only
way; they are deeply stirred by recognizing in the objects depicted to the
eyes the presentation of what lies in the idea, and so are called to recollection
of the truth-the very experience out of which love rises. Now, if the sight of
beauty excellently reproduced upon a face hurries the mind to that other
Sphere, surely no one seeing the lavish loveliness in the world of sense-this
vast orderliness, the Form that stars even in their remoteness display-no
one could be so dull-witted, so immovable, as not to be carried by all this to
recollection, and gripped by reverent awe in the thought of all this, so great,
sprung from that greatness. Not to answer thus could only be to have neither
fathomed this world nor had any vision of that other (16).
“The Gnostics say that they themselves feel no such stirring of the soul by
sensuous beauty and that they see no difference between beautiful and ugly
forms of body” (17). They are indifferent too to people’s earthly conduct,
and they do not care whether people’s goals are good or bad-they set themselves above the distinction of good and evil in this world. But this means,
Plotinus concludes, “that they are indifferent whether God Himself is good
or evil, for this-worldly beauty is beautiful by its resemblance to other-worldly
beauty: if this is not good then neither is that” (17).
But does not Plotinus himself, like all the Platonists before and after
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him, teach that “the soul must flee from any intercourse with the body,
escape from the world of becoming to the world of being” (6)?Does he not
teach that the body is “the prison and fetters of the soul”? Does he not
teach that “I am the soul” and everything else is perishable dirt that defiles
the soul and obstructs its clear vision and true being? In what way does he
differ from the world-despising Gnostics? The answer to this question is
difficult and indirect.
“Perhaps,” Plotinus writes, “the Gnostics’s hatred for the corporeal is due
to their reading of Plato who inveighs against body as a grave hindrance to
soul and pronounces the corporeal to be the inferior nature” (17). But, Plotinus
explains, due to their illiteracy and conceit they are incapable of a simple and
correct understanding of the ancient philosopher’s thought, and so “in every
way they misrepresent Plato’s theory of creation as well as many other of his
doctrines, distorting and dishonoring the ideas of the great thinker: they, we
are to understand, have penetrated the Intelligible Nature, while Plato and all
those other illustrious teachers have failed” (6). “In contemplating the world
they should have stripped it mentally of its corporeal nature and seen what
remains: the intelligible sphere . . . souls without bodies, measuring out the
distances in strict order and giving definite magnitudes to future bodies so
that the magnitude of every body that will be born will be precisely equal to
the power of its intelligible prototype, for what is greatness of power there, is
greatness of magnitude here (17). From the way in which Plotinus presents
this argument, he should explain the difference between the correct worlddenial-Plato’s and his own-and the incorrect world-denial of the Gnostics.
However, in my view, he does not explain it. Plotinus himself seems to be
aware of this, for somewhat further on he resorts for the same purpose to an
illustration which, however, is also insufficiently clear. “Imagine two people
inhabiting the same stately house; one of them declaims against its plan and
against its architect, but nonetheless maintains his residence in it; the other
makes no complaint, asserts the entire competency of the architect, and waits
cheerfully for the day when he may leave it, having no further need of a
house. The malcontent imagines himself to be the wiser and to be the readier
to leave because he has learned to repeat that the walls are of soulless stone
and timber and that the place falls far short of a true home; he does not see
that his only distinction is in not being able to bear necessity, assuming that
his conduct, his grumbling, does not cover a secret admiration for the beauty
of those same stones. The other resident is not upset by them; he does not
lose his self-possession, he loves the beauty of the stones and is at peace and,
therefore, truly prepared for his departure” (18).
Both the Gnostic and the Platonist see man’s task as freeing himself from
the body. That is the goal, salvation of the soul. But the true philosopher,
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according to Plotinus, makes use of his earthly sojoum in the body for the
good of the soul, while the Gnostic uses it to harm the soul, for to censure the
universe and its Creator is to elevate oneself, to set oneself above Him. This
is, first, ignorance, inasmuch as it does not correspond to the real state of
affairs and, second, arrogant pride, a sign of imperfection and an obstacle to
any self-improvement. (“The greater a man is, the more benevolently he
judges everything.”) In order that earthly life pass with advantage it is necessary, first, to discern and love in the body its formal, spiritual structure; and
second, to purify and strengthen the soul by means of exercises,to prepare it
for perceiving what is higher. The Gnostic understands salvation as an instantaneous and inevitable act; if his soul is by nature a “divine spark,” then
hard and painstaking labor is not needed for salvation. The discomfort and
suffering inflicted by the body are not a means of ascesis but simply evil.
The philosopher, by contrast, learns patience and rids himself of the passions, and as a reward finds spiritual tranquillity. The soul, rid of irrational
movements, acquires freedom and rest. And then spiritual reality, which was
previously distorted by waves of passion and was indiscernible, can be reflected in the completely motionless soul.
The Gnostic, who in his pride imagines himself akin to God, sets himself
above understanding-the limited discursive reason that is given to manand perhaps even above pure Intellect. He seeks an unintelligible, irrational,
mystical union with the silent Depths. He rejects petty daily ascetic work
upon himself, anticipating the instantaneous magical effect of mysterious
knowledge. As a result, according to Plotinus, he becomes a slave to his
passions, like an imbecile or an ignoramus, not above reason but below ordinary common sense and simple decency. “Only understanding and virtue,
born in the soul and advancing step by step toward the goal, make God manifest to us: without them the word God is an empty sound” (15). “Our form of
philosophy inculcates simplicity of character and honest thinking in addition
to all other good qualities; it cultivates reverence and not arrogant self-assertion; its boldness is balanced by reason, by careful proof, by cautious progression, by the utmost circumspection. . . . The tenets of the Gnostics are
opposed to ours in every respect” (14).
Both Gnosticism and Platonism may be regarded as religions of salvation,
in which knowledge is both a means and a goal of salvation. True knowledge
is the path to deification and the final destination of this path. The Platonist
abstains from nourishing food, wine, and fornication and every day occupies
himself with geometry, music, and logical exercises in just the same way as
the athlete ingests his allotted daily portion of raw meat and lifts heavier and
heavier weights: both regimens involve ascesis,exercise, and purposive training. Moreover, geometry for the philosopher and weightlifting for the athlete
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is the main thing, while abstention or meat-eating plays an auxiliary role.
The Platonists commonly compare the true philosopher with the famous wrestler Milon of Croton who, according to legend, was a pupil of Pythagoras:
every day he carried a calf on his shoulders around the walls of his city, until
the calf grew into an enormous bull. In the same way, the philosopher engages every day in the sciences and thereby step by step changes his soul,
purifies, strengthens, and reconstructs it, so that every day it contains more.
Knowledge is not a mystery; it is not necessary to do a special search for it;
it cannot be transmitted in a book or lecture: it is always here, around and
within man, who absorbs as much of it as he can. The problem of salvation
and knowledge, therefore, is a problem of the exhausting and daily remaking
of oneself. It is, first of all, an ascetic task. Once one has brought one’s body
under control, curbed one’s lusts and passions, and attained tranquility, one
can already see the spiritual essences. Then ascesis gradually gives way increasingly to contemplation and theory. But so long as one lives one cannot
completely abandon exercises and exertions.
This is not what the Gnostics teach, according to Plotinus. “In the sacred
formulas they inscribe, purporting to address the Supernal Beings-not merely
the Soul but even the Transcendents-they are simply uttering spells and
appeasements and evocations in the idea that these Powers will obey a call
and be led about by a word from any of us who is in some degree trained to
use the appropriate forms in the appropriate way-certain melodies, certain
sounds, specially directed breathings, sibilant cries, and all else to which is
ascribed magic potency upon the Supreme” (14). “They hope to get the credit
of minute and exact identification by setting up a plurality of intelligible
essences” (6).They describe the birth of eternal aeons and the fall of one of
them in such a way as though they were present at the event and as though it
was dramatic history. For Plotinus, all that we can say of the incorporeal
hypostases must indisputably be derived by reason, albeit human reason.
Only that the opposite of which is unthinkable is certain. But “in reality this
multiplication [of intelligible essences by the Gnostics] lowers intelligible
nature to the level of sensuous nature” (6). Historical description of the eternal is plain sacrilege. The Gnostics’s knowledge is not philosophical but
magical in character. He is saved who has got hold of the secret list of names
of the divine essences and learned to pronounce them in the only correct
fashion. Knowledge is the key to power over the supreme forces of the universe. It is this Gnostic understanding of knowledge as power (the future
Baconian “Knowledge is power”) that especially agitates Plotinus. “They
believe . . . that they can compel higher beings to obey them and to do what
they request . . . that one who has mastered enough of their magical art can
command the gods. . . . Perhaps they will repudiate any such intention: still
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they must explain how these things act upon the unembodied” (14). Such
knowledge does not change the knower, for the Gnostic is from the start
chosen for salvation. It is an instrument with which one can build a bridge
and instantaneouslyjump across all world orders to bliss and supreme power.
If the Gnostic denial of the world, from Plotinus’s point of view, endangers first of all the Gnostics themselves, their doctrine concerning the divinity of chosen human souls presents the greatest danger to outsiders by reason
of its seductiveness.The Gnostics believe that they are sparks of the higher
divine fire, captured by evil matter and temporarily imprisoned in the gloom
of corporeal being. After a series of rebirths and the destruction of our
universe there awaits them resettlement on a blissful “new Earth.” Here too
Divine Providence will take care of them and only of them, because the
rest of the world, controlled by the irrational and evil Demiurge, is merely
a sum of meaningless accidents. The soul of the chosen man is by its very
nature akin to God (and by the same token quite alien to the whole world).
Therefore, final salvation does not depend on the conduct of the chosen
individual. He strives for knowledge, strictly speaking, only because he is
drawn home, “to his own.” ‘‘Recollection’’of the spiritual world, which is
true knowledge or gnosis, gives him pleasure. In the final reckoning, he will
be saved irrespective of his merits.
This doctrine arouses the greatest ire in Plotinus, but at the same time his
argumentsagainst it are much less simple and convincing than those by which
he proves the perfection and uncreatedness of the world or the goodness of
its creator. They all boil down to the affirmation of the unshakeable order
and hierarchy of being: man as such, who is at quite a low level of the hierarchy, cannot be the sole chosen kinsman of the First Principle, for above him
and closer to God are the heroes, demons, luminaries, the World Soul, and
the Intellect. To set oneself above these is insanity and sacrilege.
However, in both Plato and Plotinus himself, one can find quite a few
agreements with this Gnostic doctrine, moreover, not on secondary but on
central points of their philosophy, including the soul’s difference by nature
from the lower world, the soul’s kinship with divinity, and the escape from
the body by means of knowledge or recollection. In Plato there is even a
description of the “new Earth,” on which the souls saved by philosophy live
in bliss. Plotinus tells how he himself rose in ecstasy almost above the higher
Intellect to the One Itself. From a formal point of view, the difference here
between Platonism and Gnosticism, if there is one, is small. What is it, then,
in this doctrine that arouses such ire in Plotinus? In his opinion, it destroys
what is most important for him-philosophy as such. Philosophy is the striving by means of exercises in the sciences and virtues to perfect one’s soul.
“They destroy wisdom and justice, which is innate in the moral sense and is
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made perfect by thought and by self-discipline: all that a lover of philosophy
can strive for” (15). Neither reason nor virtue nor any kind of free human
effort plays a decisive role in the Gnostic’s salvation. “What is left for themexcept where the pupil by his own character betters the teaching-comes to
pleasure, self-seeking, the grudge of any sharing with one’s fellows, the
pursuit of advantage” (15). The orientation of Greek philosophy toward
rational and purposive self-improvement is possible only in a rational and
purposive world that is permeated by the light of the deity.16 If the entire
universe that is visible and thinkable to the human mind is evil, then any
improvement is senseless, any rationality insane, and any virtue sinful, for
they conform to the laws given by the enemy-the creator of this world.
The sole justified human act, in the final analysis, is destruction, be it in the
material, the moral, or the rational sphere.
Nevertheless, unlike Irenaeus for instance, Plotinus places no special emphasis on the Gnostics’s amoralism. Nor does he dwell on other points of their
doctrine that are especially vulnerable to criticism, as Irenaeus does: he does
not cite the most absurd and comical mythological details, invalid arguments,
and motivations. He sticks to the chief, crucial points of the doctrine, precisely
those that are especially close to Platonism and his own phdosophy. The main
thmg for Plotinus is not to crush the opponent but to differentiatehimself from
him, to define with his aid his own position. This is how he always works.
The treatises in which Plotinus formulated propositions close to the Gnostic
ones were also polemical. Those that dealt in special detail with the fall of
the soul (On the Soul’s Descent into Bodies, On Time and Eternity, and On
Numbers) were directed against the Stoics and the neo-Pythagoreans of Stoic
inclination, with their fatalism and cult of nature and the natural. The treatise
in which Plotinus came closest of all to dualism-On the Nuture and Source
of Evil-was directed against Stoic pantheism, and in some particulars against
Aristotelian ethics and the Aristotelian doctrine of essence.
Plotinus formed his philosophy between the Scylla of Stoic pantheism
and the Charybdis of Gnostic dualism and nihilism. In the treatise Against
the Gnostics a good third of Plotinus’s argumentation is Stoic, coinciding
almost word for word with many passages of Epictetus. Conversely, in
Plotinus’s anti-Stoic works even the terminology is often shared with the
Gnostics: he speaks of the Soul’s daring (tcjlma), vanity, many cares, and
pride as the causes of its fall (I11.7; VI.6); of matter as a dark abyss of original evil, which is the true opposite of the One-Goodness, both of which are
beyond being, which includes the Intellect-Soul-Body;the powerless strength
of this nonexistent matter is so great that if the Soul merely glances in its
direction it is able to seize for the Soul by that glance, pull it down, and bury
it in darkness and bottomless mud (1.8).
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The position of these and other texts in the corpus of Plotinus’s works is
such that one cannot speak of any definite evolution in his views, let us say
away from Gnosticism and toward Stoicism.l7 He constantly borrows individual propositions from the most varied schools and constantly polemicizes
with one or another doctrine, running sometimes to extremes. But there are a
number of points by which he invariably stands from the first to the last
treatise of the Enneads. He always teaches the transcendence of divinity and,
accepting Stoic ethics fully and their physics partially, rejects everything
connected with pantheistic metaphysics. In his critique of the Gnostics,
Plotinus upholds the following fundamental principles of his philosophy: the
immutability of divine being, order, and goodness; the unity of the First Principle; the inviolability and justice of the hierarchical order of being; and the
unity of goodness and reason at all levels. The chief propositions of Gnostic
doctrine are unacceptable to him: the introduction of development and catastrophe into the divine sphere; dualism; the conception of knowledge as some
kind of information that can be transmitted and received or as magic that
gives the knower power; the doctrine of chosenness and the identity between
the chosen soul and the transcendent deity. All of them violate the immutable
hierarchical order and law, and neglect natural human reason and ascesis as
a means of improvement, not destruction.
The critique of Gnosticism was for Plotinus one of the most important
steps in defining his own philosophy and consolidating its inner unity. What
we call Neoplatonism took shape not by translating the Gnostic myth,
which arrived from the outside, from the East, into the language of Greek
metaphysics, but by attempting to preserve equilibrium between two dangerous extremes that threatened this metaphysics from within-between
more or less materialist pantheism, on the one side, and more or less nihilist
dualism, on the other.lE
Notes
1. Properly speaking, Plotinus’s objections to the Gnostics fill four treatises in
the Enneads, written directly one after the other and, probably, comprising a single
work: no. 30 (IlI.8: On Contemplation),no. 31 (V.8: On Intelligible Beauty);no. 32
(V.5:That the Intelligible Is Not Outside the Intellect and on the Good); and no. 33
(II.9).The last of them is a direct polemic: in it those doctrines of the Gnostics that
are unacceptable to Plotinus are set out and briefly refuted. The three preceding treatises are a detailed positive exposition of the main points on which Plotinus diverges
from the Gnostics, but he does not mention his opponents: that there are no more
than three spiritual hypostases; in particular, that between the Primordial One and
the World Soul there is only one Intellect, notwithstanding the multiplicity of ideas
in it; the beauty and goodness of the universe; that the material world is not the
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product of purposive and willed creation but the natural reflection of the spiritual
world; and on contemplation as a mode and cause of being of all that exists. I shall
examine mainly no. 33, the polemical treatise, keeping in mind the three preceding
ones in which Plotinus’s positive argumentation is developed more systematically.
2. See Les sources de Plotin, Entretiens sur I’Antiquite‘clussique, vol. 5, p. 8 ff.
(Geneva, 1957);C. Elsas, Neuplutonische und gnosrische Weltublehnungin der Schule
Plotins, pp. 14-56 (BerlidNew York, 1975).
3. Thus, the opinions of the Gnostics cited by Plotinus fully correspond to the
doctrine of the Valentiniansas presented a hundred years before by Irenaeus of Lyons,
except that Irenaeus’s presentation is much more detailed. Five hundred years later,
John Damascene in his treatise Against the Municheuns attributes to his abstract collective Manichean in large part the same propositions and arguments that Plotinus
attributed to his Gnostics (and half of Damascene’s counterarguments coincide with
those of Plotinus).
4. H. Jonas, Gnosis und spiituntiker Geisr, vol. 1, p. 43 (Gottingen, 1964).I should
note that in his other works Hans Jonas analyzes Plotinus, especially his critique of
Gnosticism, as the voice of a specifically “Hellenistic spirit”; see, for instance,
Gnostitsiun (Gnosticheskaiu religiiu), pp. 25 1-61 (St. Petersburg, 1998).
5. Ibid., p. 46.
6. Ibid., vol. 2,p. 174.
7. Ibid., p. 204.
8. If we extrapolate somewhat Jonas’s position and draw conclusions that he
himself refrains from drawing, we amve at a kind of cultural-historical determinism:
all the philosophical and religious life of the Mediterranean in the first centuries after
Christ proceeds under the sign of Gnosticism, for such is the mentality of that epoch
and civilization, from which nobody has the power to free himself. The Platonist
Plotinus, the Christian Origen, the Gnostic Valentinus-all philosophize roughly in
the same way, differing in particulars, in the form of presentation, and in unimportant
external labels.
A directly opposite argument is put forward by those who, like A. BesanGon or
P. Kozlovskii, identify Gnosticism as a definite philosophical, existential, and value
orientation that manifests itself in various epochs from antiquity to the medieval dualistic heresies, European romanticism, German idealism, and the utopian theories and
practices of the twentieth century. It manifests itself in different ways, but retains its
core, in particular, the conviction that man is chosen by God (or is autonomous); that
the world and the existing order of things are not good and must be struggled against
or changed; that the path to salvation lies in knowledge, a special kind of knowledge
that may be found, acquired, or transmitted.
9. A similar critique of “poetic myths” in the first to third centuries C.E. is a
commonplace, in particular, in Stoic philosophy. Thus, Seneca denounces “the poets’s
blasphemous and insane inventions”: “Poetic myths feed upon human delusions. The
sole aim that they pursue is more strongly to stoke up the fire of our passions and sins.
. . .The invention of all our abominations is attributed to the gods, and every human
perversion, shielded by divine authority, is excused and justified” (On the Brevity of
Life, 16,5).
10.Treatise II. 9 is simply overflowing with abuse, which is uncharacteristic of
Plotinus: ignoramuses,fools, conceitedbraggarts, windbags, imbeciles,impious people,
little children, deceivers, daydreamers, charlatans, and so forth.
11. The world as a whole, according to Plotinus, is imperishable, but each part of
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it is subject to becoming, that is, to birth and death. Becoming is a distinguishing
mark of corporeal nature, as movement is of psychic nature and as multiplicity in
unity is of intellectual nature. The perfection of any thing consists in expressing most
fully its own nature; therefore, intracosmic becoming does not prevent the cosmos
from being perfect.
12. Similarly, the way in which each lower hypostasis is “generated” out of a
higher one or, more precisely, the mode of existence of each lower hypostasis in the
higher, is examined in detail in two preceding treatises-On the Good (V.5) and On
Zntelligible Beauty (V.8), in chapter seven of which Plotinus for the first time directly
demonstrates that the universe was never created. His argument here is aimed not
only at the Gnostics but also at the directly technomorphic mythology of Plato’s
Timaeus, in which the Demiurge-artist calculates proportions in order to set in rotation the circles of the World Soul along which the luminaries will move, and looks to
see how many animals and of what kinds there should be in the new universe.
13. According to Plotinus, there can be no obstacles to the propagation of the
divine light of goodness and being, for besides that which is (being) there is nothing. This light grows weaker and dies out as the distance from its source increases
not because it has reached a boundary that it is unable to overcome (the Gnostic
Oros or Limit) but because as the distance increases the capacity of the darkness to
assimilate light declines. The unlighted darkness beyond the limits of being is matter,
pure nothing.
14.It must be noted that thereby the sensuous cosmos acquires in Plotinus’s treatise II.9 an ontological status different from that which it has in Plato. If the creation
of the world is not a willed act of God but a natural necessity, if the world cannot but
be, then it must also be assigned to “true being,” to which Plato opposes all that is
accidental and transient. Our world also turns out to be eternal, immutable, and selfidentical. But in that case the indicator according to which the transcendent spiritual
world will be opposed to this world must change. Plato opposed the “eternal, immutable, self-identical, intelligible being” to “becoming, which is never real, always changing, sensed by sight and touch but inaccessible to knowledge.” In Plotinus
this opposition continues to work for individual sensuous things, but not for the
universe as a whole. In distinguishing among the hypostases, the opposites “wholepart” or “divisibility-indivisibility’’ become increasingly important. Thus, the One
is indivisible even logically; the Intellect is undivided and indivisible in reality, but
logically a multiplicity of different ideas can be perceived in it. The Soul in this
respect is a paradox. It is by definition indivisible, like everything incorporeal; however, it is actually divided in bodies. Starting with Porphyry, this paradox becomes
its definition and even its name-to &meresperi ta somata memerismenon, “the
indivisible that is divided in bodies.” Finally, the body and magnitude always consist of parts and are infinitely divisible; it is mainly in this that their inferior ontological character is expressed.
Thus, in Plotinus’s system of values, nature and wholeness play an increasingly
important role: the natural is always higher and better than the willed and the deliberately made, and evil exists only in particular, p h a l things, while the whole-be it
nature, the world or the intelligible cosmos-knows no evil or imperfection. Both
these points bring Plotinus close to the Stoics and separate him from Plato, in whom
the supreme Goodness, God, creates deliberately and purposefully, like an earthly
craftsman (and is, therefore, called the Demiurge), and the sources of evil are connected with multiplicity, motion (mutability), necessity, and space.
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15. “Either the process is according to the order of nature or against its order, there
is no third possibility. If it is according to the nature of things, it must have been
taking place from eternity; if it is against nature, then something opposed to nature
will exist in the other world also [that is, in God], and evil will exist prior to this
world. But then the cause of evil is not this world, evil will come into our world from
there [i.e., from God]. Instead of the Soul’s harm coming from this [sensuous] sphere,
we have this sphere harmed by the Soul. The theory amounts to making the world a
Primal” (12).
16. In the first of Plotinus’s anti-Gnostic treatises, it is proven that the Supreme
First Principle-the One-is itself present without diminution in absolutely all the
particles of being-from the lofty Intellect down to inanimate substances (V.5, 11).
17. However, such thorough researchers as Harder and Dodds were inclined to
explain the differences between Plotinus’s positions in various treatises precisely by
an evolution in his views; they regarded Treatise 33 as the turning point from dualism
and the doctrine of matter as an evil substance to a monist organicist metaphysics (see
L a sources de Plotin, p. 184). However, a more convincing point of view is expressed,
in particular, by Rist (for his refutation of Dodds, see Phronesis [1961], p. 154), by
Armstrong (The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy
[Cambridge, 19671, p. 256), and by Elsas (Neuplatonische, pp. 10-12): propositions
that appear at first glance to be close to Gnosticism and propositions opposed to it are
in fact encountered throughout the whole of Plotinus’s work.
18. In my view, one should not regard the first of these phenomena as a manifestation of the Greek spirit and the second as a product of the East. Both concepts-the
Greek spirit and the East-are too vague. To consider world affirmation a characteristic trait of the joyous Greek and denial of the world a manifestation of the Oriental
mentality is too schematic a simplification. Plat0 was the first of the Greeks to teach
the creation of the world by a transcendent, ineffable, and inaccessible God and the
duality of soul and body: should he be considered a typical Greek or, following Augustine, should it be assumed that he borrowed all these ideas from the East-from
Moses? The Stoics teach that the cosmos is a beautiful and good supreme deity, the
embodiment of goodness, order, and law. Should we, following Max Pohlenz, regard
Stoicism as a Semitic doctrine alien to the Greek spirit? Or should we, following
Jonas, regard it as the most vivid manifestation of Hellenism? To try to define the
essence of Neoplatonism and its place in spiritual history in terms of the categories
West and East is tempting but unproductive.